The House at Mermaid's Cove(20)

I was racking my brain to come up with a reason why I couldn’t go and join the patients I’d abandoned, now that I was better. But Merle seemed satisfied. “Sorry,” she said, “your pie’ll be going cold. Would you like another glass of water?”



I spent the afternoon weeding rows of onions and potatoes that had been planted in front of the house, where once there must have been lawns and flower beds. Merle had given me an old cushion to kneel on, which took the pressure off my foot. She was concerned about how I was going to get back down to the boathouse.

“Why don’t you come with me when I go to get the children from school?” she asked. “The path down to the village isn’t as steep as the one down the valley. High tide’s not till just before seven, so you’ll be able to get around the rocks to the cove.”

At half past three she came to find me. The route to the village took us through the apple orchard, whose trees were gnarled and spotted with lichen. They looked very old, but the branches were swathed in blossom. We passed a patch of land with potatoes and beans growing on it, enclosed by high wire netting. Merle told me that when she and the children had first arrived, this place had been a tennis court.

As we started to go downhill, I glimpsed the estuary, dappled gray green where clouds scudded over the water. Merle asked me about my life before the hospital in London. She had never been to Ireland and wanted to know what it was like. I was able to tell the truth, mostly—apart from saying that my late mother came from Jack’s side of the family and had left Cornwall to marry my father.

It felt strangely liberating, chatting about the past after years of bottling it up. I got the sense that Merle wanted to befriend me. But I was acutely aware that I was acting a part, that I had already told her lies and would have to go on lying. I wondered whether, by asking Jack to conceal my old life, I had made things worse for myself. How could I exchange those confidences that build a friendship when I was holding back such a big secret?

As a novice, I had yearned for a friend. But any hint of it was nipped in the bud because of the ban on attachments. There had been a girl at the convent who was the same age as me. Her name was Clodagh. We sat together at recreation, and when I was put on a week of half rations for being late for chapel, she smuggled food to me after lights-out. But we were called out in the mea culpa. Steps were taken to keep us apart in future.

“Did you miss Ireland when you moved to London?” Merle’s voice broke my train of thought.

“It was very different,” I said, “but I didn’t have much time to miss things—it was so busy at the hospital.” Another half-truth. I hoped it would suffice. I didn’t want to talk about the life I could have had if I’d stayed, the life my father had been so fiercely opposed to.

“Cornwall isn’t all that different to Guernsey.” Merle took my arm as the path turned from smooth shingle to uneven cobblestones. “Apart from Guernsey being an island, I mean. We had a farm there. My husband, Maurice, grew tomatoes.”

I thought it strange that she talked about her husband and the farm in the past tense. I wondered if he’d been killed during the invasion.

“He decided to stay when the Germans came, because of the business.”

“That must have been hard for him—with you and the children having to leave.”

“Hmm.” There was something in the tone of her voice—wistful with a tinge of bitterness. I glanced at her, trying to gauge whether it was an invitation to probe further or to shut up. But as I did so, something else caught her attention.

“Oh God! Get down—quick!”

I hadn’t even heard the high-pitched whine of the plane’s engine. We’d only just hit the ground when it screamed over our heads. I shouldn’t have looked up, but curiosity got the better of me. I saw the pale gray undercarriage with its yellow-tipped wings, a black cross emblazoned on each one.

“A Focke-Wulf fighter-bomber,” Merle breathed, as we both stared after it. “Probably coming to see what damage they did the other night.”

I thought she must have seen these enemy planes often, to know them by name. I wondered if they’d flown over Guernsey before the invasion, the noise of their engines shattering the tranquility of the tomato farm where she’d lived with her husband and children. I had only a vague idea of the geography of the Channel Islands. All I knew was that they were much closer to France than to England.

“I think we’re okay, now.” She shaded her eyes, scanning the horizon. “I don’t think he’s coming back. Sorry if I scared you, but a couple of months ago the children and I were strafed on the way to school: we were lucky not to be hit.”

“They fired on the children? Deliberately?”

Merle nodded. “I couldn’t believe it, either. Come on—we’d better get going.”

As we rounded a bend in the path, I caught sight of the village—the same huddle of cottages I could see from the beach. They were stone-built houses with slate roofs, sitting right on the edge of the estuary. To the southwest—where the boathouse was hidden by a rocky promontory—the receding tide had exposed mudflats where herons, egrets, and oystercatchers prodded about.

Yellow-flowered gorse bushes lined the final stretch of the route downhill. Washing was spread out to dry on some of them. Shirts, skirts, sheets, socks—even underwear—were draped over the prickly branches, the breeze tugging in vain to blow them away.