Still Waters (18 page)

‘Maiden name?’

‘Uh?’

‘Maiden name, silly. That’s a married woman’s name before she married . . . oh, I’m making a poor go of this, what I mean is, your maiden name is Delamere, but when you marry you’ll change it to – to Anderson. Get it?’

‘Yes, I think so. But I’m afraid I don’t know what my mother’s maiden name was,’ Tess admitted. ‘Daddy may have mentioned it, but I don’t remember it. I didn’t think things like that were important when I asked Daddy about her. Oh, Andy, if only I could find that boy! He would be bound to know.’

‘Well, you might,’ Andy said. ‘Hey-up, we’re almost there! See the sand dunes? Oh what luck, what luck! We’re going to have a grand time, there’s not another soul on the beach!’

‘Because it’s starting to rain, that’s why there’s no one else here,’ Tess said as the first heavy drops assaulted them. ‘Now why didn’t we think of rain?’

But they pushed their bicycles between the dunes, ignoring the rain which the wind swept against their faces, and indeed, it seemed to ease a little as they reached the beach itself. Tess stood between the last two sand dunes, with the Marram grass pricking her legs and the sand slithering downhill, and stared out at the long, golden beach, the low-waters, and beyond them, the sea itself, white-topped, beckoning.

‘Leave the bikes here,’ Andy said. ‘D’you realise, I’ve never swum in the sea? Grab your bathers and let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!’

‘The sea, the sea!’ Tess screamed, fishing her bathing suit out of her bicycle bag and throwing her bicycle down against the nearest dune. ‘Race you, Andy, race you!’ She set off at a gallop, knowing Andy was close on her heels. Together they splashed through the low-waters, with Tess’s skirt getting soaked, and raced across the hard sand, to stop short, hearts thundering, on the very edge of the sea.

‘It’s rough,’ Andy observed against her ear. ‘Does it get deep quickly?’

‘Sure to,’ Tess said. She kicked off her sandals, then sat down and heaved off her socks, removed her knickers and began to struggle into her bathing suit whilst holding her skirt primly round her knees.

Tess’s modesty was unnecessary, with an empty beach and Andy changing as rapidly as she, but moments later the two of them stood up, he in his suit, she in hers, and ran down the beach and splashed into the creaming surf.

It was still raining, but what did rain matter when you were about to get wet all over anyway? Tess launched herself into the water, not caring whether the sandy bottom lay a foot below her or a hundred fathoms. She saw Andy, a little less precipitately, take to the water, and then forgot everything except the wonder of the sea. It wasn’t like the Broad, which simply allowed you to swim in it, the sea encouraged you, helped you, supported you. It enabled you to perform miracles, like treading water, floating, forcing your way deep and then coming up with a rush, like a cork out of a bottle. Tess did most of these things, and then heard Andy calling to her. She looked around; he looked cross, and he was standing upright, not swimming or anything, with the water no deeper than his chest though when the waves broke round him he was temporarily obscured by the foaming crest. It wasn’t a good place to stop, she knew, but since this was Andy’s first time in the sea he probably didn’t realise that it got calmer the deeper you went.

‘What?’ she shrieked. She had to shriek because he was a long way behind her, very much nearer the shore than she. ‘What is it?’

‘You’re too deep,’ he shouted. ‘Come back, come back!’

Tess laughed and trod water, slicking her hair back with both hands, rubbing the salt from her eyes.

‘Why should I? I can swim, can’t I? You come out to me – it’s much calmer out here, much more fun.’

‘What? I can’t hear you properly. Oh, Tess, come back. I’m not coming out that far. This is my first time, remember?’

She laughed again, full of the confidence of one totally at ease with the element in which she played, but there was a sizeable wave coming, so she duck-dived under it and saw that she was really very deep, that if she had been with the Throwers someone would have called her back ages ago. Though I was eight then, not twelve, she reminded herself as her head broke the surface once more. Still, it wasn’t much fun for Andy, hanging about miles behind her, probably beginning to feel the cold and not understanding how safe she was, how secure.

‘All right, I’m coming,’ she shouted, and set off for the beach.

The moment she got within a foot of him she realised that she’d given him a bad scare. His face was paper white and he was shivering.

‘Tess! Oh, Tess, you scared me. It’s too rough for me, it keeps knocking the feet from under me. Shall we play in the lows for a bit? The rain’s lessening.’

