Secrets

by Lesley Pearse

  Adele could hear their voices, Michael’s very low, Mrs Bailey’s high and indignant, but she couldn’t hear what they were saying. To her left was a dining room, with a vast table and eight chairs around it. A rather dingy room, she thought, and very dusty, but then no one had been here for a while. She took a step or two into it and saw a large kitchen beyond. It was disappointingly old-fashioned – she had imagined anyone living in such a big house would have far better. She just hoped there was a real bathroom – Mrs Bailey looked the kind to lie in bubbles half the day, and Adele didn’t fancy lugging pails of water to her.

  About fifteen minutes later Michael emerged from the drawing room alone, looking pleased with himself. ‘Mother’s come round now,’ he said. ‘And she asked me to apologize for offending you. She has agreed the terms, and I’m to show you round while she has a rest.’

  He showed her the kitchen first, and said he didn’t have a clue how to light the stove, but he knew it ran on coal and was kept permanently alight. Adele examined it and found it wasn’t much different to the one at the cottage, just bigger and newer. ‘I can light it,’ she said.

  It seemed it heated water too, and pipes ran to a bathroom upstairs, much to Adele’s relief. There was also a small electric stove which could be used to cook on any time the stove wasn’t lit. Adele was also pleased to see a big, cold larder as keeping food fresh in the summer was the biggest problem at Curlew Cottage.

  The Baileys had brought a box of food with them, including a piece of ham which Adele quickly put in the larder. She thought that whoever had packed the box knew what they were doing – it contained just about all the basic necessities, and a few luxuries too, like cake and biscuits.

  ‘Will Mrs Bailey do the shopping?’ she asked.

  ‘She isn’t used to doing it,’ Michael said. ‘So I expect she’ll get you to do it.’

  ‘And will she give me the money for it?’

  ‘No, I expect it will be on account,’ Michael said.

  ‘I don’t know that they’ll give tick here,’ Adele said. ‘You might have to arrange it before you leave.’

  That was one of dozens of questions she asked him as he showed her round the house, and most he didn’t know the answers to. Adele began to feel very sorry for Michael, he looked so worried, and she couldn’t tell him everything would be all right, as she was far from convinced of that herself. How did she know how often rich people had clean sheets? Or what they expected to have for breakfast? She just hoped her grandmother would know.

  The whole house was full of dust. And there were so many ornaments in every room that it would take a whole day to clean each one thoroughly. But at least she found some coat hangers for Mrs Bailey. There were hundreds of them in a box under one of the beds. This was just as well because Mrs Bailey had strewn the whole of the big bedroom with her clothes.

  ‘I’ll have to go now,’ Michael said when they got back down to the hall. ‘I honestly don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t agreed to come here, Adele. I would never have had the effrontery to ask you – I hope you know I didn’t come hoping you’d offer?’

  Adele smiled. She knew he was speaking the truth. ‘Stop worrying, Michael. I may not turn out to be the ideal housekeeper. But your mother will live in a clean house and I’ll get food for her. That’s all I can promise.’

  He reached in his pocket and pulled out a printed card. ‘That’s my home address, telephone if there’s any problems. If I’m not there, ask to speak to Mrs Wells, she’s our housekeeper. She’s very fond of Mother and she’ll help you. But I’ll be telephoning here anyway.’

  ‘I’ve never used a telephone,’ Adele admitted. ‘What do I do?’

  ‘When it rings you just pick it up and say “Harrington House”,’ he said. ‘If you have to ring me, you pick up the receiver and ask the telephonist to get this number. For local numbers, like the doctor, you just dial the number and wait for someone to answer it. Always be careful what you say though, the operators tend to listen in.’

  ‘I hope I can remember all that,’ Adele said anxiously.

  ‘You’ll soon catch on,’ he said. ‘I’d better say goodbye now, and go and see Mother before I take off. You’ve been a real brick.’

  Adele went into the kitchen and unpacked the rest of the box of groceries while he was saying goodbye to his mother. The stove had been cleared of ashes, so she screwed up some newspaper, laid some kindling over it and lit the paper with a match. Hearing the front door open and close, she went to the dining-room window to look out. Michael was just getting into the car, and his face looked so drawn with anxiety it made a lump come up in her throat. He was too young to be sorting out his parents’ problems.

