Secrets (21 page)

‘So when is it ready to drink?’ he asked, as he took over lifting the heavy bucket of cloudy ginger beer to pour it into the funnel Honour was holding in a bottle.

‘It needs to sit for at least a couple of weeks,’ she replied. ‘It’s delicious. Adele will give you some that’s ready to drink now. It’s not alcoholic like my wine, and they say ginger is good for the circulation. I’m proof of that. I rarely have cold feet or hands.’

‘Then I’d better start drinking it,’ Michael said with a wink at Adele. ‘One of the drawbacks to being a pilot is cold hands and feet.’

Adele was astounded to see how quickly he won her grandmother round. She not only said he was welcome to call any time if he was at a loose end, but thanked him heartily for his help and the wood.

He came every day after that, and never failed to ask what he could do for Honour before he suggested going for a walk or a bike ride. He shinned up on to the roof to fix a loose tile, he collected wood, helped weed the vegetable plot, and secured a climbing rose right round the trellis porch at the front door. He blanched when Honour killed some rabbits one day, yet he still stayed to help her skin them.

Yet it wasn’t so much what he did or what he said that made Honour like him. It was just the way he was. He didn’t have a condescending bone in his body – he was genuinely interested in the way she made a living, and openly admired her ingenuity and resourcefulness. Honour said she liked his intelligent questions, muscle and lack of squeamishness.

‘He’s a fine boy,’ she said late one night as she and Adele were having their nightly cocoa. ‘I never would have believed Emily Whitehouse could produce anything but a brood of gutless snobs.’

‘I think from what Michael’s told me that his mother is a bit nervy,’ Adele confided, hoping that wasn’t betraying his confidence.

‘So was her mother,’ her grandmother said with a wicked smile. ‘I said to her once, “Stick up for yourself, woman, don’t let Cecil use you as a doormat.” She sort of whimpered and said words to the effect that a husband should be masterful.’

Adele was astonished. ‘I didn’t know you knew her that well!’ she exclaimed.

‘We were friends.’ Honour pursed her mouth the way she always did when there was something she didn’t want to enlarge on. ‘She was a lot older than me of course, but we were friends nevertheless. That kind of changed when I began cleaning for her at the start of the war, though. I had to, I needed the money. I helped out a few times too when young Emily came running home with her children because that husband of hers wasn’t treating her right.’

‘Why haven’t you told Michael all that?’ Adele asked.

Her grandmother didn’t answer for a little while. But eventually she looked at Adele and gave a ghost of a smile. ‘I don’t like admitting I had to clean for anyone, especially a friend,’ she said. ‘But more than that, I didn’t think it was a good idea to tell him I had any connection with his grandparents, or his mother.’

‘Why? He’d be fascinated!’

‘Yes, he would be, he’s that kind of a lad. And he’s also the open kind who would go home all excited and tell his parents. I don’t want that. As I remember, both of them were fearful snobs. I suspect they’d frown on Michael being friends with you.’

Adele had already come to that conclusion on her own. She knew people who lived out on the marshes didn’t mix with people in the big houses in Winchelsea.

‘You don’t frown on it though, do you?’ she asked.

‘Of course not,’ her grandmother said vehemently. ‘My background is every bit as good as theirs, and I’m pleased you’ve got such a nice friend. But, my dear, you must remember he will be going back to Hampshire and I can’t imagine his parents coming down very often to see poor old Cecil. You may not ever see him again.’

Later that night as Adele lay in bed listening to the wind howling across the marsh, she thought about what her grandmother had said and felt sad because she knew it was true. Michael was such fun to be with, they laughed at all the same things, they could talk about anything, and she wished he could stay here for ever.

But she knew she had to be realistic. He probably wouldn’t have made friends with her if there’d been anyone else around to pal up with. Once he was back at school he’d soon forget about her. She was going to miss him, but she wasn’t going to get silly about him like the soppy girls in love stories.

