Ghost Swifts, Blue Poppies and the Red Star

by Nathan Dylan Goodwin

  ‘Don’t you have to get back?’

  ‘Fraser can wait a little bit longer, I think. Come on.’

  ‘Ma!’ Fraser called, as she entered the hotel saloon, leaping up from a chair. ‘Where the devil have you been? I’ve been worrying myself sick!’

  ‘I fell over and banged my head,’ Harriet explained, pointing to the bruise above her right eye. As much as she didn’t want the fuss, there was no way of disguising it, so it was easier just to come right out and tell the truth.

  ‘Do you need to see a doctor?’ he asked, rushing towards her and scrutinizing her injury.

  ‘No, no, I’m absolutely fine,’ she insisted, flapping her hand in his face, as though she were being pestered by some maddening insect or other.

  ‘Well, we need to jolly well hurry, if we’re going to make that last train. Come on. I’ll help you pack. I’m all ready.’

  Harriet held out her hand to stop him. ‘Hang on. Slight change of plan.’

  ‘Oh, glory…’ he said, rolling his eyes, then folding his arms, as he awaited some grand revelation.

  ‘Yes. We’re going back home tomorrow, now,’ she said.

  Fraser’s face lightened, and he unclamped his arms. ‘Oh, that’s fine. Have you checked we can stay an extra night?’

  ‘Yes, it’s all arranged.’

  ‘Good. I thought for a moment you were going to announce another fanciful expedition somewhere,’ he laughed. ‘Well, I might go and take a walk, then bathe before dinner.’

  ‘Before you go,’ Harriet said, catching his elbow. ‘There is a little more to explain about this change of plan of ours.’ Harriet turned to the doorway. ‘In you come.’

  Lina entered the room, her head shyly tilted downwards, with a clinging Poppy propped on her hip.

  Fraser flicked his eyes between Harriet, Lina and the little girl. ‘My God, she looks the very spit of him.’

  Harriet nodded, then grinned. ‘Doesn’t she just!’

  ‘This is Poppy,’ Lina said. She spoke in a soft voice to the little girl. Most of the words were in Flemish, except for ‘hello’ in English.

  Poppy smirked and pulled herself tighter to Lina.

  ‘Sorry. She’s shy,’ Lina said. ‘She will not leave you alone once she knows you better.’

  ‘Let’s sit down and we can talk about the arrangements,’ Harriet said, leading the way to the closest table.

  ‘Arrangements?’ Fraser asked.

  ‘Yes, Lina and Poppy are coming to live with us,’ Harriet replied with a broad smile.

  Chapter Fourteen

  16th September 1919, Sedlescombe, Sussex

  ‘So, this is the famous Sedlescombe?’ Lina asked, pronouncing it correctly now from hearing its constant mention. She was standing at the apex of the village green, still and quiet under a low autumnal morning sunshine.

  ‘Oh, yes. World-famous!’ Harriet chuckled, before sighing contentedly.

  ‘What a lovely little place. So green and so very different to Ypres.’

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed, taking her time to absorb her surroundings with a renewed appreciation. The disparities between the two places—separated by little more than one hundred miles—was so extraordinarily glaring as to be preposterous. ‘Nearly home,’ she said, as Poppy took her by the hand and tottered the short distance to Linton House.

  ‘Is this it?’ Lina said, placing her hand on the property’s low iron gate and staring open-mouthed at the house. When Harriet nodded, Lina declared, ‘Wow! It’s like a palace.’

  ‘Oh, nonsense,’ Harriet rejected.

  ‘Well, we’ll have to see what the inside’s like,’ Fraser muttered.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Lina asked.

  ‘What he’s trying to say is that we’ve got a rather lovely house guest by the name of Timothy Mogridge. Lovely, lovely boy.’

  ‘And you want more people staying?’ Lina said.

  ‘Absolutely,’ Harriet insisted, pushing the gate open. ‘Come on, let’s go inside.’

  Harriet walked up the garden path, taking surreptitious glances at the windows, trying not to let Fraser see that she, too, was wondering if she might have been too generous in entrusting her whole home and worldly possessions to a virtual stranger.

  She placed the key in the lock. The pleasantly indescribable, yet familiar smell of the old place greeted her, as she pushed open the door. Such a welcome relief to be home. ‘Hello? Timothy?’ she called into the house, compensating for her trepidation, as she overconfidently stepped inside.

