The Promise

by Lesley Pearse

  Two weeks after Jimmy left for France, Belle was sitting on a chair in the shop late one afternoon, reading once again her first proper letter from him. It was raining hard and growing darker by the minute, another unwelcome reminder that winter wasn’t far off, and she got up to turn on the lights.

  She had received a postcard the week before. It was a somewhat blurred picture of Boulogne harbour, which she supposed he’d bought as he got off the boat, for he’d written it on his first day in Etaples. It was only a few lines, just to say he’d arrived and was sharing a hut with nine other men. He warned her he wouldn’t get much time to write as the days would be long with firing practice, drill and physical training up and down over the dunes on the beaches.

  That first week without him had crawled by; she missed his warm body in the bed beside her, his hand on her belly which seemed to have got suddenly bigger since he’d gone. She missed sharing the evening meal with him, his jokes about the customers in the bar, bits of village gossip. Garth and Mog tried to make up for it; Mog would steal into the bedroom at night to kiss her and tuck her in, Garth took to cleaning her shoes, and asked about her day in the shop. But kind and dear as they were, they could not fill the hole Jimmy had left.

  They all felt it, the absence of his whistling coming up from the cellar, his light step on the stairs, his infectious laugh and his charm. Mog had been in tears one afternoon when she’d taken some buns out of the oven and put them on a cooling tray and he wasn’t there to cheekily snatch one while her back was turned. Garth had grown so used to Jimmy doing the lion’s share of the heavy work, moving barrels and hauling in crates of beer, that now he had to do it all, his back ached, and he struggled to get through it before opening the bar.

  To finally receive a real letter had been a relief to all three of them. It was good to have a glimpse of what his training entailed, to hear about friends he had made, and to know that he was holding his own.

  Jimmy had started the letter on his second night in the training camp, telling Belle about the men he shared the hut with, the training and even the food. He had palled up with a man called John Dixon who came from Woolwich. He described him as flash, funny and a bit of a rogue, and said he reminded him of some of the men in Seven Dials.

  He must have had to stop writing then and restarted the following evening after a long day of rifle practice. ‘I was useless,’ he wrote. ‘We had to fire again and again at the target, then go up to it to see where we’d hit it. I hadn’t got anywhere near the target, not even once. The sergeant called me a useless carrot head, with a few extra insults that I won’t repeat.’

  The day after that it was physical training. Jimmy had managed thirty press-ups before collapsing, but most of the others hadn’t got beyond ten. ‘I always suspected lifting barrels must be good for something,’ he added. At that point, even though he didn’t actually say so, it sounded as if he was finding it all very hard and daunting. He said that some of the men were reeling with exhaustion after a long run over the dunes.

  Just the fact that he didn’t write more than a few lines at a time was evidence that they were kept busy from dawn until late at night, but a couple of days later he wrote with some pride that he’d got scores of seventy hits out of a hundred at target practice and had managed fifty press-ups.

  As Belle read on she thought it sounded like the worst kind of nightmare – kit inspections, running at the double for miles with a full pack on his back, crawling on his belly over wet sand dunes, bayonet practice, and rapid loading of his rifle. He also said it kept raining and it was cold.

  He mentioned something called the Bull Ring where they did square bashing, and said that the village of Etaples was a godforsaken, rundown place that didn’t even have a decent shop. The images he was creating for her were all so grim, yet he sounded surprisingly cheerful, even when he described wearing the boots he’d been issued with as like having a lump of lead on each foot.

  But the best thing about his letter was his thoughts about her. ‘I imagine you brushing your hair at the dressing table, the way it tumbles over your shoulders as shiny as tar. Or seeing you when you leave for the shop in the mornings, all prim and buttoned up. I think of how you eat apples, the glimpse of little white teeth and your tongue all pink and pointy as you lick your lips.’

