Rachel's Secret

by Susan Sallis

  She meant to lighten the whole thing, but it didn’t work. I kept remembering the spy, and the way he had almost confessed to us; faced us defiantly and then turned and went over to the houses. Meriel was right. We had driven him there, and that was where he had died.

  She said, ‘Talk about something else. You’ve been to school for the results? Don’t tell me. You passed and I didn’t.’

  Strangely enough, that was what finally made me cry. And that was when she got off her bike and pulled me to a stop, and said, ‘Rache, don’t cry. Please don’t. I’m glad – I mean that, honestly. Don’t you see? This is my punishment. I’ll never do anything so stupid again in my whole life. I deserve not to pass.’

  I still hadn’t telephoned Mum about the results. I told Meriel about Hermione and Mrs Smith and asked if she would mind popping in to see what was happening there, so I could ring Mum.

  ‘Stop sounding so apologetic, Rache. God, it’s not your fault I failed the bloody exam – you can talk about it, you know!’

  ‘I don’t want you to think . . . oh I don’t know. Actually, I feel just terrible.’ I really did. My headache was back with a vengeance. I felt guiltier still about our poor spy, and almost as bad about matriculating when Meriel hadn’t. It didn’t make it better when we parked our bikes outside the Smiths’ house and Meriel came at me like a little terrier and butted me on the shoulder with her curly head.

  ‘You’re an idiot. We both knew I wouldn’t pass. And because of old Fritz it puts the whole exam thing into perspective, and I don’t care half as much. And we’re going to be friends for the rest of our lives, so you’d better get used to me failing exams and everything.’

  I wished we were the sort of friends who could hug each other. I ruffled her curls instead. ‘Sounds good to me,’ I came back hoarsely.

  We got no further because Hermione came running down to the gate. Her single plait was fraying out all over the place. She looked distraught.

  ‘What are you doing just standing here chatting!’ She actually started to wring her hands, which I’d never seen before, though in the kind of books I was reading the heroines did it all the time. ‘Mother hasn’t come home, and she hasn’t phoned, and I rang the dentist and she didn’t even have an appointment!’ The hand-wringing accelerated. ‘If she’s left home for good, can I come and live with you, Rachel? You’re an only child so there must be a spare bedroom in your house. And your mother is kind and good, and would be only too pleased to take in an orphan. It would be like war work. Wouldn’t it?’

  I was mute with horror. Meriel said swiftly, ‘You could come to us, Hermione. Rache’s mum already does war work and mine would like a chance to get in on something. Besides, you’d be a great influence on the twins.’

  I said, ‘Don’t be so silly. Your mother wouldn’t walk out on you in a hundred years, and you know it, Hermione. And we’ve come to give you some good news, anyway. Don’t you want to hear it?’

  ‘Oh.’ She looked at me properly. ‘I’ve tricked, have I?’ It was the sort of slang Meriel used. Not Hermione.

  ‘You sure have,’ I replied with a twang.

  Meriel said, ‘Might as well put all the cards on the table. I haven’t. But Rache has. So please be careful of my tender feelings.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Meriel. But you always said you wouldn’t. Come into the kitchen and have a drink of milk out of the fridge. It’s really nice. I get extra milk because my calcium is low, and you can have some of it.’

  It was the first time either of us had been offered anything by the Smiths. I think Hermione must have thought we were competing for her favours. I let them go ahead down the long dark hall and made for the telephone.

  Mum said, ‘Oh, thank God. I wondered what had happened.’

  ‘Sorry, Mum. We were talking . . . you know how it is. Anyway, I got it.’

  Mum made crowing noises, and there were other yelps in the background, and someone shouted ‘congratulations’. She’d told everyone. I’d have to have a word with her. How would she have felt if I hadn’t got it?

  ‘What about Meriel?’ she asked after a while.

  ‘No,’ I said, without explanation in case Meriel was listening.

  ‘Oh. Oh darling. I’m so sorry. How is she?’

  ‘Marvellous. Really good. Honestly.’

  ‘And Hermione?’

  ‘Yes. But rather a lot has happened there. I’ll tell you later. I might have to hang on a bit. If my bike is still outside when you come home, could you pop in?’