  A light, barely discernible scrape came from the back of the house, which Harriet recognised instantly as being the slide of a chair against the stone kitchen floor. She tittered upon seeing Timothy shuffling towards them; she couldn’t be sure why, perhaps it was just relief at the elimination of the niggling mistrusting doubts, which Fraser had instilled in her.

  Fraser, then Lina and finally Poppy entered the hallway behind Harriet.

  ‘Welcome home, Mrs McDougall!’ Timothy said cheerfully, shaking Harriet’s hand warmly. He was wearing a pair of John’s old trousers and one of his olive shirts with a maroon tie. ‘Oh, and visitors! Hello.’

  ‘Yes,’ Harriet said. ‘Timothy, this is Lina and her daughter, Poppy. I’ll explain everything later, but they’ve come to stay here.’

  ‘Splendid,’ Timothy said, leaning past to shake Lina’s hand. ‘Nice to meet you.’

  ‘You, too.’

  ‘Well, you’ve picked a good time for a holiday,’ Timothy said. ‘Apparently we’re due a return to clement temperatures for a week, before Autumn digs her heels in more firmly: an Indian summer, so they’re saying.’

  Harriet went to correct him and to say something to the effect that they weren’t here for a holiday, when, out of the blue, Poppy began to scream, taking immediate shelter in the folds of Lina’s pleated skirt.

  ‘What on earth’s the matter?’ Harriet asked, glancing back and forth between Fraser and Lina, wondering what she could have missed. She understood when Timothy mumbled his apologies and turned sharply back towards the kitchen.

  ‘Sorry,’ Lina said. ‘She’s just nervous around new people.’

  ‘It’s fine; I even have that effect on my own daughter,’ he muttered, striding away.

  Lina bent down, stroking Poppy’s hair and comforting her in Flemish.

  ‘Right,’ Harriet began, trying to break the mounting sense of disquiet, ‘Fraser, take Lina and Poppy into the sitting-room, whilst Timothy and I get a pot of tea going. I’m absolutely gasping! If there’s one thing that that wretched Jack fellow from the hotel and I do agree on, it’s that you cannot get a decent cup of tea outside of England.’

  ‘Probably a slight exaggeration, Ma,’ Fraser said, leading Lina and Poppy off into the sitting room.

  ‘Oh, and put some Vivaldi on! I’ve missed the old Italian maestro,’ Harriet called, dashing into the kitchen to catch up with Timothy. When she reached him, she felt the need to touch his arm for human reassurance. ‘How have you been?’

  ‘You know…’ he answered, not meeting her gaze, as he loaded cups and saucers onto a tray.

  ‘Thank you for looking after the place so well,’ Harriet praised, noticing that the kitchen was spotless. There was even a cake of some kind, proudly sitting under the glass cloche on the table.

  Timothy shrugged. ‘I needed to keep myself busy, you know.’

  ‘Have you heard anything from Nell?’ Harriet asked softly.

  Timothy filled the kettle with water and placed it on the range, keeping his back to Harriet. ‘Her father wrote to me and asked me to return—’

  ‘Oh, that is positive,’ Harriet interrupted.

  ‘—to collect the rest of my belongings,’ Timothy finished.

  ‘Oh. Sorry.’

  ‘And he’s looking at the logistics of…’ he lowered his voice and hung his head in shame, ‘…legalising the separation.’

  It might well have been overestimating their friendship, but Harriet placed her
two hands on his shoulders and rested her head onto his. ‘It’s an awful time, Timothy, really it is. But…but perhaps a fresh start is what you both need?’

  ‘And what about Anna? Do I just forget that I have a four-year-old daughter…just pretend that she doesn’t exist and never see her again?’

  ‘No, of course not. There’ll be a way to see her; I’m sure of it. Let me think on it a while. Just don’t give up, alright?’

  Making his lack of conviction clear, Timothy shrugged.

  Harriet rubbed his arm. ‘Good lad,’ she found herself saying. ‘Milk…’ she quickly added, to distance herself from her own poor choice of words, realising that she had sounded rather as though she had been fawning over a puppy. She picked up the jug of milk from the thick slab of marble in the larder and set it down on the tray.

  ‘How was the trip?’ Timothy asked, seeming not to have taken any offence.

