Secrets (9 page)

‘You’ve got a mum then?’ Adele asked.

Janice nodded. ‘Most of us have. Mine’s sick and my aunty could only take the baby, so Willy and I came here. That’s my brother Willy,’ she said, pointing to a small boy with red hair. ‘He’s four now. But if Mum don’t get well soon I reckon they’ll put us somewhere else.’

‘Why?’ Adele asked.

Janice shrugged. ‘They only take kids for a short while here. Mr Makepeace makes what he calls assessments of us.’

‘Where is he?’ Adele had forgotten until then that there was a Mr Makepeace too.

‘Dunno, he goes out a lot,’ Janice said. ‘Sometimes we don’t see him for days.’

That remark led Adele to ask about their lessons, and Janice said they didn’t have many. She said that those like her who could already read and write were told to read a chapter of a book, then write in their own words what it was about.

‘Once a week Mr Makepeace puts a lot of sums up on the blackboard in the schoolroom,’ Janice went on. ‘We have to stay there till we get them right. But that’s easy, he never gives us really hard ones. Then Mrs Makepeace gives us a spelling test too. The ones we get wrong she makes us write down till we can remember them.’

Adele wondered if Mr Makepeace set different work for older children like her. She was good at arithmetic and spelling already, but she wanted to get better still.

‘What do you do for the rest of the time then?’ she asked.

‘We get jobs to do,’ Janice replied, looking oddly at Adele as if surprised she didn’t know that. ‘Then we play outside if it’s fine. It ain’t real hard here. You don’t get the stick unless you do something really bad. But I still wish I could go home.’

It was dark outside by the time Beryl came back from the kitchen and took Adele upstairs to show her the bedrooms. She was just a year younger than Adele, a slight, dark-haired girl who appeared extremely anxious about absolutely everything.

Adele was to share a room with her and Freda, who was ten. It was chilly, furnished only with iron beds, a locker each and a washbasin. It adjoined the nursery room where baby Mary and Susan and John, the two three-year-olds, slept. It seemed the older girls were expected to take care of the younger ones during the night.

‘Mrs Makepeace gets really cross if they wake her up,’ Beryl said, her dark eyes flitting around the bedroom as if she was convinced someone was eavesdropping on her. ‘Freda never wakes up, so it’s always me what has to see to ’em. You will help me, won’t you?’

Adele assured her she would, and was then shown the other rooms. Lizzie and Janice had a room of their own, with two spare beds in it. The remaining five boys, including Janice’s four-year-old brother, shared another, with ten-year-old Jack in charge.

‘Bertie and Colin are holy terrors,’ Beryl said with a sigh. ‘They are always up to something like trying to sneak downstairs for more food, or having pillow fights. Jack ain’t up to keeping them in line, he’s backward you see, so if we hear them carrying on we have to stop them.’

By the time Adele finally got to bed she had identified why Beryl was so anxious. It seemed Mrs Makepeace delegated all the chores to the children, and as Beryl had been the oldest until Adele’s arrival, she was blamed if things didn’t run smoothly. Beryl hadn’t elaborated further, but she didn’t need to. Adele saw the bleakness in her eyes, the resignation in her voice, and recognized a similarity to her own situation at home.

‘It’s not as bad as the place I was in before,’ she replied to Adele’s blunt question about whether she or any of the other children were ill-treated. ‘We got beatings all the time there, and we hardly had anything to eat. Just watch out for Mrs M. and do what she tells you, or you’ll get it.’

Mr Makepeace was away for the whole of Adele’s first week at The Firs, and for the first two days she thought she must have misunderstood Beryl, for Mrs Makepeace seemed so warm-hearted, caring and jolly. She laughed when Adele asked about lessons. ‘Don’t you go worrying your little head about that,’ she said, as she rummaged through a cupboard of clothes and found a blue checked skirt and a pale blue jumper for Adele to wear. ‘You’ve had a nasty shock, and I’m going to pretty you up, so you feel better.’

She washed Adele’s hair for her, and combed it into two bunches, putting pale blue ribbons on each. ‘That’s better,’ she said, patting Adele’s cheek affectionately. ‘Once that nasty scar has gone and you’ve got some roses in your cheeks you’ll look a different girl.’

