Delusion (6 page)

Mrs. Pippin had offered Fee a chance to pick hops, proffering no money but hinting that she could earn her board. Fee had been about to reluctantly agree when a flock of speckled Sussex hens strutted by the window, led by a ginger-colored rooster and flanked by a small brownish chicken with a fierce red eye who pecked anyone who got too close to her. Sprinkled among them were what looked to Fee like tennis balls with legs, perfectly round fuzzy yellow chicks.

“Oh, the darlings!” Fee had said with an emphatic sigh.

Mrs. Pippin, spotting opportunity, had said, “Or would you rather be in charge of the poultry while you’re here?” The chickens were the bane of her existence. She could tolerate the lone pig, who sat in one spot and grew fat for the sole purpose of being eaten—it knew its place. She harbored some actual affection for the decoratively anonymous sheep who, if they didn’t kill themselves with their own stupidity, provided bountiful wool. And the cows were soothing, predictable. The chickens, however, were clever, inquisitive, vindictive, and worse than rats about getting into things. They left great green-black viscous droppings everywhere and destroyed the new peas.

And so Fee became mistress of the chickens, the geese, the small flock of ducks, and the ridiculously scaled-down bantams. She became like a mother hen herself, coaxing them off their eggs, arbitrating their many quarrels, and cuddling their chicks even when they grew up to be roosters with deadly spurs.

Phil walked to the village first. She didn’t quite believe the insular Mrs. Pippin or her sarcastic son and wanted to find out what sort of home defense already existed. What she found disgusted her.

“Siren?” said the postmistress. “We’ve got the church bells if there’s an emergency.”

“But don’t you know the bells are supposed to be used to relay warnings in case of land invasion, not for air raids? There’s a prohibition on bell ringing so as not to send false alarms.”

She only laughed. “The church bell rang ninety-five times when Old Granny Braeburn passed on last week. Wouldn’t she be tickled to think she’d started a rumor of invasion! A greater gossip there never was.”

Mr. Henshawe, owner of the tiny grocery store, was no more help.

“Guns? Pah, who needs game with a mouthful of lead in every bite when they can get a nice bit of tinned meat here?” He held up a can of Spam.

“But you need them to fight the Germans if they invade!”

“Why on earth would they come here? We’re in the middle of nowhere. They’ll come from the east coast, or parachute on London. They won’t call upon us on their way. Whatever happens, it won’t concern us.”

I hope they ration every single thing you sell and you go out of business,
Phil thought viciously as she left.
Not concern you!
she wanted to shout.
Not concern you, when a Hun has your head on a bayonet?

She looked for young men to rally but found only one, who just sniggered at the word
duty.

“You’ll find slim pickings in young men,” the vicar told her as he swept the church steps. “We lost so many to the Great War, and to influenza, that there were very few children born here for a decade or more.”

“You then, vicar—will you take up a rifle and defend England?”

“You’re joking, of course. But do you know I boxed in the seminary? I was quite good in my day.” Phil’s eyes lit up, and she almost challenged the vicar to a friendly bout then and there. “But no, I will not take up a gun. I only punched people who asked me to and were close enough to punch me in return. If the Germans come, I will try to make peace.”

Shades of Neville Chamberlain,
she thought as she left the church and headed back to the farmland.

She passed the oast house with its great pointed foolscap bells for drying the hops. Beyond that, on the flatter land, were the hop fields themselves, acres of towering vines supported on trellised wires. Nearby, and stretching in vast orchards to the south of Bittersweet, were the lush-bodied apple trees, their hard fruit slowly mellowing.

As she walked, she burned with fury over the villagers’ utter indifference to the state of the world. Bombs might not be falling on their own heads, but they were still English and owed it to their country to do something—anything. No one was saving scrap metal to make planes or old bones to make glycerin for explosives. No one followed blackout protocol, and there were no night patrols or plane spotters.

“I won’t let them be indifferent,” she swore aloud. “I’ll drag them out of their complacency and
make
them train. If any Germans parachute here, they’ll get the surprise of their lives.” She could see herself mounted on one of the old shire horses—so what if she couldn’t ride, they looked broad-backed and steady—holding a Tommy gun and leading the pugilist vicar and the rest into battle.

