Still Waters (40 page)

She meant it, Tess could tell, but Peter could tell too, and he had learned long ago how to handle Marianne. He came round the table and swept her up in his arms, then plonked one kiss on her nose and another on her mouth.

‘No nonsense, my little French croissant,’ he said gaily. ‘I shan’t be far away; if you’re desperately lonely you can always catch a train down to Portsmouth, come and see me. And as I said, I’ll be home whenever I can. Now be a darling and help your wretched daughters to get a move on, will you? Only I’ve got to beard old Harrison in his den with this letter’ – he waved it under her nose – ‘and he won’t be best pleased if I’m late into the bargain.’

Cherie skidded back into the room at that point, her black felt hat at a rakish angle on the back of her head, her burberry on but not buttoned, her satchel unfastened and clinging grimly to one shoulder.

‘I’m ready, Daddy,’ she said breathlessly. ‘I want toast and marmalade as well!’

‘I’ve got some for all of us,’ Tess assured her. ‘Chuck my coat over, Cherie!’

‘Where’s my briefcase?’ Peter demanded, brushing past Tess and nearly causing her to drop the pile of toast and marmalade sandwiches she was holding. ‘Oh, God, it’s in the study . . . Cherie . . .’

‘Going,’ Cherie said, plunging back into the hall. ‘D’you want all the papers on the desk shovelled back in, Daddy?’ she shrieked from the study.

‘No, don’t bother, just the pink forms,’ Peter shouted back. He was wearing his coat and had his bowler in one hand. ‘Come
on
, girls, don’t keep me waiting all day!’

Cherie, flushed but triumphant, came back towing Peter’s large, shabby briefcase behind her. ‘There!’ she said. ‘Where’s my toast?’

‘It is like a madhouse,’ moaned Marianne, but Tess could see she was wide awake for once, and quite enjoying the unusual fuss. ‘This eating in the car – it is anarchy!’

Peter held open the back door for his daughters, then rushed past them and into the cart-shed. They heard the clatter of the engine being started, then the car came out with Peter at the wheel.

‘Come on, get aboard,’ he shouted. ‘Where’s my toast, Tess? Cherie, shove my briefcase out of the way and settle down. Marianne, where’s my kiss?’

Marianne, giggling, ran forward and bent down by the driver’s window, was kissed and retreated, still giggling, looking very pink and young.

‘Toast,’ Peter said, clicking his fingers, as soon as they were out of the short drive and making their way along the road. ‘Wish I’d thought to bring some coffee, I never had time for a drink this morning.’

‘Miss Bromwich will make you some as soon as you set foot in the office,’ Tess reminded him. Miss Bromwich was Peter’s elegant, middle-aged secretary and, as he continually told his daughters, a jewel of the first water. ‘You’ve only got to ask.’ She handed him the toast sandwich, then posted another over her shoulder to Cherie, on the back seat. She took a large bite of her own toast, then spoke through a full mouth. ‘Dear Daddy, you should have struck over the toast weeks ago! I’ve really missed it.’

‘Couldn’t. Wouldn’t have been fair,’ Peter said equally thickly. ‘I only did it today because of the letter. Now girls, no more talking, eat up! And when the toast’s finished we’ll discuss what you should do when I’m gone.’

Two days later Tess bussed into the city and then caught the bus back again. Cherie had gone home on an earlier one, so she had time, for once, to think without having to help with homework or listen to Cherie’s school gossip.

Peter had gone for the interview with the Navy, but Tess was sure that it was just a formality; her father would get the job. They needed someone to train people to use signalling equipment and Peter had done precisely that in the last war. She was sure he would find himself doing it again before much longer.

So what should she do? She could, of course, stay at the Old House, but she could see that without Peter, Marianne would speedily make her life miserable beyond belief. It wasn’t that Marianne was cruel or wicked, she told herself, simply very jealous indeed. She was even jealous over any sign of friendliness between Cherie and Tess, though her own relationship with her daughter was not a particularly warm one.

I could get a bed-sit in the city, Tess told herself. Or I could even live with Uncle Phil and Auntie May. They probably wouldn’t mind too much, because the boys are off to the Forces so their rooms will be free. But she decided she would ring Ashley first and see what advice, if any, he had to offer.

Since Ashley’s return he had become a regular visitor and despite their frequent quarrels, he was still very much her friend. He was stationed in Lincolnshire somewhere and seemed to be having a good time. He phoned her two or three times a week and when he had telephoned last had said he would be coming home for Christmas and hoped they might meet up.

