Secrets

by Lesley Pearse

  Everything looked too good to be true. The sun was shining in through the windows, there was a vase of daffodils on the sideboard, and even more astounding was that her mother’s face was pink and white, glowing with rude health, and her eyes had lost the coldness she remembered.

  ‘We had our breakfast ages ago,’ Rose continued, seemingly unconcerned by Adele standing there as if she were in a trance. ‘Mother’s out feeding the rabbits, but it will give her a real boost if she comes in and sees you tucking into this. You know what she’s like!’

  ‘You look different,’ Adele said weakly.

  ‘I expect I do,’ Rose said, and chuckled. ‘More like a land girl now than the bar fly I used to be. But you look a lot different too, too thin, pale and anxious. Sit down at the table, this is nearly ready. How do you feel today?’

  ‘I’m not sure yet,’ Adele said, for her legs suddenly felt weak and she reached out for the back of a chair to steady herself.

  Rose sped to her side, tucking her hand under Adele’s arm to help her. ‘You’re still weak,’ she said, and her voice was soft with sympathy. ‘Oh, Adele,’ she sighed. ‘Your gran may think this was brought on by too much work. But I know the truth. It must have been hell keeping all that grief inside you.’

  Adele turned to look at her mother, a sarcastic retort on her lips, but was stopped short by her expression. It was one of complete understanding. Adele was well used to reading expressions in her nursing and she knew Rose wasn’t faking it. Her words had definitely come from her heart.

  ‘Yes, it was,’ she replied. ‘It still is.’

  She fully expected Rose to start gushing, but she didn’t. ‘If you want to talk later when we can be alone, just say,’ she said simply, then turned away to the stove.

  The bacon and eggs, toast and tea were put on the table with no more said. Adele began to eat, and at the almost forgotten taste of bacon she grinned. ‘Umm,’ she said appreciatively. ‘This is marvellous.’

  Honour came in then with Towzer, and when she saw Adele at the table, her face broke into a smile of pure delight. ‘Well, look at you!’ she exclaimed. ‘Rose said you might be tempted out by the smell of bacon, but I didn’t believe her. I’ve just been telling Misty it would be a few more days before you went out to see her.’

  Towzer went straight up to the table and looked at Adele with begging eyes. She was just going to cut him off a bit of bacon when Rose wiggled a disapproving finger at her.

  ‘Don’t you dare waste it on him, the dog is a glutton. You eat every scrap. You need building up.’

  There was something so completely maternal about that reproach that Adele’s eyes filled with tears and she had to look away.

  Rose and Honour went out into the garden together, perhaps feeling they might put Adele off eating by hanging around her. But after nurses’ home breakfasts of powdered egg and cold burnt toast, nothing would put Adele off this feast.

  The time alone was valuable. She could look around at all the old familiar things, enjoy the silence, and make observations.

  Honour looked like her old robust self, and the way she and Rose had gone out together so companionably suggested they were getting on. The cottage also looked cleaner and tidier than Adele had ever known it before.

  She knew she wasn’t able to be objective about Rose yet. That telling little aside she made about being more like a land girl now than a bar fly, had all the hallmarks of someone who had looked at herself critically and appreciated she must change. Her understanding of how Adele felt showed she had given thought to the wider effects of Michael’s disappearance.

  It was going to take time to find whether Rose’s new image was the real thing, or if it was just a little window-dressing. Yet right now, rested, away from the constant drama of the hospital, with the sun shining, Adele was prepared to be optimistic.

  By the end of her first week home Adele felt a hundred times better. She was eating well and sleeping like a log, the colour had come back to her cheeks and the dark lines beneath her eyes had faded. Yet Rose wouldn’t hear of her doing any chores.

  ‘You need complete rest before you go back to White-chapel,’ she insisted, backed up by Honour. ‘So read a book, go for a walk, you are not to attempt anything else.’

  Adele had done as she was told, for after the pressure and trauma at the hospital it was bliss to do absolutely nothing. She would wander on the marsh for hours, sometimes finding a spot where there was shelter from the cold wind, and just sit and listen to the wild birds and the sea pounding on the shingle, trying to sort out her feelings about her mother, and Michael.