She saw it almost as a stage setting, herself illuminated with brave orange light. It would be a beautiful scene.

Furious, scheming, dreaming (and if she had understood herself properly, acting, more than anything), she strode across the hills. She was mostly burning off her nervous energy, assuaging her need to simply do something, but she told herself she was searching for a place to train on the day when she finally assembled a force for the Home Guard. “A big open flat field for maneuvers—one that isn’t covered with hops or hay or apples or sheep.”

She walked doggedly for an hour, and it wasn’t until her feet in their overlarge boots began to ache that she realized what a fool she was. Of course the villagers would never hike all the way out here for their maneuvers, and with petrol and even tire rubber rationed like everything else, they couldn’t drive either. She was envisioning leading an entire army of farmers, but all she could probably hope for was a ragtag smattering of old men she could guilt into joining her, and a handful of lazy farmhands too backward to even qualify as cannon fodder, with perhaps a lad or two attracted by her looks. For that reluctant rabble, she might as well use the village green.

And even that, she finally admitted with dismay, was being optimistic. More likely they’d just ignore her rallying cry or, worse, laugh at her.

The land rose, and she was giving serious thought to heading home to soak her poor feet in Epsom salts when she heard voices just beyond the rise. Deep voices, male and young. Perfect, she decided, sight unseen, for her newly organized Home Guard. Her spirits, ever buoyant, began to rally.
I can do it,
she thought. She tugged down her wine-colored sweater, fluffed her long loose hair (because she knew how effective advertising is in wartime), and marched upward to recruit them.

She broke off from humming “The Bear Walked over the Mountain” and gasped. The men were suddenly inconsequential. Beyond them was a wonderland, a Xanadu, of trees that towered to the clouds, flowers in such profusion that she felt giddy with their scent, silvered rills that snaked calligraphy through it all. She caught her breath—it was all too much, scent and sight, the cacophony of a thousand songbirds.

Could it be an open-air zoo? She spied something striped and sinuous creeping through a heavy-blossomed thicket.
It cannot be a tiger,
she thought. Another movement caught her eye, and on the far shore of a twisting, maple-fringed lake, she saw a summerhouse sprout like a mushroom, all in the space of a moment. A movie set, perhaps? A tent? She herself was skilled at quick prop-work. It must be inflatable.

At the center of it all, on a slight rise, stood the most lovely building she could imagine, shimmering golden under the noon sun. Was it a castle or a cathedral? It was extravagantly Gothic, a riot of arches and buttresses, of great mullioned windows with red and gold stained glass.

Fee, seeing it, would have dreamed of loving the young heir, of fairies in the garden and lost treasures buried on the grounds, of maidens drowned in the mere and gypsies camping in the meadow, filling the estate with their wild music.

Phil, seeing it, thought that whoever could afford to spend such vast sums of money on exotic plants and beasts must surely have the money to provide weapons and training for the Home Guard, and probably a slew of gardeners and gamekeepers to volunteer. She marched up to the two men—young lords of the manor, no doubt—on the other side of a ha-ha and prepared to plead her case.

One of the young men spoke first.

“Are you certain, sir, that she cannot see us?” He looked like a beautiful shepherd, just the sort Venus or Inanna would admire, with fair curling hair springing tenderly behind his ears. He was dressed, incongruously, like a particularly outré Oscar Wilde, in an aubergine velvet jacket and extravagantly spotted yellow silk neckerchief, above which his innocent face peered, a lamb in wolf’s clothing. He looked at Phil curiously, then turned back to his companion.

“Not us, nor Stour. Have you so little faith in your masters, lad?” This man was a bit older, dark and severe, with black hair pulled back in a tight queue and eyes deeply shadowed by heavy winged brows. He wore tight riding breeches and boots. He didn’t trouble to look at Phil at all, but took the other man’s arm and began to stroll along the border of the sunken, walled ditch that separated them from the interloper.

Phil looked after them, frowning, then began to follow. Apparently they believed her beneath their notice. Well, she had her own opinions about class structure, but she’d keep them to herself long enough to secure their patronage. Why, a man rich enough to own that Gothic monstrosity might buy the village a tank.

“I could swear she looked right at the castle, and then at me, sir.”

