The September Garden (13 page)

‘Will you meet me then? I will telephone every evening so we can talk. So I can talk to you.’

‘Whatever for?’ she asked, bluntly, rudely.

His laugh was a delighted bark of surprise. ‘Because, my love, I’m falling for you.’

Sylvie found it incredibly hilarious that Mrs Bunting was in charge of the bunting. In the meadow beside the churchyard, the Lednor housekeeper held reams of red, white and blue pennants in her arms, while she ordered the young boys of the parish, up stepladders, to hang it straight and hang it well.

‘Come and give me a hand, you two,’ she called out 
as Nell arrived with her cousin carrying between them a basketful of cakes.

Sylvie collapsed with the giggles. ‘Please tell me I have the translation wrong.’

The stalls were being set up in the long golden grass. There was even a beer tent.

‘We’re expecting the RAF,’ explained Miss Trenton.

She and Miss Hull were manning the white elephant stall, and Nell was under strict instructions from her mother to look out for any of her father’s paintings that the villagers might be trying to sell off.

‘And if I find one?’

‘Put your fist through it,’ said Mollie. ‘The painting, not the person.’

A banner was strung up over the beer tent:
Lednor/ Bovingdon munitions benefit
. Men in air force blue were arriving, along with a scattering of WRAFs.

As Nell got the tea urn going, she wondered if Alex might come along early. Her fingers fluttered with nerves as she set out a battalion of cups and saucers on the table. And then she told herself to put a sock in it. How can he have fallen for me after seeing me just three times? It was just plain silly. Even so, she’d thought about him a great deal in the past week. She’d been excited about their three-minute telephone conversations, although he hadn’t managed to call every evening. She got used to his voice; liked to ask him questions. She found out he was from Kingston in Surrey and was an only child, like her. She had qualified this by saying that since last summer, with Sylvie living with them, that could no longer be true. He’d been to Marlborough, he told her, and had read geology
at Cambridge. He had a sweet tooth and liked chicken gravy the best.

She smiled to herself, glancing up at the entrance to the meadow where the vicar was greeting the parishioners from near and far, wondering if she’d spot his face. She knew she’d know him in an instant from right across the field. Conscious that he had only ever seen her in trousers or her work skirt, she chose a summer dress with a print of tiny seashells on it. Her shoes, donated to her by Sylvie, were cream with navy-blue polka dots, and made her ankles look slim and delicate.

‘How are things at home, Nell, dear?’ Mrs Oliver was milking the cups. ‘I’m so awfully sorry about everything.’

‘There are worse things,’ said Nell, bravely. Good God, she thought, at least she wasn’t Sylvie with her parents in danger stuck in Normandy, or even the Androvskys. Who knew how they were coping?

‘Ah.’ Mrs Oliver set down the milk jug. ‘Yes, there are worse things, Nell. But not for you.’

Nell’s stomach contracted with the essence of grief. How can this woman know this about her?

‘I do hope people don’t put a wet spoon back in the sugar,’ Nell said in a voice far too high-pitched to be necessary. ‘That really annoys me. Doesn’t it you, Mrs Oliver? Lumps in the sugar?’

‘As for that teacher woman,’ Mrs Oliver came close, ‘doesn’t it make you spitting mad. Who does she think she is? I was only saying to Miss Trenton—’

‘Please, Mrs Oliver …’

‘Well, good riddance, that’s all I’m going to say.’

‘But he’s my father.’ 

Mrs Oliver stopped herself. ‘So sorry, my dear. You’re a lovely girl. You deserve better than this. Chin up. Here comes Miss Hull. She’s brought her own mug with her. And it’s enormous.’

The evening began to fall, like a warm comforting quilt. It was made for cherishing. The light across Lednor valley was exquisite and, on soaking in its beauty, Nell felt her skin begin to crawl with frustration, a yearning like she’d not felt before. The pleasurable fluttering in anticipation of Alex arriving tangled up into tight knots in her belly.

She couldn’t stop thinking that he’d told her he’d fallen for her. She felt helpless with it, unaccustomed, as if it was a newly hatched bird suddenly landing in her lap. Even so, she met him, as arranged, by the lychgate at six. It was as if it was the first time she’d ever seen him. She’d grown familiar with his voice through the week, and yet had somehow forgotten how attractive she found him. There he was, splendid in uniform. Heads turned among the general setting-down of the fête and Sylvie called out yoo-hoo, waving. Nell waved back discreetly, anxious to get away from the eyes of the village.

