Secrets

  Myles explained for Michael that the camp, Stalag 8b, was in Silesia, in Poland, not Germany as they’d imagined. It had been liberated by Americans, and Michael and a few other men not able to march were put into trucks and moved from pillar to post before eventually getting back to England.

  ‘It was like the world gone mad,’ Michael said pensively. ‘Thousands of people trudging along with bundles of belongings, little children trailing behind them crying with hunger. Whole villages razed to the ground, bodies still lying in ditches, burnt-out tanks and bomb holes. I saw a glimpse of some of the survivors from one of the concentration camps too. They were like living skeletons. I’m still finding it hard to believe what was going on in those places. They say millions were killed.’

  After the tea and sandwiches they went outside to sit in the sunshine. Michael lay down on the grass in the shade of the apple tree, with Towzer beside him, and Adele could see that he was not up to talking. His eyes showed complete exhaustion, and she thought that it was because he’d seen so much horror in the past weeks that he hadn’t yet said anything about his mother’s death.

  He fell asleep suddenly, and Honour suggested that she and Myles should go up to Harrington House to open the windows and make up beds for them, and that Adele should stay here with Michael.

  After they’d driven off, Adele fetched a book to read, but she found herself unable to tear her eyes away from Michael fast asleep on the grass. She saw that the burn scar on his cheek wasn’t anywhere near as serious or disfiguring as she’d first thought. It had healed well, and once he put on some weight, and his hair grew long enough for a decent cut, it would hardly show. She found herself focusing on his lips, wanting to lie down beside him, hold him in her arms and kiss him. All the feelings that had lain dormant for so long were bubbling up inside her.

  While it was good to find she hadn’t imagined she was still in love with him, it hurt too. She didn’t know whether she could bear it if he didn’t return her feelings.

  His grey flannels and white shirt, clearly pre-war ones that Myles had taken down to Dover, were far too big now, and only his belt was preventing them from sliding down over his bony hips. It was so strange to watch him sleeping, his dark lashes like little brushes on his cheeks, so relaxed and peaceful. She hoped that meant he felt safe and at home here, but maybe after the horrors of the camp, he’d find almost anywhere quiet, equally soothing.

  Time wasn’t on her side. She had only this weekend to make everything right between them. Once she went back to London and he began looking up old friends and family, their influence might be stronger than hers.

  Without talking to Myles alone, she had no idea what had already passed between them. She doubted Myles would have been so insensitive as to launch into the real explanation as to why she dropped Michael all those years ago, not when he was so exhausted.

  So what should she say when Michael brought up the subject? More lies?

  Michael woke after about an hour, opened his eyes and looked startled to see a tree above him. He turned his head, saw Adele in her chair looking down at him, and smiled.

  ‘I thought for one horrible moment I’d only dreamt I was back here,’ he said. ‘Whatever must you think of me dropping off like that?’

  ‘I think you are a man who is exhausted,’ she said. ‘It’s going to take time, lots of sleep and good food before you recover completely.’

  ‘Said just like a nurse,’ he retorted. ‘What I want is a few pints, to swim in the sea and to eat fish and chips out of the paper.’

  ‘Fish is very hard to get,’ she laughed. ‘But swimming might be good for your legs, and Myles will be happy to take you for a few pints.’

  ‘I rather hoped you might want to do that?’

  That sounded so much like an invitation to be alone together, but Adele wasn’t sure of anything now. She felt awkward, uneasy and very shaky.

  ‘I would, but you need rest first,’ she said, and even to her own ears it sounded like the way she spoke to patients, not an old, dear friend.

  ‘You’ve become even more beautiful,’ he said. ‘Do all your patients and admirers tell you that?’

  Adele blushed. He was looking at her so intently, and she wanted to retort with something that would show him his were the only compliments she valued.

  ‘I don’t nurse anyone long enough for them to notice if I’m improving,’ she said, and once again she was afraid she sounded starchy. ‘But it’s nice you think so,’ she added.

