Secrets

by Lesley Pearse

  Adele nodded in understanding.

  ‘But that particular day, when all this came about with Rose,’ Honour went on, ‘I had at long last seen a slight improvement in him. It was 1918 then, the war still rumbling on in France, and it was late spring. We went for a brief walk together during the afternoon, and he hadn’t flung himself down on the ground as he had always done previously. He had managed to drink a cup of tea unaided, only spilling a few drops, and he had told me he loved me. That meant more than anything – you see, he rarely spoke at that time, and when he did it was just to rant about terrible things he had seen in the war. Mostly he didn’t even seem to know who I was.’

  ‘And where was Rose?’ Adele asked.

  ‘At her job in the hotel,’ Honour said. ‘But she was due home as soon as she’d turned down the beds for the night. I was looking forward to her coming in so I could tell her about the improvement in her father, and I decided I would mark the occasion by giving her the dress I’d been making in secret for her.’

  Honour leaned back into the couch, half closing her eyes, and Adele could see that she was reliving the events as she continued with the story.

  ‘Daylight was beginning to fail as she came out of her bedroom wearing the dress,’ she said.

  Honour could see it all as clearly as if it had happened yesterday. The table was laid for supper, Frank was in his chair by the stove, and she was lighting the oil lamp as Rose came out of her bedroom. She turned, fully expecting Rose to be striking a pose in the doorway, with giggles to follow as she twirled around the room to show off the dress.

  With her blonde hair, pretty face and curvy figure, Rose looked good in anything, but that evening as Honour looked round at her, she looked simply stunning, for the blue of the dress matched her eyes perfectly. She felt an immediate flush of pride and satisfaction that the long hours she had spent making the dress had turned out to be so well spent.

  But Rose wasn’t striking a pose, there were no twirls or giggles. She was scowling.

  ‘It’s horrible,’ she said, holding out the long skirt distastefully as if it was made of dirty sacking. ‘How can you expect me to wear it? It’s like something a schoolmistress would wear.’

  Honour was shocked speechless. Since Frank had been brought home they had been struggling to survive on Rose’s wages. The only way Honour had been able to buy the material for the dress was by selling her pearl brooch. It would have been far more sensible to have used that money to buy food, or even pay the doctor’s bills, but she knew how hard it was for a young girl to wear the same old worn dress day in, day out.

  Maybe the blue dress with its high neck and little pin-tucks on the bodice wasn’t the height of fashion, but it was wartime and clothes had to be practical when you lived out in the country – surely Rose could see that?

  ‘It was the best I could do,’ Honour said eventually, sorry now that she’d parted with the brooch which had been a wedding-day gift from her parents, and the only thing she had left of them. ‘I think you should count your blessings, Rose, there are plenty of girls around here who would give anything for a new dress,’ she added sharply.

  Perhaps Frank picked up on the friction in the room for he began jerking his head, dribbling and making alarming noises in his throat.

  Honour moved over to soothe him, but Rose merely looked disgusted and scornful. ‘It’s humiliating enough being so poor that I’ve got to wear a rag like this,’ she spat out. ‘But it’s even worse to have a father who’s like the village idiot.’

  Adele gasped, for the way her grandmother had related the story had brought sharp images of her mother’s cruel remarks back into her mind. ‘What on earth did you do?’ she asked.

  ‘At the time I was so appalled by her callousness, I didn’t say or do anything,’ Honour said sadly. ‘Later I wished I’d slapped her, or even forced her into a chair so I could pass on some of the horror stories Frank had spilled out in his more lucid moments. Perhaps then Rose might have appreciated the enormous sacrifice men like him made when they enlisted to fight for King and Country.’

  ‘So what happened then?’ Adele asked.

  ‘She was gone by morning,’ Honour said with ice in her voice. ‘Slunk out like a thief in the night with our money and the few small valuables we had left. She left us to starve.’

  Adele couldn’t speak for a moment. She had never credited her mother with a kind heart, sensitivity or any other redeeming qualities, but it was a shock to hear that even as young as seventeen she’d been that callous.

