Hothouse Flower

by Lucinda Riley

  ‘And they’re too big for us,’ commented another girl. ‘I think the breeches were made for men, not women. We’re all going to look a sight tomorrow morning, aren’t we, girls!’

  Everyone giggled and Olivia was glad to see they seemed like a good bunch. She’d had warnings from the WLA representative about the problems of girls who were complete strangers being billeted together and the cat-fighting that could ensue.

  After supper, Olivia stood up and clapped her hands together for silence. ‘Now, girls, first of all, I want to say welcome to Wharton Park. It’s a beautiful estate in a lovely part of the country, and you should all count yourselves jolly lucky to have ended up here. Mr Combe will talk you through how you will be organized on the land, but I wanted to brief you about the domestic arrangements whilst you’re all staying here. Bread, milk and eggs will be provided for you in the cottages at breakfast time. Work will commence at eight o’clock and you are to assemble in the Quadrangle, where Mr Combe and his staff will give you your allotted tasks for the day. There’s to be one morning break of fifteen minutes then, at noon, a sandwich lunch will be sent down from the house to wherever you are working. The afternoon resumes at one o’clock, finishing at five, and supper will be provided here in this kitchen at six. We’d appreciate it if, between five and six, you would wash and change and not arrive up here in your muddy uniforms,’ Olivia smiled.

  ‘I’m going to wear me ball gown and tiara to eat me tea here, missus, never you fear,’ chirped one girl, to resounding laughter.

  ‘You will all have one day off a week,’ Olivia continued, ‘and that will be on a rota basis. There’s a bus to Cromer that leaves from the front drive at eleven a.m., if you wish to go into town for supplies. It returns at four thirty. There’s a copy of all these details in each of your cottages. Many of you will be unused to living in the country,’ she added. ‘There are no picture-houses or bright lights on your doorstep. I suggest you arrange amongst yourselves the evening’s entertainment – quiz nights, board games and such.’

  Olivia saw the lack of enthusiasm at her suggestion, so she swiftly continued. ‘We’ve also decided to hold a Wharton Park knitting competition. My motherin-law, Lady Crawford, is organizing socks, hats and scarves to be sent from Norfolk to our boys overseas. If you don’t know how to knit, you’ll be taught. And the girl who produces the most items within a one-month period, will get a pair of –’ she opened a paper bag that was on the table and pulled out its contents – ‘these.’

  The girls ‘oohed’ and ‘aahed’ at the pair of nylon stockings Olivia was holding up. She was relieved to see that her carrot-and-stick technique had been the right approach.

  As Olivia left the kitchen, Adrienne, who had been out of sorts all week, barely leaving her bedroom, was standing in the entrance hall. ‘Will you join me for a drink in the library, Olivia?’ she asked. ‘I certainly feel I need one.’

  ‘Of course,’ agreed Olivia, although she was exhausted after her long day and it was the last thing she felt like.

  With Sable seconded to driving a tractor, Adrienne had to pour her own drinks. ‘Gin?’ she asked Olivia.

  ‘That would be absolutely marvellous,’ Olivia agreed, flopping into a chair.

  ‘How did it go with the girls? What are they like?’ Adrienne asked nervously, passing Olivia her drink and sitting down opposite her.

  ‘They seem like a nice sort, but I suppose one can never tell. They don’t have one jot of experience between them, but they’ll learn,’ said Olivia. ‘And any port in a storm …’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Adrienne. ‘And whatever hardships we must face here, it is nothing compared to what our boys will face. And it will not be long, Olivia,’ she sighed. ‘But at least you and Harry have had more time than most.’

  ‘We have, yes,’ Olivia answered mechanically.

  Adrienne stared at her daughter-in-law. ‘Chérie, I do not mean to interfere, but is all as it should be between you and Harry?’

  ‘Yes,’ nodded Olivia, a shiver of apprehension running through her at Adrienne’s gift for perception, ‘we enjoy what time we have.’

  Adrienne looked at Olivia, searching her face. ‘Yes, perhaps it is because you see each other so little, as you say. But I have felt, when I have seen the two of you together, that there is some … distance between you.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right, Adrienne.’ Olivia continued the train of thought which her motherin-law had begun. ‘We’ve barely had more than a few hours together for the past few weeks.’