  ‘It’s nice too that you’ve become such good friends with Father,’ he said, taking her by surprise by deftly changing the subject. ‘I can’t quite see how it came about though. Just one of the many slightly mysterious things I’ll have to delve into.’

  ‘So you want to delve into things, do you?’ she said, in what she hoped was a more flirtatious manner. ‘Mind you, so much has happened, I won’t know where to start. It will be a bit like trying to start a new jigsaw.’

  He moved to sit up and massaged his right leg.

  ‘Is it hurting?’ she asked. ‘Can I get anything for it for you?’

  ‘No, it’s okay with a rub,’ he said, and gave her a long, penetrating look. ‘Let’s get back to the jigsaw. I always used to pick out the edge pieces first. Once I had the frame I found them easier. The frame in this case seems to be that my mother and yours became friends. Now, that’s a puzzle on its own.’

  ‘Not really,’ she said nervously.

  ‘Well, all I know of Rose was what you told me years ago,’ he said ‘And she didn’t sound like a woman who’d have anything in common with my mother.’

  ‘Exactly what I thought when I first heard about their friendship,’ Adele said carefully. ‘But in reality they had a great deal in common. Both on their own, estranged from their children, damaged women really. It was you being reported missing that brought us all together. Granny and Rose got to know Emily first, they comforted her. Later, I went to see her, met up with Myles, and so it went on from there.’

  ‘Yes, but why did you go to Mother in the first place?’

  ‘Because I knew how devastated she would be.’

  ‘Weren’t you afraid she would tell you to push off?’

  Adele didn’t know whether he meant because of bad feeling when she worked for his mother, or because Adele had hurt her son. ‘Yes, I suppose I was, but I was upset about you and that overcame my fear.’

  ‘Ahh!’ he said, and chuckled. ‘Well, we’ve got one side of the jigsaw done now. Only three more and the whole of the middle to go.’

  ‘You may find many things puzzling now, as the war has changed everyone to some extent,’ she said. ‘It’s broken down the class structure, made people more equal. I think it’s also made most of us realize what’s important and what isn’t.’

  ‘What’s important now to you?’ he asked, squinting up at her.

  ‘This,’ she said, waving her hand to include the cottage and the surrounding marsh. ‘There was a time when I thought it might be trampled under German jackboots. Seeing Granny’s cared for, my friends, Myles, and you.’

  ‘Me!’ he exclaimed. ‘I can sort of see why my father might become important in your life, despite how he was to you in the past, because he told me it was him who broke the news to you about Rose and my mother. I suppose that would create a bond. But what importance do I have?’

  ‘Because I never stopped caring about you,’ she said simply, and blushed furiously because he was looking at her so intently.

  ‘First love and all that?’ he said.

  ‘First and only love,’ she said, and bent over to retie the laces on her plimsolls to hide her embarrassment.

  ‘Are you saying there’s never been anyone else?’

  ‘I’ve been out with a few men,’ she said, still keeping her head down. ‘But none of them were special or important.’

  ‘What’s that around your neck?’ he asked.

  Adele instinctively put her hand over the ring which hung on a cha
in around her neck. It had come out of her blouse as she bent over.

  ‘Come on, what is it?’ he asked.

  ‘Our ring,’ she said in a small voice.

  ‘You’ve still got it?’ He sounded incredulous.

  Adele sat up and looked him in the eye. ‘Of course. I’ve never taken it off,’ she admitted.

  ‘Dare I hope that was because you had regrets about running out on me?’

  Adele suddenly felt very hot, she could feel sweat breaking out all over her. She looked away. ‘Of course I did. I never stopped loving you.’

  ‘Look at me,’ he said sternly.

  She did as he asked, but his eyes looked too big now for his thin face, and they had a slightly scornful expression. ‘Don’t play games with me, Adele,’ he said. ‘I was thrilled when I got your first letter, I desperately needed something good and hopeful to think about. But I’m not in that damn camp now, I’m back in the real world, about to pick my life up again. I don’t want anyone feeling sorry for me.’

  ‘Why would you assume I feel sorry for you?’ she asked. ‘You made it home, that’s more than some of the men did. I didn’t say anything in my letters I didn’t mean.’

