Summer Blossom

There was some conversation behind the wall of the room next to me, and I heard one of the men in there shout something, before a chorus of shh’s echoed around the room and the door was thrust open. I had left Peter asleep on the bed and opened the door to our room, the light came in in a rush and I noticed that Eliza had joined us in the room, on a second mattress that had been dragged in on to the floor. She slept silently on the mattress with a soldier I recognised from falling out of the door that I had found Peter in. The door of the room where the argument had woken me lay open, and I just caught a glimpse of the young soldier who had carried Peter from the empty house we found to the boarded house, with the hole in the roof. He caught my eyes, and I saw the bloodshot look filling his. His face was red and I could tell he was frustrated at the argument he had just left. I peered in to the room he had left, and saw the driver with the scar and the cockney soldier. They stopped what they were doing with a map on a round table in the centre of the room and watched me enter. I approached them and they looked back to the map.
‘This fucking map is ruined. We can’t even see the road anymore. You’ve ruined it, Ant.’ the driver said to the cockney soldier, and I realised I had only just learnt his name, after what we had been through, the driver was still nameless.
‘I have a map you can use, an entire book actually, its got most of France mapped out, and parts of Belgium. Would you like it?’ I chirped up, realising that my old map could come in useful and perhaps prevent the raised voices which I thought we should attempt to avoid at all costs.
I left the room and took the map from the bag, which I had left on the floor in front of the bed. As I crouched and looked at Peter, who was awake now, I noticed the colour had returned to his face and the eight hours sleep had done him good. I did not smile at him; I merely touched his arm that was slung over the side of the bed so that his fingers dragged on the carpet. I returned to Ant and the driver, whose name I asked and found it was Martin. I gave them the map and they were impressed with my thoughtfulness. They asked about Eliza and I, and why we had chosen to work with the government and the French resistance. I laughed. It was as if they thought we wanted to be involved in this mess with the soldiers. I told them about how I was fluent in French after leaning from my mother, and that Eliza spoke German very well since her college lessons carried on from school, and her German nanny as a child, who she spoke fondly of. The soldiers accepted these terms, and then Ant decided to ask about Peter and I, there was a cheeky gleam in his eyes that I thought seemed inappropriate in our situation, but it made me smile, and I told him he was being rude with his intrusive questions.
‘Boys will be boys, Miss.’ Martin said, not breaking his gaze from the map, which he attempted to follow the roads on, pressing his fingers on to the pages so that his knuckles turned pale and white with the pressure. Peter entered the room behind me leaning on the door frame and coughed himself into being noticed. We all looked up and he edged his way towards us whilst limping a little on his injured leg. I glanced at the leg and saw that he had rolled his trousers up and secured them in folds to display the blood soaked bandage. I stood and made my way towards the door, passing him by, and returning with a bandage from the draw of the bathroom at the end. The bathroom was a little messier than before, and I saw a blood soaked bandage similar to the one on Peter’s knee in the bin, attempted covering with tissue did not work. I wondered about who had been injured and returned back to hand a bandage to Peter in the room with Martin and Ant. He took it from me, a look of disgust flashing at him self as he realised I was not going to bandage it again for him now that he was fully conscious and had had a good sleep. He sighed and one of the soldiers coughed their sympathy to him as they glanced up, although I did not see who it was as I was concentrating on the map, and Peter turned to head back to the bathroom to change the bandage. I heard him swearing at the pain from two rooms down, and blocked the sound out; I was interested in knowing where the soldiers were planning to take us, assuming they were intending on taking us with them.

Once I had gained the information that I needed about our plan of action for leaving the town we were in, I asked about the situation of the rest of the soldiers who were supposed to be joining them in the town, to regroup. I found it hard to believe that they were the only three soldiers prepared to come and help control the town after Peter’s battalion had been more or less dilapidated. They stared at me in dismay, and I felt like a stupid woman thanks to their expressions. There was no one else. There were no soldiers left to help; we were completely alone. These words hit hard, and Ant realised that he had sent shocks into my bones with his blunt words, and attempted to regain hope in me, and himself I thought at the time. He tried to tell me that there would be more battalions around the area as it was highly manned around Lille and the area south of that. Faith was a little restored, but I was astounded that these men had been abandoned. I thought about the gathering in the church then, the first and last one that we had attended. The men there, the young ad the old ones, and whether they had survived the bombing of the town. It was strange to think about it now; they were so close, yet that afternoon we had not seen them. I had taken note of that during the chaos that had formed in the streets as we escaped; men had been scarce anyway, but all I could see were women and children in the chaos, and the one Belgian man who was staying in the hotel with us, who I believed was around 60 years of age anyway.
‘We’ll be leaving tonight.’ Martin stated, as if a road had bee recognised on the map and something had clunked in his mind. He had decided, and he stated it with no expression or tone to his voice. It was an order, or at least it sounded authoritative to me. I nodded, still in thought about the town and the men and Olivia, with her young sons. Ant turned his body sideways as if to pastiche Martin’s position as he hovered over the map, and he looked at the area directly above Martin’s fingertips. He saw something there, and looked to Martin, questioning him.
‘Are you sure? There wasn’t anything there, mate.’ His voice fluctuated to a higher tone at the end of the sentence, a lighter tone to the name he gave Martin.
