‘I hope this doesn’t hurt,’ I said quietly.
He let out a low hum of agreement, which started up a chain reaction, from my ears to my solar plexus, and supercharged my libido. Carefully, I ran my tongue along to the corner of the tape and worked at it until it lifted. Another bend forced our bodies even closer. I stopped working on his gag. I didn’t want to take a chunk out of him by mistake. As the van straightened up, I began to tackle the tape again until its removal was finally enhanced by the lurching van, as it tumbled us to the other side, leaving me pinioned to the floor by Alex’s full body weight.
‘Thanks,’ he said, his voice husky.
‘You’re welcome.’ My own voice was breathy, as much from his weight as my excitement. With no visual signals, I had to go on other senses: the heat of him, the steady beat of his heart, the length of his thighs against mine, the draught of his breath over my face. I suddenly found myself reassessing my opinion on bondage.
‘Shall I have a go at your blindfold?’ he asked.
Like there was a choice? I had hoped he might consider applying his mouth to more pleasant pursuits. I could tell it was only inches from my own.
‘Or you can keep it on if you prefer,’ he added.
Had I hesitated that long?
‘Definitely, take it off,’ I said.
‘OK. I need you to move your head so I can reach the knot.’ His voice was soft and close to my ear. If he came any nearer, he’d hear my pulse. At the very least, he must be getting a lungful of my pheromones.
The blindfold loosened quickly and he tugged it off with his teeth. The first thing I saw was the dusty, grey wall of the van. Slowly, I turned to focus on Alex. In my head, the theme tune to Titanic was playing. He was looking down at me, a friendly smile in his eyes. A lock of dark hair had drifted over his forehead and his face was pink from the discarded tape, but he still looked utterly delicious.
‘Hi,’ he said.
‘Hi.’
He had my unspoken permission to kiss me. So it was a bit of a bummer when he said, ‘Sorry. This is a stunt for the college’s charity week. They were supposed to get my sound girl, Jules.’
Jules…We’d met earlier by the raffle stall. Her style was just-tumbled-out-of-bed chic, with masses of honey blonde hair and a succulent pout. Alongside her, I felt like an inferior species. Any man would want to be shackled to Jules. I could only imagine the disappointment Alex must have felt when he realised they’d bagged me instead of her.
‘Unfortunately, you were in the wrong place at the wrong time,’ he added.
Charming.
As I lay there, feeling like a consolation prize, the van obstinately shifted him closer until, finally, it came to a standstill. We heard the ratchet of the handbrake and, moments after the engine was switched off, the doors were pulled open to a cheering mob. Alex rolled off me as a joker in the crowd made a lewd comment, which elicited a roar from our audience. I sat up to discover we were outside the Dog & Duck.
Eager to leave, I began to inch to the edge of the van. ‘Thanks for the ride, guys. Shame you got the wrong girl.’
The tree-hugger looked mildly perplexed –like he’d been given a pint of lager instead of Guinness. He glanced first at Alex then back at me. ‘So, you’re not Jules?’ he asked with lightning perception.
‘Didn’t my screaming give it away?’
He shrugged. ‘Thought you were, like, getting into the drama of it.’
Another student began untying my hands and muttering apologies. I stood up, my knees spongy beneath my weight, and held onto the van door.
Alex stood up beside me. Unfolded, he was easily a foot taller than I was. ‘Actually guys, maybe the blindfold and tape were a bit over the top.’ He looked down at me. ‘Sacha here seems a bit shaken.’
‘Shaken?’ I said, gathering my shredded wits. ‘Try shaking!’ I held out my hands. I was trembling like a dog at the vet’s –although it had little to do with the abduction. ‘Now, if you’ve finished with me, I’m going for a drink.’
With a flick of my hair, I headed off towards the pub, knowing full well I only had some loose change and a mobile in my jeans.
Hang on a minute…
I turned round. Alex was right behind me. I looked up at him. ‘How d’you know my name?’
His eyes softened as he smiled. ‘We live in a village. It’s not difficult to find out.’
Questions collided in my head. He’d found out…like…he was interested? ‘Did you know who I was when they put me in the van?’
