The September Garden (3 page)

The light finally, by degrees, started to fade. On the war memorial by the church the stone soldier bowed his head over a list of carved names. The men of Montfleur, Nell read, who fell in the Great War. There weren’t that many, perhaps twenty. But for a village this size, Nell pondered, that might be one from each family. She ran her finger over the list. She could not see an Orlande, but there was one name she recognised: Androvsky. Androvsky, Francis.

Sylvie sauntered over and nudged her. ‘Don’t dawdle, come on. What are you looking at?’

Nell opened her mouth to explain, but her thoughts collided in confused misery.

‘My dad was in this war,’ she said at last. ‘That’s why he digs his September Garden. That’s why he paints. Why Mother says we need to be careful what we say.’

And that, she thought, is why I don’t want to be here. I want to be home.

The hesitant scratching and keening of Sylvie’s violin forced Nell to cringe back into her chair in the salon with her fingers in her ears. Above her, the teacher thumped his cane on the floor of the music room, making the salon chandelier quiver.

‘Recommence!’
came his disembodied bark. ‘Start again!’

‘Start again? Oh, please no. No more,’ Nell whispered and glanced up to see Adele in the doorway, her face bright with amusement.

‘Go and take a walk outside,
ma petite
, where it’s more peaceful. And then, later, I’ll help you pack your suitcase.’

Nell brightened, casting a happy smile across the room. In two days’ time, she’d be on the ferry. In two and a half days’ time she might just be home. She thanked Adele and made her quick way along the garden path and out of the back gate, thinking, now that the weather was cooler, she’d go to the harbour and look at the stone soldier one more time. Ignoring the stables, and their forbidden inhabitants, she walked across the yard and around the back of the Androvsky garden wall from where the rhythmic clunk of spade against earth issued. She stopped in her tracks, exhausted with homesickness. In her mind’s eye, she saw her father weeding the golden beds in the September Garden. By the time she got home, it would be in all its blazing glory.

Enticed by the sound of laughter, she went over to the garden door and peered round it. Monsieur Androvsky was digging a cabbage, while Estella and Edmund, heads together, squatted beside him squealing at the worms he unearthed. Her French was improving – Mother would be pleased – and she could understand.

Monsieur Androvsky teased his children, telling them they had to put the carrots they had dug up back in the soil. They’d also, he said, have to put the worms back into their holes.

‘Take this cabbage to
Maman
, and she will boil it up,’ Monsieur Androvsky told Edmund.

‘Are you staying for
le déjeuner
?’ asked Estella.

He said, no, he had to go to work.

The boy and girl chorused their disappointment but
Monsieur Androvsky kissed both his children on top of their heads and took up his bicycle. He snapped on his cycle clips.

Estella begged him not to go.

‘Do you want a new dress?’ he asked her. The girl nodded, her glasses wobbling on her pale cheeks. ‘Well, my pupil needs tutoring in maths. And you want a dress. That’s why I have to go. You also need new glasses, my girl.’

Monsieur Androvsky wheeled his bike along the path, his fringe of dark hair flopping over his forehead, and spotted Nell. He called hello. He pulled his folded cap out from his top pocket and settled it on his head. His dark eyes in his narrow face glittered at her. Nell suddenly felt ashamed; if she was not allowed to talk to Estella and Edmund, then she was surely not allowed to speak to their father.

‘I was just …’ she glanced around her ‘… just looking at the stables. At the signs, I mean. Not actually
in
the stables. I wasn’t
in
the stables. I was reading the horses’ names …’

‘Ah, yes, I remember the horses.’ He spoke beautiful English. His smile was bright and attentive. ‘They lived here when I was a young man. It was a pleasure to see them every day. Ullis was white,’ he told her. ‘You English say
grey
, don’t you? Tatillon was a deep glistening brown. Like mahogany. They went to Flanders in 1915.’

Something in his voice drew a melancholy line down her spine. She hesitated, thinking of the stone soldier by the harbour wall. ‘Didn’t your … did not someone who … in your family also …?’

Estella and Edmund ran up the path. The boy accused him, ‘
Papa
, you have not gone yet.’

Estella wondered if this meant her father was going to stay. She pleaded with him one more time.

Mr Androvsky looked at Nell. ‘You’re talking of my older brother, Francis. He also went to Flanders. And, just like Ullis and Tatillon, he did not come home.’

Mr Androvsky said goodbye, wheeled his bike across the yard and down the narrow passageway towards the street.

‘
Au revoir, Papa!
’ cried his children.