  ‘Well, perhaps if Harry has some leave, you two could go away together. After all, you did not have a honeymoon.’

  The thought of being cloistered alone somewhere with Harry made Olivia feel physically sick. ‘Adrienne, I think we both realise our priorities are to the war effort. We have a lifetime together ahead of us.’

  ‘That is noble of both of you, Olivia, and –’ Adrienne shuddered – ‘let us pray that is right.’

  Germany invaded Denmark and Norway in April, and the British campaign was commenced simultaneously. Yet, despite the dire backdrop of war, and the tension that existed as to when Germany would invade British shores, Olivia found she enjoyed her new life. The WLA kept her very busy and she’d become rather an expert at doing the ‘welcome’ meetings for the girls who arrived in the county, and sorting out their subsequent problems.

  The Wharton Land Girls were, in the main, a jolly bunch, and when she ferried their sandwiches down at lunchtime she would often sit with them in the fields, enjoying their light-hearted banter. When she wasn’t looking after her girls, or dealing with a broken tractor, or returning a runaway pig to its pen, she was up at the house with Adrienne. The ballroom had become a collecting station for the hundreds of balaclavas, scarves and socks that the women of Norfolk were knitting to send to their boys. Ironically, Wharton Park was more alive than it had been before the war, with the girls popping in and out, and the women in the ballroom packing boxes of woollens.

  Olivia had come to realise that Adrienne was extremely delicate. She would plead a headache at the slightest sign of a problem and retire to her room, sometimes for days. Olivia dreaded to think what would have happened to Wharton Park if she had not been there. And, more and more, the household staff were turning to her for instructions.

  As winter turned to spring, the ‘Phoney War’ gave way to the real thing in earnest when Germany invaded France. They continued their domination of Europe in the Netherlands, then advanced westward through Belgium.

  Harry moved, with the rest of his battalion, into the local boarding school in Holt. Due to the now very real threat of invasion, as Germany drew nearer to the English Channel, security along the Norfolk coast was on full alert.

  At the end of May, the battle of Dunkirk began. Olivia spent the evenings huddled over the wireless in the Land Girls’ cottages, listening to the news. Two of the girls, Bridge and Mary, both had young men involved in the battle. Two days later, the broadcaster announced that Dunkirk was being evacuated and the British troops were being pulled out. There was no more joking and chatter, as everyone on the estate waited with bated breath to hear whether it would be successful.

  When Winston Churchill, their new Prime Minister, broadcast his nightly address to the nation, and informed them that 338,000 men had been rescued from the beaches and harbours of Dunkirk, there was cheering and tears. Even though they all realised it was a dreadful defeat.

  ‘Please let Charlie be one of them,’ cried Mary on to Olivia’s shoulder. ‘I’d give anything, just as long as he’s safe and sound.’

  Olivia decided a treat was in order for the girls to keep their spirits up, and managed to procure two jugs of cider for them to celebrate with. Elsie, without Bill around, had become fast friends with Mary, and joined the Land Girls as unofficial guide on their expeditions into Cromer.

  Olivia saw Elsie was sitting quietly in the corner. She went over to her.

  ‘Elsie, you look awfully glum. Are
you all right?’

  ‘To be truthful, no, Miss Olivia. I’m sitting here, listening to this broadcast and thinking that soon it’ll be my Bill and your Harry. How I’ll cope without him when he’s gone, I really don’t know.’ Elsie wiped a tear from her eye.

  Olivia gave her a hug. ‘Try not to worry Elsie,’ she comforted, feeling rather guilty that the thought of her own husband leaving produced little emotional response. ‘Harry says Bill’s just about the best soldier in his battalion, and a little bird tells me he’s about to be promoted to sergeant, but,’ Olivia put her finger to her lips, ‘don’t tell anyone I said so.’

  Elsie’s face brightened. ‘Ooh! Really, Miss Olivia? If he was, it’d be the proudest day of my life,’ she announced happily.

  23

  In the middle of June, as Olivia woke to the beauty of Wharton Park in full, dewy bloom, she heard on the wireless that France had surrendered to Germany.

