The House at Mermaid's Cove(9)

The item of clothing I’d most detested was the skullcap. It clasped the head closely and had drawstrings on it. I’d stood in the laundry room of the convent in Dublin, my head newly shorn, listening to the Mistress of Postulants as she instructed us in the way to put the cap on. I could still hear that voice—the exact words—as if it had happened only yesterday: The tighter you draw those strings, the better you will restrain the imagination. God doesn’t want you wasting your time with daydreaming.

I shook the memory from my mind. But the instruction was as pertinent now as it had been then. I mustn’t waste time with daydreaming. The crack of light coming through the shutters told me that the sun was up. I wanted to make myself respectable by the time Jack arrived with breakfast. Show him that it wouldn’t be long until I was able to make myself useful.

I reached for the rest of the new clothes. I couldn’t yet think of them as my underwear or my blouse: having owned nothing for so many years, the idea of anything being mine was hard to grasp. As I fastened the tiny pearl buttons, a distant bark told me Jack was coming. Seconds later Brock was at the door, paws scrabbling against the wood. I heard Jack call him. Then there came two short knocks.

“Can I come in?” The morning sun lit up his face as he stood in the doorway. His black hair was tousled, and stubble shadowed his jaw. One wing of the collar of his shirt was tucked into his sweater while the other stuck out. He looked as if he’d been up all night. “Off you go, Brock—go and chase some seagulls!” He shut the door behind him.

I went to haul myself up, but he was beside me before I had maneuvered the crutch into position.

“Let me help you.” He hooked one arm around my back.

“No, really,” I said, shifting my body sideways. “Thank you for offering, but I need to get used to doing it myself.”

“Of course.” He stepped back as if he’d trodden on a snake. “How did you get on last night?”

“Quite well, I think. It took me a while to get off to sleep—I saw planes flying over the sea when I went out to close the shutters.”

He nodded. “Falmouth took a direct hit last night. It’s only a few miles from here. It’s a major port—and the Germans are aware of that—but they often miss, and it’s the poor devils who live close by that take the brunt of it.”

“Were people killed?”

He looked away. “We don’t know what the casualties are yet. But it’s pretty certain there will have been fatalities.”

I thought of how tranquil this place had seemed when I was standing outside, looking up at the moon, before the planes had appeared. The thought of people watching that same scene and moments later being annihilated was unimaginably awful. It seemed so random, so unfair. And yet I had seen something very similar firsthand, when the ship was blown up. Why had I been saved when so many others had lost their lives?

“Has there been any news of the Brabantia?” I held my breath, almost wishing I hadn’t asked.

He nodded. “There was a piece in the Times this morning. There were more than a hundred survivors—picked up by a Royal Navy patrol vessel.”

More than a hundred. But there had been more than three hundred of us on board. I wondered if Jack could sense the guilt I felt.

“I brought you some more clothes.” He put the bulging sack he was carrying down beside the bed. “These are a bit more practical than what I gave you yesterday—the sort of things you’ll need if you’re going to work on the farm.” He pulled out a pair of khaki-colored trousers with a bib attached and held them up. “This is what the Land Girls wear—dungarees. Not very flattering, I’m afraid.”

“Land Girls?”

“It’s what they call the women who’ve been drafted in to work on farms in place of the men who’ve gone off to fight. They’re not girls, not really—well, a few of them are quite young, I suppose, but some of them are old enough to be grandmothers.” He laid the dungarees down on my bed. “I suppose you’re wondering why I’m still here, not in uniform?”

I shook my head. It should have occurred to me, but it hadn’t—that a man of his age would be required to fight.

“It’s because food production is so vital to our ability to defeat the enemy. They think I’m of more use here than chasing Hitler.”

“Well, I’m looking forward to helping you.” I was glad to think that what I’d be doing was something essential to the war effort. I smiled at the thought of wearing dungarees. I’d never worn trousers. I wondered what else was in the sack. It would be strange having different sets of clothes to choose from. I hadn’t had to make such choices for years.

“Oh—I brought this back, too.” He dug in the sack and produced my chemise, which had been washed and mended.

“Thank you.” I wondered who had sewn the fine, almost invisible stitches—and how he had explained who the chemise belonged to. But before I could ask, he said: “I’ve had to tell people there’s someone living here. One of the fishermen from the village round the bay saw the smoke from the stove last night. He came to find me—thought there might have been an intruder. I told him that you were my cousin Alice from Ireland.”

My eyes widened.

“People are terrible gossips around here,” he went on. “I thought it would be easier if I said you were a member of the family. I described you as my father’s cousin’s daughter, who was living and working in a London hospital that was destroyed in a bombing raid. I said you were wearing this—hospital issue—when the bomb fell.” He laid the chemise on my makeshift bed, next to the dungarees. “You’ll remember that, won’t you?”