Secrets

  But she couldn’t turn back now, so she stumbled on past two tumbledown cottages which were little more than huts. Then she saw Curlew Cottage.

  It was single-storey and covered in black tarred shingles like the buildings she’d noticed down at the quay in Rye. The windows were small, there was a latticework porch around the door, and the ground in front was all pebbles. Yet although it was neat enough, and there was smoke coming out of the chimney which meant someone was at home, it didn’t look at all welcoming,

  She could see why children would think a witch lived there. The cottage had a defiant air, daring the wind to tear it down, or floods to sweep it away. Surely no one normal would choose to live in such a bleak, isolated spot? With the horrible image of her demented mother tied to a chair so fresh in her mind, it seemed likely that at any moment that door could open and a hideous old crone would appear.

  There was no fence or gate, and the path to the door was just old pieces of wood. She stood for a moment weighing up whether she was brave enough to walk across them.

  But she had no choice. So, taking her courage in both hands, she walked to the door and banged on it.

  ‘Who is it?’

  The strident and irritated inquiry from behind the door made Adele move back a step.

  ‘I’m your granddaughter,’ she called back.

  Adele expected that the door would open with a creak, a beaky nose would peer round it, and an almost skeletal hand would stretch out to pull her in. But that wasn’t how it was.

  The door opened wide, and the woman who stood there was oddly dressed in grey men’s trousers, a baggy blouse and heavy boots. Her face reminded Adele of a conker kept too long in a warm place, weathered dark brown and slightly wrinkled. Her steel-grey hair was harshly pulled back, but her eyes were a vivid and beautiful blue, exactly like Adele’s mother’s.

  ‘Who did you say you were?’ she asked, her thin pale lips set in a guarded straight line.

  ‘I’m Adele Talbot, your granddaughter,’ she repeated. ‘Rose, my mum, is ill, and I came to find you.’

  It seemed to Adele that she was standing there for ever in front of this woman who was staring at her as if she had three heads. But she couldn’t focus her eyes any longer, there was a whistling noise in her ears, and suddenly everything began to spin.

  Adele came to with water being splashed on her face, and opened her eyes to find she was lying on her back and the woman was bending down over her, a cup in her hand.

  ‘Drink!’ she ordered.

  Adele lifted her head and feebly held out her hand for the cup, but it shook too much to hold it, and the woman had to put it to her lips.

  ‘You fainted,’ she said curtly. ‘Now, who did you say you were?’

  Adele repeated her name. ‘My mother is Rose,’ she added. ‘Rose Talbot now, but she was Rose Harris.’

  The woman’s lips were quivering, but whether this was with emotion or just old age, Adele couldn’t tell. ‘After she went away to hospital I found a letter in her things that had this address on it. Are you my grandmother?’

  ‘How old are you?’ the woman asked, sticking her nut-brown face up close to Adele’s.

  ‘Twelve,’ Adele said. ‘I’ll be thirteen in July.’

  The woman put her hand up to her forehead, digging her nails into her skin, a gesture Adele had seen her mother make hundreds of times. Sometimes it meant ‘I can’t cope with this now,’ and sometimes ‘Get out of my sight if you know what’s good for you.’ It wasn’t a good omen, but Adele knew she was in no position to retreat.

  ‘They put me in a home,’ she blurted out. ‘But bad things happened there so I ran away. I didn’t know anywhere else to go.’

  The woman continued to stare down at Adele, her thick brows knitting together as if with puzzlement. ‘What bad things? Where’s your father?’

  Her tone was cold and suspicious, and all at once the strain of trying to pretend she was an adult was too much for Adele and she began to cry. ‘He doesn’t want me, he said I wasn’t his child,’ she said through her sobs. ‘And Mr Makepeace tried to do dirty things to me.’

  ‘For goodness sake stop blubbering,’ the woman said sharply. ‘I can’t be doing with that. Get up and come inside.’

