Читать книгу When Marnie Was There - Joan G. Robinson - Страница 7
Оглавление“JUST UP THE lane and turn left at the crossroads,” said Mrs Pegg. “Post Office is only a little way up. And the road to the creek’s on the right. Go you and have a look round.” She nodded encouragingly and turned back indoors.
Anna found the Post Office – which to her surprise was a cobbled cottage like the Peggs’, with a flat letterbox in the wall – and posted her card. Then she walked back to the crossroads. She felt free now. Free and empty. No need to talk to anyone, or be polite, or bother about anything. There was hardly anyone about anyway. A farm worker passed her on a bicycle, said “Good afternoon,” and was gone before she even had time to show her surprise. She gave a little skip and turned down the short road to the staithe, and saw the creek lying ahead of her.
There was a salty smell in the air, and from the marsh on the far side of the water came the cries of seabirds. Several small boats were lying at anchor, bumping gently as the tide turned. In that short distance she seemed to have come on another world. A remote, quiet world where there were only boats and birds and water, and an enormous sky.
She jumped at the sudden sound of children’s voices. There was laughter, and shouts of, “Come on! They’re waiting!” and a group of children appeared round the corner of the staithe. Five or six boys and girls of different ages in navy blue jeans and jerseys. Immediately Anna drew herself up stiffly and put on her ‘ordinary’ face.
But it was all right, they were not coming her way. They ran, shouting and jostling each other to a car drawn up at the end of the road, and climbed in. Then the doors slammed, the car reversed, and as it drove past her up to the crossroads she had a glimpse of a man at the wheel, a woman beside him, and the children all bobbing about in the back, talking excitedly.
It was very quiet when they had gone.
“I’m glad,” she said to herself. “I’m glad they’ve gone.
I’ve met enough new people for one day.” But the feeling of freedom had changed imperceptibly to one of loneliness. She knew that even if she had met them they would never have been friends. They were children who were ‘inside’ – anyone could see that. Anyway, I don’t want to meet any more people today, she repeated to herself-hardly realising that Mr and Mrs Pegg were the only people she had spoken to since she left London.
And that had been only this morning! Already the turmoil of Liverpool Street Station, the hurry, the confusion, the nearness of parting – against which she had only been able to protect herself with her wooden face – seemed a hundred years ago, she thought.
She listened to the water lapping against the sides of the boats with a gentle slap-slapping sound, and wondered who the boats belonged to. Lucky people, she supposed. Families who came to Little Overton for their holidays year after year and weren’t just sent here to be got out of the way, or because of not-even-trying, or because people “didn’t quite know what they were going to do with them”… Boys and girls in navy blue jeans and jerseys, like that family…
She walked down to the water’s edge, took off her shoes and socks, and stood with her feet in the water, staring out across the marsh. On the horizon lay a line of sandhills, golden where the sun just caught them, and on either side the blue line of the sea. A small bird flew over the creek, quite close to her head, uttering a short plaintive cry four or five times running, all on one note. It sounded like “Pity me! Oh, pity me!”
She stood there looking and listening and thinking about nothing, drinking in the great quiet emptiness of marsh and water and sky, which now seemed to match her own small emptiness inside. Then she turned quickly and looked behind her. She had an odd feeling suddenly that she was being watched.
But there was no-one to be seen. There was no-one on the staithe, nor on the high grassy bank that ran along to the corner of the road. The one or two cottages appeared to be empty, and the door of the boathouse was shut. To the right the village straggled away into fields, and in the distance a windmill stood alone, silhouetted against the sky.
She turned and looked away to the left. Beyond the few cottages a long brick wall ran along the grassy bank, ending in a clump of dark trees.
And then she saw the house…
As soon as she saw it Anna knew that this was what she had been looking for. The house, which faced straight on to the creek, was large and old and square, its many small windows framed in faded blue woodwork. No wonder she had felt she was being watched with all those windows staring at her!
