A Bitter Truth (23 page)

“I hope to. I don’t know.”

“Don’t forget to look me up.” We were interrupted by a thermometer put in his mouth by an older woman with a severe face. When she had gone, he asked me about myself. “My neighbor for the first week was an English Corporal. I must have been calling for you when I was off my head. He told me about your father. They’re rather proud of you, you know—his old regiment. Word got around you were out here.”

I didn’t know, and was rather pleased. And so I told him about growing up in India and other corners of the Empire, and about Somerset and even about Mrs. Hennessey.

He laughed at that. “You’re better than a tonic,” he told me when I’d finished. “Stay in Rouen, and I’ll be back on my feet before the week’s out.”

Smiling, I said, “Nurse Barlow means well. I think you gave her a fright when you went missing.”

“I told her I was on walkabout. It’s what the Aborigines do when they get tired of one place. She thought I’d gone off my head again. I’m used to the spaces of the Out Back. I can’t bear being cooped up here like a fish in a bowl.”

“If you want to rejoin your men, try showing her you’re healing.”

I left a few minutes after that, mindful not to tire him. He took my hand and thanked me for coming.

I turned as I was leaving and asked, “What did you do in civilian life?”

“My father owns a large sheep station. I breed dogs for herding sheep. There’s a large market for them in New Zealand. I never cared for sheep, much to my father’s chagrin.”

I left him then and made my way out of the race course. Outside in the street I found a man willing to drive me to the Rue St. Catherine, and then take me to the port.

No one came to the door of the house where I’d left Sophie. My spirits plummeted at the thought of missing this opportunity to see her. But where were they?

I stepped away from the door to the edge of the street and looked up. The nuns could be in the kitchen—upstairs—somewhere that the sound of the knocker couldn’t reach.

But I could see nothing, no light on this gray, grim afternoon, no small faces at the windows looking down on the street. Nothing.

I was about to turn away when the woman in the neighboring house came out her door with a market basket over her arm. I turned to her and asked in French, “Is anyone at home? Where are the nuns?”

Her accent was very heavy, but I thought she said, “
Elles sont va au cimetière
.”

They have gone to the cemetery.

As if she saw my confusion she added, “St. Sever.”

“Who is dead?” I asked.
“Un enfant? Une soeur?”
A child? A nun?

She shrugged. “I don’t know who is dead.”

“But someone must have stayed behind to watch the children.”

“I do not know,” she repeated, and with a nod, she walked on toward the shops some streets away.

I went back to the door and banged the knocker vigorously, and in the end I was rewarded. The door opened a crack and a middle-aged nun peered through it at me. “We have no one ill at this house,” she said, looking at my uniform. “You must be mistaken in your directions.”

“Please. I have come to see if Sophie is well again. When I saw her last, she had chicken pox and was very feverish.”

“No one visits the children except for the doctor in the next street. We have no need for the care of an English nursing sister.”

“But Sister Marie Joseph allowed me to see her. I am leaving for England today, and I would like very much to know that all was well with Sophie. I—I know her father. The English officer. He would like to be sure, since he sends money, that it is properly used.”

“He has sent no money for a very long time.”

“Because he couldn’t find you. Please, let me be certain she is alive and well, and he will begin to pay again for her care.” I did a swift inventory of the money I had with me, remembering how Roger Ellis had had to borrow sums from George Hughes. There was no one I could borrow money from—unless it was Sergeant Larimore. “I have some money with me. I can leave it with you to show his good faith.”

She relented finally. “Very well. But you will not speak to her. Only observe. This is the only home she has known. Do not alter that in any way.”

“I promise.”

I was taken to a small parlor heated by a coal fire in the grate. The rest of the house was damp and cold. The children were sitting on the floor, and I could see that the nun had been reading to them from a French children’s book. They looked up as I entered, their faces bright with curiosity. Visitors were a rarity.

I greeted them, and my gaze swept the circle, stopping on the fair, blue-eyed child nearest the hearth. Although pale from her recent illness, I could see that the remaining scabs were dry and healing.

She smiled at me in that way that some children have when meeting a stranger, and now I could see what George Hughes had seen, a likeness perhaps not as strong as he had wished to believe it was, but so pronounced that this child and Juliana could have been sisters. I wanted very much to speak to her, to hear her voice, to hold her on my lap and watch the play of emotions on her face.

I’d never known Juliana, but now I understood why she had left such a void in her family. The portrait had done her justice, and even the memorial stone had captured something of the living child. But here was the warmth and the smile and the tilt of the head and the lovely blue eyes under fair lashes that gave life to the static reflections of her.

I couldn’t understand how Roger Ellis could abandon her.

And would Lydia be able to love her, when she was the image of Juliana?

The nun touched my elbow, reminding me that I had had my brief glimpse and must be satisfied. I allowed her to escort me from the room, and I gave her what money I could, not nearly enough, but I needed sufficient funds to reach England and travel on to Ashdown Forest.

“When I return,” I said, “there will be more. Keep her safe.”

She thanked me gravely, and I could tell that even that meager amount was appreciated.

Just as I was about to walk out the door, I asked, “What will become of her, if there is no family to take her and educate her?”

“We have already spoken of this, Sister Marie Joseph and I. We will find her work out in the world, if that is what she chooses. Our girls learn to sew beautifully. They will be in demand for fine work. If she has a vocation, and we shall pray that God will be so kind,” she said, “we will welcome her into our house. Surely when the Germans have gone, we will be able to rebuild.”

