Bright sunshine followed the storm. Ben and Lotti came down to breakfast in rebellious moods, ready to inform Captain de Beauchesne and Clara that they would be continuing their journey alone, but neither of the adults was there.
‘The capitaine left an hour ago on a motorcycle which belonged to my cousin, who can no longer ride it because he has only one leg,’ said Madame Royère, as she served them hot chocolate.
‘Captain de Beauchesne has only one eye,’ Lotti pointed out.
‘For riding bicycles, one eye is better than one leg,’ said Madame Royère. ‘He has gone to make enquiries for you, poor children.’
‘What sort of enquiries?’
‘Ah, ça.’ Madame Royère shrugged. ‘I don’t know. And Mademoiselle Clara is sick. Well, she is crying, and has kept to her room. I know this sickness. It is a sickness of the heart. Also, you must take the father dog for a walk, he has been crying all night. So many dogs! Already I have had to chase away all the town children who want to see the little English puppies who were born on a boat.’
At the stables, Federico greeted Lotti with frenzied reproach. Elsie thumped her tail and allowed the children to admire the puppies. The four little black puppies were feeding gustily and already appeared bigger than yesterday, but toffee-coloured Delphine was just as tiny, and mewled pitifully as she tried to push in past her siblings to feed. Lotti picked her up, kissed her and tucked her in close to her mother. Then, with Federico on a lead, she and Ben went into town.
Ben gazed around curiously. Calais looked tired, like the Sparrowhawk two months ago when he came back to live on her, faded and battered and in need of paint and repair, but it was exciting to be here. Ben jumped aside at the loud clanging bell of a tram, he stared up at the tall narrow houses with shuttered windows. They walked past a café. He breathed in the smells of tobacco and coffee, and felt his blood run a little faster.
‘It’s so different from home,’ he said.
‘It’s certainly shabbier than I remember,’ mused Lotti, sidestepping an overflowing dustbin. I expect that’s the war, like in England. Or maybe it’s just that I was seven when I was last here. There’s a lot you don’t notice when you’re seven.’
The first thing they bought in town was a map, which they studied on the street outside the shop.
‘I reckon two days to get to the hospital site,’ said Ben. ‘So we’ll buy provisions to last at least that. Once we’re off, I don’t want to stop again except to sleep.’
‘Let’s find food supplies, then,’ said Lotti. ‘I’ll ask someone. Oh, Ben – look!’
She took his arm and dragged him across the street to a pâtisserie, with a dazzling array of cakes in the window.
‘That’s not shabby!’ she said. ‘Come on, I’m going to buy you an éclair.’
‘Lotti, there’s no time for cake!’
‘Ben!’ Lotti was shocked. ‘There is always time for cake!’
In a little square shaded with sycamore trees by the pâtisserie, while Federico stalked pigeons, Ben and Lotti sat on a bench to eat their cakes. Biting into her chocolate éclair, Lotti felt the years peel back. She was seven years old again, sitting with Papa in a café in the market square at Armande on the last day of the holidays, and he had bought her a cake as a treat.
‘Don’t tell Moune or Mama,’ Papa had said, with a twinkle in his eye. ‘You know how they feel about eating between meals.’
‘It spoils the appetite for lunch,’ seven-year-old Lotti had recited, hollowing the cream out of her éclair with a finger.
Oh, those summer holidays! And if Lotti were to eat cake in Armande again, would it taste the same without Papa?
She’s different here, thought Ben, watching Lotti. More French, like this was where she belonged, just like he belonged on the Sparrowhawk, but also more restless, like she was searching for something.
For the first time, it occurred to him that Lotti had never spoken of what she would do once they had found Sam.
*
They returned to La Belle Ecluse laden with parcels for the journey, and spent the rest of the day working on the Sparrowhawk. By the time Henri de Beauchesne returned late in the afternoon, the narrowboat’s interior was gleaming again, and the clean bedding was drying on the hotel’s washing line. Lotti and Ben were scrubbing the outside, watched from the roof by Federico, and by red-eyed Clara from the steps of the hotel. They all gathered on the towpath to hear what the captain had to report, Lotti noting with interest that Clara stood a little apart.
‘After much discussion with various parties,’ said Henri, ‘I have worked out the route you must take which will bring you closest to the site of the bombed hospital at Buisseau.’
He produced a copy of the same map Ben and Lotti had bought in town that morning, and showed them his proposed route. It was identical to the one Ben had worked out, except for its final destination.
