The Girl by the River

by Sheila Jeffries

  Kate went into the cottage and came out with a bucket of water. She carried it over to the nearest horse, a bay cob with a shaggy black mane trailing almost to the floor. She put the grey metal bucket down and the horse drank noisily. Along the street neighbours appeared with buckets and took them to the horses.

  ‘Thank you kindly, ma’am.’ The dark-eyed gypsy lad gave Kate a smile and a nod.

  ‘Can I bring my children over to stroke your horse?’ she asked.

  ‘Yer welcome, lady. I can see you love horses.’

  ‘I do,’ Kate beamed at him. ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Prince.’

  ‘He’s wonderful. So GOOD, aren’t you, Prince?’ Kate gave the horse a kiss on his soft muzzle. She ran to fetch the girls who were waiting with eager faces. She lifted Tessa down from the wall.

  ‘You hang on to her, Kate,’ Freddie said anxiously. ‘Don’t let her get under his feet.’

  Kate could feel Tessa trembling with excitement when she put her down next to Prince. The horse lowered his head graciously to the two children, blowing hot air out of his velvety nostrils. Tessa gasped and turned big eyes to look at Kate. ‘He’s like a DRAGON,’ she whispered.

  ‘A dragon?’ Kate laughed in delight. ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘’Cause his breath is on fire,’ Tessa said. She reached out and ran her soft fingers through Prince’s mane, entranced by its heavy, wiry fronds. The sun glistened through it in ripples of silver and tinges of blue.

  Then she did something unexpected, something that took Kate’s breath away. Tessa parted the festoons of mane as if they were curtains, crept through them and sat down between the horse’s front legs. She reached up and touched the softness of the horse’s belly hair. And Prince never moved a muscle.

  ‘Mummy!’ hissed Lucy. ‘Tessa’s being naughty.’

  Kate trusted horses. She knew better than to reach in and drag Tessa out. ‘Leave her alone. She’s all right,’ she said. She felt Tessa was having a magical experience and to break it would be sacrilege. Even so, she was relieved when Tessa emerged, her face radiant.

  ‘Prince loves me,’ the child whispered, ‘and I felt his heart beating ever so slowly under his fur.’

  Kate picked Tessa up. ‘Stroke him here,’ she said, rubbing Prince’s neck just behind his ear. ‘He likes that.’ She had a lump in her throat, remembering Daisy, the huge Shire horse she had loved as a child. She felt it was an important experience for Tessa, a moment of trust and bonding, and finding unconditional love, the kind of love which Tessa might not find in humans. A child like Tessa was going to have a hard, hard journey in her search for love.

  Predictably, Annie was not happy and neither was Freddie.

  ‘Fancy letting her do that!’ Annie was ranting. ‘A three-year-old child. She could have been killed. I’ve never been so frightened in my life, Freddie. My old heart is thumping.’

  ‘Calm down, mother. She’s all right.’

  ‘THAT KATE,’ Annie glared at him. ‘Just because she’s a farmer’s daughter, she thinks she knows it all. Will you say something to her, Freddie? You’ve gotta take her in hand. Lay the law down.’

  ‘I’ll talk to her later,’ Freddie said, to appease his mother. Laying the law down wouldn’t work with Kate, and he shared her conviction that rare moments of happiness were precious for Tessa. ‘And I won’t hear a word against Kate,’ he added, raising his voice just enough to silence his mother.

  Sensing the animosity, Kate steered Lucy and Tessa away from Annie. She took them to meet two gypsy women who had baskets burgeoning with paper roses and tistie-tosties which were irresistible golden yellow pom-poms made from freshly gathered cowslips. She bought two for a penny, and gave one each to Lucy and Tessa who buried their faces in the fragrance and brushed their small fingers through the pillow-soft blooms. Soon Lucy was teaching Tessa the old rhyme as she threw her ball of cowslips up in the air:

  ‘Tistie-tostie, tell me true

  Who shall I be married to . . .’

  Kate stood looking at the paper roses in amazement. ‘How do you make these? They look so real!’

  ‘They’re made from stretchy crepe paper,’ the gypsy woman told her. ‘We cut ’em out, roll ’em up and curl the petals with scissors. Then we dip ’em in ’ot wax. You can ’ave five for threepence, lady.’

