A Christmas Promise

by Annie Groves

  ‘I’ll be fine, Olive. Go and see to the kids, they need you now.’ He gave her a brave smile that told her he would work something out. ‘Tell Barney I’ll be down shortly.’

  ‘I will, my love,’ Olive said, before she headed for her own house. Hurrying now, she realised she had been gone nearly three hours. Sally would be frantic.

  ‘Sally!’ Olive called as soon as she entered the dark hallway of number 13. The place was silent and she had never known it to be so cold. Shivering, Olive made her way along the hall towards the kitchen and the cellar.

  ‘Barney! Alice!’ Olive’s voice echoed around the house, and she was stricken with fear. She had been so stupid leaving them alone like this. What had she been thinking of? Just then she heard Barney’s voice and felt a sudden rush of relief.

  ‘Down here, Aunt Olive.’ His voice came clearly from the floor below, through the cellar door, and there was another voice mingled in with it: Alice crying softly into Barney’s shoulder.

  ‘Oh, thank God, are you all right?’ Olive called from the top of the stairs and both children called up that they were.

  ‘I think Alice needs changing, though. She’s had a bit of an accident.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that now, Barney. As long as you are both unhurt that’s the main thing.’

  ‘I want Sally,’ little Alice cried as Olive made her way down the steps.

  ‘I know, my darling.’ Olive picked her up and held her close and she felt the damp patch on Alice’s nightie. ‘Just as soon as the lights go on we’ll have you all nice and dry again.’

  ‘Is it bad out there?’ Barney asked, suddenly not so scared any more. ‘I didn’t get a chance to look out, I just got Alice and brought her down here.’

  ‘You did the right thing, Barney. You are a good boy and deserve that fishing trip.’

  ‘Where’s Pops?’ Barney asked, using the name he liked to call Archie, as the adoption had not come through yet and he didn’t want to tempt fate by counting his chickens. ‘And the chickens? They’ll stop laying!’

  ‘They might even lay more with the fright,’ Olive said, not caring right now. ‘Archie will be along shortly.’ She didn’t tell Barney that their house had been destroyed by incendiary bombs. It was quite ironic, Olive thought, as Archie was the chief fire officer for this street, but Hitler and his bombs didn’t give a fig about who was who, as long as they wrecked as much havoc as they could.

  ‘I should have gone to the doctor’s on my own,’ Olive said aloud even though she didn’t mean to.

  Momentarily, Barney was terrified. All the people he knew who saw doctors had died.

  ‘Aunty Olive, are you all right?’ His voice was troubled. ‘Why did you go to see the doctor?’

  Olive knew she had to be careful what she said here. She couldn’t tell Barney the real reason – that was scandalous and would give Nancy Black enough gossip to dine out on for a year.

  ‘I’m fine, sunshine,’ she said brightly, ‘just popping in with a message. Is Sally not home yet?’ Olive began to worry all over again and decided that the children must be moved to the countryside at the earliest possible hour.

  ‘She hasn’t come home yet,’ Barney said quietly.

  Olive knew that he didn’t believe her lame excuse about why she was at the surgery, but she also knew she couldn’t possibly tell him the truth, so she said, ‘What it is, Barney, and I’m a bit embarrassed about this –’ her voice was hesitant – ‘I had to go and see him about my foot.’

  ‘Your foot, Aunt Olive?’ Barney was listening now.

  ‘Yes, I wanted to know if I had a verruca.’ It was the first thing that came into her mind.

  ‘A verruca?’ Barney said. ‘Why didn’t you ask Sally? She’d have told you.’

  ‘She’s been so busy lately I forgot all about it,’ Olive was astonished at the way the lie tripped off her tongue so easily.

  His worry of her impending doom obviously dissipated, Barney said in a lighter tone, ‘I had one of those from going to the baths. They’re really painful.’ He puffed out his chest. ‘I had to have it burned away – right down to the root.’

  ‘Oh, my word!’ Olive exclaimed. ‘I don’t like the sound of that.’ She was doing anything to keep his mind from the on-going raid, the noise of which seemed to be decreasing. But there was still no sign of Sally or Archie.

  TWENTY-THREE

  When, a couple of hours later, the all clear sounded, Olive opened the cellar door and looked up to see Sally standing at the top of the steps.

