Still Waters (15 page)

She shed everything and giggled at herself, sitting pink and naked on the bottomboards in the shade of the willows and gazing out across the burning silver water. What a clown she would look if Ned or Bert or even little Podge were suddenly to appear – but there was small chance of that. No one fished in the heat of the day and besides, the whole family were probably helping with a harvest, or digging in the allotment, or simply resting, conserving their energy for later, when the heat had faded into the cool of evening.

She perched on the side of the boat for a moment, then slid into the Broad, neat as a fish, and immediately the water welcomed her, deliciously cool and fresh against her hot skin. She duck-dived and saw, through the peaty brownness of it, the mysterious underwater world which she loved so much. The shoals of tiny fish, the rich weed growth, a water-vole, going quietly about its business, its fur covered with silver air bubbles. She saw a frog, heading for the bank, its long hind legs kicking it along in smooth, swift motion whilst its short little arms hung harmlessly and did nothing. I can swim like that, Tess told herself, and was trying when her breath began to run out so she broke the surface and shook her head to get the water out of her eyes and then, revitalised by the coolness, began to swim with a steady, smooth breast-stroke, out into the Broad.

It was a magical, almost dreamlike experience. Her arms, cleaving the water, looked very white and clean, and the water felt warm, like fresh milk. She swam steadily for ten minutes or so, then flipped on to her back and floated, gazing mindlessly up at the burning blue of the sky above. How happy she was, how endlessly fortunate, how wonderful it was to be Tess Delamere, to own a boat and a bicycle and to have the freedom to enjoy them!

In the centre of the Broad, when her happiness and contentment was at its height, she saw the boat. Quite a small boat, the single oarsman heading in her direction. Too good to last, Tess told herself and flipped around in the water. If she’d been wearing a swimsuit she might have gone over to the boat for a chat, but in the circumstances a tactful retreat was best.

She put her head down and went into a fast crawl and was back by her boat and heaving her skirt and blouse on before the oarsman could have realised she was bare. Not that he would have minded, she guessed. Most of the kids swam naked in the Broad when they swam at all, a boy would probably have jeered at her swimsuit had she been wearing one.

The boat drew nearer. The oarsman was a lone boy with dark hair, big spectacles and grey, water-splashed shorts. He wore no shirt and his feet were bare and he looked around the same age as Tess herself. He was rowing faster now, but splashily, and not progressing fast. At a guess, Tess thought he’d probably not used the boat much. A nephew of someone living on the further shore? Or a visiting friend, perhaps.

‘Hey . . .’ the boy’s voice rang out across the water. ‘Is it safe?’

‘Safe?’ Tess called back. ‘What d’you mean?’

‘The water, you fool . . . oh!’ The boy was near enough, now, to see Tess properly, even through the screening willows. ‘Oh . . . I thought you were a feller.’

Tess stiffened. What difference did it make, for goodness sake? ‘I’m not,’ she said unnecessarily, however. ‘Can you swim?’

‘With one foot on the bottom,’ the boy said. ‘Why? Is it deep? I thought the Broads were never deep.’

‘They aren’t terribly deep,’ Tess admitted. ‘But the bottom’s soggy, mud and peat and that. You can’t stand on it. You’d sink in.’

‘Oh.’ The boy scowled at her. ‘But I want to bathe. I’m bloody hot.’

‘Well,’ Tess said, considering the problem. ‘There is a bit further round the corner where the bottom’s sort of sandy and gravelly. It’s where my friend and I went when we didn’t swim too well. Want me to show you?’

‘Sure,’ the boy said eagerly. ‘Come in my dinghy; I’ll row you back again, after.’

Tess shook her head. ‘I’ll go ahead of you. Only the water’s quite shallow, you won’t be able to get wet all over unless you lie down.’

‘I’ll lie down,’ the boy said briefly. He watched whilst she pulled up her anchor, emptied it over the side and fitted her oars in the rowlocks. ‘You can swim, I suppose?’

‘What d’you suppose I was doing just now?’ Tess asked rather scornfully. ‘I was in the middle – it’s deep enough there.’

‘I thought you had one foot on the bottom,’ the boy said, sounding sheepish. ‘Especially when I saw you were a girl. Girls don’t often swim, do they?’

‘They do if they live by the Broad,’ Tess said. ‘It’s dangerous, else.’ She began to bring the boat out of the shade and as soon as she did so the hammer blows of the sun hit her and perspiration began to run down her back despite her recent ducking. ‘Look, I’m baking,’ she said crossly. ‘I’ll take you there and leave you; okay?’

