Rachel's Secret

by Susan Sallis

  I liked this house. It reminded me of my grandparents’ cottage at the end of the Barton; it was big, and the hall floor was tiled, and the front door had coloured glass in it, so that the tiles were different colours depending on the time of the day and the quality of the light. I liked the thought that it was all ours. But I missed Mrs Price, who had been a real brick when I had come home from hospital with the girls. I had thought Dad would be there for me – like Meriel, I had imagined the girls might take the edge off Mum’s death. But Meriel was right, it had seemed to make it worse. Mum would have been so good with them, so wonderfully good. He couldn’t bear the thought of what they were missing. He couldn’t bear it, either, that she would never know them.

  I leaned forward and warmed my hands. Nor could I bear it. I wished so much that Mum had had a sister. I wished there was an Aunt Mabe for me.

  But – back to that paragraph again – I couldn’t possibly have resurrected the Strassens and Mr Silverman whatever Meriel said, for the simple reason that I had no time to worry about them any longer. It took every ounce of energy – and more – for me to get through each day. I had welcomed Uncle Gilbert’s suggestion that I might like to do some kind of a column to show how the Coronation of our young Queen affected the city and the people in it. I thought it would do me good to get away from babies for a while. I had not envisaged the interviews, the notes and the midnight oil once a week.

  I finished my coffee and got up to make soup for our lunch, then stood there with my back to the fire, re-reading the whole letter. Then I stared through the window at the snow falling on the little canyon that was Chichester Street. It was a narrow road, the houses parapeted, so that they looked like a solid wall pierced uniformly by identical windows and doors. Covered already by the snow blanket were coal holes and boot scrapers outside each house. Meriel and I had cut through this way sometimes on the way home from school; to get away from Hermione. The road looped around then ran parallel with Northgate. I wondered what Meriel would make of the road, now I lived in it. If June proved to be a hot and sunny month, it might take on that drab, tired look so much of the city had had since the war. And when she discovered how hopeless I was at being a mother, perhaps our friendship would die a death. Would her letters become infrequent and more reserved? And then stop?

  From above came the first of the wake-up calls; I took my coffee cup into the kitchen and stuck Meriel’s letter behind the clock on the mantelpiece. I was willing to bet that first call came from Rose; she had entered the world first and in a dreadful hurry. I was right; as I started upstairs her familiar ‘Mumumum’ escalated into a screeched ‘Mummee!’, followed by Daisy’s cry of protest from the next bedroom. I lifted them out and shepherded them into our bedroom for a really good view of the snow. It was bitterly cold upstairs, no heating of course. We sat three abreast on the top stair and eased ourselves gently down on our bottoms, pretending we were sliding downhill on toboggans. I didn’t mind things taking a long time; there were still two hours to go before Tom arrived home and took over. By the time I had inserted four legs into two pairs of dungarees, fitted slippers on to four feet and topped everything off with cardigans, it was time for lunch. We sat around for as long as they would, dunking bread in our soup, trying – not always successfully – to keep the ends of our hair out of the bowls, and not to wipe soupy fingers on our cardigans. There was the usual struggle to flannel their faces and hands afterwards, then they sat on the identical wooden engines Uncle Gilbert had given them at Christmas, and shunted from kitchen to living room, while I washed up, made sandwiches, and peeled some potatoes for the evening meal.

  It was heaven to see Tom. I kissed him as if he’d been away for a fortnight instead of just seven hours. He misjudged things as usual and said, ‘I wish you didn’t have to go out in this, darling. It’s really treacherous underfoot.’

  And I said, ‘Cake in tin. Sandwiches. Rose-hip syrup. Back for bath time.’

  He groaned. ‘Oh God . . .’

  I said, ‘Well, I’m communicating important things.’

  ‘I know.’ He gathered Rose and Daisy to him, one on each arm; it looked easy. He said, ‘Shall we watch Mummy slide down the road?’

  They were really keen on seeing that. Tom played with them so well . . . so well.

