The House at Mermaid's Cove(26)

A sudden loud creak made us both turn our heads. Danielle came running up the nave. “Jacqueline’s fallen off the swing,” she panted. “She’s hurt her hand.”

Merle raced out to the churchyard. I hurried after her, my injured foot not yet sufficiently recovered to run. Louis and Ned were kneeling beside Jacqueline, who lay facedown on one of the graves, sobbing.

“She fell on that.” Danielle pointed to a gravestone that had toppled over and split in half, its jagged edges half-hidden in the grass.

“Oh, love! Show me what you’ve done.” Merle dropped down onto the grass. “Which hand did you hurt?”

“It’s this one.” Louis pointed to his sister’s right thumb, which was bent away from the hand at an alarming angle.

“Can you sit up for me?” Merle slipped her arm under Jacqueline’s head and tried to turn her onto her back, but the child cried out in pain.

“I think she’s dislocated her thumb,” I said. “Would you like me to look at it?”

Merle looked up, her face pale. She nodded. Her lips were pressed together as if she didn’t trust herself to speak.

“I’ll be as gentle as I can.” I lifted the hand at the wrist. There was a cut in the fleshy part of the palm, but not much blood. The child cried out again as I placed my own thumb on the base of hers. “I’m just going to make this better, Jacqueline. It won’t take a second, I promise.” With my other hand, I grasped the top joint of the injured thumb and gave a swift, hard pull. The popping sound it made as it slipped back into place was drowned out by Jacqueline’s scream.

“She’ll be fine now,” I said, turning to Merle as I released my grip. “It’ll be tender for a while, but all she needs is a sticking plaster on that cut.”

We’d just got Jacqueline sitting up when Brock came hurtling across the churchyard. Jack wasn’t far behind. He came running across the grass when he saw us.

“What’s happened, Mrs. Durand? Is she all right?”

He sounded strangely formal, compared to the way he always spoke to me. And yet Merle had been living under his roof for nearly three years.

“She fell off the swing and dislocated her thumb.” Merle gave him a weak smile. “But your cousin fixed it.”

He looked at me, his face unreadable. Then he crouched down beside Jacqueline. “It sounds as if you’ve been a very brave girl.” He took a sixpence from the pocket of his shirt and handed it to her. Then he turned to Merle. “I came to find you because we’ve had a group of new arrivals out of the blue. Could Alice and Danielle look after Jacqueline?”

I glanced at Merle. She looked tense. I wondered why Jack couldn’t deal with these new people without her help.

“Is that all right?” she asked me.

“Yes, of course,” I said.

“I won’t be long, love.” She stroked Jacqueline’s hair, then stood up.

As I watched her disappear into the trees with Jack, I saw him raise his hand. I thought it came to rest, momentarily, on Merle’s back. But I wasn’t certain. It might have been a trick of the light—the dappled shadows of leaves moving as the breeze lifted them. I glanced at Danielle. Had she noticed it, too? It seemed unlikely—she and Louis had their arms hooked around their little sister, trying to scoop her up off the ground.

I went to help the children, telling myself that if Jack had done what I thought he’d done, it was probably just a gesture of comfort. But my mind was charging ahead. Of course, it was entirely natural that Jack would be attracted to a warm, pretty woman like Merle. And after what she’d told me in the church, I could understand why she might be tempted.

I thought about what the Land Girls had said about the mysterious wife no one had ever seen. Surely Merle couldn’t have sparked that rumor? They must have run into her often when they came to do the milking. If they thought she was involved with Jack, why hadn’t they said so?

I tried not to listen to the chatter inside my head. I liked Merle. She’d been kind to me, as had Jack. They’d both gone out of their way to help me. But like that other Alice, I felt as if I’d tumbled down a rabbit hole into another world—a world where nothing was quite what it seemed.





Chapter 8

I didn’t see Jack that night, or the next day. And Merle wasn’t in the milking shed when I arrived for work. Danielle told me that her mother was busy, and Molly from the village was going to help with the cows until the Land Girls returned.

Molly was late arriving. Danielle said that she was the sister of George Retallack, the blind man I’d seen mending nets. She was only a few years older than Danielle—and she seemed so overawed by the fact that I was Jack’s cousin that she hardly spoke to me, other than to say that a basket of food had been left in the kitchen for me to take back with me.

When I went to collect it, the house seemed strangely quiet. Where were the new arrivals Jack had talked about? Why hadn’t I seen anyone going in or out of the place while I’d been weeding, just yards from the front door? In the three days I’d been working at Penheligan, the only other adult male I’d seen, apart from Jack, was the young man in khaki fatigues who’d helped to round up the escaped cow.



The next day was Easter Sunday. I took my good clothes—the silk blouse and the heather-colored skirt—to change into when I’d finished in the cowshed. I’d found a cloche hat on top of the basket of food that had been left for me. It was wrapped in layers of tissue paper and looked brand new. It was pearl gray, with a band of grosgrain ribbon of the same color fashioned into a small bow on one side. I didn’t know if it had come from Jack or from Merle—but it was just what I needed. It covered my hair and was more appropriate for church than the bright green head scarf.