The House of Flowers

by Charlotte Bingham

  They had come upon it as if by magic, since one minute they were in deep woodland, and the next standing before a faded honey-coloured stone cottage, built deliberately it seemed on a mound in a tiny clearing where it would remain hidden from all but the most curious. There was no path from the copse, just an end to the trees followed by a swathe of grass that surrounded the hummock that supported the charming little building.

  Poppy gazed up at it while George stood at her feet wagging his long dachshund tail as if in approval. Scott was silent, looking not at the house but at Poppy.

  ‘It isn’t like any cottage I’ve seen,’ Poppy said finally. ‘What I mean is that cottages in the country are usually either very plain brick and tile, or whitewash and thatch. They’re not like this – smaller versions of old classical stone houses, with Georgian casements and a proper slate roof – and with such elegant design and proportions. I mean why? Why was it built? And all the way out here – at such a distance from the house? The other follies at Eden Park are all so visible, all set around the lakes, none of them hidden away like this—’

  ‘Which is the exact point of this one I would imagine,’ Scott interrupted. ‘The other follies were designed to be seen. This wasn’t.’

  ‘So what was it?’

  ‘A secret? A place of secrets?’ Scott suggested. ‘A very private place where two could play? I imagine from the situation, and the fact that it’s properly built as a dwelling place, as you’ll see . . .’ He took her hand and led her up a flight of steps that had been cut in the mound, in order that visitors happening on it from the direction from which they had arrived could climb to the stone terrace above.

  ‘How did you discover it? By sheer chance? Or did you know about it?’

  ‘I knew nothing of it,’ Scott confessed with his usual engaging honesty. ‘No, it was Eugene Hackett. He spent a lot of his childhood at Eden Park; the son was a boyhood friend from Ireland, where his parents had a holiday house. He was killed recently, poor fellow. But at any rate, Hackett thinks it’s very special. They all used to come up here for picnics, and Lady Dunne would rest here when life at the Park became a trifle too hectic.’

  Scott threw open the front door and stood to one side. Poppy stepped into the little building with quiet reverence, looking around her carefully, as if she was stepping into a church, or private chapel, rather than a house.

  They stood, silently holding hands, George at their feet, as they took in the small octagonal hall, the stone-flagged floor below their feet and the glass-domed skylight above their heads. All about them, thanks to the dome above, was a feeling of light and space, and although the hall was furnished only with the dry leaves that had blown in that autumn, it nevertheless had a lived-in feeling, as if any minute now a servant would bring in a mahogany table upon which he would lay a sheaf of letters and a copy of the Morning Post.

  One by one Scott opened the three doors that led off the octagon, only to discover that they all took the visitor into the reception room, a small sitting room furnished only with one dining chair, a Regency chaise longue, and a fine glass-fronted bookcase.

  After this came the dining room, where there was no table, but three abandoned chairs, and finally a kitchen with an old oak table, a range and a small scullery that led to yet more service rooms. A flight of elegant stone stairs led them up to an iron-railed landing where another three doors matching those below revealed two bedrooms and a bathroom. Here there was no furniture at all, other than a three-legged wardrobe in one bedroom and an antique wooden armchair in the other, once perhaps identifiable as a Regency hall chair, but now heavily disguised under thick brown housemaid’s paint.

  All the windows were dressed with wooden shutters held securely by long iron bars, making the rooms seem warmer than they might otherwise have been. Poppy opened one of them and stared out across the woods. Immediately the small room became more enchanting, lit by a ray of weak winter sunlight that was sneaking its way past her and through the gap left by the shutters.

  ‘This is a strange place, Scott,’ Poppy murmured, as he took her arm. ‘It has an atmosphere, as if someone is still living in it.’

  ‘I didn’t bring you here just for you to see it,’ Scott replied. ‘I brought you here for quite a different reason.’

  ‘Namely?’

  Scott cleared his throat, rather too loudly.

  ‘I actually – well – I actually brought you here to ask you to marry me.’

