The Girl by the River (36 page)

‘Suit yourself – I’m just warning you.’

‘She’s right,’ said Clare. ‘We KNOW, don’t we, Lou?’

‘Know what?’ asked Tessa.

Clare and Lou looked at each other. ‘Trust me,’ Lou said, ‘we’re just looking out for you, Tessa.’

‘Thanks – but Art is the first man I’ve ever trusted. I’m following my heart,’ Tessa said and Lou rolled her eyes, shrugged, and walked off.

She’s wrong
, Tessa thought angrily.
Art is my soulmate
.

Sex education had been a bad joke in Tessa’s upbringing. In her last year at the Grammar School, the school had sent a letter out to parents informing them of their intention to introduce
segregated ‘sex awareness’ in their senior classes. Two teachers were sent on courses, and the PE teacher, who Tessa hated, was assigned to teach the girls. It was to be a six-week
course, starting in January, and that was the month when Tessa had bronchitis and then mumps. She missed all but two of the ‘sex awareness’ classes, and the ones she did attend were no
help to her at all. The PE teacher strutted around in front of the class, tight-lipped, with a flipchart, and droned on about ‘the development of the foetus’. Tessa sat at the back,
daydreaming and drawing horses in her jotter, and she never found out what the ‘foetus’ actually was. She did frown at a chart of a baby standing on its head inside a woman’s
womb, but didn’t make the connection. As for how it had got in there, nothing was said and nobody dared ask. At Hilbegut no one seemed to have heard of sex education, and at Art College
everyone else seemed to know about it, so Tessa had pretended she did too.

Kate had prepared her well for her periods starting, but again there was no connection. Periods were known as ‘the curse’, just something women had to endure, preferably in silence.
Kate kept a stack of sanitary pads in the airing cupboard and always referred to them as ‘ammunition’. Lucy had lent Tessa a dog-eared paperback which was doing the rounds at school,
and she’d read bits of it by torchlight under the blankets. She dismissed it as either boring, disgusting or irrelevant. Once, she had dared to ask her mother about sex, and Kate had said
haughtily, ‘You don’t do it until you’re married, dear, and then I’ll tell you about it’. The word love was never connected with sex. Love belonged to romance in
books, and that was what Tessa hoped for. Romance. Not sex!

Now that Art had ignited this mysterious flame in her body, Tessa thought about romance a lot. She talked to the cat about it. Every night he was waiting for her, followed her back to her
sleeping place, and slept the night with her. She gave him a name – Ferdinand, the name of the prince in her favourite Shakespeare play,
The Tempest
.

The weather held, dry and sunny; the days rolled by, blue and gold and balmy. Still she hadn’t told Art where she was sleeping. Solitude was important to Tessa. It was like a place, a
place of recovery and survival. Sharing it with a beautiful cat was a bonus. The cat was a good listener, and a comfort.

Running barefooted on the soft grass paths of The Island was something Tessa loved to do while Art was surfing. The Island was not actually an island but joined to the harbour by a narrow strip
of land. At the summit was the small granite chapel of St Nicholas, and the views were panoramic, with the surf beach and Clodgy on one side, and the harbour, the wooded cliffs and the miles of
Hayle sands stretching out to Godrevy Lighthouse. In the afternoons the sun made a great sheet of oscillating sparkles on the sea.

Now that Tessa could leave her rucksack and coat safely in Art’s bus, she exulted in being able to run freely up the grass paths between the rocks. She had a favourite rock where she liked
to stand and lift her arms to the sun’s vast flare path of light. She felt as if the sparkles were energising every molecule of her body. She felt close to the angels. But not close enough.
There was still some kind of emotional razor wire, a cruel fence separating her from her true self. She was afraid. Afraid of that self.

Art had lent her a book he loved. A slim, cream and brown paperback, dog-eared from much use. It was
WARRIORS OF THE RAINBOW (Strange and Prophetic Dreams of the Indian Peoples)
.
‘It blows my mind,’ he’d said. Parts of it had the same effect on Tessa. She read it avidly, rereading and absorbing it, and in its pages she found truths that were slowly setting
her free. Permission to dream. Freedom to run barefoot. Freedom to reconnect with the web of life, the animals, the birds, the secret voices of wind and water.

But what she needed most wasn’t there. Freedom to love. To love like a child was no longer enough. She wanted to love like a woman. To love Art. She prayed he would wait. She prayed he
would help her.

