Survivor (52 page)

There was a huge round of applause, and
many people were wiping their eyes.

‘Now to the ultimate love
story,’ Mercer continued, once the clapping had subsided. ‘Morgan was a
handsome steward on the ship that brought the beautiful, young Mariette to England.
They fell for each other, but Morgan joined the army when war broke out. When he was
so badly burned at Dunkirk, he decided Mariette would not be able to deal with his
disfigurement and so he decided never to contact her again.

‘While Morgan was courageously
making himself indispensable in the Southampton hospital where he had many skin
grafts and plastic surgery, and was also training to be a nurse, Mariette was
helping Blitz victims in London. She lost all the family members she was staying
with in London on the night of her twenty-first birthday, in the bombing of the Café
de Paris, and so she moved to the East End of London to stay with Joan, whose two
children – Sandra, our bridesmaid, and Ian, our usher – are here today.’

‘Mari tried to save our mum when
the bomb hit the shelter
they were
in,’ Sandra called out. ‘She climbed out to get the rescue men, but Mum
died in hospital.’

‘That’s right,’ Mercer
nodded. ‘And Mariette came to live and work in Sidmouth purely so she could be
near Ian and Sandra, who had been evacuated here to Mr and Mrs Harding. It was while
working in the Plume of Feathers that Mariette was recruited for missions to get
people out of France. She was chosen because she is bilingual, but I think they must
have seen far more in her than a pretty girl who speaks fluent French.’

He paused to look at Mariette, who was
blushing furiously.

‘Ted and Sybil could only guess
where she went off to from time to time,’ he went on. ‘Sybil told me she
lived in constant fear for Mariette’s life. But tragic as it was that she was
shot in the knee while saving the children, she was brought to the hospital in
Southampton, to meet up with Morgan again –’

Wild clapping broke out, and Mercer had
to wait until it died down before continuing.

‘To cut a long story short, and so
we can get on with our meal, let me tell you that the spark of love, which had lain
dormant for years, finally flared up between them. And the end result is this
happy-ever-after wedding. I can’t think of two people more suited to one
another, or more deserving of happiness. I give you Mariette and Morgan!’

At six o’clock, Mariette slipped
upstairs to change into the slacks Mog had made for her, plus a new checked jacket.
The Hardings had managed to get some petrol for their car and had said they would
give the newly-weds a lift to the hotel in Lyme Regis, if they didn’t mind
having the children on their laps.

When she came back down to the bar,
George Mercer was talking to Morgan.

George turned to
Mariette. ‘I’ve got something before you go,’ he said.
‘It’s a message from Miss Salmon.’

‘Really?’ Mariette said.
‘It was she who got in touch with you?’

‘Yes, that’s right.
She’s a cold fish, if you’ll excuse the pun. At first, she said it was
impossible for you to see the children, but then suddenly she did an about-turn and
offered to have the children driven here today. All very odd, very Secret Service.
The woman wouldn’t even put anything in writing! She also told me to tell you
that Celeste is fine, still running her bar, and she is safe now from accusations of
collaboration as word got out about the risks she took to help people
escape.’

‘Thank God for that,’
Mariette exclaimed. ‘I was afraid she might have been arrested by the Gestapo.
She deserves a medal for all she did.’

‘Miss Salmon said that too, but
then she appears to be far more interested in those who did the rescuing than in
those who were rescued. It was quite miraculous that she got the children here
today.’

‘Well, I am very grateful. It
really made my day,’ Mariette said, and she beamed. ‘To see them all
looking so healthy and happy has made everything worthwhile. And how amazing to
learn their parents are still alive!’

George nodded. ‘Miraculous,
considering they were all Jewish and working for the Resistance. From what I
understand, the Gestapo normally shot such people on sight. But to return to you,
Mari, it seems Miss Salmon’s department does feel an obligation towards you.
When I told her you intended to go back to New Zealand as soon as possible after
your wedding, she said they would be pleased to give you some assistance.’

