The Secret Book of Flora Lea: a Novel, page 21
“They really are beautiful,” Hazel said, gripping her drink so tightly she was surprised the glass didn’t shatter. How many glasses could she break in one night? “The one of Flora is lovely.”
“On that wall”—he pointed across the room—“there are some of St. Ives and boats and landscapes. Not everything is…”
“About that terrible time.” She reached out and touched his arm, clad in a dark shirt. He stood so still, as if waiting for what else she might touch.
“Don’t let it frighten you. They’re from memory. They aren’t from those days. I drew them over the years.”
“Why?”
“When I can’t shake something, I draw. I paint. I sketch. I let it out.”
“Like I once did with stories.” She stared again at the extraordinary art. “But you kept going and I quit.”
He nodded his head toward the door. “It’s bloody loud in here. Outside?”
She followed him.
Outside on the high street, he faced her, rubbing his hands up and down his arms to warm himself in the night’s chill. Rising and falling voices fell through the doorway onto the street, a river of sound, and they stepped to the right of the door where it was quieter.
“I wonder if you know…,” he said.
“Know what?”
“Your mum never let us near you during that horrible time. We tried to visit you in Oxford. I came alone to try to find you, and Mum had to come get me and bring me home. We didn’t desert you. I was always afraid you thought so.”
“I didn’t think that. I thought you… hated me.” A nightingale sang out, sang out, high and clear. Together they cocked their heads toward the sound and then Harry took her hand and ran his thumb along her wrist.
“I could never hate you.”
His hand on hers in the woodlands; his hand on hers here and now. “But why all the drawings of that horrible time, Harry?”
“Much of it was not horrible, and sometimes life breaks your heart to give you the best art. I don’t know why that’s true, but that’s as true as anything I know. If you let it be, anyway.”
“I assumed you forgot about me,” she said, knowing it was impossible but wanting to hear why it was not.
“It’s not that I forgot you, Hazel. It’s that I needed to forget you. You didn’t answer my last letter when I asked to see you. What was I meant to do? Track you down? Run after you?”
“Yes,” she said with a smile.
He shook his head and laughed. “No. If you don’t remember, in Binsey, you told me you never wanted to see me again.”
“I was fifteen years old and in complete shock. How could you take that seriously?”
“I always took you seriously.” He paused as if he could remember that morning, that cursed morning when she’d said those very words to him. I never, ever want to see you again. “It was your mum, too. She told my mum to make sure I stayed away.”
“She was trying to protect me, I assume,” Hazel said. “And in doing so, she kept me from what I loved the most.”
He grinned, sly and sweet. “Ah, so you loved me.”
She thought to laugh it off, but what did it matter now? “Yes, I did.”
He looked near to tears and yet he said the sweetest words in a steady voice. “So did I,” he said. “I loved you, too, Hazel.”
“We were lucky,” she told him, “to have each other as a first love. We were lucky until we weren’t.”
He stepped closer and dropped his forehead to hers.
She was silent, waiting.
“You are the first girl I ever loved. I didn’t know what it was then, but now I do.” He kept on. “I forever regret listening to my mum or yours. I should have found you. I was a coward. I know it changes nothing today but it is true all the same.”
His words released something in her, something held as tight as a boxer’s fist when the starting bell rang. She let go. “Harry, I was sick with that love. I felt guilty for missing you when Flora was truly gone.”
He lifted his forehead and looked at her, a kiss so near.
“Hazel?” Hazel spun around to see Barnaby’s mother, Eleanor, and his father, Meldon, standing ten feet away. Eleanor wore a champagne-colored dress that fit so well it might have been sewn onto her, and her silver hair was in a tight chignon. Meldon had his hands stuffed deep in the pockets of his long black coat.
Hazel and Harry separated, no easy task when Hazel’s body was moving for something different. Her face prickled with adrenaline. Her tongue felt thick with excuses and lies.
