by Liz Trenow
‘Is this fluffy enough?’ I asked, stopping to stretch my back after what felt like hours of creaming an enormous bowl of butter and sugar. Jimmy had been set to work on a smaller task, but had given up after only a few minutes and gone into the garden. My arm ached and my head throbbed, but I wasn’t allowed to complain, because Pa told us Mrs D had been going without her own personal rations for months to hoard enough sugar, flour and butter to make these cakes. ‘Such a generous woman,’ he said. ‘The money we raise from the fete is direly needed, and it’s the least we can do to support her.’
The day of the fete dawned dry; not exactly sunny, but at least no rain was forecast. At least that was what Mr Diamond had predicted, based on the long strand of brown seaweed that hung in the porch of his cottage, and which always appeared to be uncannily accurate.
Jimmy and I helped carry fifteen Victoria sponge cakes, ten ginger and ten honey loaf cakes, nearly fifty iced fairy cakes and as many raisin scones across to the playing field, laying them out on one of the trestle tables from the village hall, covered with a tablecloth of Mrs D’s pristine white bed sheet.
The crowds arrived – more people than I’d ever imagined, and certainly more than any I’d ever seen in church. I glanced round anxiously, looking for the Waddingtons, hoping against hope that Kit might come and we could meet again in a casual kind of way, resuming our friendship, but there was no sign of him.
Soon enough it was eleven o’clock. Pa stood precariously on a chair to declare the fete officially open, and within seconds our stall was thronged with eager customers. Just as Mrs D had warned, it was cleared in a matter of twenty minutes, save for a few slightly wonky scones and a fairy cake with Jimmy’s fingerprint in the icing.
‘Now off you go, you two, and enjoy the fete. You’ve earned a bit of fun,’ Mrs D said, reaching into the cash belt tied round her waist and pressing two sixpenny pieces into my hand. ‘That’s for the both of you, mind. Have a go on some of them stalls.’
Jimmy dragged me towards a table stall stacked with bottles. ‘Orange juice . . .’ he said, with an expectant grin. It was only when we got closer that I noticed the stall was manned by Melissa Blackman. Just as we approached, her husband appeared and my heart sank. I had no desire to face the man I’d come to think of as Eli’s enemy number one, but Jimmy was determined.
‘Hello, laddie,’ Mr Blackman said, with a smile that seemed to have been pasted on at the last minute. ‘And Miss Molly. What a pleasure.’
‘Can we buy two bottles of orange pop, please?’ I asked in my politest voice.
‘Well, my dear, the drinks are not for sale, I’m afraid. It’s a kind of tombola, you see. You have to buy a tuppenny ticket and see it if matches the number on a bottle.’
‘And if it doesn’t match?’
‘Then I’m afraid you get nothing. It’s like a lucky dip, if you like,’ he explained, enunciating over-carefully. I hated it when people patronised my brother. Jimmy didn’t understand, of course, and insisted on buying a tuppenny ticket, which to my astonishment turned out to match one of the bottles, except that it was a bottle of home-made beer.
‘Could we swap it for orange?’ I asked.
‘Sorry, the rules are that you can only take the bottle that matches your ticket.’
I considered asking him to show me the book of rules – which he had no doubt written in triplicate – but thought better of it. He was already holding out the beer bottle. ‘Your father will enjoy it,’ he said. He certainly would, I thought to myself, if I let him near it. Which I wouldn’t.
Jimmy took the bottle, clasping it to his chest like a prized possession. ‘Drink it now?’
‘No, Jimmy, it’s beer. Alcohol. Not suitable for children. Let’s go and find you some orange juice instead,’ I whispered, taking his hand.
‘No, now. Thirsty,’ he said, his feet planted firmly on the ground and his face crumpled. He was building up to a proper tantrum. ‘My drink,’ he shouted.
‘I said we’ll get you something else. Look, over there.’ I pointed to the refreshments tent.
‘No. Won’t.’ He stamped his foot and tossed the beer bottle to the ground, the cork blew out and brown fizzy liquid sprayed out all over the grass. Good riddance, I thought. At least I wouldn’t have to hide it from Pa. A gang of boys nearby turned to watch and started giggling.
