Secrets (11 page)

‘It will soon grow again, love,’ she said. ‘And those bruises will go too. I felt better when I got here, and you will too in a day or so.’

‘Did you think nobody in the world cared about you?’ Ruby asked, her grey eyes full of pain.

Adele nodded. A lump had come up in her throat because she felt so sorry for the girl. ‘But we’ve got one another to care about here,’ she said. ‘It’s safe here, no one hurts us.’

Later that evening Adele lay in the bed in the attic thinking about Ruby. In the face of what the new girl had gone on to tell her later, she didn’t think she had any reason to mind being alone up in this room. The old iron bed was a bit creaky and the mattress lumpy, but she was lying between clean sheets, there was light coming in from the landing downstairs, and she wasn’t hungry or hurt.

Ruby had told her that her father had left her with Aunt Anne and her four children in their basement flat and gone off to look for work. Ruby said she didn’t know exactly why Aunt Anne had suddenly become so nasty to her, but she thought it was because her dad hadn’t sent any money. Whatever the reason, she locked Ruby in the coal cellar which was outside the front door and went under the pavement of the street above. She said it was bitterly cold in there, and dark too, and at night she had only a few sacks to lie on, and an old coat to put over her. Each morning Aunt Anne would drag her out to wait for the postman to come. When there was nothing from her father, she’d hit Ruby, then shut her back in the cellar with just a couple of slices of bread and a cup of water.

Ruby didn’t know exactly how long she’d been in there, but she said her father had gone away in early February, and it was about three weeks after that when Aunt Anne had shut her in. It seemed her teacher at school and the neighbours thought her father had come back for her and taken her away when they didn’t see her. She was only found and released because a gas man went down to the basement area to empty the meter and heard her crying. He called the police.

Adele felt sick as Ruby told her all this. Some of the marks on her body were from cigarette burns: she said Anne would force her into a chair and insist Ruby knew where her father was, and she would burn her to try to get it out of her.

‘But I didn’t know and I thought I was going to die in that cellar,’ Ruby said, tears running down her cheeks. ‘I prayed Dad would come back for me, but Aunt Anne said once that men didn’t give a toss about their children, all they cared about was getting their cocks into a fanny, and once the woman was up the spout they were off. I suppose she was right.’

Adele had tried to hide her shock at the crude words Ruby used, and indeed her bewilderment that a ten-year-old appeared to know so much more about what went on between men and women than she did. Adele did know that the rude word ‘fucking’ was part of being married and having babies, but Ruby’s graphic words made it sound so ugly.

Yet hearing Ruby’s terrible story had made Adele feel lucky. She hadn’t spent one night hungry and cold since her mother was taken away. The doctor had cared enough to make sure she went to a decent home, and she had Mr Makepeace who loved her. She felt she ought to feel really happy; she might have ended up somewhere with someone like Ruby’s Aunt Anne.

A few days after Ruby’s arrival, Mr Makepeace went away on business again. As he always ate his meals in his living room, and often went out in his black car in the mornings, Adele didn’t even think about him until the afternoon when they were due to have a lesson.

‘Will Sir be back in time for lessons?’ she asked Mrs Makepeace.

‘No, he won’t,’ the woman snapped. ‘He’s gone away for a while. But you can help the younger ones with some reading and writing.’

‘Today?’ Adele asked.

‘Today and every day until I tell you otherwise,’ was the curt reply. ‘So don’t just stand there gawping at me, if you’re as clever as my husband claims, you should be able to manage perfectly well. Take the middle group first, and the older ones can do some jobs for me.’

The middle group was the six-to eight-year-olds, Frank, Lizzie, Bertie, Colin and Janice. While they all liked having stories read to them, none of them read very well themselves. In fact, six-year-old Frank barely knew the letters of the alphabet, and when Adele had tried to teach him on several previous occasions he’d refused even to try.

Adele was about to point out the difficulty of having Frank in the class with the others when she sensed Mrs Makepeace was waiting for some sort of protest. She had that slightly mocking look on her face she always had when she was boiling up for something. One wrong word when she was like that meant a clout. So Adele said nothing and went out into the garden to round the five children up.

