“Well, it would certainly make my life easier if you win fair and square, so I wish you luck and will keep my fingers crossed for you. Goodbye for now.”

As she retreated to her private reception room, she couldn’t help feeling that control was slipping inexorably from her grasp. Might her husband’s possible stretching of the rationing rules overtake any power she had over Ambrose’s BBC job? If Sir Strickland punished him, would he retaliate by tipping off the Ministry of Food? That would come back to haunt her, and her hand went automatically to her wrist, her throat.

How crucial this contest has become, she thought to herself. But as she glanced out the window, she found her gaze slipping away, away from the gardens and off into the hills, where the hawk soared menacingly above the fields.

Audrey

Audrey believed in luck. Born on a Sunday at lunchtime and raised in a household of art, good food, and passion, she felt it in her soul that life was far greater than her or her family, greater than the house in which they lived, along with the hens, the pig, and a hedgehog called Cyril—who, truth be told, repeatedly demonstrated that he wasn’t actually part of the household by frequently wandering off. Life, in the main, was outside of her control. There was just one thin sliver, one tiny portion of her life that remained within her power, and it was this one part that she clung to: her cooking and now, relatedly, the contest.

Which was why she decided to get some bees.

As a child her family had kept bees, and she remembered that tradition dictated that you didn’t buy bees. You had to exchange them for things, services, or love. The bees in question were thus sourced from a beekeeper in a neighboring village, swapped for two sacks of carrots and cabbages with the promise of two more later in the season. Bartering had become common these days. Audrey only had to walk down to the village shop and someone would offer a brace of brown trout or rabbits in exchange for some of her produce. Eggs had become increasingly scarce since the beginning of the war, so she always kept some aside for swapping.

    The bees arrived on Monday afternoon. Audrey and the younger boys were in the chicken coop collecting eggs for the Stricklands’ pies, although Ben had already broken one. He was trying to put chickens on one another’s backs, “then they can have a piggyback race.”

“Are you sure they’re enjoying that?” She laughed, putting an arm around him and giving him a hug, gently releasing the hen from his grip.

Christopher was leaning against the ancient stone sundial, the shadow of time slipping seamlessly by. He was watching the resident hedgehog, who had a jam-jar lid with a tiny trickle of milk in front of him. “Come on, Cyril. You have to drink up. It’s rationed. You don’t know how lucky you are!” The familiar words were told to children all over the country, especially if dinner was leftover soup—all the scraps, peapods, and carrot tops cooked up with discarded outer cabbage leaves and potato peelings, everything that was edible.

Ben piped up, “Bickie Sanderson told me that a London chef made a cookbook full of things you make from nature, and there’s a recipe for hedgehog stew.” He let out a loud chuckle, as Christopher looked anxiously at Cyril.

Audrey patted his back. “Don’t worry, darling. Cyril hasn’t got enough meat on him to tempt me. And think about all those spikes.”

Christopher gave a little squeal, while Ben expounded further on the subject. “There’s another recipe for roast sparrow and one for squirrel-tail soup.” He let out a laugh. “Bickie Sanderson made a portable hay-box out of his gas mask box so that he can take a tin of shepherd’s pie to school and it stays hot for lunch, and today he said it was sparrow pie. No one believed him, so we all had to try some, and it tasted incredibly funny. I hope it wasn’t poisoned.” He put a hand dramatically on his stomach.

“I’m sure it’s just his mum making do with some other ingredients. We all have to do that, you know.”

“Can I make a hay-box out of my gas mask box, too? A hot meal would be far better than the usual carrot and sweet pickle sandwiches.”

    “No, darling,” she said pointedly. “You need your gas mask box for carrying around your gas mask.”

“But there’s never been a gas attack, has there?”

“No, thank heavens.” A gas attack would have brought the country to its knees.

The sky was a deep blue, a hawk circling above the hill. A ripple of mackerel clouds seemed to pause for thought high in the sky, and the buzz of insects infused the day with a sense of peace.

It reminded her of summer days gone by, the time she and Matthew threw a garden party for their friends, a crowd of artists and writers, his cousin from Sicily, and a few women she’d known at school. Ambrose was there, of course. He was always the best person to invite to a party, entertaining people with witty stories and playing No?l Coward ditties on the piano. He’d brought his croquet set over, and he and Matthew were fiercely competing against anyone brave enough to try.

Suddenly, the low drone of aircraft jolted her out of her reverie. Within moments, the sound was louder, two planes heading fast in their direction.

“Are they Nazi bombers?” Christopher’s bottom lip quivered.

“No, darling. I’m sure they’re our planes, ferrying important people around,” Audrey said calmly, but she sprang over to him quickly, gathering him into her arms. She had learned that you had to quell the panic promptly, before it began to overwhelm him. It wasn’t usually practical, especially when she was cooking, but she couldn’t let him sense her frustration, otherwise he would enshroud himself in silence for a week or more.

As tears of worry and frustration coursed down her cheeks, she felt Christopher’s cries turning into dramatic convulsive gulps. He was panicking, his insides overloading.

Scooping him up, she raced to the Anderson shelter beside the outbuildings. “Shh! SHH!”

Thank heavens Matthew put up the Anderson before he left, she thought as they went into the little metal hut dug into the earth. It might be a bit flooded half the time, but at least it was a refuge. Inside, Ben sprang onto the top bunk while she set Christopher on the lower one, getting in beside him, her arms pulling his slim body close to hers.

    Please let him be all right!

It wasn’t for another ten minutes that he began to calm down, another twenty before she could slowly get him up, take them back to the garden. Almost an hour of her busy day gone.

Her son—her youngest—was so fragile, so vulnerable. She felt a visceral need to protect him in a way that she hadn’t been able to protect his father.

Thankfully, the collected eggs were still intact in the chicken coop when they returned. The Stricklands had upped their daily quota of food from Willow Lodge. Today they needed four meat pies, two rhubarb tarts, and a large birthday cake for a dinner party. The reason given was that Sir Strickland had a group of politicians coming—something to do with bigger canned meat orders for the troops. But Audrey couldn’t shake the idea that her sister, Lady Gwendoline, was playing games with her, draining her of precious time and ingredients so that she couldn’t cook so well for the contest.

Meanwhile, the noise of the planes had wound the hens up, and they began tussling among themselves. Gertrude, Audrey’s most difficult hen, was looking a little more tyrannical than usual. Her beak was slightly malformed, the upper part skewed to one side, and she fought off the pecks as good as she got, earning herself a bit of a reputation.

“Are you causing trouble again, Gertrude?” Audrey said, taking in the loss of more feathers and a particularly rebellious look in the beady eyes.

She picked Gertrude up, gave her a squeeze, and then passed her to Christopher. A little cuddle with a hen would cheer him up.

“Hello? Mrs. Landon?” The beekeeper’s voice called from the gate.

“I’ll be with you in a moment,” Audrey called, making sure Christopher was all right. She didn’t need him getting panicked again, not now. Not with the bees.

    Bees had to be kept calm.

And you needed to talk to them.

They’d had bees in the garden—this garden—when she was a girl, and she remembered her mother explaining, “You need to tell them everything, and never get angry close to the hive, or they will reap their revenge.”

She’d been a girl then, taking it all in. “What kind of things do I need to say?”

“Anything you like.” Then suddenly, her mother had looked more serious. “But you need to tell them if someone dies. You have to tell them immediately, or they will get cross, go rogue.”

Audrey didn’t want rogue bees in her garden. “Well, that wouldn’t be very good, would it?”