The House at Mermaid's Cove(7)
“I’ll do that.” He straightened up.
“Please, let me try,” I said.
He nodded, watching me as I made my way to the door. I managed to open it without losing my balance. The air felt cool and fresh, with a lemony tang of seaweed. I saw that the tide had come right up the beach. The place where Jack had found me had disappeared. Only the tops of the rocks were visible. I could see a row of thin metal spikes protruding from the surface of the water. It stretched right across the cove—a barrier to stop enemy boats from landing. I realized how lucky I had been not to get trapped in it. If my chemise hadn’t ripped, I would probably have drowned.
The water was very calm—tiny waves breaking on the shingle. But the thought of being in it or on it made my stomach flip over. I doubted I would ever be able to set foot in a boat again.
The cove curved in a wide semicircle. Beyond the rocks, farther along the shoreline, I glimpsed a huddle of cottages that reminded me of the fishing villages along the coast of Ireland. Above the houses were sloping fields dotted with cows.
Jack came outside as I was opening the shutters. “Make sure you close them before it gets dark,” he said. “We have blackout at night here—no light allowed to be visible from any window. I don’t want to scare you, but we get enemy planes on bombing raids along this coast.”
“Yes, of course.” After what had happened to the Brabantia, I was only too aware of how close the Germans were.
“Are you sure you’ll be all right down here on your own?” His eyes met mine. “I have to go now, I’m afraid—there’s a lot happening up at the house.” He looked away, toward the tumbling waves, as if he had been about to say more but had thought better of it.
“Does anyone know that I’m here?”
“Not yet.” He let out a breath. “I thought it best to keep quiet about you, for now. People around here are very touchy about strangers.”
“When will you tell them?”
“When you’re well enough to come up to the farm.”
“You won’t say that I’m a nun, will you?”
He cast me a puzzled look. “Not if you don’t want me to.”
“It’s just . . .” I faltered.
“I think I understand,” he said. “You don’t want to be typecast. You want to be yourself.”
I nodded. But the voice inside my head hissed his words back at me. Be yourself? I’d been a nun for all my adult life. What kind of person would be left, with all that stripped away?
“I’ll be back first thing in the morning.” He reached out as if to take my arm. His hand hovered briefly in the air. Was he afraid to touch me? Or did he think I’d be offended if he tried to help me back inside the boathouse? He tilted his palm, turning the gesture into a sort of wave. Then he headed toward the trees, his boots leaving a trail of prints in the pale sand. I followed him with my eyes until he disappeared.
Chapter 4
Jack had left a saucepan of water warming on the stove, and I used it to rinse the salt out of my hair. It was a difficult balancing act, getting the saucepan onto the floor, but I managed it. I knelt and dunked my whole head in. When I had toweled it dry, I picked up the small circular mirror Jack had brought. Looking at my reflection made blood surge to my cheeks. Beneath the tufts of dark auburn hair were darker eyebrows. Eyes of moss green stared back at me, wary as a cornered fox. I raised my left hand to my face, touching the sprinkling of freckles on my cheekbones. I didn’t remember those. Had the African sun caused them, beating down day after day, year after year, on the few square inches of my body that weren’t covered up?
My pointed chin and spiky hair gave me the look of an inquisitive elf. I heard the echo of a voice from long ago. Dan—the boy I had loved in Dublin—used to call me “pixie face.” That was when my hair hung halfway down my back and was almost impossible to tame. On bicycle rides with Dan the wind would tug it from the army of pins required to fashion it into a bun. Could it grow long again, after all these years of being cropped? It had been growing during the sea voyage, but the longest wisps were no more than a couple of inches. The rule was that it must be shaved every two months. I would have been due for a cut the day I was supposed to arrive in Dublin.
The reflection in the mirror blurred as I relived the shock of being bald that first time. The ritual was performed in the laundry room of the convent. The novices were seated in a row on a wooden bench. Three nuns, armed with clippers and shears, shaved our heads as bare as billiard balls. The floor was a mess of chestnut, blond, and black locks. The shoes of the barber nuns bristled with the clippings, like a small army of furry animals.
As I fluffed up the damp wisps on my forehead, the silver ring on my hand caught the light. I set the mirror down and splayed out my fingers. I was no longer a bride of Christ. No longer entitled to wear this wedding band. With some difficulty I pulled it off. The skin was white where it had been.
It felt as if I’d amputated part of my body. To distract myself, I picked up the book Jack had bought me. The title and the author were unfamiliar: Frenchman’s Creek by Daphne du Maurier. I wondered if the writer was French and the book a translation. Opening it, a handwritten note dropped out.
“I hope this is suitable—one of our visitors left it behind. It’s set in this part of the world, and the author lives in Cornwall. The river she describes is our river.”