The Wildflowers

by Harriet Evans

He felt very angry. She looked totally different. ‘It’s lovely, Aunt D. Very dashing.’ He turned to Daphne. ‘Why?’

  Daphne shrugged. ‘I was bored.’ She gave a small smile. Ant realised then that he hated her.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  It was Reverend Goudge who had first pointed it out to him, the final night of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, leaning against the wall, eating a greengage, plump face shining in the sweaty close heat of canvas. ‘You should think about acting, Anthony dear.’

  He hadn’t understood. In fact, as he struggled out of his thick theatrical tights which Mrs Goudge had proudly unearthed at a jumble sale, Ant thought he was castigating him for something. ‘I – yes, sir. I did try to.’

  He tugged at the gusset as the Reverend Goudge made a choking sound. Swallowing the final piece of his greengage, he said, ‘I meant as a career, dear. You are very good, in fact: you make Bottom interesting. The man’s an idiot and I don’t know what you did but it was something to make me care about him.’

  Ant paused and then shook his head, smiling the disarmingly charming grin which Daphne had once told him he possessed and advised him to use whenever necessary. As often with Daphne’s advice, it was useful, even though it made him feel as though he were acting offstage, too, something he didn’t ever want to do. ‘Oh, well, thank you. Thank you very much, sir.’

  ‘It’s true.’ The vicar stared at him appraisingly. ‘It’s the same with the little plays you used to do on the porch. Always the same. Doesn’t matter whether you’re playing a young village maiden or a hunchback or a fat old vicar like me, you always make them seem real, Ant dear.’

  Around him, in the makeshift tent erected in the vicarage gardens, which acted as ‘backstage’, rather in the manner of a Restoration troupe of strolling players, bohemian chaos reigned. It was the last night of the run (of three, but they considered themselves professionals now) and a heady atmosphere prevailed: Jane Goudge had produced some elderberry wine, and Ant had been allowed a glass of his own. Helena and Demetrius, respectively the village schoolmistress and Jim the postmaster from Swanage, who had only one leg, were dancing slowly together next to two candlesticks, which sputtered in the gloom. Joe Gage had remembered all his lines, and in fact had unintentionally brought the house down on successive evenings. It was still not yet dark.

  Ant felt exhilarated, joyful at the applause and the attention. Despite the fact that he didn’t at all care for his character either, he loved the play. He knew all the lines. He loved being backstage and watching the girls transform themselves, the excited chatter, the glimpse of the audience filing into their seats. Only once had a siren disrupted proceedings, halfway through the second night, and he had led the cast offstage and to safety in the cellar of the vicarage, then come back to direct the audience to safety.

  ‘What a nice young man,’ someone had told Dinah and Daphne as they made their way out of the front row.

  ‘He’s my great-nephew,’ he’d heard Dinah say. ‘A most satisfactory one, too.’

  This, the broken voice, and the regular kissing sessions with Julia Fletcher which were now an accepted fact of walking home after rehearsals, all made him feel unexpectedly potent for the first time, the ruler of his own domain. ‘The cock of the walk,’ Daphne had called him at breakfast a couple of weeks ago, and Dinah had laughed.

  ‘What does that mean?’ he’d said, unsettled by their chuckles.

  ‘Oh, my dear Ant,’ Dinah had said, ‘she’s only teasing. You’re suddenly rather grown up this summer, that’s all.’

  He didn’t like it when they talked in riddles, or laughed together at him: the summer had gone on, hot and curiously calm. Somehow, and he wasn’t sure when, Dinah had won the battle over schools and he was off to Downham Hall in September, much against his will. He didn’t remember agreeing to this: Dinah knew how to avoid unpleasant topics, he didn’t know how, but she just did. Those who underestimated her, who saw her just as a silly eccentric in long baggy clothes who talked too much, were fools. For starters, she wasn’t old. She was still quite young, compared to the vicar or Alastair, and her face, now it wasn’t hidden by all that hair, was quite young and pretty. She wasn’t silly, either. She knew and understood far more than Bob Dolney, the rather pompous young curate who had flat feet and was a Communist and spent a lot of time talking about Stalin. Or Mr Hill, the local solicitor who professed to know everything about ancient history and whom she’d listen to politely even when he was telling her about things she herself had probably dug up . . . And she knew other things, too, like how to barter with the man at the garage who looked after their car, and even though she was hopeless around the house, Ant wondered if sometimes, just sometimes, she cultivated this air of eccentricity. Just a little.

