Still Waters (25 page)

She never made an issue of anything if she could help it. It only made things difficult in the end and she saw how often Marianne shot herself in the foot in her efforts to have everything her own way, instead of accepting a reasonable compromise now and then.

Tess was beginning to suspect that Peter no longer loved Marianne in the old way. She thought that Cherie had noticed it too, and was certain that Marianne herself had not the foggiest notion – her self-esteem would not allow her to suspect such a thing. But Marianne’s capriciousness, which had apparently been quite attractive years ago, no longer seemed to amuse Peter quite so much. Sometimes it made him downright cross. And then Cherie’s Awful Discovery – the capitals were Cherie’s and not Tess’s – had partly explained the temper tantrums and the sudden violent crying fits.

Cherie, poking around in an embroidery bag in Marianne’s room searching for embroidery silks to finish off the traycloth she was making, had discovered a copy of her mother’s birth certificate. It proved, embarrassingly, that Marianne was not saying farewell to her twenties, as she tearfully – and frequently – claimed.

‘Why did she lie, Tessie?’ Cherie asked plaintively when she had shown her sister the documentary evidence. ‘Why did she pretend to Daddy and us that she was born in 1906? She’s almost as old as Daddy, isn’t she?’

‘No, love, she isn’t. Daddy’s five years older than she is. As for pretending, I don’t understand it at all. It isn’t as if she were really old.’

‘Thirty-seven is old,’ Cherie said positively. ‘None of my friends at school have old mothers.’

‘Mrs Thrower’s older than that,’ Tess said after some thought. ‘But it doesn’t really matter, Cherie. People’s ages aren’t important. We’d better forget it, pretend we don’t know . . . let her get away with it.’

‘All right,’ Cherie agreed, after thinking it over. ‘She can be so horrible though, Tessie! She told me this morning I was an ugly little thing, all teeth and kneecaps!’

She sounded so injured that Tess had to laugh, and then to hug her to take the woeful expression off her face.

‘Cherie, don’t worry! It’s just because you’ve got your second teeth and your face doesn’t fit them yet. As for knees . . . have you seen the colts down in Mr Rope’s long pasture?’

‘Ye-es . . . oh, they’re all knees too, d’you mean? But aren’t they
pretty,
Tess, with that velvety stuff on them and their knobbly foreheads? I’d love one for my own.’

‘Well, we can go and fuss them,’ Tess pointed out. At seventeen she had already realised that life’s various pleasures do not have to be owned to be enjoyed. ‘But what I meant was that the fillies will grow into beautiful, elegant mares, just as you’ll grow into a pretty girl with a lovely figure one day.’

‘
Will
I?’ Cherie said, fluttering her lashes and stroking her skirt down over her knees in a manner which would have befitted an eighteen-year-old, but which looked oddly foreign on a child of eight. ‘Oh, I hope I do!’

‘You will, truly. Marianne’s pretty and Dad’s got a very handsome sort of face,’ Tess pointed out. ‘And now do stop thinking about how you look, Cherie, and concentrate on your French verbs.’

Marianne talked French to them both but she didn’t have the patience to repeat a remark until they understood, so neither child had picked up the language to any great extent. And now Cherie was boarding at Tess’s school – at the tender age of eight – and Marianne nagged if she wasn’t in the first three when French exam time came around. Cherie was a weekly boarder at present so she had weekends at home but the truth is, Tess thought now, that Marianne likes babies but she doesn’t much like girls, and Cherie’s shot up and got awfully
aware
just lately. She’s not a tomboy, like me, she’s always prinking and preening. Just like Marianne, in fact, only Marianne suddenly doesn’t see that as an advantage: she sees it, quite simply, as competition. So Cherie has to mind her ps and qs and walk round Marianne instead of straight across, as she had in the old days.

‘Another ten days and we’ll be back in school,’ Cherie said suddenly. ‘I won’t mind, will you, Tessie? I don’t like the water, boats make me afraid, there are wasps in the wood . . . I shan’t mind going back to school.’

Tess laughed. ‘I shan’t mind much, either. I
do
like the water, and the boat, and the woods, but nothing’s much fun without someone to share it and Jan’s too busy being gainfully employed to enjoy mucking about. And there’s no one else of my age around here.’

‘You went eel-trapping with Mr Thrower,’ Cherie said; her voice sounded dangerously close to a whine. ‘What about that, then? You left me to ’muse myself.’

