Rachel's Secret

by Susan Sallis

  Tom nodded. She left us and we leaned across the bed, joined by Nobby, and closed our eyes. Tears oozed out of mine, probably Tom’s too.

  We read the contents of the envelope when we got back in the car. There in the car park, with the hurly-burly of that busy city going on around us, we jammed together behind the steering wheel and looked at the envelope. It was addressed to Sergeant Stanley Clarke, written in a childish hand, enormous block letters. After that came his home address at Upton-upon-Severn written in open, generous italics. Then yet another hand had scribbled, ‘Please forward to Worcester General Hospital’. It was stamped with an English first-class stamp and on the back was a small, silvery address label that read ‘Mr & Mrs Carter’ and gave an Upton address.

  We stared at it silently, then Tom upended it and shook out the contents. There was a letter, typewritten. Folded inside the letter were half a dozen sketches very similar to the one Nobby had sent us before. I could hear Tom breathing, almost gasping for air, flipping through them frantically. I took them from him, smoothed them out, and, using the typewritten sheet as a base, laid them out against the steering wheel. They were all tiny portraits of bearded men standing around a table. One of them was of the table itself and a lone man lying on it. His face was turned full on. We stared at it in disbelief for a long time.

  Tom whispered, ‘Is it?’ And almost at the same time, I said, ‘It’s Nobby. A young Nobby.’

  We peered closer. All the sketches were in pen and ink. The closer you looked, the less you could see. I took the typewritten sheet away from the steering wheel and held it against the windscreen. Tom said, ‘This is what Nobby wanted us to see. He was ill when he got this. He must have felt so – so—’

  ‘Excited,’ I supplied. ‘How wonderful. To travel those last few days in a state of excitement. How wonderful.’

  We dried our eyes and turned to the other sketches. We recognized no one else. Tom said, ‘One of these men is my father. And my father from over twenty years ago. I must know him!’

  ‘It was drawn . . . since then, darling.’ My voice was hoarse. ‘My God . . . this is done in biro. There were no biro pens in Burma in l943.’

  Tom extracted some recently acquired spectacles from the glove compartment and put them on. He studied the biro sketch, holding it close, then away, then approaching it from different angles.

  He whispered, ‘Do you think . . . what do you think? When did they start flooding the market with biros? And I still can’t see him – surely he would be there?’ His voice became querulous, then frustrated. I glanced at him. I had thought I knew everything about him.

  I said uncertainly, ‘Maybe he’s not there. He’s the observer. The artist. He did not include himself in his drawings.’ I went on, ‘Read the letter, Tom. Is it official?’ I gathered the sketches and put them back into the envelope, while he glanced at the type, turned the page over and back again.

  He said, ‘Not a bit. It’s signed by someone called Frank. Look.’ He put his arm around my shoulders and drew me close. And then we were silent, poring over the letter. Almost immediately Tom made a sound of distress and began to tremble, and I tried to hold him still. We both had trouble with our breathing. At one point we were both weeping, dashing tears away so that we could finish reading that letter. It said:

  To Sergeant Stanley Clarke.

  Dear Sir. I get flashes. You are in them. And now I’ve got your name. Nobby, they called you. You were very brave. I had to hold you down when they sawed off your leg. I don’t know if you are alive. The Burma Star man visited today and the wife said she would try to find out things when she went home. She will take this letter and try to send it to you. If you read it you might remember me. I doubt it. You were very ill and then I was ill. I woke up in a hospital bed. I was born again. No you. No anyone who wasn’t in front of me. No words, no walking, no eating. No name, no hair, no nails. They called me Frank because the animals came to me and the first thing I learned was to feed them. I was so happy. I could have learned to walk and talk and read and write in a few months but I didn’t. I couldn’t stop my finger and toe nails from growing, nor my hair and beard sprouting, but I hung on to everything so that I could taste it and smell it and know it was happening. I stopped time. Even now I do not understand the nurses here. I draw messages to them. That is the one thing I have always done. I draw my life. They smile at me and nod and hug me.

