A Christmas Promise

TWO

Agnes was glad her shift was over. Having been persuaded that her services were of the utmost importance on the underground – and preventing her from realising her long-held dream of living in the countryside – Agnes had stayed on since Ted’s death, but she wasn’t finding it easy. At the start of every shift her pain seemed renewed, and more so last night, Ted’s birthday. It had been a long night and she was bone weary now.

Almost at the top of the Chancery Lane Underground steps, Agnes struggled to pick her way through the mass of people leaving the shelter for the day when she suddenly heard Ted’s voice calling her name. Not just recalling it – she actually heard it.

Looking up, Agnes saw him standing at the top of the stairwell. He beamed that smile she remembered so well and she felt her heart hammer in her chest. To other people Ted might have been a relatively ordinary-looking young bloke of middling height, but his blue eyes were the kindest she had ever seen. Immediately, she quickened her step towards him – so he could reach out, grab her hand and haul her to where he was standing.

‘Ted? Ted!’ Agnes looked around wildly before the familiar panic shot through her, reminding her that Ted was no longer alive. Nor was he waiting for her at the end of a busy shift. She blinked away acid tears that stung her eyes and brought a choking lump to her throat … Quickly, however, she wiped her eyes with the pad of her hand and made her way home, not only exhausted but delusional too. Every day was like this now, she realised; her grief had got to the point where she could hardly bear it. Ted had been the only love she had ever known and his sudden death had left a void she felt unable to fill. But coming here every day to the Underground railway where she worked in the ticket office was becoming too much to bear now.

The physical ache had not gone away as people said it would. And her life seemed to go from one empty day to another. Even though it had been almost six months since his tragic death, over in Bethnal Green, Agnes still felt it as deeply as if it had happened only yesterday. The horror of that awful tragedy was still as raw as the night she was called into the station master’s office and given the devastating news.

Her overwhelming loss brought back feelings of rejection; like the day Matron told her she was no longer needed at the orphanage when the children were being moved to the country for the duration of this terrible war. She would have loved to have gone with them.

The orphanage wasn’t just a place where she worked – it had been her home and her life from the day she was found in a shopping basket on the doorstep at only a few weeks old, wrapped in a shabby pink blanket.

Agnes recalled being so scared to meet her new landlady, Olive, a widow, who lived with her daughter and two other lodgers. Tilly turned out to be her best friend – the only one she had ever had with whom to share confidences and dreams for the future – but what future was there now since Tilly had joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service – the ATS – and Ted was never coming back? As she approached Olive’s house in Article Row, Agnes knew she had to buck her ideas up. She didn’t want Olive to fret over her any more. But her landlady was a canny woman who missed nothing.

‘Is something bothering you, Agnes?’ Olive asked kindly, pouring tea into two cups. She had just returned from the church hall where she had been sorting clothes into bundles for the Red Cross shop.

‘Since Ted died,’ Agnes said hesitantly, ‘I have felt lonelier than I ever was before.’ Even though Olive and the others had been extra specially kind, sometimes it just wasn’t enough.

‘You’ve been through a lot,’ Olive said as she pulled the chair from under the table and sat down while Agnes poured little more than a teaspoon of milk into her tea.

‘I’ll admit my nerves are shredded, Olive,’ she said, sipping the scalding liquid without flinching, ‘but don’t we all feel like that these days?’ She paused momentarily and Olive allowed her to gather her thoughts. ‘But it’s not because Ted died, if I’m really honest.’

Olive’s eyebrows rose in surprise. She knew that Agnes had idolised her fiancé.

‘That’s just it,’ Agnes said as if the realisation had only just dawned on her. ‘I did love Ted, but the thing that has been bothering me more than anything is that … I can be honest with you, Olive … I secretly dreaded the day we would be man and wife. As I said, I did love him – but I wasn’t in love with him – I valued him like a lost soul loves their rescuer.’

‘I don’t understand what you mean,’ Olive said, her brows puckered, wondering if Agnes had truly lost all reason now.

‘He was the first man who ever spoke to me like a friend; he helped me settle in when I went to work on the underground … He was my guide and I was obliged to him, but you can’t build a life together on gratitude … And his mother!’ Agnes’s eyes widened, and Olive found her expression vaguely comical, but she did not even smile as Agnes continued earnestly.

