Secrets (54 page)

She stripped off her coat and jumped, not daring to consider how cold it was, how deep the water or how strong the current might be. As she hit the icy water the shock was so great she felt her heart was going to stop, but she forced herself to tread water while she found the woman.

The moon came out again for just long enough for Rose to make out something which wasn’t weed floating on the surface. It took only four or five strokes to reach it, and as her hand met woollen fabric she realized it was the woman’s coat or loose dress.

Still treading water, she grabbed it with one hand, the other feeling in the water beneath it. Her hand touched a limb, and she yanked it up.

It was a leg, with no stocking or shoe, and somehow that told her the woman had definitely lost her mind.

The water was so cold Rose felt almost paralysed, but still holding the leg so the woman wouldn’t sweep off in the current, she reached down again, further this time, and upon reaching what seemed to be her waist, hooked her arm right round it and hauled her up. The weight pulled Rose under, and she had to let go of the leg to regain the surface, but she still held tightly around the woman’s waist, and finally she managed to get her up to the surface.

The moon came out again, and to Rose’s surprise the woman wasn’t young, as she had supposed by the long hair, but middle-aged, and tied round her neck like some kind of bizarre necklace was a heavy chain. This was clearly the reason why she had been head down in the water.

Fear that the woman would pull her down too gave Rose new strength, and she wrenched off the chain. Suddenly the woman was very much lighter. She appeared lifeless, but Rose seemed to remember it took longer than just two or three minutes to drown.

She found it easy enough to get to the bank, swimming on her back and holding the woman’s head up with her hands, but it was quite another thing to climb out while hauling someone else.

She tried holding on to the woman’s coat, and had got halfway up the bank when it began to slip out of her grasp, weighted down by the body inside it.

‘Damn you,’ she shouted aloud. ‘I’m bloody well not leaving you in here, even if that is what you want. Help me, for God’s sake.’

But the woman couldn’t help, and there was no alternative but for Rose to slip back into the water. By now she was so cold she thought she might very well die of it too. Her hands were completely numb, but she got behind the woman, grasped her around the waist and with one almighty shove, got her halfway up the bank.

Scrabbling up beside her, Rose got on to the grass at the top of the bank, then reached down and caught hold of the woman under her arms. She hauled her up, then turned her on to her stomach on the grass.

Rose had only seen artificial respiration done a couple of times, and she wasn’t sure she remembered how it was done, or even if it was far too late to attempt it. But she pressed down on the woman’s back, then lifted her shoulders, and kept doing it.

‘Breathe, for God’s sake,’ she yelled as she pumped. ‘Do you think I want to die of cold out here with you?’

Darkness had never seemed so terrifying before. It wrapped round them like a thick blanket, and Rose was tempted to run for it now because she could do no more. Yet she still pumped despite the cold, tears pouring down her face, hot on her icy skin.

And then she heard a splutter.

‘That’s it,’ she cried triumphantly. ‘Come on, breathe, damn you! Breathe!’

She heard rather than saw water spurt out of the woman’s mouth, and it sounded like gallons. Then more spluttering, and Rose put her head down by her face and heard faint, rasping breathing.

‘Good girl,’ she said, and left her for a second while she rushed to get the coat she’d dropped earlier. She wrapped it round the woman, holding her in a sitting position, and though her head was lolling, she really was breathing.

In Rose’s mind there was only one thing to do, and that was to get herself and this would-be suicide back to the cottage. She didn’t dare leave her as she might slip back into the river, and anyway she could die of cold before help got here. So she hauled her bodily to her feet, then bent over so the woman sagged across her shoulder, the way firemen lifted people. Stumbling under the weight, Rose made her way to the lane.

Water squelched out of her shoes, every part of her was so cold it hurt, and the woman was so heavy that Rose didn’t think she could carry her more than a few yards. But she concentrated her mind on taking just one step at a time, each one getting her closer to the cottage.

She heard the woman vomit down her back, but at least that meant she was coming round. Still she plodded on, focusing only on reaching the front door.

‘Mother!’ she yelled as she reached the path. ‘Open the door.’

Nothing had ever been more welcoming than to see the door flung wide and the golden glow of the lamp spilling out behind her mother’s silhouette.

