A Fire Sparkling

by MacLean, Julianne

  I continued to lie on my side with my hand over my face, my eyes stinging with tears.

  “Is there anything I can I do for you?” he asked. “Anything that will help?”

  I shook my head. “You’ve already done so much. Thank you for coming to get us last night. I’ll never forget it, Jack. I owe you everything. You, Armand, and Hans.”

  “Who is Hans?”

  I opened my eyes and blinked up at him. “Just a person who helped us.”

  Jack knew better than to ask questions about agents in the field. He nodded and got up to make the coffee.

  “You need to get rid of that bomber jacket,” I said as Jack passed me a hot cup, “in case any Germans come here and find us. Bury it somewhere. And that flight suit . . . you should get rid of that too. Whatever you’re wearing under it, dirty it down a bit, so it doesn’t look new. Although your buttons and tailoring will be a dead giveaway, but a common soldier might not notice.”

  A short time later, despite the strong cup of coffee, I managed to fall into a deep slumber, during which I dreamed about Ludwig. He was dressed in his Nazi uniform, decorated impressively with that shiny iron cross and all his other military insignia. We were in London on Craven Street in the back garden outside our Anderson shelter, digging into the earth with a spade.

  Were we planting something? Potatoes . . . ?

  A victory garden, they called it. But no one seemed to realize that there was a war going on. The woman next door opened her window on the second floor, leaned out, and waved at us cheerfully. We waved back at her, then Ludwig used his shiny black boot to thrust the garden spade into the earth. He was digging a very deep hole. The next thing I knew, I was chasing him down the street toward the Thames, running as fast as I could. He disappeared around the corner at the theater. I couldn’t find him, and I ran to the Underground station in a panic, terrified that he had left me. I searched everywhere, but he had vanished completely. Everyone around me seemed oblivious to my suffering. Life went on, as if the war had never happened. Londoners were walking and talking and laughing in the summer sunshine, but I felt sick to my stomach because I’d lost him. Where had he gone? And why didn’t anyone care? Why were they all so happy? It wasn’t right.

  “Vivian, wake up.” Jack shook me gently. “You’re dreaming.”

  I sat up with a jolt and winced at the pain in my shoulder. Jack was sitting on the edge of the bed again, staring at me with concern.

  I exhaled and lay back down.

  He stroked my hair away from my face, helping me to relax while my breathing was labored.

  “My mother used to do that for me,” I whispered, “when I was little and had a bad dream. She always knew how to make everything better.”

  “Where is your mother now?”

  “She died,” I said, “a long time ago.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  I looked up at him. “What about your parents? Where are they?”

  “Back home in America. Worried sick about me, no doubt.”

  I asked him more questions about his family, and he talked affectionately about the farmhouse his parents owned in Connecticut, but it wasn’t a working farm any longer. His father was a plumber and his mother, a teacher. I enjoyed hearing about his two sisters, who were happily married to men who worked for the war effort in America and had not been sent overseas.

  “Your sisters are lucky.”

  “Yes.” Jack rubbed the pad of his thumb lightly across my eyebrow, back and forth. It made me want to fall back to sleep.

  When I woke, it was dark and quiet in the cabin. I lay on my side with my cheek resting on my hand, listening to the sound of Jack’s steady breathing. I rose up on my good arm to look over the edge of the bed, where I found him lying on the plank floor with a pillow, but nothing else.

  “Jack,” I whispered.

  He rolled onto his back and looked up at me. “Yes?”

  “Come up off the floor. You can sleep on the bed. There’s room enough for two.”

  “I’m fine here,” he said.

  “No, you’re not. Please, I’ll feel bad if you stay down there all night. It’s too cold.”

  I inched across the mattress to make room for him. Finally, he agreed and got up.

  Joining me on the bed, on top of the quilt, he turned his head toward me. For a long moment, we looked at each other in the darkness, saying nothing.

  How odd, I thought, to be lying in bed with a man I barely knew, twenty-four hours after I’d finally been reunited with Ludwig.