  ‘Is everything all right, Sal?’ Olive’s voice held a cautious note; she didn’t want to frighten the children any more than she had to.

  ‘Oh. Olive,’ Sally’s voice was a mixture of hopelessness and despair, ‘I have something to tell you.’ Then Sally hurried down the cellar steps, into Olive’s arms and she cried like Olive had never heard a grown woman cry before.

  ‘Come on, let’s get you upstairs and we’ll put the kettle on – that’s if they haven’t cracked the gas main,’ Olive said, trying to reassure the two children that it was the shock of the air raid that had upset Sally, because when little Alice saw her big sister crying she began to sob as if her heart would break too.

  ‘I’ll get that kettle on,’ Barney said, and, once again, Olive had to thank her lucky stars that Barney was part of this family now. He was growing into such a reliable, level-headed youth, who was a far cry from the mixed-up child who first came to Article Row in search of a place of safety, which he found with Archie. And as he took little Alice up the steps to the kitchen Olive concentrated on finding out what was wrong with Sally.

  ‘Oh, Olive,’ Sally cried, tears streaming down her face, ‘Audrey’s dead.’

  ‘How? What happened?’ Olive was stunned that her best friend, whom she had spoken to only hours ago, was no longer with them – and never would be again.

  There were tears in everybody’s eyes when Sally had finished speaking and, moments later, Olive said to nobody in particular, ‘If I could put my hands around Hitler’s bloody throat I’d choke the living daylights out of him. Barney, go upstairs and collect your things. I’m sorry to have to do this but it’s not safe here in London.’

  Barney pressed a balled fist against his lips to stop himself from crying out. He liked the vicar’s wife, she had been a good friend to Aunty Olive, and now she had gone, like his mother and his father and his grandmother.

  ‘Come on, sunshine,’ Olive said when she saw the expression on Barney’s face, ‘I think it’s about time you had a bit of peace.’

  Barney gasped as if in pain and then, when the sigh subsided, he sobbed as if his heart would break.

  ‘We’ve been selfish too long, Sally,’ Olive said, determined she wasn’t going to cry in front of the children. ‘We can’t keep them here any longer, especially now.’

  ‘I know, Olive,’ Sally said, only too aware how quickly a life could be extinguished. Barney disappeared upstairs to bring down his and Alice’s clothes.

  ‘We’ll drive down now,’ Archie said as he came through the door, covered in smuts of ash and soot. Barney didn’t need telling twice to pack his things; death was too close for comfort around here now. It took every ounce of Olive’s WVS-honed strength to stay calm when she said to Archie, ‘I’ll get Alice’s things together and we will head straight down to the farm. Have you got enough fuel in the car?’

  ‘I got my ration this morning,’ Archie said before he hurried out of the room.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t mind me staying?’ Archie asked as they neared London after the trip to Surrey to drop Alice and Barney off.

  Agnes had been thrilled to take in the two children and Dulcie was full of questions about Holborn in general. When they told her that David was safe she became calmer and promised to ring him later in the day at his new office at the Inns of Court.

  ‘Of course I don’t mind you staying. You have no windows, you have no roof and the rest of the house is unfit to live in.’


  ‘Even if I had the glass to put into the windows I haven’t got time to fix them.’

  ‘Tilly’s old room is empty now,’ said Olive, looking straight ahead and the dull ache of grief was briefly pierced by a zing of guilty elation. However, she said, ‘There will be a lot of things to do over the next few day or weeks. Mending broken windows shouldn’t have to be one of them.’

  ‘You’re so kind, Olive,’ Archie said in a low voice, while Olive noticed that he looked very pensive, and who wouldn’t be? She and Archie would need to sort out the mess the Germans had left him in, as well as help the vicar through his grief.

  ‘Stay as long as you like, Archie,’ she said.

  ‘If you feel that my staying at your house will cause tongues to wag,’ said Archie, looking straight ahead through the windscreen, ‘I could always sleep at the station.’

  ‘Don’t you think that’s a bit like closing the stable door after the horse had bolted?’ Olive answered, with a wry smile.

  ‘Point taken,’ Archie said as he gently lifted her hand and kissed it with such tenderness

  Olive felt as if she was going to cry.

