The Wild Dark Flowers (11 page)

He looked about himself with sublime satisfaction. It certainly was a glorious day. Sunlight poured into the departure hall: outside, the dockside was drenched in blinding midday light. He loved departures, the start of adventures. This more than any other.

“You look awfully happy,” Annie remarked, laughing over her shoulder as she walked away.

“I
am
happy,” he murmured.

It was almost half past midday when the great liner finally eased out of the dock and into the Hudson River.

On the boat deck, the ship’s band were playing the same song that David Nash would sing later that year as he trudged towards Albert and the front line in pouring rain. But there was no rain today, only bright sunlight as the strains of “Tipperary” mingled with the voices of the Royal Gwent Male Voice Singers, going home to Wales and belting out “The Star-Spangled Banner” for all they were worth.

John stood at the rail and watched New York slip past. Above his head, flags fluttered from the fore and aft masts; black smoke poured from the liner’s four stacks, and under his feet, he could feel the vibration of the steam turbines far below deck. He put his head back, relishing the sun on his face and the cold salty air coming from the Atlantic. He was determined not to lose his good feeling about this voyage. For at the end of it, he would make sure that he saw Octavia again.

*   *   *

I
t was not long before the ship passed Sandy Hook, and the pilot boat left it. The man on it glanced up at the huge vessel once or twice, watching it pull away.

It was strange, the pilot considered, not to see the name or the port of registry on the ship’s side, but they had been painted over since war broke out. Nevertheless, he knew the ship very well. He had seen her come into New York on her maiden voyage, and he had accompanied her then. She was a fine vessel, and she would be off Ireland in seven short days, plowing ahead at a hearty pace.

The wake of the great ship gave his boat a jolting. The pilot looked back one last time; high on the decks he noticed that the party of women he had seen that morning—nurses bound for the western front, dressed in pretty finery with the voluminous white veils pulled back on their hats—were still enthusiastically waving their little paper flags.

Although there was not a chance that they could see him, he waved back.

“God bless the
Lusitania,”
he murmured.

*   *   *

O
n the last day of Harry’s leave, Octavia arranged a small party for him.

It was not to be a very grand affair; only the family, and one or two from Richmond and York who had always known him. The Kents, as was to be expected, declined with their apologies; “Do tell Harry how much we wish him well,” had been Elizabeth Kent’s words to Octavia over the telephone. Octavia replaced the receiver slowly: she had made arrangements with Elizabeth to visit her in two days’ time, but the anguish in Elizabeth’s voice had been plain to hear. Octavia did not doubt that it would be a difficult meeting.

In the afternoon, William asked Harry to accompany him on a ride along the valley. “I would like your opinion on the two tenant farms,” he had explained.

Harry agreed, and they set out on a blustery and grey afternoon, seeing the blossoms from the orchards shaken like confetti and the petals strewn across the lane.

It was over an hour later that they stopped on a hill that overlooked the network of fields that spread out towards the stony spine of the Pennines. Getting off their horses, they sat alongside each other. Harry gave his father a sideways look: he had not a doubt that the ride had been engineered for a purpose, and it soon became clear what that purpose was.

“Harry,” William began. “After last year, when we went to Paris together . . .”

He stopped. Harry felt a surge of embarrassment on his father’s behalf: the old boy had never been very good at expressing himself. Harry remembered when he had ruled with a rod of iron—his father’s philosophy once had been
spare the rod and spoil the child
—but he could see that some sort of change had come over William since he was away. His father looked less sure of himself; the rigor had gone out of him.

“Is Louisa all right?” Harry asked now, suddenly worried that the subject of this conversation might be his sister’s welfare. “There isn’t another romantic entanglement that we have to sort out?”

He had meant it as a joke, but it fell flat. William frowned. “No, indeed,” he murmured. “Louisa is much changed.”

There was a tense silence. Above them, buzzards wheeled in the currents of air.

“It’s you that concerns us,” William began again. “Your mother and I. You seem not to be eating, Harry—you are rather thin, my boy.”

Harry continued looking up into the sky. “It’s not exactly a picnic out there,” he said quietly.

“No, of course not . . .”

“I would appreciate it if you could manage not to worry at all.”

