Survivor (53 page)

Belle, Etienne and Mog were waiting on
the wharf, as excited as Mariette was, and just as fearful. For them it was worry
over whether Mariette would approve of the redecoration of her bedroom, anxiety that
Morgan might prove difficult, and fear that Mariette had been away for so long that
she’d never fit back in. They’d suggested Alexis and Noel stay at home,
for now, as they were afraid Mariette would be overwhelmed by too many people
meeting her at the ship.

‘No more than ten minutes
now,’ Etienne said, putting his arms around both Belle and Mog’s waists,
but not taking his eye off the ship sailing towards them. He wanted that first
sighting of his daughter’s beautiful hair.

Waiting like this took him back to the
day he’d arrived on the old SS
Clansman
. It had been pouring with
rain and he’d stood up on the deck in readiness, his heart thumping with fear
that Belle might have found a new love since arriving here a year earlier.

She hadn’t, and she was
miraculously waiting on the wharf, just as they were doing now. Not for him, of
course – she didn’t know he was coming – but to collect a parcel. He
remembered her startled expression when she first saw him, a look that told him she
thought she was seeing things. Then, suddenly, she was running into his arms. The
girl he’d held in his heart for so long still wanted him.

He bent to whisper in Belle’s ear.
‘Remember the day I arrived?’ he asked.

She smiled up at him, older now, a
little plumper, and with her hair turning grey, but still his beautiful girl.

‘Yes, and
nothing’s changed,’ she whispered back. ‘You still make my heart
sing.’

‘What are you two whispering
about?’ Mog asked.

‘That would be telling,’
Etienne said, and looked back to the boat. ‘Look! Is that her, up in the bows?
Wearing something green?’

All three of them peered at the
boat.

‘I think it could be,’ Belle
said. ‘Her hair is fair.’

They were aware that others had arrived
to meet the boat. They could hear feet on the gravel path along the foreshore,
voices raised in greeting. In the days when the
Clansman
came every week,
bringing post, household goods and even the odd piano, there had been a tradition
that everyone came to meet it.

That tradition had died along with the
demise of the SS
Clansman
, but Belle knew that most of the people coming
here now wanted to see Mariette and her new husband. They would all insist it was to
welcome her home. But Belle knew word had got out that Mari had lost a leg, and
Morgan was scarred by a burn, and they were curious.

Although she was irritated by people
being so morbid, she thought it was better that they see her daughter and son-in-law
here, to satisfy their curiosity, rather than calling round to the house on some
pretext.

‘Coo-ee!’

Belle turned her head to see Peggy
hobbling towards her. She had a problem with her feet now, and found it hard to walk
any distance.

‘I couldn’t get the shop
shut,’ Peggy said breathlessly, wiping her perspiring face on her apron.
‘People kept on coming in. There are so many of them on holiday here, goodness
knows where they are all staying.’

‘We think that’s Mari, up in
the bows,’ Mog said, pointing her out.

‘I bet
she’s been standing there for the whole trip, she always did like the wind in
her hair. I just hope Morgan likes the sea too,’ Belle said.

‘He must do, if he worked on
ships,’ Etienne said.

‘Let’s all wave now, whether
it’s her or not,’ Mog said. ‘Her eyesight will be better than
ours. If she waves back, we’ll know for certain.’

They waved frantically. Sure enough, the
figure on the boat, and the man with her, waved back too.

In real time it took less than ten
minutes for the ship to reach the wharf, be secured and for the gangplank to be put
in place. But it seemed like an hour to those waiting on the wharf.

As Mariette took her first slightly
hesitant step on to the gangplank, Belle broke away from Etienne and rushed forward,
reaching her daughter just as she touched land.

‘My darling girl,’ Belle
cried out, flinging her arms around her daughter. ‘Welcome home! There were
times when I thought I was never going to see you again.’

‘Let other people get off the
boat,’ Etienne said behind her, drawing both his wife and daughter to one
side.

‘Papa!’ Mariette exclaimed,
and all at once she was crying, trying to hug both parents at once.

