THE SECRET

From Jackie:

The Secret
What I’m about to tell you, I haven’t wanted to tell anyone before,  is a secret that I’ve kept to myself for a long long time and has remained untold forever. 
I haven’t revealed this to anyone at all and maybe its time that it came out into the open and for me to bring it to light so I’ll take this opportunity to let it all out. 
It is difficult to tell about this secret because it is really so personal that in actual fact the only person who can understand it is myself.
Now I’m not sure that I’m able to do this but I’ll try …..
So here goes - the secret is about something I did once and regretted instantly - something so terrible that even I am ashamed and horrified at this dirty deed.   I was young, inexperienced in life and lacking in direction having lost my parents at a young age.
I kept the secret from my family and friends and it felt really scary to have this knowledge deep inside me and not let it out
To  come clean and confess would I believe be an enormous relief …….but on the other hand could also be damaging and I could lose you,  all my friends.    You might consider this secret to be so terrible that you can’t associate yourself with me anymore - that I’m not worth knowing or that you would be just plain disgusted that a human being could do such a thing.
So here goes, but wait,  just a few more minutes.   I’ll get round to telling my secret soon although it is something  that should never be disclosed really.    I want the whole world to know but I haven’t been able to tell before today

Once I’ve told the secret I’m sure I’ll feel an immense relief.   The burden will be lifted off my shoulders and I imagine a sense of calmness and comfort will overcome me.   Just the fact of letting the secret out - saying the words and making it known to others would be liberating I’m sure .    The burden I have been carrying all these years will be lifted.
    But….. Is it fair to push it onto someone else ?  Will that or those persons then feel the same as me and then in turn have to keep what I have revealed to them thus creating another secret.   A secret that each of them will feel the need to hold on to and then suffer what I have been going through all these years.
What could it possibly be,  you must all be asking yourselves?
Well,  its a secret!   and as secrets are supposed to be well, secret and therefore not meant to be disclosed and not  made public ; I’ll just save it for myself and keep you all wondering what on earth it could be.


From Annemarie

My Secret

Out in the bush there were no shops so their mother made nearly all her own dresses. She bought the latest patterns and with the arrival of beautiful fabrics from America she was often busy at the dining room table sewing  the Dior  New Look dresses for herself, with the unpadded, rounded shoulders, shapely bust lines, nipped-in waistlines, and full, gathered skirts  and  for her two girls she always made them  identical dresses with dirndl skirts, puff sleeves and embellishments in the form exquisite embroidery, rick-rack braid and hand -made appliqués of butterflies. Dresses were for going out to friends or for the special fortnightly visit to the Kampala where they had tea and cakes in Drapers, the big (the only) department store. Then they were allowed to wear their special petticoats, layers of net and frills which displayed the billowy skirts to best advantage. Afternoon tea was where you met friends and where you showed off you best clothes.

Best of all for these two little girls was to watch their mother transform into a princess for the event of the year - the St. George's Ball. People came from all over Uganda, from the up-country tea estates, from the coffee plantations and from the surrounding towns. For this event you did not wear home-made, no, you bought your dress when on home leave in England - a pukka evening dress from a real shop in London. There would be a well-known label on this dress (years before everyone wore labels, any old labels!) and you had your hair set and permed and you wore a beautiful face.

    Their  mother would sit at her dressing table upon which were  tortoiseshell brush sets and silver caskets full of trinkets, earrings and necklaces  and apply her make-up - mascara, not too dark, she was blonde after all, a little rouge, brush her eyebrows with the cutest of tiny brushes and then dip the soft pom-pom powder puff  into a tub of loose powder, dab it on her face and last of all and best of all was her lipstick, which she  carefully applied to her lips, mmm-mm-ed them elegantly together and gently dabbed with tissue and voila -  their mother was a real  princess in an ice-blue, off-the-shoulder, satin gown, bouffant skirt,  high heels and gorgeous red lips.
    In 1955 the family were on their biennual home leave, which coincided with their mother’s birthday. She was ecstatic as one of her birthday presents was a lipstick - not any old lipstick, no, this was one of Dior's newly launched lipsticks, his foray into make-up or as his advertisements at the time boasted:

 “for women wanting to wear Dior but unable to buy the dress.” and   “an ingenious idea: a lipstick for your bag and a lipstick for your dressing table”.

The lipstick came in a beautiful box with a lid that snapped shut with a satisfying click and was  decorated with a silky ribbon; inside it was lined with undulating  grey satin in which nestled the golden tube of lipstick itself. But this lipstick was revolutionary, really so, as it came with a new twist mechanism which twizzled the lipstick round and up and back down again. Never had the mother had so expensive a piece of make-up. She couldn’t wait to show it to her friends back in Africa.

