The Promise

by Lesley Pearse

  ‘It was the most fun I’d had in a long time,’ he admitted. ‘You were so wide-eyed, so eager to see everything. I felt so bad when we had to continue the journey to New Orleans, knowing I’d got to leave you there.’

  ‘It wasn’t so bad at Martha’s,’ she said, putting one hand on his arm as if to reassure him. ‘I never blamed you, I always understood that you had to do it. And anyway, when two years later in Paris you came bursting through the door to save me from Pascal, you more than made up for everything.’

  She involuntarily shuddered as she always did when she remembered the horror Pascal put her through. That madman had imprisoned her at the top of his house, and if Etienne hadn’t managed to find her she had no doubt Pascal would’ve killed her.

  And Etienne hadn’t only rescued her, he’d healed her by sitting beside her bed at the hospital, letting her cry, talking to her and giving her hope for the future. She remembered too the day Noah told her that Etienne’s wife and two sons had died in a fire at their home. To her shame her first reaction had been that Etienne was now free, not horror that his loved ones should die in such a barbarous way.

  Etienne noticed her shudder, and aware that his unexpected visit and their shared past were troubling her, he felt he must bring them both back to the present.

  ‘I’m going to enlist in the army when I get back to France,’ he said.

  ‘Oh no, surely not,’ she gasped.

  Etienne chuckled. ‘That’s always the female reaction, but it’s my duty, Belle. And once again my past will catch up with me because I evaded the compulsory national service as a lad by coming to England.’

  ‘Will they punish you for that?’ she asked.

  He grinned. ‘I’m hoping they’ll just be glad to put a gun in my hands,’ he said. ‘I won’t be welcoming all the drill and having to take orders, and I’m not naive enough to think it’s the path to glory, but I love France, and I’ll be damned if I’ll stand by and see it fall into the hands of Germans.’

  She looked at him speculatively. ‘You are resourceful and brave, Etienne, you’ll make a good soldier. But I’d much rather you were safe on your farm growing lemons and feeding chickens.’

  He shrugged. ‘In this life we can’t always choose the safe and pleasant road. I have a violent past, I know the worst man can do to man. I thought I’d never have to put that to use ever again, but it seems that is exactly what my country needs me for now.’

  ‘You are a good and honourable man,’ she sighed. ‘Please keep safe. But if you’re sure you really don’t wish to come and meet Jimmy, I ought to close the shop and go home. We always like to have a meal together before he opens the bar for the evening.’

  ‘Yes, of course, I mustn’t delay you,’ he said, but made no move to pick up his hat and coat. He wanted to tell her that he had always loved her, he wanted to take her in his arms and kiss her. But he knew it was too late. He had had his chance back in Paris and he hadn’t taken it. Now she belonged to another man.

  ‘You’d better leave first. I don’t want anyone remarking that I was seen walking down the street with a stranger,’ she said bluntly.

  At that Etienne put on his coat. ‘I found what I was looking for,’ he said quietly. ‘That you are happy and secure. Stay happy, love Jimmy with all your heart, and I hope one day I will hear through Noah that you have a whole brood of children.’

  He took her hand and kissed it, then turned quickly and walked out.

  ‘Au revoir,’ Belle murmured as the door closed behind him, tears prickling her eyes for there was so much more she would have liked to say to him. So much more she wanted to know about his life.

  At sixteen she had thought she loved him. It still made her blush to remember how she’d stripped off her clothes and got into his bunk and invited him to share it with her. He had been such a gentleman; he’d held her and kissed her, but took it no further.

  As an adult looking back on the horrors she’d experienced before meeting Etienne, being snatched from the street by her home, then taken to Paris to be sold to a brothel and raped by five men, she supposed that she might have felt she loved anyone who was kind to her after such an ordeal.

  Yet it couldn’t have been just because Etienne was kind to her, or that he was strong, sensitive and affectionate, because those girlish dreams about him had stayed with her throughout her time in New Orleans and the voyage back to France.