“That’s a difficult task.”

“I’m sure. However.” Harry began to put on his riding gloves again, as if the topic were over. But William placed a hand on his arm.

“Harry,” he said. “Tell me what worries you.”

“Nothing at all. Shall we go?”

But William did not get up. He looked up perplexedly at his son. “Are the fellows out there treating you fairly?” he asked.

Harry laughed in surprise. “Treating me fairly?” he repeated. “It’s not school, Father. One doesn’t get the cane. One doesn’t get bullied. We’re doing a job of work.”

“Of course, of course.”

“And as for the fellows . . .”

Harry had looked away again. The distant and preoccupied look that William had noticed on his son’s face all week returned. And William noticed now what Octavia had pointed out to him—a reflex tic in Harry’s right hand, now pleating and repleating the cuff of his coat sleeve.

“The fellows?” William prompted.

Harry sat down again with a sigh. “It isn’t as if one has the chance to form a friendship,” he said distractedly, in a kind of monotone. “One would like to of course . . . being treated fairly or unfairly doesn’t come into it . . . but one tends to get along with someone—work together, that sort of thing—and then they’re gone.”

“Gone?”

“Dead,” Harry replied bluntly. “Or injured. Or medically bumped off. We’ve had one or two of those.”

“How so?”

“Insanity shouldn’t be surprising,” Harry muttered, as if to himself. “It’s all insanity out there.”

William let this go: he had no idea how to delve deeper, and Harry’s face was wearing that closed-down look again.

“Tell me about your operations . . . your missions,” William ventured.

It was then that he saw a little spark of Harry’s old enthusiasm ignite in his son’s face. He thought with a pang of how Harry had been last year, so energetic, so happy at the thought of flying. But now that energy was obscured, as a blanket of cloud obscures the sun.

“The thought that I have most of all is . . . well, the disorganization,” Harry began slowly. “I suppose you saw the accounts of Neuve Chapelle in the newspapers.”

“Yes.”

“A jolly fine show, wasn’t it?” Harry asked. “Or so they say. I read the accounts when I got to London.”

“You flew during it?”

“Oh yes,” Harry said. “We flew.”

With a sudden gesture, he threw his riding gloves on the ground. “I was in a BE2c,” he said slowly. “Just myself, and no observer. The plane stripped down to basics.”

“Why so?”

“The target was Courtrai station. Haig sent for Trenchard—our top man, you know—and said that the RFC had to back up the First Army. Up till then, if we bombed something, it was a routinely haphazard affair.” A small twisted smile came to his lips. “We carried makeshift bombs and aimed them at our German tormentors, but I suppose we had no effect on the campaign on the ground. Not much, anyway.”

“And Haig wanted you to stop that?”

“No. But he wanted it to be specific. German reinforcements were pouring in behind the lines. He wanted us to target their troop trains.”

“I see. . . .”

“I had three French bombs on racks under the plane,” Harry continued quietly. “There were three aircraft. We flew in midafternoon. There’s a lull then with the infantry on both sides below. They get rather tired after killing each other for eight hours or so. The slaughter gets tiresome.”

William was shocked at Harry’s sarcasm, but said nothing.

“It had been a clear morning, but the cloud started to come down,” Harry murmured. “I went north of Courtrai until I saw the town. I followed the railway track at two hundred feet. Then really low—less than a hundred. When I got closer, they started firing on me. Small-arms fire. A sentry with a rifle was taking pot shots, for one. I pulled the bomb release lever. I was right over a train. They were unloading men and horses.”

“And were you hit by the firing?”

“Me?” Harry asked. “Not a scratch. Up and away. I looked back, that was the trouble. I looked back.”

“I don’t understand,” William said. “Why was that a trouble, if you weren’t struck?”

Harry now turned and looked his father full in the face. “Can you imagine the effect of a large bomb on a full railway station?”

“Oh, I see.”

“I doubt it,” Harry retorted. “I’m sorry, Father, but I hope you don’t see at all.” He crossed his arms, staring now back at the sky. “When I landed, there was a piece of railway track embedded in the fuselage. A bloody great piece. I don’t know how I got home.”

“And the others who flew in with you?”

“Ah, the others.”

