A Christmas Promise

by Annie Groves

  The bombing was now less fierce, and there was even talk that the war might be over by Christmas, so it was possible that she could give her little half-sister the kind of secure childhood Sally had enjoyed before … before … She chided herself for raking up yet another bout of resentment about her father and Morag, and began to hum a little tune that kept uncharacteristically unkind thoughts at bay.

  As much as she tried, Sally could not keep her mind from Callum today. She wondered why, all of a sudden, she had missed reading his tales of the sea, which she had enjoyed before George’s tragic demise. Callum had a natural gift for absorbing the world around him and excitedly sharing what he had learned with others. Alice would miss all that because Sally could not let him into their life again.

  She could not bear to think of her little sister getting close to Callum, as she had with George, only for him to succumb to a watery grave. She had a duty to give Alice permanence, and there would be none of that if Callum dropped in and out of her life at irregular intervals. What if the worst should happen? She would have to go through all that heartache again. Although, as she now headed up the long, shiny corridor towards Men’s Surgical, Sally wondered who she was most worried for, Alice or herself.

  She couldn’t understand why Callum kept sending letters even though she didn’t reply; if she had been in his place she would have given up long ago. Didn’t he understand that she had no intentions of letting Alice get close to him? It had been fine while George was alive, because Callum knew where he stood: he was allowed to visit his sister’s child and that was an end to it. But now that George had gone, she didn’t want him getting any funny ideas …

  ‘Good morning, Sister.’ The young probationer’s greeting brought Sally out of her reverie.

  ‘Good morning, Nurse. Busy night?’ Men’s surgical was Sally’s ward, which she was proud to run with extreme efficiency.

  ‘Just one emergency admission who was taken down for immediate surgery,’ said the night duty sister as the night staff handed over to the day staff, who gathered in Sally’s office for morning prayers

  ‘That will be all,’ Sally said, picking up the report on her desk, eager to get on with her duties. ‘Off you go and do your very best today.’

  ‘Yes, Sister,’ the probationer nurses called in unison before heading towards the ward.

  However, when she ran her pen down the list of patients Sally’s mouth fell open and her fingers covered her lips to stop the startled exclamation escaping; it wouldn’t do to show the young probationers that, as experienced as Sister Tutor was, she too could be alarmed at a name on the list of patients.

  Taking in a slow stream of calming air, Sally shook her head, realising she had to pull herself together and show the professional attitude that she had become renowned for.

  ‘Callum?’ Her voice was barely above a whisper. What on earth was he doing here? Surely, if he had been injured he would be in Haslar, the Royal Naval Hospital in Hampshire. Why had he been brought here? Straightening her dark blue uniform and making sure her white frilled cap was sitting straight, Sally took one last look in the mirror on her office wall and noticed that her cheeks were unusually pink.

  ‘Pull yourself together, Sister,’ she rebuked her reflection. ‘This is a hospital and you have work to do.’ But her hasty scolding did nothing to calm her racing heart. Taking another deep breath, she made her efficient, straight-backed way right down the middle of Nightingale ward, past the regimented row of pristine iron beds to Callum’s bedside.

  ‘Hello, Sal.’ Callum’s deep, rich voice sounded croaky. ‘I’ve been waiting to see you.’ He gave a half-smile and his heavy eyelids slowly closed, while Sally noted, as she had so often, that the luxuriantly thick, dark eyelashes resting on his cheeks were wasted on a man. And as he drifted off into an anaesthetised sleep she gazed at his handsome features, which were especially striking at rest. The glowing, golden tan told her that he had been somewhere exotic, and most certainly dangerous, and she tried to ignore the flip of her heart.

  ‘Dear Callum,’ Sally whispered as she lifted his wrist and took his strong pulse. She hadn’t seen him since he left baby Alice in her care, and even though he looked peaceful enough now she could tell by his sunken cheeks and cracked lips that he had been through a lot.

  ‘Bring me some lanolin, please, Nurse,’ Sally asked noticing that Callum’s swollen lips looked very sore. She felt a surge of … what? Pity? Regret at the way things turned out? She wasn’t sure. But one thing Sally did know, Callum would receive the best of attention while he was here – the same as every other patient in this hospital.

  ‘Appendicitis can get you any time,’ she whispered after dabbing the balm on his lips. Before she left his bedside she took one more look at the face of the man she had once loved with all of her heart. But she had been but a girl then. Things had changed a lot since that time. But as Sally turned from Callum’s bed, allowing him time to sleep and to heal, she recognised a familiar emotion … one she hadn’t felt for a long time.

  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 s
terilising 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.