The Secret Book of Flora Lea: a Novel, page 26
“She was right here sleeping like she does every afternoon, just fine as could be.” Hazel stomped her feet on the blanket just a few yards from the muddy river. Her wellies dented the earth, divots the size of her feet.
Harry’s face was so pale that Hazel thought he might faint. “I went to find Hazel,” he said. “I didn’t want to wake Flora.”
Aiden Davies wrote in a notebook he’d pulled from his pocket. His cheeks were rough with a beard just starting to grow in.
When Hazel and Harry had seen Flora was gone, Harry had bolted back to the house to tell Bridie while Hazel ran up and down the riverbank, screaming “Flora Lea!” so many times now her throat was raw and burning.
In a few minutes, Harry had returned, calling Flora’s name, too. Bridie went to Father Fenelly’s to summon the police, and then together they’d all searched the riverside. They spread out along the banks of the river and into the woodlands all around, up to Wytham Woods and beyond. Some ran to the boathouse where the river split before joining itself again on the other side.
Flora Lea!
The police arrived fast and loud, with sirens screeching along Binsey Lane. Hazel, Bridie, and Harry covered as much ground as they could while Bridie asked Hazel questions. She wasn’t accusing; she was too kind for that.
Where did you go? Why was she alone? How long? What was she doing?
Harry was the one who told his mum, “Hazel was upset because I said something dumb, and she ran away, but just right to the glade. I ran after her. We weren’t gone five minutes.”
“How far can a little girl go in five minutes?” Bridie asked, her face contorted with fear.
Hazel wasn’t so sure it was only five minutes. She wanted to reach backward to the moment she ran away from Harry. She’d never leave her sister. Not ever. What had she done?
Thoughts bounced and tangled; all of them coming too fast, accompanied by a metallic taste at the back of her tongue.
At the river’s edge, Hazel’s foot skidded. The water was muddy, churned-up, and angry in its run, its edges soft with shadows falling in dark stains, the water moving faster with the previous night’s rainstorm filling its banks.
Hazel spotted the muddy fur and screamed. Berry’s head and right arm were in the shallows of the river, his body and legs in the soft silt, almost swallowed by the brown rush and green reeds. She grabbed at the teddy bear’s arm.
“Here!” Hazel called out. Everyone ran to join her; the two policemen and Bridie and Harry, staring down at the river as if expecting Flora to be bobbing atop it, waving at them.
Aiden Davies let out a groan and looked to Hazel.
“Is this hers?”
“Yes. She never goes anywhere without Berry.”
Word spread fast, and Mr. Nolan and Miss Slife, the Baldwin twins, and some schoolchildren with their parents arrived. The crowd was rushing to the riverbanks when Aiden called out, “Do not go near there. We have to look for footprints.”
The group halted as Aiden methodically moved along the edge, slogging through the reeds, peeking inside the watery hollows under bent tree branches. “I don’t see any footprints,” he said, as if this was good news. But Hazel knew what it meant: Flora had gone into the river and hadn’t stepped out.
She knew what she had to do: Hazel sat on the earth, soft and cold, yanking off her wellies and thick woolen socks, tossing them to the ground. Before anyone could notice or stop her, she jumped into the river, ignoring the cold and how swiftly and murkily it moved.
These were the shallows, and Hazel had entered them in the summer with Harry, when Imogene babysat Flora. They’d jumped in to cool off, the water a slap of wonder and luxury as they dug their feet in the silt below and let the river rush past them like smooth hands.
The river was frigid and higher than when she’d swum with Harry, and she sank to her waist and found purchase in the slippery, unstable silt below. With a deep breath that ran across her raw throat, she ducked under the surface, opening her eyes and letting her palms travel along the sifting ground. She found nothing but rocks. She rose and dove under again.
She ignored them hollering her name, telling her to stop, to get out, Harry’s voice above them all. Then came a pain in her shoulder—someone was dragging her, pulling her by her arm. She fought back, but it was useless. Aiden Davies was bigger, stronger—made of steel, it seemed. “Stop it, Hazel,” he said. “We’ll find her. Stop!”
