I went to help the children, telling myself that if Jack had done what I thought he’d done, it was probably just a gesture of comfort. But my mind was charging ahead. Of course, it was entirely natural that Jack would be attracted to a warm, pretty woman like Merle. And after what she’d told me in the church, I could understand why she might be tempted.
I thought about what the Land Girls had said about the mysterious wife no one had ever seen. Surely Merle couldn’t have sparked that rumor? They must have run into her often when they came to do the milking. If they thought she was involved with Jack, why hadn’t they said so?
I tried not to listen to the chatter inside my head. I liked Merle. She’d been kind to me, as had Jack. They’d both gone out of their way to help me. But like that other Alice, I felt as if I’d tumbled down a rabbit hole into another world—a world where nothing was quite what it seemed.
Chapter 8
I didn’t see Jack that night, or the next day. And Merle wasn’t in the milking shed when I arrived for work. Danielle told me that her mother was busy, and Molly from the village was going to help with the cows until the Land Girls returned.
Molly was late arriving. Danielle said that she was the sister of George Retallack, the blind man I’d seen mending nets. She was only a few years older than Danielle—and she seemed so overawed by the fact that I was Jack’s cousin that she hardly spoke to me, other than to say that a basket of food had been left in the kitchen for me to take back with me.
When I went to collect it, the house seemed strangely quiet. Where were the new arrivals Jack had talked about? Why hadn’t I seen anyone going in or out of the place while I’d been weeding, just yards from the front door? In the three days I’d been working at Penheligan, the only other adult male I’d seen, apart from Jack, was the young man in khaki fatigues who’d helped to round up the escaped cow.
The next day was Easter Sunday. I took my good clothes—the silk blouse and the heather-colored skirt—to change into when I’d finished in the cowshed. I’d found a cloche hat on top of the basket of food that had been left for me. It was wrapped in layers of tissue paper and looked brand new. It was pearl gray, with a band of grosgrain ribbon of the same color fashioned into a small bow on one side. I didn’t know if it had come from Jack or from Merle—but it was just what I needed. It covered my hair and was more appropriate for church than the bright green head scarf.
The path up through the valley was wetter than it had been before. Heavy rain during the night had ravaged the camellias and rhododendrons. Their sodden petals stuck to my boots as I squelched through them. The trees and bushes were eerily quiet, as if the birds had disappeared or gone into hiding. It was very different from Easter morning a year ago, when I’d walked to chapel under a burning sun, with the deafening chirp of cicadas all around.
Merle wasn’t in the milking shed. Danielle said they were all going to church later, but her mother still had a lot to do in the house. I was getting faster at milking, but with only four of us it was hard work. I thought Jack might come looking for me. I was supposed to be helping him ring the church bells, but he hadn’t mentioned it again since he’d asked me. By ten o’clock there was still no sign of him.
I got to the church early, just in case he was waiting for me there. The place was empty, so I wandered around the graveyard, looking at the tombstones. I found the place where Jack’s parents were buried. His father’s stone was shiny black. The inscription read:
JOHN AUBREY CECIL, 13TH VISCOUNT TREWELLA.
DEPARTED THIS LIFE ON FEBRUARY 5, 1942, AGED 66.
“FOR UNTO WHOMSOEVER MUCH IS GIVEN, OF HIM SHALL BE MUCH REQUIRED.”
I recognized the line from Luke’s Gospel—appropriate for a man of wealth and privilege.
I thought about the day I’d received the news of my father’s death: of the shock of learning that the funeral had already taken place. Thousands of miles away, in a remote part of Africa, I’d been the last person to be told, even though I was his closest blood relative. Sister Clare had come to find me in the operating theater to break the news. There was no comforting touch, no hug of sympathy, because nuns were not permitted to lay hands on one another.
I’d been assisting at an emergency appendectomy—the teenage daughter of one of the mineowners, who had awoken tearful and bewildered from the anesthetic. I couldn’t allow my grief to show when I came back into the room, couldn’t allow myself to cry until that evening, during the hour of recreation, when I stumbled out into the garden to sob in the shadows of the mango trees.