Stunned by the impact, Gill lay on the damp grass looking at the stars in the black void. She ran her tongue over her teeth to check for damage. As she spat out bits of grass and grit, she realised she was also still trying to spit out the taste of Allen’s clumsy kiss. She felt she might never stop spitting.
Gill had been fleeing across the fields in the dark from Allen’s shocking approaches when she had run full tilt into
the side of a black cow standing at the edge of the new concrete runway. As she lifted her head she heard a ringing
in her ears, which, though fading, set her heart pounding anew. Was she hearing the bluebells ring, a sound that summons the fairies and bodes ill for human ears?
Breathing deeply, Gill struggled with her thoughts. There were bluebells in the woods nearby, but she knew they were yet to flower in their heady scented profusion, despite the disruption of seasonal rhythms from the warmth and light of the expanding airport. She also knew that they weren’t all bluebells – despite their similar appearance – and therefore not all headily scented, nor so empowered.
She tried to clear her head. What was she thinking? Had she heard the bluebells ring? Nor so empowered?
They Couldn’t Have Known Description:
A village near London is destroyed during World War Two, not by enemy action, but by the ruthless development of a civilian airport under the guise of wartime requirements. The poorest of the village, including two indomitable spirits – Lizzie and Allen – offer the greatest resistance.
Allen, an innocent abroad in an increasingly chaotic and dangerous world, loses his childhood love Gill to Piotr, a young Polish survivor of the Russian labour camps. Becoming further alienated from all around him, Allen finds himself innocently embroiled in major crime.
Post-war immigration – including refugees from Eastern Europe and those from the colonies seeking a new life in the ‘mother country’ – produces an unprecedented social milieu in which unlikely love and friendship emerge in the face of racial and cultural prejudice.
Burian, exposed as a war criminal from Eastern Europe, hunts Piotr and Lizzie with murder in his heart. As the tension mounts, the division between the natural and supernatural becomes increasingly blurred, leading to Burian’s bizarre demise.
