Summer Blossom

Under the flickering buzz of the light that swung a little above our heads, I scratched the coloured varnish from the nail of my right index finger. Sleep kept trailing away and I had not reason to chase it in the humid feel of the room. I scanned the sleeping faces of everyone that had squeezed into our small room, hurried in by the lady who had kindly let us stay here as there was a frantic shouting in German from three stories down and out on the back street that swung around the house and towards the end of the valley of houses. The frantic shouting had deceased and the harsh dialect that I disliked the presence of had died down to a normal conversation. We had been in the room for around an hour and a half now, and it was becoming uncomfortably warm; the lady of the house had locked us in, and from the noise that followed immediately after the key was removed, I could guarantee that some form of large furniture blockaded the door. Breathing in as harshly as possible, I attempted to savour some cool air from near to the window. A draft had been coming through and I had been listening to the whistle with impatience. Leaning on my arm I could feel Eliza breathing slowly and calmly. I had no idea whether she was asleep or awake, though her breathing sounded steady and regular, as if she was either deep in sleep or deep in thought. I moved around and tried to rearrange my dress, which was now sticking to the back of my neck with the sweat. I brought my hair up from my neck and shoulders and gathered it to one side, it felt hot and stuffy beneath my hair and i welcomed the cool touch of the whistling breeze creeping through a gap in the window boards. It was light outside, and I could hear very distant conversation in German, though it was almost impossible to hear as it must have been far at the main street we had been on days before.
Peter slapped a fly away from his arm and sighed fiercely, before pinching his lips together so that they wrinkled and whitened. I saw his anger at the warm room also and realised he may have been awake this entire time; he must have had far more patience for me for the want of sleep. The four other soldiers around the room, including Ant, Martin and two soldiers who Peter knew well, were all asleep. It seemed that they slept through boredom now, as if waiting for something; any extra rest would help with their morale. I heard something rattle in the floor below, which i had yet to see, as I had been cooped up in the top floor since we arrived. We had been asked to stay to this area of the house, and make use of this room only for sleeping. There was a second room, where I had discussed the map and plans with Ant and Martin, though it seemed that something had occurred with the German soldiers outside and we now had to be confined to a smaller space to avoid being discovered. The noise was also to be more or less diminished, and our conversation in the past hour had been scarce. We spoke for around 20 minutes, very quietly, between listening for footsteps climbing the stairs. Ant and one of the other soldiers had slumped against a wall and fallen asleep first followed by Martin and the second soldiers whose name I did not know. Peter had relaxed against the bed and smoked a cigarette, which he then offered to Eliza, who received it gratefully. I had hushed them when they had started to converse about running low on cigarettes, partly because the conversation topic bored me, partly because they would both grow anxious for more and therefore their stress caused by this would grow and they would run low on cigarettes even faster as a result of this stress. I also thought it very rude to pollute the little air in the room with thick, hot smoke. I told Peter this and he stared at me, before apologising half-heartedly and leaning against my back to sleep, as I had rolled over on the mattress to stare at the door.
'You've been awake this whole time, haven't you?' I heard him say as he pushed himself up against me and rolled an arm over the side of mine. This caused my arm to fall off the bed and I hit my knuckles off the wooden floorboards before I could stop my arm. It felt limp and I couldn't be bothered to stop it falling. Eliza, who was still leaning on my other arm whilst she was sat asleep on the floor beside the bed, jumped. I thought she was about to wake up, but instead she spluttered something about noise and turned her head sideways to lean on the edge of the bed.
'Yes, I can't sleep in here.' I creased my brow and looked at the sleeping soldiers; Martin had removed his jacket and shirt in an attempt to cool himself down, but I could see the skin around his cheeks was pink and warm. 'It's too hot, I need new air.'
Peter sat upright and pressed his hand against the wooden board that was nailed to the window frame. There was a long crack that ran down the length of the wood, and he pressed his fingers into it and pulled outwards. The wood creaked and I reached up quickly and pulled his hands down.
