The Wild Rose

by Jennifer Donnelly

  “Commander Finnegan! Tell us about the attack on your ship!”

  “Commander Finnegan! When did you find out your wife died?”

  “Commander Finnegan! Is it true you married an Arabian girl?”

  “That’s all for today, lads,” Joe shouted. “Commander Finnegan’s very weary from his long voyage.”

  “Mr. Bristow! When did you learn that your brother-in-law was alive?”

  “Has Commander Finnegan seen his son yet?”

  “What was Mrs. Bristow’s reaction?”

  “Diabolical, that lot,” Joe said as he wheeled himself back inside the house and slammed the door behind him.

  In the foyer, Fiona, weeping, had already thrown her arms around her brother.

  “We thought you were dead, Seamie. I can’t believe you’ve come back to us,” she said through her tears.

  “It’s all right, Fee. It’s all right …,” Seamie said, holding her tightly. Admiral Harris had telegraphed Fiona and Joe back in January. It was nearly the end of March now. The doctors in Damascus hadn’t wanted him to travel until his burns had healed further. That had taken a month. And then the boat had taken another six weeks to get to England. The separation had been hard on them all.

  When Fiona could bear to let go of him, Peter hugged him. Then Katie, and the twins. Everyone was there to greet him but Rose and James.

  “How is James?” Seamie asked, when they finally released him.

  “He’s a little nervous,” Fiona said.

  “I would think so,” Seamie said.

  James was bound to be nervous, if not downright frightened. He had recently lost his mother. And his father—or so he’d been told. But now his father—a man he didn’t even know very well—was coming back into his life. Seamie had only seen James a handful of times, when he was just a baby. He doubted very much that James, who was four now, remembered any of them. He knew he would be a stranger to the boy.

  “Does he want to see me?” Seamie asked.

  “Yes, he does. He’s upstairs with Rose right now. I thought it might be better to bring him down after we’d all calmed ourselves a bit. Me especially. We’ve told him all about you. He’s quite impressed. He wants to hear all about the Exeter. And how you survived the attack. Shall I get him?”

  “Yes,” Seamie said.

  Fiona sent a maid upstairs to fetch Rose, then suggested everyone follow her into the parlor. When they’d all sat down, Rose came in, holding hands with a little boy.

  Seamie’s heart melted at the sight of his son. Seamie had teased Jennie that he was the milkman’s son, for he had nothing of the Finnegans in him. He was fair-haired, with hazel eyes, like his mother. And, like her, he was beautiful.

  James left Rose and went to stand by Fiona.

  “Is he really my daddy, Auntie Fee?” Seamie heard him whisper.

  “He really is, James,” Fiona said. “Would you like to say hello?”

  James nodded. He approached Seamie shyly and manfully offered him his hand. Seamie could see James was being very brave, and his son’s courage touched him. He took the small hand in his and shook it.

  “Hello, James,” he said.

  “Hello, sir,” James said. He looked Seamie over uncertainly, then added, “My uncle Joe is a member of Parliament.”

  “Is he now? Then I shall have to be very careful how I tread around here,” Seamie said.

  “Are you a bloody Tory?” James asked cautiously. “The bloody Tories make him very angry.”

  Fiona gave Joe a look. “I told you not to bellow so! I told you the children could hear you!” she whispered scoldingly. Joe looked at the ceiling.

  “I see,” Seamie said, biting back his laughter. “Well, I’m a Labour man myself, so I don’t think I’ll have any trouble there.”

  “Have you come to take me away?” James asked suddenly, plaintively.

  Seamie could see the worry in his eyes. The poor little blighter, he thought. He’s been through so much.

  “No, James,” he said gently. “In fact, I was wondering if you would let me stay here for a bit. With you and your aunt Fiona and your uncle Joe. I’d like very much to stay. But only if you want me to.”

  James’s little face brightened. He turned to Fiona. “Can he, Auntie Fee? Can he stay with us?”

  “He certainly can,” Fiona said. “We’ll make up a bed for him.”

  James smiled. “I got a train set for Christmas,” he said to Seamie. “Would you like to see it?”

