Treacherous Waters

by Treacherous Waters (retail) (epub)

  ‘Your Fergus. I expect you think he would object?’

  There was a very long moment of silence. Annie cleared her throat. ‘I… don’t have a Fergus any more,’ she said, turning back once more to watch the glowing palette of the evening sky that now was darkening by the moment.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Fergus. We aren’t getting married.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘There’s no need. It was my decision.’

  ‘I see.’

  As she started to walk back to the car, he fell into thoughtful step beside her. ‘It wouldn’t have worked,’ she said, and flashed him a glimmer of a smile. ‘I blame Mr Forster,’ she added, ‘and his cynicism. He made me think.’

  ‘And your conclusion?’ They had reached the car. Richard held the door open for her.

  She stood for a moment. ‘It begins and continues for such very slight reasons,’ she quoted. ‘Remember?’

  ‘Indeed I do. What’s the other bit?’ He frowned, pondering. ‘About his friends and their wives?’

  ‘I’ve friends who can’t remember why they got married, no more can their wives,’ she quoted promptly.

  ‘My.’ The word was soft. ‘You have taken it to heart, haven’t you?’

  She shrugged. ‘I just realised that if I had married Fergus, good and kind man though he might have been, there would come a time when I would feel exactly like Forster says. I don’t want that.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  She looked him straight in the eye. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ He handed her into the car, stood looking down at her, smiling. ‘At least that’s no bad place to start.’

  * * *

  They arrived back in Kew long after dark, Davie sleeping soundly curled up on the back seat. As the car purred to a halt outside the house Annie turned to Richard. ‘Thank you. It’s been a lovely afternoon. And all the better for being unexpected.’

  ‘I’m glad you enjoyed it,’ he said. ‘And you’ll let me take you to Southwold on Tuesday?’

  She laughed a little. ‘You saw Davie’s reaction when you suggested it to him. I think he’d run away from home if we disappointed him now!’

  He grinned. Davie stirred a little.

  ‘I’d better get him in to bed,’ Annie said, but did not move.

  ‘Yes.’ He was watching her steadily. In the darkness, very slowly, she lifted her loosely curled hand, brushed his cheekbone with the backs of her fingers. ‘Thank you again.’

  For a moment he did not move. Then he leaned towards her and very gently brushed her lips with his. She closed her eyes briefly, every sense concentrated on the exquisite pleasure of the touch. After a long moment he sat back. Neither of them spoke, nor did they touch each other again. ‘I’d better wake Davie,’ she said at last. ‘Will you come in for a drink?’

  He hesitated. Then, ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not tonight, I think. You need to get young Davie to bed.’

  She was taken aback – and more than a little disturbed – by the sharpness of her disappointment; and just as unprepared for the lift of her heart, the faint prickle of he suggested, softly, ‘Perhaps on Tuesday?’

  Annie smiled. ‘Tuesday,’ she agreed.

  Chapter Eight

  A little disappointingly, if not exactly unexpectedly, the British weather lived up to its deserved reputation for unreliability and they set off for Southwold the following Tuesday beneath lowering grey skies that would have done as much credit to November as to May.

  ‘You are sure you don’t mind?’ Annie asked, for the half-dozenth time, as Richard stashed Davie’s small suitcase on the back seat of the car.

  Davie, fidgeting impatiently, threw his mother a look of pure disgust. If you keep asking that, it said as clearly as words, then he’ll say ‘Yes’ and that will be that!

  Richard shook his head. ‘I’m looking forward to it. It’s years since I’ve been to Suffolk, and this young lady’ – he patted the car – ‘likes nothing so much as a good long run.’

  ‘It’s really very kind of you.’

  ‘I do think she’s a real cracker.’ Davie was running a finger along the long, gleaming green bonnet.

  Richard smiled.

  ‘Have you had her very long?’

  ‘A few months. I must say I think she’s the best I’ve had.’

  ‘She’s absolutely wizard,’ Davie said, ignoring his mother’s expressively rolled eyes. ‘Can I sit in the front?’

