The House at Mermaid's Cove(78)

I opened my mouth, then clamped it shut. There wasn’t time to explain why I knew so much, no reason to tell her. She needed to be on her way, as did I.

“How on earth do women cope with this ridiculous getup?” She clicked her tongue as she hoisted the robe to knee height. “It’ll be a miracle if I can ride without getting it tangled up in the chain. Honestly, you’d have to be mad to be a nun, wouldn’t you?”

I felt my cheeks redden. I looked away, mortified by her honesty. Mad. No one had ever said that to my face. But my father had certainly thought it. Dan, too, probably. Perhaps it was a kind of madness that had made me join the Sisters of Mary the Virgin. Many aspects of the religious life had certainly seemed irrational, unnatural to me: the twice-weekly self-flagellation and the revolting feet-kissing penances. But did that make everything I’d done as a nun worthless? I thought of all the patients—hundreds over the years—that I’d treated in Africa, the village children I’d inoculated, and, above all, the baby twins I’d saved from certain death. Could I have done those things without being a nun? Some of them, perhaps, but not in Africa: without the order, I’d never have had the means to get there.

“I feel bad about taking this stuff.” Miranda’s voice cut through my thoughts. “You needn’t have offered it, but you did. That means a lot. I won’t forget it. I’ll meet you under the bridge. Good luck!” She blew a kiss as she lurched across the yard.

“God bless you.” I whispered it under my breath. Saying it out loud might have sounded flippant, given what she was wearing. I watched her grow smaller as she rode off down the track wobbling a little as she got used to the robe flapping around her legs. We’d arranged to meet after the curfew, under cover of darkness. I’d made her promise that if I wasn’t there by midnight, she’d leave without me. I warned her not to linger, because the tide would turn soon after that, and she would need the current to be with her, not against her, if she had to row out to La Coquille on her own.

I couldn’t allow myself to dwell on the implications of that scenario: that Miranda leaving alone would mean that I had got lost, been arrested, or been shot. I went back into the house, up to the bedroom, and checked my reflection in the mirror. I hoped that I looked like a hiker in the woolen trousers and sweater I’d found, with my hair tucked under a scarf. If anyone challenged me, I planned to tell them a similar story to the one she had concocted—that I was an Irish student based in Paris, in Brittany to visit friends.

My reflection blurred as Jack’s face flashed in front of me. I pictured him standing at the wheel of La Coquille, the wind in his hair as he chugged up and down the coast, waiting for the sun to go down. I kept the image in my head as I shut the bedroom door and made my way downstairs. I could hear his voice whispering, See you tomorrow. But what if I didn’t make it to Lannion? What if he had to leave without me? The thought of that was not just terrifying—it was unendurable.

I told myself that it was only half a dozen miles or so. Easily walkable in a couple of hours. So long as I kept my head, there was nothing to fear. But no amount of bravado could alter the fact that I was venturing out without the protective cocoon of a nun’s habit, without even a French identity card. I knew that if I got caught, there would be no guarantee of merciful treatment.

Please keep me safe. I shot the prayer like an arrow into the sky as I stepped outside.





Chapter 23

The afternoon air was hot and humid. I scrambled through a gap in the hedge when I reached the end of the farm track. Beyond it was rough pastureland. A herd of chestnut-colored cows eyed me curiously, then went back to chewing. I started walking, sending clouds of flies into the air as I dodged around the plate-sized piles of dung strewn across the grass.

I thought that if I kept close to the road, I wouldn’t lose my way. But when I reached the boundary of the field, I saw that walking across farmland wasn’t going to be as simple as I’d imagined. A stone wall surrounded the meadow I was in. Sharp edges of granite protruded at angles from the top of it. When I put my foot on the lower part, it felt as if it were about to give way.

I went farther along, testing it until I found a section that seemed more solid. The wall was higher than my head. When at last I managed to scale it, I caught a glimpse of a vehicle over the top of the hedge to my left. It was coming toward me. I could only see the roof and part of the windshield, but I was terrified that the driver would see me perched on top of the wall. In my panic I dropped down over the wall, catching my sweater on a jagged point of stone. I hung there for a moment, only one foot in contact with the ground, trying to unhook myself. The fabric ripped as it came away, and I fell in a heap onto the grass.

I breathed in the scent of damp earth and the sharp stink of fox. The side of my face was resting on a patch of nettles. When I lifted my head, my cheek felt as if it had been pricked by a dozen needles. The sleeve of my sweater was sticky with cow dung. Rolling over, I saw that it was all down the legs of my trousers, too. But I knew I was lucky to have got away with nothing worse than smelly clothes and a few stings. Looking up at the wall, I realized I could easily have sprained an ankle when I fell. I was going to have to be much more careful if I was going to reach Lannion in one piece. I heard the truck rumble by, the sound of the engine fading into the distance. That, at least, was one danger averted.

The time it took me to get safely over walls and through hedges made my progress far slower than I’d anticipated. I tried to keep to the edges of the fields, thinking that I’d be less likely to be spotted than if I was out in the open. It wasn’t just the Germans I was afraid of. I knew I’d be in trouble if any farmer caught me tramping across his land: in Ireland it wasn’t unheard of for them to take potshots at trespassers.