‘The lows? But they’re no better than the Broad . . . look, if I hold your hand . . .’

It was the wrong thing to say. He stiffened.

‘I’m not a baby, you know, I’m older than you and a whole lot tougher, despite my specs. I’ll come out with you.’

Tess hesitated. She turned back towards the tumultuous waves. The rain had stopped now, but she was cold about the shoulders, beginning to shiver. Suddenly, she remembered the neat packs of sandwiches in their greaseproof paper wrappings, the ripe tomatoes with the tiny screws of salt, the packets of crisps. It seemed a long while since breakfast.

‘We-ell, I’m rather cold now I come to think of it – and desperately hungry. Shall we get dry and have something to eat, first? We’ve got all day to swim, after all.’

Thankfully, they both turned their back on the suddenly cold, suddenly uninviting North sea, and headed up the beach.

They had a good day. At noon the rain stopped altogether and a watery sun appeared, and the beach filled up with families from the bungalows which lined the road beyond the dunes. Secure in their nest amongst the sand and burgeoning Marram grass, with their bicycles hidden from the eyes of all but the most curious, Tess and Andy ate, watched from their eyrie as the beach slowly became peopled, and then went back down to the sands and played. They built a huge castle, taller than both of them, and dug out a deep moat which then had to be filled with bucket after bucket of sea water. Despite Tess’s teasing, they had neither of them brought bucket or spade and were forced to borrow from a family with a great many small children and a plethora of beach equipment. The buckets were good, strong tin, but the spades were wooden ones and made digging difficult. Nevertheless they did the job and in return for the loan, Tess and Andy built a stout sand-car, in which the young males of the family drove desperately round an imaginary race-track, honking and shouting.

‘We bring them to the beach and they spend all their time pretending they’re somewhere else,’ the children’s mother sighed. She was quite young, a tanned, yellow-haired creature who looked more like an elder sister to her three small boys and two small girls than a parent. Her husband, who had come down earlier and played with vigour, had suddenly decided to go back to their holiday bungalow for a book, and hadn’t returned. ‘But that’s life, I suppose. At home they carry water out to the sandpit and slosh it about and say they’re at the seaside!’

‘We’ll build them a sand-boat, shall we?’ Tess suggested, but at that point a Stop-me-and-buy-one, on an elderly tricycle, came and rang his bell at the gap and the children’s attention left the beach completely. Their mother, who told Tess and Andy that she was Mrs Underwood, gave them some money to buy ices for her children, herself and themselves, and after the ices she produced a bottle of lemonade which they all shared and after that it was time to take the kiddies off the beach and back to their bungalow for high tea, baths and bed.

‘We’ll be leaving soon, anyway,’ Tess assured the Underwood children when they whined that it wasn’t fair, Tess and Andy weren’t being forced to go indoors before dark. ‘Thanks for the loan of the buckets and spades, kids.’

The two of them didn’t go at once, of course. They had a last swim, in a sea which was calmer now though the sky overhead was threatening, then changed, tied their wet bathers to their handlebars so that they might dry as they rode, and wheeled their bicycles down from the dunes and out on to the sandy road, pleasantly tired but still quite capable of getting home before dark.

Despite the rain, Tess thought as they rode, they had had a marvellous day. It was only on the ride back that they began to regret their rashness in not telling the truth about where they were going. The rain was pelting down in earnest, long rods of rain which flattened the grass on the verges and bounced off the children’s heads with painful force.

‘Why didn’t we bring our oilies?’ Andy groaned, trying to keep his head down and see where he was going at the same time. ‘We really should have thought of rain.’

‘I think we ought to shelter for a bit,’ Tess said. ‘It can’t keep on like this or there’ll be another flood.’

‘We’ll shelter,’ Andy decided. ‘If we can find somewhere, that is.’ He slowed his bicycle and Tess followed suit, looking around her as she did so. The landscape was bare, rain-drenched. There were thick, wild hedges, copses, growing crops. No shelter as far as the eye could see.

‘There’s nothing here, so we’d better press on for a bit,’ Andy said. ‘We’re bound to find somewhere soon.’

They pressed on, riding side by side, so wet now that it no longer mattered. They didn’t talk much though, because they were concentrating on pedalling. So when Andy, who had forged ahead, spotted something coming up and stopped, Tess, following behind him with head down against the driving rain, didn’t realise quickly enough. Her front wheel collided with his pedal, and the hiss of escaping air could be heard even above the constant patter of the rain on the grey, cloud-reflecting road.