  ‘We all have to grow up sometime,’ she thought as he pulled away. ‘Look at you, behaving like a ten-year-old last night, this morning you find you’ve turned into a woman, and now just a few hours later you’re starting work.’

  She was on her knees adding coal to the burning kindling piece by piece, and blowing to get the coal to light, when Mrs Bailey came into the kitchen. ‘It’s elevenses time,’ she said. ‘I like coffee and biscuits. I’ll take it in the drawing room.’

  Adele had never drunk, nor made, a cup of coffee in her life. The closest she’d ever got to coffee was seeing Americans drink it in films.

  ‘I’m sorry, ma’am,’ she said, ‘I don’t know how to make coffee. I could make you some tea once I’ve got the stove going.’

  The woman’s eyes opened wide with incredulity. ‘You don’t know how to make coffee?’

  ‘No, ma’am,’ Adele said, feeling very foolish. ‘Do you?’

  ‘I don’t have to know,’ Mrs Bailey said indignantly. ‘One has a maid to do these things.’

  ‘I’m not a real maid,’ Adele said, thinking there was no point in beating about the bush. ‘I’m just helping out till you get a real one. Now, the whole house is full of dust, this stove isn’t hot yet, and your clothes are all over the bedroom, and will have to be put away before I can make up your bed. I’m only going to have time to do essential things today. So it will be tea once the stove is hot enough. By tomorrow I may know how to make you coffee.’

  ‘Well!’ Mrs Bailey gasped out. ‘I have dismissed girls for less cheek than that.’

  Adele shrugged. ‘I only came because Michael was worried about you,’ she said, even as she spoke wondering how she got to be so bold. ‘I got the idea I was to help you settle in, not do absolutely everything myself while you drank coffee in the drawing room. Why don’t you go and hang your clothes up? I’ve put a box of hangers in your room.’

  Mrs Bailey flounced out of the kitchen, leaving in her wake a faint smell of lily of the valley. Adele half smiled, and continued to add coal to the stove. Somehow she doubted she’d last a week here, she didn’t think she had what it took to be a real maid.

  It was nearly noon before the stove got hot enough to boil the kettle – she had found the electric stove didn’t work. She made a pot of tea, put it on a tray with some sugar, milk and a strainer, then carried it upstairs to Mrs Bailey’s bedroom.

  To her dismay she found the room in an even worse mess, clothes and shoes all over the floor and bed, and Mrs Bailey sitting on the edge of the bed crying.

  Adele’s first thought was that it was because of the coffee. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t make you coffee,’ she said. ‘But I’ve brought you tea now.’

  ‘I can’t sort all this out,’ Mrs Bailey sobbed out. ‘Molly, my maid in Alton, always saw to my clothes. She had them all arranged in colours, with the matching shoes beneath. I can’t do it.’

  For Adele, who had just the dress she was wearing, the shabby one she worked at home in, and one skirt, blouse and cardigan, arranging her clothes had never presented the slightest problem. She couldn’t believe one woman could have so many dresses and shoes. But she couldn’t bear to see people cry, and she supposed it must have been hard for Mrs Bailey to leave her old home.

  ‘You come a
nd sit here and drink your tea,’ she said, putting the tray down on a low table by the window. The chair by it was very shabby, and she thought maybe old Mr Whitehouse used to sit up here all day looking out at the street. ‘I’ll hang your things up.’ She took Mrs Bailey’s arm and led her over to the chair, then poured a cup of tea for her.

  Mrs Bailey continued to sniffle as Adele made a start on the clothes. Fortunately the wardrobe was vast, with rails at the bottom for shoes. Within just a few minutes she had a bunch of green things hanging up, another of pink, and another of blue. ‘You’ve got beautiful clothes,’ she said admiringly. One blue dress had a bodice covered in sequins and chiffon sleeves, Adele didn’t think she’d ever seen such a lovely dress.

  ‘Most of them are out of date now,’ Mrs Bailey said, and with that began to cry harder. ‘We wore such short things during the Twenties, and now the fashions are so different. I don’t know what I shall do.’

