Rachel's Secret

by Susan Sallis

  Neither Tom nor I said anything for ages. Uncle Gilbert bumbled on about it being ‘long ago and far away’, and that he had had to do something for his family. When he told us that he had stolen and burned the register of corporation houses – which contained my signatures against Sylvia Strassen’s rent – I realized that ‘family’ included me.

  Eventually they pretended that they took our silence for total agreement. More tea was offered. We told them that the girls had gone to see the latest Cliff Richard film and even if they had tea at the Tudor tea rooms they would be home soon. I didn’t mention that Meriel was there to welcome them back and listen to their chatter. It was almost dark, anyway. We needed to go.

  Maxine cleaned Frou-frou’s paws and packed her ‘weekend case’. A typed list of instructions was tucked into the outside pocket. The past was tucked away, too. Maxine said nothing about Dad’s precipitate return to this country or Mrs Smith’s implication in . . . well, everything. I wondered whether she knew – had we mentioned it? – that Mr Smith was in hospital with food poisoning.

  We stood under the portico to say our farewells, and Uncle Gilbert clasped me to his shoulder as usual, then said very solemnly, ‘I’ll make some enquiries, Rachel. I’ll sort it out – I’ll sort it all out. Don’t worry any more.’

  They waved us goodbye and Tom tooted the horn cheerfully, as if everything was hunky-dory. And I wound down my window and flapped my glove at them, then wound it up quickly so that Frou-frou would not catch cold. I had no idea what Uncle Gilbert was going to enquire about, or what he was going to sort out. Strangely enough his final words made sense, because I wasn’t worried any more.

  Tom said grimly, ‘This is how it has to be, isn’t it? Our box of secrets. We might well open the lid now and then and look inside the box, but mostly we will have to keep it locked.’

  I put my face down, so that Frou-frou could snuffle her kisses just under my chin. I said deliberately, ‘The girls are going to adore having this little dog in the house.’

  For a moment he was astonished, then he laughed. ‘OK. You’re so thankful that your father is still your father. What else?’

  ‘Gilbert and Maxine come out of it rather well, I thought. Especially Maxine.’

  ‘Yes.’ He concentrated on turning into the main road. Then said, ‘Your dad almost got it right, except that it wasn’t the ghastly Maude and Strassen who hoisted Silverman up to the ceiling, thank God.’ He steered the car carefully past one of the enormous coal wagons and I was reminded of the Shire horse whose hoof I had narrowly missed all those years ago. ‘Poor George. He’s been haunted by the Gaffer, in a way. He can’t see straight now, and he couldn’t see straight then. When Maude Smith blackmailed Flo into breaking the official secrets thing, your Dad must have seen it as proof that Flo slept with Gilbert, who quite possibly fathered you. I guess if it hadn’t been for protecting Flo and you, he might have murdered Maude then and there. And now, when the threat rears its head again, he thinks he can get away with it. I’m afraid he probably wants to kill her, Rache. He might even be looking forward to it.’

  I was quiet, simply because I did not know any more who ought to know what. So many people appeared to have the keys to our box of secrets that they were no longer a tool for blackmail. And the secrets themselves proliferated almost daily. I had to hang on to the two most important ones – and surely they weren’t even secrets? But Dad was Dad and Mum was Mum and that was all that mattered. Except . . . except that it was possible I had not been an only child and that Hermione was my half-sister. Why else would Dad be trying to protect her? And if Dad wasn’t Hermione’s father, who was? It looked as if Willi Strassen had only appeared just before the war. He was most likely one of Mr Silverman’s protégés. So if he wasn’t Hermione’s father, who was?

  Twenty

  IT IS STRANGE how the mind works. On Friday afternoon, cycling back into the city from my old home, I had been full of an unreasoning terror in case my father was, even then – at that moment – donning the dark cloak of a murderer. All right, I know that sounds beyond melodrama, but the whole day – wrapped in mist and mystery – had been like that. And then, quite suddenly it seemed, we were dressing for our evening out, dramatic enough, of course, but full of quirks shared with Tom. For instance: Uncle Gilbert, oozing good works but managing to feather his own nest very nicely at the same time, and Maxine, worried about Frou-frou, hanging around Uncle Gilbert’s neck like an overblown trophy. Dramatic or not, it seemed ridiculous to think of Dad donning that blasted black cloak. And then Saturday, which began with giggles, ending with more enormous secrets. But also with Uncle Gilbert’s promise that everything was going to be all right.

