Gail Godwin - Flora

“Guess what?” Flora greeted me when I came in for lunch. “Finn called.”

“Did he ask for me?”

“Well, he seemed ready to talk to whoever answered.”

“What did he want?”

“Mr. Crump had told him we were worried about him, and—”

“I wasn’t worried. Maybe you were.”

“What happened, honey? You were in such a good mood this morning.”

“What happened was I spent the whole rest of the morning writing a stupid letter.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t stupid. You couldn’t be stupid if you tried. Was it to your father?”

“I’m not writing him again until he writes me. If you must know, it was to the Huffs.”

“It’s none of my business. I didn’t mean to pry.” Then, typical of Flora, she undermined her whole argument by asking was there any special reason I was writing to the Huffs, or was it just to say hello.

“It was a thank-you letter I forgot to write sooner. But I think it’s better to write a thank-you note late than not to ever write it, don’t you?”

“Oh, I definitely do.” I had expected her to blush or bury her face in her hands at the memory of her own rudeness, but my accusation went right over her. “Anyway, Finn said he wanted to fill us in on what’s been happening to him, so I invited him to dinner.”

“When?”

“Tonight. Was that okay?”

“Did he sound good or bad?”

“Good, I think. Maybe he’s heard something from that military board and he can start making plans for his future. I said we were only having Juliet’s wartime meat loaf recipe, which goes heavy on oatmeal for filler, but he sounded eager to come. I’m glad I still have some of Juliet’s dried oregano left. Maybe I’ll make some of her cheese straws for starters.”

I was dying to say “Juliet who?” just to get her goat, but, looking ahead to the happy day when the Willow Fanning room would be empty and Finn would be settling into the Starling Peake room, I said, “I want to watch you make them so I can do it for my father after you’re gone.” She looked so pleased that I generously added, “But we will always call them Flora’s cheese straws.”

Finn looked more presentable, somehow. Since his last visit, his hair had grown out enough from its spiky crew cut to lie flat on either side of a part, and his beaky face had acquired a becoming layer of color. He wore a neatly ironed khaki shirt and trousers and some brown, military-looking shoes. He had brought us a bunch of fragrant roses in a variety of colors from the garden of the old lady who kept forgetting things, only he now referred to her as Miss Adelaide, and explained he had been watering her garden and feeding her cat while she recuperated in the hospital from a fall.

“Cats prefer to stay in their own home even without their owners,” he said.

“So do humans,” I pointed out, which struck me as a very witty comeback except that Flora sideswiped it by asking if poor Miss Adelaide had broken anything. She very luckily hadn’t, Finn said, though she was bruised all over her body from head to toe. Into my overexcited brain popped the image of a naked old lady showing Finn her bruises from head to toe and out of my mouth burst a childish snort of laughter, which embarrassed all three of us.

“But we want to hear what’s been happening to you ,” said Flora, taking Finn lightly by the arm and steering him into the living room. “Is there any news from that military board you met with?”

“No final decision yet,” said Finn, settling into his former place on the sofa. “But if a person can guess when he’s made a good impression, I’d say there’s hope.”

“Can you talk about it?” asked Flora breathlessly, sliding in next to him, “or is it a confidential matter?”

“Sure, I can talk about it—with friends,” said Finn. “But to fill you in properly I’d need to go back a little. Ah, I was hoping you’d have that lemonade again.”

“And Helen made the cheese straws.”

“Not totally,” I corrected her. “You were standing right over me.”

“Well, you shaped them completely without my help,” insisted Flora, which drew attention to their rather clumsily twisted bodies on the serving plate.

“Let him go on,” I said.

“Well,” Finn began again, “I have to go back a little for it to make sense. Maybe as far back as September of ’forty-three, coming up two years ago, when we docked at Liverpool. There were five thousand of us on this transport ship built to carry one thousand. A bit crowded, but there you are. But it made our Nissen huts in the English countryside where we ended up seem like little palaces at first. My company was training hard, building foxholes, perfecting our skills of loving the ground. Remember, Helen, on our little… er… walk that day”—his eye caught mine to signal our secret was still safe—“and I was telling you how we learned to use the ground to keep ourselves alive?”

“I remember,” I said, looking meaningfully back.

“Then the weather turned cold and wet and many of the men came down with asthma or pneumonia. Pneumonia was your first choice because asthma was considered a chronic thing and they transferred you to a desk job. When I was diagnosed with pneumonia, I danced for joy because I could still be cured in time to make the big jump we’d been practicing for two years.”

I could picture Finn dancing for joy the way I had seen him do it that day in the crater. Flora couldn’t have such a picture because she didn’t know we’d been in the crater together and she never would.

“Then my lung collapsed and this one doctor saw scar tissue on an X-ray which he thought was a sign of tubercles, and I was evacuated so as not to infect others.”

“You had TB?” I asked excitedly.

“Don’t be rushing me, darling.”

“Sorry.” But it was the first time anyone had called me darling since Nonie died, which somewhat lessened the shame of his reproof.

“As it fell out, I didn’t have TB, but they weren’t sure till they got me to the military hospital here. And then there was the long recovery from the collapsed lung, and I missed the big jump on D-Day.”

“Well, I’m glad you missed it!” Flora cried. “So many boys were killed!” She had her arms crossed over her chest and was rubbing them up and down, the way she did during our scary programs.

“Ah,” said Finn, not rebuking her for interrupting but giving her an appreciative nod as if she was helping him along. “Which brings us to the second part of my sorry tale, how I joined the ranks of the mentalers. By now I was all clean in the X-rays but I still had to undergo a regimen to build back my lung power. Every day we… Recoverers (I love that word) were driven out to a mountain near the hospital and had to walk up and down a trail, a bit farther each day, and have our breathing monitored. The big jump had happened without me, but I was expecting to be sent back overseas soon. The D-Day casualties had been heavy and there was plenty of fighting left to do. Then, one day they told me I had a visitor and I went down and there was my mate Barney’s mother. Barney and I had gone through jump school together and he was in the Nissen hut with me in England. While we were training in Georgia, he had taken me home on leave to his mother’s apple orchards, which he was going to run as soon as the war was over. She was a widow and he was the only child. When I came into the reception room, she gave me a strange smile and said I looked a little fatter than when I had visited. She had ridden the bus up from Georgia, she said, to bring me some baked goods and a few keepsakes. She hadn’t said Barney’s name, but as soon as she said “keepsakes” I knew he hadn’t made it. She said she had heard “from overseas” that I had been sent home to this place. I knew it must have been in a letter from Barney in the winter of ’forty-four. Still there was no saying of his name. It was like we were in a contest not to be the unkind one to speak it first. Then she said she’d brought a drawing I’d done in the Nissen hut, it was in the tin, along with a snapshot of me taken at her house. I knew she meant my drawing of Barney because I remembered him sending it to her. When I said she should keep it, she said she’d rather not. Still no saying of his name, and then she switched to asking about me and the state of my health and she was smiling that strange smile again.”