Chapter twelve

'What do you want, Tash?'

Will is lying on the side of his body that isn't purple, on the banks of her Lake of Shining Waters. Dido sits at its edge. She has peeled off her stockings and hitched up her hem to cool her calves and feet. There is a smell of sweet grass, the sound of crickets and surfacing fish; then this lovely girl turning and telling him, 'You.'

He rolls himself up, painfully, 'No, I can do it,' he says when she offers her hand, and begins to untie his laces. Thick brown hair falls over his eyes as he balls his socks in each shoe, placing them together just so.

'Darling, no one will know if you leave your kit in a muddle.'

Will raises his eyebrows and slips his feet in the pond. 'Shall we get a house by the water, one day. It's our sort of place, isn't it?'

'What, here?' Dido says, kicking water at him. 'You're not thinking of making a home on the Island?'

'No chance,' he answers above Dido's squeals, as a cold spray soaks her pink dress. It melts on her thighs like sugar in rain as she tucks her wet feet under herself to wring out the gauzy tulle. Her knuckles go white when she hears him say, 'I was thinking about The Soup –where we used to swim.'

The Soup was an enormous water filled crater, half a mile from the grounds of de Courcelette. The officer ranks laid claim to it and laid claim to many nurses there, too. Dido preferred to practice her back stroke. She was goaded into races, of course, the idea being Miss Gardner would be the prize at the end of it. If they managed to best her she would simply submerge herself until they got bored. That was how she met Will. He didn't ask for a race, he challenged her to see which of them could hold their breath the longest. They sank to the bottom and stared at each other; the murky water made their eyes look like old coins, and he blew all the air from his lungs. Dido watched this with a mix of fascination and fear. But what she remembers most was an overwhelming need to breathe for him.

The first time she found herself in Will's arms she was coughing up water down his back. The last time she went down to The Soup he had flown into German territory to seek out the survivors of four aircraft that had been shot down. Will had given her a ribbon in lieu of a ring and came back a Captain with a medal for distinguished conduct. That same day the water went red with the shattered bodies of Merry-Hell and a surgeon from field hospital B. Dido doesn't swim anymore.

'You miss France, don't you, Will?'

'I miss flying,' he says. He feels himself being studied and frowns. 'What?'

Dido doesn't answer straight away. 'I think you're hoping I'll ask you what you want.'

He shrugs carelessly, with his floppy hair and rolled up trousers he looks twelve not twenty-two. 'Maybe. Maybe I was hoping you'd give me some idea what the hell I'm supposed to do now.'

'Earn oodles of money and keep me in white silk dresses, remember?' Dido says. She wants to sound playful but the hurt she feels is obvious.

'I'm sorry I said that, Tash. It wasn't anything your mother did, your mother is swell. I was mad at myself when she found me hiding like some kind of thief, and then... I dunno, I sat in the dark and started thinking like one. In the war it didn't matter who I was, but now...'

Dido kisses the scar on his hand. 'You can be a real pill, Will Blythe,' she says. 'I cried buckets for you, you know. Besides, it wouldn't do the least bit of good –scamming my parents, I mean.'

'Why, are the Gardners broke?' Will jokes.

'Well, if we aren't we should be. The money Papa spends, all the while Alderley's falling apart. I suppose that's why he did it...' She looks at him as if trying to decide whether to say more, then suddenly blurts it out. 'Papa sold the rights to The Life Book, for quite some money, too... they're going to make it into a film–'

'But I thought you said... that is– I understood Mrs Gardner wrote it.'

He reels in the memory of that conversation. They'd had too much wine and too little sleep and were too spooked to believe they might live out the morning. Then the wind changed direction; the mustard gas cloud blew away with all their secrets. In the end he was never sure if Dido remembered she had told him or not.

'Yes, Mamma wrote it.' Dido presses her lips together, looks down at her wet dress. Moonlight shines on her eyelids where she has spiked her lashes with Vaseline. She turns to him and smiles. 'Not that she told me, exactly, somehow I just grew up knowing.'

Will's ribs are nipping and he lowers himself on the grass again. 'I can't believe Owen Ford is your mother.'

'Neither can I when you put it like that.'

'What was it like –growing up with her?'

Dido joins him and stares up at the sky. These are probably the stars Mamma was thinking of when she wrote The Tree Lovers. When Dido studies the constellations she doesn't see pictures, she hears music: a long, lone note like a star shooting over the heavens. 'My mother is an utter brick.'

'I could tell that straight away.'

'You could? That's good. Most people assume she is flighty and frail, but she's not like that at all.'