  She guessed he had been thinking far more personal things about her, but couldn’t bring himself to write them because he knew letters were likely to be read by a censor, and that she would read some of the letter to Garth and Mog. But he’d ended it by saying, ‘You are on my mind all the time, I wonder what you are doing, if you are lonely without me. I think of our baby growing inside you and pray that I’ll be back before he or she is born. I hope you aren’t angry with me for going away just when you need me most.’

  Belle had written a letter to him every day since he left, posting them as she walked home in the early evening. But she found it hard to think of different things to tell him, as each day for her was much the same as the one before. Trying to make her letters amusing was even harder. Most of her customers were very ordinary and it was rare anyone said anything he would find remotely funny. Sometimes when she read over about what Mog had made them for tea the previous night, or she passed on a message that had come through Garth for him from one of the customers, she felt the letter was barely worth reading. But she always tried to find some old shared memory to make him smile, told him how much she was missing him, and what he meant to her. Then at the bottom of each letter she drew something, a rabbit, a cat or some other pretty small animal, and added a hat.

  She picked up the letter she’d written to him earlier, in which she’d told him about a huge spider sitting on her workbench that morning. She had been frightened to death of it, put a glass over it, then ran to the shop next door to ask Mr Stokes the cobbler to come and remove it.

  So at the bottom of the page she began to draw a comic, fat spider wearing a top hat, and she chuckled to herself as she drew it, remembering how Jimmy had found it funny that she was so scared of spiders.

  The door bell tinkled and she leapt to her feet, placing her writing pad on the counter.

  It was a big man wearing a long, very wet mackintosh, and her first thought was to wonder if she could ask him to remove it and leave it by the door because she didn’t want it dripping all over the floor.

  ‘Good afternoon, sir,’ she said politely. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘I want a hat,’ he said very brusquely.

  ‘I don’t sell gentlemen’s hats, sir,’ she replied, assuming that was what he wanted as he wasn’t wearing one and his almost bald head was glistening with rain. ‘But there is a gentlemen’s outfitters just a few doors down the street that does.’

  ‘Did I say I wanted a man’s one?’ he snapped back.

  All at once Belle was scared. While he looked and sounded respectable enough at a distance, there was a musty smell coming from him that reminded her of Sly, one of the men who had abducted her back when she was fifteen. He had a moustache, but it was untrimmed and he had stubble on his chin. As she looked closer, she saw the collar on his shirt was very dirty.

  ‘So you wanted to buy a hat for your wife perhaps?’ she asked.

  She had never felt frightened in the shop before, but now, as she saw how dark it was out on the street, and deserted too because of the rain, she realized she could seem an easy target to a thief looking through the shop window and seeing she was alone.

  ‘I want money,’ he growled, and putting his hand into his pocket he pulled out a short, stout wooden cosh.

  Belle stared at it in astonishment and fear. He’d made her feel nervous, but she hadn’t expected that. ‘I’ve hardly taken any money today,’ she gasped. It was the truth; she’d only sold one hat and that was a cheap felt one costing two shillings. With the odd change she kept in the counter drawer there was perhaps seven or eight shillings in all.

  His lip curled back. ‘Don’t lie to me, I know you do a good trade.�
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  ‘Not today. It hasn’t stopped raining and it’s cold,’ she said.

  He lunged forward, brandishing the cosh, and Belle cowered back, covering her head with her hands. ‘Don’t hit me, I’ll give you what I have,’ she cried.

  When the expected blow didn’t come she peeped through her fingers. He was already at the counter drawer, scooping out the change in there and putting it in his pocket. That proved to her he had been watching her on some other occasion as the drawer was a tiny one and not immediately obvious.

  ‘Right, where’s the rest?’ he said, coming towards her again. ‘If you don’t get it I’ll smash the shop up, then you.’

  Belle’s heart thumped with fear. Desperation was written all over the man’s face, and she sensed he meant what he said. ‘There isn’t any more,’ she insisted. ‘I’ve only sold one cheap hat, I don’t keep any other money in here.’

  ‘Don’t lie to me!’ he yelled. ‘Get it now.’

