Still Waters (74 page)

Tess was staring at him. Tears had formed in her eyes but they did not fall.

‘Sad? Yes, terribly said,’ she said at last. ‘Oh, that poor girl – so
that
was why she stood up in the boat! So
that
was what Daddy was trying to hide! It was my fault all the time . . . she wasn’t trying to leave me, she was trying to save me!’

She told Mal, of course. Snuggled up in his arms, in the lower bunk, she told him everything that Mr Moss had told her.

‘Isn’t it strange though, Mal, that in order to find out how my mother really died I had to marry you and come all the way to Australia?’ she said, when the tale was told. ‘Mr Moss was only in England for three months, and in Norfolk for one of them. And he wasn’t a Walcott man, so I could have asked and asked there and no one would have been any the wiser. He just happened to be checking crab pots off shore, and saw everything. Well, almost everything. He didn’t see me go down to the breakwater and he didn’t see the boy come interfering along and drag me off home.’

‘If it happened,’ Mal said gently. ‘Oh, I don’t mean what Mr Moss saw, that certainly happened just the way he told it. I mean you and the beach and the breakwater and whatever it was in the water, and the boy coming and picking you up . . . Don’t you think it’s likelier that the dream came out of all that happened afterwards? Hushed voices, talk of drowning, your father saying you must never be told . . . and perhaps the boy looked after you in the days directly following your mother’s death, when everything was topsy-turvy and your father was too busy packing up and leaving the place, seeing to your mother’s funeral and so on, to have much time for his little daughter?’

‘I don’t know,’ Tess said drowsily. ‘And I don’t suppose it matters now. I’ve not had the dreams for years and years – not since I met you, in fact. All that matters is I understand it all, now.’

‘And you aren’t blaming yourself for Leonora’s death?’

‘It’s a bit late to lay blame, wouldn’t you say? But no, I’m certainly not blaming anyone, least of all myself. I was a very young child, mischievous certainly, but not bad. I know I said I killed my mother but that was over-dramatisation, to put it no stronger. Poor Leonora, she died for love, you could say.’

‘What matters, to you, is that you know, now, that she didn’t kill herself. Isn’t that it?’ Mal asked.

‘That’s it,’ Tess said. ‘If I have a baby I shall call it Leonora if it’s a girl and Peter if it’s a boy.’

‘If you have a baby? If? Are you casting doubts on my abilities?’

Tess giggled. ‘All right, when, then. Glory, I’m tired. Good-night, darling Mal.’

She struggled out of the bed and he caught her ankle as she swung herself on to the top bunk and kissed her soft little heel. ‘Good-night, darling Tess.’

Tess lay on her back for a little, gazing up at the ceiling so close to her nose. The ship’s motion was soothing, but she didn’t want to go to sleep just yet. She wanted to savour her knowledge, hugging it to her bosom. Ever since she could remember, she had wanted to know who she was; the child of whom? Names meant little, it was the people behind the names she had longed to know.

And now, at last, she did know them. She could be proud of her father, who had died for his country, and of her mother, who had died trying to take care of her child. It was a pity she had never found the liquorice-eating boy, but it no longer mattered. What mattered was that Tess Chandler, who had been Tess Delamere until so recently, had found herself at last.

Tess turned on her side and closed her eyes and below her, Mal began, very softly, to snore.

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Reissued by Arrow Books in 2014

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Copyright © Judith Saxton, 1996

Judith Saxton has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

This book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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