Secrets

by Lesley Pearse

  He had a nice smile and lovely dark blue eyes, and she liked his good manners. Most boys she knew were very uncouth. ‘You’ll find it hard to ride,’ she said. ‘It’s boggy in places and there’s lots of shingle. It’s a lovely walk, but easier to get there by road on a bike.’

  ‘I was just exploring really,’ he said, and looked curiously at her basket of gorse flowers. ‘Why are you picking those?’

  ‘To make wine,’ she said. ‘My grandmother makes it.’

  He looked surprised. ‘What’s it like?’

  ‘She doesn’t let me drink it,’ Adele said with a grin. ‘But I’ve sipped it. It’s kind of sweet, and smells like the flowers. They say that one glass makes you drunk, two makes you dead drunk.’

  He laughed. ‘Is your grandmother drunk all the time then?’

  ‘No, she only sells it,’ Adele said reprovingly. In two years she had become very used to people trying to ridicule her grandmother, and very adept at defending her.

  ‘I was only joking,’ he said. ‘I’ve never met anyone who made wine before, my parents get theirs from a wine merchant. Could I buy a bottle of it for them to try?’

  Adele didn’t really know how to answer that question. Granny always sold all her wine to a man in Rye. He gave her the bottles, and he sold it on to his customers along with the elderberry, dandelion and other wines she made. ‘I’d have to ask her,’ she said. ‘Are you here on holiday?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ he said. ‘My grandmother has just died, so I came down with my parents to help my grandfather organize the funeral. He lives in Winchelsea.’

  ‘Would your grandmother be Mrs Whitehouse? My grandmother mentioned only yesterday that she’d died. If so I’m very sorry.’

  ‘Yes, that’s her,’ he nodded. ‘She was over seventy, and frail, so it was to be expected. I didn’t know her very well. Mother used to bring us down here occasionally when I was very young, but I suppose she and my grandfather found noisy brats too much of a trial. We’re staying until I have to return to school after the Easter hols.’

  ‘School?’ Adele exclaimed without thinking. Everyone she knew left school at fourteen and he was certainly a lot older than that.

  ‘Well, yes,’ he said, clearly puzzled by her remark. ‘Have you left then?’

  ‘No, but I will be leaving this summer,’ she said. ‘I was just thinking about finding a job when you came along.’

  He gave her a long, cool stare, and Adele felt he was weighing up her shabby clothes and the wine-making and deciding she wasn’t the sort of person he should be chatting to.

  ‘I expect that will be hard down here,’ he said eventually, but his tone was sympathetic, not patronizing. ‘We went into Rye yesterday afternoon and my parents both remarked that people there must be suffering badly with the Slump. What kind of job are you aiming at?’

  ‘Anything that pays,’ she retorted, and even to her own ears she sounded as brusque as her grandmother.

  She expected him to take his leave and ride off, but to her surprise he dropped the bike on the ground and began plucking the flowers off the gorse bush. ‘I’m Michael Bailey, and if I help you’ll be finished quicker,’ he said with a grin. ‘Then maybe you’ll show me the walk to Rye Harbour? That is, if you haven’t got anything better to do?’

  His grin was so warm and genuine that Adele couldn’t help but smile back.

  ‘I’m Adele Talbot,’ she said. ‘But I have to take these flowers home before they dry out.’

  ‘Is that a polite way of saying you can’t or won’t come with me?’

  Adele had had very little contact with boys so she certainly hadn’t learned to be deliberately evasive. She had meant just what she said, that she had to take the flowers home, though perhaps she ought to have added ‘first’ to make it clearer. But as he’d given her time to think about it, she wasn’t sure it was right to go for a walk with a complete stranger.

  ‘Why would someone like you want to go for a walk with me?’ she asked defensively.

  He put his head on one side and looked at her appraisingly. ‘Someone like me?’

  ‘Well, look at you!’ she said, blushing again. ‘A real gent. If your folks saw you with me they’d have a fit.’

  He frowned. ‘I can’t see why,’ he said, sounding as if he really didn’t know. ‘Why shouldn’t we walk and talk and even become friends? Don’t you get lonely all by yourself out here?’

