Still Waters (38 page)

He hadn’t written to Tess from Rhodesia because he had still been annoyed with her. Fancy refusing to meet to say goodbye! But the moment he felt Norfolk soil beneath his feet once more he’d remembered everything about her, all the little things which he had conveniently forgotten whilst he assiduously courted Lorraine, Marcia, pretty, flirtatious Ruby. Her skin which was so much whiter than anyone else’s, her hair which was so much darker. True black, her hair gleamed like satin whether it was pushed behind her small ears, falling across her face, or screening her smiles or tears. Then there was the tilt of her mouth, the small, jutting chin, the straight back, the long, slim legs . . . Tess Delamere. His Tess.

Standing in the sunny living-room watching the telephone wasn’t going to do much for their relationship, though. Would she ring? Would she pick up the receiver if he telephoned again? He took the receiver off the hook and asked the operator for Tess’s number. The phone rang out and rang out. No one answered.

She knows I’ll go over there if she won’t talk to me on the phone, Ashley told himself, abruptly slamming the receiver back on to its hook and turning towards the hallway. I might as well go now. And if she’s in church then I’ll wait until she comes out.

Driving along the sunny summery lanes with the branches meeting overhead, he wondered fleetingly why he did it. Why he continued to chase Tess, when there were other girls as pretty, with better figures. He was, after all, a tit man. All of his crew were tit men. So long as the tits were big enough they would put up with other things. He blinked as the road wound and the sun caught him across the eyes. So far as he could recall, Tess’s tits were nothing out of the ordinary. Indeed, for all he knew they might be a couple of oranges, or possibly wodges of cotton wool stuffed into a brassiere, for Tess did not approve of petting.

‘Keep your hands to yourself,’ she was apt to say sharply. ‘That’s rude!’

He’d gone along with this peculiar viewpoint partly because he had believed her to be right and partly because he could see he’d lose her if he persisted. And, dammit, she was important to him, he could not imagine life without her. Sure, he’d been happy without her in Rhodesia, but in the back of his mind he had known it was just an interlude. He would go home, find her again, talk her round . . . and she would be his Tess once more.

And she, too, had been seeing other people since he left Norfolk. He hoped sincerely that she had slapped faces and kicked shins if anyone tried to get fresh with her, but at least she would now know that he wasn’t some sex-crazed monster, that other young men really did expect a bit more than a couple of closed-mouth kisses at the end of an evening.

It was odd, he reflected, bowling along through the sunny countryside, that he could want her more experienced yet feel a dreadful twist in his gut at the thought of any man other than himself laying a finger on her. I’ll buy her a book about sex and things, he thought vaguely as he turned off the main road towards the Broad. I’ll buy her a book and we can read it together.

The thought brought a lump, but not to his throat, he thought, grinning guiltily. Ah, God, the thought of sitting next to Tess, their thighs touching, and reading a book about what he wanted so desperately to do to her! Come to that, the thought of seeing her in the flesh instead of just in his dreams! She would come to the door, smile at him, kiss him . . .

He roared down Deeping Lane, parked the car wildly askew outside on the verge, and charged at top speed up the short gravel path. He swerved round the house and banged briefly on the back door, then pushed it open.

She was whipping something in a round yellow bowl. Her glorious hair was tied on top of her head with what looked like a little scrag of string and she was completely enveloped in a big blue gingham overall. He registered that it hid her shape totally and was horrid, but then she raised a flushed face and started to speak and he was across the kitchen in one bound, round the table, and she was in his arms.

Unexpectedly, he wanted to cry. He felt tears of longing and relief flood his eyes. Oh, the feel of her, slender and supple in his arms, the fresh, youthful scent of her skin, the gloss of her hair as he laid his cheek on it . . .

She tried to push him away, wiggling desperately in his embrace. He turned her round so that they faced each other.

‘Please, Tess, don’t push me away, don’t hurt me! I can’t help loving you. You are so dear to me! Just let me hold you.’

She stopped trying to escape. She heaved a great sigh, and then she drooped her head on to his shoulder and relaxed. Her arms stole round his waist. It was the closest she had ever come to acceptance of his caresses and it was heady stuff but for once in his life, Ashley didn’t take advantage of it. He simply stood there, cradling her in his arms, closing his eyes, letting his whole body relax. Love seemed to flow out of him, and suddenly it was enough to love her; it was no longer necessary that she should love him back.

