A Christmas Promise

by Annie Groves

‘It was a shame about the American boy going home and not getting in touch again. They looked the ideal couple to me.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know about that,’ Olive answered. She could feel the heat of guilt creep up her neck and suffuse her face. If she had let Tilly know that ‘the American boy’, as Nancy called Drew, was here in London, her daughter would have been at his side like a shot. Despite the promise she had made to Drew’s father, after seeing the deep sorrow Tilly had suffered Olive wondered if she had done the right thing.

  Sally had kept her informed as to his progress at St Barts, where Sally worked, and she knew that Drew didn’t want Tilly to see him confined to a hospital bed. ‘I’d have put good money on those two settling down together,’ Nancy continued, annoying Olive as she busied herself with everybody else’s business.

  ‘Tilly and Rick are walking out together, yes, and they seem very happy.’ Olive was quite pleased to talk about her daughter, although she must be getting on soon.

  ‘Is he still blind then?’ Nancy asked without preamble, making Olive wince at such tactlessness. How awful it would be if Rick, or even Dulcie, heard Nancy being so cavalier about Rick’s injuries, sustained while he was serving in North Africa last year.

  But, sensing that her bluntness was intended to shock, Olive ignored her initial feelings of astonishment and said patiently, ‘Thankfully Rick has regained his sight, Nancy, and is even talking of going back into the army … but only to a desk job, mind.’

  ‘That’s a good thing,’ Nancy said, nodding., ‘He was such a good-looking young man. Such a shame …’

  ‘He’s still good-looking, and he’s on the mend now,’ Olive said with a hint of indignation. ‘He loves being a part of the army and can’t wait to get back.’ She knew Rick and Dulcie hadn’t had much of a home life but they had both found their own way now, especially since the war started. ‘He’s volunteered to go back, hoping to get the all clear from the medics any day now.’ Olive felt slightly peeved on Rick’s behalf.

  ‘I can’t say it did any damage to that confident personality of his. He was having a fine old time at Dulcie’s wedding last year,’ Nancy sniffed.

  ‘That can only be a good thing when you’ve lost your sight, don’t you think, Nancy?’

  ‘Not really. He’s still as cocky – from what I saw the last time he came to visit you all.’

  Olive knew her next-door neighbour would love to receive as many visitors as she herself had, and she was still of the opinion that Nancy would be so lucky if only she wasn’t so self-pitying, thinking she was the only one to suffer in this war, although Olive would never say it out loud.

  Instead, she said brightly, ‘Dulcie’s coming over later in her motor car. She’s bringing her little daughter, Hope, and her sister Edith’s baby, Anthony, if you’d like to call in and see her.’

  ‘How come she’s got her sister’s child, then?’ Nancy was not in the least disconcerted to ask such personal questions.

  In turn, Olive found herself automatically answering, ‘Edith works is a singer in a West End theatre. She works funny hours and so Dulcie offered to have the little boy …’

  ‘That’s nice for her,’ Nancy said as her nostrils flared like there was a bad smell under her nose. Olive wasn’t sure who it was nice for, Dulcie or Edith.

  ‘I’ll see how busy I am,’ Nancy sniffed, but Olive knew she wouldn’t miss Dulcie’s babies, and that her neighbour would be out like a flash when the James-Thompsons’Bentley rolled down the Row.

  ‘I haven’t seen much of Archie these days either …’ Nancy said, making Olive think that her neighbour wanted to chat all morning. ‘What’s he up to these days?’

  ‘Nancy, you are like the News of the World; you should have got a job in Fleet Street!’

  ‘Maybe I could have asked the American chap, Drew, was it?’ Olive knew every well that Nancy remembered the name of Tilly’s sweetheart, and she was irritated as the flush of guilt again ran through her veins and caused a small pain around her heart.

  ‘Here,’ Nancy said in low, conspiratorial tones, ‘talking of Sunday papers, I read that an airman who lived in Belgravia came home early to surprise his wife and got the surprise of his life when he caught her in fragrance with another man – and guess what he did after throwing her out?’

