The House of Flowers Read online

  ‘OK,’ Billy replied, putting his paraphernalia back on his worktop. ‘I got one or two other notions that might be of interest as well.’

  ‘I’ll get you an appointment tomorrow,’ Marjorie said. ‘I think you should go and see him.’

  ‘I don’t need no appointment, Marge.’

  ‘Yes you do. There’s been a tightening of security all round – no one’s allowed any freedom to roam any more, or to drop into each other’s caves if and when they feel like it. Not that it was ever easy street exactly, but things have become a whole lot stricter.’

  ‘It’s the new bloke, I bet,’ Billy said, considering the matter. ‘You know.’

  ‘Which new bloke precisely?’

  ‘Dapper Dan, I call him. I don’t know his name and number, but that good-looking bloke who’s always dressed to the nines and always checking himself in the mirror.’

  ‘Dapper Dan.’ Marjorie laughed. ‘I like that – but I don’t think it’s him. He’s a rester, apparently. Got dented recently and has been grounded for a while. Anthony said he was helping out round the place just to pass the time.’

  ‘Yeah – well he would, wouldn’t he?’ Billy grinned. ‘No one here’s ever doing exactly what they say they’re doing, are they?’

  On her way to keep her appointment, she had been forced to take shelter from an air raid, her quarter of an hour underground delaying her meeting so that she was quite out of breath from hurrying when she arrived at the rendezvous.

  At first she thought she was too late as there was no one sitting waiting for her as arranged, nor could she see anyone in the immediate vicinity. She looked round, trying not to appear as hopeless as she felt, before picking up the menu and pretending to examine it. A waitress came over to ask if she was ready to order, but she shook her head, explaining she had only just arrived.

  Five minutes later someone came to her table and drew out the chair opposite her to sit down.

  ‘I hear the pilchards on toast are good,’ he said.

  ‘I prefer bacon and egg,’ she replied as casually as she could, only half glancing at her companion.

  ‘Then perhaps today I shall try the bacon and egg too,’ the man replied. ‘It’s always good to try new things.’

  Proud as Punch, Billy now worked directly for Major Folkestone, having been enlisted not into the army but to Billy’s way of thinking into an even finer force, the Secret Service. He could hardly keep the smile off his cheery face, unable to believe his good fortune, a childhood dream come true. So often at home, before he and Marjorie had been moved to Eden Park, and even after they had taken up residence there, he had lain in bed reading stories about the derring-do of spies and secret agents. Like every boy his age he had fantasised solidly about being such a hero, and now here it was, all come true, all come to pass. He really could hardly believe his luck.

  Anthony had always been intrigued by Marjorie’s adopted brother, and the closer he got to Marjorie the more he learned about the lad and the more he began to understand him. To Anthony, the boy who had always been such a bright and inventive spark had now turned into an exceptionally gifted young man, a young man with an ability now to decipher even the most complex of codes, to plan strategems that made more sense than a lot of the more senior officers’, and to read and analyse actions both in advance and retrospectively, as had proved to be the case over Tobruk.

  ‘Yes, well, I appreciate that, sir,’ Billy had said when Anthony was commending him for his comments on the all-important fall of the desert stronghold. ‘But it’s quite easy from a chair and desk. To see the mistakes being made.’

  ‘You said all along we were leaving a weak fourth wall, in fact a non-existent one as I remember. Everything up front and on the two sides, and a fully exposed rear.’

  ‘The whole Gazala line was weak, that was the point. Everyone thought it would hold, that it was strong enough, but ’cos it had to sort of do a double job, it was never going to hold.’

  ‘And it certainly didn’t take Rommel long to find that out.’

  ‘Daft really, sir. We had him outnumbered both in men and tanks.’

  ‘He had the aircraft.’

  ‘I know, sir, but he won it by cunning.’

  ‘That’s why they call him the Desert Fox, Billy.’

  ‘Hell of a general, sir. Took a bit of seeing off.’

  ‘But we did that at El Alamein, didn’t we, Billy? We sent the Desert Fox scuttling off back to his den.’