The policeman had his fingers around her numb arm in a grip that dented her skin and would leave a bruise. The gathered townspeople stared at her. Hazel only knew she was cold because her body was shivering, her teeth slamming into each other, but she didn’t feel cold, not the way she understood feeling cold. She felt only a great yawning despair, similar but even larger than when she’d heard her papa was gone.
“Where’s the hag?” she screamed. She yanked her arm from the policeman but he wouldn’t release her. She slapped at him, hit him. “Don’t you see? Mrs. Marchman is the only one not here. She took Flora, I know it. She took Flora to replace Kelty.”
Aiden released Hazel and picked up the blanket, the last place Flora had been, and he wrapped it around Hazel. “Go home. Get warm. Let us do our job.”
Hazel looked at him, didn’t nod with agreement, but instead ran away at full speed. They would assume she’d be headed home, but she remembered the way to Mrs. Marchman. Her bare feet smacked against the soft ground, then along the dirt road. She passed The Perch, its door left open as Mr. Nolan had run to the river to help. She passed the low-slung thatch-roofed schoolhouse, past the American nurse riding her bike with wild Queen’s Anne lace filling her basket, waving in the wind with their clusters of white.
Hazel must save Flora.
This was not a magical tale; this was her sister.
This was real life.
She heard Harry running behind her. He didn’t call her name, but he was there. Together they’d free Flora from the clutches of the hag. Mrs. Marchman, with her wiry hair and yellow nails and the stench of liquor and sweat, who must have been watching and waiting in the woods until she could steal Flora to replace Kelty.
Aiden Davies might believe that Flora had fallen into the river and drowned, but Hazel would prove him wrong.
The yard in front of Mrs. Marchman’s house was a slipshod array of a shattered world: a deflated tire on its side with grass sprouting from its middle, a busted hoe with bent and rusted teeth, a defeated white fence flattened over a dead garden. The front door’s green paint was peeling and blistered with age, and when Hazel reached it, she banged on it with her fist. Harry arrived behind her, gasping.
Mrs. Marchman opened the door wearing the same dreary dress she always did. Her long hair was pulled back into a braid. Blinking into the sunlight, she lifted a wrinkled hand to shade her eyes. “What do you want?” she asked.
Hazel could smell a yeasty aroma waft from the interior of her squalid home, the stench of a basement or a cement storage cellar.
“Give Flora back!” Hazel screamed.
Mrs. Marchman stared at them and narrowed her eyes in confusion, and Hazel immediately knew that she’d been wrong. This wretched woman didn’t have the ability to steal away anyone. She was addled, confused, and completely unaware of the great drama taking place beside the nearby River Thames.
Hazel’s legs gave way beneath her, but Harry caught her as she fell. He lowered her to the ground and held her while Mrs. Marchman regarded them coldly.
Harry ignored the hag and pulled Hazel in close. “We’ll find her.”
Hazel closed her eyes, wanting it all to disappear. Instead, she recalled a nightmare she’d had of Flora falling through Frideswide’s treacle well at the edge of a cemetery.
The well.
Alice’s treacle well.
Hazel’s teeth chattered. She grabbed the collar of Harry’s sweater. “The well,” she said.
If Hazel had not allowed Flora to enter the shimmering door in the woodlands, she might instead go to her spot at the well, where the Dormouse told Alice three sisters lived at its bottom.
Harry pulled Hazel to her feet. He looked to Mrs. Marchman. “If you have a phone, please call the police and tell them to meet us at the chapel.”
She nodded and slammed the door as Hazel and Harry ran toward the church. Harry knew a shortcut through the Oxfordshire fields. Heather swiped his corduroys and Hazel’s bare legs, the nettles catching the edges of her feet with the ground soft and giving. The day was sinking toward evening, and ahead she saw the chapel steeple, piercing the setting sun like a needle in a pink balloon. Slanted and cracked, the gravestones in the cemetery glistened in waning sunlight.
Hazel was terrified this day would end without Flora beside her, that darkness would cover this land. Flora had never been alone at dark, always curled tightly to Hazel’s side.