  Kate was tempted to buy some for Annie, but she guessed what the response would be. ‘I don’t like artificial flowers,’ Annie would say haughtily. Do without them, Kate thought, and moved on to buy clothes pegs, ten for sixpence. Freddie had given her five shillings, so she parted with one of them, and piled the twenty wooden clothes pegs into the pocket of her flowery apron.

  Freddie took his box of knives down the length of the convoy until he came to the knife grinder’s barrow, beautifully painted with elaborate scrolls and pictures of birds pecking at bunches of grapes. A man who looked like Grumpy in the seven dwarves was sitting on the seat, pedalling vigorously as he held a knife against the spinning grindstone. He glanced into Freddie’s box. ‘Sixpence,’ he said, ‘for that lot. Take me about ten minutes.’

  ‘I’ll come back for them.’ Freddie handed him a silver sixpence and walked on towards the end vardo. He caught a glimpse of sequins twinkling on the curtains, and now he could read the lettering – ‘Madame Eltura, the one and only true fortune-teller’. The vardo looked closed and rather dilapidated. He wondered if she had died. The horse, different from the one he remembered, was dozing, its eyes closed and one hind leg resting.

  Freddie didn’t want to be obviously looking, so he sat down on the low stone wall outside the bank and lit a fag, watching the vardo without appearing to do so. He didn’t feel conspicuous with people milling around in front of him. He was stubbing the end of his fag out on the pavement when the door of the vardo opened. A young woman with tresses of wavy dark hair stepped out, a basket over her arm laden with sprigs of white heather, her eyes surveying the crowded street. She looked up at the sky which was now overcast by a looming cloud, a cloud with a silver lining as it billowed over the sun.

  The young woman turned and helped a small wizened figure with a crooked walking stick to climb down to the road. Freddie tensed. Time to go home, he thought. What am I doing here? The truth was that he didn’t know. He’d felt compelled to come, even if he didn’t speak to her. Something in his heart was smouldering with a feeling of impending change. So he waited, wanting it and not wanting it, thinking he would sit there and be invisible. He’d let the young woman and her elderly granny go on down the street with their basket of white heather.

  He froze in disbelief when Madame Eltura’s piercing eyes found him instantly and stared across the street, right into his soul. She nudged the younger woman, pointed directly at him, and the two of them made a beeline for Freddie.

  Madame Eltura was tiny, and bent almost double, clutching the crooked stick, her ancient hand bedecked with rings that glittered as fiercely as her eyes.

  There was no escape. He hoped no one he knew would see him there, especially not Annie.

  ‘I remember you, good sir.’ Madame Eltura’s eyes pinned him to the wall. ‘You cross my palm with silver, because I’ve got something new to tell you, sir, something very important. I didn’t pick you out of the crowd for nothing. I was compelled to come over to you – compelled – and I’m a Romany Gypsy, sir, I see only the truth.’

  She used the word ‘compelled’ the way he’d felt it. An unseen magnetic force. Directing his life!

  ‘Don’t ask me any questions, sir, and don’t tell me anything,’ she continued, ‘and whether you cross my palm with silver or not, I’m going to tell you – because I have to.’ She moved closer. ‘That little girl in your life, her name begins with a T, and she’s got a special destiny, and you are her guardian, her spiritual guardian. There’s something you must do – today – this very minute, to help her . . .’

  Freddie waited, hardly breathing. He felt as if he and Madame Eltura were inside a pri
vate bubble of light that excluded everything and everybody.

  ‘There’s something you’ve been thinking about,’ she said, ‘and you must do it – today. It’s a place you have to go to, and it’s on the road out of this town, the road that leads to the hills. You will know it by the three big pine trees, and you will know it from the angels. They sent you up there, and you’ve been procrastinating, sir, believe me, I know because those same angels sent me over here to talk to you. You must go there, today, and make up your mind – courageously. You have nothing to fear, and everything to gain.’

  Madame Eltura shut her mouth firmly. She nudged the young woman who gave Freddie a sprig of white heather. He took it and tucked it into his breast pocket. He gave the old lady a shilling, doffed his cap to her, and walked away without speaking.

  How did she know? How could she possibly know what was in his mind? That place with the three tall pine trees. How could she know he had been there more than once? It was his secret. He’d told no one. He’d tried to forget about it. But it haunted him, it followed him wherever he went, like the rising moon bobbing along the dark hedges, beaming between the elm trees like an eternal, invincible face. Madame Eltura was uncannily right. Her words became footsteps as he walked. ‘Make up your mind – courageously. You have nothing to fear – nothing to fear.’

