The Honours by Tim Clare Page B

‘Go to the library. You’re to spend the afternoon reading silently.’
    â€˜But – ’
    â€˜I won’t have you slandering our hosts.’
    â€˜But he said – ’
    â€˜You’ve told me what he said.’
    â€˜You’re not listening! They – ’
    â€˜Out. Now.’ He picked up his palette.
    Delphine took a deep breath, bunched her fists.
    â€˜Daddy, I think the Bolsheviks are plotting to kill me.’
    Daddy leant back on the stool. His shoulders began to shake. The tremors moved to his arms and head and it was only when he opened his mouth that she realised he was laughing. He took a pull on his cigarette and swung round to face her.
    â€˜Oh, Delphy.’ His painting hand settled on her shoulder. Gauze crackled as it gripped. ‘One whiff of a foreign accent and you think you’re Richard Hannay.’
    She tried to slip loose from his grasp. His hand clung.
    â€˜It’s not a joke! Mr Propp is a spy.’
    â€˜He’s not a spy. He’s a teacher and a thinker and a healer. He’s going to make us all well again.’
    Delphine stared into her father’s eyes and saw only clean burning zeal.
    â€˜But I heard him,’ she said.
    â€˜Perhaps you misheard.’
    â€˜But he was so angry.’
    â€˜Perhaps he had good reason.’
    Delphine could feel her resolve melting. What had seemed a minute ago like a fat and damning dossier now felt wispy as a fading dream. She looked down at her sandals.
    â€˜I want to go home.’
    â€˜Come now, Delphy, what did I say about whingeing?’ Fingers grabbed her chin and tilted her head up. He breathed yellow smoke in her face. ‘For now, this is our home.’ He had shaved unevenly. Black bristles dotted the curve of his upper lip. ‘I know it feels new and strange, but you mustn’t worry. Everyone here wants to make the world a better place. Be a good girl and play your part.’
    Smoke stung her eyes. ‘But I’m scared.’
    â€˜I won’t let anything happen to you. Please. Give the Society a chance. It would make me very happy. You want me to be happy, don’t you?’
    Her head was pounding. Over Daddy’s shoulder, the canvas churned crimson, raven’s wing, Passchendaele brown. She let her arms go limp.
    â€˜Yes, Daddy.’

CHAPTER 6
    UNHAPPY AND FORSAKEN TOAD
    April 1935
    M r Garforth hunched over a rumbling cauldron, boiling blood off gin traps. Delphine watched him from the doorway of the cottage. He wore a pair of grubby cloth gloves. Steam condensed on his cheeks and brow, droplets tugging at his whiskers. Using the head of a pick, he hooked out a pair of dripping steel jaws, rinsed them with a ladle of cold water, then tossed them into the dirt with the others.
    Mr Garforth bought the traps from Mr Wightman, the blacksmith, for twenty-nine shillings a dozen. They were big enough for rabbits but he used them for rats. He said the smaller traps were apt to amputate a limb, letting the rat escape. He said they were too light, and if you forgot to peg them down a rat might drag a gin off into the undergrowth.
    Once he was done boiling the traps he would bury them in the ground for a week to get rid of the scent of humans. Then he would replace any sprung traps along runs or around the sitting boxes. Delphine said it seemed like a lot of fuss. Mr Garforth said there was fuss and then there was fuss, and if rats gnawed their way into a box they could devour all the eggs and strip the broody to a skeleton in a single night. He said he’d heard stories from men back in France who’d had to burn the bodies of horses that had frozen to death on the battlefield, and once the fire was lit hundreds of rats beganpouring out of the horses’ mouths. He said he knew of a private who lost a hand when a rat bite went bad, another who woke to find a black rat gnawing at his eyelid.
    â€˜Gas is nasty, granted,’ he said,