Survivor (37 page)

He looked
shocked. ‘You are amazingly forthright,’ he said. ‘Is that a New
Zealand trait? I don’t think an English girl would say such a
thing.’

Coming on top of the suggestion that his
parents wouldn’t approve of her, she resented the implication that girls from
the colonies were uncouth. She also didn’t like the fact that he felt he had
to discuss whether or not to make love.

Surely the right way to go about it was
to just kiss and cuddle, and let passion take over?

‘I can’t see the point of
being coy. I find the English upper-class way of hiding behind euphemisms rather
pathetic,’ she said waspishly. ‘But it’s late, and I’m
tired, so I’m going to bed.’

With that, she got up and flounced out
of the room.

Once in bed, and hearing Edwin tiptoeing
along the passage from the bathroom to his room, she felt a little ashamed that
she’d sniped at him. It wasn’t his fault if his parents were snobs, and
neither was he to know she’d been hoping for some fireworks when Sybil and Ted
had cleared off to bed.

She thought of creeping along the
passage to his room, to make it up to him. But why should she? She wasn’t the
one who’d been tactless.

Knowing Sybil would be cross, if she
heard her going into Edwin’s room, she decided to stay put. He had to be on
the early train tomorrow morning anyway, so it was best to just leave well
alone.

PJ picked himself up from the barn floor,
where Mariette had thrown him. ‘A fitting end to our last session,’ he
said with a wide grin.

‘The training’s over?’
she asked.

‘It certainly is. You are as ready
now as you’ll ever be,’ he replied. ‘You’ve got the skill,
stamina, speed and agility I aimed at. I feel very confident that you will be able
to defend yourself, should the need arise. You’ve been a good
pupil.’

Mariette beamed. PJ wasn’t usually
one for compliments.

‘So when will my training be put
to the test?’ she asked.

‘I can’t say.’ PJ
shook his head. ‘It could be tomorrow, or two months hence. They’ll come
for you when they need you.’

Mariette looked at him in consternation.
‘But I have to give Sybil and Ted some kind of notice. I can’t just go
and leave them in the lurch.’ As much as she wanted to do her first mission,
she was also terrified at the prospect. ‘I must say, it’s a bit thick
expecting me to stand by, ready to drop everything at a moment’s
notice!’

PJ smiled at her indignation and put his
hand on her shoulder, in a gesture of understanding. ‘I agree. But you see,
Mari, there are so many difficulties and obstacles that have to be overcome. We need
a night with no moon to cross the Channel. The sea can’t be too rough, and the
person being passed down the escape chain also has to be in the right place.
Setbacks are very common, and sometimes our people in France
have no choice but to bring forward or cancel a rescue.
But if I were you, I’d go home and prepare Sybil and Ted.’

‘Tonight?’

‘Yes, no time like the present.
Ted’s an old soldier – if you tell him it’s a clandestine operation,
he’ll understand that you can’t give him or his wife any details. But
you will need to hatch a cover story with them about where you are, when you are
called away. Visiting a sick relative is usually a good one. That way, you can use
the same relative again later.’

‘I don’t have any relatives
in England, but I’m sure I can think of something,’ Mariette replied.
She felt a little sad that she wouldn’t see PJ any more. At the start
he’d seemed very harsh, but she understood now why he’d had to push her
so hard. ‘I suppose there’s nothing left to say but goodbye, and thank
you for training me.’

He gave her one of his intimidating,
penetrating stares. But she knew now that was just one of his arsenal of ploys to
unnerve the people he trained. ‘You will do well, Mariette, you are tough and
resourceful, and it’s been my pleasure to train you. May God go with you. And
when the war is over, maybe we can meet up and have a drink together.’

On Sunday morning, three days after PJ
had said goodbye to Mariette, she finally told Ted and Sybil about it. She had
waited until then because, with the pub closed all day, it was the one time in the
week when there would be no interruptions or distractions.

‘I may have to go away for a few
days any time now,’ she blurted out. ‘I’m afraid I can’t
explain it better than that, it’s some covert work for the government. I hope
you won’t be cross about it, I know how much it’s going to inconvenience
you, but I can’t help it.’

There was complete silence. They just
looked at her with
blank expressions, as
if she was speaking a foreign language.

‘Please say something,’ she
pleaded. She knew Ted was never one to shoot his mouth off, but Sybil always had an
opinion about everything. ‘I’d rather you were angry or said you felt
let down than saying nothing.’

‘We’re too taken aback to
know what to say,’ Ted admitted. ‘We never saw this coming.’