  Richard glanced at Annie, eyebrows raised in question. She shrugged, smiling. ‘If you don’t mind, why not? I’ll be in the front all the way back, after all. Mind you – I don’t talk the hind leg off a donkey the way Davie does. Well, I don’t!’ she added, mildly injured at the laughter that had brought.

  The big Wolseley purred slowly through the congested streets of London, through the trams and the buses, the plodding horse-drawn vehicles and the shiny modern motor cars. The pavements bustled with pedestrians, and bicycles wove their precarious way through the traffic. Davie was ecstatic.

  ‘That’s a Morris Oxford, isn’t it? It isn’t as nice as your car, is it? How fast will she go, Richard? Have you ever driven her really fast? Oh, I know you’re only supposed to go at twenty miles an hour, but that’s silly, isn’t it? No one bothers about it, do they? Hey – look at that motorbike! What a smasher! Look, Mother – d’you see?’

  Annie, settled comfortably on the luxuriously soft leather of the back seat, propped her elbow on the armrest, leaned her chin on her hand and watched the busy, crowded streets through half-closed eyes.

  ‘That’s a Ford. My friend Tommy’s father’s got a Ford. But, d’you know what? He only takes it out on Sundays.’ Davie crowed with laughter. ‘That’s really silly, isn’t it? What’s the point of having a car if you’re only going to use it on a Sunday? D’you know, they go by bus on the other days of the week, just like anybody else!’

  Annie smiled a little at her son’s excited chatter, turned her head to look at Richard. His thick, neatly cut reddish-brown hair grew to a point at the nape of his neck. His hands were big and relaxed on the steering wheel. He turned his head a little, half laughing, to answer Davie, and the light caught the line of his jaw, the lean planes and angles of his face, the narrowing of his eyes and the flicker of his long lashes as he smiled.

  ‘We’re going on the Lowestoft road, aren’t we? Mother and I looked it up on a map. It’s more than a hundred miles from London to Southwold. How long will it take, do you think? How much petrol will we use? We go past Chelmsford, and Colchester – the Romans were at Colchester, did you know? – and Woodbridge, and—’ He hesitated, frowning. ‘Somewhere else that starts with W. I can’t remember – where else, Mother? Mother? What was the other place in Suffolk that starts with a W?’

  Annie was still looking at Richard. It came to her suddenly that there was something absurdly, and perhaps dangerously, intimate in being able to study him so closely and unobserved. ‘Sorry, darling?’

  ‘The place we go through that begins with a W. In Suffolk. It’s got two words.’ Her impatient son bounced in his seat. ‘What’s it called?’

  ‘Oh – something Market. Wickham Market,’ she said absently.

  ‘That’s it. I say – look at that! A Rolls-Royce. With a chauffeur,’ he accented the word exaggeratedly, pushing his small nose in the air with his finger. ‘Pooh, pooh, pooh!’

  That was too much. Annie straightened in her seat. ‘Behave yourself, Davie.’

  Davie, surprised if the truth be told that he had got away with as much as he had, subsided, for the moment at least.

  Annie put her chin on her fist and looked out of the window again, very thoughtfully.

  The crowded working-class areas of the east of London were made no more picturesque by the grey dullness of the weather. No Rolls-Royces with chauffeurs here. Even Davie found little to exclaim about, apart from the looming bulk of the Tower of London – which prompted a few interesting asides a
bout executions and torture – and the towering cranes of the docks, which Richard admitted exerted a romantic lure for him far beyond the harsh reality of the gruelling everyday realities of life at sea, or in the docks themselves. ‘Silks and spices from the East, Davie,’ he said. ‘Cotton from America. Tea from Ceylon. Sugar from the West Indies. This is where they all come to. The greatest docks in the world.’

  ‘Together with the greatest exploitation in the country,’ Annie said tartly, but so quietly that she did not expect him to hear her.

  But his hearing was sharp. He glanced at Davie, then across his shoulder, amused and enquiring. ‘You’re a Labour supporter? You surprise me.’ His glance was quizzical.