  ‘What about Nancy?’ Archie asked later, as they made their way back to Article Row.

  Olive looked at him, really looked at him. Obviously, he was showing signs of extreme exhaustion – and who wouldn’t after their house had just been razed to the ground? – however, she couldn’t understand his sudden interest in what Nancy Black might think.

  ‘What about her?’ Olive said. Then, not waiting for him to answer: ‘Archie, if you think for one minute that I would let you struggle when I have a perfectly good house for you to live in, then maybe you don’t know me that well after all.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Olive, I just meant that—’

  ‘You were thinking of my good name? Well, don’t,’ Olive said with an emphatic nod of her head. ‘If people cannot be charitable enough to realise that there are more things in life than being respectable in this day and age then that’s their own lookout!’

  ‘My, my, Mrs Robbins, you are feeling feisty today.’ Archie chuckled, and the tension seemed to slip from his face as he looked over towards her. Olive laughed, too. She was comfortable sitting beside him now, after all they had been through, and she longed to be at home in Archie’s arms, closing out the rest of the world.

  ‘It won’t be long,’ Archie said, as if reading her thoughts. ‘We’ll be home in a few minutes and then you must rest.’

  ‘Rest is the last thing on my mind.’ Olive would never have dared say such a thing a few months ago. ‘I want you to make me feel alive, Archie.’

  ‘And so you shall, my love,’ he said as the car accelerated towards Article Row.

  ‘It says here,’ Archie said, over a late breakfast, as Olive poured more tea into his cup – it was the calm after the storm and they were rejoicing in the silence that, over the war years, had become increasingly difficult to achieve in the house – ‘that over 160,000 Allied soldiers took part in the Allied Invasion of Italy.’

  The previous September had seen the Allies completely overrun the Germans in Italy and the victory, combined with the death of Mussolini some months before, had given the country a much-needed boost of morale.

  ‘I wonder if it is as cold over there as it is here,’ Olive said, thinking that it would be quite miserable being outdoors all day and night in the January gloom. ‘Do you think they will have somewhere to stay?’

  ‘I should imagine they’ve already booked somewhere,’ Archie said, smiling behind the pages of his morning paper.

  ‘Archie, I didn’t mean that.’ In the afterglow of their wonderful lovemaking, she was now worrying about where her daughter might be and if she should write and tell her that she and Archie were going to be married very soon. She expressed those thoughts to her husband-to-be.

  ‘I don’t think they will give her a special dispensation to come to the wedding, darling,’ Archie said, still from behind his newspaper. Olive stood up and, placing her index finger in the centre of the pages, she ripped the paper down the middle.

  Still holding to the two sections, Archie looked at her as if she had gone quite mad.

  ‘Given the horrendous conditions we have lived under for the last two days I will forgive you for wrecking my paper,’ Archie said, smiling, and then continued to give Olive a detailed account of the war in Italy.

  ‘From a British viewpoint, it is too soon for a Second Front, I imagine,’ he said, holding one section while Olive read the other half. ‘However, it says here that victory on the Italian mainland would re-establish Mediterranean dominance and the news from the Eastern Front continues to be encouraging to the Allies, especially since the Red Army drove German troops backward across the Dnieper and towards the Polish border …’ Archie was silent for a moment and then he said, his eyes wide. ‘You’ll never guess who reported this.’

  ‘Who?’ Olive looked up from an article written by Marguerite Patten on how to make a delicious ginger and date cake.

  ‘Only Drew Coleman. He must be out in Italy!’

  Tilly arrived in Italy as the battle for Monte Cassino was raging.

  ‘Robbins?’ asked a subaltern as she got off the ship. Tilly nodded.

  ‘You may be in a different country, Robbins, but the same rules apply,’ the subaltern said briskly.

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ Tilly said, snapping to attention and saluting her superior.

  ‘Follow me.’ The young woman, who was not much older than Tilly, half walked and half ran, and Tilly had to sprint to catch up.

  She was taken to a miserable Nissan hut, in which a harassed-looking army captain sat behind a desk piled with documents.

  ‘You will shortly be seconded to the Americans, and you will be working in Censorship, in the intelligence section, based in a royal palace. You don’t need me to tell you it is very hush-hush and you speak of it to no one, you understand.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Tilly said, snapping a smart salute before being dismissed.

