‘You will have luncheon with me,’ Marianne said firmly. ‘No, don’t shake your head, it’s all arranged. Follow me – the dining-room is a good walk away and you will have to push my wheelchair.’
‘Luncheon – lovely!’ Tess said immediately. ‘I thought it would be a sandwich on the station, this is luxury indeed. But what’s this about a wheelchair?’
‘Oh, it’s only temporary, whilst my thigh heals,’ Marianne said airily. ‘They took a strip of skin off my thigh to make me a nice cheek, and it hasn’t healed up as it ought. Walking far is painful, but it will clear up in a week or two. I have patience, now.’
She got to her feet and Tess bent over and kissed her, noticing for the first time that Marianne seemed to have shrunk.
‘You’re a very brave woman, and I love you,’ she said quietly. ‘I think Peter would have been tremendously proud.’
‘Thank you, dear,’ Marianne said composedly. She limped slowly back to her room and, sitting down on the bed to catch her breath, added: ‘I love you too, you know. How nice it is to have such a daughter as you, Tess!’
Tess laughed. ‘How nice it is to have such a mother as you, Marianne,’ she echoed. ‘And now, where’s that wheelchair?’
Telling Marianne had been a pleasure, but telling Ashley was not. He was polite, but he could not hide his incredulity over her feelings.
‘Of course I’m glad he’s alive,’ he said robustly. ‘But dammit, girl, how can you know he’s the right person for you? You knew him for a week, it might be years before he gets home, by then he could be in love with someone else! What you’re suffering from isn’t love, it’s infatuation, it has to be. So don’t try and wriggle out of our long friendship on the grounds that I’ll spoil anything for this Malcolm fellow, because it won’t wash. If you’re sick of having me around, have the courage to say so!’
‘I’m sick of having you around,’ Tess said promptly.
‘Oh, rubbish, you know you love me,’ Ashley shouted indignantly. ‘Or if you won’t admit to that, at least admit you like me and enjoy having me around. You love it when we go for a spin, or to a dance, or when we visit old friends . . .’
‘I know I do, but I’m just trying to tell you, friendship is fine, the other isn’t.’
‘The other? What’s
the other
when it’s at home?’
‘Oh . . . lovership, I suppose,’ Tess said, after a moment’s thought. ‘Ownership, too. Yes, that’s it. No ownership, otherwise we’ll call it a day, Ash.’
They had met on neutral ground, in Lyons café on the Walk, for high tea, but even so, they were quarrelling. At least, Tess wasn’t, but Ashley’s raised voice had already seized the attention of the people at adjoining tables. And he doesn’t give a toss, Tess thought furiously. He doesn’t regard other people as at all important. They can listen or not, it’s no skin off his nose – but it jolly well is off mine. I don’t like being the object of stares and smiles and you’d think, after goodness knows how many years of claiming he knows me as no one else does, he’d have cottoned on to that simple fact.
She said so. Ashley lowered his voice and then, infuriatingly, leaned across the table and kissed her full on the mouth. Tess drew back and slapped him – it rang out like a pistol shot – and Ashley said: ‘Who’s making an exhibition of themselves now, then?’ and captured both her hands in his, smiling blandly when she shrieked at him, in a whisper, to let her go.
They made it up, of course. Ashley apologised abjectly, said he understood about the ownership bit, and behaved so beautifully in the cinema – the film was
Casablanca
– that Tess found it easy to forgive him, easy to believe that they could be friends after all.
He saw her on to her bus with a chaste kiss on the brow which made Tess giggle to herself; it had been the sort of kiss, she thought, that Archbishops or Popes bestow on an erring but still loved parishioner. But that was Ashley for you, and she knew that this time he would be good, because he understood, at last, that if he wasn’t it was the end of what had been a pretty good friendship, by and large.
I’ll miss being constantly badgered in a way, Tess mused to herself as the bus chugged slowly across Wroxham bridge and past Roys store. It was after ten o’clock and black as pitch outside, but the hump of the bridge was unmistakable and the bulk of Roys equally so. Indeed, from here on Tess would be on the alert so as not to miss her stop, because to find yourself a mile or two from your intended destination, just because you’d gone off into a dream and not remained alert, was a wartime hazard which she did not wish to face tonight.
But a glance round the bus reassured her on that score. The Ropes’ eldest son, in his uniform, was sitting near the door. Good, company for half the walk, Tess thought with satisfaction, and someone near enough to the door to watch out that the driver stops at the top of the lane. She relaxed back into her seat once more. She would spend the next ten or fifteen minutes thinking about Mal, since she seemed to have Ashley under control at last.
