Rusty rowed until she had exhausted herself. She glided into a small inlet in the bank and attached the rope to the branch of an overhanging tree. Sliding into the centre of the boat, she leaned back. The palms of her hands burned, but she didn’t care. It was such a relief to be doing something she liked. For the first time since her return to England, she didn’t feel lonely. She raised herself up on her elbow and peered over the side of the boat. There wasn’t another boat to be seen, and the banks of the river were too overgrown with trees and bushes for anyone to walk with ease through them.
Within seconds she had peeled off her clothes and had plunged into the river. There was nothing to beat skinny-dipping, she thought, as she glided and turned and somersaulted in the water.
Oblivious of time, she swam and dived, gazing at the fish and plants as she let herself sink under the surface or lie face down in a dead man’s float. After a while she hauled herself back into the boat and lay there, dripping.
Above her the leaves flickered. She stretched her arm out and brushed them with her fingers. This river was so pretty, she thought. Gradually the gentle plash of the water and the mild rocking of the boat soothed her into an exhausted sleep.
It wasn’t till she turned over to adjust her pillow that she realized that she didn’t have one, and neither was she in her bedroom at the Omsks’. She was lying in a boat on a river somewhere in Devon, and the reason she was lying there was because she was angry with her mother. She thought back to how her mother had bounded across the garden to answer that emergency call, and she realized that it was dumb to be so mad at her. After all, if her mother fixed the ambulance, it might save someone’s life. She gave a sigh. Why couldn’t she save someone’s life in a more hygienic way, though, like being a nurse or something?
She sat up. A slight breeze was moving through the leaves, and it was beginning to grow cool. Her anger had subsided, and the swim and the sleep had refreshed her. She felt ravenous. What she wouldn’t have given for a plateful of baked beans and hamburgers, followed by an ice-cream soda! But then, she thought, pioneers didn’t have hamburgers and ice-cream soda. And pioneers also didn’t have showers when they wanted, or refrigerators or washing-machines. They had to be inventive. If she was lonely and she wanted a buddy, she’d have to go out and find one. Forget about her mother and Charlie. Boy, he got up her nose. She was on her own, in the wilderness.
‘Think pioneer,’ she muttered.
She slipped back into her clothes, untied the rope and pushed one oar against the bank to ease the dinghy into the deeper part of the river. Even as the oars scraped against her sore hands, she thought ‘pioneer’ and that made her feel proud.
‘Row, row, row jour boat
Gently down the stream,’
she sang,
‘Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream.’
When she got back to Beatie’s, she’d write lots of letters. Here she’d been waiting for letters from America, and she hadn’t sent any off herself.
She’d write to Janey, and the Fitzes, and to Aunt Hannah and Uncle Bruno and the girls, and a private one to Skeet, and one to her Girl Scout captain to read to the troop, and one to Miss Jenkins, her art teacher.
Just the thought of them all made her feel good. Too bad she didn’t have a fishing rod – then she could have caught some fish and brought them back to the house for tea. For tea! That sounded so English. Like she was in a movie.
She realized that she must have rowed a good distance in her temper, for the journey back seemed much longer. She had no idea what time it was. It was difficult to tell in England. The night crept up so slow. She let the oars rest against the sides and drifted for a moment. The palms of her hands were pink and blistered.
‘They’ll toughen up,’ she said in her pioneer voice, and she grabbed the oars firmly and began whisking the boat swiftly past the banks.
As the trees began to clear, she knew that she would soon see the jetty. She pulled a little more slowly on the oars. Even though it wasn’t yet dark, the sky had grown dull, and there were lights on in the house. Hanging from a clothes-line were the two pairs of blackout curtains. Rusty stared guiltily at them. Beatie must have hung them up herself. She glanced back at the jetty and began rowing towards it.
As the boat slid alongside it, she grabbed one of the wooden posts and flung the rope around it, knotting it quickly. She was about to clamber out when she noticed a girl striding briskly across the garden. Her short wavy hair fell untidily from a side parting. Below a shabby blouse, a pair of worn blue corduroy slacks was rolled up to her knees.
Rusty guessed from the size of the girl that she must be about eleven. She waved. ‘Hi!’
The girl frowned and strode very fimly in her direction. Rusty could see that she was angry.
She stopped abruptly on the jetty, her bare feet apart, her hands on her hips. ‘I must say,’ she yelled, ‘you’ve got a bloody nerve!’