Secrets (6 page)

‘I will take Adele away for now,’ Dr Biggs said pointedly. ‘Not because of your feelings, Mr Talbot, but because she is suffering from shock and needs some tender care. I shall be back to talk to you tomorrow. I hope by then you will have calmed down and remembered that by marrying Rose, you have a legal and moral responsibility for her child.’

‘I’ve got to go to work tomorrow,’ Jim said.

‘Then I’ll come at seven in the evening,’ Dr Biggs said sharply. ‘I suggest before then, you spend some time thinking about the child’s needs, rather than your own.’

Annie Patterson showed all the compassion for Adele that Jim Talbot lacked when the doctor took her downstairs. ‘You poor dear,’ she said, giving the girl a hug. ‘I’m sorry we haven’t got a proper spare bed, but a little thing like you should be all right on the couch.’

The only clean nightdress Dr Biggs had been able to find had clearly belonged to the dead sister. It barely reached Adele’s knees and with a blanket around her shoulders and strapping on her face she looked pitiful.

‘This is very kind of you, Annie,’ he said, putting down a blanket and pillow. ‘It is only a temporary measure. I’ll talk to Mr Talbot tomorrow evening when he’s calmer.’

Adele hadn’t said a word, not to ask about her mother, or herself. Biggs hoped this was because she hadn’t really taken in what had happened upstairs.

But that hope was dashed as he was about to leave, when suddenly Adele became agitated. ‘I can’t stay with Dad, ever again,’ she blurted out. ‘He doesn’t like me. Neither does Mum.’

‘That’s nonsense,’ Annie Patterson said briskly. ‘Your mum’s ill and your dad doesn’t know whether he’s coming or going.’

Adele looked from the neighbour to the doctor helplessly. She couldn’t really believe that her mother had tried to kill her. Or that she’d really said all those terrible things.

Yet young as she was, she knew she’d come face to face with her mother’s real feelings for her tonight. It was something like spilling a bottle of milk, you could mop it up, but you couldn’t put it back in the bottle.

She knew now with complete certainty that the many slaps, nastiness and cruel words in the past were all symptoms of her mother’s simmering hatred for her. Tonight it had just boiled over.

She didn’t see how she could have spoiled her mother’s life by just being born, but she doubted there was anything she could do or say that would ever make her mother feel differently about her. Likewise, she sensed that neither the doctor nor Mrs Patterson was in the mood for any further discussion tonight. So there was nothing for it but to do what they wanted, to lie down on the couch and go to sleep. To do or say anything further would only set them against her too.

‘I’m sorry to be a nuisance,’ she said weakly, looking from one adult to the other. ‘I’ll do whatever you say.’

‘There’s a good girl.’ Mrs Patterson smiled and smoothed her cheek affectionately. ‘Everything will look differently in the morning, you’ll see. And you can have a lie-in as it’s Saturday.’

An hour later Adele was still awake, despite the cocoa Mrs Patterson had made her, and the hot water bottle on her sore stomach. There was moonlight coming in through the window by the sink and glinting down on to the backs of the chairs at the table. The couch she was lying on was more of a padded bench really, covered in brown, cracked imitation leather and very hard. It was behind the table and used as extra seating.

The Pattersons’ flat was the biggest in the house but a bit dark. The kitchen and the front bedroom where Mr and Mrs Patterson and their one-year-old baby Lily slept had big double doors between them. Then there was a passageway from the kitchen down to the room four-year-old Michael and seven-year-old Tommy shared, and a further door to the back yard.

What was going to become of her now? She’d heard what her father said to the doctor, and she was pretty certain he meant it. As far as she knew, orphanages were for young children and babies, she’d never heard of anyone of twelve being put in one. But she couldn’t get a job and keep herself until she was fourteen.

She must have gone to sleep eventually for she woke with a start to hear Mrs Patterson putting the kettle on.

‘Sorry to wake you, lovey,’ she said cheerily. ‘Did you sleep all right?’ She came over to the couch and smoothed Adele’s hair back from her forehead.

The woman’s black hair was loose now, and it was so long it reached her waist. She was wearing a dressing-gown that was so threadbare it looked ready to fall apart.

‘Yes, thank you,’ Adele replied. Her stomach still ached a bit, and her face felt sore, but apart from that she was all right.

