Still Waters (5 page)

It had been. Now and then Tess had fretted over it, moaned to herself that it wasn’t fair, and indeed until the previous summer it hadn’t worried her all that much since Janet did not swim either. But last August, when the Throwers had returned from Palling, Janet had announced that she could swim.

‘I’ll teach you, Tess,’ she had promised. ‘We’ll go somewhere quiet, where the water isn’t too deep, and I’ll teach you.’

But they’d never got round to it somehow, and besides, Peter’s edict was not to be lightly disobeyed. Only it became clearer and clearer that he wasn’t going to find the time to teach her.

‘He’s working all week, at weekends there’s the garden, and things like cooking a Sunday dinner, and then there’s his horrid golf . . . oh, Jan, I’m never going to get to learn,’ Tess had moaned as the two of them sat astride an ancient willow which dipped down over the water and watched wistfully as the row-boat, laden with Throwers, bobbed past. ‘If only I could come with you to Palling! You learned there, so perhaps I could, as well. Beaches go slower into the water than the Broad does, don’t they?’

‘Tha’s true; I’ll ask Mum,’ Janet had said, and next thing Tess knew, Mrs Thrower had come visiting one evening, all dressed up in a clean cotton dress with her hair tied back and a dash of powder on her nose, and bearded Peter in his study where he was sitting at the big desk doing sums in ledgers, or that was what Tess believed he did in there. Invited to take a seat, Mrs Thrower had made herself comfortable, cleared her throat, then told Peter straight out that it wasn’t right for a child to live so near the Broad yet be unable to swim. Tess, shamelessly eavesdropping in the hall outside, had actually stopped breathing for a moment when she heard what Mrs Thrower was saying. If only her father would agree!

‘You know, Mr Peter, as how I allus speaks my mind,’ Mrs Thrower started. ‘My Reg, he wanted to tek the girls on the water last year, but they could neither of ’em swim so he wou’n’t. But now Janet swim and your Tess don’t, so they still can’t go reed-cuttin’ wi’ Reggie, nor they can’t set the fish-traps, nor go babbin’ for eels, and wha’s more, they can’t learn to sail nor to row, and they’re things they should know about, livin’ where we do.’

‘There is a good deal in what you say, Mrs Thrower, but I’m so busy . . .’ Peter began, and got no further.

‘Of course, Mr Peter, but there’s them as do have time. We’re orf to Pallin’ again come August; what’s to stop us takin’ Tess along? We’re there a week and she’s a bright ’un, your Tess. She’ll come home swimmin’, believe me.’

Peter laughed. It was a laugh which said Mrs Thrower was talking nonsense. Tess hissed her breath in through her teeth. She could have told her father that Mrs Thrower would not like to be laughed at, though she was always happy to be laughed with.

‘In a
week
?’ Peter said incredulously. ‘I doubt that, but in any case . . .’

‘You doubt it, do you? Would you care to put money on it?’

There was an astounded silence. Tess recognised it because Mrs Thrower’s forthrightness had once more reduced her parent to speechlessness. She did hope that her friend had not gone too far, annoyed Peter. After all, it would not help if Peter decided she had better not spend so much time with the Throwers in future.

‘Put money on it? I don’t think . . .’

‘Two bob, Mr Peter? My two bob say she’ll be swimmin’ in a week, your two bob say she won’t.’

Peter laughed again. ‘Mrs Thrower, you never fail to amaze me! But . . . do you know, you have a point? I know Tess should swim, I’ve felt guilty for a long while that I’ve not made the time to teach her . . . if you would be good enough to take her with you when you to go Sea Palling then, I’d be happy to pay for her keep – and her swimming lessons, of course. And to pay up, if you really can teach her in that time.’

From that moment, Tess knew they had won. She would go to Sea Palling, learn to swim, and the Broad would open up before her, the Promised Land.

‘The sea! It’s the sea, the sea, the sea! Oh, an’ I want my penny, Dad!’ Henry was pointing to their left to where a deep-blue line had appeared above the golden corn and Tess and Janet, jumping to their feet at the same moment, knocked into each other and overbalanced on to the assorted luggage – and also on to the assorted legs of young Throwers. There were shouts and a good deal of mild cussing, whilst Mr Thrower solemnly went through his pockets and tried to palm young Henry off with a bent ha’penny and Mrs Thrower laughed and handed round more humbugs and told Tess that ‘It won’t be long now – fifteen, mebbe twenty minutes and we’ll be there!’

And it wasn’t even that long before they were bowling along between banks, with the gap ahead – most self-respecting Norfolk seaside places have a gap – and to each side of it the mighty, white-gold dunes tantalisingly hiding the sea.

