‘No, I couldn’t eat another thing, honestly,’ Tess said now, wriggling on her chair. She knew better than to get down until she was told she might do so, for the Throwers, though casual in many ways, believed that children should remain at the table until given leave to go. ‘Only Daddy doesn’t know where I am, and . . .’
‘Oh, go on with you; you can git down,’ Mrs Thrower said, seeing her dilemma. ‘Janet, you go along wi’ Tess, see if you can help. But be back here in half an hour, no later. The carrier’ll be along be then.’
‘Don’t forgit your bucket an’ flour bag, gal,’ shouted Ned as they scampered out of the back door. ‘Do you’ll never hey nothin’ to put your shrimps in.’
Tess paused long enough to yell back, ‘They’re packed already, bor Ned!’ before Janet had squealed ‘Race you!’ and they had set off, skidding on the cinder path, then erupting into the lane and pelting along it until they reached the gate of the Old House.
Peter Delamere was sitting at the kitchen table when they came in through the back door, placidly eating toast and reading a book propped against the marmalade jar. Tess thought he was the best-looking father any girl could have with his browny-gold hair and goldy-brown eyes and the neat golden moustache which tickled when he kissed her. She adored his chin, which had a deep cleft, and his neat ears and his beautifully kept hands with the golden hairs on the backs. He wasn’t as tall as Uncle Phil, but he was tall enough, and today he wore a brown-and-white checked shirt and brown corduroys, which meant he wasn’t going to go into the city to work, nor was he going to play golf. He would be at home, gardening, working in the house, having his dinner out on the daisy-studded lawn, picking an apple and sharing it with the blackbird which sometimes came right into the kitchen, it was so tame.
Tess went round behind him, put her arms round his neck and squeezed, and Peter grunted, removed her arms, pulled her round and gave her a hug. Then he took another big bite out of his toast.
‘Wretched child,’ he said fondly. ‘What sort of an hour did you get up this morning? I hope you haven’t been making a nuisance of yourself down at the Throwers’. Oh, good morning, Janet.’
‘Marnin’,’ Janet said. ‘She in’t never a nuisance, Mr Delamere. Mum telled her to mek the tea an’ she did!’
‘Well done, Mrs Thrower,’ Peter said absently. ‘Now I suppose you’ll want some breakfast kids. Well, there’s toast and coffee . . .’
‘We’re had a fry-up down ours,’ Janet said briefly. ‘We come to fetch Tess’s truck an’ do her jobs, if she’ve got any today.’
‘No jobs . . . well, unless you’ve not made your bed, sweetheart?’
Tess, shamefaced, admitted she’d not made her bed. Peter shook his head at her, but he was laughing behind the sternness, she knew.
‘Do that then, like a good girl. And tidy your room. I brought your bag down, and I’ve got some money for you.’
‘Money? Oh Daddy, thanks . . . but what’ll I want money for?’
‘Ice-creams? Gingerbeer? I don’t know, but I gave Mrs Thrower a bit for the boys, only I thought I’d hand you and Janet yours this morning . . .’ He grinned at them both. ‘Give you less time to lose it, I thought. It’s two bob each, so don’t spend it all at once!’
Two shillings! It sounded a great deal to both girls, Tess guessed, since she usually got tuppence on Saturday mornings and Janet, to the best of her knowledge, never received pocket money at all.
‘Daddy! Thanks ever so . . . we’ll be really careful, won’t we, Jan? And now we’ll go up and do my room.’
‘Good. And Tess . . .?’
‘Yes, Daddy?’ Tess paused, already through the kitchen door and standing in the hall. ‘What?’
‘Take care of yourself. You can’t swim, so don’t go taking chances. The sea’s a tricky old beast, though it can be great fun, of course.’
‘I know,’ Tess said tolerantly. ‘I’ve been before, Daddy.’
Her father snorted. ‘Once, with Uncle Phil and the cousins. But there’s no one I’d rather trust you with than Bessie and Reggie Thrower. They’ll keep you out of mischief.’
Tess agreed that they would and she and Janet hurried up the stairs and into her room, but her father’s remark had brought the dream back to her mind – the dream and its ending which always happened off-stage, so to speak.
Now she strained after recollection, but it would not come; it never did. The dream was in some weird way secret, private, a little glimpse into the hell a very small child can uncover for itself and then never share. And anyway, it was over. Whatever the young Tess had seen in the water, the older Tess – for was she not eight years old, now? – knew it meant nothing, was nothing to worry about. She had diffidently mentioned it once to her father, and Peter had stared at her rather blankly for a moment and had then asked her, in an oddly thin voice, just what it was she thought she’d seen in this sea-pool or whatever?
