The September Garden Read Free

Adele the maid had left her. It was syrupy and warm. She dared herself. Getting up, she slipped barefoot across the floorboards and twisted the doorknob. Silently she emerged. How cool the landing was, facing the north side of the house. A long lace curtain drifted in the scanty breeze. Through the tall landing window, the garden beckoned her.
    The house was airless, silent now. Holding its breath just as Nell did. Something creaked behind her. She turned to see the bulk of Uncle Claude in his dressing gown and slippers emerge from behind a door. He closed it with a gentle click and paused to groom his large moustache with his fingers, looking, Nell thought, mildly pleased about something. He spotted her and Nell flinched, wanting toduck, expecting him to bellow. After all, Auntie Beth had said: Not till four o’clock .
    Her uncle glared at her momentarily, his mouth clamped shut, looking suddenly rather befuddled. And then his face rounded into a smile. He put his finger over his hairy top lip as if to shush her. He turned on his heel and went up the stairs to his own bedroom, the belt of his dressing gown flapping behind him.
    Euphoric, suddenly, that her misdemeanour had been brushed aside, Nell ran swiftly, lightly, tiptoeing down the stairs, and down again, along the hallway. Glancing into the darkened salon shuttered from the sunlight she saw oak furniture like sleeping monsters in the gloom. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror in the hall: dishevelled curls, a mischievous face and a glint in her eye. Very nearly fifteen, she thought, and still looked like a tomboy. The stone floor of the vestibule was blissfully cold under her feet. Through the back door and down the steps, the garden, enclosed by high mellow-stone walls, was a scented heaven. The air vibrated with the sound of bumbling insects. She ran now in delight, past clumps of lavender and tarragon, past bean frames and rows of onions. By the high wall, against which grew a clump of profoundly blue delphiniums, she stopped.
    ‘ Qui est-ce? Qui est-ce là ?’ came the small voice above her.
    Nell glanced up, startled, believing she had the sleeping afternoon to herself. Peering over the top of the garden wall were two children, a girl and a boy. Their hair was black and their skin pale, their faces tiny. They were identical, like a pair of dark-headed sprites.
    ‘Bonjour, mademoiselle, comment ça va?’ the girlgreeted her. Her glasses were wonky on her face, her eyes were like saucers.
    ‘ Bonjour ,’ replied Nell. ‘How are you able to see over the wall? Are you standing on a ladder?’
    The children’s faces fell. They did not understand. Nell took a deep breath and tried her French: ‘ Etes-vouz sur un …’ What was the French for ‘ladder’?
    She wanted to ask them if they, too, could not sleep. She wanted to ask them if they wanted to come over to her side of the wall. ‘ Voulez-vous aller ici, avec moi ?’ she tried.
    The boy and girl glanced at each other.
    ‘ Non ,’ said the boy, ‘ On ne nous permet pas .’
    And then Nell remembered. Estella and Edmund Androvsky next door were different, Sylvie had told her, and they were not allowed to visit. Nell stared at them. What was wrong with them? They were only the neighbours’ children.
    ‘ Au revoir, mademoiselle anglaise .’
    Edmund and Estella ducked back and Nell padded along the path. She lifted the iron latch on the door in the back wall and sneaked into the cobbled yard. Opposite her was the old barn, now used by Uncle Claude as a garage for his car; next to it, the two stables built of silvery Normandy stone, commandeered as sheds. These stables didn’t have the doors she was used to, cut in half so that the horses could peer over. Here, at Uncle Claude’s, the doors were like any other door, solid but with a metal grille for the top half. They had once been deep cherry-red, Nell guessed, but the paint had faded long ago. Above each was an old painted sign,