  The sky was darkening to a translucent grey as Freddie picked up his box of sharpened knives and headed home, no longer seeing the Romany Gypsies. He paused only to speak to Kate. ‘I’ve got a job to do.’

  ‘On a Saturday?’ Kate said, surprised. He wasn’t good at keeping secrets from Kate. Once she sensed a mystery she would ferret and ferret until she found out. So he added, ‘It won’t take long.’

  ‘All right, dear.’ Kate looked puzzled. She stared after Freddie.

  ‘He’s up to something,’ Annie said. ‘I know that look.’

  Freddie went upstairs two steps at a time. He dragged the rug from under the bed, pushed the bed sideways, and used the newly sharpened bread knife to lift one of the floorboards. Dust rose from the dark space, and the smell of mice and mould. Freddie lay down and reached his arm in there until his hand touched cold metal. He withdrew a square red Oxo tin with a lid. Working quickly, with one ear listening for anyone coming up the stairs, he prised the lid off the tin. Inside were three fat rolls of bank notes. He crammed them into the inside pocket of his jacket, and quickly replaced the floorboard, the rug, and the bed.

  When he left the cottage, the gypsy convoy was moving on and it was spotting with rain. Annie, Kate and the children were on their way home, with Annie carrying the tistie-tosties and Lucy and Tessa contentedly licking a shiny brown toffee apple each.

  Freddie hesitated, his hand on the door of his lorry. Make up your mind – courageously.

  ‘Can you come with me, Kate?’ he asked her.

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘’Tis a secret,’ Freddie said, his eyes twinkling.

  ‘Ooh – I love secrets! How exciting. Can we all come?’

  ‘No – just you – please,’ Freddie said. ‘Mother will have the children, won’t you? Just for an hour.’

  ‘Can’t you take Tessa with you?’ Annie said. ‘I don’t mind Lucy.’

  ‘No, I can’t take Tessa – please, Mother, just for once, will you try and manage?’

  ‘Don’t look as if I’ve got a choice,’ Annie said resentfully. She brushed the sleeve of his jacket. ‘Look at you – covered in dust. What have you been doing?’ She patted the bulge of bank notes stashed in his jacket pocket. ‘What’s that? A lump of lardy cake?’

  Freddie shook her off. ‘Please, Mother – just look after the children.’

  Annie crouched under the table, her arms and legs quivering with terror. She sat awkwardly, her short legs splayed out, her head jammed against the dusty underside of the scullery table. She’d dragged Lucy under there with her, and the child’s puzzled eyes were staring into hers with disarming honesty. ‘What are you frightened of, Granny?’ she asked.

  ‘Thunder,’ Annie said, and as she spoke, the interior of the old bakery cottage was illuminated by a jagged artery of lightning from the coppery gloom of the afternoon sky. The window panes rattled and the china on the dresser rang with the thunder, a deafening, earthy growl that rolled down the streets like a horde of escaping cider barrels. Annie pressed her hands over her ears and moaned with fear. ‘It’s a curse upon us all,’ she said, and scowled at the rain-flecked window.

  ‘What’s a curse, Granny?’

  ‘’Tis bad. Bad like your sister,’ Annie said, and immediately regretted her words as Lucy’s eyes widened. Freddie wouldn’t like what she’d said. She wasn’t sure she liked it herself. Sometimes Annie’s extreme fear emerged from her lips as anger. But then – anger was more acceptable than fear, she reasoned.

  The next roll of thunder broke overhead, like tumbling bricks. Annie shuddered and so did the walls of the cottage. A scream was lurking deep in her chest, but she held it back. It wouldn’t do to scream in front of Lucy. A mad woman, that’s what they’d say. Mad women screamed. So she held it in.

  Then there was Tessa.

  She listened fearfully. Three-year-old Tessa was somewhere in the cottage. Not on the dresser, Annie prayed. Please, please not on the dresser. Where was she? Between thunderclaps the silences were ominous.

  ‘Tessa!’ she called, sternly from under the table.

  Silence. A sigh of rain on the scullery roof. A gurgling from the drainpipes. But no Tessa.

  ‘Shall I go and get her?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘NO.’ Annie grabbed Lucy’s cardigan and held on to it as another bolt of lightning vividly lit the walls with their copper pans hanging. ‘You stay here, Lucy – just in case – we’ll be safe under this strong table if the house falls down.’

