Anna shook her head. “I don’t know, really. Truly.”
“Is it what you said the other night, about them wanting to get rid of you at home? You said you knew why, but it was a sort of secret.”
Anna hesitated. Was it? She hardly knew. Anyway this was the wrong minute for talking. Already she could see that Wuntermenny was preparing to come back. “Look,” she said, pointing along the shore, “he’s tying up the wood into a bundle. In a minute he’ll start dragging it back on the rope. We can’t talk now.”
“Bother, oh bother!” Marnie looked annoyed. “I thought we had the beach to ourselves.” She seized Anna’s hand and began running up towards the sandhills, pulling her along with her. “Meet me somewhere tomorrow,” she said quickly. “Can you get out early in the morning?”
“Oh, yes! I was going to go mushrooming.”
“Good. Where will you be?”
“Along the marsh, towards the windmill.” Marnie’s face clouded for an instant. “Sam said that was the best place. I thought I’d go down the other dyke.”
“Oh, all right. Stay on the dyke, then, till I come. Then I’ll be sure to see you. I’ll come over the fields. Run now, before he comes back!”
Marnie danced up the slope, waved her hand and disappeared into the sandhills. And Anna ran down to the water’s edge again, laughing secretly to herself as Wuntermenny came trudging up with the rope over his shoulder and his eyes bent on the ground. He had never even seen Marnie.
Chapter Sixteen
MUSHROOMS AND SECRETS
ANNA WOKE EARLY next day, happier than she had been for a long while, and crept out of the house before even Mrs Pegg was stirring. Today she was going mushrooming with Marnie!
She ran along the coast road, her hair streaming in the wind, past the crossroads and the farm where the cows were already being milked. It was a splendid, breathtaking morning, with brilliant sunshine and a strong warm wind blowing from the south west, fresh and sweet, with no sting in it – only a smell of sea and grass and marsh.
She came to a row of cottages with their curtains still pulled, and stopped for a moment to get her breath. As she leaned over the low fence, looking at the clumps of dahlias and gladioli swaying in the cottage garden, the wind dropped suddenly and she heard the rich, low chiming of a clock striking seven inside the house. It was such a cosy, indoor sound – reminding her of Sunday afternoons, boiled eggs for tea, and honey with hot scones – that for a moment she almost forgot where she was. Then the wind blew up again, warm and jolly and boisterous, and she ran on again, glad not to be shut up in that stuffy cottage.
On the farther dyke – another long, grassy bank that stretched as far as the sea – she stopped and looked around for Marnie. But there was no sign of her yet.
She walked along the dyke, looking around as she went, amazed how far she could now see over the flat countryside. To her right, cows were grazing in a distant field, looking like tiny wooden models painted in splodges of brown and white, and black and white. Away to her left the windmill, looking like a brightly painted toy, was shining in the early morning sun. And in front of her lay the marsh, shimmering in a heat haze, with the blue line of the sea beyond it.
But nowhere could she see Marnie.
She was disappointed. She sat down among the grasses and wild flowers that covered the dyke, and fixed her eyes on the distant fields. She knew that as soon as she saw the tiny blob of blue that would be Marnie’s smock moving across the fields, everything would be all right. It would take at least ten minutes, running, for her to reach the place where Anna sat, but it would be all right. Marnie would have kept her promise.
She heard a rustle in the grass beside her, and a tiny noise that might have been a chuckle. She looked down and saw Marnie’s face laughing up at her from the bank.
“You do look a solemn goose, staring like that. What are you looking for, mushrooms in the sky?”
“Goodness!” Anna was amazed. “However did you get here? You’re almost magic!” She saw then that Marnie must have been lying in the grass on the other side of the dyke, and had merely pushed her way up silently on her stomach, lying low to surprise her. But it did seem very odd the way Marnie always appeared right beside her when she least expected it.
“Come on, slow coach, mushrooms!” Marnie seized her hand and together they ran down into the field, their hair blowing out behind them, their ears deafened by the noise of the wind. It buffeted them this way and that, almost knocking them over, like some big playful animal. Marnie knew all the best places for mushrooms, and in a while they had picked enough to fill the two paper bags Anna had brought with her.
