Free The September Garden by Catherine Law

weren’t actually very funny, but still made her laugh. No more impishness twinkling from his eyes. Where had they taken him? Had they taken off his muddy boots? Had they closed his eyes?
    She walked into her father’s study. Marcus was painting with a queer energy, absorbed and focused on his canvas. It was a new painting. He had not diluted the colours but was using great daubs of fresh wet paint – crimson and gold – to create a field of wheat dotted with poppies. They were broken and cut down. He jumped when she touched his arm, and Nell was astonished to see tears in his eyes.
    ‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said.
    She went over to the gramophone, eased the volume and lifted the switch so that when the record finished, the needle would return and not start playing again. Finally, the last melancholy piano note faded.
    ‘He was in my regiment,’ said Marcus, wiping his brush with a rag. ‘Second Battalion, Buckinghamshire Yeomanry. He was Gunner Pudifoot. I was his captain.’
    ‘Did you know his name was George?’
    ‘Of course I bloody did.’ Marcus was momentarily angry. He reached out with a finger to the painting and swiped a dab of blood-red paint from it. ‘Did you know,Nell, that he loved Mrs Bunting but she married someone else while he was in Flanders?’
    Nell, perplexed, asked who did she marry.
    Marcus shrugged with a strange comical smile. ‘Why, Mr Bunting, of course. But he left her.’
    Nell pondered on this, bit her lip and said, ‘That’s new,’ nodding at the painting.
    Marcus picked up his paintbrush and executed an exquisite flourish to create yet one more broken ear of wheat. ‘New, yes.’ He gestured to the painting, to the world outside the window. ‘In future, you will find many things are new – for all of us.’

Sylvie
    A few weeks ago, the first autumn storm had whipped the leaves from the beeches revealing their skeletons, their true selves. Scraping frost from the inside of the windowpane, Sylvie could see right through the naked branches across the valley to the quiet brown fields on the other side. Mist from the River Chess drifted low along the bottom.
    ‘ Merde , it’s like the outside is on the inside in this house,’ she muttered, shivering as she plunged her arms into her cashmere.
    When she first arrived at Lednor, the valley had been shielded from her by rich summer-green trees; but now this bare frigid landscape was her winter view. The earth seemed to sink into the peace and serenity of the dead end of the year. She thought of home and the endless impenetrable bocage that surrounded Montfleur and guarded it. A sudden uproar from the rooks that circled over the beeches brought her back to Lednor with a start.
    Auntie Mollie called up the stairs, ‘Time for our walk, Sylvie. Shake a leg!’
    Suitably attired – she’d reluctantly borrowed Uncle Marcus’s green rubber coat from the hallway cupboard – Sylvie walked with her aunt and cousin, breathing in the new earthy smell of the season. The way through the beech woods was muffled with bracken. Deep-green moss furred the grey trunks and fallen stumps. Her feet snapped on twigs and crunched on beech nuts. Mist was evaporating on branches overhead and drops hit the top of her head with great wet plops.
    Auntie Mollie carried her pannier, her fingertips, it seemed to Sylvie, twitching impatiently for the hunt for mushrooms to start. Nell, also annoyingly eager, hurried off ahead. Sylvie peered into the false green twilight and caught sight of her cousin’s curls as she dipped her head to root under ferns, and tenderly part the leaf mould. There was a peace and stillness between the trees. A pheasant coughed in the valley; a wood pigeon brooded up above.
    She asked, ‘When you were girls, Auntie Mollie, did you and Maman go mushrooming together?’
    ‘Oh yes, of course. All through the woods where we lived. Your mother is quite the expert. She knows her fungi like the back of her hand.’
    Of course, her mother