  ‘I see,’ she said eventually. ‘Of course, you could’ve told me this years ago.’

  Honour winced at the reproach. ‘If I have kept information from you, I had good reason,’ she said haltingly. ‘When you first came here you were very sick, you’d experienced terrible things, and the only way I knew how to heal you was by instinct. I had been deeply hurt by your mother too, and I dealt with it by casting her out of my mind. I suppose I tried to make you do that as well.’

  ‘But it doesn’t work like that,’ Adele said. ‘Secrets make things much worse. I understand now why you were bitter about Rose, I sympathize too, but it doesn’t explain why she was so nasty to me. Does it?’

  ‘No, Adele, it doesn’t,’ Honour agreed. ‘I can only make assumptions about that.’

  ‘And they are?’

  ‘Well, Rose couldn’t have been carrying you then, the dates are all wrong. So either she left here with a man, or she went to London looking for fun and adventure and met your father there. Either way, the man must have abandoned her, and it would have been very hard for any woman having a baby outside of marriage.’

  ‘So she chose to marry Jim Talbot as an alternative to the workhouse or coming home, tail between legs?’ Adele said.

  Honour grimaced. ‘I doubt she even considered coming home. She must have known what her disappearance did to us. I dare say she thought we could never forgive her.’

  ‘Would you have?’

  Honour sighed. ‘I really don’t know. I was furious with her, Frank was completely dependent on me, and we had barely enough money to feed us. Yet maybe if she’d turned up at the door with you in her arms I might have softened. I can’t honestly say. Could you forgive her if she turned up here tomorrow?’

  Adele thought about it for a few seconds. ‘I doubt it,’ she said eventually. ‘But then she’s not going to come back here, is she? Not knowing there are two of us against her. I take it she was told I was here?’

  ‘Yes, when she signed the paper that made me your legal guardian,’ Honour said.

  Adele thought about this for a moment, remembering that her grandmother wrote and received many letters at that time.

  ‘But that was years ago. Was she still in an asylum then?’

  ‘Yes. In a place called Friern Barnet, in North London,’ Honour replied. She’d had enough of questions for one day, but she sensed Adele wasn’t going to stop until she knew everything.

  ‘Is she still there?’

  Honour hesitated.

  ‘Well?’ Adele prompted. ‘Either she’s still there or she isn’t. If she isn’t, she must be well again.’

  ‘No. She’s not there any more,’ Honour finally admitted. ‘She escaped.’

  Adele gasped. ‘And you kept it secret,’ she said reproachfully. ‘How and when did she escape?’

  ‘Not long after she’d signed the papers about you. About nine months after you came here,’ Honour said, hanging her head. ‘It seems she got herself into a position of trust so she was allowed out into the grounds now and then. She may have hidden in a delivery van, no one really knows.’

  ‘If she could do that she must have got better,’ Adele said thoughtfully.

  ‘Possibly,’ Honour said. ‘I hope so. I did think at the time it was the signing of the papers that made her escape and that she’d come here.’

  ‘But she didn’t.’ Adele gave a long-drawn-out breath.

  Honour couldn’t swallow for the lump i
n her throat. She could feel Adele’s hurt, and she had no idea what she could say to make it go away.

  ‘No, she didn’t. But maybe she felt you would be happier without her.’

  Adele shrugged dismissively. ‘If I was to believe she cared anything for my happiness I might start believing in fairies too,’ she said sarcastically. ‘But now we’ve got started on this unlocking of secrets, what happened to Mr Makepeace?’

  A cold shiver ran down Honour’s back. How could she tell Adele that she met disbelief in the police station when she reported that wicked man? Would it make Adele feel any better to know she wrote many letters to the charity which ran The Firs, yet they didn’t remove the man from his position or even investigate her claims?

  The only victory Honour had won in that first year Adele was with her, was to become her granddaughter’s legal guardian. But even that wasn’t much of a victory when it transpired the authorities were relieved to be spared the task of keeping her themselves.

  ‘I reported him,’ she said truthfully. ‘Both to the police and to the charity. I was never told what happened to him.’