  Adele didn’t know whether to be relieved or sorry when Myles and Honour suddenly arrived back. She was afraid things were getting a bit intense, but at the same time she would have liked more time to have made her feelings plainer.

  As it was, Michael got up to greet them, and Honour launched into one of her disapproving tirades about the dust in Harrington House, and how she wished she’d had some warning Michael was coming so she could have gone up there and cleaned it.

  ‘If you’d seen how I’ve lived for the past couple of years you wouldn’t worry about that,’ Michael laughed. ‘Sheets and hot water are sheer luxury to me.’

  ‘But there’s no food there,’ Honour protested. ‘Myles got a few bits and pieces from the shop but not enough to make a proper meal, especially for a lad who needs building up again. You must stay here for supper, I’ve got a pot of rabbit stew.’

  Adele thought her grandmother was pushing too hard. ‘Michael needs rest,’ she said firmly. ‘He’s dead on his feet, and we could give them some of that rabbit stew to take back with them, they’d only have to warm it up.’

  ‘The indomitable Nurse Talbot strikes again,’ Michael said, grinning at his father. ‘But I suppose she’s right, and I can fit another few pieces in tonight with your help.’

  ‘Pieces?’ Honour asked.

  ‘Of the big jigsaw. What’s gone on while he’s been away,’ Adele explained, and she looked pointedly at Myles, hoping that he’d take that as a warning to be cautious.

  Honour berated Adele after they’d left. She seemed unable to grasp that everything couldn’t be put right immediately. ‘You weren’t even very welcoming,’ she said plaintively. ‘What’s wrong with you?’

  ‘How am I supposed to behave?’ Adele retorted in exasperation. ‘I can’t throw myself at him. He really did look all in. And he’s going back to his dead mother’s house, where he may very well find out that the man he calls Father isn’t. So with all that in the back of my mind, do you really think I could sit here tonight batting my eyelashes at him, with what amounts to a UXB in the next room!’

  ‘But did you tell him you still care?’

  ‘Yes I did, Granny,’ Adele sighed. ‘But there’s a whole lot more got to come out before he’ll trust me again. It’s difficult enough dealing with this myself without you getting on at me.’

  Myles called round briefly the following morning to say that Michael was still sound asleep, and he was going to leave him to wake up of his own accord. He left before Adele got a chance to ask him whether Michael had asked any difficult questions the previous night. And how Myles had answered them.

  Presumably nothing had arisen for he came back later in the afternoon with Michael and suggested they all took a drive down to Camber Sands and had a meal in a restaurant in Rye later.

  Michael seemed very distant, but Adele put that down to Myles having just taken him to see his mother’s grave. The few questions he asked were all about her, he appeared a little bewildered by everything he was told, and though he said how good it was to see Rye again, Adele got the feeling he wished he was anywhere but there.

  Myles dropped them back at the cottage and said he and Michael were going to the pub for a few pints. Adele mentioned that she was going back to London on the seven o’clock train the following day, but she didn’t get the expected response that they would see her before she went.

  That night Adele decided that Michael did only think of her as an old friend, nothing more. If he had still loved her, surely he would have questioned why she left him?

  Looking back at what had passed between them, she felt he had been embarrassed to find she still had his ring, and even more so by her claiming he was her first and only love. She cried then, for her stupidity in thinking there was hope for the future for them.

  The following morning Adele got up early and went out for a walk. When she got back she put on her newest dress, a green and white polka dot sun-dress, just on the off-chance Michael would call.

  She was out in the garden petting Misty when she heard Myles’s car coming down the lane. To her surprise Michael was in it alone.

  ‘Hello,’ she said as he came into the garden. ‘How did the pints go down last night?’

  ‘Quickly,’ he said. ‘Two and I was pie-eyed.’

  ‘And Myles?’

  ‘That’s what I came to see you about,’ Michael said, his brow furrowed with a frown. ‘He seemed troubled about something last night. Like there was something he had to tell me, but couldn’t. I wondered if you knew what it was?’