‘Good God!’ Mariette
exclaimed, looking hopefully at Morgan. ‘Did she mean financial assistance, or
getting on a ship?’

‘I think
it might be both. She told me to tell you to get in contact with her at the address
you know.’

‘That would be marvellous,’
Morgan said. ‘I can imagine what a scramble there will be for berths on ships.
Without help we might be waiting for months.’

‘The Hardings are ready to go now,
and I must go and say goodbye to the children,’ Mariette said. She inclined
her head to a burly man who was standing by the pub door. ‘I think
that’s their driver.’

The three smaller children clustered
around Mariette, all anxious to hug her. She spoke to each of them briefly in
French, telling them they were to work hard at school and keep out of mischief.

Then she turned to Bernard.
‘It’s made me so happy to have you here today,’ she said. ‘I
know the little ones don’t really understand everything, and I’m glad of
that. I hope, in time, you and I can forget it too.’ She put the address of
the Plume of Feathers into his hand. ‘Write to me here, when you are reunited
with your parents. The landlady will send it on to me. I’d like to keep in
touch.’

To her surprise, Bernard embraced her.
‘You were so brave,’ he said, speaking quietly in French into her ear.
‘We owe our lives to you. I am so sorry you lost your leg, but I am glad you
have a good husband now to take care of you.’

Mariette could feel herself welling up.
‘I couldn’t have done it without your help, Bernard. You were very brave
and strong too.’ She disengaged herself from his arms and smiled at the whole
group of children. ‘Your driver is here to take you home. I’m so glad
you came, and I hope you had a nice time.’

‘I read in a magazine a while
ago,’ Morgan said as they were in the car, driving with the Hardings to Lyme
Regis, ‘that when anyone looks back at their life, there is always someone
who was inspirational, or someone who
changed the course of their life. Do you think that’s so?’ he asked.

‘Well, these two changed the
course of our life,’ Mrs Harding said, turning her head round to look at him
and the children on the back seat. ‘We’d given up hope of having
children of our own, and we got talked into having a couple of evacuees. We were the
only people prepared to have a brother and sister; everyone else who agreed to have
two children wanted the same sex.’

Mr Harding said he had been inspired by
a man he was apprenticed to as a young lad.

‘I was inspired by both Dr Dudek,
the plastic surgeon, and Mr Mercer,’ Morgan said. ‘But I was really
thinking about the French boy, Bernard. Will he think of Mariette as
inspirational?’

Mr Harding smiled into his mirror.
‘I think every single person at the wedding today will always think of both of
you as inspirational. We’d be very happy if these two kids of ours learn
something from you two.’

‘Happy?’ Morgan asked as
they lay in bed. Their guesthouse was right by the Cobb in Lyme Regis, and through
the open window they could hear the sound of the sea slapping against the wall.

‘It was such a lovely day,’
Mariette sighed. ‘If only you could bottle days like this. And every now and
then, in the future, take the cork out and relive it.’

‘I do hope Miss Salmon does help
us get a passage to New Zealand,’ Morgan said thoughtfully. ‘I
can’t see the Netley carrying on as a hospital for much longer. It’s too
big and badly designed, and there aren’t many other hospitals that want male
nurses. We can’t live in two small rooms for long either. I’d like to
believe the politicians when they rabbit on
about a National Health Scheme, jobs and homes for all.
But where’s the money going to come from for all that?’

‘I don’t know,’ she
said sleepily. ‘The only thing I know right now is that I’ve never been
so happy before. Or so glad I’m with you. So I guess it doesn’t matter
how long it takes us to get to New Zealand. Or where the politicians get the money
from.’

‘Surely there was some other way of
ending the war than dropping atomic bombs?’ Mariette looked up from the
newspaper she was reading with tears running down her face. ‘They say that
seventy thousand people were killed instantly in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and many
more will die later. They weren’t killing soldiers, these were just ordinary
people – men, women, children and even babies.’