  I had a nice time with Maria Nightingale. I wondered what Meriel would make of that. When I got home the sky was full of stars, and the snow like cake icing. I wondered whether Tom and I could stand outside for a while after the twins were asleep, but knew I would be too tired, too cold, too everything.

  I let myself in and children poured over me. ‘Mummee, Mummee . . .’ Daisy had a new word, it sounded like ‘Bandee Bandee’. She called Dad ‘Grandee’; was he there, in our living room? I hurried through, Tom was in the kitchen on his own. Pots and pans were on the table.

  ‘We’ve got something to show you, haven’t we, girls?’ They nodded, full of importance. ‘Up you get, then.’ They scrambled on to their chairs and knelt so that they were hip-high to the table. Rose picked up a spoon and banged a saucepan.

  ‘Not yet . . . wait for it—’

  Tom lifted a wooden spoon high, and suddenly I knew what game they had been playing; what it was they had to show me.

  Tom boomed sonorously, ‘Bom, bom, bom-de-bom—’; then a semitone lower, ‘Bom bom-de-bom—’. And they were off. Saucepans, frying pans, Tom’s voice roaring Beethoven’s famous notes.

  It was the Fifth. He had taught them the opening bars of the Fifth Symphony.

  Thirteen

  I SAID, ‘YOU haven’t changed. Not a bit. You are still you.’

  Tears poured down her face. ‘You have changed. You’re skinnier than ever and – damn it all, Rache – there’s a grey streak from there to there.’ She touched my hair above the left eye. ‘No need for that!’

  I smiled. ‘You’ve got a rotten memory. I had it at school. When Daphne clonked me with her hockey stick – I lost the pigment or something. She reminded me just the other day.’

  Meriel drew back. The tears were making runnels in her makeup. She said, ‘You’re beautiful, Rache. You’re so like Flo Throstle. So much.’

  That did it, of course. I knew I had Mum’s cloud of dark hair, and her pointed chin and curly mouth and brown eyes, but to me they had never added up to Mum’s beauty. I certainly did not have her luminosity. I was grey, just like the streak in my hair. I grabbed Meriel and knocked her hat sideways as I bent down and hid my own tears in her curls; yes, she still had her Shirley Temple curls. She also had a ballerina skirt layered with a great many petticoats, from the feel of her. She protested as I squashed all of them; Tom and Rex stopped shaking hands and stood by us; and the young black woman called Sheba who had come to Southampton with us from Cheltenham picked up Georgie and led Vicky towards our two girls. She knelt down, right there on the dock, and started the introductions. I could see she was going to be a gem because Daisy came forward ahead of Rose and kissed Georgie. Rose was suddenly, and not typically, shy.

  Rex said, ‘Listen . . . girls . . . let’s get somewhere a little more private, shall we? Honey, no need to cry quite so hard . . . Tom, is Rachel OK?’

  Tom had a hand in the small of my back. I glanced at him; he was smiling widely. ‘I think she’s more than OK. OK has nothing to do with anything much at the moment.’

  I was so proud of him saying that. We might not be too good at communicating lately, but he still understood. He knew. For me, seeing Meriel again was like going back to the time when Mum was alive. I suddenly realized why Tom had chased the memory of his father so hard.

  He said, ‘I’ve got that Jaguar in the car park – not far. Shall we drive out of the town and find somewhere for tea?’

  Rex’s face lit up. Meriel snuffled, ‘Oh Tom. That would be lovely. But how shall we all get into it? Four of us, four of you and this – this – angel of mercy.’ She held out a free hand without disengaging me. ‘Sheba. The Queen of Sheba, no less. Thank you so muc
h.’ Then turned back to Tom. ‘Nine people?’

  Tom said, ‘Four of them very small. One driver and four laps.’