‘It was fun, but Mr Thrower won’t see seventeen again,’ Tess told her little sister. ‘You’d have hated it – the eels have rows of sharp little teeth and they didn’t half lash about in the bottom of the boat. It was perilous, I’m telling you. And on the way back I saw an adder. It was lying on the bark of an ancient old willow tree, it was so well camouflaged you wouldn’t believe . . . but you don’t like snakes much either, do you?’

Cherie shuddered. ‘Ugh, eels, snakes . . . I hate wrigglies or ticklies or slimies or flutteries I do.’

‘Very comprehensive,’ Tess said drily. ‘Well, tomorrow I’m catching the bus into the city. I’m meeting Freddy and we’re going round the shops. You can come if you want, but it’ll be a long day.’

‘Freddy? I don’t like boys,’ Cherie said. She was definitely whining now.
‘Must
you meet him? Can’t we two go round the shops? I’ll be ever so good, dear Tess, truly I will, I won’t be any trouble at all.’

‘Freddy, dear little noodle, is short for Frederica and she’s a girl, my age, in my class. I don’t think she’ll be thrilled if I take you, but I’m prepared to risk it if you really want to go.’

‘No, not with two of you,’ Cherie said rather sulkily. ‘You’ll walk ahead and laugh about things I don’t understand and tell me to shut up and stop whining.’

Tess had to laugh because it set out Cherie’s intentions so clearly; if she came and they talked she would whine. She had an awful lot in common with her maman, poor little thing!

‘Right, I’ll go off with Freddy then. And I’ll bring you back a present – what would you like?’

‘Hair ribbons – bright red, please, or a very pale blue,’ Cherie said promptly. She did not even have to think, Tess realised. ‘And a matching hair-slide, if you can afford two things.’

‘Right,’ Tess said. ‘I’ll make a note. And now, chick, we’d better go in and start making the tea or Marianne will hit the roof.’ She jumped off the swing seat and eyed the distance between it and the back door measuringly. ‘Race you to the kitchen,’ she ended.

‘You’ll win, you always do,’ Cherie moaned. ‘Can I have three yards’ start?’

‘All right,’ Tess said good-naturedly. ‘Go on, run . . . I’ll catch you up.’

Cherie, with a triumphant squeal, broke into a gallop but Tess drew level and overhauled her long before they reached the back door.

‘You’ve got longer legs, it isn’t
fair
,’ Cherie panted, arriving a second or so later, very pink in the face. ‘Will you come home when you’ve finished shopping with that – that person?’

‘Of course. Come on, you get the bread and butter out and lay the table whilst I slice.’

‘Freddy! Cooee, I’m over here! Oh drat that girl, she’s deaf as a post!’ Tess ran across the bus station and hurled herself at tall, red-haired Freddy Knox, nearly knocking her friend off her feet. Freddy gasped, then shook a reproving finger at Tess.

‘Good Lord, girl, what are you trying to do? You nearly had me over . . . when did your bus get in? I was watching your stop like a hawk.’

‘Didn’t come by bus. My father brought me and dropped me off at the bottom of Surrey Street,’ Tess said. ‘Come on, where shall we go first? Dad gave me half a crown, so I’ve got some something to spend for a change.’

Freddy was a new friend, because she and her family had only recently returned to Norfolk after a dozen or so years living in the south of England. The Knoxes had lived in Eastbourne and Freddy and her brothers had gone to school there, whilst her father commuted to the city every day. However, Mr Knox had recently become the senior partner in a Norwich firm of solicitors, so the family had bought a house in a local village and Freddy had become a pupil at the Norwich High School. Freddy’s elder brother, she had told Tess proudly, was at Cambridge, reading law. Ashley was
extremely
clever, Freddy said, and was expected to follow in his father’s footsteps.

But now, standing on the pavement in Surrey Street, Freddy seized Tess’s arm and spoke urgently. ‘Nice to have money to spend but look, Tess, would you mind most awfully if we changed our plans? Only my mama’s sister, Auntie Phoebe, is having a baby and she’s just been whipped into the nursing home so my mama has promised to go round and look after Auntie Vera’s two little boys. They’re four and six and a real handful so Mother promised she’d keep them in their own home . . . which leaves our house empty. It wouldn’t matter, but we’ve got the men coming in today to empty the septic tank – pooh, pooh! – so someone really should be at home. Oh Tess, would you mind awfully scrubbing the shopping trip, and coming over to our place instead? I’ve got money for the bus fares and everything, and before she rushed off Mother told Ella – Mrs Brett, who works for us – to make us a really good luncheon . . . what do you think? You can ring your mother and tell her what’s happened when we get home. Only otherwise I’ll have to love you and leave you . . . oh Tess, do come!’

