by A. M. Howell
“Which one? There are several Thomases here.”
“The tall one…with the moustache,” said Clara.
“Oh yes. And what would you be wanting with him?” the soldier asked lightly.
Clara felt a flush crawl up her neck and spill onto her cheeks.
“Is it a message – from Elizabeth?” he asked.
Clara stared at him. He knew Thomas had been meeting her aunt? The tents’ doors were flapping like eager ears.
The soldier took another bite of the apple and crunched it slowly. “You can pass a message onto me if you like. I’ll tell him when he returns from training.”
“Um,” said Clara, racking her brains. “It’s nothing. I’d better deliver these apples. I need to be getting back. Mr Gilbert is expecting me.”
The soldier’s eyes narrowed and he nodded. “Such a pity. Dreadful business. Hope they can resolve it before we move out to the Front.”
The soldier was talking in riddles. What dreadful business did he mean? Clara filed the information in her brain to take out and examine later, then brushed past the soldier and headed towards the mess tent.
“Hello,” Clara said cautiously, peering under the canvas flap. “Is anyone there?” The tent was empty of people but filled with provisions. A trestle table was weighed down with loaves of bread and tins of food. Another table was stacked with metal plates, mugs and cooking equipment.
Something under the first table caught her eye – a basket, the same as the one Mrs Gilbert had been carrying. It was covered by the same cloth too. Clara’s breath caught in her throat. Setting the apple basket down, she crouched. Wind flapped the canvas of the tent in and out, in and out. It seemed to be saying, Look inside, look inside.
She lifted the cloth, reached in and pulled out a skinny leek. Next to the leeks were a handful of potatoes and carrots and some purple beets. She sat back on her heels, a shiver of relief running through her that she hadn’t found a basket loaded with pineapples and peaches – Mrs Gilbert was not the thief.
“What have we here?” asked a voice from behind her.
Clara stood up, blood rushing to her head. A stocky man in a white overall with a spoon in his hand was staring at her.
“Apple delivery,” Clara said.
The man’s face cracked into a broad smile. He opened his arms as if to hug her and Clara shrank back into the tent. “Marvellous! Apple sauce for pudding. You can tell that head gardener the soldiers would gladly kiss his boots if he came to visit.”
Cook’s laugh was infectious and she smiled too. Kissing Mr Gilbert’s boots. Now that would be a sight to see.
“Clara? Is that you?”
Clara paused at the Gilberts’ bedroom door, which was ajar. Mrs Gilbert was sitting on the edge of her bed, her back rod-straight. Her hands were gripping a picture frame that was lying on her lap.
She looked up. “Come in, will you?”
Clara tentatively pushed the door open and stepped inside.
“Goodness. Whatever have you been doing? You look…quite worn out. And in need of a bath.”
Clara glanced down at her mud-tinged apron; tucked her tangled hair behind her ears. “I’ve been delivering apples to the Regiment,” she said.
“That’s good. They’re short of food,” Mrs Gilbert said with a small smile.
But if Mr Gilbert is sending the Regiment food with the Earl’s approval, why are you giving vegetables to Thomas when everyone is asleep? What is the dreadful business the soldier said you and Thomas must try to resolve?
“Come in, then,” Mrs Gilbert said, beckoning her forward.
Clara pushed the thoughts to one side and glanced at the frame on Mrs Gilbert’s lap. It was the pineapple tapestry. Mr Summers had been as good as his word, and mended and delivered it even more quickly than she’d thought possible. The brass plate and inscription glinted in the light. Deep peace of the quiet earth.
“Did you choose this?” Mrs Gilbert ran her finger over the plate, her fingers lingering on each word.
“Mr Gilbert did – the first time it was framed,” Clara said.
Mrs Gilbert’s lips wobbled.
Clara clasped her hands behind her back – they suddenly felt rather sweaty.
Mrs Gilbert stood up, walked to the head of the bed and hung the frame on the wall. She took a handkerchief from her pocket and gave the brass plate a quick polish.
“Thank you,” she said, turning to Clara.
Clara’s cheeks felt hot.