  Rex went to sort out luggage. There were four trunks somewhere, all labelled with the Cheltenham address. There were two overnight bags. They went in the boot – trunk – then came out again so that Merry could find Georgie’s stuffed rabbit, and then at last we wedged ourselves into the car, and Rex sat behind the wheel looking like an excited schoolboy. ‘Gee. A stick. Look at this, honey – everything on the left . . . wow, see the clock? This car will do a hundred! See this, Vicky?’

  ‘Sure, Daddy. Can I sit on Uncle Tom’s lap? And Daisy here and Rose on Mommy’s lap—’

  But Georgie wanted Mommy’s lap and wanted to be very close to Rose, too. I realized suddenly she was frightened of him, and that was why she was hanging back. I pulled her on to my knee, and then leaned down and put my face against Georgie’s. ‘Welcome to England, darling,’ I said. ‘We’re so pleased to see you at last.’

  His strangely tilted eyes studied me for a moment very solemnly, then he grinned and said, ‘Me too.’ He pushed out his tongue. I felt Rose tense.

  Meriel looked at her. ‘He does that all the time, honey. You get used to it.’ Rose didn’t understand, of course, she was only two. She put her head on my shoulder and kept very still.

  It was a long drive and some of Rex’s enthusiasm for English classic cars had abated by the end of it. The children had most definitely had enough. Sheba proved her worth over and over again, but we changed our plans at Oxford and decided Rex would drop Tom and me and the girls first and then go to Cheltenham and settle his own family without our help.

  Meriel was disappointed. She wanted me to see the Cheltenham house and then have dinner and chat the night away. I wondered how that could happen. What about bed time and Rex and Tom, and wasn’t she just a bit tired? I was absolutely exhausted. I managed to wave them off while Meriel screamed with delight at our boot scraper, then Tom and I gave up. The girls went into their cots without a murmur and without a bath. Tom and I had a cup of tea and some toast and staggered upstairs at eight thirty. I wondered how on earth we were going to cope with a month of this.

  Vicky and Georgie were instantly at home in the Cheltenham house, the Chichester Street house, Daphne Beard’s big through-room in Barnwood where they took the Rhyme and Rhythm sessions in their stride – and where Roland and Colin, Daphne’s amazingly polite boys, both fell in love with Vicky – and my old home down the rough road, where Dad watched with a stunned expression as they ran around like creatures from the Amazon jungle.

  Meriel said, ‘Do you mind awfully, George?’ Her American accent had disappeared like snow in summer. ‘They’re just showing off in front of Daisy and Rose. They’ll calm down in a minute. Vicky knows when. If Georgie tanks about too much he can have a fit, and she hates that.’

  Dad looked worried; he had never looked worried before . . . Mum. He had always been in control of whatever was happening. I tried to take Mum’s place and glinted a smile at him. ‘She called you George!’ I said.

  And, amazingly, Dad smiled back. ‘It’s my name. I think.’ He looked at Meriel. ‘May I call you Merry?’

  It wasn’t much of a riposte but it started Meriel off again. It didn’t take much. The sight of Twyver’s Brook; my old satchel hanging in number twenty-one; the little plot where Mum was buried. She said to me, ‘I had to leave it for eight years to realize how precious it all was.’

  But Dad was still all right; he draped an arm around her shoulders. ‘The trouble with you two girls is that you’ve kept such stiff upper lips all this time.’

  And Meriel, acting on him like a dose of salts, as she had forecast, said, ‘You’re a fine one to talk!’

  But all this wonderful stuff happened after the trip to London to watch the Coronation.

  Rex had wanted to book us all in at the Ritz, but London in June 1953 was full to bursting point, and in the end he had got two ‘family suites’ in a very comfortable hotel just off the Edgware Road, where we got a glimpse of Marble Arch from one of the balconies. Heaven knows what it cost. One of the other scientists at the Space Center had a brother who knew the MD of the hotel chain . . . it got complicated, but it was an excellent hotel. Neither Tom nor I had stayed in a hotel before. Dad had been to Germany, of course, but otherwise he was as raw as we were. We delighted in our two nights of luxury, and the full English breakfast, and the dinner which commenced with Windsor soup. Rose wanted nothing else; she had four plates of Winzie soup and asked for more at breakfast time. It was the kind of hotel that agreed, smilingly, to dish up soup for breakfast, and for a long time afterwards that was what Rose enjoyed every morning.

