Survivor (13 page)

That was the last time Mariette saw
Morgan. She went out on deck the following night, but he wasn’t there. And the
next morning, as the ship sailed into Southampton, all the crew were so busy that
she knew there was no point in trying to find him.

As she stood on deck, wrapped up in her
brown coat, holding on to her hat for dear life, her initial impression of England
was that it looked grim. Everything was grey – the sky, the sea, the buildings – and
so very cold. Mog had said that, as soon as March came in, she would see green
shoots on the trees, daffodils in the parks, and the sun would shine. But February
was clearly not a good month to see England for the first time.

Her suitcase was stacked with everyone
else’s on a lower deck, ready to be taken ashore. When she’d left the
cabin, Stella was panicking because she couldn’t get everything into her
suitcase. Mariette could have packed it for her but, after being ignored for so
long, she didn’t feel inclined to help in any way.

She had a recent photograph of Uncle
Noah and Aunt Lisette. He was portly, with receding hair, and Aunt Lisette looked
like Mrs Simpson, the lady the King had abdicated for. Her mother said Lisette had
been very beautiful as a young woman, with dark hair and eyes. She was in her
fifties now, her marcel-waved hair turning grey, but she was still lovely. She would
be wearing a brown fur coat and hat, with a red flower pinned to her coat to make it
easier for Mariette to recognize her. She just hoped she would.

The people on the dock were just
becoming visible now, but it would be a while before she could see the details on
faces. Morgan’s face was stamped
on her mind, and his features stopped any other images registering. She remembered
the cleft in his chin when he smiled, the way one corner of his mouth went up higher
when he asked a question, and the perfect arc of his dark eyebrows. She could recall
their first kiss so clearly, but not the last one. Why was that?

Mariette looked around, hoping he was
standing somewhere near, watching her. But she couldn’t see him. Did he love
her? She wished she could be absolutely certain of that.

With only a hundred yards of water now
until they docked, the crew were standing ready, and there were more sailors on the
quay too. She scanned the line of people waiting behind a barrier. They could only
wave for now; all passengers had to have their passports checked before they could
be greeted by friends and family.

She couldn’t see anyone who looked
like Uncle Noah and Aunt Lisette, and she had a moment of panic in which she felt
certain that they’d forgotten about her.

Finally, the ship’s engines
stopped, she was secured, and the gangway put in place.

Mariette looked around again, but there
was still no sign of Morgan, even though many of the stewards were out on the upper
deck waving goodbye.

All Mariette was aware of, as she joined
the throng of jostling people to have her passport examined, was the biting cold.
Her feet and legs were like ice, the lisle stockings Mog had bought for her in
Auckland no protection at all from the cruel blast of the wind.

There were so many people, all pushing
and shoving, so much noise and confusion. She let herself be drawn along by
passengers whose faces had become familiar in the past weeks. She didn’t know
where her luggage would be taken and, if Uncle Noah wasn’t here waiting for
her, she had no
idea of what she would
do. Then, just as her eyes began to fill with tears of fear and panic, she heard her
name being called.

‘
Here, Mari!
We’re here!
’

The voice came again, and through the
crowd she saw a man in a dark overcoat, waving a trilby hat. Dodging through the
crowd, Mariette reached him, and he flung his arms around her and hugged her
tightly.

‘You poor thing, you must be so
cold and confused,’ he said as he held her to his chest. ‘Welcome to
England. It may be freezing, but we are thrilled to see you.’

Mariette hadn’t really been aware
of Lisette until she heard a gentle voice with a French accent say,
‘Don’t cry, little one. We’ve been dying to meet you and
can’t wait to get you home.’

It wasn’t until after ten that same
night, when Mariette was tucked up in the prettiest bedroom she’d ever seen,
that she was able to reflect on all she’d experienced during the day and put
it into some kind of order.

Although she knew Uncle Noah had become
a celebrated journalist and author since the days when he was her father’s
friend, she hadn’t for one moment imagined him living like a millionaire, or
being so warm and lovable. From the first moment, when he hugged her, she felt
really comfortable with him.

