The Girl by the River (33 page)

Before he could intervene, she abandoned that idea and jumped down from the wall, making her breasts bounce as she landed. Bemused, Freddie watched her march into the shed. He heard rummaging
sounds and she emerged with a hessian potato sack. She shook it, smoothed it, and vaulted onto the wall again. She stretched the sack over his sale board, brushed the dust from her hands, and did a
little wiggle of satisfaction at her moment of glory. With her nose in the air, she wheeled her bike up the path and disappeared inside.

Freddie smiled to himself. That was SO Kate, he thought, warrior Kate. When he went indoors for his tea, she didn’t mention it, so he kept quiet. But later, Kate wanted to go into his
workshop with him. She had changed out of the baggy trousers and put on a summery dress.

First she admired his woodcarvings. There were owls, swans, dolphins and a horse’s head he’d done for Tessa. But Kate seemed to be searching for something else, her eyes scanning the
shelves. Suddenly her face brightened, and she lifted out a bird table he’d made with a Japanese roof of tiny slats of larch. ‘This is IT,’ she said. ‘I could sell these for
you, Freddie. They’re lovely. And it’s what everyone is wanting now – now that the wild birds are declining. We’ve got to feed them. Susan’s got a bird table in her
garden, a tatty old thing, and it’s always covered in birds. I don’t know what she puts on it!’

‘They’re easy to make,’ Freddie said, ‘and I could make nest boxes as well. But I don’t see how you could sell them, Kate.’

‘When I’ve passed my driving test, I can load the car up with them and go round all the hardware stores and garden centres. There are lots.’

‘They won’t buy ’em!’

‘They will if I’m selling them,’ Kate said. ‘I can be VERY persuasive.’

‘Ah, you can,’ Freddie found himself smiling. A chink of light appeared in the gloom.

‘Well, my test is in three weeks’ time,’ Kate said, ‘so you get cracking and make me a selection. Then I can take orders. And we could put up a display by the front
gate.’

‘I dare say we could.’

‘AND . . .’ Kate’s eyes had a bright, good-humoured glare. She wagged her finger. ‘We are not going to sell The Pines, Freddie. I won’t let you. That would be like
giving up.’

‘You can’t stop me, Kate.’

‘Oh yes I can. Believe me I can. There’s nothing I cannot do if I put my mind to it. Now you take that notice down or I’ll pop out at midnight and saw it off. The neighbours
would just love that.’

Freddie stood looking at her, his mouth twitching, his mind hovering between negativity and humour. He was aware that Kate was manipulating him, but she was also rescuing him, and inspiring him.
‘I need you so much, Kate,’ he said passionately, ‘and I admire your guts. Don’t ever leave me, will you?’

‘NEVER!’ she declared, giving him a hug.

Freddie thought about her idea. He strolled down to the gate and considered clearing a display area. He started to pull some of the long grass away from the wall, when he made a discovery. A row
of terracotta flowerpots stood in a line at the base of the wall. His heart leapt. Growing out of each pot was a young lime tree. His seeds! They had grown. Thrilled, he disentangled the pots from
the grass, stood them in wooden trays in neat rows, then he fetched a can of water and gave them a good soak.

If only Tessa was there to see them. To share his dream. For it was in that moment a dream was born. He leaned on the wall, staring down the road at the majestic hedgerow elms, some of them
fifty feet high and casting bars of shadows across the tarmac. He knew that elm trees had been part of the ancient wild wood which had covered Britain centuries ago. Their bark and dense foliage
was used by a cornucopia of wildlife from butterflies to woodpeckers. Granny Barcussy had told him often how elm was used for healing. If you burned elm wood like incense, it would give you
confidence. The inner bark could heal eczema and rheumatism. She’d also told him that elm trees were magic, and if you stood under one, it would connect you with the afterlife.

Freddie’s own childhood had been lived under and around the elm trees which stood like sentinels along every hedge and on every street corner. He couldn’t imagine the land without
them. It would be so bare. Yet something he’d heard on the radio haunted him. Dutch Elm Disease. Could it come to Britain? Could it destroy thousands of beautiful trees? Some said it was
already here.