‘I don’t know,’ Tess had admitted. ‘That’s what’s so silly, Daddy. I never do see whatever it is I’m screaming about.’
Peter had lifted her up in the air and then lowered her into a close hug. It was a very different hug from the dream-boy’s hug; there was warmth in it, and comfort, and a solid, protective strength. ‘Sweetheart mine,’ Peter had crooned. ‘That’s what’s known as a nightmare; nightmares come when we’ve eaten the wrong sort of things or had a worrying day, but they don’t have any roots in reality, none at all. Think about it. Where do you live?’
Tess had been six at the time, still very conscious of identity, time and place. She had said in a singsong: ‘I’m Teresa Annabel Delamere and I live at the Old House, Deeping Lane, Barton Common, Norfolk.’
‘That’s it. And have I ever taken you to the seaside?’
‘No, never,’ Tess had said, but even as she said it a tiny shadow of doubt flitted across her mind. Never? It was easy to say, but did she really know such a thing to be true? Could she know it? In the time before memory . . .
‘There you are, then. So the only time you’ve been to the seaside was last year, when Uncle Phil took you and the cousins. So the nightmare has to come from that.’
‘Ye-es, only the beach in the dream wasn’t the same as the Yarmouth beach,’ Tess said uncertainly. ‘It’s a darker sort of colour, and the sea’s different.’
‘Ah, but that’s how dreams work, darling. They muddle up reality with fantasy and sometimes good people become bad and bad become good. I imagine, darling, that something in your mind remembers that trip to the seaside and muddles it up with . . . oh well, with something like everyone telling you never to play near the Broad alone, that water, any water, can be dangerous . . . that sort of thing. Does that make it clearer?’
‘I don’t know,’ Tess had said, unhappy not to be able to assure her beloved father that she now understood perfectly what the dream – or nightmare – was all about. ‘I’m not miserable in my dream, it’s nice right up to the end. And Yarmouth beach was white, and steep when you got near the water, and full of people, absolutely full. But the dream-beach is empty. Almost empty.’
‘Darling Tess, a beach is a beach! There’s sand, sea, shingle . . . honestly, sweetheart, there’s nothing real about a dream. It’s just like a game of pretend, do you see? Only it’s a game we can’t always control, which is how nightmares happen.’
The six-year-old Tess had looked into her father’s worried, loving face, and had simply wanted to take the anxiety out of his eyes. After all, she’d been dreaming the dream for a long while now, she could cope with it.
‘Oh, is
that
all it is,’ she had said, with a big sigh of mock relief. ‘Oh well, then, I shan’t worry about it. If I dream it again I’ll just make myself wake up!’
But she never mentioned the boy, because somehow it was he who made it so extremely real to her. The fact that she had recognised him, disliked him even, seemed to set the dream firmly in reality, as though it was in truth something remembered rather than something imagined.
‘You take that side, gal Tess, an’ I’ll take this,’ Janet said, bringing Tess sharply back to the present, to her sunny but dishevelled bedroom and the excitements of the day ahead. ‘We’ll hev it made an’ the room tidy in no time, do you’ll git wrong, an’ Mr Delamere might stop you a-comin’ alonga us.’
‘He wouldn’t,’ Tess said stoutly, but she began to tug at the bedclothes, nevertheless. ‘Once he’s given his word he won’t take it back.’
‘Well, good,’ Janet said encouragingly. ‘Where’s your bag?’
‘Downstairs, by the front door. I’d better put my fawn dress down for washing, though it won’t get done until your mum is back.’
‘Your dad might get someone else in,’ Janet said. ‘He wou’n’t do that, though, would he? My mum need the work.’
‘Course he wouldn’t; he’s going to manage, he said he could,’ Tess assured her friend. ‘Good, that’s done . . . let’s go down and watch for the carrier!’
The carrier’s cart was painted brown with a gold line round it and it was pulled by two horses, both huge beasts with polished conker-brown sides and long, flaxen tails. The cart, which was a large one, comfortably held all the Throwers and their personal possessions, though Mr Leggatt, who owned the cart, pulled a doubtful face when he saw the mountain awaiting his attention.
‘Will that all goo in, along o’ all them yonkers?’ he said mournfully. Janet whispered to Tess that Mr Leggatt did funerals as well as trips, and left Tess to work out just what she meant for herself.
