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.’
37
August 1945
‘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 spacio
us, 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.