18. Helene
18
HELENE
The back door of the truck slid open, filling the dark, cramped space with salt air and the glow of moonlight. Across from her, perched between apple crates, Cecelia nodded in the shadows.
“We’re here.”
Helene’s knees and back ached from the tight quarters as she climbed out of the delivery truck. Their driver, an elderly man with a long, gray beard, reached out a hand to help her down.
“Careful,” he said quietly.
Helene’s legs shook as she stepped forward. They were parked along a narrow dirt road, miles from the nearest town. Vast limestone cliffs lined the shore below, and the channel churned endlessly to the horizon.
“How much time do you need, Sister?” the driver asked as he assisted Cecelia out of the truck. His eyes moved constantly, peering up and down the isolated road.
“Not much.” Cecelia lifted a large canvas bag out of the truck. “Dropping off supplies. Be back in an hour.”
He got back into the truck and it took off with a low rumble, its headlights off as it jostled its way back down the road.
“We need to move quickly, Helene,” Cecelia said, straightening the veil of her habit. “Follow me closely. Watch your steps.”
“Where are we? What is this place?” Helene asked as she gazed out at the wide expanse of sea. She had forgotten what it felt like to not be surrounded by walls and people and voices, to be somewhere so free.
“A way out. For men who need to escape,” Cecelia said simply and began to stride toward a small rocky path that led down the cliffside, clutching her bag closely to her side.
Helene followed behind, grateful for the round moon that shone above them, giving them light as the path veered sharply downward. Cecelia moved confidently, her head bowed. This place was clearly familiar to her.
As they descended, the chalky white stone of the cliffs grew rougher and more weathered, and Helene had to reach out to balance herself.
“Are we near Dieppe?” she asked, her voice low, as Cecelia quickened her pace. It was hard to get her bearings in the dark.
“We could be near Dieppe but I’m not sure,” Cecelia said. “I only know we’re somewhere along the coast. They don’t tell us the exact location, and we don’t ask. It’s safer that way, for everyone.” Cecelia glanced back at Helene. “Follow me now. It’s not much farther.”
Cecelia stepped onto a narrow ledge that ran along the cliffside, barely wide enough to hold one person and with a steep drop below it. She made slow, careful movements up the ledge, her veil swirling as gusts of warm sea air blew up from the channel.
Helene’s foot wobbled, tiny rocks scattering off at least twenty meters beneath. She took a breath and forced herself to keep going.
After a few minutes of climbing, Cecelia finally stopped at a wide, circular opening in the limestone. “We only have a few minutes. Before we need to start back. The longer we stay the greater danger we put them in. We can’t be certain our movements aren’t being watched.”
Helene nodded, but she felt her heart accelerate. She had thought only of getting to Thomas, of seeing him, of holding his hand. Everything else, what she would say, how she would say it, had felt too precarious to think about.
Inside, it took Helene a moment to adjust to the darkness. The cave was much larger than she expected, nearly the size of her family’s shop. The walls were smooth, dripping with water from above, and it was cooler than it had been out in the August night.
Several faces stared at them from the back of the cave, a dozen men, the air heavy with the smell of sweat and urine.
Cecelia took a step forward and the air seemed to shift with an audible relief.
“Thank God it’s you, Sister,” came a voice in English.
“Watch it,” came another.
“Sorry,” called the first voice, the tone slightly sheepish. “Didn’t mean any disrespect.”
“It’s the Lord’s name you took in vain. Not mine.”
Many of the men pulled themselves up to stand. A few remained on the ground, their legs stretched out in front of them. As she followed Cecelia deeper into the cave, Helene noticed that one had his arm in a makeshift sling, and that another’s head was propped up on a different man’s lap.
Cecelia handed a bag to one of the soldiers on the ground. “Sulfa. Morphine. Some bandages and tourniquets. Everything you requested.”
“Thank you, Sister.” He was older, close to middle age, with wrinkles around his eyes.
“Helene?”
Helene hadn’t allowed herself to think about what it would be like to hear his voice again, the miracle of its very existence, when she had felt the complete stillness of his heart only days earlier.
“You’re here.” Thomas made his way to her. The lightness of his features was subdued, as though he had aged several years.
“I am,” Helene said. It was physically painful, to know in a matter of days or weeks he would die again, that she had brought him back only to be in hiding in this cold, wet cave. Remorse flooded her for failing to take Vogel’s life. She could have been here right now to give Thomas his life back. And instead she was here to say goodbye. She looked down at his leg, at the ease with which he stood, all traces of his wound gone.
He followed her gaze. “Bizarre, isn’t it? Hurt like hell the last time I saw you. They told me it was infected, that I had bacteremia. That’s the last thing I remember…” He trailed off. “I don’t really understand it, to be honest. I woke up in the back of a garbage truck covered with a sheet,” he said as a little bit of the old light flickered back. “How did you get here?”
Helene tried to smile. “Nothing as exciting as that.”
Thomas glanced at Cecelia, who knelt beside a wounded soldier at the back. “Here I thought I was living a life filled with danger. And you were some innocent girl. All along you were the brave one.”
“I’m not.” Nearly every decision she had made in the last week, bringing Thomas back, failing to kill Vogel, had been out of panic and fear, not bravery.
“They would shoot you for this,” Thomas said, serious. “Don’t be modest. It doesn’t suit you. You’re remarkable, Helene.”
