Survivor (40 page)

Returning to haul the boat down, she
found it was very heavy and hard to move. The airman took a few wobbly steps to help
but she reproved him. ‘No, stay there, you might make your injuries worse. I
can do it.’

Putting all her
strength behind it, at last the boat began to move. As soon as the bows met the sea,
it became easier. Holding it tightly by the mooring rope, she signalled to the
airman to get in.

It was so dark, she could barely see his
face, but she sensed he was in great pain and was finding it very hard to swing his
leg over the side of the boat to haul himself in. Her heart went out to him but
there was nothing she could do to help. Once he was in, and sitting in the bows, she
pushed the boat out further, then leapt in.

As she picked up the oars to push the
boat further from the beach, she thought she heard something, and her stomach
flipped with fear. But she couldn’t see anyone, so she began to row out
towards the buoy.

Since leaving New Zealand she had only
rowed a boat on London’s Serpentine, and a couple of times on the river at
Arundel, and never since the war began. It felt very strange to be in a boat out on
the sea again, battling against a current and a fresh wind.

It was further to the buoy than
she’d expected, and she pricked up her ears, waiting for a shout that meant
they had been spotted. But finally, they were at the buoy and she secured the rowing
boat to it.

‘I don’t know your
name,’ she whispered to the airman. She could no longer see the shore, so she
doubted anyone would spot them either, but sound carried a long way.

‘Alan White,’ he whispered
back. ‘You don’t know how good it is to hear an English
voice.’

‘For me too,’ she agreed.
‘But we’d better be quiet now,’ she said. ‘We can talk on
the boat.’

It seemed for ever before Mariette saw a
pinprick of green light, which was the signal that Luc was close by. They had seen
lights on other boats, in the distance. Some
appeared to be heading towards Quiberon Bay, perhaps
making for St Pierre on the other side of the isthmus, while others appeared to be
heading towards or away from the Bay of Biscay. She had no way of knowing whether
they were French or German boats.

Finally, the boat came close enough to
see, aiming straight at them, only sweeping round when it was almost upon them.

‘Will you be able to manage the
ladder?’ Mariette asked.

‘I’ll have to,’ Alan
replied. ‘I don’t fancy spending all night in this rowing
boat.’

Mariette held the ladder steady for him,
and Luc leaned down to help him too, but they were both aware of how hard he found
the climb. When he got on to the boat, he collapsed from the effort.

Luc and Mariette hoisted him up,
supporting him between them, and took him into the cabin where they laid him on the
bunk.

‘There’s a bottle of brandy
over there.’ Luc pointed to a box by the stove. ‘Give him a tot,
he’s like a block of ice.’

The relief as the fishing boat steamed
away to meet up with the English boat was enormous, but Mariette knew they were by
no means safe yet. They still had to pass the fort where, if any suspicions had been
raised, they could be intercepted. Once they were past that danger, they could be
bombed by aircraft, hit a mine in the water, be torpedoed, or be fired on by a
German ship. But she wasn’t going to think about that.

Alan was clearly relieved too. He lay
there, grinning like a Cheshire Cat. ‘I really didn’t think I would get
out of France,’ he admitted. ‘I thought I would die from gangrene in
that cellar. Or if they got me to the beach, I expected a couple of storm troopers
to appear and shoot me.’

‘I had visions of being captured
and facing a firing squad,’
Mariette admitted. ‘But don’t let’s
talk about that. Tell me where you are from?’

‘A place called Saffron Walden, in
Essex,’ he said. ‘Mother is going to be very joyful to hear I’m
alive and well. I expect she was told I was missing, presumed dead, after I was shot
down. I don’t know whether they pass on the news that you are alive when they
are planning to get you out.’

He reminded Mariette a little of Gerald.
It was not so much his looks – he was taller, with broader shoulders, and he had
good teeth, which Gerald hadn’t had – the similarity was in their ages, in the
way they spoke and their confidence, signs she recognized as coming from a loving
middle-class home and a first-class education. But he also had that puppy-dog look
Gerald used to get, as if he was afraid of displeasing her.

‘You are awfully young and pretty
to be doing such a job,’ he said, looking appraisingly at her. ‘And
where are you from? I can detect an accent.’

‘New Zealand,’ she said
crisply. ‘But how I look is immaterial, in this job or any other.’