  Olive decided it was easier not to correct her neighbour and tell her she meant in flagrante.

  ‘What did he do, Nancy?’ Olive was curious to hear what Nancy had to say that she hadn’t invented herself.

  ‘He only went and gave all her belongings – clothes, jewellery, and fur coats – the lot, to charity.’

  ‘Nooo,’ Olive said, her eyes wide. ‘Fancy doing that – and what happened then?’ Olive, being naturally curious, didn’t mind the odd bit of gossip, as long as it was about somebody she didn’t know and it wasn’t malicious.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Nancy. ‘The paper was wrapped around Mr Black’s chip supper, and they didn’t wrap both pages – to save paper, I expect.’

  Olive couldn’t recall the last time she had bought a chip supper, even though it was one of the only foods that were not rationed.

  ‘Maybe Archie still has the newspaper. I’ll ask him later.’

  ‘I thought he looked nice and comfortable sitting at your kitchen table the other night, when I called around, Olive.’ Nancy was fishing for information now, Olive could tell, but she wasn’t going to fill her neighbour’s mouth so she could spread it around the district.

  ‘He comes to pick Barney up after work,’ Olive said noncommittally.

  ‘In his carpet slippers?’ Nancy’s eyebrows rose so high on her forehead Olive imagined they were in danger of slipping right past her hair line. She felt uncomfortable when her neighbour began to delve into her private business, as Nancy could not keep her opinions, or any knowledge she had expertly winkled from unsuspecting people, to herself.

  However, Olive, wise to her wheedling ways, told Nancy as little as possible, especially where Archie was concerned, knowing he liked to keep their private life just that – private! That was fine with Olive, who, as a widow, had never had the benefit of a man’s admiration until now, and she wasn’t going to do anything that would upset her Archie.

  She could feel her face flaming in the morning sunshine: ‘her’ Archie; when did she become so bold as to think such a thing? Although, Olive knew she would never say so out loud she felt that Archie felt the same way, even though they had never so much as …

  ‘Did you hear me, Olive?’ Nancy asked. She had taken great delight in the past in spreading malicious gossip about the police sergeant and widower. Archie was the kindest, most upstanding man Olive knew.

  ‘Sorry, Nancy, did you say something?’ Olive was momentarily disoriented.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Nancy was obviously put out at her lack of attention. ‘You were miles away.’

  ‘If only,’ Olive said in a low voice that sailed right over Nancy’s head.

  ‘So he hasn’t dropped any hints as to what is going on war-wise then?’ Nancy asked, and Olive’s eyebrows puckered, wondering what the other woman was talking about.

  ‘What makes you think he’d tell me?’ Even though she and Archie had become very friendly of late, he still had to remain professional and not tell anybody of the things he knew or heard.

  ‘Well,’ said Nancy, ‘he must be privy to important information regarding the neighbourhood. Is there anything that we should know about?’ Nancy’s steel Dinkie curlers, miraculously saved from salvage, were rattling under the turbaned headscarf she had taken to wearing, albeit with a coloured-glass brooch at the side, since Princess Elizabeth had been pictured wearing one.

  ‘All I can say,’ Olive said with all the patience she could muster, ‘is that if he is in the know about what is going on he doesn’t share it with me – and that’s as it should be.’ She had heard enough from Nancy now and, turning, she went to open her immaculately polished front door.

  ‘So
there’s nothing we should know about then?’ Nancy asked. There was a double meaning to the question; Olive knew she wondered if there was anything ‘going on’ between her and Archie.

  ‘Oh, there is one thing,’ Olive said in a low voice, looking around to make sure there was nobody to overhear. Leaning towards Nancy she whispered, ‘Archie did tell me – in the strictest confidence, of course …’

  ‘Of course!’ Eagerly moving her forefinger across tightly closed, thin lips, Nancy moved forward so she could capture every precious word.

  ‘He told me that Mrs Wetherill’s cat got stuck in a sewer pipe and she didn’t miss it for two whole days.’

