Survivor (42 page)

The boy did as he was told. As Mariette
felt the boat begin to float, she threw herself on to the side of it to roll in. She
heard a sharp bang, but before her brain had even registered that it was gunfire, a
searing stab of white-hot pain hit her right knee.

‘He wasn’t dead!’
Bernard exclaimed. He grabbed her, hauling her right into the boat.

A second shot
rang out, and a wail of shock and pain came from the smaller boy. To
Mariette’s horror, she saw that he had been hit in the shoulder.

She grabbed the oars, pushed off from
the large rock, and the tide began to draw the boat out to sea.

Another shot ran out. She saw the flash
from the rifle, low down on the ground and wild, which seemed to suggest the soldier
was shooting with his dying breath.

‘Bernard, take this and hold it
tight against the little boy’s wound,’ she ordered him, pulling off a
scarf from around her neck. ‘What’s his name?’

‘Isaac,’ Bernard said.
‘He’s the brother of Sabine, the little girl. Celine is six, and
she’s my sister.’

‘OK, Isaac,’ Mariette said
as she rowed briskly, trying very hard not to scream at the pain in her knee.
‘You’ve been shot, and so have I, but we’ll be patched up when the
boat comes for us. But we have to be quiet until the boat comes. Can you be really
brave and not cry until we are safe?’

‘I’ll try,’ he
whispered. ‘But it really hurts.’

‘Mine does too,’ she
admitted. ‘But we’re going to be brave soldiers.’

The buoy was ellusive. Mariette could
hear the bell tinkling, but she couldn’t see it as the waves were so high.
They were all drenched now, and little Sabine was whimpering, big dark eyes full of
fear as she clung to Bernard. Celine was holding the scarf to Isaac’s wound
and doing her best to comfort him. It struck Mariette that these four children must
have already been through several kinds of hell to remain so controlled in what was
a terrifying ordeal. It was dark, freezing cold, they were soaking wet, waves
threatened to turn the boat over, and they were with a woman they didn’t
know.

She wished she could be so controlled.
But she was in pain, and she was afraid that the gunfire might bring other
soldiers running, and then the dead man
would be discovered. It was too dark to see anything on the shore, but that
didn’t mean there was no one there. What if Luc had already been prevented
from sailing because the Germans had suspicions about him? How long could she stay
out on the open sea, with four children, just hoping help was going to come?

Between her own pain, and her fears for
the children, she felt this was the very worst kind of nightmare. She had a mental
picture of Celeste trying to charm Nazi officers who had come to search La Plume
Rouge. Would they arrest Celeste and take her away?

What was she going to do, if that was
the case? She couldn’t keep the children out here all night, and by morning
they’d be dead from the cold. If she couldn’t even find the buoy, how
would she manage to row the boat further along the coast, and get them safely on to
land there? And even if she did manage that, the shed she’d spent the day in
was as devoid of comfort as the rowing boat.

On top of all that, there was also her
wound and Isaac’s. She knew little about medical matters but she knew her knee
was shattered. And at the rate blood was running out of it, she would pass out soon.
Isaac was just a child, and without prompt treatment he might get an infection that
could kill him.

What was she going to do?

She was feeling faint, but she gritted
her teeth and made herself think of what her father had gone through in the Great
War. He had fought on with severe injuries, and so must she.

All at once she could see his face in
front of her. He was saying something, and she had to strain her ears to hear.
‘True courage is when you can hold on to what is right,’ she heard him
say, ‘whatever the cost to yourself, even if it seems all hope is
gone.’

She knew that
was what he’d said to her before she left New Zealand, but it felt as if he
was here, whispering it in her ear.

‘
Elise!
’

She roused herself at the name she
hardly recognized.

Bernard was prodding her arm. ‘I
think the buoy is right here, I saw it a second ago. You got us here.’

The little boat was tossed up by a big
wave and, as it came down again, Mariette saw the buoy. With all the skill
she’d perfected in her youth, back in Russell, she managed to throw a loop of
rope over the top of the buoy and pull the boat closer.

‘You are so clever,’ Bernard
said admiringly.

‘I’ve had a lot of
practice,’ she said, and managed a weak grin even though her knee felt as if
it was going to explode.

