The Sparrowhawk crew were wet, cold, elated, trembling, torn between triumph and tears. The cabins were awash with seawater, the decks were slaked with rain, the dogs were damp and cross, but they had done it! They had beaten a storm, and they were alive! Safely secured to the harbour wall, they waited to go through customs before making their way inland.
With shaking hands, bitterly ashamed of having frozen out at sea but weak with relief that Ben had saved them all, Frank pulled his passport from his rucksack, and told Ben and Lotti to do the same.
‘Oh,’ said Ben.
Frank looked at him suspiciously. ‘What now?’
‘I don’t have one,’ said Ben simply.
Frank swore.
‘I sort of forgot,’ Ben admitted. ‘I’ve never been abroad before.’
Lotti, who was cuddling the dogs on Ben’s berth, cast Frank a reproachful look. ‘We just survived a storm in the Channel, Frank. I think we can manage a customs officer. Ben, what papers do you have?’
Embarrassed, Ben produced the documents he had found before leaving Great Barton – Nathan’s passport, the Sparrowhawk’s papers, his own birth and adoption certificates. Lotti bit her lip in concentration as she went through them.
‘I think,’ she announced, ‘now would be a good time to lie.’
When customs officer Jean Lepage arrived, they were ready for him, though their hearts sank when they saw him, because he looked even grumpier than Frank.
Which, right now, was saying something.
Frank, with a grimace that was meant to be a smile, produced Nathan’s passport and the Sparrowhawk’s papers. They all held their breath as Jean Lepage inspected them, and tried not to look too grateful when he handed them back.
‘The children?’
Lotti handed him her passport. Jean raised his eyebrows.
‘You are not his daughter,’ he said in French. ‘And you are not English.’
Lotti, beaming from ear to ear in the mistaken belief it made her look relaxed, replied that Frank was a dear family friend, and that she was French on her father’s side, though her maman had been English.
‘Where are they now, your parents?’
‘Dead,’ said Lotti.
Jean Lepage flushed and turned to Ben. Frank produced Ben’s birth certificate. Jean Lepage’s eyebrows rose again. Frank produced Ben’s certificate of adoption.
‘My son,’ he said, his voice admirably steady.
‘And his passport?’
‘Doesn’t have one,’ said Frank, avoiding the officer’s eye. ‘No time. Had to leave in a hurry.’
Jean Lepage’s eyebrows disappeared into his hairline. Lotti flew to Frank’s rescue. ‘Monsieur Langton is bringing me to the funeral of my grandmother,’ she said in French. ‘She died so very suddenly. Of influenza. Ah, grand-mère! How I loved her!’
She wiped an invisible tear from her eye. Frank, not understanding a word, looked alarmed. Jean Lepage asked, ‘Would it not have been easier for him to bring you on the boat train?’
‘But Monsieur Langton has a boat!’ Lotti cried, looking astonished. ‘This boat, which he lives on with Ben! Who is his son! Why would we take the boat train?’
‘It is most irregular,’ Jean Lepage grumbled, and Lotti was beginning to despair, and wondering whether she should not just throw herself on his mercy and tell him the whole truth, when from the workshop where they had put the dogs there came a yowl of pain. Ben opened the door, and Federico shot through the cabin into the safety of Lotti’s arms.
‘What happened?’ she cried.
‘I think Elsie bit him,’ said Ben, looking into the workshop. ‘She’s growling and she just bared her teeth at me.’
Jean Lepage rubbed his face and, wearily, asked to see the dogs’ papers.
‘Ah,’ said Lotti.
How well, she wondered, would this glum-faced official respond to the story of Federico’s rescue from Malachy Campbell?
‘She’s started!’ Ben shouted. ‘Elsie’s started!’
Lotti squealed. Frank gazed at the ceiling. Would this help or make things worse?
‘What has started?’ asked Jean Lepage.
‘Puppies!’ breathed Lotti.
Jean Lepage gave up. So the boy had no passport? He seemed happy enough. So the people on the Sparrowhawk were eccentric, possibly mad? This was not a reason for not coming into France. Frankly, thought Jean Lepage, feeling a sneeze coming on, the world had bigger problems.
‘Through the harbour to the basin, there is a lock at the far end on the right which will take you on to the canal. Please leave immediately, there are more boats coming in. Welcome to France.’
The sneeze caught Jean on the quayside by the Sparrowhawk, and he stopped to blow his nose. Putting his handkerchief away, he remembered Lotti’s face as she told him there were puppies. It had worn a look of pure wonder. When, after all these years of war, had he last seen that?
Throughout the day, whenever he thought of the Sparrowhawk, Jean Lepage smiled.
*
Back on board, Lotti was feeling triumphant.
‘See how right we were to bring Elsie?’ she said to Frank. ‘Clever dog! Perfect timing!’
‘All right, all right,’ grumbled Frank. ‘Here, take these blinking papers. I never want to see them again.’
With a wide grin, Lotti took the documents and shoved them into a drawer in the galley. Then, with infinite care, Frank steered the Sparrowhawk through the busy harbour towards the lock, while in the cabin, Ben and Lotti hovered with Federico by the door to the workshop.
‘Where’s Elsie?’ whispered Lotti.
‘On the berth,’ said Ben. ‘She’s made a sort of nest, like she did before the storm.’
‘How do you know it’s not another storm nest?’
‘It’s just different.’
‘Can we look?’
‘Maybe we should leave her …’
‘But I want to see …’
Very quietly, so as not to disturb Elsie, Lotti and Ben tiptoed into Nathan’s workshop, Lotti with her hand on Federico’s collar …
Frank guided the Sparrowhawk under a rotating bridge and through the lock. About a hundred yards on, he saw a small hotel set back from the canal, with mooring rings in the bank. He stopped and secured the Sparrowhawk and went into the hotel to speak to the hotelier, a fierce but friendly widow called Madame Royère. Then he ordered a coffee and a sandwich, sat down and wrote a note.
The door of the workshop was half open when he returned to the Sparrowhawk. In the grey light of the fading afternoon, he saw the outlines of the children kneeling on the floor with Federico, Elsie on the berth. Lotti looked up and saw him.
‘There are three puppies already,’ she whispered. ‘You’ll have to take one, Frank, when they’re big enough and can leave Elsie.’
‘I’d like that.’ Frank smiled.
Lotti turned away. He watched them a while longer, then picked up his rucksack from where he’d left it in the galley, tucked his note into the fold-down table and left the Sparrowhawk.