She will, one day, he told himself, standing in the kitchen with his eyes closed and Tess warm against his chest. But until then, I have love enough for two. That will have to do, until she’s older. She’s still a baby, after all – I’m twenty-five. I mustn’t hurry her; that’s the way to lose her.

And he was careful to be the first one to move, to put her gently away from him and tell her that she had grown prettier than ever in his absence, to apologise for being such a brute on the telephone just now . . . to ask her if she would finish whatever task she was engaged on and then come out with him, just for a quiet meal, or a walk – anything, so long as they could talk, be together.

‘I’m making Sunday lunch,’ she said. ‘That was the Yorkshire pudding mix that you slopped on to the floor! Tell you what, Ash, why don’t you stay here for lunch, sample my cooking? You know Daddy and Marianne will be pleased to see you after all this time. Yes, stay for lunch.’

He thanked her, said that would be lovely, and when she suggested it, went to and from the dining-room, laying the table. He felt peaceful, at ease, as though the embrace and Tess’s sweetness had somehow damped the fire of longing for her, the feeling that she must acknowledge that they were made for each other.

Damped it for now, anyway.

‘Can you go and dig a horseradish root, Ash? Only I’ve just remembered, I promised Daddy I would and I haven’t done it yet.’

Tess and Ashley, between them, had finished off all the other preparations for Sunday lunch. The table was laid, the vegetables were simmering on the stove and from the oven, delicious roasting smells wafted forth.

‘Sure,’ Ashley said easily. ‘Where does your horseradish grow? What does it look like?’

It made Tess laugh. He really had changed! Once, he would have gone out and searched and got crosser and crosser, but he wouldn’t have admitted, to her, that he didn’t know a horseradish plant when he saw one.

‘The leaves are very long and broad, a bit like dock leaves,’ she said. ‘Look, it grows in the orchard . . . I’ll show you. Bring a fork or something out of the shed as we pass.’

She went ahead of him, chattering. She had been horrified to see those tears, and the look in his eyes! Confident, bossy Ashley, actually pleading with her not to push him away, not to hurt him! It had changed things, of course. She really hadn’t understood that Ashley had meant all the things he said. But if he’d meant them, why had he treated her so badly when they had gone out together? Being knocked into the Broad was just the last straw, but there had been plenty of straws before that! He had been silly at dances, trying to ping her suspenders whilst swaying lazily to the tune of the last waltz or sliding a hand under a shoulder strap and trying to slip it off her shoulder. God knew, she had told him crossly, that her straps slipped easily enough of their own accord without having to put up with his efforts as well! And then he’d been rude, often. Verbally rude sometimes, the other sort at other times. Cuddling was all right, it was fun and a comfort, but suddenly finding yourself having to repel insidiously seeking hands wasn’t. She’d got hot and cross, bothered as much by the secret fear that Ashley might assume she was easy because her mother had got herself pregnant before marriage as by what he wanted to do, and that of course had made her twice as determined not to give an inch in the game which Ashley seemed intent on playing.

Of course she realised, now, that Ashley wasn’t unusual; all young men seemed to try it on at least once. The main difference was that other young men took no for an answer. Some of them sulked, some of them went chasing off after someone a bit easier, but for the most part they took her strictures gracefully and stayed friends, whereas Ashley had become insulting and cross and had simply continued to try to break down her resistance.

But now, it seemed, Ashley had grown up and was going to be sensible. Reaching the shed he went in and came out with a garden fork, and when they got to the orchard and he had the horseradish pointed out to him, he dug obediently. He produced a couple of good big roots and carried them back to the kitchen, washed them, and watched as Tess, with watering eyes, grated them into a blue china bowl and then covered the horseradish with watered-down vinegar.

‘There,’ Tess said at last, carrying her booty through to the dining-room and standing the blue bowl in the middle of the table. ‘It’s worse than grating onions for making you cry, but it does go well with beef. Better than mustard. Oh, help, it’s time the Yorkshire went in!’

She ran back to the kitchen, Ashley coming behind at a steadier pace, and grabbed the big tin out of the top of the oven. It was smoking and when she tipped the batter in, the fat hissed and spat and the batter puffed up round the edges as though it intended to become a pudding there and then.

