The September Garden (6 page)

‘Oh, my life, the gas masks!’ cried Mrs Bunting in Nell’s ear. ‘Where are the gas masks?’

Marcus’s muffled voice came from the understairs cupboard. ‘In the shed, Mrs Bunting. Waiting to be unpacked.’

‘And what good is that, Marcus?’ said Mollie looking up and knocking her head on the table. ‘Christ.’

Silence. The siren ceased, cut off mid wail, but the hollow void it left inside Nell’s head was equally alarming.

Birds began singing outside in the garden again and Nell gradually sensed that life was perhaps normal beyond the cramped table, beyond the four walls of the house.

‘Where’s Mr Pudifoot?’ asked Sylvie.

Suddenly, another siren but this time in a different key.

‘The all-clear,’ someone said.

Nell peered up to see her father emerge from the cupboard with Diana Blanford, who was pink-faced, her skin exceptionally dewy. Nell thought how straight her nose was; as perfect as the Queen of Diamonds’ on her mother’s playing cards.

Out in the hallway, Mrs Bunting put down the telephone receiver. ‘The Olivers say it was a false alarm. Just testing, evidently.’

Nell thought, but the next one might be real. How long would this go on for? How long were wars, anyway? Her father left her mother at the bottom of the stairs looking frazzled and exasperated, her earlier beauty vanished, while he went upstairs, into his study, and shut the door. At least that was normal.

Mollie threw the teacher, who was loitering in the kitchen doorway, a rather hard look.

‘Nell, why don’t you show Miss Blanford around Lednor, take her for a walk,’ her mother said. ‘Go on, both of you. And you, Sylvie. Show her the September Garden.’

‘Oh, what fun,’ cried Diana, showing symptoms of exaggeration. ‘Don’t tell me you have a garden for every month of the year?’

Nell patiently explained that all the flowers come out at this time of year. ‘My father planted it years ago in the walled garden. He likes to keep himself occupied. It stops the shaking and the—’

Nell was stopped by her mother’s headlamp-like glare.

Diana brightened. ‘Oh well, show me, you must show me. Mr Garland’s very own garden. How very exciting.’

Outside was hushed, the air serenely calm. The teacher 
gazed around at the towering beeches at the end of the stretch of lawn, the voluminous herbaceous borders along its edges, exclaiming at the size, the beauty, the variety of plants.

Nell pointed out that there was a bourn at the end of the garden and the door, over there to the left, led into the walled garden. But she was loath to take Diana straight there. She felt she had not earned the right to sit and contemplate its golden beauty.

‘I wonder where Mr Pudifoot went?’ Nell asked, playing for time.

‘I think he probably ran off home to his own cottage when the raid started,’ said Sylvie.

‘I’m to meet this Mr Pudifoot today?’ asked Diana.

‘If you’re lucky, he’s our gardener and our handyman. He is part of the furniture, Mother would say.’

As they began to walk across the lawn, Sylvie asked Diana about the school and she told her it was quite a large one, in fact, in the London suburb of Harrow.

‘“Metro land” we call it. The children’s fathers take the railway every day up to London and back again. What a change for the children to be out in the country. We have a playing field and a park, but of course nothing like you have here. And you girls go into Aylesbury for school? Have they built air raid shelters? They dug ours in our playing field over the summer holidays. Long tunnels where the children can sit in rows. We practised last term. Gas masks and all. The ones who stayed behind will have them to themselves—Oh, is that a pair of feet?’

Nell peered at where Diana’s chubby manicured finger indicated and let out a hard shriek. Then she streaked 
towards the dug-over hollyhock bed. Among the mounds of turned earth and exposed roots, among the fallen flowers, lay Mr Pudifoot, spreadeagled, the toes of his great boots pointing to the sky. His grubby hand clutched the handle of his spade, which lay over the ground, twisting his wrist unnaturally. His eyes were open, staring at the sky.

‘Is he asleep?’ asked Sylvie, panting up behind her.

‘No, I fear he’s not,’ said Diana Blanford.

Nell felt queasy, looking at the man’s contorted hand. ‘Mr Pudifoot! Mr Pudifoot! He won’t wake up!’

‘I think he’s dead,’ whispered Diana. ‘He must be dead. He looks dead.’

Sylvie’s scream pierced Nell’s ears.

‘He can’t be,’ cried Nell. ‘It’s Mr Pudifoot!’

Mollie and Mrs Bunting came running from the house.

Nell backed away as Mrs Bunting knelt in the dirt of the flower bed and tenderly touched Mr Pudifoot’s forehead.

