Lost in the Flames by Chris Jory Page B

billeted near the town prior to their departure for France. Jacob loved hearing them talk as he passed them in the street, like living in a town with a thousand men like Norman, and Norman became accustomed to hearing again the voices of his native north-east, uninvited ghosts from the locked room of his past, brightening the dead embers of a mother who had left him for Newcastle and a father who had left him temporarily at birth and again several years later under the wheels of a bus.
    The snow came early and by Christmas the fields were silent and white and a canopy of cloud kept the world at bay. Occasionally a plane passed overhead in the murk, droning away unseen into the distance until the hum of silence overcame the receding burr of the engines. The Bampton children were due in London for Christmas but the snow put paid to that, and instead they woke on Christmas morning still waiting for events in Europe to justify their semi-orphaned status. Norman and Vera set off for the Arbuckles’ with Billy and Bobby, and Daphne wrapped up in a bundle in Vera’s arms. The weather was too severe for the ageing Trojan, so Norman prepared the pony and trap and the cartwheels cut deep furrows in the snow as the horse pulled them away up the hill. At Mill View Cottage, Alfred fed the pigs and set the fireplace ablaze. The Edwardian glasses etched with leaves were taken down and as they all gathered before lunch a modest collection of presents was passed around in the half-light of the sitting room. By one o’clock the dining room table lay surrounded by the hungry horde, the fat turkey awaiting its fate behind the defensive ranks of potatoes and sprouts and a moat of gravy. Rose had been invited too and she sat opposite Jacob and he saw her peering into him as he looked over the rim of his glass. She looked slowly away, then quickly back again.
    Helen was saying something about Jacob’s pigeons.
    ‘… always preening themselves, you know,’ she was saying. ‘Like this …’ and she rubbed her chin against her shoulder and looked at Jacob and giggled and he smiled and then he looked at Rose. She was watching him still, testing his reaction to Helen’s display.
    ‘Cleanest of all the birds in England,’ Helen was saying now, andshe smiled knowingly and Billy turned and made a vomiting gesture at his brother.
    ‘Of course they’re not, don’t be so ridiculous,’ said Rose.
    Her sudden interjection caused Helen to let a tower of peas tumble from her fork and they scattered across the tablecloth, leaving embarrassing slicks of gravy in their wake.
    ‘I beg your pardon?’ said Helen, looking up suddenly from the little pulses of chaos she had caused.
    ‘I said don’t be ridiculous. Pigeons are certainly not the cleanest of birds. Who on earth told you that utter nonsense?’
    ‘Jacob did,’ said Helen smugly, sensing the wound.
    ‘Well he was pulling your leg, dear girl. And you fell for it hook, line and sinker. Still, it’s hardly your fault, is it? If you were never properly educated, I mean.’
    Helen looked away, and saw again the mess she had made around her plate and Jacob looked at her and noticed that she looked as if she might cry. Then he looked at Rose and she smiled at him and winked. She had done it again, he thought, and he knew she always would.
    When the hungry horde were done, the turkey sat bare-boned and dismembered on its platter and Norman chucked the scraps outside for the dogs, and everyone turned their attention to the pudding that Elizabeth brought in on a plate lit with flame.
    ‘I guess France will be next,’ said Alfred to Norman, as he tipped a generous helping of brandy sauce onto his plate and transferred a towering spoonful of pudding to his mouth. He chewed and swallowed noisily and Elizabeth frowned. ‘And then it will be us.’
    ‘There’s not a lot to stop them,’ said Norman.
    ‘They’ll take William, and Jacob too before long,’ said Alfred in a low voice. ‘Just you