‘You okay?’ asked one. ‘Anything wrong?’
‘No, there’s nothing wrong,’ I snapped back, the flush rising on my cheeks.
It was only once the boys moved on that I realised the one who’d spoken – and I’d snapped at – was Robert, Kit’s friend.
Jimmy’s mood could switch from night to day in a second; he was suddenly all sweet and sorry. ‘Orange juice now?’
We were sitting outside the refreshment tent, sipping home-made lemonade, when there was a loud bellow of laughter from a nearby stall. It was those same boys again: Robert and three others all around the same age, who’d been at our Christmas party. They were crowded around a curious contraption: a diagonal drainpipe fixed to a frame. Accompanied by much joshing and hilarity, they took it in turns to smash the end of the pipe with a rounders bat. After watching enviously for a few moments, I decided to swallow my pride and, when we’d finished our drinks, took Jimmy over to join them.
‘Hello again,’ Robert said. ‘You’re the vicar’s daughter, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, I’m Molly Goddard. You’re Robert?’
‘Robert Parsons, at your service.’ He gave a mock salute.
‘Sorry for snapping just now. I thought you were making fun of my brother.’
He looked at his feet, suddenly awkward.
The stallholder was George Diamond. ‘Any good at “Catch the Rat”, Jimmy?’
‘What do you have to do?’ I asked.
‘Tuppence for six tries, Miss Molly,’ he said, holding up an old sock stuffed with something heavy. ‘I drop this into the top of the pipe and you have to hit it when it comes out the other end. Like catching a rat in a drainpipe. If you catch it, you get a lollipop or a sherbet dip.’
It looked easy enough, but after several attempts I began to understand what all the laughter had been about. It was the most infuriating game in the world. I tried every tactic: smashing the bat just as soon as the rat had disappeared; waiting two seconds before whacking it; and hammering the frame constantly. The boys encouraged me, cheering and booing, and somehow my failure hardly mattered. I hadn’t laughed so much in weeks.
‘Me now?’ Jimmy tugged at my sleeve, desperate to have a go.
‘Of course.’ I handed George another tuppence.
Jimmy held the bat over his shoulder and leaned in to peer up the pipe.
‘Stand back a bit, laddie,’ Mr D said. ‘Okay, that’s right. Now, are you ready?’
He missed the first two ‘rats’ but then, with his face set in grim determination, whacked the third as hard as he could and, to everyone’s astonishment, caught it fair and square. He continued whacking the stuffed sock until Mr Diamond stopped him. ‘That’s properly dead now, young man, and you’ve won two lollipops, one for you and one for your sister. Or would you prefer sherbet?’
As we turned to leave, Robert came to my side. ‘Are you around for the rest of the holidays?’
‘I’m always around,’ I said. ‘Vicars don’t really get holidays.’
The other boys were calling him. ‘Sorry, I’ve got to go. But let’s meet up sometime.’
‘That’d be nice,’ I said to his departing back.
At least someone liked me.
Jimmy and I stayed late at the fete, helping to fold up the trestle tables and trundle them on wheelbarrows back to the village hall, then picking up every scrap of litter off the grass. By the time we left, the sports ground had been returned to a pristine swathe of green, as though the fete had never taken place.
‘Had a nice time, Jim?’ I asked, as we walked the short distance home.
‘Yup.’ He skipped ahead, try
ing to chase our shadows, made twice the length in the low sun. The air was still warm, growing thicker as it always appears to towards sunset after a hot day, and I felt as happy as I’d ever been since our move to the village. Kit hadn’t turned up, which was disappointing, but I’d been helpful all day and Mrs D was full of praise. Jimmy had been well behaved, on the whole. And Pa had seemed relaxed and cheerful – I’d spied him smiling as he chatted to groups of parishioners. Best of all, I’d made a new friend. Perhaps things were taking a turn for the better.
Several days later I was upstairs at my dressing table, trying out different hairstyles, when the doorbell rang. There was nothing unusual in that, the vicarage was full of comings and goings – parishioners seeking moral or religious guidance, church staff needing practical advice, others arriving for meetings.
