Secrets (53 page)

He saw Adele’s face for a brief second. She was running to him with her hair flowing out behind her like a banner.

‘God help me,’ he rasped out as he prepared to die.

Chapter Twenty-four

1941

Honour opened the front door as she saw Jim retreating back to the lane after delivering her letter.

‘Come back here and warm up with a cup of tea,’ she called out.

It was a bitterly cold February day with flurries of hail. The sky was black and Honour thought that by tonight there would be snow. She had had the plaster cast removed from her leg in time for Christmas, but to her disappointment she still needed to use a walking stick for support, for her broken leg had become weak through lack of use. Rose wouldn’t let her do more than hobble around the garden for short periods, and not even that now it was icy, so Jim would be a pleasant diversion from her boredom.

Jim turned back, a broad smile proving her offer was welcome. ‘I’m frozen solid, but I didn’t knock because I thought you’d want time alone to read your letter.’

Honour laughed. ‘You know perfectly well I’ve got more time alone than I know what to do with,’ she said. ‘Adele’s letter can wait. Now, come on in.’

‘Rose not here today?’ Jim inquired as he stamped his boots on the doormat and closed the door behind him.

‘She’s just gone off to Rye to see if she can get oil for the lamps and some new library books,’ Honour said. ‘I wonder you didn’t see her, she’s only just gone.’

‘I wasn’t watching out for anyone,’ he said, taking off his coat and sitting down. ‘I was too busy thinking about poor Mrs Bailey.’

‘What’s the matter with her?’ Honour asked.

Jim looked embarrassed. ‘You haven’t heard?’

‘Heard what?’

‘About Michael.’

‘Don’t tell me he’s been killed!’ Honour had to sit down quickly.

‘Well, “missing, presumed dead”, but that means much the same, doesn’t it?’ Jim said, then seeing Honour’s stricken face he reached out and patted her arm. ‘I’m sorry, Honour, I thought you’d have heard already. She got the telegram a week ago.’

‘Not that lovely boy,’ Honour sighed, and tears came to her eyes. ‘How did it happen?’

‘Shot down over Germany, they say,’ Jim replied, peeling off his fingerless mittens and flexing his fingers. ‘She’s taking it very hard, well, you of all people know what she’s like. Her neighbour told me this morning that she was out in the street last night in her nightclothes. Didn’t know what she was doing!’

‘He might have been taken prisoner,’ Honour said. ‘I’ve heard it can take weeks, even months, for the news to get through.’

Jim shrugged. ‘That doesn’t seem likely. Apparently she had a visit from one of Michael’s squadron, he saw his plane on fire and didn’t see him eject.’

‘A real Job’s comforter,’ Honour said dourly. ‘Couldn’t he have given her some hope?’

She got up again to make the tea, but on seeing the tea caddy Michael had given her when he first met Adele, she began to cry.

‘Now Honour, don’t take on,’ Jim said with concern. ‘I wish I hadn’t told you now.’

‘Better that it came from you than gossip in the shop,’ Honour said, sniffing back her tears. ‘I was very fond of him. As you know, I always had hopes for him and Adele. I feel for his mother too, he was the only one of her children close to her. Whatever will she do now?’

Jim shook his head sadly. ‘If she doesn’t pull herself together her housekeeper will leave, that’s for certain. I’ve heard she’s been on the point of going dozens of times before this, and there’s only so much a body can take.’

‘Well, I hope she doesn’t take off for a while,’ Honour said indignantly. ‘People do go off the rails a bit at times like this. They can’t help it. I know how I felt when my Frank died.’

‘Your bark is very much worse than your bite, Honour,’ Jim said teasingly. ‘You’re a kind woman really.’

Honour gave a watery smile. ‘Do children still think I’m a witch?’

He shook his head. ‘That bit of nonsense died a long time ago, when Adele came here. Now you’ve got Rose too, and she’s too comely to be the daughter of a witch.’

‘I sometimes think all three of us are bewitched,’ Honour said sadly. ‘We’ve all had troubled lives.’