His car was a black Daimler, driven by a
uniformed chauffeur called Andrews, and as she had only ever been in old ramshackle
cars and trucks before, she couldn’t quite get over the grandeur of the
leather seats, so much legroom and the sublime comfort. Uncle Noah sat up front, by
Andrews, but he spent almost the whole journey turning round towards the back seat
to speak to her and Lisette. He asked so many questions about her parents and her
brothers. Interspersed with this, he told her about all the places in England he
wanted her to see.

His looks belied his true nature. While
his plumpness, thinning hair, hand-tailored suit and beautiful overcoat were all
that she had expected of a wealthy middle-aged man, his personality was
irrepressibly youthful and excitable. Within minutes of being in his company, she
began to think of him as far younger than he actually was.

Lisette had the classical look of a
ballerina, partly due to
the way her
hair was pulled back into a tight bun, but she was also slender, graceful, elegantly
dressed and very serene. Her fur coat, which Mariette suspected was mink, was a
light biscuit colour with a very fluffy collar that emphasized her high cheekbones
and beautiful skin. Yet she gave the impression that she didn’t fuss about her
appearance. While being very interested and attentive, she let her husband do most
of the talking. When she did speak, her voice was soft and soothing, her French
accent reminding Mariette so much of her father’s.

It seemed a very long drive through
farmland, woods and small villages that were so old and quaint they could have been
illustrations in a child’s picture book. As stark and bare as the countryside
was in its winter mantle, there was still so much beauty in the leafless trees, the
small humpback stone bridges over streams and the hills covered in grass so much
greener than anything she’d seen in New Zealand.

They stopped for lunch in what Noah said
was an old coaching inn in Godalming, a very pretty village. The inn had wooden
beams across the low ceiling and a huge fire, and she was rather surprised to see
women in there.

‘Women aren’t allowed in
public houses in New Zealand?’ Lisette exclaimed. ‘How very odd! English
women don’t tend to go into pubs alone, of course, but it’s becoming
very common these days for women friends to come in together for lunch, or for a
drink in the evening. Pubs are at the centre of village life in England.’

When they drove into London,
Mariette’s eyes nearly popped out of her head. Noah had asked Andrews to drive
over Westminster Bridge so she could see the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben. They
drove round Trafalgar Square, then up the Mall towards Buckingham Palace. Although
she’d seen many pictures of these places, everything was so much larger and
more splendid than she had expected.

‘There’s an awful lot more to London than we’ve shown you
today,’ Noah said, smiling because she was so overawed. ‘But we’ll
wait until you’ve got used to the cold before we take you to see the
rest.’

Finally, they reached Noah’s house
and Mariette’s jaw dropped at the size of it. Noah said it was built in 1795,
which made it much older than any house she’d ever seen in New Zealand. Old it
might be, but it was so graceful and beautifully proportioned, with a portico over
the central front door and three long windows, arched at the top, on either side of
it.

Mog and Belle had both used words like
‘cosy’ and ‘homely’ to describe the home Uncle Noah and Aunt
Lisette had when they left for New Zealand. But this house had been bought since
then. Cosy and homely would certainly not describe it. Grand, palatial – even
spectacular – would be more apt.

Mariette tried very hard not to show her
astonishment as Mrs Andrews, the housekeeper and wife of the chauffeur, opened the
front door and welcomed her into a huge hall with a floor polished to a mirror
finish and a grand staircase sweeping up and round, the like of which she’d
only seen in films.

‘We’re rattling around in
all this space since Jean-Philippe got married two years ago,’ Noah said,
while Mrs Andrews took her coat and hat. Mr Andrews was already carrying
Mariette’s suitcase up to her room. ‘We never realized how much space he
took up until he moved out. Now it’s only us and Rose. She’s away at the
moment, with friends, but she’ll be back tomorrow.’

