Secrets Read online

  Frank and his younger brother Charles only stayed at the local school, where they had often been Honour’s playmates, until they were eight, then they were sent to boarding school. But they remained friends, and always came to see Honour in their holidays. Both boys helped out in their father’s shop as they got older, and Frank often delivered groceries on a bicycle with a big basket for goods on the front. Whenever he came past the schoolhouse, he always stopped to chat to Honour, and he often gave her a ride on the front of the bike.

  By the time he left school at seventeen and came home to work for his father, Honour only had eyes for the tall, slender young man with bright blue twinkly eyes and a mop of unruly blond hair. Frank wasn’t particularly handsome, but he had a joyful nature and he was kind, funny and interested in nature, music, art and books. With him as a friend Honour didn’t need anyone else.

  She was seventeen when she began officially ‘walking out’ with Frank, and both families were delighted. The Cauldwells might not have been wealthy like the Harrises but they were well respected. Frank often joked to Honour that his father kept begging him to marry her because she had brains, and that would improve the family business.

  They were married in 1899, when Honour was twenty and Frank twenty-two. They moved into the flat above the shop, which had been empty for some years since the Harrises had bought a house on the outskirts of Tunbridge Wells. Honour remembered being deliriously happy at having such a lovely home. The Harrises were so generous, showering them with gifts of furniture, linen and glass – there was even a maid to do the rough work. And as Frank was the assistant manager in the shop, he was in and out all day, so she never felt lonely as some of her girlfriends did when they left their own families to be married.

  Honour was always aware that Frank had no real love for the grocery business. He was a sensitive and artistic man who would have much preferred to be a gardener or even a gamekeeper than weigh out sugar and cut meat and cheese. But it was his father’s dream that his eldest son should eventually inherit the business, and Frank felt obligated to him. He consoled himself in moments of irritation by saying that the shop ran itself anyway, as the assistants had all been trained so well by his father. He found time in quiet periods for his sketching and for walks in the country, and he often told Honour he considered himself the most fortunate of men.

  Two years later, in 1901, Rose was born, a plump, adorable baby with white blonde hair, and made her parents’ happiness complete. But just a few weeks after her birth, Cedric Harris had a severe stroke. Confined to a chair, and knowing he wasn’t going to recover, he made the shop over entirely to Frank.

  Until it became his sole responsibility, Frank had never realized just how much work there was in running the shop. All at once there were books to keep, orders to check, and suddenly there was no time left for sketching, walks in the country, or even playing with his baby daughter.

  Honour knew she didn’t help him adjust to the extra work load by constantly complaining that she was bored being alone all day with Rose. But she was young and unthinking, and she missed the carefree times they’d had previously.

  The following year Frank tried to make it up to her by arranging a holiday for the three of them in Hastings, at the same hotel where they’d spent their honeymoon. But to their disappointment it was fully booked. They weren’t happy about going to a strange hotel with a baby, so when one of their wealthier customers offered them the use of a small cottage in Rye, a place he claimed was much prettier than Hastings, they were delighted to accept.

  Almost from the moment they stepped off the train, they fell in love with Rye. They were enchanted by the quaint old houses, the narrow cobbled streets, and the long and fascinating history of a place which had once been an important port. Frank wanted to sketch everything he saw, from the old fishermen sitting with their pipes outside the sail sheds, to ancient buildings and the wildlife on the marshes. Honour loved waking up in the morning to the smell of the sea, instead of cheese and bacon. It was wonderful to have Frank’s complete attention, and she felt free for the first time in her life.

  Rye had none of the genteel sophistication of Tunbridge Wells, or the heady delights of Hastings with its pier and concerts. Most of its residents had never been further than ten miles away from their home, they worked the land, they fished or built boats. They were friendly, simple people, who had to work too hard to keep their many children to concern themselves with fashion, world news, or even politics.