  Now she was here, in the place where she had met him, she couldn’t believe he was dead. If he was, surely his spirit would return here and she would sense it, the way the smell of gorse flowers wafted on the wind, or she could taste the salt from the sea on her lips. She could picture him so clearly, the way he was that first day they met. It was the same time of year, with the same cold wind and hundreds of new lambs frolicking in the fields. She imagined him balancing on the fallen tree over one of the streams, arms outstretched, laughing a little nervously as his feet slipped on the mossy surface. She knew he was going to be important in her life even then.

  With hindsight, of course, it might just have been the blood tie which drew them together, and if so, she thought that his spirit was even more likely to come here and release her from the torture of false hope.

  But if it was bittersweet coming back here to find hope for Michael again, Adele was discovering even more conflicting emotions about Rose. All her previously held convictions about the lazy, cruel, moody woman without a heart had been challenged by what she observed in the cottage.

  Rose was rarely idle. She kneaded the dough for the bread with energy, raked a seed bed for planting with enthusiasm, and prepared meals with great care. She had learned to chop wood, pluck chickens and even skin rabbits, and was always browsing through books on gardening in an effort to learn more about growing vegetables. She smiled readily, with great warmth, she had a sense of fun, and a youthfulness that was very attractive.

  There had been times when Adele had found herself laughing at something funny her mother said, forgetting for a moment or two that she must keep up her guard. There were times too when she was tempted to ask Rose searching questions, not with malice, but to try to bridge the gap between this present-day woman she was in danger of liking, and the woman from the past whom she hated.

  The previous afternoon Rose had cycled into Rye, and although Adele had welcomed the opportunity to be alone with Honour, she found herself silent and thoughtful.

  It was as if Honour was reading her thoughts, because she suddenly spoke about Rose.

  ‘I think you must accept, Adele, that your mother wasn’t well for much of your childhood. I know I didn’t see her then, but she’s told me a great deal about it, and the way she treated you. I believe she had a mental disorder, and that is far worse for a body than a physical disease. But then as a nurse you’d know that.’

  ‘Am I supposed to forgive everything then?’ Adele replied sharply.

  ‘If Towzer bit me while I was trying to examine an injury he’d got, would you want me to abandon him?’ Honour retorted, equally sharply.

  Adele looked down at the dog lying with his chin on her grandmother’s feet, gazing adoringly up at her. ‘That would be different,’ she said. ‘A dog can’t explain that he’s in pain.’

  ‘Maybe Rose couldn’t either,’ Honour said with a shrug. ‘The one thing all three of us have in common is an inability to express our true feelings. We all rely on our deeds to show affection and care.’

  ‘You know as well as I do she never showed me anything but resentment,’ Adele said heatedly. In that second she had an overwhelming desire to tell her grandmother everything, including how Rose demanded money from Myles, knowing that Honour could never condone that. But she bit it back. She had told Rose that day on the marsh that her new role was to make Honour feel happy an
d secure, and she had, so Adele couldn’t possibly damage that.

  ‘By taking care of me when I needed it, she was trying to show us both that she regrets the past,’ Honour said with a sigh. ‘Surely you have seen the care she’s taken of you too since you came home?’

  ‘Yes, but I can’t help thinking she has an ulterior motive.’

  ‘Have you thought that motive might just be she wants to be loved by us both?’

  ‘Pigs might fly, I can never love her,’ Adele snapped.

  Thinking over yesterday’s bitter remarks, Adele felt a twinge of remorse. Was she perhaps a bit afraid that Rose was taking her place in Granny’s affections? Or was it just that she needed Rose as a kind of whipping boy, someone to blame for anything in her life she didn’t like?

  Adele didn’t want to return to London as the end of her two weeks’ leave drew nearer. She had heard there had been no raids for two nights, and some were saying that the Blitz was now over. But even if that was foolish optimism, she knew her reluctance to return wasn’t the thought of the hordes of injured, or the tumult and filth that accompanied raids. It was more that she felt she had left something undone here, though she couldn’t think what it was.

