The September Garden (19 page)

As they slowly got dressed together, gathered their belongings, Alex remarked that he needed to retrieve the Ford from the side of the lane. That he’d probably get done for obstruction if the Bovvie RAF came trundling through.

‘Olivers will have petrol. We can buy a can from them.’ 
She smiled at him. Her clear-mindedness about such practical matters made things seem easier for a moment or two.

‘Dear, secret little cottage,’ she said as she shut the door and hid the key back under the mat.

But just half an hour later, as he screwed the petrol cap back on and wiped his hands, took a breath of the new rain-washed air, considering his journey back to London, she felt her old fears trickle back and freeze across her chest. They stood under the trees where it appeared to be still raining. Drops fell randomly from the leaves, making her shiver. She wanted to tell him, come back to me safely, but knew that would jinx him. Curse him to disaster.

He told her again that he was a fool and took her in his arms. They stood, both unable to speak. Blood rushed through her ears, the warmth of his body so familiar now to her. Above their heads came the plaintive cry of a kite but she could not see it through the canopy of beeches.

‘Alex,’ she said. ‘I know we will get through this.’

‘I love how strong you are,’ he said. ‘Give Kit a big cuddle, or failing that, a big thump on the rump from me.’ He laughed into her mouth as he kissed her. ‘I love you.’

Yes, Alex, I will be strong, she assured herself as his car bumped away along the lane. She kept the flavour of his kiss on her lips for as long as she could. She would be strong enough for both of them. 

It certainly wasn’t her idea of heaven. Henri had assured her it was bliss out at Manor Park. No raids, peaceful countryside, interesting work, plenty of officers on site and at least four pubs within striking distance. Birdsong in the morning could be an idea of perfection to some, she thought, but a draughty cramped Nissen hut with a smoking oil lamp certainly wasn’t.

She missed the city, the Velvet Rose, the strangely comforting, brown smell of the Underground; and the girl she shared her quarters with, Kristen from Oslo, snored like a sawmill. Still, Henri was visiting this weekend and promised her lots of fun. Fun? If he called dragging miles down rutted lanes on a pub crawl fun, then he was certainly in for it.

Frustrated, her energy sapped, she braced herself to get ready for her early shift. She pulled on stockings donated in exchange for a kiss from the spiv at the Horse and Groom, buttoned up her second-best suit and checked her reflection.
A new and now permanent frown creased the space between her eyebrows. She drew out her Elizabeth Arden powder puff and dashed it over her face. The frown remained. Ticked off, she slammed her drawer shut, forcing the bulk of sleeping Kristen to flinch, turn over and resume her vibrato snuffling.

Sylvie opened her diary between the pages of which she kept Auntie Mollie’s letter. She scanned the pages of her aunt’s correspondence quickly again, taking in the begging for a visit to Lednor one weekend soon. Sylvie would reply later that day: ‘not until at least September’. She’d have to drum out the cliché that ‘things were hotting up’, something she’d heard numerous people saying in the corridors and mess halls of the establishment. But then, things were always hot under the collar at Manor Park. It was the perfect no-questions-asked excuse.

She simply didn’t feel like going back to Lednor. There was something about guilt, she decided, that turned her stomach, made her not want to see those responsible for making her feel it. Lednor, in its quiet little valley, did not hold any sort of allure for her. It had never been her home.

Sighing, she leafed over a few more pages of her diary, working out if she could possibly meet Auntie Mollie in London for an afternoon. She paused, frowning, and then turned the pages back.

She looked at herself in the mirror, put her hands on her hips and said quite loudly, ‘Oh, I see.’

Kirsten opened her eyes and muttered in Norwegian before flinging her arm over her face.

And then, a few shocked moments later, Sylvie said, once again, ‘I see.’

Henri roared up in his little Austin, beaming with smiles, his hat cocked over one eye.

‘Your
voiture
awaits you, mademoiselle.’

‘I hope you’ve got a full tank,’ she said, ducking in and shutting the door.

‘
Bonjour
to you, too,’ said Henri and patted his stomach in a manly way. ‘A full tank? You can bet your life on it.’