“So lovely to see you! Whatever are you doing here?” She was stunned by her calm voice as her heart rose into her throat.
She’d been caught.
Eleanor stared at Harry, her lips hard and straight. “We’re here for the art show. And you?”
“Aren’t you the lucky ones then?” said Hazel. “This is Harry Aberdeen, one of the artists!” Her voice shook, but she did her best, holding steady. “Harry, meet Eleanor and Meldon Yardley.”
Eleanor’s face turned to stone and her eyes ice as she stared at Hazel. She’d seen her; she knew. “Where is my son?” she asked.
“He had a faculty dinner.” Hazel felt she might be sick on the pavement. “We leave for Paris in a couple days.”
“Oh, do you?” Eleanor looked up to Meldon, who stared at Harry.
What had she been thinking? She was immature, foolish, and impulsive. Now she would pay.
Meldon looped his arm through Eleanor’s and turned her around, so she nearly tripped in her dainty high heels. Moving in the opposite direction of the art gallery, back down the street from where they’d come, with Eleanor crying out, “Meldon, darling… the art show!”
Harry watched them and turned back to Hazel, his hand over his stomach on his pale gray sweater. “Who are they?”
“Barnaby… my boyfriend Barnaby’s parents. He’s one of the most famous art and artifact collectors in England.”
Harry nodded. “They seem none too pleased.”
“I am sure they’re not.” Hazel stared after Barnaby’s parents, whom she was quite sure were on their way to call their son.
CHAPTER 33
March 1960
Hazel’s flat lights were off and once inside she removed her raincoat and shook out the umbrella before closing the front door. Small puddles formed on the entryway rug, and Hazel shivered in her damp dress. Stalking through the flat, she flicked on every lamp.
But in the kitchen, a low light already burned, a shadow form leaning against the counter with a lit cigarette glowing.
She let out a small yelp, then, “Barnaby, you scared the wits out of me, lurking in the darkness.” She turned on the side lamp, and he squinted. He walked slowly toward her.
“Hazel, honey, where have you been?”
“I told you, an art show in Hampstead with Kelty and Fergus. Midge, too.”
“My mother called me.”
“Yes.” Hazel tried to hold calm, not give away a thing.
“Who were you with, Hazel?”
“This isn’t like you, Barnaby. Quizzing me like I did something wrong.”
He smashed his cigarette into the ashtray although it was only half-smoked. “You were with the boy from Binsey.”
“Yes, Harry Aberdeen was one of the artists.” She would hold on to truth as long as she could. But she would not let a stupid mistake—to fall into her childish desires for Harry—ruin the life she had made with Barnaby.
“Do you love the man you stood on the sidewalk with tonight?” Barnaby asked. “Looking like you were lovers, according to my mother.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
He leaned forward. “They also asked about the stolen book and illustrations.”
“Stolen? You damn well know I didn’t steal them… it was…”
“A mistake. I know.”
“Wait, how the bloody hell do they know about that? You told them?” Her mouth went dry, arid.
“No. I didn’t tell them.” His voice was fading with fatigue. “My father helped you with that job at Sotheby’s, and they called him.”
Hazel heard what Barnaby said. The words were clear and yet she was baffled. She opened her mouth to speak and then shook her head.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“No. I’m… confused?” A crack appeared, sure and jagged, beneath Hazel’s understanding of her life. “Your father helped me with that job? What are you talking about? I earned that job.”
“He made a few calls. That’s all.”
“So many calls that they felt they had to tell him about Hogan’s and the illustrations?”
“Yes, I suppose so. And Mother, overreacting as usual, saying you had betrayed us.” He fished another cigarette from his pocket and stuck it between his lips without lighting it.
“I’m betraying all of you?”
Hazel put her fingers to her temples, massaged. She couldn’t answer his questions, for she had too many of her own. “Barnaby, Harry and I are not lovers.”
“Hazel, my love, we leave for Paris in two days. If there is anything you need to tell me, please tell me now.”
