“You speak fluent French, which gives you the ability to blend in. Last month we lost four men. They were rowing out to the pick-up boat from a beach on the coast of Brittany. A German patrol vessel came by, wanting to know what they were doing. None of them had more than a few words of French. They were shot dead on the spot.”
Somewhere in the trees behind us I could hear an owl hooting. Now I saw why Jack had gone to such trouble for me, why he had fed me, clothed me, and let me hide away from the world I’d left behind. From the moment he’d found me, when I’d muttered words in French while hovering between life and death, he must have realized that I could be of value. What the sea had washed up was bounty, to be taken and used.
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” My voice sounded very loud in the stillness. “Why did you pretend to be a farmer?”
“I didn’t pretend.” There was a note of indignation in his voice. “Farming takes up as much of my time as the other work. Don’t you see? We had to check you out. Gauge what sort of person you are, whether you’re cut out for the sort of thing we have in mind.”
“We?”
“Merle Durand is part of the operation. She’d go to France herself if it wasn’t for the children. I asked her to keep an eye on you—get a sense of how good you’d be at sticking to the story I’d invented for you.”
A hollow sensation seeped from my stomach to my chest. How convincingly Merle had acted her part—even down to the tone of awe in her voice at that first meeting on the beach. And those whispered confidences about her marriage in the church. Was any of it true? Or was it something she’d concocted to make me believe that she liked me, trusted me, wanted me for a friend?
“She told you she did the cooking for the people in the house,” Jack went on. “That’s partly true—but her main role is translating radio messages from the Resistance.”
He paused. No doubt he was expecting me to say something, to express surprise at what he and she had so cleverly concealed from me. But I couldn’t speak. My throat was swollen inside, as if I’d swallowed a wasp.
“I suppose all this is something of a shock,” he said. “I hope you won’t take it to heart. Merle really likes you. She thinks you’d be perfect for the work we’re trying to do.”
I tried to shift the lump in my throat. “I . . . don’t think I could do it,” I mumbled. “The kind of thing you have in mind. I . . . I’m not brave enough. Just the thought of getting onto a boat . . . any sort of boat . . . terrifies me.”
“I can understand that, after what you’ve been through. But it’s like falling off a horse: the only way to conquer that fear is to get back on as soon as you can.” He fell silent again. I heard him take a deep breath. “You said you wanted to do some good, Alice. This is your chance.”
I knew that he was right—about overcoming my fear of traveling on water. But could a person like me really make a difference in the kind of clandestine mission he’d described? “What exactly would I have to do?” I asked.
“You’d be part of a fake French fishing crew,” he replied. “With luck, you wouldn’t have to do anything. You’d go ashore with the agents we send out and come straight back with the escaping airmen. If I could split myself in two, I’d do it myself—but I have to skipper the bigger boat.”
“So, I’d have to pretend to be fishing?”
“That’s right. If there was a challenge from an enemy craft, you’d have to convince them the only thing you’re landing is mackerel.”
“I’d have to dress as a man?”
“Yes.” There was a smile in his voice. “With that haircut, you’d be quite convincing.”
I was glad that it was dark. Glad he couldn’t see my cheeks burning with humiliation. Wasn’t it enough that he’d robbed me of the illusion that I’d made a friend? Did he have to add insult to injury by telling me I looked like a man?
“You’d be properly armed, of course,” he went on. “We’d teach you how to use a pistol. Do you think you could handle a violent situation? I don’t suppose there was much of that in a convent, was there?”
The burn of humiliation gave way to a flash of indignation. If he thought I’d been living in a bubble of serenity, he was very much mistaken. “If you want to know, I’ve twice seen violent death.” I kept my voice neutral, matter-of-fact. “First in Belgium, in a mental asylum where I was nursing: when I went to relieve the nun on night duty, I found her slumped in a chair with a knife in her back.”