The Wildflowers

by Harriet Evans

  He looked up. ‘Course I did.’

  Daphne laughed. ‘I only wondered. Some girls like it, you see.’ She stood up, and came towards him, leaning her thin white hands on the back of the chair beside him. ‘They like to pretend they don’t want you to, but really, they do.’ She scratched his chin with her nail. ‘You’ll see.’

  ‘I wouldn’t – it’s not like that,’ said Ant, hotly, and then he stood up, backing away from her. There was a pain at the front of his temples, as though his head were being squeezed in a vice. ‘I’m going to bed and I think you’d – when I go back to school I think you’d better leave. If that suits you,’ he added weakly.

  She laughed, wildly. ‘If it suits me. Very polite, Dinah would like that.’

  ‘I don’t understand why you were friends,’ he said, and his head hurt so much now he wasn’t sure what he was saying and what was silence.

  ‘No, well,’ said Daphne airily, ‘you wouldn’t. I didn’t, for a long time.’ She stubbed her cigarette out on a saucer on the table, the china service Dinah’s father had bought when he kitted out the Bosky as the grand surprise for his wife and daughters. Ant wanted to slap the fingers that squeezed the cigarette viciously into the gleaming porcelain. ‘Actually, I used to think Dinah was queer, but now I’m not so sure. I simply think that side of her didn’t exist. Poor old bean.’

  ‘Please—’ said Ant, resisting the urge to clap his hands over his ears. ‘Please don’t talk about her in that way.’

  ‘Of course.’ Her eyes danced in the dim light. ‘So innocent, aren’t you, for all that dirty business in the sand dunes! But we had something in common, you see – bad with money. And I like money, Ant, in fact I rather love it. It’s awfully boring, having none, when you’ve grown up with it. War is awfully boring, when you want to be able to buy things and eat what you want and drink what you want and go dancing . . .’

  Ant thought she might be mad. ‘No one can. We’re all in the same boat. Come on, Daphne.’

  ‘But I want to do what I want, I have to.’ The eyes stared at him, huge, blue, utterly expressionless. ‘And your aunt was awfully useful for that.’

  ‘She’s kind, and you’re a bloodsucker,’ Ant said, his mouth trembling. He was so angry with her, so excited, he thought he might punch a hole through the wall. ‘A nasty bloodsucker—’

  ‘Ah, you think so, don’t you? But here’s the thing you don’t know about your darling auntie. She’s a thief. A rotten bloody thief. When she came back to London ten years ago or so she was broke, of course. She sold a little statue she shouldn’t have taken from Ur. From the temple, the ziggurat.’

  ‘No, she didn’t.’

  ‘Darling, she did. You see, the dealer contacted me – we had a little arrangement that he’d call me if people tried to sell him things that weren’t theirs to sell. Someone more competent than Dinah would have gone through an intermediary, maybe sold it in Baghdad instead, but she was a fool. It’s my job to stop precisely that kind of thing happening with people we send out from the BM. Gives us rather a bad name to have archaeologists running around all over ancient sites pinching whatever their grubby little fingers dig up.’ Her hands moved against the rough blackout material. ‘I thought I was on to rather a good thing with her, because of course she was absolutely desperate not to be exposed. She said it was just once . . . The usual rubbish.’

  ‘Why would she do it? You’re lying. That’s not her, she wouldn’t . . .’ Ant trailed off.

  Don’t gamble, Ant. It gets into the blood.

  ‘Wouldn’t she? I don’t think you knew her very well, dear. Don’t we all want to gamble, to risk everything, at some point? Have you found an ancient lion’s paw in the sand, or the golden headdress of a queen that’s thousands of years old? Do you know what it’s like to hold them in your hand, to think . . .’ She moved her face towards him, and hissed, suddenly, ‘“It could be mine, I could just take it and nobody would know!”’

  She laughed, wildly.

  ‘She’s a thief, darling. She’d squirrelled away lots of odds and ends she should have reported to the museum and I knew it . . . So we came to an arrangement – she’d let me have her flat, and she went back to Baghdad, and she wasn’t supposed to come back, not ever. I really did like living in her flat, you know – so handy for Harrods, and the park – only you came along and ruined it all.’