‘I was constantly aware that any moment London would be attacked from the air and she could be dead, injured or incapacitated, and I know now that I only cared for Ted’s sake.’

‘Well, you weren’t engaged to his mother; you didn’t have to love her, Agnes—’ Olive began, but Agnes continued as if it was the most important thing in the world to get it all off her chest while she had the courage to do so.

‘No, but if Ted had lived and had put a ring on my finger, I know his mother would never have allowed him to leave their flat.’ Agnes was pleating the burgundy chenille tablecloth between fingers and thumb as she spoke. ‘And she would have expected him to tip up his wages to her. We would never have been able to save for a place of our own – even if there were any to spare – and I realise now that Ted would never have gone to live on the farm. His mother would have had a canary if he’d suggested leaving London!’

‘How could she stop a grown man from doing as he pleased?’ asked Olive, even though she was sure she knew the answer.

‘You know as well as I do how wily she is, Olive. Mrs Jackson would make herself ill – or even one of the girls – she would have done anything to keep Ted at home, and he would have felt it was his duty, he was so trusting; his mother could do no wrong.’

Although Olive didn’t say so, she couldn’t see Ted ever marrying Agnes. He wasn’t the marrying kind, as far as Olive could see – he liked the best of both worlds, did Ted: his mother’s home comforts and Agnes’s unfailing admiration. No, he wasn’t the marrying kind at all.

‘I must admit, Agnes, I did wonder, if you had managed to persuade him to go to the farm whether his mother would have soon followed you both.’

‘She never would,’ Agnes replied, certain. ‘She is London born and bred and so is her family.’

‘I’m not so sure, Agnes. When the chips are down, as they say …’

‘Well, we’ll never know now, will we?’ Agnes knew she could talk about anything with Olive. The landlady gave sensible advice without pity, knowing there were plenty of girls who had lost their sweethearts in this war and who found a way to cope. And so must she.

‘I wonder what life would be like in the countryside.’

‘A lot of hard work, I should imagine,’ Olive answered, ‘but a lot of satisfaction too, knowing that you are helping your country to win the war by filling the stomachs of your own people.’

As Agnes’s mind began to wander a balmy September breeze gently wafted through the open window and whispered through her hair. It would be wonderful to get away from the soot-covered bombed-out buildings and inhale the scent of newly cut grass and clean fresh air, she thought, instead of taking in the acrid smell of charred destruction that London had become.

Yet, there was still an element of doubt. Agnes couldn’t imagine leaving Olive, who was more like a mother to her than anyone she had ever known before; the kind of woman Agnes imagined her own mother would have been: kind, considerate and, above all, a rock of common sense.

‘Penny for them?’ Olive asked as she scraped back her chair and picked up the empty cups.

‘I was just thinking that if anybody would give me the best advice it is you,’ Agnes smiled.

‘You only have to pluck up that courage I know you have and to ask, Agnes.’

‘Yes …’ Agnes said, more certain now than ever that Olive was the type of competent woman who deserved to wear the uniform of the Women’s Voluntary Service.

With their motto ‘Never say no’, the WVS ran the mobile canteens in bombed-out areas; delivered water in tankers where the water supply had been damaged; gathered circles of women into the church hall to knit socks for servicemen; collected and distributed clothing and household items to those who had lost everything to bomb damage – as well as helping to organise the housing of evacuees. Olive was the one woman who knew exactly what Agnes was talking about.

So, thought Agnes, why had it been so difficult to tell her landlady that the time had finally come for her to move on? The reason was because, in her heart, Agnes knew she didn’t want to leave Article Row without Olive.