‘Oh! But I thought you might show me how to swim,’ the boy said forlornly. ‘I’m staying with my great-aunt for the summer and I’m bored to tears. That’s why I stole the boat . . . she says I can’t go on the water until I can swim, d’you see? So I’m keen to learn.’

‘Well, I could try,’ Tess said doubtfully. How did one teach another person to swim if the other person was taller and heavier than you? She could scarcely hold on the straps of his swimsuit, as various Throwers had clung to hers until she could go it alone – so far as she knew, he didn’t have a swimsuit, only the patched shorts – but she supposed that, once in the water, it might be possible to show him how to do a dog-paddle.

‘Grand,’ the boy said as Tess brought her boat as close as she dared to the gently sloping shore. ‘I’m Herbert Anderson, but my friends call me Andy.’

‘Oh . . . I’m Tess Delamere,’ Tess said. She filled her paint tin with water and sank it, then hopped on to the bank. ‘D’you have a swimsuit?’

The boy shook his head. ‘No, but I can swim in these shorts. They’re old. What about you?’

‘Knickers,’ Tess said practically. ‘Do you have an anchor?’

‘Dunno,’ Andy said. ‘There’s a lot of old clutter on the floorboards – is any of that an anchor?’

Tess sighed but splashed out to the dinghy and pulled it in, then rooted in the pile of rope and bits of wood in the bottom and produced a paint-tin on a rope, very similar to her own.

‘Put it overboard so it fills,’ she instructed him. ‘There’s no wind, she’ll wait for you. And then we’ll have a bit of a splash.’

An hour later, the two of them heaved themselves out of the water, sat on the bank and grinned at one another.

‘Well?’ Andy asked, pushing his fingers up through his short, soaked hair. ‘How many strokes did I do that time?’

‘Three,’ Tess said with cruel practicality. ‘Your legs
will
sink. If we could find a way to keep them up . . . but you will arch your back, you’ve got to keep it straight, I think. Want to watch me again?

‘All the watching in the world isn’t going to keep my back straight,’ Andy observed. ‘Give us a moment, then I’ll have another go.’

‘If the water were deeper, you could do the dog-paddle,’ Tess said thoughtfully. ‘But in the shallows it pretty well has to be the breast-stroke. I wonder how you’d go on your back? I was swimming quite well on my front, back took me longer, I don’t know why.’

‘How long did it take you?’ Andy asked wistfully. ‘I’m here for five more weeks – imagine, five weeks stuck in Great-aunt Hannah’s house, not being allowed out in case I drown!’

‘I learned in a week, but I learned in the sea, and Dad says the sea is salty, which makes it more buoyant,’ Tess told him. ‘Don’t they teach you at school? Some boys’ boarding schools do, I know.’

‘Mine doesn’t,’ Andy said. ‘I say, I’m starving! You wouldn’t like to ask me to tea, would you?’

Tess took the question seriously. She stared thoughtfully at him, trying to see him through Marianne’s eyes. Dark hair spiked with water, thin, freckled face, serious grey eyes. That would be all right, but the wet grey shorts, grass-stained across the seat part, and the bare, scratched legs and feet . . .

‘I’d like to,’ she said. ‘But would she like me to?’

‘She?’

‘Marianne. She’s my stepmother. She’s French.’

‘It was damned cheeky of me to ask,’ Andy said. ‘Only Aunt has dinner at eight, and I’m used to high tea, at five. Never mind, though. I wouldn’t want to put your stepmother out.’

It occurred to Tess then that Andy didn’t speak with the local accent; he referred to dinner at eight, not supper at six. Would this make him acceptable to Marianne, make up for the wet shorts and – gracious! – the sticky tape holding his spectacles together? But Peter would be home soon, and Peter was a different kettle of fish; Tess could not imagine her father turning any friend of hers away. She jumped to her feet.

‘Come back with me now and we’ll see if we can wheedle some lemonade and cake out of Marianne,’ she suggested. ‘You won’t mind if she’s rather nasty to you? It’s – it’s being French, you know.’

‘I won’t mind,’ Andy said solemnly, but she saw his grey eyes were twinkling behind his specs. ‘What’ll we do with the dinghies, though?’

‘We’ll tow yours behind the
Roger
,’ Tess decided. ‘I’ve a stake amongst the reeds – I’ll show you.’

And very soon the two children had moored the boats and were pushing their way back along the narrow path towards the woods. Once in the trees, Tess stopped and glanced down at herself. The Aertex shirt stuck to her damp skin, the navy skirt was blotched with wet and her old sandshoes were soaked and dirty. A glance at Andy confirmed that he was not much better. But in Tess’s experience, tidy hair and clean fingernails calmed a lot of rage, so she produced a stub of comb from her shirt pocket, dragged it through her hair and then handed it to Andy.

