The September Garden by Catherine Law

Author:Catherine Law [Catherine Law]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780749012304
Publisher: Allison & Busby
Published: 2013-10-15T04:00:00+00:00

Adele

A cold late afternoon, and the clouds were low over Montfleur; the sky dull, like a bruise. Adele decided that spring had forgotten to come to this corner of Normandy as she opened the gate to the Orlande house, flinching at the sound of its brittle squeak. She glanced briefly at the tall facade as she crossed the courtyard. All shutters were closed. The house looked dead.

She opened the front door with her key and stepped into a gloom of chilled grey light. Furniture in the disused salle à manger was shrouded in dust sheets, ghostly in the shadows. Along the quiet hallway, doors were shut. Even the clock on the console had stopped. Monsieur no longer bothered to wind it up.

Adele set to performing her duty just as she did every day. She no longer lived at the Orlande house; her home was with her husband Jean and his mother at the cramped cottage under the sea wall.

Downstairs in the kitchen there was a pile of Monsieur’s shirts to iron; some potatoes to peel. He had sausages and onions in the pantry. There was a flagon of wine on the table and rotting apples in a bowl. Adele did not want to continue to work for Monsieur now that she was expecting a baby, and now Madame had gone. But Jean had the notion that it was better if she could get past the door of l’homme collabo every day; it might help their cell one way or another – information might be dropped from Monsieur’s lips during his careless wine-soaked moments. Aside from this, Adele wanted to continue to perform Madame Orlande’s parting wish: that she would look after Monsieur and the house. And keep it nice for when Sylvie came home.

Madame’s fate, as an Englishwoman married to a Frenchman, was to be interned. Monsieur’s bribery could not be sustained for ever, could not be indulged longer than seemed appropriate. One dark January morning, two months before, the Kommandant had politely and efficiently sent a black car to pick her up. She was to be taken to the station at Cherbourg to travel by train with a British family who lived in Valognes and who had been flushed out by the Gestapo. Their destination, the camp for enemy foreigners at St Denis, Paris. In all honesty, Monsieur said, after being allowed to visit her a month later, life there was tolerable.

‘She is resigned but comfortable,’ he told Adele. ‘She will be able to write a letter once a month.’

He mentioned the extra rations, food parcels from the Red Cross, plenty of fresh air and exercise, even if the yard was surrounded by barbed wire. There was even a theatre. A library.

‘She is knitting,’ Monsieur had said. ‘Socks for soldiers. German soldiers. She has made some new friends. They play cards. At least I know she is safe there. It helps …’ he had swallowed on his words, his face haunted with shame, brushing his moustache with his fingers ‘… it helps that I am who I am … She will be looked after.

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