  Two days before she was to return to London, she walked up to Winchelsea to buy some candles and matches. The cold wind had dropped, the sun was shining, and as she got up to the Landgate and looked down across the marsh towards Rye in the distance, it looked so lovely she felt a lump come up in her throat.

  Michael had taken a photograph of the same view before he went up to Oxford. He said he would pin it on the wall as a reminder of happy days. It was thinking of that which made her suddenly decide to go and call on Mrs Bailey.

  Her grandmother had said Emily had called on them at the cottage a couple of times since she got the news about Michael. Adele had found that surprising, but as Granny said, she was just desperate to talk about her son to someone who had known him well and shared her sorrow.

  Adele wasn’t quite sure Emily would view her in the same light, but she felt she had to call anyway.

  The housekeeper answered the door, asked Adele into the hall, then went upstairs to tell Mrs Bailey. As Adele waited, memories of her time working here came flooding back, how she’d scrubbed out the dusty hall, hung up all her mistress’s clothes, and struggled to cook meals which were much fancier than anything she’d cooked at home.

  Yet these thoughts weren’t bitter ones, for it occurred to her that if it were not for the experience gained in this house, good and bad, she probably wouldn’t have coped with the discipline of nursing training.

  Mrs Bailey came down the stairs slowly as if her legs were stiff. She had aged since the day Adele was invited here for tea to talk about the engagement. Her skin had a yellowish tinge, and her hair was more grey than gold. She was wearing a tweed skirt and pink twin set, but it didn’t give her that elegant look she once had. The defeated stoop to her shoulders and the deep lines around her mouth gave away her heartbreak.

  ‘I hope you won’t see this as an intrusion,’ Adele blurted out. ‘But I felt I had to call and say how terribly sorry I am about Michael.’

  ‘That is so kind of you, Adele,’ Mrs Bailey said graciously. ‘Do come into the drawing room, the fire’s alight in there.’

  ‘Have you had any further news?’ Adele asked once they’d sat down.

  ‘No, nothing. I have of course contacted the Red Cross and they tell me they are still checking POW camps, but I cannot be hopeful.’

  Adele wanted to tell her of her feelings while out on the marsh, but as Mrs Bailey believed she dropped Michael through a change of heart, that didn’t seem appropriate.

  ‘You must try to keep your hope,’ Adele said. ‘If you’d seen the sights I’ve seen in London you would soon believe in miracles. People believe their relatives have been killed all the time, and then they turn up unhurt.’

  ‘Honour tells me you have become a very good nurse,’ Mrs Bailey said. ‘She is very proud of you.’

  Adele was just about to say that the continuing bombing in London made her and most of her fellow nurses feel ineffectual, when suddenly the door opened and to her consternation in came Myles Bailey.

  Every memory she had of this man was an unpleasant one, and the last, of the day he told her he was her father, was by far and away the worst of all. She couldn’t say she hated him for that, she had always been aware that he’d had no choice but to tell her the devastating news. She even remembered that he’d been quite gentle about it. Yet whenever he came into her mind she pictured him here, the bully of a man who had slapped her face and told her to get out of the house on Christmas Eve. And it was for that that she despised him.

  He looked much the same, as ruddy-faced and plump as the last time she saw him. He was dressed in a formal dark suit with a stiff-collared shirt, and his face drained of colour when he saw Adele.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, backing away. ‘I didn’t realize you had a visitor, Emily. I had to come and see someone near here and I just dropped in to see how you are.’

  ‘Do come on in, Myles,’ Emily said, and she smiled as if pleased to see him. ‘You remember Adele, of course, she just called to offer her condolences about Michael. I’ll ring for some tea.’

  ‘I should be going now,’ Adele said hurriedly, getting to her feet.

  ‘Please don’t rush off, Adele,’ Emily said, putting a restraining hand on her arm. ‘Honour and Rose often tell me things you’ve written in letters about the hospital in London and the Blitz, and I’d love to hear more.’