  To Honour’s relief, Adele didn’t ask any further questions. Maybe that was because she was naive enough to believe that reporting him automatically meant he’d be punished. She got up from her chair, picked up her suitcase and walked over to her bedroom to unpack it. When she got to the door she turned. ‘I don’t suppose I’ll ever see Michael again now,’ she said sadly. ‘So it’s just you and me again, Granny.’

  Honour’s eyes prickled with tears. She glanced at Frank’s painting on the wall which had always been her favourite for it was of Camber Castle with the river in the foreground. He’d painted it in a spot where they often had picnics. He had always been so good at expressing his feelings, both verbally and through his painting, and she knew he would say this was the perfect time for telling their granddaughter how much she was loved and valued.

  ‘I love you, Adele,’ she blurted out. ‘You transformed my life by coming here. I wish I could do something to make everything right with Michael. I wish I could tell you something about your mother that would make you happier about her too. But I can’t do anything more than tell you that you mean everything to me.’

  Adele looked at her in astonishment for a few seconds and then began to laugh.

  ‘Oh, Granny,’ she said, tears coming with the laughter, ‘I’m not so sure I like you getting soppy. It’s not you.’

  Honour couldn’t help but smile. ‘You know what’s wrong with you, girl?’ she asked.

  Adele shook her head. ‘Tell me,’ she said.

  ‘You are far too much like me for your own good.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  1938

  ‘Nurse Talbot! Mrs Drew’s dressing needs changing!’ Sister MacDonald called out as she passed the sluice room where Adele was about to empty and wash a bedpan.

  ‘Yes, Sister,’ Adele said, and once Sister was out of view thumbed her nose at the bossy woman who ran Women’s Surgical with an iron hand.

  It was 1 January and the hospital was short-staffed on every ward because of an outbreak of influenza. Adele wasn’t feeling too good herself, not because she’d got flu, but because she and several other student nurses had stayed up late to see the New Year in and celebrated with cheap sherry. She was sure Sister MacDonald knew this as she’d been hounding her all day.

  She had started her nursing training at the Buchanan Hospital in Hastings in April. The pay was just ten shillings a week, and the hours very long, but she shared a nice room in the nurses’ home, she got three meals a day, and she had made dozens of new friends. Angela Daltry, her room-mate, was a lovable, scatterbrained girl from Bexhill, and as they almost always worked the same shifts, they spent much of their spare time together.

  Nursing wasn’t anything like Adele had expected. As she’d never even been in a hospital until she began her training she supposed she’d romanticized it, imagined herself as a kind of angel of mercy, wiping fevered brows, taking temperatures and arranging the flowers. She did know that people would vomit, bleed and need bedpans of course, but she hadn’t anticipated it being quite so relentless, or that as a student nurse she’d be the main one to deal with all the mucky jobs. She had never imagined so many rules either. Everything from not sitting on beds to making sure not a single hair escaped from her starched cap. Sister MacDonald was exceptionally fussy, and she had eyes in the back of her head. Adele was hauled over the coals on her very first day on the ward for eating a toffee. One of the patients had given it to her, but to hear Sister rant and rave about it, anyone would think she’d stolen a whole box and shoved them all in her mouth at the same time.

  Yet despite the drawbacks, she loved nursing. It was so rewarding to see people gradually getting better after operations, to know that although she was only one very small cog in the hospital wheel, it was vital work. The patients were grateful for her care, they took as much interest in her as she did in them, and there was so much gaiety and laughter with the other nurses.

  With the clean bedpan back in its rack, Adele grabbed the dressings trolley and made for Mrs Drew. She was a plump woman in her early forties, with greying hair, who had almost died of a ruptured appendix, and Adele had grown very fond of her.

  ‘Time to change your dressing,’ she said as she pulled the curtains round the woman’s bed.

  ‘Not again,’ Mrs Drew sighed, and put down the magazine she was reading. ‘I sometimes think you wait for someone to look really comfortable, then pounce on them.’