‘Yes, very funny. You’re taking me to Beaulieu.’

Henri stuck the car in first and pulled away from the Manor Park gates, protesting that it was mucking miles away.

‘You mean,
Beaulieu
?’

‘It’s where Alex Hammond is now stationed. I have to speak to him.’

‘On a matter of national urgency?’

Sylvie insisted that it was, in a manner of speaking.

As the Austin hurtled down the B-roads, Henri commented on his government-issue petrol ration and that he’d have some explaining to do when a week’s worth disappeared in a day. And, quite frankly, you couldn’t just bowl up at Beaulieu and ask to take tea with one of the ‘inmates’.

‘You have your contacts, Henri,’ Sylvie said. ‘I’m relying on you to reel them in.’

‘
Merde
, you think me more capable than my commander does.’

That went without saying. Sylvie allowed her fingers to walk across Henri’s knee.

‘Get off, Sylvie, who do you think I am? I thought Hammond was your chap, anyway? He of the Baker Street Irregulars? He kept that quiet that evening at the Velvet Rose.’ 

‘I wouldn’t know. It’s all classified information,’ said Sylvie sweetly. ‘Put your foot down.’

Trunk road followed trunk road and, by late afternoon, the little Austin, now snarling and wheezing with the effort, crossed the undulating heathland of rural Hampshire that rolled down to the coast. Sylvie relished the tremble of excitement in her stomach whenever she caught sight of the distant sea, a surreal blue segment between a cleft in the New Forest scrub. How she had hungered for it since her exile in England.

‘Just across there, Henri, is home,’ she sighed, giddy with the intangible thought of it. ‘Just across
La Manche
.’

Henri agreed and warned her that it might no longer be as she remembered. Sylvie fell silent as he muttered on about his own home, in deepest Lorraine, being very much further away. He laughed because, he said, many of his fellow countrymen felt they had always belonged to Germany anyway.

‘Your sarcasm is not endearing, and your loyalty to
La France
questionable,’ said Sylvie as they pulled up by the formidable gates to the station disguised within a rambling stately home. ‘But this is where your negotiation skills come in. Come on, this is why Churchill employed you.’

Henri got out of the car and went to speak to the guard at the barrier. He became ensconced, so Sylvie used the time to check her lipstick and reassert the position of her hat.

His thump on the roof of the car made her jump.

‘Chops away, Sylvie,’ Henri announced. ‘Checkpoint Charlie is summoning him. He’s a top man in there, you know. And, by all accounts, extremely busy.’

‘Can you make yourself scarce?’

Henri agreed that he would if he had to and indicated that he’d seen a nice little
auberge
of some description in the previous village.

‘I’m going to take Mr Hammond to the pub, so keep out of our way,’ she told him.

She waited, leaning against the car. The guard kept his eye on her and she expected that he thought her a spy. She let her mind wander back to Lednor and the reasons she resisted visiting. She could hardly look Nell in the eye at the best of times, but after this, how could she ever go back? She felt adrift, then, as the minutes passed and Alex Hammond kept her waiting. She was alone, but the idea hardly surprised her. Everything she ever did, she did on her own.

The sound of an exchange of greeting and the click-clunk of the gate drew her attention, made her tilt her chin in expectation.

‘Hello, Alex,’ she said, her smile sweet and contrite. ‘Isn’t this a lovely surprise?’

He strode over with the gait of a man far too busy for surprises, and far too important to even pass the time of day. His grin was taut. ‘Don’t tell me, you were just passing.’

‘I must say, the tone of your voice isn’t what I would expect from a dear old friend,’ she said.

‘I’m in the middle of preparing for an immensely crucial briefing. Your timing isn’t perfect, Sylvie.’

‘I admit, timing never has been my strong point. A quarter of an hour of your time is all I ask. And perhaps a little snifter.’

They walked quickly to the nearby pub in spiritless
silence. Alex bought the drinks and set them down, glancing at his watch.

‘What is this, Sylvie? I really have to …’ He paused to temper the irritation in his voice. ‘Nothing wrong, I hope? Nothing wrong at Lednor?’