  How had it come to this? My heart was shattered by Ludwig’s betrayal. I was still in shock over it, yet strangely, in a way, I felt comfort and relief in this moment.

  But I was not without fear. Every time I thought about what had occurred in Paris, and the things I had said to Ludwig, I felt another kind of fear altogether—a fear that he would come looking for me. That after the war was over, he would want to see his son.

  The following night, I couldn’t sleep. Frightful thoughts besieged my mind, leaving me in a state of terror. Feeling powerless in the dark, in the woods, so far from home, I leaned over and shook Jack until he opened his eyes.

  “Are you awake?” I whispered.

  “I am now,” he replied, turning toward me. “What’s wrong?”

  “I need you to do something for me. And I need you to promise that you’ll do it.”

  “What is it?”

  I wasn’t sure how to explain, but I had to find a way. Nothing was more important than this.

  “When I was recruited into the SOE,” I began, “Major Odell had a file on me, and he knew things.”

  “Like what?”

  “He knew that when England declared war on Germany, my twin sister, April, was living in Berlin.”

  Jack inclined his head curiously.

  “I’m not proud of this,” I continued, “and it’s difficult to talk about, but she had an affair with a German Nazi. He was an officer in the Wehrmacht.” I paused. “Did you know about that?”

  “No.”

  I was leaning on my good arm, trying not to let my breathing get out of control, but it wasn’t easy. “When I was questioned at Gestapo headquarters, I was desperate, Jack. I thought about April, and I thought I could use that somehow. I thought that the man she loved might help me if he thought I was her. We were identical, you see, and it had been years since they’d seen each other. I thought it could work, so I asked for him. And he came.”

  Suddenly my chest hurt, and I had to pause to catch my breath.

  Jack sat forward. “What happened, Vivian?”

  I fought for air and heard the sound of wheezing in my throat. “I told him that we had a son.”

  “A son?”

  “Yes. But it was a lie,” I quickly explained, “because April died in the Blitz, and she never had a child. But now, I’m afraid that if anything happens to me and I don’t make it home, he might try to find Edward and claim him as his own. That can’t happen, Jack. Edward is safe and happy where he is with people who love him, so I need you to make sure that it’s reported in the SOE files that I was only pretending to be my sister. That Ludwig Albrecht has no claim on Edward.”

  Jack stared at me in the darkness, saying nothing.

  “Please.” My breathing became more labored as my pulse quickened. “I don’t know if I’m going to make it home, and I need to know that Edward will be all right. People need to know that it wasn’t true. That I was being tortured, and I was desperate. I would have said anything.”

  “You’re going to make it home,” Jack replied, touching my arm and trying to calm me down. “And your son will be fine. Lie back down now.”

  I fought to slow the rapid beating of my heart. Jack lay down beside me and gathered me into his arms so that I could rest my cheek on his shoulder. I wished I could see his expression, but everything was cloaked in shadow.

  At least I felt calmer, having gotten that off my chest. It helped to know that someone would make sure
Edward was safe from Ludwig.

  I had never imagined myself fearing such a thing. All I’d wanted over the past four years was to find Ludwig again and become a family. What a fool I had been, living in a fantasy world, as if he and I were not enemies.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Over the next few days, the pain in my chest eased off when I breathed, and there was less pressure on my lung, but it was a slow recovery. I was still weak, and I couldn’t do much without having to stop and rest. My shoulder, on the other hand, was healing nicely. Jack changed the dressing every day, and by the fourth day, I was able to get up and move around the cabin or go outside and sit on the porch.

  Deidre had not yet returned, and I was growing increasingly worried about her. Had she gotten lost? Or had she encountered German soldiers who had spotted our plane as it was going down?

  Without answers, all Jack and I could do was stay put, continue to wait, and try not to lose hope. But even if Deidre did come back, I couldn’t go far. Not in my condition.

