The House of Flowers

by Charlotte Bingham

  And of course a bottle was the last thing a Frenchman would forget on such a day as this, even though far from being out on a picnic the trio were intent on sabotage. Nevertheless, at the appropriate moment Rolande steered his tricycle over to a gateway that led into acres of perfect pasture. The three of them were careful to keep both their varied conveyances and themselves out of sight of the road, by sitting with their backs to the inside of the hedgerow to enjoy a simple and traditional repast of baguette and cheese washed down with rough local wine.

  ‘When the war’s over, Scott,’ Lily announced, lying back to enjoy a cigarette, ‘let’s all come back here for a holiday.’

  ‘After the war you can do as you please, Lily,’ Scott replied, also lighting up a smoke.

  ‘You know what I mean,’ Lily replied casually, seemingly unperturbed by his put-down. ‘It was actually meant as a fantasy, if you like. Something to aim for, rather than a proposition.’

  ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude – and I know exactly what you mean. It’s rather why we’re here. What we’re fighting for.’

  ‘Put out your cigarettes!’ Rolande commanded suddenly. ‘And don’t move!’

  Happily he had heard the convoy seconds before them, because unlike them he had been listening out. By the time the cigarettes were extinguished and bodies flattened against the hedgerow the noise and rumble of the passing vehicles, not to mention the feeling that the earth beneath them was shaking, all suggested that the Germans had to be passing within inches of them.

  Scott found himself closing his eyes and praying that there were no foot soldiers following, that the convoy was all vehicular and there were no stragglers who might be tempted into the field for any reason, the most likely being to answer the call of nature. But as the lorries and smaller vehicles rumbled off into the distance, silence fell once more, unbroken by the sound of any footfalls.

  ‘There’s certainly a lot of activity round here,’ Scott murmured to Rolande as the noise eventually faded away. ‘It doesn’t bode well if they’re building up reserves along the coast here. The sooner we get some transmitters in place, the better we’ll all feel.’

  ‘We already have some detailed information about the placement of the heavy artillery, the troop movements and the new defences that are being constructed. My cousin waits for us ahead. When we get there you will learn all this – and perhaps more.’

  If we get there, Scott thought as he made ready to take to the road again, checking the inside pocket of his jacket to make sure his forged papers were still in place. With the amount of German activity in the region he felt sure that they were bound to be stopped at some checkpoint, and frankly he was dreading it, for the one thing that he and Lily lacked between them was a plausible reason for their travels. According to their papers their current work was many miles inland, and even their honeymoon destination was a long cycle ride from the Somme coastline that was their final objective.

  However, it seemed that Rolande had already foreseen that exigency, guiding his charges away from even the minor roads on which they were travelling and up a series of unmade paths that grew more nearly impassable the further into the hills they went. Finally, the way became so rough that even pushing their bicycles became too much of an effort, but apparently Rolande had already thought of that as well, for just as Lily was convinced that her legs were beginning to give way, their guide diverted them to a track that finally led to a small stone barn where they concealed their priceless transport under the rubble and rubbish of the obviously deserted shelter.

  From there they made their way by foot along the side of a cliff line, keeping a good fifty yards inland and well away from the ridge itself, where they could have easily been spotted by any guard or casual lookout, until at last they found themselves a couple of hundred feet above a tiny fishing village which they could see outlined below them.

  Rolande nodded to another stone shelter where they waited until darkness had fallen. As soon as it was safe Rolande disappeared, leaving Scott and Lily behind as had been agreed. Rolande had deemed it both wiser and safer for him to make his contact alone, rather than risk all three being stopped and cross-examined.

  ‘At least if they stop me, my friends,’ he argued, ‘I have genuine relations in the village who will vouch for me. As well as a woman who is prepared to swear that my reason for such a long journey is because we are enjoying a little liaison.’

  He grinned mischievously at them both and winked before disappearing into the twilight, leaving Scott and Lily to wonder at his aplomb. Only a Frenchman it seemed would come up with such a wonderful and totally plausible alibi. The French were so justifiably famous for their love of amours that no one – not even the most suspicious – would doubt that Rolande was intent on the pursuit of Cupid.

