Secrets (67 page)

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?’

‘No, of course not,’ she said hastily.

‘But that’s what you implied in that letter,’ he said sharply. ‘So how about telling me the truth now? If it wasn’t that, what was it? It had to be something pretty dramatic to up sticks and run away from your gran too. Tell me!’

Adele felt queasy. His eyes were boring into her, and she knew he was too intelligent to be fobbed off with a lie. Yet she couldn’t bring herself to tell him the truth. Not now, it was all too soon.

‘It was a combination of lots of things,’ she said weakly. ‘Things I couldn’t explain to you.’

‘You mean me rushing you into going away for that weekend?’ he said, and he lowered himself down on to the ground beside her. ‘You weren’t ready for that, but you couldn’t tell me.’

Adele began to cry. She wanted to tell him that wasn’t so, but she couldn’t.

‘I thought as much,’ he said. ‘You knew your mother had been abandoned by your real father after she’d gone to bed with him, your stepfather walked out, and a man you trusted interfered with you. And I was so stupid and callow that I didn’t stop to think that I might bring back the nightmares you’d tried so hard to overcome,’ he said, and his voice shook with emotion. ‘So you bolted because you thought I would leave you too.’

Adele was about to protest that this wasn’t so, but Michael prevented her by carrying on.

‘I suppose I always knew that was the real reason. But things you said on Friday, and talking to my father last night, confirmed it for me. He was saying something about how stuff in the past messes up the present. He wasn’t exactly coherent, we’d both had a bit too much to drink, and I think he was trying to tell me how he felt he’d failed me and Mother. He’s grown so fond of you too, Adele, he kept saying that you were very special and that he was ashamed of the past. Then all at once it all kind of gelled together, and I understood. I even asked him if he thought there was any hope for me to start again with you.’

‘And what did he say?’ Adele asked, hardly daring to breathe as she wiped her eyes.

‘He said I’d have to ask you that. So that’s what I’m trying to do. Is there?’

Adele cautiously took hold of one of Michael’s hands in both of hers. ‘Maybe,’ she whispered.

His hand between hers felt so right, the electricity flowing between them making her tingle from head to foot. She couldn’t talk any more, all she wanted was to be kissed and held until words were no longer necessary. He was so close she could feel his breath warm on her cheek, and she turned to meet his mouth with hers.

There was no resistance. As her lips met his, his arms came around her and they sank back on to the grass, kissing as though their very lives depended on it.

Adele had been kissed by other men in the last six years, but never like this. It was like rockets going off, swept away by huge waves, or freewheeling down a steep hill. It had been the same that night in London, but they had been innocents then, with nothing to compare it to. They were both worldly adults now, and Adele knew that if just one kiss could wipe out all the heartbreak, then it had to mean they had something worth fighting for.

‘Can I change my mind to “definitely”?’ she said as they finally paused for breath.

He smiled and stroked her cheek with one hand, looking right into her eyes.

‘Even when I was angry with you after you disappeared, I never stopped loving you or wanting you,’ he whispered. ‘In the camp, even before you wrote to me, I used to dream of being here with you again. But now we are here, it’s really weird, I can’t quite believe it’s for real.’

‘But it is,’ she said. ‘I’m just so sorry I put you through all that, you see…’ She was just about to try to start an explanation when he silenced her with another kiss.

‘It’s twelve years since you first brought me here,’ he said as he finally tore himself away from her lips. ‘And after six years of war and all the stuff both of us have been through, I don’t want to hear you apologizing for anything. I think we deserve a brand-new start, without looking back. That is, if you think you still love me?’

Adele ran her finger lightly over his scarred face, and tears of joy prickled behind her eyes. ‘I already told you I never stopped,’ she said truthfully. ‘In fact, I love you more now because of all the things I’ve been through.’

‘Have you really worn my ring all this time?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘I don’t even take it off in the bath,’ she said. ‘I think I believed as long as it was touching my skin there was hope for us.’

‘Why didn’t you write again then, in that first year, and tell me how you felt?’ he asked, a look of puzzlement in his eyes. ‘I would’ve understood. What I hated most was you leaving me high and dry without a real explanation.’

Adele paused before answering, looking for truthful words without apportioning blame on anyone. ‘What explanation could I have given you?’ she said. ‘I couldn’t even explain it to myself, and I thought you’d be better off without me.’

‘My father said something last night about you not appreciating your own value,’ Michael said. ‘I got a bit nasty with him and said that was rich coming from him, the man who’d been so unpleasant to you.’

