by A. M. Howell
Clara’s throat ached. For the things Will had just told her. For the loss of his father. For the things that might have happened to her own brother that she was still not brave enough to face.
Will reached behind him for a cushion-sized parcel wrapped in brown paper and string. He placed it on his lap and dragged in a breath. “Do you want to see?” he asked.
Clara felt her head nod. The anxiety in her stomach grew larger, like a rolling snowball. She did not know what she had imagined, but it wasn’t for their father’s possessions to be sent like a normal parcel through the post. Surely there should have been a trumpet playing, a parade, a more fitting acknowledgement that he gave his life for his country than just a parcel wrapped in brown paper?
Will pulled on the string; folded back the paper. The olive-green uniform was similar to her father’s, and to the one Christopher had been wearing when he had left home, walking proudly down the street, his back straight, his eyes dancing and ready for the adventures to come. As Will unfolded the fabric, Clara drew in a sharp breath. The left arm of the jacket had been roughly cut away. A dark brown stain covered the shoulder. Blood. Will had told her the telegram informing them of their father’s death had said it had been quick and painless and that he had not suffered. But how could any death caused by war be painless? A wave of dizziness washed over Clara as Will brought the jacket close to his face. He drew in a deep breath through his nose. “It smells…musty. Not of him,” he said in a flat voice.
Clara placed a hand on Will’s arm, tears burning her throat.
“What do you think happens when we die?” Will asked quietly.
Clara pulled away her hand and closed her eyes for a second. The room was spinning, like she was on a merry-go-round at the town fair. When she opened them again the first thing she saw was Will’s notebook, lying open. She picked it up, tracing a finger over a drawing of a pineapple so detailed she could see the individual quilts and spikes. She drew in a deep steadying breath. “I think it might be like…falling into the gaps between pictures on a page,” she said slowly. “Just not…there any more.”
Will pressed the jacket to his cheek. “I like that,” he said. His face was flushed, his eyes watery. He sniffed and looked at the ceiling.
“Your father would have been proud of you, Will,” Clara said softly.
“You think?”
Clara nodded. “Your drawings of the gardens, your plans for the future. He would have liked hearing about those.”
A flash of embarrassment crossed Will’s face, but a small smile also crinkled the corners of his mouth. “Would you…come with me, to bury Father’s uniform, tonight?”
Clara frowned. “What about Robert?”
Will’s lips thinned. “He won’t come. Told me he couldn’t face it.”
“But…he’s your brother.”
Will shook his head. “He finds these things…hard.”
Clara rubbed at a coal stain on her apron, remembering her conversation with Robert as the horse and cart jolted them into town. He was finding things difficult, that much she could see. But not to want to be there for your own brother at a time like this was hard to understand.
Will carefully rewrapped the uniform. “I know you find things hard too, Clara. But you should open the letter from the War Office. There’s nothing scarier than not knowing the truth,” he said sadly.
Clara pressed her lips together, picked up a piece of fallen coal and clasped it in her hand. Will was right. She must pluck up the courage and open the letter. But maybe tomorrow would be the day her mother would contact Mrs Gilbert. Perhaps she would send for Clara to come home and she would be able to thrust the letter into her mother’s make-things-better fingers and she would not have to make any decision at all.
It was past midnight. The moon was almost full, the sky clear and cold, and the sound of rifle fire seemed closer than usual. Clara pulled her shawl around her shoulders and shivered. “Are you sure the Regiment aren’t practising in the woods?” she whispered to Will. Straying beyond the gardens when soldiers were firing their rifles did seem rather foolish.
“Not the part we’re going to,” Will replied, hugging the parcel containing his father’s things close to his chest.
As they wound their way around the garden to a door in the east wall which led to the woods, the shovel Clara was carrying clanked painfully against her shins. Will pushed open the door and gestured for Clara to go ahead. Stepping forward, her right boot sank into something soft (and very un-grass-like). She bent down, her breath hitching in her throat when she saw what it was. A squished boot-imprinted mandarin.
