Read The September Garden Online
Authors: Catherine Law
The September Garden
C
ATHERINE
L
AW
For Jennie and her girls
1945
The turn of the season greeted her that morning as she left the house and walked the lane that hugged the side of the valley. She stopped still for a moment, listening, breathing in the first earthy trace of autumn. Mist, caught at waist height between the beeches where the little river glided, was vaporous, drifting like phantoms. Drifting, like her memories.
On the horizon, above smouldering golden woods, the hills were sleeping. The summer season clung on: the earth still warm; the sky, empty. The war was over, and the planes had stopped coming. A red-brown kite had the clear blue to himself. He wielded his wingspan, testing the air high above her head, his cry like that of a frightened child.
She stood there and took her fill of Lednor valley; all that was familiar, everything that was her home. She thought of the people who had come here and then had gone. The
people who had disappeared, as was the custom in war, like waves from a beach, like clouds from the sky. She thought of cousin Sylvie, and then of Alex. He walked through her mind steadily and inevitably; a passing tangible sweetness. The memory of her happiness teased and haunted her. Then left her alone. She turned around and made her slow way back to the house.
Her footsteps crunched along the gravel drive that wound its way home. The late rose clinging to the red-brick facade dropped its last baby-pink petals like tears. Her Alsatian, Kit, was waiting for her on the step. He raised his head to watch her approach. Just inside the front door, packed and ready, was her battered suitcase, the one her mother had bought her from Peter Jones before the war. She lifted her hand and the dog came to her side, trotting beside her as she made her way around the west wall of the house where a honeysuckle rambled, exhaling perfume.
She wandered inside the walled garden that had been named by her father for the end-of-summer flowers that colonised its four quarters. Globes of dahlia rose above golden chrysanths. The sunflowers – ruddy-brown and gigantic yellow – were on fire. Nasturtiums and snapdragons crowded the beds, while butterflies, early risers like herself, bobbed over them like tiny beacons. Here, in the sharp slant of the sun, the garden was bedraggled and overblown. The other day, her mother had described it as
rampant
, referring darkly to the fact that no longer was her father – or indeed any man – around to tend to it. Even so, she relished the peace and the familiarity of the garden: the September Garden. The crooked apple tree was plump
with russet fruit and the brambles heavy with black jewel berries. She plucked a berry and popped it in her mouth. It was sour, unexpectedly so.
She had been persuaded by cousin Sylvie to accompany her back to Normandy. And last night she had packed her suitcase with a resentful and reluctant drag. She and her cousin had barely spoken in the last four years. The idea of this trip was disturbing and provoking, she thought, to say the least. And what of the icy bitterness, the painful breach between them?
In the chill of this first morning of autumn, contemplating the journey back to the place where her cousin was born, she knelt down in the September Garden, in the corner where the big-faced daisies grew, and began to shiver.
Kit shuffled onto the ground beside her, his flank heavy against her ankle. He let out an elongated sigh that sounded almost human as he rested his snout on his paws. She felt her dog watch her as she pulled some weeds away to expose a little patch of short turf. The ground, she noticed, had sunk a little. Some sort of marker, a gravestone, was needed. Something had to be done.
The taxi hooted at the front of the house and she glanced at her watch.
Blunt sorrow burrowed down inside her, fixing her to the ground. She stayed there, crouching, hiding her face with her hands. Kit wriggled his nose, sniffing out her tears, shifting himself closer.
She pressed her hand to the strip of grass. It felt springy, alive. She whispered to it, to the patch of earth, ‘
It is time to go
.’ Her tears incapacitated her for some moments, ripping her body apart. When at last she could speak, she said, ‘
My
little boy, I promised I’d never leave you again. Not ever, not until I die
.’ Her voice cracked at the back of her throat. ‘
But sleep well, this time, and I promise you, I will be home soon
.’
Nell got up and walked away from the unmarked grave, glancing back just once over her shoulder.
I will be home soon
.
1938–1939
She squeezed the brakes and came to a halt at the top of the hill, lifting her feet off the pedals and scuffing her heels along the road metal. Her knees were scabbed and her socks were baggy. She rode like a boy, her mother told her. And should know better for a young lady of nearly fifteen.