‘Won’t be long now. I’ll give the Yorkshire twenty minutes maximum,’ Tess said, eyeing the big kitchen clock hanging on the wall above the door. ‘Ashley, whatever will we do if there really is rationing? I can’t imagine making a Sunday lunch without heaps of meat and fat to cook it in and lots of sugar and butter for the pudding. And Marianne’s a real French cook, she can’t start a meal without lashings of olive oil and lovely wine vinegar and stuff like that. Do you know, she buys special
flour
when she goes over to France, enough to last until her next visit? She doesn’t like our flour for croissants and things like that.’

‘You’ll manage, just like everyone else will,’ Ashley said. ‘It’s like the blackout; you’ve done the whole house, haven’t you?’

‘Yes, because Daddy explained about showing a chink of light and being bombed. He said that in the last lot a Hun pilot followed a train by the sparks from its smoke-stack until it reached a big city, he knew it was a big city because he saw lights – they weren’t so fussy in the last lot, it appears – and he dropped his bombs and destroyed buildings and killed people. Daddy said Norfolk is in the front line more than any other part of the country because we’re so far to the east, so he made Marianne do good, thick blackouts. We’ve got shutters, too, only they’ve got to be put up again. They were taken down before our time, but Daddy says they’re in the shed all right, over at the back behind all the deck-chairs and things.’

‘Well then, if you managed the blackout you’ll manage cooking on rations,’ Ashley said reasonably. ‘Marianne’s been spoilt – we all have – but we’ll all knuckle down to it if we have to. After the sinking of the
Athenia,
I think most people must have realised that there won’t be much coming in from abroad, so it’ll be English flour and no fancy olive oil, either. But you’ve got your orchard, the hens, a super vegetable patch . . .’

‘You’re right,’ Tess said. ‘I hear voices – they’re on their way up the drive! Quick, Ash, chuck me that flour and I’ll start making the gravy!’

The sun shone on the mirror-surface of the Broad and the breeze lifted a wing of Tess’s gleaming hair and then dropped it so that it fell across her forehead. Tess pushed it behind her ear and squeaked as the willow branch, in which she and Ashley were sitting, creaked a protest.

‘I wish I’d given the pudding a miss,’ Tess said. ‘This branch is groaning beneath my weight and yours – and my tummy’s tight as a drum!’

‘So’s mine – you’re a good cook,’ Ashley said. ‘That was one of the best roast beef lunches I’ve ever tasted, and Mrs Brett cooks a lovely roast, believe me. I was sad to miss my midday meal at home today, but I do believe yours was better.’

‘Thank you,’ Tess said. She shot him a round-eyed glance. ‘Are you feeling quite well, Ash?’

‘Why?’

‘Well, that’s a compliment, to tell me the meal was good, and you aren’t lavish with compliments, as a rule. In fact apart from liking the odd dress or skirt or something, you’ve criticised more than you’ve praised.’

‘Never!’ Ashley said. He sounded disproportionately astonished, like a vicar falsely accused of swearing. ‘I’m always telling you how clever you are and how pretty you look.’

Tess shook her head. So far, Ashley had not so much as held her hand. Things are improving, Tess told herself, and tried to ignore an uneasy suspicion that perhaps he simply did not find her attractive any more.

‘No, you don’t, Ash. The reason we broke up was because you said . . .’ She felt her cheeks grow hot, but continued anyway. ‘. . . You said my – my chest wasn’t as good as Stella Barlow’s.’

Ashley chuckled. ‘I was a fool. I was showing off, you see, trying to take everyone’s mind off the fact that I’d knocked you into the ’oggin. Tess, it was two years ago! I’ve learned a thing or two in that time.’

‘Oh. Good,’ Tess said. ‘So you like my cooking – what’s the food like in the Air Force, then?’

‘I’m in the officers’ mess, and it’s not too bad,’ Ashley said. ‘But it’s not home cooking. I suppose you wouldn’t like to come and sit this end with me? Then we could hold hands.’

‘All right,’ Tess said. ‘But nothing more, please. I can’t imagine anything worse than the pair of us ending up wrestling in the reed bed, which is feet deep in mud.’

‘Then don’t wrestle, give in gracefully,’ Ashley said, and immediately looked stricken. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I’ll be good, I’ll be good!’