The Secret Book of Flora Lea: a Novel, page 25
“Mum, can I?”
Mum didn’t answer, and Hazel’s gaze wandered to the fluttering ribbons. “What are those?” she asked.
Kelty looked sideways, and her face fell. “Some of the girls trade ribbons. Their parents bring them, and they trade them to have every color. The mums braid them into their hair and then they bring even more of them.”
“Mum!” Hazel cried out. “You have to bring Kelty some ribbons.”
“I will, darling.”
“Kelty must come back with me,” Hazel said. She lifted her gaze to her mum, who now stood on the other side of the bed, stroking Kelty’s arm.
“She isn’t going anywhere,” said a stern voice from behind. The nurse with the lace cap had arrived at the bedside of the child next to Hazel. The girl, her eyes closed, was no older than Flora, and there were black letters written on her forehead: M ¼. The nurse was short enough that she would look like a child if not for her graying hair and uniform. Obviously in charge, she read the chart at the end of the child’s bed, then turned to Hazel and Mum.
“I am Matron Lane, and this young lady isn’t going anywhere yet.”
Hazel stared at the little girl in the other bed. “Why is there writing on her head?”
The nurse stared at Hazel as if deciding what to say, then softly told her, “In an emergency, it is the best way we have to quickly communicate. The notation means she’s had a fourth dose of morphine.” Matron Lane placed her hand on Kelty’s bedside rails. “Kelty, is your headache better?”
“Much better,” Kelty said. “Nothing hurts. Can I please go now?”
“Not yet.” The nurse looked to Mum. “Are you kin?”
“Yes,” Hazel answered, “we are kin.”
Matron Lane offered a weary half smile at Hazel, then repeated the question to Mum. “You are kin?”
Mum shook her head.
Matron Lane gently touched the bandage on Kelty’s forehead. “She will be just fine. One more day to make sure she is nourished, and her aunt has time to come here and retrieve her. These are terrible days, to be sure.”
“She’s like my sister,” Hazel said. “Please let her come home with me.”
Tears filled Kelty’s eyes as she looked up. She tried to be brave and said, “Hazel, we will find each other again.”
* * *
Flora curled into the curve of Hazel’s body, her back resting against Hazel’s tummy. Bridie had told Hazel that Flora hadn’t left their bedroom in the cottage all day, that she’d waited there, clinging to Berry, until Hazel returned. It was a moonless night.
“Tell me,” Flora said.
“I’m too tired to make anything up,” Hazel said, already near sleep, feeling the comforting soft edges of oblivion.
“No, tell me about Kelty.”
Hazel decided not to tell Flora of the hospital or the bandages or the ribbons or the child with writing on her forehead. “Kelty is all right. Her aunt Bernice will take her home tomorrow.” Hazel took a deep breath. It was hard to say but she must. “We cannot leave here. This is our real home, and we have to stay safe. Until this is over, we can’t go anywhere else.”
“Not even Whisperwood?” Flora’s voice cracked.
“No.”
Only then did Flora cry, pulling away from Hazel and curling into herself, Berry grasped tight. Hazel reached over and rubbed her sister’s back. After the horrible things she’d seen that day, she knew their land had been an illusion. Whisperwood and its sparkling river made of stars—of course none of it was real and true. Child’s play. There were no stars in the rushing river; it was just muddy water running to the sea as it always had and always would. She was fifteen years old, and the war was real. No more fairy tales or fake queens or shimmering doors. She had to protect her sister, help Bridie, and keep them safe.
The end of Whisperwood wasn’t Hazel’s fault; the bombs and the war and the evil man with the mustache had ended their story.
CHAPTER 39
October 19, 1940
St. Frideswide’s Day
The temperature was unusually high for October. Bridie told Hazel it would probably be the last warm day in Binsey before winter set its roots into the hard cold ground. She had trimmed the garden to its nub, and the trees outside the cottage had shed their leaves.
Bridie’s music didn’t play quite so often these days as Churchill’s voice echoed in the house with news, the BBC giving updates while Harry and Hazel did their best to focus on their schoolwork, to do as both Bridie and Churchill pleaded: “Never surrender.”
As the months had passed, Harry and Hazel never spoke of the kiss and their night under the stars, and yet the silence hadn’t made it matter less, for whenever her mind wandered she thought about Harry’s touch. She remembered her head on his shoulder, and the way his arm rested under her neck, the way he smelled like wood smoke and soap. The desire for him consumed her in the oddest hours: eating dinner, running through the woods, taking Flora into town with Bridie for errands. His touch. His lips. She didn’t understand what had happened and yet she wanted it to happen again.
And again.
She found that the more she wanted him, the more brusque and short she became with him. She snapped at Harry when he asked her a question; she ignored him when he asked her how she liked the new hat his mum had knitted her; she took the last bite of cake and didn’t share. The anger was a shield to keep her from begging him to touch her one more time.
Meanwhile, Flora was learning her letters, sounding them out one by one. A hand-painted alphabet hung in squares of paper strung across the back wall of the living room next to the table where their schoolwork was done each day. Harry had drawn the letters in varying colors, each with an image below that started with the letter. A is for arrow, B is for balloon. He didn’t choose the regular nursery school words like apple; he chose his own or ones that Flora chose with him. R was for river. S was for star. W was for whisper. O was for owl. These words were hints of their secret land and yet Whisperwood was gone.
