The average person has kept a secret for 15 years. Or more. And three in five people have some ghastly secret or other and are terrified of being found out. Or so a survey tells us. I don’t know how the researchers found that out, because it would have rather blown the secrets, but I suspect that most of us keep some sort of secrets. Even blabbermouths like me.
There seem to be two sorts of secrets: short-term, everyday ones; and those big, scary, long-term ones. I’m always battling with the day-to-day ones, about friends and acquaintances. This one’s upset about something that one said, but I mustn’t tell, but the other one wants to know why that one’s annoyed with her, and I know from what she said that the other’s got the wrong end of the stick, so I tell, hoping they can make up again, then I get told off for blabbing.
So the next time they’re in a twizzle about something, I keep my mouth shut, then I get a drubbing for not telling, because if I had, they could have sorted it out. I can’t win. And if I do keep a secret, I get no credit for it, because no one ever knows. Because it’s a secret. But at least mine are usually only small secrets and don’t cause wreckage, either way.
My mother kept two huge secrets all her life. Surprising, because she was famous for blabbing. She didn’t understand tact. She thought it was a form of fib. If someone asked her what she thought of their new dress, she would tell them. Why let them walk around looking frightful? If she had an opinion, out it would come, loudly, which is why my father called her Blabbermouth.
But soon after her death, someone told me that her father – my grandfather – had had a mistress living round the corner for years, who my grandma, my mother and most of the neighbours knew about – and he had another child, my secret auntie. And I have a cousin somewhere or other who plays bridge.
I always wondered why my grandma was so cross with him, but thought it was because he was a wastrel and a gambler, albeit handsome and charming. He was sent to South Africa to find work, and as he said goodbye he asked for a kiss. “Kiss my arse!” said Grandma coarsely. Now we know why.
In addition, my mother never told me that my Auntie Celia had gambled away all my inheritance at the Curzon Club. She’d revealed every single one of Auntie’s other misdemeanours, but not that one.
Perhaps in those days people were more ashamed of secret children and gambling. Hopefully that sort of shame has faded out. I’ve been spending Wednesday evenings weeping at Long Lost Family, and those cruel old taboos and secrets that brought such misery. But a friend told me that, not so long ago, research on a genetic disease had to be cancelled when blood tests revealed that a surprisingly large percentage of the fathers were not the fathers. The researchers had to keep those secrets, or blow the families apart.
So the world hasn’t changed that much. The usual things are kept secret: affairs, debts, bad behaviour, crimes. And apparently we have some new secrets now: secret plastic surgery, secret internet histories.
But of course, the internet’s where we now show our secrets off, and where we seem to have become more brazen and shameless, inviting the world into our bedrooms. And if we don’t do it ourselves, someone else spiteful will probably do it for us, and the whole world will know our secrets for eternity. Same old secrets, just new and more dangerous blabbing opportunities.