  Meanwhile there was the business of Froufrou. Meriel hated her, the girls adored her and Tom knew it was politic to give her a trial run for the weekend; but it was me who took her into the garden for her bed-time toileting. The girls then gave her some supper, so it was they who gained her gratitude. We went to bed fairly early and left her in her basket near the banked-up fire in the living room. Meriel needed to work, and kept a suspicious eye on her from the kitchen table.

  I said to Tom, when we got to the safety of our bedroom, ‘We should have her with us – she always sleeps with Gilbert and Maxine.’ Tom treated me to one of his silences and I changed the subject quickly. ‘And I don’t quite know how Gilbert will ever sort everything out as he promised. Maxine is letting him believe he is my father, and how on earth he thinks he will discover Hermione’s real father, heaven only knows!’

  Tom came up behind me and wrapped me in his long arms, then put his cheek against my nape. ‘Have you noticed how problems seem to . . . I don’t know . . . sort themselves out?’

  ‘Oh, Tom.’ I lifted one of his hands from my waist and kissed it. My mind had leapt again. ‘Poor Mr Silverman. Even if we’d gone straight to Eastgate that day, we couldn’t have saved him. It must have happened the previous Saturday.’

  He turned me and looked into my eyes. ‘How do you do that?’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Tune in to my thoughts like that?’

  ‘I didn’t know I was. But I’ve always known it worried you that we might have saved Mr Silverman. I wondered whether, in a way, it might be a tiny bit of relief to know we couldn’t.’

  We had switched off the bedroom light because the street lamp was only two doors away. We looked at each other in the strange artificial gloaming and experienced one of those amazing moments when it seemed as if our minds touched and overlapped; and in that moment I thought I knew something else about Tom. Nineteen years ago he felt he had failed Mr Silverman, who was a good man, an unsung hero. And over the next decade he had linked that failure with another. The failure to find his own father. He knew it was a superstitious, touching-wood kind of thing, but buried deep in his mind was a conviction that if he had saved Mr Silverman that day in August, he would also have saved his father.

  I whispered, ‘All that blood . . . when you fell against the wall—’

  He whispered back, ‘And when you fainted, right there in that little room . . . and I thought you had died, too.’

  It was as if we were reminding each other that we had done what we could. I said, ‘What can we do now? Nobody could stop her then – surely now—’

  The moment was over, though we still stared into each other’s eyes. And then he heard Meriel coming upstairs, and on impulse I went to the bedroom door and beckoned her to join us. She was carrying two hot-water bottles, a book and a thermos flask. She crept laboriously along the landing past the girls’ bedrooms.

  ‘What’s up?’ she asked going to the window where Tom was standing, apparently looking out. ‘Don’t tell me Mr Dawson has lost his cat again?’

  Tom said, ‘No. It just crossed my mind that in a way it’s a pity George cannot marry Hermione now. He needs someone to look after.’ He looked round and beamed at Meriel. The lamplight reflected on his teeth. ‘You would have been absolutely spot-on for the
job except you’re so bossy, and of course already have a husband!’ He laughed and added, ‘You’re not so lumbered as usual – where are the sandwiches?’

  ‘Never mind the bloody sandwiches. Why can’t George marry Hermione? You can see with half an eye how close they have become!’ Tom tried to stifle his escalating laughter and she made a sound like a kettle coming to the boil. ‘And I am not bossy, Tom! I simply know my mind and speak it. I would never try to force anyone to do anything they did not want to do.’

  ‘Sorry . . . sorry. As for your query about Hermione, after what we were told at Clarion House it doesn’t seem a good idea any more.’

  ‘Who cares about Gilbert the Great?’

  ‘Well actually we do, and that includes you. Because he is going to sort it all out for us.’

  ‘But not for Hermione, by the sound of it.’

  Tom glanced at me and I made up my mind on the spot and told Meriel that there was a remote possibility Hermione was my sister.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ she said flatly. ‘Your father and Mrs Smith? Are you mad?’

  ‘Try – my father and Eva Schmidt,’ I suggested.

  It stopped her in her tracks. I saw her considering the idea, gnawing her bottom lip. She didn’t like it, but she tried to be fair.

  ‘I’ll have to sleep on that one,’ she said. ‘Uncle Gilbert again, I take it?’