  Walking back this time in the purple haze of night, listening to the crickets in the hedgerows and the faint, very faint sound of merriment from the vicarage fading into the distance as they approached the barbed-wire beach, Tony was silent, thinking about the glorious days of the play now behind him and about what Reverend Goudge had said, You should think about acting.

  Beside him walked Julia and Ian. He could tell Julia was desperate to get rid of her younger brother; she kept sighing dramatically and making crude attempts to shake him off. ‘Oh, Ian, I’ve forgotten my bag, could you be a darling brother and run back to the tent?’ Ian, apparently oblivious, was clinging to them like a limpet. Tony himself was deep in thought, only half listening to Julia’s story about a poem she was writing about a symbolic poppy in an English hedgerow – she kept flinging a scarf around her neck, red and trailing, which didn’t go at all with her rather pretty cotton dress – and Ian’s strange, stilted replies.

  It had never occurred to Ant before then that he could be an actor, like his father – Philip Wilde had been away so often Ant had no clear memory of his father, nor what exactly he did: he really had been a self-absorbed little boy, he thought, treated like a prince by his mother when he was actually very ordinary. He could remember his father’s one big part, as Captain Hook in Peter Pan in the West End, decked out in the obligatory wig and cutlass. He used to practise his fencing steps in the kitchen. Ant had found this thrilling; he’d read Peter Pan and this was something about his father’s strange job he could understand; but he couldn’t remember anything else about it.

  Besides, who knew when the war would end and if it ever did would there be theatres, and would they want actors, or would they want dancing girls and films instead, not old-fashioned plays? He couldn’t really remember life without it; only last week Dinah and Daphne had both laughed, and Dinah had hugged him impetuously when he’d said, ‘But what will happen to newspapers after the war? They should carry on printing them.’ He had thought newspapers had been invented to report on the war: he couldn’t recall a time when there was different news. And the other children couldn’t, either. Julia had told him she’d asked Alastair at Christmas if Hitler had always been leader of Germany and was surprised when her normally unbending father had hugged her, tears in his eyes. No, he’d said. No, and he won’t be for much longer, I promise you.

  The grimness of starting school, of breaking the spell of life with Dinah, hung over him like a cloud; he couldn’t shake off the feeling of dread he had about it and, now the play was over, leaving the Bosky was edging towards him around the corner. It would be dark and cold, and he wouldn’t know anyone. He couldn’t go back to being Wilde who mucked around with other stupid boys and listened to their stupid stories. He didn’t like boys, he didn’t like the atmosphere of boys together. He liked women, and being with them. And he liked living with Aunt Dinah.

  ‘Got cramp,’ he called to Julia and Ian, sitting suddenly down in the road and untying his laces. ‘It’s these boots. Go on without me.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Julia, stopping in surprise. She put her jar of glow-worms down on the ground. ‘Do you need help?’

  ‘Damn it. I’m off,’ said Ian, striding grumpily ahead, and Tony coul
d hear him swearing under his breath.

  ‘Oh, well,’ said Julia, shaking her hair out, and smiling down at him.

  That night even Tony was surprised at the sudden ease with which they were alone and he proceeded to go as far as he had yet done with Julia. This time was slightly different: this time it was both of them shuffling into the shelter of the siding off the lane, pressing one another frantically against the gate, and for once it was he who fumbled with her clothes and told her what to do and she, at first rather unsure – she was keen on being the director in everything – who acquiesced, gratifyingly quickly. The floral dress was unbuttoned within minutes, and she insinuated his hand into her cotton briefs, and let him waggle his finger around. It was wet and thrilling and she brought him to a climax with her clumsy hands – his penis jutting out of his shorts – all too quickly.

  ‘You ought to do it back to me,’ she said, after he’d recovered, head sagging on his chest, breathing heavily.

  ‘Do what?’ He reached for her; he wondered if they could do it again, and could kiss in the meantime.

  ‘Make me feel the same way. You should do it to me. We do it to each other at school.’

  Tony obviously looked confused. ‘Do what?’

  ‘Stop saying Do What! That!’ Julia pointed down at his limp penis, at her dress, covered with his fluid. ‘You can make girls feel like that. And you should, if you rub it harder, if you try a bit harder.’