‘Isaac is getting very
sick,’ Celine said anxiously. ‘And Sabine and I are so cold.’

‘It won’t be long
now,’ Mariette said. ‘Let’s play who can be the first to spot the
fishing boat?’

It seemed like they waited for ever, the
little boat pitching up and down, sprayed by icy water, the cold wind searing their
faces. Five pairs of eyes peered into the darkness, and Mariette silently prayed
that rescue would come.

Then, just as little Sabine began to
cry, Bernard saw the small green light from the fishing boat. ‘That’s
got to be it,’ he cried out gleefully. ‘If it was a German ship,
they’d have a big searchlight.’

Later, as Mariette lay in the bunk
wrapped in a blanket with Luc cleaning and dressing her knee, she learned that it
was only seven o’clock when he picked her and the children up. It seemed
impossible that the ordeal from leaving her hiding place to find the children, to
cutting the soldier’s throat,
getting the children in the boat, rowing out in a heavy
sea with a knee which was smashed to pieces, then waiting for Luc to come had all
happened in just two hours.

Just the part when they were in the
rowing boat on the open sea, waiting for Luc, had seemed hours.

‘Short of being blasted out of the
water by a torpedo, or fired on by a German plane, the nightmare is over,’ she
said with a snigger. She didn’t think she could ever adequately explain to him
how wonderful it was to see his boat steaming towards them.

‘Not quite,’ Luc reminded
her sternly. ‘You’ve got to get aboard the English boat yet, and this
knee is going to take some sorting out.’

‘We’re all alive,
that’s what matters,’ she said. Her knee hurt like hell, but it had been
heaven to get out of her soaked clothes, which smelled of blood. ‘How is
Isaac’s shoulder?’

Guy was at the wheel, and Bernard and
Luc had fixed up a makeshift bed for the children on the cabin floor with some
cushions and blankets. After Isaac’s wound had been cleaned and dressed,
he’d been only too glad to get into bed with Celine and Sabine.

‘It is only a flesh wound,’
Luc said, smiling down at the sleeping children. ‘Look how deeply he’s
sleeping, it can’t hurt too bad.’

Mariette smiled at the children too.
Sabine and Celine were such pretty little girls, with dark curly hair, soft spaniel
eyes and wide mouths. Isaac had light brown hair with a cowlick in the front that
made it stand up, and a sprinkling of freckles on his nose. Now that he was relaxed
in sleep, he looked as if the only sorrow in his life was losing at marbles.

‘And you, Bernard? How are you
doing?’ she asked the older boy, who was sitting at the little table wrapped
in a blanket.

He looked round
at her and tried to smile. ‘I’m alright, thanks to you.’ He was a
tall boy, very thin, with dark eyes that looked too big for his face, and his thick
curly black hair was badly in need of a cut. Mariette suspected he was brooding on
her killing the soldier. It was shocking enough for her to discover she was capable
of killing but even more shocking for a child to witness it.

‘It’s time you got some
sleep,’ she said.

Luc said he had to go back into the
wheelhouse with Guy.

As soon as he’d gone out of the
door, Bernard looked back at Mariette. ‘Have you killed many people?’ he
asked.

‘No, tonight was the first. And I
didn’t do it very well, or he wouldn’t have fired at Isaac and
me.’

‘I couldn’t believe you did
that,’ he said in a small voice. ‘I mean, you sort of leapt at him like
a wild cat, and when you pulled his head back I saw how you killed him.’

‘It was him, or us,’ she
said. ‘I hope that makes it right for you.’

‘I know people have to be killed
in war. And after what the Nazis are doing to my people, I should be glad to see
another one die. But a knife seems far more personal than a gun,’ he said, his
voice wobbling.

Mariette wished she could get up to give
him a hug. He was too young to be seeing such things, but she guessed he’d
already seen more horror than most people saw in a lifetime.

‘Try not to dwell on it,
Bernard,’ she said. ‘I shocked myself that I was capable of it. But
I’m glad I was, or none of us would be here now. And your parents would have
been very proud of the way you handled yourself tonight too. Climb into this bunk
with me now. You are exhausted, and there’s room for two of us.’