He shrugged. ‘Sure. I wasn’t wearing a blindfold.’
I could feel myself blinking as cogs whirred in my brain. ‘So, why didn’t you tell them?’
‘How?’ He was grinning now. ‘Morse code?’
‘You could have done something.’
He studied me for a moment, his smile fading. His eyes searched mine until I could feel the pulse pounding in my ears. The next time he spoke, his voice was softer. ‘You’re right. I should have realised it was more of an ordeal for you. I really am sorry.’
I swallowed and took a breath. ‘It wasn’t that bad. I suppose there was an air of fun about it…sort of.’
‘Really?’ His face relaxed. ‘Not so much you’d want to repeat it, though.’
An image played across my mind. ‘Not…exactly.’
A straight ‘no’ would have closed the subject. He considered my answer for a moment and I swear the air crackled between us. ‘So, which bit –exactly –would you repeat?’
It felt like someone had stolen the oxygen. ‘Well…not the van…and probably not the tape…’
‘Agreed.’ He was getting closer. I studied the outline of his mouth; there was a faint scar on his top lip. ‘Anything else?’ he asked.
I shrugged, mesmerised, until a voice from a galaxy far, far away said, ‘Can we just tie you two together in the back of the van? It’ll make a better picture for the paper.’
Alex held out his hand. ‘Shall we?’
‘Well, it is for charity,’ I said, taking his hand and making a mental note to pick up the blindfold. Just as a memento, of course.
The Language of Flowers
Kate Lord Brown
Kate Lord Brown
KATE grew up in the wild and beautiful Devon countryside. After studying at Durham University and the Courtauld Institute of Art, she worked as an international art consultant curating collections for palaces and embassies in Europe and the Middle East.
When Kate and family left London for the orange groves of Valencia, she began to write full time, publishing work internationally and gaining a MA in Creative Writing. She was a finalist in ITV’s The People’s Author Contest in 2009, and her debut novel The Beauty Chorus was published in 2011.
Kate now lives in the Middle East and writes a regular blog for writers juggling their work with family life, and the fortnightly Ahlan! magazine Book Club column. Her latest novel The Perfume Garden is being published in seven languages.
www.katelordbrown.com
The Language Of Flowers
October 1941
‘Hello, stranger. Now I know where all those lovely flowers at the hospital came from.’ He waits, smiling. ‘Alice?’ he says uncertainly, when she doesn’t reply.
Alice realises someone is talking to her, and she looks up from the stem of lilies she is tucking into a steel bucket on the display. The flowers are full-blown, shedding pollen from their trembling stamens, but she hopes they will last the night. A heady scent that makes her think of incense perfumes the cold air. When she sees it is him, the breath catches in her throat.
‘Richard?’ she says. ‘What a lovely surprise.’ Her breath plumes as she speaks, a pale cloud, and her cheeks are pink with cold. Darkness is falling, and the golden windows of the train on the platform blink out one by one as the conductor draws the blackout blinds. She runs her hand through her dark, wavy hair, smoothing it behind her ear. ‘Sorry, I was miles away.’
As she works in the
little kiosk at the station, arranging flowers into posies and corsages for other women, other lovers, Alice’s thoughts always drift into the same, comforting pattern: A is for Alice, Alyssum, worth beyond beauty. B is for Beatrice, Bee Orchis, industry. C is for Clover, think of me…
She smiles at Richard now. I’ve thought of you, every single day. ‘We’ve missed you up at the hospital.’
‘Are you still visiting? It is good to see you.’
Daisy, she thinks. I share your sentiments. ‘Yes, I go up and read to the boys after work most days, or just chat to them.’
‘I just dropped in to the beauty shop to say hello.’ Richard tilts his RAF cap back on his head. ‘McIndoe did a fine job with me, didn’t he?’ He turns his face from side to side for her to inspect. The scars are fading now. In his restored features, she can see the full-lipped, golden boy he was before he was shot down.
I don’t know how McIndoe does it, she thinks. The members of the Guinea Pig Club, as the surgeon calls his group of wounded airmen, are unwavering in their trust of the Boss. Eglantine: I wound to heal. She unties her brown apron, and sees her nails are ringed with green from the stems. I wish I’d had time to paint them last night. ‘You look wonderful. How are you?’