  Adele shook her head. Perhaps she was strange, some of the girls at school said she was, but she never felt lonely out on the marsh, she loved it. ‘There’s too much to see to feel lonely.’ She shrugged. ‘I look at the wild geese, check to see the first new lambs, find wild flowers. I feel much more lonely when I’m in town surrounded by people.’

  She expected that he’d give her one of those smirks that said he too thought she was strange, but as she raised her eyes to look at him in defiance, she saw instead understanding and approval. For the second time she was struck by his eyes, not just by their dark blue colour, but by the intensity of his stare.

  ‘I often feel lonely surrounded by people too,’ he admitted. ‘Even my own family make me feel that way. And back at my grandparents’ place it’s so gloomy, all they can talk about is the funeral arrangements. That’s why I took off this morning. But I don’t know the marsh, I don’t know what to look out for. Come and show me!’

  Once the basket was full, Adele took it home, and after only the briefest of words with her grandmother, she sped out again to meet Michael. She felt surprised at herself, for normally if she saw anyone walking on the marsh she went in the opposite direction. When she’d first come to live here, Granny had told her that ‘Marsh People’ were a sort of joke to the town people, considered to be at best eccentric, at worst mad. Adele had had plenty of evidence that this attitude was widespread, so she avoided town people – even girls from her class at school could be very superior. But maybe, as Michael didn’t really come from here, he hadn’t heard of it.

  Michael abandoned his bike, and Adele led him along the way she always walked to Rye Harbour, a path that involved jumping over a few water-filled ditches, a plank over a stream and taking in several of the willow shelters that shepherds erected to give the sheep and their new lambs some protection during bad weather.

  Within minutes Adele stopped feeling nervous because it was obvious to her that Michael was genuinely interested in exploring the marsh, and his enthusiasm reminded her of the way she’d been when she first saw it.

  They saw dozens of new lambs, some obviously only a few hours old, their little legs still very wobbly, and she was sure by Michael’s wide smiles that it was the first time he’d seen any so young.

  ‘What on earth’s wrong with that one?’ he asked, pointing out one lamb looking very odd and bloody.

  ‘It’s not hurt,’ Adele said. ‘The shepherd has just tied another dead lamb’s skin round it.’

  ‘Why?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s been orphaned. Some ewes die while giving birth, just as some lambs don’t make it either. So the shepherd skins the dead lamb, puts the skin around an orphaned one, and then the mum who’s lost her baby thinks it’s hers because of the smell, and she feeds it.’

  Michael looked staggered. ‘I always thought shepherds fed orphaned lambs by bottle!’

  ‘They might on an ordinary farm where there’s only a few sheep,’ Adele said. ‘But there’s hundreds out here – imagine trying to get out here four or five times a day with dozens of bottles of milk! Besides, it’s better for lambs to be brought up in a flock rather than as pets, they can become a real pest when they are fully grown.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you be tempted to rear one?’ Michael asked, looking at one little lamb bleating pitifully for its mother.

  Adele smiled. ‘Oh yes, they are so sweet. Last spring I was over here every day looking at them. I kept hoping I’d find one alone that I could take home. I didn’t think my grandmother would turn it away, she loves animals. But perhaps it was as w
ell the shepherd always got here before me. Grown-up sheep aren’t much fun.’

  She told him about Misty, the rabbit that her grandmother had given her as a pet.

  ‘She’s just beautiful, the lightest grey colour, like dawn light. She’s so tame she comes hopping into the house and lies down by the stove. She’s the best thing I’ve ever had.’

  ‘Does your grandmother keep lots of rabbits then?’ he asked.

  Adele nodded ruefully. ‘She breeds them and then kills them for the meat and the skins. I thought she was so cruel when I first came to live with her. Not only killing rabbits that are so sweet, but wringing the chickens’ necks too. But I see it differently now. It’s just a way of making a living.’

  Michael asked her then why she lived with her grandmother, and Adele told him the same thing about her parents as she told everyone else: that her mother had become ill and her father thought it best she came here to live.

