The September Garden (26 page)

She got up and found the brandy, poured a small tot for her husband. With her back to him, she herself took a sip. Kneeling back down beside him, she held the glass to his mouth.

He sipped, his eyes not leaving hers.

‘Look at me. I’m useless to you. To everyone. Lying down in this salon.
His
salon.’

‘Monsieur is being very kind,’ said Adele, feeling disloyal for saying so. ‘Your mother just told me, there is a good ration of milk down in the kitchen; some dried fish; some tins. But even so … I also don’t feel this is the best place for us.’

Madame Ricard came into the room. ‘What are you talking about?’ she cried. ‘The cellar is deep, safe from the bombs, the garden is full of vegetables. Doesn’t he have some chickens down there in the old stables?’

Adele reminded her that there used to be rabbits.

‘What more could we ask for?’ Madame sat down in an armchair and ran her finger over the coffee table, examining the pleat of dust she made.

‘But,
Maman
, this is the house of a traitor. A traitor to France … the people of Montfleur know what he has been doing for the last four years. Hobnobbing with the
Kommandant
.’

‘But his own wife was carted off to prison,’ cried Madame Ricard. ‘I can only feel sorry for him. A man in his position. Whatever he does, he cannot win.’

‘But now …’ muttered Jean, ‘but now the tide is turning. Adele, you take care of Sophie, Pierre and
Maman
. If something happens. If the hell we’re expecting reaches us … you leave me here. If I can’t manage it … whatever happens. You leave me here.’

‘But what
can
happen?’ Adele lifted her face to look him in the eye. ‘The Allies are here.’

‘Tomorrow might be different once again.’

They all glanced in the direction of the hallway. The front door was opened and shut with a slam. A curious rattling and squeaking came down the corridor towards them. Monsieur appeared in the salon, pushing before him a wheelchair.

‘It’s got broken springs,’ he said, ‘and it needs some oil. But it will do, don’t you think?’

‘Oh, Monsieur, thank you,’ breezed Madame Ricard. She leapt up and pushed the chair into the room. ‘Look at this, Jean. Isn’t this wonderful?’

Adele’s stomach contracted in embarrassment. Her mother-in-law’s simpering reaction to the gift – just one more confirmation of the gendarme’s corruption, for which they must all be so grateful – was unforgivable. She held her husband’s hand tightly on her lap, feeling his sweat drench both their palms.

Jean coughed, and tried to draw his legs up, tried to stand. He gave up.

He said, ‘Thank you, Monsieur.’ And his voice was flat with defeat.

Monsieur Orlande’s parlour radio was not as robust or as capable as the one they left behind in the sea wall cottage, but Adele managed to trace the World Service and pressed her ear to the fabric speaker to listen to the news.

‘Tommies are in Caen,’ she told Jean. ‘Carentan is taken. They are joining the Americans via the Valognes to Cherbourg route.’

‘They’re getting closer,’ her husband said.

Adele glanced out of the Orlande salon windows at the benign summer sky, quiet now. Sporadic shelling punctuated their days, like a depraved and tuneless symphony along the horizon. The missiles had not yet reached the town, but Adele felt their presence over her head, as if she constantly wanted to duck. Out in the
bocage
the Germans were fighting a rearguard action, defending the peninsula from the invaders, the liberators. And the people of Montfleur were either trapped, cowering in their homes, or they had left to find a place of safety. But where, in the besieged peninsula, could they possibly go that was safer than anywhere else?

‘I’m not leaving, Jean,’ she told him stoutly. ‘I’m not going without you.’

Jean glanced at the wheelchair parked in the corner of the room. Monsieur had left it with them, and then moved into the
mairie
. He had a camp bed there in his office, he told them. He said he had to be on duty twenty-four hours a day.

‘Damn that man,’ said Jean, ‘but I want to use it. I want to get out. I want to breathe fresh air, blow away this awful … frustration. Will you take me out?’

She dressed her husband in a clean shirt, and found his
Sunday trousers. Thick socks covered his damaged feet. She eased him into the chair and set his cap on his head. He had shaved that morning and his eyes were bright, his forehead smoothed by the rare shot of morphine she’d manage to get from the doctor that morning. She kissed his lips.

‘You are a fine-looking man,’ she told him, ‘and I love you.’

He had no need to say anything to her – his eyes told her.