It was usually possible to tell who it was, even before opening the door: parishioners gave a single discreet knock that could easily be missed; church colleagues knocked jauntily, sometimes a rhythmic tap-tappy-tap-tap; important diocesan people gave a confidently firm double knock. The likes of Blackman and his cronies leaned on the bell and brayed importantly on the porch as they waited.
This one was different: three short, gentle rings, like the start of a piece of classical music. ‘Get that, someone, please,’ I heard Pa shouting from his study, followed by Jimmy’s footsteps clomping to the front door.
Then I heard Mrs D. ‘Can I help you, young man?’
‘Er . . . I’ve come to see Molly.’ It was Robert. ‘Are you free to take a walk?’
I turned to Mrs D. ‘Is that okay? Do you mind keeping an eye on Jimmy, for an hour or so?’
Mrs D sighed but she was smiling too, so I knew it was all right. ‘If your father agrees, it’s fine with me. Just for a while, though, Missy. I’m off home to give Mr Diamond his lunch at half twelve.’
It was still only ten o’clock. ‘You’ll hardly notice I’m gone,’ I said, with an ever-so-grateful smile.
My feet wanted to skip, only that would have seemed terribly childish. But my heart was dancing inside. It was a beautiful summer’s day with barely a cloud in the sky. The roses in the cottage gardens were a glorious kaleidoscope of colour and the birdsong was almost deafening. And I was with a boy. A nice boy. To hell with Kit Waddington.
I glanced sideways at Robert as we walked. He was taller than I remembered, with mousy-coloured hair cut quite short, rather traditional-looking. He wore a plain cotton shirt with rolled-up sleeves, nothing showy, and khaki shorts showing off long tanned legs with blond hairs that glistened in the sunshine. To be perfectly honest, his face was pretty ordinary except when he smiled, which was quite often. It was a good smile, sweet and straightforward, the sort of smile you could trust. It made me happy.
‘Where are we off to?’
‘I thought we might go for a paddle.’
I couldn’t think of anything nicer on a hot day like this. ‘In the river?’
‘Thought we might go to the lake.’
‘The lake? It’s private, isn’t it? Belongs to the Waddingtons.’
‘They’re fine with us going there.’ I smiled to myself. If Kit saw me with Robert, it might make him jealous. It was a common enough ploy used by romance heroines. It was only when he saw how much he’d lost that he realised how much he had needed her.
I hadn’t approached the lake from this route before. At the bottom of the lane was a cart track that led across a field and into the lower end of the woods, where we emerged onto a broad stretch of close-cropped grass that sloped gently towards the water with a foot-wide strip of gravelly sand at the margins. The edges were punctuated with little outcrops of a spiky-leaved plant – sedge; I looked it up in one of Pa’s books afterwards. And on every upright spike clung a long, thin insect. As we approached, they flew upwards in a cloud of astonishing iridescent blue.
‘Wow,’ I sighed.
‘They’re damsel flies,’ Rob said. ‘Pretty, eh?’
‘Magical.’ We fell into silence, looking around. The lake was deserted and as still as a mirror, reflecting a cloudless sky in a sheet of blue, unbroken apart from the shadows of the trees in the furthest, darkest corner. It was like being in paradise.
‘I’m up for a paddle.’ Rob was sitting on a small rock close to the edge of the water and pulling off his sandals. ‘You coming?’
‘Of course I’m coming.’
The gravel was sharp on the soft soles of my feet, but the chilly water around my ankles felt delicious. We must have crushed a minty-type of plant as we waded in, because the smell reminded me of peppermint humbugs. The lake was so clear that we could see our toes, and tiny long-legged insects darted around on the surface of the water.
Rob was striding ahead now.
‘Come on, Molly. It’s perfectly safe.’
I waded cautiously towards him, he took my hand and we stood in silence, watching the circles of ripples spreading away from our legs across the surface of the lake, creating ever-changing patterns from the distorted reflections of the sky and the trees. For a few moments I felt flooded with peace. But it wasn’t to last.
From the woods behind came a volley of shouts and wolf-whistles. Rob dropped my hand suddenly, as though I’d burned him.
‘Oh, hell. It’s the others.’
‘The others?’ Kit, perhaps?
‘The lads. Remember? From the fete?’
