I spent most evenings up at the house. Usually I was in the library, listening for messages, but sometimes I went up to the attic to put the children to bed while Merle stayed downstairs. Often, when I was up there, I would hear voices drifting up from the rooms below. The house was filling up again. I wondered what kind of people were preparing to put their lives on the line in Brittany, whether they had wives, husbands, sweethearts, children. Knowing that I was going to be responsible for getting some of them safely onto French soil weighed just as heavily on me as the thought of going ashore myself.
The children were a welcome diversion. Danielle was old enough to look after herself, but the others liked to be tucked in and have a story read to them before they went to sleep. They had only one book—a hardback compendium of fairy tales with a dog-eared cover. It had come from the library downstairs and had Jack’s name written on the front page. Some of the stories were quite gruesome. I wasn’t sure they were suitable—especially for Ned—but Louis assured me they’d heard every one of them many times before.
I loved the expressions on their faces as the story unfolded. And when it was over, I’d stand in the doorway, watching them as they drifted off to sleep. But those evenings were bittersweet. They brought home the stark reality that, in a few days’ time, I would be far away from this comforting domesticity, in the middle of a war zone. And it brought something else to the surface—the deep-rooted ache of poignant memories, of keeping vigil beside the cot shared by the twins I’d left behind in Africa.
Kamaria and Kenyada had been too young for stories. In the days after they were rescued, we didn’t know whether they would live or die. I’d watched them grow into sturdy toddlers, been there when they took their first steps. In a few weeks’ time they would be two years old. But I wouldn’t be there to see them blow out their birthday candles. Perhaps, when they were older, some other sister would tell them the story of how they were rescued by a nun traveling upriver. I hoped she would leave out the grim facts, that they would grow up blissfully ignorant of the harrowing start they’d had in life. But thinking of that was like picking at a scab. Sister Clare had told me to try to forget them. But I couldn’t. It was almost unbearably painful, knowing that I wouldn’t be there to see them grow up.
Two days before I was due to leave for France, Merle and I were in the library together. She was trimming my hair—trying to style the uneven growth into something acceptable for the dance, which was to take place that night.
“You mustn’t worry about it,” she said, as she snipped at a tuft that stuck out above my right ear. “Short styles are very much in vogue now. You’re going to look just like—”
The Morse code machine beeped into life before she could finish the sentence. The scissors clattered onto the desk as she went to pick up the headset.
“There’s been another raid.” In a heartbeat her voice had changed completely. She bit her lip as she wrote the message down. “The Germans attacked a farmhouse near Lannion. A grenade smashed the radio. And another set was confiscated.” When she’d finished writing she looked up, her face taut. “Three dead.”
She pushed the message across the desk. It was so stark. A few scribbled words, the epitaph of three lives snuffed out. I looked up, reading in her eyes what she couldn’t say, that she was thinking of me, soon to head off to the very town where this latest atrocity had happened.
I didn’t see Merle again until the evening. She’d gone off to find Jack, to brief him about the latest developments in Brittany. No more messages came through that afternoon. I spent the time putting the finishing touches on my dress and ironing it, so that it would be ready to change into later. It seemed awful, shockingly frivolous, to be going to a dance when people on the other side of the Channel were risking their lives to bring the war to an end. But here in England, life had to go on. People couldn’t be blamed for trying to retain some degree of normality—otherwise, things would become unendurable. I told myself that I was only going for Jack’s sake, and that he was only going out of a sense of duty. But that didn’t dispel the guilt I felt: no matter how I tried to justify it—or how nervous I was—I knew I wanted to go.
Putting the children to bed distracted me for a while. They’d been out on Eddie Downing’s fishing boat, catching mackerel. Even Ned had managed to bring home two of the silvery creatures in his little tin bucket. He was too tired for a story—he fell asleep with his clothes on. And Louis and Jacqueline dropped off before I’d reached the second page of “Three Billy Goats Gruff.”