‘Course, it ’ull,’ Mr Thrower said heartily. ‘Come on, lads, get all this here truck aboard.’
‘Well, I dunno . . .’ Mr Leggatt began, but was speedily forced to agree that it was possible when the boys had loaded the cart, leaving just about room for the family to squeeze in somehow.
‘Up you go, mother,’ Mr Thrower said encouragingly, when the children had managed to stow themselves away amongst the luggage like so many sparrows in a granary. ‘I’ll sit by the driver, but the kids’ll find room for a littl’un in the back.’
More laughter. Reggie Thrower was a small, whippet-like man with very large hands and feet and though immensely strong, he wasn’t really a match for Bessie Thrower, who was tall, broad and golden-haired, with the bluest eyes you could imagine and skin like milk. Now, she squeezed good-humouredly into the tiny space the boys budged up to make and beamed at Janet and Tess, who were perched on a cardboard box stuffed with vegetables and taking great pleasure in calling each other’s attention to everything they could see from their new vantage point.
‘There, off at last, eh, gals?’ Mrs Thrower said. ‘You comfy?’
Both girls assured her that the cardboard box was a delightful seat, and then Mrs Thrower got out a bag of small, early red apples and handed them round, to ensure some peace, she said. Certainly there was quiet whilst they munched, but then Henry kicked Ozzie and presently, Mr Thrower, who had been talking animatedly to their driver, swivelled in his seat.
‘You all right at the back, there? Now what do I allus say now? Podge, he don’t know nothin’, he’s too tiddly, but Hal, you should ’member.’
‘You say
Penny to the first one to see the sea!
’ the five-year-old Henry said triumphantly. ‘An’ you let me stand on the seat so it was all fair, an’ I was fust an’ all.’
‘That’s it. Now no talkin’ nor chatterin’, just you put your minds to bein’ fust to see the sea.’
Tess pretended to keep a look-out over the tops of the hedges – the cart was a high one – but really she was so happy that she could not concentrate on anything for long. The sweet sunshine, the marvellous scents of summer, Janet’s smooth, tanned leg pressing against hers, was a dream come true for Tess. She had been hearing about Palling and the Thrower exploits there ever since she could remember – now she was going to see for herself.
And presently Mrs Thrower delved into the blue cloth bag which shared her lap with Podge, and produced a rustling bag of sweets.
‘Here y’are, kids, I brung a foo cushies. Hand ’em round and no cheatin’. It’s one each an’ no more; savvy?’
Tess’s fingers delved into the bag as eagerly as anyone’s, because Peter thought sweets were bad for her teeth so she did not see many of them. She tucked a striped humbug into her cheek and sucked ecstatically. What a wonderful day this was going to be – what a wonderful week! Despite the dream, or perhaps because of it, she loved the sea and longed to know it better. She and Janet had found an old book, beautifully bound in dark-blue leather, on her father’s study shelves, called
Flora and fauna of an East Anglian shore
, and had familiarised themselves thoroughly with the contents in anticipation of this trip. Nothing they might find would fox them, they told each other, studying the illustrations of birds, fish and beasts, all of which managed to have a Victorian look about them, which fascinated Tess almost as much as the text.
‘It’s like cats,’ she told Janet. ‘You know the cat in
Alice
? Well, it doesn’t look like our cats, but it looks just like the cats in that illustrated Dickens, and like the ones in
Simple Susan
and other old books. I always wonder whether it was the cats or the artists that have changed, but this person, the one who illustrated this book, has managed to give even birds and crabs that sort of old-fashioned look.’
Janet had laughed. ‘I niver noticed afore, but you’re right, mor. Only I reckon we’ll recognise ’em from this, even if their ’spressions are different.’
So now, perched on the cardboard box with a gentle breeze lifting her dark hair and tangling it with Janet’s long, golden locks, Tess knew perfect happiness. She just knew everything was going to be wonderful – and she hoped that by the time she got back to Barton again, she would be able to swim. That, she thought, would be the best thing of all.
Because her father refused adamantly to let her go boating or sailing on the Broad until she could swim. And when the Thrower boys said they would teach her, Peter said at once that the Broad was no place for a beginner, it was far too dangerous.
‘When I can spare the time to teach you, that’s another matter, and once you can swim . . . well, you can have a boat, swim from one side to the other for all I care. But until then, sweetheart, you’ll stay on the bank. Is that clear?’