Wild Lily Page 2

  The grotto was amazing, built a century ago by the master of the original Lockwood Hall – a very beautiful Queen Anne mansion which had been brutally destroyed to make way for the present monstrosity. Old engravings of the original house were displayed in the corridors, but were hard to make out in the ill-lit passages.

  The new house was entirely panelled in dark oak, impressively expensive but also impressively gloomy. Cosy was a word that did not spring to the tongue. Many of the servants gave in their notice quite soon, especially in the winter when the great boilers in the cellar struggled to keep the chill out of the huge rooms. Antony was used to it, but was always surprised that his father seemed fond of the place and never considered moving. It must have sad memories for him, his wife dying so soon after they had moved in, but Mr Sylvester was not a sentimental nor sensitive man. Antony wondered sometimes if he took after him. He rather hoped not, for his father was not much liked, he noticed, not one to spread bonhomie and delight.

  He spoke little, rarely smiled. He was not imposing to look at, only of average height and build, with fading, disappearing brown hair, severely trimmed, and a large dark moustache that hid most of his lower face. He wore dark suits, impeccably tailored and obviously expensive, and used little round-framed spectacles for reading. Most of that reading was confined to the financial pages of the daily newspapers – Antony had never seen his father reading anything else. It was not surprising that they had little conversation when they did meet, and Antony guessed that his father was relieved when the holidays were over and his son went back to Eton.

  For himself, he preferred being at home and mucking about with his village friends and the wild Lily when she came gardening with her father. He did not work hard at school, got into scrapes, got beaten and harangued that he did not use his intelligence for better things (than making stink bombs and writing rude riddles). He was popular and did not lack for friends, so had no complaints.

  His father showed rather more interest in the impending flying lessons than anything his son usually had to tell him and actually said, ‘I wouldn’t mind trying it out myself if I had the time.’

  ‘When I know how I’ll teach you.’

  Antony could in no way envisage this and knew it wouldn’t happen, but his father gave one of his rare smiles in agreement. They ate and then went their separate ways, his father to his study and Antony to his own room. There was a sitting room, but it was never used. There was no family life in Lockwood Hall.

  MAY, 1921

  3

  Lily was helping her father in the grounds of Lockwood Hall. When she didn’t have other jobs to do – cleaning at the vicarage, running errands for Mrs Carruthers, washing pots in the Queen’s Head or mucking out the livery horses – she helped her father. Squashy trailed along with his dog, Barky, as usual. Squashy was eleven, useless but cheerful. Barky, a small brown mongrel of countless crosses from a village litter, was also useless and cheerful and the two were never apart.

  Gabriel had been instructed to make a smooth strip beyond the lake for Antony’s aeroplane, when it came. ‘I’m a ruddy gardener, not an aerodrome designer,’ her father grumbled. ‘It’s a farm job, flattening and rolling.’

  They stood in the spring sunshine on the side of the lake, looking out away from the house. The lake, clear and deep, ran like a wide river along the natural valley below the house. On two small islands on the far side from the house, someone a long time ago had made the once-fabulous but now decrepit grotto. Antony wanted to land his aeroplane ‘somewhere near the grotto’, on the far side. He was planning to build it a hangar, which would be hidden from the house by trees and the high mound of the grotto itself.

  ‘We’ll ’ave a look at it, and tell Mr Butterworth the state of it, and ’e can make it good,’ Gabriel decided.

  As they were standing outside the house, ‘having a look at it’ entailed a twenty-minute walk to the end of the lake where a bridge crossed it, and back down the other side. Where the bridge crossed over, near to the village road, there was a row of small workers’ cottages that faced the lake, one of which was the home of Gabriel and his children.

  Mr Butterworth was the man who farmed the estate. The estate staff tended to be closely related, descended from the estate workers before them, father to son. They had been severely decimated by the war and were still mainly the old and the young, only half a force, the strong middle contingent lost and buried in French soil. There had once been twelve strong young gardeners, but now there was only Gabriel and six what he called ‘useless young dopes’ from the village, just out of elementary school. He reckoned Lily was worth all six put together, although it wouldn’t occur to him to tell her so.

