The House of Flowers

by Charlotte Bingham

  In the weak moonlight he could still make Gianni out as he patrolled the corner of the hangar, before he disappeared out of sight round the front of the huge building. He was gone it seemed for an eternity, long enough for Eugene to reckon he had lost him and he was going to have to either go it alone, or cut and run. But as suddenly as he had disappeared Gianni reappeared, gun slung over one shoulder while with his other arm he beckoned for Eugene to join him.

  Swiftly and silently Eugene ran to him, keeping tight up against the towering black wall of the hangar beside him. When he looked carefully round the edge of the open door into the dimly lit building he saw a large array of unguarded Junkers.

  ‘You mean they’ve left them here for the taking?’ he finally hissed at Gianni as they stood with their backs against the outside of the door. ‘Without guards? No patrols anywhere?’

  ‘Unless they are hiding to surprise us, no,’ Gianni whispered back. ‘They are doubtless somewhere playing cards. Somewhere nice and warm.’

  Eugene stood quite still for a moment before deciding to risk running round the edge of the hangar door, his pistol in his hand in case he came face to face with an unseen guard. Happily their first impression was right. There was no one guarding the aircraft.

  ‘I think we must just look for the odd sentry – like the one we just waylaid,’ Gianni whispered. ‘I keep watch at the doors, yes? And you go about the business.’

  Eugene nodded, never taking his eyes off the huge bombers that towered over him. In his knapsack he had wire cutters, pliers, razor-edged knives and several small bottles of a concoction specially brewed by some back-room boys which had been designed to work as what they called a slow-stopper, in other words an additive that when poured into aircraft fuel did not incapacitate the plane immediately but took effect after about twenty minutes’ flying. It had already been tested in action already, with highly satisfactory results. At least that was what he had been told. Planes simply dropped out of the sky once the additive became active, the engines stalled so suddenly that emergency control became impossible.

  He set to work at once, scaling the ladders left conveniently propped up against three bombers’ engines, finding the fuel lines, which he then expertly perforated with an instrument like a small sharpened screwdriver so that the fuel would slowly leak as pressure built up after ignition, and slightly loosening small sets of nuts which were guaranteed to work fully loose under subsequent engine vibration. Having sabotaged four Junkers in this method, he then set to work on two Marchettis belonging to the Regia Aeronautica, finding the fillers to their fuel tanks and dosing the contents liberally with the contents of two of his little bottles of lethal additive. In the cockpits of four other planes, two German and two Italian, he hid small but powerful magnets, designed to cause chaos to the bombers’ instrumentation and navigational aids, and finally he shaved the rudder wires of two more Junkers so that, he hoped, they would snap under operational pressure long before they reached Malta. All in all he managed to work on a dozen planes without interruption, although he rarely took an eye off the doorway in front of him for longer than a minute at once.

  As he worked he saw Gianni half a dozen times as he patrolled with what he hoped and imagined was the dead guard’s beat. But just as Eugene was about to finish his work on his twelfth plane, Gianni went missing. At once Eugene abandoned the aircraft, slipping down the ladder by holding both sides of the steps, then running silently to the cover of the hangar doors. He strained to hear footsteps but could hear nothing, until just as he was about to ease himself back outside something – or somebody – fell against the door. Eugene froze, certain it was Gianni. He pulled his pistol out of the belt of his trousers as quietly as possible and slipped off the safety catch, a noise that to him seemed to echo round the entire airfield.

  Just outside the door he heard someone moving, as if dragging himself along the ground with great difficulty. The next moment he was staring into the dead eyes of an enemy soldier, held up from behind by the small but immensely muscular Gianni. A knife was stuck in the side of his neck, exactly on the point of his jugular vein, and the gory results of Gianni’s murderous action could be seen on both the victim and the assassin.

  ‘Apologies,’ Gianni whispered. ‘I was about to hit him from behind but he must have sensed me. So I had to kill him as he turn.’

  He made two clicking sounds of regret with his tongue before dragging the body over to the far corner, where Eugene covered the corpse with a heavy canvas sheet that was lying spare.