It was a very different point of view from Sister Marie Joseph’s, that Sophie’s beauty could be a curse. What’s more, I couldn’t imagine Sophie as a seamstress at someone else’s beck and call, or a nun, shut away from the world for the rest of her life. I wanted to argue vehemently against either possibility. But I had to remember that without the care of the nuns, Sophie might not have survived at all.

I left then, and went back to my waiting taxi. We reached the harbor to find my ship already at the quay. I waited for the wounded to be taken aboard and then followed them.

“There is no cabin for you, Sister,” one of the officers told me. “But there’s a chair in what used to be the lounge, if you care to sit there.”

“That will do very well,” I said and went to the rail to watch our departure. The gangway was brought in, the ropes cast off, and we were free of the land, swinging with the tide, the engines rumbling under my feet.

I was about to walk on to the lounge, when across the water soared the call of that Australian kingfisher. Loud and clear, heads turning to see what it was and where it was coming from.

And there, behind the barriers on the quay was a tall man waving his distinctive hat, his face a blur, but I thought it was surely split from ear to ear by that cocky grin.

He’d escaped Nurse Barlow again and come down to see me off. She would be exasperated with him, and he would blandly tell her he was feverish again and off his head.

Still, I waved back, distinctly cheered.

It wasn’t until the ship moved slowly out into the current, heading downstream toward the sea, that I finally went below.

M
y orders were to report directly to Inspector Rother in Wych Gate. But they didn’t forbid finding a telephone as soon as we landed in Portsmouth, before I went on to meet my train.

I put in a call to my parents.

They were delighted to hear my voice and know that I was in England. But I had to tell them the reason why I wouldn’t be coming home.

My father said, “I must be away tomorrow morning. But Simon is in London. Shall I send him to Sussex?”

“Please, would you? I shall need a means of getting about.” And it would be a touch of home for me.

We talked for a few minutes more, as I assured my mother that I was well and hoped to have leave again soon. A little white lie for her comfort, I told myself.

The train to London met with the usual delays, and when I arrived at Waterloo Station, I collected my things and prepared to go in search of the next available connection to Hartfield.

Instead I found Simon Brandon waiting to help me descend from the carriage, and then he reached inside to take up my valise.

“The motorcar is this way.”

A cold rain was falling, but as we handed in my ticket and went out into the fading light, he studied my face and said, “Your mother wished to know how you looked. Tired, but well enough. That sums it up, I should think.”

I smiled. “Yes, very well. Simon, I’ve seen the little French child. Her name is Sophie.” And I went on to tell him how I’d managed to find her, and what I’d discovered.

We had reached the outskirts of London as I finished the account. Simon nodded, “I was fairly sure you would search. Against all advice.”

“There was so little opportunity to look for her. I despaired of finding her. But an Australian sergeant, his name is Larimore, put the word out, compiled a list of convents from the responses he received, and had it delivered to me by way of a wounded Scot. It made all the difference.”

“And you say Ellis knows nothing about this?”

“I don’t think he does. But running into him prevented me from speaking to the solicitor to ask how the child might be returned to her natural father.”

“Hardly your place, Bess.”

“Yes, I’m aware of that. But I’d have liked to know if it was even possible. That would guide me in deciding what to do about telling Roger Ellis—or Lydia, for that matter—that I know where Sophie is. Which reminds me, I shall need some money before I return to France. I gave the sister at the orphanage all that I could spare. They have so little, and the children need so much. French law may be very different from English law in these matters. And there’s the fact that Roger was never officially registered at Sophie’s father.”

“Leave it, Bess. You’re unwise to grow attached to this child.”

“I’m not attached. But I have become aware of another side of this war, Simon. It’s difficult enough for us to make sense of it. Think what a child who has lost everything must feel, when the future appears to be so bleak and comfortless.”

We drove on in silence, covering the miles of winter-bare England, and I wished we were heading in the direction of Somerset, on the other side of London.

We stopped briefly for tea and sandwiches in a small shop in Sevenoaks, then drove on to Ashdown Forest. This time as we approached, I recognized the first signs of it now.

“I don’t think I shall be invited to stay with the Ellis family this time,” I said ruefully.

“No. I expect not.”

“I can’t think of why I should be summoned from France for the inquest. After all, the police have my statement. Have you heard anything about the case since we left?”

“Only what you already know, that the inquest was adjourned.”

We drove through Hartfield, the street deserted, the houses already dark. I glanced toward Bluebell Cottage and saw that it looked closed and somehow forlorn. I was suddenly reminded of the cat I’d seen on a blue cushion asleep in the window.

“Simon. What’s become of Davis Merrit’s cat? Surely it wasn’t abandoned, when he didn’t come back!”

“You must ask the police.”

We left Hartfield behind and soon came to the turning where the left-hand track went to Wych Cross and the right to Wych Gate.

In the far distance, across the barren landscape, I could just see the lights of Vixen Hill as we passed the place where the lane ran into the darkness under the trees where Simon had left his horse one night.

I’d been to St. Mary’s Church, but not into the village of Wych Gate itself. It lay on the far side of the trees that stood to the west of the church, over an ancient bridge that crossed the little stream where George Hughes had died. There was a cluster of houses that clung to the road in defiance of the heath that all but surrounded them. Half the size of Hartfield, it was neither bustling nor busy, and most of the inhabitants worked elsewhere in the Forest or just outside it. But once it had been a very wealthy village based on the wool trade, when sheep had replaced the deer and other game that had drawn kings and their courts to hunt. The church was a mark of its past, and of a time when a village could afford to build it.