Secrets Read online

  But her tears were not only for her granddaughter, they were for Emily Bailey too. Honour had run into her once in Rye, during the time of the Battle of Britain, and she had asked after Michael. Emily had been transparently pleased to be able to talk about him to someone who knew him well. She had spoken of him with such pride, yet she had looked so tense and thin, and there were deep shadows around her eyes from sleepless nights.

  Honour had come fully to understand that kind of anxiety and dread since she was caught up in the air raid. Yet she could remind herself that Adele was in an underground ward most of the time, that she could run to a shelter if she was outside when the siren went. Emily wouldn’t have been able to reassure herself in that way. She knew as everyone did that when an aeroplane was hit, the chances of the pilot surviving were very small.

  Honour knew too that if Adele were to be killed, she would be unable to bear the loss. She wouldn’t even want to try. And she guessed that was just how Emily must feel right now. Her heart told her to put on her coat and boots and walk up to Winchelsea and see her. But she knew she wasn’t able to walk that far – if she slipped on the icy road she might break her leg again. She would write a letter instead, it might be a small comfort for Emily to know that people felt for her.

  It was half past three when Rose left Rye to go home, but already getting dark. There had been long queues in all the shops, and although she’d managed to get oil for the lamp, some cheese, butter and tea, no one had any sugar. She’d spent longer in the pub than she meant to, but it was fun having a flirt with two soldiers on leave. Her mother would not approve, but then if Rose couldn’t have a couple of drinks and some male company now and then, she’d be climbing the walls and snapping her mother’s head off.

  After the pub shut she’d had to rush to the library, and now she was concerned that she’d left Honour alone for so long.

  But it had been a good day, despite the bitter cold. Queuing might be time-consuming, but it hadn’t been dull. Everyone had been chatting and laughing, and she’d seen a couple of women she’d been at school with, and both had been very pleased to see her. Her cynical nature told her that they only spoke because they hoped to get a few morsels of gossip to spread around, yet it had been nice to get re-acquainted. She was very touched to find they both believed Adele came to live with her grandmother when Rose became ill. She hadn’t expected that her mother would resort to white lies to save Adele embarrassment or shame. Once she might have embellished her ‘illness’ further to gain sympathy, but she felt quite proud of herself that she’d passed it off with a shrug and said that Honour had been a better mother than she could have been.

  Despite getting to the library so late, she managed to beat another woman to a copy of Gone with the Wind. She had been trying to get it for weeks now, but much as she wanted to bury herself in it tonight, she felt she owed it to Honour to allow her to read it first.

  All in all, Rose felt pretty good about herself. For perhaps the first time in her adult life she was happy. To her utter surprise she didn’t miss London at all, and once she’d learned to adjust to the chores at the cottage, she even found them enjoyable.

  The day she spilled out all her old grievances to Honour had cleared the air. She found herself staggered that her mother was capable of admitting she’d been thoughtless. But then Rose had been agreeably surprised many times in the past months to find her mother was very different to the indifferent, prudish and bull-headed person she had created in her mind over the years.

  Honour was in fact good company. She had a lively and often wicked sense of humour. She was earthy, straight-talking and very practical. There were of course days when they’d snarled at each other, but then it was difficult to get used to having someone else around all the time when you’d lived alone for so long. Rose had resented being at her mother’s beck and call at first, and Honour had been deeply suspicious of anything Rose said or did. Not all the bitterness was entirely resolved for either of them yet, but as Honour was so fond of pointing out, ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day.’

  Yet on balance there was far more laughter than rows, and Rose had experienced moments of extreme tenderness towards Honour, especially when she bore pain and immobility so stoically.

  If it weren’t for the situation with Adele, Rose felt she could live with her mother indefinitely, providing she could go out dancing or to the cinema every week. But she couldn’t possibly forget the hatred and scorn her daughter had lashed her with. Or the threats, and she was certain that once Honour was fully recovered, Adele would expect Rose to clear off for good.