‘Oh God!’ Andy’s dismay was real. ‘That’s torn it. We’re walking from now on. And I’ve just seen a barn, too, which was why I stopped.’

‘If we can reach it, we could mend the puncture,’ Tess said hopefully. ‘I’ve got my puncture outfit with me.’

‘Yes, that’s true,’ Andy said, cheering up. ‘And it’ll stop soon; bound to. Let’s go, then. It’s only a field away.’

They swung the gate open, went into the field, and shut the gate behind them. Then they pushed their cycles along a furrow between the rows of mangold worzels until they reached the further hedge. The barn was just on the other side of it.

‘Gate’s miles away,’ Andy groaned. ‘But the hedge is a bit thinner here . . .’

‘We shouldn’t,’ Tess said, at the same time shoving her bike at the thin spot. ‘Oh, I don’t suppose it matters, there’s no stock in the field to escape. I just hope the barn’s full of something nice, like hay.’

It wasn’t, it was full of dusty farm machinery and implements such as hay forks, but there was a loft full of hay above.

‘We’ll dry ourselves on the hay first, then do the puncture,’ Andy decreed. ‘Come on, up that ladder!’

Tess giggled and bounded up the ladder ahead of him. She was so relieved to be out of the rain, so delighted at the mere prospect of being dry again, that she would have agreed to most things. And when, presently, they were indeed beginning to dry off, she descended from the loft with confidence, turned her bike upside down, and reached for the tool which would enable her to pull out the inner tube without ruining it. She had a couple of tyre levers which she inserted, and was about to spin the wheel to find the puncture when Andy gave a moan.

‘What’s up?’ she said, starting to turn the wheel. ‘It’s all right, I’ve got plenty of patches.’

‘Have you seen the size of the split, Teasle? There’s no way we can mend it, you’ll have to have a new inner tube, and they don’t grow on trees . . . nor in barns, unfortunately.’

Tess stared as the damage came into view. There was an immense slit in the tyre through which she could see the inner tube protruding like a pink, flabby intestine. And through the slit she could see a jagged tear right across the inner tube which must be about six inches long.

‘Oh!’ Tess said blankly. ‘It makes the patches look silly, doesn’t it?’

‘It does. So we’ll be walking the rest of the way, I’m afraid.’

‘And we’ve got no bicycle lamps,’ Tess said, really dismayed now. ‘And we won’t get home before dark – oh, Andy, we’re going to be in such trouble!’

‘I don’t see why,’ Andy said stoutly, but he watched rather glumly as Tess took the tyre levers out, did her best to shove the inner tube back, and then righted her machine. ‘After all, my great-aunt thinks I’m at your place and your people think you’re at the Hall. We’re safe enough.’

‘But only until it’s dark,’ Tess wailed. ‘We’re both supposed to be home by dark, you know we are. When we aren’t. Daddy will ring your aunt and ask if he should call for me, and your aunt will say she thought you were with us . . . oh Andy, you know that bit about tangled webs? Well, we’ve both practised to deceive, and now we’re going to be found out. Everyone will be absolutely furious!’

‘We’ll ring up from the nearest call box,’ Andy said, visited by inspiration. ‘My aunt won’t mind all that much, she may not even notice I’m late, but your people will, so we’ll ring them. We’ll say we went for a bike ride and you’ve got a puncture and we’re going to be very late. Won’t that do?’

‘We-ell, if they find out I’ve gone to the seaside, when I said I was going over to the Hall to pick plums, I’ll catch it,’ Tess said. ‘Daddy will be terribly hurt and Marianne will be plain furious. And they won’t let me out to play with you for ages,’ she added miserably.

‘I don’t see why they should be cross because we’ve come down to the coast,’ Andy said. They pushed their bicycles along the furrow to the further hedge, becoming bogged down a couple of times in the clayey soil. ‘Everyone goes to the seaside – you said you’d been with the Throwers a few years ago.’

‘Ye-es, but Daddy never takes us. Marianne suggests it often, in the summer, but Daddy usually comes up with some excuse. I don’t think he likes the sea much.’

‘I can understand him not liking the sea, because my pater doesn’t like it much, either. But why doesn’t he want you to go to it with me? Or rather, why do you think he doesn’t want you to go?’