The House of Flowers

by Charlotte Bingham

  So he was doubly excited when he chanced upon the wine cellars because he had discovered them at Christmas. There they were, running the length it seemed of the entire house, accessed by a long flight of stone steps that he happened to find behind a hidden door in one of the very back sculleries, a room no longer in use but where, according to Mrs A. pot boys and kitchen maids might well have slept on beds little wider than shelves, in Victorian times when the Great House had been at its busiest. In his ignorance he imagined that he was the first of the new incumbents at Eden Park to have found the cellars, because, given how everyone was always complaining about how little what they called proper drink there was anywhere, he reckoned that had anyone else found the stairway before him there wouldn’t have been a bottle left on the racks.

  Instead he found dozens and dozens of bottles stacked neatly on top of each other in two of the caves, covered in dust and so obviously untouched for ages. Meaning to rush upstairs and tell Mrs Alderman about his discovery, Billy picked up one of the long slender bottles and began to dust it off with his handkerchief. That was when he realised that what he thought was his original find might not be as original as he had thought. Under the main layer of dust were labels that showed that all the wines left behind in the cellar by the owners of Eden Park had been left behind for a very good reason. They were all German.

  Pretty sure now of the reason why the wines had escaped consumption by the officers and men billeted in Eden, Billy was also certain that wines from regions around the Rhone would not be a popular choice for their Christmas tipple. Yet it seemed a crying shame to let them go to waste, particularly since he had heard that the only drink likely to adorn the festive table was a crate of Watney’s Pale Ale.

  ‘I need some of them big glass things, Mrs Alderman,’ he announced when he had decided what he must do. ‘I shall need about a dozen.’

  ‘Shall you indeed?’ Mrs Alderman wondered in return, her sleeves rolled up to her elbows and her hands covered in flour as she rolled out what seemed to Billy to be square yards of pastry. ‘And what shall you be needin’ ’em for precisely, Billy boy?’

  ‘To put the wines in, Mrs A. I read about it in one of your cookbooks. There’s a whole bit on it in The Proper Presentation of Table Wines.’

  ‘Decanters is what you want – and they’re in that cupboard there. But you don’t want to go decanting no wine yet, young man. It’ll get aeriated, so it will.’

  ‘Aeriated, Mrs A?’

  ‘That’s what I said, Billy. You don’t want to go decanting nothing till a couple of hours before the meal. Not ’less it’s port you’re decanting.’

  ‘What colour is port, Mrs A?’

  ‘What colour is port indeed. What colour do you think it is, you noddy? It’s port wine colour! Sort of claret!’

  ‘Claret?’ Billy pulled an equally baffled face.

  ‘Brown, you noddy! Port wine’s always a sort of claret brown. Now go on, get out of it and get on with it – unless you want to help me pluck a chicken.’

  ‘You bet!’ Billy cried. ‘Chicken? We goin’ to ’ave chicken, Mrs A, are we?’

  ‘You won’t be getting nothing, young man – not until you watch your grammar. Your grammar isn’t half shocking still. It don’t matter how I correct you, it don’t really.’

  Billy smiled happily and set about taking the decanters down from the indicated cupboard, dusting them off and washing them. So they were going to have chicken after all! The thought of it was enough to set his saliva buds tingling, particularly when he married the image of roast chicken to that of nut brown sausages done to a crisp, stuffing, and a rich thick gravy covering the entire roast, golden potatoes included. It was too much to think of. It was as if the war was over already.

  Knowing the sort of enthusiasm that would be aroused by the thought of a proper Christmas feast, Mrs Alderman made her small band of helpers swear her version of the Official Secrets Act, the pain of death clause being replaced with a pain of starvation one, namely that anyone betraying their secret would be deprived of their share of the feast. Billy got a particular finger wagging from Cook, since according to Mrs Alderman he could give away information just by looking at people with his big tell-tale eyes.