  ‘Oh, Olive, you are a one!’ Nancy, colouring now, laughed, and Olive was glad she hadn’t taken offence at being so blatantly duped. Maybe when she had time to think about it, though …

  ‘Oh, I meant to tell you – about Sunday,’ Olive stopped at the front door. ‘We’ve decided to have a little get-together to celebrate Tilly’s birthday. You can come if you like,’ Olive said kindly.

  ‘Well, it’s as much your day as hers,’ Nancy said generously. ‘You did all the hard work. You can celebrate even if Tilly’s not here.’

  Olive smiled, and without another word she hurried indoors and quietly closed the front door, knowing she would never tell Nancy the things she and Archie discussed in private.

  FOUR

  ‘David, what would you say if I said we are going to have another child?’ Dulcie, lying next to her husband in their double bed, had never broached the delicate subject of sex before. Their lovemaking had consisted of passionate kisses and they were both satisfied with that – or so David thought. He turned his head towards her, his relaxed body suddenly becoming tense; he knew that this would happen one day – or night, as the case may be – and he thought he was prepared for the time his wife would want more than passionate kisses.

  ‘Do you think I should go and see our man in Harley Street, Dulcie?’ David asked tentatively. He didn’t want to rush her, knowing she had been quite traumatised by the circumstances in which Hope had been conceived in an air-raid shelter; however, they had been married for almost a year now and they still had not consummated their marriage even though they desperately loved each other.

  ‘Oh, no, David, I didn’t mean …’ Dulcie’s words tripped over each other in her eagerness to put David’s mind at rest. ‘I wasn’t saying that I should have another baby … No, not that!’ She realised now that she should have mentioned it at the breakfast table or while they were eating dinner, not now, when they were in a vulnerable position.

  ‘Well, forgive me, darling,’ David said. Leaning his elbow on the pillow and resting his head nonchalantly in the palm of his upturned hand he said, ‘I haven’t got a clue what you mean.’

  David was even more handsome now, looking down into her eyes, and Dulcie wished she was able to forget her time during the air raid with the American airman … but she couldn’t. David had never insisted on his conjugal rights – he was the most sensitive man in the world – and she knew that one day he would want to be the husband he thought she deserved. ‘I wasn’t saying that we should …’ She couldn’t bring herself to say the words. ‘It was Edith!’

  ‘Edith?’ David looked puzzled. ‘What about Edith?’

  ‘She asked if I would look after little Anthony while she went to work.’

  ‘We’ve taken care of him since he was born; she hardly knows the little chap, and he thinks she is his aunt; he doesn’t know her as his mother.’ David’s puzzlement was obvious in his sigh ‘… I thought you meant … Oh, never mind all of that …’

  You thought I meant to have a child of our own, Dulcie thought as a nip of disappointment bit into her heart. She breathed a sigh of relief that the misunderstanding had not led to anything ‘awkward’, knowing David had been the epitome of masculinity when he was married to Lydia, who had cheated on him and was interested only in his title.

  But Dulcie knew she would have to put that to the back of her mind now. Something important had happened today and she had to discuss it with her husband now otherwise she would not be able to sleep.

  ‘You know Edith came to see me today?’ Dulcie’s voice held a tentative note and David, leaning on his elbow looking down at her so adoringly, nodded.

  ‘She came to tell me that she has been offered another job.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ David offered. ‘Am I not going to like this, Dulcie?’ But his ghost of a smile encouraged her to continue.

  ‘The job is abroad, with ENSA …’

  ‘How long for?’ David asked, nonplussed.

  Dulcie shrugged; he would feel her sister’s desertion of her son keenly, knowing he could not father a son of his own; he could not understand Edith’s selfishness as Dulcie did.

  However, as the hands of the clock slowly revolved and she lay awake listening to the steady breathing of her magnificent husband, Dulcie realised that he had given her far more than she had ever given him, and for that she felt humbled. It wasn’t a feeling she was comfortable with, though, and she wondered if the time had come to give him what he wanted most in all the world – a son of his own. First thing tomorrow, she was going to see her sister and put it to her that Anthony would be much better off with her and David. She was going to ask Edith to give her son up for adoption.

