The Wildflowers

by Harriet Evans

  The looking forward is almost the worst with the Wildflowers. Because it will end one day & they will be gone. Just for one day, one day I would like to know a feeling where you are totally, utterly happy with nothing else but happiness in your heart, no worries about anything else. Just one day please.

  I must go now cos Gary has gone downstairs. I will grab the doll dress and do the floorboard, like a little fairy myself, and no one will know I was there.

  Chapter Eight

  August 1978

  The visitor at the Bosky this summer was expected daily and yet never seemed to turn up. At breakfast, in the fourth week of the heatwave, Mumma turned to Daddy and said, ‘A pound says your singer doesn’t turn up by the end of the week.’

  ‘Kenneth telephoned yesterday,’ said Daddy. ‘She’s arriving today, apparently.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Althea, and Ben saw her frown. ‘You might have told me.’

  Tony shrugged. ‘Where will she sleep? You’ll have to tell Bertie he’s in the beach hut, if he’s thinking of staying this weekend.’

  ‘Bertie’s not coming,’ said Mumma, shortly.

  ‘Not coming? But I saw him at Claire’s the other day and he said he was.’

  ‘He’s off for a few days,’ said Mumma. She started buttering a piece of toast. ‘Got a better offer.’

  ‘You’re still annoyed with him about putting you on that sketch show, aren’t you? Darling, I thought you were jolly funny.’

  Althea spread more and more butter on to her toast. ‘I don’t mind having the Michael taken out of me, darling.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Daddy, with a guffaw. ‘Really?’

  ‘No, absolutely not. Not like some. If you must know, Bertie’s off to Simon’s fiftieth,’ said Mumma, almost viciously. Daddy leaned back in his chair and folded his arms.

  ‘Ohhh,’ he said, a long, drawn-out sound.

  ‘Simon who used to come here and stay with us?’ said Cord. No one answered her. ‘Who could make birds and things with paper and—’

  ‘Not now, Cord,’ said Mumma.

  ‘Why doesn’t he come any more?’

  ‘Shut up, Cord,’ said Ben, desperately.

  ‘He’s married,’ said Mumma, and she drummed her fingers on the table. ‘Some actress he met doing rep. Can’t remember her name but she’s a sweet thing. I had a drink with them, when he came to the filming. Gosh, what was her name?’

  ‘Typical Simon.’ Tony raised his eyebrows, and drank more coffee.

  ‘Rosalie, that’s it, Rosalie Byrne.’ Daddy started coughing. ‘She’s Irish.’ Daddy exhaled loudly; Ben stared at him.

  ‘Look, I can go home, and Ben can share with Cord,’ Mads broke in. Ben watched her anxious face, looking from one parent to the other, and he rubbed his missing fingers, or the stump where they had been. It throbbed most in the mornings, when he’d just woken up and hadn’t eaten enough.

  ‘No, darling, it’s fine,’ said Mumma. She put down her toast. ‘It’s absolutely fine. Listen, Tony, are you sure she’s coming today – oh, what’s she called?’

  ‘Belinda Beauchamp,’ said Daddy. Mumma gave a snort of laughter.

  ‘What a name. Is it real, or a stage name?’

  ‘I don’t know, Dorothy dear,’ said Daddy, shaking out the newspaper with a cracking sound. Dorothy was Mumma’s real name, which she absolutely hated, Ben knew that. ‘She’s coming to teach me to sing this damned song, and the only reason she’s staying is because she’s Kenneth’s god-daughter and he said she’s mad about Hartman Hall and wants to meet you. All right? She’s got pictures of you up all over her wall, apparently. Pretty cracked for a twenty-three-year-old, but there you go.’

  ‘Oh. I see. Well, it’ll be lovely to have her here,’ said Mumma and Cord sniggered, taking her mother’s discarded piece of toast. ‘Cord, don’t be cheeky.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Cord innocently.

  ‘Darling, that’s enough toast for you. You’ve had five slices,’ Mumma said, snappily. Cord pushed the plate away. ‘You won’t have room for lunch and it’s ham.’

