Rachel's Secret

by Susan Sallis

  ‘Devon.’

  ‘OK, Devon.’ He beamed at me. ‘You’ll do a good job, Rachel, I’m certain of that. And it will do you good as well. Maxine is always telling me you’re much too thin. But your mother was the same.’ His smile died. ‘You are the spitting image of your mother, Rachel.’

  I put my hand to my hair self-consciously. It really was the only thing I had inherited from Mum. Uncle Gilbert was wearing the wrong glasses.

  That was how I came to go to see Dad and Meriel in Florida that June of 1963.

  Sixteen

  THE VISITATION – THAT was what Meriel called it – was much too short, of course. Besides taking endless photographs with a physical camera, I did lots of filming the way I’d done as a child, focusing intensely on a ‘frame’ and almost burning it into my mind. It means that I saw Meriel’s kitchen in two-dimensional blocks and have to concentrate hard on moving around it, and mentally joining it all together.

  I loved working in it; it was so light, so airy and so big. The gadgets were never put away because we actually used them on a daily basis. The juicer was a delight; the electric blender, the cake mixer, the vegetable chopper . . . even the toaster was quite different from mine, with six slots if you needed them. I became an expert cake maker and copied out all Aunt Mabe’s wonderful recipes for use in my Clarion column.

  Aunt Mabe was a delight; she was the same age as Dad, but seemed more like a grandmother than a mother. Rex was there for breakfast, and very occasionally for dinner. He took us out to restaurants and talked to Dad about his work. ‘Classified information’, he called it. ‘But it’s safe with you,’ he said, clapping Dad on the shoulder. Little did he know. Meriel did not even meet my swift glance, and I had a feeling she had completely forgotten about the betrayal. I did mention it at one point, and she looked surprised. ‘You mean that misdemeanour of his – obviously, honey, he knew what he was doing. It was too late in the war for his invention to be any good to the Germans and he needed the money for your mother. No National Health then, was there?’ She smiled wryly, she too had missed out on the National Health; subject closed.

  After the middle weekend we paid a visit to Joan and ‘Pop’ Robinson. Georgie’s school was closing for the summer, and we were to collect him and bring him back to the Florida house.

  Jack Robinson had been retired for some time, and he and Joan had become almost caricatures of good solid citizens. In many ways life in Orion was Dickensian. Joan headed a team of ladies who had made ‘caring’ into an art form. Soup in the winter, angel cake and blancmanges in the summer. Pop put chains on his car in the winter and drove people from place to place every Wednesday and Thursday. They both belonged to a reading group and a chess club. They kept weekends for Georgie – though this term he had joined a choir who were much in demand for church services on Sundays. They told us very seriously that with the extra time on their hands they had thought of taking badminton lessons.

  Meriel was different with them; she could relax properly, say what she thought. The second of our nights there, they talked about Ellie. It could have been tricky for Joan, but she too had known Jack’s first wife and had loved her. There seemed to be very much more love around in the States. Perhaps we had been fed on hatred for too long; we had to learn to be open and loving again. Or perhaps it was a national failing. Caution, protectiveness . . . I wasn’t sure. I decided I would float the idea in my articles, and see what sort of response I got back home.

  Joan said to me, ‘You know, Rachel, Ellie thought that she and Merry were very similar. She told Mabe she wanted Merry to do the things she might have had a shot at. That was why we have all encouraged Merry to enquire about the psychology course at Bristol University.’

  Meriel flashed a grin at me. ‘I haven’t told Rachel about that, Joan. I suppose I’ll have to, now!’

  Joan wasn’t a bit fazed. ‘I should think so,’ she said. ‘Do it now, while Jack and I get some supper. Once you take Georgie out of school, there won’t be much opportunity to talk it over.’

  We did not exactly talk it over; we strolled down the ‘yard’ to the stream at the bottom and watched a pair of blackbirds on the opposite bank, and Meriel talked while I listened.

