‘Probably,’ Tess agreed. Privately, she thought that her early years were still a mystery to her, so they were unlikely to find any other points of similarity. ‘Is that the turning?’
‘Must be. Come on, best foot forward!’
They had barely begun to cross the marshes, however, with their pools of water blue in the warm May sunshine, when Tess stopped short. She had thought of something.
‘I’m not really dressed for going on the river, Mal. I mean a skirt and high-heeled shoes aren’t ideal. I’m most awfully sorry, I just thought you’d want to stay in the city, you see.’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ Mal said. ‘Tell you what . . . wellingtons!’
‘Eh?’
‘They don’t cost a lot and village shops often stock ’em. Or plimsolls. Or you might borrow something from the landlady. The fellers say she’s a good sort.’
‘Well, that’s all right then,’ Tess said, falling into step beside him once more. ‘Tell me, Mal, why do the fellers come all the way out here?’
She glanced at him as she spoke and thought his colour rose a little, but he shrugged. ‘Dunno. Quiet, good food . . . that sort of thing.’
Tess laughed softly.
‘And the landlady who’s a
good sort
? Do – do they bring girls out here?’
Mal nodded, avoiding her eye, and then turned and grinned sheepishly at her. ‘Yeah, you’ve got it. But I wouldn’t do that; it’s too soon. You’re safe, Tess. I could tell at a glance you weren’t that kind of sheila.’
‘No, I – I don’t think I am,’ Tess said. ‘You know I’ve never thought of these marshes as beautiful, but they really are. Look at that!’
They were crossing a small, hump-backed stone bridge which crossed a deep dyke, overhung with hazels and margined with thick, tasselled reeds. Two mallards paddled along in the centre of the dyke, followed by a convoy of tiny dark-brown ducklings. In the foreground groups of cattle grazed, and on the horizon a disembodied sail, very white against the blue of the sky, moved smoothly along on the unseen river.
‘It’s like a picture I saw in a shop in the city,’ Mal said. ‘I wanted to buy it for Kath . . . my mother . . . but it was too expensive – fifteen quid!’
‘It was probably painted by someone important,’ Tess said wisely. ‘My father used to buy paintings occasionally, you get used to the prices. Now we’d better step out or we’ll arrive after the bar’s closed – and I am thirsty.’
Mal seized her hand and squeezed it and Tess, responding, thought she had seldom felt such happiness. This was a wonderful place, she would always love it; the marshes, the blue arc of the sky, the reflecting pools of water. There was a quiet which she had never known rivalled, and a salty freshness on the breeze which blew steadily enough to sway the reeds which lined each pool. She thought,
I’ll remember this moment for the rest of my life,
and was grateful to Mal for his wisdom. Spending a day in Norwich would not have been the same.
They reached the village at last and slowed. It was a pretty, old-fashioned place with a shop, a cluster of cottages and a village green surrounded by chestnut and oak trees in pale new leaf. They bought a cheap pair of plimsolls from the shopkeeper, who explained that they had belonged to his own daughter, but she had outgrown them, and then headed for the river. The shopkeeper had told them that the pub was just a few yards further along the road, though he spoke in an accent so broad that Tess realised Mal was totally at sea. However, being naturally polite, he thanked the old man and they left the shop, unashamedly hand in hand.
‘Did he say we were nearly there?’ he asked plaintively when they were out of earshot. ‘I guess he must have, but . . .’
‘You didn’t understand a word of it,’ Tess said, giggling as she led the way down to the river bank. ‘That’s what I call a real Norfolk accent.’
‘Oh? It could’ve been Scandinavian for all I could make out,’ Mal admitted. He looked around him, at the broad and placid river Bure, and at the marshes, stretching as far as the eye could see. ‘Not many trees about, are there?’
‘Not many. Probably there’ll be a few around farmhouses, but they don’t seem to have planted trees round the pub, apart from that apple tree.’ She glanced appreciatively at the Ferry Inn, which was whitewashed and tiled and pleasant, and not more than ten or a dozen feet from the river itself. ‘Where’s the front door?’
‘There. Come on, let’s go and ask if the landlady can get us a bite to eat.’
Together, with diffidence, they crossed the threshold and entered a bar parlour, black-beamed and still smelling of food and, more faintly, of beer. A large woman, polishing brass, looked up and smiled at them.
‘Can I help you?’