‘My Alf’s going off to work now,’ Mrs Patterson said. ‘You snuggle down for a bit longer and I’ll make you a cup of tea after I’ve given Lily her bottle. We’ll have a little chat then too.’

Adele stayed where she was for a very long time, pretending to sleep while she watched and listened to the Pattersons. She saw how Mrs Patterson kissed her husband goodbye and gave him his sandwiches. How she fed baby Lily and then bathed her in the kitchen sink. Lily’s wet nappy stank, but it was nice to hear her gurgling and splashing in the water. Then Michael and Tommy got up, and their mother made them toast and a cup of tea.

There was a cosiness about the family’s routine that Adele had never experienced herself. Mrs Patterson patted her children’s heads and bottoms affectionately, she even kissed their cheeks for no real reason, and she answered the boys’ questions in a quiet, calm manner. Adele was used to her mother snarling at her.

‘How about a cup of tea now?’ Mrs Patterson asked when the boys had gone off to their room to get dressed. Baby Lily was put on the floor to play with some wooden blocks, and she shuffled about on her bottom.

Adele got up cautiously, very aware that Pamela’s nightdress was far too short, and she hadn’t thought to bring any clothes down with her.

Mrs Patterson must have read her thoughts. ‘We’ll go up later and get you some things. I heard your dad leave for work earlier. That’s a good sign, at least he isn’t brooding.’

‘I don’t think he’ll change his mind about me,’ Adele said, assuming Mrs Patterson meant that he wasn’t brooding about her. ‘You see, he isn’t my dad, Mum said so last night.’

Mrs Patterson put her hands on her hips and made a stern face. ‘She said a great many daft things by all accounts, but she couldn’t help it, love. She was beside herself.’

‘It must be true, Dad said it too, to the doctor,’ Adele said in a small voice, hanging her head with the shame of it. ‘Mum’s been saying lots of nasty things like that lately. She said she tried to get rid of me and it was the only reason she married Dad. She even wanted to kill me last night.’

Mrs Patterson fell silent, and Adele knew it was because she didn’t know what to say.

‘I suppose I’ll have to go to an orphanage, won’t I?’ Adele said after watching the older woman busying herself making the tea for a few minutes. ‘There isn’t anywhere else.’

All at once she found herself enveloped in a warm hug. ‘You poor love,’ Mrs Patterson exclaimed, clutching her to her plump chest which smelled of baby and toast. ‘This is an awful business, but maybe after your mum’s had a rest in hospital things will get better.’

Adele liked the hug, it made her feel safe and wanted, something she hadn’t really felt before. Yet all the same she thought she must warn this kind woman just how Rose Talbot felt about her elder daughter.

‘I don’t think she’ll want me, not even when she’s better,’ she began. It took her some time to explain just how bad things had been since Pamela’s death, and that even before that, her mother had been indifferent towards her. ‘So you see,’ she finished up, ‘there’s no point in me hoping that when she’s better everything will be all right.’

It seemed an interminable day to Adele. Mrs Patterson decided it wasn’t a good idea to go back to the flat to get some clothes, so she gave Adele a sort of overall of hers to wear. It was red and white check and nearly as broad as it was long, but with a belt tied round, it didn’t look much different to a dressing-gown. Adele tried to take her mind off what was likely to happen to her by helping around the flat, but her aching stomach kept reminding her. When she caught a glimpse of herself in Mrs Patterson’s bedroom mirror she began to cry again, for her eye was going black and the scar on her cheek looked horrible.

Finally it was seven o’clock and Dr Biggs arrived, but Jim still hadn’t come home.

‘He’ll have gone to the pub,’ Adele admitted.

Dr Biggs sighed and looked at Mrs Patterson who had the kind of look that said ‘I expected as much.’ She beckoned for the doctor to come into the front bedroom with her, pointedly closing the door behind them.

‘Our dad goes down the pub too,’ Tommy said, looking up from drawing moustaches on people in an old magazine.

Adele had known the Patterson boys from birth and liked them a great deal, even if they were funny-looking with pale faces, sticking-up black hair and scabby knees. As she had always taken Tommy to school with Pamela, she knew him best – he was cheeky, noisy and sometimes a bit rough, but lovable too. He had done his best to make her laugh today; even his remark about his dad going to the pub was intended to make her feel better. But Adele couldn’t really respond, she was straining her ears to hear what Mrs Patterson and the doctor were talking about.

Meanwhile both adults were doing their best to keep their voices down.