  ‘It’s Aunt Mabe who keeps on about it,’ she said half-laughing but very serious, too. ‘She says it’s the ideal time because Georgie has got another three years at this wonderful school, and she’s still around for the vacations, and Joan and Jack are always there, and Vicky will be in college . . . and she’s right. There’s no provision for Georgie once he’s nineteen. Well, that’s not quite true, but what’s on offer would not interest him. Carpentry, gardening. You know the sort of thing. He loves music. He’ll never be a musician, but he loves music.’ She took my arm suddenly. ‘Oh Rache. He loves music.’ She was weeping. I remembered him ten years ago at Daphne’s Rhyme and Rhythm sessions, banging a drum. I put my other hand over hers.

  ‘He’ll always have people who love him, Merry. That is what counts.’

  ‘Vicky . . . yes. Oh yes. But what if he wants to marry someone? What if he wants an ordinary home and children?’

  I swallowed, not knowing. We protected disabled children even when they grew up . . . didn’t we? Could we let them take the enormous adult jump of marriage and family life?

  Meriel said, ‘Aunt Mabe wants me to have qualifications.’ Her voice became stronger, steadier. ‘So that when I voice an opinion it has . . . weight. This course at Bristol offers teaching qualifications and a degree in psychology. Armed with that I could do a doctorate back here at home. And then I would have some . . . what did we used to call it? Clout. I would have some clout.’

  ‘What for? I mean how would you use this clout?’

  ‘Getting . . . stuff . . . for Georgie.’ She waved her hands. ‘I could write a textbook – Hermione would help me.’

  ‘My God. What you’re saying . . . you’re being political again!’

  ‘I don’t know what that means, really. But like I said before, if it turns out to be political, then that’s OK.’

  I suddenly remembered how she had coped with Mrs Roosevelt’s visit to her tiny Center for Learning . . . Georgie at five years old, cupping his friend’s hands around some flowers and presenting them to their illustrious visitor.

  I said slowly, ‘You could do it, Merry. And if it’s the ideal time . . . why don’t you start next September?’ I was startled at my own words. ‘What about Rex?’ I asked.

  ‘Grandee has talked to him about it. He would be delighted.’ She made a face at me. ‘Clear field with Dawn from Devon!’

  I was startled all over again. ‘Not still?’ I asked incredulously.

  She nodded self-mockingly. ‘He would be so much better off with her, Rache. And he’s stuck with me. And he’s stuck because of Georgie. If I moved into the front line he would feel free to ask for a divorce.’ She shrugged. ‘Sounds crazy, I know, but he’s a good man basically. He would never leave me out on a limb, as it were. It would be different if I was completely independent of him – he would still see Georgie, but it would be different.’

  ‘I think I know what you mean. And Vicky would always be a bridge between all of you.’

  It was as if we had made an agreement. She brought up the subject in front of the whole family back in Florida, Dad as well.

  ‘Aunt Mabe and Joan and Pop and now Rache . . . they’re all keen on me doing a course in Bristol. Psychology with a Certificate of Education thrown in.’ She looked at Rex. ‘What do you say, honey?’

  He flitted a grin at her. ‘You know what I would say.’

  It was the Nightingale situation all over again. Complicit. Horribly, unnaturally civilized.

  ‘I’d rather you said it, and in front of witnesses.’

  ‘I think it’s a good idea. We all know that you need to go to the limit with your crusade. That’s what it will become, Merry. You know that.’

  She nodded. ‘It’s what I want,’ she said simply.

 
Meriel had also talked to Georgie about going to Bristol. She was constantly consulting Georgie, he was never left out.

  He said bleakly, ‘I won’t see you.’

  ‘I’ll be home every time you are.’ She looked into his strange eyes. ‘I promise. I’ll telephone you at Grandee’s house. I’ll write to you every week. Just as I do now.’

  I knew those letters, because she had insisted I put my piece into them while I was staying with Dad. They were simple diaries: they recorded the weather, the latest flowers in the yard, the pool man’s annoyance with the drifting leaves, Vicky’s opinion on the Polaris agreement and the riots in Alabama. Vicky was determined that her brother should be aware of the world beyond school and family. I heard her say angrily, ‘If you want him to have the same opportunities as everyone else, then you must let him feel responsible for – for – everything!’ Meriel told me later that she had provoked Vicky by her ‘condescension’.