‘We’d like a bite to eat, and then later on we’d like to hire a boat,’ Mal said. ‘The fellers said you hired boats.’
The landlady put down her cloth and went behind the bar. ‘We do indeed. Now what ’ud you like to drink? I’m on my own, daytimes, so you can take a seat and enjoy your drinks whilst I rustle up some grub.’
It was a day out of time, stolen from the war, a day at peace. They sat in the bow window with the sun pouring in on them and Mal drank beer and Tess drank lemonade shandy and they both ate the sandwiches which Mrs Figgis, the landlady, made with a prodigal hand.
‘Cheese and pickle, home-cured ham and egg and cress,’ Tess said with awe, examining the contents of the big blue china plate which Mrs Figgis set down before them. ‘Pre-war food! Where do we start?’
‘On the ham,’ Mal said gloatingly. ‘I’ve not seen real food like this since I left Australia – no, not since I left the Wandina.’
‘Where’s that?’ Tess said, through a ham sandwich. ‘Oh, isn’t this
good
?’
Mal took another huge bite, chewed and swallowed before he spoke.
‘The Wandina’s the cattle station I worked on before I left Queensland and went south. My mother and stepfather live in Queensland, too, but they’ve got a different cattle station, the Magellan. Ma’s the best cook you ever met, except that our cook on the Wandina was getting to be pretty damn good by the time I left.’
‘I see,’ Tess said, helping herself to egg and cress. ‘Do you know, Mal, that’s the most you’ve ever said to me since we first met? Did I gabble, coming over?’
Mal considered this seriously, then took a pull at his beer.
‘Nope. You just told me about your family and the Old House. Nothing about yourself, really.’
‘I didn’t? But it seemed as though I talked and talked. Anyway, no one can talk and eat this wonderful food. Can you pass me a cheese one this time, please?’
When they had eaten they set off for a walk along the river bank. The bank was higher than the river, presumably to assist in keeping the river in its place and the water-meadows dry, though Tess doubted that the highest banks could prevail against the winter floods when they came.
‘It’s your turn to talk now,’ she told Mal as they walked. ‘Tell me all about yourself and your family, where you live and how you run a cattle station.’
Mal talked in his slow, considered way and watched her as he did so. Such a lively, beautiful face she had, he even loved the way her eyebrows grew, and the faint golden freckles across the white skin of her small nose.
She was the girl he wanted to spend the rest of his life with, he had known it the moment he set eyes on her, he couldn’t get over that. All those girls in Rhodesia, all the ones back home, had been sweeties, but not one of them had stirred him as Tess had. Yet she was black-haired and he preferred blondes. She was very slim and he liked buxom girls. She was pale-skinned and he liked bronzed beauties.
But even saying that, there were a million things he loved about her. Her shyness, the way a flush crept over her face when he teased or touched her. She had a sort of delicacy – other girls, he concluded, were like roses and arum lilies, but his Tess was a wild flower, a primrose rather than a rose, a lily of the valley rather than the other sort.
She had told him about her home and her family, father, stepmother and stepsister. About her beloved father, who had been killed in the early days of the war and about someone called Mrs Thrower, who lived down the road and helped with the chores. She had told him about her job in the museum, and how she had gone into the Land Army so that she could still be near her stepmother and sister. He had wondered aloud how she managed the work and she had said, flushing brightly this time, that she was stronger than she looked and that it was often more knack than strength, lifting and carrying on the farm.
Now it was his turn. He told her about leaving the Magellan and going to the Wandina, about Uncle Josh and the hands, about Coffee and her mother. He tried to explain the fascination of the outback, the weirdness of the wildlife, the extremes of the seasons, when during the dry season great areas of bush would simply burst into flames and during the wet would be many feet under a roaring torrent of flood water.
‘That’s it,’ he said at last. ‘Now you know all there is to know about me.’
She smiled. Sceptically.
‘I don’t think so,’ she said quietly. ‘I don’t think I know all about you by a long chalk. But it’ll do for now.’
He stared at her. He hadn’t said a word about his real father, the sort of life he had led prior to his mother marrying Royce, nor about Petey.
‘You, too?’ he said. ‘You, too?’
She didn’t ask what he meant, widen her eyes, pretend surprise. She said quite simply, ‘Yes, me too. Half remembered, half forgotten. The things which made me what I am, I suppose.’
