The House at Mermaid's Cove(42)

With some difficulty, I managed to sit down on the slippery deck. I was afraid to look over the edge of the rail at the water surging around the side of the boat. Closing my eyes didn’t help. Bodies in the water were all I could see. Flailing arms glinting in the moonlight. What if it happened again? What if a German submarine was lurking out there in the Channel?

Please, God, if this is what you want me to do, keep us all safe.

I looked up at the stars, trying to quell my fear by remembering evenings in Africa, and how I used to sit outside during the nuns’ hour of recreation. The sharp salt smell of the sea faded as the scent of the Congo night came back to me: the mingled fragrance of mimosa and jacaranda, underlaid with the smell of dust. I began to hear the high-pitched thrum of crickets and the distant beat of drums. I remembered how, when I first arrived in the Congo, Sister Clare had interpreted the drum language for me. She said that the jungle was reverberating with the news that the new nun was of childbearing age and had big, beautiful eyes.

“Aren’t you cold?” Jack’s voice startled me out of the trancelike state I’d fallen into.

“No,” I called back. “It’s nice up here. Bracing.”

“It’ll be light soon. Can you see—over there—the sky’s just turning pink?”

He was pointing away from the direction in which we were heading. I looked over my shoulder and saw the faint glow on the eastern horizon. It reminded me of that other morning, in this same sea, when I’d clung to life as waves washed me toward Cornwall. Was it only two weeks ago? It felt like a lifetime.

“Come up here, if you like,” Jack called. “I’ll show you where we are.”

I didn’t trust myself to stand up, so I scrambled across the deck on all fours.

“Not got your sea legs yet?” Jack said, as I grabbed the rail at the helm of the boat. In the pale dawn light, I could see his wry smile. “You’ll have to put on a more convincing act when we get to France if you’re going to fool the Germans.”

“I know,” I murmured. “I’m not as bad as I was when we first set off.”

“You’ll be fine. I’m sure the biggest hurdle was stepping off dry land.”

I nodded.

Jack beckoned me to come closer, then pointed at something off to the right. “Can you see that?”

I craned my neck to see what he’d spotted. He was looking over to the west, where the sky was still dark gray.

“Here—have these.” He took off the binoculars looped round his neck.

Lifting them to my eyes, I made out a tall, thin shape in the distance, apparently rising out of the waves. As we drew closer, I saw that it was a lighthouse, perched on a rocky ledge that protruded from the sea.

“That’s the Wolf Rock,” Jack said. “Normally you’d be able to see the light from the Cornish coast—but they switched it off when the war started.” He turned the wheel slightly, steering the boat away from the lighthouse. “Sometimes you can hear it, though.”

“Hear it? How?”

“There are big cracks in the rock and when the weather’s rough, the wind makes a howling sound like a wolf.”

I gave silent thanks for a calm sea. “What’s that?” I pointed to a collection of gray bumps up ahead. They looked just like a school of whales I’d spotted on the voyage back from Africa.

“Those are the Eastern Isles,” Jack replied. “They’re the smallest of the Scillies—no one lives there, apart from seabirds and a few goats. In a minute you’ll see a bigger island: St. Martin’s. The one we’re going to—Tresco—is a few miles west of that.”

I soon realized what a competent sailor Jack was. As we approached the Scillies, he had to navigate through shoals of rocks to get us safely through the wild, deserted archipelago that guarded the main island group. The sky was just light enough for him to see the hazards and avoid them. Clearly his timing of the voyage had been critical—leaving Mermaid’s Cove while it was still dark, but at the last possible moment, to catch the dawn before we reached dangerous waters.

“Just that one off the port bow, now, and we’ll be through.” Jack nodded toward a group of rocks piercing the waves on the left side of the boat. “That’s New Grimsby Sound, up ahead.”

The rising sun had turned the sea a coral pink. I could see two humps of land, shrouded in a milky mist, with a narrow channel in between. I glanced at the wicked-looking rocks Jack had pointed out as we glided past them. I spotted a rusty mast sticking out of the water—the remains of a boat that had come to grief there. I wondered how long it had taken Jack to acquire such expert knowledge of the sea between England and France. I had a sudden image of him racing across the waves in his yacht, Firefly, the wind in his hair and the girl, Morwenna, at his side. I felt a gnawing ache below my ribs—a feeling I didn’t want to admit to, whose name hovered in the shadowy margins of my mind.

“Can you see the castle?” He passed the binoculars back to me.

Rising out of the mist was the top of a round tower. The pale walls were pockmarked and crumbling.

“It looks very old,” I said.

“It dates from the seventeenth century. They call it Cromwell’s Castle.” He pulled the throttle back, slowing the boat as we entered the narrow channel between Tresco and the neighboring island of Bryher. The mist was beginning to clear. I could see stretches of white sand on either side of us, deserted apart from seabirds scattered along the water’s edge. The deep blue of the ocean turned to a translucent turquoise where the waves lapped the shore. As we glided past a granite outcrop, I caught sight of the harbor nestled below the castle.