Secrets

by Lesley Pearse

  The air was choking too, a mixture of powdered mortar and fumes from the fires still raging down in the docks.

  The Civil Defence man, who said his name was Dan, tried to cheer her a little by telling her that a few hours earlier at first light they’d found both a baby and an old man still alive and unharmed.

  ‘The wardrobe door had open and the whole thing fell over the old codger as the ’ouse come down. ’E thought he was in a coffin buried alive. The baby was still in its pram, under a door. ’E was yelling fit to bust, that’s why we found ’im so quick.’

  Dan and the other men with him had worked right through the night, helping out with anything they could. He said he was taking Honour to a church they were using as a rest centre. ‘They’ll be right glad of another pair of ’ands,’ he said. ‘That is, if you don’t mind making sandwiches and tea, and ’elping take down folk’s details to get them somewhere else to live.’

  At four that afternoon Honour was as exhausted as most of the other people she’d been helping. Most of the day had been spent taking down homeless people’s particulars, and the details of family members that still weren’t accounted for, because it was soon noted by the other helpers that she was better educated and less emotionally involved than they were.

  But as Honour heard one heartbreaking story after another, even her emotions began to get the better of her. She guessed these people had had very little before the raid, and now they had nothing and had lost family members too. She would never have imagined that she could take a dirty, hungry baby with a soiled nappy from its distraught mother, strip it and wash and feed it. The only baby she’d ever taken care of was Rose. But her sympathy proved much greater than revulsion, and she found herself doing it several times. She had cuddled and fed bigger children whose mother was not yet found, she had comforted old ladies and men, and questioned what seemed like hundreds of people and filed their particulars in alphabetical order, so their claims for temporary housing could be dealt with.

  Even the people who still had a home had no gas or electricity, and they were all fearful of another raid. All day she’d heard that there weren’t enough air-raid shelters for everyone, and many people complained that the Government weren’t going to allow people down into the Underground stations.

  But at five-thirty, despite so many people still needing help, Honour knew she must go, to see Adele and get back to Rose and Towzer. She no longer cared about going home to her cottage, she was determined to come to Silvertown again the following day to help out.

  Her best dress was filthy, her eyes stung and her scalp itched from all the mortar dust, even her lungs seemed congested. Yet as she begged a lift in a truck going back in the direction of Whitechapel to see Adele, she thought how fortunate she was in comparison to the people she’d met that day.

  The hospital was a little more orderly than it had been in the morning, and Honour found Adele very quickly.

  She looked tired, her eyes red-rimmed, but when she saw her grandmother hovering nervously at the ward door, she rushed to her looking astonished.

  ‘What on earth are you doing here?’ she scolded. ‘There could be another air raid any minute.’

  Honour explained as quickly as she could that she had visited Rose, and how after the raid she’d felt compelled to come and see that Adele was all in one piece.

  Adele’s face had registered great shock at hearing about Rose. She flushed with anger and said Honour must be losing her grip leaving the safety of Winchelsea for someone so worthless. But when her grandmother reproved her for being so uncharitable, she shrugged, and began scolding her for risking her own life by coming to Whitechapel.

  ‘Look, Granny,’ she said, tutting over her filthy dress and shaking her head in disapproval, ‘I really appreciate you thinking of me, but I’m quite safe, and doing what I’ve been trained for. Now, you get going right now. Collect Towzer and go home. Don’t you dare stay a moment longer with Rose. London is no place for you.’

  ‘I disagree,’ Honour said defiantly, telling her what she had been doing all day. ‘And I’m coming back tomorrow if Rose will mind Towzer. I can be of use here, more use than I am down by the coast.’

  Adele looked really worried then. ‘Granny, it’s dangerous,’ she said, edging her back to the door. ‘Please, if you love me at all, just go home and stay safe. Now, before I get cross with you.’