      The new magic lipstick fascinated the older girl but the children knew it was 'look, don't touch' when it came to mum's dressing table. One day the parents went into town taking their younger daughter and leaving six year old Annie and her one and half year old brother with their great grandmother. It was whilst Granny was dozing that  Annie was tempted . The golden  lipstick reclined in its grey satin bed, the lid of the box open like a four poster bed. Her little  brother sat  playing with a box of coloured wooden cubes, clunking them  this way and that, totally absorbed in building the blocks, knocking them down and making noise.  Annie picked up the lipstick - how on earth did it morph into a red torpedo? Her fingers twiddled and fiddled until suddenly there was the pure deep red rocket – magic!  She gazed at herself in the mirror; she would try just a tiny smear on her lips, just a bit more, and sshe pursed her lips together making silent mmm..mmm kisses as she had seen her mother do... and then she heard the sound of a car engine as it drew up in front of the house. Her parents were back! How to make the red rocket disappear ? In panic she pushed and pushed, she shoved and she rammed the lid on but the lipstick refused to  disappear magically into its case. It squeezed and it oozed out all around, covering her fingers in red waxy, sticky goo.  She tried wiping her fingers on her clothes but that just made her dress red, as red as her smeared face ;  then she heard the car doors slam and voices, coming up the path. Panicking she wiped her hands on her  little brother, put the offending object in his dumpy little fingers. Red lipstick progressed onto the walls, the counter pane and the door. As her parents entered the bedroom she was holding her brother and scolding him:

“ You naughty little boy, you know we must never touch mummy's things and look what you have done. “

  Yes, she timed it well; little Richard was deemed too young to know, their mother should have put the lipstick away properly, and was it really fair to leave a toddler in the hands of a six year old and 85 year old? Their father was tight-lipped as he repainted the room and thought about the most expensive lipstick he had ever bought. 

Sixty-four years later my secret is out and I’m sorry Mum, Dad and Richard for the loss of your lipstick and so deviously blaming my little brother.


Sarah's contribution;

My secret 4 -  by M.S., aka S.P.

I am unhappy.  I am not supposed to be, but I am.  They tell me not to look so glum so I try to smile.  They say I am not trying enough.  But why should I try?  To please whom?  For, what have I to smile about?  Even my children are more or less strangers to me.  They are in the hands of nannies and caretakers most of the time, I am not allowed to raise them as I would—oh, what would I not tell them: flee!  Get out there and meet ordinary people!  Get a simple job, forget about money and celebrity.  But there is no use in my trying.  They are part of the system already; they are doomed.
There will be no more children, that is for sure.  Over that at least I have control.  If only I could get those two out of this stultifying, artifical, hypocritical world, if only I could do it somehow, he could get one of his bastards to put in their place.  Oh, they wouldn't like that—not only the officials and the family, but the people themselves wouldn't like that.  But why then let him make those children with impunity?  Why are there two sets of rules?
I almost got away.  I was out of the country, or almost.  Technically I was out of their reach.  But they got me, and they took away my passport.  Because men are stronger than women, even than women like me.  And because women are trained not to make a scandal.  If only I had kicked and screamed, if only I had shouted, "They are kidnapping me! I want diplomatic immunity!"  Because that's what it was.  But foolishly, I let the occasion slip.  I am storng, physically; but I have no courage.
They had arguments, of course.  Things I already knew and things I had not suspected.  That my career, the only one I was trained for, was over; I hadn't even qualified the last time.  I was getting older.  But I had thought I could go on, as a sort of ambassador for sport, promoting respect, encouraging people with "intellectual disabilities" as they call them.
Is that what I am supposed to be?  I have no schooling, I did not do well at anything except sport.  Is that why he chose me?  He thought I would be docile, and provide good strong bodies for his children.
But they told me I could not do even that.  "Ambassador"?  If I left, my name would be mud.  No-one would accept me.  I couldn't even get an ordinary job—what else do I know how to do?  And they had my passport.  I could not travel or stay anywhere without that; I could not even go home.  And my family would disown me, they said.  At least, once they began to make things difficult for them, whereas now, didn't I see, they were doing so well?
I cried at my wedding.  He chid me for it, so did they, he made me suffer afterwards.  But they told me that nobody saw.  If nobody saw, then why chide me?  They know how to punish me; they get at me through the children.  So I try to smile.  Not very hard, but I try a little.  I see the photos, I think I am doing pretty well.  I keep my secret.