Secrets (20 page)

She would imagine Henry VIII arriving here on horseback in a velvet cloak trimmed with ermine, with a procession of noblemen, the servants scurrying to get things ready for him. Sometimes she could almost see it.

The castle was the place where she did all her thinking, a place to run to when she felt the world was against her. A couple of hours alone here and everything came right again.

‘It is a lovely old place,’ Michael said, gazing around him reflectively. ‘But I want to hear about you,’ he added, putting one hand on her shoulder.

‘When you’ve been down here for a bit longer you’ll find out about “Marsh People”,’ she said with a giggle. ‘We’re supposed to be not quite right in the head on account of the wind. Some children think my grandmother is a witch.’

‘I don’t think you can be both a witch and a grandmother.’ He laughed. ‘Witches don’t marry. Has yours got a black cat?’

‘No cats, she doesn’t like them because they kill birds. But I reckon she could do a few spells if she had to.’ Adele smiled.

‘Well, get her to do one for my folks,’ he said, sitting down on the grass and leaning back against the castle wall. ‘It would take real magic to make them happy.’

Adele looked at him in surprise. She might have only met him a couple of hours ago, but he came across as the sort of person who basked in a golden world where everything was perfect.

When he saw her surprise he gave a hollow laugh. ‘Oh, I know what you’re thinking, the privileged boy at public school! But my mother is always flying into terrible rages, then she stays in bed for days on end. Father rages back at her and makes her worse. If he’d just stay around a bit more, be kind to her, she might change. But he’s as cruel as she is barmy. Mostly I’m glad when the holidays are over and I can go back to school.’

All at once Adele realized that this was why he’d wanted to come for a walk with her. He probably had no intention of unburdening himself, but just wanted to be taken into another kind of life for a while. In a way it was the same as when she and Pamela used to go and watch other people at Euston station. A way of escaping reality.

Yet it also seemed to be some strange twist of fate that Michael should pick her of all people to talk to. Who else would have any real empathy with him? ‘Is your father cruel to you too?’ she asked tentatively, her heart expanding with sympathy for him.

‘Sometimes, but it’s mostly Mother. But then she is very demanding, suspicious and extraordinarily difficult.’ He paused, giving Adele a faintly embarrassed grin. ‘She ruined my sister’s wedding by having a tantrum,’ he went on. ‘My sister-in-law refuses to come to our house any more because of something she said. Father always claims it’s her nerves and gets her medicine for it. But I think that makes her even more confused and frightened.’ He stopped again, and this time there was no grin, just a bleak, sad look and suspiciously damp-looking eyes.

‘Sometimes I think what she really needs is just someone to talk to,’ he added with a sigh.

Adele noted that he had both attacked and defended his mother, which suggested he was torn both ways. She also remembered that her own mother had often said that nobody ever listened to her.

‘My mother used to complain that my dad didn’t listen to her,’ Adele ventured, very tempted to break her code of secrecy about her parents just this once.

‘I don’t think there’s many married couples who communicate,’ he said sadly, pulling his knees up to his chest and leaning his chin on them. ‘I watch my friends’ parents and they are much the same as mine. In public they are so polite, they put up this united and devoted front, like actors in a play. But at home when there’s no one but children or servants around it’s quite different. They either ignore one another, or snipe away with sarcasm and mockery.’

‘Really?’ Adele exclaimed. She had always imagined that rich people had everything they wanted, including greater happiness.

Michael nodded. ‘My elder brother Ralph and sister Diana are both getting like it too. All they seem to care about is their social life, filling their houses with other people, going off to the races, to concerts and the theatre. Sometimes I think they are afraid to be alone with their husband and wife. When Ralph’s first child was born Ralph went away on business. He didn’t have to, he could have put it off, what could be more important than sharing such a moment with his wife?’

Adele had never met anyone, except perhaps Ruby back at The Firs, who had told her so much about their family at a first meeting. She thought she ought to be suspicious of Michael because of it. Yet instinct told her he wasn’t normally so open. She thought maybe he’d been tripped off by his grandmother’s death, or he sensed something in her that made it seem right to confide in her.

‘Where I used to live it was tradition for a man to go down the pub when a baby was being born,’ she said hesitantly. ‘That amounts to the same thing, doesn’t it?’