This is more a description of the woman Dido left in 1916 than the woman she came home to. But for the most part it's right. It's her father who needs to be treated with kid gloves; his moods that must be anticipated and worked around. He is sentimental, horribly vain. But he is generous too, to the point of extravagance, and dotes on his women; his mother, his sisters, his daughter, his wife. It suddenly occurs to her that her father doesn't have any male friends. Plenty of colleagues, a vast network of hangers-on, but no real chums. 'Royal knows how to recognise genius,' his agent once said. What he didn't say, but what Dido understood, was that her father had no genius of his own, only the means to collect it. No wonder he needed to sweeten his life with silks and puddings, surely that would make any man bitter. And no wonder Mamma loved him. Not many husbands would tolerate her need to be always working. Perhaps none.

'Mamma doesn't know that I know –about the film. I had a letter from Aunt Aline and Papa tucked a note inside.'

She wraps her arms about her head and looks for Will's expression. He is doing that strange thing injured people do and pressing on his wounds to see how much they hurt.

'Is that a common ruse of the Gardners?' he says, inching himself onto his side.

Dido laughs. 'Actually, it is! I never thought of it as a ruse before, but you're right. What a strange family we are.'

'No stranger than mine.'

'I've been thinking about that,' she says, in that serious way that always makes Will want to kiss her. He slides his arm down his hip and over his pocket. The ring sits snugly inside and he smiles. 'About how similar we are,' she continues. 'We both have parents from the Island, your mother was orphaned, my mother was orphaned. Your father had a child with another woman and so did mine–'

'Only my father never married her. He wanted to–' Will is quick is add, 'but she was adamant she would never marry again.'

'Good gravy! You never told me that bit. I can't imagine anyone turning down your father. He's divine!'

'As divine as his son?'

At this moment Will looks like a fallen angel who has not quite learned how to be on earth. His chest and his shoulders seem to fight the shirt they are clothed in, and his beautiful face, with cuts across his nose and his full bottom lip, suggest he landed here with a thud.

'If you insist on fishing I suggest you try in there,' she says, pointing to the pond. 'I want to hear more about your sister– to say nothing of her radical mother.'

Will bites his lip, presses on his ribs; the ring. 'My sister –my half sister, really– is Joy. Her mother is Leslie Moore. Dads met her when his uncle retired. He was helping out until they found another doctor. This was at Glen St Mary, do you know it?' Dido nods, urging him on. 'He'd just finished medical school and I s'pose they had a fling –not that he put it that way, of course. Anyway she refused him, I don't know why, considering–'

'But you've met her, haven't you, couldn't you have asked?'

'Ask Leslie Moore? You'd have better luck asking that moon. One day you'll meet her, Tash, and you'll know what I mean.'

'I'd like that,' she says, happily. 'They live in Vancouver, don't they? By the water...'

It's those last words that do it. Will's been lying next to her trying not think about her clinging wet dress, the sheen of her eyelids, the way she looks up at the stars expecting to see more than sky. If she asks him to make love to her this time he's not sure he has the will to say no.

He reaches for her and she moves towards him, hesitantly.

'I don't want to hurt you.'

'Bit late for that.'

He pulls her onto his good side and when that doesn't work, rolls her onto the long grass and touches his lips to hers. Their kisses are soft and closed mouthed and their fingers are tangled together. Dido has the sensation she is twelve again, sharing her first kiss with Walter Irving. She smiles and shivers at the feel of Will's mouth on her forehead, the shape of his words on her skin.

'I want to ask you something-'

'I know.'

'You do?'

'Will, this is Avonlea, do you think the Fletchers are just going to give you your grandmother's ring and not tell at least ten people? Don't be cross,' she says when he tries to pull away, 'I wasn't sure you would ask. That is until you lead me here, because the water is our place.' She kisses him again. 'No one can take that from us.'

A sound like a sigh and a groan comes from Will's throat. 'Why do I feel like you are about to say no.'

Dido leans on her elbow, her hand still in his. 'Not no. Just wait... Oh, please don't get up, please listen to me– there are things I need to do... before I can be your wife-'

'What things?'

'Papa wants me to go to France. They want me to do a screen test, can you imagine? Me! In a movie– like Lillian Gish–'

'So you're telling me you're going back to France?'

'I don't know, I really don't. Faith is trying to persuade me to go back to nursing, Mamma expects me to go to Redmond. None of these things mean I don't want to be married, I just don't want to be married yet.'

The moon has cloaked itself with the one cloud in the sky just as she needs to see his face. He hasn't moved and that feeling goes through her again, when she wishes she could breathe for him. 'Can you accept that?'

He should say yes, that one year, five years, thirty years are nothing if in the end she chooses him. And he wants to say it, even if he doesn't exactly mean it, because more than anything he wants to be that sort of man –the best sort of man, as his father would say– to let her go, and wish her well and believe she might come back to him. But the words won't come, they sit in his throat like a man trapped in smoking fuselage. He shakes his head trying to get them loose.

