Secrets Page 24

  The rest of the letter was taken up with flying and the Corps at Oxford. He was jubilant that he was now a fully qualified pilot and said he was seriously considering a career in the RAF once he’d got his degree.

  As a probationer, Adele didn’t have time to think about Michael much. There was so much theory to learn, with tests every week, and every evening and day off was spent studying. Then there was the coronation of George VI in May and Adele was roped in to help make bunting and other decorations for the hospital. Some of the nurses went up to London to watch the celebrations there, but all the probationers were expected to help at the hospital tea-party in the grounds, either serving teas or escorting the patients who were well enough to attend down to it. For Adele this proved to be a real initiation into the social life of the hospital, as that day she got to know many more people – the clerical and domestic staff along with doctors and other nurses.

  It was that day she began to see that England might really have to go to war again. The rumblings about Adolf Hitler and his ever-increasing power in Germany had been going on for so long she hadn’t taken much notice. She was horrified of course by the way he was treating Jewish people, but it wasn’t until she overheard one of the doctors echoing something Michael had said in his last letter about the man being set on ruling the whole world that she realized what that really meant.

  He would have to be stopped, and it would be young men like Michael who would be called upon to do it. A chill ran down her spine as she looked around her and saw Raymond and Alf, the two young porters, who always teased the student nurses. They would have to go too, so would most of the doctors here, all her friends’ fathers and brothers, and it would be just the same way as it was in the first war, women taking over men’s jobs. Waiting and hoping that their sons, husbands or brothers wouldn’t be on the casualty lists.

  All at once Adele understood why she had been accepted so readily for nursing training. She’d chosen to believe she was exceptional, and that she’d shone at her initial interview. But that probably wasn’t the way it was at all. England would need hundreds more nurses if war really was coming, and perhaps anyone able and willing to train could get in. But though it was a bit disappointing to know she wasn’t that special, it made her that more determined to prove herself.

  Michael came to see her at the start of his long summer vacation without any forewarning. He was only staying a couple of days with his mother before going up to Scotland and he took the chance she’d be off duty. As luck would have it she was; she’d had the day off, and though she usually went home to see her grandmother, on this occasion she had stayed in the nurses’ home to do some studying.

  Some of the other nurses saw him waiting for her in the hall and they teased her unmercifully about it afterwards. It seemed that calling there, rather than arranging to meet in town, implied a serious romance. It also meant Matron would be watching her like a hawk in future.

  It was pouring with rain, so they went in his car to a tea shop in Battle. It was a pretty place with gingham curtains and tablecloths, and lots of bright copper pots hanging from the beams.

  Adele was still in the first throes of enchantment with nursing, having just started on the ward after her probationary theory lessons, and she could talk of nothing else as they drank tea and ate crumpets and cakes. Michael was almost as one-track-minded. He was off to stay with some people who sounded impossibly grand, with a castle on a loch and a private plane which he would be able to fly. Neither of them mentioned the marshes – it was almost as if they were both trying to be different people.

  He looked so suave in grey flannels and a blazer, and he often lapsed into undergraduate slang which she didn’t always understand. He had also grown very handsome; his hair was much longer, his face thinner, and while he was ordering more tea from the waitress, the light from the window caught his angular cheekbones, and she felt a surge of what could only be desire.

  Yet however lovely it was to see Michael again, Adele was left with a sinking feeling that he had weighed her up and found her lacking. She couldn’t blame him – in her cheap cotton dress, with bare legs, prattling on about taking temperatures, bedbaths and the like, she must have looked and sounded so ingenuous.

  She knew he must meet many girls both at Oxford and through friends like the ones in Scotland. She imagined them all terribly well bred, speaking as if they had plums in their mouths and wearing clothes straight out of fashion magazines. Why would he stay interested in someone his parents disapproved of? Especially when there were countless girls out there all prettier, smarter and less trouble than her?

  Michael had to be back at his mother’s for dinner at seven, and when he dropped her back at the nurses’ home he kissed her cheek.

