Wild Lily E-Book

K. M. Peyton

• Herausgeber: David Fickling Books
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Seitenzahl: 419

Beschreibung

It's the 1920s - cars and aeroplanes are new. Lily Gabriel is scruffy, confident and takes no nonsense from anyone. Antony is rich, spoiled and arrogant and Lily is completely and utterly - no nonsense! - in love with him. So join Lily as she falls . . . Falls in love . . . Falls out of the sky . . . Falls through time . . . And effortlessly, inescapably, falls into her future. Life is never what you expect or what you predict. But if you're lucky, you hold onto exactly what you need - a young and wild heart.

Leseprobe

WILD LILY

K. M. PEYTON

For Irene

Contents

Title PageDedicationTHE 1920s1234567891011121314151617181920212223242526THE 1930s2728THE 1940s29THE 1980s30AN INTERVIEW WITH K. M. PEYTONCopyright

THE 1920s

APRIL, 1921

1

‘Pa, it’s my birthday tomorrow.’

‘Is it, by Jove!’ His father lowered his newspaper and stared curiously at Antony over the top as if he had never seen him before, which he hadn’t much. ‘And how old will you be? Twelve?’

‘Seventeen, Pa. I was born in 1904, if you remember.’

‘Good God!’ Mr Sylvester put the newspaper down. ‘Seriously?’

‘Yes, of course seriously.’ Antony tried hard to believe his father was joking, but knew he wasn’t. What was the use? ‘I thought you might buy me a present.’

‘Yes. Fine. What do you want?’

‘An aeroplane.’

‘An aeroplane? Hmm.’

His father went back behind his newspaper, and Antony waited. He wasn’t too worried; his father always gave him what he asked for.

‘Go over to Brooklands then and see my friend Tommy Sopwith. He’ll find you something sensible. You don’t want to break your neck.’

‘No, Pa. Thank you. I’ll be careful.’

Which he wouldn’t. Had he ever been? It wasn’t in his nature.

His father didn’t look up again and Antony left the breakfast table satisfied. His friends had scoffed and said the old man wouldn’t go for it, but they didn’t know the old man like he did. They had said try him with a racehorse, but Antony wasn’t interested in racing. He could have got one, of course, even as well as the aeroplane quite possibly. But just for the sake of his friends …? He often thought they were only his friends for what they could get. But all the same, he needed them, stranded in school holidays in this Godforsaken home. With an aeroplane they could travel. It must be a two-seater. He could get them to Paris one by one. They could all go up the Eiffel Tower …

Musing happily, Antony made his way out of the house. If he hadn’t lived in Lockwood Hall all his life, finding the way outside from the breakfast room could have taken half the morning, the place was so large. It sat like a great frowning fortress on a wooded hilltop, looking down on its own lake, the farm, the grotto, the winding river … it just needed a row of cannons on the rooftop, Antony often thought, to dispel raiders – should they ever come. But nobody came much apart from the staff, an army of them: six gardeners under a head gardener, ten kitchen staff, myriad cleaning women, handymen, pantry boys, nurses for his sister, the garage men, the forestry men, the charcoal workers, not to mention the farm workers scattered to the far horizons, only met in passing. One knew a few of them by name and joshed with the boys sometimes, and talked machinery in the garage, but of course none were friends. Antony was a law unto himself, with all these people to tend him, but at the back of his mind he often felt he was missing something. A mother? All his friends had mothers. He wasn’t sure about it, knowing mothers could be a nuisance: fussy, bossy and demanding. Perhaps not. But an aeroplane … his heart lifted. He hadn’t really doubted that his father would agree, but now the words had been spoken Antony felt an unusual frisson of excitement. For a boy who had everything, he now had a bit more than everything – an aeroplane!

I’m on my way, Mr Sopwith!

‘Did you know, Squashy, that Mr Sylvester is buying Ant an aeroplane?’

‘What’s an aeroplane?’

‘Those things in the sky, that men sit in.’

‘Cor.’