The drawing room to the right of the
hall was huge, decorated in soft pastel shades, with floor-length curtains and
elaborate braid-trimmed pelmets above. In front of a roaring
fire there were large sofas which begged to be curled up
on, and in front of the window there was a polished wooden table covered in
silver-framed photographs.

Mariette was thrilled to see herself
amongst them. There was one of her as a baby in Noah’s arms, when he’d
come out to New Zealand to be her godfather, another of her at fifteen, taken while
sailing the dinghy, a lovely one of her mother and father on their wedding day and
one of Mog and Belle, presumably taken at the end of the war, when they were leaving
for New Zealand, because they were both very dressed up.

‘This is Jean-Philippe,’
Lisette said, pointing out a young man with very dark hair and a very serious
expression. ‘He’s thirty-one now, but that was taken when he was around
twenty-six.’ She then touched his wedding picture. ‘And this is him with
his bride, Alice.’

Mariette knew that Jean-Philippe was
Noah’s stepson, and she wondered if he would come round soon to meet her.

‘Rose?’ Mariette asked,
picking up a photograph of a girl in her twenties. She reminded Mariette of the way
Mog had described Noah when he was young, with a round face, very curly hair and a
brilliant smile.

‘Yes, that’s my Rose – and
aptly named, for she is much more English than French,’ Lisette said.
‘She’s twenty-four now but still young enough to be good company for
you.’

‘It’s lovely to see Mum,
Papa and Mog here too,’ Mariette said. ‘I didn’t expect
that.’

Lisette put her hands on
Mariette’s shoulders and looked her full in the face. ‘Your mother and
father mean a great deal to Noah and me. There is a bond between us stronger than
just family ties. So, of course, your pictures are all here in our home. I’m
just waiting for them to send me a photograph of Alexis and Noel, and then they will
be here too.’

‘I have
one in my case, Mum said I was to give it to you,’ Mariette said.

‘You will miss your parents, being
so far away,’ Lisette said, and put her arms around Mariette to hug her.
‘But you must think of Noah and myself as stand-in parents. Don’t be
afraid to tell us things. We are not – how do you say it in English? –
ogres.’

Mariette wasn’t normally one for
hugging, but she was glad to be enveloped in Lisette’s arms. She liked her,
and she wasn’t surprised now that the Frenchwoman and Belle had been such good
friends. There was a similarity about them, not looks, but something indefinable
which she felt, but couldn’t quite put her finger on.

As Mariette reached out to switch off
the bedside lamp in her new room, she remembered how Mog had said she wouldn’t
know herself once she discovered the joys of living with electricity. She’d
already got used to it on the ship, but here in this pretty cream and pink room,
which Lisette said had been inspired by Belle’s hat shop, she hoped she would
never have to light an oil lamp again.

It was touching that Lisette had been
thinking of Belle when she planned the room, yet it seemed very French to Mariette.
The gilding on the ornate dressing table and matching stool reminded her of pictures
she’d seen of furniture in Versailles. There were two pictures on the wall
above the bed, both of outrageous frothy hats. Lisette said she’d found them
in a flea market in Paris, and both she and Noah knew immediately that they would be
perfect for this room.

The house back in Russell was very
simply decorated and furnished, which made this house seem even more grandiose and
decadent, but it wasn’t just the sumptuous carpets, polished furniture and the
like that impressed Mariette so much,
rather the way she was taken care of and the sheer
comfort of it all. While they had been eating their supper, Mrs Andrews had come up
and unpacked her suitcase for her, taking away everything that needed washing. There
was a cream chaise longue by the window, and there were radiators all over the house
so that every room was warm. Even the bed she was in was a double one, with sheets
that felt as smooth and soft as silk.

She’d had a bath in a bathroom
which was just for her, adjoining her room. There were fluffy towels warming on a
heated rail, and going outside to a lavatory was now a thing of the past. It was all
beyond her wildest dreams.