  Honour found that there were none of the social restraints in Rye that she had had drummed into her from babyhood. She could run down the street with Rose in her perambulator if she wished, abandon her hat and gloves without raising an eyebrow. The outsiders who’d settled there were people like herself and Frank, attracted by the beauty and serenity of the town and the surrounding marshes. Many of them were writers, musicians and artists. Frank would point out the artists, sitting at their easels sketching and painting in the sunshine, and he became obsessed with the idea of having a holiday cottage there.

  They heard about Curlew Cottage just two days before they were due to go home, and Frank wanted it even before they saw it. Honour tried to talk him out of it, pointing out that it was a long walk from Rye, water came from an outside pump, and the cottage was almost falling down. But Frank wouldn’t listen: the rent was cheap, he loved it, and he was determined to have it.

  ‘We have to have a little world of our own,’ he said, his blue eyes shining with excitement. ‘Everything back in Tunbridge Wells is Father’s. His shop, his flat, his customers. We live our life secondhand. But I could cope with that if we could escape now and then.’

  Put like that, Honour could only agree. She thought it would be fun to have holidays in such a wild place – they could get bicycles and explore everywhere, take dips in the sea, tramp miles on the marsh. It would be lovely for Rose as she got older, for there was no garden at the shop for her to play in. Honour was also excited at the idea of turning the tumbledown cottage into a real little home.

  Honour could still look back on the first holiday they spent at the cottage and smile, despite all the trouble and hardship which came later. They were like a couple of children playing house as Frank whitewashed the walls and she hung cheap gingham at the windows for curtains. Every afternoon they’d take Rose for a walk, and fill bags with wood for the fire at night. They had almost no furniture then, just a cheap bed bought in Rye, a table and two chairs, and they hung their clothes on nails. They would go to bed with the windows wide open, listening to the sounds of the wading birds that lived in the many ditches and swampier ground. They could hear the sea washing over shingle, and the wind rustling the gorse bushes.

  It was the happiest time, so much joy and laughter as they learned to cook on an open fire and mend the shingles on the cottage walls, and attempted to make a garden on ground which was barren and pebbly. On hot days they would strip off Rose’s clothes and let her play in a tub of water, while Frank painted and Honour sat in the sun reading.

  The following summer they bought two bicycles, and Frank made a little saddle for Rose on his crossbar. They would ride down through Rye and on to Camber Sands, sometimes even going as far as Lydd, where they would buy an ice-cream before returning home.

  Later, after the collapse of the business, Honour often reproached herself. If she had pitched in and helped Frank in the shop, rather than encouraging him to go off to Rye any time he looked fed up, it might not have happened. Yet Frank insisted the blame was all his.

  He claimed the shop had prospered in his father’s hands because Cedric Harris loved it. He had the business acumen and the right obsequious mentality to butter up the gentry around Tunbridge Wells to keep their custom. Frank wasn’t made that way, he couldn’t fawn over people just so they would give him a weekly order. He didn’t take pride in having twenty different kinds of biscuits, or ten varieties of tea. It irritated him that the customers felt they owned him.

  Frank admit
ted just before he died that perhaps he let things slide purposely, because he had a horror of them ending up like their parents, sober and narrow-minded people who went to church every Sunday and followed the strict etiquette of their class. He said he wanted passion, danger, to know he was really alive.

  Honour had smiled about the passion – that was one thing that even hardship didn’t stop. Frank experienced danger too in the war, and she supposed they did truly know they were alive, when they were so cold they had to wear their coats inside the cottage, and had periods of near-starvation. But had she known how things would turn out, she wouldn’t have been so eager to follow Frank’s lead.

  Cedric Harris died suddenly in 1904, and much to his widow and two sons’ shocked surprise, he hadn’t amassed a fortune as they’d supposed. After debts had been cleared there was only a couple of hundred pounds and the family home remaining. This he had left to Charles, the younger brother, on the understanding he was to take care of his mother, because he had already given the shop to Frank.