  Adele was at a loss as to what to say to that. She didn’t think Mrs Bailey would have anywhere here to wear such glamorous clothes, anyway. Most of the women of her class wore tweed during the day.

  ‘Have you any old friends here?’ she ventured. ‘Ones from before you were married?’

  ‘A few maybe,’ Mrs Bailey sniffed, dabbing at her tiny little nose with a lace-edged handkerchief. ‘But I won’t know what to say to them. I can’t say I’ve separated from my husband.’

  ‘Why?’ Adele asked.

  ‘Because of the shame of it of course,’ Mrs Bailey exclaimed. ‘It just isn’t done!’

  ‘I’m sure they’d all be sympathetic,’ Adele said. ‘Lots of people get divorced these days.’

  She didn’t know that for gospel, but her grandmother was prone to claiming there was an epidemic of divorce. Mind you, Granny thought that was disgraceful, she believed you married for life, even if he turned out to be a louse.

  ‘I’ll never divorce him,’ Mrs Bailey suddenly screeched out. ‘He can shove me out of my home, turn my children against me, but I will never let him be free to marry that floozy.’

  ‘So that’s it,’ Adele thought. ‘Another woman.’

  By the time seven o’clock came round Adele felt she could understand why Mr Bailey wanted to get shot of his wife. As Michael had said on the first day they met, she was very demanding. She whined about this, cried about that, and kept creeping up behind Adele while she was scrubbing and polishing to ask for something she could easily get herself.

  At first Adele broke off what she was doing to get the slippers, cardigan, book or whatever Mrs Bailey wanted. But when she rang the bell in the drawing room, just as Adele was scrubbing out the bath, only for a drink of water, Adele lost her temper.

  ‘A glass of water?’ she exclaimed. ‘You’ve got legs, haven’t you? You know where the tap is!’

  Mrs Bailey’s eyes grew larger than millstones in surprise. ‘Are you suggesting I get it myself?’

  ‘I’m not suggesting, I’m telling you,’ Adele retorted. ‘If this house was clean, and you were an invalid, then maybe I’d get you a drink of water. But the house is filthy, and you are as able as I am. If you had any gumption at all you’d be sorting out your own house, arranging things to make it nice, not sitting there doing nothing like a bloody potentate.’

  ‘But you’re being paid to do my bidding,’ Mrs Bailey said snootily. ‘And how dare you swear at me?’

  ‘You’d make a saint swear,’ Adele snapped. ‘I only agreed to come and help you out until you got trained staff. I expected to do cooking, cleaning, making beds and lighting fires, but you’ve had me hanging up your clothes, fetching cardigans, and dozens of other trivial things you could do yourself. You’ll be wanting me to wipe your nose soon.’

  ‘I’ve never been spoken to like that before.’ Mrs Bailey’s big blue eyes filled with tears. ‘Get out of my house now.’

  ‘No, I won’t,’ Adele said stubbornly. ‘I still haven’t finished cleaning the bathroom for you, and neither have I made you your supper. When I’ve finished that I’ll go, but not before because I promised Michael I’d stay till seven. And I’ll be back in the morning, and the next, until you’ve got proper staff, whether you approve of me or not. You know why? Because your son is convinced if you are left alone you’ll stay in bed and die of starvation.’

  With that Adele turned on her heel and walked out of the drawing room and back upstairs to finish the bathroom.

  It was only much later, when she let herself out of the house at seven, having left Mrs Bailey eating her supper, that she realized just how impudent she’d been.

  But as she walked wearily home back down the hill, she had no intention of retracting a single word she’d said. She knew she’d done a very good day’s work, and no one, however rich or high and mighty, had a right to treat another person like a personal slave.

  Just a couple of weeks ago her grandmother had been talking about how it was for her growing up. Although her schoolteacher father wasn’t rich, it was unthinkable at that time for girls in the middle or upper classes to work. Honour had filled her days with sewing, reading and playing the piano. She had said that until girls married they weren’t even allowed to talk to a young man without a chaperone either.

