Rachel's Secret Read online

  ‘He isn’t going to,’ Meriel said confidently. ‘And he must know we’re here. So he’s putting up with us. Why? Because he’s up to no good! It should be us ringing the police!’

  ‘I’m not ringing the police! We could end up in the cells or something.’

  ‘I said we should ring them,’ Meriel came back impatiently. She put on her George Formby accent. ‘Eh oop! He’s on the move again.’

  We followed fairly decorously again, trying to look as if we were enjoying exploring this new area. He turned left into Sycamore Drive and we got off our bikes and crept up to the corner. Half-way down the road, his bike was parked neatly, pedal on kerb. No sign at all of our man.

  We considered.

  ‘Gone into that house,’ Meriel said. ‘Even numbers. Two, four, six . . . number eight. And they were expecting him because he telephoned from the kiosk.’

  ‘And he’s not expecting to stay because he hasn’t taken his bike up to the door.’ We stared at each other, amazed at our own logic.

  ‘Ergo . . . we wait,’ said Meriel.

  We waited and had a depressing conversation about what would happen if we didn’t matriculate. Meriel stated for the hundredth time that she was not going to work at Nightingale’s and I said I only wanted to be a journalist and the Clarion wouldn’t have me without my matric, so I would end up in an office somewhere.

  ‘We could sell our bodies,’ Meriel said gloomily.

  ‘Oh yes,’ I agreed. ‘Why are we worried?’

  ‘Or we could marry one of the Yanks at the camp and live in America.’

  ‘Oh yes. Why are we worried?’

  Meriel was silent for ages. I glanced at my watch: five fifteen. Mum and Dad were home any time between six thirty and seven.

  Meriel said, ‘He’s been ages for someone who is not staying long.’

  ‘Let’s go home,’ I suggested.

  She was appalled. ‘Don’t be daft! The game must have some kind of – of – conclusion!’

  ‘OK. We’ll knock on the door and ask how much longer he’s going to be.’

  She tightened her lips and stood up suddenly. ‘Come on. We’ll play it by ear.’

  I followed, twittering helplessly. She obviously did not realize how ghastly this game could become. That it was all happening in our heads, and the poor man in cap and glasses with the soles flapping off his shoes and wearing an old Swallow School tie knew nothing about it. I said something about hounding people and she turned on me suddenly. ‘He could be like my dad! And this is my bloody revenge!’

  I stopped in my tracks half-way up the path to the front door, realizing that only part of the afternoon had been a game for Meriel. She looked over her shoulder, told me to come on again, and then lifted the knocker and slammed it down hard.

  I nearly ran, then. If it had been anyone but Meriel I would have run back for my bike and pedalled hard for home. We were basically nice girls, well brought up, and we might do silly, stupid things but we weren’t cruel. But this was personal to Meriel. I stood next to her, trembling inside, but smiling, like Mum does when the vicar calls at the most inconvenient moments.

  Nothing happened for ages. Meriel knocked again in the most imperious way she knew, and after counting a laborious but swift twenty, there were sounds inside – bolts being drawn? Then the door opened twelve inches and a woman’s face appeared. She looked so much like a rabbit it was awful. Long nose, watery eyes, gingery-brown hair folded back like rabbit ears, and buck teeth that were showing even though her mouth was clamped shut.

  ‘May we have a quick word with Mr Brown?’ Meriel asked smoothly.

  There was a pause while the woman organized her mouth, then all she said was, ‘Mr Brown?’

  ‘We saw him visiting you,’ Meriel went on. ‘We’ve been trying to catch up with him all afternoon. We’re his nieces.’

  ‘His . . . nieces?’

  ‘On his wife’s side. He doesn’t know us but our aunt showed us his photograph and when we saw him cycling through the town we thought we would say hello.’

  ‘I’m sorry. There is no such man here.’

  I started to turn away, smiling regretfully and apologetically at Mrs Rabbit. Meriel said firmly, ‘That’s his bike. And we saw him come into this house.’

  ‘Nobody has been here. Try next door.’

  She shut her door softly, before Meriel could get her foot inside. We heard the bolts go home – yes, they were bolts – then silence. We had not heard her walk towards her door, nor did we hear her go away. She could have been waiting for us just the other side, and be waiting again now. It was creepy.

