The Promise

by Lesley Pearse

  ‘No, stay,’ Belle said, remembering that it had been Vera who had kept her company all the time Miranda had been seeing Will. ‘I thought I wanted to be alone, but I don’t think I really do.’

  ‘You two were so close I don’t suppose you can imagine life without her,’ Vera said, sitting down beside her.

  ‘That just about sums it up,’ Belle said glumly. ‘Mostly I thought I was the one who held her up; I had the ideas, she followed me. But now without her I feel I’ll never have another idea or plan again. I was thinking earlier how odd it is that I think that; after all, if she’d run off with Will, or decided to go home, I’d have been fine without her.’

  ‘But you didn’t see this coming, and it’s final, that’s why it hurts so much,’ Vera said. ‘None of the rest of us got really close to her, but it’s still knocked all of us for six. Every single one of the drivers and stretcher bearers feel it too.’

  ‘I don’t know if I can stay here now,’ Belle said sadly. ‘I’d give anything to be at home with Mog and Garth, yet at the same time I know if I was to go home I’d feel just as empty there.’

  ‘Would it make you feel better to go and see Miranda’s mother?’

  Belle shook her head. ‘She’s the last person I want to see. She’d put on a big display of grief, but I’d be thinking how false it is because she wasn’t very kind to Miranda.’

  ‘What about Will? He’ll need someone to talk to.’

  ‘Yes, that’s true. Poor man, they had made so many plans. Miranda didn’t even have time to tell me them all, but I don’t think I could talk to him, not yet.’

  ‘You can talk to me any time,’ Vera said, and put her hand on Belle’s arm.

  They sat there together for some time in companionable silence. Every now and then a couple of nurses or orderlies would come past, and there were a number of civilians too, perhaps relatives of patients. Further down the path, there were some men well enough to leave the wards, some on crutches, an arm in a sling, or a bandage around their head. Birds were chirping nearby, but behind that they could hear the muffled boom of guns miles away at the front.

  Belle broke the silence. ‘The guns must be very loud if we can hear them all this way away,’ she said. ‘It must be like hell there. Three years of war now and we’re still no closer to ending it. How many more men have to die before they are satisfied?’

  Vera took Belle’s hand and squeezed it, a way of saying she shared Belle’s anger. ‘You know, I sometimes wonder what it was that made me come all this way. I can remember thinking it was my duty to help, but I had no real understanding of the destruction, the sheer brutality of war.’

  ‘Miranda and I saw it as an adventure,’ Belle confessed. ‘That seems so stupid now, after all, we’d worked in a hospital back home and knew the horror of it. But we thought we were being brave and noble.’ Her laugh was hollow.

  Vera nodded in understanding. ‘I suppose I thought I was being noble and self-sacrificing too. But the real truth is that I was so bored working in the bakery. I’d listen to customers telling Mother about their problems, trivial things like a child who’d broken good china, or the dress material they’d sent for that hadn’t arrived, and I wanted to scream at the dullness of my life.

  ‘I used to daydream of living in a big city, going dancing, having enough money to buy anything I wanted. But I wasn’t qualified to do anything other than serve in a shop. When I heard they needed volunteers here, it seemed the answer to everything. I would see more of the world; I’d learn things I never could at home.’

  ‘Well, you’ve certainly done that,’ Belle said. ‘But didn’t you get some hospital experience before you came?’

  ‘Only a month in Auckland, but because I could drive they put me on collecting and taking old people home, so I didn’t learn anything much. That’s why I got put on driving an ambulance here. But my first day collecting the wounded from the train shocked me to the core.’

  ‘I should think it did,’ Belle agreed. She’d found it shocking too and she was already used to seeing gory sights.

  ‘I wanted to go home,’ Vera went on. ‘The tranquil life I had back there seemed like heaven when I was surrounded by blood and guts and young soldiers crying for their mothers. I’m so used to it now that I’ve started to worry that I’ll never fit in again back home.’

  ‘I sometimes feel like that too,’ Belle said. ‘It’s hard to write home because I know they can’t imagine what we do, or maybe it’s that I don’t want to put those pictures in their heads. So tell me about New Zealand. That would be a far more pleasant thing to describe to them. Is it very hot?’

  ‘It can be in the North Island where I come from,’ Vera replied. ‘It’s sub-tropical, you see. But down in the South Island it can be very cold and often very wet. It’s a beautiful country, with mountains covered in snow in winter, lakes and fast-flowing rivers. There’s lots of sheep, many more of them than people, there’s so much space, you can go miles without seeing a single house.

  ‘But I live in a little place called Russell. It’s in the Bay of Islands. The sea is turquoise, with little islands dotted about in it covered in trees, and it’s very quiet and beautiful. Yet once it was a very wicked place, which they called the Hell Hole of the Pacific because the whalers used to come there to get drunk and find women.’