However, Agnes needed to find out about her parents, about the life she should have had. Although she had been treated kindly at the orphanage it wasn’t her home; and even though Olive had made her feel comfortable and part of her own family, neither was number 13. They were places she had been obliged to inhabit because she had nowhere else to go. Although, maybe she would leave it a little longer before telling Olive that she was leaving to go to live on the farm …

If she was honest, Sally knew Callum’s sister, Morag, would once have been the first person she would have gone to when her mind was uneasy. But having been so angry with her over these last few years, she now realised she hadn’t even grieved for the loss of their friendship. And while she had not mourned the passing, there was a void inside Sally that could not be filled. The knowledge, coming out of the blue when she saw Callum again, made her realise that Morag and her father had given her the most precious gift after they were killed: her beautiful half-sister, Alice. But now was not the time for such thoughts. Now was a time to work …

Later that morning, Sally was making sure that the junior nurses were carrying out their obligations to the best of their abilities, and not slacking in their endeavours to keep the patients comfortable. She headed to the sluice room to check that all was in order before doctors’ rounds, where she saw two young trainee nurses from the Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service, or, as it was more popularly known, the QAs, who replaced the qualified nurses that had once staffed the wards and were now spread around other hospitals or had even been snapped up by the armed forces.

These two, Sally noticed as she stood in the doorway undetected, were dressed in a pale blue uniform to show their position in the hospital hierarchy – or lower-archy, as she and Morag used to complain when they were hard-working probationers. Obviously unaware of her presence, the two probationers worked and chatted while busily emptying the metal bedpans, then placing them into a specially made sterilising machine and securing the drop-down lid before preparing the glass urinals for further use.

Sally smiled as they giggled their way through their duties, and she knew that they would invite a severe dressing-down if caught by any other senior member of staff, Matron especially. All the younger nurses were terrified of Matron, even though she was an absolute angel in Sally’s estimation.

But she couldn’t see the harm in a little bit of banter if they were competently carrying out their duties; she had soon discovered better results were achieved when the young trainees were given an inch, and offered good, down-to-earth advice, rather than having the life terrified out of them, although the latter seemed to work for Matron.

However, Sally knew the probationers worked well for her, and she seldom had to reprimand the juniors. Also, she recognised that if the two probationers realised she was standing in the doorway they would not be very happy at being listened in to, and probably would be all fingers, thumbs and bumbling apologies.

Sally wondered when, exactly, she had become such an object of maturity and even apprehension. She wouldn’t go so far as to terrify the life out of the probationer nurses, like Matron – or demand respect, like the doctors – and she was firm but fair. The young nurses did give her respect and, in turn, she gave it back where it was due.

Her thoughts drifted now to her own training days when she and Morag whispered and gossiped in the sluice room and shared their secret desires of the latest handsome doctor because there was always at least one whom all the nurses fell for; like these eighteen-year-olds trainees were drooling over a doctor now, and wondering who between the two of them would be the first to snare the potential high-flying consultant and live happy ever after.

‘I’ve heard Dr Parsley is going to be the best heart surgeon in England,’ one of the young nurses gasped, her hands covering the place where her heart was probably beating fifteen to the dozen, thought Sally.

‘One of the junior nurses has seen him – he’s as handsome as debonair David Niven, they say. I can’t wait to meet him.’

Oh, she did miss Morag, Sally suddenly thought. She missed being carefree and young, linking arms and swapping stories they could never tell anybody else, of sharing hopes and dreams without fear of being teased for being immature – because even now she still had fleeting moments of doubt in her abilities, and Morag would have been the perfect person with whom she could share those moments. Sally knew now that she would never have a friend like Morag ever again. She missed their heart-to-heart chats but most of all she missed having Morag as the best and kindest friend she had ever known … It would have been nice to share her thoughts, maybe to go out dancing instead of being old before her time. Sally almost laughed out loud; since when did she have time to go dancing these days? All she seemed to do was work, sleep and, more rarely, enjoy the company of her young half-sister, Alice – Morag’s daughter.

If she was being honest now, Sally thought, she was beginning to understand how her father and Morag were drawn to each other. Morag had been so wonderful – the best of good friends, taking over the most intimate nursing of her mother as though she had been her own, when Sally needed to leave her mother’s bedside to give way to her tears.

Morag, with her gentle nature, wonderful sense of humour and, most of all, her compassion; so like her own mother – if Sally were truthful, even if only to herself, there was a part of her that was glad Morag took care of her mother when she was unable to do so, for, there was nobody else she would have trusted to do it.