‘Yonder’s the Sutcliffe place,’ Ben said, pointing. ‘Awright, in’t it, young’uns? D’you know, Tess, there’s
beds
?’

Tess opened her mouth to say of course there were, and remembered. The young Throwers did not sleep in beds, they had mattresses on the floor, big ones to be sure, and the oddest assortment of blankets, old coats and even curtains to keep them warm in winter. She supposed that Mr and Mrs Thrower had a bed, but Janet had only a thin flock mattress which was rolled up under the sofa in the front room in the daytime and produced at nights.

‘And there’s a bathroom,’ Ben continued impressively. ‘A bathroom, Tess, with a real bath!’

‘Ben, Tess knows . . .’ Janet said uncomfortably, but Tess leaned forward and addressed Ben directly. Ben was only seven, he didn’t know that most modern houses had bathrooms. Indeed, Peter was always promising that he’d have a bath installed one day but for now they used the big tin bath before the kitchen fire.

‘Gosh, a proper bathroom, in a holiday bungalow? The Sutcliffes must be very rich!’

It was the right thing to say. Mrs Thrower, who cleaned at a couple of large houses where bathrooms were the norm, beamed at her.

‘Tha’s true, my woman, they’re rare rich,’ she said. ‘Cor, I wou’n’t mind livin’ in this place for the rest of my days – eh, Reggie?’

‘Too near the blummen sea,’ Reggie said. ‘That might flood.’

‘Our cottage floods,’ Ned pointed out truthfully. ‘Many a winter flood we’ve had at Barton.’

‘Aye, but it’s good clean Broads water, not that salt stuff,’ Mr Thrower said, and was howled down by the rest of the family who reminded him of the mud which the ‘good, clean Broads water’ brought into their home, and the stinking carcass of a dead sheep which had once come in on the flood and made their mother tearful and jumpy for days.

‘Well, you may be right,’ Mr Thrower conceded majestically. ‘But better dead sheep than dead sailors, tha’s what I say.’

‘Reggie!’ ‘Dad!’ ‘Mr Thrower!’ The objections came from a good few throats but before Reggie Thrower had to answer the implied criticisms, the cart jerked to a stop outside a pretty, pebble-dash-and-tile bungalow with a red-painted front door and a well-kept front garden. Mr Leggatt went to his horses’ heads, Mr Thrower came round to help his wife to alight, and everyone else began to seize the baggage and hand it over the side.

‘The key’s in my pocket,’ Mrs Thrower said, as the boys started to drag assorted boxes, bags and bundles up the garden path. ‘We’ll go in the back door; most of the grub’s goin’ to live in the kitchen, I dessay.’

‘Wait’ll you see our room, Tess,’ Janet said, panting up the path behind her mother with a sack over one shoulder. ‘It’s beautiful – there’s pink curtains!’

And presently, less saw the room for herself and agreed with her friend that it was both beautiful and pink-curtained. There were two small beds with pink-and-white-checked counterpanes, a couple of easy chairs, even a square of carpet on the floor.

‘We have to be awful careful, an’ keep everythin’ awful clean,’ Janet warned. ‘We scrub everythin’ before we leave, an’ Dad do the garden an’ clip the hedge an’ mow the lawn. One year Mum had to paint a door, ’cos one o’ the boys banged into it wi’ a bucket an’ took the paint off. Dear Lor’, but ain’t it just beautiful?’

‘It is beautiful, and it’s bigger than our house,’ Tess agreed. ‘I bet your mum loves the kitchen.’

The kitchen was all fitted cupboards and a sink at waist height and shiny taps, and there was an oil stove to cook on and an enclosed stove which you lit for hot water. There was a dining-room, a living-room and a conservatory, as well as four wonderful bedrooms – they were wonderful to Janet and the boys, so Tess thought them wonderful too – and of course the bathroom.

Exploring the house, however, was not a lengthy procedure, and presently Mrs Thrower called through that dinner was ready and they hurried into the kitchen – the dining-room was for the evening meal, Janet told Tess.

Dinner was cheese sandwiches, home-made pickles and a cup of tea, with an apple to follow. As soon as the table was cleared and the plates and cutlery washed and put away, Mrs Thrower took one of the kitchen chairs out into the sunny garden and announced that she intended to have a nap.

‘No swimmin’ till an hour after your grub have gone down,’ she decreed. ‘And then only when your dad and I are around. Off with you!’

It was the sort of command which everyone wanted to obey. Out into the sunshine, with the breeze wafting the seaside smells to their nostrils, sand underfoot, the blue sky arching above. They tore down to the gap and, amidst the sand dunes, scattered, the boys roaring as boys will, Janet and Tess stopping as soon as they reached the beach itself to shed shoes and socks, to tuck their skirts into their knickers . . . and then to run on. Tess ran with all her might, though as they neared the sea the wet, ridged sand hurt her bare feet and sent shock-waves up through her spine. But she didn’t care, and as they ran full-tilt into the little waves she was conscious of a joy and a sense of well-being greater than she could remember experiencing before.