  ‘No,’ I shook my head. ‘Maxine.’

  She raised her brows, turned down her mouth, nodded thoughtfully.

  ‘Well, well. I respect that woman. As you know, she turned my dad down.’ She turned, hugging both hot-water bottles to her. ‘If I don’t sleep a wink it’s all your fault.’ Then, just before the door closed behind her, she added, ‘Anyway, nobody will murder anyone tomorrow. It’s a Sunday.’ The door clicked shut and we fell into each others arms, laughing helplessly.

  Our tea duly arrived in the washing-up bowl the next morning. Rose’s face was long and mournful, even Daisy looked solemn. We sat up in bed, and said how lovely, and waited to hear what they had to say. The silence was deafening, in spite of the creaking of the bed as we settled ourselves among the pillows and wedged the bowl between us.

  Tom, who could bear only his own silences, said, ‘The light seems odd. Has it been snowing?’

  Daisy leapt to the window. Rose said repressively, ‘Don’t be silly, Daisy. If we didn’t see snow from the front door when we waved goodbye to Aunt Meriel, we’re not likely to see it from the upstairs windows, are we?’

  She could be insufferable at times. Daisy did not care. ‘The sky is yellow. Grandee always says something about that.’

  Rose joined her. ‘Yes. He says red sky at night is shepherd’s delight.’

  Daisy improvised quickly. ‘And when sky is yellow, snow is mellow.’

  I was glad when Rose laughed and gave her a friendly shove. I said, ‘Don’t tell me Meriel has gone to church?’ I lay back in bed and sipped my tea. I could see that it was another murky day.

  Rose’s face lengthened again. Daisy said, ‘More impossible than that, even! She’s gone back to Bristol early because she’s got lots to do, and it’s always left to her to sort everything out, because the two of you are ungarageable.’

  Rose said, ‘Incorrigible. Mum and Dad aren’t cars!’

  ‘OK. What does it mean?’

  ‘I think it means they’re hopeless.’

  I wailed, ‘She’s gone back already? Hermione and Grandee are coming to lunch. We’ve got pork and apple sauce.’

  Rose mentioned she did not like pork because it tasted like a pig. Tom said, ‘She didn’t say anything last night about leaving. She must have thought it up in the night.’ He finished his tea and frowned. ‘She’s going home for Christmas soon, isn’t she?’

  I looked at him, eyes wide. ‘Oh Lord. Her flight is next Thursday. And she hasn’t even said goodbye or taken the presents for Vicky and Georgie or – or – anything!’

  ‘It’s only a month, Mum. She’ll be back in the middle of January.’ Rose patted my hand and Daisy scooped up the bowl and mugs.

  ‘But I’d got jam for the Greenwoods, and an old war-time recipe book for Joan and Jack with a foreword by Lord Woolton.’

  ‘We’ll go to Bristol on Wednesday to say goodbye and take the stuff.’ Tom relieved Daisy of the washing-up bowl, put it on the floor, and gathered us all into his long arms. ‘We’ll give her a great send-off and just show your Aunt Meriel that we’re not that hopeless after all!’

  Dad was late for lunch, and by himself. He left his bike by the boot scraper and scrubbed his feet assiduously on the door mat. ‘I wish it would actually snow,’ he said, sounding unusually grumpy. ‘This blasted fog makes you wet. You can shake the snow off.’ He made a fuss about spreading his coat over the newel post, and suggested that for our Christmas present he should get central heating installed in the house. I stayed by the front door waiting for Hermione to appear. The girls ushered him into the front room where the tree was already up, ready for decorating, and the fire glowed.

  ‘You can shut that door, Rachel,’ he called, mollified by their welcome. ‘Your bestest friend in all the world has taken Hermione with her to Bristol, and intends to take her further still, to Florida.’ He waited till I came in then added, ‘She browbeat Hermione. The poor girl had to pack a case, leave her cards and presents on the hall table for me to deliver, sort herself out at work— They gave her four weeks’ leave, can you believe it? Times have changed. My God, they’ve changed.’

  ‘Hermione works hard, Dad. She deserves a proper holiday.’