Mrs Gilbert stepped across the room in her stockinged feet and placed her hands on Clara’s shoulders.
Clara stiffened in surprise. This was the closest she had been to Mrs Gilbert since she arrived – apart from the unfortunate hair incident. Without warning, her aunt pulled her into a hug. It was not a warm and motherly one, smelling of fresh linen cupboards or strawberries. This hug smelled of furniture polish, and reminded her more of a sad shoe brush with worn, wiry bristles. But Clara had not been hugged for so long that she felt her body begin to betray her and relax into Mrs Gilbert’s arms. Mrs Gilbert rested her chin on Clara’s head for a second and took a long slow breath.
The slap. The hidden letters. Will. Father. Everything went through her mind.
But she must not be swayed by Mrs Gilbert’s unexpected burst of softness. Clara pulled out of her grasp, turned on her heel and ran from the room.
“Clara!” Mrs Gilbert called.
Clara ignored her, ran up the stairs to her bedroom and slammed the door shut, standing with her back to it. She scrunched her eyes shut and pressed her fingers into them until she saw wavy black shapes, and the memory of Mrs Gilbert’s hug faded into nothing.
It was after midnight. A drip of condensation from the glass roof of the pineapple house plopped onto the concrete near Clara’s right boot. She reached forward and smudged it with her thumb, thinking about what Will had just told her. He had found another mandarin by the lake that evening, just before an autumn mist had begun to smother the gardens in an opaque cloak.
“Maybe someone is playing a prank, leaving this fruit for us to find,” Will whispered. He had agreed with Clara’s theory that the fruit was being left deliberately, but neither of them could imagine who would do such a thing. “Maybe it’s one of the young under-gardeners?” he suggested.
“But you’ve checked the hothouse and you say no mandarins have been taken,” said Clara.
“Maybe they come from somewhere else – the grocer’s in town?” Will said with a shrug.
Clara wrinkled her nose. A garden full to the brim with fruit and the mandarins were being bought from a shop? She thought that very unlikely indeed. Anyway, why would a gardener risk losing his job over a silly prank?
“If we catch Mrs Gilbert tonight, then what will you do?” Will asked, changing the subject.
“I told you that the basket I found at the Regiment’s camp contained vegetables from the gardens. You can’t still think my aunt has something to do with the thieving? It’s almost like…you want her to be responsible,” Clara whispered, a flash of irritation tightening her jaw.
It was Will’s turn to wrinkle his nose. He picked up a small stone and threw it at a plant pot. It dinged off the side and rolled onto the pathway separating the pineapple plants.
Hunching beneath the bench was making Clara’s neck ache. “It’s just…the Gilberts are family,” she said, kneading at the pain with her fingers.
“And there’s nothing more important than family,” said Will in a small and rather lost voice.
Clara shifted a little closer to Will until their knees were nudging. “I’ve been away from home for so long, that when I think about my family it’s hard to remember them properly. I wonder if this is what it was like for Father and Christopher when they went away to fight?”
Will glanced at her, seemed to be thinking about this. “Open the letter from the War Office, Clara. You need to know what it says, for your sake and for your parents’.”
Clara dragged
in a deep breath of warm, sweet air. At home she had lived alongside the War. It was real, but also at arm’s length. Father’s tight-lipped refusal to talk about his experiences on the Front. Mother’s refusal to read the newspapers. This sometimes made it feel like they were living in a bubble, protected from the worst the War could throw at them. Here it was different. Burying Will’s father’s things. The soldier at the hospital with his injuries. The Regiment’s camp on the edge of the woods and the nightly rifle fire. Mr Gilbert’s stories of Zeppelins dropping bombs on nearby Norfolk. This war was like a mole, burying and tunnelling into her, popping up for air and leaving its mark. “Maybe,” said Clara.
“Maybe yes, or maybe no? You’re braver than you know. You need to stop worrying that you’re not.” Will grasped Clara’s hand and gave it a firm squeeze. Wind licked the windowpanes, shivered from one to another like a round of applause. He gave her a look that she could not interpret, a sad look that made his face seem smaller, as if he was cast adrift from her, the hothouse and his beloved pineapples.
