“You're shaking,” she said. “Are you getting ill?”
“Just cold. Hold me a bit.”
She did. Liv read his face when she came up for air. One of her slender eyebrows arched up, as though rearing back for a better look at him. Her face wasn't so round as it had been just before Agnes was born, but still not yet so thin as it had been when they'd first met. She still carried some of Agnes on her.
“Hmm.”
“What?”
“Are the flowers for me or for you?”
“What do you mean?”
“You're feeling guilty about something.”
When had she burrowed inside him like that? This was part of Liv's magic, the way she saw into him, saw the man inside him. She'd done it since the moment they met, as though she'd made a study of him all his life.
“Of course they're for you, dove.” Marsh sighed. He shook his head. “Bad day at work.”
She didn't ask. She didn't need to.
“So they are for you, then.” She poked a finger in his stomach. “Cheeky.”
He jumped. “Never.” Somewhere inside him, storm clouds thinned, turned from coal to lead.
“Hmm,” she said. With the vegetable knife she trimmed the flower stems. Then she plucked a glass preserves jar from the narrow shelf above the sink. Water sprayed in every direction, jetting from the spout, when she filled the jar. It darkened her blouse, shone like diamond droplets on her eyelashes.
She frowned, blinked at him. “I wish you'd mend that.”
“I'll do it now.” He opened the cabinet beneath the sink. She arranged the bouquet on the windowsill overlooking the back garden where the Anderson bomb shelter and Marsh's shed crowded together. She bumped his head with her hip, ever so carefully, as she did. A breeze swirled through the open window to tug at the petals.
He touched the back of her knee, rested his hand on the curve of her calf. “Someday, Liv, you'll have a real vase. You won't be using jam jars forever.”
“I think it's cozy.”
Marsh's toolbox jangled as he pulled it out from under the sink. The sink needed mending on a regular basis.
Agnes cried. Her wails, surprising in their intensity from a package so small, drowned out the wireless.
Liv lifted Agnes from the bassinet. She hugged the blanketed bundle to her chest, swaying on her feet in time with the music. “Shhh, shhh.”
She sang along with Vera Lynn on the wireless, lulling Agnes to rest. “We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when ...” Marsh hummed while pulling the faucet apart.
“Tsk, tsk.” Liv cooed to their daughter. “Your father couldn't carry a tune in a bucket. What should we do with him? Should we keep him?”
“What's that, pretty girl?” She leaned her head toward little Agnes resting against her shoulder, as though listening to a whisper. She fixed Marsh with a long sly look. “Yes, I suppose he is. In a rugged sort of way.” One of her tresses bounced across the pale curve of her neck as she shrugged. “If one goes for that sort of thing.”
Despite himself, Marsh smiled.
“What else should you know about your father? Hmmm. What a curious girl you are. Now let me think.” She put a finger of her free hand to the corner of her mouth and frowned, eyebrows hanging low over her eyes.
“Well, he is rather sharp. Or so his friends tell me.”
Marsh replaced the washer, chuckling to himself. Somewhere, the sun burned through storm clouds and gloom. He felt inside the valve seat with the tip of his finger. It was worn and rough.
“There's the problem,” he muttered to himself. “Have to replace that.” Until he did, it would keep chewing up washers, forcing him to replace them regularly.
“And occasionally,” said Liv, “he shows a glimmer of usefulness about the home. Not often, however.”
He tightened everything, reopened the valve beneath the sink, and tested the faucet. Water gushed from the spout and nowhere else.
“On second thought,” Liv said to their unconscious daughter, “let's keep him round a bit longer.”
Marsh embraced her. They swayed to the music. Quietly, he asked, “How long until we eat?”
“A little while.”
“In that case, I'll go out to the shed. Try to get something done before it's too dark.” He kissed Liv on the cheek. “It's past warm enough to get the tomatoes in the ground, and I should do it soon. Otherwise, it'll be a long wait for a proper salad this summer.”
“Go, you. I'll call when it's time to eat.”
Music floated through the open window all the way to Marsh's shed, though it was too faint to make out. He hummed the Vera Lynn song to himself as he worked.
He inspected the tomato vines, checking for hornworms and fungus. Just as he'd been taught when he was very young. He'd been putting the plants out every morning to harden them in preparation for transplanting to the garden. In another day or two, they'd be ready to stay out overnight.
“Liv?”
He stepped out of the shed. Agnes wailed again.
“Liv?”
“Raybould? Raybould, come here!”
He dropped the plant he'd been working with and dashed back to the house, picturing a ghostly man attacking his family. Liv looked pale and drawn where she kneeled in front of the wireless in the den, Agnes clutched to her chest. She reached for him, pulled him to her. Now she was the one to shiver.
“—intensive Luftwaffe bombing, torpedoes, and artillery barrages from the First Panzer Division onshore. Royal Navy destroyers lost during the evacuation include the
“They're saying they've abandoned the evacuation,” said Liv, squeezing Marsh's hand. “They won't, will they?”
The news continued: “Vice Admiral Ramsey today announced that despite a most difficult situation, a total of over twenty-eight thousand fighting men have been evacuated since Sunday.”
Left unsaid, of course, was the number of men left behind on the beaches of Dunkirk. Nor was there any count of civilian craft obliterated by the Luftwaffe, though the toll on the ragtag flotilla must have been very high.
They listened through the night. The BBC gave no such numbers. If it knew them, it wasn't likely to report. But Marsh, who had been there not three weeks earlier, knew the combined total French and BEF roster spread across northern France approached half a million men.
He didn't share this with Liv. There was no need. By sunrise, a grim reality dawned on the world, leaving Marsh to wonder what sort of future Agnes would inherit.
Britain had lost an army.
interlude
They arrived in numbers that blackened the sky, and at the beaches, they feasted.
Amidst sand and iron, surf and steel, ravens gorged on the dead. The first few hours were best, before sunlight and seawater fouled the meat. But soon the carrion reek attracted more than birds. New men arrived to
