The House of Flowers Read online

  ‘It’s quite strange, really—’ Speaking quietly, Poppy stood up and walked over to the window, drawing aside the net curtain to look outside. ‘Even as early on as my honeymoon I used to wonder why Basil had married me, and I realised fairly quickly that it had to be because I had money. He thought of me as a gold mine – you know, only child, American parents in the diplomatic corps, no confidence. I was an easy target really, particularly for someone like him. Yet I still hoped, still went on hoping that he might just have married me because he had some feelings for me. But of course he didn’t. Not one. No – actually, that is not entirely true. I think he did have feelings for me – feelings of contempt. As a matter of fact I don’t think he liked me at all. So it’s all rather odd, hearing that he’s dead, probably because he has been dead for me for so long already.’

  ‘Understandable.’ Cissie looked round for an ashtray but finding none got rid of her cigarette ash in the coal bucket instead.

  ‘I know. But it doesn’t seem to affect me at all because the thing is I suppose I feel as if I have been a widow already. Ever since the Fascists blew up his car in Italy – and of course I didn’t really know what he was up to then, that they were just faking his death so they could smuggle him back into England – but ever since that moment I have felt – well – widowed. I lost Basil then, really, but then he came back to life again, and now he’s died again – so the consequence of all that is that now I don’t really know how to feel. Or what.’

  ‘Why should you, my dear? Matter of fact I’d say it would be really quite rum if you did know how to feel. Or what. If you felt anything at all.’

  ‘Yes,’ Poppy agreed thoughtfully. ‘I imagine you’re right.’

  Cissie glanced at Poppy, who was staring out of the window at the bleak view without, and drew slowly on her cigarette.

  ‘When it’s as quiet as this, hard to think there’s a war on. One gets so used to sirens, and ambulances, bombs and all the rest of it. It’s unsettling, this quiet,’ she murmured, breaking the silence.

  ‘When I first heard Basil was dead,’ Poppy continued, as she remembered walking in Green Park the day Basil proposed to her, and how oddly happy she had been then, ‘when they said he’d been killed in Italy, for a second I did actually think that since I’d known and seen a little bit of the nice side of Basil – possibly all there was – I did think it was my duty as a widow to try to remember him at those moments. But even though he’d seemed so kind when we first met at a really rather dull dance, it really was impossible to hang on to that sort of memory, seeing that he was a traitor. Yet I still feel guilty, because after all I married him. No one else did.’

  ‘See what you mean. Yes.’

  ‘I suppose what I actually feel like, to be perfectly honest, is heaving a rather large sigh of relief. I can’t actually pretend to be sad, that would be hypocritical. After all, he stood for everything I hate.’

  ‘Regret’s an odd sort of thing, you know. Speaking for oneself, one finds one’s memories of someone are so often more than a bit tinged with regret for what they weren’t, rather than for what they were.’

  Poppy looked round at Cissie, intrigued as always by her observations. Many people who didn’t know Cissie Lavington well, or who didn’t bother to try to get to know her better, were inclined to write her off as a bit of a social butterfly, because of her upper class mannerisms and her apparent determination to take nothing in this life very seriously. But those who knew Cissie well, those who bothered to talk to her and to listen to what she really had to say, admired and respected her for the astuteness of her observations and her refusal to tell anything but the truth.

  ‘Anyway,’ Cissie said in conclusion, firmly squashing her cigarette on the inside wall of the fireplace. ‘The war’s still on so one had best beetle off and continue to fight the g.f.’

  ‘Of course,’ Poppy agreed, walking to the door with her. ‘Besides, I think my late husband’s already had far more attention than he deserves.’

  ‘Pity we didn’t pay more attention to taking people like him more seriously, and locking them away years ago,’ Cissie replied, dropping her cigarette holder back into a handbag that she then snapped smartly shut. ‘If people had only listened a little to the warning voices, we might not be in this pickle now.’

