Secrets Page 36

  The train was slow, taking an hour longer than it should have, giving her far too much time to worry about what she was going to find at her journey’s end. She had felt compelled to bring Towzer with her just in case something cropped up and she couldn’t get back again tonight. While he seemed perfectly at home on the carriage floor, she wasn’t sure what he would make of busy streets with buses and trams. Fortunately he seemed to be taking it all in his stride, and Honour felt quite proud of herself that she’d managed to find her way to Hammersmith unaided.

  As Rose had said nothing about her personal circumstances, only that she let out rooms, Honour couldn’t help but feel she must be in difficulties. Why else would she suddenly claim she was sorry for all the hurt in the past?

  Honour was very hot, her best navy blue dress too thick for a summer’s day. Her feet hurt, her eyes felt full of grit, and both she and Towzer desperately needed a drink. But on the plus side, number 103 was no better or worse than any other house in the street.

  It was a soot-engrained terraced house that led straight on to the street, with no front garden. It had three floors and a basement, with a few steps up to the front door which was painted royal blue. Most of the windows were open, and she hoped that meant Rose would be in, and that her journey hadn’t been wasted.

  The bell rang loudly enough to wake the dead, but it was a while before Honour heard someone coming to answer it.

  A young woman of about twenty-five, with bright red hair and conflicting lipstick, opened the door. ‘Yes?’ she inquired.

  ‘I’ve come to see Mrs Talbot,’ Honour said.

  The girl shrugged. ‘I dunno if she’s in. Try knocking on that door.’ She pointed to the second one down the hallway, then flounced off back up the stairs, leaving Honour to come in and close the front door behind her.

  Honour knocked, then called out Rose’s name. There was still no reply. Looking up the stairs, she could see an open door to a white-tiled room that looked like a bathroom. As she needed the lavatory and a drink for Towzer, she went up, taking the dog with her.

  She used the lavatory, which she noted was none too clean, got Towzer’s tin bowl from her bag and gave him a drink of water. As the window was open she put her head out to see what lay behind the house.

  To her surprise, right down below at the basement level, there was Rose lying asleep in a deckchair. A lump came up in Honour’s throat, as from so far away Rose looked young and vulnerable in a pink and white striped sundress, the skirt hitched up over her knees.

  She leaned out of the window and called to her.

  It was almost laughable that while Rose hadn’t heard the loud door bell, the sound of her mother’s voice made her jerk awake immediately, jump to her feet and look round in puzzlement.

  ‘I’m upstairs, Rose,’ Honour called out. ‘I knocked on your door but couldn’t make you hear.’

  Five minutes later Honour was down in the back yard, with Rose sitting opposite her and Towzer between them panting and looking from one to the other, perhaps picking up on the tension between them.

  ‘I shouldn’t have sent that letter,’ Rose said for the third time. ‘I wasn’t quite myself at the time.’

  ‘You were drunk?’ Honour said bluntly.

  ‘No! Of course not,’ Rose said, too quickly. ‘I was just feeling a bit low.’

  Honour was fairly certain Rose had been drunk and had no recollection of writing or posting it, for when she’d let her mother in she seemed completely dumbstruck at being found. That didn’t bother Honour. While she didn’t exactly like the thought that the letter was the rambling of a drunk who had forgotten it by morning, in her opinion people tended to speak from the heart at such times.

  ‘I can’t believe you came all this way on the train,’ Rose said breathlessly, as if desperate to move the conversation on to a different tack. ‘With a dog too! How did you find your way?’

  ‘I might be sixty but my brain still works,’ Honour said dryly. ‘The travelling has made me very thirsty though. Are you going to offer me some tea?’

  She had seen nothing of Rose’s house but the bathroom and a fleeting glimpse of the kitchen, which Rose had quickly led her through to bring her out here. She had said something about it being cooler under the tree as she put up another deckchair, but having a suspicious mind, Honour doubted that was the real reason.

  Rose blushed. ‘Of course, I wasn’t thinking.’ She leaped to her feet. ‘I’ll go and make some.’

