The September Garden

by Catherine Law

  ‘They had a ladder, do you remember? Kept popping up, with their little faces. They were such naughty little beans.’

  Sylvie’s mother interjected, bristling defensively, ‘Well, you know, Nell, the Androvsky family were taken away. But that was after I had gone so I don’t really know much about it, really.’

  ‘We can all take a good guess what happened, Madame,’ Adele said. ‘I expect they ended up in Drancy. Trains left there, we know now, for Auschwitz.’

  ‘No need to be so brutal,’ scolded Beth. She poured coffee with a pale-knuckled, shaking hand.

  ‘The children?’ Nell exclaimed.

  ‘When their parents were sent away they were left behind. They came to live here with Monsieur Orlande. We hid them in the spare bedroom. Your room, actually, Nell, do you remember?’

  ‘See, there you are.’ Beth’s voice was shrill with justification. ‘He did what he could. Claude was a good man. Of course,’ she said, handing a cup to Nell, ‘we have no sugar.’

  Sylvie stood up suddenly, desperate for a change of air. ‘Maman, will you take me upstairs, for a moment? Show me my room? I really want to—’

  Her mother’s face broke into a broad smile. ‘Oh, ma chère. Of course.’

  Sylvie trod the stairs with care, as she had always done – in an attempt not to make any noise. She hurried along the long landing past the closed door of what had once been her parents’ bedroom. Up another flight, and the sickness in her stomach began to churn.

  She opened the door to her old bedroom and walked over the Paris carpet, looking around the serene white-painted walls, at the bed with its French Grey drapes, and the little armoire in the corner. Her dolls, her ribbons, her shoes were in tidy rows, the bed made up, the crisp sheet turned down. A pain settled over her heart as her mother began to speak.

  ‘Adele kept the room aired and clean for you, all through the war,’ Beth was saying proudly. ‘I’m afraid it could do with a bit of a going-over now, but everything is still here. Everything you own, Sylvie. I wanted to keep it for you. For when you came home.’

  Sylvie’s memories bubbled like poison under the surface of her skin.

  ‘You needn’t have bothered.’

  She walked to the window as her mother’s open-mouthed, shocked silence bore down on her. The garden was forlorn, left to rack and ruin, but she remembered clearly the rows of beans, the mounds of lavender, the stables at the end. Poor old Monsieur le lapin. It wasn’t Nell’s fault. She knew that then, and she knew it now. If only she could tell her so.

  ‘I had hoped to slip through Montfleur without attracting attention,’ she told her mother. ‘Thought my headscarf might do the trick, but no such luck. I saw them looking. The intakes of breath, the raising of eyebrows. I heard them say it. La fille du collabo.’

  ‘But that’s why I am so desperate to leave,’ said her mother, wringing her hands in agitation. ‘I take it that you are settled in England, and would not want to return here? I wasn’t sure what your plans were. I am so glad you came back for me.’

  Sylvie turned to her. ‘I never wanted to set one foot in this place again. I’m only here to bring you home.’

  An understanding filtered softly over her mother’s features. ‘He wasn’t a bad man, Sylvie. He was caught in the middle. Damned if he did. Damned if he didn’t. And for it to end like that. So barbaric. He didn’t stand a chance.’

  She stared at her. ‘Maman, I don’t want to sleep in this room tonight. I’d rather sleep on the chaise in the salon.’

  Her mother recoiled. ‘But we kept it all for you. We have it all laid out. Fresh sheets. Every week.’

  Anger simmered inside Sylvie’s bones. She stared at her mother’s pathetic face, at her broken tooth, and had to look away. Through the open window, Adele’s and Nell’s voices drifted up as they stepped out of the vestibule and lingered on the path below.

  ‘… the old fort at Cherbourg was the German headquarters … soldiers in the cafés, asking girls to dances. We refused, of course. Always said we were washing our hair.’

  Nell pondered on the unimaginable dangers and prompted Adele to continue. Sylvie found herself smiling – her cousin, forever the reporter.

  ‘We’d tune into the Free French in London,’ Adele went on. ‘The World Service. My husband was in the Resistance. He died just after D-Day.’

  Hearing Nell’s sudden exclamation of sorrow, Sylvie glanced angrily at her mother. ‘Just because my father is dead,’ she said, ‘it doesn’t transform him – suddenly – into a good man.’