  Adele got only the briefest impression of the inside of Curlew Cottage before she lost consciousness again. It was like walking into the junk shop by King’s Cross station, a musty smell of old books and furniture, a gloomy room stuffed with relics from the past.

  Honour Harris stared down at the child on the floor, for a moment so horrified she didn’t know what to do. Her heart was thumping dangerously, long-buried emotions threatening to surge up and spill over. She glanced at the door for a moment, considering running to get help, but seeking help for anything wasn’t in her nature, so she shook herself, bent down, lifted the child up and put her on the couch.

  The simple act of lifting her brought back Honour’s natural instinct to protect any hurt animal. The child’s skin was ferociously burnt by the sun, she was filthy, her hair matted, and when Honour removed her shoes and socks she let out an involuntary gasp. They looked like lumps of raw bloody meat, and it was clear she’d walked a very long way to get here.

  Yet after a cursory inspection Honour felt it was exhaustion and hunger rather than illness which had brought about her collapse. That was something of a relief, for she could neither afford nor wanted a doctor coming here.

  The kettle was already on the stove, hot enough for washing, so she got a bowl, a flannel and a towel. She stripped off the girl’s filthy dress, leaving her in her vest and knickers, then proceeded to wash her.

  Honour was fifty-two, and years of hardship living alone out on the marsh had taught her to deal only with the present. While she knew that this child, if what she’d claimed was true, was going to force her to look back at a part of her life she wanted to forget, for now that wasn’t important.

  After washing her as well as she could, she went into her bedroom and found a pot of ointment, good for soothing and healing burns. She applied it liberally to the child’s arms, legs, face and the back of her neck, but decided against putting it on the broken skin of her feet.

  ‘Just sleep now’, she said, tucking a soft quilt around her. ‘When you wake I’ll have some food for you.’

  Honour found the child’s presence in her living room deeply disturbing. Questions kept arising in her mind, and she felt constantly compelled to go over to look at her. While relieved to find she was sleeping peacefully, Honour still had the jitters, and her own supper of bread and cheese was left uneaten on the table, for she had no appetite for it now.

  No visitor had come into Curlew Cottage for years, and Honour found it odd that just one small person could make her suddenly aware of how cramped her living room had become in that time.

  She looked about her at the spare mattress stacked against the book shelves, the piles of books on the floor, boxes of china, ornaments, linen and memorabilia from the past crammed into every available space, and she felt even more uneasy. When Frank was alive it had been such a comfortable, well-ordered room. But after he died she stopped caring about how it looked. She had brought the contents of Rose’s old room in here when the guttering above it started leaking, but even after she repaired the guttering, she had no enthusiasm for putting the stuff back. She should have got rid of it all.

  But most of it held precious memories of happy days as a new bride, so she couldn’t. Why they hadn’t sold it all before they took up permanent residence here, she didn’t know. Goodness knows, they could have done with the money. But Frank had always been so insistent that their ship would come in again and they’d need it all one day.

  It was odd that the overcrowded room should suddenly start to bother her the moment this child stepped through her door. But then any memory of Rose always had a bad effect on her.

  Honour got up from her chair again, this time to make some soup from the stock pot she had simmering on the stov
e. She got a small piece of chicken from the meat safe in the scullery, cut it into tiny pieces and added it to the stock along with a diced carrot and a small onion. Then, suddenly aware it was growing dark, she lit the oil lamp at the end of the couch.

  When she glanced round a little later, she was suddenly struck by the child’s resemblance to Rose at the same age. She supposed that while she was washing her it had been too gloomy to see her clearly.

  By sixteen Rose had become a stunner. Honour could remember looking at her curvy body, her beautiful face with those wide blue eyes, full pouting lips and silky blonde hair and marvelling at the transformation. Yet at twelve, Rose had been as skinny and plain as her daughter was now. Frank used laughingly to say she looked like a stick insect with saucer eyes.

  She hadn’t noticed whether the girl’s eyes were blue, but she thought not, and her hair was a dull light brown, but she had got Rose’s defiant pointed chin and the same slender nose and full lips.