  ‘Of course we do,’ Adele laughed. ‘We’ve got to do something to justify the enormous amount of money we get paid.’ She folded down the sheets and blankets to just below the woman’s stomach, then lifted her nightdress to expose her dressing over the abdominal stitching. She removed it gingerly. ‘It’s healing very well,’ she said. ‘I expect you to be able to go home very soon.’

  ‘I’m in no hurry,’ Mrs Drew said with a smile. ‘It’s nice and warm in here, and a real treat to put my feet up. Soon as I’m home my lot will all expect me to wait on them again.’

  Mrs Drew had six children ranging from eighteen down to a three-year-old. She had ignored the pains in her stomach for months because she had no time for herself and she couldn’t afford doctors’ fees.

  ‘Sister will tell them what’s what,’ Adele said with a grin. ‘You’ve had major surgery, you’ve got to take it easy when you get home, no carrying heavy shopping, coal buckets or even your toddler. Your husband or one of the older children will have to do it all for you.’

  Mrs Drew gave Adele a withering look. ‘Some chance,’ she said. ‘I’ll get back home to find the place like a midden. If you’ve got any sense, nurse, you’ll stay single. Once the honeymoon’s over it’s down hill all the way.’

  Adele had met many stoic women like Mrs Drew since she began nursing. They always put their husband and children first, their own needs ignored. Mostly they had brought up their large families in poverty, with appalling housing conditions, yet somehow managed to retain a lively sense of humour. Mrs Drew had a particularly black one – she called her husband Eric ‘The Pig’, because he grunted rather than spoke to her. She claimed she’d thought of rounding her kids up and dumping them on an orphanage doorstep to get a bit of peace. Yet her face broke into a wide smile when Eric walked into the ward to visit her, and she wrote separate little notes for each of the children, because they weren’t allowed into the ward.

  ‘I bet if you could start all over again you’d still marry Mr Drew,’ Adele said as she cleaned the wound before redressing it.

  ‘I suppose so. I’d clout him round the ear the first time he grunted though,’ Mrs Drew chuckled. ‘Are you courtin’?’

  Adele shook her head.

  ‘Haven’t you even got your eye on anyone?’

  Adele giggled. For a woman who often said marriage and children was a mug’s game, Mrs Drew was very keen on seeing everyone else getting paired off.
r />   ‘I suppose I have,’ she admitted, thinking of Michael. ‘But it’s not going to work out. His parents will never approve of me.’

  ‘I’d be over the moon if my boy Ronnie found a nice girl like you,’ Mrs Drew said. ‘You’re clever, pretty and talk nice. His parents want their heads seeing to.’

  Adele pulled the woman’s nightdress down and tucked the covers back over her. ‘I’ve often thought that about them myself,’ she said with a wink. ‘Now, you have a rest, Mrs Drew, no gallivanting off up the ward to talk to someone.’

  As Adele wheeled the dressings trolley back down the ward she wondered where Michael was right now, and if he’d been to Winchelsea to see his mother over Christmas. She had been working on both Christmas Day and Boxing Day, so she hadn’t been able to get home. But she had two days off as from tomorrow and she hoped her grandmother would have lots of gossip for her.

  Michael had written to her last January to apologize again for his parents’ behaviour. It was an odd sort of letter, she could feel deep sadness in it, and a great deal left unsaid. Reading between the lines, she felt his father had laid into him about her and almost certainly insisted he was never to contact her again. Michael probably felt he ought to obey his father, maybe he even thought there was nothing to be gained by continuing their friendship anyway, but being a kind person he wouldn’t say all that as it would add insult to injury.

  Adele waited a couple of weeks and wrote a cheery letter back to him at Oxford. She told him she was applying to go into nursing and that he mustn’t feel bad about anything because things had turned out for the best. She said she had no hard feelings towards either him or his mother, and hoped Mrs Bailey was managing all right.

  It was almost three months before he wrote again, just a few days before she started as a probationer. He said he was thrilled she was going to be a nurse as it was in his eyes one of the most important jobs anyone could do. He also said he thought she was born for it. He asked if she would meet him if he came to Hastings, but he couldn’t say when that would be. His hopes that his parents would get back together again had been dashed.