Chapter 2
The next morning
How could she be the person she was before?
She couldn’t, but still the past drew her back.
All night, dreaming, Florence had longed to stumble upon a garden just like hers in the Dordogne.
But it wasn’t a garden she found; in her dream it was a cemetery with her name carved on a headstone, paper roses strewn before it.
Torn between worlds, in that hazy state before the day opened properly, her mind felt clouded, her heart unsettled, but then she heard water running over stones.
From her bedroom window the evening before, she had spotted that the garden briefly dipped downwards, so the water was a little deeper there before it vanished under shrubs and bushes.
Things became clear again. England, the early morning light here more fragile than it was at home, diffused.
And then tapping. She heard someone tapping on her door.
Barely able to remember the strange dream now, she heard Jack’s voice and rubbed the sleep from her eyes just as he poked his head around the door.
‘Sorry to disturb. You all right?’
She pulled the sheets up to her chin, acutely aware she wasn’t wearing a nightdress. Last night, Jack had dug out a long-sleeved winceyette nightie that had once belonged to his grandmother, but she hadn’t liked to say how much she hated the horrible itchy thing.
Jack ran his fingers through his hair, leaving it tousled, and didn’t quite meet her eyes.
‘You didn’t disturb me,’ she said. ‘I was half awake.’
‘Good. I thought you might be hungry.’
‘Might be? I’m famished!’
‘There’s eggs and sausages from the farm next door and a fresh loaf.’
She smiled. ‘Give me fifteen minutes. No, ten.’
‘Scrambled? Fried? Poached?’
‘Up to you.’
‘Good. Truth is, I can only really do fried.’
She laughed as he left the room. Then she splashed her face and gave herself a quick flannel wash with water from the china jug and bowl on the marble-topped washstand.
Then she put on the dressing gown Jack had given her and brushed her tangled blonde hair, tying it back in a low ponytail.
She glanced in the small wall mirror, smiling at her own gunmetal grey-blue eyes, the ingrained dirt on her heart-shaped face and the annoying red spot on her chin.
Too bad. She would have to do. Relief at being safe bubbled inside her and as she opened her bedroom door, she could smell the sausages frying in the kitchen. Mmmm. Delicious.
She hurried down the narrow stairs. There was a brick-built outdoor bathroom, a sort of add-on affair, complete with a lavatory, a huge Belfast sink, and an old bath, but no electricity.
At night you had to use a torch or a candle.
You reached it via the scullery, so at least you didn’t have to go completely outside, and she dashed through before heading for the kitchen.
‘Smells wonderful,’ she said a little later as she joined Jack. ‘I missed a good old British banger when I lived in France.’
He pulled a wry face. ‘Sorry. Burnt them a bit.’
‘The only way sausages are meant to be eaten.’
‘You like them like that?’
‘Absolutely.’
Dark blonde hair framed his strong face, clean-shaven now for the first time, with even his sandy moustache gone.
This man who had come into their life so suddenly, who had been a friend to her sisters as well as to the Resistance, had been her way out of France, her means of escape.
He smiled at her, his green eyes bright with life. ‘Better?’
She nodded, her mouth full of sausage, then glanced around the oak-beamed kitchen. It was small but immaculate, with a cream-coloured Aga which Jack filled from a store of anthracite in one of the sheds. She’d take over that task when he was gone.
When he was gone.
She didn’t dwell on what else she might do when he was gone.
Jack had brought her here so she had somewhere quiet to recover before she made contact with her mother.
He hadn’t told her where he would be going, and she didn’t want to think about him leaving, but he was still a member of the Special Operations Executive as far as she knew, albeit with an injured arm.
She forced her mind away from the unsettling subject and looked around her.
In the kitchen there was also a built-in wooden dresser, latticed cupboards with wire netting on the inside, hooks hanging from beams, another Belfast sink, and four oil lamps, a nod to the cottage’s fragile electricity supply.
The deep window seat, on one side of the pine table, overlooked the water meadow in front of the house.
From another window at the back all you could see was the green slope of the hill behind the house where Jack told her the pheasants ran about like lunatics.
Even a shadow in the window would be enough to set them off.
A massive open fireplace with an oak mantel and a bread oven at the side took up almost one wall and a heavy chopping block lay on a smaller table in the middle of the kitchen.
‘It’s lovely to be here,’ she said.
‘Can’t swing a cat,’ he replied.
‘It’s cosy, and anyway you haven’t got a cat.’
‘Would you like one? Gladys has kittens up at the farm.’
‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘But I can’t see my mother letting me take a kitten to her cottage.’
‘Fair point. When Dad brings his dog over, do you fancy taking him for a walk?’
‘Just as long as I can have a bath first.’
She could already feel the Devonshire landscape calling her.
She loved the countryside – the animals she’d seen on the nearby farm, the brook, the water meadow, the wildlife.
And from the moment she had arrived the day before, she’d loved the earthy green smell of it too.
It helped revive her spirits and lessened the exhaustion, the homesickness, and the loneliness when she thought of her sisters still in France.