When they arrived at the well, Aiden Davies was already there with Father Fenelly and a smattering of the townspeople. Ethan Baldwin was peering into the dark hole, too narrow for a child to enter, but the lure of it fascinating even to him.
“Today’s the feast of St. Frideswide,” Father Fenelly said, his voice soft. “It’s the day Oxford celebrates the day of her death.”
Hazel, sick and dizzy, turned on Father. “I don’t care. I don’t care about the stupid princess. Where is Flora?”
“You called us here?” Aiden asked Hazel so gently, pressing his palms together in a prayer gesture and holding them against his chest.
“Yes. If Flora ran away, she would come here. She thought it was magical…”
“Magical?” Another policeman, a new one she had never seen before, spat out the word with contempt, spinning around to face Hazel and Harry. His face was pockmarked with an old illness and his eyes so hidden beneath the folds of his lids that they looked pressed into dough. The man shifted his hat on his head and glared at Aiden. “Coming here was a waste of time. It’s obvious she’s in the river.”
Aiden took off his coat, a dark blue wool one with fat brass buttons, and threw it over Hazel’s shoulders. “You’re going to get sick if you do not go home and get warm.”
The running, the fear, the knowledge that this was all her fault swamped Hazel with dizziness. Haloes of sunlight flickered around all the faces at the well, the glistening water at the edge of the dark rock like diamonds of the treacle—it all swam before her, melting. She was the one in the river, drowning, gasping for breath, going under.
CHAPTER 42
March 1960
The night before leaving for Paris with Barnaby, Hazel dreamed of Harry. He was standing at the edge of the river surrounded by wildflowers growing so fast he was watching them thrust through the earth. He laughed as the red and yellow and orange flowers opened their petaled faces to the cerulean sky. Hazel was calling his name and he didn’t hear her, over and over she called his name until she awoke. Her neck was cramped and her face smashed against the kitchen table where she’d fallen asleep.
Barnaby was gently shaking her. “Hazel.”
She sat, groaned.
Barnaby stood over her, dressed in his suit and a tie, the university logo on his pocket. “Are you all right?” He grimaced. “You were calling out… that boy’s name.”
She rubbed her face and rotated her head, cranked her neck left and right before gazing at Barnaby. “It was a nightmare and no one could hear me. I was at the river and…”
He lifted her notebook, scanned the pages, and his eyebrows rose. “You’re writing your story? That’s why—you’re reliving it all? Why?”
She stood with a shooting pain in her hip. She’d rested her head on the table somewhere in the middle of the night, in the middle of the writing. What time had that been?
“I need tea,” she said.
She felt him watching as she moved to the kettle and the stove, rubbing her head and trying to wake. She turned to him. “I wanted to finish the story, but I didn’t.”
“Our stories are never finished.” He smiled weakly.
“But I want this one to be done.” Her voice cracked with the truth. “I desperately want those days to be over and in our past. I intended to write down all that happened until now, but I fell asleep writing the day Flora disappeared.” She rubbed at the fatigue. “I’m so sorry about the past two weeks. I’ve been so distracted and distant and…”
“Come here, love.” He held out his arms and she went to him. He rubbed her back and whispered, “It’s all going to be okay.”
“I just wanted to get it out. It’s like those days have been stuck inside of me.” She shuddered against him. “They’ve been living inside me without my permission.”
“Get it out of your system. Get him out of your system.” He kissed her neck.
She lifted her head and gazed into his eyes with a question.
“Harry,” he said. “Get him out of your system, please.”
She moved toward the kettle as it steamed, making a cup of tea without another word. “He’s not the problem. It’s everything else.”
“It’s all right,” he said. “I smoothed everything over with my parents. I explained who Harry was and why you were there. They understood.”
“Thank you,” she said robotically. “But honestly, your parents are the last thing I’m worried about.”
“You realize we leave tonight”—he glanced at his watch—“in ten hours, don’t you?”
