When Marnie Was There (14 page)

“You promised to make a house today,” Anna said once.

“I didn’t promise. Why are you so cross?”

“I’m not cross, but you said you would. I’ve been waiting all day.”

“Oh, poor you! But I can’t be everywhere all the time. And I’m here now. Come on, let’s be friends.”

But Anna did not feel like being coaxed. “It isn’t fair,” she said. “I need you more than you need me.”

“Nonsense. I need you, too, but you don’t understand – I’m not free like you are. Don’t let’s quarrel, darling Anna!” Then Anna’s resentment melted away, and they were happy again.

One day, wandering in the sand dunes, Anna came across a little shelter made of driftwood and marram grasses. It was big enough to crawl inside, and she crept
in, thinking how pleased Marnie would be when she showed it to her.

But when she told her about it, Marnie said, “I know. Edward and I made it yesterday.” Anna could not say anything at all then, she was so hurt and angry. For the first time since they had met, she put on her ‘ordinary’ face. But Marnie knew at once what it meant.

“Anna – Anna, I
was
going to show it to you, truly. Please don’t look like that. Please don’t go away from me.”

And again Anna was coaxed back into forgiving her.

But she began to realise that she must not rely on Marnie too much. That if she was over-sure of meeting her, that would be the time she would not come. That it was almost as if Marnie was determined Anna should never take her for granted.

And yet sometimes they were as happy together as they had ever been.

One day, when Anna was lying on the farther dyke, near where they had first gone mushrooming, Marnie did her old trick of suddenly appearing in the grass beside her. Anna sat up, surprised. She had only chosen that place because she was sure she would not be seeing Marnie until later in the day.

“I thought you were going out with Edward,” she said.

“I was, but I changed my mind. He decided he wanted to go and have a look at the windmill.” Marnie settled down beside her. “What are you reading?”

Anna had not been reading, though she had a comic with her – the one Mrs Preston sent regularly. She handed it over. “Do you have this one?”

Marnie shook her head. “I’m not allowed them. Sometimes the maids have them – more grown-up ones, but they’re comics just the same – and sometimes they let me read them, when they don’t want me to be a nuisance and want to keep me out of the way.”

“You can have that one if you like, but don’t read it now. Tell me what the maids’ ones are like.” Anna did not think she had ever seen a grown-up’s comic.

Marnie stretched herself on the grass beside her. “They’re terribly exciting,” she said, and her eyes grew dark and secret looking, “they’re full of eerie mysteries – that’s what they call them – all about nuns shut up in towers, and stolen babies, and wicked men. That’s where I got the idea from that I might be really adopted.”

“You talk as if you’d like to be,” Anna said. “I didn’t understand you when you said that before.”

“Didn’t you?” Marnie looked at her thoughtfully. “It’s difficult to explain. It’s only – well, I mean it would just
show
how good my parents are, wouldn’t it. I mean they’ve given me everything –
everything
, and they’ve never even
hinted
that I might be adopted. But secretly, very secretly, I feel as if I am. Promise you won’t tell?”

“Of course I won’t. Anyway, who is there to tell? Go on telling me about the comics.”

“Well, they have love stories and things.” Marnie hesitated. “But I think love stories are sloppy, don’t you?” Anna agreed. “And yet—” Marnie looked at her hopefully – “I do want to fall in love and get married when I’m grown up, don’t you?”

Anna was not sure. “I don’t know. I might fall in love with someone who didn’t love me. I should think I would. I might keep dogs instead – have kennels.”

“Oh, no, I should never do that!” Marnie turned the pages of the comic. “This is nicer than the grown-up kind. I’ll keep
it.” She folded it and laid it aside. “I’ll tell you another secret,” she said seriously. “
I don’t want to grow up.
Not ever. I shouldn’t know how to be a proper grown-up, like Mother and her friends. I want to go on being like I am for ever and ever.”

“But Marnie—” Anna was startled – “how can you say that? I should have thought—” she broke off, thinking of what Marnie had told her about her nurse bullying her.

“Yes, I know what you’re thinking. But I’m used to that. And I know what to run away from if I’m frightened.” She glanced quickly over her shoulder in the direction of the mill. “That horrible place, for one thing. But I don’t know anything about being grown up, and no-one tells me.”

“Why
are
you frightened of the mill?” asked Anna. “I wish you’d tell me.”

Marnie looked away. “I don’t know. I’ve always been scared of it. That’s why I wouldn’t go with Edward.”

“Did you tell him you were frightened?”

Marnie shrugged, pretending to be indifferent. “I tried to, but he didn’t understand. First he teased me, then he said if I was really frightened I ought to face up to it – that I couldn’t go through life running away from things.”

“It’s easy to be brave for someone else,” Anna said.