  Then three or four years ago, after one of my flashes, something strange happened. You were there. You were in a boat. Three people. The Burma Star people leave me books and I read one called Three Men in a Boat. So I thought it was that. I thought perhaps you had read that book too. But then some time after, it happened again. And this time I knew that one of the people in the boat was you. And your name was Sergeant Stanley Clarke. And you were the same brave man I remembered.

  I want to say two things. I am still so happy. When I laugh they call me crazy Frank. They learn words to say to me. Crazy Frank laugh, they say. How else can I share such joy? And I want to know that you are happy like this also. We are connected. Look at these sketches and remember. And I will know.

  Yours faithfully,

  Frank. I have read about Francis of Assisi now.

  Eventually the letter slipped on to Tom’s knees. He turned to me and we held each other, and as we wept the strangest thing happened. There was joy in the confined space of the car. It was June and the sun was bright. But this was something else.

  Twenty-four

  WE NOTICED EVERYTHING on the way home, every spray of blossom, every ripening plum in the Pershore orchards. I remembered my grandmother’s amazement when at last she gave in and wore spectacles. ‘Everything is so beautiful – the colours are just right and bright!’ And she went around the garden every morning, rain or shine, to make sure those magical glasses were still working. It was like that. Seeing things for the first time.

  ‘This is what he meant,’ Tom said.

  ‘It’s what Hermione meant at Christmas when she recognized the difference between imagining the feelings of others and . . . knowing. What did she say – she knew it with her muscle and bone?’

  ‘It’s adding a new dimension. Colours and shapes and how to draw them.’ He slowed to go through another village. Then added, ‘I wonder . . . Rache, I wonder whether he is still alive.’

  I had known this was coming. I felt cautious but could not say so; Tom’s tiny hope was like a light shining again. For so long now he had ‘accepted’ his father’s death; suddenly he had this hope. I said, ‘The Burma Star Association. They’re the ones to contact. And this couple in particular: The Carters. They brought the letter home and found Nobby’s address.’

  ‘But if he is, what then? How fragile is that happiness he feels? Have we got any right to threaten it?’

  I waited until the road widened again. ‘Well . . . just to know he is alive would be enough at this point, wouldn’t it?’

  He was silent for ages, then nodded. ‘Yes. I have to know if he is alive.’

  Nobby’s sister-in-law, and the friends who had supported him domestically, arranged the funeral, and the church at Upton was full of people who had appreciated his courage and his eccentricities. He had been a ‘character’ as well as a hero. Afterwards in the local pub we heard some very amusing stories. Nobby would be missed. The Carters were there and local members of the British Legion. The girls asked whether they could come with us. It was their first funeral, and they were suddenly hit by trepidation as the coffin was brought into the church. We all held hands very firmly.

  Then it was time for Meriel to go home for the summer. Since her trip to the manor to see Gus, she seemed slightly better and the amazing letter from ‘Frank’ had rushed all of us into another place; she had been as incredulous and amazed as we all were. But that last weekend with us seemed to drain her energy again, and she sat at the kitchen table and stared into the garden, opting out of the fervent discussion going on around her. Tom had spoken with the Ca
rters at Nobby’s funeral, and again by telephone. There was a feeling now of urgency; Jack Fairbrother – if it was him – was the same age as my own father and had been institutionalized for the last twenty years. Eve and Gus talked to us of the cushioning effect of amnesia. I remembered Dad living those ten years in Florida: a half-life.

  It was Saturday, and Tom was at the office, so I was trying to explain to the girls and to Meriel how ambivalent Tom felt about the whole thing.

  ‘Frank’s fingertips were damaged and his teeth pulled, so there was no easy identification method.’ The girls moaned softly; we had spoken of the torture aspect very matter-offactly, not glossing over it; but I was glad it had not escaped them. ‘Even so, it is almost certainly Jack Fairbrother. The sketches are sufficient evidence for us.’ I looked directly at Meriel. ‘I’ve got no doubts about it whatever. Do you agree, Merry?’

  I did this every time she slipped into her special reverie, forcing an answer from her.