'Stop it! We can't open that window, its nailed shut. You'll never get those boards off.' He shook me off and reached to the edge of the wooden board, pulling at the side of it. The wood creaked again and I heard it snap and splinters fell onto Peter's lap. I fanned the dust away that it had produced and then saw that Peter had revealed the small metal clip that opened the window. He awkwardly pushed his wrist against the wall so that he could reach his fingers between the wood and the frame and pull the metal clip upwards; he struggled with the rusted metal, and after pushing aggressively, it snapped and clicked and the window swung open. The smell of damp vegetation filled my nose and the cool breeze entered the room. It felt soothing and wonderful, and Peter pressed his face against the plaster of the wall to get his face closer to the window; with his eyes closed and his mouth gaping open, he breathed in the cold air with a lustful look. I laughed and he opened his eyes and turned to me, pulling me close to him and directing my face to the gap. I copied his look and then laughed at him again, he looked pleased with himself.
'We need to leave tonight, Madeline.' He whispered with his mouth close to my ear; he had pulled my body across his legs and I still leant against the wall. Pulling his face closer to mine to feel the cold breeze, I stayed completely still and watched his face come closer. I focused on his blue eyes, looking up and down his face and then admiring the length of his dark eyelashes as they swept open and closed when he blinked the bright afternoon light away. He pressed his cheek to mine and I could feel his breath on my nose. I felt him nod and my head jolted with his as his cheek pulled on mine, moving my head up and down with him. I let out a laughing sigh and felt him wince as I rearranged my legs; I knocked his knee accidentally and he swore at the pain and moved his leg away from me.

Hours later, I realised I had no idea what time it was. I had watched the light in the broken wood boarding the window disappear until the remaining view of the sky that I had was dark blue and the clouds had blended to dark grey. I looked down to see Peter’s broken watch; I had not realised it was broken and I needed to find another means of finding out the time. I rolled sideways from where I was lying uncomfortably beside Peter’s sprawled body, and he rolled on to his side to look at me. Stepping over Eliza’s arm as she slept quietly I made my way towards the door. The shadow of the wardrobe had blurred with the darkness outside, and so I decided to attempt to open the door. It was still locked but I could not hear anything from the house below. I looked down at the sleeping soldiers in the room and searched their wrists for working watches. Ant’s watch looked dark and I had to pinch my eyelids together to create a small space to look from until I made out its shape. I stepped over one of the soldier’s I had not met yet and reached down for the watch on his wrist. As I turned his arm around he did not notice and continued to sleep like a small child. The time surprised me, and I looked to the broken board where the sky was now blocked to link the dark sky with the time. It was half past midnight. I had expected the sky to look darker in France at this time of the year, as November was freezing and dark throughout Europe. Peter asked me what time it was, and his deep voice that broke the silence awoke Eliza and Martin. I told the three of them what the time was and Martin got to his feet immediately. He stood and looked to the door.
‘Where are they? Have they unlocked the door?’ I shook my head in dismay. I had no idea where they were, because the door was still locked. This presented us with a problem. I knew full well that the men intended to leave tonight, taking us with them. ‘Then we’ll have to force it down if we don’t know where they are. Presumably they would have unlocked it by now if the soldiers hadn’t realised they were hiding us.’
Peter stepped to his feet whilst Martin woke the other men in the room. The five of them discussed for a moment by which means they were going to open the door, and Eliza and I watched in silence. The silence from the house below was disruptive, I could not think of anything but it. I was confused about why we were still locked in this room, and where the woman and Etienne were. A crack ripped through the door as the wood split and the wardrobe on the other side of the door shook itself on the floor. As three of the men, including Peter and Ant, punched the wooden bed frame against the oak door, the floor creaked below them. This noise was horrendous in the silence of the house; the silence of the town rather. I continued to watch whilst trying to listen for any noises from the open window and the floor below. Nothing. Nothing at all. There must have been something wrong, for this disruption would have drawn the attention of Etienne and the woman, but they did not come. The door ruptured down the centre and the men forced the wooden bed through the gap so that the wood splintered and fell to the floor in shards. Martin forced his hands through the hole and pushed the wardrobe aside so that the door could be pulled open. Once they had breached the door further they managed to pull the wooden fame of the centre of it apart and produce a large, gaping wound in the wood. One of the stepped through partially and moved the wardrobe to the side, opening the corridor up to our view. It appeared the same, very dark and empty. I was the second to last one out of our familiar room, followed by Martin who helped me through the sharp wooden crevice of the doorway. The two soldiers I did not know had already disappeared and were making their way down the staircase to the second floor. Eliza was waiting for me in the darkness and I stopped to wait for Peter to come through the door. He stepped in front of us and made his way down the stairs cautiously with the other men. I tried to see Eliza’s expression in the darkness but it wad far too dark to see anything other than faint outlines. I could tell she was looking at me though, as some light from somewhere reflected in her dark eyes. She reached down and gripped my hand and then she steered us towards the staircase, putting me before her so that I could see Peter and Martin stepping carefully down the staircase before me. I heard my shoe scrape on something below my feet and Peter and Martin both turned their heads frantically. They waved for me to move away from whatever it was and Peter reached out his hand for me to grip to help me down. I held tightly on to Eliza’s hand too and pulled her with me, feeling her avoid the thing on the floor. I think it was a bullet shell, but I did not know for sure. Peter’s hand was hot and clammy, and he gripped my fingers so tightly I thought they would break. His grip was stinging my skin from the pressure but I wriggled from it a little and continued to walk behind the soldiers. The house was so quiet it scared me.