Mog turned to Morgan. Smiling, she held
out both her hands to him. ‘Welcome home too, Morgan. I’m Mog, and
we’ve all been dying to meet you. They’ll get around to saying that too,
any minute. But I think the sooner we can get back to the house the
better.’

For Mariette it was the strangest
feeling to be back home again. Everything – the sights, the sounds and the smells –
were all so familiar, as if she’d left only yesterday. But it had a dreamlike
quality to it, as if she might wake up and find herself back in England.

Everyone had so
much to say, so many questions to ask, and Mariette found it quite unnerving that
her two brothers were now grown men with deep voices and wide shoulders. Yet their
deep cobalt-blue eyes seemed to reflect all the danger and hardships they must have
experienced.

With everyone talking at once, Belle
told Etienne and Mog to take Morgan and the boys into the kitchen, and she would
take Mariette and her luggage up to her old room.

‘That’s better,’ Belle
said, shutting the bedroom door behind them. ‘I’ve got you all to myself
for a few minutes.’

Mariette sat down on the new double bed,
which had replaced her old single one, and looked around her. The pictures of film
stars she’d pinned up were gone now, and the walls were papered in a pretty
blue and white paper. All the furniture was the same, though, just given a fresh
coat of white paint. There was an enlargement of a photograph of Mariette on the
wall; she was standing at the helm of a yacht, wearing oilskins, because it was a
heavy sea.

‘Where did that come from?’
Mariette asked. It was far too good a photograph to have been taken by anyone she
knew.

‘A photographer who was here on a
fishing holiday took it. It must have been the year before you left for England.
Anyway, a couple of years ago he came back here again and gave it to us. As you can
imagine, your father was thrilled. He made the frame, and we put it in here when we
did the room up for you.’

‘It’s all lovely,’
Mariette said. ‘So pretty and fresh. And it’s so very good to be home
again.’

‘Mog thinks you and Morgan will
want a place of your own by the time Christmas is over,’ Belle said. But she
laughed, as if unsure whether that was likely or not.

‘I don’t think so,’
Mariette said. ‘Come and sit here, so we
can cuddle.’ She patted the bed beside her.
‘Or do you think I’m too old for that now?’

Belle was there in a trice, hugging
Mariette tightly. ‘There were times when I thought I’d never, ever do
this again,’ she said, her voice cracking with emotion. ‘Now I just want
to hold you and never let you go.’

‘You’ll be a grandmother
before long,’ Mariette said. ‘I won’t get a look-in with you, once
there’s a baby to compete with.’

‘You’ll always be my
baby,’ Belle said fondly, patting her daughter’s cheek.
‘That’s why I’ve got to ask about your leg. I need to see it. Is
that peculiar of me?’

Mariette laughed. ‘No, I think I
understand. I’ve been told that all new mothers check to see their baby has
all its fingers and toes. I guess it’s the same instinct.’

‘Then you don’t mind showing
me?’

‘No, well, as long as it’s
once and for all. To put your mind at rest.’

Mariette stood up and unfastened her
slacks so they fell to the ground. She heard Belle’s sharp intake of breath
but she said nothing, just let her see the prosthetic leg and how it strapped on.
She understood that the hardest thing in the world for any mother was to see their
child injured.

‘It doesn’t hurt,
Mum,’ she said as she sat down and began to unstrap the leg. ‘I’m
used to it now, and I don’t mind it any more. I want you to feel that way too.
I can do most things I did before, I just can’t run or jump. There!’ She
exposed the stump, took her mother’s hand and laid it on her upper thigh.
‘I’m still the same, Mum, there’s just a bit missing, that’s
all.’

She watched as her mother’s
fingers hesitantly touched the stitching on the stump, and saw the tears rolling
down her cheeks.

‘Don’t cry, Mum,’ she
said. ‘I really am OK about it.’

‘When you
were a baby, I kissed your tummy, your bottom and those plump little thighs,’
Belle whispered. ‘I played “This Little Piggy” with your toes. It
never crossed my mind that anything could ever spoil your perfect body. But thank
you for letting me see. It’s not awful like I expected.’

‘We’ve got so much to talk
about,’ Mariette said as she strapped the leg back on and pulled up her
trousers. ‘I don’t mean about this, but things we never discussed
before. You, Papa and Mog, how you all came together, your adventures both before
and during the last war. I want to know it all.’