  When he reappeared to save her life, her innocence was long gone and she knew more about men than any woman should. But he must have felt something for her too: why else would he come rushing to Paris two years later when it was reported to him that she’d disappeared?

  Throughout her convalescence after the rescue, she waited and hoped for an admission of love. She sensed he did love her from the way he looked at her, and the tenderness he showed her. Yet he didn’t take her in his arms and admit he wanted her, not even when they parted at the Gare du Nord and she was crying and making her own feelings very clear.

  She’d done her very best to erase their parting from her mind, and the yearning she felt for him for so long after, even when she was safely home with Mog, and Jimmy was talking of marriage. So why did he have to come here today to drive that particular splinter back into her heart?

  She had told him the truth. She and Jimmy were very happy. He was her best friend, lover, brother and husband all rolled into one. They had the same goals, they laughed at the same things, he was everything any girl could want or need. He had healed the horrors of the past; in his arms she had encountered exquisite tenderness, and deep satisfaction too, for he was a caring and sensitive lover.

  Jimmy was her world; she loved the life she had with him. Yet all the same she wished she could have told Etienne how wonderful it was to see him again; that he’d been in her thoughts so often over the last two years and that she owed him so much.

  But a married woman could not say such things, and neither could she encourage him to stay in her shop any longer. Blackheath was a village, people were small-minded and nosy, and there would be plenty of them glad to gossip about seeing a handsome man talking to her in her shop.

  She began to tidy up, dusting off the counter and picking up some stray tissue paper from the floor.

  Yet she couldn’t help but ask herself why, if everything was so good for her, she felt there was something missing in her life. Why did she read about suffragettes in the newspaper and feel envy that they had the guts to stand up for rights for women in the face of hostility? Why did she feel a little stifled by respectability? But above all, why was it that Etienne’s voice, his looks and the touch of his lips on her hand, still had the power to make her shiver?

  She shook herself, opened the drawer where she kept the day’s takings and emptied them into a cloth bag which she pushed into her reticule. She secured her straw hat to her hair with a long hat pin, flung her cloak over her shoulders and took her umbrella from the stand by the door.

  She paused at the door before turning off the lights, and reminded herself of the day she opened her shop. It had been a cold November day, just two months after Mog and Garth’s wedding, and she and Jimmy were due to be married just before Christmas. Everything had been new and shiny that day. Jimmy had indulged her by buying the small but expensive French chandeliers and the glass-topped counter. Mog had found the two button-backed Regency chairs and had them re-upholstered in pink velvet, and Garth’s present to her was paying the two decorators who had done such a fine job of turning the dingy little shop into a pink and cream feminine heaven.

  She sold twenty-two hats that first day, and dozens of other women who came in to look had been back since to buy. In the eighteen months since then there had been fewer than seven days in total when she hadn’t sold one hat, and those were all in bad weather. The average week’s sales worked out at fifteen hats, and though it meant she had to work very hard to keep up with the demand, and use an out-worker to help her, she was making a very good profit. During the summer
she’d bought in plain straw boaters and trimmed them herself, and that had proved very profitable. Her shop was a resounding success.

  ‘As is everything in your life,’ she reminded herself as she turned out the lights.

  Etienne went straight to the station, but having found he’d just missed a train and had twenty-five minutes to wait for the next one, he stood by the window by the ticket office and looked at the Railway public house across the street.

  He had never quite understood English bars, the rigid opening hours, men standing at the bar drinking huge quantities of beer, then staggering home at closing time as if they could only face their wives and children when drunk. French bars were far more civilized. They were never seen as a kind of temple to get drunk in, for they were open all day and a man wasn’t considered odd if he drank coffee or a soft drink as he read the newspaper.

  The Railway at least looked inviting, with its fresh paint and sparkling windows. He could imagine that on a cold winter’s night it was a warm, friendly haven for men to gather in.