  He nodded contrition. ‘I know, I know. I’m not up to these sudden decisions.’ The girls were jigging around him wanting to know why and when, and telling him of our plans to drive to Bristol on Wednesday with the presents. Tom joined us, pushing the girls’ old dolls’ pram full of bottles and glasses. It was the usual melee. Dad accepted a glass of ginger wine. We all clinked glasses. Dad said, regretfully, ‘She could have stayed and joined in with us.’ He sighed deeply. ‘Except that she couldn’t.’ The girls laughed at that, but Tom and I knew what he meant. And when we were washing up and the girls were watching A Tale of Two Cities on the television, he admitted that Meriel had done the right thing.

  ‘Poor old Derek Smith died late last night. Luckily the sister rang Hermione as well as Maude Smith. When Meriel rang Hermione very early this morning to ask her over to Florida for Christmas, Hermione told her, and Meriel’s invitation became urgent. Very urgent. She arrived soon after in that blessed sports car, and we thrashed it all out. Hermione wrote a letter to her father’s doctor requesting a post-mortem. I rang Gilbert – I wanted to cut him out a bit. He’s getting rather too big for his boots. Plus he’s such an old woman. But I told him he’d got clout and if he wanted to use it in the right way he would make sure the Wingco had a post-mortem examination.’ He grinned. ‘He said he’d do anything I asked. I nearly made a list. Then I told him Hermione was going to the States for Christmas and I wanted it all sorted out before she came home.’ He cleared his throat as he reached up to a high shelf to put away a milk jug. ‘I think I actually said that Maude Smith must be behind bars by then. Can’t quite remember.’

  I pulled the plug and watched the water swirl away. Tom was in the larder finding room for the leftovers. I said quietly, ‘Dad . . . tell me straight out. Is Hermione your daughter?’

  He was so shocked he dropped the tea towel. I said quickly, ‘Don’t panic. No one else knows. Just Tom and me. We went to see Uncle Gilbert and Maxine yesterday.’ I whipped up the towel and tried to grin. ‘Sorry . . . sorry. Shouldn’t have mentioned it.’

  ‘You didn’t believe him? My God, you did! Rache, you lived with Mum and me. You knew us. How can you imagine for one minute that I would have cheated on my beautiful Flo?’

  ‘Dad. I’m sorry. Uncle Gilbert was full of a kind of awful nostalgia. We went to ask him about Mr Silverman. He thought Strassen had killed the old man. I should have known then that ev
erything he said was suspect.’

  ‘Not quite. He told you about . . . other things, I expect. They were true.’ He didn’t wait for my answer and his voice toughened. ‘It made me angry. I called on Eva, intending . . . I’m not sure now. It’s nearly forty years ago. I’d always admired her for admitting she was an Austrian Jew. Always. We knew her quite well in those days. The war was still a long way off. But already Silverman was getting Jewish people out of Germany and settled in this country, and she helped him. It wasn’t easy for her. Her brother had married Maude, who was a social climber of the worst kind and wanted to forget the whole foreign side of her new husband. Eva ignored her and kept going. Yes, I admired her a lot.’ He sighed. ‘She listened to me going on and on about Gilbert Carfax seducing my wife with his pleas for sympathy. She even let me hold her hands . . . drink her whisky . . . dammit, I think I cried at one point. And then I tried to kiss her. I was probably drunk by then.’ He sighed again. ‘It’s all right, Rache, don’t be embarrassed. It stopped right there. I knew she was going to talk me out of it. But she didn’t even do that. She just laughed. And she kept on laughing and told me to go home and stop acting like an idiot.’ He looked up. ‘Rache, I couldn’t have done it anyway. Flo . . . your mother . . . was everything to me.’

  I thought for a terrible moment he was going to cry again. I felt his loneliness like an enormous void. I went up to him and put my forehead against his.

  ‘Dad, it’s all right. It wouldn’t have made any difference. I promise you that. I’m glad for your sake, not for mine. And I’m glad that Hermione had a mother like Eva.’

  ‘Hermione is glad, too,’ he said in a low voice.

  Behind Dad, Tom came out of the larder and made signs at me. I straightened so that I could look Dad in the eye. I gave the smallest smile.

  ‘Uncle Gilbert was out when we got to Clarion House and Maxine did quite a bit of talking before he came in.’ Dad smiled, too, and nodded. I said, ‘You do know that Uncle Gilbert cannot have children, don’t you?’ He stopped smiling. ‘She wanted me to know that. In case I got any strange ideas that Uncle Gilbert might be my father.’