The House at Mermaid's Cove(22)

With a poker face, I retrieved my bootlace and stuck it under my nose to make a drooping mustache, curling my top lip to hold it in place.

This made Ned laugh so much he almost spat his out.

He held my hand as we made our way around the rock pools left behind by the tide. “Can we go fishing?” he asked. “There’s a net in your house—I seen it.”

“There is.” I smiled. “But we’ll have to ask your . . .” I trailed off, wondering what he called Merle.

“Auntie Merle?”

“Yes—we’ll see what she says.”

I almost had a fight on my hands when we got back to the boathouse. When the others heard what Ned planned to do, they all wanted to go fishing. Luckily there were two shrimping nets. I took charge of the boys and Merle the girls. By the time the incoming tide had driven us back, we’d caught half a dozen shrimps, three crabs, and a starfish.

“But I want to stay here,” Ned wailed when Merle said it was time to go back for tea. She went to take his hand, but he wrapped his arms around my leg.

“You can come another time,” I said. His little arms were gripping me like a vise. I bent down, slipping my fingers under his, trying to pry them off as gently as I could. I hoped that Merle hadn’t caught the emotion in my voice, that she wouldn’t see that my eyes were filmy with tears and ask me what was wrong.

I didn’t notice that two other figures had appeared on the beach. It was only when I raised my head that I saw Jack, just feet away, with Brock at his heels. There was the strangest expression on his face. He looked as if he’d seen a ghost.





Chapter 7

Merle shooed the children up the beach toward the woods. Ned had let go of my leg as soon as he spotted Jack. I wondered if the children were afraid of him.

Once they’d gone, he behaved as if nothing was amiss. He’d brought more kindling for the fire, and he smiled at me as he tipped it into the willow basket, asking how I’d got on in the milking shed with the Land Girls.

“They were a bit wary at first,” I replied. “I don’t think they liked the idea of me being your cousin. I had to remember my training.”

“Training?”

“The rule of the convent—that a nun must always act with grace and politeness. Smile, whatever you’re feeling inside.” I didn’t tell him about the interrogation I’d received. Something must have happened up at the house to make him look the way he did when he’d come onto the beach. I didn’t want to darken his mood by telling him how the Land Girls had been gossiping about him.

Is it true that he’s got a secret wife? Janet’s words rang in my head. How could it be true? Why would a man like Jack have to hide the fact that he was married? But if it were true . . . would that explain the dark cloud that sometimes seemed to hover over him? I used to think I was good at reading people, after so many years of nursing. But Jack was a mystery.

“Merle’s been very friendly,” I said, trying to steer the conversation in a different direction. “She showed me around the village this afternoon.”

“Oh?” He snapped a stick of wood over his knee and threw the pieces into the glowing belly of the stove.

“She’s very easy to talk to,” I went on. “It’s years since I’ve chatted like that. I didn’t realize how much I’ve missed it.”

“Didn’t you have any friends in Africa?” He looked up, incredulous.

“Not among the other nuns, no. It wasn’t permitted.”

He shook his head. “That’s barbaric. You were thousands of miles from home, working in primitive conditions—there must have been times when you needed someone to talk to.”

“Oh, there were.” I nodded. “But the only person I ever really confided in was a Belgian priest. His name was Father Armand. He came to the hospital twice a year to be checked for leprosy.”

“Leprosy?” Jack grimaced.

“He’d set up a leper colony on an island in the river. I used to take medical supplies there while I was on my rounds of the villages in the bush.” I saw my old friend in my mind’s eye. A Santa Claus face, with white hair and a bushy beard. “He was the kindest person I ever met. And he had a knack of picking up on what troubled a person. I think he knew, long before I did, that I wasn’t really cut out for the religious life.”

“Do people really do that?” Jack was shaking his head. “Choose to live among lepers? Did he have a death wish? Or was he some sort of saint?”

“I used to think he was saintly,” I said. “But one day I heard his story—not from him but from the local barber, who used to come to the hospital to give the patients haircuts. He said that as a young priest, Father Armand was stationed in a remote part of the Congo. He was very lonely, and one day he just disappeared into the bush. His mission gave him up for dead, but years later a touring priest discovered him living in a hut in the jungle with a native wife and three children.”

Jack’s eyes narrowed. “What did they do to him?”

“This other priest persuaded him to hand the children over to nuns and to leave his wife. He was sent back to Europe in disgrace. But the following year he came back to Africa. He’d asked the church for permission to devote the rest of his life to lepers as a penance for what he’d done.”