Lily was kind to her brother Squashy who had little brain. None, said most of the village people. But he did no harm. Their father was Mr Sylvester’s head gardener and they lived in a cottage on the estate. He often took them with him when he went to work, as his wife had died when Squashy was born and he felt he had to keep an eye on them – Lily seemed to look for mischief and of course Squashy had no brain, so they slipped easily into trouble. Not that Antony was a good influence; as the lad had so little to do, he often came larking with Lily. The two were something of a pair, although Lily, at thirteen, was a good deal younger. But she had no conception of class where Antony was concerned, and treated him the same as she treated her village friends – that is, with her usual scorn, always the one who knew best.

‘I don’t know why he don’t clip you one, the cheek of you,’ her father said. ‘You should remember he’s the gaffer round here. A bit of respect would do no harm.’

‘What, for Ant? He’s only Ant.’

Her father, known by his surname Gabriel, as were all the workers on the estate, was not articulate enough to explain exactly what he meant. It was true that Antony was not the vicar or the doctor or the squire or Mrs Carruthers, or anybody to whom Lily was quite rightly in the habit of showing respect to, but all the same he was heir to one of the richest men in the county and therefore well up in the hierarchy of people to whom Gabriel touched his hat to and feared to look in the eye. Even if Antony was only a kid.

Gabriel called him Master Antony. If he got an aeroplane he might have to up it to Mister.

Mrs Carruthers was outraged. Her husband had told her the news. He knew that she got very upset if she didn’t know every detail of what was going on in the village or at the big house. Even if the news infuriated her it was easier for him to live with that than her outrage if she missed out on it. He braced himself.

‘Sylvester’s insane! The boy will kill himself!’

‘The things are safer now than they used to be. The war advanced flying no end.’

‘It advanced Sylvester too. How’s he made all that money, I’d like to know? To buy his son an aeroplane, just for a toy! I ask you!’

‘He’s a very shrewd man, Mr Sylvester. A clever businessman. You always imply that he made his wealth dishonestly, but there’s no evidence.’

She never called him Mr Sylvester, just Sylvester, because she ranked him as trade. She had scarcely ever met him for he was always in his Rolls-Royce when he passed through the village; he never came to church, nor to any of the village functions, but his lifestyle was widely described by his servants who were mostly local and only too willing to gossip.

Sadly, the gossip was very boring – no women, no parties, few visitors, no empty whisky bottles. The only items of interest concerned his daughter Helena, whom no one had ever seen save fleetingly, very occasionally, in the back seat of the Rolls-Royce on its way to London. She was twenty-one and very beautiful. But she was blind and deaf and lived in her own quarters in the vast house with her own staff to look after her. However those staff never came to the village. They had their own staff to wait on them. This was really good fodder for gossip.

‘Think they’re royalty! Can you believe!’

‘And she treated like a princess! Only a tradesman’s daughter! That’s what money can do!’

‘But the poor mite – blind and deaf! Can you imagine it?’

Kinder souls spoke out:

‘Why shouldn’t she have the best? No mother to love her – it’s tragic.’

‘And the boy too. He could do with a mother to keep him out of bad ways. He runs quite wild.’

‘Such a bad influence on those nice boys – the vicar’s lad, John, and Cedric Butterworth – easily led, I’m afraid. Even that clever lad Simon, the one with his nose in the air, he’s very much taken with Antony. They spend all their time up there when school’s over.’

‘Well, not surprising, considering there’s the lake to swim in and tennis courts and servants to bring out lemonade—’

‘And now an aeroplane! Can you believe it!’

‘There’ll be a death up there, you mark my words. Asking for it, a death for sure!’

Antony decided to invite his friend Simon to go to Brooklands with him to meet Mr Sopwith. He would want someone to talk it through with and Simon had more brain than the others – sometimes, Antony thought, more brain than was comfortable, by which he meant more than himself. Simon’s father was a professor of some sort, much respected in the village, a real gentleman they said. Simon went to Eton, like Antony, but was given much extra tutoring by his father at home. He was said to be a brilliantly clever boy, unlike Antony.

Antony’s father was out all the next day, as usual, so Antony ordered the Rolls and asked the chauffeur, Tom, to pick up Simon on his way out of the village.

‘I say, I like this!’ Simon waved to the unsurprised villagers as they purred away down the high street.