From the back of the cave, Cecelia addressed Helene. “We’ll need to be going.”
Helene looked at Thomas as the night slipped away from her, as she felt him begin to blur at the edges, as though already only a memory. She fought to hold on to the present, onto Thomas, and for a moment, she could almost pretend they were back on the beach, not as it was in Dieppe, but a beach a thousand miles and years from the war, just the two of them together with the rocks and the waves, and he was only a boy asking her to talk to him in the glittering sun.
“Can’t you stay a little longer?” he asked, as though reading her mind. She saw it in his eyes too, the reverberation of their first meeting, the acknowledgment of the strangers they were that day, of how in the chaos and brutality of war that one conversation, all of their conversations, were precious.
“It’s not safe.”
“Then come back.”
“But you’ll be gone.” She couldn’t meet his eyes when she lied to him, even if it was for his own peace of mind. Outside, the sea slammed against the rocks below, violent and restless. “They’ll get you out by then.”
“Come with us then. You can get out too.”
If things were different, if Thomas had a full life ahead of him, she could almost envision a world where she said yes, where she left everyone and everything behind, created a new life in Canada, or America, away from the ugliness of the war. But a part of her knew that even then, even if such a future existed, she couldn’t abandon Irene, or her mother and grandfather, even Cecelia, who despite everything had trusted her enough to bring her to see Thomas. “I can’t leave. This is my home.”
Thomas made a soft noise. “Not right now it’s not. They took it away from you. We’ll get you out and then you and I can go anywhere you’d like. Anywhere in the world.”
Helene smiled. Thomas was a little more weary than he had been in Rouen, but he was also the same, so trusting that the world was malleable, that he could mold it into whatever form he chose. “It’s still my home,” she said. She bit her lip until she could taste the slight metallic tang of blood, punishment for the loss of the boy in front of her, and her part in it.
Cecelia made the sign of the cross on the forehead of one of the men and stood up. “It’s time,” she said, her voice loud and carrying in the confined space.
Helene suddenly felt the weight of Thomas’s hand in her own. It rooted her to the spot, as though she were a part of her surroundings, part of the vast white cliffs, and the sea itself. She looked up at him, and she remembered why she was here. She wanted to spend however long was left of the war fighting back. She wanted to be brave. And even though it broke her heart, she couldn’t waste one more second while Thomas was still in this world.
In one swift motion, she reached up and kissed him. At first he was too stunned to react, but then he wrapped his arms around her as though he had done it before. Helene didn’t care that the others were watching. All she could do was hold him there, the beat of his heart next to her own, imprint every last detail into her soul.
Thomas gazed at their hands, still intertwined, wonder softening his features. “I’ll come back then. And I’ll win this whole godforsaken thing for you.”
Helene smiled, desperate to keep the night from swirling forward. All they had was this small moment.
“This will end, Helene. There will be an after. And you’ll have a big, beautiful life. That I know for certain. More than anything.”
Helene nodded as her throat tightened and eyes burned. “Be safe, Thomas.”
Thomas squeezed her hand. “And you.”
Helene heard Cecelia’s footsteps behind her, but she couldn’t bring herself to let go of Thomas’s hand.
“I have to go.”
Thomas held her eyes, as though he too were trying to memorize her face.
“You said that already.”
“We can’t be late, Helene. Our driver will be waiting.”
She took a deep breath. “Goodbye then.”
Thomas shook his head. “Not goodbye. We’ve found each other too many times already. I know we’ll find one another again. Say good night instead.”
He kissed her again, once on each cheek. She closed her eyes to try to slow everything down, to keep him there a second longer.
“Good night, Thomas.”
She followed Cecelia out of the cave, the night sweeping back over them, the sky impossibly bright compared to the darkness of the cave. Helene focused on her breaths as she walked down the narrow ledge, each one bringing more salt air into her lungs. She filled herself up with it.
When they reached the path and climbed back up to the top of the cliff, the smell of the sea reminded her of a home that felt farther away than ever.
The road was empty. Helene swayed as the exhaustion of the last few days began to hit her. She felt dizzy, disoriented, the black sky, yellow moon, and gray sea blurring together into one infinite void.
But just as the world began to spin around her, she felt a hand in hers. Cecelia. Heat flowed into her skin, up her arms and down her back and chest, until the raw, jagged edge of pain inside of her melted.
From down the road, there was the rumble of the truck engine. But Cecelia didn’t let go. The sea seemed calmer now, moving in gentle, rhythmic waves beneath the moon.
The truck was only a few meters away when it cut out abruptly, the driver peering over at them from behind the wheel.
“Are you ready, Helene?” Cecelia asked quietly. “To come back with me to Rouen. Is that your choice?”
Helene released Cecelia’s hand. She knew the darkness would only deepen, that if there was an end to the occupation, to the war, it would only be achieved through more bombs and battles and devastation. But as she stood on that cliffside, she knew she had to try to fix what she could of this broken world, do what she had spent her life watching her mother do for the people who needed her.
Helene looked back over the channel, her eyes lingering on the horizon, where the edge of the world she knew met the vast, unfathomable future gleaming just beyond it. Cecelia’s words from earlier that week echoed in her mind. Only now, for the first time, she understood their meaning.
“I didn’t choose this,” Helene said now. “I didn’t choose any of it. But I’m here. And I’m ready.”