‘Now, this isn’t like you,’ Jim said, his kindly face full of concern. ‘I always think of you as invincible.’

Honour shook her head sadly. ‘No, Jim, I’m not that. I’m just an old woman who does the best she can to get by.’

Jim stayed for a little while making small talk about rationing and how lucky they were that they weren’t town folk without chickens and homegrown vegetables to fall back on. After he’d left, Honour lay down on the couch, pulled a shawl over herself and cried. She knew in her heart that Adele had never stopped loving Michael. She might go out with other young men, and no longer asked for news of him, but she wasn’t fooling anyone. She was going to be devastated by his death, and Honour was sure Michael must be dead if his plane had caught fire.

But her tears were not only for her granddaughter, they were for Emily Bailey too. Honour had run into her once in Rye, during the time of the Battle of Britain, and she had asked after Michael. Emily had been transparently pleased to be able to talk about him to someone who knew him well. She had spoken of him with such pride, yet she had looked so tense and thin, and there were deep shadows around her eyes from sleepless nights.

Honour had come fully to understand that kind of anxiety and dread since she was caught up in the air raid. Yet she could remind herself that Adele was in an underground ward most of the time, that she could run to a shelter if she was outside when the siren went. Emily wouldn’t have been able to reassure herself in that way. She knew as everyone did that when an aeroplane was hit, the chances of the pilot surviving were very small.

Honour knew too that if Adele were to be killed, she would be unable to bear the loss. She wouldn’t even want to try. And she guessed that was just how Emily must feel right now. Her heart told her to put on her coat and boots and walk up to Winchelsea and see her. But she knew she wasn’t able to walk that far – if she slipped on the icy road she might break her leg again. She would write a letter instead, it might be a small comfort for Emily to know that people felt for her.

It was half past three when Rose left Rye to go home, but already getting dark. There had been long queues in all the shops, and although she’d managed to get oil for the lamp, some cheese, butter and tea, no one had any sugar. She’d spent longer in the pub than she meant to, but it was fun having a flirt with two soldiers on leave. Her mother would not approve, but then if Rose couldn’t have a couple of drinks and some male company now and then, she’d be climbing the walls and snapping her mother’s head off.

After the pub shut she’d had to rush to the library, and now she was concerned that she’d left Honour alone for so long.

But it had been a good day, despite the bitter cold. Queuing might be time-consuming, but it hadn’t been dull. Everyone had been chatting and laughing, and she’d seen a couple of women she’d been at school with, and both had been very pleased to see her. Her cynical nature told her that they only spoke because they hoped to get a few morsels of gossip to spread around, yet it had been nice to get re-acquainted. She was very touched to find they both believed Adele came to live with her grandmother when Rose became ill. She hadn’t expected that her mother would resort to white lies to save Adele embarrassment or shame. Once she might have embellished her ‘illness’ further to gain sympathy, but she felt quite proud of herself that she’d passed it off with a shrug and said that Honour had been a better mother than she could have been.

Despite getting to the library so late, she managed to beat another woman to a copy of
Gone with the Wind
. She had been trying to get it for weeks now, but much as she wanted to bury herself in it tonight, she felt she owed it to Honour to allow her to read it first.

All in all, Rose felt pretty good about herself. For perhaps the first time in her adult life she was happy. To her utter surprise she didn’t miss London at all, and once she’d learned to adjust to the chores at the cottage, she even found them enjoyable.

The day she spilled out all her old grievances to Honour had cleared the air. She found herself staggered that her mother was capable of admitting she’d been thoughtless. But then Rose had been agreeably surprised many times in the past months to find her mother was very different to the indifferent, prudish and bull-headed person she had created in her mind over the years.

Honour was in fact good company. She had a lively and often wicked sense of humour. She was earthy, straight-talking and very practical. There were of course days when they’d snarled at each other, but then it was difficult to get used to having someone else around all the time when you’d lived alone for so long. Rose had resented being at her mother’s beck and call at first, and Honour had been deeply suspicious of anything Rose said or did. Not all the bitterness was entirely resolved for either of them yet, but as Honour was so fond of pointing out, ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day.’