  ‘The blood.’ Eugene nodded. ‘They’re going to pick up on that blood sure as Italian hens lay eggs – and if they do before we’re out of here—’

  ‘Sand,’ Gianni announced. ‘It soaks up oil – so it soak up blood too, I think.’

  He ran back into the building, to where there were several bags of building materials possibly left over from the construction of the hangars. The one nearest them was a half-finished bag of sand, the contents of which he proceeded to spill over the trail of blood between the door and the corpse. After this they made their way silently back to the Bugatti. The whole operation from the moment Lucia had parked the car until their return had taken just over three hours, which put the time at a little after half past one.

  ‘The man you just killed,’ Eugene whispered as they crouched down by the car. ‘He’d have been the guard taking over, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘You are right, my friend. I see him come out of a building – the guardhouse maybe, who knows? There is a sound of laughter and shouts, yes? So I imagine this was where they all are.’

  ‘So he comes out expecting to find the first guard we killed, but he sees you instead.’

  ‘Which is the last thing he sees, yes,’ Gianni agreed.

  ‘We have no idea how long their shifts are.’

  ‘We have a pretty good idea. We start work at about twenty-two thirty hour – the first guard is already on duty when we kill him – the next guard come on three hour after.’

  ‘Good,’ Eugene said. ‘So the shifts – the patrols if you like – can’t be less than three hours. More likely four.’

  ‘More likely four, yes,’ Gianni agreed.

  ‘Can we believe they have only posted one guard for the whole airfield?’

  Gianni shrugged as he considered the possibility. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, of course not. But we say perhaps they have maybe four guards, one for each boundary – north, south, east and west. We have taken out the guard for one boundary – this area here.’

  ‘They’re going to miss their little chum, aren’t they?’ Eugene asked after a moment. ‘However irregular their timings, aren’t they going to notice one’s gone missing as they march to and fro? You’re a chatty lot, you Italians. I can’t imagine they have the sort of discipline the Krauts do – no talking on duty, exact pace and length of goose-step and all that – but I can believe they’re going to miss their little fat friend. They’re also going to miss guard number one – in fact why haven’t they missed him already?’

  Gianni shrugged again. ‘Who knows? Perhaps they think he go straight to bed. But they haven’t come looking yet.’

  Eugene stared round the darkened airfield, no longer illuminated by the light of a moon. They had to decide on a new course of action. With two guards down the chances of their being discovered were now considerably more than doubled. They would be quadrupled if they stuck to their somewhat ill-considered plan of tucking themselves back into the boot of the Bugatti to wait for the return of their driver, which was why Eugene knew they had to take their leave of the party there and then.

  ‘But what of poor Lucia?’ Gianni whispered as they crept along the line of the wall that finally became a closely meshed wire fence. ‘She will be all alone, yes?’

  ‘She won’t know that until she stops somewhere,’ Eugene replied. ‘And with a bit of luck – if we get out of here and get on the right road . . .’

  He stopped to regard the fencing. It was a good
ten to twelve feet in height with a line of barbed wire topping it off. The mesh was far too tough to be cut by any of the small tools Eugene was carrying.

  ‘This fence runs all the way round?’

  ‘That is so, my friend. All the way round at this height.’

  ‘Then this is the way we escape.’

  ‘How? We never get up that height? We sure as eggs don’t get over the barbed wire.’

  ‘They’re going to think we did.’

  A moment later Eugene had hoisted Gianni on to his shoulders, having handed him his sweater and instructing him to take off his own jacket. These Gianni then draped over the wire, so that to all intents and purposes it looked as though whoever had broken into the compound had escaped by somehow straddling the wire. They also rolled a half-full oil drum from the side of the nearest hangar and left it directly below the point of the wire on which they had draped the two garments.

  ‘You sure we don’t make it out like this anyway?’ Gianni wondered as Eugene surveyed their work.

  ‘One of us might,’ Eugene replied. ‘I flip you over – no problem. But then how do I get out? Or vice versa? We’d have to give each other a leg-up.’