‘
Au revoir, mes enfants!
’

And their calling continued, repeating, echoing along the passageway, until they could no longer hear each other. Quiet now and subdued, Estella and Edmund said goodbye to Nell, slipped back into their garden and closed the door.

Nell waited a moment and then followed Monsieur Androvsky’s tracks, down the passageway to the street. She caught sight of him at the end of the road, wobbling off on his bike around the corner. She heard him shout goodbye, once more, even though he was out of earshot of his children and they’d never hear him.

1939

Mollie Garland, standing with hands on hips in the hallway, was furious.

‘I told you, midday, Nell. Be back here by midday. How
dare
you behave like this the day our visitor arrives. Are you going to go upstairs and wash and change?’

‘It’s only cousin Sylvie,’ Nell retorted.

‘Get up those stairs at once and make yourself presentable.’

Nell shuffled reluctantly up the stairs, glancing down through the banisters to the drawing room where she glimpsed her cousin sitting patiently, knees together, hands folded on lap. Her white socks were pulled up to just below her knees; her patent shoes were prim on the carpet. A year older, Nell thought, and she looked taller, there was more to her; her cheekbones more defined. She looked like she had a bust. Sylvie turned her head away and Nell knew, by the very tilt of her head, that she was pretending not to have heard the telling-off.

Up in the bathroom, squeezing out the flannel, Nell dabbed half-heartedly at the smudges on her face. She had been out on her bike, as usual, and had dawdled all the way home. In the bedroom, where the usually empty twin bed was now made up, ready for her cousin, she changed and found her best blouse, thinking, she still hates me, she still hates me.

‘There you are at last,’ said her mother downstairs in the hallway. ‘Sylvie’s in there waiting for you to come and say hello. I’ve given her some squash. If you want some, you’ll have to make your own. Mrs Bunting’s busy with the dinner.’

Nell slipped in to the room. The French doors were open to the garden and through them blew the breeze scented by
Boule de Neige
roses. Long slants of sunlight threw rectangles over her mother’s Aubusson rug. Occasional tables were polished to the depth of golden syrup by the girl from the village who ‘does’. In the silence, a leaf from the dried-flower arrangement in the fireplace fell with a surprisingly loud, crisp sound onto the hearth. Nell peered at her cousin. Sylvie was sitting primly on the sofa, her face concealed by the large glass of squash from which she drank deeply. Nell’s eyes rested on the long midnight-black hair held back with an Alice band. In the face of her poised beauty, envy nudged her. She shrugged it off and moved forward across the rug until her favourite photograph of her father on the occasional table came into view. There he was: young and clear-eyed in his old-fashioned uniform. The photograph was brown-tinged, just like the war into which Ullis and Tatillon and Monsieur Androvsky’s brother disappeared. The ‘hell’ her father went through all those years ago was only ever 
referred to by her mother in hushed whispers. And now, Nell sensed with a creeping discomfort, a new war was spoken of in a fresh urgent way. Only yesterday, she’d heard her father say, ‘I can’t face another one,’ and her mother reply, rather cuttingly, ‘
You
won’t have to.’

Nell watched as Sylvie set the empty glass down on a coaster. For the first time in a whole year, Nell looked into her violet-black eyes.

‘
Bonjour
, Sylvie,’ Nell said, queasy again, and awkward.

‘I’ve got to speak English,’ Sylvie said, bluntly, ‘
Maman
has warned me. And Auntie Mollie is going to monitor me. So I will be grateful if you don’t try to speak French.’ Sylvie fixed her with a narrowed stare. ‘You were never that good anyway. We all had to make a huge effort to speak English last year, you were so bad.’

Nell said that she thought she’d done all right.

‘Not really. Anyway, it helped me to learn better English. More fool you.’

Nell, disgruntled, opened her mouth to respond, but was interrupted by her mother rushing back in.

‘What are you two still doing inside on such a lovely day?’ Mollie demanded. ‘Nell, take Sylvie round the garden. Show her the tree house.’

Sylvie said brightly, ‘That sounds like fun, Auntie Mollie.’

‘What’s for dinner?’ Nell asked.

‘That’s all you ever want to think about – food. Mrs B has told me that the last of her Victoria sponge has disappeared. I think I can take a flying guess who the culprit is. Dinner is a surprise, something special for our visitor’s first evening. You girls will have to wait and see.’

Nell led the way down the terrace steps, across the lawn, past the high wall to the September Garden – there was no way on earth she was going to take Sylvie in there – past her mother’s herbaceous borders where lanky hollyhocks were alive with bees, and where Mr Pudifoot, gardener and general handyman, stood leaning on the handle of his fork, listening to birdsong. He doffed his hat to them.