He wriggled in on the inside of the
bunk, and fell asleep almost as soon as his head touched the pillow. Mariette
wished she could sleep as peacefully,
to wash away the pain in her knee, the smell of blood which seemed to be lingering
on her, and the sadness that she’d only been able to save four Jewish children
when there were tens of thousands who would perish before the war was over.

‘I can’t believe something so
terrible could happen to her.’ Belle sobbed against Etienne’s chest.
‘We should never have sent her to England.’

‘She’ll be fine now
she’s in hospital,’ Etienne assured her, hoping this was the case. He
was still reeling from being called to Peggy’s bakery at daybreak to take the
telephone call from Sybil.

To learn that their daughter had been
shot on some kind of secret mission in France, when they believed she’d been
safely working behind a bar in a sleepy seaside town in England, was a terrible
shock. Etienne had always believed he could deal calmly with anything life threw at
him, but he was wrong. It wasn’t possible to stay calm when one of your
children was hurt or in danger.

‘Why would she volunteer to do
something so dangerous?’ Belle sobbed. ‘Doesn’t she understand
we’ve got enough worry, with the boys over there, without her adding to
it?’

‘I think we should be proud she
chose to do something to help in this war,’ he said. ‘Did you stop to
think how Mog would feel if you were killed, when you signed up to drive ambulances
in the last war?’

‘That was different,’ Belle
sniffed.

Etienne grinned. Belle had been just as
impulsive and daring as Mari when she was younger, but for some reason she
had always seen Mari’s spirit as
a bad thing. Boys were allowed to be daring, but girls should be quiet and
obedient.

‘It wasn’t different at
all,’ he reproved her. ‘You drove ambulances because you wanted to do
something to help in the war. And, although we don’t know what Mari was
actually doing in France, I’m sure it was something similar. So dry those
pretty eyes, and just be happy she’s lived to tell the tale.’

Belle grimaced. ‘You always did
take her part when she acted impulsively.’

‘Just as you took Alexis and
Noel’s part when I took them to task for being too timid! That’s the
whole point of having two parents, they balance each other out.’

He smiled at Belle, who was pouting. If
she’d had her way, she would have wrapped the boys in cotton wool. But her
pout was so sexy, he felt a strong urge to kiss her.

‘It was nice that Sybil sounded so
fond of Mari. She said she was a credit to us,’ Belle said reflectively.
‘I just wish so much we could go to her. Letters and phone calls aren’t
enough, not when she’s in hospital.’

‘If there was a way to get to
England, I’d try,’ Etienne said. ‘But we know it isn’t
possible, and Sybil said we can phone the pub any time for updates.’

Peggy came bustling into the shop then,
her big face flushed with both the heat from the ovens in the bakery and from
distress, because when she answered the person-to-person call from England she
thought it had to mean one of their children was dead. To see Belle and
Etienne’s white faces, and the way they were clinging together, only confirmed
this for her.

‘Is one of them –’ she broke
off, unable to say that terrible word.

‘No, they are all alive and well,
Peggy, just Mari with a
busted-up
knee,’ Etienne said, understanding what their friend had thought. ‘The
lady who called was Sybil, the owner of the pub where Mari works and lives.
We’re only upset because it seems Mari has been doing secret work in France,
and this could have been a lot worse than a bullet through her knee.’

‘You mean she’s been
spying?’ Peggy asked.

Etienne laughed. ‘No, I
don’t think so, we assume she was working for the Resistance. But her injury
has put paid to that! It seems it will be a long job getting her walking again. But
the hospital in Southampton is a good one, so she’ll get the best of
care.’

‘Thank heavens for that. But
you’d better take Belle home now, and give her some special care,’ Peggy
said, noting that Belle was shaking. ‘If you need to use the phone again, you
know you can come any time.’

Etienne put his arm around Belle to
support her as they walked the short distance home. He was worried because she was
so shaken and pale. He could see Mog up ahead, waiting for them on the veranda, and
even from a distance he could sense her agitation.

The war and worry for their children had
taken its toll on all of them. He might still be lean and healthy at sixty-four, but
when he looked in the mirror it was a shock to see how lined his face had become and
that his hair was white, not blond any more.