‘And what did he say to that?’ she asked.

‘“I got my comeuppance,”’ Michael said, and chuckled. ‘I took it that meant you got your own back at some point?’

‘We had a few words,’ Adele said, and laughed.

‘One of these days when we’ve got nothing better to talk about I want you to tell me everything you two said to one another,’ he said. ‘But not now, all I want to do is kiss you again and again.’

He kissed her again then with even more passion, leaning over her as she lay on her back, his fingers running through her hair.

Adele knew he had no more questions or he wouldn’t be as relaxed as he was. He was home, he was happy, it had all come right. But before she could relax and make love there was something she had to do.

‘I love you so much,’ she said with a sigh, ‘But we could be much more comfy with a blanket to lie on, and a picnic. Then we could stay here all day.’

He lifted his head and grinned down at her with the same boyish wickedness she remembered so well. ‘We could go back to your gran’s and get both.’

‘It’s too far for you to walk there and back again,’ she said.

‘Look, Nurse Talbot,’ he said indignantly, ‘I’ve dragged myself around half of Europe, I can make it to the cottage.’

‘You could, but you’re not going to,’ she said wriggling out from under him. ‘You save your energy for later. Have a snooze in the sun. I can be back in twenty minutes.’

She ran off before he could argue, laughing as she went.

As she had expected, Myles had turned up, and he was sitting in the garden with Honour. They looked up at her questioningly as she came haring in.

‘I came back for a picnic,’ she said breathlessly. ‘I made Michael wait there.’

‘I couldn’t tell him last night,’ Myles said, frowning with anxiety. ‘I tried to, but I simply couldn’t. I was just telling Honour, it was too hard.’

‘Much too hard,’ Adele nodded. ‘And unnecessary now. He doesn’t need to know any of it.’

‘Adele!’ Honour exclaimed, frowning up at her. ‘What on earth do you mean?’

‘He has his own ideas about why I left him, and they are far kinder to everyone than the truth,’ Adele replied. ‘Let him believe them.’

‘But surely I have to tell him you are my daughter?’ Myles said in surprise.

‘Why?’ Adele asked.

‘Because I’ve come to love you,’ he said, his eyes welling.

‘Surely being your daughter-in-law would do just as well?’ she said, and leaned down to kiss him on the forehead. ‘I could call you Father then without anyone finding it odd.’

For a moment they just looked at each other, then Adele leaned forward and wiped away a tear that was rolling down Myles’s cheek. ‘Emily would like it this way,’ she said. ‘She would never have wanted Michael to feel different to Ralph and Diana. And I think Michael would if you told him the truth.’

She waited as Myles and Honour looked at each other.

‘I think Rose would agree with that too,’ Honour said after a moment’s thought. ‘I saw her distress the night all this came out. She wouldn’t want anyone to suffer further for her past mistakes, or for Michael to feel less for his mother.’

Myles sighed. ‘You are just making it so easy for me to take the coward’s way out,’ he said.

Adele knelt down in front of him and picking up one of his hands, she held it to her cheek. ‘There’s nothing cowardly about a man who can forgive an unfaithful wife, and continue to give protection and love to her child. Let Michael remain in blissful ignorance. Please?’

‘But what if it was to come out at a later date?’ he said, light coming back into his eyes.

‘Who’s to tell?’ Adele said with a grin. ‘Only us three know. Well, aside from my friend Joan, but she’s going off to America soon and she isn’t the kind to blab. And us three left, we’re the best secret-keepers of all time.’

He gave a little chuckle and smoothed back Adele’s hair from her forehead.

‘Go and have your picnic. And by the time you come back I want to see that ring back on your finger.’

‘And pack a bottle of the elderberry wine,’ Honour said, a wide smile spreading from her lips up to her eyes. ‘Frank always used to call it my love potion.’

*

Ten minutes later, Myles and Honour watched Adele running like a gazelle towards the castle with a basket in one hand and a blanket under her arm. Her hair was flowing out behind her like a banner, and even from such a distance they could sense her joy.

‘Oh, to feel that way again,’ Honour said softly.

‘We may not have any passion to look forward to,’ Myles said with a little catch in his voice. ‘But we’ll have excitement enough with a wedding and maybe grandchildren too.’

‘I’ll be a great-grandmother,’ Honour said reflectively. ‘Hmm. Not so sure I like that!’

Myles began to laugh.

‘What’s so funny?’ she said indignantly.

‘You were always a “great” grandmother,’ he said. ‘I’m sure that’s what Adele would say.’

MICHAEL JOSEPH

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