  Leaving her mother speechless, she hurried down the stairs and along the garden path, catching up with Adele and Nell outside the stables.

  ‘Monsieur Androvsky once told me about Ullis and Tatillon,’ Nell was saying. ‘The two horses that used to live here.’

  Sylvie looked at the faded signs above the twin stable doors.

  ‘We never had horses, Nell,’ she gently chided. ‘Only rabbits.’

  Nell protested, ‘No, there were horses here a long time ago, when Monsieur Androvsky was a young man. Oh, I can still smell it.’ She was standing where the narrow stone steps disappeared up into darkness. ‘That faint whiff of straw.’

  ‘Nell, you’re being too ridiculous,’ said Sylvie. ‘How can you smell it when there haven’t been horses here for years?’

  Adele put her hand on Nell’s shoulder. ‘You were always so fanciful, so sensitive, little Nell,’ she said.

  ‘Will you tell us what happened?’ Nell asked. ‘To the two children?’

  Sylvie’s mother had followed them out to the yard. She now stood with her arms folded, her face downcast. A twitch had appeared above one of her eyes. Sylvie thought how sunken she was; how she was crumbling away.

  Adele said, ‘The night we planned to send the children down the lines, I hid them up there in the stable loft. We thought it would be easier that way.’

  Nell said that she wanted to go up and take a look. She’d never dared to before.

  Sylvie followed her cousin and Adele up the steps. She sensed her mother climbing silently behind her.

  ‘Sacré bleu,’ Sylvie muttered, her eyes blinking in the darkness. ‘I was never allowed up here as a child, and I can see why. It’s a positive deathtrap.’

  ‘Can someone help me, please?’ came her mother’s plaintive voice from below.

  ‘Here, allow me.’ Adele stooped, gripped her under the armpit, and with one strong pull, hauled her up.

  They stood close together in the half darkness. Sylvie’s nostrils were warm with timber dust and the musty scent of confined air, her head almost touching the sloping ceiling. As her eyes adjusted she began to make out the pale faces of her mother, her cousin and Adele, their eyes like dark pools. She saw pinpricks of daylight through the roof tiles. They looked like stars in a night sky. She remembered the tree house at Lednor and how it had been the most wonderful place. This loft was draughty, dusty and festooned with cobwebs. It was not a place anyone would want to stay for very long.

  ‘The same night Estella and Edmund were hiding in here, there was a Resistance operation,’ Adele whispered, as if she might wake the children. ‘It went terribly wrong and it was not possible for us to deal with them. It was a dreadful mix-up. We should never have …’

  The break in her voice scratched at Sylvie’s nerves. She felt her heart quicken with dread.

  ‘And then, Monsieur Orlande betrayed the children.’ Adele’s shoulders shuddered.

  Nell covered her mouth with her hand and looked away.

  ‘How dare you!’ Beth cried out.

  ‘I’m afraid it’s true, Madame. That dreadful morning, to save the cell, the town, himself, he sacrificed the children. He redressed the balance. And I watched him do it.’ She wept in the gaping silence. ‘We are guilty. All guilty.’

  Sylvie’s legs turned to liquid. She span around, sat down hard on the dirty floor. She leant forward, her chest sinking, her head collapsed under the weight of the shock that came
at her like a physical blow.

  ‘He betrayed them,’ she hissed, ‘like he betrayed all children.’

  ‘Oh, Sylvie.’ Her mother was there in front of her, her face aged with distress, her eyes bright with tears. ‘It’s awful. So awful. I am so sorry.’

  ‘Why are you sorry?’ screamed Sylvie. ‘You will forgive him, like you always forgive him and, again, forgive him!’

  Her sobs filled the rafters and the dark corners where the children had crouched and waited.

  She felt Adele’s hands scrabbling for hers in the half darkness, placing in them some crumpled folded pieces of paper. She stared down at her lap in the gloom, trying to make them out.

  ‘These are pictures that the children drew the night they were here, Sylvie. I’d like you to have them.’

  In the gloom of that stable loft, Sylvie could hear Nell weeping and the footsteps of her mother as she hurried back down the steps. She felt a soft puff of relief, as if someone just then had breathed gently on her throat.

