London Dawn (30 page)

“Ah.” Lord Preston waved his hand. “We’ll be in the thick of it in less than half an hour. Steer clear of the destroyers and troopships, Owen. They’re targets for the German aircraft. There are a lot of men on the beaches to port. We shall go in there and collect as many as we can.”

“Yes, sir.”

Once
Pluck
reached the shallow water, men waded to the craft. Owen and Skitt helped two dozen aboard, told the others they’d be back, and sailed to the nearest destroyer. Cargo nets hung down its sides, and the men got out of the sailboat and began to climb. Four other sailboats were right behind
Pluck
, loaded with soldiers.

“Briskly.” Lord Preston clapped his hands. “Briskly.”

“Coming about!” called Owen.

The boom swung, Eva and Skitt and Lord Preston ducked their heads, and Eva sprang to sheet the sail home.

“That’s nimble of you, my dear.” Lord Preston smiled at Eva. “Don’t you think so, Owen?”

“Yes, sir.”

“We shall carry on through the night, do you all understand that? We must get the men off those beaches. The darkness will be an aid to us. No enemy planes.”

“That makes sense.” Eva sat on a hatch. “We’ve plenty of bread and cheese on board. We can share that around to those who have a long wait until they’re on a destroyer or troopship.”

“Yes, Elizabeth made sure we’d have enough of that to feed the entire army—British and French.”

They floated into shore again, and men swarmed on board.

“My, it’s nice to see your face, Ginger.” One of the soldiers grinned. “I’ve missed you English girls.”

Eva smiled back and patted him on the shoulder but didn’t speak. She turned away to help Skitt haul an older soldier over the side. He spat out saltwater and looked at her in surprise.

“The Royal Navy’s improved a great deal since last September then,” he said.

“Hasn’t it just?” responded Skitt.

There was a loud roar, and a plane with black crosses streaked low over the sailboats in the water, wings flashing. Tall geysers burst to port and starboard of
Pluck.
A sailboat near them keeled over sharply in deep water, its hull and sail riddled with bullets, and the soldiers spilled out, yelling as waves swept over their heads.

“Help them!” Lord Preston pointed with his finger.

“Coming about!” shouted Owen. “Duck, lads!”

The boom swung, and a few soldiers practically got their skulls cracked. Eva drew the sheets home, and
Pluck
drove for the struggling men. Skit tossed lines over the side, and several grasped them while the soldiers on
Pluck
tugged.

“Those chaps, those chaps there!” Lord Preston was pointing again, waving his finger wildly. “Get them a line!”

Three soldiers were trying to stay afloat while they kept a fourth man’s head out of the water. Blood was on their hands and uniforms from his wounds. None of them were good swimmers, and they were constantly going down and fighting their way back up. The boat was upon them in a moment. An instant later the four men went under and did not reemerge.

“They’ve gone,” said Skitt, leaning over the side with a white life ring in his hand. “Lord help us.”

“Take the wheel!” Owen cried to Eva. “I’m going after them.”

“I won’t!” Eva fired back. “I can swim as well as you!”

“Don’t argue with me!”

“I’m not going to argue! I’m going to jump!”

They both hit the water at the same time. Skitt lunged for the wheel as the boat pitched to starboard. Eva came up first, one arm around a young soldier with his helmet still on, hauling him to the side of
Pluck
, stroking with her free hand. The men on board grabbed the youth under the arms and brought him into the sailboat. She immediately dove under again.

“Here! Take him! Quickly!” Owen shot out of the water and lifted a man toward them. “Where’s Eva?”

“She’s right back under, mate,” said a soldier. “Brought us wee Chipper here, better’n new.”

Owen was gone beneath the waves.

The men watched, their faces tight. The boat rocked in the swells. There were explosions on the beach and more planes howled over their heads, but they kept their eyes fixed on the sea.

“C’mon, lad, c’mon then,” muttered a sergeant.

Owen broke the surface with another soldier.

“Get him on his stomach!” he shouted as they pulled him onto the sailboat. “Get the water out of him! Where’s the girl?”

“She’s not come back up,” the sergeant told him.

Owen dove under the waves. Half a minute passed. Then he exploded out of the sea with Eva and the wounded soldier. Eva gasped and choked as she fought for air, but that didn’t stop her from helping Owen swim the wounded and unconscious man to
Pluck.
The men had no sooner dragged him into the boat before another German plane passed over the beaches. This one was met by the
thump thump
of antiaircraft fire from the destroyers and from the shore. The fighter plane sprayed the water and small boats with bullets. Even though she was still rapidly drawing air into her lungs, Owen hauled Eva underwater as shells smacked into the waves near
Pluck.

“
Nein
!” she cried as he hauled her under.

She struggled against his grip and tried to surface, but he saw the bullets trailing bubbles and streaking toward them and began to stroke for the capsized sailboat, one arm around her waist. One shell stung his foot, but its force was spent. She finally wrestled free and broke into the open on the far side of the sinking boat. He emerged beside her, wiping the saltwater out of his eyes.

“You crazy fool!” Eva spat seawater. “Are you trying to drown me?”

“Didn’t you see the plane?” he demanded. “It was right on top of us and its shells were heading straight for you!”

“Why do you exaggerate?”

Owen lifted his foot from the water. It was covered in blood.

“I didn’t get that from a barnacle,” he said.

She blinked as water ran into her eyes.

“But then you wouldn’t let a Jewish boy’s hands on you, would you?” he asked.

She slapped him across the face. “Is that what you think?” Her blue eyes were on fire.