‘Depends what you call
wrong
,’ she said.

‘Spit it out, Sylvie.’

She sipped at her half pint of local ale, wincing at its bitterness, and watched his face closely as she told him she was expecting his child. His eyes glazed, their blue fading to grey. He dipped his head, momentarily stupefied.

‘You’re sure?’

She told him she was as sure as any girl could be.

‘But I used, but we …’

‘These things happen, Alex.’ The ale was making her eyes water. ‘It’s never foolproof, now, is it?’

Alex took a large draught of his own drink, wiped his hand over his mouth. He cradled the empty glass loosely in his hand, staring at it. There was a cleft between his brows, as if his agony was manifesting right there.

‘I have got the most important operation unfolding ahead of me, I have men relying on me and everything I can give them, men’s lives, my life … how can I …?’ he muttered. ‘Oh, my Christ.’

Sylvie sat upright, her hands folded demurely on her lap. ‘Alex, what are you saying?’

‘Can’t you go back to Lednor, to your auntie …’ Alex’s head snapped up and he stared at her. ‘Oh God, Nell.’

‘Do you think they’ll want anything to do with me now? Especially Nell? After all, she had a thing for you, didn’t she?’ 

‘A
thing
?’ His blanched face cracked as he laughed bitterly. ‘A thing, you say?’

‘You’re not angry, are you, Alex?’ she asked.

He pressed his lips together so hard that the skin around his mouth went pale.

‘We will marry once your mission is over?’

Sylvie let the question float between them and watched the man’s attractive potency disintegrate in front of her. He glanced around the pub, his eyes flinching and flickering with each desperate idea that cleaved his mind.

‘Sylvie,’ he uttered, like an enquiry. He sat back in his chair and regarded her as if seeing her for the first time. A hopelessness haunted his face.

She stared at him openly, aghast, registering the hell in his eyes.

‘Alex,’ she said, earnestly, and reached forward to take his hand. ‘Alex, I have no one.’

At the
Bucks Recorder
, Nell was on to the story that a great deal of aluminium was still needed to replace the fleet of Spitfires destroyed the summer before, and so the people of Buckinghamshire were being called on once again to clear out their cupboards.
Don’t forget Grannie’s attic
, Nell tapped into her typewriter,
and think how proud your young son would be if he knew his toy cars were going to be part of one of the great machines that defend the skies over Britain, and our very freedom
.

‘Is your filler ready yet, Miss Garland?’ Mr Collins called across the office. ‘The leader page is ready to go, bar that space. Do we have a picture? We need a picture of saucepans. Do we have one? Can you size it up?’

Feeling unduly harassed, Nell pulled her finished copy out of the typewriter, handed it to Mr Collins and hurried over to the filing cabinet. She began to leaf through the buff dividers, the A to Z files of photographic prints, searching 
under P for pans, S for saucepans and scrap metal, trying to ignore her sudden giddiness from standing up too quickly at Mr Collins’s bidding. She took a deep breath to steady herself. Her fingers shook as she plucked at the paperwork, a steady chill pricking her blood. She’d felt all right this morning. Perhaps she was coming down with something. Anthea had had a bad cold last week, which had wiped the smile off her face for a while.

‘Preferably one with people standing around a big haul of it,’ Mr Collins insisted from across the room. ‘You know – housewives, children, old men.’

She was used to his voice now. His perpetual badgering ensured that the newspaper always went to press on time, and near-as-damn-it perfectly typeset too. But just then, as she concentrated on the task, she felt her patience stretching and annoyance bit her right there.

‘All right, Mr Collins, I’m on to it now!’ she cried.

Anthea’s head snapped up.

‘Nell, you’re looking in the wrong drawer. Those files only go up to 1938. You need to look over here.’

Nell pushed the draw shut with an angry bang, catching her finger. She stuck it in her mouth, her eyes smarting. Anthea was at her side.

‘You look very pale, my dear.’

Nell whispered, tears in her eyes, ‘I think I’m going to be sick.’

‘When you’re ready, Miss Garland,’ called Mr Collins.

‘Oh, put a sock in it, Collins,’ muttered Anthea, taking Nell by the arm and ushering her outside.