They flung themselves down on the bank again, laughing.
“How on earth did you know exactly where to go each time?” Anna asked. “I couldn’t even see those little button ones till we were right on top of them.”
“Well, I ought to know the best places by now,” said Marnie. “I’ve been here long enough.”
“You are lucky.” Anna was envious. “How long?”
“Every summer of my life – as long as I can remember.”
Anna, watching her, saw that her eyes were the same colour as the sea, and her hair, blowing across her face, was pale yellow, like the dry grasses on the dyke, only lighter. She thought she was the prettiest girl she had ever seen, and hated her own dark hair and sunburnt skin. I look like a witch compared with her, she thought, hating herself.
“What are you looking so gloomy about, all of a sudden?” said Marnie. She slid down the side of the bank into a hollow. “Come down here, out of the wind.”
They lay, side by side, sucking the ends of grasses, while the wind roared by over their heads, scarcely stirring their hair. In the sudden quiet, Anna murmured, “You are lucky. I wish I was you.”
“Why?”
Anna wanted to say, because you’re pretty and rich and nice, and you’ve got everything I haven’t, but she was suddenly tongue-tied. It would have sounded so silly. She chewed the end of her grass gloomily and said nothing.
“Tell me now who wanted to get rid of you, and why,” said Marnie. “Don’t your parents love you?”
Anna shook her head. “I haven’t any parents. I’m – well, sort of adopted. I live with Mr and Mrs Preston. They’re called Uncle and Auntie, but they’re not really.”
“Oh, poor you! And are they cruel to you?” Marnie sounded almost as if she hoped they were.
“No, they’re very kind to me,” said Anna. “At least, she is. I don’t see him very much, he’s always busy, but I think he’s kind too. He’s quite nice.”
“But what happened to your real parents?”
“My father went away – I don’t know where – and my mother married someone else,” Anna’s voice was flat and monotonous – “and then they went away on a holiday – and I was staying with my granny – and they got killed in a car accident.”
“Oh, poor you!” Marnie was suddenly sympathetic. “How dreadful for you. Did you go into mourning? Did you mind terribly?”
“No, I didn’t mind at all. I don’t even remember it. I told you, I was living with my granny…”
“Go on.”
“Well, then she died,” said Anna flatly.
“Oh, but why?”
Anna shrugged and pulled up another long grass, biting it between her teeth. “How should I know? She went away to some place because she said she wasn’t very well, and she promised to come back soon, but she didn’t. She died instead, at least that’s what Miss Hannay said.”
“Who’s Miss Hannay?”
“A lady who comes to see me sometimes. At least, she comes to see Mrs Preston and talk about me. It’s her job, you see, to go and see children who’re sort of adopted like I am. She has to see me, too, and she asks about school and things. She’s quite nice, but I never know what to say to her. I did ask her once about Granny – because I sort of remembered her – and she said she’d died.” She paused, then added defiantly, “So what
! Who cares?”
Marnie looked shocked. “But didn’t you love her?”
Anna was silent for a moment, frowning at the ground. Then she blurted out sullenly, “No, I hate her. And I hate my mother. I hate them all. That’s the thing…”
Marnie looked at her with puzzled eyes. “But your mother couldn’t help being killed,” she said.
Anna looked surly. “She left me before she was killed,” she said defensively, “to go away on a holiday.”
“And your granny couldn’t help dying,” said Marnie, still being reasonable.
“She left me, too,” Anna insisted. “She went away. And she promised to come back and she didn’t.” She gave a dry little sob, then said angrily, “I hate her for leaving me all alone, and not staying to look after me. It wasn’t fair of her to leave me – I’ll never forgive her. I hate her.”
Marnie said, trying to comfort her, “In a way I think you’re lucky to be sort of adopted. I’ve often thought, secretly, that I’m adopted – don’t tell, will you? – and in a way I wish I was. That would prove how terribly kind my mother and father are, to have adopted me when I was a poor little orphan baby with no-one to look after me.”
