Chapter 20
Florence
Devonshire, Winter
Florence was chewing her pen and gazing out of the window.
Hélène’s last letter was still circling through her mind.
She could not believe Suzanne had been killed after all her bravery over the past few years.
Thinking of Suzanne, of Henri, of her sisters and the uncertainty they were still living in, Florence’s mind was returning more frequently to her memories of the war in France.
And of that dark day she wished she could forget.
Now she picked up her pen and began scribbling in the notebook she’d started back then, after what had been the worst day of her life. Jack had been there. Helped her. Carried her away from the dead bodies of the two men who had held her down and whom élise had shot.
Jack had witnessed Florence lying bruised and traumatised, half-naked and bent double over the kitchen table.
He had seen, and she felt a wave of shame.
He had carried her away from what had happened there.
Could seeing her like that, so vulnerable and exposed, have affected how he viewed her now?
She recoiled at the awful memories of that day.
Dirty, sullied, she hadn’t been able to speak, wanting only to wipe the violation from her mind.
The journal became her only outlet. The only way she could face the shame, the guilt, the rage.
Logically she knew the rape had not been her fault and yet the feeling of blame lingered.
It comes back to me, she wrote. The danger that lurks behind the door.
The closed door. The door that I, in my innocence, freely opened.
The door I opened myself, through which the violence came into my house – into my body – into my soul.
Even as I fought and struggled, I knew I had been the one who’d let it in.
And now the danger behind the door never quite leaves me.
Her eyes blurred and she put down her pen.
Since coming to England, she’d forced it to the back of her mind, especially while so much of her life had been in limbo.
But now that things had settled a bit, and she’d started her job at the manor – preparing the evening meals and lunch and dinner at the weekends – the memories kept coming back.
Back, back, back. And she couldn’t stop them.
With her notebook before her on the kitchen table, she forced herself to face them and eventually, one page at a time, found some solace. Where once she’d baked and made jam, now she wrote down her darkest feelings.
Jack was away all the time – usually in London she thought, though he would never quite say – and despite her work at the manor, Florence felt very alone.
She just needed someone to talk to and thought about tramping up to the phone box at the crossroads and calling the number Bruce had given her, but something kept stopping her.
She turned on the wireless. It was battery-operated, and she knew she’d need to get it to the garage to charge it up or it would soon die on her.
The news was still all about the V2s the Germans had been using since early September.
They’d got the nickname ‘flying gas pipes’ because the government had hidden the truth and blamed the damage and deaths in London on gas mains explosions.
Now everybody knew they were ‘bloody Hitler’s’ rockets.
She turned the wireless off; it was too depressing. Instead she read for a while. The book about Malta she’d borrowed from the library was full of words, but not enough pictures. Most of all she wanted to see it, so she imagined a sunny place with a sparkling blue sea and soft breezes.
She glanced at the freezing day beyond the kitchen windows.
No soft breezes out there. Winter now held the countryside in its grip.
Every morning icicles hung from the outer frames of the windows and inside the house Jack Frost had been at work, decking the glass with elaborate frozen ferns, although not in the kitchen. The Aga saw to that.
She fetched her woollen tweed coat, wrapped a thick scarf around her neck, pulled on her hat and mittens, and left the house to tramp along the flat water meadow in front of it.
The hoar frost she had woken to was still very much in evidence and already the cold was creeping into her bones.
She’d thought the stream might have frozen over and walked over the rough grass to look.
There was ice but the water was still flowing.
She spotted a strange little bird that appeared to be swimming underwater.
She took a closer look and was enchanted when it bobbed up, shook itself and curtseyed before balancing on a stone to sing, and when it began a sweet melodic song, she decided to look it up in Jack’s bird book at home.
Such a jolly, fat little bird, dark above, with a huge white bib in front and a short tail, it shouldn’t be hard to find.
She turned back for home.
Long before she reached the house, she saw the ravens. Four of them – big, black and bossy. She didn’t like them one bit and since their arrival a week or so before she’d felt uneasy.