  They walked along what was to be the landing strip, up as far as the grotto, Gabriel marking the required distance as ordered by Master Antony, and deciding on the best site for the hangar. The space was certainly wide enough, bounded on the far side by the hedge that marked the estate boundary and a lane beyond.

  While Gabriel was pacing out his plans, Lily and Squashy went out to the grotto, attracted as always by this strange, creepy figment of the weird Georgian imagination. There were two islands quite close to the shore, and so close to each other that there was just a strip of water between them. They had been covered with great rocks, imported at great expense, built very high and now covered with a thick canopy of trees and undergrowth and swags of rampant ivy so the water between them was in a tunnel of verdancy.

  On one of the islands the famous grotto had been built inside the rocks. Its entry was beside the water at its narrowest part, a yawning cave mouth, now blocked off with a securely locked iron gate. A landing had been built at the waterside outside the cave mouth for visitors who came by boat, but the island with the grotto in it was near enough to the shore to be connected by a rickety wooden bridge. Lily and Squashy used the bridge, although Lily always thought it would be very romantic to arrive by boat from the open lake, through the tunnel. The lake was supplied with various boats, kept near the house, which the boys used to lark about in, but it was forbidden to go to the grotto. ‘Dangerous!’ they all said on the estate. ‘Horrible!’ ‘Do not go there!’

  Of course they went. Antony knew where the key to the iron grille was kept, and once he had taken them right in there – but all Lily remembered was the awful smell of the underground, the enfolding chill like wings of death, the frightening echo of dropping water, the terrifying dark and Antony’s scornful laugh ricocheting off distant walls. There had been narrow passages going off in all directions, lit only by Antony’s feeble torch. She had been petrified but, as ever, determined not to show weakness in front of Antony, her hero.

  Going to the landing, as they did now, was nice, turning their backs on the grim cave mouth, sitting on the warm stones and dangling their feet in the water. Summer was coming and the water was warm.

  ‘Fancy Antony buying an aeroplane,’ Lily said. ‘I wouldn’t half like a go in it.’

  ‘I don’t want to go,’ Squashy said.

  ‘He’ll take the others. I doubt he’ll take me.’

  Lily had no illusions as to where she stood in the group that made up Antony’s gang: she was only a girl, after all. But she strung along, in spite of the insults, because she loved Antony and wanted to be with him for ever. She adored him. Everything about him: the way he spoke, (Etonian), the way he moved (like a mountain goat, bold and free), the way he looked (like a Greek god), the way he laughed (loudly), the way he swam (like an otter), the way he regarded her (kindly enough). When they were alone together he was really nice; when the others were around he mostly ignored her, but did not send her away. When she told him that she loved him he laughed and said he loved someone else.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Melanie Marsden. I love Melanie Marsden.’

  ‘Oh really, Antony.’ What a disappointment! Mostly for his taste. Lily knew she was worth six of Melanie Marsden. ‘You’ll grow out of it,’ she said.

  �
�So will you then.’

  ‘No. Not me, not ever, not till the day I die.’

  ‘Blimey. That’s a bit thick. What am I supposed to do?’

  ‘Nothing, really. But later on we can get married.’

  ‘I’m not sure about that. I’ve got to marry someone posh.’

  ‘Who says so?’

  ‘My dad would, if you asked him.’

  ‘I won’t ask him. You can make up your own mind when you’re older, surely?’

  ‘I daresay. Melanie Marsden.’

  Lily hit him and they had a fight until Squashy started to cry and attacked Antony with a spade.

  ‘Oh hush, Squashy. It’s only for fun.’ She hugged him. ‘It’s not real.’

  But when she lay in bed at night she thought about it and knew it was for real. Antony could scoff as much as he liked but it made no difference. She was born with it. Whoever he might choose to love Lily would always love him better.

