When Marnie Was There (4 page)

Anna did go down to the beach in Wuntermenny’s boat. She found him as unsociable as the Peggs had promised. He was small and bent, with a thin, lined face, and eyes which seemed to be permanently screwed up against the light, looking into the far distance. After the first grunt of recognition he hardly noticed her, so she was able to sit up in the bow of the boat, looking ahead, and ignore him too. This suited her well, but it made her feel lonelier, and she was a little frightened that first afternoon. There seemed such a huge expanse of water and sky, and so little of herself.

Sitting alone on the shore, while Wuntermenny in the far distance was digging for bait, she looked back at the long, low line of the village and tried to pick out The Marsh House. But it was not there! She could see the boathouse, and the white cottage at the corner, and farther away still she could see the windmill. But along where The
Marsh House should have been there was only a bluish-grey smudge of trees.

Alarmed, she stood up. It
had
to be there. If it was not, then nothing seemed safe any more… nothing made sense… She blinked, opened her eyes wider, and looked again. Still it was not there. She sat down then – with the most ordinary face in the world, to show she was quite independent and not frightened at all – and with her knees up to her chin, and her arms round her knees, made herself into as small and tight a parcel as she could, until Wuntermenny came trudging up the beach with his fork and his bucket of bait.

“Cold?” he grunted, when he saw her.

“No.”

She followed him down to the boat, and those were the only two words that passed between them all the afternoon. But as they rounded a bend in the creek and she saw the old house gradually emerge from its dark background of trees, she felt so hot and happy with relief that she nearly said, “There it is!” out loud. She realised now that it had been there all the time. In the distance the old brick and blue-painted woodwork had merely merged into the blue-green of the thick garden trees. She realised something else, too. As they passed close under the windows, on the high tide, she saw that the house was no longer asleep. Again it had a watching, waiting look, and again she had the feeling it had recognised her and was glad she was coming back.

“Enjoy yourself?” asked Mrs Pegg, who was frying sausages and onions in the scullery when Anna returned.

Anna nodded.

“That’s right, my duck. You do what you like. Just suit yourself and follow your fancy.”

“And maybe I’ll take you along to the windmill one day if you’re a good lass,” said Sam.

S
O THAT WAS
how it was. Anna suited herself and went where she liked. In a way, now, she had three different worlds in Little Overton. The world of the Peggs’ cottage, small and warm and cosy. The world of the staithe, where the boats swung at anchor in the creek and The Marsh House watched for her out of its many windows. And the world of the beach, where great gulls swooped overhead and she sometimes found rabbit burrows in the sand dunes, and the bones of porpoises lying in the fine, white sand. Three
separate worlds… but in her own mind the important one was the staithe with the old house by the water.

Gradually, instead of thinking about nothing, she thought about The Marsh House nearly all the time; imagining the family who would live there, what it was like inside, and how it would look in the evenings, in autumn, with the curtains drawn and a big fire blazing in the hearth.

Trudging home across the marsh at sunset one evening she saw the windows all lit up and ran, thinking they must have arrived while she was down at the beach. Perhaps if she hurried she might catch sight of them – the family of children in navy blue jeans and jerseys – before the curtains were pulled. But as she drew nearer she saw that she was wrong. There were no lights in the house. It had only been the reflection of the sunset in the windows.

On another day she saw – or thought she saw – a face pressed close to the window; a girl’s face with long, fair hair hanging down on either side – watching. Then it disappeared. Even when there was clearly no-one there, she still had this curious feeling of being watched. She grew used to it.

The Peggs were glad she had settled down so well. It was good for the lass to be out of doors so much, and provided she came in to meals at reasonable hours, and ate heartily, they saw nothing to worry about. She was, in fact, “no trouble at all,” as Mrs Pegg assured Miss Manders at the Post Office.

A letter came from Mrs Preston in answer to Anna’s card. She was glad Anna was happy, and yes she could wear the shorts every day as long as Mrs Pegg didn’t mind.
We’re looking forward so much to hearing all the interesting things you’re doing,
she wrote,
but if you haven’t time for a long letter, a card will do.
Enclosed was a small folded note with “Burn this” written across the outside, and inside,
Does the house really smell, dear? Tell me what sort of smell.

Anna, who had quite forgotten her remark about the cottage smelling different from home, wondered vaguely what it meant, burnt the note obediently, and forgot about it. She bought a postcard with a picture of a kitten in a flower pot on it, and wrote on the back,
I’m sorry I didn’t write before but I forgot, and on Thursday the Post Office was shut so I couldn’t buy this card. I hope you like it.
There was only
room for one more line, so she put,
I went to the beach. Love from Anna.
She added two Xs for good measure, and posted it, well satisfied, never dreaming Mrs Preston might be disappointed at having so little news.