  Just the mention of Rose’s name in front of Myles made Adele squirm. ‘I feel I am intruding now Mr Bailey is here,’ she said nervously, hardly daring to look at him.

  ‘Nonsense, Adele,’ Myles spoke out. Clearly he’d gained his composure. ‘I’d like to hear about your nursing too. And Emily has so much to say to you, she has been so grateful to your mother and grandmother for rescuing her, as I am too.’

  Adele looked at him in bewilderment. ‘Rescuing her?’ she said.

  ‘You don’t know about that?’ he asked, and looked concerned. ‘Now, there’s discretion for you! I fully expected they would have told you. Emily fell in the river and your mother jumped in and hauled her out. A very brave deed on a cold January night.’

  Adele couldn’t have been more surprised if Myles had said Rose rode on an elephant through Rye, for she’d been told nothing. ‘Really!’ she exclaimed. ‘I knew Mrs Bailey had visited them, but Granny didn’t say anything about a fall in the river.’

  Emily got up, her face pink with embarrassment. ‘I’ll just go into the kitchen and see about the tea myself,’ she said.

  Adele felt that someone could perhaps fall in the river during the summer while walking along the bank, but they wouldn’t be likely to go anywhere near it during the winter months.

  The moment Emily rushed out, she looked sharply at Myles. ‘Did she fall or jump?’

  ‘She claims she slipped on the mud, but we can both draw our own conclusions, as it was just a few days after we had the telegram about Michael,’ he said in a curiously gruff voice. ‘Your mother could easily have drowned too while rescuing her, the river was swollen and very fast-flowing. I would have called to thank her myself, but because of our past connection, that didn’t seem appropriate.’

  Adele was surprised that he was being so open, especially here in his wife’s home. ‘No, it certainly wouldn’t have been. But I rather wish you hadn’t said anything about the river. Mrs Bailey must have been beside herself with grief at the time, and now she’ll be so embarrassed that I know about it.’

  ‘It never occurred to me that your family wouldn’t tell you,’ he said thoughtfully.

  ‘My grandmother has never been a gossip, and she’s a very big-hearted woman,’ Adele said proudly. ‘She was very fond of Michael, and so of course she felt for his mother and wouldn’t want such a thing to get about. As for my mother, well, maybe she has some saving graces aft
er all.’

  Emily came back then with a tray of tea and the three of them made small talk about the war, Honour’s injuries in the air raid, and nursing air-raid victims.

  It seemed to Adele that Emily was coping. She had seen her in far worse states when she worked for her. Losing Michael had clearly opened her eyes to the plight of others, and she showed real concern for all those who had been made homeless by the bombing and for the widows and orphans.

  Myles was much less caustic and opinionated than Adele remembered, softened perhaps by grief. His eyes glistened with unshed tears when he spoke of both his older son and son-in-law who were about to be posted overseas, and clearly he was afraid he might lose them too. He didn’t belittle Emily in any way, and when he mentioned his grandchildren it was with great affection.

  Adele stayed just long enough to be polite, then using the candles she had to buy as an excuse, she said she must go.

  ‘Bless you for coming,’ Emily said, kissing her cheek. ‘Do ask Honour and Rose to call on me sometime. Tell them I’m doing some voluntary work now, and I’m fine, thanks to them.’

  Myles shook Adele’s hand and wished her well, then escorted her to the door to see her out.

  As she stepped out on to the pavement, Myles suddenly stopped her. ‘I’m so very sorry,’ he said.

  Adele looked him right in the eyes. ‘What for?’

  ‘For causing you so much unhappiness,’ he said.

  ‘So you want me to see you in a better light, do you?’ she said mockingly. ‘I think the biggest shock to me was discovering my father was a bully, a snob and a man that strikes servants.’

  ‘Touché,’ he said, and winced. ‘You may not think much of me, Adele, and who can blame you for that? But I’ve seen a great deal in you to like and respect. Since Michael went missing I have had to evaluate everything about my character and life. I found much of it lacking in substance.’