Survivor

by Lesley Pearse

  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.

  28

  Russell, New Zealand

  ‘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.’