I dress like a boy too
, thought Nell, wiping the curls out of her eyes with the back of her hand.
This was the best spot. She could see the whole of Lednor valley,
her
valley, from here: the lane that looped through tunnels of hawthorn and beech; the silvery River Chess; the glittering ford at Lednor Bottom. Without the clattering of the bicycle wheels, the rushing of air past her ears, Nell could listen to the day. Over in the copse a wood pigeon purred and then a cuckoo piped – so cheerful and innocent-sounding for the wicked interloper that he was. She must tell Dad, so he could write it down in his notebook. The field of wheat behind the gate was turning
to gold. Blazing scarlet poppies, paper-light in the breeze, invaded its bounds.
She saw a sunshine-yellow bird hop, pause, then flee into the sky.
‘Dad would know,’ she whispered, straining her eyes against the blue. ‘He’ll know what sort of bird that is.’
She rested her bike on the ground and hooked her leg over the stile, pulled her knickers down and squatted in the pasture. As she peed, she watched the winsome sheep, now bereft of their lambs, chewing blank-eyed in the shade of the oak.
‘I hope you’ve forgotten your children already,’ she told them. ‘Otherwise, it’s far too barbaric for words.’
Sitting back up on the stile she drew an apple from her pocket and bit into it noisily. She drummed her feet on the crossbar.
The valley was laid out peacefully below her like one of her father’s paintings; the sun sharpened the shadows and the heat subdued the birds. A woodpecker hammered away in the wood, then fell silent. Three miles away, behind banks of sultry trees and concealed by the bosomy curves of the fields, lay the village of Great Lednor, revealed only by a shimmering grey church spire. Beyond there, in a distance unimagined to Nell, eventually, lay London.
She peered down the valley, shielding her eyes. There it was, her mother’s car in miniature, coursing through the ford on its return from the station, her shopping trip to London, leaving waves and ripples in its wake.
‘Better go home,’ she told the uninterested sheep.
She chewed the last of the apple and flung the core into the hedge.
Her jaw, her teeth, her bones juddered. She lifted her feet and began to squeal as the lane fell steeper, the bends sharper. She laughed, and her breath was snatched away. One more bend. One more dip. The speed never failed to shock her. Her brakes screamed for mercy.
With a war cry, she plunged through the leafy tunnel and broke into sunshine, straight over the gravel, scattering stones. Her father’s doves flapped in an agony of terror up to their cote. The car was already parked, its radiator tinkling as it cooled. The boot was open and Nell half glanced inside. There it was, just as her mother had promised, the brand-new suitcase.
‘Only the best, from Peter Jones.’
Her mother had conjured up the holiday plan with her sister, Auntie Beth: this summer, Nell should go and stay at Auntie Beth and Uncle Claude’s all the way across the sea in France.
‘You can spend your time with cousin Sylvie. Get to know her better. Learn from her,’ her mother said, unreasonably. ‘She is growing into a fine young lady, by all accounts. And her accent, oh, divine.’
And next year, it was decided, Sylvie would come and visit Lednor and so on and so forth. It was not to be argued with. It was, Nell suspected, a way for her mother and Auntie Beth to have the gift of ‘six weeks without the child’ every other year. It was no use denying this; Nell heard her mother say those actual words.
She was, her father explained patiently to her, to be packed off on the boat-train from Waterloo to Portsmouth, to cross the Channel with a chaperone. Then she’d be shunted from Cherbourg onto an
autobus
, and finally a
horse and cart to reach the Orlande house in the village by the sea. Uncle Claude was a gendarme, her father reminded her; a pillar of the community.
‘What an adventure you’ll have,’ he’d said to cheer her up.
How appalling
, Nell had thought. The thing was that whenever she thought of Sylvie – one year older than her, brutally confident, with unforgiving violet eyes and a sharp face of incredible beauty – she felt queasy, belittled and she quite simply disappeared.
‘Ah, there you are,’ announced Mollie Garland, coming out through the front door. She looked beautiful in her red suit for town, clinched in at the waist, and with her little hat perched on her rolled-up hair. ‘Well, aren’t you going to say something? What do you think of it?’
‘I don’t know, really …’ What could she say about a suitcase?