  If there had been any other money anywhere, Belle would have run to get it. She’d had enough run-ins with desperate men before to know appeasement was vital.

  ‘I promise you there is no more,’ she said frantically. ‘If I had any, I would give it to you.’

  With that he swung his cosh at her cheval mirror and smashed the glass, shards falling tinkling to the floor.

  ‘Get it or you’ll be next,’ he yelled at her.

  Belle didn’t know what to do. The back door was locked and bolted, and even if she tried to reach it she knew he would catch her before she had a chance to open it and escape.

  ‘I can’t find something that isn’t here,’ she cried out. ‘You have all there is.’

  He gave a kind of angry growl and leapt forward, bringing his cosh down hard on her shoulder. Belle screamed in pain and staggered back, clutching at her shoulder.

  ‘It’s in there, isn’t it?’ He pointed his cosh towards the work room at the back.

  Belle’s back was to the wall by the back-room door. ‘If you can find any money in there you are welcome to it,’ she sobbed.

  As he moved as if to go into the back room she saw her chance, and flew towards the front door. But as she caught hold of the handle to pull it open, he was there behind her and he grabbed her by the shoulder and hauled her back.

  ‘You aren’t going anywhere, bitch!’ he yelled at her, and lifting his cosh again he brought it down with such force on her side that she crumpled and fell to the floor. But he wasn’t satisfied with that, and swinging his leg back he kicked out at her.

  In the split second as his leg moved, she tried to protect her belly with her arms, but it was too late for his boot struck squarely at her abdomen, sending her skidding across the floor to crash against the counter.

  The pain was so fierce she didn’t attempt to get to her feet. Instead she curled up, hardly able to see. She heard him lock the front door and pull the blind down over it, and sure he was going to kill her now, her only thought was what that would do to Jimmy.

  But he didn’t come back to her, he just stepped over her and went into the work room. She heard him crashing about, pulling down the boxes of trimmings on the shelves like someone possessed. She was fairly certain he’d pocketed the key to the door. Trying to reach the telephone was not an option because he’d stop her the moment he heard her. She couldn’t fight him, she didn’t even dare cry out in pain for fear that would anger him still more. So remaining motionless and seemingly unconscious on the floor seemed the only thing to do, for once he’d satisfied himself there was no more money anywhere, he’d go.

  It was so hard to just lie there when she wanted to scream out because she was in so much pain. But somehow she managed to do it. She opened her eyes once on hearing a tin being opened and saw him stuffing the biscuits it contained into the pockets of his coat.

  The pain was so bad that the room began to swirl around, and the last thing she remembered thinking was that she was going to be sick.

  ‘Mrs Reilly! Mrs Reilly!’

  She heard a man’s voice as if from a great distance away, and forced her eyes open.

  ‘Oh, thank heavens!’ he exclaimed. ‘I thought for a minute …’ He broke off. ‘Now, don’t move, there’s broken glass everywhere. I’m going to call for help.’

  Belle was aware enough to know it was Mr Stokes the cobbler from next door, but she didn’t know why she was in such pain or lying on the floor which was covered in glass. It only came back to her when she heard several other male voices and recognized one as Dr Towle’s.

  She had thought Dr Towle rather pompous when she called on him about her pregnancy. He was tall and rather handsome with thick black hair and deep blue eyes, and she had felt that perhaps his manner was such because so many women patients doted on him. But now, as she registered the kind and gentle way he examined her as she lay on the shop floor, and his genuine outrage that she could be attacked in such a way, she realized he wasn’t just a handsome stuffed shirt, but a compassionate man.

  She managed to tell a policeman who was there too about the intruder who had robbed and attacked her, then Garth appeared and with the aid of another man they had put her on a stretcher and carried her home.

  ‘You were subjected to a horrifying attack,’ Dr Towle said sympathetically some time later when she was back at home in her own bed. ‘But I had you brought back here instead of getting you to hospital as I believe you will recover quicker with Mrs Franklin nursing you.’

  Belle wasn’t able even to nod to show her appreciation that she was back with Mog and Garth.

