A Summer Promise (6 page)

Maddy reached the beck and glanced all around her. To her left a willow drooped its summer-dark leaves over a deep pool; deep enough to drown a non-swimmer, rumour had it. The local children vowed it was bottomless. To her right the water cascaded over rocks, so that the beck seemed to chuckle to itself, but under the willow, because of the depth Maddy supposed, the stream was still, reflecting the green of the branches and the blue of the sky. She lay down carefully, cupped her eyes with her hands and tried to look through the water and not be distracted by the reflections, but it was no use. Unless one had the courage to put one’s whole head under the water – and she was not quite that brave – it was impossible to see past the inverted willow tree. Maddy dabbled a hand in the cool water then sighed, pulled the book out of her pocket and opened it. She would enjoy a quiet read whilst keeping an eye on the beck for any sign of underwater life.

Maddy read on and on, pausing every few pages to gasp over the beauty of Mr Theaker’s illustrations. In fact, she was so deeply involved in little Tom’s world that when something heavy landed in the middle of her back and a harsh voice yelled in her ear, her heart almost jumped out of her chest and for a moment she truly thought that a bull must have broken out of the nearest meadow, leapt over the hedge and landed with stunning force on her unprotected spine.

NATURALLY, SHE SCREAMED
like a train whistle as the breath whooshed back into her lungs, whereupon her attacker rolled off her, proving to be a boy some three years older than herself and both taller and heavier. Maddy, who knew all the boys at the village school, did not recognise this one and thought it might be unwise to say any of the things which sprang to her mind, such as ‘How dare you!’ or ‘What the devil are you up to?’ or even ‘Gerroff!’ Instead she sat up, clutching her chest from which every bit of air had been driven, and asked, ‘Who are you, and why did you jump on me?’ She was trying to stop her voice from wobbling, for her ribs still ached from the onslaught. ‘Oh! Are you one of Alice’s cousins?’

‘No,’ the boy said. ‘I didn’t know she
had
cousins.’ By now the pair of them were sitting facing one another on the bank of the beck, Maddy gently rubbing her back and sore ribs, and the boy pushing ginger hair out of his eyes and grinning like – oh, like a tiger, Maddy thought crossly. ‘It was an accident. I saw you lying there and I thought you were Alice. I was going to shout out “boo” when I caught my foot in a root and fell on top of you.’ He eyed her angrily. ‘I’d arranged to meet her here, only not for half an hour yet. Satisfied?’

Since he did not seem to have attacked her on purpose Maddy took her courage in both hands and repeated her original question. ‘All right, but who
are
you?’ she asked bluntly. ‘I know everyone round here.’

The boy looked her up and down and then gave a dismissive wave of the hand. ‘Mind your own bloody business, you nasty little thing,’ he said rudely. ‘Who are you to question me? Do you own the beck or something? You’re just a village brat Alice was kind to when she had no other friends.’

Maddy felt the blood rush to her cheeks at the insult, but continued to stare at him challengingly, taking in his appearance. He had rough ginger hair, white eyelashes and a great many freckles. He was taller than she and heavily built, with greenish hazel eyes, uneven teeth and clothing similar to her own: a faded checked shirt, incredibly old trousers and black, ragged plimsolls through which his big toes peeped coyly.

Having examined him closely, Maddy raised her eyes to his face once more. ‘Alice said her cousins might be coming to stay, and I thought you were one of them, but now I can see you aren’t,’ she said accusingly. ‘The maid who looks after Alice would have torn up that shirt and trousers for dusters as soon as she set eyes on ’em. So who
are
you?’ For a moment the pair held each other’s gaze and Maddy was pleased when he disengaged first. ‘Go on, why won’t you tell me? I can easily ask Alice, you know. So what’s the big secret, Ginger?’

She had spoken in a deliberately provocative manner, and decided it had been the right approach when the boy gave a reluctant grin. ‘I’m Tom Browning, and I’m wearing old clothes because I keep my good things for best,’ he said, and then, seeing the puzzled frown on Maddy’s face, explained further. ‘You know that big black car at the Hall, the one parked in what used to be the stables? Well, my dad’s the chauffeur, which means . . .’

‘I know very well what a chauffeur is,’ Maddy said repressively. ‘So don’t you go trying to tell your grandmother how to suck eggs.’