Tom was laughing. ‘Two little squits like you in this motor! You don’t know your luck, Master Antony.’

‘I do, you idiot. You know I do.’ Antony was not sure he wanted Tom’s familiarity in front of Simon, but Tom was not one to take it too far. They got on well. ‘You think you’ll be able to service an aeroplane? We’ll have to have some instructions,’ he added.

‘I managed to move from horses to motors, so I daresay I can move from motors to flying machines. They got an engine the same, haven’t they?’

Tom, a young man who missed the Great War because of a history of tuberculosis, was obviously going to enjoy having an aeroplane on the premises, and Antony felt his excitement rising as the Rolls wound its way through the network of Surrey lanes towards Brooklands, not far from Lockwood. The area was graced by the homes of the rich; they flashed past in the shade of their private woodlands: so beautiful, like jewels set in emerald lawns – why on earth, with all these alternatives to hand, had his father chosen hideous Lockwood? Antony wondered. Presumably for its grounds, which were undeniably beautiful and very extensive. Good for landing an aeroplane, luckily, unlike these tree-girt mansions that saw them pass. Antony had already earmarked his airfield – a strip of land below the lake, beyond the grotto.

Perhaps Tom and some of his mates would be able to build him a hangar down there before next winter … he could not believe his luck, as the Rolls turned down the tarmac road marked Brooklands – his father saying yes.

He had visited Brooklands before, so was not surprised by the sight of the untidy conglomeration of huts and workshops that huddled on the edge of the famous racetrack, high-banked in a great ellipse all round them. It was hard to believe that during the war this place had been a hive of activity where the great designers and producers of military aircraft thrashed out their ideas: even then it had not looked impressive, but now it was decidedly down at heel, with dismantled aircraft, old cars and motorbikes scattered all over the place. The name SOPWITH appeared in large letters on a row of the sheds, but the great man, they were told, was not there.

‘He’s over at Kingston most of the time now, set up his works there. He a friend of yours?’

The man they spoke to was patronizing, but obviously impressed by the Rolls-Royce, uncertain.

‘He’s a friend of my father’s.’ Antony spoke with the assurance of the Eton boy. ‘My father said he would find me a suitable plane. That’s why we’re here, to buy one. My name is Antony Sylvester.’

The young man’s attitude changed abruptly at the mention of the name Sylvester and thereafter the two boys – and Tom, hovering in the background – attracted a number of interested parties. They spent the afternoon in a blissful whirl of technical talk, pushed to see this one, that one, try this cockpit, what visibility eh? – this rudder is out on its own, handles like silk … get in and we’ll give it a roll …

Rolling meant taxiing across the airfield without taking off. It was the beginning of learning to fly. Antony was given the controls and the chance to try it for himself, and he went zig-zagging across the unkempt grass in hair-raising fashion, terrified he might take off by mistake – it easily happened, apparently: ‘Suddenly the ground ain’t there any more. So not too much throttle, be careful now.’

Be careful. Simon knew it wasn’t in his friend’s nature and was relieved that he himself wasn’t offered the chance to try anything. He saw too how the name Sylvester carried weight. His father had told him several times ‘to go carefully with the Sylvesters’, but was unable to elaborate when questioned. Just a shrug and, ‘I don’t think I trust that man.’ Simon pointed out that he rarely saw the father, only Antony, and with Antony came perks, like today.

The machines were mainly planes left over from the war, fighters being dismantled for parts. Several were two-seaters, carrying a pilot and a gunner, or a photographer; some still had a gun mounted. Some were monoplanes, some biplanes. Antony realized there was no way he could choose in one afternoon, and decided the best thing would be to sign on for some lessons and choose to buy when he knew a bit more. A flying school was on the site, so he signed himself up, giving his age as eighteen. In spite of his father thinking he was twelve, he knew he passed for eighteen without much trouble. He wasn’t questioned.

Going home in the Rolls they reckoned they had spent a very good day. Just before the car came into the village and approached Simon’s house, a sprawling old place half-hidden back from the road in a tangle of trees, Simon said to Antony, ‘What does your father do, that he carries such clout? When you said the name Sylvester their attitude changed in a trice.’