It was so easy now to see how her father would have been instantly beguiled by her friend, and Sally realised now that she wasn’t betraying her mother’s memory by thinking this way. Her father had found comfort in Morag’s company and that comfort had eventually led to love – for both of them. With hindsight, Sally could see it now. Life was too short and too precious to live with regret.

Her father was not the kind of man who could have his head turned by any young flibbertigibbet who came his way – he truly loved her mother, of that Sally had no doubt – but neither was he the kind of man who was strong enough to live alone or wallow in grief. He celebrated her mother’s life in everything he did. Morag had been his strength when Sally had been so defeated by grief and absolutely useless, emotionally and substantially, to her father. So who better to fill her mother’s shoes and – yes – her bed? Sally knew that, at the time, she would have thought nobody was good enough to take her mother’s place – absolutely nobody.

Yet, thinking of it now, she knew that Morag would never have had any intentions of becoming a substitute for her own mother. The thought of it still brought on a small shudder of distress, but now she had to put the feeling to one side, because she had to move on, for Alice’s sake as well as for her own wellbeing. Harbouring such toxic thoughts as she had done in the past was not healthy. It had been wrong to foster bitterness and a single-minded refusal to see anybody’s point of view, except her own.

‘Ah, Sister, there you are.’

Sally turned suddenly to see a young, floppy-haired doctor approaching, wearing what looked like a brand-new stethoscope and a wide grin, his white coat-tails flying as he walked.

Sally’s freshly starched apron rustled as she turned to see the object of the young nurses’ affection. One of the trainees gaped in the doctor’s direction and said quickly, her face taking on a pink tinge as if she had been caught doing something she shouldn’t, ‘I’m sorry, Sister, I didn’t see you standing there. Did you want us for something?’

‘No, Nurse,’ Sally said in her usual calm manner. ‘You carry on.’

‘Carry on, Nurse, you are doing a sterling job,’ Dr Parsley said enthusiastically, undermining Sally’s authority, for which she gave him a withering look. This was the young doctor who, according to the probationers, was a bit of a lady’s man and, according to Matron, was a pain in the rear.

‘How lovely to meet you, Sister,’ Dr Parsley said, holding his hand in front of him, which Sally pointedly ignored. ‘And may I say how beautiful you look in that disapproving grimace.’

‘Indeed.’ Sally’s nonplussed demeanour was fully witnessed by the probationers, whom, she suspected, Dr Alex Parsley was trying to impress. ‘This way,’ Sally said, walking into the sluice room. ‘Nurse, show Dr Parsley where he can put his preposterous observations.’ Sally knew that once they took their Hippocratic oath these newly qualified doctors left their common sense at the door.

‘Oh, Sister, would you be a pet and see if there are any rooms to let hereabouts?’

‘Did your last slave die of exhaustion, Dr Parsley?’ Sally asked with an air of disdain as she left the young doctor in the care of the salivating nurses. She had no intention whatsoever of finding the young upstart a room.

Sally knew what she had to do. She had left making the journey far too long, and the time had come to visit her home city. Her mind was made up. The only problem was she wanted to go right now, but she wouldn’t be able to have leave until well after Christmas, maybe even after spring.

‘Ah, Sister, so glad to have caught up with you,’ said one of the older and much more experienced doctors. ‘There is a gentleman in bed five who has been asking for you in his sleep – his name is—’

‘I know who it is, thank you, Doctor.’ Sally could feel the hot colour rise to her throat and cheeks; Callum was calling her name in his sleep.

THREE

‘I see there’s a new lodger in Ian Simpson’s house, Olive,’ Nancy Black said as she closed her front door and began to attack her pathway with a balding sweeping brush. Olive was not in the mood for Nancy’s prattle this morning but knew she that thinking of mundane things would stop her fretting about her daughter, Tilly. Nancy would jump at the chance of a bit of gossip, no matter how small or insignificant. Olive knew her neighbour, like a starving crow, fed on the smallest piece of tittle-tattle for as long as possible.

‘I heard on the wireless that the war might be over by Christmas,’ Olive tried changing the subject, knowing that Nancy, now leaning on the threadbare brush, enjoyed a good old moan about the war.