  Each week when she walked up to Winchelsea at the arranged time to telephone her daughter, Rose felt sick with nerves. Adele wasn’t insulting or even offhand, but there was no warmth in her voice, no suggestion she might be gradually softening, even though Rose knew Honour had told her in her letters that everything was working out well. As the London Blitz was still continuing, with bombing every night, Adele hadn’t been able to get time off to come down here, not even at Christmas. Rose knew that until she did come home, and saw for herself that Rose had kept her part of the bargain and perhaps changed for the better, she was always going to despise and think the worst of her.

  Rose and Honour were very aware that the news reports on the wireless were not giving the full picture of how it was in London or in the war at large. Adele’s letters, information passed on by neighbours with family and friends in the city or on the front lines, revealed a very different one. People were being killed and injured in their thousands, the Germans were better equipped and had more manpower, and it didn’t look possible that England could beat them. Nightly they heard bombers flying in, sometimes they heard bombs dropped well before the planes reached London. Refugees from both Europe and London arrived down here daily, having mostly lost everything in their flight. Sometimes Rose would stand at the window of the cottage looking towards the beach with its huge rolls of barbed wire, and wonder how long it would be before the Germans invaded Britain.

  They would probably land along this stretch of coast, and she and Honour might very well be in graver danger than facing the bombs in London.

  The daylight had gone completely by the time Rose drew near to the lane which led to the cottage. There was a full moon, but it flitted in and out of banks of clouds, giving only fleeting silhouettes of the rooftops in Winchelsea up on the hill and the black slick of river.

  The blackout made night-time so scary. No welcoming light glowed at the cottage, or from the houses in Winchelsea. It was like being the only person left in the world, and very few cars came this way now as people saved their petrol for emergencies. The moon went behind the clouds again, and Rose cursed herself for not bringing her torch with her. It would be hell on the lane, stepping into unseen ice-covered puddles or stubbing her toes on big stones.

  She hesitated where the lane began, looking up to where the moon had been moments before. ‘Come on out, Mr Moon,’ she said, and giggled at herself for being so childish.

  A noise made her turn her head. It sounded like someone or something in the meadow by the river. Assuming it was a sheep, she stepped gingerly on to the lane. But on hearing the sound again, she stopped and listened.

  The noise sheep made was the very fabric of life on the marsh, and this sound wasn’t one of theirs. Sheep weren’t given to walking about when it was as cold as this, they’d be far more likely to be huddled together under the hedge. She was sure this sound was human, for it was more than just feet scrunching on the frosty grass, but panting too.

  The moon came out again, and to her astonishment she saw a woman in the meadow. The moon glinted on her fair or white flowing hair, and she appeared to be running towards the river.

  The moon vanished again, but the sound of the panting was louder now, and it seemed to Rose that the woman was in distress. In a flash of intuition she suddenly realized she was intent on drowning herself.

  There was no other explanation for her being in th
e meadow, not in the dark, or in such cold weather. Rose knew from her own experiences that people could do extraordinary things in moments of desperation, and she knew she must stop this woman.

  Forgetting that seconds before she had been anxious about ice and stones, she dropped her shopping at the side of the lane, made for the hole in the hedge she often used when collecting wood and squeezed through. She couldn’t see the woman now, but as she started over the meadow towards the river, she heard a splash.

  Racing towards the spot where the sound had come from, she was just in time to see one very white hand flailing about in the dark water. The rest of the woman was submerged.

  Rose looked desperately around her. The nearest house was her own, but Honour wouldn’t be able to help with this. By the time she got help elsewhere the woman would be drowned. There was no choice but to deal with it herself.

  She stripped off her coat and jumped, not daring to consider how cold it was, how deep the water or how strong the current might be. As she hit the icy water the shock was so great she felt her heart was going to stop, but she forced herself to tread water while she found the woman.