The news on 15th August that Japan had
surrendered, and that the war was finally over everywhere, was wonderful. There were
parties, fireworks and general jubilation throughout England. But now that Mariette
knew just how that victory had been won, she felt ashamed that she’d
celebrated. And she was pretty certain tens of thousands of others must feel the
same.

‘I know, it’s
dreadful,’ Morgan agreed. ‘But, in fairness to the Yanks, I don’t
think they fully realized what the bomb was capable of.’

‘What sort of a person creates a
weapon and uses it without knowing the end result?’ she said, angrily wiping
her tears away. ‘I don’t believe they didn’t know. I bet they did,
and they dropped the bombs regardless.’

It was Sunday morning and, for once,
Morgan had the day off to spend with Mariette. They had planned to catch the bus
later to Brockenhurst and have a picnic in the New Forest.

‘Stop looking at those
pictures,’ Morgan said, and snatched
the paper away from her. ‘You’ve been weepy
and worked up about lots of things lately. Why is that?’

‘I don’t know,’ she
said, looking up at him. ‘I started crying the other day at work, when a
patient told me her dog had died while she’d been in hospital. She had to
console me, she said the dog was very old and it had had a good innings.’

‘You couldn’t be pregnant,
could you?’ he said. ‘You are looking very rosy and fuller in the
face.’

Mariette just stared at him. ‘I
don’t know! That never occurred to me.’ She jumped up and dug her diary
out of her handbag. ‘I had the curse just after our honeymoon,’ she
said. ‘I put a cross on the 5th of June. There’s another one on the 3rd
of July …’ She leafed through a few more pages, then looked up at Morgan.
‘Nothing at the start of August, but I could just have forgotten to mark
it.’

‘Or it didn’t happen. And
what with the war ending, and all that excitement, you just didn’t
notice?’

‘Oh my giddy aunt!’ Mariette
exclaimed. ‘I don’t know whether to cry again or laugh. Is it good or
bad? What am I saying? Of course it’s good. But not really at the right time,
what with hoping to get a passage home.’

Morgan began to smile, and it gradually
stretched over his entire face. ‘As far as I’m concerned any time is the
right time. But maybe we should chivvy Miss Salmon up to get us there quicker. It
wouldn’t be ideal, if the baby was born at sea.’

Mariette got up and put her arms around
Morgan. ‘Well, nursey, how long before we know for sure?’

‘Take a pee sample into work
tomorrow and get them to test it,’ he said. ‘Might be a bit too early,
but worth a try. But I believe another reliable way of finding out is examining the
breasts, the areola turns brown. Let me look?’

‘You are
making that up,’ she giggled. ‘You are not examining them, because you
know what that will lead to.’

‘Exactly, my sweet,’ he
grinned. ‘But, as I’m your husband, I have a perfect right to examine
any part of your body I feel needs it.’

She fled into the bedroom, but he caught
her and pushed her down on to the bed.

‘Do you submit to
examination?’ he asked, holding her two hands above her head with just his
left hand while, with his right, he undid the buttons down the front of her blouse
and pulled up her bra.

‘I submit,’ she giggled.

‘Umm, as I suspected, brown
areolae. And if I’m not very much mistaken, Mrs Griffiths’s breasts are
a little fuller than normal. They will need to be kissed on a daily basis from now
on.’

‘So I am then?’ she asked,
but Morgan was too busy sucking at her nipples to answer.

Mariette smiled to herself. She might
not have thought of having a baby yet, but now it looked as if there was one on the
way. She felt a warm glow all over her.

She couldn’t be happier.

On Monday morning, the first thing
Mariette did was to ring Miss Salmon. Mr Mercer had given her the woman’s
London number after the wedding and suggested she phone to remind her of the offer
of a passage home.

Mariette hadn’t done it. Her
excuse had been the excitement of the wedding, and moving into their own little
flat, but the truth of the matter was that she was a little intimidated by the
chilly woman. But now she thought she was pregnant, and she was a match for
anyone.