  “I would like that very much,” Seamie said.

  “Come on, then,” James said, offering Seamie his hand.

  Seamie took it. He followed James. For the first time in months, ever since the Exeter had gone down, he felt glad.

  Glad he’d survived.

  Glad to be home.

  Glad for the one thing he’d managed to do right in his life. Glad for little James.

  Chapter One Hundred Four

  Willa stretched languidly in her bed, then sat up. It was three A.M. She would get up soon. Make some prints. She was wide awake and full of energy. Making love had always had that effect on her.

  She looked over at Oscar Carlyle, her handsome American lover. He was lying sprawled out on his back in a tangle of sheets, eyes closed.

  Lover, she thought now, as she turned away from him and gazed at the night sky out of her huge windows. What a strange word for what he is to me.

  Willa didn’t love Oscar, or any of the men she’d been with since she came to Paris. She wished she did. She wished she could.

  “I love you, Willa.”

  She’d only ever loved one man, and she knew, deep inside, that she would give her body now and again, but she would never, ever give her heart. She could not. It was gone. She had given it to Seamie, and Seamie was dead.

  “I love you, Willa.”

  Grief filled her—thick, black, and choking. She couldn’t bear that he was gone. She didn’t know how to go on in a world that didn’t have him in it. In her head and in her heart, she still talked to him. Still marveled at sunsets with him. Told him about her work. Shared her wishes to return to Everest one day. And in her head and her heart, she heard him answer her. How could he be gone?

  Willa felt a hand on her back. She jumped, startled. “Where are you, Willa? Where’d you go?” Oscar said.

  Willa turned to him and smiled. “Nowhere. I’m right here.”

  “I said I love you. Fifteen times.”

  Willa leaned over. She kissed his mouth. And said nothing in return.

  “I’m starving,” Oscar said. “You have any food in this joint?”

  “Some chocolate, I think. And oranges,” Willa said.

  Oscar got out of bed. He was young—only twenty-seven. He had a glorious body, all bronzed, rippling muscle. They’d gone out on the town, more than three months ago, after she’d photographed him for Life, and had had a good time. That same night, they’d ended up in bed. He was kind and smart and funny. He was something warm to reach for in the middle of the night. He would have to return to his home in Rome in a fortnight. She would miss him when he left.

  He grabbed a silk kimono of hers now and shrugged into it.

  “You look very fetching, Madame Butterfly,” she said.

  He picked up a magazine and held it in front of his face, like a fan, then walked daintily across the room like a geisha, to fetch the bowl of oranges, which made her laugh.

  He put the oranges on the bed. He found half a bar of chocolate, wrapped in silver foil, and another bottle of wine—they’d already emptied one—and brought them to her, too.

  “It’s cold in here!” he said, belting the kimono around himself. He padded over to the small iron stove, on the far side of the room near the windows, opened its door, and tossed in a few lumps of coal. As he was making his way back to the bed, he stopped suddenly, to look at a row of prints spread out on a long worktable.

  He was silent for a few minutes as he looked at them. Picking some up. Shaking his
head. Saying, “Damn, Willa.”

  Willa knew what he was looking at it—it was a series she’d taken two days ago, at a brothel. The photographs portrayed the prostitutes during the day, when they were off-duty. It showed them washing their sheets, their underthings. It showed them cooking, eating, and laughing. Taking care of their children. It showed them as human beings.

  “These are astonishing,” Oscar said quietly. “Totally amazing. The critics are going to go nuts.”

  “Good nuts or bad nuts?” Willa asked, smiling at his Brooklyn voice.

  “Both,” he said, getting back in bed. “You’re fearless, Willa. But it’s not because you’re brave. It’s because you don’t give a damn what happens to you. You don’t care if the tarts beat you up, or the gypsies, or the cops, or the critics.” He looked at the oranges and frowned, then took a big bite of the chocolate. “You got anything else to eat here?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “No wonder you’re so thin,” he said, breaking off a piece of chocolate and popping it into her mouth. “Come to my place tonight. I’ll make you steak frites.”