‘We’re clean, because of swimming, even if our clothes are a bit mucky,’ she explained. ‘But Marianne hates untidy hair.’

Andy hastily combed his hair, then slicked it back with both hands. He looked quite different now, Tess saw; older, more responsible. His spectacles helped, she supposed, but he didn’t look like a boy who could be crushed by rudeness.

‘All right?’ Andy said, seeing her looking. ‘Tidy enough for Mrs Delamere?’

‘Yes, I’m sure,’ Tess said. ‘How old are you, Andy?’

He smiled teasingly down at her. ‘As old as my tongue and a little bit older than my teeth, as Aunt always says. Why?’

Tess shrugged. ‘Dunno. I thought you were twelve, like me – you’re taller than I am, but boys often are – only now I’m not so sure. You looked younger with a fringe, you see.’

‘I see. Well, I’m a bit older than you – thirteen. Satisfied, Mademoiselle?’

Tess laughed. ‘Yes, that’s fine. Come on, then.’

She led the way out of the trees, across the dusty lane, up the garden path and round the corner to the back door. Someone was clattering dishes in the kitchen; it must be later than I thought, Tess realised, and Marianne’s getting our tea. She and Cherie, despite the difference in their ages, were given high tea and then packed off to their rooms so that Peter and Marianne might dine together without distraction. Peter kept saying that Tess was too old to be sent to bed at eight, but he never said it loud enough or crossly enough and so far, Marianne had just murmured agreement and continued with her insistence that Tess should share her baby sister’s bedtime.

But now Tess pushed open the kitchen door and called through it, for all the world as though Marianne would be delighted to see her, ‘Hello, Marianne, I’ve brought a friend home – any chance of some food and a glass of your delicious lemonade?’

She stepped into the room, closely followed by Andy, and found her stepmother putting the finishing touches to a large bowl of salad. Marianne looked up, began to speak, and then saw Andy, hovering.

‘Oh . . . Tess, if I’ve told you once I’ve told you a dozen times, if you want to bring a friend home you ask, first.’ She put down the knife she was holding and frowned reprovingly at Tess. ‘I’m trying to get high tea for you and your sister, so that I can concentrate on preparing Peter’s dinner when it gets cooler; you should be more thoughtful . . . I simply won’t have you or your friends underfoot when I’m so busy.’

Tess shrank, horrified by her stepmother’s sharp tone, but Andy walked round the table and held out his hand.

‘I’m so sorry if I seem a nuisance, Mrs Delamere,’ he said politely. ‘My name’s Herbert Anderson – I simply came in for a glass of water since my great-aunt, Lady Salter, generally has a nap after luncheon and doesn’t much like being disturbed. But it’s all right, I can go round by the side entrance and get one of the servants to fetch me a drink without waking Great-aunt Hannah. I didn’t intend to trespass on your hospitality.’

Tess’s eyes widened. He sounded quite different – very much in command of the situation, not at all like a boy who has just been snubbed by a grown-up. And Marianne, instead of coming right back at him with another similar remark, was walking round the table towards them and taking his hand, a smile on her lips.

‘Lady Salter’s nephew . . . why, my dear boy, that makes you a neighbour! There’s no question of your trespassing on our hospitality – I’m so sorry if I seemed sharp, but Tess is so thoughtless, she has no conception of the dangers of bringing total strangers into . . . I mean, you could have been anyone . . .’ Marianne’s voice died away but the smile remained, more brilliant than ever. Tess, fascinated, looked from one face to the other and saw that Andy not only sounded different, he looked different. He was smiling, too, but it wasn’t the casual grin he’d been giving her, on and off, all afternoon. It was . . . well, she didn’t know what it was, but it might have been designed, she thought gratefully, to soothe bad-tempered stepmothers. She could almost see Marianne beginning to purr and hoped that Andy could keep it up, wouldn’t giggle, turn away. But she underestimated her new friend. His eyes remained fixed on Marianne’s face, his expression remained serious.

‘Naturally you must be careful; daughters are precious,’ Andy said. He shook Marianne’s hand, still smiling. ‘How do you do, Mrs Delamere? And please call me Andy; everyone does.’

‘I’m very well thank you, er, Andy, though I find this hot weather difficult. You’ll stay to tea, of course? Tess is about to get her little sister up, so if you would like to accompany her upstairs she’ll show you where the bathroom is and so on. Lady Salter won’t grudge you to us for an hour or so, I dare say?’