  Honour hoped she hadn’t inherited her mother’s cruel nature too.

  At twelve that same night Honour was dozing in her chair, wanting to go to her bed but afraid the child might wake during the night and not know where she was.

  A rustle woke her with a start, and she opened her eyes to see the child sitting up on the couch looking frightened.

  ‘So you’ve woken up at last,’ Honour said sharply. ‘Do you know where you are?’

  The girl looked about her, then looked down at herself and saw her dress was gone. She touched her cheek as if to test if it was still sore. ‘Yes, you are Mrs Harris,’ she said eventually. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve been a nuisance.’

  Honour snorted. She was in fact a little touched that the child’s first thoughts were for someone else. But it wasn’t in her nature to say so, or to say anything welcoming. She was also relieved the child hadn’t called her Grandmother. She wasn’t prepared to accept that was what she’d suddenly become. ‘I dare say you need to go to the lavatory. But you can’t go out there in the dark now so I’ve put a chamber pot out in the scullery,’ she said brusquely, and pointed the way with one finger.

  She saw the child wince as she put her feet to the floor, but she didn’t complain and hobbled out.

  When she returned, Honour told her to sit at the table and silently put a bowl of soup and a glass of water in front of her.

  She saw the child down the water in almost one gulp and wondered how long it was since she’d eaten or drunk anything. She waited till over half the soup was gone and then fetched another glass of water.

  ‘Water is good for sunburn,’ she said as she put it on the table. ‘Now, are you going to tell me how you came to turn up at my door?’

  Adele was confused. She could remember knocking at the door and this woman opening it clearly enough. She had a vague recollection of telling her who she was, but it had a kind of dream-like quality, so she wasn’t sure how much she’d told her.

  ‘Start at the beginning,’ the woman said sharply. ‘With your full name, how you came by my address and where you’ve just walked from.’

  That confused Adele even more, for it sounded as if this woman wasn’t her grandmother after all. She was so gruff and peculiar. If Adele hadn’t realized while she was peeing in the chamber pot that she’d been washed and some sort of cream had been put on her sunburn, she’d think the woman was ready to put her out the door if she didn’t tell the story quite right.

  Wearily Adele began, explaining who she was, how her sister had been run over and that her mother went mad a while after and had to be taken away to hospital. She explained about Jim Talbot not wanting her, about the letter she’d seen with this address, and then how she was taken to The Firs.

  ‘In Tunbridge Wells?’ Mrs Harris exclaimed. ‘Where-abouts?’

  Adele said she didn’t actually know the whole address but she said it was nearer to Lamberhurst than she’d expected.

  ‘Why did you run away from there?’

  ‘Because of Mr Makepeace,’ Adele whispered, and overcome with renewed shame at what he’d done, she began to cry.

  ‘Don’t start blubbing again,’ Mrs Harris said impatiently. ‘You can leave that part till later. Now, what does Jim Talbot do for a living?’

  Adele thought that was a very strange thing to ask, the most unimportant thing in her entire story. ‘He works in a builder’s yard,’ she said, thinking it was better to tell her exactly what she wanted to know. ‘I always thought he was my real dad until the night Mum went crazy and attacked us both. She’d been blaming me for Pamela dying, and saying all kinds of other nasty things, but I heard Dad tell the doctor I wasn’t his child and that he didn’t want anything more to do with me or Mum.’

  Adele was startled when the woman got up and moved around the room, fiddling with things as though she was nervous, but saying nothing. Even Mrs Makepeace had been quite sympathetic when she’d explained all this to her, and she wasn’t any relation. Adele racked her brain to think of something further to say that would make this woman act as if she was aware she had someone else in the room with her. But she couldn’t think of anything.

  ‘Rose disappeared when she was seventeen,’ Mrs Harris suddenly burst out, turning towards Adele and banging her fist down on the table. ‘Not a word to me, not a single word, the heartless baggage. Her father had come back from the war sick, and she took off just when I needed help. So you tell me why I should care about the child she didn’t even bother to tell me had been born!’

