Icy and black, the whole weight of the North Sea behind it, it knocked her off her feet. Helpless, she was carried along, her arms and legs thrashing uselessly in the swirling current, knocking into bony rumps and sharp horns. There was a roaring in her ears. Her lungs were bursting. Then, just as she thought she could not hold her breath any longer, she crashed into something solid and held on with both arms and all her strength. She found her feet and dragged herself upright. Her head surfaced. Choking and gasping, she sucked in the blessed air.
She had fetched up against a tree. For several moments she just clung on to the slender trunk, shaking, gasping, thankful simply to be alive. Around her she could hear the cattle still lowing in fear, but now her only thought was for herself. She had to get to the house. The water was up to her shoulders and still rising.
‘Ann!’
A croak in the darkness. Her father. At first she couldn’t see him in the swirling confusion.
‘Ann! Help me!’
The moonlight caught his head. His hat was gone, his face was twisted in fear. He was being washed towards her, the tyrant reduced to a helpless rag doll by the raging force of the flood. Annie could see him trying and failing to get his feet to the ground, his arms flailing. An odd disconnected thought slid into her head. He hadn’t called her by her name in years.
A chance eddy brought him near to her, nearer—
‘Ann!’
There was terror in his voice, desperation in his face. His hand stretched out to her. He was three yards away, two. The events of her life seemed to whirl before her. She was six years old again, was cowering before him as he grasped her arm, his heavy hand beating her again and again. She was eleven. Her teacher said that if she worked hard, she could pass the exam for the grammar school. But her father sneered at the very idea. Grammar school was not for the likes of her. She was needed on the farm.
‘Please, Ann—!’
He was her father. He couldn’t swim.
‘Dad?’ she croaked.
She had only to let go of the tree with one hand and reach out to him.
She saw Bobby cowering, Bobby terrified at having failed to do some task way beyond his years and strength, Bobby called nothing but ‘that boy’ and forced to call his own grandfather ‘Mr Cross’.
‘Ann, for God’s sake—’
He was close enough for her to touch his fingertips. But she did not. And a moment later he was gone, swallowed up into the black water.
‘Dad!’ she screamed.
She let go with one arm and strained after him. The hungry current got her in its grip, tugged and sucked at her.
‘Dad!’
Frantically, she flailed about, trying to find him, to catch hold of him.
But it was too late.
CHAPTER TWO
July 1940
‘No MORE school, no more books, no more teacher’s dirty looks!’ Annie’s friend Gwen chanted as she danced along the road.
Annie followed with a heavy heart. This was her last day of freedom, the last day she would walk towards home with Gwen, the last day of laughing and chatting to her friends at break time, the last—
‘Let’s go and look at the beach!’ Gwen called over her shoulder. Her freckled face was pink with excitement, her girlish plaits and her white ankle socks contrasting oddly with the woman’s figure beneath her cotton frock.
Annie glanced down at her own woefully small breasts. That was something else that Gwen had more of than her. It wasn’t fair.
‘All right,’ she agreed.
Anything to put off going home.
Gwen waited for her to catch up and threaded an arm through hers.
‘I’m never going to open another book again,’ she vowed.
Annie sighed. ‘I probably won’t be allowed to.’
‘Oh, you—’ Gwen pushed her away and pulled her in again. ‘You’re such an old swot. Mr Clifton’s favourite! Teacher’s pet! What did he say to you, when he called you up to his desk?’
‘He wished me luck and told me to keep going to the public library,’ Annie admitted.
She was going to miss Mr Clifton, Annie decided. He had stuck up for her when her dad had refused to let her take up her scholarship to the grammar school. He’d offered to go and speak to her dad about it. Not that it had done any good, but at least he had tried. And he’d always been kind to her and encouraged her reading, getting her to try new authors and discuss what she had read.
‘No need to tell you that,’ Gwen said. ‘Oh, isn’t it lovely? We’re grown-ups now. We’re not kids any more.’
‘It’s all right for you; you’re going out to work. You’ll have money of your own. I’ll just be stuck on the farm, day in, day out,’ Annie said.
