“You can see the docks from here.” The subtle change in the volume of Merle’s voice brought me back to the here and now. She was looking away from me, across the bus, out of the window on the other side. Following her gaze, I saw a wide sweep of bay and a forest of masts. A huge ship, painted gray, was making its way toward the docks up a wide channel of water. Houses covered the hill that rose up from the waterfront. Falmouth was bigger than I’d imagined.
“Can you see that gap in the houses—over there?” Merle pointed to a place where there were no roofs, just the jagged remains of walls. “That used to be Lister Street. Thirty people died when it was bombed.”
The bus wound its way through narrow streets with shops and houses painted in pastel colors. A man in a Royal Navy uniform with a pint glass in his hand glanced up at us from the doorway of the Star and Garter pub. More men, in uniforms I didn’t recognize, were gathered outside the Dolphin.
“Americans,” Merle whispered. “They’ve only just arrived in Cornwall.”
I nodded. “The Land Girls told me.”
We passed a building with sandbags piled around the walls. “What’s that place?” I asked.
“The hospital,” Merle replied.
I remembered what Dr. Williams had said about it being a waste that I was doing farmwork. Jack had told me I could save more lives working for Churchill’s secret army than being a nurse. Was that true? I wondered. I’d patched up four men on that mission to France. It didn’t seem much, compared to what I might have done in a hospital ward. But I knew that wasn’t what Jack had meant. It was impossible to gauge the impact of those four men going back into active service.
“Do you wish you were working there, instead of for us?” Merle had read my thoughts. She’d dropped her voice to a whisper, mindful of the other people on the bus.
I hesitated before replying. “I’d like to work in a hospital again one day,” I said. “But if you and Jack think the other work is more important, I’m glad to be doing it.”
“It’s not just important—it’s vital,” Merle murmured. The bus came to a stop and she stood up. “This is where we get off.”
We stepped out into a wide avenue of pale brown buildings that reminded me of Grafton Street in Dublin. As Merle led me across the road, away from the alighting passengers, she said: “I couldn’t tell you on the bus, but those people you dropped off—and the ones you’ll take next month—they’re preparing the way.” She glanced over her shoulder. “The Americans are getting ready to launch a major offensive. The success of that operation will largely depend on the people we have in France gearing up the Resistance. That’s why we’re so desperate to get them over there.”
I nodded as I took in what she was saying. That explained why American soldiers had set up a base in this area. They were gathering as near as possible to the coast for an attack by sea. “When will that happen?” I whispered.
“No one knows. It’ll be determined by what happens on the eastern front, as well as the strength of the Resistance in France.”
I thought about the agents we’d taken to Brittany. Miranda, Ferdinand, and the others. I asked Merle where they would have been taken when I’d left them.
“To a safe house inland,” she replied. “Although safe isn’t a very good word. The places they stay in are constantly being raided. They have a fifty-fifty chance of coming back alive.”
“Do they know that?”
“Yes. We couldn’t expect them to do what they’re doing unless they knew the risks.” She paused as a man walking a dog came to a halt a few feet in front of us. She pulled me into a shop doorway and started talking about the balls of wool arranged in a pyramid in the window. When the man moved on, she said, “All of this is top secret—you mustn’t breathe a word to anyone.”
A moment later, Merle was back in the persona of a mother whose only concern was trawling the shops for what she needed for her children. It was as if the conversation we’d had about the war had never happened. She took me to a store that sold blankets and suggested that I buy one to have made into a coat. Then she found a place that had rolls of printed cotton that the assistant said had just arrived from India. She explained how many coupons I was permitted to use from my ration book, and we bought enough fabric to make me a dress.
I should have savored the experience of buying things on what was my first shopping trip in years. But my heart wasn’t in it. I couldn’t stop thinking about the photograph in the bureau at Penheligan. It was as if I’d found a little piece of Jack’s soul hidden away in that envelope.