The boy stifled a laugh, but by the time he spoke again he had managed to school his features into an expression of gravity. ‘You don’t look much like a grandmother, not even one who sucks eggs,’ he said blandly. ‘What an odd creature you are! I don’t know where Alice gets her friends from, but for sheer strangeness you take the biscuit. You’re wearing old clothes, and you’re as ugly as sin, so how dare you question me!’

Maddy bounced to her feet. ‘Well, Tom Browning, you are quite the rudest and nastiest boy I’ve ever met, and the stupidest too. Why don’t you bugger off back to wherever you came from. I don’t want you here.’

To her pleasure, Tom Browning looked as though a tiny day-old chick had bitten him on the nose. He had got to his feet when Maddy did, though more slowly, and now he burst into angry speech. ‘Why, you impudent little beast! I’ll box your ears. You wait till I tell Mr Thwaite you think you own the place. Just you come back here . . .’

But he was too late. If there was one thing at which Maddy excelled, it was running, and probably she ran all the faster with the devil – otherwise known as Tom Browning – on her heels. She might have actually reached the summerhouse, where she suspected Alice might be, had she not happened to glance back and seen, to her absolute horror, Tom standing with the copy of
The Water Babies
held triumphantly above his head. For a moment Maddy hesitated. If she went back he would probably not only box her ears but throw her into the beck, but if she did not go back . . . oh, what hideous revenge might he wreak on the beautiful volume which Mr Thwaite had allowed her to borrow for weeks and weeks, while she had been tied to the house!

Maddy knew, really, that she had no choice. The book was not hers, but she was responsible for its well-being. And after all, if he really was the son of Mr Thwaite’s chauffeur, whom she had met once or twice up at the Hall, he could not be all bad. And she had been very rude and quite nasty: she had called him Ginger which, though true, was generally regarded as an insult . . . oh, dear, she only had herself to blame if he really did box her ears.

She turned and ran downhill even faster than she had run up, shouting as she did so, ‘Tom, I’m sorry I was rude. The book isn’t mine, I borrowed it . . .
please
put it down,
please
don’t . . .’ As she reached the bank she leapt at him and clutched the book, heard his shout of alarm as her weight overbalanced him, and before she knew what was happening found herself struggling to remain upright in a couple of feet of water, Tom having staggered backwards into the beck when she cannoned into him.

For a moment all was confusion. Maddy’s one desire was to save the book from a wetting and it seemed as though Tom Browning shared that ambition, for instead of fighting her off he was thrusting her ahead of him back up the bank. Once on dry land again he pushed the book into her hands. ‘You silly little twerp. I wouldn’t have damaged the book; I was only kidding you,’ he said. He stretched out a tentative hand to point at her soaked skirt. ‘You
are
in a mess! What’ll your mam and dad say when they see you?’

Maddy looked at her clothing. From the waist down she was wet, muddy and scratched, but she drew comfort from the fact that the dress was an old one, and anyway by the time she returned to the farm it would have dried out. She said as much, adding: ‘And I don’t have a mum or dad, I live with my gran.’ She looked consideringly at her companion. ‘What about you? Will your mother make a big fuss? Because you’re every bit as wet and muddy as I am.’

The boy shook his head. ‘Don’t have a mam,’ he said briefly. ‘But my dad’s a real stickler. Only I reckon I’ll be dry before I have to go back home.’

‘Same as me,’ Maddy said, nodding. ‘But I’ve just thought; the chauffeur at the Hall is quite young. He doesn’t look more than about twenty. He
can’t
be your father.’

The boy laughed. ‘Lucas gave in his notice a few weeks ago, and when the job was advertised my father applied and got it,’ he explained with more than a trace of pride. ‘The wages aren’t bad and the flat comes with the job, and I’ve still got a year to go at a school a couple of miles along the dale, so Dad jumped at the chance.’ He raised his brows at Maddy. ‘So you see, you’re landed with me, like it or not.’ He pointed at the book which now lay innocently, and undamaged, on the grass between them. ‘So what’s all this about, eh? If it ain’t yours, whose is it? Don’t say a little kid like you stole the bloody thing?’

‘No I did
not
steal it and swearing’s wicked; Miss Parrott says it’s unnecessary . . . why are you laughing? I don’t remember making a joke,’ Maddy snorted. ‘Go on, what did I say that was so funny?’

The boy spluttered. ‘No one’s called Parrott; you made it up,’ he said. ‘Or is it your name? Are you Polly Parrott?’