It was Anna’s turn to be surprised. “I should have thought anyone would rather have their own mother and father – if they knew them,” she said, turning over another secret trouble in her mind. She looked at Marnie thoughtfully. “If I tell you a deep secret will you promise never to tell?”
“Of course! We’re telling secrets all the time, aren’t we? I wouldn’t dream of telling.”
“Well, it’s about Mr and Mrs Preston. I told you they’re kind to me, and they are, but I thought they looked after me and everything because they – well, because I was like their own child, but I found out a little while ago—” she lowered her voice almost to a whisper, “they’re paid to do it.”
“Oh, no!” Marnie’s eyes grew wide. “Are you sure? How do you know?”
“I found a letter, it was in the sideboard drawer. It was a printed letter and it was something about how the council was going to increase the allowance for me, and there was a cheque inside as well.”
“Oh!” Marnie breathed. “What ever did you do?”
“When she came home I tried to ask her about it. I couldn’t say I’d read the letter, at least I didn’t want to. Anyway I wanted to ask her first. So I said didn’t it cost an awful lot to feed me, and hadn’t my new winter coat cost a lot, and things like that. And all she said was that they liked to do it and I wasn’t to worry, and if it was because I’d heard her saying they were hard up I wasn’t to take it seriously. Everyone said they were hard up and it didn’t mean anything.”
She paused for breath, then went on quickly, “So I kept on asking questions about money and how much things cost, and things like that. I tried and tried. I gave her every chance I could to tell me. But she wouldn’t. She just kept on saying she loved me and I wasn’t to worry. Then afterwards – when I went to look – the letter had gone. She’d hidden it. So then I knew it was true.”
Marnie was thinking seriously. “Does that mean she doesn’t love you, though?”
“I think in a way she does, sort of,” said Anna, trying to be fair. “But you can see the difference, can’t you? How would you like to have someone paid to love you? Anyway, after that, I think she guessed that I knew. She kept looking at me as if she was worried, and wanting to know why I was always asking questions about money. And she kept trying to do things to please me. But it wasn’t the same then – it couldn’t be.”
Marnie had an idea. “Why don’t you ask Miss Hannay?”
“Oh, no!” Anna looked shocked. “That would be mean. Anyway I couldn’t talk to her about it, I hardly know her. She knows all about me, but I don’t know anything about her, not really. It would have been mean to ask her behind their backs. Anyway I knew already. I didn’t need her to tell me what I’d found out for myself. But—” her voice broke suddenly and a tear trickled down the side of her nose, “I did so wish she’d told me herself. I gave her such a lot of chances.”
Marnie moved nearer and touched her hair. “Dear Anna, I love you more than any girl I’ve ever known.” She wiped the tear away and said, suddenly merry again, “There! Does that make you feel better?”
Anna smiled. Yes, she did feel better. It was as if a weight had been lifted off her. Running back across the fields with Marnie, she felt as light as air. And even when Marnie had left her, and she was running home alone with the mushrooms, her face kept breaking into a smile for the pure joy of it.
On the corner she saw Sandra standing with two or three other children.
“Daft thing! Daft thing!” Sandra called when she saw Anna coming. “My mum says she’s daft. Talks to herself, on the beach, she does. And frightened my little cousin ever so, when he wasn’t doing nothing. Rushed up to him on the marsh, she did. My auntie said she looked fair daft, running like mad.” She turned to a little boy in a blue plastic mackintosh who was standing beside her. “That’s the girl, ain’t it, Nigel?” He nodded his head solemnly. But Anna ran on, hardly noticing.
As she turned into the lane she could still hear Sandra calling after her, “Daft thing! Daft thing!” but she did not mind enough even to feel angry.
Chapter Seventeen
THE LUCKIEST GIRL IN THE WORLD
ANNA AND MARNIE met nearly every day now. They met on the beach, in the sandhills, and once they went mushrooming again in the early morning – but not in the same place. Marnie said no, she wasn’t going so near that dreary old windmill, and when Anna asked her why, she pretended not to hear and raced on ahead.