  And as the new day dawned, David listened to his wife’s steady breathing. He and Dulcie had everything they could possibly dream of – except the loving intimacy that every married couple enjoyed and took for granted. He loved Dulcie with all of his heart, and he had done since the moment he saw her standing behind the perfume counter of Selfridges department store. With each day that passed since their wedding, he had showered her with everything he thought a woman could want, except the one loving intimate thing he couldn’t give. And he so badly wanted to show her just how much he loved her. As he watched her seemingly sleeping so peacefully with not a care in the world David vowed that he would go and see the consultant that day. Surely, something could be done.

  The house was unusually quiet now that all the girls had gone. Olive wandered through the silent hallway towards the kitchen. The mantel clock sounded louder than usual. She had hardly noticed it before as there was always somebody coming or going, and the constant chatter made the soft tick-tick-tick almost imperceptible. Now Olive wasn’t sure if she liked the sound of the unrelenting passing of time.

  She wasn’t given to bouts of melancholy usually, but she was becoming more worried about her family and friends now that she had time on her hands and had promised herself she would find more useful things to occupy her time. She had volunteered for more hours at the Red Cross shop, and she and Audrey Windle, the vicar’s wife, were also teaching less domesticated young women the joys of making do and mending in the church hall every Thursday afternoon. There they showed young women how to turn a collar on a child’s shirt – or their husband’s, if he wasn’t away fighting the war. The only way to get through this awful war and stop herself from worrying was to keep busy, she reckoned. She lifted a hessian sack that contained clothing donated this morning and put it on the kitchen table, intending to take it to the shop later.

  Some of the clothing that had been brought to the exchange lately was so tatty-looking that, before the war, she would have ripped it up for dusters, but this was no longer an option. Most of the younger women who had come to the mending classes were so pitifully grateful they could send any of their children who had not been evacuated or who had come back home to school looking half-way decent.

  Many thoughts filtered through Olive’s head as she prepared to do her daily chores. The war, in many Londoners’ eyes, seemed never-ending now; people were bone weary no matter how much the Pathé News people tried to convince the world that ‘London Could Take It’.

  If the truth were told, London was sick and tired of it – and ‘taking it’ wasn’t an option!

  From the time the Americans entered the war Olive knew
that Mr Churchill was certain of an Allied triumph. She also recognised, after avidly following the nightly news, that the Germans’ disastrous campaign in Russia over the winter and the Allies’ success in East Africa and at El Alamein had improved this guarantee. Nevertheless, the longed-for Second Front, designed to attack Hitler’s Atlantic Wall on the north coast of France, still seemed a long way off. And as days turned into weeks she knew that it was still hard to endure the prolonged absence of husbands, sweethearts but, most of all, her daughter.

  Sally had thrown herself into her work at St Bartholomew’s Hospital as well as raising her three-year-old half-sister, Alice, who was also being looked after by Olive and Agnes. She doted on the little girl, and her presence at number 13 was part of the reason why Agnes hadn’t gone to the farm long ago. Although Olive knew that the Germans had other countries to fight now, she did worry that London was still not safe. Raids were an ever-present terror and were growing more frequent again of late. She vowed that when she and Sally had a moment she would broach the subject once more of Alice being evacuated. She knew how heart-breaking it would be for all of them to see little Alice being farmed out to somewhere quiet, but it was for the best, especially if the Axis powers turned on Britain once more.

  And Tilly, her own darling girl, had lost her sweetheart, Drew, not through action or fighting in the war, but in a motor car accident that had left him in a coma for a long time, and who had been brought to London for major, experimental surgery on his back, to help him walk again. Olive pulled at the skin around her knuckles and her forehead pleated as she frowned … She had tried so desperately to put the thought of Drew leaving hospital out of her mind. Tilly would never forgive her for not telling her that her sweetheart was so, so close and that she could have gone to see him any time she felt like it.

  ‘Hi, Aunt Olive!’ Barney’s deepening, fourteen-year-old voice made her jump as he came through the back door, and Olive was sure she had a guilty look about her as she turned to see him carrying new-laid eggs in the turned-up bottom of his pullover. ‘I found these.’