‘Where is Sophie?’ he asked as she manoeuvred the chair through the front door.

‘
Maman
has her with her down in the kitchen. Pierre is fast asleep. I told her we won’t be long.’

‘But I want to be,’ said Jean.

Adele pushed her husband over the cobbles, through deserted streets. Occasionally a shutter would open, she would see a timid face, and she would utter
Bonjour
. Montfleur was holding its breath.

Out on the smooth tarmac road sweeping around the low-lying coast, the wheelchair was so much easier to push. Adele began to giggle, she began to run. The chair nearly flew as she propelled it before her.

Jean laughed, ‘I need to fasten my safety belt! But this thing doesn’t have one.’

‘You should have stolen a Bosch helmet for extra protection,’ she laughed, panting. ‘You know what a bad driver I am. I haven’t run so fast for years. I feel like I am back at school, tearing round the playground.’

The beach lay to their left, perfect with crisp white sand tickled by gentle waves.
La Manche
was a pure blue, reflecting the sky, with streaks of gunmetal grey where the
waters were deeper, darker. The sun was hot overhead. The stupendous green of the fertile green blanket of fields nearly blinded her. Birds fluttered through the rambling hedges where big white cows poked their soft faces over. Adele stopped the wheelchair and she and Jean both reached up to stroke their noses. A vile stench hit her suddenly and she stood on tiptoe to see where it was coming from. In the field beyond, three dead cows lay in the long, lush grass, their bodies bent and ravaged by shrapnel injuries. A bleating calf bent its head, trying to nuzzle its dead mother’s teats.

Without a word, Adele grasped the handles of the chair and pushed Jean away.

A puff of wind blew his cap off and Adele ran along the road behind it as it bowled along. She caught it and planted it on her head.

‘Hey, Adele,’ he cried, laughing. ‘Give that back. That’s mine. It’s the only one I’ve got, remember.’

‘Unfortunately not any more,’ she cried. ‘I have commandeered it. I haven’t visited the hairdresser’s in months. In fact, I think they all left Montfleur weeks ago. My hair is a mess and I need to keep it covered. You’re fine without it.’

They reached the bottom of a slope that led up to the headland, the apex of the eastern edge of the peninsula. Adele braced herself and pushed hard, steering her husband up to the top.

‘Put your back into it.’

‘That’s right,’ she wheezed, ‘you do all the huffing and puffing, I’ll do all the hard work.’

She stopped at the top, applied the brake and wiped her face with a handkerchief. She put Jean’s cap back on his
head, knelt beside him, took his hand and gazed out over the bay. They both fell silent, awestruck by the enormity of the sight before them. The sea swept wide to the distant south where Caen lay, marked on the horizon by the shroud of black smoke over it. The Allied armada lay at anchor, colonising the bay. Countless warships and destroyers, surrounded by flotillas of smaller boats, imposed their strength and their will on the sea, on the land, on the war.

‘Here,’ Jean drew his field glasses out of his pocket and handed them to her. ‘Take a look and tell me what you see.’

She squinted through the lenses. The terrifying mechanical bulk of the warships came into sharp view, with a blur of activity between them as small boats flitted, conveying supplies, conveying men to the coast.

‘They keep on coming,’ she said. ‘They just keep on coming.’

She spotted planes in the sky over the land, protecting and monitoring. She swallowed hard at the power – the sheer audacity – of it all unveiled before them.

‘Do you feel safe now?’ Jean asked her, as she handed him the glasses.

‘It’s as beautiful as a dream. It’s as frightening as a nightmare.’

Jean fell silent as he, too, watched through the glasses and took in the magnitude of the fleet. He put the glasses away and Adele watched him wipe his eyes.

‘If only we’d waited,’ he said. ‘We should have waited. We shouldn’t have … we shouldn’t have carried out the raid. You know … I mean the one years ago, when the children were taken. We should have waited. They were taken because of us.’

‘Jean, please.’ Adele rested her head on his shoulder and stared ahead of her at the might of the Allies, feeling the twist of pride, of delight in her gut, and the sharp guilt that raked over her heart. ‘Oh Jean, you’re shivering. You’re so cold.’

‘My legs …’ he said. ‘The pain is creeping up them.’

‘I’ll get you back home.’

‘Wait a moment. I want to look at the ships for a few minutes more. I don’t want to forget this.’