  As he looked at it, a big man with red hair and a beard came out of the front door. He was wearing a leather apron over his clothes, and Etienne guessed that this was Garth Franklin, Jimmy’s uncle. Stopping to look up at water spurting out of a broken gutter and running down the front of the building, he called to someone inside.

  A younger man joined him, and Etienne knew immediately that this was Jimmy. He was bigger than he’d imagined, as tall as his uncle and with the same broad shoulders, but he was clean-shaven and his red hair was neat and slightly darker than Garth’s, perhaps because he’d oiled it down. The pair, who looked like father and son, stood there looking up, discussing the broken gutter, seemingly oblivious to the rain.

  Jimmy suddenly turned, his face breaking into a joyful smile, and Etienne saw it was because he’d seen Belle coming towards them.

  She was struggling to hold the umbrella over her and holding her cloak around her shoulders, but she ran the last few yards towards the men. As she reached them, her umbrella was tilted back and Etienne noted that her smile was as bright as her husband’s.

  Jimmy took the umbrella from her with one hand, while with the other he caressed her wet cheek, and kissed her forehead. Just those small, tender gestures told Etienne how much the man loved her.

  He had to turn away. He knew he should feel at peace to be sure Belle was truly loved and protected, but instead he felt only bitter pangs of jealousy.

  Chapter Two

  Belle looked up from sketching, frowning with irritation at the din coming from downstairs in the bar. She expected such noise on Saturday nights, especially near closing time, but not at eight o’clock on a Tuesday.

  Mog’s homemaking skills had come into their own since they all moved to Blackheath. The living room was large, with two sash windows looking on to the street. During the afternoon and evening it was bathed in sunshine, and Mog’s choice of decor, pale green wallpaper with a small leaf motif, moss-green velvet curtains and a sumptuous Turkish carpet she had bought at an auction, was very attractive yet homely.

  The previous owners of the pub had left the huge couch behind, probably because it had seen better days, but Belle and Mog had made a loose chintz cover for it and matching ones for the two armchairs they’d brought from Seven Dials. Garth was always teasing Mog about aspiring to be ‘gentry’, and said that she’d be insisting on getting a maid before long. But both he and Belle knew that she would never trust anyone else to clean her home; she loved it too much to have any outsider poking around in it.

  Normally the living room was a serene retreat from the hurly-burly of a busy pub. Belle loved her evenings sitting at the table by the window working on her hat designs, but realizing that with all the noise tonight she wasn’t going to be able to concentrate, and overcome by curiosity, she decided she would go down and see what was going on.

  As Garth didn’t approve of women behind the bar during the evenings, she could only peep round the door. Yet even with a limited view she could see it was filled to capacity with young men, all clamouring to be served. But the most surprising thing was that they came from all walks of life. Some were City gent types with bowler hats, dark suits and starched white shirts, others were manual workers in flat caps and grubby overalls, but almost every other occupation and style of dress between these two extremes were accounted for too. Jimmy and Garth were struggling to keep up with the supply of beer.

  ‘What on earth’s going on?’ she asked Mog, who was washing glasses in the kitchen. ‘There must be at least eighty men in there. What made them all come in tonight?’

  ‘They’ve all been enlisting in the army,’ Mog said, and shook her head as if she was bewildered by such madness.

  On 4 August, two weeks earlier, Germany had invaded Belgium and therefore England had declared war on Germany. Since then no one had talked about anything else. The newspapers were full of it, men stood on street corners discussing the likely outcome, even the women who came in to Belle’s shop talked about it, some afraid that their husbands or sweethearts would join up, others claiming it was every able-bodied man’s duty to go and fight.

  Belle knew, as everyone did, that the British army was small, but it was also often said that its soldiers were better trained than any other European army. She hadn’t expected that ordinary men like these would start clamouring to join up.

  ‘What, all of them?’ Belle exclaimed as she peeped round the door to the bar again. ‘They aren’t even men, they’re mostly boys!’