It was nice to be fussed over, to be able to confide in the woman about all the horrible things her mother had said to her. Adele could see it was true that Mrs Makepeace did get the children to do much of the work around the house, but she didn’t mind, after all she was used to doing a great deal at home, and at least Mrs Makepeace appreciated it.

But on her third morning Adele discovered that Mrs Makepeace had a cruel and vindictive side to her.

Colin, a tow-headed eight-year-old, had been sent out to collect the eggs from the chickens. It was still raining hard and he’d run back with the eggs, but slipped on the wet grass and broke two of them.

He was crying when he came in, for he’d hurt his knee, but Mrs Makepeace made him cry even harder. ‘You’re useless,’ she raged at him. ‘It’s hard enough feeding all you lot without one of you wasting food. Bertie and Lizzie will have to go without their egg for breakfast because you are so stupid. I hope they make you suffer for it.’

Adele was astounded when she made Colin eat an egg in front of two other children who’d been deprived of theirs. She could see by his tortured face he would gladly have gone without himself for two or even more breakfasts rather than risk his friends’ displeasure. And Mrs Makepeace goaded Bertie and Lizzie to be angry with Colin. She kept asking how their bread and marge was without a boiled egg. She said they should ignore Colin all day.

It was the kind of sinister, manipulative cruelty that her own mother had gone in for. She could remember Pamela being given second helpings of pudding while she was left out. Or Pamela being forced to parade her new skirt or cardigan when Adele needed one far more. The only reason she didn’t turn spiteful to Pamela was because she always knew that was exactly what their mother was aiming at.

Sadly, Bertie and Lizzie did react as Mrs Makepeace wanted. They were nasty to Colin all day. By bedtime he’d withdrawn right into himself, and Adele knew he felt lower than a worm, for that was just the way she used to feel herself.

From then on Adele found herself watching Mrs Makepeace more closely as she doled out her flamboyant affection, patting bottoms, kissing cheeks and tweaking hair, and calling them ‘her little sweetheart’. The recipients glowed with delight, falling over themselves to keep her approval in any way they could, mostly doing extra chores for her. But it soon became clear that their subservience was as much from fear as adoration. At the slightest misdemeanour Mrs Makepeace would crush the love-hungry child with ridicule. She was a master at humiliation, homing in on weakness and insecurity.

Adele got the idea that all the children over five had been selected purposely, for there was a distinct type. There wasn’t one independent, rebellious street urchin – every one was needy in some way. They all had younger brothers and sisters whom they were separated from and missed, which made them ideal nursemaids to the younger ones. Adele could recognize herself and her background in each one of them.

As the days went by she heard Mrs Makepeace reminding the children over and over again in honeyed words that the clothes they wore, the food they ate and the toys they had to play with all came from her and her husband. This wasn’t true either, for Adele discovered that The Firs was a charity, and the Makepeaces mere wardens.

She had made this discovery while dusting Mr Makepeace’s study. A pamphlet with a picture of The Firs was on the desk, and she couldn’t resist reading it. She read that it was a charitable home for ‘Distressed Children’, a place of safety where they could stay until their family circumstances improved or long-term care could be found for them. Donations were required as Mr and Mrs Makepeace, the wardens, had to be paid, along with the housekeeping expenses. Furthermore, it was hoped that enough money could be raised to accommodate more children and give them better school and play facilities.

But whatever Adele thought of Mrs Makepeace, she liked The Firs well enough. She had three meals a day and the company of other children, and she was very glad to wake each morning knowing that she wasn’t going to be slapped or shouted at for merely looking at her mother.

Then Mr Makepeace arrived home and the last of Adele’s little anxieties floated away. Just the way all the children ran eagerly to him to be swung round or thrown up in the air said that he really loved the children in his care.

He was tall, perhaps six feet, with thick dark hair, a moustache and the loveliest, softest brown eyes Adele had ever seen. She thought he must have false teeth because they were so white and even, but when he laughed or smiled, which he seemed to do very readily, there was no give-away flash of anything that wasn’t natural gums. He was a bit portly, but he dressed so beautifully with a waistcoat beneath his suit jacket that it hardly showed.

‘Adele is such a pretty name,’ he said when his wife introduced them. ‘But then you are a very pretty girl. And how are you settling in?’