  As she sat now with Squashy, kicking her feet in the water, she laughed, thinking of Antony arriving out of the sky in an aeroplane. How gloriously rich the Sylvesters were! Mr Sylvester went up to London in his white Rolls and saw politicians and investors and bankers and likewise men of power and fame, and obviously he acquired enormous amounts of money – but what for, nobody knew. If they knew they probably wouldn’t understand! Antony himself had no idea how it came about. He took it for granted, being rich enough to have an aeroplane for his birthday.

  Lily knew only too well the gulf that separated her from Antony. He had never been inside her home, just as she had never been inside his, save for a few steps into the kitchen, to deliver flowers. Her home was a small cottage, built for the master workers. Most of the workers lived in the village, but as Gabriel was the head gardener he had been allocated a cottage. The cottage was well maintained, but the inside was Lily’s department and something of a tip, housewifery not being one of her passions. She had to do all the shopping and cooking and do the fires, as well as work for various people in the village and for her father too in the summer, when the gardens needed so much attention. Sitting dangling her feet in the lake by the grotto was a rare moment of idleness, lasting as long as it took Gabriel to survey what was going to be the airfield.

  Not very long.

  ‘Crazy idea. The boy will kill himself for sure.’

  Everyone in the village was saying the same thing. Lily disagreed. ‘He won’t. Aeroplanes are much safer now, since the war.’ If he killed himself, she would die too, she thought.

  ‘Come along. We’ve wasted enough time with this rubbish.’

  And Lily spent the rest of the day on her knees in the herbaceous borders below the windows of the Hall, weeding, her large red hands expertly wrenching dandelions from their moorings, buttercups from their deep and wicked creeping roots, wandering ivy, chickweed, thistle and pernicious bindweed all consigned vigorously to the wheelbarrow, which Squashy trundled away to the rubbish heap. She was a cauldron of energy, her thin, childish body working its way through the hollyhocks, long yellow hair swinging – ‘worth five boys at least’ they said of her – and she laughed as she worked, and shouted at Squashy, and Squashy laughed at his dog who sat wagging his silly tail, and Gabriel told them not to be so damned silly and – at last – go home and get some food ready. The old man was starving.

  A typical day in the life of Lily Gabriel, aged thirteen.

  JUNE, 1921

  4

  The boys were sitting by the side of the lake beside what was now called grandly the airfield, waiting for Antony to arrive in his aeroplane. Nobody was pretending that they weren’t excited: they were jabbering away and looking at their watches every few minutes.

  Lily approached them dubiously. She was emboldened by knowing more than they did, Antony having told her what time to expect him – they were only guessing. Normally, without Antony being there, she would have avoided them. They tended to despise her when Antony wasn’t there, as she did them.

  It was a hot afternoon and the boys had been swimming to spin out the time. Lily was supposed to be picking beans in the kitchen garden, but her father had gone off to the farm and she knew he wouldn’t be back till supper time so she was in the clear. She wanted to witness Antony’s arrival as much as the boys. The whole village was waiting, she knew, for it was something of a local scandal, the young lad being so indulged as to be given an aeroplane for his birthday.

  ‘What if he crashes?’ Cedric was saying. ‘I can’t believe he’s learned so quickly.’

  ‘He’s got more brain than you, dolt,’ Simon informed him. ‘It’s not very difficult. Landing is the trickiest, of course, so who knows?’

  ‘You can save him if it sets on fire,’ John said. ‘Be a hero. Count me out.’

  Lily lay down in the grass near them, only half listening to their stupid conversation. Cedric, the farmer’s son, always got dumped on by the others but, an amiable lad, he did not seem to notice. John Simmonds – also at Eton with Antony and Simon – was the vicar’s son, rather hampered by his father’s calling, but quite nice in Lily’s opinion. She didn’t like Simon. He mimicked Squashy and teased his dog till Squashy cried – Lily had had fights with him over it, but of course lost, until rescued by Antony. But sometimes she had given as good as she got by underhand means, scratching and biting, and knowing where to kick. Simon fought fairly, to his disadvantage. He was a gentleman, after all.

