Lyme Bay.” He groaned suddenly as pain knifed through his leg and almost lost his senses.
She opened his torn trouser leg and frowned. “That’s terrible. You’ll have to go to hospital.”
“Will that mean Germans?”
“I’m afraid so.”
He clutched at the front of her reefer coat. “No-no Germans.”
She eased him back down. “Just lie still. I’m going to leave you for a little while. I’m going to need a cart.”
“Okay,” he said. “But no Germans, They mustn’t get their hands on me. You must promise. If you can’t do that, then you must kill me. See, there’s a Browning pistol here.”
He plucked at it and she leaned over him, face set, and took the pistol from its holster on his left thigh. “You’re not going to die and the Jerries aren’t going to have you either-that’s the only promise I’m prepared to give. Now wait for me.”
She slipped the pistol into her pocket, turned and hurried away. He lay there on that fog-shrouded shore, trying to get his bearings, and then the leg started to hurt again and he remembered the morphine in the emergency kit. He began to crawl toward the life raft. That, of course, was very definitely the final straw, and he plunged into darkness.
II
Lelen de Ville left the cart track which was the usual way down to the beach and took a shortcut, scrambling up the steep hillside through the pine trees. She was strong and wiry, not surprising after four years of enemy occupation and the food restrictions that had caused her to lose nearly thirty pounds in weight. She often joked that it had given her back the figure she’d enjoyed at eighteen, an unlooked-for bonus at forty-two. And like most people, the lack of a car and a public transport system meant she was used to walking many miles each week.
She stood at the edge of the trees and looked across at the house. De Ville Place was not one of the largest manors on the island. It had been once in days of family glory, but a disastrous fire at the end of the nineteenth century had destroyed one entire wing. It was very old, constructed of Jersey granite weathered by the years. There were rows of French windows at the front on either side of the entrance, a granite wall dividing the house from a courtyard at one side.
She paused, taking her time, for there was an old Morris sedan parked in the courtyard, one of those requisitioned by the enemy. For two years now she’d had German naval officers billeted on her. They came and went, of course, sometimes staying only a night or two when E-boats of the 5th Schnellboote Flotilla came over from Guernsey.
Mostly they were regulars, young officers serving with various naval units based in Jersey. The war took its toll. There were often engagements with British MTBs in the area of the Channel Islands, and the RAF frequently attacked convoys to Granville, St. Malo and Cherbourg, even when they made a night run. Men died, but some survived. As she started across the lawn, the door opened and one of them came out.
He wore a white sweater, old reefer coat and seaboots and carried a duffel bag in one hand. The face beneath the salt-stained naval cap was good-humored and recklessly handsome. A bravo, this one, straight out of the sixteenth century, who wore a white top to his cap, usually an affectation of German U-boat commanders, but then Lieutenant Guido Orsini was a law unto himself, an Italian on secondment to the.German Navy, trapped in the wrong place at entirely the wrong time when the Italian government had capitulated. Helen de Ville had long since given up pretending that she felt anything but considerable affection for him.
“Morning, Guido.”
“Helen, cara mia.” He blew her a kiss. “I’m the last, as usual.”
“Where to today?”
“Granville. Should be fun in this fog. On the other hand, it keeps the Tommies at home. Back tomorrow. Do you want to go into St. Helier? Can I give you a lift?”
“No thanks. I’m looking for Sean.”