  Adele was scared then. This woman had the same eyes as her mother and perhaps she was mad too. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘She doesn’t care about me either.’

  ‘All these years I never knew if she was alive or dead,’ the woman went on, her voice rising almost to a shriek. ‘Her father asked for her so many times when he was dying, sometimes he even accused me of throwing her out. He never would believe what a minx she became after he went off to the war. She was his little girl. His treasure, he used to call her. He died believing it was my fault she didn’t come home to see him. Do you know what that’s like?’

  Adele burst into tears again. She did know what it was like to be blamed for everything. And now it seemed she was going to be blamed for her mother’s behaviour too.

  ‘Oh, stop that blubbering,’ her grandmother shouted at her. ‘You’re the one who turned up uninvited, telling me my daughter is mad, and wanting me to take you in. It’s me who should be crying.’

  From deep within her Adele felt anger rising. In a brief flash she saw images of all the injustices that had been piled on to her – the blame for Pamela’s death, her mother’s cruelty, being sent off to a home where the man she trusted betrayed her. And now this grown woman was being unfair too. Well, she wasn’t going to take any more of it. She had to speak out.

  ‘Then get the police and make them take me away,’ she shouted back. ‘I haven’t done anything to you, except hope that you might care about your granddaughter. I can see where Mum got her nastiness from. It’s you!’

  She expected a blow. She quickly covered her head with her arms in self-defence when the woman moved towards her. But surprisingly no blow came, just a hand on her shoulder. ‘You’d better get back on that couch and go back to sleep,’ she said gruffly. ‘You’ve been out in the sun for too long, and we’re both overtired.’

  Chapter Seven

  ‘How on earth do I deal with this?’ Honour grumbled to herself as she got into her bed later that night.

  The candle was flickering in a breeze from the window, making the shadow of her bed posts on the wall move in a disconcertingly eerie manner, and she shivered.

  It had been a tremendous shock to open her door and find that waif of a child there. In the last ten or so years she had done her best to erase Rose from her mind. She had been forced to, for the bitterness and anger she felt towards her daughter had almost destroyed her. Yet on the rare occasions Rose covertly slipped into her mind again, Honour had always imagined her living in luxury,
the spoiled and cosseted wife of a wealthy man. She had never once considered that she might have had children.

  If the news of Rose’s present plight had come from any other source, Honour would undoubtedly have felt some kind of grim satisfaction. But to hear a mere child spilling out such a tale was utterly chilling.

  Honour picked up the framed photograph of Frank from the bedside table. It had been taken just before he was sent to France in the spring of 1915. He looked so happy, dashing and handsome in his uniform, yet just two years later he was brought back to England a physical and mental wreck.

  Honour knew that millions of young men shared the same horrors in the trenches as Frank did. A huge proportion of them didn’t live to tell their loved ones about it either. She could well imagine the men’s terror at seeing their comrades die and wondering when it would be their turn. She felt for every one of them who had endured living in mud, with rats and lice their constant companions. But Frank’s story was even more horrific, for he had fallen into a fox hole after being shot in the leg and was buried alive beneath other fatally wounded men who tumbled in after him.

  It was believed he was trapped there for three days before he was found. It was hardly surprising that he lost his mind as he became drenched in his comrades’ blood, heard their death throes, and thought he would surely die too.

  ‘What do I do, Frank?’ she whispered at his picture. ‘I don’t want her here, not after what her mother did to us.’

  Honour had known Frank Harris all her life. Her father, Ernest Cauldwell, was the local schoolmaster in Tunbridge Wells, and Frank’s father, Cedric, owned Harris’s, the most prestigious grocery shop in town.

  Harris’s was a splendid shop, all shiny walnut and white marble, stacked from floor to ceiling with every kind of delicacy. Honour remembered as a small child being morbidly fascinated by the fantastic displays of dead pheasants, rabbits and hares lying on a bed of greenery. Her mother had to hold her tightly so she wouldn’t attempt to stroke them.