  Honour stayed in her deckchair as she wanted to give her daughter time to gather herself. Stunned as Rose had been at her mother’s arrival, she hadn’t seemed horrified, nor had she been belligerent, the way she was when she’d called at Winchelsea. She also looked well, far less brassy than before, and the kitchen at least had been clean and tidy. It was only fair to give her a few minutes to get rid of anything in her living room which might embarrass her, and perhaps remember what she’d actually said in her letter.

  The back yard was surprisingly pleasant – only a scrap of grass, but there was honeysuckle along the walls and a clump of Michaelmas daisies just coming into flower. It had been tended by someone, there were no weeds, and the concrete part by the steps up to the kitchen was well swept. Rose’s letter had implied it was her house, and if this was so, Honour wondered how she’d got the money to buy it. But then there was so much she didn’t know about Rose, and she knew if she was to get anywhere today, she had to curb her desire to ask too many questions.

  Rose came back some ten minutes later with tea things on a tray. She had brushed her hair, put on a little lipstick, and she looked composed. The tea set gave Honour a bit of a jolt, for it was dainty bone china with a dark red band around the cups decorated with gold, and very like a set she had.

  ‘How long have you had the dog?’ Rose asked, putting the tea tray on a wooden crate between them. She reached out to stroke him, and it was clear to Honour that she was very unsure of herself and going to take refuge in neutral conversation.

  Honour explained how Towzer had arrived, and why she had brought him with her today.

  Over the tea they talked about the Battle of Britain. Rose appeared to be quite ignorant about it, but perhaps this was understandable as most of the air battles had been fought over Essex, Kent and Sussex. She complained about rationing, the blackout, and the many false alarms when the air-raid sirens frightened the life out of people.

  ‘We don’t take any notice of them now,’ she said with a shrug. ‘They won’t bomb London. Some people just like to scaremonger. I wish they would stop it, it’s hard enough to get good tenants as it is, without making out London will be flattened soon.’

  From what Honour had seen of London today, there certainly didn’t seem any cause for alarm. The transport was running smoothly, shops were open as usual, people meandering along in the sunshine looked carefree.

  A woman she got into conversation with on the Tube had said that people were getting sick and tired of rushing into shelters when the sirens went off, only to find they’d wasted several hours for nothing as it was a false alarm. She said nothing would make her go into some filthy dirty shelter again. So maybe Rose was right. She lived here after all.

  ‘Is it your house?’ Honour asked after hearing a tirade against some of the people who had lodged here.

  ‘Yes. I’d been saving for a very long time, and I got a little windfall. A friend said I should invest it in property.’ She spoke defensively as if she’d rehearsed that explanation.

  ‘Very sensible,’ Honour said. She wanted to stop the chit-chat, and get back to why Rose had written to her. The tea set, so similar to her own at home, offered a possibility of getting on to a more personal level.

  ‘Your tea set is almost identical to mine,’ she said brightly, picking up the teapot to look at it.

  ‘That’s why I bought it,’ Rose said somewhat sheepishly. ‘I saw it in a secondhand shop and it was a reminder of home.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought yo
u wanted any reminders,’ Honour said, carefully keeping her tone light.

  ‘You’d be surprised at how often I think about the past,’ Rose retorted, and then hung her head a little as if she was aware she would have to follow up that statement with some kind of explanation. ‘Okay, Mother,’ she said, looking directly at Honour. ‘I do regret a lot of things. If I could have my time over again, I would have done everything differently.’

  Honour nodded. ‘You said that in your letter, and that you hoped for forgiveness and a chance to try again. What made you suddenly want that?’

  ‘It wasn’t a sudden thought,’ Rose said with a shrug. ‘I’ve wanted it for a very long time, but since the war began it’s become more vital.’

  ‘I’ve felt that way myself,’ Honour said carefully. ‘But pleased and relieved as I was to find out where you were, I can’t promise forgiveness. That has to be earned.’

  ‘How?’ Rose frowned.

  ‘Well, that’s something you have to think about,’ Honour said. ‘You’ll have to be honest with yourself about your motive for wanting it. Is it because you are lonely or troubled right now?’