‘No I am not. I’m Madeleine Hebditch and I live at Larkspur Farm with my gran. The book belongs to Mr Thwaite. He lent it to Alice and me and I go – went – to the village school and my teacher there was Miss Parrott. Satisfied?’

‘Well, if you’re sure . . .’ the boy said doubtfully. He held out a hand towards the book, stopping when it was a few inches away. ‘Can I look or isn’t one allowed to touch?’

‘Not if your hands are wet,’ Maddy said quickly. ‘It’s a – a first edition and very valuable, or so Mr Thwaite says, but if you dry your hands on your shirt I suppose you could take a peek.’

The boy rubbed his hands vigorously on his much patched shirt and gingerly pulled the book towards him, opening it at random. ‘Fairy stories, I suppose; kids’ stuff.’ He flicked over a page to reveal one of the illustrations, and let out his breath in a low whistle. ‘I say, this chap can certainly draw! Oh, and it’s not fairy stories; I know what it is, though I’ve never seen an illustrated copy before.’ He closed his eyes and screwed up his mouth for a moment, then his eyes shot open. ‘It’s
The Water Babies
, by Charles Kingsley,’ he said triumphantly. He turned to Maddy. ‘Did you know Mr Kingsley wrote it when he was staying with friends here in the Yorkshire Dales? He was a vicar and a professor, a very learned man. My father told me that one day, when he’s not too busy, he will take me to Cumming Cove, which is where . . .’ The boy began to leaf through the pages, then gave an exclamation and returned to the beginning. ‘Of course! How stupid I am to forget! Tom climbs down to sea level in the early part of the book, so if there’s a picture it must be somewhere in the first couple of dozen pages . . . ah, here it is!’ He tapped the illustration with a finger. ‘You can just imagine how poor Tom must have felt after clambering down that, can’t you?’

He was swivelling the book to face Maddy but she stopped him with a gesture. ‘Don’t bother; Alice and I know every picture by heart, pretty well. But I’m glad you don’t think it’s just a fairy story, because I think there really are strange creatures in the sea, and I mean to find them.’

‘Oh you do, do you?’ the boy said rather mockingly. ‘Well, I bet you five bob you don’t find a water baby. Not that you could, of course; water babies can’t possibly exist. Tell you what, though, it might be quite a laugh to follow Mr Kingsley’s wanderings and see if we can identify Vendale. What do you say to having a try? The summer hols have another couple of weeks to go and it would give us something to do.’

Maddy stared at him, two thoughts jostling in her mind. One was that it would be both fun and interesting to use the stories in the book as a sort of guide, for the Reverend Mr Kingsley – he was a clergyman, if this strange boy was to be believed – had said right at the start of the book that Vendale was a made-up name, invented deliberately so that inquisitive little girls might not flock to it and ruin the peace and beauty of the tiny dale and its becks and rivers, where he had found not only water babies but also many other strange underwater creatures.

The second thought, coming out of the blue, so to speak, was rather more disturbing. Maddy had assumed that Alice had not visited Larkspur again after that first time because she was nervous of Gran and did not want to be involved in looking after her. Now, however, she faced the unpleasant thought that Alice had not come because she had found herself another friend, this Tom Browning, son of the new chauffeur. It was disappointing to realise that Alice, her idol, might have feet of clay, but perhaps she should not be blamed for her defection. After all, just because Maddy herself had lost several weeks of the summer holiday was no reason why Alice, also, should miss out. It was not as if Alice had other friends in the village, and if this boy was serious when he suggested trying to find Vendale then she could scarcely blame Alice for jumping joyfully at the thought of such a companion whilst Maddy herself was more or less housebound.

But Tom was staring at her, his brows still raised. Maddy pulled herself together. ‘It’s a champion idea, especially since my gran’s agreed that I can have the rest of the hols to myself,’ she said slowly. ‘But what will Miss Spender say? She doesn’t always have the same timetable as a regular school so Alice may . . .’ and here Maddy crossed her fingers behind her back, ‘already be back in the schoolroom.’

She was afraid that Tom would give himself away – give Alice away, really – by admitting that he had spent the last few weeks taking her, Maddy’s, place as Alice’s best friend, but he did no such thing. Instead he shrugged. ‘I think Alice gets her own way more often than not, and if she wants to explore the dales with us then that’s exactly what she’ll do. Have you ever met Miss Spender?’ And then, as Maddy shook her head, he gave a rueful grin. ‘Well, she’s wax in Alice’s hands. But Alice will be here in person quite soon, so there’s no point in discussing our plans until then.’