Seventeen
THE RELIEF WHICH
Tess had felt on hearing that Mal was a prisoner of war was destined to be short-lived, however. On a freezing cold January day in 1944 she had a brief letter from a young woman she had worked with at the Castle Museum. The girl had joined the WAAF but she and Tess had corresponded from time to time and now the young woman wrote to say that her brother had been killed in a POW camp.
He tried to escape
, the letter said sadly.
He never could bear being cooped up. They caught him tunnelling under the wire and shot him.
Tess had been stunned, shattered. She had telephoned Ashley and read the letter aloud in a trembling voice and he had assured her that Mal would be fine.
‘He’ll not be stupid enough to try for an escape bid, not this late in the game,’ he said bracingly. ‘From what you’ve told me, he seems to have settled in pretty well, by and large. Didn’t you say they had amateur operatics and a drama group going? And that they’re learning languages and stuff?’
‘Oh, yes. Come to think of it, Mal talked about learning German – my God, Ash, do you think it’s so that he can escape as well? D’you know, I can’t imagine, now, why I was so complacent over his being taken prisoner. He could be killed easier, in a way, like a rat in a trap.’
Ashley chuckled. ‘I like the simile, but I don’t imagine Mal would! Don’t be a little idiot, Tess. Worry about things when they happen, not if they happen. Make plans for the future, knit him gloves, anything which is sensible.’
‘I know you’re right, really,’ Tess said resignedly. ‘But Ash, I’m deathly scared and that’s the truth.’
‘Of course you are, you wouldn’t be human if you weren’t. But Tess darling, he’s an independent sort of chap, Mal. He’ll do the right thing, never you fret.’
‘But Ash, remember he’s an Aussie. He’s used to the wide open spaces, to being free. Suppose he finds being imprisoned suffocating and decides that anything would be better that that?’
‘Being shut up in the cockpit of an aircraft doesn’t allow for displays of claustrophobia,’ Ashley reminded her. ‘Look, I’ve said before, he’s a sensible bloke and he’s got you to think of. He won’t jeopardise your future together, I’m sure of it. He wants to get back to you, Tess! Look at it like that and before you know it you’ll be together again.’
Ashley had never sounded so positive when speaking of Mal before, quite the reverse in fact. After a pause Tess said sulkily: ‘But I thought you said I was just infatuated with Mal and he with me. Now you’re saying he loves me so much that he’ll stay in a prison camp rather than put himself in danger. You could equally well say he’d break out and run for it to be with me earlier.’
‘Don’t be so bloody-minded,’ Ashley snapped. ‘I’m not saying he’s right to want to come back to you, especially since you seem determined to show me how nasty you can be, I’m telling you why he’ll just sit on his arse and wait, the way you seem to want him to. Look, I know telling you that things are coming to a head over there, and that Mal will know it, doesn’t mean you won’t worry, but at least you may not worry so much.’
‘Yes, I do see. Thanks, Ash. Sorry I was so horrible,’ Tess said contritely. ‘I’m just sick with worry and misery, to tell you the truth. I don’t even seem able to think straight.’
‘I know, sweetheart,’ Ashley said, immediately comforting. ‘I can see all too clearly what you’re going through. You felt he was safe in the camp, simply sitting out the war and now, because of your friend’s letter, you realise that there is a darker side to it. But there’s no point in fruitless worrying, so stop it. Think about something else – the future, your work, me, anything – and face forward. Get it?’
‘Yes. I’ll be sensible and look to the future,’ Tess said. ‘Thanks, Ash, I couldn’t ask for a better pal than you.’
‘That’s all right, sweetheart. And keep your pecker up, for Mal’s sake if not for your own. How’s Marianne?’
‘She’s very much better,’ Tess said. ‘She’s going back in March for another operation to do something about her mouth, but she really is much better. I don’t know whether she and Maurice really will marry, but they spend an awful lot of time together, and she’s being sensible and optimistic, which is easier now that she’s not in constant pain, she says.’
‘Good, good,’ Ashley said heartily. ‘Tell you what, sweetheart, why don’t you nip over to Blofield the next time you’re free, and stay with my parents for a few days? They’d love to have you and it might do you good to get right away from Barton for a bit.’
‘I might,’ Tess said cautiously. ‘They – they won’t want to talk about the war, will they?’