  She gazed down at the pictures, smoothing her fingers over the wrinkled paper but unable to see clearly what the children had drawn for all she could think was that he was gone.

  At last, at last. He was gone.

  Nell

  She barely noticed her Auntie Beth drifting around the house at Lednor, such was her plaintive withdrawal into her own shadow. But whenever Nell did encounter her, on the stairs or in the garden, she saw grey hair unwashed and tangled, slippers mismatched, heard her muttering to herself, fingertips twitching in unconscious agitation. And she could not help the compassion that lifted out of her chest for her frail aunt. Even more so, because Sylvie refused to visit Lednor.

  After the revelations in the stable loft in Montfleur, Nell explained to her mother, the two women had barely spoken to each other. The journey home to England had been awkward, arduous. Nell had watched the choppy heavy-grey waves from the prow of the cross-Channel steamer, urging England to appear out of the drizzling horizon, longing for it to take shape, craving for Lednor, for home. She’d done her duty in accompanying Sylvie back to Montfleur and left her cousin and her aunt to prowl the ship like strangers.

  Her mother begged her to become arbitrator, to telephone Sylvie and ask her to reconsider. After all, Auntie Beth was contrite and suffering more than she needed to, was desperate to make amends with her daughter. Nell reluctantly dialled the number for the mews.

  ‘I’m glad you telephoned,’ Sylvie said, quite calmly, surprising her. Her voice contained an edge of humour. Nell braced herself. Sylvie making jokes was lethal; a symptom of something much darker brewing underneath. ‘Yes, I will come up to Lednor. Just to warn you, however, I will be liaising closely with Mrs B to ensure no lapin for dinner.’

  She arrived the following afternoon just after their mothers had left for the cinema.

  Nell was nervous of Sylvie, skirting around her as she took off her coat and put her suitcase upstairs, wishing her mother and aunt had stayed in to shield her from the hardness that veneered her cousin’s face, those beautiful, unreadable eyes.

  ‘They’ve gone into Aylesbury on the bus,’ Nell explained. ‘Even Mrs B decided to join in. It was Mother’s idea, an outing to cheer your mother up. And the perfect day for sitting indoors in a cinema, looks like it’s going to tip it down.’

  Sylvie followed her into the kitchen, unusually reticent, and sat herself near the warm Aga, pushing her hands up the sleeves of her cashmere cardigan. Outside, the day grew blustery and rain started to fall from voluminous grey clouds.

  ‘I’m glad they’re out, and we have the place to ourselves,’ said Sylvie. ‘I’ve always liked good old Mrs B’s kitchen. Most comforting.’

  Nell agreed that it was and offered to make some hot chocolate. She talked about the weather, wondered what the film would be like, asked about the mews house, anything to stop Alex rising between them.

  Sylvie politely took the steaming cup of milk and, dipping to her bag on the floor, said, ‘I have something in here for you, Nell. You didn’t get a chance to see them properly at Montfleur. I’ve brought the drawings.’

  Surprised, Nell took them, unfolded them, smoothed them out over the table.

  They sipped their hot chocolate in silence, contemplating Estella and Edmund’s innocent imagination. When Nell dared to look at Sylvie she saw that she also had tears in her eyes.

  Nell said, ‘I know what we should do with these.’ She went to the dresser and found an empty biscuit tin, saying that it would do and that Sylvie should put the drawings in it. ‘Make sure the lid is tight. That’s it. Come with me.’

  Sylvie protested that it was raining, but Nell chivvied her up, putting on a raincoat of her mother’s and handing Sylvie her own old hand-me-down mac from the hall cupboard.

  ‘I’m surprised this old thing hasn’t been given to Miss Trenton for the jumble,’ she protested.

  They left the house and ran together across the lawn through the rain, wet beech leaves blowing in their faces, their hair whipped madly by the saturated wind. Breathless, the shoulders of their coats wet already, their shoes soggy, they stopped by the bourn under the big willow tree.

  ‘Can you do it, Sylvie? I think you should do the honours.’

  ‘Hold the bottom of the rope ladder for me, then. Merde, I’m surprised it hasn’t rotted away after all this time. Ouch, that’s my stocking gone.’ And then, ‘You’re right, I can’t fit through the entrance. Six years ago it was a bit of a struggle – but now certainly not. It’s definitely built for children.’