School had been her escape. Her father didn’t see the point of her going, but it was the law that children had to attend until they were fourteen, and even he had to obey that. He flouted it as much as he could, keeping her back when they were busy on the farm, but still Annie had been able to get away most of the time. But from now on, she was going to be tied. It was like a prison sentence, stretching away ahead of her, with no let-off for good behaviour. Already, her father had given notice to the elderly man who had worked for them for the last ten years. She was cheaper, and available seven days a week.
‘But you’ll get time off, surely?’ Gwen said. ‘He won’t have you working in the evenings. We can go to the pictures together.’
‘Yes—’ Annie tried to be optimistic. ‘He can’t keep me in all the time, can he? We’ll go to the pictures Friday nights.’
‘Cary Grant …’ Gwen sighed. ‘Humphrey Bogart …’
‘Clark Gable …’ Annie responded.
‘Who would you like to be, if you was a film star?’ Gwen asked.
‘Judy Garland.’
How wonderful to be Dorothy and meet the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion … how wonderful to escape from your farm and land in Oz. But of course you had to live in Kansas for that to happen to you. Whirlwinds didn’t tear across Essex.
‘Judy Garland? Oh, no. I want to be glamorous. I want to be Vivien Leigh.’
And meet Rhett Butler.
‘Oh, yes …’ Annie sighed.
Both happy now in their fantasy world, the girls marched arm in arm along the dusty summer streets of Wittlesham-on-Sea. The neat terraces of guest houses leading to the sea front still had ‘Vacancies’ notices hopefully displayed in their front windows, but many of the gardens had their roses and geraniums replaced by lettuces and peas as people answered the call to dig for victory.
When they reached the sea front, they stopped automatically and looked towards the pier.
‘Quiet, isn’t it?’ Gwen said. ‘My mum says it’s hardly worth keeping open.’
Gwen’s mum ran The Singing Kettle, a tearoom fifty yards from the pier entrance. The previous summer, the last summer of peace, it had been a little gold-mine, and Gwen had been kept as busy as Annie, running from kitchen to table with trays of teas and cakes and sandwiches, and back again with piles of dirty crockery. This year the visitors were few and far between. People were reluctant to go on holiday when invasion forces were threatening just across the Channel.
‘Blooming Hitler,’ Gwen grumbled as they surveyed the sprinkling of holiday-makers and the barbed wire entanglements running the length of the beach. ‘Gone and ruined everything, he has. That’s what my mum says.’
‘Yes,’ Annie agreed. ‘We’ve had to plough up the fields by the road because of him.’
Digging for Victory had meant that her father had had to change some of his farming practices. He hadn’t liked that at all, and she and her mother had been the ones to bear the brunt of it.
The girls turned away from the pier and strolled along together towards the southern end of the promenade. Even fewer businesses were open here, and the locked doors and boarded-up windows gave the prom a forlorn air.
‘D’you really want to go and work at Sutton’s Bakelite?’ Annie a
sked.
Gwen shrugged. ‘It’s good money, and it’s all year round,’ she pointed out.
Year-round jobs were at a premium in Wittlesham, where seasonal work was the norm.
‘Yes, but Sutton’s—Beryl’s dad,’ Annie persisted.
‘I know—’ Gwen said.
Both of them thought of Beryl Sutton, their sworn enemy.
‘—but it is war work. I’ll be making parts for aeroplanes and stuff. Wirelesses, that sort of thing,’ Gwen said.
‘I s’pose so. But Toffee-nose Beryl—’
‘Swanky knickers—’
‘Posh pants—’
They giggled happily, dragging up every insult they’d ever thrown at Beryl. But it still didn’t help with the deep jealousy Annie harboured, swilling like poison in her gut. Beryl had been allowed to go to the grammar school, when Annie had always beaten her in every school test they ever did. On top of that, they shared a birthday. Somehow, that made it much worse.
‘She won’t be there,’ Gwen pointed out.
No, Annie thought. She’ll be at school, for another two years. Lucky cow.
‘And her dad’s all right.’
‘Yes.’
