The Wild Dark Flowers by Elizabeth Cooke

material spread, and watched the village laundry maids sprinkle the sheets with lavender water. She took several of the pieces between thumb and forefinger while the housemaids stood behind her. “Let them air for an hour, then take them upstairs,” she instructed. She looked them over critically, trying to find fault with their appearance.
    Then, apparently satisfied, she turned on her heel. “I shall take my tea, and be on the stairs at four,” she said. “Don’t keep me waiting. In the meantime, unfold all the sheets from the linen closets that I left in the laundry room. Shake them out, air them for half an hour, and refold them.”
    Mary watched the housekeeper go. At the door to the house, she saw Mrs. Jocelyn take hold of the doorframe for a second or two too long. She wiped the edge of her thumb along it, then reached up and did the same to the top of the door. Finding nothing to reprimand the girls for, she disappeared inside.
    Mary looked at Jenny. “She’s getting dafter,” Mary commented dryly.
    Jenny smiled. “Best not say it.”
    “She is, though. I saw her going along the corridor to the kitchen. It were like a little dance. She’ll take a step forward and two back at each light. Don’t you see her? Right peculiar.”
    “Did she always?”
    “Not that I remember. Just these last few weeks.”
    Jenny shrugged. Mrs. Jocelyn inhabited another world, as removed from them as Mars, and just as unfathomable. They went to the laundry room. In the gloom of the house, the small annex behind the kitchens was full of steam and the smell of starch. Yesterday had been wash day, and today the girls brought in from the village labored at pressing every piece of clothing and linen that had dried. The nearest looked up as Mary entered. “It’s bad enough doing the regular without the fookin’ curtains,” she complained. “They was done after Christmas. She’s gone off her head.”
    Mary had to bite back a smile, because the girl was right; however, she was far senior to a village laundry maid, and it wouldn’t do to agree, or laugh at her language. “Just get on with it,” she retorted, taking from the pile of sheets.
    Once the linen was on the rails in the sunlight, Mary and Jenny paused, hands on hips. “I wonder where David is now,” she murmured. “I wonder when he’ll get here.”
    “Is he off to Southampton afterwards?”
    “No. Shropshire. More training.”
    “They say when all the Kitchener volunteers get out to France, it’ll end the war.”
    Mary considered awhile before replying. “I don’t know,” she murmured. “I expect they volunteer in Germany, too.”
    “You don’t think we’ll beat them?” Jenny answered, aghast. “That’s not a very patriotic thing to say, is it?”
    The two of them leaned against the wall of the house, shutting their eyes against the glare of the sun for a moment or two. Mary muttered, “That’s what we’re supposed to be, is it? Good old decent British, aren’t we? They say ‘murdering Hun,’ don’t they—but what do you think
we’re
doing out there?”
    She opened her eyes to find Jenny staring at her doubtfully. “But we’re in the right. We didn’t start it.”
    Mary laughed shortly. “And they think the same, I don’t doubt. They’ll have been told they
had
to do it. Invade Belgium and France. To right some sort of wrong, I expect.”
    “Mary,” Jenny whispered. “You’ll get yourself in trouble talking like that. What would his lordship say?”
    “Yes,” Mary agreed. “So I keep my mouth shut. But don’t expect me out there waving and smiling and saying what jolly good fun it all is, because I won’t. Harrison might like it . . .”
    “He can’t wait to hunt them down,” Jenny whispered. “Like the hunt goes after foxes, he says. Ain’t that horrible, though?”
    “I told you,” Mary replied. “When you first came here last year—he’s a strange one. You can never tell what’s really on his mind.”
    Jenny