  “That sounds delicious. I think I will,” she said.

  As Oscar poured them both more wine, Willa reached over to her night table, for the bottle of pills that was there. She tried to take two, discreetly, to help her cope with the sorrow she was still feeling over her memories of Seamie. Oscar saw her, though, and said, “More pills? Again?”

  “I need them. For the pain,” she said.

  “What pain? Where?” he asked her.

  “My leg,” she said.

  Oscar shook his head. “No,” he said. “The pain’s not there.” He slid his hand under her breast, pressing his palm against her heart. “It’s here,” he said.

  Willa looked away. She didn’t want to talk about it.

  Gently, tenderly, Oscar took her chin in his hand and turned her face to his. “Look at me, Willa. Why are you so sad, huh? Always so sad? Thin and sad.” He took her arm, stretched it out, kissed the inner bend of her elbow. “Why do your arms look like pincushions? Why do you gobble all those pills?”

  “Oscar, don’t …,” Willa said.

  “Because you lost someone? In the war? Yeah, I know. I’ve seen the picture you took of him. The one on your wall. But hey, here’s some news: Everybody lost someone.” He went quiet for a bit, then he said, “But you found me and I found you, and that should count for something. It could, too, if you would let it.”

  Oscar popped the last piece of chocolate into his mouth, then he took the silver foil that had covered it and twisted it into the shape of a ring, complete with a knobby diamond. He took Willa’s hand in his, slipped the ring onto her finger, and said, “Marry me, Willa.”

  “Stop it, you fool.”

  “I’m dead serious. Never been more serious. Marry me.”

  Willa shook her head.

  “Come on, Willa. Be my wife. I’ll get you out of this dump. Take you back to Rome with me. Get you a nice house somewhere pretty. One with radiators. You can have a garden. And a kitchen. I’ll buy you an apron. And a set of china …”

  Willa burst out laughing.

  “… and a vacuum cleaner, too.” Oscar’s voice dropped. “I’m serious. We can have kids. And toast in the morning. And dinners at night. Real ones. Just like normal people.”

  “That sounds nice, Oscar. It really does,” Willa says softly. The thought that he cared enough to want these things for her, these good and real things, touched her deeply.

  “It is nice. It will be. Do it. Leave your ghost in the graveyard where he belongs and do it, Willa.”

  Willa knew he was a good man. A talented musician. And as handsome as a god. Most women would have killed to have a man like that propose to them.

  “Come on, Willa. Marry me,” he said, pulling her close. “I love you like mad. Whaddya say? I’m throwing you a lifeline here. Don’t be a jerk. Take it.”

  Maybe he was right and she was wrong. Maybe there was a chance for her. For them. Nothing she’d done had ever been able to make her forget Seamie, but then again, she’d never done anything this mad or this foolish. Maybe she could be happy married. In a house. With a vacuum cleaner. Maybe she could. At the very least, she owed him for that. For caring enough to try.

  “All right, then, Oscar,” she said. “Why not? Yes. I’ll marry you.”

  Chapter One Hundred Five

  “Excuse me, Prime Minister,” said Amanda Downes, David Lloyd George’s secretary, “but you and the cabinet are due downstairs now for photographs with the German trade commission.”

  Lloyd George, who’d replaced Asquith in the general election, and who was in the midst of haranguing his chancellor of the exchequer, Andrew Bonar Law, over the government’s proposed budget, paused. “Thank you, Amanda,” he said. He turned to his minister of trade, Archibald Graham. “Remind me, Archie, why we are going along to this dog and pony show. This was your idea, wasn’t it? What’s it all about?”

  “Reestablishing trade with Germany. Lifting embargoes. Making loans. Abolishing tariffs,” Graham said.

  “Business as usual,” Joe Bristow said, with a note of bitterness in his voice.

  “Precisely. They want our tea. We want their motorcycles,” Graham said.

  “But none of it can happen until we put that slight incident behind us,” Joe said.

  Graham raised an eyebrow. “Slight incident?” he said.

  “The war.”