Mog had just had her seventy-second
birthday, and her hair was snow white too. She had arthritis in her knees and walked
with a stick. But although she joked that she was growing senile because she forgot
things and repeated stories, Etienne knew that she was far off that.

As for Belle, at forty-nine she was
still a beautiful woman, even with grey hair and glasses. She had kept her figure,
the
brilliant blue of her eyes and the
sweetness of her smile, and there was hardly ever a morning when Etienne
didn’t wake up and look at her and think how lucky he was.

They’d been through a great deal,
both before their marriage and after, but the love between them had grown even
stronger with the birth of the children, in spite of the hardships of the Depression
and now this war. Mog, Belle and Etienne all felt empty and rudderless without the
children; the house was too quiet, too tidy and too big. He missed them coming out
in the boat with him, the chatter at mealtimes, and even having to break up the
squabbles between them.

Mog still did all the dressmaking and
alterations work in Russell, but Belle rarely made hats any more. Instead, she grew
vegetables and fruit in their garden and on a piece of land they had acquired near
their house, and she sold the surplus produce.

With all the younger men in Russell
having gone off to the war, Etienne had more than enough building or repair work to
keep him busy, and the three of them were better off financially than they had ever
been. But that was no compensation for missing the children, or for the ever-present
fear of getting that telegram telling them one, or both, of the boys was dead or
missing in North Africa.

Ironically, they had never really
worried about Mari being killed; perhaps that was purely because she’d cheated
death twice in bombings in which her companions had died. They did worry about the
boys, though, because their regiments were right in the thick of the action, but so
far neither of them had received so much as a scratch. He just hoped their luck
would hold out.

Three boys from Russell had been killed,
boys who had gone to school with his children, played on the beach with
them and come to the house for parties.
At each memorial service he and Belle had felt deeply for the bereaved parents, and
it drove home the message that today the service might be for Tom, Roger or Andrew,
but next week or next month it could be for Alexis or Noel.

‘What was up? Is she sick, in
trouble?’ Mog called out as they got closer.

They waited until they were sitting down
on the veranda bench before Belle explained to Mog all that they knew. But it
wasn’t enough for any of them. Even Sybil had said that, when the man called
to tell her Mari was in hospital, he’d been reluctant to say anything more
than the fact that she was hurt. She’d had to drag the information out of him
that it was a bullet wound in her knee.

‘Her knee is very badly
damaged,’ Belle said. ‘Sybil doesn’t know how it happened – why,
or even where – but she said she was planning to go to see Mari in hospital tomorrow
and she’ll ring us again then. But doctors can do wonders now, Mog, it’s
not like it was in the last war.’

Etienne could see by the haunted look in
Belle’s eyes that she was remembering the time when she was told how her first
husband, Jimmy, had lost an arm and a leg at Ypres.

‘Trust Mari to stick her neck out
and volunteer for something dangerous,’ Mog said.

Etienne smiled. He could see that Mog
felt proud of Mari’s courage.

‘There hasn’t even been a
hint in her letters that she was doing anything like this,’ Belle said
indignantly. ‘How could she write home and tell us about the pub and Edwin,
and leave this out?’

‘You can talk! As I recall, you
put very little in your letters about the conditions when you were in France,’
Mog retorted.

‘They
were too bad to write about,’ Etienne said. ‘But if Mari was working for
the Secret Service, she wouldn’t be able to divulge anything.’

‘What if she can’t walk any
more?’ Belle said fearfully.

‘Will you stop it!’ Etienne
said. ‘There’s no point indulging in this “what if”
speculation. We must wait till Sybil rings us again with more news. Maybe Edwin will
ring us too – that is, if he’s been told. Poor chap, I expect he’s as
shocked as we are to find out what she’s been up to.’

Belle excused herself and went indoors
and up into the bedroom to cry. She knew everything Etienne had said made perfect
sense. But he didn’t understand that discovering her daughter had been
involved in something dangerous was far worse than facing danger herself.

She wanted Mari back just the way she
was when she left here, five years ago. She may have been disobedient, devious and
selfish, but at least she was safe.