  I practically dragged Meriel away. She kept saying, ‘I know he’s in there, I just know it.’

  ‘He was in there. He’s gone now. Through the back door and along one of the ash lanes.’ Many houses in the city were connected by these back entrances and they were often surfaced with ashes from the house fires. They were called ash lanes.

  ‘But his bike—’ Meriel protested.

  ‘It’s too good a bike for him. He pinched it, I bet. Now he’s left it.’

  ‘How do you know he’s gone? He could still be there . . . gloating . . .’

  ‘If he’d been there he wouldn’t have let her answer the door. What could we have done about that? Nothing at all.’

  I was amazed at myself. I was making it up as I went along, but it was so right. I wasn’t taking anything away from Meriel, in fact I was giving something back to her. Just to underline that I added, ‘Some revenge, eh? You put the mockers on that. Absolutely.’

  She looked at me intently for a moment, then that wonderful smile lit her face, her dimples appeared and her grey eyes leapt into life.

  ‘Come on. Let’s cycle home past the park. See what we’re letting ourselves in for on Saturday.’

  And that was what we did. And we both thought what a great afternoon it had been. The haircut, the butterless sandwiches, the terrific chase . . . yes, a really great afternoon. And in the end, we had hurt no one. I started to sing ‘There’ll be bluebirds over . . . the white cliffs of Dover . . .’ And Meriel joined in. With our names – Throstle and Nightingale – we’d toyed with the idea of becoming a singing duo under the name of ‘The Song Birds’. The snag was neither of us could sing that well. We leaned over our handlebars, convulsed with giggles at our falsetto renderings. ‘Don’t panic, Vera!’ Meriel called across the railway lines.

  Two

  SATURDAY CAME AND Hermione’s mother cycled down the rough road at eight thirty to say Hermione wasn’t well enough to go to the Holidays at Home in the park. What a surprise. I heard Mum murmuring condolences at the front door. My bedroom window overhung our front door, and I peered out as Mrs Smith wheeled her bike back up to the gate and mounted it at the kerb. She was wearing one of those old-fashioned dust coats, and she had a spoke guard on the back wheel of her bike. I drowsed and wondered what kind of a job it might be to thread up those spoke guards, and whether the threader was ever tempted to crochet a pattern as she went along. In the future that sort of thing could become precious like the Bayeux Tapestry or something. I tried to imagine a crocheted spoke guard and failed. And then I thought, poor Hermione. Not even Holidays at Home. She had to be the only person in our class who hated school holidays.

  When I flumped down the stairs half an hour later Dad had already left for work. He worked a six- and sometimes a seven-day week. He was a designer at Smith’s Aircraft Company and had been responsible for a modification on the Spitfire’s tail fin that had given it what he called ‘a bit more oomph’, which Mum had explained later meant more manoeuvrability. ‘Could get one of those young men out of trouble,’ she said in her quiet voice. Which meant that she wished Dad could be designing aircraft for international races the way he had before the war, but that if he had to make war machines she was proud of him because he could be saving lives. Anyway, what it also meant was that at times we did not see much of Dad.

  ‘Will he be back for tonight?’
I asked anxiously. It was better with Dad there, because Mum then became one of us and giggled helplessly nearly all the time. Dad was one of those people who never seemed to make their presence felt, yet . . . I don’t know . . . freed everyone up to be happy and natural. There has to be a name for someone like Dad. Liberator? That was the name of an enormous plane, so it wasn’t quite right. But he did liberate things. He had a way of lifting his left eyebrow and just looking at you. I don’t know what it was.

  Mum nodded reassuringly. ‘That’s why he went off so early this morning. Long before Maude Smith came with her lame excuses. I feel so sorry for Hermione. She’s ill so often it will make her properly ill one of these days.’

  She looked at me and I purposely lifted my left eyebrow, and we both collapsed laughing.

  We had a good Saturday. We discussed the possibility of me not getting my matric, and Mum said easily, ‘Well, you could do a secretarial course at the commercial college. I bet Gilbert Carfax would prefer that, in a way. How would you feel? There’s a good place round by the spa pump rooms.’

