The Wartime Matchmakers, page 25
The Scot nodded and bellowed to the men on the mole, “Listen up, lads! Find Major William Taylor! We need to speak with him!” The Scotsman’s voice carried farther than hers, and word rippled down the line as soldiers passed on the message.
“If he’s still here, they’ll find him,” the Scotsman said.
“Thank you . . . What’s your name?”
“Angus Kincade, lassie.” The Scot gave her a respectful nod.
“Thank you for your help, Mr. Kincade.”
“’Tis my honor.” He turned back to help the other men while they waited to leave.
In the meantime, another officer was counting troops to board the boat. Hetty feared they would leave before she saw the major again, but as another soldier leapt aboard, a familiar face broke through the waiting soldiers.
“Major!” Hetty called out in relief. Major Taylor’s face was pale, but he smiled. Blood splattered his uniform, but it didn’t seem to be his.
“I promised you I would still be here, Miss Byron.” He saluted her and relieved the officer handling the boarding of troops.
“Make and keep that promise again.”
He nodded solemnly. The soldiers they had rescued this time were in far worse shape than the first group.
“Ma’am?” Harold pulled her aside and whispered to her. “We’ve got a man here with a bad wound. I’m not sure he’ll make it.” Harold indicated a man seated on a bench on the stern side of the yacht. Blood oozed from a shoulder wound, and the man’s face was stark white, his gaze listless.
“Bring him into the cabin.” Hetty rushed to find Charles’s medical kit in the cabin and instructed Harold to put the injured soldier on the bed.
“Let’s take a look at the wound.” She got out the swabs, cleaning cloths, and medical alcohol, and Harold helped her remove the young man’s coat and shirt. The gaping wound was far worse than she’d imagined. The man’s teeth started chattering when he was exposed to the cool air.
“There now, we’ll warm you up,” Hetty promised as she wrapped a blanket around his shoulders, but she had to keep his wound visible, which left him still half-naked.
“C-cold—so cold.” The young man, who couldn’t have been more than twenty years old, started to shake.
“He’s going into shock,” Hetty gasped. The man convulsed violently, blood coating his lips as he coughed and struggled for breath.
“Try to hold him still.” Harold helped pin the man down on the bed to keep him from hurting himself.
“Moth-mother . . .” He grasped Hetty’s shoulder in an almost punishing grip, his eyes wide as terror seized him. “Don’t—want to die.” The words stuttered out of his bloody lips.
“It’s all right, it’s all right, you’re safe.” She stroked his wet blond hair back from his face. The man was shaking so hard that she couldn’t look at his wound until he stilled.
“Mo-mother?” This time, the word was barely a rasp. “Scared . . .”
The fear in his eyes shattered everything inside her that had stayed strong until that moment, and she did the only thing she could. She wrapped herself around the man, hugging him to her body as he gasped and choked for air.
“I’m here. I’m here.”
With a soft exhale, the man went limp in her arms. She didn’t let go, didn’t open her eyes. She held the man, praying to feel him breathe against her neck, to feel some pulse of life within him. All she felt was stillness, that kind of stillness that swallows a person’s soul. Somehow she’d managed to keep herself above the surface of despair, but this . . . this was too much. This boy she didn’t even know lying dead in her arms. It was far too much.
“Please . . . no . . . please . . .” She wasn’t sure who she was begging, a god who had turned His protective gaze away from England and her brave boys, or the young man who’d already passed on. She begged in a way she never had before. If she could just save him, just one more . . .
“He’s gone,” Harold said.
Her pleas turned to sobs, the kind that shook her so hard she’d ache for days afterward. She’d never been one to cry, but as the warmth of the man’s body faded and the light in his eyes dimmed, she wept. The promise of youth and life had vanished from him as the mist did beneath the rising sun in the summer.
“There now, ma’am. You gave him comfort.” Harold placed a hand on her shoulder. “You did all you could.”
