Wishing Water (15 page)

Jan raised her eyebrows. ‘Best not to ask too closely when it comes to our Stella,’ she advised, wrapping braid back on a reel with alarming dexterity. ‘It doesn’t do to upset her.’
 

As if on cue, Miss Stevens stuck her head around the stock room door, hair awry, looking faintly flustered with flags of colour lighting each prominent cheek bone.

‘Ah, there you are Jan,’ she said, as if it were a surprise to find her two shop assistants still behind the counter. ‘Kindly take a selection of brassieres along to Mrs Elvira Fraser. She has sent a request for same in this morning’s post.’
 

‘But she lives right up on the Parade,’ groaned Jan, thinking of the long hot trek staggering under a weighty parcel. ‘We’re run off our feet. Why can’t she come here?’
 

‘Because she’s quite old and rich enough to do as she pleases. A state of affairs which will never be a problem for you, girl, if you don’t jump to it, as you will be unemployed and expire of starvation before you reach twenty.’
 

Jan hung her head. ‘Yes, Miss Stevens.’ Studiously ignoring Lissa’s giggles, she gathered up a suitable selection and set out.

Stella Stevens returned to her office, staring at the wad of unpaid accounts in her hand and reaching for her bottle of Milk of Magnesia. Her nervous stomach was really giving trouble this morning, a little sip or two might help.

She was a large lady with a healthy appetite, a low-slung bosom and hips that were a walking advertisement for her corset department. Her ‘nerves’ were aided and abetted not by the worthy Milk of Magnesia but by whatever liquid the innocent blue bottle actually happened to contain. Today it was brandy.

‘Something must be done,’ she informed the Kangol beret poster stuck on the wall above her desk. ‘Clients no longer seem to have the good taste of former years. Turn their noses up at true quality, they do. “Is it in fashion, my dear Miss Stevens?” they say.’ Stella mimicked the warbling tone of a customer and took another sip from the Milk of Magnesia bottle, found it empty and threw it in the waste paper basket. Then realising what she had done, took it out again and went to her washroom to refill it. She was not herself this morning and could do with a bit of comfort. Surprising really how bad her stomach got after the monthly bank statement arrived.

‘This is a good little business, no matter what the customers might say,’ she declared to Jan and Lissa as she faced them later that day with the unpalatable truth that despite the high volume of people passing through the door, the takings in the till were pitifully small.

‘Course it is, Miss Stevens,’ Jan hastily agreed.

Lissa privately thought Stevens Drapery had not moved with the times. It fell very much between two stools. The clothes were neither stylish nor classic, merely old fashioned. Admittedly they did well with a few useful bits and pieces of haberdashery, but not enough to sustain a thriving business.

‘What I wouldn’t like to do with this place!’ Lissa said, as Miss Stevens retreated to her office like a crab scurrying sideways to bury itself in sand, safe from the harshness of the world.

‘Burn it down?’ And they both burst into fits of giggles.

The girls were thankful when five-thirty came and they could lock the door, hand over the takings and return home to the little boathouse where they took it in turns to make the evening meal. Then they would sit outside by the lake in the evening sun and talk about how blissful it was to be seventeen and free.

Occasionally Derry came over, declaring himself in need of some fresh air, though he always managed to make a point of rubbing Lissa up the wrong way. Tonight was no exception.

‘Not going out then?’ he asked, staring almost accusingly at her.

‘No,’ Jan answered for her, eyes closed as she sat sprawled in a deck chair, her neat figure clad in a blue and white swimsuit that sported a dashing skirt about the hips.

Derry was dressed in a blue check shirt, open at the neck to show off his tan, and tight blue jeans that no doubt sent the young girls crazy, Lissa thought, averting her eyes from his neatly shaped rear.

‘Wouldn’t get me leading such a dull life. It isn’t cool to stay in,’ he loftily informed them, and started skimming stones across the lake, yelling with delight when he got a high number of bounces. ‘Out every night, me.’
 