  Now she knew what had caused their excitement, their flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes made her feel chilled. She had recognized a few of them as sons, brothers or husbands of women she knew, and wondered what their reaction would be to their menfolk enlisting.

  ‘There was a soldier playing a bugle outside the church hall apparently,’ Mog said, as if that was an excuse for them to be so impulsive. ‘Garth went by there this afternoon and saw them flocking in to sign up. He came back with a similar light in his eyes, but mercifully they’re refusing anyone over forty.’

  Belle felt a pang of fear run through her. ‘Jimmy wouldn’t want to join up too, would he?’

  ‘Not if he’s got any sense,’ Mog said, grimacing as if the thought appalled her. ‘But men are funny creatures – who knows what goes on inside their heads? Most of them just want a bit of adventure, so let’s hope it’s true that it’ll all be over by Christmas.’

  Garth opened the bar door and called to Mog to hurry up with the glasses and asked her to come and serve too. Belle thought he must be hard-pressed to lose his prejudice against women behind his bar as she went upstairs again. But once back in the living room she found herself worrying about Jimmy.

  Up until now his view had been that soldiering was for professionals, not a bunch of hot-headed amateurs. Yet whatever he said, Belle suspected that pressure from other men and a surge of patriotism might very well change his mind. Mog was probably right in saying that most recruits just wanted an adventure, but some of their number would be killed or wounded, and Jimmy could well be among them.

  Just the possibility of losing Jimmy made her eyes fill with tears. She couldn’t, and didn’t want to, think about life without him. She wiped away a stray tear, not understanding why in the past few weeks she’d become so emotional about everything. Only the previous day she’d burst into tears on opening a box of trimmings from her supplier and finding he’d sent four rolls of red ribbon instead of one each of red, pink, blue and yellow.

  But then ever since the day in June when Etienne turned up at the shop, she’d not been herself. The weather had turned very warm just after his visit, bringing in a sudden demand for straw boaters. She’d had some put by, already trimmed, so there was no real need for panic, but she did panic, rushing down to her supplier in Lewisham and buying up almost his entire stock. Yet instead of buckling down and getting the hats trimmed up, she found herself idly staring out of the shop window. She’d nodded off sever
al times during the day, then at night couldn’t go to sleep. She could be hungry all day, yet when Mog dished up the evening meal, often her appetite had gone. Her ability to concentrate appeared to have left her too; she couldn’t seem to stick at anything for more than half an hour.

  At first she thought it was just because Etienne had stirred up old memories; she certainly had been guilty of frequent daydreams. But now she wondered if it was just the war, as it was hard to look ahead when you couldn’t foresee what the future might bring. Yet could impending war and uncertainty really account for her feeling over-emotional, woolly-headed and weary? She hadn’t confided in Mog or Jimmy because there was nothing tangible to describe, and anyway she was afraid to say anything to either of them in case she let slip about Etienne calling on her.

  She felt bad about that. What could be more natural than sharing the delight in seeing an old friend again? But of course the truth was that she was afraid she would say something that would make Jimmy realize her feelings for Etienne had been more than just friendship.

  It was as plain as the nose on her face that she couldn’t have a better husband than Jimmy. She didn’t think that many one-time whores could claim they’d never had their past thrown back in their face in a moment of anger or jealousy.

  But Jimmy had never done that. He was kind, steady, sensitive to her needs, and would do absolutely anything for her. Yet even more unusual, and something she truly valued, was that she had the kind of freedom in her marriage that was almost unheard of. He never interfered with her business, he was proud that she was doing so well, and if she should fail, she knew he’d be supportive. And he worshipped her.

  Common sense told her that even if Etienne had told her he loved her when they were in Paris, and she’d married him instead of Jimmy, it would never have become the kind of serene relationship she had now. Noah had been right when he pointed out on the journey back to England that Etienne was dangerous. He didn’t mean that Etienne would ever physically hurt her, more that he was a deep, complicated man with a complex and dark past.