They wandered back down the lane along the valley. The air was rare and balmy, clotted with the pink perfume of may and a deeper, green, more earthy scent from the undergrowth of fern and nettle. The basking hills on the horizon were the colour of damson plums, and looked as close to her as the end of her fingertips.

‘Divine, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘We’ve been so lucky with the sunshine today.’

She flinched. How idiotic she sounded, talking about the weather. 

They reached the ford and crossed, as Nell explained to him, using ‘Sylvie’s sensible way’ on the stepping stones, keeping their shoes on.

‘How did the fête go?’ he asked, sounding a little nervous, on edge.

‘Oh, not bad. I think we made ten pounds for the munitions fund. It’s all a good bit of fun. Keeps everyone on the up.’

He took her hand, then, and she jumped in surprise.

‘Sometimes, though, it isn’t much fun, is it?’ he said, mildly.

She glanced at his face in an effort to gauge his seriousness.

‘Shall we sit by the river?’ she said as an unusual confidence trickled through her, stealing her anxiety away. ‘I’ll show you my favourite spot.’

They picked their way along the riverbank beyond the ford to where the reeds were dense, thick with green, and the water trickled like music over the stones in the shallow bed. Sitting with their backs against a robust willow, beneath a silvery canopy of leaves, he once more took hold of her hand. His thumb chafed gently over her wrist bone. She liked him sitting there beside her. Her settled feeling was ringed with a tight, new certainty that she could hardly account for.

But then Alex sighed heavily and said, ‘I’m not sure I want to put you through all of this, Nell.’

She couldn’t respond for she felt him venturing deeper than she’d ever expected or imagined. Resting her head back against the trunk, she hoped her silence was generous enough to encourage him to continue. 

‘I’m not always sure how I go on, really,’ he said eventually. ‘If it’s not 3 a.m. sorties, maps and targets, then it’s long training flights, hours on the gunsights with the firing teachers. Those Brownings are nasty pieces of work. Tiring, exhausting.’

‘But you do go on; you have to, don’t you?’ She wanted to find out what made him tick, but she was scared of it, and what the underlying truth of it would mean to her.

‘Yes, we all do,’ he said. ‘But I begin to fail when I link the two: the weight of the bombs in the hull, with what, and especially who, is way down below us. That’s when it gets dangerous, for then I start to think too much.’

He turned to look at her, struggling with his smile, and said, ‘I think the answer, really, is that I shouldn’t think too much.’

The sun was slowly peeling away in the west, but the moon had yet to rise. Swallows still pitching against rosy-pink clouds hadn’t realised that the day was done.

This man likes me, Nell decided, watching his face in the reflected half-light, but he will leave.

Alex put his arm around her shoulder and she drew herself up close to him. When he turned his face to her, his breath traced her cheek. She wanted to give him strength, to be kind to him. She whispered, ‘But you will go on, Alex, I know you will. You will not think too much. And you will be fine.’

He kissed her, then, with a gentleness that seemed to rock her in a lullaby. A thrill caught at her, and took her breath away. Presently, she noticed the unearthly light gradually beginning to extinguish itself. The birds, finally convinced it was nightfall, grew silent. 

They sat close together, their heads resting against one another. The moon rose as a great silver globe. High mackerel clouds swept in against the navy sky and the moon drifted between them, illuminating them. A breeze rushed past her ears. Alex kissed her again, and she fell deep into him, wanting him. The moon was a million miles away, she thought, silent, cold and beaming down on her. Something flew fast, like black lightning, over her head.

‘Bats,’ she whispered.

He kissed her forehead through her curls.

‘I know this moon,’ he said. ‘It lights my cockpit, ebbing and flowing through the clouds. It’s a world of black and white up there. The black night, the light of the moon. Even sitting there in front of all the instruments and dials, the roar of the engines, there is such a strange serenity.’

Hot tears sprung into Nell’s eyes, shocking her. She must not cry in front of him, for that would be such a weakness, compared to what he had to do. She stared straight ahead, concentrating hard to spot another bat, which she knew was impossible. She only ever realised they were there once they’d gone.