  ‘Masters of the North African shores we are, sir. Fantastic it was too. And what with Jerry surrendering at Stalingrad in February, it’s been quite a year, sir, in’t it? I like what Mr Churchill said – it’s not the end of the war . . .’ Billy quoted, in a more than passable Churchill imitation. ‘It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps the end of the beginning.’

  But much as Anthony liked and admired the young man, it was the Colonel who thought up the dodge that was to make young Billy Hendry a hero in his own right.

  Eugene was lucky to get out of Sicily in one piece, let alone escape unscathed from further escapades in Calabria following the capture of Sicily in August after a series of nightmare battles. He had been working closely with cells of the Resistance on the island, successfully sabotaging German supply lines as well as armoured cars, mechanised gun carriers and even the odd Panzer tank. He was hit twice, once by a sniper’s bullet that quite literally creased his temple and once by a piece of shrapnel that removed several inches of one side of his waist, leaving him to joke that fighting a war was the quickest way to lose weight. Fortunately it was only a flesh wound, and he was patched up and back in underground action again within the week.

  The Germans thought so highly of their unknown saboteur that a large ransom was placed on his head, leading to several near betrayals of the unsuspecting Irishman. It wasn’t until one of his more dependable colleagues pointed out how much he was worth to a poor Sicilian that Eugene found himself suddenly wishing that the Sicilian campaign would finish and he could escape to the mainland, with victorious troops, and from there quickly back to England for a well-earned rest.

  It was of course not to be as easy as that. When Sicily finally fell and the action moved to the mainland, with the Allies landing in Salerno and Taranto in early September, it seemed that Rome would soon be recaptured and a victorious highway forged northwards. But the Germans put up a valiant resistance, and with winter not far off Eugene found himself once more in the thick of things, being sent ahead of the Allies to blow up certain key bridges before the enemy crossed them and blew them up themselves as they retreated. The campaign was hard fought all the way by both the advancing armies and the retreating ones, and in spite of the heroic efforts of undercover agents such as Eugene every kilometre of ground had to be battled for.

  Finally, after a particularly close run incident just east of Gaeta where Eugene and his small band of brothers were all but successfully ambushed by a small corps of elite German sharpshooters, with Eugene losing two of his comrades and collecting another flesh wound in his right arm, the three survivors had to make a run for it, finding themselves virtually surrounded by the riflemen. Thanks to a sudden rainfall of monsoon proportions, they managed to escape over the hills and along the eastern Mediterranean coast, past the massif of Monte Cassino that was about to become the scene of one of the bloodiest battles of the war, along the valley of the River Liri, over the mountainous spine of Central Italy – with the invaluable help of local guides and climbers – and finally on to the Adriatic coast near Termoli. The three of them walked all the way, in all sorts of weathers, nearly freezing to death as they crossed the Apennines, in spite of the thick extra clothing with which they had been generously supplied by villagers in the foothills, and nearly drowned by continuous near-tropical rain along the Liri valley. But they not only made the trek, they survived it, resting up in a tiny village where they were welcomed in true Italian style, now that the natives had decided it was time for a ch
ange of coat; hidden away, fed and watered until they were strong enough to try to arrange their safe passage home.

  Helped by a family of fisherfolk, they were shipped out to a cargo boat bearing the neutral flag of Sweden on which – after a lengthy negotiation with the captain and the handing over of the last of Eugene’s precious emergency gold coins – they were stowed away and shipped to Lisbon where they changed boats, managing to scrounge a free ride in a broken-down Irish tramp steamer that all but sank in the rough seas encountered in the notorious Bay of Biscay. Nine weeks to the day from when they started their escape, Eugene and his companions found themselves disembarking in Cork, where after three nights spent in alcoholic celebration, and consequently in worse shape than when they had finished the most exhausting part of their trek, they boarded the ferry for Fishguard.

  ‘That’ll do for the moment, I think, Eugene,’ Kate stated, as if he’d just come in from riding. ‘I think you can retire now and take up growing tomatoes.’ He had taken her by surprise in the House of Flowers, where she was staying in Poppy’s absence, walking up through the woods and bursting into the little sitting room without a word of warning.