That night she fed the kitten, glad that she’d finally agreed to take him, and he curled up next to her on the bed.
But the wind howled around the house, the windows rattled as the rain beat against the glass and the walls seemed to be closing in on her.
She switched on her bedside lamp but then there was a loud crack, and the lamp went out.
In the dark she fished for matches and candles in the drawer of her bedside table.
Jack had told her the electrical supply was fragile during the winter and insisted she must always be prepared.
She eventually found what she needed and stuffed the candle into a holder before putting a match to its wick.
The little flame flickered, and elongated shadows loomed in the corners of the room.
The storm went on and on, battering the cottage until Florence felt the assault might never end.
She pictured the boiling, turbulent sky, the angry gods, her own body spinning off into the clouds and she pulled the blankets over her head.
It didn’t help. The world had stopped feeling real and in the middle of the night she dreamt she was losing Hélène just as Claudette had lost Rosalie.
In the tangles of her dream everything was wrong.
At the edge of the world, it was black. So awfully black.
Hélène appeared out of the shadows like a spectre in the mist and Florence called to her, shouted until her throat was raw.
‘Stop! Stop!’ In the end Hélène turned, looked straight through her as if she didn’t even see her and then she laughed, a bitter strangled laugh, before walking away and disappearing over the edge into the blackness.
The abyss. Hélène had fallen off the edge of the world, but no, she hadn’t fallen after all.
Florence had pushed her. Pushed her own sister over the edge into the blackness.
She woke screaming and gasping in horror, her heart pounding and her cheeks wet with tears.
Although feverish now, she managed to sleep a little more as the wind howled and phantom ravens flew around her room.
When she woke and tried to get up her legs gave way.
She shivered and climbed back into bed where she lay all day, veering between icy cold and unbearable heat.
She sweated until the bedclothes grew damp but felt too sick to change them.
She moved to the other side of the bed where the sheets were dry.
When that side grew damp too and she realised the kitten was gone, she curled up into a ball to comfort herself.
Florence woke to an icy room, with a pounding headache and so cold she felt as if her bones had frozen.
Was it the next day, or the one after that?
She pulled the bedclothes over her head again but when she thought she heard someone moving around downstairs she attempted to get out of bed.
She could tell she wasn’t as ill as she had been, but her legs still felt weak and she soon gave up.
Back in bed again, she listened anxiously.
Could it be Belinda? Then she heard her name being called.
Jack. Thank goodness. She called out in a feeble croaking voice, ‘In here. I’m in here. ’
She heard him climbing the stairs and then the door opened wide, and he was there.
‘Dear God, what the devil …?’ He marched over to open the curtains as she struggled to sit up. He came over to her, concern in his eyes. ‘You’re unwell.’
She nodded.
He stroked the damp hair from her face. ‘Jesus, you’re freezing.’
‘I’ve been hot, I’ve been cold, and I can’t stand up.’
‘Aga’s gone out. That’s why it’s so cold up here.’
‘I’m sorry. You said to never let it go out.’
‘You were too sick.’
‘What’s wrong with me?’
‘Bad case of the flu, I reckon. It’s going round. Now I’m going to fetch you a glass of water, then I’ll stoke the Aga and light all the fires, including the one in here.’
‘I don’t usually get so ill.’
‘I know. Lie back down for now. Once the house is warm, we’ll see what’s to be done. This room needs airing.’
‘I can’t get down the stairs.’
He smiled. ‘I’ll think of something.’
‘There were ravens. I knew something bad was going to happen when I saw them.’
He brought her a glass of water and she held it in a shaking hand. Then he went to warm up the house.
A little later he was back, and she struggled to sit up again as he perched on the bed beside her.
‘The fire is going great guns, so I’m going to carry you down to the sitting room. I need to change your sheets and open the windows. I’ll light a fire in here a little later.’
She nodded.
‘The Aga takes longer to heat up so I can’t make you a hot drink yet. Now I’m going to put an arm around your shoulders and then your legs. Ready?’
He lifted her out of the bed.