  She must have been listening properly because she immediately responded, returning my look with a small smile. She knew exactly what I was doing.

  ‘Of course I agree,’ she said. Then, as if to convince us of her complete understanding, she went on steadily, ‘The Carters heard of this hospital in Singapore because of the drawings – didn’t they say there was a framed collage of them in their hotel room? One of the hospital staff must have saved them from the incinerator – maybe to show his family? Whatever. They made enquiries and paid a visit. And found one of the patients was English. A leftover. No identification, so no papers, so no slot in the system. Also no memory, except these flashes, as he calls them. And always of his captivity. And absolutely no trouble to anyone.’ She glanced at the girls morosely. ‘A lesson here, yes? You don’t get noticed if you’re too . . . amenable.’

  I said quickly, ‘No problem for you two, then.’ They cast me exasperated looks, but then smiled. They would not be fourteen until August and were entitled to another few years of childhood. And then Rose tipped her chair and turned to me.

  ‘Listen, Mum, why don’t we tell Dad to get himself over there? Just be with this man and find out if he really is our other grandad. Then we can visit him too, and perhaps one day he will be able to visit us.’

  Daisy nodded. ‘Dad has to go there. I reckon our grandad might die if we take him away from the heat and the sunshine. And his world – the world he has made inside his head – would go away.’ She nodded again, emphatically. ‘Much better for Dad to go there.’

  Meriel smiled properly at them. ‘Oh, girls. You’re wonderful. You prove all the time that two heads are better than one. How long do you think your father could stay over there?’

  They looked at each other; they were so close I often wondered whether their minds could connect in some way, as Tom’s and mine so often did. They started one of their dialogues.

  Rose said, ‘We could manage for a while without him. Somehow.’

  ‘We would. Of course we would. We would make ourselves.’ Daisy’s hand, lying palm down on the table, clenched itself into a fist.

  ‘It would be awful if he stayed over Christmas.’

  Daisy forced a laugh. ‘It’s only June now, six months till Christmas.’

  ‘Six months. That man – Frank – he’s been on his own over there for twenty years!’ Rose set her jaw. ‘I think Dad and Frank ought to live together properly, get meals and things. It might take a year. But it has to take as long as . . . it has to take!’

  Daisy nodded judiciously. Meriel said, ‘Do you mean that? Your father does such a lot with you.’

  ‘You come over here, Aunt Merry, and Vicky and Georgie manage.’

  ‘I know. I feel awful about it, actually.’

  ‘But it’s not really for long.’ Rose became very earnest, leaning forward across the table. ‘And it gives you lots to talk about when you go home. And Dad will have such heaps to tell us about our new grandad.’

  Daisy said in the same tone, ‘It’s the only way, really, isn’t it? For you and your family, and for us and our family.’ She turned to me. ‘Tell you what – Grandee would like to go and he’d help Dad and our other grandad. When he’s finished planning Hermione’s Cottage he’ll need something else, and it would be like one of Miss Hardwicke’s projects!’

  My heart sank: no Tom and no Dad. Yet Dad would look after Tom.

  Meriel gave one of her old sly smiles. ‘There’s always Uncle Gilbert to look after you. And I could have a word with my dad.’

  We all laughed. It was a good time.

  Tom must have talked to Gilbert that same morning, because when he got home he seemed feverish with excitement. Gilbert and Maxine were still full of their trip to the Caribbean; they had entered into this new journey with total enthusiasm. Maps and airline timetables had appeared; the service to Australia nearly always stopped to refuel at Singapore. Tom telephoned the Carters and they confirmed that the journey was not difficult and Singapore was a beautiful city; and Frank’s English, though rusty through under-use, was simple and direct and intelligible. We all went to see Meriel off, and in a sudden fright I made her promise to return in September.

  She laughed. ‘I’ve talked to David Harmsworth. You met him, Rache. A really good man. He seems to think it’ll be all right. So yes, I promise I will return!’ She mimicked the narrator’s voice in a Victorian crime series on the new commercial television channel, and I laughed back at her obligingly. I assumed she meant that her exam results had passed muster. It was such a relief. I knew better than anyone how much work she had put in to this first year of the course.