  Hitler was now in Paris, surveying his latest trophy, and she wondered how long it would be before the Battle for Britain, as Mr Churchill had termed it on the radio this morning, would begin.

  As she walked into the kitchen garden to collect the daily ration of fruit and vegetables to feed the estate, she thought how difficult it was to imagine the kind of mass-scale death and destruction she’d seen with the girls on the newsreel two nights before actually arriving here in England. When she entered the kitchen with her two heavy baskets of fresh produce, she found Harry, looking gaunt and exhausted, sitting at the table drinking a cup of tea.

  ‘Hello, darling.’ He smiled wearily. ‘Guess what? I’ve been given a day off.’

  ‘Gosh!’ Olivia continued unpacking her basket of vegetables. The prospect of Harry being home didn’t excite her at all; rather the opposite in fact. ‘I’m sure you just want to go to bed and sleep.’

  ‘Actually, I thought we might use it to go out somewhere together. How do you fancy a picnic on the beach?’

  Mrs Jenks, the cook, hands in the sink, smiled and said, ‘Yes, Master Harry, take your wife out. She’s been running this place single-handedly for the past few weeks, as far as I can see. She needs a break as much as you do.’ She looked at Olivia admiringly. ‘You’ve picked a good one there. She’s just wonderful, she is. And we all think so,’ she added, so there could be no mistake.

  Olivia blushed at the compliments and frantically began to cast around for excuses. ‘But I’ve got to take the girls’ sandwiches down and –’

  ‘Hush now! You leave it to me, Mrs Crawford, and go and have a day out with your husband.’

  Realising that she was beaten, Olivia surrendered. ‘I’ll run upstairs and get out of these trousers.’

  ‘I’ll meet you by the car in ten minutes, darling,’ Harry called after her.

  ‘My goodness, I’m jolly glad to be out of it for a few hours,’ Harry breathed as they drove away from the house. ‘It’s a beautiful day and I have a picnic from Mrs Jenks in the boot. I thought we might go to Holkham. It’s perhaps the only beach I can think of that hasn’t been completely spoilt by barbed wire and barrage balloons.’ He looked at her questioningly.

  Olivia nodded silently.

  They parked a few minutes’ walk away from the beach and headed up to the dunes, Harry carrying their picnic basket. The beach was completely deserted, not a soul in sight. Harry threw himself down full-length in the sand, rolled over and closed his eyes against the sun.

  ‘What a treat!’ he said. ‘This is the life! Here, it’s actually possible to imagine that the war is a nightmare I dreamt up in my sleep last night.’

  Olivia sat down on the sand a few feet away from him. She did not reply. She stared out to sea, willing this day to be over as quickly as possible. When she turned, she saw he was watching her.

  ‘Fancy a stroll down to the waves?’ he asked.

  ‘If that’s what you would like.’

  They stood up and walked together towards the sea.

  ‘I just wanted to say, Olivia, that you’ve done the most marvellous job at home. I really don’t know what would have happened if mother had been there alone. She has such delicate health and is so easily upset. I know you’ve been doing the lion’s share of running the place.’

  ‘I’ve enjoyed it,’ she admitted. ‘It’s been jolly good to be busy.’

  ‘You’re obviously a natural and everyone at Wharton Park adores you.’ He smiled down at her fondly. ‘As do I.’

  ‘Oh, Harry.’ Olivia was suddenly irritated. ‘Really, there’s no need to pretend any longer.’

  They walked on in silence. Just before they reached the sea, Harry stopped and turned to her. ‘Olivia, I … I’ve been thinking a lot about when we first met. Before any of … it happened. I remember thinking to myself you were the brightest girl I’d ever had the pleasure to meet. Not silly and stupid and vain, like so many of the women I’d come across before, but a girl with real intelligence and integrity. I think you liked me then, too.’

  ‘Of course I did, Harry,’ Olivia agreed quietly.

  ‘Do you remember how we used to tease each other, laugh together?’

  ‘Yes –’

  ‘And perhaps,’ he said urgently, ‘I should have told you then and there that I thought you the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen.’

  Olivia shook her head in frustration. ‘Harry, do please stop! I understand what you’re trying to do. But it’s just too late!’