‘Right as rain. In fact, I’ve been in America.’
‘America?’ Alice savours the word, the idea of the place.
‘I was supposed to be giving a series of lectures to get the Yanks to join the war, but they took one look at me and…’ He broke off. ‘I have a good face for radio now, as they say. I did a few broadcasts instead.’ She sees the wounded pride in his gaze. ‘What have you been up to?’ he says brightly. ‘Have you started training to be a nurse yet?’
‘Me?’ She raises her voice as another train pulls into the station, steam clouding the glass canopy above them. ‘No. No, I –well, I rented this kiosk hoping I could save a few bob, but I might have to put my little dream of a cottage in Kent, and nursing on hold.’ She hopes she sounds bright, carefree, like him, but her brow furrows as she pulls down the shutter of the kiosk, and locks it. She loops her handbag over her wrist and drops the key in. I wish I hadn’t worn my old tweed coat today. She knows the airmen take a raffish pride in their long hair, their scruffy nonchalance compared to the pink cheeked, polished infantry boys, but Richard looks so smart to her in his RAF uniform, she feels shabby in comparison.
‘East Grinstead,’ the conductor shouts. ‘East Grinstead…’
‘You know,’ she says, ‘sometimes I look at the trains passing through every day, and I just long to jump on one, to go and just see where it takes me.’ She glances down at her hands. ‘You must think me frightfully silly.’
‘Not at all.’ Richard shifts the brown paper parcel under his arm, and winces.
‘How are your hands now?’
‘Not so bad.’ He flexes the tan leather glove. ‘Tend to keep them covered when I’m going to town though. Don’t want to scare anyone.’
‘You’re awfully brave.’
‘McIndoe told us to just get on with it. He gave me my life back.’ Richard takes her arm and they walk along the platform. ‘Well, you all did. You’ll never know how much your visits meant.’
‘I bet you say that to all the girls who plied you with ginger beer.’
‘Of course,’ he says, smiling. ‘There was Sue, and Anne –I think I was a little in love with both of them. And then there was Bertha –’
‘Bertha?’ Alice laughs.
‘We differed in our opinions about sex. She prefers a cup of tea…’
‘You like to shock people don’t you?’
‘None of them were a patch on you.’
‘Get on with you,’ she says, nudging him with her elbow. Flax: I feel your kindness. She doesn’t want to show how this thrills her.
‘My mother maintains I was well on the way to being a dreadful cad before the crash.’
‘I can see that,’ Alice teases him. ‘I remember your red pyjamas. We all called them your passion pants.’
‘Did you now? Sister Hall loathed those pyjamas. “This is a hospital not a den of iniquity, Mr Hillary,”’ he says, imitating her perfectly. ‘But even she was a sweetheart. She gave me a pot of brown makeup on my first weekend out. “Make yourself pretty for the girls,” she said.’
‘Did it work?’
‘That would be telling.’
‘Good old Sister Hall. A lot of the nurses look down on the volunteers, but she’s always kind.’
‘They think you’re all hoping to nab an officer with his defences down,’ he says, and laughs. ‘I am glad I caught you. One of the girls told me you were working at the station this afternoon.’
‘Mabel, my mother-in-law, was supposed to be covering me today. Well, she’s my fiancé’s mother, really,’ she says quickly, conscious that she is babbling, trying to cover up her feelings with chatter. ‘But she has a cold so I offered to –’
He stops walking. ‘You’re engaged?’
‘Yes,’ she says quietly, and lifts her hand. The diamond chips set in the thin gold band on her ring finger glint, weakly.
Richard takes her hand, and she feels his warmth through the supple leather. ‘It’s very pretty,’ he says, and she feels her throat tighten at his kindness.
‘Kenneth…well, he said we needed to save money for the shop.’ Her chin falls. ‘Not that it’s his money, anyway.’
‘I didn’t know you have a shop?’
‘We don’t, not yet.’ Her eyes are bright as she looks at him, and she forces a smile. ‘My parents left me a bit of money.’
‘They were killed in the Blitz, weren’t they? I remember you saying you lived with your aunt now.’
