The Victory Garden: A Novel

by Rhys Bowen

  “Stay a while and talk to us, you adorable creature,” one of them said, holding out a hand as Emily passed.

  Emily was quite willing to do so, but her mother intervened. “Come along, Emily. We haven’t time to dilly-dally. There are all those wards upstairs to be visited.”

  “But you don’t need me to follow you around,” Emily said. “Why don’t I take a tray to different rooms and that way halve the work for you?”

  Her mother frowned and waited until they were in the hall again before replying. “It isn’t seemly for a young girl to visit a room full of men unchaperoned.”

  Emily had to laugh. “Mother, I don’t think I’m in any danger from a room full of crippled soldiers. Besides, you saw them—they wanted me to stay and talk. They need cheering up.”

  “Emily, keep your voice down. I do not expect you to argue with your mother where we can be overheard.”

  The grandfather clock in the hall began to chime eleven. Mrs Bryce turned and handed the platter to Emily. “I’d better go up and have that cup of coffee with Matron. I don’t like to keep her waiting too long, so I suppose we will postpone the rest of the visits. You had better remain down here for the moment. I don’t think you were included in the coffee invitation with Matron. Take this platter and fill it with a good selection of cakes, then bring it up to me in about fifteen minutes. Come straight up the stairs. I don’t want you wandering this place alone.”

  “No, Mother.” Emily sighed. She glanced at Florrie and they exchanged a grin. After they had arranged the mixture of iced fairy cakes, rock buns and cream puffs on the plate, Emily waited in the cool quiet of the front hall, listening to the distant murmur of male voices, until what she thought was a suitable amount of time had elapsed. Then she lifted the platter and headed up the curved staircase.

  As she came to the top of the first flight, she heard raised voices. Then a male voice said, quite distinctly, “Aw, bugger!”

  “Such language. Behave yourself, Flight Lieutenant Kerr,” said a booming woman’s voice. “Just lie still. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “Not going to hurt me? It’s about time someone taught you how to change dressings without ripping off half a patient’s skin,” replied a man’s voice with a strange accent.

  Curiosity drew Emily to the open door. The man lay on a narrow bed, the large figure of a nurse looming over him. He was the most handsome man she had ever seen. He had unruly red-blond hair and a tanned, outdoor look to him quite unlike the pale English young men Emily was used to. She hadn’t realized that she was standing and staring until suddenly he looked up past the nurse and spotted Emily standing there. She had no time to shrink back out of sight. His eyes lit up, and to her embarrassment he winked at her.

  “I’m doing my best, Lieutenant,” the nurse said. “You have to understand that changing burn dressings is not an easy task.”

  “Not with sausage fingers like yours,” he replied. “You ought to let that young lady volunteer do it for you. Look at her dainty little hands. I bet she wouldn’t skin me alive.”

  The nurse spun around to see Emily standing there, red-faced. “This young lady is only a visitor,” she said, “and would no doubt be horrified at your language. And for your information I qualified at one of the best London hospitals and have changed thousands of dressings.”

  “Old cow,” the man muttered.

  “What did you say?”

  “I said, ‘Okay for now,’” he replied, looking up at her innocently. Emily turned away, pressing her lips together, afraid she’d burst out laughing.

  “Don’t go,” the young man called after her. “Come and talk to me. I haven’t seen a pretty face in months.”

  “I’m afraid I have to take these cakes up to Matron’s room,” Emily said, conscious of the nurse glaring at her.

  “You’re not even going to share your goodies with poor wounded blokes like us?” he asked. “We’re the severe cases, you know. All flyers.”

  “You’re not severe, you’re all hopeless,” the nurse said, “and I’ve no doubt that the young lady will be back with cakes for you when it’s your turn. But only if you behave yourselves.”

  “We’ll all be as good as gold, Nurse,” he said, and he shot Emily a grin as she turned back to look at him.