  The moon came out again for just long enough for Rose to make out something which wasn’t weed floating on the surface. It took only four or five strokes to reach it, and as her hand met woollen fabric she realized it was the woman’s coat or loose dress.

  Still treading water, she grabbed it with one hand, the other feeling in the water beneath it. Her hand touched a limb, and she yanked it up.

  It was a leg, with no stocking or shoe, and somehow that told her the woman had definitely lost her mind.

  The water was so cold Rose felt almost paralysed, but still holding the leg so the woman wouldn’t sweep off in the current, she reached down again, further this time, and upon reaching what seemed to be her waist, hooked her arm right round it and hauled her up. The weight pulled Rose under, and she had to let go of the leg to regain the surface, but she still held tightly around the woman’s waist, and finally she managed to get her up to the surface.

  The moon came out again, and to Rose’s surprise the woman wasn’t young, as she had supposed by the long hair, but middle-aged, and tied round her neck like some kind of bizarre necklace was a heavy chain. This was clearly the reason why she had been head down in the water.

  Fear that the woman would pull her down too gave Rose new strength, and she wrenched off the chain. Suddenly the woman was very much lighter. She appeared lifeless, but Rose seemed to remember it took longer than just two or three minutes to drown.

  She found it easy enough to get to the bank, swimming on her back and holding the woman’s head up with her hands, but it was quite another thing to climb out while hauling someone else.

  She tried holding on to the woman’s coat, and had got halfway up the bank when it began to slip out of her grasp, weighted down by the body inside it.

  ‘Damn you,’ she shouted aloud. ‘I’m bloody well not leaving you in here, even if that is what you want. Help me, for God’s sake.’

  But the woman couldn’t help, and there was no alternative but for Rose to slip back into the water. By now she was so cold she thought she might very well die of it too. Her hands were completely numb, but she got behind the woman, grasped her around the waist and with one almighty shove, got her halfway up the bank.

  Scrabbling up beside her, Rose got on to the grass at the top of the bank, then reached down and caught hold of the woman under her arms. She hauled her up, then turned her on to her stomach on the grass.

  Rose had only seen artificial respiration done a couple of times, and she wasn’t sure she remembered how it was done, or even if it was far too late to attempt it. But she pressed down on the woman’s back, then lifted her shoulders, and kept doing it.

  ‘Breathe, for God’s sake,’ she yelled as she pumped. ‘Do you think I want to die of cold out here with you?’

  Darkness had never seemed so terrifying before. It wrapped round them like a thick blanket, and Rose was tempted to run for it now because she could do no more. Yet she still pumped despite the cold, tears pouring down her face, hot on her icy skin.

  And then she heard a splutter.

  ‘That’s it,’ she cried triumphantly. ‘Come on, breathe, damn you! Breathe!’

  She heard rather than saw water spurt out of the woman’s mouth, and it sounded like gallons. Then more spluttering, and Rose put her head down by her face and heard faint, rasping breathing.

  ‘Good girl,’ she said, and left her for a second while she rushed to get the coat she’d dropped earlier. She wrapped it round the woman, holding her in a sitting position, and though her head was lolling, she really was breathing.

  In Rose’s mind there was only one thing to do, and that was to get herself and this would-be suicide back to the cottage. She didn’t dare leave her as she might slip back into the river, and anyway she could die of cold before help got here. So she hauled her bodily to her feet, then bent over so the woman sagged across her shoulder, the way firemen lifted people. Stumbling under the weight, Rose made her way to the lane.

  Water squelched out of her shoes, every part of her was so cold it hurt, and the woman was so heavy that Rose didn’t think she could carry her more than a few yards. But she concentrated her mind on taking just one step at a time, each one getting her closer to the cottage.

  She heard the woman vomit down her back, but at least that meant she was coming round. Still she plodded on, focusing only on reaching the front door.

  ‘Mother!’ she yelled as she reached the path. ‘Open the door.’

  Nothing had ever been more welcoming than to see the door flung wide and the golden glow of the lamp spilling out behind her mother’s silhouette.