They now had blackout curtains that Bridie had sewn herself on the Singer machine in the corner of her bedroom, and the new rations had Bridie waiting in line for enough meat for the four of them. Newspapers trumpeted headlines of death and destruction.
But on St. Frideswide’s Day, Bridie packed a picnic basket with cheese and slabs of ham. She sang a song about a tisket and a tasket while folding napkins, slipped in three white china plates with the emblem of Oxford University stamped at its center. On top she placed a neatly folded red wool blanket that they had spread at the river’s banks more times than Hazel could now count. The repeated rituals made the children feel safe.
“I must go into Oxford today,” Bridie said that October morning as she patted the red blanket and folded the wicker top over all of it. “I am going to get us a telephone. We need one now in case there is… news.” She kept her gaze on the basket so as not to give away any fear in her eyes.
But Hazel knew what she meant: news of Mum’s injury or death, or something else that was awful. Bridie was taking her wheezing car into Oxford to pay for a new phone and have the lines brought across her sweeping field for only one kind of news: bad.
She gave the basket one more pat, then looked up with that bright smile, crinkling her cheeks into folds. Bridie lifted her black purse with the silver clasp, kissed Harry, Hazel, and Flora on top of their foreheads, and walked out the front door, calling out behind her, “Now go enjoy the day, and watch out for each other.”
Watch out for each other.
* * *
Heather swayed in the breeze as Hazel and Flora ran, their feet trampling through a path they’d taken many times before. Harry ran behind them, carrying the picnic lunch Bridie had packed.
The river ran hard that day, rushing as if late for its destiny.
The children reached the river’s banks and stopped, Flora bumping into Hazel and nearly sending her into the rushing water.
“Flora!”
“Sorry.”
When Harry reached them, he dropped the wicker basket to the grass. His cheeks were red from running. Hazel tried not to notice that the muscles in his arms were bigger than they were even a month ago. It was like a man within was pushing out of the boy he was. Hazel spread the red blanket on the grass and the three of them sat cross-legged.
Over the past months, Hazel did whatever she could to have some part of her body touch Harry’s. An elbow during schoolwork as he read, his lips moving silently to the words, a knee as they sat there at the river, a hand during prayer. It was a strangely vivid feeling when their skin met, even through jerseys and gloves and stockings. She felt she could both breathe deeper and could not breathe at the same time. She watched his face for even the smallest recognition that he felt the same.
In her dreams at night, he’d take her hand or touch her cheek or hold her close while a storm howled outside. She even made stories about them in her head, nothing she’d ever write down for fear that he or Bridie might find them. But in her stories, she and Harry lived in the house, just the two of them. They wandered not only through the woodlands but through life. He kissed her good morning and kissed her goodnight. They shared a bedroom—what went on in that bedroom was unclear, but the door closed with them inside.
In place of the Whisperwood stories, as if Hazel’s heart and mind could not bear being absent of tales, in rushed new ones about her and Harry.
At the riverside, with him beside them, Flora was beginning to doze off for her afternoon nap. “Just one more of our stories…”
“Shh,” Hazel told her, feeling the heat of their secret while Harry unpacked the basket.
She rubbed Flora’s back until she fell into a soft sleep. Harry leaned back on his elbows and smiled. “So, then tell me one of your stories.”
“How can you know… how?” Her voice was sharp.
He looked confused, as if she’d slapped him across the face.
“Did I say something wrong?” he asked, shifting on the blanket and looking at her, his eyelashes long, glinting in the sunlight.
Hazel stood, calculating how he could have possibly heard them speak of Whisperwood. “Have you been spying on us?” Her heart pounded crazily, like one of the hammers Bridie used on the fences.
“No. I would never!” He blushed beneath his freckles.
He stood, and they were face-to-face. “Then how do you know about our stories?” she asked.
Flora lay curled on her side, her teddy close. Her flowered dress with the pink and blue cornflowers surrounded her like a cloud.
Harry’s and Hazel’s gazes locked. Hazel was flooded with embarrassment, as if in hearing her talk about her imagined land Harry had seen her naked.
“I don’t spy,” he said. “We live in a small cottage, you know.”
Hazel took two steps toward him, placed her hands on his chest, and pushed him away. He stumbled backward.
“Don’t listen to us!” she said. “It’s private.”
“Why are you so mad?” he asked, coming closer, just as she always wished he would.
“That story is ours. It’s our secret place. Even Mum doesn’t know.”
It was quiet suddenly. The two of them stood there in the autumn afternoon.
Harry cleared his throat and pulled his wool cap lower. “You have a secret place?”
“I will never tell you,” Hazel said.
“Aw, come on, tell me.” He grinned with that look that made Hazel wish he’d only look at her and never anyone else.
But he had so many of his own things—a mum who sang songs and took them on adventures, a cottage in the middle of a grand field of heather, friends who sought him out and adored him. Hazel would not hand over to him the single possession shared by her and Flora.