  ‘Of course. Nothing too awful?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Mrs Smith driving you mad?’

  ‘No. I really will tell you later. I’d better go. Hermione is getting us a drink.’

  ‘What? I thought you said—’

  ‘I did. And it might never happen again, so cheerio!’ I could hear her laughing.

  There was a grainy old table in the kitchen that didn’t look too hygienic. I was glad when Hermione flapped a cloth over it. We sat there with glasses of milk – I have to say it was delicious – and discussed explanations for Mrs Smith’s non-appearance. My headache got worse.

  Meriel glanced at Hermione’s face and said, ‘Let’s start at the beginning. She left for this appointment at eight o’clock.’

  ‘Only there wasn’t an appointment,’ Hermione reminded us drearily. It was obvious she had been over and over this during the course of the morning.

  ‘No. But she had planned to go out. Not until about tennish when the taxi came. It was definitely pre-arranged. She did have some kind of appointment.’

  ‘Well . . . yes.’ Hermione looked a little less fraught. ‘And she was nervous, too – just like she is when she goes to the dentist.’

  ‘Really? So she wasn’t meeting an old friend?’

  ‘She would have told me. She hardly knows a soul in this area. She would have been so happy . . .’ Hermione gave a small dry sob.

  I stopped thinking about my headache. I might be an only child, but I was surrounded by people who knew me because they knew Mum and Dad and they had known my grandparents. But the Smiths were not ‘local’. And because they were so odd and snobby they seemed to have few friends. And then Mr Smith had been posted, and Mrs Smith and Hermione had been . . . stuck.

  Meriel obviously found it impossible to imagine Mrs Smith being happy. She said, ‘Perhaps she was nervous . . . for the friend? And then she left early because of the air raid. Because the friend was staying in the city and might be scared or something.’

  Hermione repeated impatiently, ‘If it had been a meeting with a friend she would have told me. Definitely.’ She glanced at me. ‘What do you think, Rachel?’

  I didn’t want to say, but on the other hand ignorance was not bliss for Hermione at the moment.

  ‘She might have had a different kind of appointment. More . . . medical?’

  Hermione almost wailed, ‘She would have told me! She would have told me!’

  ‘Perhaps she didn’t want to worry you. And if it was at the infirmary it could have been cancelled. The roads are all cordoned off down Southgate.’

  There was a silence. It fitted. Mrs Smith could have set out early to find out whether her appointment was still valid, and could still be waiting in that awful out-patients’ waiting room.

  Meriel said, ‘There are phone boxes in the entrance place, but once you’ve got in a queue in the waiting room you don’t want to lose your place.’

  Hermione said hopefully, ‘Yes. I remember when I went for my tonsils . . . Yes, it could be that. And it need not be anything too awful. They do ingrowing toenails and everything.’

  There was another silence. Nobody suggested telephoning the infirmary and enquiring about Mrs Smith’s appointment. After a while Hermione stood up and took our glasses to the sink. ‘If Mother comes in before you leave, don’t say anything about the milk,’ she said. And we both babbled of course not, and then mentioned that the weather was brightening. It was time to leave. She didn
’t want us there when Mrs Smith came home.

  As we went past the stairs again I tried to get into a lighter mood. ‘Still two weeks of the holiday to go, Hermione! You’re a bit early with getting your uniform up together.’ She laughed obediently, and I said, ‘Even the pleats are tacked on your skirt. But where is the tie?’

  As I spoke I wished the words back. I don’t know why. Hermione said quite easily, ‘Mother thought a new tie for the sixth form would be . . . appropriate.’

  Meriel spoke sadly. ‘You could have had mine. It was new last year. I won’t be needing it.’

  That finished that. We waved cheerio and straddled our bikes. Meriel said she might as well go home. I said OK. Then, as she stood on her pedals to get going, we saw Mrs Smith. She was on her sit-up-and-beg bike with its spoke guard at the back and basket at the front, her summer boater was slightly askew, and one of her cotton gloves was missing. Strangest of all, she was coming along the rough road; not from town, not from the village, either.

  We exchanged quick glances; she would not want us to see her. I turned my bike expertly and fell in with Meriel; we both stood on our pedals and whizzed around the corner towards the village. Then we got on to the grass verge as close to the hedge as we could, dismounted and crouched.