‘Whatever happened, girls?’ Mollie asked, her voice tiny and timorous.

‘Call the doctor,’ the housekeeper sighed quietly. Then she cried out, ‘Fetch the doctor. Now!’

Diana turned and ran back to the house.

Mrs Bunting raised her face. It was white, crumpled. Her eyes had disappeared. Her mouth gaped. ‘You children. Go away! Get out of here. Go! Go!’ she bellowed. ‘Please, let my man have some peace!’

Sylvie said, ‘Did you see poor Mrs Bunting?’

‘What killed him?’ asked Nell. ‘Nazi bullets? Gas? A bomb?’ 

Sylvie said, ‘There weren’t any planes. It was a false alarm.’

‘Where are we going?’ asked Diana.

They were on the lane by now but shock still pursued Nell with punishing speed.

‘Let’s go down to the river,’ she said, fighting nausea and dismay. ‘At least we can paddle. We have stepping stones, and bullrushes and … Miss Blanford, do you want to paddle?’

The teacher was happy to do anything, anything at all, she said, blowing her nose with a handkerchief damp and screwed up in her pale shaking hand.

Below them lay the flat-bottomed valley, with the River Chess broadening through the shallows and the still water of the ford reflecting the clouds. Beyond, in the water meadows, brown cows languished up to their knees in tall grass. One by one, they raised their chewing faces to observe their approach. Further on up the sides of the valley, golden fields had been shaved to stubble.

‘Oh my goodness,’ exclaimed Diana. ‘A great big eagle.’

‘No, it’s a kite, miss. They live all over the Chilterns,’ Nell corrected her, gazing upwards at the magnificent bird, thinking, but this lady is a teacher. She should know.

‘No, it isn’t a kite,’ Diana said lightly, her voice breaking. ‘It doesn’t have a string.’

They laughed a little. The kite glided effortlessly on its great red-brown wingspan through the warm air over the valley. Cloud shadows were chasing themselves over the hillside.

‘Oh, girls, I must confess, I’ve hardly ever left my hometown,’ announced Miss Blanford, ‘and now when I
do it’s because of the horrible war. I’m in charge of all the pupils, their welfare and everything, and yet I can hardly cope with any of this myself.’

Nell worried that she was going to start crying. Sylvie asked her how old she was.

‘Twenty-five,’ she replied. ‘Not that you’re supposed to ask a lady such questions.’

‘Do you have a boyfriend? Are you getting married?’

Diana blushed. ‘Questions, girls, questions …’

They came to the ford.

‘We can do this one of two ways,’ decreed Nell. ‘We can take the sensible way and cross on the stepping stones. Or take off our shoes and socks and paddle right through. I know what I’m going to do.’

‘Me too,’ said Diana, slipping off her shoes and reaching under her skirt to unclip her stockings.

‘I’m being sensible,’ said Sylvie unsurprisingly, and began to pick her way across the stones, her patent shoes as pristine as ever.

Miss Blanford shrieked as she dabbed her toes in the water. ‘It’s ice-cold!’ she cried, laughing. ‘Oh my goodness. This is a first for me. Would you ever! This is unbearable, oh goodness. But somehow, rather splendid.’

On the other side of the river, the short willows on the banks grew thicker, the dells deep and secret, the pathways more secluded. Nell guided them, ducking under draping branches, pushing through the green-scented undergrowth of wild flower and reed, avoiding the webs of golden-yellow spiders fat from a summerful of flies. All the time the river sang beside her with a fresh burbling tune.

‘The war is far away now,’ Nell said as they settled on a 
grassy bank in the broken shade, under a flickering canopy of willow leaves. Her sick feeling faded as she breathed on sweet river air.

‘This is bliss,’ sighed Miss Blanford, wriggling her toes. ‘What a marvellous place for you girls. Yes, the war all seems such a long way off now.’

And so, thought Nell sadly, is Mr Pudifoot.

Debussy drifted down the stairway from her father’s study as Nell walked back into the hall with Sylvie and Diana. She knew each pondering note so well. She headed for the kitchen, hoping for a cup of milk and a biscuit, and stopped on the threshold. There was her mother, her hand on Mrs Bunting’s shoulder. Mrs Bunting was sipping a cup of tea, shaking her head, a sort of quivering attacking her plump body.

‘Oh, there you are, Nell,’ said Mollie, her eyes dark and unreadable. ‘I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news for you. For you all.’ Her tone made Nell uncomfortable, as if she was in some way responsible. ‘Mr Pudifoot died, I’m afraid.’