“Goodness, look,” she whispered to Will, picking up the pulpy mess. A dribble of juice ran down her wrist. As she stood up, she noticed two small stone cupid statues on plinths, one on either side of the door. The first cupid was empty-handed, but in the right palm of the second statue rested another mandarin. The one she had trodden on had probably rolled off the first statue’s hand, maybe helped by a puff of wind.
Will did not respond, just clutched his father’s parcel closer to his chest as he stared at the fruit. Clara carefully placed the squished mandarin back where it had fallen from and wiped her fingers on her apron. Now was not the time to wonder why this fruit was being deliberately left in the gardens – for she was sure that it was. Now was the time to help Will.
Neither of them spoke as their feet cracked over twigs, brushed through nettles and around brambles.
“Here,” Will said, after Clara had counted they had walked past seventy-six trees of varying sizes and shapes. Breath steamed from their lips as they stood in a small clearing, tree stumps perching on the soil like giant’s feet. Clara leaned the shovel against one of the stumps, which was overgrown with lichen. Will placed the parcel on another and then picked up the shovel.
“Snowdrops grow here in the spring. Crocuses too. Father loved them,” Will said.
A snake of cold air wriggled down the neck of Clara’s coat. She pushed autumn away, instead imagining the sun dappling through the trees, the earthy smell of green shoots pushing through the soil. Life beginning all over again.
Will began to dig, shovelling earth over his shoulder. He paused, took off his jacket and wiped his brow, a cough racking his chest. Clara took the jacket from him and folded it over her arm.
The hole Will was digging grew deeper, plenty large enough for the parcel. Lines of sweat trickled down his face. He coughed again and wiped his nose with the back of his hand.
Distant rifle fire echoed through the trees. Will was right, the Regiment were practising in a different part of the woods tonight, but the sharp staccato bursts still dried Clara’s mouth and caused her hands to ball into fists. Were these the sounds that Will’s father had heard as he died, the sounds her father and brother had grown accustomed to? She did her best to push the thoughts away. “I think it’s big enough, Will,” Clara whispered. But the chink of the metal through the soil and the sound of Will’s laboured breathing smothered her words.
Will grunted, flinging soil over his shoulder as the hole grew bigger still.
Clara took a step forward. “It’s done, Will,” she said, louder this time.
Still Will continued to dig. He stood in the hole, his legs swallowed by the heap of earth, so he seemed only half the person he was.
“Will,” Clara said urgently.
Will paused, then glanced at Clara as if he had forgotten she was there. “Yes,” he said in a strangled voice. He looked down at the hole. He looked at the parcel. “You’d best hand it to me.”
Clara carefully picked up the package and passed it to him.
Will hugged it to his chest one more time. He dipped his chin and sucked in a deep breath. A huge cough made his body shake.
Robert should be here, to help his brother, Clara thought. Will should not be doing this alone. But Robert wasn’t there, and she was. Clara stepped forward, her boots sinking into the soil. She laid her hands over Will’s. Very gently, s
he guided the parcel towards the hole. They crouched beside one another, their hands still joined. Will’s fingers were icy and encrusted with mud. But that did not matter one jot to Clara. She pressed the parcel into the soil until her own nails, fingers and hands were as dirty as his. “Goodbye,” Clara whispered.
Will began to tremble, like someone had taken hold of his body and was giving it a jolly good shake. He wiped his nose again, then sprang to his feet and began to shovel soil on top of the parcel until all traces of the brown paper were hidden.
Clara forced her eyes to stay fixed on Will’s stony face, even though a tiny part of her wanted to turn away, run away – from the woods, from the buried uniform stained with blood, from the tears sliding down his cheeks.
It was done. Will dropped the shovel to the ground. He wrapped his arms around his middle and bent forward as if he had a pain in his side.