  ‘God forbid it, Kate darling!’ he cried, lifting her up bodily and whirling her round in the air. ‘When I go it’s with me boots on!’

  He kissed her as he swung her, then he put her down on the ground and kissed her again.

  ‘Not here,’ she whispered, understanding the strength of his passion and his longing. ‘I wouldn’t feel comfortable.’

  ‘Poppy wouldn’t mind.’ Eugene smiled. ‘And Scott certainly wouldn’t.’

  ‘I would,’ Kate said. ‘I know your place isn’t quite as comfortable as this, but at least it’s yours.’

  Shutting the House of Flowers up behind them and blowing it a kiss, Kate led Eugene off back to the jumbled but cosy place that was his flat in the stable yard, where they retired to the bedroom for the rest of the day and all of the night.

  ‘I never doubted for a moment you’d come back,’ Kate whispered to him in the twilight. ‘Not for a moment. Particularly when I was up in the house. I used to sit there for hours sometimes and I could see you. I could literally see you.’

  ‘Where, Katie? Where did you see me? What was I doing?’

  ‘You weren’t anywhere. It’s hard to explain really. You were just you. You were just you and you were just there – but you were coming home. I just felt it. It was almost as if I was being told.’

  ‘I was telling you. I used to call to you over the mountains and the seas – all the way from Sicily and all the way up through Italy, all I did was call your name. In the middle of the darkest night, the wettest day, the coldest evening, I’d call to you. In my heart. All the time. Now come here – come here to me, my darling love, for we’ve a heck of a lot of that time to make up.’

  Kate had never been happier. Somehow it seemed now that Eugene was home and the fortunes of the war had changed so dramatically in favour of the Allies that she was not alone in believing hostilities were all but over. She began to hope and then to think that perhaps the need for agents to go on quite so many highly dangerous missions was diminishing, and she could almost start looking forward to a future spent with her beloved wild Irishman. And it wasn’t only Kate who was thinking of their future life, for now when they sat down in front of the fires they would lay in the House of Flowers – where they spent every evening but never the night – Eugene would begin to paint a spell-binding picture of the sort of life they would live together when the war had finally come to an end. Not that he was counting his chickens yet, as he kept assuring Kate. It was just that the time had come to stop dreaming so much and to discuss a little bit of reality. Kate was only too happy to discuss that little bit of reality with him, for ever since she had met and fallen in love with Eugene she had spent far too much time daydreaming, never really daring to give any credence to her daydreams lest her lover failed to come home. Yet here he was by her side with another Christmas close at hand and the Germans it would seem not only on the back foot, but on the run.

  A week or so after Eugene’s safe return to England’s shores, the winter weather turned bright and sunny, a fine enough day for a good ride, Eugene declared when he rose that morning, standing at the window of his flat looking out over the roofs of the stables at the park beyond, tucking the tail of a heavy white wool shirt into the waist of the breeches he had already pulled on.

  ‘I have to go to work, unfortunately,’ Kate said, climbing out of bed with a happy yawn. ‘Otherwise I’d follow behind in the trap.’

  ‘Watch for me from your window.’ Eugene commanded as he sat to pull on his riding boots. ‘I’ll blow you one of my devastating kisses.’

  ‘I shall watch for you all morning,’ Kate replied. ‘And probably get sacked for inattention.’

  She saw him leave all right. Everyone in her office did, their attention drawn by hers as she stood at the big window that directly overlooked the park to wave at the horseman standing up in his irons in the middle of the main lawn, blowing as promised the mightiest of kisses to his love. Then with a theatrical wave, his hand circling the top of his bare head, he sat to his fine horse and galloped off along the track between the great lake and the smaller one, up the hill that led to the country beyond and away out of sight. Kate watched for a moment after he was gone, imagining herself behind him on the horse, her arms clasped tight round his waist and her hair flowing out behind her in the wind as he carried her to their home high in the hills above the lakes in the west of Ireland, about which he had already spun her thrilling, romantic tales; their little whitewashed house that stood at the foot of Mount Nephin, surrounded by the wild and wonderful countryside of Mayo.