  The nurse followed her out into the hallway. “I must apologize, Miss Bryce. He’s Australian, you know. No sense of propriety or decorum, as far as I can see. We’ve just received several of them into this ward. All members of the Royal Flying Corps—aviators, brave boys. Personally, I think they need their heads examined, flying in the sky with a craft that is essentially held together with paper and string. So I am trying to give them more leeway than I would in normal circumstances—knowing what lies before them, I mean.”

  When Emily looked at her curiously, the nurse moved closer and lowered her voice. “The life expectancy of a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps is six weeks, Miss Bryce.”

  “Ah, there you are,” came her mother’s voice. “We wondered where you had gone. I hope you haven’t disregarded my wishes and been fraternizing with the young men.”

  “No, Mother, I came straight up the stairs at what I thought was the right time,” Emily said.

  “Well, come along then. Let’s start with the rooms at the back,” her mother said. “We have a lot to get through before lunchtime, and your father will be home for luncheon today.”

  Emily glanced back at the open door, but she could no longer glimpse the cheeky Australian. She gave a sigh and went to join her mother.

  CHAPTER TWO

  As if encouraged by the news from the front lines that a victory might finally be within sight, the weather turned unusually warm and sunny. Mrs Bryce served the first strawberries and cream on the lawn and persuaded Josh to outline the tennis court and put up the net, just in case tennis partners could be found.

  “I’ve been thinking, Emily,” she said. “If the weather remains this favourable, we may just hold your twenty-first party outside—lanterns in the trees, ice creams, violins by the fountain . . .”

  “Mummy, I don’t need a twenty-first party,” Emily said. “It wouldn’t be right to celebrate while so many people are suffering and mourning. Besides, who could I possibly invite? Every young man I knew has been killed and most of the young women have moved away or married.”

  “I expect your father can rustle up some suitable dance partners.” Her mother tossed her head in the way that indicated she didn’t like being crossed. “And there are certainly enough families around here to whom we owe a favour or two. The Warren-Smythes, for example. Their daughters will be home from school, and Aubrey can come down from the city.”

  “Mummy!” Emily rolled her eyes. “Aubrey Warren-Smythe must be almost thirty and is as dull as ditchwater. And there really must be something wrong with him if he hasn’t been called up yet.”

  “I gather he has weak ankles,” Mrs Bryce said seriously.

  Emily swallowed back a giggle, then she said, “I really don’t want a party made up of people to whom Daddy owes a favour.”

  “You must still be in touch with old school friends who are available to attend,” Mrs Bryce said. “What about that girl whose cousin was a viscount?”

  “Daphne Armstrong? Now married to another viscount,” Emily said.

  “Splendid. We’ll invite them then. That will certainly make the Warren-Smythes sit up and take notice, won’t it?”

  “Mother! She was never a close friend, and I haven’t spoken to her since we left school. Can we just forget about the party?”

  “Absolutely not. My mind is made up. I had always planned to have my daughter come out properly into society. I had expected her to be a debutante. And since that option has been denied you, the very least I can do is to give you a twenty-first party.”

  Emily could see there was no point in fighting. “I’ll go and see if any more strawberries are ripe before the birds find them,” she said, and set off with a basket across th
e lawn, through the shrubbery to the kitchen garden. She had just bent down to pick strawberries when she heard noises amid the rhododendron bushes that separated the Bryces’ property from the convalescent home next door. She looked around, expecting it to be Josh, but he was weeding the borders beside the drive. She backed away. There were sounds of blundering and undergrowth being trampled. It sounded like some kind of large animal. Then she glimpsed a figure—a man was pushing his way through the hedge that separated the Bryces’ home, the Larches, from the adjoining property. A tramp, she thought, come to steal our fruit. She waited as the man eased his way between rhododendron bushes and then she demanded, in a loud voice, “What do you think you are doing, trespassing on private property?”

  The man spun around at the sound of her voice and almost lost his footing as he stepped into a newly turned bed. He had to grab on to a nearby branch to steady himself.

  “Aw, stone the crows. You nearly gave me a heart attack,” he said. He emerged from the shadows, and Emily recognized him as the Australian who had winked at her.