But there were two things missing. One
was the sound of the sea. Ever since she’d been a little girl, she’d
lain awake listening to the waves breaking on the shore, and on the voyage from New
Zealand the sound had surrounded her. Here there was just traffic, a faint hum now
it was getting late, comforting enough, but not in the way the sea was.

Then there was Morgan. She’d
managed to avoid thinking about him for most of the day, but now she was alone she
ached for him. Was he thinking of her right now? Or had he forgotten her already and
gone off into Southampton to dance, get drunk and find another girl?

The first two weeks of being in London
were such a whirlwind of new experiences that Mariette didn’t miss Morgan
quite as much as she’d thought she would. It was really only late at night
that he crept into her thoughts, and although her stomach would churn with wanting
him, it wasn’t as bad as she’d expected it to be.

She adored London. It wasn’t just
seeing the famous sights – the Tower of London, St Paul’s Cathedral and London
Zoo – but simple things, like a ride on a bus, eating fish and
chips, or taking a toboggan out on Primrose Hill when it
snowed. She’d never seen snow before – they had it in the South Island, but
never in Russell – and she couldn’t quite believe that a man like Noah would
gleefully hurtle down slopes on a toboggan with her.

When she wrote home, the words flooded
out in her excitement to make her family share her experiences and the sights
she’d seen. She felt obliged to tell them she missed them all, but the truth
was that she was far too happy with her new life to give them more than the
occasional sentimental thought.

She loved living in such a busy street.
In the mornings, when she looked out of the window, there were gentlemen in bowler
hats with furled umbrellas, going off to the City. There were so many smartly
dressed office girls too, mothers taking small children to school and older children
larking around as they found their own way there.

Later in the day, there were the
tradesmen: a baker delivering bread from his horse-drawn cart, a coal merchant, even
a man who sharpened knives. Nursemaids pushing prams came out when it was sunny,
while housemaids scrubbed doorsteps and polished door brass.

She thought of the streets in Russell.
Cows meandered along them at will, and when it rained they were like swamps. Now
that she was here, in London, she couldn’t imagine going back to such a
primitive way of life.

The thought that Noah and Lisette might
get fed up with her – and might send her home – worried her, and to make this far
less likely she made sure she was always on her best behaviour. She spoke French to
Lisette, because she knew she liked it, and she offered to help around the house.
Mrs Andrews did all the housework and so, invariably, Lisette would say there was
nothing to do. But Mariette made her
own
bed, kept her bedroom really tidy and remained alert for anything else she could do
to please Lisette.

She loved running errands. The little
shops nearby were like Aladdin’s caves stuffed with goods, and the big shops,
further away in Oxford Street and Regent Street, were so amazing that she could
wander around them all day without getting bored.

Rose had returned home on
Mariette’s second day in London. Although Mariette’s first impression of
her was that she was like one of those aristocratic, earnest young women she’d
seen in British-made films, she liked her.

‘I expect Mama and Papa will
overdo the sightseeing,’ Rose said with an infectious grin. ‘So
I’ll take you to the jollier places. Have you ever tried roller skating? I
love it. There’s a rink in Finchley Road, not far from here. Shall we go
tomorrow night?’

Mariette had only ever seen roller
skating on a film, but it looked a fun thing to do, and she agreed with
enthusiasm.

It was all Rose had said, and more.
Mariette hung on to the side of the rink at first, too scared to let go, but then
Rose and one of her friends held her hands and took her round with them.

She got the hang of it very quickly
after that, and by the end of the session she could even skate backwards. She was
complimented for learning so quickly.

Rose and her circle of friends were very
different from women of the same age back in Russell. Although few of them did any
paid work, they all appeared to have had very good educations. They spent their days
visiting friends, having lunch and helping out in various charities. Rose told her
it wasn’t done for middle-class girls to work and that she was an exception,
having been trained as a bookkeeper. But even Rose didn’t go to work every
day; it seemed the
bookkeeping work she
did was for people known to her father, and she slotted this in between her social
engagements and charity work.