  “Did you catch anything?” I asked Jack when he came tramping through the woods from the lake.

  He held up two large trout. “It’s our lucky day.”

  We had been getting by with cans of powdered eggs, some canned whale meat casserole, and stale oatmeal from a jar. Fresh fish would be a delicacy.

  I followed Jack inside, and we set to work preparing our supper.

  After the sun went down, the wind picked up and rain began to fall. Jack lit the oil lamp, and we sat at the table, talking about our experiences since the war began. Jack told me that he had flown nearly two hundred sorties into enemy territory since he joined the RAF. He had started out flying bombers, but he became a “Moonlight Squadron” pilot for the SOE because of his friendship with Major Odell.

  I shared things with him as well, little snippets from my life at Grantchester Hall, including the recent arrival of Henry and Clara.

  Eventually, Jack leaned back in his chair and watched me intently in the golden glow of the lamp.

  “What is it?” I asked, feeling self-conscious.

  “When I saw those poker burns on your back,” he said, shaking his head, “all I wanted to do was fly straight back to Paris and choke the life out of the bastard who did that to you. And tell him why I was doing it too.”

  “I wouldn’t have stopped you.”

  He chuckled softly but with a note of regret as he lowered his gaze. “I blame myself, you know. I’m the one who saw you singing at that dance, and I recommended you to Odell. But I thought they just wanted a translator.” His eyes lifted, and he shook his head. “Why in the world did you volunteer for this, Vivian?”

  Why, indeed?

  I looked down at my hands on my lap. “Because I wanted to do my part for the war effort.”

  He tapped his finger on the rough-hewn tabletop. “That sounds like a proper stock answer.”

  “It’s the only one I’ve got.”

  “Is it?”

  I met his gaze and wondered, uncomfortably, what he was trying to pull out of me.

  “Even with a son at home?” he prodded.

  “Especially with a son at home. I couldn’t just sit back and let Hitler take over the world. What would have happened to Edward then?”

  “I don’t know,” Jack replied, leaning back in his chair until the front legs came off the floor. “You told me he’s blond haired and blue eyed. He probably would have made out just fine.”

  The lamplight flickered, and I shivered while we stared at each other across the table.

  “How can you even say that? Hitler had to be stopped,” I insisted.

  “I agree.” But Jack didn’t let up. He continued to stare at me until I felt completely naked and exposed.

  “What are you trying to say, Jack?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  A gust of wind rattled the ill-fitting windows, and a tree branch scraped against the outside wall. I felt myself beginning to perspire, so I got up and left him sitting there while I carried our supper dishes to the bucket of water on the worktable and rinsed them.

  “You can trust me, you know,” he said.

  “I know that.”

  “No, I mean you can really trust me, Vivian. With anything.”

  “I do trust you.” Yet, I couldn’t turn around and look him in the eye.

  The sound of his chair sliding back and his boots tapping lightly across the creaky floorboards made me swallow uneasily. I felt his approach, followed by a sudden, inexplicable urge to flee somewhere else.

  I turned away from him and wiped my hands on a cloth.

  Jack’s voice was calm but disconcerting at the same time. “Tell me about your sister.”

  Here we go. “There’s not much to tell,” I insisted, “besides what I already told you. She was my twin, and we were identical. She died in the Blitz.”

  “Yes, but you must have been close. It must have been difficult for you when you lost her.”

  My stomach dropped at the reminder of that night. I didn’t want to think about it. Every time I did, something inside me died all over again.

  I dried the plates and set them on the shelf.

  “What happened?” Jack asked, never taking his eyes off me.

  I realized that no one had asked me about the bombing in a very long time. It wasn’t something any of us at Grantchester Hall enjoyed talking about. We found it easier not to think of it.

  I crossed to the bed and sat down on the edge of the mattress, while the wind howled like a beast outside the cabin.

  “A bomb hit the house on Craven Street,” I told Jack, “and the whole building collapsed on top of all three of us—me, Vivian, and Theodore.”