‘Fine thank you, sir,’ she replied, looking down because she was embarrassed at someone saying she was pretty when she knew she wasn’t.

‘Mrs Makepeace tells me you are a clever girl as well as being pretty,’ he said, putting his hand under her chin and lifting her face up. ‘A good reader, gentle with the little ones, a first-class potato peeler. So many talents. But I don’t think you believe you are pretty too.’

‘No, sir,’ she whispered.

‘Well, you’re wrong,’ he said, looking right into her eyes. ‘Prettiness comes from inside, and I can see it’s there in you. Another couple of years, a bit of filling out, and you’ll be gorgeous.’

His voice was so smooth and deep she couldn’t help but smile at him.

‘There you are,’ he chuckled. ‘A smile that would melt anyone’s heart. Now, come into my study for a moment and we’ll have a chat about your lessons.’

He sat down at his desk and made Adele sit beside him. He took a book down from his shelf and asked her to read a passage. It was
The Mill on the Floss
, a book Adele had read not long before Pamela died. She had loved it and perhaps that was why she lost her nervousness and read it well.

‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘We don’t get many children as able as you here. Now, tell me what you were learning at school before you came here.’

He was so easy to talk to, she found herself telling him far more than he asked. About how she loved reading, that she’d been top of the class in arithmetic, but history was boring and geography didn’t seem to have any use to her personally.

‘But you might travel one day,’ he said with a smile. ‘How would you know how to decide which country you wanted to visit unless you’d studied them?’

Adele had never thought of that aspect, but then she’d never spoken to a man who knew as much as he did. He even seemed to know about the events which had brought about her needing a new home, and he asked how she felt about being brought here.

‘It’s nice,’ she said shyly. ‘But I am a bit worried I’ll get behind with school work.’

‘Mrs Makepeace isn’t a teacher,’ he said slightly reprovingly. ‘And sadly many of the children here aren’t able to learn as readily as you, Adele, and many of them don’t stay here for very long. We have always stuck to just the rudimentary things, reading, writing, sums and spelling, for that is all that is necessary for most. Yet when we have a child here who can learn more, I am only too pleased to help them.’

*

Adele felt she was floating on air in the days that followed Mr Makepeace’s return home. She lost interest in observing his wife and had stopped listening to Beryl’s many whines about how put-upon she was. For the very first time in her life she felt special and she had Mr Makepeace to thank for it.

On his second day home he had called her in from the garden where she was helping with the weeding, and set her a test in arithmetic. When she’d finished that, he marked it, and praised her for getting every sum right, then gave her
A Tale of Two Cities
by Charles Dickens to read over the weekend, and said they would discuss it the following Monday.

As she got into the book she found herself imagining Charles Darnay as Mr Makepeace, which made it all so much more important and vital to her. To complete her happiness over that weekend, Mrs Makepeace relieved her of nearly all her chores, and while the rest of the children were working, or in the younger ones’ case, out in the garden, she curled up on the playroom couch, lost in the drama of the French Revolution.

She finished the book late on Sunday evening, and when she went up to bed she found Beryl awake, stiff with disapproval.

‘You aren’t the first girl he’s made a fuss of,’ she said waspishly. ‘He does that, then when he gets fed up he sends them away.’

Adele wasn’t in the mood for Beryl. She was always moaning about something and she thought the girl was riddled with jealousy.

‘He won’t send me away,’ she retorted confidently. ‘He likes me.’

Chapter Five

Mr Makepeace took the pipe he was lighting from his mouth. ‘How long have you been with us now, Adele?’ he asked.

They were having a private geography lesson in the schoolroom. The room bore little resemblance to the classrooms Adele had been used to, being very small, with just one old refectory table, a few chairs, and a handful of dog-eared books on the window-sill. The only real indication of the room’s purpose was the blackboard, which at present had a large map of the world clipped over it. Mr Makepeace had been pointing to various countries on it and Adele had to write down their names and capitals.

Anyone glancing into the room would have perhaps imagined she was receiving some kind of punishment, as it was a sunny spring afternoon and all the other children were playing outside in the garden. But although the sounds of their voices wafted in through the open windows, Adele had no desire to be out there with them. She was more than content to be having another lesson with her teacher.