The September Garden (10 page)

Nell’s father breathed out a sigh and rubbed his fingers through his hair. ‘Oh, I see, I see …’

Standing behind the half-open door, Nell heard a chink of glass on glass as her mother, out of view, poured the drinks.

‘How about you and I locking the door and comforting each other. God knows we both need it.’

‘Thing is, Mollie darling, I’m bushed, don’t you know. Can we save it?’

‘Why save it?’ she asked archly. ‘It’s been a long, long time.’ 

‘Look, sweets. I am pretty worn out, truth be told.’

Nell turned to walk away, disgusted with herself for listening in, and sickened by her father’s pathetic sidestepping.

‘Take off your coat.’

Her father said all right, that he would, but that’s all.

‘The perfume is quite distinctive, you know,’ Mollie said.

Out on the landing, Nell stopped in her tracks. Her heart iced over.

‘Yes. I know, Marcus,’ said her mother. ‘The “old bag” perfume. Diana has told me all about the coat. The story of how she stole it. Bored me with it the other day. Except now I’m not bored. I’m furious. And the perfume is disgusting. It clings to her, and clings to that dead animal pelt she wears absolutely everywhere. And clings to anything and anyone who gets close to her.’

‘Are you teasing me again, Mollie dear?’ Marcus was trying to laugh.

‘No. Not this time. Are you having an affair?’

Silence.

‘Are you having an affair with Diana Blanford?’

‘Now, really, Mollie—’

A whisky glass slammed down onto the tray.

‘Just admit it, Marcus, you utter bloody coward!’ Mollie screamed. ‘No wonder they wouldn’t send you over the top. No wonder you got yourself a Blighty. It’s always the same with you. You won’t admit it. You won’t admit anything. And you keep me here in purgatory. Do you know how that feels? I’m being ripped in two. Do the decent thing, Marcus, God damn you.’

‘I’m not sure it’s something you’d want to hear …’ 

‘What I want? What I want? You’ve long ago stopped caring what I
want
!’

‘We love each other.’

Nell’s blood froze under her scalp as if a cold, tight hood had been placed over her head. She trembled, taking tentative steps towards the study. Cocking her ear, she felt compelled to listen to horrors she did not want to hear.

Inside the room her mother hissed, ‘
Love
? I thought you were just having sex with her?’

‘We’re going to leave,’ he said, his voice weedy, trembling. ‘There never will be the right time. But we will do that right now. If that’s what you want.’

Mollie screamed.

Nell, in a rush of brutal panic, leapt forward into the room. She saw Mollie thrust her hands into her hair, wrecking her hairdo. She jerked towards her father, who took a step to get out of her way, and pushed straight past Nell not seeing her at all. She ran down the landing, ran downstairs and wrenched open the door to the hall cupboard. Nell heard the dustpan and brush, the vacuum cleaner, the mop and bucket, everything being hauled out and clattering as she threw it onto the floor.

Nell cried, ‘Dad, what on earth …?’

Her father looked at her like a beaten dog. He wouldn’t say a word, his silence torturous.

Her mother came back up the stairs lugging a suitcase screaming, ‘Out! Out! Out!’ as she kicked it along the landing.

She flung the suitcase on the floor in the centre of the study and opened the lid. At the cupboard, she yanked out shirts, socks from his drawers, and slung them into the case. 
Nell’s father was cowering by his easel, his paint-stained fingers gripping a handkerchief in front of his chest.

Mollie suddenly looked round and stared at Nell.

‘What’s going on?’ Nell managed to say, clasping the door handle.

Marcus muttered, ‘I think you’d better go downstairs.’

‘Don’t you dare speak to her! You rotten bastard!’ Mollie screamed and ran towards him, her hands outstretched like claws. He dodged out of her way. She grabbed a fistful of paintbrushes and another of tubes of paint and slung them into the suitcase. ‘You awful, awful bastard! Do you know, Nell, he’s been at it with that tramp? What a fool I have been. What a stupid, mad fool. No longer. Not any more!’

Marcus put his hand on her arm.

She reacted as if he’d burnt her.

‘Mollie, will you please calm down. Look at Nell, you’re upsetting her. Please Mollie, just—’

She glared at him. ‘Coward,’ she spat. ‘You let your men down. They went over the top. Not you. George Pudifoot went over the top. Shell shock? Huh! What a joke. You’ve been milking it for years. Should have given you white feathers instead of marrying you.’

Mollie lifted her hand to strike him. He bowed his head and simply allowed her blows to rain down on his ears, his chest, his face.

