The Wild Dark Flowers Read Online Free PDF Page B

who had died as her daughter was born, and whom she herself she had never really known and now would never know.
    Sessy had duly come into Rutherford, though still hidden away by the sheer distance of the nursery from the main house. As often as she could without being a nuisance to the sturdy woman who looked after Sessy, Louisa would creep in to play with the little girl.
    “You needn’t be embarrassed,” Louisa said to Jack now. “She’s up in the nursery, you know.”
    “I know.”
    She took a step closer to him. “She’s a dear little thing,” she said.
    “That I wouldn’t be party to, as I don’t see much of her.”
    “Very strong, and rather willful, I’m afraid.” He made no comment. “I’ve been wondering . . . do you think it’s too soon to find her a little pony to ride?”
    He looked surprised. “She’s only a bairn.”
    “She’s seventeen months old, and walking.”
    “Aye. Maybe.”
    “Well, do you think it’s time to sit her on a pony? I’m sure she would love it. I had Grey Goose when I was ever so little.”
    He smiled. “That were a grand little one.”
    “Yes,” Louisa agreed. “I still miss her, you know.”
    They gazed at each other in silence; after a moment, Jack dropped his eyes and seemed to take a great interest in the sandy gravel under his feet.
    “I’ll ask Father.”
    “Aye,” he agreed.
    “And will you help me find the right sort of animal?” He raised his eyes. “I can’t very well do it without you,” she told him. She smiled when he shrugged by way of reply. “That’s settled, then,” she murmured. She turned to go, stopped, and looked back at him. “Do you remember when we danced in the orchard?” she asked.
    “I do.”
    She smiled hesitantly. “Carefree days,” she murmured. And, almost to herself, added, “I was such a little beast most of my life, I’m sure. So pleased with myself generally. So thoughtless.” She looked at him. “Did you ever dance again to that song?”
    “I don’t dance much,” he told her. “There’s not the opportunity.”
    “It’s very frivolous, I suppose, to talk about dancing just now.”
    “I suppose,” he agreed.
    She turned to go, then stopped and looked back at him. “You’re not going to enlist, are you?”
    “Your father has said he can’t spare me.”
    “But you’ll not listen to all this talk of going anyway?”
    “I can’t say,” he replied quietly. “I must go in time, I think.” She frowned; he nodded at her and made a kind of shrugging gesture. “I’m away down to the farm then, if there’s nothing else.”
    “No, no, of course,” she told him.
    And she watched him go, until he was out of sight beyond the gates of the yard.
    *   *   *
    A s the motor taxi trundled along the narrow lanes from York station that evening, exhaustion crept up on Harry Cavendish.
    It was strange, because he had managed to keep awake all the way from London, relishing the green peacefulness of the world beyond the train window. Other passengers had engaged him in conversation too, eager to hear his version of the war.
    Perhaps it was the strain of keeping a positive slant on his stories—it was not done to suggest even a fragment of the nightmare in Flanders, it was perceived a duty to be insouciant, even offhand—but it was only when he stepped onto the platform at York that an overwhelming need to sleep gripped him.
    It was not long before his head tipped back and his eyes closed as the taxi went along. He felt himself to be lolling gently on a warm tide, and the patchwork landscape that moments before had been his home country now became monochrome reconnaissance photographs of France all laid out in an endless line, one after the other. Scribbled lines in the mud that were once farms and fields and cottages.
    His hands were relaxed in his lap, despite the thick bandage on the left; but in his dream he was hefting the camera in a mahogany case, weighing ten pounds, over the side of the