  Honour chuckled at the sudden reversal of roles. She had no intention of going back to Sussex, but she thought perhaps it was wisest not to tell Adele that now, not when she had so much else on her plate. She kissed her granddaughter and told her to get back to her patients.

  The air-raid warning went off when Honour was halfway to Aldgate Station. She looked at all the people around her, but was confused as they were scattering in every direction. Someone had said during the day that they reckoned the Underground stations were the safest place to go, so breaking into a trot she went on.

  She didn’t look round when she heard the drone of the bombers, nor did she falter at the first whine of a bomb and the earth-shaking thud that followed it. She heard a man shout to her and the people running with her, but assumed he was only warning them to hurry.

  Another whine, this time seemingly very close, and a woman screamed close by, Honour felt what seemed like a blast of hot air in her face, and all at once she was blinded by choking dust and something bowled into her, knocking her down.

  Her last thought as a red-hot pain engulfed her was that she hadn’t told Adele where Rose lived.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  ‘Don’t you look at me like that! I don’t know where she is,’ Rose snapped at Towzer. When the air-raid siren had gone off half an hour earlier he’d become quite demented, barking furiously and running from room to room looking for Honour. He wouldn’t come into the cellar with her, and Rose had been forced to drag him in by his collar.

  Now as bombs were dropping he had his front paws on her lap, and the pleading eyes and sad whining noises were getting on her nerves.

  ‘We’ll be all right,’ she said, relenting and stroking his head, guessing that he was picking up on her terror, for he’d been fine before the siren went off. They’d been down to Ravenscourt Park at midday for a walk, and then stopped in the pub at the end of the road for a drink on the way back, and everyone had made a fuss of him. Bob the landlord had even given him some scraps.

  Everyone had been talking about the previous night’s bombing in the East End and it was rumoured that hundreds of people had been killed. The general view was that the bombers had been targeting the docks and it was just an unfortunate mistake that civilians had been killed. Yet everyone was very jumpy. Most intended to go to a shelter that night, and several men said they were going to send their wives and children out of London.

  Rose only stayed for a couple of drinks as she was expecting Honour back, but as the afternoon progressed and her mother didn’t turn up, she began to feel cross and put upon that she’d been left with Towzer.

  But now, listening to bombs dropping, with only him for company, Rose couldn’t help but think the worst had happened to Honour and possibly Adele too. She couldn’t imagine her mother hanging around one minute longer than she needed to in Whitechapel. The only thing that would prevent her coming back for Towzer was not being able to find Adele.

  As another thought popped into her head, a chill ran down her spine. What if Myles had told Adele the truth?

  Rose had no recollection of either writing or posting the letter to her mother, so she’d obviously done it while she was drunk. She was absolutely stunned when Honour turned up, and her first thought was that she’d come to lay into Rose about the business of Myles and Adele.

  Yet within minutes she realized this wasn’t so, for Honour certainly wasn’t angry with her. Rose relaxed then, believing Myles had found some other way to induce Adele to make the break with Michael, and hadn’t admitted he was her father. Maybe he’d even offered her money, and that was why sh
e hadn’t told her grandmother.

  Later in the evening, when Honour eventually told her Adele had come to London to get over Michael, Rose even smiled mentally. That’s what she would have done herself, pocketed the money and disappeared off to the city. It seemed Adele wasn’t the goody-two-shoes Honour liked to make out, but a chip off the old block.

  But now, as Rose waited impatiently for Honour to return, she couldn’t help but have a nagging feeling she might have misjudged Adele. What if Myles had told her the truth, and the girl had kept it from Honour to spare her feelings?

  If that was the case, and Honour turned up at the hospital with the story she’d been with Rose, Adele might very well be furious. And if the two of them put their heads together, it wouldn’t be long before they worked out how she got the money to buy the house.

  Rose felt sick at the very thought of it. Was that why Honour hadn’t come back? Because she couldn’t bear to spend another night in the company of a Judas who took the proverbial thirty pieces of silver?