The lesson went much better than she expected, but then she did bribe the children by saying that if they each read a passage from a book in turn, and then copied six lines from it in their best handwriting while she helped Frank, she’d read them all a story.

Mrs Makepeace came into the schoolroom just as they were doing the writing part. She stood for a moment watching, and Adele carried on helping Frank write simple three-letter words. Perhaps she was impressed that all the children were working, because she soon turned on her heel and left without saying a word.

The older group later were no trouble at all, they got bored being out in the garden for long periods, and they were glad to have something to do. Even Jack, who was a little backward and couldn’t read much better than an average seven-year-old, wanted to try. For the writing part Adele chalked up sentences on the blackboard, missing out an adjective, and got them to put their own in.

She had to suppress a giggle when she read one of Jack’s efforts. He was a big, ungainly boy with a sloppy mouth and sticking-out ears, so gormless that she couldn’t usually be bothered much with him. But this really amused her.

The sentence she’d given the children was, ‘It was a – day, so Mrs Jones hung the washing in the garden.’

The others had slipped in ‘lovely’, ‘nice’ or ‘windy’, but Jack had put ‘bloody’.

‘Why bloody, Jack?’ Adele asked, trying hard to keep a straight face.

‘Mum always said, “It’s bloody washing day” every Monday,’ he replied.

She read them the first chapter of
Treasure Island
afterwards, and when the bell went for tea she felt very pleased with herself that both lessons had gone so well.

That first day was the only one when Adele managed to hold the attention of the classes. As each further day passed, their behaviour gradually grew worse. By the end of the week they were all larking around the whole time, and Adele got the blame from Mrs Makepeace because they were making so much noise.

All at once Adele found herself friendless because the children saw her as Mrs Makepeace’s spy and excluded her from their games and conversations. Even the younger children kept their distance. Once in her attic bed she could hear the other girls chatting and laughing together downstairs and she felt they were laughing at her. On top of that, Mrs Makepeace was very sarcastic towards her, and any questions were met with, ‘You’re the clever one, work it out for yourself.’

Four whole weeks crept by, each one leaving Adele more miserable and isolated. Sometimes she was afraid that Mr Makepeace was gone for good, because his wife seemed so angry, and Adele felt she’d just wither up and die if he didn’t return.

Then one morning as she was peeling potatoes for dinner, she heard his car draw up outside. She didn’t dare run out to him of course, but her heart began to hammer and she rushed to the window to look at him.

She thought he looked as handsome as a film star in his dark grey suit and trilby hat. His face was bronzed from the sun and as he saw her at the window and smiled, his teeth flashed brilliant white.

Mrs Makepeace dished up the children’s dinner, warned them to behave while they ate it without her, then took hers and her husband’s into their living room. She emerged again over an hour later, just as Adele was finishing the washing up. The other children had skipped off to play outside, and Beryl was wheeling Mary around in her pram trying to get her to go to sleep.

‘My husband wants to see you in the schoolroom after you’ve done these,’ Mrs Makepeace said curtly, banging down a tray loaded with dirty plates and glasses.

Adele only nodded. The grim look on the woman’s face was enough to know something had upset her.

When Adele finally got to the schoolroom, Mr Makepeace was sitting on the window-sill smoking his pipe and she rushed to him, throwing her arms around him.

‘You’ve been away so long and it’s been terrible without you,’ she blurted out.

He laughed softly. ‘I’ll have to go away more often if I get a welcome like this when I get back,’ he said.

‘I missed you so much,’ she said, and began to cry, spilling out how she couldn’t teach the younger ones anything, and she hadn’t got a friend in the whole place.

He moved on to a chair and drew her on to his lap. ‘I’m sure it wasn’t that bad,’ he said, drying her eyes with his handkerchief.

‘It was, it was,’ she insisted. ‘I couldn’t bear it.’

He cuddled her to him and rocked her in his arms. ‘I missed you too,’ he said. ‘But I have to go away now and then, I have business to take care of.’

When he began kissing and stroking her Adele was so pleased to be with him again that she found she didn’t mind as much as before. He said he wished he could take her away with him, and that maybe when she was a little older he could.