  The rest of that summer went by much too quickly. When Dad and Tom left one pearly dawn, the three of us clasped each other and wept as if we would never see them again. The house almost rang with emptiness. The slightest thing set us off; I ironed the clothes the men had been wearing and wept; Rose and Daisy found the kazoos and dripped tears on to them, so had to dry them and wrap them in tissue ready for the next musical concert.

  We thought time would hang heavily and pass very slowly, but after a few days it seemed to work the other way. We got letters or phone calls two or three times a week, and felt as if we were living half our time in dusty old Gloucester and the other half in the exotic Far East. The first time Tom visited the hospital, Dad stayed in his hotel room and wrote to us about what he could see through the window; the palms and the shops and beyond them the sea; how anxious he was about Tom going to the hospital alone, and how homesick they both felt. ‘I know now, my darling girls, that I cannot live in Florida again. Please investigate the golf courses in the county!’

  Back home, Myrtle Nightingale surprised everyone by learning to drive. She took us to the river to swim every day during the short, fierce heatwave of August. Barry joined us with his second wife and her three small boys. The girls came into their own as nursemaids; they found some old planks and made a raft and towed the boys up and down between the barges; Myrtle absolutely loved watching the girls regress to being ten-year-olds again.

  In the midst of all this, Gus and Eve jettisoned all the plans for their wedding and ‘fixed everything up’ at the registry office. Gus added, ‘Once George and Tom left, we didn’t want anything grand, but we wanted it quickly.’ I thought I knew why. They were planning to go to the States.

  The girls had their fourteenth birthday without Tom. Colin and Roland Beard took them to dinner at the sixteenth-century New Inn, and Gilbert and Maxine did a jelly and bun party the next afternoon with paper hats and crackers. The girls from the Swallow School pretended it was a bit of a joke, but everyone enjoyed it so much they asked whether they could come again next year. After they had followed the treasure trail laid by Gilbert through the fields to the home farm and back again they abandoned Miss Hardwicke’s rules on pestering and begged to be allowed back next year. The treasure was a cultured pearl necklace each.

  Maria Nightingale designed two dresses for the girls and ‘did them a deal’. She was planning an
other show in the autumn and asked them if they would model the dresses.

  In fact people were so anxious to fill Tom’s absence that both girls had the time of their lives. But when all the festivities had died down and the new term began, they started asking whether Dad would be home for bonfire night. It seemed he would not. He wrote to us at the end of September.

  Darlings, this is going to be a long job. Frank is definitely my father and your grandfather. When I saw him first I recognized him instantly: he can still wrap his big toes around the others, he is ambidextrous (look that one up!) and he has a sort of lisp. But even without those things I would have known, just as you would know me in twenty years’ time. Unfortunately it doesn’t work the other way round. Not only does he definitely not recognize me, he shakes his head at the idea of ever having had a son. As for my mother, he smiles and says what would a nice girl be doing with a bloke like him? Yes, he has a go at a bit of a joke now and then. And today we had a breakthrough. He was interlacing his fingers when I arrived and I told him it reminded me of an action rhyme he used to do for me when I was small. He didn’t understand the term ‘action rhyme’ and I showed him. You know the one, girls, you loved it too. ‘Here’s the church, here’s the steeple, open the doors and here’s the people . . .’ and so on. I was half-way through when he actually picked it up and went on with it. ‘Here’s the parson running upstairs, and here he is saying his prayers . . .’ It was marvellous. I cheered, and the little Chinese nurse came running, thinking there was trouble. But that was it. He sat there smiling like a Cheshire cat, but nothing else happened. Patience. We must have patience. Grandee is coming again tomorrow to play dominoes. My father can play dominoes. Before all the other soldiers left, they taught him dominoes and he’s hot stuff. Just a word for Mum, then I must go to bed. There’s a big fan over my bed and it’s heavenly.

  In his postscript to me he told me how sad it was. And then he said he loved me and I must take care. And other things.