  ‘Next time we’ll arrange it well in advance so we have more time,’ he said. ‘I’d like to take you to dinner or dancing.’

  Adele took a deep breath before replying. She wanted Michael on almost any terms – he made her legs feel wobbly, her heart pound, and she could look into his dark blue eyes for ever and never get bored. But she was a realist, and however much they felt they had in common five years ago when they first met, they were grown up now and poles apart. Even if his parents hadn’t been so against her, it still couldn’t work, and she didn’t want Michael to feel he had some kind of debt to pay back to her.

  ‘No, Michael,’ she said firmly. ‘No dancing or dinner, just drop me a postcard once in a while so I know what you are doing.’

  She had expected that he would look relieved, even laugh and say he was glad she hadn’t grown out of being so direct, but to her surprise he looked stricken and turned off the car engine.

  ‘You don’t like me any more?’ he asked. He put one hand on her cheek so she couldn’t turn away from him and his eyes bored into her.

  ‘Of course I like you, silly,’ she said and made an attempt at a laugh. ‘You will always be a special friend, but that doesn’t mean you’ve got to keep turning up and giving me treats to make up for your father being so horrible to me.’

  ‘Is that why you think I came here today?’ he asked.

  ‘Well yes,’ she said. ‘Maybe you didn’t actually decide that was the reason, but I think it is. You don’t have to feel bad about all that, I’m nursing now, the experience with your mother helped me get there. I haven’t got any hard feelings towards you, or her.’

  He put his other hand on her cheek too, cupping her face between his two hands. ‘You’ve got it all wrong,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to take you to dinner because I feel guilty, it’s because I want you to be my girl.’

  ‘But you can’t possibly want that,’ she said, feeling almost faint at the touch of his hands on her cheeks. ‘How could I ever fit into your world?’

  ‘Look at you,’ he said with a tender smile. ‘You’re beautiful, Adele, capable and strong, you could fit in anywhere you chose to. But I don’t want to get you to fit in anywhere at all, I just want you as you are, wherever you are. I like your values, your lack of conceit, your kindness. I like you, a great deal!’

  Before Adele could say anything, he kissed her. Not a snatched, embarrassed kiss like the first one two years ago, but a real sweetheart’s kiss, and the first Adele had ever had. His lips were far softer than she expected, and his arms went right round her, pulling her close to him. The tip of his tongue parted her lips a little, and suddenly she understood how lovers could stand in railway stations and shop doorways kissing for hours. She thought she could even ignore Matron if she was standing on the steps of the nurses’ home, watching them. She wanted to stay in Michael’s arms for ever.

  ‘Now will you come out with me again?’ he said when the kiss ended. He was still holding her tightly and rubbing his nose against hers. What could she say but yes? When she finally got out of his car she was so happy she felt like running into the nurses’ home and screaming out to everyone that Michael Bailey wanted her to be his girl.

  But it was just as well she didn’t mak
e a public announcement, for it seemed as if she and Michael were jinxed. He came back early from Scotland just to see her, but she had been put on nights and all they had together was a couple of hours in the afternoon walking along the promenade. In September, when he arranged to come again, his car broke down, leaving him stuck twenty-five miles from his home in Alton. He came anyway when it was fixed but they only had time for some fish and chips and she had to go on night duty. He was there again in the morning when she came off duty, but she was so tired she fell asleep in his car on the way to get some breakfast.

  In October he had to go back to Oxford, and as it was his final year he had to buckle down and study. But he wrote to her every week and he begged her not to get fed up with waiting and fall in love with a young doctor.

  Adele could only smile at that. She worked such long hours that by the time she came off duty the only thing she wanted was her bed, and she had to study for her exams too. Besides, it was strictly forbidden for nurses to fraternize with doctors, and even if it had been allowed, not one of them would hold a candle to Michael.