Hazel moved closer to him. “Never! It’s ours and not yours!”
She ran, as she often did when she didn’t know what else to do, without knowing where she’d go or why. The path to the riven tree and the cavernous space of Whisperwood was well worn. She reached the grove and slipped inside, nudging to the edge of the dark space so the inside of the tree rested against her back, as it had done so many times.
How long was she there with her eyes closed, with confusion and tears and frustration flowing through her blood? She would, for the rest of her days, wonder this. Her body thrummed, everything rushing in at once: anger and desire, need and fear, loss. Her dead father. Her battered mum; Kelty’s mum; bombs and war and fear.
And how she’d killed Whisperwood, taken it away from Flora.
And then a longing for Harry, his touch, something more than what she had, something that kept her awake at night.
Eventually a rustling came from outside, and her name was called.
It was Harry and she answered him. “In here.”
His face appeared at the slit-opening of the tree; he bent down and crawled in with Hazel. “Look what you found,” he said. “This is so magical.”
Hazel didn’t answer him.
“I didn’t mean to make you so mad.” Harry reached over and touched her cheek so gently it could have been the wind; she closed her eyes. She was falling, sinking, falling… and it was like she’d wished for. His arms were around her, pulling her close. She rested her head on his shoulder, and it fit as if made for her.
He felt like home.
He ran his fingers through her tangles and the sheer joy of the tingles in her scalp calmed her. She lifted her face for whatever came next.
He placed his forehead against hers; she smelled morning tea. He kissed her, and the rest of her roaring thoughts faded away. The kiss was gentle at first, then their arms and legs tangled, and the ache of longing transformed into something she had less control over: desire.
He nibbled the edge of her ear, murmuring, “Mum said to watch out for each other. I won’t stop now.”
“Watch out for each other.”
A ringing keened in Hazel’s ears, a high-pitched sound that had her pushing Harry away and sent her feet moving again, toward the river, toward Flora, toward the red blanket on the cold ground.
Harry’s footsteps followed behind her, the ground shaking. They reached the river’s edge together. There was the blanket with the basket and a piece of cheese; an empty stillness.
Flora was gone.
CHAPTER 40
March 1960
“Pegs, tell me the difference between fairy tales and, say, The Tale of Peter Rabbit or Gulliver’s Travels,” said Wren.
They were tangled together in a canopied bed in London’s Savoy Hotel, and even as Wren’s hand ran down her leg and scooped her closer, Peggy had a hard time believing it was real. Everything had happened so fast: a meeting at midnight in the garden behind his house, the rushed drive to the airport, a day in Boston and its airport, a sleepy all-night plane ride, and soon after a cabbie chattering away in a British accent.
She answered Wren as best she could with the disconnected feel of someone suspecting they might be dreaming.
“Aesop’s are beast tales,” she told him. “And Gulliver is a traveler’s tale and another one… Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a dream tale.”
“Someone has divided up these tales?” he said. “Does it matter what the stories are called?”
“Only to academics who need to finish their doctorate.” She trailed her fingers along his chest. “I’ve always loved Alice the best. I never thought of hers as a dream story, not until I heard it described that way. I’ve had dreams about her dream, which sounds a bit nutty, I know.”
This discussion about fairy tales and stories was one they’d been having since the plane lifted off, since her head rested on his shoulder, and they rose above the clouds to eventually descend into a new land. It was an ongoing conversation punctuated by touch and kiss and a sense of becoming someone else, like a transformation of Proteus the shape-shifting god.
High in the sky, she’d asked, “Wren, can you tell me why you were kicked out of Harvard?”
He’d pulled away from her. She shouldn’t have asked.
“There was a cheating incident in our chemistry class,” he said calmly. “I refused to rat out my pal, and they suspended us all. Eventually, what your mother didn’t tell you was my pal confessed and we were all exonerated. Suspension lifted. I have no idea how she knows anything about it. She’s… wow.”
“Yes, she is.” Peggy had snuggled closer, astounded that she could.
And now in bed in a luxurious hotel as far away from her mother as she’d ever been, she stretched out her arms languorously as Wren said, “Dreams about dreams.” He reached over and gently pulled her to his side. She nodded into his chest, a soft place with downy seagrass-colored hair.
“What a fairy tale is meant to do,” she said, “if it’s meant to do anything at all, Tolkien says, is give us new perspective in our world, the consolation of a happy ending. A recovery of sorts. Like we leave that world to see ours anew. Does that make sense?”
“Like when I leave you, and everything is different; or when I’m with you, and it feels like the world and everything in it is alive and for me?”
Heat rushed through her; his words were as water to parched earth. “I give you new perspective?” she asked, nudging her hip closer to him as he wrapped his leg around hers, their bodies coming together again.
“You are my fairy tale. You always have been,” he said.
CHAPTER 41
October 19, 1940
“When was the last time you saw Flora?” Standing at the river’s edge, Aiden Davies asked Hazel, then Harry, and then Bridie, with such a calm expression on his face that Hazel felt a scream building within, spiraling up and up.
“For me, it was late this morning,” Bridie told him. “When I left the children to drive into Oxford to register for a telephone.”