  But Michael wasn’t satisfied with that explanation, and as they continued their walk to look at Camber Castle, he kept asking more questions. What was wrong with her mother? How often did her father visit her, and why if her mother was ill didn’t she come and stay here too?

  Adele liked the fact that someone as nice as Michael could be really interested in her, but she didn’t want to reveal her background, so did her best to change the subject. Michael was persistent, however, and kept on asking her the same thing, only rephrasing the questions in different ways.

  ‘Why don’t you tell me the truth?’ he said eventually as they reached the ruined castle. He looked at her sternly. ‘Is it that bad?’

  Adele thought that if she was to tell him the whole truth, he would consider it pretty bad. But that wasn’t the reason she didn’t want to reveal it. It was loyalty to her grandmother. She’d taken her in when no one else cared, and so it seemed right not to bandy around that her daughter was mad, and a bad mother. Granny often used the word ‘standards’, and to Adele that meant keeping family secrets secret, maintaining some dignity even if your dress was shabby and your grandmother distinctly odd.

  Adele had come to admire her oddity. Honour Harris treated everyone the same, whether it was the man she sold her wine and preserves to, policemen, acquaintances in Rye, or ramblers who came to the door asking for a drink of water in the summer. She was proud, cool and impervious to flattery, cheap jibes or any kind of blackmail. Adele had noticed with some delight that most people became quite obsequious to her after just a brief meeting.

  She strode into Rye to sell her goods with the belief they were better quality than anyone else’s. She didn’t wait humbly for the shop proprietor to see her. If he didn’t drop everything the moment she walked in, she went somewhere else. The manager of the Home and Colonial store had once described her to Adele as ‘a real character’. He was right, she was quite unique. Hard, capable, bombastic and sharp-tongued, she was also fair, honest and unexpectedly generous. She could always spare a penny or two for beggars, especially those who were crippled ex-servicemen. When she knew a family was in dire straits she would make up a bag of vegetables, eggs and some chicken or rabbit to help them out.

  ‘Actions speak louder than words’ was the proverb Granny lived by, and Adele had clear proof of that. From the moment Honour knew what Mr Makepeace did to Adele, she had taken action. She had never divulged what transpired when she went to the police to inform them that her granddaughter was with her, but months later she announced she was now Adele’s legal guardian. There was a legal document to prove it, and even more important to Adele, her grandmother had never shown the slightest hint that she regretted it.

  ‘How well do you know Rye?’ Adele asked Michael as they walked into the ruin of Camber Castle. She wasn’t so much deliberately ignoring his questions, as hoping to sidetrack him.

  ‘I know my way around it,’ he said with a grin. ‘It’s very quaint, isn’t it, but I suspect you want to know if I’ve learned all its history?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ She smiled. ‘My grandmother is an expert on it, she can walk you around it telling you tales of the ship-building, the smuggling and its royal connections. She’s almost as passionate about it as she is about the marshes.’

  ‘My grandfather told me Rye and Winchelsea were once islands but the sea receded and created the marshland, but that’s about all I know,’ Michael replied.

  ‘It’s more important to know that Rye was one of the Cinque Ports and that Henry VIII built this castle,’ Adele said reprovingly. ‘Some people claim he built it to lock up Anne Boleyn, but I don’t believe that, he built it as a defence in case of an invasion. It’s my favourite place.’

  To others the castle might only be an old ruin, but to Adele there was something mysterious and wonderful about the way nature had taken it over, bushes sprouting out of the thick stone walls, ivy clambering up stone stairs, and lush grass and wild flowers growing inside. Even in winter she often walked here, as once inside the outer walls, sheltered from raw winds from the sea, she could sit and dream. Primroses and cowslips bloomed earlier here than anywhere else on the marsh, birds nested here, and often, if she sat very still, rabbits would come out of their burrows and scamper about near her.

  She would imagine Henry VIII arriving here on horseback in a velvet cloak trimmed with ermine, with a procession of noblemen, the servants scurrying to get things ready for him. Sometimes she could almost see it.

