Secrets

by Lesley Pearse

  Adele liked Mr Wainwright. He was big and hearty, with a bulbous red nose which suggested he was over-fond of port. He commiserated with Adele, praised her for getting the house back into such good shape, and said he admired the tough line she took with her mistress. He said it was imperative that Mrs Bailey learned to do some things for herself, for the time might come when she would have to move into a far smaller house and manage without any help.

  By that Adele realized Mrs Bailey hadn’t got a bottomless pot of money, so she made economies where she could. It was fortunate that her grandmother had trained her well in this department because if she ever asked Mrs Bailey what she’d like to eat for dinner, she always said she wanted lamb, steak or some other expensive food. So Adele stopped asking and just cooked what she thought was appropriate. And Mrs Bailey invariably ate it without complaint.

  It was just over a year ago that Adele had finally been compelled to come and live in Harrington House. She had no real choice, for her employer was a danger to herself. Aside from her drinking, she never remembered to put the spark guard in front of the fire when she was out of the room or going to bed. The hearthrug was peppered with burn holes, and it was only a matter of time before a fire would break out and burn the house down.

  Aside from being able to have a real bath and use an inside lavatory, Adele hated living in. The job had never seemed so bad when she could go home at night and tell her grandmother what she’d been doing. They often had a good laugh at some of the sillier things Mrs Bailey got up to.

  Now Adele had her day off on one of the days Mrs Thomas came in, and left something cold for Mrs Bailey’s dinner. On fine days she and Granny usually went for an afternoon walk, collecting wood as they went, or sometimes they’d go into Rye, have tea in a shop and go to the pictures together. When it was wet or very cold they’d just stay in by the stove and talk.

  Honour always had a recipe for her to take back to try, and she would talk through any problems Adele had run into during the week. It was through this that Adele got further insight into the way her grandmother had once lived. She knew how everything should be done, from the right thickness of starch for the bed linen, to which kind of glass you used for any drink. She had a huge fund of dinner and supper ideas, and she was well versed in etiquette too.

  She always asked about Michael, and whether he’d been to see his mother. He did telephone every week, and sometimes if Mrs Bailey was out he and Adele would have a chat. He had joined the University Flying Corps as he said he was going to, and he was always eager to talk about the flying lessons, his friends in Oxford and playing cricket. He never spoke of girls though, and that convinced Adele he was avoiding the subject deliberately for fear of hurting her feelings. She felt sure he must have a girlfriend, and did her best to persuade herself that she didn’t care.

  But although he telephoned his mother every week, he’d only visited three times: last Christmas, at Easter and in the summer, always staying only one night. As for the rest of the family, they hadn’t been once.

  Adele sympathized with them, for Mrs Bailey’s behaviour was as disturbing as her own mother’s had been. There was only so much nastiness, embarrassment and hurt a person could take before love disappeared.

  When Mrs Bailey was at her worst, Adele often thought about Rose and wondered where she was now, and how she lived. But she hadn’t the slightest inclination to see her again, and she supposed the Bailey children felt much the same way about their mother too.

  Mrs Bailey had been absolutely dreadful back in November of last year, refusing to get out of bed, crying all the time and not even bothering to wash herself or do her hair. But she finally perked up when Michael said he was coming for Christmas, and then announced she was going to invite some old childhood friends for drinks on Christmas Eve.

  Christmas had always been a disappointment to Adele. She could remember how she and Pamela had always got excited once the lights and decorations went up in the shops. At school they put on a nativity play, the Salvation Army band played carols outside Euston station, and the feeling of joy and hope grew larger and larger as Christmas Day drew nearer. But it was always an anti-climax. Their father would invariably come home from work late on Christmas Eve so drunk he could barely stand, and that would tip their mother into one of her blackest moods. Adele could remember taking Pamela out for walks on Christmas Day, for there was always far more jollity on the streets than there was at home.