In the toilet, Nell knelt down on the hard ceramic floor, expecting the inevitable. 

‘Must have eaten something,’ she tried to call out to Anthea, as the juices in her stomach lurched, and cold sweat lapped up her throat.

Anthea tapped on the door. ‘Are you all right in there?’

‘Nothing’s coming up,’ she said. ‘Just feel so awful.’

After a bit, she unlocked the door. Her colleague handed her a soaked hand towel. ‘Have a dab down with this and go and see your doctor.’

Nell would have her know it couldn’t be anything serious enough for that.

Anthea smiled in her enigmatic way. ‘I’ll come with you if you like. It happens more often than you think.’

‘Anthea, I don’t know what you mean …’

‘Just one look at you, my dear. I can tell. I’m an old married woman, remember. And he can marry you as soon as you like. Because you know what people will do. They’ll start counting on their fingers, but won’t say anything as they are generally too polite. And these days, well, anything goes.’

Nell put the lid down on the toilet and sat on it. She stared up at Anthea, her mind emptying in a peculiar and precarious way. Anthea leant nonchalantly against the cubicle door, examining her nails.

Through a mouth dry as cotton, Nell maintained, ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Speak to your sweetheart, my dear. It’s Mr Hammond, isn’t it? I knew you were made for each other, I saw it, way back then,’ said Anthea. ‘And when he gave you that brute of a dog … well – it was like he gave himself to you.’

Nell was stubbornly silent, her insides barricading themselves firmly against the utter wonder of that idea. 

Anthea insisted, ‘You know exactly what I mean.’

Nell bowed her head. A pellucid comprehension of her situation grabbed hold of her by the scruff of the neck so hard that she flinched.

‘I can’t tell him,’ she murmured. ‘For I don’t know where he is.’

‘Story of our lives, these days,’ said Anthea. ‘The men come and go as easy as breathing.’

‘Oh no, Alex is coming back,’ rallied Nell, prickling defensively. ‘I love him and he loves me.’

‘I know, I can see by the look on your face. Oh, bless you. Look at you.’

‘It’s just that he’s at a secret location preparing for a God-awful mission. How can I tell him
this
? He will be distracted and so, so worried. I can’t do anything to jeopardise what he’s about to do. It’s so important. He’s on a knife edge. By God, the last time I saw him … So many men are relying on him. It’s so, so
deadly
.’

Anthea held out her hand. ‘Come on, miss. Let’s get you some fresh air. See if we can’t coax a cup of tea out of that grumpy waitress at the tea room. Mr C can find his own damn photograph.’

As they left, Mr Collins was bent over the filing cabinet, muttering expletives.

On the stairs down to the street, Anthea stopped suddenly and whispered, ‘Shall you tell your mother yet?’

‘Oh no,’ Nell replied. ‘She has far too much on her mind. You know how indisposed she is. I won’t burden her with this. Just an announcement of my wedding when the time comes. She can do the workings out later if she likes.’

‘That’s more like it, girl.’ 

A fine mist of rain was falling from a milky summer sky as Nell linked arms with Anthea and they trotted across the cobbled square. She turned her face up to the droplets, relishing their coolness on her cheeks and brow. She remembered the soft touch of Alex’s fingers, his breath on her neck. The wash of rain felt like a baptism; something almost like ecstasy. She and Alex were going to have a baby. They were going to have a life together when all of the horror was over.

Her mind did an about-turn and the years seemed to unfold before her in an open and welcoming winding road. I’ll save the good news for him, for when he comes back. And he will. For he promised me.

‘When Alex is back and safe, then, Anthea,’ she giggled, as an uncertain euphoria took hold of her, ‘you will be dancing at my wedding.’

Nell kept to her promise to herself and declined to tell her mother anything; but she wrote some of her news to her father in a letter the following day. It had been a while since she’d written, and a long while since he’d replied, so a shyness swept over her and stilted her words. She told him,
Dad, I have something wonderful to tell you. I have met a flight lieutenant in the RAF and he and I want to be married.
She wrote,
Everything is so difficult at the moment, for I am unable to see him. But he is a magnificent man, and loves to birdwatch. He is better than I, but not as good as you, Dad, I’m sure you’ll like him very much.