Keeping busy as usual, Olive intended to fill every minute of her day so she didn’t worry. She hadn’t seen Tilly since April, when she’d been home on forty-eight hours’ leave, and now it was September – and soon to be her twenty-first birthday. Tilly had written only sporadically, and Olive had no idea where she was posted. It was a big wrench to a mother who had watched and nurtured her only daughter so carefully for those twenty-one years.

Olive couldn’t stop the disturbing thoughts that sometimes filled her mind in the darkest, sleep-deprived hours of the night, not only because she had no idea where Tilly was since she moved out of London, but also because she hadn’t been honest with Tilly for the first time in her daughter’s life: she had kept the really important news that Drew was in London to herself. Sally had told her he was being discharged from hospital any day now and she wondered if he would go straight back to America as his father had wished.

‘There haven’t been as many raids lately and if the news is anything to go by, it looks like the Nazis are running out of steam,’ Nancy called over the fence, breaking into Olive’s thoughts. ‘All the hysterics from Hitler about taking over London have come to nothing, just as I knew it would.’ She gave an exaggerated nod of her turbaned head. ‘I could have told them that Hitler was full of hot air … silly man, doing all that ranting.’

‘Maybe Mr Churchill should have come to you first, Nancy,’ Olive answered drily. ‘It would have saved an awful lot of bother.’ She shook her head as she dipped her disintegrating chamois leather into the galvanised bucket and, having given it a good rinse, she then vigorously removed all trace of city grime from her front windows, saying as she wiped, ‘We’ve got Hitler on the run now for sure.’

Olive wished the war would be over soon for the sake of both sides. She recalled reading in the newspaper that the German industrial port of Hamburg, was bombed nine times in eight days! It must have been as bad as the blitz, she thought. She believed that not everybody was bad to the core, but though she felt a deep abiding pity for the thousands of people who had been killed in the resulting firestorm that had destroyed nearly half of Hamburg’s factories, she wouldn’t say so to Nancy.

‘Serves ’em right,’ Nancy said with a vehemence so unbecoming it made Olive flinch. Knowing that German towns were now being blasted to oblivion didn’t give Olive cause to rejoice. Instead she grieved for all the wives and mothers who had lost someone so precious they could never be replaced; she thought of the fathers and sons who would never live to see their families thrive, no matter what country they came from … It was difficult to delight in the misery of others.

‘I must say, though,’ Nancy continued unabashed, ‘it didn’t take Mussolini long to renege on his duties once Rome was bombed.’ The Italian Fascist had been arrested after surrendering, Olive remembered. ‘He soon changed his tune when the war began turning in Britain and the Allies’ favour.’

Olive realised the optimistic news did little to alleviate Nancy’s black mood when her neighbour said through pursed lips, ‘I never did trust that turncoat Mussolini.’

‘It’s easy to say that now, Nancy,’ Olive told her next-door neighbour, who was beating her doormat, causing plumes of dust to spoil the brightness of the sunny summer morning, not to mention Olive’s newly polished windows. ‘Here, isn’t it your Tilly’s birthday soon?’ Nancy’s sudden comment sounded more like an accusation and Olive nodded as she continued to work. Olive had never imagined Tilly celebrating her twenty-first birthday fighting for King and country, but then, she mused, nobody would have thought there would be another war after the last one. Olive nodded in reply to Nancy and swallowed the painful lump of fear-infused pride.

‘I think it might rain later,’ Nancy said in her usual contrary fashion, looking up at the perfectly calm pale blue sky as Olive, once again, began to polish her windows. She wasn’t in the mood for Nancy’s constant whinging today; she had far too much to do before she left for the Red Cross shop where she helped out most days, and she had to try to get into town to buy Tilly a birthday present.

She had saved all her points and coupons as well as the money in the Post Office for just this occasion, and she couldn’t wait to have a look around the shops, although there wasn’t much to buy these days. Certainly, there wasn’t much in the way of luxury goods for twenty-first birthdays. It had been a long time since she had treated herself to a day in the West End.

Olive sighed as she brought her windows to a dazzling shine with the daily newspaper. So much had happened in the last four years it was hard to know a time when peace had been taken for granted. Taking a deep breath of warm morning air, Olive tried not to dwell on thoughts that would dim her usually positive outlook, knowing her temporary melancholia was caused by the lack of information about her daughter; she hadn’t had much in the way of letters since Tilly went back to camp after Easter leave, last April, giving her cause to worry – as any mother would.