He crossed the road and stood under his favourite elm tree, the oldest and tallest, the one that turned the brightest gold in autumn. He looked at it carefully, and noticed a few dead branches,
their leaves a dirty mustard colour. He picked some of them up from the road. It was high summer and all the leaves should have been green. Freddie stood close to the trunk and touched the bark. He
closed his eyes, and listened. And then he knew. The tree was dying. There was nothing he could do.

Tessa came into his mind then. Tessa sitting at the tea table, with her hair in plaits, arguing with Annie. What Tessa said had affected Freddie deeply. ‘When the earth is sick . .
.’

But there was nothing he could do.

He needed Tessa to come home.

Tessa slept in a grassy hollow at the back of Porthminster Beach. At first she lay awake, listening for footsteps. The thought of someone discovering her in the night was
alarming. Her mind was replaying the scene of the man shouting at her. No matter how firmly she told herself to stop, her mind wanted to recycle it over and over. She couldn’t let go of the
memory. She wanted Jonti so much. She regretted telling her mother she’d seen the little dog in spirit. It had caused a rift – another one. But did it matter? After all, she was free
now. Theoretically.

She listened and worried, snuggled under her duffle coat which felt like her one and only friend.
But I’ve chosen this,
she told herself.
I could have gone home. I could have
gone to London with Faye. I didn’t know just how frightened I was going to feel. But I’m not going to let fear spoil my chance of freedom.

Tired out, she eventually slept, and awoke to the dawn chorus in Cornish. Hundreds and hundreds of seagulls glided through the dawn twilight, making wild music as they circled high in the sky
above the town, fading into the distance, then coming close again with a full-on chorus. Hauntingly beautiful. Different from the nightingales. A raw, unafraid, exultant cry that touched her soul
in a new place, awakening something she’d spent her entire life trying to repress.

The early morning sea was aquamarine and steely. Between the cries of the seagulls, there seemed to be a ringing sound coming from the sea, from the bell buoys far away, or from all the clocks
in Cornwall chiming across the water. It was more than a sound. It had resonance, and Tessa could feel it in the grains of sand, and the blades of grass, and in the ancient lichen-covered rocks.
Like a silver sword hundreds of miles long, a power line she had sensed in her childhood. It was part of her as if she was a glass bead on a string.

The ringing sound disappeared with the silence of the rising sun and its flare path of golden pink across the ocean. Even the gulls went quiet, and stood on the wet sand, their beaks to the
light, in perfect stillness. Teaching the world how to greet the sun.

Tessa drank some water and ate a biscuit, then curled up under her duffle coat, and slept with the sunrise imprinted on her dreams, and with a new feeling of safety. She woke, refreshed, at
mid-morning, deflated her airbed and rolled it up, stuffing it into her rucksack with the bulky coat. The waves on Porthminster Beach were still small, but surf was breaking far away over Godrevy.
Maybe she’d come to the wrong place. She considered hiking along the coastal path until she reached the surf.

First she explored the cobbled streets, passing cottages with pots of bright geraniums and windows with knitted sailor dolls. The high street smelled of pasties and fresh bread. Tessa was
starving and she needed to work out the cheapest possible way of eating. A huge pastie, steaming hot and crammed with well-seasoned root vegetables and minced beef seemed good value. At the last
minute she changed her mind in the shop and bought a vegetarian one. It felt good.
I’m an animal lover
, she thought,
I don’t EAT my friends
. She remembered the delicious
vegetarian meals Starlinda had introduced her to, and the memorable comments she’d made about saving the planet. It happened in a flash. From the moment she sat on the glittering harbour-side
and sank her teeth into the luscious pastie, Tessa became a vegetarian.

Satisfied, she wandered through the hot streets, wanting to swim again, but saving herself for that elusive surf. She paused, looking at a little street called The Digey. A pavement café
was there, and it was crowded with long-haired, suntanned men, and girls with flowers in their hair. They were laughing and eating, some sitting in the street with their backs against the
café wall, plates of food in their hand. Tessa edged her way past. She wanted to stop and look at every man to see if he was Art. But she still needed to be alone, not get involved, so she
walked on, hearing a song belting out from the café.

She walked on up the street without knowing why. Something was drawing her. A new light on the cobbles. A new glaze of salt in the air. A new feeling of transition, of walking towards the edge
of a cliff. Where all you had to do was trust and jump off into white space.