  The castle was the place where she did all her thinking, a place to run to when she felt the world was against her. A couple of hours alone here and everything came right again.

  ‘It is a lovely old place,’ Michael said, gazing around him reflectively. ‘But I want to hear about you,’ he added, putting one hand on her shoulder.

  ‘When you’ve been down here for a bit longer you’ll find out about “Marsh People”,’ she said with a giggle. ‘We’re supposed to be not quite right in the head on account of the wind. Some children think my grandmother is a witch.’

  ‘I don’t think you can be both a witch and a grandmother.’ He laughed. ‘Witches don’t marry. Has yours got a black cat?’

  ‘No cats, she doesn’t like them because they kill birds. But I reckon she could do a few spells if she had to.’ Adele smiled.

  ‘Well, get her to do one for my folks,’ he said, sitting down on the grass and leaning back against the castle wall. ‘It would take real magic to make them happy.’

  Adele looked at him in surprise. She might have only met him a couple of hours ago, but he came across as the sort of person who basked in a golden world where everything was perfect.

  When he saw her surprise he gave a hollow laugh. ‘Oh, I know what you’re thinking, the privileged boy at public school! But my mother is always flying into terrible rages, then she stays in bed for days on end. Father rages back at her and makes her worse. If he’d just stay around a bit more, be kind to her, she might change. But he’s as cruel as she is barmy. Mostly I’m glad when the holidays are over and I can go back to school.’

  All at once Adele realized that this was why he’d wanted to come for a walk with her. He probably had no intention of unburdening himself, but just wanted to be taken into another kind of life for a while. In a way it was the same as when she and Pamela used to go and watch other people at Euston station. A way of escaping reality.

  Yet it also seemed to be some strange twist of fate that Michael should pick her of all people to talk to. Who else would have any real empathy with him? ‘Is your father cruel to you too?’ she asked tentatively, her heart expanding with sympathy for him.

  ‘Sometimes, but it’s mostly Mother. But then she is very demanding, suspicious and extraordinarily difficult.’ He paused, giving Adele a faintly embarrassed grin. ‘She ruined my sister’s wedding by having a tantrum,’ he went on. ‘My sister-in-law refuses to come to our house any more because of something she said. Father always claims it’s her nerves and gets her medicine for it. But I think that makes her even more confused and fright
ened.’ He stopped again, and this time there was no grin, just a bleak, sad look and suspiciously damp-looking eyes.

  ‘Sometimes I think what she really needs is just someone to talk to,’ he added with a sigh.

  Adele noted that he had both attacked and defended his mother, which suggested he was torn both ways. She also remembered that her own mother had often said that nobody ever listened to her.

  ‘My mother used to complain that my dad didn’t listen to her,’ Adele ventured, very tempted to break her code of secrecy about her parents just this once.

  ‘I don’t think there’s many married couples who communicate,’ he said sadly, pulling his knees up to his chest and leaning his chin on them. ‘I watch my friends’ parents and they are much the same as mine. In public they are so polite, they put up this united and devoted front, like actors in a play. But at home when there’s no one but children or servants around it’s quite different. They either ignore one another, or snipe away with sarcasm and mockery.’

  ‘Really?’ Adele exclaimed. She had always imagined that rich people had everything they wanted, including greater happiness.

  Michael nodded. ‘My elder brother Ralph and sister Diana are both getting like it too. All they seem to care about is their social life, filling their houses with other people, going off to the races, to concerts and the theatre. Sometimes I think they are afraid to be alone with their husband and wife. When Ralph’s first child was born Ralph went away on business. He didn’t have to, he could have put it off, what could be more important than sharing such a moment with his wife?’

  Adele had never met anyone, except perhaps Ruby back at The Firs, who had told her so much about their family at a first meeting. She thought she ought to be suspicious of Michael because of it. Yet instinct told her he wasn’t normally so open. She thought maybe he’d been tripped off by his grandmother’s death, or he sensed something in her that made it seem right to confide in her.

  ‘Where I used to live it was tradition for a man to go down the pub when a baby was being born,’ she said hesitantly. ‘That amounts to the same thing, doesn’t it?’