Still Waters (6 page)

When the Throwers vacated the bathroom at last Mrs Thrower said: ‘I’m just a-goin’ to have a peep at the gals,’ so, forewarned, Tess closed her eyes and tried to look as though she had been asleep for hours. She obviously succeeded, too, since Mrs Thrower tiptoed back to her own room and then said loudly, as though the walls were at least two foot thick, ‘Fast off, the pair of ’em! They’d sleep the clock round, no error, if we ‘lowed it.’

‘I wou’n’t mind sleepin’ the clock round,’ Mr Thrower said wistfully. ‘Still, we’ll hev a bit of a lie-in, hey old gal?’

‘I’ll see,’ Mrs Thrower said. The bedsprings creaked. Any minute now everyone will be asleep, me as well, Tess thought hopefully, and sure enough presently echoing snores began to sound. Mr Thrower was plainly in the land of Nod, though his wife said his name crossly a couple of times before succumbing as well.

Mrs Thrower snores ladylike, Tess told herself, still awake and listening. I wonder if all ladies snore higher than men? And then Janet turned on to her back, kicking Tess in the knee as she did so, and proved that girls, too, can snore almost as deeply as men.

I’ll never get to sleep, poor Tess thought, as Janet’s snores, and those of the elder Throwers, began to compete for her attention. And when morning comes I’ll be all stupid and dopey, and they’ll think I’m ill and send me home! Oh, I must go to sleep, I must! She turned on her side, her knees caught Janet a well-deserved wallop, and Janet moaned something and turned too.

Miraculously, silence descended. The rhythmic roars which Tess had likened, in her own mind, to that of a pig being strangled, ceased. With a sigh of real thankfulness, Tess curled up, put her thumb in her mouth, and was immediately asleep.

And at some point in the night she found herself on her dream-beach in a pink-and-white-striped dress and frilly knickers, looking down into the cradling sea-water and worrying about her drowning shoes.

Tess awoke suddenly, as she always did from the dream, and immediately, as though she had lain here for hours working things out, she realised what she must always have known, even when she was trying to agree with Daddy that the dream simply must be pretend. She had dreamed the dream long before that first trip to the seaside with Uncle Phil. She was absolutely sure of it, now that she thought. Time, when you still aren’t into double figures, takes such an age to move that you can remember what happened and when very accurately and she just knew she had been dreaming the dream long before her fifth birthday. Because it was on the day following her fifth birthday that Uncle Phil had called round, shoved her into the back of his old Morris Minor with four or five of her dreadful cousins, and driven the whole crowd of them down to Great Yarmouth, to have a day on the beach and a picnic, and afterwards to go up to the funfair and enjoy a few of the rides.

‘She want the company of other kids, bor,’ Uncle Phil had bawled at Peter, putting on a Norfolk accent to try to make his brother smile. ‘Do my kids eat her, I’ll pay you compensation, that I ’ull!’

Daddy had laughed, then, and leaned into the car and kissed Tess on the nose and told her to have a good day or he’d tan her backside for her. And, knowing she was watching, he had walked back into the house doing his Charlie Chaplin walk to make her laugh, and Uncle Phil had said that Pete had always been a card and did she, Tess, like fish and chips?

So now, Tess lay on her back with Janet’s warm bulk pressed against her side and told herself that she would find out, one day, just why she dreamed the dream. I’ll find the boy, she decided, and he can tell me. Daddy won’t, but that boy would.

And it was the first time, ever, that she had admitted to herself that she believed Peter knew more about her dream than he was prepared to tell.

Very early that morning Marianne Dupré had ridden her bicycle down Deeping Lane, not hurrying but enjoying the peace and quiet. She knew the lane wound down from the main road – well, as main as roads got round here – until it stopped when it met the Broad, and there were only four houses down it. One was a tied cottage where the Ropes’ ploughman and his family lived, another was the Throwers’ waterside cottage and the third belonged to the Beaumonts. They were brother and sister, both in their seventies. Mr William Beaumont was a botanist and Miss Ethel Beaumont was an artist, and together they wrote and illustrated books on the wildlife to be found on the Broads.

