The House at Mermaid's Cove(58)

When I came out into the sunshine, I stood for a moment, listening. A magpie was rattling away in one of the ancient yew trees. When it stopped, all I could hear was the whispering rush of the stream that trickled through the trees on its way to the cove. Then I thought I heard something else. Something human. Not words, something more like a cough or a burst of laughter. It sounded like an adult—not a small child. It was coming from beyond the church, somewhere in the tangle of shrubs and trees, away from the path. I ran across the graveyard, almost tripping over a toppled tombstone half-hidden in the grass. I scrambled over the wall, and as I landed in the pile of leaf mold on the other side, I heard a familiar voice, singing.

“Row, row, row your boat. Gently down the stream . . .”

Through the foliage I spotted Jack’s face in profile. On his back was what looked like a giant pine cone. My brain leapfrogged the message my eyes were sending. With a surge of joy, I realized that it was Ned, dressed as a hedgehog. Jack had one hand around two little ankles that stuck out from under the sacking hem of the costume. Ned was holding on to Jack’s head. I could see his fingers moving, rubbing Jack’s hair as if it were a biddable pony, not a person, carrying him. As I got closer, I saw Ned’s body quiver, as if he was sobbing silently. I could just see his nose and chin protruding from the hood of the costume. In the moment before he saw me coming, Jack reached up and felt for Ned’s face.

“Soon be home, little chap.” He cupped the child’s swaying head in his hand. “There’s nothing to be frightened of. I’ve got you now.”

The expression in Jack’s eyes was intense—gentle but ferocious—words that shouldn’t go together, but somehow did. I’d encountered something similar when I was in Africa, in the maternity ward at the mission hospital. I’d seen it in the faces of the women when they held their babies for the first time.

“Alice!” He’d seen me. In a flash he heaved the drowsy child off his shoulders and set him down on the ground. Ned blinked up at me from beneath a small forest of bristles. His eyes were red and swollen. Green caterpillars of snot oozed from his nostrils.

“Thank goodness you’re safe!” I bobbed down and wiped Ned’s nose. “Where did you find him?” I glanced up at Jack, who looked as if he were chewing on a wasp.

“In the summerhouse.” He jerked his head back over his left shoulder. Through the trees I could just see the moss-covered thatch of the little hut where he’d taken me for target practice before we went to Brittany.

“Oh, Ned! Why did you run away?”

“I s . . . seed a plane.” He drew the back of his hand across his eyes. “Louis says if it goes bang, I got to run.”

“I’d better get you back to the house.” The way Jack spoke to Ned was quite different from when he’d been carrying him on his shoulders. He sounded brisk and businesslike, as if the child were a stray animal that he’d rounded up. He gave the boy a little prod. I wondered why he didn’t pick him up. Ned could hardly put one foot in front of the other.

“I’ll carry him, if you’re tired,” I said.

“If he’s not too heavy for you.” He nodded. “I’ll go on ahead—let them know he’s been found.”

I got the distinct impression that Jack was the one running away now.



Much later, when the sun was going down, Jack came by with Brock. He told me that the German plane that had dropped the bomb on the field had been shot down by the Spitfire Louis had seen chasing it out to sea. He didn’t mention Ned until I asked him about the search.

“How did you know he’d go to the summerhouse?”

“It was my den when I was a boy.” He shrugged. “Somewhere I used to go and hide.”

“He’s such a sensitive little soul,” I said. “It must be so hard for him, hearing the others call Merle ‘Mummy.’ He must wonder what’s happened to his own parents.” I was aware that I was venturing into dangerous territory. But I couldn’t forget the look I’d seen in Jack’s eyes when he was carrying Ned through the woods.

“Merle told you how he came to be here?” He bent down to ruffle Brock’s fur, avoiding my eyes.

“She told me that a man approached you on the quayside on Guernsey. She said he begged you to take Ned because his wife was in hospital.”

Jack nodded. “But you don’t believe that.”

The silence hung in the air like dust motes. It was as if he’d peeled back my eyes and looked inside my head. I felt as if I were back in the convent, caught unawares, not certain which rule I had broken.

“You know, don’t you?” His voice was almost a whisper. “I saw it in your face when you came through the trees.” He looked up, straight at me. “I don’t know how you know. But you do.”

My body reacted before my brain had fully grasped what he was saying. Gravity went into reverse, my stomach lurching toward my chest. He was telling me that what I’d tried not to believe was true. Morwenna wasn’t just a girlfriend he’d loved and lost. She was the mother of his child. Ned was his son.

“I . . . I found a photograph,” I mumbled.

He searched my face, his dark eyes glinting silver in the fading light. It was like watching a thunderstorm, waiting for the explosion. “Where?”