‘Afternoon, young ladies. Fine afternoon, innit? Where you off to, then?’

‘We’re going down to the bourn. We’re going to go up in the tree house,’ Nell piped up. ‘I’ve got to show her the tree house. This is my cousin Sylvie. She’s French.’

‘Half French,’ snapped Sylvie.

‘Welcome to Lednor Bottom,
maddy-mo-selle
,’ chuckled Mr Pudifoot. ‘Pleased a meet you. You ladies take care. Don’t get wet now, French miss. Ha!’

They set off again, following the long path that wound down to the back of the garden.

‘Who’s that and what did he say?’ asked Sylvie.

‘That’s our gardener, and he has a lovely voice,’ Nell said, thinking of Mr Pudifoot and his soft Chilterns twang. ‘He’s a nice man.’

‘A simple man,’ said Sylvie.

Nell ignored her. They came to the bourn, which formed the boundary of the back garden where silvery willows overhung the water, and rushes created a spiky margin. Pebbles under the clear current made the water burble and sing, made it froth and bubble. Long weeds streamed under its surface like green hair. Watercress choked the flow further upstream and occasionally Nell would spot the heron stalking the stiff velvety-brown 
heads of the bullrushes. Often, ducks would quack their way through the current and, once or twice in springtime, they were rewarded with a family of swans nosing against the flow.

‘Why don’t you call it a river? Or a stream?’ demanded Sylvie, standing back from the water’s edge as if she was compelled by Mr Pudifoot’s warning.

‘Because it’s a bourn. And a bourn is a chalk stream,’ said Nell, feeling momentarily superior. She peered down. A school of tiny brown minnows froze in the shallows when her shadow fell over the water. ‘The water comes down from the chalk in the hills to join the Chess in the valley. It rises in the winter. Some summers, this is just a dry bed. You only get bourns in the Chilterns.’

Sylvie wondered what on earth they were going to do next, her face pouting with boredom.

Nell turned to the biggest willow and reached up for a rope hanging from a branch that stooped over the water. She pulled, and a rope ladder unfolded down the trunk.

‘We’re going to climb up here.’

‘It’s not very ladylike,’ complained Sylvie. ‘I’ll ruin my shoes.’

‘Take them off, then.’

Sylvie unbuckled her patent shoes, rolled off her socks and stuffed them neatly inside. She lined them up at the base of the willow trunk. Nell, not bothering to undo her sandals, pulled them off with her socks in one go and left them where they fell.

‘Come on, then,’ Nell said, folding her bare toes around the first rung. ‘Follow me.’

When she got halfway up she felt Sylvie’s weight pulling 
on the bottom of the rope ladder, making it swing and crash back against the trunk.

‘Ouch!
Merde
,’ swore Sylvie below her.

Suppressing her desire to laugh, Nell climbed quickly through the willow boughs. She eased herself up into the tree house set into a crook where the trunk split into two. The ceiling was too low to stand up. When her father built it he had miscalculated and was loath to cut away any more branches, leaving it with Lilliputian dimensions.

It will be fine, he had told her. It’s only meant for children. Grown-ups not allowed.

Nell wondered for how many more years she would be able to squeeze inside. She sat down and shuffled across the floor to the window – little more than a gap in the wall of rough boards. From her perch, Nell could see clearly across the garden and towards the back of the house. Mr Pudifoot was wiping his forehead with his handkerchief. She spotted Mrs Bunting, cook and housekeeper, flinging some potato peelings onto the compost heap. Through the french windows, she saw her mother, in short-sleeved blouse and wide linen trousers, walk across the Aubusson rug with the folded
Times
and sit in an armchair out of sight. Only her long crossed legs were visible. Now and again a leg bounced, the ankle circling. From below, Nell heard Sylvie puffing and straining, muttering on the swinging rope ladder.

‘Not long now.’ Nell called encouragement over her shoulder. ‘Nearly there.’

She turned again to the house and saw that the window of her father’s study was still open. In the dimness of the room behind it she could just make him out, turning the 
dial on his radio set. He sat by the window listening and shaking his head. Nell watched him light a cigarette and smoke it as if it was the same as breathing.

Sylvie rolled into the tree house, exclaiming in surprise that she’d made it.

Nell was surprised by the pleasant expression – she couldn’t really call it a smile, more of a glow of triumph – on her cousin’s face.

‘So, now we’re up here,’ said Sylvie, dabbing her glistening forehead with a lace-edged handkerchief. ‘What on God’s earth do we do?’