  ‘I’m a labour supporter – small “L”. I’m not actually political at all. But I read the papers. I talk to people. I make up my own mind. And – yes – I do think it’s wrong that decent men and women should be exploited so that the likes of you and me can live – relatively at least – the life of Riley. I didn’t know anything about the casual labour system until I read about it last year during the dock strike. Whatever your politics, you can’t approve of a system that treats men no better than work animals, that pauperises families and prevents them from caring properly for their children. Not just in the docks. In the mines; on the railways. No wonder they strike. I don’t blame them. Yet all the government can do is order out the army to shoot them. Very constructive, that.’

  He laughed a little. ‘Well, well – sounds as if we’ve a real little revolutionary in the back there, Davie. We’ll be in for it when she can vote.’

  ‘Well, while we’re on the subject, there’s another thing,’ she replied with mild asperity. ‘Why can’t I? What makes the great and the good believe that a man of twenty-one can use a vote sensibly while a woman must wait until she’s thirty? It’s patently ridiculous.’

  Richard swung the big car out onto a main road, edged his way into the traffic. He was grinning broadly. ‘Looks as if we’re going to have an interesting journey,’ he said.

  As at last they drove out into the flat, green Essex countryside the traffic eased, and the road cleared. The car was warm, the ride smooth and comfortable. Half listening to Davie and Richard as they talked, Annie found herself dozing.

  She woke up some time later, stretching and yawning. The sky had cleared a little and the sun gleamed fitfully between clouds. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘We’ve just gone through Ipswich.’ Davie had a map spread on his lap. ‘I’m the navigator,’ he added. ‘Richard says I’m very good at it.’

  Not for the first time, it occurred to Annie that for a man who had no children of his own Richard appeared to have an almost uncanny knack of knowing exactly how to keep Davie happy and interested; a knack that Fergus, for all his efforts, and despite being a father, had never managed to acquire. ‘How much longer, do you think?’

  Richard flicked a glance at her through the rear-view mirror. ‘An hour or so, I should think. Are you comfortable? Do you want to stop?’

  ‘No, no. I’m quite happy.’ She yawned again, sleepily.

  Richard laughed, and the undisguised affection in the sound warmed her heart. ‘Go back to sleep. Davie’s doing an excellent job. We’ll wake you when we get there.’

  They drove into Southwold at about half past midday. The weather now had cleared completely: the sun shone and a cool breeze blew from the sea. Jane was waiting for them, a simple lunch on the table. ‘I thought you might like a stroll along the beach before you go back?’ she suggested. ‘It seems a shame to come all this way and not to stretch your legs.’

  Annie glanced at Richard. ‘Would you like that?’

  ‘Very much.’

  ‘I’ll come,’ Davie said, around a mouthful.

  ‘I rather thought, Davie,’ his grandmother suggested, ‘that you and I might do some shopping. At Mr Goffin’s. Essential supplies for a grandson’s visit, so to speak.’ She grinned like a child herself. Mr Goffin it was who ran the sweet shop that was famous county-wide for its gobstoppers.

  ‘Oh. Yes, please.’ Davie looked at his mother. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’

  Annie shook her head solemnly. ‘No, no. You go ahead. We’ll be quite all right.’

  * * *

  ‘I really like your mother,’ Richard said later as they strolled along the water’s edge, feet scrunching on the shingle.

  Annie glanced up at him, smiling. ‘I’m fairly fond of her myself.’ They had left behind the huts and the fishing boats of the longshoremen, together with the bathing machines and the picnicking, sandcastle-building families on the town’s popular beach, and were strolling north along the wide, empty stretches of the deserted coastline, the waters of Sole Bay glittering restlessly to their right. Brandy, having raced around like a mad thing for the first half-hour, now trotted docilely at Annie’s heels. Shrimp boats bobbed, far out on the water.

  Richard tilted back his head and took a deep breath of the cool, fresh air; then suddenly he stopped walking and turned to Annie, both his hands outstretched.

  With no hesitation she took them. It was as if she had been waiting for the gesture.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  She laughed, startled. ‘For what?’

  ‘For letting me bring you here,’ he said lightly. ‘For walking with me. For sleeping in the back of my car.’ He glanced down, and all at once the laughter was gone. ‘For taking my hands,’ he said quietly. ‘For being Annie.’

