April went to sit in the walled garden, on the rough grass around the back where the sun shone full. There was a rounded patch that April had already guessed to be the last resting place of the famous yellow apple tree. The stump had long since been dug out or rotted away, so April could not be sure, but she liked to think that she was right. She liked to imagine the feet of three small children dangling from branches above her, the fourth child swinging alongside, legs and arms outstretched as if flying. She could see them playing hide and seek here, and hear their laughter, quick and elusive among the foliage.
She had come from Empyrean, where she’d walked through the rooms that were now painted and fresh, and the rooms that were still broken and grimy, and she had listened out for the voices there, too, but had heard none. The house was filled with the kind of settled calm that could signify acceptance of defeat, but instead felt more like peaceful rest. April had closed the front door behind her with a sense that whatever ghosts may have been lingering, their last faint traces were now gone, their years of living among the wreckage at an end.
In the walled garden, the roses were fading now, the heat too much for them. But the dahlias were starting to flower. Their new buds should be picked off, according to The Popular Encyclopaedia, until the plants had gained sufficient height. Other plants had come up without help. A great clump of mauve catmint, and a stand of red hot pokers. Blue buddleia attracted the bees and a golden daisy had seeded itself freely all over. August was a time for potting bulbs, the Encyclopaedia told her. Narcissus, hyacinth and freesia would all emerge sweet-smelling in winter if started now.
Winter. Not so very far away. If she stayed, that is. If she went back, it would be summer again, but it would not feel like it. In the garden of Circle Court, it had never felt like summer. There was a dampness that never left, that chilled your feet always as you walked, crept right up to your knees if you sat on one of the battered benches.
Not that she could go back to Circle Court. Her flat would be occupied by someone else now, and so would Jenny’s. But if she were to re-create her old life, then she would have to live somewhere similar, somewhere small and drab, with the same few possessions. She could not keep the money from the house — perhaps Jenny’s church would take it? That way, her old life could begin again as if it had never ended.
But what was the purpose of that life? April knew what she’d intended for it to be, but she was no longer sure she had actually fulfilled it. She did not feel as if she’d achieved anything worthwhile. She could see now that the real end was still beyond her, and, strive as she might, she’d never reach it.
Because she could not wake the dead. Nothing she could do would ever bring Ben back. When he’d died, she’d believed the essential part of her had gone with him. But she was still here, and she could feel the sun’s warmth and smell the last of the roses, and she could hear the echo of children laughing under an apple tree.
And what of Dan? How could she explain that all the hurt she’d caused him might have been avoided, if she’d seen then what she could see now? If she’d let him convince her that it was possible to move on, to live with grief but not let it become your life?
Dan had moved on. Not quickly. Not easily. But he had, and he had a life with his new wife and his new little boy, and perhaps another child by now.
April’s hand went to the chain around her neck. Remorse and reconciliation, Edward had said the keys symbolised. She was not short on remorse; it had filled her up like sawdust for five years and choked the life out of her. But reconciliation? Was that even possible? Could Dan ever forgive her?
He could, she decided, because he was the kind of person who’d always want to. Perhaps, though, it was more important that she first forgave herself.
A flash of blue caught her eye. A kingfisher, on top of the garden wall, light bouncing off wings as bright as if they’d been enamelled. It crouched, beak pointed outwards, and then it sped off into the sky, straight as an arrow.
‘My fault.’
Jack had come within a few feet without her hearing him.
‘I startled it. Hope I didn’t startle you.’
‘I never expect to see you during the week,’ she said. ‘But I’m very glad you’re here.’
He dropped down beside her on the grass.
‘I came in for the water from the tap. It’s always cold.’
She had given him Kit’s old flask, thinking he had more need for it than her. He offered it to her, and she drank, and felt the icy rush renew her. She had not realised she’d been so thirsty.
‘I have these, too.’
He held a bundle made from an old handkerchief, and untied it to show her what it contained.
‘Strawberries?’