As a child Tessa had visualised her future life like a shining pathway sweeping into the distance, over mountains, through the winking lights of cities, and rainforests, and oceans. But now,
when she dared to look, the pathway ended abruptly. There were iron gates, and three iron grey figures guarding them. Miss O’Grady, the Reverend Reminsy, and Ivor Stape.

Art’s parents now lived in Truro and he’d told Tessa she could use their address for letters. One morning he handed her a blue envelope with her father’s copperplate writing on
it. Inside were letters from both her parents. They wanted her to come home. They wanted her to go back to college.
What about what I want
? Tessa thought angrily, and for the first time she
understood how Lucy had felt. Then some words jumped out of Freddie’s letter. The lime tree seeds had grown! Tessa’s heart leapt with joy.

She told Art about the woods.

‘Aw – man, that’s tragic,’ he said. ‘Those beautiful woods. I really care about issues like that, and you do too – I can tell. Let’s go out on the
cliffs and give those thoughts to the universe. Maybe it will have some answers.’

Tessa was happy to go with him. She knew that something was going to happen between them. She wanted it to be on the springy turf high above the rolling waves. So far, Art hadn’t done
anything except kiss her on the cheek, and she’d gone away with the feel of the kiss embossed on her consciousness. What he had done was a lot of quiet focused talking, telling her she was
beautiful and creative. Telling her she was a rare and sensitive being. It was a new experience for Tessa, and a nurturing one. And the quieter his voice was, the more his eyes glowed into hers,
the more she burned and tingled for him to touch her. When he did, she’d be ready, she’d be on fire.

She led him to one of the fairy gardens she’d found cloistered in the mighty granite outcrops, where the grass was deep and cushiony with mounds of thrift. There they sat, with a gentle
breeze wafting in from the sea, the piping cries of oystercatchers down on the rocks, and the vibrating seed heads of the sea pinks adding energy to the earth. Art looked at her for a long time,
his hair frizzy in the light, his soul shining into hers. She loved the slowness, the way he was letting it build, letting their auras fuse together. She loved the hunger in his eyes, and the way
he kept it back, like holding a powerful horse on a thin rein, not with cruelty. With love.

Hardly breathing, she waited for him like a butterfly on a flower. Soft. Brightly coloured. Exquisitely sensitive. And when she felt his lips finding hers, she wanted to scream and writhe with
excitement. She opened her mouth and let him in, let him kiss her deeply, let him draw her into a sacred eternal moment when love flowed between them. It felt like the sun’s rays focused
through a magnifying glass, making fire while the ice cold waves of the Atlantic rose ever higher, wilder, brighter than snow.

Art pulled away from her, and they lay with their faces close, their eyes full of wordless light. Tessa ran her hands over his broad, bare shoulders and into his sun-bleached chest hair. She
kissed his throat, then took his hand and kissed his fingers, one by one, then found his lips again, found the heat and the magic rippling between them.

‘Happy?’ he asked as they pulled away again and gazed at each other.

‘Very, very – super happy,’ Tessa murmured.

‘Good,’ he whispered. ‘That’s what I want. I don’t want to rush you, Tessa. I’m holding back – you know that, don’t you? I want to be sure that
you’re ready for me – all of me. Are you?’

Tessa hesitated. She searched his eyes. ‘I don’t want to spoil this,’ she said. ‘It’s so romantic.’

‘Why would you spoil it?’

‘I don’t know – I might – panic.’

‘Panic? Why? Is it your first time?’

‘No,’ Tessa said, and she felt her body shutting down, the magic leaving. It was like a conflict between the new, loving, alive Tessa, and the old, terrified, imprisoned Tessa. She
looked at Art hopelessly.

‘Where are you?’ he asked. ‘Where have you gone, Tessa? A minute ago you were radiant and loving. You’re a natural lover, Tessa. And you want me – I can tell. So
what happened? Tell me. I want to understand.’

She sat rigid, the way she had been for most of her life. Afraid. The sea had opened her up. Now Art was there, warm and alive and concerned. He wasn’t forcing her.
I might never get
this chance again, in my whole life
, she thought.
I have to try
.

‘Please – trust me, Tessa. What is it?’ Art asked. ‘Talk to me.’

She stared silently at the waves. She saw Jonti’s eager little face circling in front of her in the water, only the water was black, and it was the Mill Pool. Why had she never told
anyone?

‘I was a bad girl . . .’ she began, and couldn’t help smiling when Art said, ‘Aw – I love bad girls!’