‘Oops!’ He put his hand over
his mouth. ‘Sorry if I offended you.’

‘You haven’t offended me.
It’s just a bit trying to be judged by your age and looks. No one does that
with men. But never mind that. How are your wounds? Can I do anything to make them
more comfortable? Are you feeling alright?’

‘I am, now we’re away from
France,’ he said with a boyish lopsided grin. ‘I can even believe that
in a day or two I’ll be drinking a pint of beer at my local, taking my girl,
Valerie, out and listening to my mother wittering on about the length of the queue
at the butcher’s.’

Mariette hoped that would be the case.
After all he had been through, it would be terribly bad luck to be captured now, or
for the boat to hit a mine.

But they were
lucky. It was a very choppy crossing, and Alan was seasick, but no German boats
challenged them, the bombers that came over flew past, and they made the rendezvous
with the English boat on time. It was eleven in the morning when they sailed into
Lyme Regis, and Alan was taken away to a military hospital.

He tried to thank Mariette, but his eyes
filled with tears and his voice quavered.

‘Don’t, Alan,’ she
said. ‘I was just one link in a chain of people who helped you. Getting you
back here was the result we were all working towards. Now just get well again. Go
home and see your mum and Valerie, and keep out of trouble.’

Mariette looked out of the back window of
the pub at the thick layer of snow covering roofs, walls and gardens, and a shiver
of fear ran down her spine. Snow would make the planned rescue even more
dangerous.

It wasn’t a question of the cold
for, however miserable icy weather made everyone feel, it often worked in their
favour. German soldiers were inclined to take shelter when it was very cold rather
than patrol as they were supposed to. Snow, however, meant better visibility in the
dark, and footprints were a clear signal of paths used and how many people were
involved.

Tonight would be her ninth trip to
France and, so far, they’d all been successful. Not all the escapees had been
wounded airmen: two were French Resistance men, who were being hunted by the
Gestapo, and there had been some young Jewish women who Celeste had been hiding.

There was now no doubt in anyone’s
mind that the war would eventually be won. The Americans were piling in, and the RAF
planes were inflicting grievous damage on German cities. The Russians had finally
managed to triumphantly end the siege of Leningrad, and even Rommel in North Africa
looked beatable at last. There was the question of the Japanese, of course – some
said they were almost beaten, but others said they would fight on to the last
man.

People might
have different opinions on many aspects of the war, but the one thing that unified
everyone was their weariness of the rationing, the blackout and all the shortages of
everyday goods. Oddly, they moaned more about these things than about the terrible
tragedies played out daily, with husbands, sons and brothers killed in action and
civilians dying in air strikes. Thousands were homeless, many more were living with
severe bomb damage to their homes, and children were growing up without their
fathers. And yet, such things were not mentioned as often as the scandals of wives
and girlfriends being led astray by fun-loving GIs.

Just a few days ago, there had been a
heated discussion in the pub about unfaithful wives, black marketeers, looters and
other wartime examples of wrongdoing. Sybil’s view was that people were losing
their moral compass, and all the things they had once thought so important – like
honesty, loyalty, pride, good manners and sticking with a marriage even when it
became a bit rocky – were being abandoned.

Mariette didn’t agree. In her
opinion, people still had the same values, but the challenges and deprivations of
wartime had just altered their outlook. She knew from her own experience that, right
up until she began the training for her secret missions, she would have married
Edwin in the blink of an eye, if he’d asked her, and been more than happy to
settle down and make a home for them both.

She had been hurt by his reluctance to
introduce her to his parents, but it was her training and the danger of the missions
which had given her a new perspective. She had learned a great deal about herself,
and what she wanted out of her future life. Now she wasn’t so sure Edwin was
the right man for her.

She still felt the same physical
attraction to him, and she longed to spend a whole night in his arms. But Edwin
continued to be the perfect gentleman.
He never suggested taking her to a hotel, as almost every other red-blooded man
would do if he had nowhere else to go with his girl, and whereas she’d once
admired his self-control, she was now inclined to think there was something
cold-blooded about a man who didn’t allow his heart to rule his head.

But, on the other hand, it could be that
he was terrified he’d be killed and leave her unmarried and pregnant. However,
she knew they were drifting apart. They had once had so much to say to one another,
there was never enough time for it all. Now there was little to say.