'Is that a no? Are you telling me no?'

'No, I– no... that wasn't what I meant.' He feels socked by Dan Reese's fists all over again. 'You've had time... to think about what you were going to say, but this is all new to me. I– I've got this damn ring in my pocket... All through the wedding I was picturing our own– and now you tell me this.'

The knowing looks his cousins gave him; his father clapping him on the back; the secrets he told that weren't his to tell, and all the time she was going to say no. He's on his knees then he carefully stands up.

'I knew you would do this, I knew you would try to get away from me!'

'I'm not the one going back to France,' he says, softly.

'You think I'm the one running away? Alright fine, let's see how you like it. Goodbye, Will Blythe.'

Dido leaves him at the pond. The burst of satisfaction she feels stops short when she cuts across the corn field at Orchard Slope and sees two figures walking toward her. One of them carries a lantern.

'Dodo, wait on, we're looking for Will and Dr Blythe!'

'Ma wants to head home,' Perry Fletcher hollers. 'The buggy's waiting!'

A Fletcher. Perfect. Dido crosses her arms and tucks her fingers close to her sides.

'You look like you've seen a ghost,' Jack says. He bends down to catch his breath, passing the lantern to Perry who jogs up behind him.

'Where's the lucky boy?' Perry grins. 'Got something to tell us, Miss Gardner?'

He peers past her –over her really, the boy must be seven foot tall– into the dark field beyond. Dido isn't sure what to do. She wants to say she doesn't know where his cousin is, and what's more she doesn't care; then she'll stroll off smartly with her chin jutting out and nary a tear to be seen. But she can't, it would be mean spirited not to point the boys in the right direction, especially when Will is hurt. It's that last thought that causes her to wobble. Her big grey eyes make the merest gesture in the direction of the pond.

'The pond. Perry, you've got the lantern, why don't you head that way? I'll walk Dido home,' Jack says.

They head along the boundary fence. Jack doesn't touch her until they reach the ford that feeds into the field, then he takes her hand and helps her across. It's Dido that won't let go. She doesn't say a word and neither does he. When they reach Lone Willow her heart has almost resumed its natural beat. She finds Rose and Jean asleep in her bed and goes up to the garret in search of a blanket. She might sleep out on the porch, even go as far as her Cherry Tree hut. She's not halfway up the attic ladder when Jack calls out her name.

'How did you know it was me?' she asks him. The hem of her nightgown catches under her foot. There's a moment she thinks she might fall, then she catches herself.

'Because you climb ladders like you've never climbed a ladder before,' he says. 'Have you been kicked out of your room, too. I've got Aunt Minnie-May's boys in mine.'

He is still wearing the hideous checked trousers Delia made. His hair still bears the teeth marks of his mother's furious comb, and his vest would make that same woman cry. Being a Wright, Jack has a stash of food tucked up in a tea towel, and gleaming drips of treacle decorate his chest. Dido realises how hungry she is, and sits beside him on a winter-weight quilt. Her mouth is crammed with cold strawberry pie when she finally says what she has been longing to tell him all night.

'It's was magical, Jack, just magical-'

'You must have heard how I fudged the middle bit? Even Una told me not to worry, which means it must have been bad.'

'I like those Merediths,' Dido says, brushing flakes of pastry from the well of white muslin between her chest and her knees. Her lips make a kissing sound as she catches a crumb on the end of her finger. 'They are, all of them, exceptional in their way.'

'Jerry was headed for glory, you know. He won prizes and scholarships just like your Ma. Then he went in for Officer training, busted his ankle and that was that.'

Dido sucks strawberry seeds from her teeth in as thoughtful manner as she can muster. She knows now what he means by 'that was that'. Disappointment. White feathers. A self-induced exile.

Jerry gave up his post-graduate studies and took a position at what he called 'a poky schoolhouse that couldn't keep a teacher and couldn't keep a certain Cora Andrews in line.' It was a sad day for everyone when the Army Medics gave him the all clear. Delia gave Jerry pressed heads of lavender. Jack gave him a promise to watch over the girls until he came back.

'To think he was destined for greatness and gave it all up.'

'I s'pose it depends on what you call great,' Jack mutters. His eyes are slowly closing. Dido lays her knitted blanket over his shoulder and smooths it down his hip.

I'll just lie here a minute, she tells herself, then I'll go to the Cherry Tree hut, I'll go far, far away... She can hear the sound of a bird's wings beating, then the tick, tick, tick of raindrops as they strike the old tin roof. I'll wait for bit to see if it stops, Dido reasons, then I'll go downstairs, I'll go sleep with Mamma...

She pulls Jack's arm around her. His body feels warm and solid, and his breath comes even and sweet on the back of her neck. The rain begins to fall as though it never means to stop. And Dido knows, she always knew, she's not going anywhere.

...