‘Do? How should I know? He makes money.’

‘Doing what?’

‘I don’t know. He goes up to London a lot, to see politicians and things. Manufacturers.’

‘Manufacturers of what?’

‘Money!’ Antony laughed. ‘What does your pa do? Does it matter?’

‘He writes books. No, it doesn’t matter. Just wondered, that’s all.’

The Rolls stopped outside his gate and Simon got out. His mother was getting tea and a fire burned cheerily, sparks flying across the dog-worn hearth-rug; his father was writing at his desk and a smell of baking emanated from the kitchen. Simon thought of Antony driving on to godforsaken Lockwood Hall and grinned to himself, not feeling envious at all.

‘How was it?’ his father asked.

‘Good. Very interesting. Ant looked at a lot, and has signed up for flying lessons.’

‘Oh, showing some sense for once. Knowing him, I half thought he might be coming back in one.’

‘It won’t take long, I reckon.’

‘Well, I might as well tell you now, you won’t be going up in it. I forbid it.’

Simon laughed. His father was a cushy old thing and there was plenty of time for argument. Anyway, Simon thought he might not want to, after all, when it came to the point.

2

Antony told his father all about it over supper. For once he had something to talk about; they usually ate in near silence. When his father was home they ate together in the dining room at one end of a vast mahogany table that seated forty. It was too big to move out and had obviously been built on site. It was hideous, but neither Antony nor his father had ever really noticed. They ate at the end nearest the door that led, after a long walk, to the kitchen.

‘Mr Sopwith wasn’t there, but we had a great time. They showed us all sorts and I was allowed to drive one. “Roll it,” they say – just along the ground, not taking off. It’s how you learn. They’re quite hard to control, strange. I signed up for lessons, so I can fly it home – when I’ve decided which one to have. If I have lessons, I can try them all, see what’s best.’

‘Very good.’ Mr Sylvester was surprised at his son’s sense for once, having half expected to find an aeroplane sitting on the drive when he came home.

They had an uneasy relationship, neither quite sure what to make of the other. They did not meet very often, and there was no third party to ease the contact, no jolly wife or quarrelling siblings. Claude Sylvester’s wife had died, quite suddenly, soon after they had moved to Lockwood. She had been excited about the vast prospect of turning the echoing rooms into a comfortable home, but perhaps the whole thing had been too much for her, for she died of a heart attack immediately after a meeting with a firm of interior designers who came down from London and exclaimed in horror at the task that faced them.

She had made a pretty flat upstairs for Helena – a prime consideration – but that was all she had managed. Antony had been eight when his mother died and Helena four years older. He had already learned at that early age to live his own life, as his mother – not unnaturally – was almost totally taken up with Helena. How could it be otherwise? Antony accepted the situation without rancour, but tended to avoid seeing too much of Helena – the atmosphere up in her quarters was not to his taste and he found it hard to please her, foundering in his own inadequacy to understand what on earth it was she was saying, or trying to say, or what she wanted, or how to please her. She laughed a lot and he thought she mocked him. He was sorry for her, of course, not to be able to see or hear. How did she imagine the world, he wondered, not ever having seen it?

His friends were always nosy about her, dying to meet her. He had been in the habit of bringing his Eton friends home in the holidays to stay – but none of them had ever wanted to come twice after they had found themselves banned from the freak upstairs, and only just managing to survive the discomfort of life in Lockwood Hall. Antony stopped asking them, but at the back of his mind he had always harboured the idea of a huge midsummer party by the lake, using the amazing grotto as a base. That would be quite something, especially if he got an aeroplane. That would impress them. They would come then.

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.

‘He’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.

‘He’ll make it next time,’ Simon said confidently.

‘He’ll come at the right angle, surely? Not sideways.’

‘He must start coming down at the end of the lake, not over the house.’

Lily was thinking bitterly, I could have done it better. She was deeply disappointed by her hero’s performance and feeling quite faint in the aftermath of his near-death. Now she was as one with the boys in their exclamations of dismay and horror.

‘You nearly lost him there, dandelion,’ Simon said with a grin.

