Survivor (43 page)

They had gone out in the boat on the
previous day, and had spent a lovely afternoon together. They hadn’t returned
until after dark, and Belle had been reminded that it was a long while since
they’d been spontaneous, and done something just for fun.

‘There was this letter for you,
from England,’ Mog said, handing it to Etienne. ‘It looks very official.
Could it be about Mari?’

Etienne opened the envelope with a
knife. As he read the contents, he frowned.

‘Bad news?’ Belle asked
anxiously.

‘No,’ he said, ‘just
surprising news. It’s from a solicitor. It seems Noah left my old place in
Marseille to us.’

Belle was so surprised, she could only
stare for a moment. ‘Really?’ she exclaimed, after a moment or two,
knowing she must respond. ‘That is amazing! And how like Noah to do something
lovely for us.’

Etienne had bought the land long before
she met him. He had repaired the tumbledown cottage, planted lemon trees and kept
chickens. During the Great War, when she met up with him in France, he had told her
about it. He had even suggested she should run away from Jimmy, her husband, and
hole up there until the war was over. But then Jimmy lost his leg and arm, and she
couldn’t leave him like that.

She had thought
Etienne had been killed in the war, and so, when Jimmy died too, she and Mog
emigrated to New Zealand. It was Noah who discovered that Etienne was still alive.
He tracked him down to the farm, and urged him to follow Belle out to New Zealand.
Noah bought the little farm from him; he said he and Lisette would love to have a
summer home in the South of France.

‘Why has the solicitor taken so
long to contact us?’ Belle asked.

‘It appears they’ve had some
difficulty finding out where we are.’

‘Why?’ Belle asked.
‘Surely Jean-Philippe knows exactly where we are?’

Etienne grinned. ‘I suspect
Jean-Philippe didn’t want to say. The solicitor says, “Mr Foss
challenged his stepfather’s will, claiming that the French house had been
promised to him.” He then goes on to say the court ruled that Mr
Baylis’s wishes must be upheld.’

‘And so they should be,’
Belle said, with some indignation. ‘I’m quite certain Jean-Philippe was
well taken care of anyway. But, you know, Lisette did say in a letter some years ago
that Jean-Philippe could be difficult with Noah. She didn’t elaborate. But she
must have felt bad about it, considering that it was Noah who saved her and her son
from the clutches of French gangsters and gave them a new life.’

Etienne nodded in agreement. ‘I
only met Jean-Philippe once,’ he said. ‘And I recall him being a very
sullen little boy. Noah was embarrassed by him not answering my questions. But I had
assumed he would improve as he got older. Seems he didn’t.’

‘It’s an ill wind and all
that,’ Belle said with a smile.

‘A place in the South of France
isn’t worth much to anyone right now, it could even be a liability,’
Etienne said
doubtfully. ‘The
chances are it has been damaged, requisitioned or even burned down. I recall Noah
sent us a picture of his family taken there, and it looked marvellous, because
he’d done the place up. But that must have been fifteen years or so
ago.’

‘I’ll try to find that
picture,’ Belle said. ‘They went there every summer. Lisette loved it as
much as Noah. She told me in one letter that people around there still talked about
you.’

Etienne smiled. ‘Well, by the time
the war’s over and we have enough money to go there to take a look, I’d
say most of those people will have passed on. We’ll have to sell the place
anyway. It’s too far away.’

‘Noah must have realized that we
wouldn’t go back to Europe,’ Belle said. ‘So why did he leave it
to us?’

‘He was a sentimental man, he knew
how much it had once meant to me, and I guess he felt it was right to give it back
to me. But I really hope he also wanted to annoy Jean-Philippe,’ Etienne said
with a wicked grin. ‘I never told you, because Noah asked me not to, but at
the time I was talking on the phone to Noah about sending Mari over there, he
admitted to me the lad was a nasty piece of work. He said he was resentful,
mean-spirited and very jealous of Rose. He often tried to hurt her. Noah said
Lisette was bewildered by it, and they both felt very relieved when he got married
and moved away.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me this
before?’ Belle asked with some indignation. ‘Surely you should have said
something when Mari left Noah’s house so quickly after the tragedy?
Didn’t you think that Jean-Philippe must have been nasty to her?’

‘Yes, I did. But I could hardly
leap over there and flatten him, could I? We were both so upset at losing Noah,
Lisette and Rose. And it wouldn’t have helped you to know what Noah had told
me.’

