Philippa Carr - We’ll meet again

Dorabella gave a sudden start.

“Look! Down there! I saw it on the water, a dark object bobbing about on the tide.”

“It’s a boat,” I said, and I heard the drumming of an engine.

“Probably one of the fishermen coming in late,” replied Dorabella.

We waited for a few seconds. We could not see the boat coming into the beach.

“Should we give the alarm?” I asked.

“And make ourselves a laughingstock again?”

“It’s what we’re supposed to do.”

“Gordon said we did the right thing. How were we to know about those wretched fishes?”

“Let’s go down and see who it is,” I said. “I bet it’s old Jim Treglow or Harry Penlore, or one of them. They might be just doing it to catch us … to get another laugh at the expense of ‘they foreigners.’”

“Suppose it’s some secret agent?”

“Don’t make me laugh! That’s one of the old fishing boats. There are lots of them in the harbor.”

I hesitated. We must not call the alarm again unless it was really necessary. If we had waited a while on that other occasion, we might have realized what we had seen was a shoal of fish and not an invading army.

“Come on,” said Dorabella. “We’ll watch them come in and, if it is anyone we don’t know, we’ll run up and give the alarm. There’ll be time.”

We sped down the path to the beach and stood close together in the shelter of an overhanging rock. The engine had been shut off and there were no lights showing now. Nearer and nearer came the boat. It touched the sand and then I heard a man’s voice say something in French.

Dorabella caught her breath as the man looked up at the cliff face towards the house. He had not seen us.

Then he turned and another slight figure wrapped in a cloak had started to climb out of the boat. A woman, I thought.

We had to act. We had to slip away unseen. We had to give the alarm. No one must be allowed to come ashore without some interrogation.

The man was looking our way. He had seen us. He spoke almost in a whisper but his voice was clear on the night air.

Dorabella said: “Jacques …”

The man heard. He stepped towards us, the girl beside him.

Dorabella came out of the shelter of the rock. She walked towards the pair.

She said: “Jacques, what are you doing here?”

He turned and faced her.

“Dorabella, ma petite …” Then he held out his hands.

They stood facing each other, then he turned to his companion and said: “This is my sister, Simone.”

I knew who he was now. I had seen him before at the Christmas party at Jermyn’s Priory when he had first met Dorabella. He was the French artist who had been painting the Cornish coast, and for the sake of whom she had faked a drowning accident and fled to France, leaving her husband and her little son Tristan.

He released her and turned to me, stretching out a hand and taking mine in his.

“I am so glad to see you,” he said in his accented English. “I did not think we would arrive. The sea is calm but the craft is frail … and it is a long way to come.”

“Why … why?” stammered Dorabella.

“You ask that. We cannot live in France … not till we are free again. Neither Simone nor I. It is impossible. We are two of many who are making this journey. They take to the sea … they take the small boat… and they risk their lives …but what good is life as slaves, eh? So, we escape.”

“I see,” said Dorabella. “It was very brave of you.”

She was studying Simone, a small, dark girl who looked romantically beautiful in the darkness of the night. I noticed she was shaking, and I said: “You must be cold.”

“We had long at sea,” she answered. “It is not easy … this Manche. No … even on such a night as this. We are cold and hungry but we rejoice to have succeed. We are here … as we planned to be.”

“We can give you some food and something to drink,” I said. “Come up to the house. You can tell us all about what is happening over there.”

“And you … out at this time?” asked Jacques.

“On the watch,” replied Dorabella. “For people like you. No, really, we are looking for Germans.”

“The enemy … you expect … ?”

“Any minute,” said Dorabella. “We are on watch every night.”

“And you find us! I did not expect to see you so soon. I planned to land and wait till morning somewhere along the coast. Then we should throw ourselves on your mercy. We want to work for the overthrow of these tyrants who have taken our country. I shall join General de Gaulle as soon as possible … and there will be some work Simone can do.”

I said: “I think you had better tie up your boat. I’ll go and tell Gordon what has happened.”