For the last week Michael was there, the weather turned really warm, and they had many wonderful times together. They paddled in the sea, shrieking with laughter because it was so cold. They built a bridge out of branches across one of the streams on the way to Rye Harbour, and had a competition to see who could make their gob-stopper last longest. Adele had never had one of those giant sweets before as she rarely had any money to spend on such things, but Michael had bought them, and explained they changed colour as you sucked them. It made Adele laugh when he kept making her open her mouth to see what colour hers had turned to.

They tried having races across the top of the shingle banks. Adele taught him to kind of ski down the steep parts. She showed him the millions of baby eels in one of the streams and he taught her to count in French. Yet it wasn’t so much what they did, it was that everything seemed to be such fun when they were together. They could just look at each other and start laughing over nothing.

On the morning of the day Michael had to go home again, he called round at Curlew Cottage just as they were finishing breakfast.

‘I won’t intrude, Mrs Harris,’ he said very politely. ‘But this is a thank-you for being so welcoming.’ He handed Honour a very pretty tin tea caddy, full of tea.

‘How very thoughtful of you, Michael,’ she beamed, admiring the tin.

‘I got you a book,’ he said to Adele, handing over a parcel. ‘I hope you haven’t already read it.’

Adele opened it and found it was
Lorna Doone
. ‘No, I haven’t read it,’ she said, delighted with the surprise. ‘Thank you, Michael. I shall start reading it today.’

‘Will you stay and have a cup of tea with us?’ Granny asked.

Michael shook his head. ‘I can’t, they’ll be waiting to leave.’

‘Run along to the end of the lane with him then,’ she said, giving Adele a little nudge. ‘Goodbye, Michael. I hope to see you again one day.’

Michael had his bike out in the lane. He picked it up and looked at Adele.

‘I’m going to miss you,’ he said glumly. ‘Will you write back if I write to you?’

‘Of course I will,’ Adele agreed. ‘You make sure you tell me all your news. But you’d better be going. You don’t want to make your parents angry.’

She watched as he rode off, the bicycle wheels wobbling as he went over the rough ground. Towards the end of the lane he stood up on the pedals and went faster. As he turned on to the Winchelsea road he waved without turning his head.

Adele still had the book he’d given her in her hands. She opened it and saw he’d written a message for her.

To Adele, a story about a boy who meets a girl out on the moors and can’t forget her. I’ll never forget you either.

With all my best wishes,

Michael Bailey. Easter 1933

Chapter Ten

1935

‘I don’t believe I’m ever going to find a real job,’ Adele said wearily as she slumped down on the grass by her grandmother’s chair.

It was almost the end of August, two years since she left school, yet she still hadn’t found permanent work. She had managed to get temporary jobs, a few weeks here and there in the laundry when they had a busy spell with holidaymakers in the town, haymaking in a farm in Peasmarsh beyond Rye. She had picked strawberries and raspberries, dug up potatoes, cleaned the fish shop in town after it was closed for the day, and done dozens of other little jobs too. She had written letters to just about every company and business in Hastings as well, and travelled over there on the bus time and time again, but no one wanted to take her on permanently, in any capacity.

‘They all say they want someone with experience,’ Adele complained. ‘But how can I get experience if no one will give me a chance to show what I can do?’

‘Times are hard,’ her grandmother said, and gave her a little pat on the head.

Adele was only too aware that there were millions unemployed, and indeed that men had taken their own lives because they couldn’t provide for their families. Hardly a week went past without a hungry man looking for work knocking on the door to ask if they could spare some food. Honour always gave them a bowl of soup and some bread – she’d even parted with the last of Frank’s old clothes. These men usually came from the Midlands or the North of England, though there was terrible poverty in Rye and Hastings too.

On a hot sunny day like today it wasn’t obvious, but back in the winter Adele had seen ragged, barefooted children begging along the High Street. Every week there were yet more men hanging around dolefully by the quay, hoping for a day or two’s work. Some families had sold every stick of their furniture, and old people died in the winter because they had no coal to burn.

‘Maybe I’ll have to go to London,’ Adele said gloomily. ‘I met Margaret Forster in town. She said she’d had a letter from Mavis Plant and she’s managed to find a job in an office there.’

