“Oh God! Get down—quick!”
I hadn’t even heard the high-pitched whine of the plane’s engine. We’d only just hit the ground when it screamed over our heads. I shouldn’t have looked up, but curiosity got the better of me. I saw the pale gray undercarriage with its yellow-tipped wings, a black cross emblazoned on each one.
“A Focke-Wulf fighter-bomber,” Merle breathed, as we both stared after it. “Probably coming to see what damage they did the other night.”
I thought she must have seen these enemy planes often, to know them by name. I wondered if they’d flown over Guernsey before the invasion, the noise of their engines shattering the tranquility of the tomato farm where she’d lived with her husband and children. I had only a vague idea of the geography of the Channel Islands. All I knew was that they were much closer to France than to England.
“I think we’re okay, now.” She shaded her eyes, scanning the horizon. “I don’t think he’s coming back. Sorry if I scared you, but a couple of months ago the children and I were strafed on the way to school: we were lucky not to be hit.”
“They fired on the children? Deliberately?”
Merle nodded. “I couldn’t believe it, either. Come on—we’d better get going.”
As we rounded a bend in the path, I caught sight of the village—the same huddle of cottages I could see from the beach. They were stone-built houses with slate roofs, sitting right on the edge of the estuary. To the southwest—where the boathouse was hidden by a rocky promontory—the receding tide had exposed mudflats where herons, egrets, and oystercatchers prodded about.
Yellow-flowered gorse bushes lined the final stretch of the route downhill. Washing was spread out to dry on some of them. Shirts, skirts, sheets, socks—even underwear—were draped over the prickly branches, the breeze tugging in vain to blow them away.
A wooden bridge took us from the path to the edge of the village. I could see thin green strands of eelgrass swaying in the shallow water lapping through the channel beneath. Like a mermaid’s hair, I thought. I wondered if this was how the cove had got its name.
I followed Merle into what appeared to be the main street through the village. Despite the uniform gray of the cottage walls, it was a place of vivid colors. Pots of fuchsias and pansies lined windowsills and porches. Baskets of geraniums hung at either side of front doors. Chickens and ducks wandered around the cobblestone streets, and I could hear budgerigars and canaries chirping away inside the houses.
“It’s very quaint,” I said, as we passed a half-open stable door where an old, toothless man stood smoking a clay pipe.
She nodded, turning to wave as the old man raised his pipe in a greeting. “It’s like the whole place is preserved in aspic. Shame about the smell, though.”
Living in the boathouse, I’d become used to breathing air tainted with the odor of fish. But here the stench was overpowering. The smell was tinged with something else—a bitter, tarry scent that Merle told me was pitch boiled up to preserve the fishing nets.
We saw the nets draped out to dry in the sunshine as we neared the quayside. Wooden boats, left high and dry by the receding tide, were moored to metal rings in the wall. Their names were hand painted in bold letters. I shaded my eyes to read them. Fleetwings, Seasquirt, Mabel, Stella. Farther out in the estuary, moored to buoys, were bigger fishing boats.
A few yards from the quay was the fish cellar. “That’s where the stink comes from,” Merle said. “They store the pilchards in there after they’ve squeezed the oil out of them.”
Two men in sailor’s caps were sitting outside, mending nets strung with floats made of cork. Merle nodded to them as we passed by. “Those two are Eddie Downing and Leo Badger,” she murmured. “Eddie’s granddaughter is the same age as Danielle. Leo’s his uncle. He’s seventy-four, but he still goes out fishing every day. Last summer he caught a shark and it bit him when he tried to haul it in.” She glanced back at the men, her lips pressed together, as if she was trying not to smile. “I would have introduced you—but every time I stop to chat, Leo rolls up his trouser leg to show me the teeth marks!”
We dodged across the narrow street to avoid a donkey that was coming up behind us pulling a cart laden with seaweed. “They use it for compost up at the farm,” Merle said, as it trundled past. “The banks are too steep for tractors.”
There was another man sitting outside a cottage, making some sort of basket out of withies. When Merle called out a greeting, he raised his head and I saw that his eyes were opaque. “That’s George Retallack,” she whispered. “He’s amazing: He makes those crab and lobster pots even though he’s been blind since he was born. He can find his way around without any help—people say he can even sense the state of the tide.”