A feeling of cold, of death, sank to the base of Nell’s stomach and stayed there. It weighed her down, clenched like a fist.

‘You pathetic little man,’ her mother seethed at him, rubbing the palms of her hands from the impact against her husband’s flesh and bone. ‘Diana Blanford can have 
your stupid paintings, your paint, your dirty socks and your blessed “
Clair de Lune
”. She can have you. She can have all of you.’

The floor beneath Nell’s feet rocked as if she were still fourteen years old and on the ferry heading for Cherbourg; heading away from home for an endless, lonely summer. Her stomach suddenly filled with hot juice. She turned and ran. She made the bathroom just in time to kneel in front of the toilet bowl. Violent spasms brought the stale bun and the tea up, and in the dreadful, drawn-out, heaving minutes that followed, her world fell about her ears, the walls of her home crumbled. She heard, through her own wrenching sobs of disgust, along the landing, her father close his study door and his footsteps retreating towards the stairs. Down in the hallway, the front door was opened, and then was quietly shut.

‘What in Mary’s name is going on?’ Nell heard Sylvie say, her voice reaching her from the hallway below.

Nell drew herself up, leant on the basin, feeling the cold porcelain against her palms propping her up. She splashed her face with water to erase the tears, the bewildered look that stared back at her from the mirror. She gave up, and made her shaky way along the landing.

‘What’s the mop and bucket doing out?’ Sylvie demanded of her. ‘Are we to start spring cleaning? This early?’

Nell stopped on the bottom stair. She held onto the banister, her knees like straw. Her cousin stared at her.

‘Nell, what’s the matter? What on earth …? Where’s Auntie Mollie?’

‘In here,’ came Mollie’s muffled cry. 

In a stupor, Nell followed Sylvie into the drawing room. Her mother was on her hands and knees, running her fingertips over the Aubusson rug.

‘Just a bit more,’ Mollie muttered, plucking at tiny specks of dust. ‘Just clearing up.’ She glanced over her shoulder at them, knelt up and then sat down elegantly on the rug, gathering a wad of fluff into the palm of her hand. ‘I’ve started in here. We’ll have this place clean and free of him, and her, in no time.’

‘Auntie Mollie?’ Sylvie’s voice was a whisper. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Mother, do you need a drink?’ Nell asked, finding herself in front of the trolley. Her trembling hands reached out with impulse. The whisky decanter was still upstairs but there was some brandy. She splashed liquid into three glasses.

‘What a good idea,’ said her mother. ‘That’s it, Nell. A nice big drink. That’s what we all need.’

Nell sat beside Sylvie on the sofa and sipped at her brandy as if it was oxygen. Her mother remained on the floor in front of the fireplace.

Sylvie, cradling her own drink, watched her aunt guardedly. ‘Have you had bad news? Is there a letter from the Red Cross? Oh, no. Is it …?’

Mollie threw back her head to laugh. ‘No, dear self-centred little Sylvie. Not your poor mother. Not my poor sister. It’s all about me this time. This is my
news
.’

The crystal tumbler chinked against Nell’s teeth.

Sylvie demanded to know what was happening. She implored Nell to tell her. Nell looked sideways into the ebony of her cousin’s eyes and she swallowed on the choking fire in her throat. 

‘Dad’s left.’ It felt as if she was telling a great, dirty lie.

‘
What?
’ Sylvie dipped her head.

Mollie guffawed loudly, making them both jump.

‘Tell her the best bit, Nell. Can’t leave out the best bit. Ha, if you can’t then I will. Guess what, Sylvie, my dear. Your Uncle Marcus has run off with Diana Blanford. That’s right. Little miss schoolteacher.’

‘But I just saw them,’ said Sylvie, incredulous. ‘I waved at them. Uncle Marcus and Diana. They were in the Olivers’ taxi on their way down the lane. I thought it was strange, for a moment, but you know how it is. I just waved.’

Sweat drenched Nell’s scalp, swept over her shoulders and down her back. She stood up and set her glass down with a crash onto the coffee table.

‘Where are you going?’ demanded Mollie, her voice high on the scale, but Nell had no time, or inclination, to tell her.

She hurried out to the front door and plunged out into the fresh, frigid, heart-stopping air. She ran, hurtling over the gravel, her shoes slipping on sodden fallen leaves. She was chasing the Olivers’ taxi, even though she knew they were long gone and it was far too late. Even so, she kept running, wanting to make it stop. To say to her father, ‘Don’t leave us. Don’t leave
me
.’