  Belle half smiled because that made her think of New Orleans, but she wasn’t going to tell Vera that. ‘It sounds lovely. Have you ever seen a whale?’

  ‘Lots of times. I used to go out fishing with my father and brothers and we often saw them, dolphins too, they are exciting to watch, so playful and beautiful. But I guess no one ever appreciates where they grew up, not until they go away from it.’

  ‘It sounds heavenly to me,’ Belle sighed. ‘Jimmy and I used to think we’d like to live by the sea when the war is over, but the longer I’m here, the less I think about the future. I can’t imagine doing ordinary things like washing clothes or baking a cake any more. Maybe you are right and we won’t fit in when we go home.’

  Just then they saw Captain Taylor walking towards them. ‘He’s coming to speak to you,’ Vera said. ‘I’ll go in and leave you to it.’

  ‘Thank you for the chat, Vera,’ Belle said as the girl got up. ‘You’ve cheered me, I’m very grateful for that.’

  ‘Good evening, Reilly,’ the captain said as he drew closer. ‘I just came over to tell you that I’ve managed to contact Mr and Mrs Forbes-Alton. They are arranging for their daughter’s body to be taken home to them. It will be tomorrow morning.’

  ‘And did you manage to contact Sergeant Fergus?’

  ‘Not personally,’ he said. ‘I spoke to his CO this morning and he will have told him by now. It’s a bad business, we are all sadly accustomed to informing relatives of servicemen killed in action, and now and then we have to inform men here too of deaths in their family back home, but I never expected to have to relay the news of a death of one of our female volunteers.’

  ‘May I go home with Miranda?’ Belle asked. ‘I mean, on the same train and boat. She would have wanted me to.’

  She saw by the way his face tightened that this wasn’t possible. ‘Or just so I get back in time for the funeral,’ she said. ‘I know it must be difficult with one driver gone, without a second one asking for leave.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Reilly. But Mrs Forbes-Alton has insisted that you are not to attend their daughter’s funeral,’ he said.

  Belle was stunned. ‘But why? How could she say that? I was Miranda’s closest friend. She would want me there.’

  The captain looked uneasy and made a helpless gesture with his hands. ‘She was adamant, extremely forceful. I’m sure it was grief, it does make people say irrational things sometimes. She appears to blame you for her daughter’s death.’

  ‘Me!’ Belle was incredulous. ‘How could I be blamed for it?’

  The captain shrugged. ‘She said you persuaded her to come here, that she hadn’t been the same girl since she
met you. But as I said, people do say foolish things at such times.’

  ‘That woman is such a witch,’ Belle gasped. ‘Miranda was older than me, she had a mind of her own, I didn’t force her to come, she wanted to. How dare her mother say such a thing?’

  ‘I have to admit I was rather shocked at her outburst,’ he said. ‘I pointed out that her daughter had been happy here, that she was a valued member of our team and that I’d found you to be a steadying influence on her. But it was to no avail. I’m sorry, Reilly.’

  ‘Did you tell her that she was going to marry Sergeant Fergus?’

  ‘No, I didn’t, it wasn’t an appropriate thing to say under the circumstances.’

  ‘I’m a volunteer. If I want to go home on leave tomorrow, can you prevent me?’

  He looked at her for a moment, as if weighing up the situation. ‘No, I can’t prevent you. But I would urge you to think it through. We need you here, and Mrs Forbes-Alton has connections in high places and is likely to use them if you go against her wishes. Please think it over calmly. I’m sure your friend would not have wanted you to jeopardize your future just to attend her funeral.’

  Belle was just about to make an angry retort when an American staff car drove past. She saw a familiar face glance at her and the captain, then the driver stopped the car and reversed back towards them.

  ‘That’s Sergeant Fergus,’ Belle gasped. ‘I hope to God he’s been told already, I don’t want to have to break the news.’

  Belle could see by Will’s face as he got out of the car that he had been told. He seemed to have shrunk a couple of inches and the glossy appearance he’d had the day they first met had vanished.

  He saluted the captain, then looked at Belle with such pain in his eyes that a lump rose in her throat.

  ‘Will, this is Captain Taylor, who runs the ambulance unit,’ she said. ‘Captain Taylor, this is Will Fergus, Miranda’s fiancé.’

  The captain offered his condolences and explained that Miranda’s body was being taken back to England in the morning. Then, perhaps realizing it was Belle that the man wished to speak to, he said that if Fergus had any further questions of him, he would be in his office.

  ‘Oh Will, I’m so very sorry,’ Belle said once the captain had gone. ‘How much did they tell you?’