‘What on earth have you got there?’ Honour cried out. ‘Is it an animal?’

‘A drowned one,’ Rose retorted, and she wanted to laugh then, for just to see her mother made her feel safe again.

‘Oh my goodness,’ Honour exclaimed as Rose laid her burden down on the hearthrug in front of the fire. ‘It’s Emily!’

She began stripping off the woman’s sopping clothes and wrapping her in blankets. Rose told her briefly what had happened, but the combination of the sudden warmth of the room and the shock of the ordeal she’d been through was making her feel very peculiar and disoriented.

She recalled her mother ordering her to strip off her clothes because she was dripping water everywhere. She supposed she must have gone into her bedroom to do it, for the next thing she was aware of was finding herself in her nightdress and dressing-gown, a towel wrapped round her wet hair. Honour was sitting on the floor cradling the woman in her arms and feeding her sips of brandy.

‘I’m Honour Harris, dear,’ her mother was saying to the woman, who was just looking at her with blank eyes. ‘I’m going to take care of you, everything will be all right now.’

Rose was so terribly cold, she wanted to get over to the stove to warm herself, but she couldn’t because her mother and the woman were in the way, and she felt somehow threatened. ‘We can’t take care of her, Mother,’ she said. ‘She needs to be in a hospital. She isn’t a stray like Towzer, you can’t mend her with a bowl of food and a warm by the fire. Once I’ve got warm I’ll go and phone for an ambulance.’

‘Shush!’ Honour said, giving Rose one of her stern looks.

‘Mother, she’s gone mad! She jumped in the river, and if I hadn’t heard her, she’d be washed down to the sluice gates by now.’

‘She’s only mad with grief,’ Honour said with a shake of her head, still rocking the woman in her arms. ‘Michael is missing, shot down over Germany.’

‘Michael?’ Rose said questioningly.

Honour looked up at her. ‘Yes, Michael, the young man who was Adele’s sweetheart. This is his mother, Emily Bailey.’

Rose reeled back like a drunk, her head suddenly feeling as though it was going to explode.
Emily
. It was too much for her to take in. Surely this woman she’d rescued couldn’t be the same one who had once been some kind of she-devil in her eyes?

Emily Bailey, that shrew of a woman who didn’t love her husband, but would never set him free to marry anyone else! Rose had never met her, never even seen a picture of her, but when she was in love with Myles she had wished her and her damned children dead.

And now some twenty-two years later she had inadvertently saved her life.

‘Rose dear, I think you are suffering from shock,’ Honour exclaimed suddenly. ‘You’re as white as a piece of tripe, and quivering like a jelly. Wrap a blanket round yourself and get yourself some brandy.’

The clock struck six just a little later, making Rose realize that the dramatic events earlier which had seemed to go on for hours, had in fact all happened in about half an hour from start to finish. She was warmer now, thanks to the brandy, but she still felt very strange. Her mother was still sitting on the floor cradling Emily in her arms and murmuring soothing words, but Rose felt she was observing this from afar, unable to participate in any way.

‘You can’t stay there on the floor, Mother, you’ll hurt your back,’ she said irritably a while later. ‘Let me lift her on to the couch. She’s got to let go of you sometime.’

‘If I believed my child was dead, I’d want someone to hold me,’ Honour said stubbornly.

A lump came up in Rose’s throat at her mother’s words. ‘You can hold her just as well on the couch,’ she croaked. ‘Come on, let me help you up and I’ll make us some tea.’

It seemed odd that Rose had managed to carry Emily back to the cottage so easily, for just trying to lift her from the floor to the couch took every vestige of strength she had left. Perhaps Honour noticed this because once Rose had helped her up on to her feet, she hugged her daughter. ‘It was such a brave thing to jump in there after her,’ she said, her eyes swimming and her voice breaking. ‘You could both have been drowned.’

Rose shrugged. ‘It might have been brave if I’d thought before I did it,’ she said. ‘But I didn’t, I just acted on impulse.’

‘So lack of thought makes it less brave then?’ Honour said with an attempt at a smile, perching beside Emily on the couch.

‘Yes,’ Rose replied. ‘Now Emily, are you going to stop crying and have some tea?’

