then the train gathered speed and a bend in the line hid her from view.
Anna sat down without looking round, broke off four squares of chocolate, put the rest of the bar in her pocket with the packet of paper handkerchiefs, and opened her comic. Two hours – more than two hours – to King’s Lynn. With luck, if she just looked ‘ordinary’ no-one would speak to her in all that time. She could read her comic and then stare out of the window, thinking about nothing.
Anna spent a great deal of her time thinking about nothing these days. In fact it was partly because of her habit of thinking about nothing that she was travelling up to Norfolk now, to stay with Mr and Mrs Pegg. That – and other things. The other things were difficult to explain, they were so vague and indeterminate. There was the business of not having best friends at school like all the others, not particularly wanting to ask anyone home to tea, and not particularly caring that no-one asked her.
Mrs Preston just would not believe that Anna did not mind. She was always saying things like, “There now, what a shame! Do you mean to say they’ve all gone off to the ice rink and never asked you?” (Or the cinema, or the Zoo, or the nature ramble, or the treasure hunt.) – And, “Why don’t you ask next time? Let them know you’d like to go too. Say something like,’ If you’ve room for an extra one, how about me? I’d love to come.’ If you don’t look interested nobody’ll know you are.”
But Anna was not interested. Not any more. She knew perfectly well – though she could never have explained it to Mrs Preston – that things like parties and best friends and going to tea with people were fine for everyone else, because everyone else was ‘inside’ – inside some sort of invisible magic circle. But Anna herself was outside. And so these things had nothing to do with her. It was as simple as that.
Then there was not-even-trying. That was another thing. Anna always thought of not-even-trying as if it were one long word, she had heard it said so often during the last six months. Miss Davison, her form teacher, said it at school, “Anna, you’re not-even-trying.” It was written on her report at the end of term. And Mrs Preston said it at home.
“It isn’t as if there’s anything wrong with you,” she would say. “I mean you’re not handicapped in any way and I’m sure you’re just as clever as any of the others. But this not-even-trying is going to spoil your whole future.” And when anyone asked about Anna, which school she would be going to later on, and so on, she would say, “I really don’t know. I’m afraid she’s not-even-trying. It’s going to be difficult to know quite what to do with her.”
Anna herself did not mind. As with the other things, she was not worried at all. But everyone else seemed worried. First Mrs Preston, then Miss Davison, and then Dr Brown who was called in when she had asthma and couldn’t go to school for nearly two weeks.
“I hear you’ve been worried about school,” Dr Brown had remarked with a kindly twinkle in his eye.
“I’m not. She is,” Anna had mumbled.
“A-ah!” Dr Brown had walked about the bedroom, picking things up and examining them closely, then putting them down again. “And you feel sick before Arithmetic?”
“Sometimes.”
“A-ah!” Dr Brown placed a small china pig carefully back on the mantelpiece and stared earnestly into its painted black eyes. “I think you are worried, you know,” he murmured. Anna was silent. “Aren’t you?” He turned round to face her again.
“I thought you were talking to the pig,” she said.
Dr Brown had almost smiled then, but Anna had continued to look severe, so he went on seriously. “I think perhaps you are worried, and I’ll tell you why. I think you’re worried because your—” He broke off and came towards her again. “What do you call her?”
“Who?”
“Mrs Preston. Do you call her Auntie?” Anna nodded. “I think perhaps you’re worried because Auntie’s worried, is that it?”
“No, I told you, I’m not worried.”
He had stopped walking about then and stood looking down at her consideringly as she lay there, wheezing, with her ‘ordinary’ face on. Then he had looked at his watch and said briskly, “Good. Well, that’s all right then, isn’t it?” and gone running downstairs to talk to Mrs Preston.
After that things changed quite quickly. Firstly Anna didn’t go back to school, though it was a good six weeks till the end of term. Instead she and Mrs Preston went shopping and bought shorts and sandshoes and a thick rolltop jersey for Anna. Then Mrs Preston had a reply to the letter she had written to her old friend, Susan Pegg, saying yes, the little lass could come and welcome. She and Sam would be glad to have her, though not so young as they was and Sam’s rheumatics something chronic last winter. But seeing she was a quiet little thing and not over fond of gadding about, they hoped she’d be happy. “As you may recall,” wrote Mrs Pegg, “we’re plain and homely up at ours, but comfortable beds and nothing wanting now we’ve got the telly.”
“Why does she says ‘up at ours’?” asked Anna.
“It means at home, at our place. That’s how they say it in Norfolk.”
“Oh.”
Anna had then, surprisingly, slammed the door and stamped noisily upstairs.
“Now whatever did I say to upset her?” thought Mrs Preston, as she put the letter in the sideboard drawer to show to Mr Preston later. She could never have guessed, but Anna had taken sudden and unreasonable exception to being called “a quiet little thing”. It was one thing not to want to talk to people, but quite another to be called names like that. The stamps on the stairs were to prove that she was nothing of the sort.
Remembering this now as she sat in the train pretending to read her comic (which she had long since finished), she suddenly wondered if anyone here might be having the same idea about her. Creasing her forehead into a forbidding frown, she lifted her head for the first time and glared round at the other occupants of the carriage. One, an old man, was fast asleep in a corner. A woman opposite him was making her face up carefully in a pocket mirror. Anna stared, fascinated, for a moment, realised her frown was slipping, and turned to glare at the woman opposite her. She, too, was asleep.
So the ‘ordinary’ face had worked. No-one had even noticed her. Relieved, she turned to the window and stared out at the long flat stretches of the fens, with their single farmhouses standing isolated from each other, fields apart, and thought about nothing at all.
ANNA KNEW THAT the large, round-faced woman waving a shopping bag at her on the platform must be Mrs Pegg, and went up to her.
“There you are, my duck! Now ain’t that nice! And the bus just come in now. Here, give me your case and we’ll run!”
A single-decker bus, already nearly full, was waiting in the station yard. “There’s a seat down there,” panted Mrs Pegg. “Go you on down, my duck, and I’ll sit here by the driver. Morning, Mr Beales! Morning Mrs Wells! Lovely weather we’re having. And how’s Sharon?”
Anna pushed her way down the bus, glad she was not going to have to sit by Sharon, who was only about four and had fat, red-brown cheeks and almost white fair hair. She never knew what to say to children who were so much younger than she was.
Fields stretched on either side, sloping fields of yellow, green and brown. Ploughed fields that looked like brown corduroy, and cabbage