  ‘We were looking at a newspaper photograph of Jackie Kennedy, and I said she should send it to Georgie because he loved beautiful people. I didn’t mean they were the only people he could appreciate – my God, he appreciated Mrs Roosevelt all right!’ Meriel looked at me and issued a challenge. ‘Dammit, Rache, you’re in the business of communication. You write to him. See how you do!’

  That was when I started to write to Georgie. My letters weren’t a bit like hers. The first was one of my recipes for drop scones. The next day I copied out Blake’s ‘Jerusalem’ and sent it to him. I showed them to Dad when he got in from the day’s golf. He grinned, just as he had before Mum died. ‘If you go on doing this, Rache, tell him about the time we were all foxes in a den.’ Then he stopped smiling, and said, ‘Get Tom to do some sketches. To go with your letters. He’ll say he can’t do it. That’s because his father was so good. But he could do it after a fashion, and he should.’ He saw my astonishment and all the questions I was going to fire at him, and he said dismissively, ‘Just a thought. I must have a shower. Mabe is cooking supper tonight.’ And he was gone.

  The plane landed at Stansted and there was Tom and the car I thought we’d never have; before I even asked he said, ‘Daisy and Rose are staying overnight with Daphne. As they are both in love with her boys I’m afraid you lost the contest, love.’

  I butted my head into his arm. ‘At least you turned up.’

  He kissed me, then said, ‘And at least we’ve got the house to ourselves till about four o’clock tomorrow afternoon.’

  We held on to each other, drew apart, looked and looked. I steadied my voice to say, ‘And Daphne was also a Swallow girl, so she will know what their uniforms should look like.’

  He nodded, half-smiling, running his hand over my hair.

  ‘They’ve made a list of questions so that you can prepare your answers.’ His voice did not shake so much as wobble. I’d only been away a fortnight, but we hadn’t been apart that long since we were married. ‘It’s a long list but a lot of them are duplicated and involve the sort of makeup Vicky is wearing and whether Georgie and Rebekkah will get married. And whether Grandee has met anyone else.’

  ‘D’you think they’re sex mad?’

  ‘No. But they are going through a silly stage. They catch each other’s eye, and for no reason at all they fall about laughing.’

  ‘They’re laughing at us. They realize that life is absurd. They think they are the only people in the world to know that.’ I kissed him again, laid my head against his arm and closed my eyes blissfully. ‘And of course, they are twelve years old.’

  By the time we got to Oxford I was asleep.

  It was good to be home. The two weeks in America had been amazing. I had tried to ‘do a Hermione’ and observe it all as dispassionately as possible. Uncle Gilbert was paying for this trip and I had to bring back ‘letters from America’ that were both everyday and chatty, yet conscious all the time of the different cultures, the poverty gap, the frantic efforts to gather all those disparate peoples and make them into a nation. I had found it incredible that even at Georgie’s ‘special’ school the day began with the national anthem, the flag, the reminder that first and foremost came the United States of America. Learn that and everything else would follow. And by everything else, most people meant wealth. At the same time I noted the generosity and kindness. There seemed almost too much of everything, especially food. I had not realized that almost twenty years after the end of the war we were still so careful of food and belongings; we had not yet entered the throwaway world.

  Personally, the most important thing I observed was Dad’s apparent happiness. It didn’t go deep and it certainly wasn’t the sort of happiness he had had with Mum, but he looked very fit and well. Retired men in Florida played golf, and he joined them and liked them well enough. He seemed to have no wish to come back to this country. He was absolutely delighted to see me at first, and then there was almost a caution about him; as if he dared not let himself go. As if he had fenced himself away from all his old life. I couldn’t believe it. It was as if the whole Strassen thing had gone; in fact as if the whole of England and his life at Smith’s had gone.

  When I reminded him that he had not seen the girls since they were five years old – which was when he had let Hermione have Rough Road Cottage – he looked vague. ‘Guess I should come and look at the house.’

  I was nettled by the fact that Daisy and Rose came after the house.

  I said, ‘Hermione is taking great care of it. She loves it. Reckons she had the happiest times of her childhood there. I think she came round about half a dozen times, didn’t she?’

  ‘Golly, Rache. I don’t remember.’

