With great effort, they maneuvered Bernardus up the slope and into the backseat of the car.
Gerrit leapt behind the wheel. “To the hospital.”
“No!” Bernardus cried.
“Not the hospital,” Charlie said. “His injury was obviously caused by a mine.”
Gerrit released a long groan and turned onto the road through St. Aubin. “If we missed any evidence, if the boat doesn’t sink, they’ll realize he was the saboteur.” The Germans would torture him. How many names would he spill? “But he needs help.”
“Ivy’s at home,” Charlie said.
“No.” With one hand, Gerrit smashed the idea on the car seat. “We can’t involve her.”
“If he doesn’t have surgery soon, he’ll bleed to death.”
A long, low cry of pain roiled up from the backseat.
Was there another way to explain his injury to the doctors at the hospital? Perhaps Bernardus was walking on the beach. But why would he do so at night? Everyone knew the beaches were mined. He would only be on the beach at night if he were up to no good.
“Fine.” Gerrit raced toward St. Helier. “To your house. To Ivy.”
“Fern,” Bernardus moaned. “What about Fern?”
“She went out with friends,” Charlie said.
The film had just started when Gerrit left the cinema. At least Fern’s betrayal of family and country had purchased two precious hours before curfew.
chapter
24
St. Helier
The tip of Ivy’s pencil didn’t move. For the past six weeks since Thelma and Demyan had died, she’d been unable to draw.
“Your art brings joy. It brings light. It brings—hope. Don’t ever stop,”Gerrit had said to her that day. But her art also sprang from joy and light and hope, and she had none.
“That isn’t true,” she murmured. She had Charlie. Whatever had been bothering him bothered him no more, and he’d been sweet and attentive, especially after he heard about Thelma. He’d loved Thelma too.
“I have my home.” The familiar drawing room, still carrying the warmth of Dad and Mum’s love, still echoing the laughter of happier times. “And I have the Lord.”
The front door banged open. “Ivy! Hurry! Emergency.”
“Charlie?” Ivy tossed aside sketch pad and pencil, and she ran downstairs in her house slippers.
Charlie backed through the front door dragging something heavy on a piece of canvas—no someoneheavy. Gerrit van der Zee held the other end.
Ivy braced herself against the wall in the hallway. “What on earth?”
“Hurry.” Charlie huffed as he carried his end of the canvas. “It’s Bernardus. He’s badly injured.”
Why would they bring him to her? She dashed to the telephone. “I’ll ring for an ambulance to take him to casualty at the hospital.”
“No,” Charlie and Gerrit said together, and Gerrit kicked the front door shut.
“He was injured by a land mine.” Charlie entered the treatment room. “They’ll know he was committing sabotage.”
“Sabotage!” She stared down at the unconscious man, his face blackened, a white tourniquet about his thigh, his leg—what was left of it—stained crimson.
