Sandpiper by Michael Pert

Author:Michael Pert [Pert, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shawline Publishing Group Pty Ltd
Published: 2022-02-11T09:45:41+00:00

44

South of England

October 1943

As she plunged into the woods, Yvette faced a new level of darkness. She had waited long enough on the porch for her night sight to return, but almost no ambient light penetrated to the forest floor on such a foul night. All she could do was follow the faint path ahead of her, the trees around her alive with the sound of rain in the leaves, mocking her. She pulled her coat tightly around her and bent her head against the rain. It was all she could do.

At one stage she stumbled and almost turned her ankle as she fell. She cursed, and stopped to regain her composure. Pulling the umbrella from her rucksack, she pushed it before her to feel the ground ahead, which was becoming more rutted and uneven as she progressed. She pushed on, stopping periodically to check her compass bearing, the little luminous needle her only friend.

She cleared the wood unexpectedly and was confronted with a large open area to her front. Feeling exposed, she bent to one knee and checked her bearing. Ahead she could see enough to discern fields, outlined by the darker lines of their stone fences and hedgerows, in a gently undulating landscape. Her heart lifted, but the rain did not.

She aimed for the top of the nearest rise on her bearing, and crossed a ploughed field to get there, the mud sticking like glue to her boots as she navigated the furrows and hauled herself over the stone fence. Grassland took her to the top of the rise; she looked down across another field with a wood on the far side, directly on her bearing. She headed for it.

There was no evident path through this wood so she had no option but to force her way through. She took a bearing and plunged in, the darkness swallowing her. The ground was firm underfoot as there was more deadfall, but the trees were spread more thinly than in the first wood so she made better progress than expected. She had only walked a short distance when the rain suddenly stopped; all was silent around her save for the dripping of water onto the forest floor. For the first time since leaving the house she felt exposed, not realising how much she had hidden in the noise of the rain.

When she reached the edge of the wood she looked out onto more farmland and a gentle upward rise directly in front of her. Copses of trees on or around the higher ground, dotted the landscape. She took a bearing and checked her watch. By her reckoning she had walked about two and half miles; she reasoned that she should be in sight of the cottage from the next rise and prayed silently that it would be so.

At the top of the rise she propped and studied the landscape around her, particularly the horizon. She spotted a small, lighter object slightly off to her left. It sat at the top of a rise she was now looking down upon from higher ground.

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