  Antagonism between the two brothers began to erupt almost immediately. Charles worried that Frank seemed set on letting their father’s business run into the ground. Frank’s way of dealing with anything unpleasant was to avoid it. He didn’t like to see his younger brother’s irritation with him, so he took Honour and Rose off to the cottage even more often. During that time the elderly owner offered to sell it to them for a nominal sum, so Frank bought it and became even keener to go there more often.

  The more he was away, the more the business sank. One by one, the wealthiest people in the town stopped coming in, and without a quick turnover of perishable goods there was a great deal of waste. But Frank and Honour weren’t really aware of this until it was too late. They were totally immersed in their carefree way of life down on the marshes.

  Rose was eleven when the shop finally collapsed. Frank went in one morning to find a couple of angry suppliers waiting for him. They hadn’t been paid for months, and they wanted their money immediately. Frank paid them, but he couldn’t persuade them to give him any further goods on credit.

  The shop had survived eight years of Frank’s neglect, but once the word got around it was in difficulties, it took only a few weeks to fail completely.

  Even now, nineteen years later, Honour could still picture the way Frank looked when he came upstairs to her after locking the shop door for good. He was thirty-five then, but still as slender and boyish as the day they married. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said, his face breaking into a wide grin. ‘We’ll sell the building and go and live in Curlew Cottage for ever.’

  He made her believe it would be paradise, that the interest on the capital from the sale of the shop building would keep them. He would sell his paintings, and they’d raise a few chickens and grow their own vegetables. Everything would be fine.

  Honour sighed deeply. Back then she was as naive as Frank. She didn’t stop to think what living on the marsh in winter would be like, or that Rose would resent leaving her old school and friends behind. It didn’t cross her mind that her own parents would see their only child’s sudden departure from Tunbridge Wells as abandonment. She didn’t know what real poverty meant then either, not until their capital was depleted.

  Nor did she know then that just two years later England would go to war with Germany and Frank would enlist. If anyone had told her on the day the shop closed for the last time that within six years she’d be wishing for death to release her from the struggle to survive another day, she would have laughed at them.

  The candle had burned right down to a mere stub while Honour had been reliving the past. It hurt to dredge it all up, to look at what a good life they could have had if only they hadn’t chased dreams. If Frank had kept the shop going he could have avoided joining up, and perhaps he’d still be alive today. If they’d stayed in Tunbridge Wells maybe Rose would have turned out differently too.

  But the past was past, and there was nothing to gain by wishing they’d done things differently. It was the present that mattered to Honour now, and until this evening her life, though often hard, had been tranquil and agreeable. She made just enough to live on with the sale of her eggs, preserves and rabbits, and she loved the marshes and her little home. She didn’t want change, heartache or further responsibilities.

  Especially not a child to take care of. She would be a constant reminder of Rose and all that grief she caused. She couldn’t and wouldn’t keep her here.

  Adele woke suddenly at the sound of a cockerel crowing and for a second or two she thought she was still at The Firs and had dreamt the long walk to Rye.

  But her feet were throbbing, her face felt as if it was on fire, and when she tried to sit up, a sharp pain in her back prevented her, and she soon realized this was no dream.

  It was very early, for the light coming through the thin gingham curtains was still grey, and above the sound of birdsong, she could hear her grandmother snoring in the next room.

  She was relieved to see that her imagination hadn’t been playing tricks with her, and that her grandmother’s living room was every bit as cluttered and odd as the brief impression she’d formed when she arrived.

  The couch she lay on was in front of the stove, one of those old-fashioned ones with a fire inside it. It had gone out now, and she supposed her grandmother had to light it each morning. From her position on the couch, the front door was in front of her, the scullery behind, and her grandmother’s bedroom door to her right beside the stove. To her left at the back of the couch were a table and chairs and all the clutter. It even blocked the light from the window back there.

