The Wildflowers

by Harriet Evans

  But as he opened the door the car began to move, violently, and he was shoved against the other window and fell, banging his head, and a small cloth package, dislodged from her bag, also flew out, hitting his ankle. ‘Victory!’ Dinah shouted, as the car moved forwards. ‘Alastair, you’re a marvel, a veritable marvel!’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that,’ came a measured Scots voice. ‘It’s my pleasure, Dinah. I’m awfully glad to have you back again. I thought you’d never come back, not after—’

  Dinah interrupted. ‘Come out, Ant dear, come and say hello to Mr Fletcher. He’s down the road at Beeches. You seem well, Alastair. We should give you a drink some time.’

  ‘You should, though of what I’ve no idea,’ said Alastair, nodding in welcome as Anthony climbed, shakily, out of the car, holding the package that had viciously hit his ankle. His arm was bleeding. Alastair Fletcher nodded, and his moustache wriggled on his lip, like a hairy caterpillar. ‘Good to meet you, m’boy.’ He turned to Dinah. ‘Listen, get inside. There’s another fight on, over there towards Bournemouth.’ He nudged Ant, as though pointing out a great treat to him. ‘I say, laddie, look at that. Damn Jerry’s back for more again. I tell you, Dinah, it’s been relentless, all summer. I don’t know how much longer we can go on. Now, I’ll be off to my shelter. Do you want to come with me?’

  ‘No thank you, Alastair,’ said Dinah heartily, showing no inclination to move. ‘I’ll get us inside, we’ll be safe there.’

  ‘Hm. Well, Anthony, I’ve a son and a daughter I think you’ll get on with. Ian, he’s two years older than you and Julia. They’re back from school in a couple of days so I’ll make sure they come over and say hello. You’d like that?’

  Ant stared at him blankly, as the sound of the planes grew louder, buzzing in his ear. ‘Yes.’

  Alastair Fletcher leaned towards him. ‘Did you hear me, boy?’

  ‘Ian and Julia,’ he said, and he actually thought he might be sick, the plane noise was so near now. ‘Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. I – it’s just I think we ought to get inside.’

  The adults both glanced at his face. ‘Absolutely,’ said Alastair Fletcher. ‘We ought. G’bye, Dinah. Good to have you here.’

  ‘Righty-ho. Tinkety-tonk, old fruit,’ called Aunt Dinah to his retreating back. ‘And down with the Nazis!’

  After he’d gone, Ant jerked his head back and looked again at the house. He pointed. ‘There’s no underground.’ He knew he sounded rude but he couldn’t help it. ‘We can’t be safe if there’s no underground.’

  ‘The living area is up on the top floor, looking out to sea. But the bedrooms are built into the sand dune, so we’re sort of one floor down, here on the lane. We sleep down here, so there’s no need to move when the siren goes off, you see,’ said Dinah, blowing her hair out of her face with a puffing motion of the lips. ‘Oh, look, they’re moving off.’

  And it was true that the planes were further along the beach now, heading towards Bournemouth. But Ant was not appeased.

  ‘Is it v-very dark at night?’

  Dinah nodded. ‘But that’s good. It means the Germans can’t see as much. Promise. It really is safe as houses.’

  Anthony kept staring at the sky. ‘Houses aren’t safe,’ he said quietly.

  Dinah put her arm around him. ‘I know, dear boy,’ she said, briskly, and her voice wavered. ‘But this one is. I promise you. Let’s go inside. I long for a cup of tea. While I was in Camden I swapped some sugar coupons for tea coupons with your nice neighbour Mrs Gallagher.’

  ‘I hate tea,’ Anthony said, churlishly. ‘Mummy used to drink coffee.’

  ‘Well, there’s a war on, Ant dear—’

  ‘Don’t call me Ant.’

  ‘Besides, there is no coffee.’

  ‘Well, Mummy knew where to buy it, she—’

  But Aunt Dinah interrupted him, smiling quickly, and he saw the flash of her white, even teeth in the late-afternoon sun. ‘Listen, Anthony. We will get along more harmoniously if each of us tries. What do you say? If not, I’m afraid the situation will rapidly become tiresome. We have both given up much to come here. Try to remember that, if you please.’ He nodded, hanging his head, and she touched his chin with her finger, raising it up so their eyes met. ‘All forgotten. Welcome to the Bosky.’

