The House at Mermaid's Cove(18)

“I don’t mind.” I shrugged. “I can’t sit around doing nothing. No one can.”

I asked her where she was from.

“A place called Thirsk. It’s up north. Took me two days on the train to get here.”

“What about the others?”

“They’re all from different places. No one’s from round here. We live in the Scouts’ hut down the road—at Constantine.”

I didn’t want her to think I was getting special treatment—that I’d been given a room in Jack’s house while they were all sleeping on camp beds. I told her I was living in the boathouse down at the cove.

“Aren’t you scared, being there on your own at night? I would be.”

“Cousin Jack comes to check up on me twice a day—it’s where he walks his dog.” It felt odd, calling him that. But it was what he’d told me to say, and I thought I’d better stick to it.

Janet suddenly leaned closer. “They’re all in love with him,” she whispered. “Even Marjorie. Is it true that he’s got a secret wife?”

I’d just taken a first sip of the very hot tea. I coughed and spluttered as it went down the wrong way. Edith came over and clapped me hard on the back. She couldn’t have heard what Janet had said. I’m sure she would have tried to get more out of me if she had. But thankfully she had something else on her mind. She tugged at the scarf on my head, which had slipped off when she’d whacked me.

“What happened to your hair?”

I grabbed at the scarf, trying to cover myself. “Head lice,” I muttered.

“Ugh!” Edith shrank back. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Janet edge away, too.

“I don’t have them now. I caught them at the hospital in London, where I was working.” I undid the knot in the scarf and tied it back on—tighter. Doing something with my hands seemed to help me to lie. “We were bombed out. That’s why I was limping—I got glass in my foot.”

I saw something like respect in their eyes then. The older woman, Marjorie, brought me a milking stool to sit on while I finished my tea. I sensed, though, that while their initial hostility might have abated, it would only be a matter of time before, like Janet, they started quizzing me about Jack.

A secret wife. I told myself it was none of my business if he was married. Marital status wasn’t something I’d thought about much when I’d encountered men in Africa. They were forbidden—and over the years I’d come to view them less as people of a different gender and more as individuals whose personalities I either warmed to or struggled with, just as I did with my fellow nuns.

So why had Janet’s words made my insides shrivel like burning paper? A man of Jack’s age—kind, good looking, and titled—was bound to be married. If I’d really thought about it, I suppose I should have wondered why it was him, and not his wife, who brought me what I needed each day. But I hadn’t thought about it. Perhaps it was because everything was so new to me. Or perhaps it was because I hadn’t wanted to.

“Have you met her?” It was a tall, slim woman who asked the question. Her hair was the same dark auburn as mine but much longer, fashioned into a loaf-sized bun that was held in place by a hairnet. Her name was Rita. She came with the teapot to top up my mug, overfilling it as she looked me in the eye.

“Met who?” I tried to sound nonchalant.

“Lady Trewella.” Her eyebrows arched. “There’s a rumor that His Lordship’s married—but his wife has never been seen.”

“Oh. Who told you that?”

“The woman who comes up from the village to do the washing. Her mother was the old viscount’s housekeeper—before the war.” She held my gaze, unblinking. “You’re his cousin—so, go on, is it true?”

I drew the mug to my lips so that I could look away in a manner that would seem natural, not as if I was trying to hide something. I’d learned this discipline as a nun—of concealing my thoughts, my reactions. It helped me to parry the questions that followed, thick and fast.

“He’s a very private man,” I said, “and our families have never really been close. Until I came here this week, I hadn’t seen him since I was six years old. You probably know as much about him as I do.” I felt a twinge of guilt. I was getting better at it—this mixing of lies and truth.

“But you could ask him, couldn’t you?” Rita wasn’t going to be fobbed off.

“What am I supposed to say?” I shrugged. “I’ve already foisted myself on him at short notice, when he hardly knows me from Adam. I can hardly drop it into casual conversation, can I—‘By the way, Cousin Jack, are you married? Because if you’re not, there’s a queue of women who’d like to audition for the part of Lady Trewella.’”

To my relief, this made them laugh. Then a cow got loose and there was pandemonium in the yard while we tried to round it up. A man in uniform came to see what the commotion was. He didn’t look much older than Janet, but he had film star looks and oozed self-confidence. By the time the animal was caught, the Land Army women seemed to have forgotten about Jack.

Back inside, they taught me how to skim cream off the milk and turn it into butter. By the end of the morning my arm ached from turning the handle of the barrel-shaped churn. I watched Marjorie fashion the pale yellow lumps that emerged into pats, using wooden paddles to shape them. Tomorrow, she said, that would be my job.