Beryl was lurking in the corridor when Adele came out of the schoolroom an hour later.

‘Teacher’s pet,’ Beryl hissed scornfully at her.

‘You’re only jealous,’ Adele retorted. ‘I can’t help it if he likes me because I’m the only one of us who wants to learn anything.’

‘That’s not what he likes you for,’ Beryl snapped back, her small face full of spite. ‘He likes anyone who lets him stick his hand in their knickers.’

Adele stopped in her tracks, astounded by what the younger girl had said. ‘That’s a filthy thing to say,’ she gasped.

‘He’s the filthy one.’ Beryl shrugged. ‘He tries it on all the bigger girls, that’s why Julie ran away.’

Adele walked past with her nose in the air. She didn’t believe Beryl, and she wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of thinking she’d upset her.

But as she helped Mrs Makepeace get the tea ready, spreading margarine on the bread, and laying out plates and cups on the table, she was still mulling over what Beryl had said.

Soon after Adele arrived at The Firs she recalled Mrs Makepeace laying into a couple of the children because they’d said a girl called Julie had run away. Mrs Makepeace said they were talking rubbish, and that Julie hadn’t run away at all, but left because she was fourteen and old enough to go to work.

Adele was fairly certain that Beryl had concocted her nasty version of Julie’s story with the aid of Ruby. The new girl had a dirty mind, she was always saying grubby things, and Beryl hung on her every word.

‘What on earth’s up with you?’

Adele jumped at Mrs Makepeace’s angry voice. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked.

‘Well, just look how much marge you’ve spread on that slice of bread,’ she said, wiggling a tablespoon menacingly at Adele.

Adele looked down and saw that she had spread enough marge for several slices. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I was thinking about something.’

‘Well, stop it,’ the woman snapped. ‘Thinking isn’t any good for girls in your position. You have to learn to work and do it quickly, that’s all.’

Adele woke with a start that same night to hear a creak on the stairs coming up to the attic. She sat up in bed and looked towards the door, but she could see nothing because the light on the downstairs landing had been turned off.

A stair creaked again and all at once she saw a big dark shape in her doorway. She was just about to scream when she smelled lavender hair oil. ‘Is that you, sir?’ she whispered.

‘Yes, my love,’ he whispered back. ‘Not a sound please, we don’t want to wake anyone else up.’

‘Is there something the matter?’ she asked when he’d come right in and shut the door.

‘No. I just wanted to be with you,’ he replied.

As her eyes got used to the dark she could just make out that he was wearing his pyjamas, and he sat down on the bed beside her and made it creak.

‘You’ve stolen my heart, Adele,’ he said, taking one of her hands and rubbing it between his. ‘All I can think about is you.’

Adele didn’t know what to say. He had stolen her heart too, but it didn’t seem right that he was creeping about in the dark to say such things.

‘May I lie beside you?’ he asked. ‘I just want to hold you.’

Adele moved over, but the bed was very narrow and there wasn’t much room for him too. ‘You shouldn’t be here,’ she ventured nervously, suddenly thinking of what Beryl had said again.

‘Why, my darling?’ he said, scooping her into his arms. ‘Didn’t you ever get into bed with your father for a cuddle?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t allowed.’

‘But you would have liked to?’

Adele remembered that Pamela had often gone into bed with their parents, especially when she didn’t feel well. Adele had always envied her. She had tried to do it herself a few times when she was five or six, but her mother always ordered her back to her own bed. ‘Yes, I would’ve liked to,’ she admitted. ‘But it’s different with you.’

‘Why is it?’ he asked, kissing her forehead. ‘I love you like you were my own daughter.’

That made it seem right, and she relaxed against him, and as he held her closely to him the warmth and comfort of his arms made her sleepy again.

She woke later to find herself alone in her bed, and the first rays of morning light were just coming in through the window. For a moment she thought she had dreamed he was there with her, but as she turned her face into the pillow she smelled his hair oil and knew it wasn’t a dream.

Later that day in a lesson with the other older children he gave her a secret kind of smile, and when the lesson was over he asked her to stay on in the classroom for a minute.