‘What
else have the solicitors said?’ she asked.

‘I have to confirm I am Etienne
Carrera, get someone to witness the document, and then they will send me the deeds.
Maybe I’ll also ask if I can see a copy of the will, just to make sure that
Jean-Philippe hasn’t blocked anyone else’s inheritance.’

‘What might the house be worth,
darling?’ she asked.

Etienne shrugged. ‘I haven’t
the faintest idea. It’s in Vichy France, and I don’t know if that makes
it more likely to be intact, or less. I don’t even know if Noah had someone
taking care of it. But the land will have value, once the war is over, and people
start going to the South of France again.’

‘Maybe once Mari’s leg is
better, she will be able to go to look at it for you?’ Belle said.

‘Yes, maybe she will,’
Etienne replied.

But he couldn’t look Belle in the
eye as a sixth sense told him the repair to Mari’s leg wasn’t going to
be a quick one.

Etienne’s instinct was right.
Mariette’s knee had been badly smashed by the bullet, and she had her first
operation on it the afternoon she arrived at Southampton Hospital.

The journey from France was all very
hazy to her. All she remembered clearly was being on deck, ready with the four
children to transfer from the French boat to the English vessel, and the pain in her
knee was so bad that she couldn’t stand on her right leg.

In the end, Luc jumped across with her
in his arms because she passed out. Or so Armand said, on the way back to England.
She had no recollection of it.

The rest of the journey, arriving in
Lyme Regis and being transferred to an ambulance, was like a series of brief,
disconnected snapshots to her, with faces she didn’t recognize leaning over
her and white-hot pain engulfing her.

She only became aware of being safe in
hospital the next day, after the first operation on her knee. A man called Whitlock
came to see her, sent by Miss Salmon, and Mariette asked him to contact Sybil to
tell her where she was. But Whitlock was more interested in hearing the details of
how the rescue went, and reminding her that she wasn’t to divulge anything to
anyone, than in reassuring her that Sybil would be told.

So she was left not knowing whether he
would contact
Sybil, or not. And she was
wondering how she was expected to explain her injury to people, especially here in
hospital. She was fairly certain a gunshot wound bore no resemblance to a wound
acquired falling over or being hit by a car. Was she supposed to say she
couldn’t answer that question, if the doctor asked who shot her?

As it was, the doctor who came to see
her after she came round from the anaesthetic just said that he’d removed the
bullet from her knee. Then he explained that she’d need a further operation in
a day or two as the bullet had splintered other surrounding bone. He didn’t
ask any questions about how she got the injury. All he did say was that she would be
in hospital for some time.

Apart from the constant pain in her
knee, it felt good to be in bed in a warm room, with no further responsibility. She
was alone in a small side ward. If she craned her neck, she could just see the big
ward through a glass panel in the wall. She was glad she wasn’t in there.
Women patients always made a point of trying to find out what was wrong with
everyone else, and she needed rest and time to make up a story before she was ready
to talk to anyone.

Yet whenever she closed her eyes, she
saw again how she had killed the soldier. She heard the gurgling noise he made, and
felt the spurt of warm blood on her hand from his throat.

She wondered if she would ever be able
to forget it. Was she going to see that scene for the rest of her life? She could
rationalize it, tell herself that the lives of four innocent children were more
valuable than the life of one soldier. She just hoped that other good people in
Portivy didn’t lose their lives because of what she had done. Especially
Celeste, Luc and Gilpin. Would she ever get to hear any news of them?

Sister Fairclough, a thin horsey-looking
woman, came to
see her at nine that
night to tell her Sybil had rung the ward to ask how Mariette was, and to say
she’d be coming to visit the next day. ‘She said a Mr Whitlock contacted
her,’ the sister said. ‘That was the gentleman who came this morning,
wasn’t it? Is he a relative?’

‘No, I sort of worked for
him,’ Mariette said, hoping that would stop any further questions. ‘I
asked him to ring Sybil. I lodge in her home, and I knew she’d be worried
about me.’

‘I’d be worried too, if my
lodger had a bullet in her knee,’ the sister said tartly.

‘I’m not allowed to talk
about it,’ Mariette replied. ‘I’m sorry.’

Sister sniffed, put a thermometer in
Mariette’s mouth and pushed up the sleeve of her hospital nightdress to take
her blood pressure.

It seemed as if she’d taken the
hint.