  On the morning of 2 June, we were woken by a strange murmuring sound. I glanced at the grey light filtering through the curtains and decided it was rain, but when the little chamber maid brought tea – silver tray and pot – and opened the curtains, she reported the overnight crowds just waking up. ‘Poor things,’ she said, peering out. ‘It’s a sharp breeze out there, they must be that cold.’ Tom and I carried the girls to the window to join her. The narrow side road was full of people, and when we leaned out and looked towards Marble Arch we saw where they had slept all night long. ‘It’s a carpet of people,’ Tom told Daisy. ‘Look . . . can you see them wrapped in blankets? They’re running about in the park to keep warm.’

  Rose ran next door to call Grandee, and Dad came in wearing his threadbare pyjamas. I realized how shabby we all were. When two minutes later the Robinsons joined us, this was even more evident. Meriel’s matching nightdress and negligee were pure silk, and Rex sported an alpaca dressing gown – ‘I had to wear it in bed – gee, is it cold for midsummer!’ But he hadn’t grumbled about the food last night, unlike the Americans on the next table. He remembered the drastic economies during the war, and had guessed that we weren’t far away from all that. I decided that I rather liked Rex, especially when I managed to cut out Dawn from the equation. He and Tom got on really well. And he was polite to Meriel, and loving to Vicky – and sometimes to Georgie, too.

  As planned, we spent our time between the television room and the balcony. All the children preferred the television; it was cold and wet on the balcony and there was nothing to see until that glimpse of the royal coach. But when that glimpse came, Vicky surprised us all by bursting into tears. It worried Georgie; he clasped her around the waist and buried his face in her flimsy summer dress.

  ‘What is it, honey?’ Merry asked, stooping down. No chance of Rex comforting her, he was craning over the balcony rail clicking his camera wildly. But Vicky did not really need comfort, she needed empathy, which she was getting from the other children. She looked at them and wailed, ‘I love her. I’m half-English so she is mine as well as yours, and I love her.’ So of course Rose cried properly, Daisy forced a few tears and Tom lifted up as many of them as he could, starting with Vicky, and perched them on his shoulders so that they had the best view of all.

  It was over in minutes. We had all seen the Queen on the day she dedicated herself to us, and looking around I thought that maybe the same sort of thing had happened between Meriel’s family and mine. As Tom said later, ‘Poor lass. She’s got to take us on, warts and all.’ And that’s how we had to be with each other. Warts and all.

  So, for the rest of that month, we did just that. Daphne Beard turned up trumps and entertained all the children once a week, while Meriel dragged me into the old house to chat with her mother. I found it difficult. Myrtle Nightingale had to be well aware that I visited Maria once a week; I had tried to make it sound as if it was all in the cause of the ‘Notes on a Coronation’ but she was canny enough to realize that such regular visits weren’t strictly necessary. Probably Dennis, with his usual tact, had told her how well we got on together. It was just as difficult for Meriel, when we went in to the shop to see her father and birth-mother. I knew that Maria would have liked to have given her one of the Coronation ‘special
s’, but after the fiasco of the green dress she did not dare. When we came away, Meriel actually said, ‘God. I’d love one of her outfits! You can see how she nobbled Dad, can’t you? Dressed up like Lady Muck, clothes rationing or no clothes rationing.’

  I said, ‘Be fair, Merry. Surely it was your adopted mother who did the nobbling? You were actually born when your dad got engaged to her. Maria was left right out in the cold.’

  ‘I’m not sure. I rather think Mum and Dad were in the middle of a long engagement when I came along. Poor old Mum was so besotted she took me on as well as him. Dad didn’t want to lose her – she had money. God, he’s such a rotter.’