had never thought she’d be so glad to be home, but now she felt an overwhelming longing to see her father and her brother Marc, and to be enveloped in their strong arms again.
Fréd smiled at her. ‘Nearly there now,’ he said as he picked up her bag and his own. ‘Lead the way.’
She spotted them down by the boat, her father’s tall figure lifting empty creels from the stack on the quayside and passing them down to Marc on the deck. She was about to run to them when Fréd put out a hand to stop her. ‘Wait,’ he said quietly.
Out towards the end of the harbour wall, a crude concrete blockhouse had been built and a German sentry stood on top of its flat roof. Fortunately, his back was to them as he scanned the iron-grey sea for ships through a pair of binoculars. From the dark slits that were the eyes of the blockhouse, protruded the barrels of two machine guns. One pointed seawards, but the other was trained on the little harbour and on the men who worked on their boats there. Beyond the blockhouse, just before the little lighthouse at the end of the seawall that marked the entrance to the harbour for the fishing fleet as they returned home on dark nights, an anti-aircraft gun pointed to the sky, taunted by the jeering seabirds that wheeled above it.
The sight of her father and brother working beneath the threatening presence of the machine gun, which was trained upon them from the blockhouse, shocked Claire to the core. A gasp escaped her as Fréd pulled her back around the corner into the shelter of the lane. He put a finger to his lips, cautioning her to keep quiet.
‘We can’t go to them now, Claire, not with that German sentry on duty. We’d only draw attention to ourselves and that’s the last thing we want to do. Even with your excuse of coming home to see your family, they’ll be on the lookout for any new arrivals, for anything out of the ordinary. We’ll have to hide until darkness falls.’
Claire nodded, realising that he was right, even though the urge to run to her father and put herself between him and the sights of that gun turret was strong. She glanced around, then seized his hand. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘We can get into the alleyway behind the house. The back door is never locked. We’ll be able to wait for them inside.’ She led him to a tiny gap in the wall on one side of the lane which opened on to a narrow, sandy path running between the back-to-back gardens of the fishermen’s cottages, each with its own outhouse. She pushed open the gate in a peeling picket fence and picked her way past the little patch of vegetables – neat rows of plaited leek leaves and feathery carrot tops – that had been cultivated in the sandy soil of the garden. She turned the handle of the back door and, with a smile of triumph at Fréd, pushed her way inside.
Her heart thumped at the sight of her family home. The rooms seemed smaller, somehow, and yet they were filled with artefacts that reminded her of her mother – the yellowing lace cloth on the sideboard where a few pieces of china were displayed, painted with a bright Breton design of leaves and flowers – and of her father, too. His chair by the fireplace sagged with the weight of his tired body, returned from the sea. She picked up an unravelling ball of twine which sat on the shelf alongside the chair and absent-mindedly rewound it, tucking the end in neatly and replacing it next to his seat.
In the kitchen, the stove had been damped down for the day while the men were out on the boat. Taking comfort from the feeling of being home again after so long, and from the familiarity of actions which had been a part of her daily life from as far back as she could recall, she riddled the embers and coaxed the fire back into life, then set a pan of water on the top to heat. ‘We could probably both do with a wash after that journey.’ She smiled. ‘And then we’ll see what there is for supper. Papa and Marc will be hungry when they get in. I doubt they’ll be long.’
Even though dusk was falling now, Claire didn’t light a lamp, nor did