  ‘I didn’t know.’ He felt as though he’d made a major social faux pas; obviously this was something one did, obviously he’d got it wrong. ‘I’m sorry. Show me then.’ He reached for her brassiere, but she began buttoning herself up again.

  ‘No, not tonight. I’d better go back. Ian will tell Dad if I’m not back soon. He’d love to catch us out one day, you know.’

  ‘Your father? He likes me,’ said Tony, confidently.

  ‘He might like you because you’re Dinah’s nephew but if he thought you were fiddling with me in a hedgerow he’d probably strangle you. He’s one of those Victorian types who thinks the piano legs should be covered up. Sees sex absolutely everywhere, poor ducks, probably because it’s been so long since he’s known the ways of woman.’

  ‘Julia, don’t,’ he said. ‘That’s your father, after all.’

  ‘Gosh, you sound like him when you get that stern look on your face. It’s all just bodies, isn’t it?’ She smiled at him; he thought how nice she was especially now she wasn’t trying to be dramatic. Her teeth were even and white, and her freckled cheeks were flushed. Suddenly, he felt a rush of foolish affection for her, and wished she wouldn’t go.

  ‘What’ll we do now the play’s over?’ he said, half to himself, a dreadful flatness seeming to fall on him, from somewhere high above. He felt awful.

  ‘How about a bike ride tomorrow?’ said Julia. ‘We could sail over to Brownsea. I was going to go anyway; they’ve an old fort there I want to sketch for my art teacher. She told us to draw monuments in case they’re bombed and lost to the nation. We could take a picnic and swim off the side. I say, would you like to?’

  It was said with such artless enthusiasm he grinned at her. ‘I’d love to. Thank you.’

  ‘We’ll leave Ian out of it, shall we? He’s packing for school anyway.’

  ‘Don’t mention school,’ said Tony, the old sick feeling returning to his stomach again. ‘I don’t want to go.’

  ‘Fine, we won’t talk about it at all, we’ll just have a jolly day. Bring some bread if you can, I’ve some fish paste and heaps of strawberries and greengages. Bye then,’ she said, almost cheerily, as though they’d been out picking wild flowers or something, and then she ran off into the night.

  Ant followed her down the lane, face raised to the sky, feeling the breeze on his cooling skin. The night was dark with no moon and he negotiated the path and side steps up to the front of the house; he was used to walking in the dark now, where formerly it had terrified him. Entering the Bosky from the entrance on the lane, he ascended the stairs to find his great-aunt standing looking out of the still-open door on to the porch. Her arms were planted on her hips; she was bent slightly at the waist, as if wanting to bend forwards, but unable to.

  ‘Hello, Aunt Dinah?’

  She hadn’t heard him come in and she turned slowly towards him; he couldn’t see her face. ‘Ant dear . . . yes, of course. How was it?’

  ‘It was terrific. Reverend Goudge, he said I should think about – I say, are you all right, Aunt Dinah?’

  Looking at her, he understood for the first time the cliché ‘white as a sheet’. Her skin was a ghastly colour, chalky and deathly pale, as though she had aged many years in one night. I wouldn’t recognise her if I walked past her in the lane, he found himself thinking.

  ‘I’m sorry we didn’t come, Ant dear. We were home – yes, I should have come.’

  ‘What’s happened?’ He looked around, his euphoric glow draining slowly away, and then he noticed for the first time the disorder of the sitting room. Two glasses knocked over and smashed upon the floor, Aunt Dinah’s spectacles twisted and broken, lying atop a novel, which had been damaged, as though stepped on. The cushions of the sofa were disordered. The great wooden wireless had fallen backwards, and sputtered intermittently into the silence, and all the boxes, the ones still to be sorted through, were opened, contents spilling out on to the floor.

  Dinah said nothing. Ant bent forwards, picked up her spectacles. ‘Aunt Dinah,’ he said, handing them to her, and as he did he saw the droplets of blood on the old and worn sofa cushions.

  ‘What’s that?’ he said. ‘Are you hurt?’ It was her stillness, the frozen quality of the scene, that scared him the most. ‘What happened? What did you do?’