‘Oh Nell, have some enthusiasm, do. It’s all rather irritating. Come on, help me with the shopping.’
Mollie began to hand Nell large stiffened paper bags emblazoned with smart London store logos.
‘Did you get me anything else?’ she asked. ‘Apart from the suitcase.’
‘No. Everything you have already is perfectly adequate for Montfleur. You won’t be going anywhere special.’ Her mother glanced at her. ‘Oh, but look at the state of you. What a fright you are. You’ve been out all day, haven’t you? On that blessed bike. I tell you, you’ll certainly be learning a lesson from Sylvie this summer, learning to be more ladylike. Just like her. You know she plays the violin. It’s a wonder you are so unmusical.’
Being compared to perfect Sylvie was absolute torture.
‘Is this everything, Mother, because I really have to go to the bathroom?’
Nell turned on her heel, ran into the hallway and unceremoniously dumped her mother’s shopping bags at the bottom of the stairs.
She could hear music straying from her father’s study overhead. She went upstairs and along the landing, hearing the pristine notes of Debussy drift from the gramophone and through the air. She may not be able to play a note, but what she heard was beautiful; made her ache.
She poked her nose around the door and asked her father if she could come in.
Marcus Garland was sitting by the window, his chin down, staring up at the easel before him. His paints were scattered on the table – twisted tubes of carmine and crimson lake. Nell loved to line them up, tidy them away for him; press the ends so the paint rose to the top, and not a drop wasted. Sunlight glimmered through his jam jar of water; his brushes were idle.
‘Bit shaky at the moment,’ he told her, ‘Can’t quite pull it together.’ He kept his hands, stained with paint, tightly clasped in his lap. His buttoned-up waistcoat seemed loose on his frame; his rolled-up sleeves revealed wiry tanned forearms.
Nell asked him if she should mix some paint for him.
‘No, not today.’ He turned now and threw a smile at her. His eyes were distant, as if he was forever witnessing some other world behind them. ‘I thought you were helping Mother.’
She drew closer and peered at the canvas.
‘Roses,’ she said. ‘They’re nice.’
‘Half done,’ he said, ‘but I can’t see me finishing it now. I can’t see them any more.’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘Can’t see them in here. They’re gone now. Faded away until next year.’
She reminded him that there were roses still in the garden. Why couldn’t he paint them?
‘But these are the
dog
roses, Nell, in the lanes. I started this painting a few weeks ago. Those roses are gone now.’ He pressed his fingertips between his eyes. ‘And I can’t remember them.’
Nell heard a shake in his voice. The wild roses of the hedgerows were her favourites, with their open faces the colour of a baby’s fingernail. He was right: they had faded, and the hedges were now a richer green; a deep, summer green.
The music finished and the arm on the gramophone lifted with a click.
‘Shouldn’t you be downstairs, helping your mother?’ he asked again, screwing the cap onto a tube of permanent rose.
Nell scuffed her feet on the carpet. ‘I’d rather be up here with you. Can I help you? Tidy your study?’
‘No, Nell, you have to …’ He cocked his head towards the door, towards the world outside his study.
‘Do I have to go to Auntie Beth’s? Do I
really
have to? It’s such a long way. All that way across the sea.’
He insisted that she would like it, that she could improve her French. He said it again; it would be an adventure.
‘But I can do that here …’ Nell heard her voice whine, sensitivity rising like mercury through her blood. ‘I want to stay here.’
With you
.
‘Your mother thinks it will do you good. You’re fourteen, nearly fifteen. Perhaps it’s time to stop racing round the country lanes.’
Nell mumbled, ‘Oh, and be just like Sylvie?’
The smile reached his eyes this time.
‘You don’t have to be anything like her,’ he said. ‘Just be good.’
Uncle Claude called it
le petit sommeil
. In the weary heat of the afternoon, the seaweed on the harbour walls baked, the tall blue shutters of the house were closed, the street was empty, silent. A solitary dog trotted by.