That was another thing. Beryl’s dad was all right. He was nice. He was big and cheerful and adored Beryl. But then Gwen’s dad adored her, too. He called her his little princess and slipped her money for treats with a wink and a ‘Don’t tell your mother.’ Annie sighed. It wasn’t fair.
The closed up souvenir shops and cafés dwindled into bungalows as the cliff ran down towards the marsh at the edge of the town. As the sea wall joined the end of the prom, there was a no man’s land of nettle-infested building plots and little wooden holiday chalets on legs that was not quite town but not country either. The roads here were just tracks and there was a temporary feel about the place. On the very last plot, a field under the sea wall that took a corner out of Annie’s father’s land, was a holiday chalet called Silver Sands. It belonged to the Suttons, who let it out to summer visitors.
‘Looks like they’re opening it up,’ Annie said.
She was right. The windows and doors were open and the net curtains were blowing in the breeze. Rugs hung over the veranda rails. From inside came the sound of someone banging around with a broom.
‘Trust the Suttons to get lets when no one else can,’ said Gwen. ‘There’s a lot of people in this town don’t know what they’re going to do if this war goes on much longer. My aunty May’s desperate. She’s only had two families so far this summer, and lots of her regulars have cancelled. And my uncle Percy, he can’t work, not with his chest. And, like she says, rates’ve still got to be paid, and the gas and electric and everything, and the rooms kept nice, whether there’s visitors or not. She was talking to my mum about it the other day. Went on about it for hours, she did.’
‘Yes,’ Annie said.
Her eyes were on Silver Sands. It was a trim little place, painted green and cream with sunray-effect woodwork on the veranda rails. Around it was about half an acre of wild ground with roughly cut grass, a few tough flowering plants and a swing. Positioned as it was, right next to Marsh Edge Farm, it had always held a special place in her imagination. When she was little, she liked to picture herself creeping in and living there, safely out of the way of her father, her own small palace where she could order everything the way she wanted.
‘I wish it was mine,’ she said, without really meaning to let it out.
‘It’s only a holiday chalet like all the rest,’ Gwen said. ‘I dunno why you make such a fuss about it. You wasn’t half mad when the Suttons bought it! I thought you was going to burst a blood vessel!’
‘Well, why should they have it? Them, of all people? That Beryl …’
Annie’s voice trailed off. There, on the track leading to the chalet, was Beryl. It was as if she had been summoned like a bad genie by Annie’s speaking her name. Annie took in her grammar school uniform, the green and white checked dress, the green blazer, the straw hat with its green ribbon and green and yellow badge. Her guts churned with jealousy.
‘Ooh—’ she jeered. ‘It’s the posh girl. Look at her soppy hat! What’re you wearing that hat for, posh pants? Looks like a soup plate!’
‘Soup plate on her head!’ chimed the faithful Gwen.
Beryl glared at them. She was a solid girl with brown hair cut in a straight fringe across her broad face and thick calves rising from her white ankle socks. The school uniform that Annie envied so much did nothing for her looks.
‘Common little council school brats,’ she countered, her lip curling into a full, cartoon-sized sneer. She glanced behind her. ‘Come on, Jeffrey. Mummy doesn’t like us talking to nasty little guttersnipes. They might have nits.’
It was only then that Annie noticed Jeffrey Sutton, Beryl’s younger brother by a year, sloping up along the track towards them. He was also in grammar school uniform, his leather satchel over his shoulders, his green and black striped cap pushed to the back of his head. It was unfortunate for Beryl that she took after her mother while her three brothers favoured their father, for the boys had the better share of the looks. Jeffrey caught up with his sister and threw Annie and Gwen a conciliatory grin. You never knew which way Jeffrey might jump. His loyalties depended upon the situation.
‘Wotcha!’ he said.
Beryl rounded on him. ‘Jeffrey! Ignore them.’
Jeffrey shrugged and walked on, opting out of the situation. As he went, he said, ‘Bye!’
It was difficult to know who he was speaking to, but Annie leapt on the one word and appropriated it.
‘Bye, Jeffrey,’ she said, as friendly as could be.
She was rewarded by a look of intense annoyance on Beryl’s face.
‘So you’re going to be one of my father’s factory girls, are you?’ she said to Gwen, breaking her own advice of ignoring Gwen and Annie.