  ‘I thought it was precisely because of people like Basil—’

  ‘Not a bit,’ Cissie interrupted her with a vague wave of one hand. ‘If Herr Hitler hadn’t got the idea that Britain in the shape of the ruling classes was sympathetic to him, people like Basil who were all too ready to embrace his perfectly dreadful philosophies . . . And as for all those upper class ladies with crushes on Hitler, they gave the blighter confidence. Worse – they gave him hope. Hope that he could do what he blasted well liked and no one here would raise a finger to stop him. No one in power or authority, that is. That’s the sort of damage those British Fascists did. Don’t worry; I’ll let myself out. By the way – if you’re interested – they’re missing you back at the Park. Up to you, of course.’ She looked at Poppy enquiringly, imagining how bored and restless she would be in her place, sitting it out in such drab surroundings.

  ‘I’m more than up to it – I can’t wait in fact,’ Poppy replied, glancing backwards over her shoulder towards the kitchen door, not because she was worried that she might have said anything indiscreet that Mrs Bellows could have overheard, but more from force of an ever increasing habit. ‘Tell them I’ll be at my post tomorrow.’

  It was once more snowing heavily when Cissie set out on her return journey to Eden Park, where she was now permanently based. It forced her to drive slowly, but gave her plenty of time to reflect on the surprising qualities that had emerged in Poppy Tetherington since her training as an agent. She had not only changed in looks, becoming prettier and more vital; her whole personality too had changed. She had shown daring, invention and nerve, qualities some of those working alongside her in Eden Park had intimated might well be lacking in someone who initially had seemed almost timid. But Cissie had believed in her from the word go, otherwise she would never have taken her on in the first place. She had sensed young Poppy Tetherington’s worth from the very beginning, whereas she had quite conflicting feelings about her latest recruit.

  Lily Ormerod had lost her fiancé Robert Maddox only a few months before, the young naval officer having been killed in the act of rescuing a child from a bomb-site. To make matters worse her fiancé was the brother of Kate Maddox, one of the girls working in C Section at the Park. Despite everything that anyone had said it seemed that Lily was still determined to blame herself for Robert’s death, and it was this that worried Cissie more than anything. Guilt did not make a good bedfellow for an agent in the field. If someone felt guilty they went out of their way to try to compensate for the harm they imagined they had done, and this was what made Cissie Lavington feel sure that Lily Ormerod was in danger of turning into the kind of agent that brings dread to the hearts of every head of section – namely the kind of agent who does not mind dying.

  By the time she finally made it up Eden Park’s snow-covered drive, parked her car in the stable yard and ascended to the floor that housed all the offices of H Section, Lily was already waiting for her, reading an out of date copy of Woman and Home.

  ‘Sorry. The snow, doncher know. Roads back to the Park were practically impassable.’

  Lily stood up, carefully replacing the magazine. Like many young women at Eden Park, she was curious about Cissie Lavington. There seemed to be fresh rumours spawned every day concerning the tall, enigmatic woman with one black-patched eye, the latest being that since she was said hardly ever to sleep she possessed no nightwear, and that she never closed her one good eye in case she missed something.

  Holding the door to her inner room open, Cissie requested her secretary to bring in a couple of cups of coffee before following Lily into her office.

  ‘’Fraid it won’t be proper coffee, as usual – just that dreadful Ca
mp stuff. One would have thought by now we’d have come up with some sort of plant of our own we could brew.’ Cissie sighed, digging deep in her copious handbag for her packet of Senior Service cigarettes. ‘Mind you, so saying, one did have the utter misfortune of trying some herbal tea or some such once, and all one can say is not ever again. Now then.’

  She sat down, and glanced at Lily’s file, which lay open on the desk in front of her.

  ‘Going to be one of those gels with not a lot to learn, eh?’ she said with a slow smile, looking up with her one good eye to stare at the very pretty girl seated opposite her. ‘According to this you speak French and German fluently, is that correct?’

  ‘I have a bit of a knack with languages, always have,’ Lily replied, fiddling with the thin gold bracelet she wore on one wrist. ‘My mother was the same. She was half French. We spoke both French and English at home. She taught me both languages before I even started school.’

  ‘Your German?’

  Lily looked at the woman sitting opposite her at her desk, then at the ceiling, then past her out of the window before she replied.