‘George, my poor George,’ Mrs Bunting sobbed into her hand.

‘The doctor’s just left,’ said Mollie. ‘He said he had a bad heart. He thinks the siren frightened him. Made him have a seizure.’

‘Bloody,
bloody
war!’ snapped Mrs Bunting, her sobs bitter. ‘He survived the last lot. Was going to do his bit this time round if he could. Now look … What a mess. What a bloody
mess
.’

Upstairs, Marcus turned the volume up and Debussy soared.

‘Oh, that blessed music,’ cried Mollie, ‘It’s been non-stop.’

Mrs Bunting looked like she was going to break in two. She declared that she could not bear it. Couldn’t he play something else? Better still, nothing at all?’

‘Go and ask him, Nell,’ said Mollie. ‘Tell him it’s upsetting Mrs Bunting.’

Nell went upstairs, immersed in ‘
Clair de Lune
’. No more Mr Pudifoot. No more jokes, which weren’t actually very funny, but still made her laugh. No more impishness twinkling from his eyes. Where had they taken him? Had they taken off his muddy boots? Had they closed his eyes?

She walked into her father’s study. Marcus was painting with a queer energy, absorbed and focused on his canvas. It was a new painting. He had not diluted the colours but was using great daubs of fresh wet paint – crimson and gold – to create a field of wheat dotted with poppies. They were broken and cut down. He jumped when she touched his arm, and Nell was astonished to see tears in his eyes.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said.

She went over to the gramophone, eased the volume and lifted the switch so that when the record finished, the needle would return and not start playing again. Finally, the last melancholy piano note faded.

‘He was in my regiment,’ said Marcus, wiping his brush with a rag. ‘Second Battalion, Buckinghamshire Yeomanry. He was Gunner Pudifoot. I was his captain.’

‘Did you know his name was George?’

‘Of course I bloody did.’ Marcus was momentarily angry. He reached out with a finger to the painting and swiped a dab of blood-red paint from it. ‘Did you know,
Nell, that he loved Mrs Bunting but she married someone else while he was in Flanders?’

Nell, perplexed, asked who did she marry.

Marcus shrugged with a strange comical smile. ‘Why, Mr Bunting, of course. But he left her.’

Nell pondered on this, bit her lip and said, ‘That’s new,’ nodding at the painting.

Marcus picked up his paintbrush and executed an exquisite flourish to create yet one more broken ear of wheat. ‘New, yes.’ He gestured to the painting, to the world outside the window. ‘In future, you will find many things are new – for all of us.’

A few weeks ago, the first autumn storm had whipped the leaves from the beeches revealing their skeletons, their true selves. Scraping frost from the inside of the windowpane, Sylvie could see right through the naked branches across the valley to the quiet brown fields on the other side. Mist from the River Chess drifted low along the bottom.

‘
Merde
, it’s like the outside is on the inside in this house,’ she muttered, shivering as she plunged her arms into her cashmere.

When she first arrived at Lednor, the valley had been shielded from her by rich summer-green trees; but now this bare frigid landscape was her winter view. The earth seemed to sink into the peace and serenity of the dead end of the year. She thought of home and the endless impenetrable
bocage
that surrounded Montfleur and guarded it. A sudden uproar from the rooks that circled over the beeches brought her back to Lednor with a start.

Auntie Mollie called up the stairs, ‘Time for our walk, Sylvie. Shake a leg!’

Suitably attired – she’d reluctantly borrowed Uncle Marcus’s green rubber coat from the hallway cupboard – Sylvie walked with her aunt and cousin, breathing in the new earthy smell of the season. The way through the beech woods was muffled with bracken. Deep-green moss furred the grey trunks and fallen stumps. Her feet snapped on twigs and crunched on beech nuts. Mist was evaporating on branches overhead and drops hit the top of her head with great wet plops.

Auntie Mollie carried her pannier, her fingertips, it seemed to Sylvie, twitching impatiently for the hunt for mushrooms to start. Nell, also annoyingly eager, hurried off ahead. Sylvie peered into the false green twilight and caught sight of her cousin’s curls as she dipped her head to root under ferns, and tenderly part the leaf mould. There was a peace and stillness between the trees. A pheasant coughed in the valley; a wood pigeon brooded up above.

She asked, ‘When you were girls, Auntie Mollie, did you and
Maman
go mushrooming together?’

‘Oh yes, of course. All through the woods where we lived. Your mother is quite the expert. She knows her fungi like the back of her hand.’

Of course, her mother still is the expert, Sylvie assured herself, even though she is hundreds of miles away across the sea.

