The House at Mermaid's Cove(80)

I’d turned up at the door of the convent, filthy and near hysterical, on the day the Germans had let me go. They’d fed me, run a bath for me, and given me clean clothes. The Mother Superior herself, Mère de Saint-Philippe, had come to hear what had happened to me. She told me that I could stay at the convent for as long as I needed to. The only condition was that I must live as the nuns did, with no special treatment. It wouldn’t be wise, she said, to draw attention to the fact that I was there. She didn’t say the word Resistance, but it was clear that there must be no hint to the outside world of the nuns’ sympathy for freedom fighters.

I was given the clothes a novice would wear: a short robe, just below knee length, and a white scarf, pinned at the nape of my neck. It was like being back in Dublin, when, a month before my eighteenth birthday, I’d made that fateful decision to join the Sisters of Mary the Virgin.

The kindness of the French nuns shamed me, intensified the guilt that had never gone away. But those feelings didn’t eclipse what dominated my thoughts: my desperation to get a message to Jack.

Mère de Saint-Philippe had told me that Miranda had come to the convent to exchange the nun’s habit for the fisherman’s clothes I’d left behind. I’d gone to the harbor as soon as I reached Lannion, to make sure that the dinghy had gone. I’d stood staring at the metal ring the boat had been tied to, picturing Miranda waiting in the dark before finally giving up hope of me coming. I’d imagined Jack leaning over the side of La Coquille, bewilderment on his face when he realized that the woman climbing up the rope ladder wasn’t me.

He would have had no choice but to return home: he had a boatload of escapees on board, and Miranda would have told him about the map. The urgency of getting that to London was paramount and would have to override any fears he had for my safety. I wondered what he would have been thinking as he set a course for the Isles of Scilly. It must have crossed his mind that I might be dead. I had to find a way of letting him know that I was alive.

I knew that the Mother Superior must be in communication with the Resistance. My first impulse was to ask if she could get word to England that I’d made it back to Lannion and was living at the convent. But I realized what a selfish request that would be. Any sister who undertook it would be putting herself at risk. I had to work out a way to do it myself.

After matins on my third day at the convent, I asked permission to write a letter. I knew it would be useless to try to mail anything to Jack in England—no letters were permitted to be sent from occupied France. There was only one person I knew who could get a message to him. I didn’t know the exact address. I hoped that “Monsieur Josef Auffret, La Boulangerie, Kermaria” would suffice. This is what I wrote:

Cher Monsieur Auffret,

Merci de dire à votre livreur que je dois annuler ma commande de baguettes car je déménage à Lannion. Ma facture doit être envoyée à ma soeur, Madame Antoine.

Très amicalement, Mademoiselle Ariel

The Mother Superior agreed that it sounded innocent enough: a woman canceling her bread order because she was moving to another town and giving instructions for her outstanding bill to be sent to her sister. Josef would know there was a hidden message as soon as he saw who it was from. Votre livreur meant “your deliveryman”—an obvious enough reference to Jack. Josef probably wouldn’t grasp the significance of “ma soeur, Madame Antoine,” but Merle would when it came in via Morse code. Not “my sister, Mrs. Anthony” but “Sister Anthony”—my nun’s name. It would convey the message that I’d found my way back to the convent.

Josef wouldn’t be able to reply to my letter, of course. I would just have to trust that on the next new moon, arrangements would be put in place for me to join whoever was being picked up from the beach south of Lannion.

To wait a whole month to see Jack again seemed like an eternity. I told myself I was lucky to be in a place that was safe and familiar. In the meantime, I tried to make myself useful at the convent. Part of the building housed an infirmary, where twenty-five elderly invalids who had no family were cared for by the nuns. I asked if I could help with the work there.

My days began to fall into the same pattern they had followed in the Congo, rising early to go to chapel, eating a silent meal in the refectory, then going to the infirmary. The passing hours were punctuated by the bell summoning me to prayers at regular intervals.

At the end of my first full week at the convent, Mère de Saint-Philippe summoned me to her office. Her pale blue eyes had a Mona Lisa look about them.

“Vous vous êtes très bien intégrée ici, ma fille.” You have fit in very well here, my daughter.

I was glad she thought so.

“The sisters have told me what a lovely singing voice you have,” she went on in French. “You sing with such confidence—even in Latin.” She was looking straight into my eyes. I felt as if she could see inside my head, see me squirming. I knew then that I couldn’t go on pretending. She had guessed my secret.

I dropped my head, unable to bear the searchlight gaze. “J’aurais d? vous le dire. J’ai été nonne.” I should have told you. I used to be a nun.

She murmured something I didn’t catch. Then she asked me why I hadn’t wanted to tell her.

“I . . . I was ashamed,” I mumbled in French. “You’ve been so kind . . .” Suddenly it all came tumbling out. The row with my father over Dan, the dream of nursing in Africa, the pain of rescuing the twins and then being separated from them, the attack on the Brabantia and the chance of a new life in Cornwall.