  ‘No, I’m fine,’ Rose said indignantly. ‘I’ve got this house, income from my tenants. I can show you round so you can see for yourself.’

  ‘Material things don’t impress me,’ Honour rebuked her. ‘They never have and never will. You and your father were once the axis my world turned on, now it’s Adele. And just as I would have done anything to keep you and Frank safe and well, so I would with my granddaughter. So you have to convince me that your motives are pure before I’ll allow you anywhere near her.’

  ‘I don’t know that I want to go anywhere near her,’ Rose said in a sullen tone. ‘We didn’t get on when she was a child. I doubt it would be any different now.’

  ‘If you’re going to take that attitude then I might as well leave right now,’ Honour snapped back. ‘Adele and I are a package. If you want me somewhere in your life, you’ll have to make amends to her.’

  Rose said nothing for a little while, twisting her hands in her lap.

  ‘I do want to make amends,’ she said eventually. ‘It’s just that I don’t believe she’ll ever meet me halfway. I know I handled everything so badly that day I came to see you. There was so much I wanted to say, but I shouldn’t have just turned up like that and been so—’ She paused, clearly not knowing how to describe her attitude that day.

  ‘Insolent?’ Honour suggested. ‘That’s how you were, Rose. Ignorant, ungracious, unfeeling, all those things. I could see no trace left of the daughter I had nurtured so carefully. You must have lived with some very low sorts to get like that.’

  Rose stiffened. ‘Low sorts were the only ones to give me shelter,’ she said defiantly. ‘I wouldn’t have married Jim Talbot if I hadn’t been desperate.’

  Honour looked hard at her daughter. She did look very much better than she had at their last meeting. Her blonde hair was shiny and fixed up in the latest style, a sort of thick roll along the back of her neck which puzzled Honour as to how it was achieved. She was suntanned, slimmer too now, and the pink and white sundress had a classy look. But there were lines on her face, and they weren’t ones of laughter. She was still a very attractive woman, but she looked hard.

  ‘Jim Talbot was in the distant past,’ Honour said eventually. ‘But have you dragged that past into the present?’

  ‘What on earth do you mean by that?’ Rose riled up. ‘It seems to me you’re the one who wants to drag the past up!’

  Honour felt she had to be firm. ‘Now don’t start, Rose. Just listen to me for a moment. The way you left, and your father dying, made me bitter and reclusive. I remained that way right up till the day Adele turned up. So I do know why people drag the past with them and wallow in the misery of it. Now, once you got out of that asylum, did you make a concerted effort to change your way of life?’

  ‘Yes, of course I did,’ Rose snapped. ‘Look at me now, am I living in a slum? Am I unkempt, dirty or barmy?’

  ‘No, you aren’t,’ Honour agreed. ‘But have you achieved what you have now by your own efforts and hard work?’

  ‘I suppose you think I got it from a man.’ Rose got up from her deckchair and glowered down at her mother. ‘What do you think I am? A tart?’

  Honour opened her mouth to reply, but she was stopped short by the sound of aircraft in the distance. A dull, droning sound that she knew from experience wasn’t small fighter planes.

  ‘Listen,’ she said as she jumped up and caught hold of Rose’s arm. ‘Bombers!’

  ‘So it may be, but they aren’t going to drop any here.’ Rose shook off her hand. ‘It’s bad enough you calling me a tart. I can’t cope with hysterics too.’

  Honour stood stock-still, her ears straining to hear the planes, and ignoring her daughter. There was a shrill whine, then a dull thud, quickly followed by others, and then the ear-piercing shriek of the air-raid warning siren which made Towzer howl.

  ‘Where’s the nearest shelter?’ Honour asked, grabbing her bag and the lead for Towzer who continued to howl at full throttle.

  ‘There’s one down the road, but you can’t take dogs into them,’ Rose said tetchily. ‘For goodness’ sake, Mother, calm down and stop that damned beast making that horrible noise.’