Yet on balance there was far more laughter than rows, and Rose had experienced moments of extreme tenderness towards Honour, especially when she bore pain and immobility so stoically.

If it weren’t for the situation with Adele, Rose felt she could live with her mother indefinitely, providing she could go out dancing or to the cinema every week. But she couldn’t possibly forget the hatred and scorn her daughter had lashed her with. Or the threats, and she was certain that once Honour was fully recovered, Adele would expect Rose to clear off for good.

Each week when she walked up to Winchelsea at the arranged time to telephone her daughter, Rose felt sick with nerves. Adele wasn’t insulting or even offhand, but there was no warmth in her voice, no suggestion she might be gradually softening, even though Rose knew Honour had told her in her letters that everything was working out well. As the London Blitz was still continuing, with bombing every night, Adele hadn’t been able to get time off to come down here, not even at Christmas. Rose knew that until she did come home, and saw for herself that Rose had kept her part of the bargain and perhaps changed for the better, she was always going to despise and think the worst of her.

Rose and Honour were very aware that the news reports on the wireless were not giving the full picture of how it was in London or in the war at large. Adele’s letters, information passed on by neighbours with family and friends in the city or on the front lines, revealed a very different one. People were being killed and injured in their thousands, the Germans were better equipped and had more manpower, and it didn’t look possible that England could beat them. Nightly they heard bombers flying in, sometimes they heard bombs dropped well before the planes reached London. Refugees from both Europe and London arrived down here daily, having mostly lost everything in their flight. Sometimes Rose would stand at the window of the cottage looking towards the beach with its huge rolls of barbed wire, and wonder how long it would be before the Germans invaded Britain.

They would probably land along this stretch of coast, and she and Honour might very well be in graver danger than facing the bombs in London.

The daylight had gone completely by the time Rose drew near to the lane which led to the cottage. There was a full moon, but it flitted in and out of banks of clouds, giving only fleeting silhouettes of the rooftops in Winchelsea up on the hill and the black slick of river.

The blackout made night-time so scary. No welcoming light glowed at the cottage, or from the houses in Winchelsea. It was like being the only person left in the world, and very few cars came this way now as people saved their petrol for emergencies. The moon went behind the clouds again, and Rose cursed herself for not bringing her torch with her. It would be hell on the lane, stepping into unseen ice-covered puddles or stubbing her toes on big stones.

She hesitated where the lane began, looking up to where the moon had been moments before. ‘Come on out, Mr Moon,’ she said, and giggled at herself for being so childish.

A noise made her turn her head. It sounded like someone or something in the meadow by the river. Assuming it was a sheep, she stepped gingerly on to the lane. But on hearing the sound again, she stopped and listened.

The noise sheep made was the very fabric of life on the marsh, and this sound wasn’t one of theirs. Sheep weren’t given to walking about when it was as cold as this, they’d be far more likely to be huddled together under the hedge. She was sure this sound was human, for it was more than just feet scrunching on the frosty grass, but panting too.

The moon came out again, and to her astonishment she saw a woman in the meadow. The moon glinted on her fair or white flowing hair, and she appeared to be running towards the river.

The moon vanished again, but the sound of the panting was louder now, and it seemed to Rose that the woman was in distress. In a flash of intuition she suddenly realized she was intent on drowning herself.

There was no other explanation for her being in the meadow, not in the dark, or in such cold weather. Rose knew from her own experiences that people could do extraordinary things in moments of desperation, and she knew she must stop this woman.

Forgetting that seconds before she had been anxious about ice and stones, she dropped her shopping at the side of the lane, made for the hole in the hedge she often used when collecting wood and squeezed through. She couldn’t see the woman now, but as she started over the meadow towards the river, she heard a splash.

Racing towards the spot where the sound had come from, she was just in time to see one very white hand flailing about in the dark water. The rest of the woman was submerged.

Rose looked desperately around her. The nearest house was her own, but Honour wouldn’t be able to help with this. By the time she got help elsewhere the woman would be drowned. There was no choice but to deal with it herself.