  But Billy was utterly tight-lipped and completely discreet. No one suspected anything unusual was happening in the kitchens downstairs, mostly because nothing unusual ever emerged from the kitchens now that all the home-grown produce had been commandeered by the government for the general welfare and good, leaving the Nosey Parkers to subsist on the sort of plain, and by and large pretty distasteful, diet the rest of the country was having to endure. Occasionally some sort of treat would surface in the shape of a pie or a pudding, when Mrs Alderman could call in a favour from one of her contacts, or someone granted her a favour in the hope of being able to call one in in return at a later date. But as far as Christmas went, they all saw the menu pinned on the board and what they read was what they thought they were going to get.

  Home-made broth with pearl barley

  Sausage and mash

  Gravy

  Apple Flan

  Custard

  The Loyal Toast

  Wines

  Watneys Ales

  The real problem was keeping people from straying into the kitchen, usually in search of an extra cup of Camp coffee or tea that was known as Dishmop Cha, or in the case of Kate and Marjorie using the kitchen as a short cut through to their offices from their cottage, something that had to be stopped as soon as the preparations began in earnest.

  Billy saw to this, telling them the kitchen and environs were out of bounds to all Nosey Parkers until further notice, due to an outbreak of botularism in one of the kitchen staff.

  ‘Mrs A is very determined that there won’t be no epidemic and have Christmas ruined and all,’ Billy told them solemnly. ‘But it’s highly infectious, being based in and affecting the gut, so if I was you—’

  ‘Were you, Billy,’ Marjorie corrected him. ‘If I were you.’

  ‘You wouldn’t like it.’ Billy grinned. ‘Not one bit. So as I was saying before I was so crudely interrupted – if I was you two I’d give the kitchens a wide berth. You don’t want to spend the whole of Christmas—’

  ‘All right, Billy!’ Kate and Marjorie carolled. ‘That’s quite enough, thank you!’

  And so it was – quite enough to keep Marjorie and Kate well away from what was going on below stairs: the plucking of half a dozen plump hens, the roasting of one hundred and twenty potatoes, the gentle boiling of home-grown Brussels sprouts, the washing off and cooking of the salted French beans stowed away under the stairs in huge earthenware pots since the summer, the thickening of Mrs Alderman’s special gravy, the stuffing of the roasting fowls, the careful making of fresh bread sauce, the filling of sixty-six home-made sausage rolls and mince pies, the pricking and cooking of three dozen fat sausages, and the gentle simmering of four huge plum duffs. All doors into the rest of the house were kept shut, locked and sealed lest the smells of the cooking should pervade the rooms where the innocent were still at work, or spending their leisure time – which was little enough – decking the place with home-made paper chains, bells and streamers, and clumps of freshly picked holly and mistletoe, all dominated by a magnificent spruce Christmas tree lovingly decorated by all the girls of all the various Sections working in the house.

  ‘It even smells just like Christmas!’ Billy exclaimed on Christmas Eve when Mrs Alderman led her little gang up through the all but silent house, their work nearly done, only the final cooking and presentation to be completed the following morning, before and after church.

  On Christmas morning everyone left behind on duty at the Park put on their bravest faces, wishing to a man and a woman they could be home with their loved ones, but knowing there were literally hundreds and thousands of men and women in the armed forces who were far further away from home than they were, trying not just to celebrate Christmas but to manage to stay alive to enjoy
it, so much more dangerous were their circumstances. Some friends filled stockings for each other, as did some lovers, while Scott and Poppy made sure that at the foot of their bed in their little house in the woods hung two white pillowcases full of little presents wrapped tight in red crêpe paper done up with thin green ribbons.

  ‘Happy Christmas, darling girl,’ Scott said quietly as he woke his warm, soft and still sleepy Poppy.

  ‘Happy Christmas, you great beast,’ Kate laughed after Eugene had climbed in through the bedroom window in the cottage to kiss her awake on Christmas morning, dressed as a makeshift Santa Claus, but somehow still managing to look more like an overgrown leprechaun.

  ‘Happy Christmas to you too, Marjorie my love!’ Eugene called, leaning over the bed and tickling Marjorie out of her slumbers, the party finally being joined by Billy, dragging in a pillowcase stuffed full of oranges, nuts, chocolate bars (negotiated by Eugene), second-hand board games of snakes and ladders and Ludo, and two almost new comic books from America, their purchases also negotiated by Eugene, even though there were as yet no Americans in England.