  ‘I’m cold,’ Lily complained, after the first hour alone.

  ‘It’s spring. You can’t be cold,’ Scott replied. ‘For God’s sake it’s been the warmest day of the year so far.’

  ‘It may have been a warm day, but we’re a lot of feet above sea level, it’s night, and I happen to be cold.’

  ‘Here.’ Scott had taken off his jacket and was now offering it to her. Lily stared at it.

  ‘You’ll get cold now.’

  ‘I’ll survive. I don’t feel the cold.’

  Lily shrugged her shoulders and wrapped the canvas jacket round them, tucking her legs up under her as she sat in one corner of the shelter, while Scott stood opposite her, his back to the wall, smoking a cigarette and looking up at the ceiling, if at anything at all.

  ‘Why don’t you come and sit down? You’ll get tired standing there. Rolande is going to be gone some time.’

  ‘You know that for a fact?’

  ‘Look how far he has to descend,’ Lily retorted with a nod of her pretty head. ‘That’s one hour gone before he even reaches the village. Then another hour if not more while he makes contact without arousing suspicions, then another hour at least to climb back up here. If you insist on remaining standing all that time, you’re not going to be of much use when it comes to us getting going.’

  Scott gave her a brief look then nodded.

  ‘After I finish my cigarette,’ he said, ‘I’ll take a pew – but only after.’

  His smoke finished, he seated himself opposite Lily rather than beside her. Lily sighed loudly.

  ‘We’d both be not only more comfortable if you came and sat beside me,’ she said, ‘but also a whole lot warmer.’

  Scott said nothing, refusing to admit that by now even he was feeling not just foolish, but chilled in the night air, high up as they were above the sea. Finally, after a brief struggle with his pride, he went over, and sat down beside Lily in the darkness.

  ‘It’s OK, Scott,’ she murmured. ‘I don’t bite.’

  Scott sat stiffly with his back to the wall, leaving about a foot of space between him and the woman who he was sure was smiling to herself in the darkness. Next thing he knew Lily had shuffled herself up close to him, so close that he could feel the immediate warmth from her body.

  ‘Huh,’ she whispered, breathing warm breath straight on to him as she took one of his hands. ‘You’re half frozen. You loony.’

  She breathed on his hand again, holding it up to her mouth and warming it the way Scott remembered his mother warming his hands in winter-time. All at once he was back by the family fireside, fresh in from tobogganing on a tin tray down the steep lawns outside the house, sitting on his beloved mother’s knees while she blew warmth back into his hands, before settling him down between their two sleeping red setters in front of a blazing fire. He swallowed hard, and was trying to remember when he had last been as suddenly homesick as he was now, when right out of the blue he found himself longing for a fireside back in another house, a small house up in the woods in Eden Park where he imagined Poppy might even now be sitting in front of a log fire with her little dog, asleep in the warmth of the glow. He closed his eyes and tried to banish the desperate
longing, knowing that it would only weaken him, diminish his sense of dedication, but the sickness in his throat would not subside. It was just as if he was a small boy again, sent away for the first time to school, alone in a darkened dormitory full of strange boys all as miserable as he was, his heart and mind awash with unhappiness and despair as he lay in the dark longing for the love of his home and family.

  He was so engrossed with his memories he was hardly aware of Lily’s head on his shoulder, or of her arm round his waist as she cuddled him to her, until it was too late.

  ‘It’s OK,’ she whispered, trying to reassure him. ‘I’m only keeping us warm. It’s OK.’

  Scott sat as still as a mouse, not daring even to take a breath for fear of inhaling one of his favourite scents, the warmth of a woman’s hair, let alone another, the sweetness of a woman’s skin under her clothes. Yet even though he was still holding his breath, the delicate fragrance of Lily’s body was already in his being, and the warmth of her was in his arms. He closed his eyes again and thought of cold, and rain, pain, discomfort and unhappiness, but the warmth was still there. Alone and in danger, there was nothing he wanted more than affection. But he refused to respond.