  Yet coming to live with her grandmother had cancelled out some of those sad memories. Her grandmother didn’t have much money to spare on frivolity, but she put a great deal of effort into Christmas. She bought little treats and surprises, decked the cottage out with holly and paper chains, and told Adele stories of the wonderful Christmas parties she went to as a child. When she talked nostalgically of eight-foot trees alight with hundreds of candles, of huge tables laid with silver and sparkling glasses, of singing round the piano, and games of musical chairs, pin the tail on the donkey and blind man’s bluff, she often had tears in her eyes. Adele sensed that she was remembering her own parents, her husband, and perhaps Rose too as a little girl. She admitted that the Christmas after Frank died she felt so low she stayed in her bed all day, and she hadn’t attempted to celebrate Christmas in any way at all until Adele came to live with her.

  It was because of this blight on her own family that Adele tried so hard last year to make everything lovely at Harrington House. She got armfuls of holly from the garden and tied it with red ribbon, polished up the best glasses, and spent hours making dainty mince pies, sausage rolls and other little festive canapés Granny suggested. And all that alongside buying and preparing the Christmas Day dinner.

  Michael arrived late in the afternoon on Christmas Eve, but Adele barely saw him because she was so busy in the kitchen. Then just before six he came charging in to get her, saying his mother was throwing another tantrum because she hadn’t got anything to wear that night.

  The guests were due at seven, so Adele flew upstairs. Mrs Bailey had said earlier in the week that she was going to wear her silver satin cocktail dress and Adele had pressed it and hung it up on her wardrobe door, with silver shoes beneath it. In Adele’s opinion it was the perfect choice, a very fashionable mid-calf length, cut on the cross, with a flash of black embroidery from one shoulder to her breast. Mrs Bailey looked lovely in it.

  The sight that met Adele’s eyes as she entered Mrs Bailey’s bedroom was alarming. She was dressed in just a satin petticoat, her hair all wild, and she’d done her old trick of dragging the entire contents of the wardrobe on to the floor. The silver dress was torn into pieces and tossed on to the bed.

  ‘What on earth have you done that for?’ Adele asked incredulously, knowing she’d have to work a year or two to buy such a dress. ‘It’s a beautiful dress and you look so lovely in it.’

  ‘It made my skin grey,’ Mrs Bailey screamed at Adele, and came rushing at her, as if about to strike her. Adele put her hands out to stop her, and as she caught the woman’s arms she could smell whisky on her breath.

  ‘I’ll make your skin grey if you start showing off now,’ Adele said fiercely, and pushed her down into the chair. ‘Your friends will be here soon, do you want them to see you acting like a madwoman?’

  Adele found a dark red crêpe dress and forced her to put it on. She brushed her hair for her, fixed two glittery combs one each side of her head, and then powdered her face and put a little rouge on her cheeks. But as she bent down to pick up a pair of black shoes for her to put on, Mrs Bailey kicked her up the backside and she fell forward, banging her head on the end of the bed.

  It was all Adele could do to stop herself from kicking the woman back. Her head hurt and she guessed she’d have a bruise there the next day.

  ‘You’re a nasty piece of work,’ she snapped at her. ‘I’ve a good mind to go home right now, and leave you to cope alone tonight. But you aren’t going to show Michael up, not if I can help it.’

  Some
how she managed to get Mrs Bailey to put on some lipstick and the right jewellery, and got her downstairs. Mrs Bailey immediately poured herself another large drink.

  Michael watched his mother pacing the drawing room and he was pale with fright. ‘What am I going to do?’ he whispered to Adele. ‘Perhaps I should send the guests away when they come, she’s going to be awful, I just know it.’

  ‘You can’t do that on Christmas Eve,’ Adele said. ‘I’m sure she’ll start behaving once they get here.’

  At first it looked as if Adele was right. Mrs Bailey greeted her old friends with warmth and charm, introduced Michael to them all, like a perfect mother, and even told them all that Adele was her treasure, as she handed round the food.