“He needed more. He needed . . .” She choked on her own words. “He needed his mother.”
She rocked on the bed, the lifeless soldier still in her arms. She closed her eyes, seeing Major Taylor’s face on his body, seeing Marcus’s face, her father’s, and then Charles’s. This man could have been any one of them. This man had been someone to others. A son to a mother and a father, possibly a husband or a brother.
Hetty slowly released the boy’s body and laid him gently on his back on the bed. With trembling bloodstained fingertips, she closed his eyes. There was a light blanket that wasn’t being used by the men above, and she drew it over his body, covering him as a death shroud.
She lifted her face and stared out the porthole window of the cabin at the gray sea. The rage and grief inside her were strong enough that if she faced down a division of Panzer tanks at that moment, she would show no mercy. It was a terrifying thing to learn about herself, that she was full of such rage.
The hum of a plane reached her ears, and she raced back up on deck. She snatched the nearest rifle from Angus Kincade. It was an M1 Garand, a standard infantry rifle that many of the men in the boat currently had strapped to their backs. She studied the gun, remembering what her father had taught her about the Garand. It had eight shots of .30-06 ammunition and was more powerful than the Bren guns. If she got lucky, she could bring the plane down, even if it was close to impossible.
She took aim as the German Stuka bore down on the beaches. She held her breath until the water ahead of them churned with the force of the low-flying aircraft.
“You won’t get him, ma’am,” Harold said. “The cockpit has armored glass four inches thick. Even if you aim for the fuel tanks, you’d need the devil’s own luck to break through.”
“I’ll take it down if it’s the last bloody thing I do.”
The men on the beaches were running. Some had stopped and were firing their own guns at the Stuka because it had dipped low enough to make a decent target. Hetty ignored the chaos and shouting of men around her and stayed utterly still and focused. The men on the boat ducked for cover while she faced down the aircraft.
It was just like skeet shooting, she realized with a terrible coldness as she led the target the way she’d been taught. She fired off several shots in rapid succession along the side of the slender dark-green aircraft. It climbed higher and wheeled around the smoky sky for a second pass. Hetty reloaded the rifle. Harold appeared at her side, his own gun in his hands. The men on the decks glanced around, and then as Hetty prepared to fire, several of them scrambled to their feet, slinging guns off their backs. With a small army around her, Hetty steadied her breath and waited.
“Not yet!” she called out. “Wait for my signal!”
The Stuka bore down on them, the deafening rumble only driving her determination deeper.
“Now!” she shouted, and a volley of gunfire burst from the men aboard the Henrietta and straight into the oncoming plane.
A violent explosion tore through the air, knocking everyone off their feet and sending shock waves across the water, which rocked the boat violently.
Hetty scrambled to her feet, still gripping the semiautomatic rifle as she saw the plane smoldering in the shallows of the oil-slicked water while clouds of black smoke obscured the soldiers on the shore.
She slowly lowered the rifle, and Angus caught it before she dropped it in stunned horror at what she had done. Every soldier on board turned toward her with looks of amazement and admiration on their faces. They’d brought down a German aircraft and saved countless lives upon the beach.
Hetty glanced down at herself as her hands came away sticky with something. Her clothes were painted in crimson. It was only then that she realized her hands and chest were still covered with the blood of the soldier who’d died in her arms.
“Three cheers for the lady!” one of the men shouted, and the boys on the boat cheered with him.
Their cheers came to her as though through a dense fog. Hetty turned to Charles, needing in that moment to see him there. He was the one thing in this world that grounded her and made her feel safe.
His gray eyes were dark and fathomless as the sea, and she wondered if she’d broken something between them, never to be mended. Did he see a killer, a woman without a heart? She’d just killed two men in that plane. Would he ever look at her like he used to? It was not what a proper Englishwoman would do—it was barbaric, a brutal thing she’d done.
Their deaths didn’t bring back the man who’d died in her arms. But those men would never hurt anyone else, and she clung to that cold solace.