He nodded. ‘Too right. But we’ve plenty of time to talk, now. We’ll talk in the boat, then again whilst we eat our dinner, on the bus going home, in the taxi, outside your front door . . .’
‘Oh, the boat – can you row?’
He grinned. ‘You soon learn, in the wet. You?’
‘You soon learn if you live by the Broad. Shall we take it in turns to row, then? We could get further than on foot.’
‘Right. We’d best turn back now, I suppose, or we won’t have time to row much further than we’ve walked!’
He turned her round and she stopped short, then hugged him, giving him a quick, embarrassed kiss on the chin. He caught her and held her, looking down into her face, wondering whether he should kiss her properly, deciding against it. For now.
‘Oh thanks, Mal, for this lovely day – and you’re right, we’d better start back.’
The boats were pulled up on the bank a bit further along from the pub. An old man took their money, pointed out the best boat, helped them launch it. Whilst they were settling themselves, Mrs Figgis came out of the pub with an elderly basket which she handed down to them.
‘A foo scones,’ she said briefly. ‘An’ some of my farmhouse fruit-cake. Have a bit of a picnic tea, ’cos I’m plannin’ dinner for seven. That’s roast duck tonight.’
They thanked her and took the basket aboard, then Mal leaned out of the boat and stroked the head of the old golden retriever which had followed the landlady out on to the grass. The dog wagged a slow tail and then waddled after his mistress, nose uplifted the better to smell the roast duck.
Mal chuckled. ‘That old feller knows a good thing when he smells it,’ he said. ‘But that smell means grub for us, not for him. Are you comfortable, Tess? Off we go, then.’
The day had started out fine and bright, with seagulls crying faintly overhead and the breeze smelling of the sea. But by the time they set out in the boat, talking desultorily as they did so, clouds were beginning to appear on the horizon and presently a light rain started to fall. Tess, who had been wondering whether Mal would presently stop rowing and kiss her, was annoyed with the rain, which somehow banished the thought of kissing as though it were a pastime only possible in fine weather.
‘We’re miles from the inn, we can’t get back in time to eat our tea, so where shall we have our picnic?’ she said, as the light drizzle turned into real rain and the wind began to get up. ‘There are some willows ahead . . . shall we see if they’ll give us some shelter?’
They reached the willows and drew into the bank. Mal tied up whilst Tess jumped ashore, the basket which Mrs Figgis had lent them clasped in her arms.
‘Damn!’ she said angrily, gazing out across the flatness of the marshes. ‘Damn and damn and damn! Oh, Mal, I’m sorry I suggested boating, I should have remembered the weather always lets you down.’
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ Mal said. ‘What’s that down there?’
The rain was falling fast now. Tess peered through the grey curtain of it at a hollow in the flatness. He was right, there was something – a farmhouse? Unlikely, with no surrounding fencing, no track leading to it.
‘It could be a barn,’ she said doubtfully. ‘Shall we take a look? Only what about the boat?’
‘No one’s likely to steal it out here,’ Mal pointed out. ‘There isn’t a soul for miles. Coming?’
He took the basket in one hand, then extended the other invitingly.
‘Oh, all right. I can’t get much wetter, I suppose,’ Tess said rather gloomily. She had been so delighted that Mal appreciated this lonely, marshy countryside and wanted him to take an impression of the beauty and calm away with him when he returned to his station. But no one could help the weather, and at least they would have the bright morning to remember. Accordingly, she took his hand but was soon forced to release it as the slope down which they were scrambling grew steeper. ‘Goodness, how odd! It is a barn, right in the middle of nowhere, I don’t suppose it’s been used for years.’
They reached the barn and scurried inside. Dusty piles of marsh hay met their eyes, and implements so old that Tess was unsure of their use. But everything was bone-dry so clearly the place was weatherproof.
‘Come on, at least we can eat with a roof of sorts over our heads,’ Mal said, leading the way inside. ‘Now look at that – a seat, specially for us.’
Someone, at some time, must have used this old place for a quiet smoke, or perhaps to eat, as they would. The seat was rough, rustic pine, but it held two nicely. They squeezed on to it and began to unwrap the food.
As they ate, Tess glanced around her. The barn was thatched with reed, quite professionally enough to keep out the rain, but the walls were made of split willow; you could see daylight all around, and the doorway had never boasted a door. The wind blew a little rain in, but not enough to inconvenience them. It was dim, but somehow cosy. Tess munched scones and then had a piece of cake. She was very happy.