Secrets

‘That doesn’t mean anything to me,’ she said, irritated that he could bring everything back to how he felt. ‘I’ve had to live with heartache since the day you told me who you were, and it grew even worse when I heard Michael was missing. I hope and pray he is in a POW camp somewhere and comes home safe at the end of the war. You’ll be fine then, so will your wife. But I’ll still be in the same situation, unable to greet him with joy as a sister, or as his sweetheart.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, and took her two hands in his. ‘Truly sorry. If you should ever need any help, in any way, come to me, Adele. I can’t change the past, but maybe I could do something for you in the future.’

  Adele wanted to say something cutting, but no clever words would form in her mind. All she could see was those eyes so incredibly like hers, hear the sincerity in his voice, and feel the warmth of his hands on hers.

  He took a card from his pocket and put it in her hand, closing her fingers round it.

  ‘Call on me. Whatever you think of me, whatever hurt being your father has caused, a big part of me feels proud to know my child grew up to be such a good, strong woman.’

  Adele backed away. She knew that as a lawyer he was experienced in making moving speeches, which almost certainly were mostly lies. Yet what he’d said had moved her. She felt as if he’d suddenly filled an empty place inside her. She knew she must flee before she cried.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  1942

  ‘I’m bored stiff,’ Joan yawned as she poured a cup of tea for herself and Adele. ‘I’ve a good mind to crawl into one of them empty beds and ’ave a kip.’

  It was just on midnight, the few patients they had on their ward were fast asleep, and they had slipped into Sister’s room for tea and a chat.

  ‘To think we once complained about being too busy,’ Adele laughed.

  During the previous April while she was down in Rye, the nightly bombing in London had stopped. By the time she arrived back in London people had more or less slipped back to normal living patterns, optimistically believing the Blitz was over for good. But on 10 May there was a terrible raid, the worst so far, and by morning it was rumoured 3,000 people were dead. The Law Courts, the Tower of London and the Mint were all hit. Every bridge between the Tower and Lambeth was impassable, and hundreds of gas mains were severed. Westminster Abbey was badly damaged, even Big Ben had its face pock-marked, and there wasn’t enough water available to put out the fires, particularly over in the Elephant and Castle area.

  That night and for two further days and nights, Adele and all the other medical staff worked flat out dealing with casualties. While no one expressed their fears openly at the time, Adele could see the same question on every face, ‘How can we stand any more of this?’

  But after the injured were patched up and sent home, the dead buried and the roads cleared, there were no further raids like that one. While there was spasmodic bombing in London and in other cities too, it seemed the Blitz really had come to an end, and the hospital returned to relative calm.

  The previous December the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor, and as a result the Americans had now declared war on Germany and Italy, and joined forces with England.

  The two girls saw the New Year of 1942 in at a dance at The Empire in Leicester Square, and two days later the news broke that Japan had taken the Philippines and was invading the East Indies. Towards the end of January American troops began to arrive in England, creating great excitement amongst the nurses. Even Adele, who had remained fairly impervious to men until now, couldn’t help but find these fun-loving, well-mannered and generous men attractive.

  Since February she’d been out dancing at least once a week, and had been taken to the pictures or for a drink by five different men. She really liked fair-haired, blue-eyed Lieutenant Robert Onslow from Ohio, whom she had met at Rainbow Corner, a club for other ranks in the old Del Monico’s restaurant at the corner of Shaftesbury Avenue and Piccadilly. He took her to see Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit at the theatre, and they saw Rebecca and Goodbye Mr Chips at the cinema. But he had been posted to a base in Suffolk in May, and his letters had gradually fizzled out.

  Adele wasn’t unduly saddened by the budding romance dying – as Joan so rightly pointed out, there were plenty more fish in the sea. She had been happy enough just to find she was capable of fancying a man again. It was good to become like all her friends, living for the next night out, enjoying herself and not taking anything too seriously.