‘I’ll have to make a report to the authorities,’ the doctor said sadly. ‘I suspect Jim’s got no intention of taking care of Adele, and we can’t let it go on and on. Is there any other family? Grandparents, aunts or uncles?’

‘Jim’s got a sister somewhere up north,’ Annie replied. ‘But he never sees her. If Rose’s got any family they’ve never been here.’

‘No parents?’ the doctor asked.

‘I don’t think so,’ Mrs Patterson replied. ‘She grew up in Sussex, by the sea, that’s all I know.’

‘I’ll ask Jim when I get hold of him,’ the doctor said. ‘If her parents are still alive, maybe they’ll help out.’

‘I hope so. It grieves me to think of that sweet girl going to an orphanage,’ Annie Patterson said, and her voice had a kind of break in it as though she was crying.

‘I’ll write a note for Jim, and Adele can leave it upstairs for him while she gets some clothes.’

‘I doubt he can even read,’ Annie said scornfully. ‘He’s not the full shilling, you know.’

‘I know,’ Dr Biggs agreed. His wife had informed him of that last night. She heard all the gossip in the neighbourhood. According to what she’d been told, Jim’s family, the Talbots, had been a notorious family in Somers Town back in the early 1900s, the boys all villains and thugs, the girls tarts, and the parents even worse. Jim was the youngest of eight, and generally known to be backward. He joined up in 1917 when he was eighteen, and it was assumed he must have been killed in France, as at least three of his brothers had been, for he didn’t return. His parents and the two younger sisters who were still living at home died in the flu epidemic of 1919.

Everyone was astounded when Jim Talbot suddenly turned up again in Somers Town four years later. Not only because he had survived the war which had taken so many of the young men in the area, but he came back with a pretty, well-bred wife and a four-year-old daughter too. They were even more astounded when he managed to hold down a job at a wood yard, and they discovered that his wife wasn’t a slut as his mother and sisters had been.

In the light of what Dr Biggs had heard the previous night, it seemed likely that Rose Talbot only married Jim as a last resort, because she was carrying another man’s child. He thought that years of living with a man she didn’t love, in considerably reduced circumstances compared to what she was used to, had caused a huge resentment towards Adele to grow.

Dr Biggs couldn’t find very much sympathy for Rose, who had no right to blame an innocent child for her mistakes or misfortune. But he did feel a little for Jim, for he had been up against it from birth. No doubt he’d consulted his workmates today, and they’d all encouraged him to reject Adele. Perhaps he also thought of it as a way of showing Rose he was tired of being her provider and doormat.

‘I’ll write a note anyway,’ he said. ‘But I’ll come round again in the morning and try to catch Jim.’

Adele walked up the stairs very reluctantly, the note from Dr Biggs in her hand. She was scared of going into the flat, it was only going to make her think about her mother with the knife again. As her dad hadn’t come back to speak to Dr Biggs it was clear he didn’t care what happened to her. She wished it was she, not Pamela, who was dead.

As she opened the door of the flat and turned on the light, Adele felt sick. The saucepans and broken plates were still on the floor, and there was a bloodstain on the tablecloth, along with the knife. It smelled nasty too, of drink, cigarettes, her dad’s sweat and socks. She wanted to run right out and never come back again, but she steeled herself to go into her bedroom and collect her things.

She didn’t have much to collect, just her best Sunday skirt and jumper, one clean vest, school blouse, knickers and pair of socks, her shoes and gym slip. She was about to put her things in her school satchel when she remembered there was a small suitcase on the top of the wardrobe in her parents’ room.

Their bedroom stank even worse than the living room, and the bed wasn’t made. There were more bloodstains on the pillows, she supposed from the cut on her dad’s cheek. She stood there at the dressing-table looking at herself in the mirror for a moment.

She looked awful, she thought, it was no wonder no one wanted her. Even before she got the black eye and the scar on her cheek she hadn’t been pretty. Dull, straggly, biscuit-coloured hair, sallow skin, even her eyes weren’t a proper colour like brown or blue, they were a greenish colour that Mum had once said was like canal water.

It was no wonder her mum was angry that her pretty daughter got killed instead of the plain one.

Pulling up the bedroom chair, Adele climbed on to it to reach the suitcase, and as she lifted it down she saw it was covered in a thick blanket of dust. She put it on the bed and wiped it off with the edge of the bedspread.