  The war in 1914 had changed everything. These same cloistered women were suddenly nursing, driving ambulances or running tea wagons for troops at the railway stations. Once they’d tasted freedom they didn’t want to return to the old order of sitting at home waiting for a suitable husband to present himself. Not that there were enough suitable young men any longer – the war saw to that.

  Her grandmother had explained, too, that it was the war that relieved working-class girls from a life of obedience and drudgery in service, one of the few career choices open to them before. Suddenly there was a wealth of other opportunities in factories and offices, all more attractive than lighting fires, washing clothes, cooking and cleaning for the wealthy.

  Maybe there wasn’t that abundance of work available any more, but Adele knew she mustn’t begin to think she should be grateful to Mrs Bailey for allowing her to be her skivvy.

  She must keep it in mind that she was doing the woman a favour. And gaining some experience of how rich people lived and behaved. As soon as a real job came up, she’d be off.

  Chapter Eleven

  1936

  Adele moved to the far end of the drawing room to look at the overall effect of the Christmas tree she’d just finished decorating. It was over seven feet tall and she’d placed it in the alcove beside the fireplace and covered the tub it stood in with red crêpe paper.

  She smiled with pleasure. The silver tinsel was draped perfectly, and the glass balls were well spaced out, each one with a small candle close to it so the light would reflect on the balls when the candles were lit, just the way she’d seen in one of Mrs Bailey’s magazines. She’d even managed to fix the fairy at the top straight, no easy feat standing on a chair and stretching over prickly branches.

  She felt optimistic that this Christmas was going to be a happy one, unlike last year’s which had been absolute misery. But then, in sixteen months of working for Mrs Bailey she felt she’d come a long way. She not only knew a great deal more about running a household, but she had also come to know her employer well, and learned to read the danger signs that heralded disaster.

  Her grandmother said it was stupidity which made Adele stay longer than one week, and sheer cussedness that kept her there afterwards. Perhaps she was right, because Mrs Bailey had to be the most difficult, selfish, idiotic woman in the whole world. She was beautiful, rich by Adele’s standards, and quite charming when she chose to be, but that wasn’t often.

  Adele couldn’t count the tantrums the woman had thrown in those first few months. Each day she had to brace herself for what she’d find when she let herself in the front door. In the first few weeks Mrs Bailey often hurled her supper tray against the drawing-room wall. Adele would get in the next morning to find a congealed mass of leftovers along
with the broken china and whatever ornament had been knocked down by the tray. Apparently Mrs Bailey was incensed that there was no one there to remove it to the kitchen.

  Adele kept cleaning the mess up each day until one day she rebelled and left it there. It just so happened that Mrs Bailey’s solicitor called that morning, and Adele purposely showed him into the drawing room, and left him staring at it in astonishment while she called Mrs Bailey to tell her he was there.

  ‘How could you let such an important man see that mess?’ Mrs Bailey screamed after he’d gone. ‘I didn’t know where to put myself.’

  ‘Well, think on that before you throw any more food and china,’ Adele retorted, past caring if she got thrown out. ‘Because I’m not clearing it up again, and if it gets left there you’ll have rats coming in to eat it.’

  Looking back, that was one of the more easily solved problems. Mrs Bailey was terrified of mice, let alone rats, so she never threw food again. But she would throw the entire contents of her wardrobe on the floor and leave it for Adele to hang up again. She would demand fires to be lit all over the house when she wasn’t using the rooms. She ran baths and forgot them until the bathroom was flooded. She would stand by the telephone listening to it ring while Adele was in the garden hanging the washing up, then complain that she’d missed a call. Sometimes she drank so much in the evenings that Adele would find her out cold on the floor, often in a pool of vomit. But the most irritating thing about her was that she seemed unable to understand she was never again going to have a team of staff to jump to her every whim.

  Jacob Wainwright, the solicitor in Rye, arranged that John Sneed, the gardener who had worked for Mrs Bailey’s parents, would come back to look after the garden and do any odd maintenance jobs. Mr Wainwright also eventually found a Mrs Thomas, and got her to come in two mornings a week to do the laundry and the rough work like scrubbing the floors. That left Adele to do everything else, but she accepted this when Mr Wainwright explained that Mrs Bailey couldn’t afford more staff.