  She daydreamed a great deal about him though, reliving his kisses, remembering every compliment, every joke they’d shared. Yet all the same she held herself in check, not daring to think ahead, for apart from his father’s animosity towards her, there was now the very real threat of war.

  Every day there was something on the news which seemed to bring it closer and closer. Mr Chamberlain, the Prime Minister, might make soothing speeches, but he wasn’t really fooling anyone now. Michael mentioned the RAF more and more in his letters. Sometimes Adele got the idea he was actually hoping for war. He claimed that if it came it would be fought in the skies, not in trenches like the last one, and he said it with excitement and relish.

  How could she think ahead when Michael looked set for the most dangerous profession she could think of?

  Adele kept nodding off to sleep on the bus ride home to Rye that evening. But each time her head touched the cold window she woke with a start. She knew the road so well now that she didn’t need to try to peer out into the darkness to see where they were. Even with her eyes closed, she knew by the bends in the road, the steepness of a hill and even the number of people getting on or off, how far the bus had come. There was a pig farm at Guestling, she could always smell it long before they passed it. She knew when they were stopping at the turn-off for Pett by the wheezing of the fat woman who always got off there.

  She came to with a jerk as the bus drove into Winchelsea, and as always she got ready to look at Harrington House. To her surprise there was a Christmas tree ablaze with electric lights in the window of the drawing room, and she was suddenly wide awake, looking to see if Michael’s car was there. It wasn’t, but she saw a fleeting glimpse of a woman drawing the curtains upstairs in Mrs Bailey’s bedroom. She thought it was probably the housekeeper who Granny said had arrived during the summer. She was a widow by all accounts and the gossip was that she was very religious. Adele wondered what she made of Mrs Bailey’s drinking.

  As the bus went through the Landgate and down the hill Adele got up, rang the bell and walked to the front to get off.

  ‘Mind how you go,’ the conductor said, opening the door for her. ‘It’s icy and you can’t see in the dark.’

  Adele wrapped her scarf more firmly round her neck as the bus pulled away and left her in pitch darkness. It was freezing cold with a raw biting wind coming off the sea. Yet however cold it was, the silence was wonderful. In the nurses’ home and the hospital it was never quiet. She suddenly remembered the first winter she lived here, and how scared she’d been coming home from school when it was dark. She mistook the wind moaning in the trees for spooks, and always felt someone was lying in wait to grab her.

  It was her grandmother who cured her of that. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said sternly. ‘If a man wanted to lie in wait for a girl passing by, he’d pick somewhere a little less chilly and somewhere more likely to catch someone. As for spooks, if there was such a thing, do you really think they’d pick the open countryside when there’s hundreds of ancient houses in Rye to haunt?’

  ‘She isn’t afraid of anything,’ Adele thought as she picked her way carefully past ice-covered puddles in the lane. She didn’t think she’d want to live all alone in such a remote place when she got old.

  But as she smelled the wood smoke and saw the welcoming light in the window, she forgot that she was tired, hungry and cold. It was so good to be home again.

  ‘That was really scrumptious,’ Adele sighed as she scraped up the last of the treacle pudding and custard which had followed chicken, roast potatoes, parsnips and Brussels sprouts. ‘No one makes such good dinners as you, Granny.’

  ‘It’s easy enough when you’ve got fresh produce,’ Honour retorted, but she was smiling with pleasure at the compliment. ‘I expect the vegetables you get at the hospital are weeks old.’

  ‘And cooked to a pulp,’ Adele said. ‘Everything tastes the same. Now, come on, tell me all the gossip!’

  ‘Now, when do I ever see anyone to get gossip?’ Honour said. ‘Without you here it’s not often I need anything at the shop in Winchelsea, so I can’t tell you anything about the Baileys, not even if Michael came for Christmas.’

  Adele blushed. She hadn’t realized she was being so transparent.

  ‘He’ll be back off to Oxford soon,’ she said. ‘But he sent me this for Christmas.’ She fished down the front of her jumper and brought out an oval gold locket.