  He stayed as still as the rock he was trying so hard to be, thinking only of the person who waited for him on the other side of the narrow channel of sea that lay between them. At long last, Lily fell asleep, her breath rising and falling in a gentle steady rhythm, and her head sliding forward off his shoulder. Instinctively Scott put up an arm to prevent her from jolting herself awake, and the next thing he knew she was folded up in his arms, her head on his chest, the warmth of their bodies fused into one.

  Rolande did not return until morning. When he arrived he was accompanied by a younger man, not much shorter than he but of an entirely different physique. Where Rolande was big this man was slender, where Rolande was hefty, he was nimble, and where Rolande was heavy-featured, his face was almost classical – almost but not quite, since both Scott and Lily could see at once that there was too much of the agricultural in him to be classically framed. His mouth was a little too full, his eyebrows slightly too thick, and his chin a touch too square. It was his eyes that were compelling – and it was to his eyes that both Scott and Lily were immediately drawn, so much so that the first impression they got of the stranger was that he was in fact immensely good-looking, mesmerised as they were by the pair of brilliant green eyes that examined them so intently. For his part Scott thought he had never seen a pair of eyes more full of mischief, while Lily thought she had never met a gaze so hypnotic. They were both fascinated at his arrival, failing initially to take in the formal introduction Rolande was busy making as he established his cousin’s credentials. Scott asked his forgiveness at once, pretending he was still dozy from sleep when in fact he had been fully awake for at least two hours, while Lily just smiled.

  ‘My cousin Yves,’ Rolande repeated gruffly, as if to show his irritation at the seeming indifference of his companions in arms to his all important cousin, when in fact he was simply reliving the experience that befell him practically every time he introduced the mesmerising Yves into company. What infuriated Rolande even more was that his cousin seemed to be totally unaware of both his good looks and the immediate and often catastrophic effect his appearance had on people. Most famous of all had been the time when Rolande had taken the reluctant Yves to the wedding of an old flame of his own, only for the bride to desert her husband-to-be at the altar and run off with Yves for a passionate affair which, although it only lasted a little under two months, left the community astounded and the runaways exhausted, if finally apart.

  ‘We are late back here,’ Rolande was explaining, ‘because we were stopped – rather I was stopped, as we thought I might be. I spent a couple of hours in the company of the Boche, who were only dissuaded from putting me up against a wall and shooting me by the arrival – thank the Lord—’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Yves chipped in, raising his startling eyes heavenwards, crossing himself as he did so. ‘Thank the Lord indeed.’

  ‘By the arrival of my supposed mistress, who talked the pigs out of shooting me.’

  ‘Tut-tut,’ Yves sighed, making an over-innocent face. ‘Cousin, that is not why you are so late. You must tell our friends why we are this late – and why we are now late for our work.’

  Rolande glowered at his cousin in return, furrowing his huge black eyebrows until they met in the middle and narrowing his dark eyes to their most fierce.

  ‘Rolande,’ Yves scolded lightly. ‘You must tell our friends – or would you rather I did?’

  ‘You can go to hell, cousin!’ Rolande retorted, turning on his heel and striding out of the shelter. ‘You can go straight to hell!’

  Yves winked at Scott and Lily. ‘He became partial to the lady who says she is his mistress,’ he said, keeping his face straight while raising his eyebrows quickly just once. ‘They fell into deep conversation – which lasted most of the night. My cousin is very interested in philosophy, you understand?’

  ‘Yves!’ came a mighty roar from outside the barn. ‘If you do not shut up this moment I shall break your head in two!’

  Yves shrugged, raised his eyebrows again and took the pack off his back, crouching down on his haunches to unpack a quantity of food and drink.

  ‘The success my cousin has with women is phenomenal,’ he said quietly, with a conspiratorial grin. ‘I think they suppose if they kiss him he will turn into a prince.’

  Rolande had returned just in time to pick up the last part of this comment, an aside that was rewarded with a smack on the back of Yves’s head.