Clara squeezed his hand back.
“Shhh,” hissed Will suddenly. His body had stiffened. He dropped her hand.
There were footsteps outside. But they were not the tiny footsteps of a night-time creature on the hunt for food.
The moisture in Clara’s mouth vanished. Will’s eyes were bright and excited in the dim light, his hands clenched on his knees. The footsteps travelled the length of the hothouse, then paused at the entrance. Clara felt like she had forgotten how to breathe. The feet trod softly down the steps. The door handle turned. Clara slunk back beneath the bench, but Will was leaning forward, peering at the door.
The footsteps were stealthy, not like the footsteps of someone who had a right to be walking inside the hothouse, caring for the fruits. Clara felt sure these were the footsteps of a person who meant to do them harm. She dug her nails into her palms.
A hot-water pipe gurgled. Clara swallowed the dryness in her throat. The feet were walking along the narrow path between the planting beds, growing closer, and closer still. Clara blinked. Blinked again. Even though it was dark, she had seen enough boots to know the ones now standing in front of the bench were men’s army boots. The man’s breaths were fairy-light and even, not at all how Clara had imagined a thief’s breaths would sound. He turned and leaned against the bench, crossing his legs at the ankles.
Clara bit her lip as she watched Will reach out until there was less than a pin’s space between his hands and the man’s calves. Then, with a grunt, he lurched forward and grabbed the man’s legs.
A noise came from the man’s throat – a gurgle of shock and pain as he twisted and fell to the ground with a heavy thump.
Will scrabbled out from under the bench and Clara followed, her knees scraping on the rough paving. She smothered a gasp as she looked down into the shadows.
It was Mrs Gilbert’s soldier-friend, Thomas.
Will turned and gave her a broad grin. Told you so, his eyes were saying.
There was a low scuffling noise behind Will. Clara opened her mouth to shout to him, but she was too late. Thomas had sprung to his feet and was gripping Will’s shoulder. Will wriggled and squirmed. “Got you,” Thomas said through gritted teeth.
In her panic, Clara grabbed onto the bench to steady herself and her fingers brushed against something small and wooden. It was the handle of a small gardening trowel. She picked it up, lifted it above her head and stared at Thomas, who now had his back to her as he struggled with Will. Clara flung the trowel towards the back of the hothouse, where it clattered on the ground.
“What the…?” Thomas muttered, momentarily loosening his grip on Will.
Clara turned and ran from the hothouse, up the steps and out into the mist. She could hear Will’s footsteps close behind, then he was shooting past her like a hare. Clara swung around the left side of the hothouse, but Will was running in the opposite direction, up the slope towards the orchard, a cough hacking from his lungs. Thomas’s feet were thudding on the grass, chasing Will.
Clara stared out into the mist, droplets of water clinging to her hair and cheeks, her breaths ragged in her throat. The gardens were eerily quiet, as if shocked into silence by the night’s events. She didn’t think Thomas had seen her face, but he knew that Will hadn’t been alone. She needed to hide before he came looking for her. The thief knew they were on to him.
Clara pulled open the large glass door to the Earl’s summer house, shutting it quietly behind her. The warmth untied some of the knots in her tired muscles as she weaved around the white wicker chairs and past the mandarin trees in their giant terracotta pots. She tripped over two butterfly nets lying on the floor near the wall. Perhaps they belonged to the girls who had seen her sitting in the wild flowers. They were most likely fast asleep, dreaming about pretty dresses and lovely things. If they were here now, what would they make of her, hiding in a summer house (where she had no business hiding) from a pineapple thief?
Huddling behind the largest of the potted trees, Clara watched the moonlight hit the chandelier above her, which was throwing beads of light along the walls, and listened to the distant rattle of gunfire. Her brain was a mess of thoughts, like a baby’s scribbled drawing. Will was right – Thomas had been taking the fruit. But did Mrs Gilbert know? And where was Will now? He was fast, had speed on his side. But he was up against a trained soldier who had been taught to hurt and kill. If Thomas did catch Will, would he be held captive and bound so that he could not yell for help?