She turned away, unable to bear the thought of what he must be thinking now. Instead, she watched the wreckage of the German aircraft burn in the shallows, black smoke billowing out from the flaming metal.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered into the breeze. She was sorry that she’d had to kill, sorry that she’d lost the boy in the cabin below, sorry that any of them were even here fighting like this. Hadn’t they all been through this twenty years ago? Why was this happening again?
They were underway for Dover when night fell. She found herself back in the cabin with the man they had lost. She stared at his pale face. How strange that he seemed to be unrecognizable in death. It was alien to her now in a way his living, breathing countenance had not been. She couldn’t bear to leave him alone.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered to him. “I’m sorry.” The words would never feel strong enough or good enough, but they were all she had. She didn’t know this man’s name, but she would never forget him. His face would be there whenever she closed her eyes.
“Hetty . . .” She glanced up to see Charles lingering in the doorway. “I thought I’d find you here.”
She turned her face away and discreetly wiped tears from her cheeks. “Shouldn’t you be manning the helm?”
“The Scotsman took over for Harold and Angelo is at the helm. We have some time to rest, and I wanted to check on you.” His gaze strayed to the dead soldier on the bed.
Without another word, he came over and put an arm around her shoulders. He seemed to do that a lot lately, wrap himself around her and hold her. Was he worried she would drift away? She’d felt as though she might until he held her like this. All the world could have blown away, and she’d stay rooted in that moment with him. Safe, cherished. She buried her face in his neck, and for a brief instant she forgot where she was and thought she was at home, curled up on the couch with him.
“Please don’t hate me,” she begged him.
“Hate you? Hetty, how could I?” he asked. His lips touched her forehead. She felt so cold inside and out, and Charles was pure sunlight, breathing warmth into her.
“I . . . I killed two men.”
“I could never hate you. You are a fierce goddess of war. I only hate that you will carry this burden inside your heart. I wish I could take that from you and carry it upon my shoulders instead.” He kissed the crown of her hair. “I hate that we all must fight, but hate you? Christ, woman, I’m in love with you.” His wry chuckle made her lips flicker with a weak smile. “Nothing will ever change that. I’m yours, Hetty my darling.”
She was his too . . . but the words were too new, too raw to be spoken just yet.
“Come up on deck when you’re ready. We’ll be in Dover in half an hour.” He placed one more kiss upon her lips before he went back up on deck. He hadn’t even noticed that some of the blood on her chest had transferred to his own.
She was dead on her feet but managed to find her way back up on deck and then marveled at the moonlight reflecting upon the water as white cliffs appeared in the distance.
This arrival at the port was harder than the first. The men on the deck were quieter this time. Perhaps it was the fall of darkness that made everyone feel the loss of their brothers more keenly. Hetty shook the hands of a few as they disembarked. The Scotsman, Angus Kincade, was the last, and he called out for a man stationed on the docks.
“We’ve got a lad on board who needs a few hands to carry him home with honor.” Then Angus turned to Hetty. “I knew the lad who passed. Good man he was. Ye cared for him, lassie. His family will ken what happened, that he had a mother’s love in the end.”
“I’m no mother,” Hetty said softly, wishing that she’d known what secrets a mother would have to help a child in his final hour.
“Mothers are angels, lassie, and ye were our avenging angel today. Ye may not have children of yer own yet, but yer an angel all the same.” Angus bowed low to her before he and several soldiers retrieved the young man’s body and carried him ashore. Hetty’s hands fisted at her sides as she fought off fresh tears.
Charles sent a message with the dockworkers to call Elizabeth so she would know they had made it back safe again.
For the rest of her life, Hetty would never know where she found the strength to keep going after such heartbreak, but there were more men waiting for them. More men like Major Taylor who needed to be saved. She lifted her chin and faced the sea.