‘You are too young to go to London,’ her grandmother said forcefully. ‘I don’t want you living in digs, at the mercy of unscrupulous people. And something will turn up here, I’m sure of that.’

‘The papers keep saying there’s work now for those who want it, but that’s rubbish,’ Adele said angrily. She was hot and tired and her feet hurt. It hadn’t helped that Margaret Forster had been crowing about her job in the Home and Colonial. She boasted about a new pink crêpe-de-chine dress, and she said she was going to the pictures that night with another girl from the shop. Adele had only been to the pictures twice in the last year.

What made her really furious was that she was sure she was being turned down because she lived on the marsh. Interviews always went quite well until she was asked where she lived. She was intelligent, quite attractive, well-spoken and good-mannered. Why did they think she had a fatal flaw just because of where she lived?

‘We can manage perfectly well even if you don’t get a job for another year,’ her grandmother said calmly. ‘With all your help I’m producing twice as much as I did three years ago, and getting better prices.’

‘I can’t bear to see you work so hard,’ Adele blurted out. She had observed her grandmother even more closely since she left school, and noticed she hardly ever sat down during the day. Between the chickens and rabbits and making jam or wine, she never stopped. ‘I should be making things easier for you now, not making you have to work even harder.’

‘If I work harder now it’s because I choose to,’ Honour said crisply. ‘I like what I do, I’m not a martyr. Now, go and wash your face and hands, get yourself a drink and go and sit in the shade for half an hour. Tomorrow’s another day, and who knows what will appear?’

‘Nothing will appear,’ Adele muttered as she washed her hands in the scullery. The water suddenly trickled to a halt, and that was the last straw. They got drinking water from a pump in the garden, but rain water ran into a tank at the side of the cottage and that fed the tap in the scullery for washing. It hadn’t rained for a couple of weeks and the tank was obviously empty.

Everything in this cottage was such hard work. The stove had to be lit and fed with collected wood. A bath meant heating pails of water and filling up the tin bath, which then had to be emptied. The privy didn’t have a flush, every now and then they had to tip some lime down it, and it always smelled. There was no electricity, just candles and oil lamps. They didn’t even have a wireless.

Since she left school Adele had become far more aware of the way some other people lived. It wasn’t that she was jealous exactly that so many of them had gas and electricity, wireless, gramophones, boilers to do the washing in and even electric irons, she just thought it was a little unfair that some had so much, and some so little. She had been top of the class at school, yet she couldn’t get a job, while Margaret Forster, who was the class dunce, landed one in the Home and Colonial. Most women of her grandmother’s age had time to sit in a chair with a book. Yet she had to eke out a meagre widow’s pension by skinning rabbits. And those rabbit skins were made into coats for women who did absolutely nothing all day.

Snatching up a large enamel jug, Adele went out to the pump in the garden and pumped furiously until she’d filled it. Then she filled a bucket too. As she carried the water back inside, she wondered how on earth Granny would manage when she was a really old lady. When she wasn’t fit enough to pump water or collect wood.

‘I’ll take care of her,’ she said to herself. But that thought made her start to cry. How could she take care of someone else when she couldn’t even get a job?

Honour came in and caught her crying. ‘What are you blubbing for?’ she said in her customary unsympathetic manner.

‘Because everything’s so bloody hard,’ Adele burst out.

‘Don’t you dare swear in my house,’ her grandmother retorted, ‘or I’ll scrub your mouth out with soap. And stop feeling sorry for yourself, there’s millions far worse off than you.’

Adele ran into her room and slammed the door, flung herself down on her bed and cried even harder. She stayed there, even though she knew Honour was getting the tea ready, and when she wasn’t called for it, she cried harder still because it was obvious Granny didn’t care if she was upset or hungry.

She knew she was being irrational and wallowing in self-pity, and it wasn’t the lack of modern conveniences here, or even the absence of a job which was causing it. She loved this place, and she didn’t really care if she had no money to go to the pictures. Even her anxiety that Granny worked too hard didn’t really wash, as she’d only stepped up her output of produce because she had Adele to help with it.