‘I thought there was something
fishy about that man coming here, and then you suddenly taking up running,’
Sybil burst out. ‘And going off in the afternoons and never saying where you
were going. Was that to do with this?’

‘Yes,’ Mariette sighed.
‘But please don’t ask me anything about it because I can’t tell
you. All I can tell you is that I’m likely to be called away suddenly, and I
won’t be able to say where, or what for. But if it’s any consolation,
I’d give anything to be able to confide in you.’

‘You can tell us, we won’t
let it go beyond these four walls,’ Sybil urged her, her face lighting up at
the prospect.

‘Enough, Sybil!’ Ted glared
at his wife. ‘Mari can’t tell us, she’d be in trouble if she did.
All we should be saying is that she’ll always have a job and a home with us,
and to stay safe wherever she is sent.’

‘Thank you, Ted.’
Mariette’s eyes welled up. Ted rarely strung more than half a dozen words
together, and she was touched that he’d managed to find the very words she
wanted to hear. ‘They did say I’d only be away a couple of days at a
time, and it wouldn’t be a regular thing. To be honest, I’m scared. I
almost wish they’d decide I’m no good to them and cancel the
plan.’

‘What does Edwin say about
it?’ Ted asked.

‘He doesn’t know, and he
mustn’t know. So if he rings and I’m not here, just make out I’ve
gone to the pictures or something. I don’t want him worrying about
me.’

Things had been
a little cool since their last meeting, when he’d said he wanted to marry her
but didn’t seem keen for her to meet his family.

‘Is everything alright between you
two?’ Sybil asked.

‘Yes, fine,’ Mariette said,
getting to her feet. She knew if she stayed in the pub all day, Sybil would keep on
at her like a dog with a bone. ‘I’m going to visit Ian and Sandra.
I’ll see you later.’

Each time she saw Ian and Sandra, she
always thought how proud Joan would be of her children. They were well behaved,
enthusiastic, articulate, interested in so many different things, and very
appreciative of everything people did for them. Maybe much of the credit for how
they’d turned out was down to Mr and Mrs Harding, but they had Joan’s
sense of humour and her generosity of spirit.

Sandra had joined Ian at the grammar
school in September, and she was excited by the new subjects she was learning, such
as Domestic Science and Biology.

‘At the moment we’re only
learning how to make pastry and stuff like that,’ she said, her face aglow.
‘But soon we’ll be making whole meals. And in Biology we’ll be
dissecting frogs before long. Imagine doing that?’

Mariette had a job not to laugh. She
couldn’t imagine anything worse than dissecting a frog, but it was great that
Sandra enjoyed school. Mariette had always hated it.

Ian was learning to play the guitar. The
Hardings had bought one for him, the previous Christmas, and he’d tried to
teach himself from a manual. By Easter, Mrs Harding was feeling sorry for him
because he wasn’t getting anywhere with the manual and he wanted to play so
badly. So she’d found someone in Beer to give him lessons, and now he was
doing very well.

‘Auntie
Mari,’ he asked, ‘could I work as a guitarist? I mean, when I leave
school. Do people get paid for playing musical instruments?’

‘They do, if they are really good
at it,’ she told him. ‘So stick at it, and maybe you will be able to
make a career of it. But even if you aren’t that good, it doesn’t
matter. You can just play for your own enjoyment.’

She went with them for a walk later.
Although it was sunny, autumn had arrived with a vengeance at the start of October,
with cold winds and a sprinkling of frost in the mornings, and it was dark by five
o’clock. Looking out to sea, which today was like a millpond, she remembered
what PJ had said about waiting for a moonless night. It sounded like the plot of a
film, a romantic and daring dash into France to rescue someone, but she knew the
truth of the matter was that it would be a long and cold journey fraught with
danger. The coast of France was bound to be well guarded by the Germans, both on
land and at sea, and there was the danger of mines too.

But, looking on the bright side, which
she knew she must, whoever planned this must know it was viable. After all, there
would be no point in sending people into France to rescue someone, if everyone
involved was likely to be killed.

Yet, despite the danger, Mariette was
very excited. To be out on a boat in heavy seas was the kind of challenge she
welcomed. As for what she had to face in France, she would worry about that when she
got there.

A call came on Monday morning telling
her to report to Miss Salmon that afternoon, at three thirty, at the same hotel on
the esplanade where she’d had her initial interview.

‘PJ informs me you are
ready,’ Miss Salmon said, when Mariette had been ushered in to see her.

The woman was as
sour-faced as she had been at their first meeting; Mariette wondered if she drank
vinegar to keep herself that way. In a dark brown wool dress, without even a lace
collar or a brooch to lessen the severity, it was clear she cared little for
appearances and was probably wincing at the brightness of Mariette’s
apple-green jacket and strawberry-blonde hair.