  ‘You’ve ruined it,’ he said, in throbbing tones. ‘You’ve ruined everything, you’ve driven her away—’

  But she ignored him. ‘So I don’t have a flat, and I don’t have this house, and she’s kippered me, gone off with the rest of the loot and that angel. If she’s real, she’s worth a huge amount. I’d be set up for life if I could find the right chap to sell it for me. But she’s left me with nothing at all. So I have to take what I want,’ she said, coming towards him so she was facing him.

  He was against the wall, and she was in front of him, and she took his hand and shoved it abruptly inside her silk shirt. His fingers automatically closed over her small, plump breast; he felt the nipple tighten, and his mouth opened very slightly, the unfinished business earlier with Julia making him more eager than he might otherwise have been. She saw this, and he saw the flash of triumph in her blue eyes, and moved closer towards him, holding her hand over the shirt, over his hand under the shirt, on her cool, naked breast.

  ‘Your aunt, darling, is a bad woman,’ Daphne said, and she put one leg between Ant’s, pressing on to his crotch, and instantly, he felt himself starting to harden. ‘Oh,’ she said in a low, pleased voice. ‘I thought you were just a little boy. Well, you are really, aren’t you? Say you are.’

  Ant said, through gritted teeth, ‘No. No, I’m not.’

  ‘Oh, you are to me. Still a kid.’

  Yet he didn’t move away from her firm, hard leg, the pressure it exerted on him, and she saw the shame in his eyes and her own eyes glowed.

  ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘That angel’s mine.’ She moved her knee, nudging him, very slowly, so that he hardened even further. ‘It’s not even an angel. Isn’t that a riot. It’s the goddess Ishtar. It’s Mesopotamian, three thousand five hundred years old . . . almost priceless. I don’t know where it came from, but I don’t believe she bought it at some market which is what she always claims. It’s an extremely valuable piece, unlike anything else – it shouldn’t be hanging up above some draughty wooden cabin by the sea. It’s a joke. If you were the one who found it . . . your place in history would be assured . . .’ Her eyes were gleaming, she took small, rapid breaths and there was something about the intensity of her expression, her rigid body, that was fascinating and repellent at the same time . . . She turned her catlike stare upon him. ‘It should be in a museum, not with Dinah.’

  ‘She bought it, paid for it, she believes it has some kind of special powers, that it’ll keep her safe.’ Ant blinked away the memories, tried not to look at her, tried not to show how much he wanted her. ‘Sh-she doesn’t have to give it to a museum.’

  ‘Rubbish, it’s unique. It’s been around longer than most things in the world – it’ll outlast Hitler, that’s for sure . . .’ Her hand replaced her knee, and she was rubbing him and he thought he might be sick, the desire was so strong, the way she rubbed him was almost too intense, her pillowy, soft pink lips caught in her white teeth and yet he couldn’t make himself ask her to stop . . . he simply couldn’t. Ant closed his eyes. ‘You like that, don’t you. Just a boy, a young boy, and you like it already. Well, it’s not what it seems, never is. Your school fees, for example. She couldn’t afford them so I helped her sell a nice seal she’d found in Nimrud.’ He felt hotter than ever, and her fingers, her skin, were both so cool, and he moved against her, helplessly. ‘She got desperate, you see, wanting you to have this silly education – wanting you to grow up to be a proper man, brought up in the nice British public-school tradition – she got afraid too much time with her would bend you the wrong way, make you like her – isn’t that funny . . .’
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br />   Her face was mocking him, her pink lips softly saying these things, the sweep of hair falling into her face. She shook it out of the way, then leaned forward, letting her silk slip fall from her shoulders, and kissed him, and he kissed her back.

  ‘You’re not really a man yet, are you?’ she said, and so he kissed her again, more forcefully, hands squeezing both her breasts, and then the siren went, loud and clear, echoing across the empty beach, and he stepped back, breathing hard. Surely this would end it . . . surely it would end now. But Daphne rubbed him again, harder, until he sagged against her, and then she broke off abruptly, and took his hand.

  ‘Downstairs,’ she said. ‘Your room.’

  She led him in and shut the door, and he saw the sparkle in her eyes, the gritted teeth, her square, set jaw, and he was almost crazed with wanting her by now, wanting to prove himself to her, to blot out what had gone before, to simply finish it.