  The whining shriek of a bomb, and then a thud, this time so close it made the light flicker, made Rose shake with fear. If the house was hit she could be buried under tons of bricks. She had never liked being alone – that was one of the reasons she’d wanted to have lodgers. But none of them were home tonight.

  Margery and Sonia, the two young girls who shared the big front room on the first floor, had come back fleetingly this morning to get some clean clothes. They’d gone up West yesterday to do some shopping, and ended up spending the night in a public shelter. They said it was grim and they’d been scared out of their wits, and so they were going off to stay with Margery’s parents just in case there was another raid.

  Rose got out of the deckchair and lay down on the mattress, pulling a blanket over her and burying her head beneath the pillow in an effort to shut out the noise of the bombing. But the bombs, like her thoughts, couldn’t be shut out.

  In the pub she’d heard many of the people she drank with and classed as friends making arrangements to meet up in the local shelter if there was another air raid tonight. Yet no one had asked her to join them. Margery and Sonia hadn’t asked if she’d be all right either.

  She thought of how her mother had wanted to know about each of the lodgers last night – how old they were, where they came from, and what they did for a living. Rose hadn’t been able to tell her, for she knew practically nothing about any of them. Today she hadn’t even asked Margery where her parents lived.

  Rose had never before thought it might be a failing to have so little interest in other people, but perhaps it was. Maybe Margery, Sonia and other tenants both past and present could only view her as a rent collector, not a woman on her own who might need company. Perhaps, too, all those people down at the pub saw her as an independent woman who had no room in her life for them?

  All at once she realized she didn’t have any real friends. She had dozens of acquaintances, she could walk into any one of half a dozen pubs in London and be greeted by someone she knew. But that wasn’t real friendship, only the camaraderie of heavy drinkers. Who would mourn her if she were to die tonight?

  If Adele had told Honour about Michael today, neither of them would give a damn if she was reported killed. And none of the many men in Rose’s past life would either, for if they remembered her at all it would only be of how she used them.

  ‘Mrs Harris! Can you hear me?’

  Honour could hear a female voice, but there was a lot of other noise behind it, the way it was at a noisy party or in a railway station. She couldn’t seem to open her eyes, and she hurt, though she couldn’t quite make out where.

  ‘Mrs Harris! You were hurt in the air raid, but you’re safe now in hospital.’

  Air raid! Hospital! Those words seemed to mean something but she couldn’t quite grasp what. Was this a dream? Should she try to wake up and let Towzer out?

  ‘Got to let Towzer out,’ she managed to say, and forced her eyes open enough to see bright lights.

  ‘That’s better,’ the voice said. ‘We found your name on an envelope in your handbag, Mrs Harris. Do you live in London or is the address in Sussex your home?’

  Slowly Honour’s eyes began to focus and the blur in front of her became a face. A young, pretty face with dark brown eyes. She had a nurse’s starched cap on her head, just like Adele.

  ‘Is Adele here?’ she managed to croak out though her mouth seemed to be full of dust.

  ‘Adele who?’ the nurse asked.

  ‘Adele Talbot, my granddaughter. She’s a nurse.’

  ‘You’re Adele’s granny?’ the nurse said incredulously. ‘Oh my goodness.’

  Honour was sure it was only a dream. She closed her eyes because the lights were too bright and slipped back to sleep.

  ‘Granny!’

  The sound of Adele’s voice woke her immediately.

  ‘Adele?’

  She couldn’t see her clearly, but the hand holding hers felt right. She didn’t need to talk now Adele was here, it was safe to drift off again.

  Adele rushed over to the Ward Sister’s office when she left Honour’s bedside. She had been nursing patients recovering from operations all evening, so she hadn’t seen many of the casualties as they were brought into the hospital. It had been a terrible shock when Nurse Pople had come to her and broke the news that her grandmother was one of them. Adele had believed she was safely back in Hammersmith.

  Yet it was even more frightening to see her lying there swaddled with bandages and to have the nurse tell her that they feared brain damage as she’d remained unconscious for so long.