  ‘You go. I stay.’

  ‘And my mother was Joan of Arc. No, we’re both going to get out – and we’re going to get out exactly the way we came in.’

  They had left the lid of the Bugatti’s boot slightly open in order to minimise the noise they made on their arrival, but they had shut themselves securely away again long before a squad of soldiers was despatched from the barracks to go to look for trouble, their officer possibly having noticed the absence of two perimeter guards. Eugene and Gianni heard them alongside the Bugatti, shouting excitedly. A moment later they felt the car rock as the doors were wrenched open and a terrible feeling of despair and disappointment washed over Eugene as he realised they were about to be discovered. Gianni had obviously come to the same conclusion. Eugene could feel his body tensing against his own, just as they both became aware of the footsteps coming round the back of the automobile. A second later someone tried to open the boot, but without any success.

  ‘What happen?’ Gianni whispered after the noise had stopped. ‘Why it not open?’

  ‘Search me?’ Eugene hissed back. ‘Maybe the boot is self-locking. Maybe it’s just stuck. I don’t know!’

  They heard the footsteps recede, and not another sound was heard from the squad for the rest of the night. Praying that the soldiers were satisfied that their quarry had escaped over the wire, Eugene and Gianni managed to fall asleep, before being awakened by the sound of someone getting into the driver’s seat and starting the car.

  At once both men were awake, pistols drawn, safety catches off. The Bugatti drove off, slowly and smoothly as if the driver had not a problem in the world, heading, the prisoners in the boot hoped, for the main gates. Sure enough, a minute or so later the car slowed to a stop and there was a muttered conversation, which ended at last with a most joyous sound – Lucia’s laugh. The car started to move forward once again, heading, they both devoutly hoped, for the open road, the countryside – and freedom.

  Once she had put a considerable distance between herself and the aerodrome, Lucia pulled the now sputtering car off the road, obviously finding a lay-by out of sight of anyone passing by before she turned off the engine and alighted from the vehicle. The next minute the lid of the boot had sprung open and the two men found themselves staring up at Lucia’s beautiful albeit somewhat exhausted face.

  ‘How did you do that, Lucia?’ Eugene wondered as he began to scramble out. ‘The wretched thing was jammed tight shut back there.’

  ‘Yes!’ Gianni exclaimed, following his companion out. ‘How you manage to open it so easy?’

  ‘Thank Signor Bugatti’s great imagination.’ Lucia shrugged. ‘The boot is opened by a lever in the door pillar – see?’

  She took them round and showed them the security device that allowed access.

  ‘I notice it when I first get in the car,’ Lucia explained. ‘I thought you boys must know all about it, seeing how much you know about cars.’

  Eugene grinned as he stretched his stiff body.

  ‘Signor Bugatti sure as hell saved our hides,’ he said. ‘But I don’t think we quite have the time to let our hair down yet,’ he added, seeing the slow smile that was creeping across her face. ‘Any celebrations will have to wait until we are, as they say at the racetrack, home and hosed.’

  Eugene knew it was essential that they manage to get both themselves and the Bugatti back to Putagia well in advance of any alarms being sounded at the airfield. He doubted anyone would suspect sabotage, hoping that seeing the evidence of their escape over the fencing everyone in the compound would believe that they had averted a bungled attempt to blow it up. For the present he and Gianni must get the car back to il Padrone, help Lucia get back to the mainland, and whisk themselves off the island as fast as whatever transport had been assigned to them could allow.

  ‘We have to move,’ he said. ‘And now.’

  ‘But what about the car?’ Lucia interrupted. ‘She is making these terrible noises again – and she lose power all the way for the last five or six kilometres.’

  ‘She just needs another little drink,’ Eugene lied, fetching the second can from the boot. ‘These cars use a lot of water. I probably didn’t put enough in the radiator when I drained it originally.’

  Refilling it for the second time, Eugene didn’t bother crossing his fingers. This time he relied on prayer. He hoped and prayed with all his might that Signor Bugatti’s beautiful motor car would somehow last out the final leg of this all-important journey.