‘I love it when we go foraging in the
bocage
beyond Montfleur,’ Sylvie mused. ‘We make a day of it. Just me and
Maman
. Adele packs us a picnic.’ She paused, as her happy memories cascaded through her like warm syrup. 
‘
Maman
always has an absolutely wonderful time.’

Her aunt glanced at her with a ghost of a tear in her eye.

‘Well, then, let’s have a look round here,’ she announced heartily, bending to part the undergrowth at the base of a large beech trunk. ‘There were lots around this tree last year.’

Sylvie squatted down to look, her own tears fogging her eyes, blinding her. ‘Look at these beauties, Auntie Moll.’

Her aunt was at her side. ‘Oh, oh no, don’t touch that. Destroying angel. That one would definitely floor you. Steer well clear.’ Mollie paused and twitched her nose much in the way Beth would when she was on the scent. ‘Oh, but here, here now. Puffballs. This is better.’

Mollie grasped a white bulbous stem, laid it in her basket and reached back to pull up its group of mates.

‘Now this will be lovely, fried up with some butter,’ she said, ‘with a dash of parsley and even a splash of wine. We’ll raid Uncle Marcus’s cellar. What a treat. We can have these tonight, with our steamed meat pudding. Oh now, Sylvie … No more tears.’

A heavy, dank feeling wrapped itself around her as her aunt embraced her, crushing the coldness of the rubber jacket to her ribs, so her chill of loneliness reached deeper than ever before.

In the dining room the small stack of coals hissed in the hearth, emitting a peculiar mineral scent. Sylvie, attempting her English homework at the table while the cold autumn evening fell quickly, decided that the warmth of the fire fell woefully short, not like Adele’s great roaring applewood blazes. The blackout was down, and the heavy curtains 
muffled sound, cloistering the room from the outside world. Opposite her, Nell was doing algebra, her hair brightened by the yellow glow of the oil lamp. She needs to grow up, thought Sylvie, sharpening her pencil. She needs to get over the
Little Wooden Horse
and read Jane Austen.

Miss Hull, the English teacher who used the long hooked stick to ease open the classroom windows and also to bash the desks of those girls who did not come up to scratch, had recently pressed on Sylvie a tatty copy of
Persuasion
. She’d also singled her out in front of the whole class to praise her. Sylvie’s skin crawled and her eyes smarted at the thought of that particular ordeal.

‘B-plus for your English exercise. A for effort,’ Miss Hull had announced. ‘Girls, I want you all to look to Sylvie Orlande as an inspiration. Never forget how brave Mademoiselle is in these terrifying times.’ Miss Hull’s bright blue eyes in her weather-tanned face fixed on Sylvie. ‘I must say, Orlande, seeing how you have coped with your lessons here, the French education system must be very good indeed.’

‘Oh, yes, Miss Hull,’ she had replied, nervous in the face of such an onslaught of praise, ‘but
Maman
helps me at home.’

Now, trudging through her homework in the Lednor Bottom dining room, the embrace of solitude was complete. She opened her exercise book and stared at the lessons. She struggled to keep her face composed, not wishing to reveal the pain hammering her insides. What was the use of good marks if she couldn’t chat with her mother and tell her all about them?

‘A letter has arrived for you, Sylvie.’ It was Uncle Marcus, 
making her jump. He had come in, in his slippered feet, and was looking over her shoulder. He drew an envelope out of his waistcoat pocket. ‘Your auntie and I took the liberty of opening it when it arrived this morning. We hope you don’t mind.’

A rush of joy swept aside her pain. Her mother’s handwriting was beautiful, looped and pretty like notes on a sheet of music. It took her straight back to the salon in Montfleur and
Maman
sitting at the secretaire in the corner writing elegant letters to Auntie Mollie and to all her friends. Sylvie ran her fingertip over the inked page as if to stroke her mother’s cheek. She imagined her father reading over her mother’s shoulder as she wrote, a heavy presence, preening his moustache. She drew a breath and read quickly, glancing at the last line above the love and kisses. Then she started again, slowly this time.

‘A trust fund?’ she said. ‘They’re transferring money for me? To Switzerland?’

Nell asked if Sylvie was going to be rich.

‘See it as your Christmas present,’ said Uncle Marcus, pulling out a chair to sit down next to her. ‘The fund will be secure in a Swiss bank. Safe as houses, so they say. Your parents want to make sure that you have everything you need.’

Everything I need? Sylvie thought. How will they know what I need?

There was nothing in the letter from her father, although she could feel him there, like a stain upon the page.