  Adele blurted out to Sister Jones that Mrs Harris was her grandmother. ‘Nurse Pople said she might have brain damage,’ she said. ‘Is that right?’

  ‘It’s too soon to tell yet,’ Sister said, and seeing the look of anguish on the young nurse’s face, she patted her shoulder in sympathy. ‘It’s an excellent sign that she was able to ask about you, but the head wound is bad, she also has a broken leg and countless lacerations to her body and limbs.’

  ‘She’s very strong and healthy,’ Adele said, her voice cracking with emotion. ‘That will help her, won’t it?’

  ‘Yes, nurse, of course it will, and being here in the same hospital as you too. Now, does she have a husband?’

  ‘No, she’s a widow,’ Adele said. ‘She’d been visiting someone in London, and left her dog there. But I don’t know the address.’

  She couldn’t bring herself to admit the someone was her mother. Since Honour had informed her she’d stayed the night with Rose, Adele had been seething with anger that she’d had the cheek to try to worm her way back into their lives.

  The Sister explained how she’d been through Honour’s handbag and found a letter. ‘I didn’t read it of course, but maybe you should, it might be from the person she stayed with. Now, how long have you been on duty, Talbot?’

  ‘The same as everyone else really,’ Adele said. ‘Since yesterday’s raid, and three hours off this morning. But I don’t want to go off now Granny’s here.’

  Sister Jones looked at her sharply. ‘I shall insist you go off for a few hours later,’ she said. ‘Exhausted nurses make mistakes. Besides, there isn’t likely to be any change with Mrs Harris until at least tomorrow.’

  When Adele went through Honour’s handbag and found the plaintive letter from Rose, she felt even more furious with her mother. It beggared belief that she would have the nerve to ask for forgiveness after the misery she had caused.

  Maybe she didn’t expect Honour to jump on a train to London immediately, but to let her set off for the East End right after an air raid was criminal.

  Adele knew what she’d like to do. Rush over to Hammersmith, snatch Towzer back and tell her mother in no uncertain terms that she never wanted to see or hear from her again. But she couldn’t leave the hospital, or Granny, nor could she look after Towzer until her grandmother was better.

  She supposed she would just have to ask the poli
ce to notify Rose about what had happened, and trust that she had enough remnants of decency to take good care of Towzer.

  Rose was woken by the door bell at eleven the following morning. She had stayed in the cellar until the all-clear went soon after dawn, but she hadn’t slept at all because she was so frightened. She took Towzer out for a short walk, and felt relieved to find there was no bomb damage to be seen around Hammersmith. She then went back to bed in her own room.

  As she opened the front door and saw a uniformed policeman, she thought the worst and clutched her dressing-gown round her tightly.

  ‘Mrs Talbot?’ the policeman asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Rose said, her legs almost buckling under her.

  ‘I’m sorry to bring bad news, but your mother was injured in an air raid last night.’

  Rose didn’t know what to say. She just stared at the policeman.

  ‘She’s in the London Hospital in Whitechapel. The message which we received early this morning was from your daughter who I understand is a nurse there. She reported that Mrs Harris has quite serious injuries but she is stable.’

  ‘But I’ve got her dog here,’ Rose said without thinking. ‘What shall I do?’

  The policeman looked askance at her. ‘Take care of it until she’s better?’ he suggested with a touch of sarcasm.

  ‘But how long will that be?’ she asked.

  ‘You could try calling or visiting the hospital to find out,’ he said sharply.

  Rose closed the door after the policeman had gone and walked slowly back into her flat. It took a few moments before what she’d just been told sank in, and several more moments before she realized that her reaction must have appeared callous. She stood at the back door, looking down the steps into her garden, and fumbled for her cigarettes in her dressing-gown pocket. Why had she said that about the dog? Now she’d given that policeman the impression that she cared more about getting shot of the animal than she did that her mother was hurt.