This was no ordinary house, in a long road, like the one she lived in at home. This house stood alone, and had a quiet, mellow, everlasting look, as if it had been there so long, watching the tide rise and fall, and rise and fall again, that it had forgotten the busyness of life going on ashore behind it, and had sunk into a quiet dream. A dream of summer holidays, and sandshoes littered about the ground-floor rooms, dried strips of seaweed still flapping from an upper window where some child had hung them as a weather indicator, and shrimping nets in the hall, and small buckets, a dried starfish swept into a corner, an old sun hat…
All these things Anna sensed as she stood staring at the house. And yet none of them had she ever known. Or had she…? Once, when she was in the Home, she had been to the seaside with all the other children, but she hardly remembered that. And twice she and the Prestons had been to Bournemouth and walked along the promenade and sat in the flower gardens. They had bathed too, and sat in deck chairs, and been to the concert party at nights.
But this was different. Here there was none of the gay life of Bournemouth. It was as if the old house had found itself one day on the staithe at Little Overton, looked across at the stretch of water with the marsh behind, and the sea beyond that, and had settled down on the bank, saying, “I like this place. I shall stay here for ever.” That was how it looked, Anna thought, gazing at it with a sort of longing. Safe and everlasting.
She paddled along in the water until she was directly opposite to it, and stood, looking and looking… The windows were dark and uncurtained. One of the upper ones was open but no-one was looking out. And yet it seemed to Anna almost as if the house had been expecting her, watching her, waiting for her to turn round and recognise it. And in some way she did.
As she stood there, half dreaming in the water a few feet from the shore, the strange feeling crept over her that this had all happened before. It would have been difficult to explain even what she meant by this, but it was almost as if she were now standing outside of herself, somewhere farther back, watching herself standing there in the water – a small figure in her best blue dress with her socks and shoes in her hand, looking across the staithe at the old house with many windows. She even noticed without concern that the water must have risen slightly, because she could see it lapping at the hem of her dress, making a dark stain round the very edge.
Then the little grey-brown bird flew overhead again, crying, “Pity me! Oh, pity me!” and Anna shook herself out of her dream… She looked down and saw that the water had come up to her knees while she had been standing there. It had even reached the hem of her dress…
“Who lives in the big house by the water?” she asked Mrs Pegg, as they sat drinking cocoa in the kitchen later.
“The big house by the water?” said Mrs Pegg vaguely. “Now which one would that be?”
“The one with blue windows.”
Mrs Pegg turned to Sam, who was eating bread and cheese, spearing pickled onions on the end of his knife and putting them whole into his mouth. “Who lives in the big house with the blue windows, Sam?”
Mr Pegg looked equally vague. He thought for a moment, then said, “Oh, ah, you mean The Marsh House? I don’t know as anyone lives there, do they, Susan?”
Mrs Pegg shook her head. “Not as I know of, but I never go down by the staithe so I wouldn’t know. Didn’t I hear it was going to be bought by a London gentleman? I think Miss Manders at Post Office said so. ‘That’ll need a fair lot of doing up,’ she said. ‘It’s been empty quite a while.’ But maybe that’s not the one.”
“And who are the children in navy blue jeans and jerseys?” asked Anna. “The big family?”
Again Mrs Pegg looked puzzled. “I don’t know of none,” she said. “In the summer holidays there’s lots of children, of course, in their holiday clothes like that. But I don’t know of none now, do you, Sam?”
Mr Pegg shook his head. “Maybe they was just down for the day,” he suggested helpfully.
“Yes, perhaps,” said Anna, remembering the car. But she was secretly disappointed. In her own mind she had already decided that the house by the water was theirs. They had looked the right sort of family to live in a house like that.
“Anything else you’d like to know?” asked Mr Pegg, smiling.
“Yes,” said Anna. “Which is the bird that says, ‘Pity me! Oh, pity me!’”
Mrs Pegg gave her an odd look. “Time you was in bed, my lass,” she said briskly. “It’s been a long day, what with the journey and all. Come you on up and I’ll get you settled in.” She pulled herself out of her chair and carried the cups into the scullery to put them in the sink.
Anna got up and stood looking down at Mr Pegg still eating his bread and cheese. “Goodnight, then,” she said.
“Ah, goodnight, my biddy!” he said abstractedly. “I’m thinking – might that be a sandpiper, do you think? That makes a lonesome little cry, that does. Though I can’t say I ever heared the words afore!” he added with a chuckle.