  Honour came closer and peered at it. ‘It’s real gold,’ she exclaimed. ‘It must have cost a fortune!’

  ‘I know,’ Adele grinned. ‘All the girls were envious. It opens up too, for a picture. I wish I had one of him to put in it.’

  ‘Do his parents know he still keeps in touch?’ Honour asked, and raised one eyebrow.

  ‘I shouldn’t think so,’ Adele replied.

  Honour sighed deeply but made no comment.

  The following day it was even colder, and apart from going out to feed the chickens and rabbits, they stayed huddled round the stove all day, Adele copying up some notes she’d made in a lecture, and Honour knitting. The following day it was just as cold, but Adele noticed there wasn’t very much firewood, and as she was going back to the hospital in the evening, she insisted that she would go out alone to collect some.

  It felt good to be outside bundled up in her old clothes and boots, dragging the little cart behind her. She never walked much in Hastings, after a long day on the ward she was always too tired, but she missed the fresh air and the solitude that had been so much of her life before nursing.

  Within an hour she had filled the cart, for the high winds in the past few weeks had tossed a lot of driftwood up on to the beach. She was just coming back over the shingle bank with one last armful to put in the cart, when to her surprise she saw Michael in the distance.

  He was coming from the direction of Rye Harbour, tramping along with his head down in the wind. He wasn’t dressed for a walk in such a wild place, he appeared to be wearing a long city-type overcoat over a suit and he was bareheaded.

  ‘Michael!’ she shouted, but the wind was too strong for him to hear. She ran the rest of the way to the cart, dumped the wood and then ran back to meet him. It was only when she was about two hundred yards from him that he looked up and saw her.

  ‘Adele!’ he shouted jubilantly, and broke into a run. ‘I never expected to see you. I thought you’d be working.’

  He told her he’d come down on Christmas Eve, but his car was playing up and he’d taken it to a mechanic down by the harbour to fix. He’d got a lift down there this morning from a neighbour of his mother’s, expecting to drive it away repaired, but it needed a new part, and it would be another day before it was ready.

  ‘I should have gone home the road way,’ he said, looking down ruefully at his smart black shoes all covered in mud. ‘These shoes aren’t meant for tough going, but I remembered the first time you showed me the
way to the harbour, and I felt I had to come that way again. Then suddenly there you are in front of me.’

  ‘Would you have knocked at the cottage if you hadn’t seen me?’ she asked, feeling it might have been wiser to have run home, changed into some decent clothes and waited for his knock.

  ‘I don’t think I would have. I’d thought about it already and decided I wasn’t brave enough to face your grandmother.’

  ‘Why on earth not? She doesn’t bear a grudge and she knows we keep in touch,’ Adele said. ‘I showed her the locket the night before last, and she didn’t say anything sharp about it. Thank you for it by the way. It is so lovely, but you shouldn’t have spent all that money on me.’

  She parted the collar of her coat to show him she was wearing it. ‘I’ve got something for you too, nothing grand like this, but I was waiting till you got back to Oxford to send it.’

  He smiled. ‘Look at you!’ he said. ‘You look so beautiful with your rosy cheeks and that woolly hat.’

  Adele blushed. ‘I look a fright more like,’ she said. ‘Why is it you always turn up when I’m unprepared?’

  ‘I don’t believe you could look any more gorgeous than you do now, even if you’d had hours to prepare,’ he said, staring at her intently until she had to drop her eyes from his. ‘You do know I’ve fallen hopelessly in love with you?’

  Adele heard what he said, but she could only think he was joking. He couldn’t be serious. Could he?

  Yet as she lifted her eyes he didn’t appear to be joking. His eyes were so soft and tender, his full lips, red with the wind, were slightly apart as if waiting breathlessly for her reply.

  ‘Are you serious?’ she asked, her voice cracking.

  ‘Never more so,’ he said, and reached out for her. ‘I’ve tried to tell myself a hundred times that I was imagining it, but it doesn’t go away.’