But Marianne was only interested in the fourth dwelling. She had come down Deeping Lane before the sun was up, when the Broad was covered with a gentle white mist and a gold line on the eastern horizon was the only sign that the sun was about to rise. On reaching the first dwelling she dismounted and walked slowly along, pushing her bicycle, pretending to herself that she was just admiring the countryside. When she got to the Old House she pushed her bicycle deep into the woods opposite – for all the dwellings on Deeping Lane were on the right side of the road as you came down towards the Broad; the left side was woods which gradually gave way to marsh, to reed beds and finally to the Broad itself – and hid it in a copse of young willow trees. Then she took off her waterproof jacket, folded it and laid it on the mossy ground, sat down on it, and produced from the bag at the back of her bicycle a flask and some sandwiches.

I’m a holidaymaker who has just happened to find this remote spot, Marianne told herself. Presently, when the sun comes up, I may stroll down to the water, chat to anyone I happen to meet . . .

But she knew she wouldn’t, not really. Because that might easily ruin everything.

She unscrewed the lid of her flask and was pouring herself some coffee when the child came running down the path from the Old House, then dashed down the lane towards the gleam of water which Marianne could just see through the trees. A small, dark girl, skinny and plain. Not a bit like . . . Marianne cut the thought off short; she was a stranger, a holidaymaker, she didn’t know anyone here – remember?

She had drunk the first cup of coffee by the time the child came back and when the carrier’s cart arrived she was cross, uncomfortable, and beginning to regret the impulse which had caused her to get up literally at the crack of dawn and arrive here so very early. After all, what had she gained? She felt like a spy, an intruder, and what was more the damp was beginning to seep insidiously through her waterproof jacket and, by the feel of it, into her very bones. No good would come of catching a chill . . . but she was stuck here, now. There were too many people about to allow her to move, because she knew very well that, if she was spotted by the child or the neighbours, she would have a great deal of explaining to do.

Peter had never pretended, he had always made his feelings clear.

‘You are my Hickling Water Frolic, my shooting trip to Scotland, my fishing weekend in Wales,’ he had told her. ‘My darling, darling Marianne, that is all I can offer you. Is it enough?’

‘It’s enough,’ she had whispered throatily, that first time. ‘Oh my darling, darling Peter, it’s enough!’

But it wasn’t, of course. It hadn’t been enough once she’d really fallen in love with Peter. The hunger to be with him always, to be acknowledged, had almost driven her crazy. She had plotted, planned, persuaded . . . but she had not thought of the obvious.

Until now. And because she felt that the battle was all but won, she had come extra early to the Old House, as a spy admittedly, to see the child who was so precious to her lover that he would not risk allowing her to meet his mistress. So precious, in fact, that he would not remarry, simply dismissed such an idea out of hand. Yet he loves me, Marianne told herself petulantly, as the laden carrier’s cart passed her, the peasants on board laughing and shouting out as though they were unaware of their lowly status. Marianne, an aristocratic Frenchwoman to the tips of her fingers, knew peasants when she saw them and wondered, fleetingly, why Peter, who was so careful of his daughter, should let her go away for a whole week with such people. But then self-interest reasserted itself; I’m glad he’s sent her away, Marianne thought, so what does it matter what these Throwers are like? I am grateful to them, peasants or no, because Peter and I have a whole week together – as well as the rest of our lives.

Marianne had not seen Tess until that morning, never clapped eyes on so much as a photograph, because Tess was always at home, so she and Peter had to meet away from the house and village. In fact she had never set foot inside the Old House. Instead, Peter arranged to meet her in pubs, small hotels, holiday cottages, cafés. Because of a plain little girl we’ve been forced to skulk, Marianne told herself as she packed up her picnic and prepared to wheel her bicycle across the road and up the path to the Old House. How absurd it has been, as though he were a married man with a jealous wife, instead of a widower with a small daughter who would probably love a stepmother.

And although she was sure that the farce was just about over, that her new life was about to begin, she still pretended to herself that she was a holidaymaker, approaching a house to ask the owner whether there were any hire-craft on this part of the Broad. She wheeled her bicycle across the muddy, rutted lane, up the short gravel path and round to the back door, reminding herself that it would not do to break cover now. All must be respectable, for everyone’s sake. Even the child’s.

Marianne propped her bicycle up against a rabbit hutch, then knocked on the back door. She desired most urgently simply to walk inside, but caution forbade it. Suppose he had a friend staying, or a housekeeper? He had never mentioned such a thing, but . . .