Clara folded her arms around her own body. Trekking over snowy mountains, floating through the air high above the world in a balloon – that took a certain kind of bravery. But this was a different kind of bravery, a type Clara had never seen before and very much hoped she would never have to see again.
October 1916
My Dearest,
Do you remember the first time you tasted a home-grown pineapple from the hothouse? How sweet the yellow flesh was, so different to the imported pineapples that arrive salt-weathered and sour at the London docks. The sheer delight on your face!
It takes me much effort to rise in the mornings now. I find my mind drifting to you while I work, directing the scullery maids to blacken the hearths and lay the fires at the Big House. I have little appetite to clean my own cottage. Alfred has mentioned more than once the lacelike cobwebs hanging in the corners, the balls of dust drifting under the bed like silent mice. He is suspicious, I think, but I am beyond caring. All I wish is for us to be together, my dear.
Your fondest,
Lizzy
Clara slid the letter into the envelope. It was as if the letters were magnetized, drawing her into the room to read them despite the risk of being caught. Mrs Gilbert must have been in the room writing her secret letters while Clara had been helping Will bury his father’s things the night before. She checked each drawer of the bureau again for letters from her mother. There were none.
Locking the door, Clara returned the key to the Gilberts’ bedroom and ran down the stairs, taking the steps two at a time. Hurling open the door to the gardens, she pulled in a breath of early afternoon autumn air, which was thinner and chillier than it had been. She walked quickly down the slope towards the boiler house. She wondered what Will was doing. Sleeping? Stoking the boiler? Drawing in his notebook? The way he spoke about the pineapples and the hothouses was so tender, like they were his family. Maybe they were now.
Mr Gilbert was talking to Robert under the apple trees. He was gesticulating, pointing at the hothouses. Clara skirted through the trees until she was standing near enough to hear what was being said.
“Two, you say?” said Robert.
“Yes, and a dozen peaches as well. The Earl will want the police involved,” said Mr Gilbert firmly.
“Not yet,” said Robert quickly. “I’ve been keeping watch. I’ll stay up tonight, try and catch them. They’re bound to try again.”
“Are you sure about that?” Mr Gilbert asked curtly.
“I’m…not sure what you mean,” said Robert.
“Have you been watching the hothouses? By all accounts you were tucked up in your bed early last night, snoring the place down.”
A fly buzzed around Clara’s head. She swatted it away.
“The work in the gardens is tiring,” Robert said eventually. His voice was thin, edged with guilt.
“Course it is, lad. There’s a war on, which means more work for everyone. And on top of that, a thief is ransacking the Earl’s hothouses,” Mr Gilbert said wearily.
“I’m sorry…”
Clara’s legs felt like jelly. More fruit had been taken, and it had happened when they were not keeping watch. Coming back from the woods the previous night, Will had been shaky, his feet stumbling over every branch, around every bush. Clara had persuaded him to return to the boiler house to sleep, rather than keep watch in the hothouse.
She had been exhausted too. It had been an odd kind of tiredness, which had made her limbs feel heavy and caused her to collapse into bed as soon as she got back to her room, sleep engulfing her the instant her head touched the pillow. As usual she had left her bedroom window open, but nothing and no one had woken her. No nightmare, or creak of a hothouse door or footsteps thudding across the grass; no voices carried in by the breeze. Clara itched to speak with Will.
She rested a hand on the trunk of a gnarly apple tree; laid her cheek against the rough bark.
“I promised a basket of apples to the Regiment,” Mr Gilbert said, reaching up and picking a couple of apples and placing them in a barrow. “Can you take them?”
“As you said, there’s a lot to do here,” Robert replied in a clipped voice.
There was a pause. Mr Gilbert picked another apple and dropped it into the barrow. “The army also has a lot to do, keeping us safe.”
Robert kicked hard at a fallen apple with the toe of his boot; it split into several pieces. Mr Gilbert picked up his spade, flung it over his shoulder and strode off to the far side of the gardens.