‘As from now on we – Auntie Mollie and I – are to be your legal guardians.’

Sylvie looked at her uncle. ‘
From now on?
’ she repeated. ‘What do you mean, “
From now on”
?’ 

‘They are being sensible, under the circumstances.’

‘But nothing’s happened yet,’ Nell butted in. ‘At school, they’re calling it the Phoney War. They said it would be over by Christmas, and it’s like it’s never even started.’

‘Nothing happening, you say?’ said Marcus. He unfolded
The Times
that he’d brought in with him and spread it on the table. ‘Let me have a bit of a read and I’ll see.’

Sylvie neatly folded her mother’s letter in its envelope, and tasted the bitter length of the distance between them.

‘Miss Hull likes you, Sylvie,’ said Nell. ‘You’re the teacher’s pet.’

‘So?’ said Sylvie, filling her ink pen from the pot of Quink.

‘You know she’s a lizzie,’ Nell whispered across the table.

‘Now really, girls,’ Marcus said, folding the paper in half. ‘Nell, have more respect, I’m surprised at you. I really am. You’re sixteen now. Come Easter you’ll have taken your exams and left. I expect more from you.’

‘It’s not fair. Sylvie is leaving school at Christmas.’

‘That’s because I have a whole year on you.’ Sylvie wondered how much money she might be receiving. A drip of an idea spread over her mind, like the ink stains on Nell’s exercise books. An idea of being free, independent and alive. Away from her misery? Away from Lednor?

Uncle Marcus said, ‘Now, listen to this. We’ve had our first casualty on the Western Front, a captain … What else …?’ he pondered. ‘The Fins are resisting the Soviets. Humiliating the Red Army. Canadian troops will soon begin arriving in Britain, to help us. That’s good. That’s because they are part of … what, Nell?’ 

‘The
Empire
. Oh Dad, I know
that
much.’

‘And … oh dear, this is not good.’ Marcus scanned a short piece of type on page three. ‘It says here, girls: “The Nazis are beginning to deport Jewish people from occupied lands.” “Resettling”, they say.’

Sylvie lifted her head. ‘We have Jews next door to us back home.
Maman
talked about them in her letter.’ She unfolded it. ‘Where is it …? Ah yes:
Our neighbours have asked us if we can help them come to England … asked your father for references … I suspect, as your papa is the gendarme, they think he can help
…
’

Nell sat up. ‘Do they have to leave, too? Mr and Mrs Androvsky? And Estella and Edmund?’

Sylvie glanced at her uncle to see his face close down behind a mask of ill ease.

Nell persisted, ‘But what would happen to their cabbages and carrots? And Mr Androvsky’s bike?’

‘Oh, do grow up, Nell, and behave,’ snapped Sylvie. ‘What are you going on about? Cabbages and carrots?’

Her uncle interrupted, brightening with forced jollity. ‘Now for some good news. You girls will like this, I’d wager: “
Gone with the Wind
opens in Atlanta, Georgia”.’

‘How wonderful!’ cried Sylvie, her spirits rushing to the sky.

‘You can go when it opens in Aylesbury. Auntie Mollie will take you,’ said her uncle, ‘and I’m sure Diana would like to go, too.’

Miss Blanford had just let herself in at the front door, her footsteps clicking on the parquet. She stood at the threshold of the dining room, untying her woolly scarf.

‘Where would I like to go, Marcus?’ she asked. 

‘You’ve brought the cold in with you, Diana,’ he replied, his voice, Sylvie noted, falling down the scale. He spoke to her as if no one else was there.

‘We’re going to see
Gone with the Wind
,’ cried Nell, giggling with the thrill of it. ‘Oh look, miss, come and look at the photograph!’

‘My, my, how very exciting,’ said Diana as she leant over Nell’s shoulder and looked at the newspaper story. Her plump hand with its tiny manicured nails resting on the table was perilously close to Uncle Marcus’s and Sylvie realised that she was the only one to notice. However, it was far more exciting to think of the film. Her imagination blossomed and turned a joyful corner. She, too, peered at the photograph in the newspaper of the glamorous film premiere in Atlanta, Georgia. The grainy image showed the actresses in delightful gowns, the men in their dinner jackets.

Nell held on to Sylvie’s arm tightly; such was the force of her glee that she knew she’d have little bruises there tomorrow.

‘Oh look, Sylvie, look at lovely Vivien Leigh. And look at Rhett Butler.’

Sylvie smiled and silently appraised Clark Gable’s grin and his wondrous set of teeth, and her desire for freedom made a circle round her heart. It was a whole other world.