The sun beat down. The dune grasses rustled and whispered peacefully. Summer clouds jaunted across the sky and, beyond the wire that guarded France, that suffocated France, the sea looked perfect for bathing, the sand ripe for children to build their castles.

Jean lived for just a few days more, but not long enough to see the first Tommies walk into Montfleur.

As British tanks streamed up the road from the south, Adele tried to call the doctor but the telephone lines were down, the electricity cut off. In the Orlande salon, they guessed at blood poisoning. Jean was delirious, his fever intensifying; he cried, he whimpered like a child with the pain. And then, very suddenly, he became incredibly quiet. His eyes glazed over as the first shells screamed in over the rooftops and blasted holes in the houses around the square.

‘Tell them to stop,’ cried Adele, clutching Sophie in her arms as an obscene blast rocked her bones. She crouched by the
chaise
, shielding her daughter and burying her face into her husband’s shoulder. His face was tilted away from her; his sweat felt ice-cold under her fingertips. As the blistering explosion faded, the deathly quiet returned and
she dared to lift her head, she realised how still he was. ‘Tell them, Jean, tell them,’ she whispered into his sleeve. ‘There’s hardly any Germans left here anyway.’

Simon appeared suddenly at her side, his eyes staring wildly, his face white, his clothes encrusted with brick dust.

‘I just made it across the square. Oh God, get down to the basement with that child, Adele. Go.’

‘Simon, I’m not leaving him.’

‘Do as I say!’ Simon gripped her arms and picked her up as she held onto Sophie and dragged her away from the
chaise
. A stream of plaster trickled down from the ceiling. Glass could be heard falling, breaking somewhere in the house.

‘I want to stay! I want to stay with Jean!’

Madame Ricard hurried in and grabbed Sophie from her arms.

‘The baby is downstairs. Now come with me,’ she commanded. ‘He can no longer hear you.’

Adele looked at her mother-in-law. Her hard wrinkled face was broken with emotion and yet her cold voice sounded so reasonable and natural that Adele dumbly obeyed her.

Sheltering in the basement kitchen, Adele sensed the hours drag by, the sunlight change outside the window. The noise from the shells slowly eased to be replaced by cracks of gunfire from hand-held pistols in the streets.

‘They’re fighting house to house now,’ said Simon. ‘They’re flushing them out.’

She wondered where the Germans might be hiding. The stables at the end of the garden, or the shuttered house, empty and ghostly, next door? She held Sophie close and
spoke gently to her, listened to her muffled weeping. She, too, longed to cry but was too empty, too shattered to even try.

A spell of silence passed and Madame asked, ‘Will they retreat to Cherbourg, Simon?’

‘They might try but I hear that Cherbourg is surrounded by the Allies.’

Madame made a satisfied remark.

Simon said, ‘Someone told me this morning, the gendarme’s gone missing. Disappeared last night. I hope he’s done the honourable thing.’

‘One can hope,’ said Madame.

Adele said nothing. She lowered her head, longing for sleep. She wanted to crawl up the stairs and find Jean and look after him, to comfort him, to at least cover him. But she knew she must stay here and stay safe for Sophie and Pierre. She must stay alive for her children.

‘And guess what else, Adele,’ said Simon. ‘You know the
tricolore
that I kept hidden on the boat?’

She lifted her face and tried to smile at him.

He said, ‘I grabbed it just before I ran for cover in here. I hung it on the gates outside. For Jean. For you. For all of us.
Vive la France.’

The front room of the Orlande house was a special room, for special occasions, Madame Orlande had always said. The grand
salle de dîner
with dusty crystal chandelier, exquisite panelling – now bearing cracks from the impact of the bombardment – a marble fireplace and rose-pink drapes at the windows, had been shut up and shrouded since Madame was taken away. With the shutters closed
and the candles lit, it became Jean Ricard’s chapel of rest. He lay in his open coffin on the dining table, his eyes closed, his face sleeping.

Adele knelt by his side in the golden, smokey half darkness and prayed. She pressed her hands into her face and forced out the words, yet they were muffled by her tears and by the wrenching of her heart. How quiet it was, in the room, in the house, in the village. She did not want to breathe for she might break the peace.

The window was open behind the shutters and she heard through it a scattering of jovial voices.
English
voices.