  ‘Sad, interesting, illuminating, tragic, revealing, rewarding, surprising,’ Harriet answered, thinking but withholding all manner of other similar or conflicting adjectives to describe the trip. ‘In short: very worthwhile.’

  ‘Good, I’m pleased,’ Timothy said, his voice almost lost to the histrionic scream of the boiling kettle.

  ‘I think I know as much as I’m ever going to about Malcolm’s last weeks… Oh, and the biggest shocks of course are in the sitting room.’

  Timothy paused, mid-way through lifting the glass cake cloche. ‘Oh?’

  ‘Poppy, that little girl,’ Harriet said, finding that she was pointlessly lowering her voice, ‘she’s Lina and Malcolm’s daughter.’

  Timothy’s eyes widened, as he processed the information. ‘Astonishing.’

  ‘It is, rather. Goodness only knows what the Reverend Percival is going to have to say on the matter. Or the neighbours. Or the village. Gosh, I’d not even thought of that. And Hannah!’

  Timothy lifted the cake over to the tray, poured the boiling water into the teapot, then faced Harriet. ‘Perhaps Malcolm and Lina had married—in secret?’

  Harriet shook her head vehemently. ‘No, unfortunately…’ she stopped herself short, as his intonation sunk in. ‘Oh. Oh! I see. Yes, perhaps they did.’ She gazed momentarily out of the window, thinking. ‘A secret wedding in Woolwich in 1916, when Malcolm came over on hush-hush war work. John, being John, would never have approved of Malcolm’s marrying a foreign charwoman, so the poor fellow had little choice but to keep it all hidden from us.’ Harriet beamed. ‘That’s right! Well done, Timothy!’

  ‘Pleasure, Mrs McDougall,’ he said flatly.

  ‘I think perhaps it’s time you started calling me Harriet, don’t you?’ she said.

  ‘Oh, right. That might take some getting used to,’ he grimaced.

  ‘Try it. That cake looks glorious, Timothy,’ she enthused.

  ‘Thank you…Harriet,’ Timothy said. ‘Genoa, freshly baked today.’

  ‘There! You did it,’ Harriet said with a laugh. ‘I suppose I must also tell Lina to do the same. Harriet—a bit less stiff and stuffy than Mrs McDougall, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so,’ Timothy agreed.

  ‘You are a good man. You know that, don’t you?’

  Timothy blushed, avoiding her eye, and said, ‘I think there’s a little lemonade powder left in the packet; ought I make some up for the little one?’

  ‘Fabulous idea!’ Harriet replied, picking up one of the trays and moving out of the kitchen. A long-forgotten sound, overwhelming the mawkish Vivaldi composition, drew her along the hallway towards the sitting room: relaxed laughter and unguarded joy, so bold and pronounced that it brought tears to her eyes. How she would have liked to stand still and immerse herself in that unfamiliar joviality. She loitered for a time and then continued into the room and into its heart-soothing embrace.

  ‘Tea!’ Harriet sang, placing the tray down on the table. ‘And..!’ she said, placing dramatic emphasis on the word, ‘Genoa cake…made by the lovely Timothy.’

  Fraser clapped somewhat dismally, and Harriet glowered at him, hoping that Timothy hadn’t heard it from the kitchen, as she set out the cups and saucers and began to pour the tea.

  Timothy stepped into the sitting room, awkwardly handing the glass of lemonade to Lina, holding the injured part of his face away from the little girl. ‘For Poppy.’

  ‘Thank you very much,’ Lina said, taking the glass and offering it to Poppy with some words in Flemish.

  As Timothy cut neat rectangles from the cake, Harriet watched as Poppy drank the entire glass of lemonade in one go, handed the cup back to Lina, then turned to the mantel piece, reaching up for one of the ornamental wooden elephants, which Fraser had sent back from Constantinople.

  Lina reached out to pull Poppy’s hand away, saying something with a reprimanding edge in her tone.

  ‘No, let her play with them,’ Harriet said, ‘by all means.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Absolutely. What else is the poor thing to play with? I’ll have a hunt later for some of the boys’ old toys, and we’ll make the bedroom up for you both.’

  ‘Which bedroom?’ Fraser asked.

  ‘Malcolm and Edward’s,’ she replied, not wishing to discuss the matter, lest she should get upset.

  Fraser nodded solemnly, appreciating the gravity of this moment for his mother and also the necessity driving the decision. ‘I’ll help, if you like.’