“Barnaby, I went to an art show with Kelty and as I stood outside talking to Harry, I ran into your parents on the street. Your mother misconstrued what she saw. I love you. We leave for Paris in two days. That’s all I know to tell you.”
He stared while weighing her words, her past, and their future. Then he pulled her toward him and kissed her. Hazel felt as if she were watching herself being kissed, as if she stood outside the window peeking in on two lovers she didn’t know.
* * *
Barnaby snored on, and Hazel glanced at the clock: six a.m. She couldn’t sleep so she might as well rise. Slipping from bed, she went into the kitchen to boil water for tea. She needed to get her feet under her, to find her way back into the real world.
On her way through the living room, her gaze landed on the new Vanity Fair magazine that Barnaby had taken out of the trash and tossed onto the side table. She picked it up and stared at the text on the cover again. The Lost Children of Pied Piper by Dorothy Bellamy.
Maybe Hazel was wrong. Maybe the journalist could help. It was entirely possible that Dorothy Bellamy had sources Hazel didn’t have. She took the magazine to the kitchen and after making tea, she sat at the table and read. Bellamy’s article told of a young girl from Hillingdon, a member of the Mickey Mouse Club, on her way to Canada during the evacuation to live with her cousins. But poor Beryl Myatt had died at age nine when the ship she was on had been bombed on September 17, 1940. Ninety children evacuees were on board, and seventy-seven perished.
Hazel’s heart rolled. She couldn’t read another word. So much heartache. Children sent from home to be safe, only to then be lost.
She could not allow Flora to be one more of Dorothy Bellamy’s melodramatic stories, something for a “younger, smarter woman” to read about in horror. She again tossed the magazine into the bin and looked to the untouched mail on the table. She sipped her tea and shuffled through the bills until she saw the letterhead of the Thames Valley Oxford Police Department.
She ripped open the envelope and read the names of the four nurses in a typed line; their names dented the paper and every “e” was crooked. A note paperclipped to the list was in Aiden’s block handwriting.
In September of 1940, they were all interviewed and easily cleared of suspicion of foul play related to Flora.
Imogene Wright, now Mulroney, in Henley-on-Thames. She is married with one daughter named Iris Taber, also of Henley-on-Thames.
Frances Arkwright passed away a year after the war.
Maeve Muldoon is married with six children and lives in Glasgow.
Lilly Carnigan is a spinster and lives in Birmingham.
Sincerely,
Aiden
Attached were their addresses and phone numbers. Hazel’s heartbeat raced.
“What’s that?” Barnaby’s voice surprised her, and she dropped the letter. It fluttered to the floor, where he picked it up.
“Good morning,” she said, kissing his rough cheek. “Did you sleep all right?”
“Good morning, love.” He squinted at the note. “What’s this about?”
“The four nurses from Binsey. Remember I told you I visited Aiden, that police inspector I know?”
He looked at her, his eyes shaded. “You will never let this go, will you? For your whole life you will endlessly chase this loss.”
“That’s unfair, Barnaby. How could anyone not pursue this?”
He set the note on the table and readied to leave. “I have morning office hours. Must head out.”
“This early?” So much doubt now between them. And he looked hurt by the question.
“Yes, I have to go, love.” He kissed her. “See you tonight.”
“Barnaby—” she said as he walked out.
He looked over his shoulder, but he was already moving away. “Yes?”
“I love you,” she said. She didn’t know how to make this better. Or anything else, for that matter.
“I love you, too.” But his response rang hollow as the door opened and shut.
Imogene’s daughter.
An only child.
Iris.
CHAPTER 34
February 1940
It was after the Imbolc that Hazel started writing down the Whisperwood stories in school notebooks. She hid them in the bottom dresser drawer beneath folded shirts and pants, beneath a silk drawer liner Bridie had sewn for them. They nestled right next to the daily sketches from Harry.