‘Good for you,’ said Lissa dryly. ‘How would you know what we do, since you’re never around?’ She lifted violet eyes to his, a challenge blatantly written in them, and felt a curl of delight to see the swaggering arrogance slip slightly into doubt as he frowned at her.

Lissa’s swimsuit was a two-piece, of a modest cut but revealing enough to give Derry pause for thought.

‘You could come with us on our gigs.’

‘Perhaps we have better things to do.’
 

‘Who would you go out with?’ He preferred to imagine her sitting serenely here, by the lake, waiting. For him? He wasn’t quite sure. He’d thought at one time that she quite fancied him, now he’d given up hope. Almost.

‘None of your business.’ Violet eyes met brown, and held.
 

For the first time Derry looked uncertain, almost as if he wished he hadn’t asked. He skimmed a stone with such fierce vigour it bounced half across the lake before sinking.

‘Did you see that? Thirteen.’
 

‘Unlucky,’ said Lissa and sank back in her deck chair, closing her eyes as if she wasn’t interested.

He took out his comb and flicked at his quiff with quick, agitated gestures. ‘This town is boring. You won’t find me hanging around here much longer. I’ll be off and away. Starting to make real good money with the group now.’
 

Despite herself, Lissa’s eyes flew open and saw the triumph register in his eyes as he recognised her interest. The thought of never seeing Derry again sent her heart plummeting. ‘Go where?’

‘Haven’t decided yet. Manchester. London. Who knows?’

‘You were born and brought up in the Lake District. How could you ever be happy anywhere else when you love it so much? There are no mountains to climb in London.’
 

He looked thoughtful for a moment then shrugged his shoulders. ‘Life goes on. I’m going up in the world. Good as this is, I could do better. Renee’s a pain, though her cooking has improved, and Dad isn’t too bad. He’s building a boat for me, you know. So I can win the races this year.’
 

‘You’re staying on at Nab Cottage because you get well fed and Jimmy is building you a boat? You selfish, arrogant…’
 

Jan lifted her hands in her favourite conducting gesture. ‘Now children, no more squabbling. Why don’t we go for a row on the lake? A little gentle exercise will do us all good. Cool us all down.’
 

Lissa was still stinging from his accusations of dullness as they dragged the wooden row boat over the shingle. ‘Where’s your fan club tonight? Deserted you already?’
 

Derry stopped tugging at the boat to grin at her, his face so close to hers that to Lissa’s immense fury her heart gave a little flip. Why won’t he stay out of my life completely then I could forget him?

‘They do tend to wear a bloke out, it’s true. But I’m between dates, as you might say.’
 

A wave of sickness hit her and Lissa would have liked to knock the supercilious expression off his face.

With strenuous efforts on Jan’s part, good humour was restored as they puffed up and down the lake and were soon squealing with delight every time they ‘caught a crab’ and were splashed with the ice cold water.

‘This is fun, we should do it more often,’ Lissa gasped, on a sudden burst of enthusiasm.

Derry glanced at her in surprise. ‘My, take care. Dangerous to unstuff your shirt and mingle with the peasants.’
 

‘
Derry!
What a thing to say.’ Jan was horrified.

He said he was sorry but didn’t look it. Lissa decided she’d been right about Derry Colwith all along. He was perfectly horrid.

With the fickleness of Lakeland weather the skies had turned iron-grey, promising rain, held off only by the wind which tore through the valley, turning the leaves upside down on the trees, churning the waters and scurrying the ducks into flustered huddles.

It was a day to be indoors. Renee was spending it defrosting her fridge.

‘Drat the thing,’ she screamed, jabbing her knife into the huge lumps of ice stuck fast to its shining surface.

‘There’s more water on your kitchen floor than in the lake,’ said Jimmy, watching her wring out cloths and shift bowls about. ‘Our Derry’ll have to swim in for his tea tonight.’
 