  The lake lay still in the hot sun. Lily stretched out in the grass, loving a few moments of rest, so rare in her life. She was tall for her years and honed thin with physical work – stringy, the boys said. Her hands were large and capable. She wore old-fashioned flowery dresses left over from her mother’s wardrobe, which she had cut about, made shorter, tighter and more becoming. She had an instinct for what looked right and was a clever seamstress, but she wore her clothes carelessly and they were often dirty and torn: she did not attempt to make the boys stare. Antony was the only boy she wanted to please and he liked her as she was, her long blonde hair unkempt, her face sunburnt, her bright blue eyes laughing with admiration for him.

  ‘My little dandelion,’ he said.

  ‘That’s a weed.’ Lily was not flattered. ‘What about rose?’

  ‘You’re no rose, save for the thorns. Sunflower, perhaps. Tall and gawky.’

  Lily did not take offence. She liked sunflowers.

  She lay watching the birds circling over the grotto island where they had their nests in the thick verdancy. There were blackcaps and woodpeckers as well as the sparrows and wrens and tits and blackbirds and thrushes, and at night she could hear the owls hooting. She loved this place, in spite of the horrid house.

  Antony’s friends were much intrigued by the beautiful Helena and were trying to get Antony to bring her out so they could talk to her. But Antony only said, ‘When we have our party she will come.’ Nobody was quite sure when or what this party was going to be, but Antony only said, ‘When my father’s away, of course.’ He was planning to get his Etonian friends over and it would last all night. Lily wasn’t sure if she would be invited, but supposed she could be a servant and get in that way. She didn’t really think it would ever happen, but the boys were keen on the idea.

  ‘Listen!’

  The boys suddenly all sat up. Lily pretended not to be bothered, but she felt a lurch in her stomach, a sudden sick feeling. It amazed her. She hadn’t been at all nervous, perfectly cool, but suddenly she was. She lay still, trying to pretend nonchalance. The boys had got to their feet and were staring excitedly up towards the house, over the hill, from where now distinctly came the sound of an aeroplane engine.

  The sun was so bright it was difficult to focus. A flock of jackdaws flew off the chimneys and a small un-birdlike thing scattered them, skimming alarmingly low over the roof of Lockwood Hall. The boys all screamed out and Lily, forgetting nonchalance, jumped to her feet.

  ‘He’s too far down for the runway, the idiot!’ Simon shouted.

  ‘H
e’ll have to go round!’

  ‘He’s too low!’

  The plane came towards them over the lake, its wheels skimming the trees of the grotto, and the birds flew in a great panic in all directions. The engine gave an anguished roar and the nose of the plane pitched up, the wings wobbling alarmingly.

  ‘He’s going to stall!’ Simon screamed out.

  The plane hung like a shot bird for a moment, then lurched sideways and came slanting down completely out of control, obviously set on crashing into the ground.

  Lily screamed, terrified, and the boys were shouting too, and running towards the spot which seemed destined for what looked like Antony’s disastrous arrival. But at the last moment, inches from the ground, the little aeroplane staggered onto an even keel, and with a great burst of throttle shot off down the lakeside. Its wheels were only inches from the ground and it raced towards a large stand of trees that marked the boundary of the estate as if intent on burying itself in their embrace.

  ‘Oh, Jesus Christ!’ said John the vicar’s son.

  Lily shut her eyes and thought she was going to pass out.

  It seemed quite impossible for the plane to clear the boundary, but there was a fine gap in the middle of the stand and the plane made for it and managed to gain enough height to skim over it, its wheels brushing the topmost leaves so that they scattered as if in an autumn gale. Then it wheeled away like an eagle and its engine faded into the distance.

  Lily joined the boys now, faint with fright. She saw that they were as stunned as she was, and she was now one of them in their combined concern for Antony.