  She realized now that the day she came face to face with Myles again in Winchelsea had been a turning-point in her life. Her present serenity had almost certainly come about by finally managing to deal with the bitterness she felt for her mother.

  After talking to Myles that day she had returned home to ask Honour and Rose to tell her about Emily’s near-drowning. Rose had little to say on the subject, shrugged off her involvement, and went out for a walk, but Honour was far more voluble. She not only described in graphic terms the events of that night, but said that Emily did indeed owe her life to Rose’s courage, stamina and complete disregard for her own safety. She mentioned too that certain things which Emily had said while she was distraught had made Honour confront her own failings as a mother.

  With her eyes full of tears, she told Adele how she had treated Rose when Frank came home from the war. She explained that she felt angry that he’d returned a broken shell of the man she loved, and that sometimes she even wished he’d died in France. She took her guilt at thinking such things out on Rose.

  It wasn’t the first time her grandmother had tried to make Adele see it was time she forgave her mother. But this time, perhaps because Adele was moved by Rose’s courage in saving Emily, she felt as if a door had opened on to the past. All at once, all the past information she’d gathered and observations she’d made recently gelled together, and she could see the whole picture. And Rose in a very much more sympathetic light.

  That evening Adele had felt very much more comfortable around Rose. At one point as they were sitting on either end of the couch, listening to the wireless, Adele put her feet up on the couch, and Rose took them and placed them across her lap. Just a little thing, but it felt affectionate and companionable.

  The following morning Adele accidentally let one of the rabbits escape from its hutch while she was giving it clean straw, and Rose came to help her catch it. The rabbit was intent on evading them, and as they both blundered around trying to capture it, they laughed their heads off.

  Rose offered to go with her to see her off at the station when she had to go back to London, and as they walked into Rye, Adele told her what Myles had said to her up in Winchelsea.

  Rose didn’t comment for a little while and Adele got the idea she was brewing up to say something nasty about him. But she wasn’t, she was just thinking it over. ‘I wish I’d had just an ounce of your common sense and humanity when I was your age,’ she said with a sigh. ‘I think you take after him far more than me, Adele.’

  Adele changed the subject then and asked Rose whether she would like to go back to her house in London now Honour was fit again. ‘You can, you know,’ Adele said. ‘Neither Granny nor I would feel you’d let us down, we both know it isn’t much of a life for you here.’

  Rose smiled then. ‘It’s a better life than in London,’ she said. ‘A far better one. And I like being with Mother.’

  Adele had returned to London with a great deal to think about. Nothing was in black and white any longer. No one was wholly bad, and no one was perfect either, least of all herself. She knew then that she had to learn to live with what had been doled out to her.

  By thinking of Rose as just Rose, rather than as a failure of a mother, she found she was able to see her differently. She became intriguing rather than suspect, amusing rather than hurtful. When they spoke on the telephone they found a great deal to laugh about. There was warmth where once there had been stiffness and lack of trust.

  Each visit home had brought more understandi
ng as they shared a bed and the chores, went to the pictures together, and sometimes to a pub for a few drinks. They argued, often their views were totally opposing, but a year on Adele could honestly say they had become friends. Rose was the only one who knew her real feelings for Michael, and she understood. Adele could also confide in her about other men she met. Rose reciprocated by telling her about men in her past, including Myles. She had once joked that they couldn’t have a normal mother-and-daughter relationship, because neither of them really knew what that meant. Adele thought that was very true. But in some ways what they had was better, for they could be more honest with each other.

  ‘I wonder what would ’appen if Sister caught me kipping?’ Joan giggled.

  ‘She’d hang, draw and quarter you,’ Adele said, quickly giving their cups a wash. ‘And she’ll be back any minute, so we’d better find something to do.’

  As she spoke the telephone rang.

  ‘Bloody ’ell!’ Joan exclaimed as she went to answer it. ‘So much for a peaceful night. That’ll be some inconsiderate bugger wanting a bed.’