‘No, they are celebrating the birth of the new baby,’ he said indignantly.

Adele smiled. ‘Maybe they say that’s what they are doing,’ she said. ‘But from what I’ve seen, most working-class people drink to escape reality. They don’t want to think about having an extra mouth to feed, just as they don’t want to remember there’s rent to pay, and that they’ll be lucky if they’re still in work next week.’

‘It seems we are looking at this from opposite ends,’ he said with a smile. ‘Do you know any couple who married for love and stayed that way?’

‘My grandmother did,’ Adele retorted. ‘Grandfather died a couple of years after the war. Every now and then she tells me something about him and her face goes all soft. She’s got some of the pictures he painted in the cottage, she’s always looking into them like she’s seeing him.’

‘He was an artist then?’ Michael looked quite taken aback.

‘Yes, and a good one too, but he was wounded in the war and never painted again. When they first married they lived in Tunbridge Wells, they had a quite different life there I think. More like yours, I suppose.’

Michael looked really interested at that. ‘So they weren’t real “Marsh People”?’ he asked with a smile. ‘Your grandfather came here to paint? That’s pretty romantic.’

Adele had thought it terribly romantic when her grandmother had explained how it all came about. She loved to hear how they’d brought all their grand furniture down from Tunbridge Wells in a horse-drawn cart. She imagined the bear coat stand, the stuffed bird and the china cabinet all piled up, with Granny and Grandfather sitting on the back with Rose between them.

‘Granny’s not exactly one for going over the past, and why and how things came about.’ Adele shrugged. ‘But there are things about her that give you big clues. She’s very well educated, her father was a schoolmaster, and some of her furniture is really fine, like it came from a big house. And Grandfather was an officer in the army, not an enlisted man.’

‘Intriguing,’ Michael said thoughtfully. ‘You are too, Adele. You’ve got a young girl’s face, but the mind and manner of someone far older. Why do you think that is?’

‘The wind on the marshes I expect,’ she joked, afraid he was nudging her into a situation where she might say too much. ‘Come on,’ she said getting up. ‘We’ll never get to Rye Harbour at this rate.’

*

It was just on six when Adele got home, having parted from Michael where he’d left his bike earlier in the day. She was very cold now, and she went straight over to the stove to warm her hands. Her grandmother was sitting mending a pair of socks. She’d put some bread to rise by the stove, and there was also one of her vegetable soups simmering.

‘Umm,’ Adele said, sniffing the air. ‘I’m starving.’

‘Didn’t the young man buy you tea and cake?’ Grandmother said in a caustic manner.

Adele wheeled round in surprise. ‘How did you know I was with a young man?’

‘I have eyes,’ she retorted. ‘The marsh is flat, you can see for miles. If you were trying to hide him then you failed.’

Such a remark was typical of her grandmother. She said things just as they were, no beating around the bush, no trick questions or subterfuge.

‘Of course I wasn’t trying to hide him. He just got talking to me and I showed him the way to the harbour.’ Adele felt foolish now – she might have known her grandmother would spot them together.

‘And his name?’

‘Michael Bailey,’ Adele said. ‘He’s down here because his grandmother, Mrs Whitehouse, died. You mentioned her the other day.’

Granny nodded. ‘Then he must be Emily’s child. The Whitehouses had two sons too, but they lost them both in the war.’

‘Do you know his mother then?’ Adele asked.

Her grandmother wrinkled her nose. ‘Yes I do, an uppity little madam, though she may of course have grown out of that. I haven’t seen her for donkey’s years.’

Adele would have liked to have known why her grandmother had formed that opinion, but she thought it might lead to repeating what Michael had told her. ‘Michael’s really nice,’ she said instead. ‘He really liked the marsh too, I don’t think he’s ever seen a newborn lamb close up before.’

‘That’s city folk for you,’ her grandmother said with a wry smile. ‘As I recall, the man Emily married was a bumptious chap. Far too full of himself for my liking. I’m glad the son isn’t like that too.’

Adele was surprised that her grandmother didn’t ask her more about Michael. Girls she knew at school said that their parents were always suspicious of anyone of the opposite sex. But then, as Granny knew his family perhaps she didn’t need to ask anything more.