  Dinah opened the door. Ant followed her. She lit a candle, and took him by the hand up the stairs. It was dark inside, warm and still, the musky feel of a place undisturbed for years. Dinah drew back the shutters at the top of the stairs and the sun slanted in through the windows, dazzling them both, and Ant looked around at the kitchen-cum-sitting room, blinking in the golden light. At first, he wasn’t quite sure what he was seeing. Then he began to take in the rest of his surroundings, and gave a small gasp.

  There was literally no room except where they stood, all the space taken up by . . . things. Beside them, stacked against a bare wall, were piles of teetering books, some of which had collapsed on to the floor, surrounded by their own confetti: creamy shreds of paper, scattered everywhere, which gave the room an almost festive air.

  ‘Oh, gosh, the mice have been at my books,’ said Dinah, shaking her head. ‘I’d forgotten quite how much I left down here. Daphne wanted me to remove most of my possessions from the flat . . . Now, where are the miniature deer?’

  Next to the books, a velvet dressmaker’s dummy wearing a brocade dressing gown, both eaten to lacy patches by the moth, and by the French windows a stack of battered leather trunks and suitcases, covered all over in travel labels, against which leaned a whole host of wooden panels and framed pictures: some had fallen forwards, and he could see paintings and tapestry-work in frames, the latter also attacked by moths. A huge stone panel dominated the centre of the room, of men diving for fish. There was a stack of bronze bowls, a small stuffed monkey wearing a red coat and holding cymbals, a footstool with worn metal lion’s feet, worn green with age, and a pair of birds of paradise in a glass case: blue, coral and pink, their tails as long as Ant’s arm.

  ‘Where did you . . . where’s all this stuff from?’ he said, eventually.

  ‘Oh – here and there.’ She waved her arms. ‘Some of it I acquired on my travels. Some of it was my parents’ from India; you know, my dear father was a colonel in the army. I grew up in the North-West Frontier before we – we had to come home.’ Dinah stepped heavily over piles of folded damask in an acanthus pattern that faded from blue to yellow. ‘Father had a little difficulty and we had to sell everything off but there was an awful lot that couldn’t be disposed of at auction. Hey-ho, what finds!’ Dinah picked up a smooth, polished stone, with wings and a beak carved into the side. ‘The paperweight bird! Alulim, dear Alulim. Hello, old thing, and good afternoon.’ She gave a small bow to the paperweight in her hand. ‘I found him in Ur. Alulim was King for twenty-eight thousand years, did you know that?’

  ‘Um – no,’ said Ant. ‘No, I didn’t.’

  Dinah took off the peacock kimono and slung it, like a cowboy arriving in a bar, across the back of a chair. She reached across and smiled at the monkey. ‘Now. I call him Livingstone. How have you been, sir?’ She saw Ant watching her and smiled that rather enchanting smile. ‘Right, enough nonsense. Let’s open the doors. Clear a path, Ant dear.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Copying her loping, pincer movement, Ant slotted one battered and bruised limb in between a box of records and a gramophone, landing on a marble tube which rolled, sending him flying. He caught hold of her arm, then bent and picked it up. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘Oh, it’s a marble cylinder. It was a means of signing your own name. You roll it on moist clay and it forms a pattern – look, can you see it? A man and a god, look at his wings.’ Aunt Dinah lifted up a huge doll with a china face and unsettlingly soft, lifelike hair pinned in a bun. ‘Hello, Eunice, regards to the family.’ She put the unsmiling doll gingerly down on one side. ‘Now look, there’s the mah-jong set! I bought this in Mosul, you know, off a terrifying chap with only one eye. Wonderful. We’ll ne
ed that when the bombing raids are on, I suspect.’ Ant’s stomach lurched, as she clutched a wooden box with a pattern in pearl to her bosom. ‘Awfully good fun, mah-jong. Look, there’s the teapot. Now, talking of cylinders, I spoke to Mr Gage in the village and he very kindly arranged for a gas cylinder to be delivered and fitted so we should be – yes, we have fire, oh, marvellous.’ She emerged from the galley kitchen with the kettle on the gas ring, and picked up the doll again. ‘It’s yours. It was your father’s. He used to play games with her when he was little. Acting out stories. Rather sweet.’