He talked about his airmen friends, what
they’d said and done, and she talked about the regulars who came into the pub.
But it was dull, and there was no spontaneity or excitement.

Sybil said perhaps he didn’t feel
able to talk about his experiences on the bombing raids, and that Mariette ought to
understand that – after all, she couldn’t talk about her missions to France.
But it wasn’t that. She felt Edwin had withdrawn from her a little because
he’d had second thoughts about her. She knew from things he’d said about
his family when they first met that they were rather grand, and recently he’d
said they were stuffy. Added to that, when she thought about the slightly critical
remarks he made sometimes about the way she spoke, dressed and approached people, it
all seemed to suggest to her that he knew his parents wouldn’t approve of her
working behind a bar, or of her being from New Zealand.

A great many English people seemed to
have the idea that New Zealanders and Australians were uneducated oafs, and perhaps
his parents subscribed to this view too.

While it was hurtful to think anyone
would make judgements about her without ever meeting her, maybe Edwin
was right to think she might not be the
kind of wife his own mother had been. Mariette had seen ‘county’ women,
there were plenty of them around in Devon and Dorset, and she couldn’t see
herself fitting in with that sour-faced, bridge-playing, riding-to-hounds set who
sent their sons off to boarding schools. Her own daydreams of marriage and
home-making were always set in Russell. She wanted to be the kind of wife and mother
Belle was – very affectionate, fun-loving and unpredictable. Belle didn’t need
a week’s notice to organize a party or picnic, an hour was long enough for
her. She was joyful about everything, from bottling fruit to collecting the
hens’ eggs in the morning, or making herself a new hat that would raise
eyebrows at church on Sunday.

During one of Mariette’s trips to
France she had taken a long walk along the coast of Quiberon and saw why the
Atlantic side of the isthmus was called the Côte Sauvage. Strong winds scraped the
harsh, flat landscape and the few feeble trees were bent over in the wind. It
reminded her of certain places back in New Zealand, and she knew that, although it
was inhospitable now in midwinter, in summer it would be lovely, with yellow gorse
filling the air with its perfumed flowers, long waving grasses, and clumps of pink
thrift and other wild flowers softening the stony ground.

She even found herself looking at houses
that had been shuttered up since the German occupation and imagined owning one,
opening it up, whitewashing the outside and planting geraniums in tubs by the door.
She knew if she told Edwin that she’d like to live somewhere like that, with a
boat moored on the beach, brown-skinned children running wild, spending the days
fishing and gathering wood for the fire, he would think her crazy.

It was, of course, only the vague
similarity to New Zealand that made her nostalgic; she didn’t want to live in
France,
only in the Bay of Islands. She
could see the clapboard houses of Russell before her, feel the sun on her skin, hear
the voices of all those people she’d grown up amongst. She imagined Russell
parties, with everyone from aged grandparents to newborn babies – and every age in
between – gathered together for a celebration. She’d watched her parents at
these parties, laughing and dancing together, still as much in love as they had been
when they married. Yet they had their own separate identities, her father with his
building skills, his fishing and sailing, and her mother drawing and painting and
making pretty hats.

It was ironic that she had to go to the
other side of the world to discover that her own parents lived the life she wanted.
But Edwin would never adapt to Russell.

He was too polished and sophisticated,
too fixed in his outlook. He was, even if he claimed otherwise, a city man. He might
like sailing, swimming and fishing, but only on a holiday, not all year round. She
couldn’t see him tolerating the lack of electricity for long, or the bad
roads. And what would he do for work in New Zealand? Maybe he could pick up where
he’d left off in accountancy, move on to law, or become a pilot for one of the
new airlines he seemed to think would start up after the war? But that would mean
they’d have to live in Christchurch, Wellington or Auckland.

But, over and above all the niggling
anxieties she had, she knew Edwin would be horrified when he found out she
wasn’t a virgin. At the start of their relationship she had always imagined a
night of passion with him would be all that was necessary to wipe out the past – the
way it had been with Morgan – but Edwin would want assurances that it was her first
time. He was just made that way.

Then there were her parents, and Mog. It
would soon become obvious to anyone that all three of them had enjoyed
a colourful past. Some men might like
that, but she didn’t think Edwin would. He was far too conventional. She
couldn’t bear the thought of spending her life with someone from whom she had
to hide things, for fear of his disapproval.