  Helen was more interested in the boxes of old photographs she unearthed in the attic than the trunks full of old clothes Kate was sorting through.

  ‘Bognor beach, 1932,’ she said as if surprised. ‘Would you look at me in this. And look – here’s old Birdy Gardiner. Do you remember Birdy, Kate? Who always used to look after us when we went down there for the summer?’

  ‘Of course I do, Mum – and none of these dresses are any good. They’re all old cocktail frocks.’

  ‘Try that trunk at the end, dear. I think that’s the one with your grandmother’s stuff in it. And do look – here’s Geoffrey Partridge – he was a terrible old fussbudget. I wonder whatever happened to him?’

  ‘Why did we always go to Bognor, Mummy? We seemed to spend every summer holiday there,’ Kate wondered as she undid an old dust-covered steamer trunk.

  ‘It was all to do with your father’s work. There was some arrangement or other with the university. It worked out very well because you and Robert always had someone to play with, and the grown-ups always had someone to drink with, as your father used to say. Oh, my heavens, will you just look at that ghastly hat? How could I have thought that was pretty?’

  ‘Ah – now what is this?’ Kate wondered, producing a long white dress. ‘Oh, now this is absolutely the thing! This is just perfect!’

  ‘Perfect? What for, dear?’

  ‘You haven’t listened to anything I’ve been telling you.’ Kate laughed. ‘Too busy strolling down Memory Lane. I keep telling you we need a dress for one of the girls at Eden. For Poppy Tetherington, who’s getting married on Friday. And I would say this dress is just perfect.’

  Kate stood and held up the long white dress in front of her to show her mother.

  ‘If you say so, dear,’ Helen replied, raising her eyebrows in wonder. ‘I can’t pretend to be abreast of the fashions nowadays, so if you say that dress will do, far be it from me to disagree.’

  ‘But it’s perfect, Mummy! Look! What could be more perfect than what has to be Grandmother’s old wedding dress?’

  Helen glanced at the beautiful lace-trimmed dress.

  ‘Nothing, darling, I suppose. If only we still had it.’

  ‘If only we had it?’ Kate echoed. ‘What do you think I’m holding up here?’

  ‘Your grandmother’s old ten
nis dress.’

  Kate said nothing to Poppy about the provenance of the beautiful white dress she presented to her with a flourish, holding it over one arm in the manner of the manageress of a bridal department.

  ‘Et voilà!’ she said with a huge smile. ‘Cinderella shall go to the ball after all!’

  Poppy stared at it. ‘Gosh – that is beautiful, Kate.’

  ‘Glad you like it. Told you I’d find you something. It was my grandmother’s.’

  Poppy and Marjorie both leaned forward simultaneously to feel the fine old linen, noting the lace at the neck and on the long sleeves, while Billy frowned at it curiously before giving them his opinion.

  ‘A princess could get ’itched in that,’ he said.

  ‘Hitched, Billy,’ Marjorie corrected him. ‘And we prefer the term married.’

  ‘Married then.’ Billy grinned before breaking into song. ‘There was I, waiting at the church . . .’

  ‘That’ll do, thank you, Billy,’ Marjorie ordered. ‘We don’t have the time for musical interludes.’

  ‘Try it on, Poppy,’ Katie urged. ‘We have to see if it fits.’

  ‘Of course it’s going to fit,’ Poppy assured her, holding the dress up before her. ‘I can tell it’s exactly my size. The only thing is – I don’t really think I should wear white. Do you know what I mean? Because of being married before.’

  ‘I don’t think that matters,’ Marjorie said, without being at all sure. ‘I really don’t think that matters at all.’

  ‘Yes,’ Billy said with a frown, staring down at the floor. ‘Yes, well, even if it did – even if it did matter, I still think you should wear it, Poppy.’

  ‘Why’s that, Billy?’ Katie said carefully, noting his sudden blush.

  ‘Because,’ Billy muttered, still looking at the floor. ‘Because she’d look smashin’.’

  There was a long silence while Marjorie and Kate looked first at Billy, then at Poppy, then back to Billy again.