The House at Mermaid's Cove(60)

“What about Ned? What happened to him?”

“I should have taken him with me, but I panicked. I couldn’t stomach trying to explain it all to my father. I paid Phyllis the money I was going to give to Morwenna—asked her to look after him until I’d worked out what to do. Then, a month later, the call came to evacuate all the children from the island.” He raked his fingers through his hair. “It was the perfect cover. I could bring him back to Penheligan. There was no need for anyone to know the truth.”

I remembered what Merle had said about the chaos in St. Peter Port on the day she left. It suddenly occurred to me that she might have been aware of what Jack was doing but had told me the version he had invented. “What about Merle?” I asked. “Does she know?”

He shook his head. “I sometimes wonder if she suspects. But she’s terribly loyal—she’s never said anything. She gets an allowance for looking after Ned. I told her it had to come via me, from the government fund for evacuees, and she’s never questioned that.”

“But what about Ned? Doesn’t he need to know?”

“Yes—one day. But he’s too young to be troubled by it now.”

I wasn’t sure about that. I thought of the time in the woods when Ned had asked me if I’d be his mummy. The child was desperate for parents of his own.

“It’s hard to think of the future,” Jack went on. “With this war, nobody can. When I went back to Guernsey that June of 1940, the only thing on my mind was to bring him somewhere safe.”

“Wouldn’t it have been easier for everyone if you’d admitted he was your son? It must be so hard, having to keep up the pretense.” I stopped short of saying what I felt in my heart: that Jack was denying himself and Ned the love that had flickered into life in that moment in the valley.

“Easier?” His face changed. His eyes had a distant look, like a sleepwalker. “You know, Alice, when I found you on the beach, and you told me you wanted to leave your old life behind, I envied you. Three years ago, I could have done something similar. When Morwenna died I thought of sailing away with Ned and never coming back. But I didn’t have the guts. I couldn’t do it to my father. It meant everything to him—the house, the estate, our standing in the community.”

“But when your father died, couldn’t you have come clean about Ned?”

“I made a promise to him on his deathbed—that I’d never do anything that would bring shame on the family name.” There was such sadness in his voice. I saw now why he wore his title so lightly, why he preferred to be called “Jack” and not “sir” or “my lord.” He hadn’t wanted it. It had shackled him. And now it was blighting Ned’s life, too.

“You must think me the worst kind of hypocrite,” he said. “Going to church on Sundays, putting on a show of respectability.”

“I know how that feels,” I replied. “I was a hypocrite for years. I clung on to the order, even when I knew I could never be what they wanted me to be. If it hadn’t been for the shipwreck, I don’t think I’d have had the courage to leave.”

“You’re very honest, Alice. That’s why I had to talk to you. You don’t like lies. Pretense doesn’t come easily to you. But I’ve come to beg you to keep my secret.”

I felt as a priest must feel on the other side of the confessional. But what he’d revealed wasn’t going to be remedied by three Hail Marys and a few Our Fathers. I wanted to reason with him, to impress on him how much more important his son was than any amount of wealth or privilege. But I sensed that he already knew that, and that anything I said would simply aggravate his sense of guilt and make him turn away from me. For Ned’s sake, I must bite my tongue. Until I had the chance to do . . . what?

I want to do some good in the world.

The words I’d come out with the day after I’d met Jack sounded hopelessly na?ve to me now. What did “doing good” mean in a situation like this? Was there anything in the Bible about it? Any words of wisdom from Jesus or the disciples? Something floated into my head:

Above all, hold unfailing your love for one another, since love covers a multitude of sins.

I couldn’t remember where that came from. Somewhere in the New Testament. One of the Epistles—James, maybe, or Peter.

Love. That word had so many shades of meaning. One thing that had been made very clear to me as a nun was that loving someone didn’t mean turning a blind eye when they did something wrong. And what Jack was doing, what he was asking me to keep hidden, was, undeniably, wrong. The thought of Ned longing for the love of a parent—with Jack living alongside him, refusing to reach out to him—was heartbreaking.

The feelings Jack had stirred in me should have withered just thinking of that. But they were still there. I knew very well that no matter what I told myself, the next time he came to the boathouse, the very sound of his footsteps would set my pulse racing. Was it possible to subdue that longing?

With God’s help, you could.

That was what Sister Clare would say. But in my heart, I knew I wasn’t going to ask for that kind of help. Like a starfish that loses one of its arms, part of myself had been amputated when I left the order. What had grown in its place might look the same—but it was entirely new. And the new part of me didn’t want the longing to stop.