So Tess sat on the bus and rehearsed what she would say to Ashley. That her father would be moving down south, to work for the Navy, and that she had decided to move too. She wanted his advice on whether to . . .

No! Suddenly, she knew quite well what she wanted to do, and it wasn’t to have a bed-sit nor to live with her aunt and uncle in Unthank Road. She wanted a war job too, like Daddy and Ashley! She would join up!

Eleven

January 1940

IT WAS BITTERLY
cold. Outside the Old House snow lay thick, piled against the windows where the wind had carried it, drifting six feet deep along the lane so that even someone on a bicycle would have had difficulty making their way along it. But the worst of it was, Tess reflected, digging her way down the front path with her father’s huge old coal shovel, that beneath the snow the ground was iron hard with frost. The wind might move the snow around as it gusted icily about her ears, but it was unable to bring about a thaw, and that meant winter was here to stay – for a while, at least.

It’s a good thing I’m still here, she told herself as she dug, because if I weren’t, Marianne and Cherie would just sit inside the Old House and slowly starve. Despite the fact that it was Saturday, and her day off, she had been first up today, as usual. Not that you could blame Cherie for lying in on such a morning – the snow had been bad now for over a week and the buses ran when they could, which wasn’t often. Marianne, of course, no longer bothered to get up to cook breakfast. Why should she? Peter was not there to appreciate her sacrifice.

So when the postman abandoned his bicycle at the top of Deeping Lane and came down, swearing, with the mail, Tess grinned up at him and straightened her back, leaning on her shovel for a breather.

‘Well, fancy meetin’ you, Miss Delamere,’ George Broxton said, grinning at her and resting his bag on the mound of snow she had thrown up to one side of the gatepost. ‘You’ve been snowed in for quite a while, by the looks of it. Well, you’re in luck, I’ve got through an’ there’s a letter for you. You’ve got nine days’ post there, mostly for your ma, but I’d best not stand here gossipin’. This is the fust time I ha’ got through, see, since the snow come down bad. Oh, and I’ve give you the Throwers’ letters an’ all, save my old legs, ’cos I know you’ll be down there some time today. Cheerio!’

‘Wouldn’t you like a cuppa?’ Tess asked, taking the letters. ‘I’m going down to the Throwers all right, but I can make you some tea first.’

‘I would, but I dussen’t stop,’ George said. He was old but hale and hearty, with a shock of white hair which pushed his postman’s hat up at an odd angle in front, and a cheery though toothless grin. ‘As I telled you, that’s the fust time I got down here since the snow so there’s folk other than you waitin’ for ’portant letters. Never mind, I’ll hev that cuppa some other time.’

So Tess trudged up the path with the letters, took a cursory glance at them as she slung them on the hall table – there was a letter with a French stamp and another from Portsmouth with Peter’s familiar handwriting on the envelope – then picked out the three letters addressed to the Throwers and the one addressed to herself and wrapped her scarf securely round her neck once more. She bellowed up to Marianne that the post had come and she was just off down to the Throwers with theirs and took off, shovel in hand, hoping that this unplanned excursion – for she had only intended to dig as far as the narrow cleared path down the middle of the road – would not mean that Cherie and Marianne would snuggle down and simply not get up until noon or after.

Despite working like a Trojan it took Tess the best part of twenty minutes to reach the Throwers’ cottage, a journey which normally took less than five. She pegged away with the shovel though, because if she just pushed her way through she’d be soaked to the skin in seconds, and eventually arrived at the point where the Throwers must have cleared the snow earlier in the week. Of course it had snowed since, and drifted as well, but Podge and Dickie, being schoolboys, were at home still and must have been told to do some digging so that Mr Thrower could get into the village and Mrs Thrower could go off to work. No matter what the weather, Tess reminded herself, Mrs Thrower would find a way to reach her ladies; she had to, they needed the money. Bad weather meant the men couldn’t garden or work on the farms or do the thousand and one other small jobs by which marshmen made a living, so the women had to work twice as hard when conditions were harsh.

Reaching the back door, Tess knocked on it, then pushed it open. Warmth rushed out, smoky, rather smelly warmth. You could tell, Tess thought, appreciatively sniffing as she entered the room, that the Throwers had been housebound for a while. She bade everyone good-morning, then took off her coat which had managed to get pretty wet despite her digging, and kicked off her wellingtons, leaving them outside the door.

‘Well, well, an early bird today, Tess!’ Mrs Thrower, pummelling dough, beamed at her visitor. ‘Don’t tell me that’s started in to thaw!’

