Chapter 31
chapter
St. Peter’s Parish
Bundled in blankets, Gerrit sat beside Ivy in the doorway to the barn. “Aren’t you tired of drawing your uncle’s cows?”
“Never. See? Today I’m drawing cows in the snow.” She lifted her gloved hand and her pencil. On the sketch pad, two cows held hooves to their mouths.
“Are they eating ice cream?”
“Of course. Jersey cows make the creamiest milk and the best ice cream. And in weather like this . . .” She shrugged, rubbing her shoulder against Gerrit’s.
“They make their own ice cream, yes? You’re adorable.” He kissed her chilly cheek.
Ivy murmured her disagreement, only making her more adorable.
In preparation for invasion, OT now required military training on Sundays.
Whenever possible, Gerrit made excuses. He’d returned to worshipping at the church in St. Helier, telling his colleagues that his English was better than his German, which was true.
He didn’t tell them how much it meant to sit in the same sanctuary as Ivy, even though she had to treat him with her old frostiness and he had to respond with his old stiff formality.
Then every free Sunday he enjoyed lunch with Bernardus, Charlie, and the Jounys. And Ivy. The rest of the day with Ivy.
His sigh floated to the overcast sky. “I wish I could take you somewhere else on the island to draw. Jersey is so beautiful.”
“It was more beautiful before your lot came.” No resentment colored her tone, only a touch of humor.
Yet he knew what Jersey meant to her. “Someday you’ll rebuild everything beautiful and tear down everything ugly. Someday soon.” Even though snow dusted the fields before him, spring would come soon. And with the spring, the Allies.
Gerrit was making plans for the invasion.
Since the Germans would fight hard to defend the port, St. Helier would be a most dangerous location.
He’d advised Ivy and Charlie to meet him at the farm, well inland and far from landing beaches and towns.
He and Bernardus had their pistols to protect the family from German soldiers.
Changing out of his German uniform would also protect Gerrit from Allied soldiers, so he’d stashed his civilian suit in Bernardus’s room.
He didn’t intend to conceal his status—only to stay alive until he could reveal it in safety.
After liberation, the Allies could sort out the truth of Gerrit’s involvement with Organisation Todt and the resistance.
Ivy snuggled closer to Gerrit, and her pencil swooped over the paper.
He didn’t want to think about the war. He circled his arm around her well-blanketed waist. “You’re drawing the cows. May I draw the house?”
A laugh pushed her round cheeks high. “Are you capable of drawing without a ruler?”
He groaned in mock indignation and smacked a kiss on her lips. “Watch me.”
She handed him a pencil, and he went to work, although his gloves complicated the process. At least the rough texture of the granite walls justified his less-than-straight lines. He outlined the walls and roof behind Ivy’s cows, careful not to bump her hand and ruin her art.
Four windows upstairs, three windows downstairs, and a door. “It’s easier to draw when I can see what I’m doing.”
“Mm.” Ivy darkened a hoof of one of her cows. “I can’t imagine working with secret ink.”
“Working blind in many ways.” According to Charlie, the ink Ivy had procured from the chemist had been accepted by the resistance network. “Not only tracing with clear ink, but I don’t know whether the Allies are receiving the maps or if they do any good.”
“I know they’re doing great good.”
“Even if they don’t, God is still faithful.”
Ivy paused with her pencil tip halfway along a tree limb arching over the first cow. “What do you mean?”
Gerrit drew a grid to denote roof tiles. “So often during the war, I’ve done the right thing but haven’t received the expected results. It felt as if I had done my part, and the Lord hadn’t done his. It shook my faith.”
“Because you couldn’t see the results, what you’d hoped for,” Ivy said in a thoughtful tone, adding jagged little branches to her tree limb. “It reminds me of the verse the rector quoted this morning. ‘Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.’”
Gerrit’s pencil poised at the top of the chimney. “I couldn’t see results, so I lost faith.”
Ivy turned her lovely dark eyes to him, her cheeks pink from the cold. “What if it’s like your maps? You can’t see the lines, but someone else can, someone with the right developing solution. You may never see the results of your work, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there.”
“She’s a marvel, our Ivy,” Thelma Galais had once told him. He remembered that conversation, the whimsical drawing of a house, Ivy saying she drew what she saw. And at that tension-filled Christmas dinner, Charlie had said Ivy saw “beyond the seen.”
He cleared his dry throat. “You do. You see beyond the seen.”
Ivy dipped her head to the side. “I don’t know. Sometimes I’m blinded by what I see.”
Gerrit understood, blinded as he was by black curls and brown eyes, and he kissed the pink of her cheek.
She nuzzled closer and drew a single leaf clinging to a twig. “You doubted God’s faithfulness, and I doubted his goodness.”
Something Gerrit had never doubted. “How is that?”
“I always saw his goodness in the beauty of the world and in the people around me, so when those were warped by ugliness and cruelty—well, I could no longer see God’s goodness.”
Gerrit rested his forehead against her temple. “I’m sorry for the role I played in that.”
“Don’t be.” She melted into his embrace. “Before she died, Thelma reminded me that the cross is the only proof I need of the Lord’s goodness.”
Gerrit let that thought sift through his head. “Yet what could be uglier or crueler than the cross?”
“Oh, Gerrit.” Ivy sat up straight and looked him full in the eye. “Ugly, cruel, and yet so very good. Why didn’t I see that before?”
She would have eventually, but his chest felt a bit broader.
A gentle sadness softened her expression. “I miss her.”
“I do too.”
“She’d be happy to see us together. She was fond of you.” Fondness shone in Ivy’s eyes too.
Was it too soon? Or the right time? Gerrit swallowed hard, wet his lips.
Ivy added pencil strokes to a cow’s ear.
“Thelma never saw your uniform. She saw your character. In a way, I did too. The first time I saw you . . .” Her cheeks colored, and she drew with more intensity.
“At first my view of your uniform was blocked by people in the pews between us, and I saw something in you—kindness, strength, integrity. Then your uniform came into sight, and I couldn’t reconcile what I saw with what I saw. ”
A curl curved around her chin, and he brushed it aside. It was time. “I remember the first time I saw you too. I couldn’t stop looking. I still can’t.”
A wisp of a smile flitted over her lips.
“I’ve never . . .” His voice came out raspy, and he cleared his throat. “I’ve never given much heed to the idea of love at first sight. True love takes time. But . . . but I know I started falling in love with you that day. I haven’t stopped.”
“Oh, Gerrit.” She ducked her chin even lower.
“I know. You had the uniform to look past. I didn’t. I’ve had a year and a half to fall in love. You’ve had only a few months. I don’t mind if you don’t love—”
“I do.” Her chin snapped up, and her eyes rounded with wonder. “I love you so much.”
His mind and heart overflowed, pushing all words from his mouth. He had nothing but kisses.
And he gave them to her.