One day Sandra-up-at-the-Corner came to the cottage with her mother. Dinner was late that day, so Anna was caught before she had time to slip out of the scullery door.

Sandra was fair and solid. Her dress was too short and her knees were too fat, and she had nothing to say. Anna spent a wretched afternoon playing cards with her at the kitchen table, while Mrs Pegg and Sandra’s mother sat and talked in the front room. Sandra and Anna knew different versions of every game, Sandra cheated, and they had nothing to talk about.

In the end Anna pushed all her cards over to Sandra’s side and said, “Here you are. Keep them all, then you’ll be sure to win.”

Sandra said, “Ooh,
that
I never!” went bright pink and relapsed into sulks in the rocking chair. She spent the rest of the afternoon examining the lace edge of her nylon petticoat, and trying to twist her straight, straw-coloured hair into ringlets. Anna read Mrs Pegg’s
Home Words
in a corner and was thankful when they went.

After that she was less trouble than ever, and stayed out all day in case she might ever have to play with Sandra again.

One afternoon, coming back from the beach where Wuntermenny had been collecting driftwood, and she had
been looking for shells, Wuntermenny astonished her by saying his first complete sentence. They were coming up towards the staithe when he suddenly jerked his head over his shoulder and said in a gruff, casual voice, “Reckon they’ll be down soon.”

Anna sat up in surprise. “Who will?”

Wuntermenny jerked his head again, over towards the shore. “Them as’ve took The Marsh House.”

“
Will
they? When? Who are they?”

Wuntermenny gave her a look of deep, pitying scorn and shut his mouth tightly. Too late she realised her mistake. She had been too eager, asked too many questions. If she had just looked sleepily uninterested he would probably have told her all she wanted to know. Never mind, she would soon find out. She might even ask the Peggs.

But on second thoughts she decided not. They might think she wanted to make friends with the people, and that was not what she wanted at all. She wanted to know
about
them, not to know them. She wanted to discover, gradually, what their names were, choose which one she thought she might like best, guess what sort of games they played, even what they had for supper and what time they went to bed.

If she really got to know them, and they her, all that would be spoiled. They would be like all the others then – only half friendly. They, from inside, looking curiously at her, outside – expecting her to like what they liked, have what they had, do what they did. And when they found she
didn’t, hadn’t, couldn’t – or what ever it was that always cut her off from the rest – they would lose interest. If they then hated her it would have been better. But nobody did. They just lost interest, quite politely. So then she had to hate
them.
Not furiously, but coldly – looking ordinary all the time.

But this family would be different. For one thing they would be living in ‘her’ house. That in itself set them apart. They would be like her family, almost – so long as she was careful never to get to know them.

So she said nothing to the Peggs about what Wuntermenny had said, and hugged to herself the secret that they would soon be coming to The Marsh House. And as the days went by she followed her fancy in her imagination as well, until the unknown family became almost like a dream family in her own mind – so determined was she that they should not be real.

O
NE EVENING
A
NNA
and Wuntermenny were coming home in the boat on a particularly high tide.

The sky was the colour of peaches, and the water so calm that every reed and the mast of every boat was reflected with barely a quiver. The tide was flooding, covering quite a lot of the marsh, and as they drifted upstream Anna had been peering down into the water, watching the sea lavender and the green marsh weed, called samphire, waving under the surface. Then, as they rounded
the last bend, she turned as she always did, to look towards The Marsh House.

Behind it the sky was turning a pale lime green, and a thin crescent moon hung just above the chimney pot. They drew nearer, and then she saw, quite distinctly, in one of the upper windows, a girl. She was standing patiently, having her hair brushed. Behind her the shadowy figure of a woman moved dimly in the unlighted room, but the girl stood out clearly against the dark, secret square of the window. Anna could even see the long pale strands of her hair lifted now and then as the brush passed over them.

She turned quickly and glanced at Wuntermenny, but he was looking along the staithe towards the landing place and had seen nothing.

Anna ran home, turned the corner of the lane, then stopped. Mrs Pegg and Sandra’s mother were standing talking at the cottage gate – their faces brick red in the orange light of the sunset. Mrs Stubbs was a big woman with bright black eyes and a rasping voice. Anna did not want to meet her again, so she stepped back into the dusky shadow of the hedge, and waited.

“You’ll be coming over to mine tonight, won’t you?” Mrs Stubbs was saying. “My sister’s over from Lynn and she’s brought them patterns.”

“Has she now!” Mrs Pegg sounded eager, then hesitated. “Well, there’s the child –” she added doubtfully.