  Adele’s stomach churned. If Myles couldn’t tell Michael, she certainly couldn’t.

  ‘I expect he’s feeling much like you,’ she said quickly. ‘So much he wants to ask and tell you, but he can’t find the words. I’m the same.’

  ‘He said Mother had left me Harrington House in her will,’ Michael said. ‘He wouldn’t, or couldn’t, say why. It seemed very odd to me that it wasn’t to be shared between Ralph, Diana and me.’

  ‘Ralph and Diana didn’t come to visit her much,’ Adele said, though she guessed Emily had made this provision for Michael just in case he was blocked from inheriting anything from Myles. ‘Besides, she knew you loved it around here. It was her family home, remember, I expect she wanted to ensure it didn’t get sold to someone else.’

  He smiled then. ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ he said. ‘Let’s go over to Camber Castle,’ he said, glancing towards the house as if daunted by Honour’s presence.

  ‘Can you walk that far?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m not a cripple,’ he said defensively.

  ‘I can see that,’ she retorted. ‘But it’s rough ground and you mustn’t overdo it.’

  ‘I feel more normal today,’ Michael said after they’d walked in virtual silence for at least ten minutes. ‘It’s been weird ever since I got off that ship. Almost like I was someone who was trying to pass himself off as Michael Bailey. Can you understand what I mean? Like I’d learned all the background stuff about this chap, but once I was confronted with all the people from his past life, I didn’t know how he would respond.’

  ‘You look and sound like the real Michael to me,’ she said. ‘But if you like I’ll test you.’

  ‘Go on then!’

  Adele giggled. ‘What was I wearing the first time you saw me?’

  ‘Baggy trousers tucked into Wellington boots, and a navy jumper with holes in it.’

  ‘You have passed the first question,’ she said. ‘What was the first present you gave my gran?’

  ‘A tea caddy,’ he said.

  ‘Top marks. I’d say you are definitely the real Michael Bailey,’ she laughed.

  ‘I have one for you,’ he said. ‘What was it like when you first met up with your mother after all those years?’

  Adele
thought for a bit. ‘Difficult. I felt nothing but contempt for her, but I had to force myself to be pleasant because of Granny’s feelings. I suppose you could say I seethed with resentment for a very long time.’

  ‘What changed that?’

  Adele looked sideways at him, feeling this line of questioning had something behind it. ‘Why do you ask that?’

  He shrugged. ‘I’m still trying to fit pieces into the puzzle.’

  She explained how Honour was hurt in the air raid, and that she asked Rose to come here and look after her. ‘I suppose that’s when things changed. Mum looked after Granny so well, she made her happy. I didn’t expect that, so she kind of proved herself to me. She became a very different woman to the one I spent my childhood with, she was lively, funny and very hard-working. I grew to like her. And I had forgiven her well before she died.’

  They were approaching Camber Castle now and a few sheep darted out on hearing them coming. Adele took Michael’s arm to steady him as they walked through an area with a lot of half-buried boulders.

  ‘Have you forgiven me?’ he asked as they got inside the castle.

  They were very close to the spot where they had been sitting the day he tried to fondle her breasts when they were kissing, and she thought it was that he was referring to.

  ‘There’s nothing to forgive you for,’ she said.

  ‘There is. I shouldn’t have taken you to London that weekend. You weren’t ready for it. I should have known.’

  Adele was puzzled by what he meant. She sat down on the grassy hillock they’d sat on so often in the past and looked up questioningly at him.

  ‘I thought about it all a great deal in the camp,’ he said, looking down at her as he leaned on his walking stick. ‘You’d been through so much as a child, especially that incident in the orphanage. You didn’t have any close friends, no father around, just your grandmother. Stuck out here away from the real world. Then I came along.’

  ‘That was the best thing that ever happened to me.’

  ‘I wasn’t fair to you though. I had another life that you couldn’t enter into, and I made things worse by getting you to work for my mother. You had no life of your own, and they were so beastly to you. You went from that into nursing, cloistered away with other women, rules and regulations stopping you from any exploring of your own. Was that why you broke away?’