As we reached the bottom of the stairs and turned the corner, I felt something underneath my foot that I had to step over. I stepped over the lump that I thought was a carpet and felt it sink under my weight a little. It was soft and supple and covered in a thick material. It was a body. As I jumped away from it and pulled my foot I stumbled and heard the body slump down from where it must have been pushed up against the wall. The men had missed it somehow and I was the one to discover it rolled against the side of the room. I turned and gripped Eliza’s arm and pulled on Peter’s hand as I did so. He was yanked backwards in to me and kicked the body as he went. I heard him swear and then lower his voice before he called to the other men in a deep whisper. I heard a scratching from the men as their boots all turned on the floor to face us gain. Only able to see a few outlines, I scrutinised the shapes with my wide eyes. Peter pulled me over the body and took my around the shoulder with one of his arms, and then gave me back to Eliza who was breathing heavily in the darkness. One of the men produced a lighter from somewhere and it jumped to life in his hand and bounced in the black surroundings. Etienne’s body was slumped at Peter’s feet. His face was bruised and purple and a thin slither of dried blood split his face in to two sections. It ran down his forehead from a splintered gauge of skin where a bullet had entered, and trailed in meandering waves down his broad nose until it spread in a few lines over his lips and disappeared down under his unshaven chin. It disappeared in the coarse black hair of his beard. I frowned as if I had expected it to be someone else, and dreaded the thought of the woman’s corpse lying around the house somewhere, or even the room, with a similar bullet nestled in her skull. I could smell urine in the room somewhere, its stench sharp and putrid. Meandering around the body we continued down the stairs to the bottom floor in silence. I held Eliza close to me and watched the men in front leading the way.
The back door was open and it let in some light from the naked sky above. It felt like the deep of winter outside, but the March air was crisp and new. I could still feel the chill of winter as it had not yet dispersed to springtime, and gripped my long coat around me with my free hand. Bright light glowed from the moon and lingered in the silence. It lit up Eliza’s pretty face beside me. We walked behind the men in silence. Two of them walked about ten yards ahead of us with their guns poised far too close to their faces for comfort for me. The walls of the buildings in the thin backstreet that we escaped through were pasty cream I thought, and peeling. The cobbled floor made it hard to walk in silence, and so I removed the shoes that had a slight heel on them and carried them; Eliza copied. Stepping over the strips of sharp wood from the rafters of brittle houses we followed the men. Ant, Peter and Martin were walking behind us; Ant within close proximity for us to smell the deep stench of the sweat entwined with his uniform. The sharp tangy smell was almost familiar now, and the scent of fresh perfume on my own neck had completely diminished over the past few days. How many days had it been? I realised I had no idea what day it was. Everything had happened so fast, yet so slow.
I was drawn to a halt by Eliza’s arm as she tugged on me gently. Looking up into the darkness of the shadows across the buildings before us I saw a slight flicker of a candle light on the interior. Starching the sickly white paint of the buildings into a grey colour, the tinge of light sent shockwaves of colour around the inside of the house. I glimpsed some torn floral wallpaper with large printed roses down the furthest wall, and a rotten, shredded sofa sitting lifeless on the wooden floorboards. The light went out and then illuminated the setting again, the light seeming to swing backwards and forwards. I realised it was a lantern hung from the ceiling of the room on the lower floor; it had been hung from the rafters and left there, which explained the dying flame.