  She thrust the doll at Ant, who recoiled. ‘Oh.’ He held Eunice’s rigid body, feeling the stiff sharp horsehairs that protruded from her torso scratching his arms and stomach. His father had held her, had touched her cold white china face, had made up stories about her. He had been here. He knew it here. So did Mummy, less so but still, this was a place known to his parents. He patted Eunice’s head.

  Dinah pushed and heaved at the French windows and eventually shoved them open, almost launching herself outside in the process. ‘Come on through. Come and see the sea.’

  Following the glow of the evening sun, Ant limped slowly to the window. ‘There,’ she said, yanking him over the last part, a heap of gleaming brass pots and pans. They stood on the threshold, doors flung open. ‘Look at that, they’re still there.’

  There was the sea, silver-turquoise in the afternoon sun, set in a curved, glinting bay, woods and greenery sliding away from them down to the water, a line of white cliffs and rocks off to the right. And off to the left, two planes danced about each other, small as buzzing flies.

  Dinah moved out on to the porch; Ant grabbed her hand.

  ‘Don’t.’

  ‘We’re safe here, don’t worry.’

  ‘But they might—’ He felt helpless, and he was so sick of it. The smells, sights of the new place swamped him. Its newness wasn’t exciting now, it was overwhelming, and he put his hands to his face, terrified he’d cry in front of her. I just want to go home, he said to himself, but there was no home any more, of course.

  She produced something from her pocket. It was the cloth parcel that had hit him earlier. He’d put it down on the table. She unwrapped it. ‘Here. Pop this above the porch door, would you?’

  He looked down: in his hands was the ancient angel gazing out impassively at him. He stared at her. Her calm, wide smile seemed to say, I’m here. I’m here now.

  Anthony followed Dinah out on to the wooden decking and breathed in, a huge, deep, calming breath, and for the first time in his life smelled the scent of the rosemary that sprang from the sandy earth underneath mingling with the wild roses that frothed over the side of the house, and above it all the fresh salty sea air . . . He closed his eyes, holding the square stone slab in his hand.

  ‘Now, open this,’ she was saying, and she handed him the sack she had brought in with her from the car. ‘There’s not very much, but it’s what I could retrieve.’

  Ant peered inside. ‘From where?’

  ‘Your old house. I went back a couple of days ago. I rather thought I should have another look, see if there’s anything I could salvage.’

  ‘It was you who went back then. That’s how you got my uniform.’ She nodded, her eyes bright with tears, long pointed nose shining.

  ‘Only clothes you had left, dearest one. The lady at number twenty-one had hung on to them. She’d been drying them on the line for your mother.’

  ‘Mrs Ball, next to Mrs Gallagher. She got the sun in her garden . . .’ Ant opened the bag, slowly. There, sitting on the top and wrapped in a piece of cloth, was a watch, a Christmas present from his parents. It had a navy leather strap, scratched, and there was a crack on the glass, but it was still working. He held it up to his ear, heard the faint, purring tick of the mechanism and then, for the first time in days, smiled at Aunt Dinah, his eyes shining. ‘My watch,’ he said. ‘You found my watch.’

  She nodded. With shaking fingers he drew out next a brass doorknob, the long screw slightly bent, a worn copy of Peter Pan covered in pencil scribbles and two buttons glued all over with paste diamonds; Mummy had had an assortment of buttons in her sewing box. After that, a black velvet evening bag shot through with gold thread, and a matching scarf folded inside. There were some Happy Families cards: Mr Thread the Tailor, Master Stain the Dyer’s Son, Mrs Smut the Sweep’s Wife. A silver fork, two tines hopelessly twisted and finally, and miraculously, a photograph of Ant and his mother in Brighton.

  He stared at it, at her laughing face, her bright eyes, her hands squeezing his shoulders as they smiled at his father who was taking the photograph. She had touched this photo, used the fork, worn the scarf, played with the cards. It was all he had left of her, of both of them.

  Ant said, as his trembling hands struggled to put on the watch, ‘You got these from the house? How did you get in?’ He and his friends were driven away by zealous ARP wardens and police every time they tried to go near a bombsite.

  Aunt Dinah shrugged. ‘I’m an archaeologist. I’m good at clambering over ruins and finding things. And I’m persuasive when I want to be. One should be prepared to be elastic with the truth, only if absolutely necessary.’