  ‘I have my ways,’ Eugene said seriously, tapping his nose. ‘I have contacts you could only dream of.’

  Billy bet his last penny that although many of them might have dreamed of what was going to happen at midday, few of them would ever have believed it was actually going to happen.

  Once everyone was seated, happily waiting for their home-made broth and sausages and mash, Billy rushed off to the kitchens to give the signal, whereupon – just like something out of an old Victorian Christmas illustration – Cook led the way into the dining hall with a huge platter bearing the first of the roast chickens held high over her head, her loyal band of followers carrying the rest of the feast on large trays or pushing it in on trolleys, and the rear being brought up by Billy, also pushing a trolley but very slowly, since on the top and bottom shelves were balanced twelve decanters of the finest Rhone wines, chilled as cold as the cellars would allow.

  ‘I say,’ said Jack Ward, who had made a special effort to be able to attend this Christmas lunch, in order, as he thought, to keep up morale. ‘I say, Billy,’ he repeated, sniffing the exquisite wine carefully after the first glass had been poured. ‘Where did you unearth this little beauty from, hmm?’

  ‘That would be saying, sir,’ Billy grinned. ‘Cook made us sign her version of the OS Act.’

  ‘Contraband, no doubt,’ Anthony Folkestone remarked with a poker face. ‘Knowing young Billy, he hijacked a boat and went to France specially for it.’

  ‘You got it, sir,’ Billy agreed. ‘All the way to France and back I went.’

  ‘What happened to the bottles?’ Jack wondered, sipping with equal care at the wine. ‘Not usual to have white decanted, is it?’

  He looked kindly at Billy over the top of his glasses, not challenging the boy but genuinely curious.

  ‘No, sir, you’re quite right there. But it was in the cellars, see. Under the house. And there must have been a flood at some time ’cos none of the bottles had labels, and I din’t think that looked so hot – so I decanted it. It hasn’t done it no harm, has it, sir?’

  ‘It hasn’t done it no harm whatsoever, Billy,’ Jack assured him. ‘In fact it is one of the finest Rhones I think I have tasted in many a long year.’

  Billy looked at him appalled, hoping against hope that no one else had heard, sure that if they had there might be an immediate repudiation of the wines. But no one seemed to be bothered in the slightest, even those people close at hand who Billy thought must surely have heard. All he could think, as he swallowed hard, was that their geography wasn’t as hot as his and they hadn’t a clue where the Rhone Valley might be.

  ‘It’s all right, Billy,’ Jack murmured, one strong hand on his arm guiding him quietly to the side of his chair. ‘Wines as great as this have no enemies. But well done, you. And a jolly happy Christmas, too.’

  Jack winked at him to reassure him, and Billy, feeling six inches taller, hurried back to take his seat alongside Marjorie, who was sitting next to Anthony Folkestone.

  ‘Well done, Billy,’ Anthony said. ‘Cook has told us what a sterling role you played.’

  ‘Yes, well done, Billy,’ Marjorie said, turning to kiss him on the top of his head the way she had always done since she first took him under her wing all those years ago when they were both orphaned. ‘Really well done. You’re a smasher. Know that? Happy Christmas.’

  Billy started to eat his wonderful Christmas dinner, his whole being aglow with happiness. After the first delicious mouthful of tender chicken breast, carefully speared on to his fork with a slice of perfectly roasted sausage and the corner of a matchless roast potato, he looked round the huge dining hall, lit gently by the light of fifty odd candles in jam jars, and beamed a beam of pure delight and joy.

  Yes, he thought to himself. Yes, you bet. This is certainly worth fighting for. You bet your life it is.