The dark man sighed. “It is entirely possible that the more sensitive commoners might feel a certain...awareness...of this place. They may feel themselves compelled to pause and admire the prospect, but mark my words, they will never glimpse so much as a stone of Stour. The magical protection is too strong for that. Stour has been hidden from the world here for forty years so far. I doubt the spells will come undone the first day you take your place on the watch.”

“Why have the watch then, sir?”

“Because we dare not let anything interfere with our sacred mission. You know what would become of the world if we failed.”

The lovely boy kept looking back at Phil over his shoulder. “I think she’s following us.”

“Nonsense!” the other said, annoyed. Really, prentices were so woefully stupid, confusing coincidence with purpose. “She cannot see us, or the castle, or even the ha-ha, but the magic ensures she sees a barrier nonetheless. Swampy ground or cow droppings, whatever is necessary to keep her from prying. Like any creature, she walks along the obstruction to see a way past. Any moment now she will give up and turn away.” He stopped and faced Phil, looking at her with such little interest that she might be a sheep.

Phil smiled at them and said, “Hello!”

“Sir!”

“I heard her. Coincidence. It was used as an exclamation, not a greeting. Perhaps she sees some rare bird behind us. In the nesting season there are a great number of collectors out here looking for eggs—”

“Excuse me, but I’m not looking for eggs. I’d like to speak to the owner of the house. Stour, did you say? It’s about the Home Guard.”

She waited, looking as pleasant as she could. The nerve of them to ignore her for so long—and what was that hogswallow about not being able to see the castle? Perhaps it was one of those stately homes closed to visitors. Well, she didn’t want to tour their ridiculous gardens (which should be plowed up and sowed with carrots) or buy a souvenir stamped with the family crest. She just wanted rifles, radios, and oh, wouldn’t it be heavenly to have her very own antiaircraft gun? Her dreams, so recently crushed, rose phoenixlike from the ashes of her doubts.

“Prentice, fetch two or three of the other masters. I should be able to deal with this, but”—the dark-haired man swallowed hard—“it is possible that something has gone seriously wrong. Don’t alarm anyone, but hurry.”

“Yes, Master,” the young man said, and hastened through the wooded lakeside toward the house.

“You see,” Phil went on hopefully, “the village is wholly unprepared, and something really must be done. If I could just talk with whoever is in charge for a moment?”

“It can’t be as it seems,” the man said.

“Oh, but it is. Hardly anyone has blackout curtains, and can you believe it? There’s not even a siren.”

“Can she be mad? Or rehearsing for a play? Of course, that must be it. I’m as bad as a prentice, believing I see meaning in random events.” He leaned over the ha-ha and peered at Phil. “Yes, she certainly is a commoner. Not a spark of magic about her. Coincidence, nothing more.” He chuckled to himself. “Imagine, a commoner suddenly able to see past the barriers. Still, couldn’t hurt to check.”

He squatted on his haunches and placed his hands on the ground, his fingers digging through the thick grass until they reached dirt. He closed his eyes, and for a fleeting moment a look of ecstatic joy crossed his face as a vibration of power surged up from the earth. Under his touch, the deep emerald grass brightened to a neon hue, as faintly incandescent as a glowworm at noon. But Phil didn’t notice, for she was looking at the young man’s intense face, wondering why the good-looking ones were always nutters.

The man stood, brushing off his hands. Just as he thought—the barriers were firmly in place. No one would be able to see anything beyond the ha-ha save a stretch of bland, uninviting countryside, and if he tried to traverse it, he would find his feet always turned in the wrong direction. Stour was perfectly concealed from anyone but a magician, and it was clear this girl was no magician. There was no charge of earth-force around her. She was as anonymous and uninteresting as an animal, as common as the starlings that settled in a dark murmuration in the meadow behind her.

“Everything is just fine,” he said with smug complacency.

“But it isn’t—that’s the problem,” Phil said, and leaped across the ha-ha.

The man staggered back and gave a cry that, since Phil was feeling uncharitable, she would have almost called a scream. It startled the flock of starlings into flight, and they wheeled madly overhead. He went ghastly white and shook his head in disbelief, plainly terrified. She whirled around. Was it a bomber? A paratrooper? Only an invasion could make a grown man so distraught. But there was nothing—just her.