  She’d never seen anything like it: piles of cardboard boxes, a chest of drawers perched on an old sideboard. There was a stuffed russet-coloured bird with a long tail in a glass case, a big carved wooden bear which looked as if it could be a coat and hat stand, and a mattress stacked against the wall. She wondered what was in all the boxes. Could her grandmother be preparing to move somewhere new?

  The bird, the bear and the table and chairs all looked as though they came from a rich person’s house; even the couch she lay on was dark red velvet. It didn’t seem to go with a woman who wore men’s clothes and had no electricity.

  Adele wanted to go to the lavatory, but when she tried to get up again, she found she still couldn’t. She felt awful too, and very scared when she remembered how nasty her grandmother had been last night. She didn’t dare call out, so she closed her eyes and tried to go back to sleep.

  She must have dozed off again, coming to with a jolt as a door creaked. Bright sunshine was coming through the windows now and the sound was her grandmother coming out of her bedroom. She had a shawl around the shoulders of her flannel night-gown.

  ‘I need to go to the lav,’ Adele said hesitantly. ‘I tried to get up, but I can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’ her grandmother asked, peering down at her suspiciously.

  ‘I hurt all over,’ Adele said.

  ‘You’re just stiff I expect. I’ll help you.’

  Her help was merely to catch hold of Adele’s two arms and jerk her upwards. Adele bit back a scream of pain and wavered on her sore feet.

  Her grandmother offered her arm to hang on to and Adele edged towards the scullery, wincing with every step.

  ‘Slip your feet into those,’ Honour ordered, nudging a pair of old slippers towards Adele with her foot. ‘It’s not far to the privy.’

  When the back door opened, the view in front of her beyond the fence of the large garden was so beautiful and unexpected that Adele momentarily forgot the pain she was in.

  Waving grass studded with wild flowers stretched all the way to Rye. To her right was the ruined castle she’d seen on her way here, and a river like a slick of silver ribbon winding its way through the lush grass.

  A honking noise made her look up. A flock of large birds with long necks were flying over, and as she watched they swooped down on to the river, landing gracefully without even making a ripple.


  ‘Wild geese,’ her grandmother said. ‘We get dozens of different kinds here.’

  Adele suddenly became aware again of how much she hurt and hobbled on to the privy which her grandmother had pointed out, almost hidden beneath a bush covered in large purple flowers. When she came out again a few minutes later she saw her grandmother opening a rabbit hutch to let the occupants out into their run.

  ‘I like rabbits,’ Adele said as two very large brown and white rabbits came out and sniffed the air expectantly.

  ‘They aren’t pets,’ her grandmother said coldly. ‘I breed them for their fur and the meat.’

  By the afternoon Adele was in despair, and convinced her grandmother really was a witch, for she had to be the nastiest person she’d ever met. All she wanted to do was lie down, close her eyes and go to sleep, but her grandmother said she must sit in the chair.

  She had made her put on an old dress of hers while she washed Adele’s, and she kept firing questions at her that mostly she felt too ill to answer. One moment she was cold, the next so hot she was sweating, but her grandmother didn’t appear to notice for she kept going outside to do jobs.

  She was cross when Adele ate only a few spoonfuls of soup for dinner, and then she plonked a jigsaw on a tray and ordered her to do it instead of staring into space.

  Adele had always loved jigsaws, but her head spun as she looked at the pieces. She wanted to cry and say how ill she felt, but she was sure that if she did, it would only make the woman nastier.

  She wished she hadn’t come here now. It would have been better to have taken her chances going to Mrs Patterson.

  ‘Drink this up!’

  Adele started nervously at her grandmother’s voice so close to her. She was holding out a cup of tea in one hand and a plate with a slice of fruit cake in the other. ‘Come on, sit up straight, and don’t mind the flecks of cream on the tea, it won’t do you any harm. But I’d better go and buy some more milk, it goes off so quickly in this warm weather.’