“What else am I supposed to think? You’re a goose-stepping Nazi!”

She slapped him with the other hand. “You never read my letter did you? You threw it out! You burned it!”

“There was nothing in it.”

“There was everything in it. I told you I didn’t care if you were Jewish. I said I was sorry. I told you I wanted to talk.”

Owen didn’t reply. He treaded water and looked at her. “I didn’t know,” he finally said.

She had one hand on the capsized hull. “Of course you didn’t know. You can’t burn letters and know what people are saying in them. The Nazis are good at that. Burning letters and burning books.”

“I’m sorry.”

The blue in her eyes softened a bit. “We had better get back to
Pluck
before your grandfather thinks the worse.”

“Eva—”

“We can talk tonight. Something tells me when Lord Preston says we will be ferrying troops through the night he means you and me.”

“Don’t be so sure. He has a constitution of iron.”

“Well, we’ll see.” A sudden smile went over her lips and eyes. “I missed your eighteenth birthday.”

“It’s my fault you weren’t there.”

“I’m not looking to find fault, Owen.” She swam the few feet of water that separated them. “
Herzlichen Gluckwunsch zum Geburtstag
—happy birthday.” She kissed him on the cheek. “You have grown into quite the man. Your foot is still bleeding. Let’s get back to the boat. You were protecting me.
Ich danke Ihnen
—I thank you.”

They swam out from behind the hull as Hurricanes showed up over the beach and raced after the German fighters. The soldiers on
Pluck
cheered for the Hurricanes and cheered for Eva and Owen at the same time.

“It’s nice to be loved, as you English say,” Eva managed to get out as she stroked.

They glanced at each other at the same time. “Yes, it is,” he said.

“You are an older soul than eighteen, Owen.” She looked straight ahead again. “Will you have the poem for me tonight? I don’t suppose you have it on a piece of paper somewhere?”

“I don’t need a piece of paper. It’s where it always was.”

Lord Preston did keep
Pluck
working until long after midnight, though he himself wrapped up in a blanket and slept in the cabin, and so did Skitt. The sailboat moved between ship and shore without stopping. The soldiers built fires on the beach, and the destroyers shone with lights in the dark sea. Owen rigged a lantern high on the mast. He had
stripped off his shirt so it wouldn’t get snagged, and he left it off after he climbed down.

“What about my poem?” asked Eva as he steered the boat back to get more men.

“All right.”

He recited the poem he had written two years before without looking at her, speaking the last stanzas slowly.

Let me open my wings like the Caspian tern

Let me burn, let me illumine, like the rays of the sun

I will have the sea and all that it gives

All that it promises and all that lives

Deep in its soul and I shall be free

To drink of its years and learn of its hours

To sail on its colors and all of its waters

With no end in sight

No ending to light

Then he said, “For Eva.”

“Still?” she asked as the darkness slipped past to port and starboard.

“More than ever, I expect.”

She slowly put her hand over his as he held the wheel. “Can we stop the boat?”

“Stop it?”

“Or make the half-hour run to shore last twice as long?”

“If we took in more sail. But why would you want to do that?”

“Because I’m tired and I need a few minutes rest.”

“You? Tired?”

“It happens sometimes, Englishman. I see German planes over our boat. I see them dropping bombs on ships that are trying to rescue the men. They come in as low as possible and their bullets kick up the sand and water and kill. I remember it is my country doing this. I remember how I used to march and how I betrayed my father because he was hiding Jews and Albrecht. I have tried to pin up the tear in my shirt so the British soldiers don’t see my tattoos. I’m exhausted by everything I carry on my heart and in my mind. Please. A few minutes.”

“Can you take the mainsail in by yourself? Not all the way. Leave about half the sail up.”

“I have the strength, yes.”

She braced her legs on the deck and drew the sail down quickly, tying the line off at the cleat.

“Now lash the wheel,” she told Owen.

“What do you mean?”

“Let it run parallel to the beach.” She placed her hand on his bare chest and over his heart. “It’s not so much rest I need as the freedom to speak with you.”

“What is there to say?”

“I have a lot to say, Englishman.”

He did as she asked.

The lantern light swayed back and forth over his arms and shoulders as the boat moved sluggishly through the swells. They were about five hundred yards offshore. Fires of different sizes flared on the sand, and the destroyers and troopships glimmered behind them, but other than that they sailed on blackness. He turned to face her, and she whispered, “
Sie haben in solch einer schonen jungen Mann herangewachsen
.”

He smiled. “Pardon?”

She smiled back. “I shall have to teach you some German. It might come in handy.”

“Because of the war?”

“Because of me. I just told you that you have grown into a beautiful young man.”

“Do you mean that?”

“Yes.”

“But you—you are such a stunning woman. I feel like I’m not enough for you.”

“Anyone who writes poetry like you and sails like you and saves the lives of men like you is more than enough, Owen. You have been part of changing me, renewing me,
ja
? So there is already a special bond between us. Do you have any other poems for me?”

“I did think of some over the past two years. But I thrust them aside. I’m sorry.”

“I have seen a little bit of how your mind works, Owen. I think you have not forgotten all of the poetry that has run through your head.”

“It’s been hard for me to turn into stone.”

“If it had been easy I would have known the poetry was just pretty English words with no heart.”

He took in a face streaked with grime from the day, the saltwater tangle of her loose hair, the rips on the arms of her shirt, a cut that ran down part of one cheek, the large darkness of her eyes, the light of the lantern that for a moment showed him her features and then slowly took them away again.

“Mate, it’s too good to be true.” He shook his head.