The House at Mermaid's Cove(83)
I had the shock of my life when I opened the door to the recreation room.
“George?”
“Miss Alice? Is that you?”
I ran and hugged him, almost knocking his white stick from his hand. “I can’t believe it! How on earth did you get here?”
“In Leo Badger’s boat.” He smiled. “Didn’t reckon ’e’d be needin’ it for a while yet, so me an’ ’Is Lordship painted out the name an’ turned her Froggy like. La Patelle, she’s called now: that means limpet in French, ’e tells me. Anyway, ’e sent me to tell you ’e’s waitin’ for you down at the ’arbor.”
Frantic with joy, I was barely coherent when Mère de Saint-Philippe came to say goodbye. George and I walked out of the convent arm in arm. What could have looked more natural, more normal, than a nun helping a blind man along the streets of the town?
On the way to the harbor he told me how the plan to rescue me had evolved. He was careful not to raise his voice above a whisper—he seemed to sense when people were about to pass by, even when they were still yards away. It had been his idea, he said, to use Leo’s boat. Jack had contemplated taking the motor launch across the Channel, but it would have attracted too much attention. It had been a rough crossing in such a small boat, but they knew she could make it to France because Leo had done it before: he’d been one of dozens of fishermen who had answered the call to rescue retreating British troops from Dunkirk in 1940.
“When we got ’ere ’Is Lordship was all for going to fetch you ’imself,” George went on. “But I told ’im ’e was more likely to be rumbled than me, if anyone spotted ’im trying to get inside a convent. ’E asked me ’ow I’d find my way, an’ ’ow I’d make the nuns understand when I got there, not ’avin’ a word of French. So, I got ’im to write me two messages in French, one on card an’ one on paper, so’s I could tell the difference. The first one said: ‘Where is the convent?’ An’ the second said: ‘I need to speak to the Irish sister.’”
“But weren’t you afraid of being stopped? What would have happened if someone had started asking questions?”
He made a muffled, mumbling sound, raising his white stick and waving it in front of his face. “When folks see that you’re blind, it’s easy to fool them into believing there’s other things wrong with you.” He chuckled. “Piece of cake, it was.”
I squeezed his arm. “Thank you for being so brave.”
“It’s nothing, miss,” he replied. “I ’aven’t ’ad this much fun in a long time. An’ anyway, one good turn deserves another. You saved Leo’s life, remember.”
We soon reached the riverbank. The boats were lined up along the quayside. Men were sitting or standing on the decks, smoking, mending nets. Cooking smells wafted from some of the boats—mussels steaming in wine, fish frying with garlic and onions. We attracted a few curious glances as we walked along, me scanning the side of each vessel for the right name. I was talking in French as I walked, and George nodded away as if he understood every word. We kept up the act until I spotted the magic words: La Patelle. The Limpet. I thought my heart would burst out of my rib cage.
“Bonsoir, Soeur Antoine!” There he was, pushing his dark hair back from his forehead as he emerged from belowdecks. My legs threatened to give way as I helped George onto the gangplank.
“Merci pour votre aide.” Somehow Jack managed to sound completely natural. “Voulez-vous prendre un verre de vin avec nous?”
I felt a bubble of hysterical laughter rise in my chest. He was thanking me for my assistance, asking me if I would stay for a glass of wine. It was insane, having to go through this charade when all I wanted was to throw my arms around his neck. Struggling to keep my face straight and my French suitably formal, I thanked him for his invitation and said that I would prefer a glass of mineral water, if he had some. With a little nod he took my hand, ushering me toward the steps to the galley while George tactfully settled himself down on a coil of rope. I almost tripped over my robe in my haste to get down there.
“Oh, Alice! I thought I’d lost you!” He pulled me to him, laughing as my coif bumped against his forehead.
“And I thought I’d never . . .” The words died away as my mouth found his. We stood there in the galley, wrapped in each other’s arms—a ridiculous sight, no doubt, if anyone could have seen us, me in my nun’s habit and him in clothes smeared with fish guts and engine oil. His skin still had that fragrant Christmas-tree smell, despite two days at sea. It flooded my senses as we clung together, devouring each other.
When at last we broke away he brought his hand up to my face, stroking my cheek as he gazed into my eyes. “I wish we had more time—but we’ve got to get going.” He glanced toward the steps up to the deck. “The other fishing boats will be heading out at dusk, and we need to be among them. The Germans have got gun emplacements at the mouth of the estuary. They’ve been on high alert ever since they found out what we’ve been up to.”
He had fisherman’s clothes for me to change into. As I unpinned my veil and removed the various layers of the headdress, I heard the chug of engines as the boats moored nearby began to pull away from the harbor. If there had been more time, I might have lingered over the sight of the nun’s habit, neatly folded, now lying on the bench seat: my old life, discarded not with guilt this time, but with a new sense of hope and anticipation.