‘And you your best friend. I don’t see that it’s anything to smile about. You won’t laugh if he kills himself!’

‘I don’t suppose he’s laughing now,’ John put in. ‘He’s got to come down, after all. I daresay that scared him more than it did us.’

‘Not more scared than me,’ Cedric said. ‘I don’t want to watch next time.’

The sentiments of them all, Lily thought, but of course their eyes were glued to the sky and their ears alert for the recurring sound of the engine. They stood like pointing greyhounds, faces turned upwards. The birds had all come back and the air was full of the singing of the skylarks. They would sing on, Lily thought, when Antony had crashed to his death right in front of them. She was shaking and felt the bile of fear in her throat.

Far away, they heard the sound again. In a better place this time, coming from the village end of the lake, in the proper place for descending onto the runway. But too fast, or too slow … how many times had he practised it, the clever bit of learning to fly, to land? Apparently any fool could take off. They were silent now, staring into the bright sky.

This time the aeroplane came into view at what looked the right height and in the right place. It seemed to be coming very fast. Did it have brakes? Lily wondered wildly. It seemed to waver about somewhat, its wings tipping one way and then the other (which was surely wrong?), but still high enough to clear the ground. Too high?

Lily cried out.

‘Bloody hell!’ breathed the vicar’s son.

The plane sank suddenly and its wheels hit the ground. Too fast: it bounced up again, seemed to shudder like a wounded bird, and then dropped for the second time. Not quite so hard, another bounce, then another, and it slewed sideways nearly into the lake and came to an anguished halt half facing the way it had come. The engine stopped and there was a sweet silence, not even birdsong, for the birds had all been scared away.

The spectators let out a collective sigh of relief, and then they were all running towards the skewed plane, laughing and shouting, Lily as well. She wanted to scream to relieve her agony of fear, but she bit her lip and stifled the stupid words that came into her head, not to give herself away. It was just a lark; the boys were all laughing their heads off. Antony wasn’t dead, after all.

He was still sitting in the cockpit, pushing up his goggles. He was as white as a sheet, but pretended nothing was untoward.

‘Sorry if I scared you! Got it a bit wrong first time.’

‘Yeah, and the second time too,’ Simon said unkindly.

‘Not perfect, no. But I will improve. Early days, you wait.’

If they had been scared, Lily could see that Antony, with reason, had been even more so. She wondered if it had put him off.

But he said, ‘Piece of cake next time. You’ll see. I landed properly plenty of times at Brooklands.’

‘Nerves, that’s all,’ said John kindly. ‘Are you going up again now? You know, like getting back on a horse after a fall.’

‘No, why should I? I got it right the second time. Tomorrow I’ll go for a spin, and one of you shall come with me. That’s what I got it for, for us all to have a bit of fun. Who wants to be first?’

There was a marked silence.

Then Cedric said, ‘Not me.’

John cleared his throat awkwardly. ‘Rather you got a bit more practice in first, old chap.’

‘Simon?’

‘No bloody fear.’

Antony stared at them, mortified. Disappointment and indignation mingled in his features. He pulled off his brand-new flying helmet and flung it down in disgust. Lily thought he looked as if he were going to cry, his triumph short-lived. ‘I thought we were going to be in this together, get about and have a load of fun. I didn’t think you were such a lily-livered bunch of old women. I went into it thinking of all of us, all of us having a lark …’ His voice trailed off.

Lily stepped forward. ‘I’ll come, Antony. Take me. I’m not scared.’

‘Lily!’ They all gaped at her.

Antony’s face broke into a great smile and Lily thought for a glorious moment he was going to hug her. But he rounded triumphantly to the others: ‘You see, a girl! Lily’s not scared! She’s worth ten of you lot. You’re a brick, Lily, I love you!’

If only, Lily thought. She stood, trembling.

Then Antony said, ‘Tomorrow morning, Lily. Meet me here, and you will be my first passenger. I promise you, it will be great. My first real trip, all round Surrey. You will love it!’

