Daffodils (Katherine Wheel, #1)

by Alex Martin

Do you really feel you want your estate to be left behind in all this progress? To be seen as old-fashioned and backward looking?”

There will be a great deal of expense, no doubt. This damn land tax of that ruddy Welshman, Lloyd George, has fairly scuppered me finances,

Lady Amelia was a tougher nut to crack but her competitive streak in local society was a trump card. He would get his taps and drains before a twelvemonth was out

the disaster of the Gallipolli campaign

Conflict was spreading throughout Europe like an ugly rash.

Florence lay quiet and lethargic; too ill to cry.

By dawn, she was out of all discomfort and would never make a sound again.

Silently their autumn colours drooped towards the hungry ground in a vertical, suicidal suck of gravity and lay there, curling up in their death throes, submitting to the crush of oblivious feet.

This analogy is an allusion to the death of the baby Florence and the funeral which is about to take place.

The flimsy gauze membrane of her memory kept them apart.

This is a great analogy.

After that, every time Lionel paid a visit to Cheadle Manor, he saw the squire drift around its large, empty rooms in bewildered confusion, as the twentieth century stuck its bloody claws into his insular world and stripped it of its protective armour. His wife marshalled various women into an organised party of workers with the ruthless efficiency of an army general. The new era had marched boldly into their cocoon, braying its mechanical noise and brutality so loudly, it could no longer be denied.

seems the rich can do just as they like in wartime, same as they do always.”

Daisy.

She, at eleven years old,

Daisy and her little brother, Jack,

estaminet

Lionel stood in the pulpit,

Grief stalked the two neighbouring villages as young men were cut down in the French killing fields as regularly as daffodils in spring.

his feelings were becoming an obsession.

My father always says that intelligence is defined by a curious mind.

Ariadne

Ariadne looked thoughtful, as she so often did these days. “They are all men under God, aren’t they? They too have wives at home like you, Kate. Children too, and mothers. We are all just people. This crazy war is waged by politicians and the reason for it is a mystery to me but, in a way, I’d like to get to know some of the German men – see if they are monsters - or like us, just people who are confused and scared and worn out.”

Ariadne

The bubbly young woman she’d met on the train to London had aged m...

Cass...

appeared to be stronger for her war...

Cassandra’s seeming callousness was simply a defence mechanism.

malnutrition amongst the German troops and the high level of illness.