Marnie turned to her quickly. “Yes, isn’t it? Edward’s terribly serious sometimes.” She smiled. “That’s what I love about you, darling Anna. You don’t keep telling me what I
ought
to do. I suppose I ought to go to the mill now, just to prove I can, but I’ve always been scared of it – ever since…”

“Since what?”

“Oh, it started ages ago. Ettie used to say, when I’d been naughty, ‘They’ll take you away and shut you up in the windmill with only the wind ’owling and
then
you’ll be sorry.’” She was smiling but her face had the same pinched look as Anna had seen before. “I was only little then, but she made it sound terrible. Ettie’s like that. She likes frightening people.” She sighed, and shrugged her shoulders again.

“And once, when Father was going away, he asked me what I wanted and I said a red balloon, so he asked Nan to buy me one when she went into Barnham. But when she came back she’d got me a paper windmill instead – the kind that goes round and round in the wind. She said it would last longer. I was terribly disappointed, and I cried and cried, so then Nan got into a temper and she said, ‘All right, my girl. If you don’t like the windmill
I’ve
got you, we’ll ask Ettie to take you to a better one.’ And she told Ettie to take me for a walk, because she was tired after going into Barnham.

“I don’t know if she really meant her to take me to the mill; perhaps she just meant to frighten me. But Ettie did. She dragged me all the way there, screaming, and I really thought she was going to have me shut up.”

She smiled again, a tight, thin little smile. “It sounds silly now, I know, but I was terrified. Then, just when we got there, the sky went quite dark and there was a terrible thunderstorm. Ettie was frightened too, then, and I don’t know whether that was better or worse!” She laughed, trying to shake off the ugly memory. “Ugh! Let’s talk about something else.”

But Anna was furious. “I never heard such a thing!” she said, outraged.“I hate Ettie. I wish she’d been struck dead.”

Marnie looked startled. “What a funny girl you are. Why do you always look so shocked when I tell you things like that? Didn’t anyone ever try to frighten you?”

“Not
grown-ups –
on
purpose.
Of
course
not!” Anna was nearly shouting with rage.

Marnie murmured, so low that it might almost have been the wind blowing over the grasses, “You are lucky. I wish I was you.”

Anna turned to her, suddenly quiet. “That’s what I said to you – last time we were here.”

“Did you?”

“Yes, don’t you remember? Oh, poor Marnie! I do love you. I love you more than any girl I’ve ever known.” She put out a hand to touch Marnie’s hair, then stopped in mid-air. “And that’s what you said to me,” she said slowly, with a surprised look on her face. “How funny, it almost seems as if we’re changing places.”

A
NNA SLIPPED OUT
of the cottage at dusk that evening. Ever since Marnie had left her on the dyke earlier in the day, she had been thinking about the windmill. Now she turned along in that direction. She had never been there herself. Sam had kept saying at intervals that perhaps he would take her there but it had never happened. Now she had an idea.

She would go there by herself. She had never actually promised she would not. Then she would be able to find out whether there was really anything for Marnie to be so
frightened about. She was fairly sure there was not, but she had to be sure. If she could say, next time she met her, there’s nothing in it, I went there myself, then Marnie would believe her. Edward might have told her so, but Edward was different and he had called her a coward.

For once Anna would have something to give Marnie that Edward could not: the proof that her fears were groundless. She felt quietly excited with her idea.

It had grown dusk earlier than usual. The sky was overcast and a gusty wind blew about. “It looks as if weather’s broken at last,” Sam had remarked at tea-time. The water in the creek had been churned up into little choppy, grey-green waves, and Anna realised that even if the tide were right, Marnie would not have been able to take the boat out that night.

Now the seagulls were flying around inland, screaming angrily. They swooped over her head as she walked, and in the distance she could see them circling round the windmill, their wings white against the darkening purple sky. She began to wish she had thought of coming earlier in the day, but there was no turning back now. That would be really cowardly.

If she could go to the mill alone, now when it was nearly dark and she was half frightened herself, then tomorrow perhaps she would be able to persuade Marnie to let her take her there, by daylight, and show her round. It was probably the only place in Little Overton that Marnie did not already know. And this time Anna would have been there first!

The sky grew darker and something wet splashed on to her hand. She broke into a run and reached the mill as a few large drops of rain spattered down on to the dusty road.

She looked up and saw the mill towering above her. It was dark and enormous, and for a moment she had a terrible fear that it was leaning over towards her, and about to fall. Then dizzily, she searched for the door and pushed it open. It creaked horribly.

Inside it was quite dark. She stood, panting, waiting for her eyes to get used to the blackness. And at that moment, above the sound of her own heavy breathing, she heard another sound. It came from directly overhead. A gasp, followed by a sort of strangled choke. Someone was up there.

Anna stood dead still, too frightened to move. She remembered all Marnie’s own panic, and the stories of ghosts, and people shut up in towers in the maids’ comics, and suddenly she felt as if she had stopped breathing. She drew in her breath again, and it came in one long wheeze that seemed to go on and on.