‘Mad,’ Uncle Claude would have said if he had seen the dog. And to tease Auntie Beth, he’d have said: ‘Mad just like the English.’ But he and Auntie Beth were closeted away in their room at the back of the house. Sylvie was in her own
boudoir
, dreaming sweet dreams, no doubt. Nell could hear the house at rest as she lay on top of the white ruffled bedspread in the guest
chambre
. Behind the closed shutters the room held a grey half-light. Nell listened to the cry of seagulls over the rooftops, the ticking clock, a rumbling water pipe. She twitched, her legs excruciatingly itchy, unable to find a comfortable spot. Here at the front of the house, facing west, her room was an inferno. Her own ‘little sleep’ evaded her.
She went to the shutter and opened it a chink. The hard sunlight made her screw up her eyes and she retreated. She thought of the still, deep-green water in the harbour and imagined its coolness. She thought of the steps that led down into the water that were still visible in the quiet underworld beneath the surface. She had no desire to
dip her toes in. Instead, she yearned for the bourn back home. And home, with its twisted russet-brick chimneys and friendly little casements, two storeys high, spreading itself wide, hugging the earth. She liked the way she could ramble through the long passageways at home, walking the breadth of the house past the displays of her father’s less successful watercolours. But here, at Auntie Beth’s and Uncle Claude’s, everything was crammed in, built upwards, four-floors high. Oh, it was all very grand. The blue-painted gates that fronted the street loomed over her, shut her in; the metal floor-to-ceiling windows were narrow, creating a very elegant, very beautiful cage. She must always climb upstairs and downstairs to get anywhere.
Fidgeting and wretched, she heard the clock chime on the
mairie
across the way. Half past two. Auntie Beth said that she and Sylvie must not emerge until four.
Four
?
Nell sat up and sipped the lemonade that Adele the maid had left her. It was syrupy and warm. She dared herself. Getting up, she slipped barefoot across the floorboards and twisted the doorknob. Silently she emerged. How cool the landing was, facing the north side of the house. A long lace curtain drifted in the scanty breeze. Through the tall landing window, the garden beckoned her.
The house was airless, silent now. Holding its breath just as Nell did. Something creaked behind her. She turned to see the bulk of Uncle Claude in his dressing gown and slippers emerge from behind a door. He closed it with a gentle click and paused to groom his large moustache with his fingers, looking, Nell thought, mildly pleased about something. He spotted her and Nell flinched, wanting to
duck, expecting him to bellow. After all, Auntie Beth had said:
Not till four o’clock
.
Her uncle glared at her momentarily, his mouth clamped shut, looking suddenly rather befuddled. And then his face rounded into a smile. He put his finger over his hairy top lip as if to shush her. He turned on his heel and went up the stairs to his own bedroom, the belt of his dressing gown flapping behind him.
Euphoric, suddenly, that her misdemeanour had been brushed aside, Nell ran swiftly, lightly, tiptoeing down the stairs, and down again, along the hallway. Glancing into the darkened salon shuttered from the sunlight she saw oak furniture like sleeping monsters in the gloom. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror in the hall: dishevelled curls, a mischievous face and a glint in her eye. Very nearly fifteen, she thought, and still looked like a tomboy. The stone floor of the vestibule was blissfully cold under her feet. Through the back door and down the steps, the garden, enclosed by high mellow-stone walls, was a scented heaven. The air vibrated with the sound of bumbling insects. She ran now in delight, past clumps of lavender and tarragon, past bean frames and rows of onions. By the high wall, against which grew a clump of profoundly blue delphiniums, she stopped.
‘
Qui est-ce? Qui est-ce là
?’ came the small voice above her.
Nell glanced up, startled, believing she had the sleeping afternoon to herself. Peering over the top of the garden wall were two children, a girl and a boy. Their hair was black and their skin pale, their faces tiny. They were identical, like a pair of dark-headed sprites.
‘Bonjour, mademoiselle, comment ça va?’
the girl
greeted her. Her glasses were wonky on her face, her eyes were like saucers.
‘
Bonjour
,’ replied Nell. ‘How are you able to see over the wall? Are you standing on a ladder?’
The children’s faces fell. They did not understand. Nell took a deep breath and tried her French: ‘
Etes-vouz sur un
…’ What was the French for ‘ladder’?
She wanted to ask them if they, too, could not sleep. She wanted to ask them if they wanted to come over to her side of the wall. ‘
Voulez-vous aller ici, avec moi
?’ she tried.