  ‘Oh, lovely ham,’ said Mads, smoothing over the peace as she always did. ‘Come on, Cord, let’s go and change our outfits, I’m too hot already in this.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Cord. ‘Then let’s go to the beach shop and get an ice cream.’

  ‘No, darling, not before lunch,’ Mumma called out to her as they skipped inside.

  ‘Cord’s awfully fat,’ said Ben, faux-casually, after they’d gone. ‘It’s good you’re telling her not to eat so much.’

  ‘Don’t crawl, darling,’ said Mumma. ‘She’s a growing girl, she needs to eat. I was the same shape when I was her age. It’s just she scoffs all morning and then won’t have her lunch and she’s so rude about it in front of other people. And those plaits . . .’

  ‘What about the plaits?’ said Tony, mildly curious.

  ‘Oh, they’re the bane of my life. They look like stubby cigars. I wish she’d have it cut into a bob. Or grow it out. She looks like one of the worst St Trinian’s girls.’ Mumma looked up, and around. ‘Don’t glower at me, Tony. It’s true.’

  ‘Cordy’s beautiful.’

  ‘I’m not saying she’s not. But facts are facts . . .’ She trailed off. ‘Never mind. Horrible old Mumma, eh?’ She smiled at Ben. ‘You, on the other hand, are perfect, my darling. Always have been.’

  Ben felt distinctly uncomfortable, whether because of her stroking his face which he wished she wouldn’t do or because of Daddy’s quick, contemptuous glance at them.

  Daddy stood up. ‘I’m going to the beach for a swim before it gets too hot,’ he said. ‘You chaps coming with me?’ He looked at Althea, and held out his hand to her.

  ‘Yes, absolutely,’ said Mumma, meeting his gaze and taking his hand in hers. ‘Let me just chat to Gary about lunch and I’ll join you. I might try making potato salad to go with the ham.’

  ‘Oh, my favourite, how wonderful,’ said Daddy. He always greeted every minor effort by Mumma to do something in the kitchen as though it were an attempt on Everest. ‘You are amazing, isn’t she, Gary?’

  ‘Yes, isn’t she,’ agreed Mrs Gage, drily, removing the breakfast plates with a clatter. ‘Don’t worry about the salad, Mrs Wilde, it’s best I do it.’

  ‘Oh, well,’ said Althea, as though this were a great disappointment. ‘Right, let’s go to the beach.’

  Cord was a brilliant swimmer – she loved being in the water more than anything, and could go out further than the others, and was strong enough to swim against the tide. That day they all swam together, Mumma in her deliciously silly aquamarine swimming costume covered all over in flowers that ruffled in the breeze, Madeleine falling out of one of Cord’s costumes from last year, and Ben and Daddy, racing each other in the sea. Cord kept ducking under water when no one was looking and pinching people’s toes – only when it was too late could you see her blue form coming towards you like a barrelling torpedo.

  ‘Your lung capacity is astonishing,’ Daddy said, wrestling her out of the water as she tried to attack him. ‘You should enter one of those contests they have in Bournemouth, the underwater breathing ones.’

  ‘I know,’ said Cord, panting, and she dived down again, and tugged at Ben’s shorts, suddenly, and Ben screamed in shock, and collapsed, giggling, backwards, into the sea, and they all joined in, laughing as well, and then he found he was choking because he was laughing so much. Madeleine pulled him upright and Mumma patted him on the back, and he hiccupped.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Cord. ‘I didn’t mean to—’

  ‘I’m fine!’ he said, batting his hand at her. ‘I’m going to sit on the sand for a bit.’ He waded back to the beach, collapsing on to his beach towel, and glanced casually down. He had thin, spindly brown hairs on his chest, eighteen or so, and he wished they were a bit darker or more visible, and also that he wasn’t still so weedy-looking in his orange trunks.