Her lungs were singed by the cold, the tears on her cheeks ripped at by a wind like invisible ice. As she ran and ran down the valley, the low sun cast her shadow over the lane; but that shadow, she thought wildly, shortened and stumpy in the low sun, looked just like that of a little girl.

Her second week on the
Bucks Recorder
and, like a volley of deadly salvos, something new and unprecedented was 
thrown her way every single day. Mr Flanagan’s warning of only being there to water the plants and pick up torn bits of paper proved to be unfounded.

The unpredictability of everything was sourced by the tension that was centred, as always, over the subeditors’ desk. Here Mr Collins and Mr Smith were either screaming for copy, or bent in tense silence over their galley proofs. Every so often there’d be a short burst of shouting, like a break in a dam, peppered with swear words. Nell would visibly flinch at her typewriter as if ducking a bullet. And then Mrs Challinor would laugh and say it was ‘tin hat time’ and general gaiety would boom around the room in agreeable release. Anthea Challinor, the editor’s secretary, was in her middle thirties, all lipstick and painted-on eyebrows, and would not stand for any despondency. She was the paper’s life force.

‘Come on, girl, look lively,’ Nell told herself as she hurried across Aylesbury town square that April morning, mimicking Mr Flanagan’s daily bellow.

The blackout was still down at the windows of the
Bucks Recorder
, crisscrossed with paper strips to save them from the bombs. Inside the dim interior of the stairwell, Nell caught a whiff of Anthea’s first cigarette of the day. She could hear the secretary tap-tapping away already, upstairs in the main office. As she opened the door, she relished how empty and peaceful it was, such a contrast to the bubbling maelstrom that unfolded each day. Over in the corner, Anthea was working, her cigarette sat in its ashtray at her elbow, sending a stream of smoke up to the tobacco-stained ceiling.

‘I’d keep your coat and hat on if I were you,’ said Anthea, looking up from her typewriter. 

‘Yes, still rather chilly, isn’t it, for spring?’ said Nell. ‘But I’ll soon warm up by the gas fire.’

Anthea pulled out a sheet of paper from her machine with a satisfying whirring of the mechanism and placed it in her
For
Signature
tray.

‘No, keep your hat and coat on,’ she said. ‘Mr Flanagan briefed me last night. You are to be sent straight out on a story this morning. No time for a cup of tea. And no need to look like that, Nell Garland. It’s your first assignment and I’m coming with you.’

Nell, surprised, sat down with a thump at her desk.

‘Apart from being an excellent secretary,’ announced Anthea, plucking a pencil out from behind her ear and checking her lipstick in her hand mirror, ‘I am also staff photographer. And I know what you’re thinking: desperate times need desperate measures. But our staff pictures man was sent over with the BEF and I stepped in, like us women have to these days. I’d rather do this than work in munitions, wouldn’t you?’

Nell rummaged in her drawer for her notebook and pencil and told Anthea that she felt guilty for not doing more for the war effort.

‘Oh, but we are, we are.’ Anthea stood up and fetched her coat from the hook on the wall. ‘We keep morale up. We keep them smiling through.’

Anthea’s husband Syd was with the Royal Engineers ‘somewhere in France – in the Northern Zone’, but she never lost heart, or her smile.

‘Our lovely readers all over Bucks,’ enthused Anthea, ‘will
love
this story Mr F has in mind for you. The RAF over at Bovingdon Airfield have a brand-new mascot. Kit 
the Alsatian. Mr F’s sending out his best tip-top team – that’s us, Nell – to cover it. So perk yourself up.’

‘An Alsatian – a
German
shepherd? That’s all a bit inappropriate, isn’t it? Under the circumstances.’

‘The wing commander did have a Jack Russell, but it was a pain. Kept nipping pilots’ ankles, weeing in helmets. Mounted the lady mayoress’s leg when she paid them a visit. The Alsatian, apparently, is a lot more placid. They tell me he’s like a great big rug. He’s a stray. They found him wandering in the village evidently. Someone had turfed him out.’

‘Probably in revenge for being
German
,’ said Nell.

‘Those RAF boys are going to love us. You, the gorgeous young girl. Me, the mature woman of the world.’

Mr Collins the chief subeditor walked in, unbuttoned his overcoat and set his hat on the coat rack. Anthea chirped good morning.

‘You off to Bovie Airfield?’ he asked.

‘Yes, it’s going to be the scoop of the week.’