‘All the food’s going off.’ Renee almost sobbed her frustration. ‘Why didn’t that salesman tell me it’d take half a day and a night to defrost the damn thing?’
 

‘He told you to do it every week. You do it once every two months, and the ice builds up.’
 

‘Looks like the bloody north pole. I wish I had one of those huge American fridges, like on “I Love Lucy”.’
 

Jimmy groaned and got up from the kitchen table where he’d been enjoying a bacon and egg breakfast. ‘Aw, don’t start, Renee. Not summat else. Enough’s enough.’
 

‘I only want what I deserve, pet. What I’ve never had.’
 

‘I know, sweetheart, but there’s only so many working hours in a day.’
 

‘We could get it on the Never-Never.’
 

‘Aye, and never bloody pay for it? I thought you wanted a gramophone?’
 

‘I do.’
 

‘I’m not a walking bank, Renee.’
 

Tears were streaming down her face and Jimmy watched her with a sad expression. It was the nearest they’d come to a quarrel. ‘I’d give you the earth, love, you know I would, but it’d cost too much.’
 

The knife jerked in her hand and flew off into some distant recess of the kitchen. Renee doubted she would ever see it again, and didn’t rightly care.

‘To hell with it. Oh, Jimboy, I’m sorry. I wanted things to be real nice this evening when they all came.’
 

‘They will be nice. Don’t you always make things nice?’ Then she was in his arms and in seconds the quarrel was forgotten. He was lifting up her skirt, grabbing like a teenager with eager hands. He took her there and then, slipping and sliding in the pools of ice on the kitchen floor.

‘I’ll get you a telephone installed, so you won’t feel so alone,’ Jimmy gasped, when he could breathe again. ‘How about that?’

Renee screamed her delight and hugged his tousled head close to her soft round breast. ‘Oh, I do love you, you soft old fool. Now get off to work, and take care.’
 

He smacked a kiss on one damp nipple. ‘When do I not?’

When he was gone Renee sat for a minute longer on the damp floor, eyes glazed with soft love.

‘Mind you,’ she said to the budgie as she went off to change. ‘It’s all very well being a modern woman and Jimmy working hard to buy the latest gadgets, but there’s so much to learn to operate the damn things you need to be a trained mechanic.’
 

The little gate had been given a fresh lick of green paint and the tiny garden was crowded with blue delphiniums, hollyhocks, pink rambling roses and pale crinkly honesty as the two girls walked up the path to Nab Cottage.

Renee loved to invite them for a meal. It gave her a chance to show off her latest culinary efforts, and they were always glad to accept. The electric fire was not switched on since the rain had stopped and a fitful sun was warming the August day, but the little blue budgie was still squabbling noisily with its alter ego in the mirror.

‘You’re cooking is really getting very good,’ Lissa told Renee as they all tucked in to delicious lake trout, baked to perfection with smoked crispy bacon. There were plump ripe strawberries to follow, piled high on a meringue nest.

‘I’ve you to thank for that. No one else has ever bothered to teach me anything.’
 

‘You’ll have to teach her to knit socks next,’ Jan said.

Renee looked puzzled, as well she might. ‘Why socks?’

‘Lissa’s family are experts but haven’t the first idea how to dance.’
 

Nobody else quite understood their hilarity. But that’s the way they were: silly and careless. Joking all the time. Life was fun and Lissa wanted to keep it that way.

Jimmy Colwith let his eyes rest on his young wife with pride. Dressed in her usual black pencil skirt which flattered her shapely figure, she wore a pink top with raglan sleeves and a wide vee neck that kept slipping off one lovely bare shoulder. Ripe as one of those luscious strawberries she was. It had been a lucky day for him when she’d walked through the door. He’d quite forgotten she’d ever had any connection with his son.

Lissa hadn’t. She was letting her own gaze stray to Derry’s face and found his warm brown eyes riveted upon his young stepmother. Her heart plummeted. So that was why he was reluctant to leave home? He still wanted Renee. The thought filled her with a sick dread. What a foolish innocent she was.