“They don’t eat cuckoos, surely?”
She laughed. “No. The children know the story behind it—they learnt about it in school: Some ancient farmer was making a fire and he put a tree stump onto it. When the flames started to take hold, a cuckoo flew out of the stump. So now, every May, people round here commemorate it. The children put on a play and there’s a picnic afterward. I’d love you to see it, but someone needs to be here.”
She showed me the costumes she’d made for the girls. Danielle was the May queen and Jacqueline one of her attendants. The boys were going to be woodland animals—Louis a fox and Ned a hedgehog.
“I’ll bring them in to see you when we come home,” she said.
“Yes—I’d like that.” I picked up the hedgehog costume, imagining Ned’s excitement as he put it on. Merle had used sacking with bunches of bristles from old brooms she’d found in one of the farm buildings. She’d made the outfits while listening out for messages—on the same sewing machine I was using to make a dress from the fabric I’d bought in Falmouth, the dress I planned to wear for the dance.
I’d fretted over telling Merle about Jack’s invitation. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. I thought that she would probably have liked to go, too, if she’d been invited. But, to my surprise, she hadn’t seemed to mind.
“I wouldn’t feel like dancing,” she said. “It probably sounds mean-spirited, but I couldn’t take a whole evening of watching other people having fun.”
“You’re worried about Fred?”
She nodded. “It’s five weeks since his last letter. I think he was in Tunisia. But I don’t know if he’s all right.”
Jack had told me the news of the spectacular defeat of German and Italian forces in North Africa. He hadn’t said how many Allied troops had been killed.
“Anyway,” Merle said, with a too-bright smile. “How’s that dress coming along?”
Jack put his head around the door of the library after Merle had gone. I had the headset on, so I didn’t hear him at first.
“I’m off to the village in a minute,” he said, when he’d managed to get my attention. “They want me to give out the prizes.” He was smiling, but it was a tight smile, as if what he was going to do was a duty, not a pleasure. “Merle’s already gone, has she?”
“Yes.”
He came and sat down beside me.
“Is anything wrong?” His eyes searched mine.
“No—everything’s fine.”
“There’s something on your mind, though.”
This ability of his to pick up on my thoughts was uncanny. I’d been mulling over what Merle had said about Fred, wondering if Jack could pull strings to find out what had happened to him. I’d held back because I wasn’t sure whether she’d told him about the man she’d fallen for.
“It’s just something Merle said,” I replied. I told Jack that she was worried about a former employee from the farm on Guernsey.
“Fred Bechélet?” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I wish I could make some inquiries. But if everyone did that, they’d be swamped.”
I nodded. I felt foolish. I should have realized that.
“It’s hard for her,” he went on. “But I think that having you here has made things much more bearable.”
That word again. It made me sound like something you might put on a burn or an insect bite, a salve that would sting at first but was worth putting up with. Was that how he saw me?
“There’s something I need to talk to you about before I go.” He rubbed his chin with his knuckles. He was looking at the Morse code machine, not at me. “I’ve had a call from the people in London. They have you in mind for something different next time we go to France—something that would involve going ashore.”
“What do they want me to do?” I felt a tremor in my stomach, the same panicky feeling I’d had when I’d been rowing the men back to La Coquille.
“They want you to act as a courier—take equipment to the Resistance: the kind of thing we can’t parachute in. There’s a shortage of women, you see, and it has to be a woman.”
“Why?”
“The Germans are getting wise to what we’re doing. They’re routinely searching any man who passes through the checkpoints—however convincing a French accent they have. Women attract less attention than men, and with your background, you’d be particularly convincing.” He paused, his middle finger tracing a mark on the table, a ring made by a carelessly placed wineglass. “They want you to go into France as a nun.”