‘We have a mission planned for
Wednesday. You must be at Lyme Regis harbour at five p.m. Wear suitable, warm dark
clothes for the boat. But you must also have smart street clothes and a cocktail
dress with you.’

Mariette looked askance at the older
woman. Surely she wasn’t expected to be socializing?

‘Come, come,’ Miss Salmon
tutted. ‘You will have more than one part to play on this mission. Now, let me
tell you the cover story.’

Sybil lunged forward as Mariette went
to leave through the pub’s side door on Wednesday, just after one
o’clock. She caught hold of Mariette and hugged her tightly.

‘You come back safe,’ she
said, her voice cracking with emotion. ‘Ted and I have come to think of you as
family, and we’ll be on tenterhooks until you return.’

Mariette disengaged herself from
Sybil’s arms, touched by her affection. ‘That’s a sweet thing to
say, but try not to worry about me, I’ll be fine. Now, if Edwin should
telephone, just say I’m out. Don’t tell him I’m with the kids –
which is what I’ve said to everyone else – as he knows the Hardings are on the
phone, and he might ring there. But I must go now, or I’ll miss the
train.’

‘Were you hoping to disguise
yourself as a man?’ Sybil asked teasingly, referring to Mariette’s wool
trousers and the fact that she was wearing a naval pea jacket which had been
left behind in the bar last winter.
‘Because if you were, you failed. Even with your hair tied back, you still
look totally feminine.’

Mariette grinned. ‘I doubt I will
with this on,’ she said, pulling a black knitted hat from her pocket.
‘But I’m not walking through Sidmouth wearing it. I’m saving it
for when it’s dark.’

She wondered what Sybil would say if she
knew just what kind of place Mariette was heading for in France. She had lowered the
neckline of the black dress she wore so often behind the bar, and had sewn dozens of
sequins on the bodice. Sybil would have guessed the part she was expected to play
right away, if she’d seen her in the altered dress.

And she’d have been even more
worried.

As the train chugged along the coast,
Mariette thought about Sybil’s emotional reaction to her leaving. She had
grown very fond of her employers too, and it seemed so odd now that her younger
self, back in New Zealand, had never formed any attachment to anyone other than
family members. And she hadn’t even been very caring towards them!

Would age have made her kinder and more
caring, even if she’d stayed in New Zealand? Or was the change in her
character only down to getting a wider view of life in England and experiencing
tragedy?

Her stomach was full of butterflies.
When she’d slipped the razor-sharp flick knife that PJ had given her into the
bag with her clothes for the trip, she’d felt physically sick, convinced she
could never use it. But PJ had assured her that the training she’d had would
automatically kick in if she was in danger. She hoped he was right. She wondered too
how her parents would react, if they knew what she was about to embark upon.
They’d be scared for her, of course, but
somehow she felt they’d be really proud that she
was brave enough to risk her life for someone else.

But she didn’t feel brave; for two
pins she’d jump off the train at the next station and run back to the safety
of the pub. Yet whoever it was she was going to collect in France, she guessed that
at this very moment he was probably every bit as scared as she was, cowering in some
hiding place, terrified he’d be caught and shot. She couldn’t let him go
through further torment by not turning up as planned – to do so might be the same as
signing his death warrant, along with others in the chain.

Mariette arrived in Lyme Regis too early
to go straight down to the harbour, so she went into a busy tea shop to wait. From
her tiny table in a corner she could observe everyone, and despite her nervousness
it was very entertaining.

At the pub most of the customers were
men, and the women who did come in were very ordinary – mostly wives or girlfriends
of regulars, or young women in the forces or doing war work in or around Sidmouth.
She rarely came up against what Sybil called ‘lah-de-dahs’, middle-class
ladies with fox furs around their necks and loud, braying voices. That kind of woman
was more likely to be found in the cocktail bar of one of the grander hotels,
sipping gin and tonic.

But the Copper Kettle in Lyme Regis was
clearly another gathering place for such women, and while some of them might be here
on holiday, looking for fossils – which Mariette had discovered was one of the
attractions of Lyme – she thought, from the snatches of overheard conversation, that
most of these women lived close by.

‘She asked to see my identity
card!’ one woman, with a Roman nose and a long speckled feather sticking out
of her hat, exclaimed loudly. ‘As if she didn’t know who I was! Such
impudence. That girl was in service to
my sister before the war, but now she’s been taken on as a receptionist at the
Bellevue she thinks she’s royalty.’