She turned to him with a forced smile. “The Night Ferry. I’ve been thinking about it for so long. Moving across the English Channel in the night, in a train on a ferry! How amazing and posh is that?”
From the inside pocket of his coat, Barnaby produced two tickets. “We’ll take Charing Cross to Victoria and board the sleeping car. They have catering onboard. When the train arrives in Dover, it uncouples from the tracks and the entire car drives onto the ship. We’ll wake in Paris!”
“Imagine that.” She kissed him.
“Yes,” he added. “Then to the Le Meurice hotel, followed by macaroons and the Louvre and red wine and…” He swept her backward as if they were dancing, and she wished she felt as free and light as she feigned. He brought her upright and kissed her. “But for now I must work and you, my dear, must pack—although I hope you won’t be wearing clothes all the time.” He kissed her one more time and winked before leaving.
* * *
Charing Cross Station’s black clock above the ticker tape of train schedules read six p.m. Barnaby pushed the trolley with one hand and used his other to steady the stacked-up luggage threatening to tip. He and Hazel hustled toward Platform 7. With each step forward, she felt something tugging her backward, a rope pulling at her that she would cut if she knew how, but the best she could do was ignore it.
She walked beside Barnaby in her smartest traveling suit: a red tweed skirt and matching jacket with big black buttons. Her outfit was completed by black ballet shoes and a pillbox hat. She would not arrive in Paris looking anything less than chic.
The evening’s mellowing sky was visible above the open latticework arching over the station. Posters announced Moss Bros. clothing and Guinness beer, red and white British Union Jack flags fluttered from the roof, porters in black hats pushed carts of tipping luggage, and children trailed behind their frazzled parents amid the grind, puff, and screech of arriving trains.
Hazel’s two suitcases were filled with the best of her wardrobe, from silk dresses with matching hats to lingerie she’d bought just for the trip—there were still tags on the straps of nightgowns and demi cup bras with lace.
Barnaby juggled the suitcases off the trolley, cursing as her smaller black one landed on his foot.
Maybe she should just jump on a plane to America, track down the author, and demand an explanation. Tell me now! Who are you? Where did you find this story? Are you hiding my sister? She’d gone as far as she could here in England, tracked down every source she could think of, and hit her head on dead ends as dense as brick walls.
What if she grabbed his arm right now and told him, Barnaby, love, I think we should change our plans and instead of a trip to Paris we should fly to Boston. It’ll be grand!
How absurd. How mad. If she wanted to blow up their life and their relationship, if she wanted to end it all as she had every other relationship before him, that would be the perfect plan. But that wasn’t what she wanted. She wanted to stick it out; she wanted love that lasted; she wanted to walk through life with someone who loved her and whom she loved in return.
If she kept running backward, she would never quite be able to run forward. Even if a miracle had occurred and Flora had survived to tell the story and carry it across the sea, even then, six-year-old Flora was still gone. Even if Hazel found her sister, she would not find the sister she lost.
Her obsession with reasons and explanations, her desperate need to make meaning of the meaningless and sense of the senseless was destroying what she had right here, right now. She watched Barnaby move toward the train and she followed. The olive-colored train car rolled to the platform, smoke pouring from its stack as its brakes gave a high squeal. He smiled at her. “Off we go.”
The door hissed open, and Hazel stepped after him onto the metal stair of the first-class sleeper car. Barnaby held out his hand to help her up. Above Hazel in the train stood a woman with an owl brooch on her blue suit jacket.
“Oh, pardon me,” she said, moving sideways to make room for Hazel.
An owl.
Whisperwood.
“Hazel!” Kelty’s voice, or was Hazel imagining it? Then again. “Hazel! Stop.”
Barnaby turned, letting go of Hazel’s hand, and she stumbled on the stair. Quickly regaining her footing, she stepped back to the platform and spotted Kelty bounding toward her, with Midge fast at her heels.
“What the bloody hell?” Barnaby said. He glared at Kelty.
“Midge!” Hazel bent down and hugged her goddaughter, who wore a bright blue jacket with a lace Peter Pan collar, beginning to look so grown-up and proper. “How’s my girl?”