  ‘Is the baby all right?’ she managed to ask as he used a little silver trumpet-like instrument to listen at her belly.

  ‘His heart is still beating,’ Dr Towle replied, patting her hand in sympathy for her anxiety. ‘But it is essential you stay in bed, as I suspect you have a couple of cracked ribs. I have strapped them up to enable them to heal. But there is little I can do about your shoulder; it is not broken – the pain you feel is the severe bruising from a heavy blow. You will be in pain for a few days, and it is quite common after such a shock to feel very low for a time. But all this will pass, and I shall be calling to see you every day.’

  After giving Mog some further instructions, and some medicine to ease Belle’s pain, the doctor left.

  ‘You poor love,’ Mog said, bending over the bed and stroking Belle’s hair back from her face. ‘I just hope they catch that fiend that did this to you. Garth said one of the police told him there was a similar attack on a shopkeeper in Lewisham just last week. They think it was done by the same man.’

  ‘I thought he was going to kill me,’ Belle said weakly. ‘Did he smash up the whole shop?’

  ‘Garth said it was a mess, but men always exaggerate when they are angry. I’ll go up in the morning and see for myself and clean it up. But you won’t be going back there, my girl!’

  ‘Mr Stokes found me,’ Belle said. ‘Did he see the robber?’

  ‘Only a man fleeing up towards the heath,’ Mog said. ‘Apparently he was shutting up his shop as the man came haring out of yours, and at the same time a policeman came up the street. But Mr Stokes told Garth he thought you were dead at first.’

  ‘Don’t let’s tell Jimmy about this in our letters,’ Belle begged her. ‘I don’t want him worrying about me.’

  ‘I’ll need to talk to Garth about that,’ Mog said. ‘He’s so angry he wants to lash out. But I think you are right, telling Jimmy would serve no useful purpose.’

  Belle began to cry and Mog perched on the bed. She couldn’t hug Belle for fear of hurting her more, so she just wiped away her tears.

  ‘There, there, ducks, Garth and I are here to look after you,’ she said soothingly.

  ‘I feel as if the bad times are coming back again,’ Belle sobbed. ‘First Jimmy enlisting and now this! I might have known the happiness couldn’t last.’

  Chapter Six

  Belle was woken by a sharp pang. There was nothing unusual in that – in the la
st two days since the attack she had grown used to being woken by pain. But this was different: it wasn’t coming from her ribs or shoulder, it was in her belly and her lower back.

  It was still dark and she could see the faint glow around the edges of the curtains coming from the gas light out in the street. But the medicine Mog had given her had made her very groggy, and as the pain subsided she fell asleep again.

  She was woken again by another pang. She didn’t know how long it had been since the previous one, maybe an hour, maybe minutes, but this time it was even stronger, enough to make her cry out. It seemed to build up to a peak, then slowly subside, and as it faded completely she knew what it was.

  The baby was coming.

  Lying there on her back, she put her hands on her belly, feeling the curve of it, and cried, knowing a baby couldn’t survive being born at a little less than six months.

  In her mind’s eye she could see Miranda lying on the bed of cushions in the back room of the shop, looking exactly the way she felt now. Was this God’s judgment on her for helping Miranda? If so he was a cruel God, for all she had done was act as a nurse, she hadn’t made the abortion happen, or even been party to Miranda’s decision to have it. Both Jimmy and she had wanted this baby. It would have been loved and nurtured because both of them wanted to give it all they had not had themselves as children.

  Or was this punishment for her former life as a whore?

  Another pang came and she gripped on to the mattress as it engulfed her. Much as she wanted to stay silent, she couldn’t help but cry out, for she had never experienced pain as bad as this before.

  Her bedroom door opened and Mog came in carrying a candle.

  ‘What is it, ducks?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s the baby,’ Belle gasped. ‘Help me!’

  ‘Oh my giddy aunt,’ Mog exclaimed, going over to the bed and setting the candle down. ‘How long have you been having pains?’