Mr Thrower was puffing on his pipe and staring sourly at the glowing stove and the boys were writing something in exercise books. Letters to elder brothers, Tess suspected. She had done her share of writing to friends in the Forces of late.

‘No, it isn’t thawing, I dug my way through because George asked me to bring your post down,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Nice to see you relaxing for once, Mr Thrower.’

‘Relaxing?’ Mr Thrower snorted, tapping his pipe out against the side of the stove. ‘I casn’t cut reed in this, and it’s reed-cuttin’ time, young ’oman. Where’d I stack the shooves, for a startorf? And don’t you say I could rick ’em up, because when the thaw come – if it come – the floods won’t go round a rick, not bloomin’ likely, they’ll carry it orf down to the sea with ’em. Wha’s more the Broad’s fruz over, the marsh walls is thick wi’ snow, since I in’t a bloody eximo I casn’t git no fish . . .’

‘Well, the reeds’ll wait,’ Mrs Thrower said philosophically. ‘I in’t never known a marshman what din’t grumble about the weather for reed cuttin’, whether ’tis rain, hail or snow, like now. If there in’t nothin’ doin’ outside, why don’t you mend your bow nets?’

‘I mended ’em Christmas,’ Mr Thrower said. ‘Chuck us the post, gal Tess, an’ I’ll tek a look at it.’ Tess handed over the letters and Mr Thrower got his tiny little spectacles out of the top pocket of his jacket and perched them on his nose. He slit both envelopes, then pulled out two sheets of pale-blue lined paper.

‘One’s from our Ned – he’s in France, you know. And t’other’s from Ozzie, on this here frigate, only they’re ashore, seemingly. Ah, an’ the last ’un’s from our Bert.’

Having said this he handed the letters to Podge, who read them aloud whilst Tess opened her own letter, which turned out to be information leaflets on the armed services. So far, she had done nothing further about choosing which service to honour with an application to join, but she rather fancied the WRNS since Peter was with the Navy and hoped the leaflets might make up her mind for her.

‘Well, there y’are,’ Mr Thrower said at length, when the three short letters from the Thrower young had been read out and exclaimed over. ‘And now, if it in’t actually
peltin’
wi’ snow, I’d best go an’ git some hay in for Susan.’

Susan was the Throwers’ latest acquisition, a house cow. She was a good-tempered little beast, with a fudge-coloured hide and a wide-ranging appetite. She would happily eat marsh-hay, reed or gladdon, which was the local name for bullrushes, and she had been known to take a meat sandwich out of your hand and be licking your fingers with her long, blackish-purple tongue before you’d even realised where your food had gone.

‘Right you are, Dad,’ Mrs Thrower said placidly. ‘She’s on high ground, in’t she? It ’ud break my heart if anythin’ happened to that little old cow.’ She turned to Tess. ‘Ate my bloomers off of the line last week,’ she said. ‘I writ to Janet an’ she said the girls in her billet near on died laughin’. You ha’n’t decided yet whether or not to join the WRNS, then?’

‘Not yet,’ Tess admitted. ‘But I’ve got information leaflets and application forms now, that was what my letter was. So maybe I’ll start filling the WRNS one in tonight.’

‘Good for you, gal,’ Mr Thrower said. He was struggling into his huge marshmen’s boots and slinging his waterproof round his shoulders, slapping his sou’wester on his grizzled head – over his cap, Tess was amused to see. ‘I like to see youngsters doin’ their bit, same as what I did, in the last lot. Our Janet, she’s doin’ good, that I do know. Now, young Podge, get you off that sofy an’ come alonga me. Teks two to move marsh hay.’

‘You’ll put in for the WRNS I reckon, young Tess,’ Podge said, getting to his feet. He got his own jacket off the hook and struggled into it. It was quite a lot too small, Tess realised, and this made her see how Podge had grown. He must be getting on for six foot and he had shoulders like barn doors, yet he was only fifteen going on sixteen, and desperately anxious to get into the Forces. He had told Tess he would probably choose the Navy, though he had a sneaking desire to fly. ‘Why don’t you put in for the WAAF, Tess, like our Jan?’

‘Oh, I dunno. I might still do just that. I don’t much like the WRNS hats, to be honest, they’re awful, worse than my old school hat. And black stockings can look really frumpy and they make your legs look thinner, which mine can’t do with. But it would please Daddy, though in a way I’d quite like to be stationed in Norfolk, near all my friends and family, which would mean the WAAF – most of the WRNS are down in Hampshire or up in Scotland. And then with Janet and Freddy both being in the WAAF it makes me think that perhaps I’d be happier in the Air Force. So you can see why I can’t make my mind up!’