‘I had thought to bring the Sparrowhawk right up to the hospital site,’ Ben said. ‘Nathan wrote in his letter that barges went there.’
‘Unfortunately, I have been informed that the river to that site is now unnavigable. Which is why I suggest this …’ Henri pointed again at the map. ‘Here, at the intersection of these two rivers, there is a convent where the religious sisters nursed many soldiers during the war. They are good women, and I am sure they will help us. By my calculations the convent is a little more than a day’s journey away from here by boat. Then it is about twenty kilometres to Buisseau by train from the local station of St Matthieu.’
Lotti, irritated, admitted to herself that this was helpful.
Henri turned to Clara. ‘I will ride ahead, Mademoiselle Clara, and alert the good sisters of your arrival.’
Now was the moment, thought Lotti.
‘Tell them,’ she whispered to Ben. ‘Say we don’t want them to come!’
‘Why me?’ he whispered back.
‘It’s your boat!’
‘I don’t know what to say.’ Ben was gazing at Captain de Beauchesne in stupefaction. ‘He’s so … efficient.’
‘All right,’ said Lotti. ‘I’ll do it.’
But she didn’t have to.
‘Captain,’ said Clara, in a voice that only shook a bit. ‘Could we talk?’
*
Henri and Clara walked together along the towpath away from the hotel.
‘You are so kind,’ Clara said, when they were out of hearing of the Sparrowhawk.
‘I’m not sure I am,’ Henri replied honestly. ‘I’m not sure I should be encouraging Ben to search for his brother. It seems to me a quite hopeless endeavour. What is your English expression? A needle in a haystack.’
‘Yes,’ said Clara. ‘You’re right, of course. But I’m awfully afraid he needs to find this out for himself.’
‘Mademoiselle Clara …’ Henri de Beauchesne blushed, uncharacteristically bashful. ‘The reason I am helping … Everything I have done, I have done for you. I must tell you …’
‘Oh, please don’t!’ said Clara.
‘You don’t know what I am going to say!’
‘But I do!’ Clara was close to tears again, but she also wanted very much to explain. ‘The thing is, I have just lost – there was this boy, this young man, I loved him so much, and waited for so long, and now … I have just learned that he is dead, and I don’t even know if I can love any more. I don’t even know if I still loved him – the feeling had become so mixed up with the feeling of waiting. Even my family, my parents – they disapproved of him so strongly, they threw me out of their home. I have been so removed from love for so long, I think I’ve forgotten what it is. So you see, I cannot – I mean, it would be unfair – I mean, I cannot ask you to help us more than you have already so very, very kindly done.’
‘Even as a friend? Even if I don’t mind that you don’t love me?’
‘Even so.’ She tried to smile, but it hurt too much.
Henri looked across the canal to where a clump of daisies on the opposite bank danced in the afternoon breeze. He had a mad notion that he would like to wade across to pick them for her. But then he thought that the gesture would embarrass her, and also that she was the sort of person who probably preferred flowers to be left alive. He felt a surge of anger towards anyone who might hurt her.
‘May I ask – if it is not too indiscreet – why your parents disapproved so much of the young man you loved?’
Clara sighed, and he worried that he had offended her. But then she spoke again, very softly.
‘He was German,’ she said. ‘But it didn’t matter to me, and it shouldn’t matter to them.’
And then she left.
So much said, so much left unsaid. Clara, hurrying away from Henri along the towpath, wished she had the courage to go back to tell him that in another life, in other circumstances, she might have given him a different answer. He, recovering from her revelation, wanted to call out after her that Max’s nationality didn’t matter to him either, and that he would wait for her, just as she had waited for Max.
‘You are wrong,’ he wanted to tell her. ‘You say that you can’t love, but you can. You love those children.’
But Henri didn’t speak, and Clara didn’t go back.
Henri watched the water a little longer, then returned to the hotel by a different route, paid for all three rooms, spoke briefly with Madame Royère and left on her cousin’s motorbike for Paris, where he lived.
Lotti and Ben watched Clara walk listlessly back towards the Sparrowhawk.
‘Oh dear,’ said Lotti. ‘Ben …’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘We can’t leave her.’
‘We can’t, can we? Poor old thing, she looks so miserable. Someone has to look after her. Do you think she’ll mind sharing Nathan’s workshop with the puppies?’