So he told her about the rows of cottages and the fires that were always kept burning and the rattle of the winding gear, about the big house at Norseley Park and the family with their horses and their Rolls Royce, and about his school and his friends and the cricket club and the cycling club. And all the while Annie fixed him with her wide blue eyes, and asked questions and smiled or looked angry or sympathetic in all the right places so that he forgot all about time and place in the pleasure of talking to a willing listener.
‘Tom! To-om!’ His sister’s voice shrilled over the seawall.
Tom stopped in mid-sentence and put a finger to his lips. Annie grinned in instant understanding. Silently, they listened to Joan calling.
‘Tom, where are you? Mam wants you. Tom—’ She was puffing now as she climbed the grass slope.
‘I’m just coming,’ Tom called back. ‘Go and tell her I’m coming.’
He looked at Annie.
‘I’ve done nothing but waffle on about me,’ he apologised softly.
‘All right. But you’ve got to come right away,’ said an aggrieved voice quite close to them.
‘It’s nice. I liked it. It’s like seeing a different life, like when you go to the pictures,’ Annie whispered.
‘I said, you’ve got to come right away,’ the voice insisted.
‘All right. I am,’ Tom repeated. He smiled at the thought of his life being like a film. ‘I don’t think they’d put me on the pictures. I’m right ordinary.’
‘No, you’re not. You’re not at all ordinary,’ Annie said.
Tom felt oddly breathless. His heart was thumping in his chest.
‘Nor are you,’ he said.
‘Oh, there you are,’ exclaimed Joan.
Tom could have killed her. He swivelled round to glare up at her in the twilight.
‘Yes, here I am. Now clear off and tell Mam I’m coming, all right?’
He would never hear the last of this now.
‘All right,’ Joan repeated. ‘And I’ll tell her who you’re with, shall I?’
With an irritating laugh, she made off.
‘Blooming sisters,’ he groaned.
Annie stood up. ‘I got to run. It’s nearly dark.’
‘Will you—will you be back tomorrow?’ Tom asked, the words tumbling out of his mouth.
‘I’ll try,’ she said.
And that was all he had to live on for the next twenty-three hours.
The next day was broken up by a very different visitor. In the afternoon, Mrs Sutton, the lady who owned the chalet, arrived with her lump of a daughter and her small son. Tom heard them arrive, heard the mothers all talking together and the kid go off to play with his cousins. He kept very still in the sunny spot where he was playing patience, hoping he’d be forgotten. No such luck.
‘Ah, now, here’s poor Beryl with no one to play with,’ he heard his mother say. ‘Tom’s in just the same position. I’m sure he’ll be glad to entertain you. Tom! Where are you? Come over here!’
He ignored her, hoping she’d assume he was out of earshot, but again he was out of luck. Joan snitched on him and he was forced to make an appearance. The girl was standing there with a silly expression on her face while all three mothers smiled at them both.
‘Hello,’ he said, trying hard not to sound too put out about being interrupted.
‘Hello,’ the girl said, smiling for all she was worth. ‘My mum was coming so I thought I’d come along too.’
‘Oh,’ Tom said.
There was an awkward pause.
‘Well, run along, the pair of you,’ his mam told them. ‘Perhaps you’d like to show Beryl some of your paintings, Tom.’
‘Not on your life,’ Tom muttered. He caught his mam giving him a warning look. He suppressed a sigh. ‘Come on, then,’ he said to Beryl.
She followed him round the side of the chalet.
‘Do you do painting, then?’ she asked, in the same tone of cheerful politeness that his mam used with strangers she wanted to impress.
‘Not really,’ Tom said.
‘Can I see them?’ Beryl persisted.
‘They’re not good enough,’ Tom stated. He wasn’t sharing that with her. It was private. He stopped at the far side of the chalet from the grown-ups and the children, where his game of patience was laid out on a bare piece of earth.
‘D’you play cards?’ he asked to distract her.
‘Oh, yes!’ Beryl exclaimed, looking delighted. She studied the arrangement on the ground. ‘Look—you can put that seven of clubs on the eight of hearts.’
‘I know,’ Tom told her. ‘I was just going to do that.’
He squatted down and swept the pack up.
‘Patience is no good with two. What else can you play?’
‘We play rummy and happy families at home so that Timmy can join in too, but they’re a bit babyish. My mum’s teaching me canasta,’ she said.
‘That’s no good with just two,’ Tom said.
Snap and pelmanism were dismissed by both of them as stupid. Newmarket and chase the ace needed more players. Tom had an inspiration.
‘Can you play poker?’
Beryl looked a bit shocked. She shook her head.
‘It’s easy,’ Tom told her. ‘We’ll play for matchsticks.’
He explained about pairs and runs and flushes. Beryl nodded and said that it all sounded pretty straightforward. But she couldn’t get to grips with the timing. She had no idea when to raise and when to quit.
‘Shame it’s only matchsticks,’ Tom said as he swept her stake into his pile yet again. But there was no pleasure in it really. You needed really sharp competition to make it fun.
Tom shuffled the cards. If only Annie were here instead of this stupid Beryl.
‘D’you know a girl called Annie Cross?’ he asked suddenly. ‘She lives at the farm over the fields there.’
The minute the words were out of his mouth, he regretted them.
‘Yes,’ Beryl said.
Tom said no more, but carried on shuffling.
‘Why?’ Beryl asked.
‘Oh—no reason. I just met her the other day, that’s all.’
He riffle-shuffled the pack, neatly layering them together, not looking at her.
‘I was at school with her, at the elementary. I’m at the grammar now,’ Beryl told him.
It was a safe subject, so he took it up.
‘So am I, back home, that is,’ Tom said.
‘Annie stayed on at the elementary. She’s left now. At fourteen,’ Beryl told him.
Tom said nothing, hoping she’d drop it. He dealt the cards.
‘So she’s never done Latin or French or science,’ she pointed out. ‘Not like you do at grammar school. Not like us.’
There was an unpleasant edge