The two soldiers who I did not know stepped forward to the house and immediately pointed their guns in to the swinging light. Nothing moved other than the light and so they moved on. I turned to see Eliza stood still behind me, unmoving even as I tugged at her hand. She was listening closely to something, and as Ant moved past her she hit his stomach to signal to him to listen in the silent darkness. The sound of a gun suddenly exploded in my ears and I ducked as a light shone down on my face. Peter gripped my arm fiercely and dragged me forward as he began to run. Eliza followed and Ant was thrown to the ground as he stumbled over a pile of rubble that spilt from the front door of a demolished house. The gunfire screamed through the air, the pain of the peaceful breeze being split and sliced echoing through my head. Peter flung me in to an empty doorway of a house, followed by Eliza. She landed heavily on my right arm and I felt it bent in an excruciating way. Pulling it away I yelped at the pain that coursed through me. Peter threw himself down next to me and Ant landed next to us. The house smelt like mould and rot and I turned to stare pointlessly into the dark entrance.
Martin had disappeared as we had all been split by the unaccountable gunshots. Another shot rung out and Peter pushed me backwards as I heard Grewar shout. There was the sound of someone falling against the wall of the house we were in and then silence. Peter swore and punched the wall before us. A few more shots bolted through the air close to the house. Ant stood and pulled Eliza and I to our feet, following Peter who was now making his way back through the house to somewhere we could escape from. The back door of the house shook as Peter kicked it open and we emerged into thicker darkness. The small walled garden was filled with many potted plants and trees, and the tiles on the floor reminded me of city gardens. I stepped through the immensity of gathered plants and felt one scratch my aching arm. Peter led us to an open gate at the back which led to a long, thin alleyway with different gates to all of the gardens. A nonchalance to the gunfire resonated from the two men, as they concentrated on escaping the danger.
I followed down the long alleyway and they began to run. Peter dropped back and ran behind Eliza and I so that we were enclosed between the two soldiers. Gunshots were slightly quieter now and they seemed numbed as we distanced ourselves. I felt guilt at leaving the three men behind, but it would serve no purpose to question why Peter and Ant had decided to leave them. They had weapons, and they were the three of them together. Though the thump of someone’s body hitting the house we had been thrown in to made me believe that one was injured.
Once we had reached the end of the alley we took a left down another wider alley and, still running, managed to reach what I gathered were the outskirts of the town I was no more familiar with than when we first entered it. This place was a maze of alleys and destruction; the houses were crumbling and lay in disorder. I had spent two nights in the town now; in houses I would never know the owners of, and in streets that seemed as if they had never seen the light of day and hope of freedom.

Along the dark stone road we wandered together. I held tightly on to Peter’s hand, gripping my fingers around his, which were cold and icy. He walked a little in front of me, still limping, and his hand enclosed mine securely. I looked up to see the clear sky, dappled with bright stars. I recalled my father telling me that if the sky was clear of a winter night, it was due to be cold throughout that night. It felt the chill of the thought echo through my spine and goosebumps on my skin.
There had always been moments when I was younger when I had thought about looking at the sky as clear as it were and holding someone’s hand that I loved. Peter limped before me and I gripped his hand, squeezing it a little to get his attention.
He turned to look at me, and in the dark I could see the outline and shape of his face. His nose which shadows slept at the side of as he turned and his lips which were darker than the other shades of his face in the dark. Everything was a shade of grey or black in the dark, even his eyes. I pulled him closer to me as I searched for a hint of colour in his face, a hint of life as he looked at me blankly. His eyes shone in the darkness and I searched them for a gentle glow of blue. The closer he got to me the blacker his eyes seemed, until his face pressed against mine and it became a blur and out of focus.
‘Jesus Christ.’ He breathed out as he sighed the cold air in to his lungs with his cheek pressed against mine. He wobbled from side to side with his injured leg and held me close to him, all the whiles cursing something. ‘Jesus fucking Christ.’
‘There’s a house there,’ I heard Eliza say from ahead. She had stopped and I could see Ant and her stood together in the darkness, facing the opposite direction to Peter and I and staring at the faint outline of a building. ‘There’s a barn I think, should we stay there for the night? Just get a few hours sleep atleast? We can leave early in the morning. I need some sleep.’