As they crawled through the sandhills, searching for rabbits, or ran along the hard sand at low tide, they learned a lot about each other. Anna told Marnie all about home – she still found she could never tell her about the Peggs; when she was with her she always forgot all about them – and Marnie told Anna about her parents; her father, who was in the navy and often away, and her mother – the lady in the blue dress – who was more often in London than in Little Overton. Anna learned that for most of the time Marnie was alone at The Marsh House with her nurse and the two maids, Lily and Ettie.
“So you see, as long as they’re happy gossiping in the kitchen or telling fortunes, I’m lucky because they don’t even miss me and I can get out,” Marnie told her, skipping about on the sand in an exaggerated way as if to show how happy and free she was. Anna could not help laughing. “And it’s so lovely when the others come back! Mother’s so beautiful – everyone tells her so – and I feel so proud. And Father’s so handsome, and so kind. You’ve no idea how kind my parents are! Sometimes I think I’m the luckiest girl in the world.”
“I think you are, too,” said Anna.
“But now I’ve got you I’m even luckier!” Marnie flung her arms round Anna’s waist. “You don’t know how much I wanted someone like you to play with! Will you be my friend for ever and ever?” And she would not be satisfied until they had drawn a circle round them in the sand, and holding hands, vowed eternal friendship. Anna had never been so happy in her life.
“It’s funny,” Marnie said one day, “but sometimes I feel as if I’ve been waiting for you to come here for years and years.”
Anna looked up from the sand where, on hands and knees, she was diverting the course of a small stream. “I know,” she said. “I feel as if I’ve been waiting to come here for years and years too. Which way shall I run this stream?”
“Bring it over here,” said Marnie, patting the sides of a sandcastle she was building, “then it can go round our garden. This is going to be our house,” she said, half laughing, half serious. “I’m making it for us to live in, just you and me.”
They were on the far side of the marsh, where sea lavender and marsh weeds gave way to hard sand. Here, when the tide was out, they spent hours altering the course of streams, and making tiny villages out of mud and sand. Even before a house was completed Marnie would sta
rt making a garden for it, collecting sprigs of sea lavender to make bushes, and wild harebells to stick along the sides of each minute garden path. When, next day, they found the tide had washed it all away, she was undismayed and would start on another all over again. But Anna was always a little regretful for the lost houses.
“We’ll live here all by ourselves,” Marnie said, shaping the top to make a roof. “And we won’t have any maids either.”
“Tell me what Lily and Ettie are like,” Anna said.
Marnie sat back on her heels and made a face. “All right, I suppose. Lily’s quite nice. She makes chips and brings them to me in bed sometimes. But Ettie’s not so nice. She’s bad tempered, and she likes frightening people.”
She made a chimney pot out of wet sand and balanced it on the roof. Then she said with a sigh, “They used to be quite fun, but not now. Ettie’s got a friend in the army who used to write to her – she was quite jolly then – but I think he’s stopped now. Secretly, I believe he writes to Lily instead, but I’m not sure. So now Ettie’s terribly cross and ugly. She and Lily had a fight one day in the kitchen, and when Nan came down she found them crying and Lily said Ettie’d pulled her hair out, and Ettie said Lily’d stolen her boyfriend. It was quite frightful.” She looked at Anna with wide eyes, then picked up her trowel again.
“Go on,” said Anna. “What happened then?”
“Well, they were screeching at each other, and Nan said if they didn’t shut up she’d see they got their notice – that meant she’d tell Mother when she came back and they’d have to go. But Nan doesn’t want Ettie to go because she tells good fortunes in the tea leaves. And I don’t want Lily to go because she tells me stories sometimes, when she brings me the chips in bed. So I said, ‘Oh, no, don’t make Lily go!’ and that was silly, because Nan found out I was listening – I was hiding on the stairs, you see—” She broke off and shivered.
“So what?” said Anna.
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