A Christmas Promise

by Annie Groves

  ‘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 vigoro
usly 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.’

  Edith agreed and hung up while Dulcie wondered what it was her sister wanted this time. It was a shame that their mother hadn’t lived to see her grandch
ildren, after suffering a heart attack near Bethnal Green underground station, where Edith had actually given birth to the son her mum didn’t even know she was carrying.

  ‘Is Agnes still working on the underground then?’ Nancy asked conversationally.

  Olive nodded, wondering what barbed comment Nancy was going to come out with next.

  She didn’t have long to wait when Nancy said, ‘It was such a shame about Ted; but thinking about it now, Agnes would never have been able to compete with that grasping mother of his.’

  ‘Nancy!’ There was a warning note in Olive’s voice that she wasn’t going to listen to the venomous accusations her neighbour could spit out at will, even if Nancy did voice the things that other people thought. The girl had never known a family of her own, and Ted had become her whole life. When he was killed, Olive didn’t think Agnes would ever get over the shock. However, she soon realised that Agnes would have been stuck in a rut with Ted if he hadn’t been tragically killed in the same crush at Bethnal Green as Dulcie’s mother. Over a hundred people had been killed, though the tragedy hardly got a mention in the papers and not at all on the wireless.

  Olive doubted Ted would have been ready to walk Agnes down the aisle while his mother still had breath in her body to disapprove, and that, Olive thought, was another thing she would keep her own counsel over, knowing Ted’s clingy mother and two young sisters depended upon him for everything.

  ‘Is Tilly still walking out with Dulcie’s brother, Rick?’

  ‘Are you training for military intelligence, Nancy?’ Olive asked, and immediately wanted to bite back the tart reply. She knew Nancy lived through the lives of others, maybe because she missed her daughter and two grandchildren more than she ever let on.