‘Wild ones.’ He nodded to them. ‘Go on.’
‘I don’t like to take food from you.’
‘Plenty more where these came from. For now.’
They were smaller and rounder than the garden variety, but they exploded in April’s mouth like a flavour bomb, all juice and sweetness.
‘Goodness,’ she said when she could. ‘Glorious.’
He shared them all with her. Threw the last one to the dog, who spat it out.
‘Heathen,’ said April.
‘He’s a dog,’ said Jack, with a smile. ‘What can you do?’
But April knew exactly what to do. She leaned in to him and pressed her mouth to his, and the here and now ceased to matter.
CHAPTER 33
mid-August
‘The war rid me of any capacity to be surprised,’ said Sunny. ‘Nothing was normal so everything was, if you know what I mean. You stopped looking for any rhyme or reason in events because it was obvious there was none.’
‘Well, I’m surprised,’ said Edward. ‘Pleasantly so, of course. Very pleasantly.’
April had wondered all day what their reaction might be. She’d assumed it would be positive, but then not everyone welcomed change, did they? There’s comfort in what you’re used to.
She’d even wondered if her appearance would pass without comment. Jack had made none; April had the firm impression he never even registered what clothing she wore. Edward might feel it ill-bred to react; he’d be the kind to pick up a soup plate and drink from it rather than make a foreign guest feel bad. Sunny might feel it was simply none of her business. Which, to be fair, it wasn’t. It was April’s choice, and she’d made it of her own accord.
She’d arrived at Sunny’s for afternoon tea with her hair cut and coloured, and wearing pink lipstick, white sandals and a primrose yellow dress. It was the dress from the linen chest in the attic, a style typical of wartime: short puffed cap sleeves, a deep V-necked bodice that gathered in soft folds under the bust, a fitted waist panel from which a full skirt fell to just below the knees. It was not the same as the dress she’d worn the day that Ben had died. But it was similar enough to make her heart race and her fingers stumble as she’d zipped it up. It fitted. As she’d known it would.
‘I recognise that dress,’ said Sunny. ‘Cora made it for the summer of 1943. The summer I left to join the ATS.’
‘Weren’t you very young?’ said Edward. ‘Not even twenty?’
‘You could join as soon as you turned seventeen,’ said Sunny. ‘But you had to be unmarried. I decided not to tell them I was engaged.’
They were sitting in the courtyard under the shade of a large green umbrella stuck through a hole in the middle of the table. The table was not quite large enough, so Edward was obliged to keep one foot resting on its base, lest it topple and Sunny’s pretty plates and cups shatter on the flagstones.
The air in the courtyard smelled of lavender, one of the few plants thriving in the dry weather. Pots of sedums and succulents were also doing well, and there were some wonderful flame-coloured daisies with mahogany centres. Fatso was absent. Hunting, according to Sunny. He did not need food, but that was irrelevant. The surrounding gardens were teeming with rabbits and shrews, mice and moles, and h
e intended to catch all of them.
‘Why did you join that summer?’ said April. ‘Had you been working up to it?’
She bit into one of Sunny’s cucumber sandwiches and marvelled again at how something so simple could be so delicious. The lemon cake on the table was her own. It had a scattering of thyme in it, picked from the walled garden. It had turned out pleasingly well, despite being made entirely from memory.
Sunny, April thought, had not heard her question, being busy inspecting the underside of a leaf on her climbing rose.
But after running her finger and thumb hard along the leaf’s surface, the older woman said, ‘No’, and paused to wipe her hand with a napkin. April saw on the cloth a green streak that had, only a second ago, been a cluster of aphids.
‘No, I had not been working up to it,’ Sunny continued. ‘I was put in a position where I had little other choice.’
‘What happened?’ said Edward. ‘That is, if you want to tell us.’
April knew why he’d added that rider. Sunny’s posture was no longer as upright, and the lines in her face had become pronounced in the way a passing cloud will summon the shadows in a landscape. For the first time in April’s acquaintance, Sunny looked every year of her age. No wonder Edward sounded anxious.