  ‘What on earth have you got there?’ Honour cried out. ‘Is it an animal?’

  ‘A drowned one,’ Rose retorted, and she wanted to laugh then, for just to see her mother made her feel safe again.

  ‘Oh my goodness,’ Honour exclaimed as Rose laid her burden down on the hearthrug in front of the fire. ‘It’s Emily!’

  She began stripping off the woman’s sopping clothes and wrapping her in blankets. Rose told her briefly what had happened, but the combination of the sudden warmth of the room and the shock of the ordeal she’d been through was making her feel very peculiar and disoriented.

  She recalled her mother ordering her to strip off her clothes because she was dripping water everywhere. She supposed she must have gone into her bedroom to do it, for the next thing she was aware of was finding herself in her nightdress and dressing-gown, a towel wrapped round her wet hair. Honour was sitting on the floor cradling the woman in her arms and feeding her sips of brandy.

  ‘I’m Honour Harris, dear,’ her mother was saying to the woman, who was just looking at her with blank eyes. ‘I’m going to take care of you, everything will be all right now.’

  Rose was so terribly cold, she wanted to get over to the stove to warm herself, but she couldn’t because her mother and the woman were in the way, and she felt somehow threatened. ‘We can’t take care of her, Mother,’ she said. ‘She needs to be in a hospital. She isn’t a stray like Towzer, you can’t mend her with a bowl of food and a warm by the fire. Once I’ve got warm I’ll go and phone for an ambulance.’

  ‘Shush!’ Honour said, giving Rose one of her stern looks.

  ‘Mother, she’s gone mad! She jumped in the river, and if I hadn’t heard her, she’d be washed down to the sluice gates by now.’

  ‘She’s only mad with grief,’ Honour said with a shake of her head, still rocking the woman in her arms. ‘Michael is missing, shot down over Germany.’

  ‘Michael?’ Rose said questioningly.

  Honour looked up at her. ‘Yes, Michael, the young man who was Adele’s sweetheart. This is his mother, Emily Bailey.’

  Rose reeled back like a drunk, her head suddenly feeling as though it was going to explode. Emily. It was too much for her to take in. Surely this woman she
’d rescued couldn’t be the same one who had once been some kind of she-devil in her eyes?

  Emily Bailey, that shrew of a woman who didn’t love her husband, but would never set him free to marry anyone else! Rose had never met her, never even seen a picture of her, but when she was in love with Myles she had wished her and her damned children dead.

  And now some twenty-two years later she had inadvertently saved her life.

  ‘Rose dear, I think you are suffering from shock,’ Honour exclaimed suddenly. ‘You’re as white as a piece of tripe, and quivering like a jelly. Wrap a blanket round yourself and get yourself some brandy.’

  The clock struck six just a little later, making Rose realize that the dramatic events earlier which had seemed to go on for hours, had in fact all happened in about half an hour from start to finish. She was warmer now, thanks to the brandy, but she still felt very strange. Her mother was still sitting on the floor cradling Emily in her arms and murmuring soothing words, but Rose felt she was observing this from afar, unable to participate in any way.

  ‘You can’t stay there on the floor, Mother, you’ll hurt your back,’ she said irritably a while later. ‘Let me lift her on to the couch. She’s got to let go of you sometime.’

  ‘If I believed my child was dead, I’d want someone to hold me,’ Honour said stubbornly.

  A lump came up in Rose’s throat at her mother’s words. ‘You can hold her just as well on the couch,’ she croaked. ‘Come on, let me help you up and I’ll make us some tea.’

  It seemed odd that Rose had managed to carry Emily back to the cottage so easily, for just trying to lift her from the floor to the couch took every vestige of strength she had left. Perhaps Honour noticed this because once Rose had helped her up on to her feet, she hugged her daughter. ‘It was such a brave thing to jump in there after her,’ she said, her eyes swimming and her voice breaking. ‘You could both have been drowned.’