  It was strange, all being here again. The year after it happened Ben t
hought they wouldn’t go – Mumma was away filming the second series of Hartman Hall. And Daddy was busy with rehearsals for something, he had to do a Scottish accent, and it wasn’t very good. But somewhere through the summer something changed – later, much later on when he was a grown-up, Ben realised his father had probably pulled out of the play or TV commitment, whatever it was, because Daddy took them himself and though Ben wasn’t sure he wanted to go back to the Bosky yet, the moment the three of them arrived it was wonderful. Mads had made it better too, she seemed to understand, she didn’t fuss – Daddy and Cord both did, a bit, at first.

  The second summer after, Mumma was filming the third series, and so Mrs Gage had stayed with them and Mumma came down at weekends. Daddy was away in New York doing Macbeth on Broadway. It had been OK too, again mostly because Mads was there to do fun things with, and three of them was a gang in the way two wasn’t. She and Ben liked the same music, they all liked the same jokes and frantic games. But the great thing about Mads was, she knew when to leave you on your own. Because sometimes Ben wanted to be alone. Not before but now he did, and especially here, when he’d look around and see this beloved place where once he’d been a boy who believed nothing bad could happen to him. But it had and sometimes he wanted to shake Cord awake at night, to tell her she didn’t know, didn’t understand the real world was very, very different from the shimming, spinning little sphere they’d grown up in. It was a harsh place, where bad things happened.

  Mumma being famous changed everything too, almost as much as the accident. Day-to-day life was different because of it, you couldn’t walk down the street with her and she was always giving interviews or being on TV shows like Parkinson. ‘Oh there’s Mumma,’ Cord said once, casually, turning the TV on and seeing Althea sitting on a sofa looking glamorous as usual. She’d even been in a Morecambe and Wise sketch, Eric got a bucket stuck on her head and she’d been so funny, which Ben and Cord liked because Mumma was funny.

  Sometimes it was great – the viewing parties they had at River Walk, with champagne and all Mumma and Daddy’s jolly friends, going to see the filming, people at school asking them about her – and sometimes it wasn’t, when she was away for weeks on end and it was them on their own, trying to fill the hours in the big empty house and missing her while Mrs Berry sat in the kitchen knitting. The truth was, anyway, they were a different family now.

  Ben hugged his knees. Being at the Bosky brought it all back. Cord had told him once that Mumma had scratched her face to pieces with worry while he was missing. He’d seen the raised red torn skin on her face when he’d woken up at the hospital but hadn’t asked – he’d been too out of it, too confused. And then Daddy had appeared, and Ben had told him to go away. He’d screamed at him, thrashing around and pulling out the tubes and the doctors had had to ask Tony to leave.

  Mads waved from the water, and Ben waved back, remembering her lips on his, feeling the warmth on his drying salty shoulders, feeling right and safe and happy. He wished he could stop the world right now, for he hated how when he felt like this the other feelings were not far behind, as though you had to pay some sort of penance for being happy – he drew his arms tighter around him, and shook his head and then there he was, remembering it again, and once he was in it, he couldn’t ever stop the reel unspooling in his mind’s eye: he would have to relive the whole business, like being strapped to a chair and forced to watch a horror film you’ve seen many times before. Cord had stopped asking him about it because he’d told her to. But he wondered if they thought about it.

  He was fine now, he told Mumma or Daddy or anyone who asked. But it sat with him all the time. Photos in his head, smells that would set it off. Pink-white dogs, like greyhounds, or the smell of tar, or the sight of the silhouette of a tall thin woman ahead on the street. There was so much else in his mind, too, sometimes it seemed there wouldn’t be room for it all – how much he hated school and how he worried all the time about IRA bombs and plane crashes, or whether Cord would be knocked over on that corner turning into the station where the motorcycles went too fast, or if Mumma would die of the cancer that killed Jones’s mother, or whether Daddy would leave them for another woman, someone younger who would want more children and they’d get forgotten. This had happened to a boy at school, he’d stopped getting birthday presents and eventually he’d had to leave because his mother couldn’t afford the fees.

  In truth he knew why he worried about these things: so he wouldn’t have to think about the others, which were real, which he had heard and knew to be true.