Rose didn’t know if it was the sterner tone, but for the first time since she got into the cottage, Emily looked down at the blanket she was wrapped in, then around the room.

‘Where am I?’ she asked in a weak, strained voice, and she stopped crying.

‘You jumped in the river, and my daughter pulled you out,’ Honour said, and smoothed the still wet hair back from Emily’s face. ‘Do you know me? I’m Honour Harris, the grandmother of Adele who used to be your maid. And this is Rose, my daughter, she rescued you.’

Emily looked quizzically at Honour for a few seconds, her expression one of a child who had just woken from a bad dream. ‘You came to my house once.’

‘That’s right,’ Honour said patiently, glancing at Rose sitting in the chair opposite. ‘I was a friend of your mother’s. We talked in Rye once last year too, about Michael. I am so very sorry he’s missing, I was very fond of him too.’

Emily’s face crumpled and she began to cry again, but not almost silently like earlier, this time it was great heart-rending sobs, and she buried her face in Honour’s shoulder and clung to her. ‘It’s not fair,’ she sobbed out. ‘He was so special to me, so kind and loving. I don’t want to live without him.’

‘But he may be in a prisoner-of-war camp,’ Honour said gently. ‘You can’t give up yet. How would he feel if he came home after the war and found you’d taken your own life?’

‘He won’t come back, I know he’s dead,’ Emily insisted. ‘His friend saw his plane in flames.’

‘I’m sure he told you how many other pilots have parachuted out safely from burning planes,’ Honour said. ‘I’ve read dozens of such stories.’

‘It’s God’s judgement on me,’ Emily said woodenly. ‘My punishment for wrongdoing.’

Honour glanced at Rose and half smiled. ‘What wrong have you done?’ she asked gently. ‘Not much, I’ll be bound!’

‘I have, I have,’ Emily insisted, wringing Honour’s hand. ‘I’ve been terrible to my family.’

‘I don’t think the blame was all yours,’ Honour said evenly.

‘It was. Myles was so kind and loving once, I changed him by being so impossible. That’s why I’m being punished now.’

‘I think we’d better have a nice cup of tea,’ Honour said.

Later that evening Rose lay in bed, icy cold even though she had a hot water bottle. Emily was sharing her mother’s bed, and the wind was howling around the cottage, making the windows rattle. She reached out for her dressing-gown and pulled that over her too, yet she knew no amount of bedcovers were going to warm her tonight, just as nothing Honour could say to Emily was going to ease her grief.

It was guilt and shame that was keeping her cold. Emily didn’t want to live because she’d lost Michael, that was a normal reaction for a mother. But Rose had never wanted to live with Adele and had even wished it was she who had died instead of Pamela.

She could understand Emily’s grief so well because of Pamela. And the madness which made her throw herself in the river. Yet Rose had never been a real mother to Adele. Never valued or loved her.

And how was Adele going to react to this news about Michael? Rose knew that she’d be just as devastated as his mother, but who could she pour that out to when everyone believed she’d jilted him? Only two people knew the truth about that, and Adele wasn’t going to turn to either of them.

Rose had thought when Adele attacked her when they were collecting wood that it was one of the lowest moments in her life, but this was even worse. Living back here, getting to know her mother again and finding herself happy at last, had made her see how selfish, greedy and shallow she’d been. She had believed she was on the road to becoming a better person. At times she even liked herself.

But as Emily had tearfully poured out so much about her marriage and her family tonight, Rose had felt ashamed that she had probably been part of the reason why Emily’s marriage had broken down. All these years Rose had told herself that she had been the innocent victim of a philanderer, who callously abandoned her when she was carrying his child, but tonight she could no longer cling on to that pretence.

It was true that she was a virgin when she met Myles while he was staying at The George, but she could hardly be described as innocent, for she set out to ensnare him coldbloodedly. She wanted a life of comfort and gaiety in London, and sensing he was rich, lonely and vulnerable, she used her looks, youth and charm to get it. All he had done was kiss her a few times when she begged him to take her to London with him, wickedly claiming her father was ill-treating her.

Myles told her he was married with three children before they got on the train. He even made it quite clear that he could only help her find a job and somewhere to live. He was as good as his word, he found her lodgings and supported her, and if she hadn’t used her feminine wiles on him, he would never have slept with her.