“Nearly sixty men rescued in less than half a day,” Elizabeth said softly as she hung up the phone. “So far, Hetty and Charles are safe, but they’re headed back out again soon.”
“Sixty men? For that ship, two loads, not bad,” the colonel said. “Word is, there is a fleet of ships moving back and forth across the Channel.” The colonel added this as they all sat down for dinner that night.
Elizabeth had decided to leave for London the following day. She’d been too worried about Hetty and Charles to get any real work done.
“Some ships are coming all the way down from Scotland,” Marcus said. “That’s what I heard when I biked to the village today. Everyone is talking about it. Someone said it’s a miracle.”
“It is,” Elizabeth replied. “Civilian ships sailing into danger and successfully bringing men home is a miracle. I just pray that the German air force leaves the beaches and ships alone.”
“I made a few calls,” the colonel said. “I still have a few friends left in London who know what’s happening. The French are keeping the German forces at bay. The French are buying our men time to evacuate. Never thought I’d hear a day when they’d defend us like that, at least not twice in one century. It’s damned noble of them.”
“Will we rescue the French too?” Marcus asked the colonel.
Colonel Cunningham’s gaze lowered to the table, and he cleared his throat as though it was suddenly harder to speak.
“I—hope so, but some soldiers will have to stay behind and hold the perimeter as long as they can to give our men on the beaches a chance.”
Marcus’s face drained of color. “They’ll be left behind when the Germans . . .” The boy didn’t finish.
“Yes, I’m afraid so.”
“Well,” Mrs. Harrow interrupted, her tone falsely cheery. “Anyone want a cherry tart? I pulled a few from the oven. They’re nice and hot.”
Elizabeth and Eva both shook their heads. Marcus was the only one who had the heart to take the housekeeper up on her offered dessert. The others were thinking of those soldiers in France, the poor brave men left behind to keep the Germans from slaughtering the troops on the beaches.
The colonel muttered something about needing to see to things in his room. Elizabeth saw the older gentleman remove a brandy bottle from the cabinet and walk away with one of the glasses.
She wondered how this must feel to someone who knew the horrors of war, hearing about the next generation of young men facing it all over again and being unable to do anything about it. Elizabeth couldn’t even imagine the toll that would take.
Elizabeth sank into her bed that night, listening to the old manor house creak and groan. As the wind blew against the gables, it whistled eerily through the tiny cracks in the doors and windows. Somewhere in the nearby forest, a fox screamed. The sudden sharp shriek made Elizabeth start, her fingers clenching the sheets.
Her dreams that night were full of men dying upon the beaches across the Channel, and her friends who were in terrible danger as they tried to help. England needed a miracle now more than ever.
CHAPTER 21
May 31, 1940
The Henrietta reached Dunkirk again early on the last day of May, beginning their third day assisting with the evacuation. The growing light of dawn poured over the long stretches of sand dunes that dipped into gently shelving beaches. It was such a desolate, eerie place, made more so by the ruins of war scattered on the sand.
A dark line of men formed along the pale shores as they waited to take their chance at reaching the motorboats and other craft that were able to get closer to the beach than the destroyers and sloops. The burned-out remains of a paddle steamer named the Crested Eagle served as a fresh reminder of the dangers everyone faced.
A new wreck had joined the Crested Eagle since the last time they’d been there. It was another paddle steamer, the Devonia. Hetty and Elizabeth had been on the Devonia seven months ago in the Bristol Channel when they’d taken a brief holiday.
“Look.” Angelo pointed out seven large lifeboats in the shallow water filling with men. The coxswains used whistles and called out orders sharply to keep the boarding soldiers from swamping and sinking them. The lifeboats were able to get close enough to shore that the men could wade waist-deep into the water before climbing aboard.
“Where did the lifeboats come from?” Hetty asked. They weren’t lifeboats for many of the nearby ships that were aiding the rescue. These boats were much larger and more substantial. They could take well over a dozen men comfortably and a few more if necessary.