  Part Two

  JULY 1943

  Chapter Seven

  In preparation for the planned landing by the Allies in Sicily, Eugene once again found himself dropped in the mountainous and volcanic island that lies southwest of the foot of Italy, his job this time to make contact with a fierce Resistance group led by one of the most notorious of the Sicilian bandits and subsequently to help plan a series of sabotages that would weaken vital enemy supply lines as well as jeopardise any possible escape routes. It was a commission that had sounded quite straightforward when explained to those about to undertake it, but Eugene was now far too skilled an agent to be fooled by the apparent simplicity of the enterprise. When commissioned he knew at once that this was far and away the most difficult dodge he had been requested to do.

  To the once again deserted Kate, however, his absence was no different from the last. She knew that once he was gone there was nothing she could do about it. They were at war and this was what happened when a country was fighting not only for its own survival but possibly for the survival of the entire free world. Terrible risks had to be taken and they had to be taken generally speaking by people who were dearly loved by other people. So in order to cushion the shock and avoid worrying herself to death she had invented an emotional bolster for herself, considering herself twice blessed to have fallen in love with and to be loved in return by someone as heroic as Eugene. This didn’t mean that Kate either took Eugene for granted or simply put him out of her mind until his prayed-for safe return; it simply put her plight and anxiety into a better perspective, allowing her the chance to try to equate her own situation with the much more important universal one, and to put her own private suffering into a context that she was then able to contain and control.

  She and Poppy called themselves the WGWs – the War Grass Widows – doing their best in a typically English way to make light of a possibly dreadful situation. And with every day Kate grew more glad of Poppy’s friendship and her companionship. Although Marjorie would never be replaced as her oldest and dearest friend, Kate grew very close to Poppy because of the similarity of their situations, the only difference being that Eugene acted as a solo operator, working in tandem when he had to with people on site, as he called it, while, although it was not said aloud, Scott was known to be working as part of a home-based duo.

  Scott’s partnership was never discussed specifically between Kate and Poppy; both were too well trained, too fiercely loyal and far too professional ever to discuss the possible details of their partners’ commissions. The only thing that was talked about regularly between them was the problem of how to deal with the absences and how best to cope with their own daily lives while their lovers were gone. Poppy duly confessed that she would find it much easier if she was back in the field herself, even though she understood the reasons why she was not going to be allowed to work with Scott again now they were married.

  ‘I simply itch to get back in the saddle,’ she would tell Kate time and time again when the matter was aired. ‘And what I can’t u
nderstand is why they won’t make use of me, instead of just letting me fester away in H Section. After all, I didn’t do a bad job on the Churchill thing.’

  ‘You most certainly did not,’ Kate had assured her. ‘You were brilliant apparently – according to what I heard. Perhaps they’re saving you for something special?’

  As it happens Kate was absolutely right. Jack Ward, who had been very impressed by the part Poppy had played in the Churchill Incident, as it had become known, was also mindful of how the incident had affected Poppy who had taken a considerable time to level out – as Jack called it – after playing such a pivotal part in saving the life of the man who was now saving the life of a nation. Jack had several important prospective missions – albeit still in embryonic stages – on his drawing board, but since they were set in what was at this moment the future, he thought it best not only to rest Poppy by putting her behind a desk, but also to rekindle what he knew to be her fervent desire to help fight in her country’s corner by seeming to ignore her. Jack viewed his agents in much the same way as a trainer might view his best thoroughbreds – keep them in steady work but never allow them out of anything more than a steady working canter, so that when the tapes finally went up the horses were more than ready to run their hearts out.

  Even so, in spite of Jack’s great skills as an officer in MI5, in Poppy’s case he very nearly made a serious miscalculation.

  It was Mrs Alderman who first noticed the effect Poppy’s enforced inactivity, allied to her constant separations from her beloved husband, was having on one of Eden Park’s favourite heroines.

  ‘You need feeding up, young lady,’ Cook remarked one afternoon when she was surprised in the kitchens by a pale-faced Poppy. ‘Aren’t you eating properly?’

  ‘No one’s eating properly, Cookie,’ Poppy laughed in return, accepting one of Mrs Alderman’s home-made biscuits but then only toying with it. ‘I’ve never been a great eater anyway, so don’t worry. You do wonderfully, the way you feed us all here. We don’t know how you do it, any of us. You’re really some sort of miracle worker, given the perfectly dreadful ingredients you have to work with.’