  In the silence the sea washed almost to their feet, then rippled away again, restlessly tumbling the shingle as it went. Annie said nothing.

  Still holding her hands he drew her close to him, bent his head, kissed her very gently. Annie stood quite still, his lips on hers. She tasted salt. The breeze ruffled their hair, the sea rushed and murmured, above them a seabird wheeled and called, mournful and haunting; and still, gentle and undemanding in the cool air, he kissed her. After a moment he released her hands to lift his own and cup her face. She closed her eyes; in that moment it was as if every sense she possessed was more vivid, more acutely tuned than she had ever known before. It was as if the world had stopped. The sound of the sea and of the bird call, the brush of the sea breeze on her skin, the touch of the man’s salty lips on hers: the moment was perfect. Too perfect. Painfully perfect. When finally he lifted his head she leaned to him and he wrapped his arms about her, holding her to him, looking over her head to the shimmering distances of the sunlit sea. She rested her head against his shoulder, the rough, sea-damp tweed of his jacket scratching her cheek.

  Neither spoke for a long time.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said at last. ‘I really shouldn’t have done that.’

  She stirred, opened her eyes, lifted her head to look at him. ‘Why not?’

  He looked down at her. ‘I wouldn’t want you to think—’ He stopped.

  ‘At the moment,’ she said softly, touching his lips with her finger, her words almost lost in the sound of wind and sea, ‘I’m actually not thinking at all.’

  His arms tightened around her; he laid his cheek against her hair. And Brandy, bored, suddenly shot yapping along the beach to chase off a huge seagull that had had the temerity to land at the water’s edge nearby. The spell was broken. Laughing they stepped apart, hands still linked, turned to stroll back towards the town with the dog trotting proudly beside them. Neither broke the silence that had fallen between them; but when they arrived back at Jane’s cottage they were still holding hands.

  * * *

  ‘I got your letter,’ Jane said quietly, a little later. She was standing at the kitchen window, cup and saucer in hand, watching Davie and Richard in the garden playing an arcane and apparently rule-less game involving sand buckets, spades and tennis balls.

  Annie looked up. ‘And?’ she asked quietly.

  Her mother shrugged, glanced a smile across her shoulder. ‘I can’t say I was actually surprised.’

  ‘Do you think I did the right thing?’

 
‘Would it matter if I didn’t?’ Jane was genuinely amused.

  Annie shook her head and stirred her tea. ‘No.’

  ‘That’s what I thought.’ Her mother joined her, sat down across the table from her. ‘But for what it’s worth – yes, under the circumstances, I think you did.’

  ‘Circumstances?’ Annie made only a half-hearted effort at innocence. She knew her mother too well.

  Jane did not even dignify that with an answer; she simply raised wry brows and smiled.

  Annie tinkered with her spoon in her saucer. Her mother watched her in patient silence. Annie raised her eyes, opened her mouth to speak, shut it again.

  ‘What?’ Jane asked.

  Annie shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It’s just… things seem to be happening rather quickly.’ She lowered her eyes again, blushing a little. ‘Richard just kissed me. On the beach.’

  ‘I rather thought he had.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’ Her daughter spoke in a rush. ‘I don’t know what he sees in me. Oh, I don’t mean’ – she stopped, shook her head – ‘I don’t think I know what I do mean.’

  Jane laughed softly. ‘That,’ she said, ‘sounds very much like the onset of love. Or, of course,’ she added, ‘of infatuation?’

  ‘Exactly.’ Annie was quick to pick that up; it was the thought in the forefront of her own mind. ‘How do you tell the difference?’

  ‘An age-old question, that, and not an easy one to answer.’ Jane got up, took her cup and saucer to the sink and ran it under the tap. Then she turned, leaning on the sink with arms folded, surveying her daughter. ‘Annie, darling, you’re a grown-up woman. Just a few weeks ago you were bemoaning the lack of romance in your life—’

  ‘I know. That’s the trouble, can’t you see? How do I know that—’

  ‘You can’t know anything,’ her mother interrupted gently.

  In the garden outside Davie was laughing so hard he could hardly speak. ‘Oh, come on, Richard – nobody can be as cack-handed as that—’