  He had taken both of her hands as he cleared his throat. Poppy frowned up at him, taken aback not by his proposal, but by the fear she could see in his eyes.

  ‘What about getting married and the war?’

  Scott frowned. ‘Well let’s say I don’t think our marrying is going to bring about world peace,’ he said, drily. ‘But it would certainly make me very happy. You too, I hope.’

  ‘What I meant was how? How are we going to manage to get married when we have all this work to do? What I mean is – do you think it’s right to get married?’

  ‘I think it would be terribly wrong not to,’ Scott replied in all seriousness. ‘Particularly because there is a war on. I couldn’t live for one moment longer without you as my wife. Really, I could not. So? So what do you say?’

  ‘Of course.’ Poppy smiled up at the tall handsome young man still holding both her hands. ‘Of course I will marry you. You surely didn’t think for a moment that I wouldn’t, did you?’

  ‘I take nothing about you for granted, I hope,’ Scott told her, taking her in his arms, while relief flooded him, and his kiss echoed his gratitude at her reply. ‘Particularly between cup – and lip.’

  After which he kissed her again, and again.

  ‘When?’ Poppy wondered. ‘When do you think we can get married? And where are we going to live? I don’t really think that little flat we’ve just seen is going to be exactly ideal.’

  ‘We’ll get married as soon as we can arrange it. We can organise a special licence and get hitched in a couple of days, or weeks, whatever we want. And as for where to live, you mean you don’t like this place?’

  Poppy stared round her. ‘We can’t live here,’ she said. ‘How can we possibly live here?’

  ‘When Eugene first showed it to me, he said all that needed to be done was for him to have a word with the owners.’

  ‘Are you sure it’d be all right?’

  ‘Absolutely. Now come on – let’s go and see exactly what we have to do to get married.’

  Poppy was the one to shut the front door behind them. As she did so she noticed some carving above the fine lintel of the heavy panelled door.

  ‘Domus Florea,’ she read. ‘Translate please, Mr Meynell.’

  ‘Yes. Even I with my horribilis Latinus, even I know what that is. It means House of Flowers.’

  Eugene’s flight was uncomfortable and dangerous, owing to the age and flimsiness of the aircraft designated to fly him the seventy-five miles from Malta to Sicily and to the atrocious weather – a storm of such ferocity that Eugene found himself quickly accepting that they were bound to crash into the black and icy seas below them.

  But somehow the little antediluvian twin-engine aircraft rose to the occasion, thanks more to the skill of its pilot rather than to the resilience of its structure, since during the worst of the storm it seemed as if the howling February gales would rip it to pieces in mid-air. At one point the engines lost all their power against the might of the wind and the plane suddenly plunged nose first for the sea. Somehow the pilot, busy screaming abuse at the gods and swearing at the top of his voice in Maltese, managed to yank the aircraft out of its death dive and level it off only a matter of a hundred or so feet above sea level, before slowly beginning to ascend once more until at long last they were seemingly out of danger.

  But, miraculously, the storm abated. As suddenly as it had blown up it was over, even though as Eugene could see from his little side window the seas below them were still turbulent. But the force of the wind had undoubt
edly abated because by the time the little plane was approaching the appointed dropping zone it was back on an even keel. Turning to Eugene, the pilot made a jump and drop signal with one hand and smiled before sticking his thumb up in the air. Eugene, having run all his pre-drop checks, clambered further back in the fuselage until he was alongside the door through which he was about to launch himself.

  ‘Gude lock, Paddy!’ the Maltese pilot bellowed. ‘Go keel the goddamn Chermans!’

  After which Eugene gave a thumbs-up sign, unlocked the door, and, taking a deep breath, without thinking twice hurled himself out into the night. After counting to five, he pulled his ripcord and heard his parachute billow out with a whoosh behind him. Opening the eyes he had just tightly closed, he grabbed the sides of the harness above his head and began to fly himself down as best as he could to a ground that seemed to be coming up at him a great deal faster than he was descending.