  There were five couples in all, two of whom Adele knew by sight as they lived in Winchelsea, and it seemed to her that everyone was there to show that their sympathies lay with Mrs Bailey and they would support her now she was living alone. Michael began to relax, the fire was blazing, the drawing room looked lovely and so did his mother. She had a drink in her hand but she didn’t appear to be drinking it. Every time Adele looked at her she was engrossed in animated conversation, and she looked really happy for once.

  About nine o’clock Adele was just coming back from the kitchen with more hot sausage rolls when she heard the crash from the drawing room. She rushed back in to find Mrs Bailey lying on the floor, with her dress right up showing her stocking tops. She had presumably fallen over the side table for it was overturned, and the glasses on it were all spilt on the carpet.

  The other guests were looking down at her in astonishment.

  Adele ran to help her up, but Michael got there first. ‘It’s those shoes again,’ he said. ‘You said you were going to get rid of them because the heels are wobbly.’

  Adele gave him ten out of ten for making up such a plausible excuse so quickly. It was clear to her that Mrs Bailey had been drinking after all, and constantly refilling her glass. There was nothing wrong with the shoes.

  ‘She made me wear them,’ Mrs Bailey said, slurring her words and pointing none too steadily at Adele. ‘She does everything she can to embarrass me, but then she’s in the pay of my husband.’

  Everyone looked at Adele, and she was so shaken she let the tray of sausage rolls slip a little and to add to her distress they began to slide off on to the floor.

  ‘You see what I mean?’ Mrs Bailey said triumphantly. ‘But what can you expect from a girl from the marshes?’

  Adele fled to the kitchen and burst into tears. She had done her very best to make the house welcoming, she’d spent hours cooking and arranging everything, and she so much wanted Michael to have a happy evening and to stop worrying about his mother. It hadn’t worked and she would get no thanks for trying.

  The guests all left very soon afterwards. Adele heard Michael apologizing to them in the hall as he helped them into their coats. She thought he was apologizing for her and that made her cry even harder.

  She heard him go back into the drawing room, and it was then she got her coat to leave for good. But as she came out of the kitchen with it on, he was coming towards her across the hall, the tray of sausage rolls in his hands.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Adele,’ he said, his lips quivering. ‘That was awful for you. She’s drunk of course, out cold in a chair. Goodness knows what her old friends thought, it will be all over the county by tomorrow.’

  He made Adele go back into the kitchen and sat her down at the table. His face was white and strained but he wiped her tears away with a handkerchief and kissed her on the forehead.

  ‘I shouldn’t have subjected you to this,’ he said. ‘Has she been like this to you before?’

  It was only because Michael looked so troubled that Adele didn’t tell him the truth. He didn’t deserve to hear what his mother was really like, not on Christmas Eve.

  ‘She has her nasty moments,’ was all she said, and took her coat off because she knew she couldn’t leave him alone to deal with his mother.

  ‘But that was last year,’ Adele murmured to herself as she picked up the empty box of decorations to put away. ‘It won’t be like that this time.’

  So much had happened on the world stage this year that even self-obsessed Mrs Bailey had been forced to see she wasn’t the only person with problems. In January King George died, and the whole country was plunged into mourning. That was hardly out of the way when the newspapers began printing stories about King Edward’s love affair with the married American woman Wallis Simpson. Civil war broke out in Spain in July, Mussolini seemed to be trying to take on the world, and sinister rumblings in Germany were getting louder and louder. Two hundred men marched from Jarrow in County Durham to London, with a petition about the 75 per cent unemployment in their town. Then finally, just a couple of weeks ago, King Edward decided to abdicate from the throne so he could marry Wallis Simpson, and the whole of the country was thrown into turmoil and heated debate.

  Adele doubted that Mrs Bailey was really concerned about her country or those less fortunate than herself, but she had calmed down considerably. Her tantrums, screaming fits and heavy drinking bouts were all less frequent. She even appeared to have reconciled herself to being an estranged wife because she got the drawing and dining rooms redecorated to her taste. Adele didn’t much care for the dark red striped wallpaper in the dining room, it was too gloomy by day, but the pinks and greens in the drawing room were beautiful. Mrs Bailey had also been doing some voluntary charity work with a couple of other women, and had gone to France for a week back in the spring with an old girlfriend.