To her surprise, Miss Salmon was in her
office and actually
seemed pleased to
hear from Mariette, asking how the wedding went and if she’d enjoyed seeing
the French children again.

‘It was the best wedding present
ever,’ Mariette said. ‘And I was so thrilled that they are going to be
reunited with their parents too. But Mr Mercer did tell me you would be prepared to
help with a passage home to New Zealand for my husband and me. We would like you to
honour that promise now. I’ve just found out I’m pregnant, and obviously
I want to be home before the baby comes.’

‘Well, I don’t know if I can
arrange anything quickly.’ Miss Salmon’s voice suddenly took on its more
normal chilly edge. ‘As I’m sure you realize, there are many important
people who are very anxious to get out to your country, and one has to
prioritize.’

‘Isn’t someone who risked
her life to save servicemen and members of the Resistance a priority? Especially
someone who lost a leg saving others?’ Mariette wheedled.

‘Well, of course, Mariette,’
she said, her tone oily. ‘I’ll see what I can do, but I can’t
promise anything.’

Mariette felt she had to drive her
message home or be fobbed off and perhaps never get help. ‘Thank you, Miss
Salmon. The only other way we can be sure of getting a passage is to bribe someone,
and we can’t afford to do that – not unless we sold my story to a
newspaper.’

‘You can’t do that!’
Miss Salmon exclaimed, and it sounded like panic in her voice.

‘I don’t want to, of
course,’ Mariette replied. ‘But I need to leave within the month, if
I’m to be home for Christmas.’

There was silence for a second or
two.

‘Leave it with me,’ Miss
Salmon said eventually. ‘I’m sure I can arrange something.’

When Mariette put the phone down, she
felt victorious. She could almost imagine Miss Salmon snatching up the
phone and demanding tickets for them.
She wouldn’t want the general public to learn about her department and how
little they cared for those they had recruited to risk their lives on secret
missions.

Mariette passed the next week in a
state of anxiety. She wouldn’t really go to a newspaper, and she wondered if
Miss Salmon realized that.

But at the end of the week, she received
confirmation that she was pregnant. The baby was due late April, and nothing seemed
as important as that news. It was tempting to ring home and tell them, but Morgan
said she should wait a little longer, so as not to tempt fate.

Then, three days after her pregnancy was
confirmed, a plump brown envelope arrived by post. To their absolute delight it
contained tickets on the
Ruahine
, sailing from Southampton to Auckland on
25th September.

‘Blimey!’ Morgan exclaimed.
‘That’s an old ship; she was due to be scrapped and was only saved
because of the war. I think she’s just been carrying troops and cargo since
then.’

‘I don’t care how old or
shabby she is – I’d paddle myself in a bathtub, if that was the only option.
Oh, Morgan, we’re going home!’

She flung her arms around him, her face
radiant with joy. He lifted her up by the waist and danced around with her. In the
last letter from home her parents had written that Alexis and Noah were still in
Italy, winding things up there, but they thought the boys would be home for
Christmas.

‘And we should be home for
Christmas too,’ Mariette screeched excitedly. ‘Could things get any
better?’

In early December, sitting on the deck
of the
Ruahine
, Morgan turned to look at Mariette. She’d fallen
asleep on a steamer
chair, as she did
most afternoons now it was warm enough to sit out in a spot shielded from the
wind.

He didn’t think he’d ever
seen a woman look so good pregnant. Her hair shone, her skin was radiant, and her
rounded belly was adorable to him.

In a week’s time they would be
docking in Auckland, and from there they would get the steamer up to Russell, to
arrive on 20th December, in plenty of time for Christmas. But however good it would
be to meet Mariette’s family, at last, and to see her little hometown, which
she talked about so often, he was also a little sad the voyage was coming to an
end.

Back in England work had always got in
the way of them spending much time together, so it had been marvellous to wake up
each day on the ship with nothing more pressing to do than go for meals, stroll
around the deck and just be together. The
Ruahine
had been refitted in
1933, to carry 220 passengers in tourist class, then relegated to cargo only in
1938. But the passenger accommodation had been reactivated later to carry
troops.