‘Oh!’ Tess said doubtfully, rather overwhelmed by such a rush of words. ‘I don’t mind at all, in fact I’d love it, but I did tell you I don’t go to other people’s houses because my stepmother’s French and doesn’t like entertaining in return. Oh Freddy, why didn’t you just cancel me? We could have gone shopping another day.’

‘We tried, but you’d already left,’ Freddy said frankly. ‘Mother told your stepmama what had happened and asked if you could come home with me and Mrs Delamere seemed to think it would be all right for you to come back to ours. As for a return visit, it doesn’t matter a hoot. My dear father would say that was foreigners for you! Do, do come, dear Tess, we’ll have a lovely day, really we will. And having two of us there would help my mama enormously, because my guess is she’ll be stuck at Auntie’s place for ages, and I don’t see why you shouldn’t stay for a few days, if your father agrees. We could have marvellous fun, you know.’

‘I’m sure he wouldn’t let me stay over, because of not being able to ask you back,’ Tess said gloomily, but Freddy said not to be such a defeatist, and did Tess know that Freddy’s mother and Tess’s father had known each other once, years ago?

‘No, he’s never said,’ Tess said, much struck by this gratuitous information. ‘But then Daddy hardly ever talks about his past – because my stepmother’s his second wife, you know. But he lived in Brundall for a time – is that near you?’

‘Very near,’ Freddy said, taking Tess’s arm. ‘Look, we can catch the Seven, it leaves in five minutes, and be back and ringing your father before you know it. Your stepmama made it clear that his word is law. Oh come on, Tess, be a sport!’

‘Oh, all right then, I’d love to come,’ Tess said, surrendering. ‘Isn’t it a small world though – fancy our parents knowing each other!’

‘Yes, it’s odd,’ Freddy agreed. They reached the bus stop where the Number Seven was revving its engine impatiently. ‘Jump on!’

Without giving herself time to think, Tessa jumped aboard and followed her friend down the aisle to an empty front seat. Sinking on to the shiny red leatherette, she said rather breathlessly, ‘Where do you live, Freddy? I’ve never thought to ask!’

‘Blofield,’ Freddy said. ‘How odd you don’t know, because I know where you live. Barton Turf, isn’t it?’

Tess stared at her. Where had she heard that name before? Blofield . . . it had some sort of significance, she knew it did. But just where she’d heard it before she couldn’t . . .

Inside her head, all of a sudden, she could hear her father’s voice.
She lived in a small village called Blofield on the road between Norwich and Yarmouth
. Of course, that was it – Leonora had lived in Blofield! She and Andy had talked about tracing her mother but he’d not come back to the area, and there had seemed little point in trying to detect alone. But now she was to visit Leonora’s home village officially, perhaps she could stay there for several days! She was bound to be able to find out something in that time. But Freddy was looking quizzical; she had been silent too long. Tess hurried into speech.

‘Blofield – yes, that is near Brundall, I remember now. Umm, yes, we live near Barton Turf . . . we’re quite a way outside the village, though. I don’t know Blofield at all – is it a pretty village? And what’s Brundall like?’

Freddy chuckled and settled herself more comfortably in her seat. ‘Brundall’s all right – the river’s there, which makes it rather special. Ash and I bike down there sometimes to snoop round and look at the boats. Blofield’s pretty ordinary, but we like it. I hope you will, too. Oh, I say, do you still have relatives living in Brundall? If so, you could visit them.’

‘I don’t think so. My grandparents moved to Horning years ago – they’re both dead, now – and Dad’s only brother lives on Unthank Road, in the city. But there must be people who remember him, I suppose. It’s a pity about the relatives; I’d like to have some to visit.’

‘I should think not having them would be quite an advantage,’ Freddy said frankly. ‘Some of my uncles and cousins . . . honestly, they’re dreadful! But I suppose I wouldn’t like not having them, if you see what I mean. Having been away for so long, it’s quite fun having relations popping in. We’ve only been back nine months, but every time I go into the village post office or walk past the bus stop, someone says “Mornin’ – you’ll be Sally’s girl. Settlin’ in?” Sally’s my mother’s name,’ she added.

‘I’d like that,’ Tess said, trying not to sound wistful. ‘Uncle Phil’s twelve years older than Daddy and his children are much older than me. We hardly ever see them, in fact. Do you like Blofield, then?’