The hot, sweaty, pastie-smelling town was left behind and she walked towards a dazzling energy. Ahead of her, between the cottages, was a wall, and a sound like nothing else. Both a roar and a
whisper. It was eternal. And it had a heartbeat. A thrum thrumming pulse, the heartbeat of the Atlantic Ocean.

She tasted the sea salt on her lips. She stared in disbelief at the towering white surf piling in, higher than the horizon, wave upon rolling wave. She wanted to dance in the street with pure
excitement and awe.

There were hippies sitting carelessly on the wall, with sun-bleached manes of hair, their skin tanned a dark gold and glistening with salt. A line of Malibu surfboards were propped along the
wall, and on the corner was a café with a big black footprint painted on the wall. It was called the
Man Friday
.

Tessa leaned on the wall, mesmerised by the surf. It was high tide and the waves were foaming across the sparkly shell sand of Porthmeor Beach. She ran down the steps, dumped her rucksack
against the wall and quickly changed into the sea-green bikini. Then, feeling very small against the awesome sea, she waded slowly into the marbled stretches of foam, amazed to feel it sucking the
sand from her ankles as the wave retreated. It had power. Power that she wanted.

At first it was glorious, feeling her body being torn between the hot sun and the cold sea. Jewel green and lace white, the waves curled and frothed around her, slapping her bare tummy, lifting
her like driftwood, knocking her over, grabbing the wavy tresses of her chestnut hair and chilling her scalp. Her skin felt burning pink and alive.

Tessa was a confident swimmer, but swimming was impossible, even between waves, and she was wary of the fast surfboards that flew past with keen-eyed, wild-haired men crouched on them like
Michelangelo paintings of gods flying through the heavens. She moved down the beach out of their way, and stood knee-deep, looking at the sea. Beyond the breakers the water was inky blue, the swell
like green silk. That was where she wanted to be. She dived through every wave and fought her way out there until she could float and swim, and look down through clear water to the pale sand
below.

She swam until she was deeply cold. It seemed part of the transformation experience. She ignored the shouting voices from the beach. She heard only the whispering roar of the sea. What made her
turn back was the bright face of a small white dog circling in front her. Jonti!

The tide had turned, and it was hard to swim back. Tessa realised suddenly how far the sea had dragged her. Jagged black rocks were close, with the surf breaking over them. Why were those people
on the beach waving and shouting? Who were the two men who dashed into the sea and began to swim furiously towards her? And why, suddenly, was the strength leaving her body? Her arms were weak and
aching, her legs numb, her breathing laboured.

It was then that Tessa panicked and went under.

. . . OF THE AGE OF AQUARIUS

‘GET OFF ME!’ Tessa screamed in fury at the two men who grabbed her. She thrashed like a caught fish in the water.

‘We’re not attacking you, sweetheart. We’re rescuing you. We’re lifeguards.’

‘I don’t need rescuing. I can swim perfectly well. Leave me alone.’

‘Listen to me, sweetheart. Listen!’ They held her still in the raging sea, keeping her head up out of the water. ‘We’re Cornish lifeguards and we know what we’re
doing. You’re in serious danger. You’re exhausted and you’re getting swept onto those sharp rocks. We’re taking you back to the beach.’

Tessa felt the grip of their iron-man fingers around her arms and a primal fear caught her in its fist, emerging from her mouth as rage.

‘I want to be alone. Let go of me,’ she yelled, and struggled furiously, going under again, swallowing water, coughing and spluttering as some of it went into her windpipe. The
coughing and the exhaustion interfered with the rage. She felt herself going limp and crying with frustration. Terrible memories surfaced. Nightmare times of being held down at the dentist. The
smell of chloroform gas. The fighting. The day at the mill, and the troll-like figure of Ivor Stape forcing her back into a deep chair, holding a rag over her face with that same ominous smell of
gas. ‘I hate men. I hate you. Leave me alone,’ she found the strength to scream, and the scream seemed to break some kind of barrier. She burst through the splinters into calmer
water.

Directly in front of her was a pair of steady hazel eyes. Tessa stared into them as the two lifeguards dragged her to safety. They had put her on a Malibu surfboard and were steering it into the
beach. The ink blue of deep water was changing to the white lace patterns of foam. Her feet touched the sand. She tried to stand up but her legs were quivering and she felt totally vulnerable.