  ‘Darling, please, with things as they stand, I’ll be jolly lucky if we ever have this chance again to be together, for me to be able to explain! I beg you, Olivia,’ Harry implored her, ‘I must at least tell you what happened to me. Please, can we sit down?’

  Olivia looked at the desperation in his eyes and relented. ‘Well, I can’t see how it can make any difference, but yes, if that’s what you’d like to do, I promise I’ll listen.’ They both sat down on the sand.

  ‘I’m going to tell you from the beginning. I accept, as you say, it probably won’t make any difference, but at the very least, you deserve to know.’

  ‘Please, Harry, just talk.’

  ‘Very well. And, I swear, I expect no sympathy from you. It is merely an honest explanation. Right,’ Harry was visibly gathering his thoughts, ‘I tried to tell you that night, that when boys are together at boarding school – which I have to tell you, are jolly cruel places to spend one’s formative years – sometimes, out of sheer loneliness and desperation, they develop crushes on each other.’

  Olivia could not help but shudder at the thought.

  Harry continued. ‘I was particularly desperate and dreadfully homesick for my mother. There was a boy in my year who I got on well with, and we became close. Not on any physical level, may I add. But it was the nearest thing to an intimate relationship I had. He showed me affection, Olivia, he seemed to care about me. And I wondered at the time, to be perfectly honest about it, whether I might well have been in love with him. Which then led me to wonder for the rest of my teenage years whether I was indeed, as you once put it so bluntly, a homosexual.’

  He looked at her for a response. Olivia lowered her eyes. She had none to give. Harry forged on.

  ‘This feeling was, of course, exacerbated at Sandhurst. As you know, I’m hardly a natural soldier, and I really began to believe my lack of eagerness to fight and to be aggressive, combined with my fondness for the piano, was due to my lack of masculinity. When I first met you, I admit I was very confused,’ said Harry. ‘I’d had few dealings with women and certainly no intimacy. To be brutally honest, they scared me half to death. I didn’t understand what they wanted and I didn’t know how to please them. Then …’ Harry sighed, ‘I met Archie that night at Penelope’s dance. And he seemed so very like me in so many ways; his sensitivity, his love of the arts … and, of course, I realised immediately that he was homosexual. He was very encouraging, and I travelled to London a couple of times to meet him.’

  ‘I knew I saw you once in London,’ Olivia butted in, ‘when I was going in
to the Ritz late one night. You were walking up the steps of a club, further down the street.’

  Harry nodded. ‘Yes, I was there. Archie had introduced me to some of his – friends. He’d taken it for granted, right from the start, that I was “one of them”. He put a lot of effort into trying to persuade me.’ Harry hung his head. ‘When he came up for our wedding, he tried to talk me out of marrying you, said that it was all a terrible mistake. And, to be frank, Olivia, I was so confused that day, I really didn’t know what to think. Archie had filled my head with horror stories, about how I’d be unable to perform as a husband with you on my wedding night.’ He looked into Olivia’s eyes. ‘I was so damned scared he’d be proved right. Oh God, Olivia! Believe me when I tell you I’m so dreadfully sorry for what happened that night. I was, quite simply, terrified out of my wits.’

  Despite her determined efforts not to believe a word Harry said, when Olivia looked into his haunted, sad eyes, she could not help but feel they were filled with some kind of basic honesty. If he wasn’t telling her the truth, then he was a very talented storyteller.

  ‘That night,’ Harry continued, now on a mission to finish, ‘when I left you in the bedroom with Elsie, whilst I waited, I went into the library to pour myself a brandy for courage. Archie found me, and told me he loved me then and there. I asked him to leave me be – I was very angry and terribly confused.’ Harry sighed. ‘Whilst you were waiting for me in the bedroom, wondering what the hell had happened to me, I was taking a long walk through the park with a bottle of brandy for company. And that, my darling, on my mother’s life, is the truth.’

  ‘I see.’ Unable to look at him, Olivia concentrated on sieving the soft sand through her fingers.

  ‘As you know, three weeks later, at Christmas, Archie reappeared. I was at the height of my confusion, couldn’t see a way out. I looked at you, at your grace, your gentleness, your beauty; yet, at the same time you were so confused and hurt, because of what I’d done to you.’