‘Seriously,’ Tessa said. ‘I was a cry-baby and a troublemaker. A teacher called Miss O’Grady, who looked like a badly weathered clothes peg, absolutely hated me. She
rubbished everything I did, especially my dreams and my visions. She tried to get me expelled, and she sat me in front of the vicar, with my mum there, and they all had a go at me – for being
creative, and for talking about spirit people, and for being hypersensitive. They threatened to send me to a home for bad children, and I believed them. I was so terrified that I actually collapsed
– and when I came round, I felt like a seashell.’

‘A seashell?’

‘Like an empty shell washed up on a beach, with the life torn out of it. From that moment, Art, I was suicidal. That’s when it started. I tried so hard to conform, I was like a
robot. Only my Dad understood me, then I met Selwyn, and Lexi, and YOU. You really helped me, that day – as if you’d given me back my dreams . . .’

‘I’m glad,’ Art said, gently moving a tendril of her chestnut hair from her cheek. He tucked it behind her ear.

‘BUT,’ Tessa said, ‘all of that happened just after I’d been . . . abused by this strange man – I don’t know why I’ve never EVER told anyone. I guess I
thought telling them would make me even more of a bad girl – and what he did completely shattered my trust in men – and it’s stayed with me, like a concrete barrier – a dam
across a river – so that every time a boy wanted to kiss me, I’d freeze or push him away. But . . . I don’t want to push you away, Art – I don’t.’

‘Then let’s break that barrier down, together,’ Art said. ‘Let me hold you, safe, in my arms – darling – and you can tell me everything you want to, and
we’ll transmute it together, send it into the light, and let the real, beautiful Tessa emerge.’

He held her against his heart and she relaxed with a little sigh, and began to talk. ‘When I was seven . . .’

‘She’s living with the blimin’ hippies,’ Freddie said, looking at Kate over the top of Tessa’s letter. ‘She’s with some guy living in a blimin’
old bus in some car park – illegally.’

‘Let me read it,’ Kate said and Freddie handed her the letter in disgust. He’d read the first paragraph and that was enough. Looking around at their lovely home, it hurt him
unbearably to think that his daughter didn’t want to live in it. Instead she’d chosen to shack up with some hippie, the lowest of the low in Freddie’s opinion.

‘All the years I worked and saved me money, and she does this!’

‘We’ve got to stop her,’ Kate said. ‘We could make her a ward of court, couldn’t we? Get her home and talk some sense into her.’

‘It wouldn’t work. It would just drive her away.’

‘I mean – supposing she got arrested? Or took drugs? We’ve got to protect her, Freddie. And what about her wellbeing? It sounds as if she’s living on bags of chips and
biscuits.’

‘All the effort we’ve put into giving her a good education,’ said Freddie bitterly, ‘and she’s throwing it all away. Doesn’t appreciate it.’

‘But – wait a minute – have you read the second page of her letter?’

‘No. The first was bad enough.’

‘It’s not ALL bad,’ Kate said. ‘Tessa keeps telling me on the phone – and she’s written it here – that she’s never been so happy in her whole
life, Freddie. She keeps on trying to tell us that. Shouldn’t we be trying to understand? We mustn’t be two old fuddy-duddies, like Lucy said we were. Don’t you think we should be
glad she’s found happiness? Ethie never did.’

‘Ah – Ethie.’

‘Remember when Tessa was born?’ Kate said. ‘How we all thought she was like Ethie? In a way, she has been just as difficult, or worse, and you’ve been so good with her,
Freddie. You’re close, you and Tessa. I wouldn’t want anything to break that bond.’

‘No. I wouldn’t either,’ agreed Freddie. He thought of the words hidden away in the sealed envelope. Not for the first time he wanted to open it up and share it with Kate,
especially now that his mother was gone. ‘Tessa hasn’t fulfilled her potential yet. She hasn’t found her life’s purpose, if you know what I mean, Kate. Even art college
– I’m not sure it’s right for her – are you?’

‘Oh, but she MUST stick to it,’ Kate said. ‘We can’t let her throw that away as well!’

A memory fell into place in Freddie’s mind. He saw himself at twelve years old, under an apple tree with his parents. The day he found out that they had planned his future for him. The day
they had trodden on his dreams.

‘My parents tried to force me to be a baker,’ he said, ‘and it was the last thing I wanted. They gambled all their money on it – for me – and I had to do it. I
hated it – but in the end I broke free, and it was hard. But Mother ended up proud of me, and dependent on me too. Tessa’s got dreams, Kate. Maybe we don’t even know what they
are. So let’s not go talking about wards of court and all that. We should wait and see what happens.’ He looked at Kate’s beautiful eyes, and saw how much she was worrying over
Tessa. ‘Let it be, Kate,’ he said, ‘let it be.’