Fortunately, he and Mariette had been
given a cabin that must have been intended for an officer. It was spacious,
comfortable, on the top deck, right next to a bathroom, and it even had a double
bed. From what they understood from other passengers, mainly ex-servicemen returning
home, the other cabins were very poky and airless.

The cabin was a real retreat from the
other passengers, and also from memories of war, the hospital, and even real life.
They played cards, board games, lay on the bed reading, and there was also a great
deal of lovemaking. They were two of a very small group of passengers who
hadn’t suffered from seasickness. The passengers who had cabins down in the
bowels of the ship really suffered in rough seas. Despite telling himself before
they boarded that he wouldn’t
tell
anyone he was a nurse, so that he wouldn’t be called upon in an emergency,
Morgan had helped out, and so had Mariette. It had seemed wrong to lie around
enjoying themselves when so many of the passengers were ill.

One of the best things about the voyage,
apart from being with Mariette, was having time to reflect on both his past and his
future. He’d gone from being an illiterate Jack the Lad, who bedded any girl
that crossed his path on the cruise ships, to being a soldier. And then came his
injury – which, at the time, made him wish he was dead.

Those first few months of pain and total
dejection had been terrible, but good things had come out of it. He’d
discovered that his looks weren’t his only attribute, that he was intelligent,
he had compassion towards the sick, and he had the ability to learn new skills.

He had felt pangs of real sorrow saying
goodbye to the many friends he’d made at Netley and at the Borough. The two
hospitals had been his entire world for five years – until Mariette turned up, out
of the blue, he had thought he would be there for his whole life.

Mariette had stopped him thinking about
his disfigurement. He could even look in the mirror now and just see himself, not
the burn.

But now a whole new chapter in his life
was about to begin. He had no anxieties about being a husband and father, but he did
have some concerns about finding a job and adjusting to a life that wasn’t
centred around a hospital. Mari’s father sounded tough, and he just hoped he
could get on with him and her mother.

What he really wanted to do, though he
didn’t know yet if it was possible, was to work in a burns unit. He supposed
the closest one would be in Auckland, and maybe Mariette wouldn’t want to live
in a city.

But he
wasn’t going to talk to her about that yet. It could wait until after the baby
arrived. By then, she just might be thinking that Russell was actually too small and
lacking in challenges for her, after all. New babies had a way of making people
change their ideas about all kinds of things.

‘We’re nearly there
now!’ Mariette put her arm through Morgan’s and squeezed it tightly with
excitement as they stood at the steamer’s rail. She had been moved to tears so
many times on this last lap of the journey from Auckland to Russell, by the clear
blue sea, the lush greenness of the trees along the rocky coast, and the dolphins.
They had put on a display of gymnastics alongside the boat, which she was convinced
was just to welcome her home.

There was no longer a regular weekly
boat to Northland – people went by road now – but this one had been chartered to
serve all the holidaymakers going up to the Bay of Islands for Christmas, or further
into Northland where they had friends or relatives. There were also quite a few men
in civilian clothes, who she thought were returning servicemen, but she didn’t
know any of them as they weren’t from Russell.

‘There it is!’ she
exclaimed, as they sailed into the bay and they could see houses in the distance.
‘Do you think they’ll all be there to meet us? My heart feels like it
might explode with excitement. I don’t think I’ve ever been quite as
excited as this before, but I’m scared too.’

‘What of?’ he laughed,
putting his arms around her and hugging her.

‘That they’ll be upset by
the way I walk, that they won’t be the way I remember. Alexis was fifteen when
I left, Noel was fourteen. They’ll be grown men now seven years on. I was
always so mean to them, they are probably dreading me coming back.’

‘Silly
goose,’ he said affectionately, kissing her forehead. ‘Seven years and a
world war will have changed how everyone acts and feels. You aren’t the same
girl who left, and they won’t be the same boys.’