  ‘This is a far cry from Naples,’ Tilly said. ‘I’m really shocked.’

  ‘All these people, begging in rags,’ said Janet soberly. ‘The quayside is seething with them.’ She pushed her way through outstretched beseeching hands.

  ‘This is a far cry from the ordered restraint of London,’ Tilly said, distressed. ‘If I had some money on me I would willingly give it to them.’

  ‘And you would be mobbed for your generosity,’ said a soldier who had overheard Tilly’s comment. ‘Servicemen from all over the world ignore the beggars.’

  ‘I want to save every one of them,’ Tilly said in a low voice. ‘Look how bad it is, their whole city in ruins.’ Tilly had been horrified to see the awful hardship and poverty that the ordinary Italians were having to endure. It was a far cry from the orderly queue for rations back home.

  ‘They are mainly old people, women and children,’ said Janet. ‘All their men are either prisoners of war or have gone over to the Allies. They were beaten by both sides when they surrendered: the Germans killed their menfolk, while the English and Americans imprisoned the healthy ones.’

  ‘They looked starved,’ said Tilly. ‘Many of them don’t even have proper shoes.’

  ‘What are those things on their feet? Look, bits of wood with a strip of cloth nailed across the instep to keep them on.’

  ‘How can they walk in such things,’ said Tilly, looking down at her own well-shod feet.

  ‘What do you suppose we’ll be doing while we are here?’ Janet asked. ‘I heard something mentioned about the intelligence section.’

  ‘I couldn’t possibly say,’ Tilly answered. She was under strict orders to say nothing to anybody.

  ‘I understand the US Seventh Army have advanced along the north coast,’ said Janet, not so giddy now after what she had seen. ‘And I heard the Eighth Army have moved up the east side from Catania with one small landing craft.’

  ‘General Patton’s men entered
Messina just before Montgomery’s on the seventeenth, so Sicily is now in Allied hands – but I also heard that 100,000 Axis troops managed to escape.’

  ‘Do you think we’ll be safe in our beds?’ asked Janet, her brow furrowed.

  ‘I’m sure we will,’ Tilly answered, and she couldn’t swear to it but she thought she heard a whisper coming from her friend.

  ‘Oh, that’s a shame.’

  ‘It looks like we’ve been dumped here,’ said Janet a few days later, after having a word with one of the commanding officers. She and Tilly were outside in the light winter rain, taking a break from their desks. ‘I had visions of sun-baked olive groves and sweet wine, and all we get are ruins.’

  ‘Well, you must admit, Janet, it is only February,’ said Tilly, trying to inject a bit of humour into her friend’s melancholy, ‘and we were the ones who ruined it.’

  ‘Be that as it may, but I don’t fancy staying here for the duration. Everywhere you look its rusty old shells and devastation.’

  ‘I’m sure it’s just the same as England at this time of year.’

  ‘I didn’t expect it to be so … so desolate.’ Janet looked around at the war-torn Italian beach and groaned.

  ‘I heard we are moving somewhere else,’ said Tilly, reading the letters sent by Pru and Veronica, who were still stationed on the Isle of Wight. Her eyes skimmed the page and she looked up. ‘Pru said they’re having a ball when they’re off duty. The island is swarming with servicemen – especially Americans, and they are all so generous.’

  ‘Just our luck,’ said Janet, lazily pulling the skin up on her finger and watching it slowly go back into place. ‘I think I’m dehydrated.’

  ‘It’s all that vino you’ve developed a liking for.’ Tilly laughed. ‘Anyway, back to the letter – it says here that the Yanks also like a good old fisticuffs with the locals at closing time.’

  ‘I wish we’d plumped for going back to the Isle of Wight now,’ Janet said in churlish tones, as she offered her face to the weak Mediterranean drizzle.

  ‘I can’t think why. mind you, I did want to travel, see everything and have plenty of fun, so when we move out of this part of Italy and into more permanent headquarters, I’ll soon be back to me old self again, I should imagine.’ Janet’s stated ambition since the start of the war was to see as much of the world as possible before she settled down to ‘domestic devastation’, like her ma. Somehow, Tilly couldn’t see anybody devastating Janet.