  At last she said, ‘She tricked me. She tried to make me – but I wouldn’t.’ She looked down at him, her large face haggard with misery. ‘We had a row.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Telling the truth. I’m not good at it. You must forgive me, Ant. I’ve lied to you. And I lied—’ Like a child, she wiped her nose with the arm of her sleeve. ‘I lied about that, too!’

  ‘There’s nothing to forgive, Aunt D—’ He came around, and sat next to her, and put his arm around her thin shoulder. Her shapeless khaki blouse was stiff with grime. She’d always been relaxed about washing clothes, and personal hygiene; lately, though, even he, a teenage boy, had begun to find the smell of her a bit much.

  ‘I say, where’s Daphne?’ he asked, wrinkling his nose. ‘Why don’t we have a celebratory—’

  ‘She’s gone back to London. She – she was angry with me. I wouldn’t do as she asked.’ Her thin shoulders shook. ‘She said it was the last time, and then she asked again, and again . . .’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Ant bit one finger, and stared at her; it was awful, seeing her this upset.

  ‘I – I made a mistake. Gambled at long odds. Please, Ant, dear—’ She broke away, pressing her shaking hand to her mouth, suppressing a sob. ‘No more, not now.’

  She pushed him aside, and thudded downstairs, her tread on the stairs shaking the whole house. The door to the porch slammed shut, in a sudden breeze, leaving him alone in the unrelenting darkness.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  1987

  On the day of his wedding, Ben woke up at 5 a.m. wide awake and knew he wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep. He lay in his childhood bedroom, wallpapered in pastel zigzags, the tattered posters of Bowie and Roger Moore in Live and Let Die opposite him. He could hear the wood pigeons cooing out in Marble Hill Park, smell the distant and distinct scent of autumnal damp from the river. He stood up, foggily, and looked out of the little window. He’d stayed away so long. It was on autumn mornings like this that the river was perhaps loveliest of all.

  For a while he lay there, thinking about all that had to be done that day. He knew, as did his parents, that Mads was apt to worry and become close to hysterical if overwhelmed. She found large gatherings terrifying – he hadn’t reall
y realised this until they’d started going out in Bristol, having previously only really seen her at Worth Bay where everyday life was fairly relaxed: his parents, he saw now, had this wonderful ability of making everyone believe everything was running smoothly, that life was grand, whether it was the truth or not; it was immensely comforting. He’d had to reject them and move away to discover how hard a trick that was to pull off.

  In crowded student pubs or gigs Mads was pale and silent, trying to pretend all was well. ‘I love it!’ she’d say, bouncing up and down with enforced enthusiasm at a group of shaggy-haired, leather-clad, guitar-wielding youths and turning that huge smile on him. ‘Don’t you? Isn’t it great, Ben?’ He’d take her hand and find it was icy cold and clammy. Gradually he came to realise she was doing it for him, because she wanted him to enjoy himself. So much of what she did was to make him happy. Ben, full of young-man swagger, found this alarming, and then immensely touching. He thought of it as a privilege to be loved by her. Knowing what he knew now about her grim childhood it seemed to him to be a miracle that she could trust anyone. He and Cord had been too young to fully understand the truth about the strange clothes she wore, how hungry and thin she was, how dirty.

  Mads told him and Cord one summer that she ran away from her father, when Ian Fletcher had left the kitchen window open. It wasn’t until after their engagement when they went back to Beeches before it was sold that he went inside the drab, miserable house and saw the window in question – the size of an A4 sheet of paper, high off the ground. ‘I stood on some old books to climb out of it,’ she told him as they stood in the dank kitchen. ‘I think that’s why he hit me when I came back, because he didn’t like his books being disturbed.’

  ‘Where did you run to?’

  ‘Oh, well, that’s the thing, I didn’t know you all yet, so I couldn’t run to you. I ran up and down the beach for ages and then I was so tired, I fell asleep on the sand, and in the morning, I woke up, and there were all these families arriving on the beach, to play and have fun, and they all stared at me like I was . . .’ She had shaken her head, hair flying around her. ‘Rubbish. Scum. This mum, she had a lovely flowery pinafore on, and she was giving the children a pear each. It looked lovely. And she looked really nice. So I smiled at her. I was all covered in sand and she pulled the children close towards her as though I’d give them a disease.’ He had pulled her close to him, then, his heart lurching. ‘So I went back. I didn’t know what else to do. Who’d believe me? Where would I go?’