  ‘Women’s Surgical,’ she said brightly as she picked up the phone. She frowned as she listened to the voice on the other end. ‘Just one moment,’ she said, and held out the receiver to Adele. ‘It’s for you,’ she said. ‘It’s your mum.’

  Adele’s heart lurched as she snatched the phone from her friend. Rose would only call here at night in an emergency.

  ‘What’s happened, Mum?’ she asked, her heart in her mouth. ‘Is it Granny?’

  ‘No love, nothing nasty,’ Rose replied. ‘It’s good news. I know it’s the middle of the night and I’m probably the wrong person to be passing it on to you. But I knew you’d want to know immediately. Michael’s been found!’

  Adele gasped, her legs went to jelly and she had to catch hold of the back of a chair to support herself as she listened to her mother. Rose was staying over at Winchelsea because Emily Bailey had twisted her ankle in a fall and her housekeeper was away visiting relatives. Rose was just helping Emily up the stairs to bed, when a call came from the Red Cross. They said they’d just got notification that Michael was in a POW camp.

  ‘Are they sure?’ Adele asked cautiously, unable to believe it could be true.

  ‘Yes, it’s definite, they don’t tell relatives until they’ve checked properly,’ Rose said, her voice unnaturally shrill with excitement. ‘It seems he was badly injured and taken to a hospital, then moved from pillar to post afterwards, that’s why Emily hadn’t heard anything.’

  ‘Is he all in one piece?’ Adele asked, her heart sinking at the thought of Michael disfigured by burns and with missing limbs.

  ‘They could only say he was well, and that letters from him should soon arrive. But he’s alive, Adele! To Emily that’s enough. You should’ve seen her, laughing and crying all at once. Such joy! I couldn’t let you know until I’d got her into bed.’

  ‘Tell her how glad I am, and thank you too for ringing me immediately, but I’ll have to go now, Sister’s coming,’ Adele said quickly as she heard heels tapping on the corridor outside. ‘Try and phone me again tomorrow morning, about nine at the nurses’ home.’

  Throughout the remainder of the night Adele glowed with happiness, whispering to Joan how miraculous it was, and how happy her grandmother was going to be when she got the news.

  Joan gave her a couple of odd looks, clearly wondering why Adele had given this man up if she cared so much. She also asked curiously why her mother should be with Michael’s mother, when as she understood it, the romance had failed because of family disapproval.

  In her joy Adele would have blurted out the entire story if they hadn’t been working, for she knew Joan could be trusted to keep it to herself. But Sister kept coming in and out, and such a long and complicated story couldn’t be easily told in whispers.

  If she’d been able, Adele would have danced the polka around the ward, woken everyone up and rattled bedpans to celebrate. She wished she could catch a train home right now for by morning everyone in Winchelsea would be talking about the wonderful news. Michael was alive, and that was the most wonderful news she’d ever had.

  In the last hour before it was time to wake the patients, while Joan laid up the early-morning tea trolley out in the corridor, Adele sat at the ward desk writing up the patients’ notes. But she stopped suddenly, thinking of Myles.

  Two months after she’d met him again in Winchelsea, Adele got out the card he had given her and telephoned him. She wasn’t sure why, just a vague feeling they had some unfinished business. She fully expected that he’d have thought better of wanting to see her, and that he’d make some excuse. But she was wrong, he was very pleased to hear from her.

  He took her to lunch at a French restaurant in Mayfair, a place he said had been very grand before the war. It wasn’t that grand any more because it had been damaged by bombs a couple of times and they’d been unable to redecorate it. Most of the diners were servicemen with their wives or girlfriends, and an old accordion player was attempting to create a romantic atmosphere.

  Almost straight away Adele realized Myles wasn’t the ogre she’d come to think of him as. He was opinionated and inclined to be brusque, but he was also attentive and disarmingly truthful.

  Over the simple but well-cooked meal he gave her his version of his relationship with Rose.

  Rose had told Adele a great deal about it already, even as far as admitting the lies she had told him to persuade him to take her to London. In almost every detail Myles’s story was the same as Rose’s, except he was gallant enough to blame himself for encouraging her interest in him in the first place.

