The House at Mermaid's Cove(35)
I stepped outside with him while Jack helped Leo to relieve himself in a chamber pot.
“I must congratulate you, Miss McBride,” he said. “Not only did you save the leg, but probably his life as well. He’d lost a lot of blood by the time you arrived. Lord Trewella tells me you were working in a London hospital until recently?”
I nodded, praying he wouldn’t ask me which one. A doctor wouldn’t be fobbed off with the vague answer I’d given Merle when she’d asked that question.
“But you’re not nursing here in Cornwall? I hear you’re helping at the farm.”
“That’s right.”
His searching look was disquieting. “Hmm. If you don’t mind me saying so, that’s a terrible waste. You should be working at the hospital in Falmouth, not milking cows.”
The sun had gone down when I got back to the boathouse. Its dying rays tinged the surface of the estuary copper and crimson. The water was flat calm—so different from earlier in the day, when the wind had whipped the water into foaming fury. I stood outside for a while, watching the colors change in the fading light and listening to the haunting cries of the birds gathered along the shoreline.
I thought about what the doctor had said. He’d made me feel guilty about being here, in this beautiful place. And what he’d said was, undeniably, right. Milking cows and weeding vegetables could be learned quickly by any able-bodied person. Even a child could do farmwork, as Danielle and Louis had demonstrated. But it took years of training to be a nurse. How could I justify remaining here if there was a need for nurses in Falmouth?
I wondered what it would be like to live in that city, with the constant threat of bombs dropping. Even as I imagined it, I knew that it wasn’t the fear of a German attack that made me want to stay in Mermaid’s Cove. It was the newfound joy of living in a place that made my soul soar every time I stepped outside, of having my own space after years of communal living, and—what I hesitated to admit, even to myself—the way I felt every time I set eyes on Jack.
My conscience told me that these were very selfish reasons not to follow the doctor’s advice. I would have to talk it over with Jack. Perhaps the doctor was already discussing it with him, on the journey back to Falmouth. My heart sank as I imagined Jack nodding at the words that had made me feel so uncomfortable. I tried to push the image away, telling myself that at least my being here had done some good. I murmured a prayer for Leo Badger’s speedy recovery, picturing him smiling as he sat up in bed. Jack had organized some of the neighbors to take turns sitting with him. I planned to go back and see him in the morning when I’d finished in the cowshed.
“Alice!”
I spun round at the sound of Jack’s voice. I hadn’t expected to see him down at the cove.
“I thought you were taking Dr. Williams home,” I said, when he came jogging across the beach, the dog at his heels.
“I did,” he said, catching his breath. “But the flooding’s not so bad now—we didn’t need the tractor—so I got back in time for a walk. Poor old Brock’s been cooped up all day, haven’t you, boy?” He smiled as the dog gave an answering bark. “Oh—and I brought these, to say thank you.”
From his knapsack he produced a bouquet of scarlet camellias. “They were Leo’s idea,” he said. He glanced down as he handed them to me, as if he were embarrassed to be giving flowers to a woman. “This is from me.” He pulled out a bottle of claret. Chateau Latour 1934—a vintage my father would have driven the length and breadth of Ireland to get hold of.
Jack had brought something else as well: an enormous mullet—another gift from Leo—for supper. “He was bringing it in when the accident happened,” he explained. “In the old days I’d have cooked it over a driftwood fire on the beach,” he said. “But that’s another thing the war’s deprived us of. We’d better go inside.”
I glanced up at the sky. The rain clouds had disappeared. A single star, or more likely a planet, was just visible on the eastern horizon. “We could eat outside even if we can’t have a fire,” I said. “Looks like it’s going to be a fine night.”
As twilight descended on the cove, we sat on a blanket on the sand with a glass of the claret to wash down the fish. The only sounds were the lap of the ebbing tide and the rustle of birds roosting in the trees behind us. Jack’s face was silhouetted against the darkening sky. I couldn’t make out his features, but he seemed to be looking far out into the distance, across the black, shimmering water. I wondered if he was thinking about those other nighttime picnics he’d alluded to. Perhaps he’d sat like this with the girl Leo had told me about.
I followed Jack’s gaze, out to the vanishing horizon, thinking about what Leo had told me: how he’d spotted the boat, Firefly, anchored farther along the coast, and seen Jack and the girl jumping off it, into the sea. Frolicking about—that was the phrase he’d used. It conjured faded memories of my own—of the summer before I joined the order, when Dan and I would cycle to the dunes at Portmarnock beach. We’d throw down our bikes and flop onto the cool sand, shielded from prying eyes by clumps of waist-high marram grass. It was a ten-mile ride from Dublin, but we were hungrier for each other than for the food and drink in our saddlebags. It was on one of those days at the beach that he’d asked me to marry him. I remembered teasing him, saying he’d only proposed to make me go further—to do what I longed to do but didn’t dare. I’d ridden back home elated, carried away by the idea of a wedding. It hadn’t crossed my mind that Dad would be so vehemently opposed to our plans.