  “Oh, it’s you,” he said, his face lighting up with a beaming smile. “My little vision from the other day. So you are real. I thought the morphine was making me hallucinate. And to think you live so close by.”

  “Yes,” Emily said, no longer able to be indignant as he was smiling at her. “And you are trespassing,” she added. She was conscious that she was perspiring, and that she was dressed in a simple cotton frock that revealed too much shoulder.

  “I didn’t mean any harm, and I didn’t think anyone would mind,” he said. “They had us parked outside in bath chairs like a lot of old fogeys and I couldn’t stand it a moment longer. When there were no nurses around, I got up and sneaked off. I’ve been dying to take a closer look at this place. I can see a bit of the grounds from my window, and it all looked so perfect, so unreal . . . that green, green grass and all those roses. My word, if my mother saw this, she’d think she’d died and gone to heaven.”

  “You like roses, do you, Flight Lieutenant?” Emily asked.

  “I was thinking of my mother. She tries to grow flowers, especially roses, but she never quite succeeds. Where we live, there’s only about six inches of rain a year. Not enough for a proper garden, but she keeps on trying. If she could only see this, I bet she’d just break down and cry.”

  “Where do you live exactly?” Emily asked.

  “What we’d call Back of Burke,” he said, “meaning the outback. Middle of nowhere. The far western part of New South Wales. The closest town is Tibooburra, and that’s not much of a place.”

  “And what does your family do out there?” She realized she was sounding like her mother.

  “We’re farmers.”

  “Farmers? How can you farm with so little rain?”

  He grinned. “We run sheep.”

  “Sheep? Sheep can exist with no grass?”

  “There’s a little grass. Not green like this around here, but enough to keep a sheep alive. We can only run about one sheep per acre though.”

  “One sheep per acre?” Emily tried to grasp this. “Then how many sheep do you have?”

  He frowned, thinking. “I’m not quite sure. Maybe twenty thousand or so.”

  “Twenty thousand? Then you have twenty thousand acres?”

  “More than that. We have land that’s not much good for anything as well.”

  “You must be miles from your nearest neighbour then.”

  “About fifty.”

  “Fifty miles?”

  He nodded, grinning at her incredulous face.

  “Isn’t it terribly lonely? What happens if you have a medical emergency?”

  “We take care of it, or we die. You have to be pretty self-sufficient if you live like us. We do our own blacksmithing, sheep shearing, you name it.”

  “Golly,” was all Emily could find to say.

  “And in answer to your other question, yes, I guess it is a bit lonely for my mother. It was all right when we nippers were at home. I’ve got two sisters. Then we all were sent off to school and my sisters stayed on in the city—one is a teacher and the other got married and has a kid of her own. My mother didn’t want me sent off to school. I was her youngest, you see. Her baby. But Dad insisted. He needed his son to be properly educated to take over the station one day.”

  “Station?”

  “What we call our farms. Sheep station.”

  “I see.” She nodded.

  “So my mum took it hard when I was sent to school. And she took it even harder when I enlisted and sailed for Europe. Then I was at Gallipoli with the Anzacs.”

  “I hear that was frightful,” Emily said.

  “My word. It was a massacre,” he said. “I was one of the few lucky ones, and I decided it was a mug’s game being a sitting duck on a beach, so I signed up for the Royal Flying Corps. Well, that’s what it was called when I joined it. Now we’re the Royal Air Force, so I’m told.”

  “Did you know how to fly?”

  “Actually, no, I didn’t, but I can drive pretty much any vehicle, and I figured I’d take to it quite easily. They were desperate for any bloke who was mug enough to try, and I took to it like a duck to water.”

  “What’s it like to fly in an aeroplane?” Emily asked.

  “Oh, it’s amazing. You feel so free and light—just like a bird. And you look down on the land below you and it looks like toy farms and houses.” He gave a chuckle. “Only you don’t look down much because you never know which direction the enemy is coming from. And when they do come, it’s a fight like no other. You swoop, you bank, you dive, and all the time shooting at each other until one goes down in flames.”