  ‘My father moved about Europe a great deal. He had a cousin who lived in Bavaria,’ she finally admitted. ‘We used to go on holiday there, and in turn he would come over to England sometimes. My father and he used to speak German, and I just picked it up. As I said, I seem to have an ear for it. As a matter of fact I dream in three languages. That’s usually considered a good sign, isn’t it?’

  ‘Where is your father now, Miss Ormerod?’ Cissie cut in, having already learned the facts but not the whereabouts of Frank Henry Ormerod from his daughter’s dossier.

  ‘I’m not altogether sure, Miss Lavington. My parents got divorced years ago. Not very amicably, and I’ve not heard from my father since.’

  ‘Is he still in this country? One would rather hope so. Yes? He’d be a little too old, perhaps, to have joined up.’

  ‘As I just said, Miss Lavington,’ Lily replied almost curtly, ‘I really have no idea where my father might be.’

  ‘Understand perfectly.’ Cissie lit the cigarette she had now placed in her holder and tapped the file with a long bony finger. ‘The French connection is handy. We can run you under your mother’s maiden name – might also help authenticate any background we care to give you. That’s given that you make it that far. To becoming active.’

  ‘I’ll make it that far, Miss Lavington. You need have no worries on that score.’

  Again Cissie glanced up, but this time only momentarily. She had already taken in all that was necessary for the work ahead. She had observed the light in the eyes of her latest recruit, and noted how pretty she was. Cissie’s ideal agent would be much more nondescript, the sort of man or woman who could lose themselves in a crowd or be passed in the street without a second glance. Young Lily Ormerod was the very opposite. Lily was most definitely the kind of blonde that, as the saying went, could make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window. If she wanted to be recruited as an agent, particularly as someone they could use as a courier, things would have to change. Before anything else they would have to defenestrate her, as Cissie liked to call it, and if she stood up to that, well, all to the good; if not, Cissie would drop her as being too much of a risk, whatever the present crisis.

  ‘On the other hand,’ Cissie continued, as if she had been thinking out loud.

  ‘What other hand would that be, Miss Lavington?’

  ‘From your character assessments here,’ she continued, without looking at Lily, ‘from reading these assessments of your character it would appear you have plenty of what used to be called gum.’

  ‘Gum?’

  ‘Gumption. You are described here as forthright, determined, and certainly not lacking in gum. You seem to keep yourself in trim, too – although I’m sure Mr Jacques will still find plenty for you to do. Mr Jacques, in case you were not aware, is our PT chap. As far as Mr Jacques is concerned the human body is an undiscovered continent.’ Cissie sighed shortly.

  ‘Think you can do it, do you?’ she asked after a long pause. ‘Think you’re up to snuff? They don’t mess around with one if they catch one. Being shot is the least you can expect, if you’re caught, which of course we all hope you won’t be.’ She opened the drawer of one desk and held up a cyanide pill. ‘If you’re caught, this is the best we can offer you.’

  Cissie paused again, just where she always paused, waiting to see what, if any, effect her little homily had on the new recruit. It was hardly the most graphic of depictions, yet several of the girls who had sat opposite her and heard what she had to say had suddenly found all sorts of reasons why all in a moment they no longer considered themselves suitable agent material. Lily Ormerod, on the other hand, simply raised her eyebrows, breathed in deeply and shrugged.

  ‘Long as I’ve accounted for a number of them,’ she confided, ‘I don’t really care. That’s what matters to me. Taking a few of them out.’

  ‘Bravely said, Miss Ormerod,’ Cissie replied. ‘Except for one thing. One thing that’s absolutely de rigueur. Never lose sight of the fact that too much gumption can endanger other agents, and worst of all their contacts. We know of whole villages in France where the inhabitants have been shot, because of someone else’s bravado. Sometimes even a heroine goes to her grave with the blood of innocents on her hands. Always good to keep that in mind.’

  Lily nodded almost absently-mindedly. Ever since December when she had been introduced by a colleague to Poppy Tetherington at the pub in the estate village, Lily had made it clear that she was longing to do something other than secretarial work, and so the die had been cast. Poppy instinctively recognised a fellow soul, and sensing her new friend might be ideal material for H Section had made discreet enquiries before meeting her again.

