The Girl by the River (10 page)

‘Tessa is an impossible child,’ Annie said, rocking harder. ‘Serve her right if she gets struck. And serve her mother right for bringing such a brat into the family . .
.’ She gave in and let a stream of vitriol pour through her, not caring that Lucy was listening. Annie had tried to like Kate, but her own sense of inadequacy and powerlessness had got in the
way. Everything had been going along nicely, she thought, until THAT TESSA had been born. Now the little hussy was out there dancing naked in the rain, in HER garden. The shame of it. The
shame.

The storm wilted into a dripping silence. The rooftops of Monterose glistened and the wet leaves sparkled with a sense of satisfaction. The streets gurgled with rivulets of sooty, oily, muddy
water, all heading down to the station yard. Annie stayed under the table, feeling her heart slowing down, beat by shameful beat.

Kate’s bright voice and Freddie’s reassuring footsteps brought Annie’s guilt and humiliation into sharp focus. Jealousy was there too, stabbing at her heart. Kate was in the
garden – laughing – and it seemed to Annie that the laughter was ringing through the street like the church bells.

Kate came into the kitchen, radiant, with Tessa in her arms and Lucy clinging round her skirts. ‘Ooh, you are a pickle!’ Kate said to Tessa. ‘Did you enjoy the rain?’

Tessa nodded, her pale blue eyes shining with joy. ‘I danced,’ she whispered, ‘and now I’ve got stars on my skin.’

Kate laughed even louder. ‘You mean raindrops! Stars indeed. Anyone would think you’d been sprinkled with fairy dust.’ Her laugh seemed to energise the whole cottage.

‘Tessa’s wicked,’ Lucy said. ‘I didn’t take MY dress off. Granny said Tessa was a curse.’

Kate frowned. ‘Don’t talk so silly,’ she said. ‘It’s not wicked to enjoy the rain. Come on, madam, into the bath with you.’

‘But Granny’s under the table,’ said Lucy, and the moment Annie dreaded had arrived. She couldn’t get up from the floor on her own, especially not from under the table.
If Kate laughed, it would be the last straw. The thought of that ringing laugh added another spike of anger to Annie’s overloaded emotions. Hot tears zigzagged through the wrinkles on her
cheeks.

Kate swung round to look at her, but Tessa got there first. Her pale blue eyes stared under the table just as Annie was wiping her face with the corner of her flowery apron.

‘Don’t cry, Granny.’ Tessa dived under the table and put her bare wet arms round Annie’s shoulders. Annie only saw the splodges Tessa’s wet feet were leaving on the
floor. She saw her wet navy blue knickers and the splashes of mud over her legs and socks. In her fury, Annie didn’t see the compassion and the love the child was offering her.

‘You bad, wicked girl.’ Annie pushed Tessa away. ‘Look at the state of you. Filthy dirty. I don’t want you near me.’ She glared out at Kate. ‘I told her not
to go outside, and she did. She should be made to do her own washing – look at the state of her – and – and she was DANCING in the front garden in the pouring rain where the whole
neighbourhood could see her. Out there in her knickers. Aren’t you ashamed of her, Kate? Oh – that’s right – CRY!’ she added as two silent tears ran down Tessa’s
face. ‘I’ll give you something to cry about. Wicked child.’

Kate saw the light drain from Tessa’s eyes. ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘That’s not fair. I won’t have her treated like that, Annie. Tessa was trying to be kind to
you. Fancy pushing her away like that. I’m not having it.’

Annie snorted. ‘Well, are you going to help me out of here?’ she demanded. ‘I’m an old woman and I can’t get up.’

Kate wanted to tell Annie that as far as she was concerned, she could stay there.
But I’m here to love
, she thought.
I’m here to keep the peace, keep everyone happy
. So
she reached under the table, gave Annie her hand, and spoke to her kindly. ‘You’ll feel better in a minute. Don’t upset yourself.’

She pulled the trembling Annie to her feet and looked at her caringly. ‘Come on, it’s all right now. We’re home and everything’s all right.’

Disarmed by the kindness, Annie allowed Kate to guide her to her favourite chair and tuck a blanket round her. ‘I can’t help it,’ she said. ‘It was the thunder. I tried
to keep the children safe – I tried – but that Tessa . . .’

‘Now you just sit here quietly,’ Kate said. ‘Freddie’s on his way in. Everything’s all right, Annie. I’m going to sort out this wet child, and then
we’ll have tea and toast. AND – we’ve got a surprise.’