  She hadn’t seen us. She got off her bike and propped it against the kerb and did a quick adjustment of her hat and linen suit, and then wheeled the bike up the path.

  We waited until we heard the front door open and then close. We exchanged one of our looks again, I lifted my eyebrow, Meriel shrugged, I turned my bike and started back the way I’d come. Meriel called, ‘Same place. Tomorrow afternoon?’

  ‘OK.’

  I went home and took two aspirin.

  Five

  BY THE TIME Mum and Dad got home I was asleep in the garden. The sun really had come through, and it was a beautiful, golden evening, and I wanted it to be like the evening before when we had eaten raspberries and laughed together.

  They saw me through the kitchen window, and while the potatoes were cooking they brought out the tea things and laid up the picnic table properly and placed a bowl of flowers as a centrepiece. Then they woke me.

  ‘Am I old enough to receive flowers?’ I asked primly.

  ‘Not really.’ Mum smiled lovingly. ‘These are from the other girls in the office—’ she held up a hand at my guffaw. ‘Just you wait and see. Meriel and Hermione will always be girls to you.’

  ‘Your girls are pleased for you. They don’t know me.’

  ‘They’re pleased for all of us. And Dad and I thought you might like—’ She looked around. ‘George, where are you?’

  He appeared from the shed and gave Mum a package, and she gave it back to him, then they both clutched it together and held it out to me. Dad muttered, ‘One, two, three,’ then they both said slowly and clearly, ‘Congratulations!’ And I didn’t have time to open it before the tears started, and then absolutely spurted, and I was gathered up between them and asked with dismay whatever was the matter. So I told them.

  At the end, when I was sitting in the deckchair again, they stood up from their squatting positions and sat down too in their chairs, and Mum said, ‘How could all this have happened while we were at the fair together?’

  I told her all over again, and then about our stalking expedition on Friday, and then what the spy had said to us. And then about Mrs Smith.

  Mum said, ‘I can’t believe that in the space of three days all this has actually happened!’

  Dad said, ‘So it’s thrown up three . . . difficulties. Nothing to be done about them, not really. But you will have to live with them, poppet. Number one is Meriel not getting the exam, and this problem with her father. Then it’s the man on the bike, who you pretended was a German spy, and who might have been killed in last night’s air raid. And thirdly, it’s Mrs Smith and the tie. Is that a fair assessment?’

  Mum shook her head slowly from side to side; she didn’t believe me any more than Dad did; none of it seemed real to her. I nodded just as slowly. I wasn’t sure. Dad was always simplifying things, which was good a lot of the time but surely couldn’t work now – this was much too complicated.

  Dad said even more slowly and very solemnly, ‘You and Meriel pretended a little bit too much this time, Rachel. You began to believe your own stories. There are a lot of foreigners in this region at present, some of them just waiting up at the transit camp, not knowing what is going to happen to them, and therefore unhappy and frightened. Many of them have been harassed by over-zealous patriots. It happens in time of war, I’m afraid. Silverman – the tailor in Barton Street – his windows were smashed on Saturday evening while we were enjoying ourselves on the big wheel. Perhaps your man was there at the time, and that was the cause of his angry reaction when he confronted you. And he was right, wasn’t he? You were harassing him. There is a perfectly reasonable explanation for his actions, but none for yours.’

  I looked at him, then down at my lap. ‘Oh Dad,’ I said. Then I looked up. ‘But the tie?’

  Dad glanced at Mum. ‘Flo?’ Mum’s name was Flora but he always called her Flo.

  She said in a low, troubled voice, ‘Old clothes go to the rag and bone man. And he sorts out anything he can sell. He might get sixpence each for old Swallow ties.’

  Dad let this sink in. After a pause I said, ‘So we really did harass him to death – literally.’