But, Olive thought, at least she had the other girls to keep her going, and then there was Archie; he took her mind off her troubles, she reflected with a smile. At nearly forty, Olive recognised that although she wasn’t old, nor was she sixteen any more – even though Archie made her feel that young when he looked at her in that special way he had …

‘You are always on the go, Olive. You’ve been like a mother to those lodgers of yours. I never thought I’d see the day,’ Nancy said, breaking into Olive’s wonderful reverie of Archie.

‘I’m no different from anybody else, Nancy.’ But Olive felt a little glow of pride especially when she remembered that Dulcie had said she was her very own substitute mother. Dulcie, like all her belles, was like another daughter now, especially after her own mother had been tragically killed last March in the Bethnal Green underground crush. Brash, flinty, glamorous and a dyed-in-the-wool East Ender, Dulcie had married aristocratic RAF fighter pilot David, but she was still a frequent visitor to number 13, and Olive suspected she always would be.

‘But if Dulcie sees you as a mother figure, then she must also see you as a substitute grandmother,’ said Nancy, popping Olive’s little bubble of pride; knowing the grandmothers she had become acquainted with were all of matronly stock. Did she look like that? She hoped not, and she tried to keep herself neat and trim. And even if there was so little in the way of beauty care she still used her Pond’s cold cream every night, albeit more sparingly than she had done before the war.

‘I couldn’t stand Dulcie when I first met her,’ Nancy said. ‘ “Common” was the word that sprung to mind when she bobbed down Article Row with those swinging hips and all that fake …’

‘What fake?’ Olive stopped what she was doing and looked at Nancy, her brows furrowed.

‘All that lipstick and rouge, the dyed blond hair and the painted nails, not to mention those eyelashes – it’s a wonder she could see out of her own eyes!’

‘I thought she looked very glamorous,’ Olive lied – she wasn’t having Nancy push Dulcie’s reputation into the gutter – ‘and her hair was not dyed. She used to enhance her own natural blond with a lemon rinse and let the sun do the rest, that’s all.’ Olive wasn’t going to tell Nancy that she, too, thought Dulcie looked a little too ‘made up’ when she first came here. ‘Anyway, she worked on the perfume and make-up counter at Selfridges – she had to look glamorous, it was part of her job.’

It was funny how things turned out, Olive thought, remembering she hadn’t taken to Dulcie straight away when she first came to Article Row; she thought the girl from Stepney was a bad influence on young Tilly. But as it turned out, Dulcie was one of the kindest, most generously thoughtful people Olive had ever met; more so since she married David, who had been badly injured in the Battle of Britain in 1940.

David, Olive recalled, had spent many long months in hospital, and Dulcie surprised everybody by being one of his few visitors and had showed a deeply hidden, sensitive side to her nature that many people, including Olive, didn’t know she had. And now they had little Hope, their darling daughter, who had arrived prematurely– as had, it seemed, a lot of war babies. Olive gave a wry smile: terrible things, those air raids, she thought, knowing that as long as David and Dulcie were happy it was nobody’s business but their own how and when Hope had been conceived.

‘There is a telephone call for you, Mrs James-Thompson,’ said Dulcie’s housekeeper and mother’s help to little Hope and her sister’s boy, Anthony. ‘I will take the babies for their afternoon nap before you go to visit Mrs Robbins.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Wilson,’ Dulcie said, still not used to having help at home. She was surprised when she heard her sister’s voice on the other end of the line.

‘Dulce, are you in today?’

‘I’m going out later this afternoon, but I’m in now, obviously – you just rang me, you nit!’ She hadn’t seen her sister for weeks, which suited Dulcie, because every time she did hear from Edith it was because she wanted something. Last time it had been because she needed Dulcie and David to look after her little son, Anthony, for a few days, and that few days had been three months up to now.

‘Can I come over? I need to ask you something.’

‘Oh, ’ere goes,’ said Dulcie without preamble. ‘I thought it must be something like that.’

‘No, I don’t want anything from you – just a bit of your time, that’s all.’

‘Well, you’d better look sharp because I’m going shopping.’