‘I don’t like surprises,’ Annie warned. ‘A surprise can be a shock for an old woman like me. Bad for my heart.’

‘Leave it to me, Kate,’ Freddie said later. ‘I’ll tell Mother – she’ll take it better from me. You go and put the girls to bed.’

He walked Annie back to her own cottage next door, thinking it best to have this particular conversation away from the girls. He knew Annie was upset, but he needed to tell her what he’d
done. She’d take it hard, but he’d talk her round.

Freddie sat down in his father’s old chair, his fingers smoothing the brass studs that held it together. Half of him was listening to Annie ranting on about thunderstorms and the other
half was still in a happy haze from the secret hour he’d spent with Kate. Her reaction to his surprise had been everything he’d dreamed of, the way she’d flung her arms around him
and danced around with such enthusiasm. Danced! Yes, she made him dance, and he’d loved it. His face still ached from smiling. He couldn’t wait to take her to bed that night, the memory
of the passionate kiss they’d shared and the way he’d felt so wanted and so appreciated. Telling his mother seemed like an ordinary duty, nothing he couldn’t handle.

‘I’ve got something to tell you, Mother,’ he began, and Annie stiffened. What she’d dreaded was about to happen.

‘What’s that?’ she asked.

Freddie looked at her with his level, steady gaze. ‘I bought a house.’

Annie’s voice dwindled to a whisper. ‘A house?’ she said, as if a house was a disease worse than the plague.

Freddie took a paper from his inside pocket, unfolded it and handed it to her. ‘There. You take a look. It’s a beauty. Brand new, with an acre of garden. Half a mile out of town on
the road to Hilbegut. Built with red brick.’

‘Bricks?’ Annie gasped. ‘I don’t like those things. Vulgar.’

Freddie winced. He was glad Kate wasn’t there. He waited, watching the expression on his mother’s face as the news sank in. An unhealthy lilac tinge crept up her cheeks, her eyes
narrowed and her lips set in a purple line. He was reminded of the times he had coaxed her out of the panic attacks when he was seven years old, walking backwards in front of her, his small hands
hurting with the tightness of her grip, his feet blistered raw from wearing wooden clogs, his only footwear. She’d been dependent on him.

‘You BOUGHT it, you say?’

‘Yes.’

‘How much money? How much?’

‘Seven hundred pounds.’

‘Seven hundred pounds! I’ve never seen that much money in my life. Where did you get it?’

‘I’ve been saving, Mother, all through the wartime, and every single haulage job with the lorry. Ever since our wedding. I want to give Kate the home she deserves.’

‘She’s got a perfectly good home here, and so have you.’

Freddie was silent. He waited. The last thing he wanted was a confrontation with his mother.

‘So – what are you going to do with this brick-built house?’ Annie asked. She picked up her ebony walking stick which lay beside the chair, and put it on the floor, leaning on
it as if to anchor herself. The stick began to shake harder and harder.

‘Kate and I are going to live in it. With Lucy and Tessa,’ Freddie said as gently as he could.

Bitterness cut into Annie’s eyes. She nodded. ‘I thought that was coming.’ Her voice shook. ‘What about me?’

‘What about you? You’re all right here, aren’t you?’

‘I’m your MOTHER,’ she spat. ‘You can’t LEAVE me. I’m old now.’

Freddie leaned forward and took both her hands in his. ‘I know, I know ’tis hard. But we’re not abandoning you. We’ll look out for you, and bring the children.’

Annie snatched her hands away and screamed at him in a high, thin voice, her mouth foaming, her eyes erupting with tears. ‘Don’t do this,’ she begged, ‘don’t leave
me, Freddie. Don’t leave me here to die on my own.’

Freddie was shocked. He never remembered his mother crying, even when his father had died. She’d been stoical and silent, frightened, but never like this. She was working herself into a
frenzy.

‘I’ll never let you go. Never,’ she cried. ‘You leave this place over my dead body.’

IN SEARCH OF FOREVER

‘Do you like that poem?’

The teacher’s question was followed by an elastic silence, tension stretched into snapping point.

‘Tessa?’

Seven-year-old Tessa froze, her anxious eyes locked with the demanding stare of her teacher. Miss O’Grady had a knack of dropping one of these questions into the middle of her daydream
where it sat like a granite pebble, an obstacle that sparkled mockingly. There had to be a word, Tessa thought desperately, a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ to deflect the question, but
she didn’t trust words. Words got you into trouble when you spoke them. But words could suck you into multi-coloured dream worlds, and that’s where Tessa was when Miss O’Grady
asked her the question.

