Private Bartleby moved Joel’s hand onto his chest and folded his other hand on it. He sat beside the cot and pulled a weeping Anna onto his lap. ‘I’ve never seen such kindness as you have shown, you and Pru.’
‘I didn’t even know him,’ she said into his chest.
‘He never knew that. You were his Patience,’ he assured her. ‘I’m too worldly-wise to be amazed at women, but by God, I am.’
She sat up to see the foretopman watching them. Even in her mental and physical exhaustion, she saw nothing in his expression but determination.
He spoke to the Royal Marine. ‘You and I are from different nations but we are not so different. Let’s finish this fight withLa Guerre.’
‘That will depend on the next move Captain Beattie makes,’ Private Bartleby said. ‘It will be bold and right.’
And dangerous, Anna thought.Please, God, I love him. She thought of Cathy’s note, left behind and probably missed, and her lovely portrait on the Swallow.What about you, John Beattie?Do you love me? Can you?
Chapter Thirty-Six
First Lieutenant Joel Watt was coffined and buried the next day. There was no funeral, only the quiet burial of a sailor far from his native land, watched over by Mrs John Beattie and her children, Pru and Allan.
Private Bartleby, Royal Marines, whispered to her that he wanted mightily to attend, to keep his word to Captain Beattie that he would watch over Anna with his very life. Ever practical, Anna reminded him that he needed to maintain the fiction that he was wounded.
‘I am counting on you and the foretopman to be convincing invalids while we see a good man to his grave.’
‘Are you always this stubborn?’
‘I have only been this stubborn since a certain captain knocked on my door last January,’ she told him.
‘Very well then,’ he grumbled, pulling up his blanket and facing the wall like a spoiled child. ‘Mind you, if I didn’t greatly respect your husband, I…’
‘Private Bartleby, do shut up,’ Anna said, but kindly. ‘Trustme.’ She thought she heard him laugh.
Hector glowered at her when she insisted they accompany him and the coffin to St Matthew’s burial ground beside thechurch. She held firm. To her surprise, he relented, even though he made them sit low in the wagon bed next to the coffin, and not on the driver’s seat.
‘I don’t mind,’ Anna told Pru and Allan. She patted the side of the coffin. ‘I feel as though we know Joel by now.’ She couldn’t help a smile. ‘After all, Pru, you and I have been his imaginary relatives.’
‘Monsieur Durand could have been less rude to you about it,’ Pru grumbled.
‘No matter. We’ll hunker down here. I’d rather be out of sight than sitting up there and smelling Hector.’
When they pulled up to the Anglican burial ground beside St Matthew’s, he climbed from the wagon seat, speaking loudly, as if he had no respect for the dead. ‘Mon fils, enterrons cet homme.’
Anna couldn’t see who he was speaking to, sitting as they were on the other side of the coffin. The response of, ‘Oui, père, comme vous voulez,’ equally meant nothing, except…I know that voice, she thought, racking her brain over ‘feece’ and ‘pear’, which sounded vaguely familiar.
She pulled both children closer, and whispered in Pru’s ear. ‘Do you know that voice?’
Pru nodded. ‘Mama, I have wondered how Mr Brown knows French,’ she replied, her voice soft as a breath. ‘I have heard him speaking French to other men, when he is outside the classroom.’ She frowned. ‘Should I have told you?’
‘Don’t worry,’ Anna whispered.
Pru is right, she thought.Many people know some Spanish, French and English on a place like Menorca. It is nothing.
Except it was everything, because she did knowfeeceandpear. She heard them often, mainly because Madame Durand was prone to drama. Only yesterday, she had gone quietly to the kitchen for more water, and startled Madame. The housekeeperhad jumped and crossed herself, muttering something which had to be, ‘Father, Son and Holy Ghost.’ Madame Durand said it often, over both minor and major irritations. Father.Père. Son.Fils.Saint Esprit. Holy Spirit.
Hector Durant and Hal Brown are father and son?Surely, this cannot be, she thought, astonished and wanting to be wrong because it was absurd. Surely, she’d let her imagination get away from her.
The men spoke in lower tones. Anna peered around the coffin and put her hand to her mouth. Hector had finally removed his nasty cap and she saw two heads together, two red heads of that handsome auburn colour she’d admired on Mr Brown the schoolteacher.
Father and son whispered together before her eyes. Frightened of this knowledge and all it implied, she had no choice but to act as though she hadn’t heard a thing. She sat back against the coffin, feeling a powerful sense of protection from the casket that harboured a good man gone too soon.
‘Here I go,’ she murmured. She coughed several times, waited a moment, then stood up in the wagon, making herself visible, where before she had been hidden from view. There they were, father and son. Hector must have replaced his cap when she’d coughed so deliberately, giving him time to do precisely that.