When Adele asked if she could go for a bike ride on Monday, she was even more surprised that her grandmother agreed readily. The only comment she made was not to go too far, as the weather in April was unpredictable.

Granny was right. Adele and Michael got as far as Camber Sands and it began to pour with rain. They sheltered under a tree for a while, but when the rain showed no sign of stopping, they had to head for home.

Yet even getting soaked didn’t spoil the day. Michael was such good company, he could talk about anything and everything. He told her about his friends at school, his home in Hampshire, and how he wanted to fly aeroplanes.

‘Father sniffs every time I say it,’ he laughed. ‘He’s a barrister, you see, so he thinks I ought to be one too. I told him once that he’d already sucked Ralph into the law, and he needn’t think I was going to follow like a sheep. But I think he imagines when I go up to Oxford that will change my mind.’

Adele had already decided she wouldn’t like Mr Bailey one bit. Michael had said he was complaining at being stuck in Winchelsea with a doddery old man, and if he had his way he’d be off the moment his mother-in-law’s funeral was over. Adele thought it was hardly surprising Mrs Bailey was nervy if she had such a heartless husband.

‘Maybe he doesn’t think you’ll make a living flying planes,’ she said.

‘Well, he’s probably right there.’ Michael grinned. ‘But I don’t care about money. The first time I got up close to a little bi-plane, something about it just bowled me over. It belonged to a friend of my father’s and he took me up in it. That was it, my fate sealed.’

‘I think it’s wonderful you’ve got a real ambition,’ Adele said staunchly. ‘But he might be right about you changing your mind once you’re at Oxford.’

She knew now that Michael was nearly sixteen, and he had two more years of school before Oxford. She had thought he must be very clever to go there, but Michael insisted he was only average, and he didn’t think he’d stand a chance of getting into Oxford if it was purely on merit, rather than having been at the right school first.

‘I won’t change my mind,’ he said firmly. ‘I’ve only agreed to make an effort to get into Oxford because they have a flying corps there. I’m going to do it, come what may.’

Mrs Whitehouse’s funeral was two days later, and the rest of Michael’s family didn’t arrive until the morning of that day. Adele was intending to walk up to Winchelsea and just happen to be near the church at the time of the funeral. She wanted to get a look at them all, but her grandmother was horrified when she realized that was what Adele had in mind.

‘You’ll do no such thing,’ she said sharply. ‘Have a little respect, girl! Do you think they’d appreciate you gawping at them at such a time?’

‘I was only curious about them,’ Adele said lamely. ‘Michael’s told me a lot about them.’

‘Curiosity killed the cat,’ her grandmother said tartly. ‘I daresay the boy will be back to see you when it’s all over. And you’d better invite him in so I can get a good look at him.’

Adele thought that sounded ominous, but she hadn’t reckoned on Michael having such a winning way with people. He didn’t turn up till two days after the funeral, and in his arms he had a bundle of wood for the stove that he’d picked up by the river on the way down from Winchelsea.

‘I hope you don’t think me impertinent, Mrs Harris,’ he said, when Honour opened the door to him. ‘But I saw all this lying around and thought you might be glad of it.’

‘What a kind thought,’ she said. ‘Though I don’t know that your parents would approve of you roaming down here. But come on in, it’s a miserable raw day.’

Adele felt shy and awkward about Michael being in her home. Out on the marshes they were equals, but she expected he would think Granny’s house with its lack of electricity and outside lavatory a slum compared with his grandparents’ big house.

But Honour asked him about the funeral, and how his grandfather was bearing up, even mentioning that she knew him to be a good chess player, and Michael looked very comfortable and at ease with her as he had a cup of tea.

Honour was intending to make and bottle up her ginger beer that day. The mixture of yeast, ginger and sugar had been fermenting by the stove in a big pot for the past week. ‘May I help?’ Michael asked, when she mentioned it.

The bottles Honour was intending to use were still outside, unwashed. Never one to let a pair of willing hands go unused, she set Michael to the task in the scullery. She gave him a bottle brush, hot soapy water, and made him scour them out and remove any labels.

Adele was frightened he’d get fed up and want to leave, but he didn’t. He cleaned the bottles in no time, bringing them into the living room all sparkly, just as Adele and her grandmother had finished straining the yeast mixture, added lemon and water, and were ready to fill the bottles.