‘We could play cat’s cradle,’ Nell said, reaching for the old biscuit tin in the corner where the pitched roof touched the floor. She fished out a piece of knotted wool.

Sylvie crowed, ‘I am not a baby. I am sixteen.’

‘Well, we can spy on my parents.’

Sylvie said that that was more like it.

The girls knelt at the squat window and peered through the canopy of leaves.

‘What does Uncle Marcus do all day, up there in his room?’ asked Sylvie.

‘He paints,’ said Nell, ‘and listens to music. He has exhibitions. He has sold his paintings. There was even one up in London. And when he’s not painting he tends the September Garden.’

‘The what? What do you mean?’

‘Shush, Mother’s coming out.’

Mollie walked over to the herbaceous beds.

‘Mr Pudifoot,’ Nell heard her call, ‘Will you make a start on the ivy. It’s in a dreadful state.’

Nell glanced up and saw her father look out of his 
window at the sound of her voice. He pondered over his cigarette, then turned and switched off the radio.

‘Your parents are strange,’ mused Sylvie, sitting up and rubbing her knees where the wooden floor had embedded marks in her flesh. ‘Whenever
my
parents are at home, when sometimes
Papa
is home early from work, they go to their room together. If I’m at home, on school holiday, or whatever, they send me out to the shops with Adele.’

‘My parents don’t have a room together.’

‘How do they make babies, then?’

Nell shrugged, loath to admit she did not quite understand.

‘Do you still have to have “the little sleep”?’ she asked.

Sylvie told her that was an idiotic question. ‘Ice-cold English,’ she muttered and glanced back out through the branches. ‘My
papa
says your
papa
is soft in the head.’

‘Soft? Oh no,’ said Nell, bristling in defence. ‘He is very clever. He has a
condition
. He is
shocked
.’

‘Shell-shocked do you mean? Don’t they say there’s going to be
another
war?’

Nell felt a sudden cramp of fear. She picked at a loose piece of bark with her fingernail.

‘Anyway, who knows. Only those grown-ups know,’ Sylvie went on. ‘We just have to do what we’re told. Don’t you hate that? The grown-ups tell us what to do. Even when they’re stupid, they still rule everything …’

Suddenly there was a terrific clanging sound coming from the house. Mrs Bunting was standing outside the kitchen door banging a wooden spoon on a saucepan.

‘
Merde
!
What on earth …?’

‘Dinner time,’ said Nell.

The girls ran barefoot across the lawn until Sylvie suddenly stopped and, chastising herself, sat down to put on her socks and shoes.

Nell waited for her, wriggling her dirty toes in the grass.

‘I must be ladylike at all times,’ said Sylvie. ‘
Bien élevée
. That’s what I must be – and so you should too.’

Nell ignored her. She was hungry. The smell of Mrs Bunting’s dinner wafted from the dining room.

As they walked into the room, hands washed and hair brushed, her father, already seated at the table, was saying, ‘… the belligerent madman is not giving up on Poland. Have you heard what he’s done with Danzig? He’ll want France next, you’ll see …’

Mollie suddenly hissed, ‘Marcus! The girls!’

Marcus Garland turned round in his chair with his particular false gaiety and cried, ‘Well, well.
Ma petite nièce. Comment vas-tu?
’

Nell broke in, ‘She’s not allowed to speak French. Auntie Beth said so.’

‘There’s no need to interrupt, Nell,’ said her mother, ‘while your father is talking.’

‘That’s all right,’ said Sylvie sweetly, sitting at the table, in the centre of which stood a steaming pie, and shaking out her napkin. ‘I’ll speak French with you, Uncle Marcus, if you like. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you. Don’t you think I’ve grown?’

Nell, her eyes fixed on the tiny breasts swelling under Sylvie’s blouse, began to giggle.

‘That’s enough, Nell. Remember your manners,’ said Mollie, pulling the pie towards her and brandishing a serving spoon. ‘Now, Sylvie, I hope you are hungry, for we have the 
best of Mrs Bunting’s culinary efforts before us. Well, the best of her weekday fare, anyway. Marcus, the plates?’

‘Now, what would you girls like to do this summer?’ asked Nell’s father. ‘There may be a play up in town you’d like to see.’

Nell turned to Sylvie. ‘When he says
town
, he means
London
.’

Her mother said quietly that in the circumstances, perhaps a trip to London might not be a good idea. They’d have to wait and see.

‘Because of the belligerent madman?’ asked Sylvie with a glitter of defiance.