Even though Imbolc was to be the start of spring, winter had its last say that late February. A snowstorm raged for two days, covering the land in a veil of white that shut them in the house with a roaring fire, their schoolwork, and piles of books. They would go outside to play in the snow and return with numb toes or fingers, then warm themselves by the fire as feeling returned with electric tingles. Bridie made steaming cocoa and they all wished for sugar to sweeten it.
All the while, Hazel kept writing.
If you were born knowing, and to be honest we all are, you will know how to find your way through the woodlands to the shimmering doors that are meant for you. They lead to the land made for you.
It became her routine every night to add to these stories in their tiny bedroom off the kitchen. With Bridie’s wireless music playing low, Flora closed her eyes to sleep as Hazel scribbled in notebooks until she couldn’t keep her own eyes from fluttering shut. She wrote of the day’s activities, yet it was more than a list; she added magical elements, as if Whisperwood had ceased being imaginary and entered their world. That owl slipped from the bonds of the imaginary and watched them at the riverside with Harry. These worlds braided together as she wrote and months passed.
* * *
On the twentieth of May, Flora and Hazel raced to the meadow and found it transformed into a noisy, chaotic land of bell-shaped tents and soldiers. Terrified that the evil man had arrived in Oxford, they ran home to Bridie, who explained they needed to stay clear—it was an operation to help the British Expeditionary Force and allied troops who’d been saved from a French seaport called Dunkirk; the men gathered there had been rescued. They were Belgian and French and British and had been brought here before being sent to their next assignment.
The morning after the soldiers’ arrival, Harry, Flora, and Hazel ran out the door just after breakfast. The morning sun rose across a silver sky as Bridie headed into town on errands. Flora was waddling, imitating a mama duck leading her ducklings to the river. Harry laughed and picked her up to swing her around just as they reached the river’s edge.
At the same time, they all saw the men and encampment. They stopped perfectly still to gaze across the river to the tents perched on the green carpet of Port Meadow’s pasture. Men in British Expeditionary Troop uniforms—brown as earth and green as olives, buttons and bars and medals pinned on the fabric—were marching into the area. Others walked around, looking dazed, as if they’d just woken.
“They’re from Dunkirk,” Harry said in a low voice, as if it were a secret, which it wasn’t. Hazel had read all about it in the Oxford Mail, and Bridie had already explained. But Hazel let Harry go on, allowing him to feel smart. “They were evacuated because Hitler invaded France and we had to get them all out of there.”
We, he’d said. By “we,” he’d meant Britain, and he was proud.
“When I can, I will join them,” he added.
Hazel faced Harry. “No, you will not.”
“Of course I will,” he said in a louder voice, as if trying to convince himself. “I only have three more years, and I can join. I’d go now, but Mum would rat me out for lying about my age.”
“Don’t do it,” Hazel said, thinking of her papa and the day of his leaving. She looked away from Harry, for fear she’d cry at the very idea of him leaving and never returning.
A mist hung over the meadow, rising from the flowing river like a ghost. The pinnacles of an Oxford church loomed in the distance watching over the rescued people. Flora held to Berry, and Hazel sidled closer to Harry, an instinct that grew every day. “You cannot go where you might be killed. Your mum wouldn’t bear it.”
Harry moved just enough to meet her gaze and she saw the question—could you bear it? But she wouldn’t answer the unasked question, not even with her eyes.
“Hazel?” Flora pulled at the edges of Hazel’s flowered dress, the one that had just in the past month become at least an inch shorter.
Hazel crouched down. “Yes?”
“Is Papa over there?”
Hazel understood Flora’s confusion. The last time Flora had seen her papa, he’d been wearing one of those uniforms. A sob grew in Hazel’s throat and she swallowed it. “No. He’s gone, Flora. You know that.”
“How do you know?” Flora swatted at Hazel, hitting her thigh with a helpless cry. “He could be there right now. Maybe he didn’t die. Maybe he’s one of them…” She pointed across the river and broke free, running toward the water.