  ‘While when they kiss you they find out just what a toad you are, cousin!’ he roared. ‘Now give our copains their petit déjeuner, because we all have work to do.’

  By late morning they had climbed down to the village and Scott and Lily had been introduced to the local grocer, who took them into the back of his store, locked the door behind them, and produced three small but fully assembled radio transmitters from the bottom of three sacks of corn. It appeared he had made and fitted them out himself, radio being not just a pastime but a complete obsession. Yves further assured them that although they had not dared run a full test yet for fear of discovery, the sets would work because Monsieur l’Epicier was a genius, and once the transmitters were installed in the caves they were about to visit the war would be over in no time, and they could all return to a full and proper contemplation of the serious things in life, wine, pétanque, and the fair sex, strictly in that order.

  ‘Aerials,’ Scott said. ‘We shall need aerials. We can’t transmit without aerials.’

  Yves looked at Rolande, who in return shrugged and pulled a non-committal face.

  ‘So?’ Yves said. ‘We rig up aerials once we have the transmitters in place, yes?’

  ‘Where?’ Scott wondered. ‘We shall have to see where we’re transmitting from first.’

  Again Yves looked to his cousin, who nodded agreement that they were about to enter the next phase of their activities, and possibly so far the most dangerous one. Now they had to hide the priceless transmitters away somehow in some form of transport and ferry them to the chosen destination under the noses of the Germans, who it seemed were now everywhere.

  It was finally agreed that the transmitters should be hidden once again in their bags of corn and loaded on to the grocer’s delivery cart, which Yves volunteered to drive as far as he could into the surrounding countryside before meeting up with the others in order to carry their precious equipment into the caves that lay deep in the high cliffs.

  ‘No. I don’t think so. I think I should drive the cart.’

  The three men stared at Lily, as if unable to believe their ears.

  ‘You do not know the way, for a start,’ Rolande growled, after a small pause. ‘And you’re hardly going to be able to stop and ask a friendly German.’

  ‘One of you, Yves I imagine, can hide in the back and direct me,’ Lily replied. ‘It�
��s better that I drive. If I get stopped, I can – as a last resort – flirt my way out, perhaps.’

  ‘She’s right there, boys,’ Scott interrupted with a smile. ‘If anyone can flirt her way out of danger, Lily’s the number one choice.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ Rolande said, eyeing the pretty young woman as he lit another Gitanes. ‘Hmmm.’

  ‘And if she doesn’t succeed,’ Yves added, ‘which I have to say I greatly doubt, then I shall kill the offending Kraut.’

  ‘Krauts,’ Scott said, pluralising the noun. ‘If it’s a patrol, two at the very least – possibly more. If it’s a squad, the best of British to you is all I can say.’

  ‘Pardon?’ Yves frowned. ‘The best of British . . .?’

  ‘Luck, chum. Particularly since our arms at the moment run to a couple of knives between us.’

  ‘I don’t see the alternative,’ Rolande said finally. ‘We have to go by daylight because at night we are even more certain to be stopped – after curfew.’

  ‘And the corn has to be delivered, as always,’ Yves added. ‘So naturally it must be delivered during the day.’

  The grocer had volunteered to deliver it himself, but since he was elderly and more than a little infirm no one considered it fair that he should be put at risk, Rolande assuring him that he had done more than enough by assembling and hiding the transmitters. Finally it was agreed that Lily should drive the cart with Yves well hidden below all the bags of grain and feedstuffs and Rolande and Scott following on foot at a more than discreet distance. The directions were in fact much simpler than Rolande had at first indicated, since there was only one road out of the village. After three kilometres it forked into two, at which juncture Lily was directed to take the right fork and drive the cart as far up into the hills as she could, a matter of another kilometre and a half before she finally came to a point of no return, the farm to which she was meant to be delivering the feedstuff.

  After only three hundred or so yards, she saw two Germans, rifles slung over their shoulders, patrolling the road. They had their backs to her but as soon as they heard the sound of the cart they turned to look.