Since getting to know Celeste better,
Mariette had confided in her about what Jean-Philippe had said about her mother.
Celeste had smiled knowingly and said that, when Mariette got home, she was to ask
Belle about her experiences.

‘Don’t ever make the mistake
of thinking that all women who are, or have been, whores are bad women,’ she
said. ‘My experience is the exact opposite. I’ve seen great kindness and
self-sacrifice, generosity of spirit, and courage too. Any woman who could produce a
daughter like you would have to be a good woman through and through. So listen to
her story, when the time is right for her to tell it to you, and be proud of
her.’

Mariette knew that she had seen enough
of life in the raw since the war began to accept anything her parents might have
done in the past. But Edwin certainly wouldn’t be able to. He’d try to,
of course – he was, after all, a tolerant and good man – but as Mog had been very
fond of saying, ‘You can’t make the blind see, or the deaf hear. However
much you want to.’

Turning away from the window, Mariette
pulled on a pair of flannel pyjama trousers, tucked the legs into her socks, then
put thick wool trousers over the top. On her top half she wore a wool vest, a
flannel shirt and two jumpers. She had to make sure she kept warm while at sea,
otherwise it was utter misery.

Today, just like every time she went on
one of these missions, she hoped it would be the last. The fear never left her.
She’d had one close shave, when
German soldiers came running down the beach just as she was rowing away. That time,
she’d had the Jewish women in the boat with her, and the Germans opened fire.
Fortunately, the boat was just out of range and the bullets hit the water
harmlessly. But the terror hadn’t stopped there. They’d fully expected
the soldiers to call for assistance and a fast boat to be launched from the harbour
to cut them off. For whatever reason, that didn’t happen – Luc was of the
opinion that the soldiers were supposed to have been somewhere else, and raising an
alarm would mean questions would be asked – but although she was thankful for their
luck that night, Mariette knew it was unlikely to be repeated.

Edwin seemed to think the Allies would
invade France in early summer. She fervently hoped he was right. From Celeste and
the French fishermen she’d heard how much their people were suffering under
occupation. The farmers had seen their livestock and crops taken, and sometimes
farmhouses were ransacked and then burned to the ground. Children went hungry, and
old people were dying because they had too little food and not enough wood for the
fire to keep warm.

It was Luc who told her Celeste used the
profits she made from her café and brothel to help local people. ‘Some people
call her a collaborator because she entertains the Germans, but every sou she takes
from them is distributed around our people, and she takes such a big risk supporting
the Resistance. There are folk in town capable of informing on anyone just for a
loaf of bread or a few eggs, so it’s only a matter of time before one of them
points the finger at her.’

Mariette knew now that all those
terrible rumours of camps where Jews were gassed were true and not anti-Nazi
propaganda. She also knew that all
those working for the Resistance were shot or sent to labour camps when they were
caught. A labour camp might sound better than being shot, but by all accounts it was
worse because it was a slow, painful death from starvation and disease. This made
Celeste’s dogged determination to outwit the Gestapo even more admirable.

‘If you don’t want to miss
the train, you’d better hurry,’ Sybil shouted up the stairs, bringing
Mariette abruptly out of her reverie.

She moved away from the window and put
the last few things in her bag. She didn’t want to go, but she had to, people
were depending on her. Sybil never tried to pry into what she did any more. She
certainly knew it was dangerous, though, because each time Mariette left, the
goodbye hug was longer, and the relief on her face when she returned was
greater.

In the bottom of her wardrobe Mariette
had left a tin containing letters for her parents, Mog, her brothers, Edwin, Sybil
and Ted, and Ian and Sandra, just in case she didn’t make it back. She had
explained in the letters what she had been doing all these months, and said she
hoped they would forgive her for choosing to do something so dangerous. She had
written in one of them:

I felt glad that speaking fluent French and being able to handle a boat
enabled me to help a few people. Mum and Papa always said I was defiant as a
child, and I’ve been proud to defy the Germans by slinking in and out
of France right under their noses.

Each one of the letters was tailored
individually to tell her loved ones how much they meant to her and why. It struck
her, as she put the letters into the tin, that they were all she had to leave
anyone. Her clothes and other belongings would
fit into a small suitcase. And if she did die in France,
no one would even know where her body lay.