  This whole thing at the Clarion office had been fixed up by Mum. She had gone out with Gilbert Carfax who owned the Clarion and – obviously – had dropped him like a hot cake when she met Dad at the big do at Smith’s where she was waitressing. Gilbert had seen them together and known before they did. He said that was what made him such a good reporter: because he knew things before they happened. He was my godfather and I quite liked him, and called him ‘Uncle Gilbert’.

  She shrugged at my unspoken question. ‘Well, you know. He was just ordinary. Not that good at school except that he did produce a magazine thing. He worked for his father who owned the Weekly Post and then his father died, and he bought the Clarion and Bob’s your uncle.’

  ‘And he might think I was too big for my boots if I matricked?’ I asked nervously.

  She shrugged again. ‘I don’t think so. But he wouldn’t hold it against you if you didn’t matrick. And he’ll probably make you learn shorthand and typing anyway.’

  ‘I don’t mind that. And I don’t mind making tea and things. But I would like to start learning to be a reporter.’

  ‘So long as you don’t follow in your mother’s footsteps.’

  She still said things like that, in spite of Dad. I reminded her that she had been the best waitress in the country, and she did the eyebrow lift and we laughed again. Then we started on the cleaning and the singing. We always sang when we cleaned the house. We harmonized, we crooned, we did instruments; we were superb doing Beethoven and Chopin. I might be on the landing using the banister as a piano and Mum might be below conducting with one of the walking sticks in the hall or my hockey stick. I already mentioned I was spoiled rotten. It was so lovely.

  The Nightingales lived much nearer the city than we did, so we called for them. Dad got home in good time and we had lettuce from the garden, hard-boiled eggs from the chickens next door and plenty of bread and Mum’s butter spread. One of Dad’s colleagues grew his own grapes in a conservatory and had brought Dad a huge bunch. He took some of them in to Hermione’s as we passed her house and asked Maude Smith whether Hermione might be well enough to come with us after all. Apparently she wasn’t.

  Meriel was already waiting for us outside her house. She was wearing a dress I hadn’t seen before. It was dark green cotton with white bias binding along the neckline and shoulders, where the whole dress fastened with enormous white buttons. It fitted perfectly and showed off her tiny waist and burgeoning, grown-up bust. She looked marvellous but also dangerous. Her eyes were glittering. You could see them properly now that I had cut her hair. Mum couldn’t get over her.

  ‘You look like one of the covers on my magazine, Merry,’ she said. ‘That dress is so – so—’

  ‘Sexy?’ It was a word not much in use then and Meriel used it to provoke. I looked nervously at Mum but Meriel swept on regardless. ‘Dad’s sleeping with a dressmaker these days and he took her one of my old dresses and she used curtain material and made . . . this.’ She looked down at it with dislike.

  I nibbled my lower lip, recognizing the signs: Meriel was ripe for a rip-roaring row with her father. Or anyone else who happened to be around.

  Mum said helplessly, ‘Oh . . . Merry.’

  Dad said, ‘Is he coming to the park with us?’

  ‘No. He’s taking Mum and the boys in the car. He’s got some black-market petrol and he says the car needs an occasional drive. I said I’d see them there. Shall we get going?’

  Dad hesitated. ‘Is your mum all right with that?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course. When he came in with the dress she said he reminded her of Errol Flynn!’ The scorn in her voice made my teeth ache.

  She was frenetic that night, and I went along with her because she was my friend, and because it was the best fair I’d ever been to. And because Mum and Dad looked younger than me and went on all the rides, and Dad bought loads of brandy snaps and toffee apples and funny hats and fizzy pop. I’d never been to anything like it before, where you bought fun. Our fun was everywhere but we rarely bought it. Singing. Picnics. Bike rides. Holidays in Cornwall . . . maybe we bought those. I don’t know. This fun was so . . . determined. Meriel and I were old hands at the big wheel. It came to Barton Fair every autumn and we loved it. But this was a big big wheel and we did not rock the twin seat, we just screamed louder and louder. Below us, the Nightingale boys, Barry and John, tried to outdo us without success. Above us Mum and Dad just laughed helplessly. When we got out Meriel fell into the arms of one of the fairground men and pretended she couldn’t stand upright, and the other one handed me out and told me that in a couple of years’ time I’d have legs like Betty Grable. I was so embarrassed. But thrilled, too. We staggered across to the whip. Dad said, ‘I don’t advise that thing. Not after the candy floss. We don’t know where that sugar came from.’