  She removed her clothes, her pale smooth body glowing like bone in moonlight. He made to undress and she put a hand on his shirt.

  ‘Keep the clothes on, little one. The shorts, keep them on. Let’s play a game, shall we?’ Tony nodded, urgently. Daphne gripped his wrists, her jaw hard, eyes set. ‘I’m your teacher, you see? I’m your favourite teacher. And you – you’re a bad pupil. I’m very upset. You need to calm me down.’

  She made him take his shorts down.

  ‘Round the ankles, don’t take them off.’

  ‘Yes—’

  ‘Yes, miss. Say, yes, miss, Tony, otherwise . . . You don’t want to know what I’ll do.’

  She pulled at his penis all the while, making sure he was still erect, and he was so sensitised he nearly came as he mounted her, and then it was over, very, very quickly, so quickly that he passed out and then woke up twenty minutes later as she tapped him on the shoulder, this time wearing her silk dressing gown, burgundy lipstick on her mouth, ever so slightly smeared at one corner, as though applied in haste. And she used a high-pitched voice, so she was an airy-headed teacher and he was a young boy.

  ‘Naughty,’ she kept saying, in a soft, cloying voice. ‘Naughty boy. You said sorry, didn’t you? You like touching Miss Hamilton there, don’t you? She’s not cross any more, she likes you touching her, and you like it when I touch your little thing, don’t you?’ Her curved mouth was slack as she fumbled hungrily with his shorts.

  And there was more in that vein, things she said that he tried to block out for the rest of his life, and the memory of her sinewy body, her staring eyes, so unlike Julia in all ways, and as he was saying to himself that he’d have to just break away from her and run out of the room, she was bringing him to ecstasy again and he ejaculated over her and himself, and she patted herself down, and him, pretending he was a child who’d had an accident in the playground as he stood there with his shorts around his ankles, dripping, and she smiled and said, ‘He likes it, doesn’t he?’ and so really, he was complicit in it all.

  Afterwards, when Ant turned away from her, eyes stinging with tears, and laid his head on the pillow, and began to silently weep, Daphne saw this in the mirror and she laughed. She told him to grow up, and then she did more things to him that she told him he should have enjoyed, but which he thought demeaned her, and himself. It hurt, it should have hurt her, to have it there, but she liked it. Tony understood some of what they talked about at school and realised they knew nothing, those strutting, silly boys, playing at being men, knew nothing of how disgusting and brutal and ugly it could be, amongst the ecstasy.

  She fell asleep, her face utterly still in repose, as though she were dead, and as he stared at her he wondered what would happen if he were to kill her, put a pillow over her head . . . He crept out of the room, up on to the porch, and spent the night there, shivering in the cold, under an old blanket, waiting for the sun, the day to come.

  Daphne laughed at him in the morning when he offered her some dried egg and burned toast, when he said hesitatingly that she should leave.

  ‘Of course I’m leaving. What’s here for me now? Nothing.’

  ‘Where will you go?’

  ‘Back to London, to the museum. Find someone else who can help make life more bearable.’

  ‘You – I’m going to write to them, tell them what you’ve done to Dinah.’

  ‘No, you’re not,’ she said, amused. They were standing outside in the lane. ‘You know I’ll get the museum to report her to the police. I’m the one they trust, she’s seen as a liability. She’ll be on every list, won’t ever be able to come back after that. You’re weak. You’re a scared little boy, you always will be, it’s in your eyes,’ she said, as she prepared to cycle off on Dinah’s bike which he had, in an act of rashness, said she could take, just so she would go.

  He couldn’t bear to watch her cycle speedily away, on the bike Dinah had haphazardly pedalled around the bay, her knock-kneed posture and wild hair making her instantly recognisable.

  Where are you now? Where have you gone? Why did you leave me?

  He would go to Reverend Goudge’s later, ask if he could stay with them. They would make sure he didn’t starve, would see him safely back to school. They would do right by him, though they had many other obligations, everyone did. Looking around the empty, dark room with the crumpled pink candlewick bedspread, Tony knew that he was entirely alone now.