  He had heard Daddy say it on the telephone that night he’d left, heard the words float out of his mouth. What if he’d known Ben was listening? What would he have said? Sorry, Ben, but it doesn’t change anything. Or would he have said, You’ve heard the truth now about why I don’t love you, Ben, and that’s why I’m sending you away to school. I want you out of the house.

  It was all so clear as though it were yesterday.

  He’d been minded to run out of the house after the row with Daddy about going to school. He’d decided to go to the beach, paddle in the sea for a bit to calm down. But as he’d stood in the corridor outside his parents’ bedroom and he’d heard Daddy talking, he’d realised he had to run further away than that, so far away that none of them could ever find him.

  In his pocket that night was a bar of chocolate he’d bought that afternoon at the village shop, as part of the running-away bounty. He’d kept it as a surprise for Cord, a treat to cheer them up on the way back to London. Next to it he slipped in some string, and in the other pocket he wedged a pair of socks, and a clean handkerchief, and two pound notes, his pocket money, saved up to see Monty Python and the Holy Grail which was still showing in Swanage. Into his school satchel he put a clean Aertex shirt and a pair of shorts, and Robinson Crusoe which he thought might be helpful.

  He could still hear Tony in his room talking on the phone. He crept into the hallway, looking up at the lights from the porch, listening for the sound of his sister’s voice one last time, but couldn’t hear her and so, opening the front door silently, Ben left the Bosky behind and began walking down the lane. He didn’t look back. He tried to feel brave and excited but he didn’t. He felt miserable.

  As he’d turned on to the road he tried to hold his head up high, slinging the satchel casually to one side so it hung at a jaunty angle. He was a troubadour, a wayfarer. He didn’t care if what he’d overheard was true. He didn’t care about any of them. Now he wouldn’t have to go to that boarding school. He’d find another family, live with them, go back to the Bosky when he was grown up. ‘See?’ he’d say. ‘I’m all right. I turned out all right. I didn’t need any of you.’

  It was getting dark when he left the Bosky. For a mile or so he was fine, in fact he might almost have been cheerful but for what he had overheard and because he had had to leave Cord and Mads. He ate the chocolate bar and mused about whom he’d live with. A rich family who lived by the sea all year round who had a sports car and a whole floor for Scalextric. They would have fish and chips every Friday and a puppy.

  Ben went down a lane he thought led to Bill’s Point. He had the vague idea of walking to Swanage over the Downs and going to a Wimpy bar for something to eat. But the lane was the wrong turning and it carried him further up the hill inland, away from the cliffs, where the new holiday bungalows were being built, a long line of them towards the farm. There were no street lights nor any moon so it was very dark now, and when the lady appeared from one of the houses, Ben jumped half out of his skin.

  ‘What are you doing, out this late?’ she’d said. She was smoking, wearing a dressing gown, and she had slippers on. Ben felt uneasy. He looked up at the clouded, dark grey night sky.

  ‘I’m going for a walk.’

  ‘A little thing like you? Aren’t you a bit young to be walking out by yourself?’ She peered at him. ‘Oh, my goodness. I know you. You’re Tony Wilde’s boy, aren’t you? I seen you on the beach.’

&n
bsp; She laughed and he could smell her stale cigarette smoke. There was something unpleasant about her, with her dyed blonde hair with the black roots growing out, and the thin, disconsolate face. Cord’s voice came to him, her face orange and black in the shadows of the candle on the porch. There’s a witch up on the hill. I’ve seen her. She flew out of the sky one day and she’s living here now. Her name’s Virginia Creeper. She takes children away.

  He backed away from the house, towards the hedgerow opposite.

  ‘I knew him after the war, you know that? He doesn’t recognise me, of course. We were matey, your dad, he’s quite the Casanova.’ She peered down and stared at him. ‘P’raps I shouldn’t be talking like that to you. Very friendly, is what I mean to say. He used to be down here all the time after the old lady did a runner . . .’ She waved her cigarette at him. ‘Your father, oh, ho ho! Them parties he used to have after the war, the people he’d bring down . . . Ho, yuss!’ She blinked rapidly. ‘Not many left who remember it now, before he got together with your ma, she always looked like she had a poker up her jacksie. ’Scuse my French . . .’