  If it had been anyone else speaking Meriel would have insisted on paying out her last sixpence and climbing into one of those wicked compartments, but it was Dad, so she said, ‘Tell you what, Mr Throstle. Let’s do all the stalls next till we’re sure the sugar was okey-dokey, then see how we feel.’

  Dad seized her hand and pumped it hard. ‘Done,’ he agreed.

  So we did the stalls. The boys stayed with us. I was glad because Meriel tailored her comments for their ears. It was they who snuffled laughter when Mum looked around for Mrs Nightingale. Barry said to her, ‘They’re behind the dynamo thing.’

  John added, ‘Spoooooning!’ Meriel said nothing. She hurled the hard wooden ball at the coconuts with such force she almost dislodged one from its sandy bed. Then she just looked at the stall holder, and he grinned and fetched her a bright yellow teddy bear.

  Barry won a goldfish in a jar. John scooped up a Chinese puzzle with his long wooden spoon, and we lost about half a crown rolling pennies, and much more than that trying to spear real gold rings with crooked darts. Then Dad spotted the Nightingales, and we all walked to the fish and chip van and tucked in as if we hadn’t eaten for days. We were all grinning at each other – well, not at the Nightingales, because they just grinned at each other. It had been a really splendiferous time. August 1944. Holidays at Home. The park. We were never going to forget it.

  ‘Time for bed. Come on, girls. Back to the bikes.’

  Meriel’s face dropped a mile. ‘You said we could go on the whip after we’d done the stalls,’ she reminded him.

  ‘But not after fish and chips.’ He looked at her incredulously. She kept nodding. Her dad blinked and looked away from his wife at Dad.

  ‘You heard what Mr Throstle said. Jump to it!’

  I knew then that if she had to hang for it she’d go back to the whip.

  The two of us went. The Nightingales and the boys wandered off to where Mr Nightingale had parked his car, and Dad and Mum told us to catch them up as soon as we could and they would wait for us at Meriel’s house.

  The whip was ghastly. It tried to dislocate the spi
ne and very nearly succeeded on me because I had such a long one. The gorgeous fish and chip taste still lingering in my mouth changed, too. Not for the better.

  We stumbled towards the park gates where we had locked our bikes. Several American soldiers were just arriving in a jeep. They took one look at Meriel and started to whistle as they spilled out of their jeep. We kept going. Then one of them shoved another, and a third one cannoned into Meriel and knocked her flying. She cried out. I wrapped her in my orang-utan arms. And from behind a laurel bush appeared her dad and . . . someone. Not Mrs Nightingale. Very dishevelled.

  Mr Nightingale flew past Meriel and me, gripped the GI with his left hand – the GI was looking bewildered and concerned at the same time – and gave him a slamming punch with his right. Blood spurted like a fountain from his face as he staggered back against one of the others. Just for a moment there was a curious hiatus in the flurry of events: Mr Nightingale stood there rubbing his knuckles, the GIs were thoroughly confused – not a good sign for our second front – and Meriel and I stood apart and brushed ourselves down, although there was nothing to brush off.

  Then one of the GIs called, ‘No damage, sir.’ And another – very odd indeed – added, ‘We’ll say goodnight, now.’

  Mr Nightingale – who had not even glanced at his daughter – blustered, ‘I shall be phoning your commanding officer!’

  And, perhaps oddest of all, the dishevelled woman, clutching her dress across her chest, said, almost shyly, ‘The dress looks just lovely on you, dear.’

  Meriel looked up, then lifted her head towards the top of the poplar trees that surrounded the park and . . . screamed. It was a short, sharp scream, not the sort that heralds complete hysteria; she knew what she was doing. Then she put her hands to the neck of the lovely dark green dress and pulled.

  I knew that she wanted to tear the dress to shreds, but what happened was such an anti-climax. The curtain material was strong, and the bias binding which ran across from shoulder to shoulder made it even stronger, and though she pulled again and again, nothing happened. The dishevelled woman put her hands to her face and whimpered, and her dress fell open and revealed bare breasts. Mr Nightingale had turned at the scream, and stared at his daughter struggling with her clothes. I flapped around and said, ‘Merry . . . please don’t, please . . .’