  ‘Then we must go inside, Rose,’ Honour said, going over to Towzer and putting her arms around him protectively. ‘Is there a cellar?’

  ‘Yes, I use it for storing things,’ Rose said, casually picking up the tray of tea things as if there was nothing to be concerned about. ‘Don’t panic, Mother. We’ll go up to the top floor and look out, you can see for miles up there. Perhaps then you’ll calm down.’

  The room Rose spoke of did have a good view towards central London, but the sight that met their eyes robbed them both of speech. The sky was full of planes, so far away they looked no bigger than birds, but rising ominously up to meet them was a mushroom of black smoke.

  All at once it was Rose who looked terrified, and she turned to Honour wringing her hands. ‘Oh my God!’ she exclaimed. ‘They really are bombing! What shall we do?’

  ‘We go and look at your cellar,’ Honour said. ‘I’m not going into a shelter without Towzer. How far away is that cloud would you say?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Rose gasped, her face suddenly white. ‘The West End maybe, but it could be as far away as the East End. It’s difficult to tell.’

  ‘Whitechapel?’ Honour asked, her legs suddenly feeling like jelly.

  ‘Could be,’ Rose said. ‘Come on, let’s get downstairs before they get here.’

  Later, Honour was to realize that if the air-raid warning had not come when it did, she would not have discovered much about her now grown-up daughter. They probably would have ended up arguing, and Honour would almost certainly have travelled home later with as many unanswered questions as she arrived with.

  It was four o’clock when the siren went off, but by seven that evening Honour had established that aside from the traits of selfishness and stubbornness that she already knew so well, Rose was easily panicked, averse to any kind of manual work, and had precious little humanity.

  The noise was distant but incessant. Bombs dropped for two hours, and alongside this was the sound of ack-ack guns, ambulance and fire-engine bells. It was only when they listened to the six o’clock news that they had it confirmed that bombs had fallen only on the East End and docklands, not, as Honour had imagined, all over London.

  She didn’t know that then, though, and she felt it was imperative to create a place of safety as quickly as possible. But Rose dithered, chain-smoked and did no more than close the windows.

  It was Honour who knocked on the tenants’ doors to check who was in. It was she who cleared out the cellar, swept the floor, carried down chairs, blankets, pillows and other comforts. When Honour suggested Rose filled buckets with water to put out fires from incendiary bombs, she just looked blank as if she’d never heard of such a thing.


  ‘This house might not be hit today,’ Honour snapped at her eventually. ‘But they almost certainly will get this far across London sometime. You’ve got to make preparations for that, Rose! And the safety of your lodgers might depend on you too.’

  ‘Surely I haven’t got to look after them?’ Rose retorted in horror.

  There hadn’t been anyone in when Honour checked, but that was probably only because it was a warm day. Tonight, or any night, it might be different.

  ‘Up to a point you must look out for them. Obviously as adults they can decide whether to go to an official shelter or not,’ Honour said wearily. ‘But in an emergency you must make this cellar available to them.’

  The moment the all-clear went off, Rose rushed out of the front door without so much as an explanation, leaving Honour to continue making the storeroom comfortable. She was writing a list of things she felt Rose needed to buy to keep in there for emergencies, such as candles, tinned milk and foodstuffs, and a paraffin stove for heating in the winter, when her daughter came back with a bottle of brandy, saying someone had told her the docks were ablaze.

  At seven-thirty, when the siren went off again, it was already dusk. If Honour hadn’t already made corned beef sandwiches and a flask of tea and prepared Towzer’s dinner with the food she’d brought with her, they would have gone hungry, for Rose rushed into the storeroom with her brandy, without a thought for anyone but herself.

  As bombing began again, Honour went upstairs to check if any tenants had come in without her hearing them. There was no one there, but a look out of the top floor window shocked her. The night sky was a brilliant red over to the east, and clearly this was the dock fire Rose had spoken of.

  Honour had not intended to tell Rose that Adele was nursing in London, at least not before she had established whether Rose deserved to be reunited with her daughter. But she was so afraid for Adele once she’d seen the flames that she couldn’t help but blurt it out.