The door opened. Peter stood there, his light-brown hair on end, a pair of tortoiseshell spectacles perched on his nose. He was wearing an open-necked shirt and corduroy trousers and tartan bedroom slippers and he had a book in one hand, one long finger marking his place. He looked at her almost uncomprehendingly for a moment, then said, sharply: ‘Marianne! What on earth . . .?’

‘My darling, are you alone?’

He nodded uncertainly, then moved aside as Marianne, seizing the opportunity, stepped into the kitchen. My kitchen, she thought wonderingly, looking round. Goodness, it needs redecorating, smartening up. But I’ll do it – I’ll have all the time in the world once we’ve sorted things out.

‘Yes, I’m alone. Tess left about ten minutes ago. But I’ve told you never to come here, you know very well . . .’

‘Peter darling, I had to come.’ She kept her voice low, throbbing with passion. She put her arms round him and then stood on tiptoe to kiss the only part of his face she could reach – his strong, cleft chin – and pressed the length of her body against him in a manner she would once have considered wanton in the extreme. Only . . . she had to be wanton, if that was the only way to make him see sense! ‘Why are you cross with your Marianne?’

‘You know our agreement! Right from the start . . .’

‘Darling, I’m having a baby.’

He stood very still. Sensing shock, fearing rejection, she pressed her cheek against his chest and kept her arms round him, but he jerked himself free and held her at arm’s length, staring down into her face.

‘A . . . a
what
?’

‘A baby, Peter. Your baby.’

‘But that’s not possible! I’ve always taken precautions . . . we both agreed we didn’t want any sort of complications. Marianne, you must be mistaken, you must!’

She had not expected this, but she should have done so. Peter’s feelings exactly mirrored her own, last week, when she had first wondered if she might be pregnant. She knew that Peter had taken precautions, but accidents do happen. She had been horrified – the very last thing she wanted was a child – but then she had realised that a baby might well be her trump card. Peter was, above everything else, a true English gentleman. He would never desert her, and judging by the ridiculous, obsessive way he loved his daughter, he would be sure to love a child which he and Marianne had made together at least as much he loved Tess.

‘There’s no mistake. I went and saw the doctor, he says I’m
enceinte
. Peter, I know it isn’t what we wanted, what we’d planned, but – don’t you think that perhaps it’s for the best? You need a woman in your life, so why should that woman not be your wife, the mother of your child – children, I mean? Peter, you’ve told me you are a widower, it isn’t as if you’ve a wife, living . . . you wouldn’t cast me off?’

It sounded melodramatic and Marianne flinched internally, but she knew she could not bear to lose Peter. She had thought herself to be, if anything, cold, because she had come to England with one purpose in mind; to marry a rich Englishman and to make her life here, as far away from France as she could envisage going. Only a marriage such as that could make up to her for the pain of seeing her younger, plainer sister wed before her.

Because, rather later in her life than she had expected, Marianne had met and become engaged to a rich, languid young man with a château in the Dordogne, a seaside house in the South of France and a little
pied-à-terre
in Paris. Armand Nouvel’s family owned famous racehorses, made famous wines, mixed with the upper five thousand. Proud as a peacock of her conquest, Marianne had taken Armand home, introduced him to her family . . . and watched, helpless, as her plain but brilliantly clever sister, Dédé, had made it clear that she really liked the gentle, rather spineless young man. And Armand, who had seemed dazed by Marianne’s beauty and wit, had simply ditched her for her wretched, wretched sister Dédé.

Even now, Marianne could remember her pain, her fury. She hadn’t loved Armand, but she had wanted him! And she had not even considered Peter as a possible man-friend when they had first been introduced. He wasn’t rich, or stunningly handsome, or titled, even. He was just a not-so-young man at a rather boring party who had been introduced to her, and who had made her laugh. So she eyed him covertly whilst waiting for something better to come along, and finally allowed him to dance with her because one glance at the assembled company had told her that this was a wasted evening. There were a couple of rich young men but they were with boring, po-faced English girls. She would wait until she knew rather more people before casting out any lures. She intended to make use of her advantages – her beauty, her intriguing French accent and her sharp wit. A rich, possibly titled, Englishman would show Armand that he wasn’t the only pebble on the beach and would prove to that cat, Dédé, that there were better fish in the sea than ever came out of it. But she was at the party, and she was bored, and Peter was bending his head to speak conspiratorially into her ear. The least she could do was listen.