We'll Meet Again. Patricia Burns

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СКАЧАТЬ in at the kitchen door. Her mother was sitting at the big table, turning the wheel of her sewing machine. The needle flew up and down so fast that it became a blur, while her mother fed the long side seam of a green silk dress beneath it.

      ‘Mum?’ Annie asked. ‘You all right? You need me to do anything?’

      ‘No—no—’ Edna Cross did not take her eyes from the slippery fabric. ‘Just want to get this done before Mrs Watson comes for her fitting tomorrow.’

      ‘I think I’ll go out for a bit, then.’

      ‘All right, dear.’

      Annie slid out of the porch, ran across the yard and away down the track before her father could see what she was doing. Once over the gate into the first field, she slowed to a walk. She felt physically light, as if she might bounce along if she wanted to. For a short while, until it got dark and she had to go back indoors, she was free.

      She headed automatically for the sea wall. It was no use looking at Silver Sands, for a big family had moved in two days ago for a holiday. Even from here she could see the two little tents they had put up in the garden because the chalet wasn’t large enough to accommodate them all. But it would be all right the other side of the wall. That was one advantage of the barbed wire—it kept people off the beach. Nobody but her liked to sit on the small bit of sand between the wall and the wire.

      It was a beautiful summer’s evening, warm and still. Annie dodged the cow-pats and the thistles, singing as she went.

       ‘Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye …’

      The one big bonus of the war, as far as she was concerned, was that her father had gone out and bought a wireless so he could listen to the news each evening. Which meant that they could also listen to Henry Hall and Geraldo, and her mother could have Music While You Work on. Now she knew all the latest songs just as soon as Gwen did.

      As she came nearer to Silver Sands, she could see the family there out in the garden. She felt drawn to study them. There were two women—Mum and Aunty, maybe?—sitting on the veranda knitting, together with a man reading a newspaper, while a bunch of children all younger than herself were running round the bushes and up and down the steps in a game of ‘he’. Annie skirted the garden, wishing there was another way on to the sea wall, but you had to walk a long way away from the town before you got to the bridge over the wide dyke that ran along behind the wall. There were shrieks from the children as someone was caught, and then yells of, ‘Joan’s It! Joan’s It!’ Annie wondered what it would be like to have a holiday. It must be nice to be able to play all day long like those children. Not that she was wanting to run around playing now, of course. She was too grown up for that. But she would have liked it when she was little.

      She ran up the sea wall, stopping at the top to look about.

      ‘Oh!’ she said out loud.

      For there, just below her on the seaward side of the wall where nobody ought to be, was a boy a year or so older than herself with a sketch-book on his knee.

      If he had heard her, he made no sign of it, but just kept on glancing at the sea then looking down at his paper and making marks. Fascinated, Annie looked over his shoulder. He was making a water-colour sketch. The sky was already done and, as Annie watched, he ran layers of colour together to make the sea, leaving bits of white paper showing through so it looked like the low sunlight reflecting off the waves. He made it look so easy, so unlike the clumsy powder paint efforts that she had occasionally been allowed to do at school.

      ‘That’s ever so good,’ she said before she could stop herself.

      The boy turned his head, screwing up his eyes a little to see her as she stood against the light.

      ‘Oh—’ he said. ‘Hello. I mean—thanks. I thought you were one of my beastly kid cousins creeping up on me.’

      He had an angular face with broad cheekbones, and very dark hair cut in a standard short-back-and-sides, but what struck Annie most was his unfamiliar accent—something she vaguely identified as being northern.

      ‘No,’ she said.

      Now that she had started the conversation, she wasn’t quite sure what to say next.

      ‘You an artist?’ she blurted out, and instantly curled up inside with embarrassment, because how could he be an artist? He wasn’t old enough.

      But, to her relief, instead of laughing, he took her question seriously.

      ‘I want to be. But I don’t know whether I’m going to be good enough.’

      ‘But you are! That’s lovely!’ Annie cried.

      He shook his head. ‘Not really. The colours aren’t right.’

      ‘They are—well, nearly,’ Annie said, sticking to the truth. ‘And it’s—’ She stopped and considered, her head to one side. She’d never really looked at a painting before, not a proper one. She had no words to describe what she thought about it. ‘It’s like—moving. Yes—that’s it. The sea’s sort of moving—’

      It sounded daft, put like that, because paint didn’t move. But the boy’s face lit up. He had an infectious smile.

      ‘Really? You think so?’

      Glad that she’d hit the right note, Annie grinned back. Without thinking about it, she came and sat down by him. He was dressed in a blue short-sleeved shirt, khaki shorts and plimsolls. His arms and legs were long and skinny. His nose was peeling.

      ‘I do, honest. I think it’s good,’ she assured him. ‘Are you going to put the pier in? And the wire?’

      ‘When it’s dry I’ll draw the pier in Indian ink, so I’ll be able to get all the little details. I don’t know about the wire. I think I might do another one, without the pier, just sea and sky and the wire across it.’

      Annie nodded slowly, seeing it in her head. ‘Yes, sort of … like a prison—’ The boy turned and gave her a long, considering look.

      ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s just it. It’s supposed to be keeping the Jerries out, but if you look at it the other way, it’s keeping us in.’

      ‘But if you look through it—sort of fuzzy your eyes—you know? You can pretend it isn’t there at all,’ Annie said.

      Which brought on that dazzling smile again.

      ‘Yes! That’s what I’m doing right now! Just—making it go away. How did you know that?’

      ‘I do it a lot,’ Annie told him. ‘Pretending things aren’t there. Or people. It’s better like that.’

      ‘And how,’ the boy said.

      They looked at each other, breathless, startled by that heart-stopping moment that revealed a kindred spirit.

      ‘I’m Tom. Tom Featherstone.’

      That intriguing accent. The way he said ‘stone’.

      ‘Annie Cross.’

      Self-consciously, they shook hands. Tom put down СКАЧАТЬ