Belle chuckled. ‘And I shall be
quizzing you about your adventures too.’

Mariette stood up and took her
mother’s hand. ‘But not today, we’ve got a lifetime for all that.
Let’s go down now and see the boys. I bet they’ve got lots to tell
too.’

Later that evening, after a celebratory
dinner of roast lamb, something neither Mariette nor Morgan had eaten for years,
Belle suggested they should all move outside as it was such a lovely warm
evening.

On the way back to New Zealand, Mariette
had run through her head all the conversations she would have with her family.
Especially her two brothers, because she was very well aware that they hadn’t
really communicated at all before she left for England.

Yet, despite all that planning, once
they were all sitting around the table together, the conversation was as trivial as
if they’d only been apart for a week. Mariette and Morgan spoke about the
voyage home, and Alexis and Noel told them about a few incidents when they’d
been kicking their heels in Auckland for a week, unable to come home until
they’d been officially demobbed.

As they all got up to move outside,
Alexis caught hold of
Mariette and held
her for several minutes without saying a word. When he finally released her, he
touched her cheek tenderly.

‘It’s great to be home with
you again, sis, and to know that Noel and I are going to be uncles. Tonight
isn’t the time to discuss the war and what it has done to all of us.
It’s just a time to be glad we are all home, safe again. To welcome Morgan to
our family, and to look ahead to Christmas.’

Noel patted her shoulder, as if to say
that he was in total agreement with his elder brother.

‘Wait till you see what the old
man’s been up to while we’ve all been away,’ he said, grinning
like a Cheshire Cat.

‘Less of the
“old”,’ Etienne reproved him. ‘I had to find things to do,
with all my children gone, and my wife off growing fruit and vegetables.’

Etienne took Mariette’s hand and
led her outside. When she saw the transformation, she gasped.

When she was growing up, there had just
been scrubby uneven grass running downhill from the back doorstep to the chicken
run. In winter it was like a swamp, and in the summer the grass had huge bald
patches because of all the ball games played there.

But now it was a raised terrace of
rather splendid crazy paving, with the walls surrounding it designed to be planted
up with flowers. It looked beautiful, with a riot of bright red, orange and yellow
flowers cascading over the walls. A couple of steps led down to the rest of the
garden, where there was a real lawn, lush and green, with pretty flower beds.
Mariette could see neat rows of vegetables growing behind a trellis.

‘It’s beautiful,’
Mariette exclaimed, and all at once she burst into tears. Somehow, the
transformation in the garden brought home to her the realization that she and her
brothers were grown-ups now. That her parents and Mog had been
forced to make a life just for themselves while the
children were away. They were all home together again now, but she, Alexis and Noel
would all have to find their own path soon, which might even take them away from
Russell.

Morgan sat down and pulled Mariette on
to his lap, letting her cry on his shoulder.

‘She’s understandably
emotional,’ he said, looking around at her family, who all looked confused by
her tears. ‘She’s kept an image of this house, of Russell and all of
you, in her heart for seven years. But that image is out of date now. There’s
so much to say to all of you, so many stories about each of you that she wants to
hear. But she’s forgetting there is no rush, that we’ve got endless time
ahead of us to catch up.’

Etienne put his hand on Morgan’s
shoulder. ‘Well said, Morgan. And can I just say how glad I am to find that my
daughter has married the man I would have picked for her myself?

‘I can imagine what was going
through your head on the long voyage, not really knowing what lay at the end of it.
I made that trip into the unknown myself once. But I know you and Mari are going to
be as happy as Belle and I have been, and a new life begins for you now as a member
of this family.’

He sat down then, next to Morgan, and
took Mariette’s hand in his. She had begun to cry even harder because of what
her father had said.

‘Tomorrow, we’ll go out on
the boat,’ he promised. ‘And you’ll find nothing has really
changed here.’

Belle came closer and bent down to kiss
both Morgan and Mariette’s cheeks. ‘What a future we have now! All of us
older and wiser, but with a baby joining us soon. Babies have a habit of making
everything real, they show you what is important and what isn’t.’