‘Mabel is a friend of my aunt’s. They all said it made sense. It does really. I’m alone, and Kenneth…’ Her voice trails off at the thought of his pale, dour face. She thinks of their stilted evenings at the pub, struggling for something to talk about, the way they dance awkwardly together. She thinks of Mabel. How her eyes gleamed with triumph when Alice mumbled ‘yes’ to Kenneth, who was on one knee on the linoleum in the front parlour that always reminds Alice of a funeral home. She had tried not to flinch as he kissed her cheek, lightly. The only kiss then, or since.
‘Should I congratulate you?’
‘It’s all happened rather suddenly. Kenneth says it makes sense to put my money into a business that we can run together.’ None of it makes sense, she thinks. God, how I loathe that word. Good, sensible Alice, is that how they all see me?
She notices Richard checking the station clock. ‘Are you catching a train?’
‘Yes, I’m going up to town.’
Geranium: expected meeting. He’s probably off to meet a girlfriend. There were always girls visiting him at the hospital. ‘I do miss London,’ Alice says.
‘Come with me, then.’
Hawthorn: hope. ‘I couldn’t. I’ve got to open the kiosk for the rush hour –’
‘What difference will one evening make?’ He turns to her. ‘Come on, live dangerously!’
London. Alice thinks of the night the bombs fell on their street in Kennington. How it seemed the sky was on fire, the black lattice of her shattered home, blazing. Iris: flame. She sees again the twin stretchers carried from the building. If I hadn’t been out dancing, there would have been three. The guilt of surviving weighs her down, again.
‘I know what you’re thinking, but you mustn’t worry. The bombings have tailed off since May. You’ll be perfectly safe with me.’
‘But you’re busy. I wouldn’t want to get in the way.’
‘Nonsense, you’d be doing me a favour. I’ve got to go and see my publisher, and I’d feel a lot braver with a pretty girl on my arm.’ Richard smiles at her. ‘It’s not so bad here. You know we all call East Grinstead “the town that never stares”? Well, it’s different in London. Everyone stares. Sometimes you forget, you know, and you wonder what everyone is looking at until you catch sight of yourself in a shop window…�
�� His voice trails off.
Alice longs to comfort him, but she knows how he hates sympathy, hates any pity. You dear, brave man, she thinks, old feelings stirring, rising in her. She realises she hasn’t felt this alive for months, that she has been sleepwalking through the days since she last saw him. Jonquil: I desire a return of affection.
‘Come, please. We can make an evening of it.’ He pats the parcel under his arm. ‘Once I’ve dropped this off, we can do anything you like.’
‘You’ve written a book?’
‘Yes, The Last Enemy.’
‘What’s it about?’ she says as Richard guides her towards the platform, his hand on the small of her back.
‘Do you know the line from Corinthians, “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death”? That’s where the title comes from. I thought it was rather good, don’t you? The book’s about the war.’ He flashes her a smile. ‘You could say it’s the story of how a cocky young chap learnt some humility.’
‘How wonderful –I mean, to write it all down in a book.’ Alice’s eyes shine as she remembers how Richard used to talk to her for hours. It wasn’t always like that though. I was terrified, at first.
Sister Hall encouraged her to talk to him. ‘Cheer the poor laddie up, Alice,’ she remembers her saying. ‘Beneath the skin he’s still a young, and vigorous man. It will do him no end of good to have a pretty girl treat him like an ordinary chap.’ She remembers approaching his bed, so nervous her hand shook as she put a fresh glass of water on his table. Within a couple of minutes she forgot his injuries. Richard’s charm shone through, and soon they were talking like old friends. I’d never talked to anyone like that, so easily. Some of the others thought he was arrogant, but I know that’s just a front. He’s sensitive, and kind. Kennedia: mental beauty. That’s what he has. Of course he was short-tempered and harsh sometimes, but who wouldn’t be when you think of the pain he was in?
Alice glances at him as they wait. Once he was beautiful outside, but now – She thinks of the change she saw in him over the months in hospital. His mother is absolutely right. It’s as if losing his looks has freed the best in him, somehow.
Truly, Madly, Deeply Page 37