  The watch was heavy on his wrist, after not wearing it for all those weeks. He stared at the photograph again, tears pricking his eyes.

  ‘Do you know any Shakespeare?’ Aunt Dinah said, after a short silence.

  ‘Bits.’

  She reached over the porch railings, pulling at a sprig of rosemary. ‘There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance. Pray you, love, remember.’ She rolled the needle-shaped leaves between her fingers and the smoky-sweet smell assailed his nostrils. ‘Now, put that angel up in her place. She’ll look after you, didn’t I promise you she would?’

  Ant reached up and rested her on the lintel above the door. ‘All right?’ he said.

  ‘We’ll put a hook up so we can hang her properly,’ she said. ‘Look how tall you are, you’re so like your father and he loved it here, you know. I say, perhaps you could put on some plays here on the porch one evening like he used to.’ She glanced up at the angel and gave a deep breath. Ant thought it sounded rather like a ragged sigh. ‘Well, then, Ant dear. Here we are.’

  Chapter Eleven

  September 2014

  When the doorbell rang early one Saturday morning in September, Cord almost ignored it. People you knew never rang the bell any more, just as people never called the landline unless they wanted money from you. She’d taken, lately, to shouting firmly down the telephone before replacing the handset, ‘Aren’t you ashamed of yourselves, trying to con someone out of their savings? Aren’t you? I’m putting the phone down, now. Goodbye.’

  The truth was that actually she’d rather welcome a phone call from an old friend, or someone she’d sung with years ago. ‘How are you, Cordelia? I saw your number in my phone book and I thought I’d look you up.’ But it never was anyone she knew. Never. Silly to think it would be, she’d tell herself sternly. This sternness, it made her feel old, like so many things these days. Snapchat, YOLO. The previous week she’d visited her favourite music shop in Kentish Town to search for some obscure Brahms lieder sheet music. With no luck – and besides, what was the point? Why bother to buy new music for her wrecked voice? As she closed the banging door gently behind her on the way out, a man idly flicking through his phone and leaning against a massive, stupidly gleaming black 4×4 Land Rover had called, ‘That place is a rip-off.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Cord, astonished.

  ‘Yeah.’ He was chewing gum furiously and was bored, she realised. ‘Got all my kid’s piano music there before I remembered Amazon.’

  ‘What a terrible, stupid attitude,’ Cord had heard herself saying in that bellowing Stern Woman voice. He was probably only five years younger than her, but still. ‘It may be cheaper, but what’s the long-term price? Hm?’

  The man had looked blank. ‘There’s no long-term price. Place like this’ll shut in a few y
ears.’

  ‘And don’t you care?’ Cord had boomed at him.

  He looked absolutely astonished. ‘Course I don’t care. Why should I?’

  ‘Why?’ Why? Cord was astonished at the rage that bubbled up within her. Because it’s everything that’s wrong, she felt like yelling at him. Small businesses going under because of big corporations, years of expertise lost – Lorelei who ran the shop knew exactly what double-bass string was needed or the best plectrum for your guitar, but no, no, expertise doesn’t matter when the product is cheaper from Tesco or Amazon or wherever according to some idiot hedge-fund manager who drives a vast car that blocks narrow London streets and belches out vile diesel fumes that children inhale and . . .

  Breathe, Cord.

  She was able to smile at herself, most of the time, for the grumpy old lady she was turning into and the gay abandon with which she castigated those responsible. ‘Here’s a bag for your dog’s shit,’ she was used to saying, having run after surprised dog owners whose pets had fouled on her street. ‘You must have forgotten one so I won’t report you this time.’ A wide, dazzling smile.

  ‘Please don’t shout at that waitress. It’s not her fault there’s no almond milk. Dairy intolerance has been promoted by an increasingly industrialised health-food industry. Unless you have a medically diagnosed allergy to it, cow’s milk is good for you. Almond milk is irresponsibly resource-heavy to produce.’

  ‘This scribble is a delightful addition to the railway bridge. I hope you don’t mind me pointing out that you don’t know the difference between “your” and “you are”. I’m taking some photos – could you lift your headgear up just a little so I can see your face? No, I won’t, thank you very much.’