  ‘What’s H Section like, Poppy? Has to be more fun.’

  ‘Oh, it’s more fun all right, Lily.’

  They both knew what they meant by fun. Fun spelt danger, it meant work that got you out into the field; it meant that you felt so much more alive, because you were going to flirt with death.

  ‘The work is very different in this section, you’ll find,’ Cissie went on, seeming to know what Lily was thinking. ‘So much so that you might find yourself wishing you were back in C Section. No shame in that if you do.’

  ‘There’ll be no chance of me wanting to go back to being a secretary, of that I am quite sure.’

  Released from her interview, Lily wandered out on to the landing and stood at the huge window that overlooked the park. Now that England was at war, Eden Park’s eighteenth-century garden would doubtless be unrecognisable to its owners – what with so much of the grounds turned over to allotments growing much needed fruit and vegetables, and the deer having to share their grazing with large herds of dairy cows and sheep – yet even in winter the overall vista was still remarkably beautiful, the great trees stretching their bared arms towards the pale blue winter sky as if entreating those who walked beneath them to hurry off and fight for their survival.

  The blanket of snow that sparkled over the fields in the weak January sunlight reminded Lily of the silver threads in her mother’s evening stoles, and of the necklaces she would wear when she came up to kiss everyone in the nursery goodnight. It recalled the stars she would take them to the nursery window to see, pointing up at the night sky and teaching them the names of the mighty constellations, her pretty voice repeating with her children the names of the Great Bear and the Little Bear, of Orion, the Plough and the Heavenly Twins. All that seemed a thousand years away, in another time, but one that, for a few seconds, Lily could not help wanting back with all her heart. To be small again, and safe; not to have to be brave: that was unimaginable now. As she turned from the window a siren started up its sinister wail, and downstairs in the busy hallway someone was beginning to sound the alarm, knocking together the wooden clackers that were kept for that purpose behind the great double doors.

  ‘I really do have to leave,
I promise!’ Kate laughed, trying to wriggle free of the hold Eugene had on her, a grip that was becoming tighter the more Kate wriggled. ‘I have to go and have tea with my mother!’

  ‘And I have to go away soon,’ Eugene reminded her yet again, kissing her quickly. ‘You seem to be forgetting that, madam.’

  ‘I haven’t forgotten it at all, Eugene!’ Kate protested, wriggling all the more. ‘You’re making me late enough as it is!’

  All of a sudden Eugene let her go, throwing his arms wide and at the same time widening his eyes in a look of mock innocence. ‘And when I do go away – suppose I don’t come back?’ he wondered quietly.

  ‘You’re not to say that. You promised. We made a pact—’

  ‘Ah, madam, I fear you’re right,’ Eugene interrupted with an over-large sigh. ‘That was a dirty move – and an unfair one to boot. I shall return, make no mistake, my fine darling – and when I do, beware.’

  He caught her up in his arms again, lifting her clean off the ground. Kate allowed herself to go absolutely limp in his embrace, welcoming his next kiss.

  ‘The Bee’s kiss,’ he murmured to her. ‘You remember the poem.’

  ‘No, and I don’t want you to remember it either—’

  Eugene ignored her. ‘Kiss me as if you entered gay—’

  ‘My heart at some noonday,’ Kate whispered in return.

  ‘A bud that dares not disallow’ – Eugene continued – ‘The claim, so all is rendered up . . .’

  He kissed her once again, this time long and passionately, then let her go. ‘Go on now – off to your mammy,’ he teased. ‘And don’t forget to brush the stardust out of your hair now.’

  He stood back and smiled at her, sitting himself down on the ledge of the window that looked directly out over the stable yard, lighting a cigarette and crossing his legs. Dressed as he was in his riding breeches and thick check shirt, it seemed to Kate that he looked for all the world like a wild and dishevelled hero out of a Technicolor western. She laughed and ruffled his hair, kissed him on the cheek, and allowed him to grab her by the hand and kiss her back once more before finally pulling herself free and hurrying away. Eugene was the very devil to leave.