Alex tried to explain what it felt like, to be on his way home, home from the target, and to see landfall. There below him: fields and trees. England.

His hands pressed together over hers, held her solidly. He bent his face and kissed her knuckles.

‘And now I am in danger of thinking too much again,’ he laughed softly.

She inhaled deeply on air punctuated by the dark, unearthly scent of the night by the river, growing colder with every breath. She thought of the Spitfires as they were 
scrambled, the bombers made ready for their journeys through the sky, all in the defence of her beloved world. Down here by the trickling river, and its dripping stones, and mossy bark, she felt the tug of gravity. Close to the earth, close to Alex, she felt safer than she ever had done before.

‘Nell,’ he said, finally, when it was really quite dark. ‘I want to ask you to marry me.’

‘But how can you?’ she blurted out and then clamped her hand over her mouth in shock.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he said.

She searched his face, searching for the humour; the sign that he was jesting. That he didn’t really mean it. In the gloom, his face was steady, grave and deadly serious. She watched as his eyes flickered to and fro between hers. A fear began to build up against the void of shock that had emptied her insides out.

‘Well, Alex, what am I thinking?’ she asked eventually.

‘That we know hardly anything about each other. We’ve only just met. You don’t know me, really, from Adam. But I want you to know how I feel, how it is for me, from my point of view.’

She fought hard to gather herself, to be grown-up and sensible.

‘Alex, you are right. That is what I’m thinking.’

‘The times we have spent together have been so dear.’

She nodded in affirmation. How could she tell him how exquisite they were?

‘The station is being closed down – meaning no one can leave or come onto it, all leave cancelled – the day after tomorrow, for a big operation. Christ, listen to 
me. I will be drummed out of the force, telling you that. What I am saying is, that I won’t be able to see you or speak with you for a few days. And I might be losing my nerve—’

‘Please don’t,’ she said. She unhooked her hands from his and stood up. Her dress felt crinkled and damp from the ground. She realised, suddenly, how cold she was. ‘Please, Alex, don’t say any more. You are right when you said it was a mistake to think too much.’

‘Nell, wait a moment, Nell wait—’

She began to push her way back along the path, stray ferns tripping her legs, branches whipping her face. Dampness slapped her bare arms, thorns tugged at her hair. She was out of breath by the time she reached the ford. She waited for him, not understanding why she ran, had to get away, but knowing that her reaction was true and real. She heard him swear mildly as he stumbled out of the undergrowth and then laugh a little as he brushed himself down.

‘Does this mean you are saying no, Nell?’ he said.

‘How can I, Alex?’ she said. She was glad of the half darkness of the midsummer night, the kind of darkness that blurred but did not obliterate, for tears coursed silently down her cheeks. ‘How can I marry you, when you are most certainly going to leave me?’

She slept late the next morning. Her night had been wakeful, her body restless and twitching. In the dead quiet of the small hours, she felt exceptionally lost and lonely. She had only just had her bath and got herself dressed when the RAF jeep rolled in over the gravel. 

‘Great heavens! Nell, are you up yet?’ she heard Mrs Bunting call from downstairs. ‘It’s the airman.’

She met Sylvie at the bottom of the stairs who gave her a playful little smile. ‘He’s a persistent man, Nell,’ she said. ‘What on earth have you said to him?’

As she opened the front door her fingertips froze and sharp shame prickled her scalp. He was standing beyond the doorstep, his hands clasped in front of him, his uniform pristine, his peaceful face gazing at her from beneath his cap. He smiled his hello, questions and confusion flashing in his eyes.

‘Hello, Alex,’ said Nell, trying for cheerful. ‘I’m surprised you’re here. Oh, Alex, you see I …’ She closed the front door behind her and stepped onto the gravel. She wondered how awkward, how painful this was going to be. ‘I want to explain myself. I really don’t know …’

‘I want to ask you a favour,’ he said.

She recoiled in surprise, absurdly disappointed.

‘It’s just this,’ he said. ‘Last night, I told you about everything that is going on at Bovvie at the moment. But this morning there has been a further complication. I am not taking part in this latest operation …’

As he said this, the relief in Nell’s mind felt like a physical rush of cool air. It nearly floored her.