Belle knew her daughter had changed
dramatically in those five years. When she first arrived in England and wrote home,
Belle’s instinct told her Mari was playing along at being a caring, sensible
girl, and many a sleepless night was spent wondering how long it would be before her
daughter disgraced herself.

It was after Noah, Lisette and Rose had
died in the bomb blast that real maturity shone through in Mari’s letters.
There was no self-pity, only grief that she’d lost a family she’d come
to love. She never said that Jean-Philippe had made her leave the house, but Belle
and Etienne sensed he’d been mean to her, and Belle knew only too well what a
come-down moving from St John’s Wood to the East End would be. Yet Mari
didn’t moan about her reduced circumstances. In fact, she wrote about her
friend Joan in glowing terms, grateful for a roof over her head.

Yet it was when
Joan died in the air raid, and Mari was left with nothing – no home, not even a
change of clothes – that the real transformation in her character happened. Her pain
at losing her friend Joan was all too clear. She said in one impassioned letter that
it wasn’t right that a woman with two children should be taken. Then she moved
to Sidmouth, and, although she never said that it was because Joan’s children
were there, Belle knew it was. And she was deeply touched by her daughter’s
compassion towards them. Five years ago, Mari wouldn’t have thought beyond her
own needs. She might have got a rich man to take care of her, and it certainly
wouldn’t have occurred to her to try to help two motherless children who she
barely knew.

Belle buried her face in the pillow and
cried.

She felt guilty that, whenever she felt
anxious about Mari, she always imagined her doing the sort of shameful things
she’d done herself when she was in a tight spot. What sort of mother was she
that she hadn’t worried about bombs or stray bullets, and had only anticipated
an unwanted pregnancy, dishonesty or guile?

Why hadn’t she been able to trust
Mari to do the right and honourable thing?

She heard Etienne come into the room,
but he said nothing. He just sat on the bed beside her and scooped her into his
arms. He let her cry against his shoulder for some time before speaking.

‘You know, we’ve had more
than our share of good fortune,’ he said eventually. ‘We found each
other again, we’ve got three beautiful, bright and healthy children, and we
live in paradise. If all we have to grieve about is one of our brood in hospital
with a bullet wound, then I think our luck is holding out.’

‘You
always manage to look on the bright side,’ she sniffed. ‘But I feel
responsible for this because I thought it was a good idea to send her to
England.’

‘It
was
a good idea. If
she’d stayed in New Zealand, she would have got into some kind of
trouble,’ he said. ‘As it turns out, England seems to have been the
making of her. All I hope is that Edwin doesn’t keep her there for
ever.’

‘That’s just it,’
Belle sighed. ‘She doesn’t tell us her plans, or what she thinks about.
She’s never even said outright that she loves Edwin, or that they’re
planning a future together. I’d feel so much happier if I could sit down with
her for an hour or so and find out everything.’

‘Do children ever tell their
parents everything?’ Etienne chuckled. ‘I certainly never told my father
anything because he was always drunk. I doubt you told Annie anything
either.’

‘No. But I had Mog, and I did talk
to her.’

Etienne moved and propped himself up on
his elbow, looking down at her. ‘I bet you didn’t tell her you’d
met me again in France and been unfaithful to Jimmy?’ he said, arching one
eyebrow.

‘No! How could I tell her that?
She loved Jimmy.’

‘I’m just reminding you that
there are many reasons for not telling the whole truth,’ he said pointedly.
‘Maybe Mari doesn’t think Edwin is “the One”. Or maybe she
knows he doesn’t care as much as she does. Or he could have some hideous
disfigurement.’

Belle managed a faint smile. ‘Now
you are being silly!’

Etienne smoothed her hair back from her
face. ‘Come out on the boat with me today. We’ll take a picnic, and
I’ll make love to you on a deserted beach.’

‘Why is it that you believe making
love is the cure for everything, from a headache to fallen arches?’ she
asked.

‘Because,
ma chérie
, you
have been exceptionally healthy
since I
began making love to you. That is all the proof I need.’

Belle giggled. Etienne still had the
power to make her feel eighteen again.

It was just two days after the phone
call about Mari’s injury that Mog returned from the shop with a letter in her
hand. Belle and Etienne were still in the kitchen, lingering over breakfast.