Tessa had been pondering the word ‘forever’, and the concept of a stream flowing into eternity. Forever was where you went when you died, she thought. It was where her grandad had
gone. Gone, into the ‘silent land’, the forever place where no one would ask you questions. In her mind Tessa had gone to the banks of the millstream, taken off her Clarks sandals and
her school socks, and waded into the silver water. She’d always wondered where the stream was going in such a hurry. Now she knew. The stream was going to ‘forever’. And if she
followed it, she could go there too. She could see Grandad, and live in peace in this ‘forever’ place.

Why wait
? Tessa thought, and the idea looped around her like a hug of joy. She leapt to her feet, overturned her chair, and ran to the classroom door. She clutched the round brass
doorknob and turned it with both hands.

‘Tessa!’

She heard the creak of Miss O’Grady’s chair, the clop of sensible black lace-up shoes, the thud of a book falling to the floor. She struggled with the doorknob, wrenching at it until
it turned. The heavy door swung open, and Tessa fled down the polished corridor, her new Clarks sandals clap-clapping like Kate’s butter pats.

‘You NAUGHTY GIRL.’ The words bounded after her like a farm dog, but Tessa didn’t care. She was out. Out, out, OUT under the vast blue-silver skies, under the whispers of
mighty elm trees, over the pitted asphalt of the playground, through the clang of the wrought-iron gate. She seized a stick and ran it along the iron railings, playing a tune of freedom, a wild
tune, an escaping tune.

With her chestnut plaits flying, she headed over the water meadows towards the millstream. She would follow it on its babbling journey until it joined ‘the brimming river’. Tessa let
those enticing words into her mouth, turning them over, sucking the sugar from them. The brimming river. The brimming river. She so wanted to see it, swim in it like a duck, drink its crystal water
and follow it – to forever.

Kate took the two halves of her freshly baked Victoria sponge to the kitchen table. She spread the lower half with homemade raspberry jam, and the top half with rich, creamy
butter icing, then carefully sandwiched them together, and put the cake on a paper doily. Singing happily, she set the table with the best willow-patterned china and silver cutlery. She peeped
under the crisp navy and white tea cloths to check the cucumber sandwiches made from a wondrous new product – sliced bread. She checked the egg mayonnaise ones, and the ham. They looked fresh
and moist. Gingerly she plugged in her new electric kettle, and spooned tealeaves into her favourite teapot which looked like a cottage.

It was going to be fine, she told herself firmly. Kate was proud of her lovely red brick house with its big garden and the three tall pine trees. It had elm trees too, all along the hedge
bordering the lane. Freddie had made a long path with blue-lias flagstones, bordered by his vegetable garden and a magnificent lawn. His stone carvings stood proudly around the edges, and
he’d made a swing for the children from two old telegraph poles, a thick rope and a seat made from the lid of an oak chest he’d found in the hedge.

The garden had magical places too, for it had once been a much loved cottage garden before the cottage had been demolished and the new brick house built in its place. There was a hollow where
the Anderson shelter had been, now overgrown with lilac and buddleia, a place of secrets where Lucy and Tessa loved to play.

That morning, Kate had sent them to school in clean cotton dresses, with new ribbons in their hair, white ankle socks and stiff new Clarks sandals. ‘Keep nice and clean today,’
she’d said. ‘We’re having a tea party when you come home from school. Auntie Susan and her two children, and Auntie Lexi will be here, and Granny. Mind you be good – on BEST
behaviour. Then you can have a slice of my Victoria sponge.’ Two pairs of eyes had shone back at her, reflecting her smile. But, as always, Tessa had pouted. ‘I don’t like Auntie
Lexi.’

‘Well – grin and bear it, dear,’ Kate said, briskly. She tightened the blue satin bow on one of Tessa’s gleaming chestnut plaits. The anxiety in the child’s eyes
annoyed her. ‘Try and be more like Lucy,’ she advised. ‘Lucy gets on with everybody, and she smiles.’ But Tessa gave her a mutinous, chilling glare. Kate bit back the angry
response that danced in her throat. She’d already had one confrontation with Tessa that morning, over the new sandals. Tessa refused to wear them and it had ended in tears and a slap. The
mark of Kate’s furious hand was still there like an accusing red flame on Tessa’s firm little thigh.