  There were still times when she took to her bed and wouldn’t get up. She still showed little regard for all the hard work Adele did. But on Adele’s seventeenth birthday in July she had given her a little silver locket on a chain. She didn’t say anything other than ‘Happy birthday’, but Adele thought maybe she was like Granny and just couldn’t put her feelings into words.

  Now Michael had somehow managed to persuade his brother Ralph, his wife and children, and Mr Bailey to come for Christmas. They would be arriving tomorrow, Christmas Eve, and Adele fervently hoped the family could patch up their differences.

  ‘I didn’t expect to see you today!’ Honour exclaimed in surprise as Adele walked into the cottage the following afternoon.

  Adele took off her coat and shook the rain off it before closing the door. ‘I just needed to see you,’ she said.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ her grandmother asked, getting out of her chair.

  ‘Nothing at all,’ Adele said, and lifting a basket up on to the table she took out a brightly wrapped present, a small pudding in a china basin, a bag of tangerines and a tin. ‘I just wanted you to have these for the morning,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t tell me you aren’t coming home tomorrow?’ her grandmother said, and the catch in her voice told Adele her instinct had been right, and she was feeling very alone.

  ‘Of course I’m still coming in the afternoon,’ Adele said, and reached out to pat Honour’s cheek affectionately. ‘I wouldn’t leave you alone on Christmas Day even if Wallis Simpson was calling in to give me a few of her old dresses.’

  Honour thought Wallis was a she-devil, sent directly from hell to overthrow the monarchy. Yet despite her loathing of the woman, she often remarked that her clothes were sensational.

  ‘What’s in the tin?’ she asked, getting up to look.

  ‘A Christmas cake,’ Adele said with a smile. ‘Made and iced by my own fair hands.’

  Adele watched as her grandmother lifted the lid, but instead of the expected questions, or even a little sarcasm that the icing wasn’t too smooth, she saw a tear trickle down Honour’s cheek.

  ‘I didn’t take the ingredients,’ Adele said hastily. ‘I bought them, but I didn’t think there was anything wrong with putting two cakes in the oven at the same time.’

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ her grandmother said, her voice soft and low. She wiped away the tear and smiled. ‘You’
ve gone a long way from that little waif I took in five years ago. That was the best day’s work I ever did.’

  A tingle went down Adele’s spine at hearing the love in her grandmother’s voice.

  ‘A pudding too!’ Honour exclaimed. ‘So mind you don’t stuff yourself up at the house and have no room for your dinner here!’

  ‘I’ll have to go back now,’ Adele said. ‘Open the present in the morning.’

  Her grandmother shook her head. ‘No, I’ll wait for you to come. So don’t let them keep you there too late.’

  As Adele walked back through the driving rain to Winchelsea she offered up a little prayer that by the end of Christmas Mrs Bailey would tell her she was going back to her husband in Hampshire.

  She didn’t want to be a servant any longer, she knew what it really meant now. A couple of years ago she had thought that it was purely earning money by taking care of someone richer. To her it had been no different to a bricklayer building a house for someone else, or a butcher selling his meat to his customers.

  But it wasn’t like that at all. The reality of a servant’s place in society had been driven home today when Michael and his family arrived. His father had stuck his hat and coat in her arms and walked into the drawing room, and the others had followed suit, even the two children. As though she was a coat stand.

  Michael sort of shrugged and gave her a tight-lipped smile. He at least hung his coat up himself, but he went on in after the rest of them and closed the door behind him.

  Michael had sat drinking ginger beer in her granny’s kitchen, he’d helped skin rabbits, and collected wood, like one of the family. Yet although Adele cleaned up his mother’s vomit, coaxed her into eating, washed and ironed her clothes and slept in her house to make sure she didn’t burn it down, she couldn’t talk to Michael in front of his family. She could say ‘Merry Christmas’, or ‘Shall I take your hat, sir?’ But not ‘How are you getting on at Oxford? Do tell me all about it!’