Clara dragged in a deep breath of citrusy air. She leaned forward and stroked a leaf on the mandarin tree. The tree did not have as many fruits as those in the hothouse. Maybe they did not grow as well here. She would ask Will. If she ever saw him again.
Tick-tick-tick-tick said the hot-water pipes. They were singing her a gentle tune, one that rolled wave after wave of tiredness through her body. Clara rubbed her eyes. She would check the boiler house in a couple of hours, just before dawn, to see if Will had returned. Until then she needed to stay hidden out of sight, in case Thomas returned.
“Clara? Clara?” The voice was insistent and nagging at the edge of her hearing.
Clara jerked awake, her heart thudding against her ribs.
Robert was kneeling in front of her. A lit oil lamp was on the floor next to him, although he barely needed it. The huge windows of the summer house framed the pink-tinged sky.
Clara scrabbled to her feet and rubbed her eyes.
“What in heaven’s name are you doing in here? Folks have been looking for you,” Robert said. His face was pale, the skin under his eyes as dark as bruises.
Clara glanced at her watch. It was just after 7 a.m. How could she have let herself fall asleep?
“Come on, we’d best let them know you’re safe,” Robert said, picking up the lamp.
Clara followed him out of the summer house, around the edges of the wall, until they came to the steps which led to the boiler house. The door at the foot of the steps was flung wide open.
Bile rose in Clara’s throat. Will had not come back. “Wait,” she said, planting her boots on the dewy grass.
Robert turned.
Clara’s hands were clammy. She pulled the sleeves of her cardigan around her fingers.
Robert’s cheeks were ice-white.
“It’s about…Will,” Clara said. She squeezed the wool between her fingers, hoping that Will would forgive her for breaking her promise.
Robert’s eyes flickered to hers and then away again. The muscles in his jaw tensed.
Clara took a deep breath. “I met him in the gardens.”
Robert’s jaw twitched.
“We know that fruit has been stolen from the hothouses. We’ve been keeping watch for the thief. Last night…while we were watching, the thief came – Thomas. He chased after Will.”
Robert massaged his throat.
Clara shifted from foot to foot. Why wasn’t he leaping about, his eyes widening in horror? She glanced a
gain at the entrance to the boiler house. Robert’s eyes followed hers.
“I don’t think Will came back to the boiler house last night. I think Thomas has caught him – maybe he’s keeping him somewhere.”
“He’s been caught alright,” Robert said with a sniff, pushing his glasses up his nose.
A heavy feeling pulled Clara’s stomach towards the grass. “What?”
“It was Will who was doing the thieving. I know full well where he is – being held in the cellars at the Big House until the police come.”
Clara felt like a steamroller was pressing all of the breath from her lungs. “No!”
Robert sighed. “I can’t believe it myself. I confessed to Mr Gilbert that I’d let him sleep in the boiler house. I’m not proud of that. To think I brought him here and all he’s done is taken advantage of my…kindness.”
“No…the soldier who caught him…Thomas. He is the thief,” said Clara.
Robert’s mouth twisted into a grimace. “It’s you and Will who’ve made a mistake, Clara. Thomas is Mr Gilbert’s brother. He was watching the hothouses last night as a favour to Mr and Mrs Gilbert – and me. I’ve been so tired lately…what with all the extra work in the gardens.” Robert’s eyes flicked sideways to the hothouses, then back to Clara. He reached up under his glasses and pressed the corner of his cloudy eye, as if trying to clear away the murkiness.
Clara’s mind spun like a Catherine wheel nailed to a fence on bonfire night. Thomas was Mr Gilbert’s brother. Which meant he was family – Mrs Gilbert’s brother-in-law. But why was he so upset when they were in the woods together?
“But it’s impossible,” Clara said. “Will isn’t the thief. We have to help him.”
Robert shook his head. “There’s nothing I can do for him now. It’s in the hands of the police – and the Earl.”
“But he’s your brother,” said Clara, her voice cracking in her throat.
Robert’s lips were as thin as a paper cut. “Come on. I need to get you back to the cottage. I’ve things to do.”