  The words tumbled past my lips, quite unintentionally, before I even realized what I was saying.

  Me, Vivian, and Theodore . . .

  Who did that make me?

  April, of course. I was April.

  As soon as the words were out there, floating like some sort of tiny winged creature in front of my face, I felt panic flood my bloodstream, because I knew there was no taking those words back. Jack wanted the truth, and I suspected that somehow, he already knew it. Perhaps I’d been too open with him. Or perhaps he was able to see the real me, when others couldn’t.

  This was not the first time I’d fallen out of my sister’s identity since I’d come to France. I had done so with Ludwig, and before that, with Hans when we were waiting for the supplies drop. But even on that night, I knew what I was doing, and for some unknown reason, I didn’t care if I let a small detail slip out, because he was the Ghost, and he had a way of disappearing. And I was not myself in the field. I was Simone. Hans didn’t know anything about my real life in England, and he never would.

  But here in this remote, isolated cabin with Jack, I wasn’t Simone. Or Vivian. I was me—a woman who had, in a way, been broken by the Gestapo. Or rather, by Ludwig. Perhaps that’s why the truth had slid out of me so easily tonight. I’d been able to withstand torture by the Gestapo until Ludwig showed up. Now, evidently, I was no match for Jack Cooper.

  He strode closer and sat down beside me. When he took hold of my hand and held it in his, all my resistance fell away.

  “Vivian and I argued that morning,” I told him. “The truth is she and I had argued quite a few times that summer, after I came home.”

  “From Berlin . . . ?” Jack gently asked.

  “Yes.” A tear fell from my eye, and I wiped it away. “But Vivian and I always clashed. We loved each other, but we were different.”

  “How so?”

  “She was a cautious person, even as a child, while I was always very adventurous and a bit wild. ‘You never look before you leap,’ she used to say to me, and she was right.” I wiped away another tear. “When Theodore came home from work that morning, just before the bomb fell, he and Vivian got into a terrible argument over me. I’ll always feel guilty about that, because they were so happy otherwise—very much in love—but their last mome
nts together were spent in anger.” I looked into Jack’s eyes. “When the bomb hit, I was upstairs, and they were in the room below me, still arguing, I think. I’ll never forget how loud the explosion was. I don’t remember much about it, nor do I understand how I survived. It’s a miracle, really. I just remember waking up, and Vivian was buried beneath me. But she was still alive. For a little while, at least.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  I closed my eyes. “At least we were able to say goodbye to each other.”

  Neither Jack nor I spoke, while the driving rain battered the windowpanes and wind whistled down the chimney.

  “You took her name that night,” Jack finally said. “Why?”

  I turned to him. “It wasn’t my idea. It was hers. I didn’t want to, but she begged me.”

  “Why?” he asked a second time.

  “Because I was going to be arrested. They knew about my relationship with Ludwig. They were going to question me, most likely send me to an internment camp. And I was pregnant.”

  He drew back slightly and nodded, as if he’d already suspected all of this. “Can I assume that what you told me the other night, about your fears for your son . . . you have good reason to be afraid, because the German officer really is Edward’s father?”

  “Yes.” I broke down and wept.

  Jack gathered me into his arms and held me. He stroked my hair and kissed the top of my head while I let everything out—my fears, my regrets, and my shame.

  “Everything will be all right,” he whispered.

  “Will it?” I looked up at him. “I don’t see how.”

  “No one needs to know about this. Unless you want them to.”

  “Ludwig knows. I told him.”

  “Yes, but we’re at war. It’s impossible to know what the future might hold.”

  “He could die,” I said. “But I don’t want that. I wouldn’t wish it.”

  “Of course not.” He drew me close and hugged me again.

  “But I’ve told you about this,” I said, “and you’re with the RAF.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  I pulled back. “Aren’t there rules about this sort of thing? I went to France as a spy, but I had an affair with a German Nazi and didn’t disclose it. I lied to the war office. I think that’s a problem.”