  “How horrible.” Emily shivered.

  “Oh no. If it has to be war, then this is about as good as it gets. At least it’s a gentleman’s war in the air. Warrior against warrior. If you go down, you go down with honour after a good fight.”

  Emily didn’t know what to say to this.

  “Look,” he said, “I can’t go on talking to you if I don’t know your name.”

  “It’s Emily. Emily Bryce. What is your name, Lieutenant?”

  “My name is Robbie Kerr, although at home most people call me Blue.”

  “Blue?”

  “On account of my red hair.”

  “Now you’re making fun of me,” she said, feeling herself flushing.

  “Oh no. In Australia, blokes with red hair are always called Blue.”

  “Then it sounds like a silly place.”

  “Oh no.” He shook his head this time. “It’s a bonzer place. Plenty of land and sunshine, and nobody cares if you’re a duke or a chimney sweep. But out where we live, it’s no place for a woman, really. No hat shops or beauty parlours or even other women to talk to. That’s why I wanted to see this garden . . . to finally have something positive to write to my mum about. All she’s heard is bad news so far. Gallipoli, and then being shot down in France . . .” He was staring out past her, across the lawns. “So I thought I’d describe these flowers. She’d like that.”

  “You’re a good son.”

  “I try to be,” he said, giving her a mischievous grin.

  “But should you be up and walking around?”

  “Probably not. They’re worried about my burns getting infected. The plane caught on fire, see. Oh, and I broke my leg.”

  “Then you definitely shouldn’t be walking around. Aren’t you on crutches?”

  “Yeah, but I left them on the other side of the hedge.”

  “Robbie, you should go back at once. You’re supposed to be resting.”

  “No, I’m supposed to be using that leg. They’ve given me exercises to do. Just not squeezing through hedges. So can I see you again?” he asked. “You’re the first good thing that’s happened to me in a while. All I’m faced with is dreadful old battleaxes like that Nurse Hammond.”

  “You called her an old cow.”

  He grinned. “So I did. Sorry about that. The pain m
akes me forget my manners sometimes.”

  “It was nothing to do with pain. You enjoyed needling her.”

  He gave a sheepish smile. “Aw yes, well . . . I have to do something to cheer myself up, don’t I? Been lying in a bloody hospital bed for too long.”

  “Please go back before you’re found to be missing, Robbie.” She reached out and touched his arm. “I don’t want you to get into trouble, and I certainly don’t want you to re-injure that leg.”

  He stood looking down at her. She hadn’t realized until now how tall he was. “So when can I meet you again?”

  Emily made a face. “My mother would have a fit if she saw us here. She’s very prim and proper. And we haven’t been introduced.”

  “Introduced?” He looked amused.

  “Oh yes. In polite society, I’m not supposed to talk to anyone unless we’re properly introduced.”

  “And you thought Australia was a silly country?” He chuckled. “At least we can talk to anyone we want to. The prime minister or a swagman.”

  “I agree, it is rather silly,” Emily said. “We have so many rules here—which fork to use and where to seat people at the dinner table, but all that stuff matters to people like my mother.”

  “Not to you?”

  “I haven’t had a chance to escape yet and try out the real world beyond home. I’ve been cooped up here for the whole war, dying of frustration, dying to do something—volunteer, do my bit.”

  “So why haven’t you?”

  Emily chewed on her lip. “My parents. They won’t let me go. They are worried that something will happen to me.” It sounded silly when she said it. Weak. Pathetic. “My brother was killed, you see,” she added, trying to explain. “And my parents . . .”

  “They were worried they’d lose you, too.”

  “Yes.”

  “I suppose I can understand that. My mum was really upset when I said I was joining up.”

  “But that’s different. You were going a long way from home, going to fight. I only want to find some useful volunteer work in a town.”

  “Then perhaps they are worried about unsuitable young men and you being brought up so sheltered.” His eyes were holding hers. “Not realizing that unsuitable young men were lurking in your own bushes.”