  ‘Push the tin in as far as you can.’

  ‘Have done,’ she called down. ‘It’s over by the eaves, away from any gaps. It is rather dry up here, surprisingly so. That’s good. Job done.’ Sylvie made her slow way back down the ladder, swinging over Nell’s head while she held it steady.

  Sylvie landed with an elegant thud on the ground and the cousins faced each other under the shelter of the branches where the raindrops barely reached them.

  ‘They’re safe up there,’ Sylvie said. ‘No adults will ever find them there.’

  Later, in the lamplit drawing room, Sylvie opened the trunk that stood in the centre of the Aubusson rug. It had arrived yesterday from Normandy for her mother. Nell poured them both a sherry and busied herself perusing the shelves in the alcoves, chancing upon some of her father’s old books. With broken spines and yellowing pages, they should, she decided, have been thrown out years ago. Kneeling down to peer along the bottom shelf, she was surprised at what he’d left behind – most of his life, it seemed. He had walked out of the house five years before with the clothes he stood up in.

  She commented as much to Sylvie, saying she ought to clear them away, and wondered why her mother hadn’t.

  ‘Hanging on to him, isn’t she?’ said Sylvie. ‘I think we can all be guilty of doing that. How is Uncle Marcus, anyway? And his young teacher bride?’

  ‘Hasn’t been a teacher for years. Drummed out of the profession for running off with a married man.’

  ‘Well, they’re married now, aren’t they?’

  ‘Their baby is due in a few months, and he is on crutches. Has to sleep downstairs, Diana tells me. She hopes he will be better by the time the baby comes.’

  ‘He won’t be much use around the house, will he?’

  ‘I don’t think he ever was.’

  They laughed dubiously.

  ‘Ah, here we are,’ said Sylvie, drawing out a pale-blue photograph album from the trunk and wiping the silk cover with the cuff of her sleeve. ‘Come and look at this, Nell.’

  She sat beside Sylvie on the rug as her cousin carefully opened the wedding album. The dust made her sneeze delicately and Sylvie commented that even her sneezes were pretty. Between the thick wax-paper leaves half a dozen photographs had not seen the light of day for years. Uncle Claude stood in the studio in front of a curtain, while Auntie Beth sat on the edge of an overstuffed chair. She was demure in a cloche, her white gown trimmed with
a band of fur. Claude held his gloves and bowler hat in front of him. His moustache in those days was neat and small.

  ‘Why did they bother to include this one?’ Nell wondered. ‘Uncle Claude must have moved as the shutter closed. His face is a blur.’

  ‘Just as well, I say,’ said Sylvie, snapping the album shut and burying it back in the trunk. ‘Who wants to look at him, anyway?’

  Nell wondered and then bit her tongue. She said cautiously, ‘Of course, my mother burnt her own wedding album on the infamous bonfire.’

  ‘The first time I met Alex. The day we both met him.’

  Nell looked at Sylvie, braving the full force of her intense and contrite violet-blue eyes, and then turned her face away.

  ‘Thank you for coming with me to Montfleur,’ Sylvie said quietly.

  Nell blurted, ‘I left John-James when I didn’t want to. I don’t want to do that again in a long time.’

  She felt Sylvie’s hand on her arm. ‘I asked a lot of you. I only did that because I needed you.’

  Nell shrugged, unable to contemplate this notion.

  ‘Nell, it’s not your fault.’

  ‘Oh, it is,’ she said, her own voice drilling painfully through her head. ‘I fell asleep. I should have watched him, always, watched him. The vicar’s been up to bless him, you know. Everyone has been so kind. But it’s so cold out there. So cold.’

  Sylvie knelt up and her arms went round Nell. Sylvie’s sweet, powdery perfume enveloped her. Tears raced down her cheeks.

  ‘I knew Alex loved you,’ she heard Sylvie say in her ear, ‘that’s why it drove me mad.’ She drew back. ‘I was under the influence, completely, but hadn’t a cat in hell’s chance. And yet still I clung on. Where’s the dignity in that? I wouldn’t give up for a whole year. Not until he came home from Gibraltar. At last he came home, and finally I took off my engagement ring. There was no fight left in me. That was the night I knew. He loved you. He wasn’t interested in me. Nell, you are made for each other.’