‘Of course I’m sure. I’ve been driving around this area for weeks now, Trust me. We’ll need to set off around one a.m. I think, if I can remember correctly, that there was some sort of arrangement made about 90 miles from here. But, fuck knows now, everything’s turned to shit. We need to return to Lille anyway at some point, we may as well head there from the beginning rather than waste time.’ Martin begun his directions clearly, and I saw his face change as realisation that plans couldn’t be relied on fully in war. I felt useless, I wanted to help, but I knew I had no information that would help them unless they needed resistance information, which Eliza and I were full of. I realised I had heard part of a conversation about a town 60 or so miles north-east of Lille. Eliza walked in to the room at that moment, as if on queue and I turned around and led her back out slowly. I wanted the soldiers to think I was just leaving through boredom, and I grabbed Eliza and dragged her into the room where I had slept the night before. She watched me with anticipation as I closed the door. I stood against the wooden door, my fingertips on the ivory coloured handle, feeling the cool china of the delicate handle.
‘Remember Christian mentioned something about a meeting point north-east of Lille?’ I asked her, feeling someone walk past the door as the floor below my feet wobbled a little. I held the door closed behind me still and realised I looked worried, then leant forward and relaxed.
‘Yes. Why?’ She continued to watch me.
‘We need to go there. Martin and Ant have no idea where to go. We can’t go back to Lille; they already know we’re working with the resistance. Imagine if we were caught with six soldiers. Two young British women, one French speaking and one German speaking. We look like agents. We aren’t supposed to be here anyway, we can’t risk returning to Lille.’
She nodded as she listened, and I felt the door creak open behind me. I spun around to see Peter looking at me. His hands were caked in blood and he was holding the bandage that I had given him moments before, dripping with the crimson liquid. His face was pale and I could tell he had just been sick whilst trying to change the bandage.
‘I think I need stitches. I tried to clean it, but I couldn’t, it was fucking hideous.’ He leant against the wall and I saw that he was holding his thigh as if it would help the pain, and his trouser leg was rolled up where I could see a thick brown towel tied around his knee.
‘I can stitch it for you.’ Eliza commented, though she was still brewing on my words and my plan, and she had not looked away from me as I had inspected Peter. ‘Maddy, you’re right, we can’t return. What if someone has told them?’ She chewed on her bottom lip, her face twitching as she wrinkled her nose in thought. ‘I’ll get the stitches.’ Then she left me looking at Peter, the colour that had returned this morning having drained to his lips again, which were the only source of colour on his face. I sat him down on a wooden chair in the corner of the room and waited for Eliza to return. When she returned with a needle, having boiled it and sterilised the silver metal, I felt Peter squirm away from her eyes. He turned his head and then slid it backwards, sucking in air through gritted teeth. I pulled the soaked towel away from his leg as gently as possible, though the increased aggression of his air sucking grew and I gave up. I yanked the towel off, a few of the fibres sticking to the wound and I ignored them. Eliza produced the stitching and knelt before Peter’s leg. Her stitching was precise and elegant, and I watched incredibly impressed with her accuracy. Once she had finished, and Peter had moaned about the pain and winced, and jerked his head backwards and forwards like a child, and having gripped my hand really hard and left marks on my skin, he settled. I frowned at him and laughed, his colour had returned, and I shook my head at the six inch stitched wound across his knee.
I heard something shake behind me and quick footsteps advancing up the staircase below us. The noise vibrated through the floorboards and Eliza looked up; she reminded me of a cat, her eyelashes dancing open with the searching gaze that looked out and around the door frame and then back to Peter and me. I waited to see who was running up the stairs in what sounded like a panic. A French voice reached me from through the wall of the room next door, and I heard Ant answer in a chaotic voice, asking what the woman was saying, and telling her he didn’t speak French. I jumped up and looked out on to the corridor. The woman that had asked us into the house bustled out of the room with Ant and Martin in and ushered me back in to the bedroom. I saw Etienne behind her, telling a soldier something about German men. I asked her what was happening and she blurted out ‘The soldiers are coming to the house, they’re knocking the door.’ This was when I realised the knocking from far below us on the ground floor; the second floor must have ensured that the sound was almost lost. Shouting and raised voices reached me as well then, and I turned back in to the bedroom and helped Peter to the bed. I dropped him down and left him and went to close the door behind me, not exactly sure what good it would do, and I was met by Martin, Ant and two more soldiers who were being pushed in to the room, each one looking confused but orderly. The door slammed shut and I heard Etienne asking the woman where the wardrobe was. A bang followed and a dragging across the carpet outside, which sent shivers through me as the fibres of the carpet ripped and made a rubbing noise. I saw the light at the bottom of the door go out, and our room was left in faint darkness. One of the soldiers flicked the light on just as Etienne shouted for silence in the room, which there already was in the confusion, and then silence outside of the room fell too. We looked at each other, and I could see all of them looking to me for an answer to the situation. I glanced back to the bottom of the door, and strained to see a darker shadow had covered the door; Etienne had found the wardrobe or some form of furniture to cover the door. I pressed my finger to my mouth as German voices reached our blocked up window from far below at the front of the town house. One was raised and I heard two others speaking with Etienne, as he attempted to speak above them and was shunned. Peter had sat up and was staring at something on the wall, obviously listening, much like the other soldiers who were stood like statues as they listened. Footsteps echoed on the ground floor, as heavy boots entered the house. We each stood so still that dust may have gathered on us if we had stood for longer, and I finally moved. I gently eased myself towards the bed, way from where I was stood in front of the door. The boots stopped walking around in an offensive manner, and the conversation begun again. I wondered at what the men looked like; whether they would appear to me in their uniforms like the five soldiers in the room, though now Peter wore only his uniform trousers and jacket, having torn his shirt somehow. The others in the room relaxed and found scattered places to sit or lie.