‘I’m going to be earning me own living,’ Gwen retorted. ‘Not a little schoolgirl in a soup plate.’
‘You are so ignorant, Gwen Barker,’ Beryl said, and stalked off up the track and in at the gate of Silver Sands.
‘Ooh!’ Gwen and Annie chorused and, linking arms again, marched after her, past the gate and on towards the sea wall. As they dropped arms to take a run at the steep slope, Beryl’s mother came out on to the veranda, her face set in lines of disapproval.
Annie couldn’t resist. She gave a friendly wave.
‘Afternoon, Mrs Sutton!’ she called cheerfully and, before Mrs Sutton had a chance to reply, the pair of them raced up the grassy bank, over the bare rutted path at the top and slid down the other side. They landed in a heap at the bottom, giggling helplessly and scratched all up their bare thighs from the sharp grass blades.
‘Did you see her face?’ Gwen chortled.
‘Sour old boot!’ Annie gasped.
It was warm and still at the foot of the sea wall, for the wind was offshore. There was a smell of salt and mud and rotting seaweed on the air. The very last of the Wittlesham beach was at their feet, a narrow strip of pale yellow sand and shingle that dwindled to nothing fifty feet to their right where it met the marsh.
Annie wrapped her arms round her legs and rested her chin on her knees, staring through the barbed wire entanglements, out across the fringe of grey-green marsh and wide expanse of glistening grey-brown mud to where the waters of the North Sea started in lace-edged ripples. It was friendly today, in the height of summer, the sunlight glinting off the gentle green waves. She let the peace steal into her with the heat of the sun. A curlew uttered its sad cry. She felt safe here.
‘Jerries are over there, across the water,’ Gwen said.
‘Mmm,’ Annie said.
That was what they said, on the wireless. It was difficult to believe right here, sitting in the sunshine.
‘My dad’s out every evening, drilling with the LDVs. No, not that. The Home Guard, it now is. Mr Churchill said.’
‘My dad doesn’t hold with it,’ Annie sa
id.
But then her dad didn’t hold with anything that meant cooperating with anyone else. And her dad would be expecting her home soon. She didn’t own a watch, so she had no idea of the exact time, but her dad knew when school ended, and how long it took to walk home. Reluctantly, she stood up.
‘S’pose I’d better go,’ she said with a sigh.
‘You got to?’ Gwen asked. ‘It’s the last day of school. It’s special.’
Gwen’s mum had promised her a special tea, and then they were all going to the pictures—Gwen, her sister and her mum and dad.
‘Not in our house, it isn’t,’ Annie said. ‘Have a nice time this evening. Tell me all about it.’
They scrambled to the top of the sea wall again. Gwen set off towards the town. Annie stood for a moment watching her, then turned and ran down the landward side and up the track beside Silver Sands. She couldn’t help glancing over the fence at the little chalet in its wild garden but, though the windows were still open, none of the Suttons were outside. She skirted round the back of the garden and struck out across the fields. The newly expanded dairy herd grazed the first two. Then there was an empty field that had been cut for silage. Ahead of her across the flat land, she could see the square bulk of the farmhouse and the collection of sheds and barns round the yard. Marsh Edge Farm. Home. It gave her a sinking feeling.
One field away from the house, Annie climbed over the gate and on to the track that led from the farm to the Wittlesham road. She looked at the yard as it grew steadily nearer. Was her father there? She started counting—an odd number of dandelions before she reached the hawthorn tree meant he was there, an even number meant he wasn’t. Nineteen—twenty—twenty-one. Bother and blast. Try again. If she could hold her breath as far as the broken piece of fence he wouldn’t be there …
She reached the gate into the yard. In winter, it was a sea of mud, but now, in summertime, it was baked into ruts and ridges in some places and beaten to dust by the passing of cattle hooves twice a day in others. Hens strutted and scratched round the steaming midden in one corner, the tabby cat lay stretched out in the sun by the rain barrel. A gentle grunting came from the pig pen. Annie started to relax. Perhaps he was in one of the fields on the other side of the farm. She could go in and have a cup of tea with her mum.
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