‘Oh, Tess, honestly!’
‘Well . . . and Ash, what about the weather? If it’s cold here, which it is, what’ll it be like in Germany?’
‘Cold as well, but from what I’ve heard the POWs have a good few tricks to keep warm and cheerful. Look, I must go . . . promise me to stop worrying and try to look on the bright side?’
‘I promise I’ll do my best,’ Tess said. ‘Sorry to be such a misery, Ash. It’s the shock, I think. When I’d thought I’d faced everything I had to face and it was just a matter of waiting, someone suggested a possibility that – that wrecked my peace of mind. But you’ve made me see straighter, at any rate. I’ll be okay.’
She rang off. She was in a public call box on Davey Place with a queue of people waiting patiently in the cold outside so she left the box immediately, smiling an apology at the queue. She pulled on her gloves, settled her hat more firmly on her head, and set off for the bus stop. She had three days off, because the frost was into the ground and accordingly farm work had eased up a bit. They couldn’t plant or plough, the cows were all in and she, Susan and Molly had just finished whitewashing the insides of all the farm buildings, so Mr Sugden said she might as well have a few days off.
She had come into the city to try to buy some wool. Knitting was all the rage in weather like this, and Molly had just finished a blue woolly jumper which was as warm as it was pretty. Very envious, she and Susan had decided to emulate this feat of industry, and she had actually managed to buy some wool, though it was a rather uninspiring peachy-pink colour.
I wonder whether I might go out to Blofield now, Tess mused to herself, emerging at the top of Davey Place steps and regarding Castle Meadow, which seemed pretty bleak in the icy wind which swirled the dead leaves along in the gutters. If I just gave the Knoxes a ring . . .
She turned round abruptly, to hurry back to the telephone box she had just left, and collided with someone.
‘Sorry,’ they apologised in unison, and then exclaimed, equally in unison: ‘It’s you!’
‘Yes, it’s me,’ Andy said. ‘What a bit of luck, do you know I called in at Willow Tree Farm on my way to see Aunt Salter and they told me you were on three days’ leave? I was going to pop in to the Throwers’, because I knew the Old House had been burnt out, and Mrs Sugden told me you often went to Staithe Cottage. Only then some girl said you’d come into the city to buy knitting wool and mightn’t be back till late. So I thought I’d come in myself and try to buy something unrationed for my tea and there you were – or rather, here you are!’
‘Yes, here I am,’ agreed Tess. ‘What brings you to Norwich, Andy? It’s been ages . . . well, years . . . since you were here last.’
‘True enough. I’ve been abroad, but things are coming to a head over there, so they brought me back and I’m going to be desk-bound for a bit. Working here and there, in London, Portsmouth . . . anywhere they can find room for me, I suspect. And that’ll last until the summer, anyway.’ He peered at her in the grey and cloudy afternoon light. ‘What’s up, love? You look a bit pale and peaky.’
‘It’s Mal, the chap I’m going to marry. Did I tell you I was going to marry an Aussie?’
‘I don’t recall it,’ Andy said cautiously. ‘It’s been ages since we really talked Tess, and I – I don’t always receive letters. Look, why don’t we go along to the Scotch Tea-rooms and get ourselves some tea? Then we can talk in the warm.’
‘So you see, I was feeling pretty depressed,’ Tess said when she had brought Andy up to date with her affairs. ‘Fancy you not knowing that Mal was a POW, or that Marianne had been badly burned in that explosion – I know you hardly ever answer my letters, but I did think they’d be saved for you.’
‘Sometimes people don’t know where I am, or they forward my letters but by the time they arrive I’m not there,’ Andy said. ‘I’m most awfully sorry about Mrs Delamere, Tess. What a dreadful thing to happen. I remember the hoard, of course – she got very cross when you called it that – and her French boyfriend, but that must have been in ‘forty-two. I’m afraid Auntie hardly ever passes on what she would think of as “local gossip”, though she told me about the Old House, of course. Dear me, you must have thought me a poor sort of friend not to write and offer my condolences. By the way, did you ever do any more digging around to find out about your real mother? Lord, what a pair of innocents we were – detecting away and never getting round really to
doing
anything!’
‘It’s my fault. I should have gone and visited Ziggy’s sister, Mrs Whatsername,’ Tess said. ‘But at first I didn’t want to go ahead by myself and then when the war came, and I found Mal, it simply didn’t seem to matter.’