An idea was simmering in Clara’s head. A stack of wicker baskets leaned against the brick wall nearby. Uncurling herself from the tree, Clara walked across and picked one up, looping it over her arm. The breeze ruffled the leaves above her head and the apples bobbed and bounced. Robert was looking at her. She ignored him, reached up to one of the lower branches, chose an apple flushed with pink and twisted. It came away in her hand. She placed it in the basket, then carried on twisting and picking until the basket was half-filled.
Robert wandered over and glanced into the basket. “You’re picking a good crop there,” he said, leaning against a tree. His eyes looked pink, his top lip beaded with sweat.
“I thought you might need some help,” said Clara.
“There’s so much to do,” said Robert. “Sometimes too much.” He took off his glasses, pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose, then wiped his face.
A pang of sympathy tightened Clara’s jaw. Poor Robert. Mr Gilbert was working him very hard. All the worry he had about hiding Will and finding them somewhere to live – it must be so very wearing. “I can help…would you like me to pick more apples?”
Robert pushed his handkerchief into his pocket and glanced at Mr Gilbert, who was digging a planting bed along the back wall. “I need to take some apples to the Regiment’s camp.”
“I could take them,” Clara said eagerly – maybe too eagerly. “I have nothing else to do,” she added with a shrug.
Robert scratched his chin. “It would be a help. I have to ready another cartload of vegetables for the hospital and tend to the leeks. There just aren’t enough hours in the day.”
“No, there really aren’t,” replied Clara, pressing her boots into the grass. “Don’t worry. I’ll take the apples and be back before you know it.”
“You really are helpful, aren’t you?” said Robert thoughtfully.
Clara felt his eyes on her like the prickle of a beetle walking up her arm. She needed to be careful not to make him suspicious. She forced her lips into a bright smile and pushed away the tinge of unease in her gut. Taking the apples to the Regiment would help Robert, but (maybe a little selfishly) she hoped it would help her more.
When Will heard that more fruit had been taken, he was bound to bring up his theory again that Mrs Gilbert was the thief. When he spoke like that, his voice changed, became harder, and it made Clara’s head ache. If she could visit the Regiment’s camp, maybe she could find Thomas the soldier and ask him what had been in the basket Mrs Gilbert had given him. She felt certain that Mrs Gilbert had nothing to do with the stolen pineapples, and whi
le she and her aunt did not get on the way she had hoped, it was important to prove this to Will, so they could concentrate on finding the real culprit.
The trees rustled and murmured in the stiff wind; sunlight flickered through the branches which were waving goodbye to their leaves for another year. Crows bustled in the sky like black handkerchiefs, as the sound of voices filtered from where the woodland path fanned out onto open fields. Two men were sitting on a farm gate, swinging back and forth. They paused when they saw Clara, one of them raising a hand in greeting. As she approached them she trod over discarded cigarette ends and heavy boot-prints.
The Regiment’s tents were in rows, like sheets on washing lines. Pegged to the tent ropes were items of clothing – socks and men’s underwear, which made Clara want to look in the opposite direction. In front of the tents and nearest to the woods was a long trestle table, with two benches on either side. To the right of this was another larger tent, where a spiral of smoke was rising.
One of the men jumped down from the gate and walked towards her. He was chewing on a blade of grass. “Hello. What do you have there?”
Clara stared at his olive-green trousers, his undone jacket. She felt her pulse quicken. His uniform was similar to Christopher’s. She placed the basket on the ground and massaged her aching arm. “Apples…for… Cook,” she said. “From the head gardener.”
“The mess tent is over there,” the soldier said with a friendly smile, pointing to the spiralling smoke. “They look good.” He reached into the basket and picked up an apple, rubbing it on his sleeve before taking a huge bite from it. “We appreciate everything the Earl’s doing for us. It’s good to eat well,” he said with his mouth full.
Clara picked the basket up again and glanced over at the other tents. “I’m also looking for…Thomas.”