  ‘Of course you didn’t. You’re not seeing straight on this at all, love. That man knew where he was going, and when he couldn’t shake you two ferrets off, he went there quite openly. He was going there, sweetheart. Whether you and Meriel had followed him or not, that house was his destination.’ Another pause, and then he was off again. ‘As for Mrs Smith . . . her actions are always odd because she is an odd woman. Your explanation about a hospital appointment could well be the right one.’ He grinned suddenly. ‘Supposing she cycled home, saw your bikes propped up outside her house and thought – can’t face those two perishers, I’ll have a quiet cycle ride down to the fields and see if they’ve gone when I get back!’ Mum and I had to laugh; he didn’t sound a bit like Mrs Smith except for the posh-posh accent.

  When we stopped laughing Mum said, ‘Come on, open up your present. I’ll have to go and see to the potatoes in a minute.’

  As usual Dad had defused all the horrors, and Mum was picking up where he left off. I opened the little package. There was a black velvet box, and inside that was a silver bracelet, very plain, very simple. I felt the tears again.

  Mum said quickly, ‘We want it back. We’re going to have it engraved. We couldn’t before we knew that you had actually matriculated.’

  ‘We knew you would,’ Dad said. ‘But Mum reckoned it was bad luck.’

  I said, ‘It’s lovely. I’ll always wear it. I just wish so much that Meriel had passed, too.’

  And Mum said, ‘Yes. But you know, she won’t mind too much about not getting that piece of paper. It’s the other-woman thing she cares about. And if Mrs Nightingale puts up with it, then I’m afraid Merry will have to do the same.’

  ‘It was just . . . it was such a shock. And the woman must have been the one who made that dress. Meriel kept trying to rip it to shreds, and then she was sick and Mr Nightingale just . . . left.’

  ‘Well, he’d got his wife and two sons waiting for him in the car somewhere,’ Mum said reasonably. I looked at her in astonishment, amazed that she could reduce all the sordid events of Saturday evening into such neat order. Mum reached for my arm and held it so that the sun glinted on the bracelet. ‘Look at how it sets off your tan,’ she went on, smiling.

  I got up to help her with our meal. It had never occurred to me before that jewellery was simply a way of attracting attention to the human body. And my arm did look rather nice.

  Dad had asked me to pick the beans, so the next day I did that as soon as Mum left for work. Then I sorted out my school uniform, pressed everything and put it on a hanger the way Mrs Smith h
ad done for Hermione. It was a sort of apology to her for thinking . . . whatever I had thought about her. Ever. It could be she had some terrible illness and was hiding it from Hermione . . . oh, please God, don’t let that happen to Mum. I said that out loud.

  It was nine thirty when I cycled into the city, turned off into the tiny lane that housed the office and print shop of the Clarion, and propped my bike against one of the gas lamps that still lit many of the streets then. Beyond the terraced houses opposite, the cathedral tower reared into the sky, and the smells from the vinegar factory overlaid the scent of rotting fruit that came from the market. I loved it all; I knew I belonged here.

  Inside, there was a high counter, and lots of telephones all being used, as news came in from various agents over the county. A goods train from Sheffield carrying bazookas had derailed just this side of Birmingham on the Lickey embankment; cranes were being brought in. The Spitfire Fund had received a cheque for fifty pounds after a successful garden fête held by the citizens of Winchcombe. Sunday’s air raid had claimed the lives of two people who had been trapped in the rubble of one of the houses when it received a direct hit. They had not yet been identified. Two people. Not just Fritz on his own. Somebody had been with him.

  A voice, male but young, said, ‘May I help you?’ And I looked up and saw a chap, maybe a couple of years older than me, standing behind the counter fiddling nervously with a sign that said, ‘Enquiries, please ring for attention.’

  He was my height, which was tall, and everything about him seemed to be straw-coloured: from his aggressively straight hair and sandy-lashed blue eyes, through to his crooked nose and long mouth. Perhaps he should have started to shave, because his skin had a sort of straw-coloured sheen as the light from one of the bottle-glass windows highlighted his face. It made him seem . . . nondescript . . . but he wasn’t. Not a bit. As he spoke I saw that his two front teeth were slightly prominent, and he tried to hide them by drawing down his upper lip. There was no need, it was rather attractive. He fiddled with the sign and I registered long knobbly fingers. He was certainly no Errol Flynn. But there was something . . . it was kindness. He didn’t look as if he’d been one of those kids who tore wings off butterflies and stamped on snails.