The next morning, after a long night
that Mari had spent mostly awake with the pain in her knee, a young nurse came in
with a bedpan and a bowl of water for washing. She was a plain girl with dark hair
and glasses, but she understood immediately that Mariette was embarrassed at having
to use the bedpan. She somehow managed to get it beneath her, then disappear as she
used it and come back at the right moment to discreetly remove it.

‘I’ll leave you to wash
yourself while I nip off and find you a toothbrush and toothpaste,’ she said
cheerfully. ‘I’ll find you a clean gown too.’

Mariette managed to wash herself quite
well – considering each time she moved her leg, it hurt like crazy – but she was
very glad when the nurse came back and helped her into a clean gown and combed her
hair for her.

‘You’ve got such pretty
hair,’ the nurse said. ‘But it looks like you’ve got blood in it.
How did you manage that?’

Knowing it was
the soldier’s blood made Mariette feel sick. She lay back on the pillow
without replying.

‘I’ll bring you some
breakfast,’ the nurse said, backing out with the washing bowl, clearly
realizing that she’d somehow upset her patient.

Mariette lay in bed, on the verge of
dropping off, when she suddenly heard a man’s voice outside her door.

‘I was told I’ve got to take
someone down to X-ray,’ she heard him say, and Mariette was instantly wide
awake. His voice was so familiar.

She shook herself, remembering that many
Londoners sounded the same.

It couldn’t possibly be
Morgan.

But when the little nurse with glasses
came into her room, carrying a breakfast tray, she had to ask.

‘A man came just now to pick up
another patient for X-ray,’ she said. ‘His voice sounded like someone I
used to know. What’s his name?’

‘I don’t know,’ the
nurse said. ‘I haven’t been here long, and most people just call him
“Porter”. Some call him “Scar”, though,’ she said,
then clamped her hand over her face in a sudden gesture of embarrassment at what
she’d said. ‘I’m sorry, that was horrid of me, especially as
he’s a nice man, very gentle and kind to the patients. And very rude, if he
should be your friend.’

‘He isn’t,’ Mariette
said, remembering Morgan’s handsome face. ‘If he had been, you’d
have described him very differently.’

At eleven o’clock that morning,
she heard the porter’s voice again. And this time he had come for Mariette, to
take her to X-ray.

As he pushed the trolley into her room,
he stopped short and stared open-mouthed at her.

If he
hadn’t reacted to her, she might never have realized it was Morgan.

Because he had changed so
dramatically.

His black hair was streaked with grey,
presumably a result of the shock of the burn that disfigured his right cheek and
neck. It slightly puckered his eye and one side of his lips, but it looked as if
he’d had extensive plastic surgery because the scar tissue was pale and shiny,
almost like snakeskin. It was only by looking at the left side of his face that she
could recognize the face of the man she’d fallen in love with on the way to
England. That cheek was as golden and smooth as she remembered.

‘Morgan!’ she gasped.
‘I thought I heard your voice this morning. But I convinced myself it was just
someone who sounded like you.’

‘Mariette! Of all the people in
the world!’

‘That you hoped you’d never
run into again,’ she added pointedly.

He hung his head. ‘I’m sure
you can see why I didn’t want you to come and see me in Folkestone. I looked
like a monster.’

‘Did you really think I was that
shallow?’ she retorted. But even as she spoke, she knew that, in fact, she had
been back then. And he must have looked a million times worse than he did now.

‘You were just an impressionable
young girl then, and I’d also treated you very badly the last time I saw
you,’ he said. ‘I was amazed you even wrote to me afterwards.’

As he turned the good side of his face
towards her, she was astounded to feel that old familiar tugging sensation in her
belly that she remembered so well. It seemed ridiculous, considering all she’d
been through since they’d last seen each other.

‘You’ve got a very bad knee injury, I’m told. The surgeon needs an
X-ray to look at how he will rebuild it,’ he explained.

He manoeuvred the trolley to the side of
her bed and then removed her bed covers so she could shuffle over.

‘Can we talk sometime?’ she
asked.

He let go of the covers and lightly
touched her cheek with one finger, just the way he had on the boat coming to
England. ‘What is there to talk about?’ he asked. ‘Maybe, on the
ship, it did seem special. But you lived in one world, and I came from another. You
didn’t deserve the way I treated you; the only excuse I can offer is that I
knew I was out of my league.

‘I don’t know why I wrote to
you when I was in the Folkestone hospital. As soon as I’d posted the letter, I
regretted it. Anyway, it was all a long time ago now. Let’s leave it and just
remember the good parts.’