The time lapse – tomorrow! – was balm to Lily’s nerves. She thought she would pass out with relief. All night to get used to the idea, to talk herself into believing in Antony’s skill. Of course she had faith in him, there was nothing to be scared of, only a great treat to look forward to! She looked up and saw the three boys staring at her. Their expressions were hard to make out, but she had an uneasy instinct that pity was uppermost.

She felt her lips quiver, but she said, ‘Fine, Antony, I’ll be here in the morning.’

And walked home.

5

Lily did not sleep that night. She dozed, and her dreams were all of death. She dreamed of her dead mother. She saw her again, lying exhausted after Squashy’s birth, and later with the life gone out of her, her beautiful blue eyes closed for ever and her cheeks marble white, sunk in disappointment. It was one of the neighbours who inadvertently christened Squashy: ‘That baby’s not right, you can tell – all sort of squashy-looking. The brain will be amiss, you mark my words. Poor little soul.’

But Lily took her baby brother under her wing and from his birth scarcely ever left him, trailing him behind her in a little cart their father made, playing with him, laughing. So Squashy grew up much loved by Lily and his dog Barky, and was happy. Their father was not a loving man, but he made sure the village boys didn’t rag his son, nor the under-gardeners. He worked him very hard, but Squashy thrived on the work and was happy whatever the task.

He wouldn’t be very happy seeing her fly away in Antony’s aeroplane, Lily knew that, and determined that he would go with his father in the morning, off to market. Then she would be in the clear. She could not convince herself that she had made a good decision, in spite of impressing the boys, but the admiration in Antony’s eyes consoled her. If she hadn’t seen his terrible landings she would have been more excited than terrified, and she tried to convince herself that of course, with her on board, he would take infinite care to get it right. He obviously didn’t want to die either. She concentrated on thinking how amazing it would be up in the sky like a bird, looking down on all the woods and fields.

But it seemed a very long night, full of the sad cries of the owls and the lament of a distant cow with its calf lost and then the infinite silence with a half moon lying on its side in a sky full of stars where her mother’s soul dwelt and all the souls of everyone who had gone before … how could one count the numbers? What matter if she and Antony were to join them? Who would miss them? Only Squashy and her father, and Mr Claude Sylvester, she thought. No wonder she could not sleep with such portentous rubbish floating around in her head.

In the morning her father departed with Squashy and Barky and she went down to the lake with her heart pounding. The awful fear had faded and now it was excitement that filled her. The worst imaginings always surfaced in the hours of the night, but with daylight and sunshine came optimism and hope. The water reflected the clear blue of the sky and the birds were all singing again. She made her way down to where the aeroplane stood, straightened out now and facing back the way it had come. It was a biplane, quite small and stumpy, with two seats one behind the other, a cocky little thing, Lily thought, and the right sort for Antony. Not too serious.

Quite soon Antony appeared on his bicycle, making round the head of the lake. He was wearing a long leather flying coat and a leather flying helmet, with goggles slung round his neck, and looked every inch the proficient pilot. The other boys were arriving too, agog, Lily thought, to see a bit of excitement.

Ghouls, she thought … they want to see us crash! But Antony won’t crash – she willed it, a prayer to God. How she wished she could believe in God! It was so hard, after what he did to her mother. It would be a big help now.

‘I thought you might have changed your mind,’ Antony said when he arrived.

‘No, why should I?’ Very nonchalant.

‘Lots of good reasons,’ Simon said.

‘Honestly, you haven’t got to,’ Antony said, rather unexpectedly.

‘No, I want to come.’ Big lie.

‘Good. You’re a brick.’

Her seat behind him had its own door, and the boys opened it and bunked her in.

‘Do up the straps,’ Antony called.

‘Why? You’re not going to loop the loop?’ A flare of panic.

Simon laughed.

‘Coward!’ Lily hissed at him.

‘A live coward though!’

‘It gets a bit bumpy up there sometimes, that’s all.’

Lily could not conceive of air being bumpy, but conversation was cut off by the sudden roar of the engine as John swung the propeller to Antony’s instructions. The noise was terrifying and the birds all left the grotto again in a great cloud of confusion, swirling high into the sky. And me too, Lily thought: here I go, and the little plane started to move off down the side of the lake, very sedate, like a car.