  The fact was that the plane was little more sophisticated than those first used in the Great War and needed to fly at a much lower altitude than was considered safe for parachuting. Not only was the risk to Eugene far higher; so inevitably was the violence of his landing. By using all his strength Eugene managed to control both his drift and his speed, so that by buckling and rolling as soon as he felt the ground under his feet he escaped with nothing more than a few knocks and was able to punch himself free of his parachute. Gathering it into as small a bundle as was possible, he hightailed it for the shelter of the woods that he could see silhouetted on one side of the plateau on to which he had dropped.

  As he crouched in the scrub at the edge of the copse he looked for any sign of the signal that was supposed to welcome him to Sicily. He didn’t have to wait long. Hardly a minute after he reached his hiding place, he saw a small pinpoint of light flickering only a couple of hundred yards from where he was crouching. He at once responded, and waited as instructed until he heard the faintest of movements behind him in the copse.

  ‘Three-a-no-tromp,’ a voice whispered, feet from where he crouched.

  ‘Five clubs,’ Eugene returned.

  ‘Good. Now you wait, please.’

  Eugene did as he was told, remaining motionless until he felt a tap on the shoulder.

  ‘Now-a,’ he was urged. ‘Come.’

  There was no moonlight. In fact as they made their careful way out of the pitch-dark woods it seemed as though there was no light at all. Eugene could just make out the shape of two men in front of him, both with rifles slung over their backs; small men, both of them, who, it became quickly clear, were enviably light on their feet.

  After half an hour of slow and stealthy progress they came to a road, over which they crossed before continuing through more pitch-black woodland until finally reaching a small house silhouetted against the winter sky. Eugene’s guides flattened themselves against the front wall before edging up to ease open the door. A second later they were in the house, leaving their guest outside with his back against the wall while they inspected the premises.

  ‘Psssst?’ A hiss indicated it was safe for Eugene to enter, which he did, closing the door behind him.

  ‘Safe-a ’ere,’ one of the men said. ‘We stay-a ’ere now a while. ‘Ave a smokey.’

  The three of them lit cigarettes, cupping their matches tightly in hand to show the least light possible. They all leaned back against the wall to smoke in silence, the quiet outside broken only by the call of some night bird. When they finished their cigarettes they took it in turn to rest while one remained on watch.

  Perhaps out of respect for his journey, Eugene was invited to be the first to sleep. He huddled himself into the nearest corner of the room, pulling his jacket round him for warmth and wrapping his arms tightly round his chest, allowing his chin finally to drop as if he was already asleep, while he examined the situation.

  His mission, particularly vital at this point in the war, was to help try to sabotage the massive buildup of enemy aircraft in Sicily, designed to bolster the ongoing attacks the Luftwaffe were constantly mounting against the strategically vital little island of Malta. Somehow, miraculously, the island had held out throughout an offensive that had begun the previous June when the Italians launched wave after wave of their Savoia-Marchetti bombers in raids over the island. All the Maltese had to defend them were four biplane Gladiator fighters, which notwithstanding their obsolescence in their few weeks of heroic glory intercepted over seventy enemy formations, shooting down or badly damaging thirty-seven enemy aircraft.

  But once the British supplemented the tiny fighting force with a handful of Hurricanes the Germans and the Italians realised they had a very real fight on their hands, if they were going to conquer and occupy the tiny island that had been so strategically important since the Middle Ages. Hence the building up of Luftwaffe units in Sicily, and Eugene’s mission to search out and sabotage as many planes as he could. He was to pose as a sympathetic mechanic, a role that Eugene had rehearsed with his usual dedication and attention to detail. Happily so, for it was this sense of detail, allied to that sixth sense that is so necessary to survival, that first alerted him to danger.