  “I wouldn’t have put it exactly like that,” Graham said, “but yes, that is correct.”

  Lloyd George sighed. He stood up and picked his cravat up off his desk, where he’d tossed it earlier. “I suppose there will be press?” he asked, tying the cravat around his neck.

  “Quite a bit from what I understand,” Graham said. He, and the ten other men seated around the large mahogany table in Lloyd George’s office, also rose. All but Joe, who pushed his wheelchair away from the table.

  “The kaiser starts a war, kills millions, then he wants to sell us motorcycles,” he said, disgustedly. “I want no part of this.”

  “What we want to do and what we must do are two separate things,” Graham said patronizingly. “In politics we must sometimes make deals and compromises. You’ve been in the House a long time. You know that well enough. This particular compromise is for the greater good.”

  Joe cocked an eyebrow. “Is it?” he said.

  “It will create trade. And trade creates jobs. Which the men who have fought for this country, and have returned home to it, desperately need. We treat with the enemy to secure our advantage.”

  Lloyd George sighed deeply. “You’re right, of course, Archie.”

  “I usually am, sir,” Graham said. “Now, gentlemen, if we can please present a united front to the press on this issue. Smiles and warm words would be helpful.”

  Joe, who had wheeled himself to the doorway, now turned his chair around, blocking everyone else’s way out. “A united front?” he said, shaking his head regretfully. “I don’t know, Archie. I have to tell you that this is going to be a very hard sell in East London,” he said.

  “Ah. Now we come to the heart of the matter. I’m surprised it took you so long,” Graham said archly.

  “I’m going to need something I can take to my constituents.”

  “Have you any ideas on what that something might be?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do.”

  “I somehow thought you would.”

  “I’ll want three new factories. One in my constituency, Hackney. One in Whitechapel and one in Limehouse. If Gerry wants to sell us motorcycles, he can bloody well build them in East London.” He paused, then said, “In politics, Archie, we must sometimes make deals and compromises. You’ve been in the House a long time. You know that well enough.”

  Graham crossed his arms over his chest. “Two factories,” he said at length. “Put them wherever the hell you like.”

  “Done,” Joe said, flashing the man
a wide smile.

  “If you gentlemen are finished?” the prime minister said.

  “We are,” Joe replied, wheeling himself out of the way so that Lloyd George could pass him.

  The prime minister led the way from his office, down a series of corridors, to the foyer of Number 10 Downing Street, his ministers following in his wake. There, Lloyd George stiffly shook hands with the head of the German trade commission—Wilhelm von Berg—as his ministers mingled with the delegates. The conversation was cool. Both sides were coming together because they had to, not because they wished to.

  Joe made small talk with a coal baron from the Ruhr Valley, an economist from Berlin, and a manufacturer of farm equipment. The atmosphere was stiff and uncomfortable, and Joe found himself actually wishing to be outside, in the bear garden of journalists and photographers that awaited.

  “Congratulations on your reelection, Mr. Bristow,” a voice behind him said, in impeccable, polished English. Joe turned. A tall, blond man stood nearby. As Joe looked at him, he realized he knew him. His hair was shorter than the last time Joe had seen him, and there was a vicious scar running down the left side of his face, but even so, he had not changed greatly over the last four years.

  “Max von Brandt,” the man said. “We met before the war. At Holloway prison. You invited me to your home. For your brother-in-law’s wedding.”

  “Yes,” Joe said coldly. “Yes, I did.”

  “I’m pleased to see you again,” Max added, “this time in my role as delegate to the trade commission.”

  A terrible anger rose inside Joe at the sight of von Brandt. With great effort, he forced himself to contain it. He was conducting the people of Britain’s business here, not his own. He had words for von Brandt, but they would have to wait. He forced himself to listen, politely and attentively, while Max, and two more men who’d joined him, greeted him and congratulated him.

  “Gentlemen, this way if you will …,” Joe heard Archie Graham say.

  They were all shepherded outside, in front of the prime minister’s residence. Hordes of reporters, jostling behind a cordon, started peppering them with questions.