She folded the letter, and registered a sudden, unsavoury trickle of fear about Sylvie and Alex, then watched it fade away. Addressing the envelope, she speculated 
about the house her father lived in on Harrow Hill. She wondered at Diana Blanford’s parents and their thoughts on the whole matter, their daughter’s relationship with their soon-to-be-divorced house guest. To all intents and purposes, Nell decided, he was their lodger. She longed to go there, and find out what kept him away. She wanted to take a step towards understanding him, to tell him how the September Garden was doing, now that it was about to bloom and run riot. And tell him all about Alex.

How her dad must miss the valley, she thought, as she set out down the lane with the letter to the postbox in the village. He had missed two spring times. And now the summer was turning another corner. And he would miss that too.

When she stepped back into the hallway, her mother was on the telephone, her voice singing with astonishment and laughing with joy. ‘Oh, my dear, well that is wonderful, I must say, if not an absolute surprise.’

Mollie pressed her hand over the receiver and hissed to Nell, ‘It’s Sylvie. Calling from Berkshire.’ She tapped her nose with her finger.

Nell stood by, her scalp tingling with irritation. Her mother had been drinking, that was obvious. She revelled in the clandestine nature of Sylvie’s work, all the
ask no
questions
and
keeping mum
. And now she was hooting, ‘Sylvie, you have made me so happy; why, that is wonderful news.’

Nell could not help but shrug, wondering at Sylvie’s latest escapade. She sat on the bottom stair and did not have to wait long, for the telephone call was soon cut off by the operator. 
‘Blast this three-minute thingy,’ cried Mollie. ‘I need a good drink after that!’

Nell followed her swiftly into the drawing room, wondering why.

‘Our lovely Sylvie is … wait for it … going to be married.’ Mollie’s glee was radiant, her eyes wide and bright. Her hand clutched the heavy crystal decanter and she splashed whisky into a cut-glass tumbler.

Nell kept her smile fixed. She was surprised but mildly pleased for her cousin. Sylvie was perplexing and unpredictable and forever out of her orbit. But, perhaps now, she would settle down.

But then, Nell beamed inwardly, didn’t she have her own surprising news to impart? But not yet, for it wasn’t quite the right time to tell her mother. Let her get over this news first. As for Sylvie, who had she bagged now? Poor Henri?

Her mother’s tongue was loosened by the whisky. ‘My dear,’ she said to Nell. ‘Do you remember that lovely man? Oh, when I had that to-do with the bonfire, burning your
dear
father’s paintings.’ Nell ignored her mother’s sarcasm. ‘You remember, don’t you? Oh, of course you do. Didn’t he take you to the cinema once?’

Nell shrugged childishly, thinking only of Alex and their secret. Their soft, warm secret. She burrowed down with it, held it tight.

Her mother was laughing. ‘This is the way it goes, these days; there’s no need to get high and mighty about it. As long as it’s born before the wedding night, no one seems to care, do they?’

Nell flinched, thinking, does Mother know about
me
? Why is she talking about
Alex
? 
Mollie blundered on. ‘Our Sylvie is going to marry … wait for it … that very same Mr Hammond.’

‘Mister …?’

‘Yes, oh now, Nell, don’t be so prudish. I can see what you’re thinking. She’s a game girl, got caught out, that’s all. Yes, dear, she’s pregga. And going to be
Mrs
Alex Hammond, rather quite soon, I think.’

Nell’s mouth gaped in horror. ‘She
can’t
be!’

Mollie declared that no one can afford to dilly-dally, not these days.

Nell’s skin contracted in shock, tightening over her bones. Her jaw slackened, she felt her heart crushed by a fist. She stood rigid, staring at her mother, who was still speaking, her voice bizarre and joyous.

‘Ho, now Nell, you know what she’s like. Our darling Sylvie. When she’s on to something, she really is. “Soon”, she said. Oh, so very soon. I wish to God I could find a way to tell Beth. How she would love it – she’ll be a grandmother.’