  He grew up that night, entirely the wrong way, and he spent the rest of his life trying to atone for it, to make up for what he had done. He told no one about it so there was no one to tell him that he was not at fault, that he was a good person, deserving of happiness.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Fifteen years later

  1958

  She didn’t like driving too fast, she said – but he saw the way that when he took the corners really fast, she drew her breath in with a gasp and he knew it was excitement, not fear. Her little hands in their coral kid gloves clutched the cream interior of his new Austin as he took the lanes past Wareham at a lick, occasionally reaching over to touch her thigh, or turning to smile at her.

  ‘I want you to love it,’ he said. ‘As much as I do.’

  He’d said it before, but he thought this time he might mean it.

  Althea Moray was nineteen – ten years or so younger than him. He liked her youth. She had been a child in the war, barely remembering it beyond being cold all the time and National Banana Day in 1946, when every child in Britain was given a banana. Her first clear memories dated from the Festival of Britain, seven years ago. She’d come down to London for it, with her family. She mentioned it often, as though to back up her credentials as a woman of the world; he found it rather touching.

  She was Scottish – she’d been in London for six months, studying at Central School of Speech and Drama, and she lived in a hostel with several other girls in Marylebone. She’d never been to Dorset. And she’d never heard of Anthony Wilde, wasn’t impressed by him, hadn’t heard about Hamlet.

  ‘It was eight years ago, rather well-received, you see, sort of right-place right-time jobby,’ he’d explained to her over dinner, with the blend of self-deprecation and awkwardness that he knew he could pull off without being nauseating and which oh-so-modestly drew a veil over the rhapsodic attention he had received.

  ‘Why would I have heard anything about it, squirrelled away in Dumfriesshire?’ she’d said, laughing at him. ‘Who came to see you, then? Marilyn Monroe? Mario Lanza?’

  He couldn’t tell her she should have heard of it, that a critic had written an entire book about his performance and the production, which was stripped back and all the actors dressed in black, the only item on stage a vast rusting, half-gilded and lopsided metal carapace to represent Elsinore: part prison, part birdcage. Mario Lanza had come, and Olivier with Danny Kaye and Vivien Leigh and she’d written him an utterly sweet note afterwards. That they’d had to draft policemen in on the last night to control the crowds. It had made the front page of the Evening News. One policeman had told Tony the crowds hadn’t
been this hysterical since Ivor Novello’s funeral.

  ‘Because it was a huge – oh, never mind, I sound ghastly, explaining it like that,’ he’d said, giving up, and taking her hand to kiss it. ‘Princess Margaret came one night. There. You’re a child.’

  ‘I was a child when you were Hamlet, yes.’ Her eyes twinkled. ‘Tell me, was she very beautiful?’

  She was self-absorbed, but could laugh at herself, and he liked that, because he recognised a little of himself in her.

  Bertie Hoare, that awful mischief-maker, had introduced them one night at the Phoenix club. ‘Tony darling,’ he’d said, in his drawling voice, stopping in front of his table. ‘Here’s a new prize for you. Meet Althea Moray. She’s desperate to know you.’

  Tony of course had fallen for it, had stood up, hand outstretched, polite but showing just a little of the boredom he aped in front of his friends now to demonstrate that it was awfully tedious, being hounded like this . . . he had held her hand and then looked into the face of this ravishing Titian-haired girl and murmured, ‘Awfully nice to meet you, Althea,’ and then been astonished when she had replied, in a soft, Scottish burr, ‘Bertie, forgive me, but I’ve already told you I don’t know who this gentleman is at all.’

  Tony had sat back, to general shouts of mirth from his friends, and gleeful pats on the back. He’d stared up at Bertie, furious, realising this was a stunt to take him down a peg or two, and then once again gazed at this girl, at her green eyes, her white skin set off by the black polo neck and the heavy eyeliner.

  ‘Anthony Wilde. He’s a dangerous man, darling,’ his friend Guy had said to this impassive young beauty.

  ‘Oh.’ But still his name appeared to mean nothing to her, and as she shook hands with Guy and Dougie Betteridge, he’d said to Bertie, ‘Can I buy you both a drink? Please, join us.’

  Before Bertie could answer she’d said, ‘Champagne, please,’ and settled herself into the booth, folding the voluminous netting of her skirts against her legs, like the petals of a flower.