“Were they hit?”

“I saw them wheel about. One was fine. The other was trailing. He got down at the airfield, but he had taken a bullet. More than one, in fact.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yes, so were we all. I went with him to the field station. It was three miles away along a dirt track. We had him in a staff car. What a bloody awful ride that was.”

“This was someone you knew well?”

“Pretty well.”

“A mature pilot, a skilled man?”

“Mature for us. He was twenty-two.”

“It is a great deal to contend with, I’m sure.”

Harry abruptly got to his feet, laughing in a kind of astonished gasp. “To contend with?” he repeated savagely. “As one might contend with one’s footman being rather slow, or breakfast being rather lukewarm?”

“Harry . . .”

“
I went with him to the field station
,” Harry repeated with aggressively slow emphasis. “He couldn’t breathe. He’d been shot through the lungs.” Suddenly, the twitching right hand was scratching through Harry’s hair repeatedly. “He called out for his mother, you see? I told him to bloody well shut up. They all do that. You can hear them. They don’t make a terrific fuss, of course; they try not to groan too much or be too much trouble. But it gets on one’s nerves, you see? ‘
Mother, Mother!
’”

“Sit down a moment. . . .”

“I can’t,” Harry said. He seemed to recognize the scouring motion of his hand then and shoved it into his coat pocket. His whole body was rigid. “I’m sorry, Father,” he managed to say at last. “Ignore me.”

William got to his feet. He walked up to his son, but was too afraid to touch him now. He had a feeling that it would be like touching an electric current. “You must try not to dwell on such things,” he said. “For your own sake.”

“Yes, yes,” Harry muttered. “Of course.”

“It can do you no good.”

“No.”

“If you might try to put it aside . . .”

“Yes,” Harry snapped. “All right.” He hunched his shoulders, sighed, and smiled. It was a dreadfully blank and empty smile.

“Shall we go back?” William asked. “Your mother has her little party arranged. We mustn’t disappoint her.”

“Of course,” Harry replied. He picked up his gloves from the ground. “A party, yes. How nice of her. A party. . . .”

*   *   *

I
t was indeed a pleasant affair.

Harry appreciated that his mother in particular had tried to make his last evening at home special. He spoke with the parents of his old school friends from Richmond, and one or two of Louisa’s acquaintances, all the while making a tremendous effort at inconsequential conversation.

The dinner itself was beautiful, and the dining room looked perfect, lit by candles, the great swags of the curtains drawn back to show the last of the evening light in the grounds and on the terrace. In the reflection of the window glass, he saw their own blurred shapes and faces: muted colors in the ladies’ dresses, their bare arms shown as rosy lines among the flowers; the shine of glasses, the sparkle of silver. He felt he must be dreaming from time to time: this was an enchanted world, unreal. Reality lay outside the room, miles away, across the English Channel. He tried to take his father’s advice and turn his mind away from that: he tried very hard to focus on the flowers and the glasses and the silver and the pretty colors.

He sat for some time in the drawing room—so gloriously done with its sprays of blossoms arranged in the great blue-and-white Spode urns by the windows—so comfortable in the deep couches, so warm by the fire blazing in the broad limestone hearth. And with Louisa’s two girlfriends on either side of him, placed there, he had no doubt, for his especial entertainment.

He liked to listen to all the voices. The voices of the girls as they leaned towards him, all lightness, all merriment, their fingertips brushing his sleeve; the voices of his family, well-known and loved, weaving in and out of their conversations. It provided a kind of melody. And later in the evening, Charlotte played the piano. It was a piece that she had been practicing for him, apparently: a Chopin Étude, piercingly lovely—so lovely that it made his heart ache.

He had kissed his mother good-night when it was over, and thanked her. He kissed Louisa and Charlotte, and shook his father’s hand. “Thank you so much,” he told them. “It was very fine. I did enjoy it. I shall remember it.”

And he had taken himself up to bed. His train was leaving at six the following morning.

But it was only as he had closed the door on his room that he was able to let the pretense drop. Octavia would have been distressed indeed to see her smiling son walk over to the window, lean heavily upon it, and lean his head on his clenched hands murmuring, “Oh God, oh God. . . .”