  Lucy’s bottom lip quivered. ‘I’m frightened. I don’t like it.’

  ‘Cuddle up to me then,’ said Annie.

  ‘But you’re frightened, Granny,’ Lucy said. ‘I want Daddy to come home, and Mummy.’

  ‘They’ll be back soon, I hope.’ Annie frowned. Freddie and Kate should never have gone off and left her in charge of Tessa, she thought resentfully. Today of all days. Freddie wouldn’t tell her where they were going. A mysterious sparkle had danced in his eyes. It was a secret, he’d said. Even Kate didn’t know. She’d climbed trustingly into the lorry, her face bright with anticipation.

  ‘We won’t be more than an hour,’ Freddie had promised. Minutes after they’d driven off, the storm broke over Monterose.

  Lucy squirmed out of Annie’s arms and ran to the window.

  ‘No, Lucy. You’ll get struck by lightning.’ Annie felt her heart lurch into a different gear. Her chest hurt with the hammering, and her back ached from sitting on the hard floor. What if she had a heart attack?

  ‘Tessa’s in the garden,’ Lucy reported, ‘and she’s taken her dress off.’

  Annie groaned and began to rock herself to and fro, her hands clutched around her chest. Suddenly she couldn’t breathe. ‘I’m gonna die,’ she moaned, ‘here under the table. And they’ll have to drag me out by my feet.’ She pulled her navy blue dress down to cover her knees. Sweat trickled out of her hair and glazed her ice-cold skin. The room darkened, and Lucy’s voice was distant.

  ‘Granny, Tessa’s dancing in the rain.’

  Annie didn’t care. Well, she did care, and she didn’t. She hated herself for being in a panic. She hated what fear did to her. Was it the fear, or was it real? She couldn’t tell. Either way it was humiliating.

  ‘Tessa’s standing in a puddle and it’s up to her ankles,’ Lucy shouted. ‘I banged on the window but she won’t take any notice. And the lightning is like a broken tree flashing in the sky.’

  ‘Tessa is an impossible child,’ Annie said, rocking harder. ‘Serve her right if she gets struck. And serve her mother right for bringing such a brat into the family . . .’ She gave in and let a stream of vitriol pour through her, not caring th
at Lucy was listening. Annie had tried to like Kate, but her own sense of inadequacy and powerlessness had got in the way. Everything had been going along nicely, she thought, until THAT TESSA had been born. Now the little hussy was out there dancing naked in the rain, in HER garden. The shame of it. The shame.

  The storm wilted into a dripping silence. The rooftops of Monterose glistened and the wet leaves sparkled with a sense of satisfaction. The streets gurgled with rivulets of sooty, oily, muddy water, all heading down to the station yard. Annie stayed under the table, feeling her heart slowing down, beat by shameful beat.

  Kate’s bright voice and Freddie’s reassuring footsteps brought Annie’s guilt and humiliation into sharp focus. Jealousy was there too, stabbing at her heart. Kate was in the garden – laughing – and it seemed to Annie that the laughter was ringing through the street like the church bells.

  Kate came into the kitchen, radiant, with Tessa in her arms and Lucy clinging round her skirts. ‘Ooh, you are a pickle!’ Kate said to Tessa. ‘Did you enjoy the rain?’

  Tessa nodded, her pale blue eyes shining with joy. ‘I danced,’ she whispered, ‘and now I’ve got stars on my skin.’

  Kate laughed even louder. ‘You mean raindrops! Stars indeed. Anyone would think you’d been sprinkled with fairy dust.’ Her laugh seemed to energise the whole cottage.

  ‘Tessa’s wicked,’ Lucy said. ‘I didn’t take MY dress off. Granny said Tessa was a curse.’

  Kate frowned. ‘Don’t talk so silly,’ she said. ‘It’s not wicked to enjoy the rain. Come on, madam, into the bath with you.’

  ‘But Granny’s under the table,’ said Lucy, and the moment Annie dreaded had arrived. She couldn’t get up from the floor on her own, especially not from under the table. If Kate laughed, it would be the last straw. The thought of that ringing laugh added another spike of anger to Annie’s overloaded emotions. Hot tears zigzagged through the wrinkles on her cheeks.

  Kate swung round to look at her, but Tessa got there first. Her pale blue eyes stared under the table just as Annie was wiping her face with the corner of her flowery apron.