  ‘I should have known better,’ he said, sorrowfully shaking his head. ‘But I was lonely, Emily had been impossible since Michael was born, wild hysterics one minute, cold as ice the next, and Rose was so very lovely, and interested in me. That’s a huge draw to a man.’

  He spoke about the first few weeks in London with Rose with obvious nostalgia. She had never been to London before and found even the most ordinary things like tram rides thrilling, and he clearly enjoyed taking a pretty and excited girl to see the sights. Adele got the idea that it was the first time in his life he’d really had any fun, yet at the same time he was terrified of the scandal which would ensue if he was found out. Adele had mixed feelings about his excuse that he finally became nervous when he realized Rose had no intention of standing on her own feet, despite all her claims that she expected nothing of him when they first left Rye.

  ‘I didn’t expect her to go into service, even though that looked like the best solution at the time,’ he said, his brow furrowed with a frown. ‘I knew she hadn’t the right mentality, she was too sparky and untamed. But she turned her nose up at every other kind of work, even a position in a select gown shop where they were offering a good salary and accommodation too.’

  Rose had told Adele that she used to pretend that she’d been turned down for positions when she hadn’t even applied for them. She said she had no intention of getting any job because she thought that if Myles continued to support her, before long he would divorce his wife and marry her. Maybe that was wrong of her, but Adele supposed that in those days most women expected their man to keep them.

  In her opinion, Myles had been something of a cad. Maybe Rose did use every trick in the book on him, especially sex, but the fact remained that he was a married man in his thirties, playing around with a seventeen-year-old who was still a virgin when he met her.

  ‘So did you know she was expecting me when you left her?’ Adele asked bluntly.

  ‘She claimed she was,’ he admitted candidly. ‘I chose not to believe her. When she didn’t come after me later to ask for money, I took that as confirmation I was right.’

  Adele bristled at that. ‘You could have checked to see she was all right,’ she said accusingly. ‘Anything could have happened to her. You said you loved her! How could you be so callous?’

  ‘My wife and childr
en were my priority,’ he said in that arrogant tone she remembered from the past.

  ‘But they weren’t a priority when you skipped off to London with Rose,’ Adele reminded him tartly. ‘I think you behaved very badly.’

  ‘I did,’ he said. ‘But I was in an impossible situation.’

  Adele could see there was no point in arguing with him. He was typical of his class, believing that anyone further down the social scale didn’t really matter.

  ‘So what did you think when Rose turned up twenty years later and told you about me?’ she asked, wanting to move on to more recent events.

  His face turned an even ruddier hue. ‘I was absolutely floored. It was bad enough to hear she had in fact had a child, but to find you were the girl I’d met at Emily’s, and Michael’s intended, was absolutely horrific. I panicked – you see, I didn’t imagine Rose intended to keep it to herself.’

  ‘So you paid her off? Weren’t you afraid if you paid her once, she’d keep coming back for more?’

  His eyes flashed with anger then, reminding her of the night he’d slapped her. She thought it quite surprising he hadn’t attacked Rose.

  ‘Yes, I was. But I was more afraid of what she’d do if I didn’t pay up. How did you find out about the money though? Surely she didn’t admit that to you?’

  All at once Adele felt an unexpected tug of loyalty for her mother. ‘Yes, she did,’ she said airily. ‘When we got together again after my grandmother was hurt in an air raid, she told me everything. I don’t approve of blackmail, but then I don’t approve of men who abandon a woman carrying their child either. And she had to get you to stop the marriage, didn’t she?’

  Myles looked at Adele thoughtfully for some time before replying.

  ‘Yes. And I have to be completely frank with you about this, even if there had been no blood tie, at that time I would have done almost anything to stop Michael marrying you.’

  Adele riled up at that. ‘The common girl from the marshes marrying a barrister’s son,’ she jeered. ‘Oh Mr Bailey, how terrible that would have been!’