  It was the cigarettes they were smoking. Because he was so meticulous when preparing what he liked to call a new role for himself, Eugene’s studies always included a painstaking study of native habits. He took a pride in knowing everything from the fact that Italians abhorred the colour purple, associating it with prostitutes, to the manner in which they smoked and drank, or insulted each other.

  It was because of this attention to the tiniest detail that he had made sure Jack Ward and his associates supplied him with the correct type of Sicilian cigarette. The tobacco in these cigarettes was black, rough and pungent, a typical peasant type of smoke. But the cigarettes his companions were smoking smelt as if they were made of Virginian tobacco. Watching them from behind half-closed eyes only confirmed his suspicions.

  He sat up, indicating that he had run out of smokes. Could they possibly spare him a cigarette? Without a second thought the man nearest him opened an unmarked tin, which allowed Eugene to sit back in his corner and smoke the sort of cigarette he would have greatly enjoyed in any other circumstances than the ones in which he now found himself.

  He was undoubtedly in the hands of German sympathisers, which was what Jack Ward with his usual understatement would call a bit tricky. He quickly ran through his options. He could shoot them both with very little difficulty since presently they seemed far more occupied in eating a lump of bread filled with some high-smelling sausage than they were in keeping an eye on him. Two shots would take them out, and he would be gone before they even hit the floor. It was regrettable, but there was really no choice, since his only real chance lay in making good an escape.

  Bluff Hackett – that’s your only chance, just good old Irish bluff.

  The first part was a lot easier than he had reckoned. Pretending that he simply could not sleep because he was too keyed up, Eugene persuaded the younger of the two men to take his place in the corner while he and his friend would pass the time playing a gambling game Eugene would teach him. The younger one was soon fast asleep in the corner, his heavy coat pulled up nearly to his eyes and his face turned away from his companions, while Eugene began to explain in whispers how the game was played. The second Sicilian listened intently as Eugene muttered the directions.

  ‘If you win . . .’

  Eugene put his hand in his pocket and produced some of the many small gold coins without which he never travelled. As always, greed very soon overcame any common sense the Sicilian might have had, as he saw the chance of winning one of the coins that were now lying on the floor in front of them, glinting faintly in the light of their cigarettes.

  ‘Now then,’ Eugene whispered to him in his carefully rural Italian. ‘You can have first guess. Is that coin head up? Or head down?’

  As he had anticipated the Sicilian leaned slightly forward as if to try to read how the coin lay. The moment he did, Eugene struck him
hard and brutally under his chin across his windpipe with the edge of one large, strong hand. He was dead before his head struck the wall behind him.

  The second man was an even easier target. He was so fast asleep he would not have heard Eugene even if he had stood up and started to dance an Irish jig on the stone floor. Eugene had no need to stand up, let alone dance a jig. He simply leaned over and knocked the man stone cold unconscious with the butt of his revolver. To make sure his suspicions were correct, Eugene at once went thoroughly through both the men’s jackets. In the pockets of the man who had been asleep in the corner, the one who now lay unconscious in front of him, he found nothing more incriminating than the pack of Virginia cigarettes. But sewn inside a tobacco pouch belonging to the man with whom he had been intent on playing Spoof he found a safe pass from the SS.

  He had no idea of how much time he had before his scheduled betrayal. It occurred to him as he carefully inspected the inside and then the near outside of the small abandoned farmhouse that in all probability he was not to be handed over there at all, and the intention had been to take him into the nearest town where he was meant to be finding work in a garage. It was there that the SS would be waiting for him. This meant that Eugene had two questions which he had to address. The first was how much had they known about his plans? The second, more vitally, was who had betrayed him?

  From what he could see, there was no sign of any activity in the immediate vicinity of the house. The surrounding landscape was nothing but flat fields, winter-dead to everything other than the ever scavenging birds, with mountains rising into the still dark skies far beyond. In the enveloping darkness it was impossible to make out the lie of the land, but after a careful and what Eugene devoutly hoped was an invisible reconnaissance he returned inside the house to collect the rest of his small parcel of belongings.