  That was how he did it, of course, by not remembering. When I was rattling on about the girls and Tom I often felt him shut down. He rarely mentioned Mum. He was only seventy-two and he was deliberately losing his memory. He didn’t ask about Hermione again. I wonder whether he even remembered her.

  I found it terribly difficult to tell Tom all this. When he asked about Rex and Meriel and Vicky and Georgie, I couldn’t stop talking. But when it came to Dad it was different. ‘You’ll have to wait for me to do my letters for the Clarion,’ I told him. ‘I’ve got heaps of notes. There’s just too much to remember and regurgitate.’

  Long before I got the very ancient Oliver on to the kitchen table, Meriel’s first letter had arrived. It was very short.

  Darling Rache, I am missing you so much. Maybe more than I would have done had we had the kind of holiday together I planned. I knew you were coming out to see your father, of course I knew that, but I still thought that in-between – not even in-between but all the time, there would be that bond between us. I’m not saying it’s gone, Rache. It can never just disappear. But what we had in Coronation year, that wonderful month when it seemed as though nothing happened and everything happened, we didn’t have that, did we?

  Perhaps I’m sounding neurotic. It’s just that . . . well, you know me, Rache . . . I have to have everything out in the open. So if there is anything, just tell me. Please, please, Rache, just tell me.

  That was all there was, and she must have written before I actually left, because airmails took five days to get across the Atlantic and this one arrived on my first ‘normal’ day – when in fact I planned to start on the ‘letter from America’. I stared at her sprawling signature almost vexedly; I did not want anything to come before my letter. Gilbert had commissioned it so that I could go over and check on Dad . . . we both knew it. So the letter – the excuse for going – had to be . . . good. And as for Meriel wanting to have stuff in the open – it was ridiculous.

  I put her letter on the kitchen mantelpiece and got cracking. I didn’t even hear Rose’s key in the door at four thirty. Not until she slammed her satchel on to the table with such force the Oliver lifted half an inch.

  I stopped work and tried to hug her; she was stiff. ‘What’s up?’ I asked.

  ‘Daisy’s got a date.’

  Her voice was almost sullen. She shrugged o
ut of her blazer, put it on the back of one of the kitchen chairs, and made a sound of annoyance as it slid to the floor. She made no attempt to pick it up. I demanded to know who Daisy was with, and how she could just walk off without letting me know. They both knew the rules: they came home from school immediately and directly.

  Rose looked grimmer than ever; after all, why should she have to put up with my anger at first-hand when it was nothing to do with her? I shook my head in a sort of apology and kissed her.

  She said, ‘The date’s not today. You’ve forgotten she’s got tennis practice down at the park. You forget everything lately.’

  ‘Oh . . . of course. And I’ll be OK once this article is done. So what’s all this about a date?’ I gave up on the Oliver, lugged it over to the dresser, then grabbed the kettle and filled it. I hadn’t eaten since seven thirty and had not even peeled a potato for our evening meal.

  ‘Colin Beard.’

  ‘Colin? Aunt Daphne’s Colin? But he must be . . . fifteen?’

  ‘Nearly sixteen,’ Rose said with a touch of satisfaction at my reaction. Obviously, she thought ‘the date’ was my fault because Daphne was my friend and Colin was her son; and just as obviously she enjoyed making the age difference even wider and more horrific.

  I spooned tea into the pot and glanced over my shoulder. ‘Pick up your blazer, it’s not meant to be a door mat. Then go and change your clothes. We’ll have tea outside, and you can tell me all about it.’

  I had been home three days and was sounding like Meriel. But Rose instantly picked up her blazer and disappeared, so it worked. And I made the tea and went for the phone. Daphne had long given up on Rhyme and Rhythm and now ran a cleaning agency. She also lived back home with her widowed mother; home was an enormous house with its own tennis court and swimming pool. She cheerfully confessed that her husband had dumped her for his secretary. The boys, just as cheerfully, said Dad couldn’t stand the noise when they took up drumming. He visited them all once a week and said he hadn’t known when he was on to a good thing. But he always went back to his blonde, slim and very pretty secretary. Daphne was still overpowering.