“My sister is so practical,” Dorabella told them.

“Ah, yes,” said Jacques. “I remember this Gordon. The good manager, is that not so? You must tell him?”

“Yes. He is in control here and you will understand we have to report to him.”

“Of course, of course.”

I left them and went ahead into the house. My thoughts were in a whirl. What a coincidence! Dorabella’s lover, escaping and coming to our beach! But then, I supposed he had made for it, thinking how much easier it would be to explain himself to those who already knew him than to strangers.

It was all very strange, but then so many strange things were happening now.

I COULD NOT DESCRIBE my feelings when, waiting with Violetta in the shelter of the rocks, I heard that voice from the past. Jacques in England! And at such a time! Here was the past, which I had hoped was buried forever, come back to confront me. It seems that everything we do remains forever; there is no escaping from it.

I can remember Violetta quoting something like this once:

The moving finger writes

And having writ moves on

Nor all thy piety nor wit

Can lure it back to cancel half a line

Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.

Violetta always liked poetry and often quotes it to great effect. I thought of this poem now. How true it was. Many a trouble had she covered up for me throughout our childhood, and my affair with Jacques was the biggest of them all. She had helped me to emerge from it with as little discredit as possible.

The war had helped, for I returned just at that time when it was declared and people had other things with which to occupy their minds than the affairs of an erring wife.

Yes, I was indeed impulsive. It was always act first and think afterwards; Violetta would be there to help if need be. But, of course, when I was about to become involved in a mad escapade, I never thought of the consequences until afterwards.

There had been that time in Germany when I first met Dermot. There he was, an Englishman on holiday, as we were. It was all so natural—a holiday romance which ended in wedding bells. Quite an ordinary story, really. I enjoyed every minute of it at the time. Dermot had all the qualities of a romantic hero—handsome, presentable, heir to a large estate, and very much in love with me. Up to that time, I had been a little disappointed in the holiday. All that intense nationalism, all that clicking of heels, the great Hitler and the rise of the new Germany—and then, of course, it became a little sinister. But it was all so far removed from our lives. When the holiday was over, we should go home and what was happening in Germany seemed of little importance to us. I later realized I was wrong about that—as I was about so many things.

We came home and my family visited Dermot’s and everything went smoothly; it seemed the most natural thing in the world that we should marry and live happily ever after.

Perhaps I began to feel a few twinges before the wedding. It is strange how different people can be in certain settings. In Germany Dermot was the romantic hero, rescuing us when we were lost in the forest, defending us during that frightful scene in the schloss when the Hitler Youth tried to break up the place because the owners—our friends—were Jewish. Yes, he was wonderful during that time.

Then, back in Cornwall, he seemed less heroic, seen against the background of Tregarland, the ancestral home. He was in awe of that strange old man, his father, and he was overshadowed by Gordon Lewyth; there was, in truth, something sinister about the entire household. It was not quite as I had imagined it.

I realized then what I had done. It had been like that often during my life. It seems fun to do something until the advantages dwindle away, and one begins to count the costs.

My sister came and I felt better then. She is like a part of myself—the reasoning, sensible part. It never occurred to me until I went away how very important she was to me.

Well, there I was, in the house in which I had never felt entirely comfortable, married to a man with whom I was falling rapidly out of love. I was very fond of my little son, but I am not the maternal type, and a child could never make up for the lack of a satisfactory lover. It was not that Dermot’s affections for me had wandered. He remained devoted to me, but he was no longer exciting. I found Tregarland overpowering; the closeness of the sea disturbed me, and I wanted to get away. There was no one to whom I could explain my feelings—not even Violetta.

And then Jacques arrived.

That silly feud between the houses of Tregarland and Jermyn has played quite a part in our lives. It goes back a hundred years or so when a Jermyn girl and Tregarland boy were lovers—our Cornish Montague and Capulet—and the girl drowned herself on the Tregarland beach after her lover who had tried to elope with her had been caught in a mantrap set by the Jermyns, and was maimed for life. This resulted in years of enmity between the two families.