‘In’t it good, gal Tess?’ Janet shrieked, well ahead of Tess now with the waves at knee-height, her skirt escaping from wobbly knicker elastic and dangling in the restless water. ‘Isn’t it the best thing you ever done?’

‘Yeah, yeah,
yeah
!’ Tess shouted back. She kicked spray in a dazzling, diamond arc between herself and the great yellow eye of the sun. ‘I wanna swim, I wanna swim, I wanna swim!’

‘We will, later, when our dinner hev gone down,’ Janet said. She came back to her friend’s side and suggested digging a castle or searching the shallows for sea-life – crabs, shrimps, anemones.

‘We’ll dig a castle,’ Tess said. ‘My spade’s up at the bungalow, but it doesn’t matter; I can dig with my hands, like a dog.’

Both girls fell to their knees and began to excavate. And Tess glanced round the beach whenever she thought herself unobserved, and tried to see whether it was anything like the beach of her dream. It had the long wooden breakwaters all right, with deep pools beside them where the tide had gobbled the sand away. And there were dunes, which weren’t in her dream, but no pebble ridge, which was. A different place, then. And she remembered Yarmouth as being very different both from this beach and from the dream-beach.

But what did it matter, after all? Tess returned all her concentration to castle manufacture and to the creation of a really deep moat and a drawbridge made out of driftwood, to a shell decoration, to battlements . . .

That night, Tess could not sleep. She was too excited. Her first swimming lesson had been a wonderful experience – Mrs Thrower, vast in a garment which she swore was a swimsuit, though it seemed every bit as voluminous as her day-dresses to Tess, had held her chin whilst Ned had told her to pretend to be a frog and Janet had sculled up and down beside her doing first one stroke and then another and begging her to ‘Look at me, look at me, gal Tess!’ until even her placid mother told her to ‘goo tek a runnin’ jump, you irritatin’ little mawther!’

The lesson had ended with Mrs Thrower releasing her chin and Ned holding on to the straps of her swimsuit and saying that though she wasn’t breathing right they’d soon have her frogging it up and down, every bit as good as young Jan, there.

Tess still didn’t quite understand why breathing was important, and Janet said impatiently that ‘the breathin’ kinda
came,
when you stopped thinkin’ about it’, but she felt in her bones that swimming was something she could master – and would.

Sleep, however, was another matter. This was her first night away from home, and she couldn’t help worrying about her father, and missing him, too. Of course they’d been parted for a night before – often. Peter was a partner with a firm of accountants in Norwich and as such, frequently got invited to functions which, he explained, he could not refuse. Then, nice widowed Mrs Rawlings from Catfield would be fetched home with Peter in his car, and would stay with Tess until Peter returned. Once, her father had gone skiing in Scotland for a whole ten days; another time he went to Oulton Broad for their Regatta week and crewed for Uncle Phil. Tess would have liked to go along, but Peter said not yet; another year perhaps, when she was older.

‘When I’m older you said I could have Janet to stay, instead of dear Rawlplug,’ Tess reminded him. ‘Am I older this year?’ But Peter only laughed and said there was plenty of time for that.

Peter would be all right really, she knew that. He would probably enjoy a week at home without her – though he would miss her, that went without saying. Tess tried to turn over and bumped into Janet, which was something else she wasn’t used to – sharing a bed. And it was only a single bed, and Janet kicked in her sleep. But I’ll drop off presently, Tess assured herself. I always do at home.

But she had not realised what a noisy family the Throwers were, come bedtime. Podge and Henry, sharing the second bed in the girls’ room, weren’t too bad, but when the older boys came to bed they made a terrible din, and Tess lay there listening to their top-volume conversations and chuckling to herself. Boys boast and shout, but they’re no better than us, really, she told herself.

And scarcely had the boys stopped thumping and calling than Mr and Mrs Thrower came along the corridor. They were noisy too, in their way. They washed in the bathroom, loudly admiring various gadgets – the real toilet-roll holder on the wall, the wrinkled glass in the window so no one could see you in your bare skin, the bright taps which gushed water when you turned them on. And they were loud in their praise for the flush lavatory. Tess agreed with them that it was a great improvement on the earth closet at home. Peter kept saying he was going to have one installed at the Old House when he had a bath put in, but he had not got round to it yet. Tess knew that Uncle Phil had two – one upstairs and one down – but she only visited the big, ugly house in Unthank Road a couple of times a year, so flushing the lavatory was still very much a novelty.