I remembered all right. The three boys who’d stared at Jimmy when he’d thrown down the beer bottle. The ones who’d smirked when George Diamond had offered Jimmy a go at ‘Catch the Rat’, and who had been silenced by his success.
Rob was already wading back to the beach, abandoning me with my skirt tucked into my knickers and muddy water up to my knees. I followed him, scowling with resentment.
Ashley, Brian and Peter. Strange the things you remember after all these years, when I can’t even recall the name of someone I met yesterday. Ashley was tall and fair, like Rob. Brian was short, spotty and ginger-haired. Peter was dark, thickset and serious-looking. They acknowledged me with shy smiles.
‘What’ve you done with that funny little brother of yours today?’ That was Brian. The chippy one, I remembered now. And rude.
‘His name’s Jimmy,’ I retorted. ‘He’s at home with my dad.’
In the company of his friends, Rob appeared younger and sillier. We sat in the sun and Peter produced a bottle of lemonade, which he passed round.
‘Bloody hell, it’s hot,’ Brian said suddenly. ‘Anyone for a swim?’
It felt like a dare. The other boys hesitated, checking his expression. Was he teasing? It didn’t seem so. He swiftly shed his shoes and socks; now he hauled off his T-shirt to reveal an acre of pale skin dotted with acne scars.
‘Steady on,’ Rob said. ‘Spare Molly’s blushes, won’t you?’
But Brian was not to be deflected. He was in his shorts now, his skinny chest bared defiantly.
‘We can cool off paddling, can’t we?’ Ashley said.
‘Don’t be a wimp,’ Brian said. ‘C’mon. Last one in’s a sissy.’
Masculine pride was at stake, and there was no holding them back now.
‘Are you coming?’ Rob asked me, as he stripped to his shorts.
‘No, thanks.’
I retreated to the shade of a small willow copse to the side of the grassy area and sat on a log, watching them belly-flopping into the water with bellows of shock, then starting to horse around, racing with splashy strokes, swimming underwater to grab one another’s legs, trying to duck each other.
By now I was feeling deeply awkward. Paddling with Robert was nice, and being at the lake on our own, quietly, had somehow been magical. The arrival of the boys ruined all that. Their careless noise seemed to desecrate this beautiful, peaceful place. Had they forgotten that the lake was supposed to be private property?
The more I thought about it, the more uncomfortable I felt, and the more I wanted to get away. I tried to attract Rob’s attention, but h
e was having too much fun to notice. Just as I was about to leave I heard a shout: ‘Hey! You lot. What’s going on? Don’t you know it’s private property?’
I hid behind a tree, expecting at any time to see a burly gamekeeper wielding a shotgun. Or, worse, Mr Waddington. But no, a tall, slim and dark-haired boy was striding towards the piles of shoes, socks and shirts hastily strewn across the grass. It was Kit.
‘Waddington!’ Rob shouted. ‘Where the hell have you been all these months?’
‘Oh, here and there,’ Kit called back. ‘Now, lads, how do you like your clothes? A bit wet, or just sopping?’ He gathered up the piles of clothing and ran to the edge of the lake, dropping them one by one into the water.
‘You bastard!’ Rob said, rushing to tackle him, so that they both fell into the shallows, laughing wildly. Socks and shirts floated all around them, like small coloured islands. I lingered in my hiding place, watching, unable to take my eyes off Kit as they played in the water. He had a sporty body: his legs muscular and tanned, and his chest so much broader than any of the others’. Robert seemed spindly, childish by comparison. Kit was well on his way to becoming a man, while the others were still only boys.
I couldn’t help laughing at their playfulness. How enviable it was to be so free of care and responsibility. I tried to imagine my friends from school doing the same, but failed. They would all be too conscious of their hairstyles, their new clothes, their dignity. Not for the first time I wished I’d been born a boy. And that I wasn’t the daughter of a vicar.
The distant sound of church bells chimed twelve; half an hour before I had to be back at the vicarage. The boys were coming out of the water now, gathering up their wet things, wringing them out and hanging them over willow branches to dry.
Rob looked round. ‘Molly, Molly,’ he shouted. ‘Where are you?’ A pause, then, ‘You can come out now.’
‘She must have gone home,’ one of the others said.
‘Molly Goddard, you mean?’ Kit asked.