‘You know, I’m not even sure my children know the full story,’ said Sunny. ‘Perry did, of course, but he was the only one I could bear to tell it to.’
Edward began to assure her that she did not have to say a word, but she cut him off with a wave.
‘Oh, no need to spare my feelings,’ she said. ‘I’m a tough old bird, you know. And as time goes on, these memories hurt less and become part of what make you who you are. It certainly helped make me. If I’d ever been in two minds about how I wanted to live my life, I had no doubt at all afterwards.’
‘Well, only if you’re sure,’ said Edward.
But Sunny did not hear him. She had been cast back over seventy years, to a place, April guessed, that was markedly less peaceful.
‘We were in the Blythes’ shed,’ she began, ‘milking the cows. The farm labour shortage was chronic by then — so bad in some areas that the government was considering releasing POWs. Supervised, of course.’
Sunny’s tone became accusatory.
‘People today have no idea how busy farms used to be. Today, you raise sheep or grow crops or milk cows, whereas then the Blythes did all of those and more, and with none of the technical contrivances we have now to save labour. They kept poultry and sheep and a milking herd. They grew wheat and barley, and oats to feed the stock. They harvested apples and nuts. Cob nuts. Hazel nuts. They ploughed, harrowed, rolled, made hay, spread muck, sheared, mended fences and hedges. They raised calves and lambs, and killed and hung their own meat. They took their own produce to market. It was not a big farm by today’s standards, but before the war there had been six men working on it besides Ellis and his two sons. In 1943 there were Ellis and Martha Blythe, Lily and, when they could, her brother’s wives, Cora, my mother and me, and wee Virgie, who was thirteen by then but still tiny. Seven and a half women doing the work of nine men.’
‘What about Mr Potts?’ April said.
‘Hardly!’ said Sunny. ‘Ellis Blythe worked for him, not the other way round. Besides,’ she added, darkly, ‘he had other things on his mind at that time.’
‘Trouble at mill?’ said Edward. ‘Political graft? Sex scandal?’
‘Do you want to hear this or not?’
‘Please. Carry on.’
‘We would take turns getting up before dawn to milk the Guernseys,’ said Sunny. ‘I enjoyed it but once we found Virgie asleep, still sitting on the stool, her head resting on the cow’s side. After that, we let her stay in bed.
‘That morning, it was my mother and me, and Martha Blythe. The sun had just risen when we heard it. A stop-start buzz, up in the air. An aeroplane with a failing engine. We kept milking, as we had to, but we were all listening intently. Its sputtering became louder — there was no doubt it was coming closer. Then silence, for no more than a few seconds. And then — bang!’
She slammed her hand down on the table. Edward and April jumped, and table and umbrella lurched, sending teacups rattling. April steadied the umbrella, while Edward clamped his foot back down on the table base.
‘The plane crashed,’ said Edward. ‘Obviously.’
‘Was it Germans?’ said April.
‘No,’ said Sunny. ‘A mixed crew, American and British. Joy-riding in a decommissioned Vickers Wellesley. They crashed in the back field. The plane clipped the top branches of an old oak, landed smack on the ground and burst into flames. We heard the woomph quite distinctly. Exactly like setting a match to gas.’
April’s hand flew to her mouth.
‘We left the cows half-milked and ran,’ said Sunny. ‘All of us, even Martha Blythe, who was no sylph. We met Ellis Blythe, running from the farmhouse. By the time we reached the field, the front of the plane was ablaze. One of the airmen had managed to get out, and he was staggering towards us, bashing away at the flames on his uniform. My mother and Cora had both completed first aid training through the WI. Ellis Blythe had on his old tweed jacket, heavy as a blanket, which my mother practically ripped from his back. She sprinted to the burning airman and shoved him to the ground so that she could roll him in the jacket and extinguish the flames. I’m not sure the poor man knew what hit him, but I suspect that his brain only started to function again once he was no longer burning. Before that, he was like an animal fleeing a stubble fire, blind terror overtaking all else.’