  That was more or less where Eugene was himself in his own mind, as he galloped fast over the perfect turf that lay beneath his horse’s pounding hooves. He was a boy again back home in the west, bareback on his pony, with a cabbage stalk for a whip and the big stone walls of the Blazer country rising up before him. Coming up was one of his favourite leaps in the park, five foot of drystone wall whose landing side fell away another three feet below the five to carry horse and rider down in a breathtaking sweep on to a fine gallop that rose gently up away from the wall for a good quarter of a mile. Eugene loved this jump with all his heart, for there was nothing better to his way of thinking than to be on a fine strong horse on a bright sunny day with the winds of winter in your face and the thought of landing running so that horse and man were one as they accelerated away along the ride ahead of them.

  They were into the wall just perfect, the horse setting himself up for the right stride and Eugene finding and feeling it at once beneath him. He barely had to ask the animal – all he had to do was tip and balance, hands like silk in the ribbons so as not to catch the horse in the mouth as they landed, firm at the knees and light on the toes in the stirrups. He almost shouted as he felt the leap they were making, his horse rising higher than he ever had before at the wall, yet not ballooning it – simply flying it, back arched, neck stretched – and then they were down.

  There was no way either horse or rider could have seen the hole on the other side of the wall, no way at all. It looked to those who saw it later like the beginning of a den or a set, dug by a fox or even perhaps a badger, although the countrymen among the party who found him doubted very much if any badger would wish to build a set so close to an exposed wall. Whatever its origin, what the horse put his near fore in was a hole of big enough dimensions to bring him down, shooting his rider straight over his head at a lethal speed before Eugene could know what had happened.

  He landed on the very top of his head, buckling over straight on to his back, unconscious from the moment his unprotected skull hit the ground. Miraculously, the falling horse missed him by inches, crashing onto its side parallel to where its rider lay supine, lying there winded for fully two or three minutes before slowly clambering to its feet, groggy and disorientated, treading on one of its ride
r’s arms as it stood and crushing the bone into splinters as it did so. With reins flapping and saddle slipping down one side, the animal began to run, still too winded and frightened to gallop. The ever loosening saddle would have been enough to make any other horse panic, but not Eugene’s. As if realising the enormity of their joint calamity, the creature stopped a hundred yards from where its master lay and, instead of disappearing into the beyond, turned its head for home, running steadily parallel to the wall until it came to an open gate through which it immediately turned, quickening its pace now as it anticipated the warmth and security of its box, cantering at a steady but sensible pace back down the track past the lakes and towards the great house itself.

  Cissie Lavington was the first person to see it, standing at the window smoking one of her interminable cigarettes as she reviewed certain vital matters in her mind. She was immediately distracted by the sight of the riderless horse, a horse she recognised at once, as did everyone else who gathered at the window in response to her gasp of dismay and look of horror.

  Hurrying to find Kate, Cissie nearly knocked Marjorie over in her haste to take the corner in the corridor.

  ‘It doesn’t necessarily mean he’s hurt though, does it?’ Marjorie wondered a little breathlessly as she hurried along the corridor behind Cissie, who had explained her mission in a few brief words.

  ‘Of course not, my dear,’ Cissie replied. ‘Only thing is, riders as good as Eugene don’t fall off without damn’ good reason.’

  Kate ran into them, rather than the other way round, on her way out of the washroom. Seeing her, Cissie backtracked and, taking her by one arm, told her what had happened.

  ‘We’ll need to organise a search party,’ she announced, deputising the young woman nearest her. ‘Go along and tell Major Folkestone, there’s a good girl. Tell him we’re taking a party off to look for the fallen hero.’

  Micky, who acted as Eugene’s groom among other things, was already on the case as the search party fanned out of the front door of the house, arriving in the battered old pick-up truck that was used as the all purpose vehicle for the estate. The youngest of the party clambered up into the back to sit among a jumble of uncleared bits and pieces while Cissie and Miss Budge, who had also volunteered her services, sat up alongside Micky in the cab.