It had been more than two months since she’d seen them or been in contact; England was still at war and Hitler was still wreaking destruction in Europe.
It might be years before she saw Hélène and élise again.
Later, after Florence had finished her bath and had scrubbed her body until it was pink and glowing, Lionel turned up, bright and jolly, waving aside offers of tea and saying he needed to get going.
Justin was a young, lolloping black Labrador with heart-melting chocolate eyes, so the three immediately prepared for their walk.
There were boots, jackets, waterproofs, and wellingtons in the cottage, accumulated over the years, Jack said, and she could always find something to wear.
He had inherited the cottage from his grandmother but had often stayed there in the past so had left plenty of his clothes stored in wardrobes and chests.
It helped to have the dog easing the edge between them and they laughed as he bounded off to bark at pheasants and imaginary rabbits.
After crossing the shallow brook at the front of the house, they were now walking up the bumpy gravelled track they had driven down the day before.
There was a valley on the left where a stream meandered, and beyond that a bank of beech, elm, and oak trees that marched up another steep hill.
Jack strode on ahead and, as she watched him, she couldn’t help thinking about what they’d been through.
‘Do you think about Biarritz?’ she called out.
He twisted back to look at her and frowned.
‘I was so frightened,’ she said, as she caught up with him.
‘I try not to think of it, Florence, and I wish you wouldn’t. But I have to admit I thought we’d never find a passeur.’
‘I can’t help going over it in my head. What could have gone wrong.’
He nodded. ‘I know.’
She remembered blindly following the man into the darkness and the narrow passes of the foothills of the Pyrenees with Jack coming up behind. She’d stumbled and tripped and cried out in fear, her heart pounding.
‘It’ll be all right. The Boche won’t find us here,’ Jack had said when they spent the first night in an abandoned shepherd’s hut listening to gunfire. After everything that had happened, it was hard to even recall the girl she had been a year ago.
Now, as he tramped on calling to the Labrador, she picked up speed too.
‘What’s up?’ Jack asked.
‘Oh, I don’t know.’
He ruffled her hair and smiled. ‘What a funny one you are, Florence Baudin.’ And though he sometimes treated her like a kid sister, she liked it.
That night, after she closed the curtains at the three casement windows, she sat on the sofa, feet tucked beneath her.
Larger than the kitchen, the beamed sitting room was rectangular, with a comforting smell of old books.
Even though it was not cold, Jack had decided to light a fire.
She watched as he layered the twisted paper, kindling, and smaller pieces of wood, and tried to work out what he was feeling but his face, as usual, was unfathomable.
Occasionally she would catch his eyes upon her, glittering, intense, and he would seem almost on the point of speaking, but when she smiled to encourage him, he would frown and look away.
She knew she needed to write to her mother and get a message to her sisters to let them know she and Jack were safe in England.
Hélène would be sick with worry. She tasted something acidic on her tongue and then smelt something too.
Guilt maybe? Could you smell or taste guilt?
She glanced toward Jack again. They had already lost so much of their lives to war.
Didn’t you just have to grasp each day and live it?
‘The first fire of the season is always special,’ Jack said, seemingly oblivious to what had been going on in her head. ‘Although I know it’s not really the season, but these cottage walls are thick and it can be cool at night.’
He was still squatting as the fire caught but spun round on his heels.
‘Are you happy to be here?’ he asked, gazing up at her. ‘You do seem subdued.’
So, he has picked up on something, she thought as she watched the flickering flames casting shadows across his face. ‘I don’t mean to be. Thank you for bringing me here – I love it.’
‘You don’t have to stay. If you’d rather go to your mother in the Cotswolds straight away, I won’t be offended.’
She frowned. ‘It isn’t that. I’m glad to be here.’
‘Then?’
She turned the issue of Hélène over in her mind again but didn’t have the courage or the will, so spoke of how strange it would be to see her mother after seven years.
Then she fell silent.
She inhaled the scent of wood smoke as they remained without speaking for a few minutes longer, the only sound the fire as it crackled and popped.
‘Damn thing smokes,’ he said, ‘when the wind howls.’ And then he laughed and spoke in a spooky voice. ‘The windows rattle, and the ghosts come out to play. Whooo.’
‘Stop it,’ she said laughing.
He grinned. ‘Well, it isn’t windy now, of course, but when it is you just have to pull out these two knobs.’ He pointed at them.
Again she thought of the Pyrenees.
The wind hadn’t been howling there either, not at first.
On that first night they slept a little and when dawn came she could make out the distant peaks of the mountains, shocked by how high they were and how high the stakes were too.
A skinny young Basque guide collected them from the hut but seemed too nervous to know what she was doing.
If Jack had chosen the wrong person, his misplaced trust could have meant certain death for them both.
She shook the images away as she realised Jack had been asking her something and wished she didn’t keep going over these dark thoughts.
But no one else could understand, no one else had been with them on those wild mountains with the constant risk of death.
Just her and Jack. And then Hélène came into her mind again and a feeling of shame inflamed her cheeks as her sister’s face danced in the firelight.