  ‘I’d rather do it alone…if that’s alright. I thought after lunch, perhaps you could take Lina and Poppy on a short walk and show her all this village of ours has to offer.’

  ‘Well that will be a very short walk, then, won’t it,’ he commented.

  ‘That will be lovely,’ Lina said. ‘Is there a wood near here that she can play in?’

  ‘We are literally surrounded by woodland,’ Fraser said. ‘And they start right here at the bottom of the garden, just over a small meadow, and run all the way to the next village.’

  Lina gasped. ‘Poppy’s never been to a wood before. She’s never really seen proper trees up-close, either.’

  ‘Well, we’ll soon change that,’ Fraser said.

  Harriet handed out the cups of tea, then taking one for herself, sat down with a noisy sigh: ‘Home sweet home.’

  Harriet was sitting on Edward’s bed, stroking the bedroom wall with appreciation for how the house had listened and understood her family’s needs so far in their custodianship. It was still and quiet throughout just at that moment, but it was a pleasant warm stillness, filled with promise and hope; the endless dreadful solemnity, which had woven itself into the very fabric of the walls for so long, had gone. The house was changing, responding to its new future, the next chapter in its story, and its new meaning. And she, Harriet understood that it was time, now, for her to do the same.

  She stood up from the bed and backed slowly towards the door, seeing the room objectively for the first time in as long a period as she could recall. The wardrobe would need to be emptied of their clothes, the bookshelves cleared, their ablutions-paraphernalia removed from below the washstand and under their beds cleared out.

  Harriet picked up Malcolm’s and then Edward’s pyjamas and briefly touched them to her face, attempting to evoke a firm memory of their wearing them, something tangible and certain; but her mind refused, providing her instead with a thin and feathery recollection, which might well have actually been her imagination or a splicing of several such instances from over the years. Perhaps, if she had known what their fate was to be, she would have consciously tried to retain such moments of seeming inconsequence. She carried the nightwear to her room and placed them onto her bed. Returning to their bedroom, she pulled open the wardrobe and glanced over the pitiable quantity of clothing hanging there. A set of Sunday best each, two mackintoshes, four cotton shirts, four pairs of flannel trousers, two pairs of working boots and, at the bottom of the wardrobe, a few pairs of socks, lambswool vests and pants. She gathered it all up into her arms and carried it through to he
r bedroom. Her plans for the clothing—and for anything else, for that matter—did not extend further than putting them onto her own bed for the time being.

  Next, she carefully picked down the display cases of moths and butterflies above Malcolm’s bed; they were certainly enough to terrify a young toddler. The thought of Poppy catching a glimpse of the morbid collection, as she was trying to go to sleep, actually made Harriet chuckle. Where a suitable location to hang them might be, she had no idea. She unstuck Malcolm’s hand-drawn sketches of moths and butterflies, intending to put them up on her bedroom walls. And then there were the books, two whole shelves of them. What was she to do with those? She certainly could never bring herself to discard them, she thought, casting her eyes over the variety of titles, each demonstrating one of the boys’ interests: Edward’s astronomy and painting books; Malcolm’s nature and chemistry books, annotated in his own hand with various comments and drawings.

  It took eight trips to transfer the books through to her bedroom. Next, she crouched down beside Edward’s bed and pulled out two wooden crates, containing his few belongings. ‘Aha!’ she said, pulling out a painting set, something which Poppy could use. ‘And…perhaps not,’ she mumbled, upon seeing that the paints by now resembled some cracked Saharan desert. At least she had found something which could be discarded without offending her otherwise still-raw and very intact sense of sentimentality. Below the painting set was a pile of The Captain magazine books, the most recent edition being April to September 1915. She picked up the book, glancing briefly at the articles on Australian cricket, short stories by P.G. Wodehouse and black-and-white images of a boxing match. As she flicked through, she felt the spine making the light creak and groan of a fresh volume, unread. She sighed, repacked the box, and turned to the second. This one contained all of Edward’s astronomy equipment, including his brass telescope. Harriet withdrew it from the box and carried it over to the window, where she extended the tripod legs and, squinting through the eyepiece, turned the cylindrical tubes to their fullest extent.

  ‘Ah!’ she cried with delight, as the back-garden fence appeared with sudden and alarming clarity. Freshly painted by Timothy, she noticed amiably.