‘Who could blame him?’ said Edward. ‘Was he badly burned?’
‘He was,’ said Sunny. ‘But he was alive.’
She paused, to gather herself. A bumblebee was lofting to and fro in the lavender, humming its contented oboe note.
‘Martha Blythe had the presence of mind to return to the farmhouse and telephone for the doctor and police,’ Sunny began again. ‘She tried to take me with her, but I refused. These airmen were Bomber Command, the same as Perry. I’d never have forgiven myself if I’d not seen this through to the end.
‘The airman’s lungs were burned so badly he could hardly speak. My mother and I were bent over him, straining to hear. He said: “There are other chaps in the cockpit.” My mother asked: “How many?” He held up three fingers. Red raw they were, seared free of skin, down almost to the bone. I was so hypnotised by them that the first I knew that my mother was running to the plane was a warning shout from Ellis Blythe.
‘He ran to catch up with her. There was ammunition in the plane, shells were already flying in the heat, but my mother could not be dissuaded. She went in, of course, and so did Ellis. He had no choice.’
‘Your mother was an extraordinary woman,’ said Edward.
‘How they bore the inferno of that fuselage, I’ve no idea,’ said Sunny, as if she hadn’t heard. ‘They came out dragging another airman.’
‘Alive?’
‘My mother didn’t stay to find out. She left him with Ellis and ran again to the plane. This time, I held Ellis back, made him stay put. I think, you see, that I knew.’
Sunny, unconsciously, was twisting her wedding rings around her finger. The rings, a platinum band and three modest diamonds set in gold, were loose and circled easily. The veins of her hands showed blue under translucent skin.
‘It went up in a huge explosion, a fireball straight up into the sky. We were all burned a little by it, red patches on our skin and spots behind our eyes for days afterwards. My mother would have been killed instantly. There was no way of knowing whether the remaining two airmen had been alive or already dead. I like to think that they may have been alive. That she did not die for nothing.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ said April.
She had a burst of sympathy for all those people who’d said exactly those words to her. They were woefully inadequate, but really, what else could you say?
‘I remember that I stood rooted to the
spot,’ said Sunny, ‘absolutely numb with shock and disbelief. It took me a moment to feel Ellis Blythe’s hand on my shoulder, and to hear the noise, a high sound, keening on and on. I thought it was the aftershock of the explosion ringing in my ears. Until I realised it was coming from my own mouth.’
Sunny looked through the kitchen window to the sideboard, on which the photo of her and Perry on their wedding day could just be seen.
‘I made much the same sound when he died,’ she said. ‘My children were most distressed.’
‘Oh, my dear girl,’ said Edward, as if she were still only nineteen.
‘My memories of the day from then on are very patchy,’ Sunny said. ‘But I do distinctly recall Cora Potts, white-faced, gripping me by the shoulders and insisting that I could stay with them for as long as I wanted. That Empyrean was my home, too.
‘Cora,’ Sunny nodded towards April, ‘was wearing that dress.’
April glanced down, instinctively, as if somehow she would find she’d been transported back in time, and into another’s body.
‘I had no doubt she was sincere,’ said Sunny. ‘But I also had no doubt that I would leave. I could not bear the thought of being in the house without my mother, of entering rooms expecting to see her, or hearing laughter that could and should have been hers. After the funeral I enlisted and within two weeks I was in a training camp in Devon. I had no idea, at the time, that I would never see either Cora or James again, and that it would be over a decade before I next saw Lily.’
‘Did you correspond?’ said Edward.
‘Regularly with Lily, less and less often with Cora. By the late ’50s, she was in Paris, designing textiles. I saw an article about her in Vogue magazine, after she died. Her signature pattern was called “Harvest”, stylised wheat sheaves and bright orange pomegranates and an odd little round bird that, if you looked at it from an angle, resembled exactly a curlicued letter D.’
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