  ‘The minimum,’ he said. ‘A train hit her ambulance. Was she killed instantly, Belle? I can’t bear to think of her suffering.’

  He sat on the hut steps next to her and Belle told him exactly how it came about and assured him it was instantaneous. ‘I ran to her, and she was already dead, Will. She didn’t stand a chance.’

  ‘She told me on Saturday night that her arm was aching from the stiff gears,’ he said. ‘If only she’d refused to drive it again.’

  He told her then how they had discussed getting married, and although he would have liked it to be back in Philadelphia with all his family there, they had decided that if they got married in France it would be far easier to take her home with him when the war was over.

  ‘Another reason was that she wanted you there,’ he said. ‘She joked that she was going to make you wear something so ugly you wouldn’t outshine her.’

  That brought tears to Belle’s eyes because she could imagine Miranda saying it.

  ‘I never thought for one moment when I left the States that I would find love here in France,’ he said. ‘Me and the other guys had the idea that the French girls would be queuing up for us, we talked about little else on the way out here. If anyone had told me I was going to fall for a classy English girl I would’ve laughed at them. I was so proud of her I felt I could burst with it. I’d written home and told my folks all about her. I had my whole future planned around her, all I was scared of was that I might die here. It never crossed my mind it would be her.’

  Belle told him then what Captain Taylor had said, how she wasn’t welcome at Miranda’s funeral, and that made her cry. ‘At least you were spared that overbearing ogre of a woman as a mother-in-law,’ she sobbed. ‘I can’t believe she would blame me.’

  ‘Hey, don’t take it to heart,’ he said, putting his arm around her, tears running down his face too. ‘Miranda said she didn’t care if she never saw her mother again. I thought at the time they’d just had a bit of a tiff, but I guess she was on the level about her. Don’t put yourself through going over there just to make a point.’

  ‘All I wanted was to be with Miranda on that final journey,’ Belle sobbed. ‘We meant so much to one another it seems awful that she’ll be going alone. How could anyone be so cruel and nasty?’

  ‘Beats me,’ he said sadly. ‘No wonder Miranda said she wasn’t even going to tell her folks about us until after we were married. But I tell you what, suppose I come tomorrow night with flowers and we go down to the level crossing and say our goodbyes to Miranda there?’

  Belle sniffed back her tears. ‘That would be good,’ she said.

  ‘She loved you like a sister,’ Will said, hugging her to his shoulder. ‘She said that meeting you was the best thing that ever happened to her, well, up till meeting me. We’ve both got broken hearts now, I can’t see mine ever mending, but I know she’d want you to laugh again, to be happy with your old man. So you gotta do it for her.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ Belle said, deeply touched that he was soothing her when he was hurting so badly. ‘I suppose I ought to go in now. I know Captain Taylor kind of gave us permission to talk, but it will still be frowned on, me being out here with you.’

  ‘Can you meet me tomorrow? I’ll wait outside the fence where I used to meet Miranda.’

  Belle nodded. ‘I’m glad you came, I was so worried about you. It was me who told Captain Taylor he had to inform you. If it had been left up to him even her parents would only have got a telegram.’

  ‘Thank you for saying I was her fiancé,’ Will said. ‘That made me feel like I had a real claim on her, y’know what I mean? And if you give me her folks’ address tomorrow, I’ll write them and make them see Miranda was very special.’

  Belle gave him a watery smile. She thought he was one of the nicest men she’d ever met, all that Miranda had claimed.

  ‘And I’ll tell ’em what a gem you are,’ he added. ‘We’ll stay in touch, yeah? Maybe when we’re all done here I’ll come to England and meet your folks and your old man. He’s lucky he’s got you to come home to.’

  After Will had gone, Belle went into the hut and with help from Vera packed up Miranda’s things. She found her friend’s copy of the photograph they’d had taken together before they left England. They were wearing dresses of a similar style, with loose frills down the bodice and a wide sash at the waist. Belle’s was green washed silk, and Miranda’s blue-and-cream-striped crêpe, and they both wore pretty little hats that Belle had made. The sepia colouring of the picture didn’t do the dresses or the hats justice, but their smiles were real, because they were excited about going to France. She thought she would give it to Will as she still had her own copy she would never want to part with.

  When she found the dark red velvet dress she guessed that was what Miranda had worn on her last evening with Will, and she hugged it to her, breathing in her perfume that still lingered on it. It was tempting to keep it, but it looked as if it had cost a small fortune and Mrs Forbes-Alton might claim she had stolen it.

  She kept a silver bracelet for herself as a keepsake, though, and the fluffy pink shawl that Miranda used to wrap around her shoulders when sitting up in bed. It still smelled of her lavender toilet water.

  ‘Why don’t you give her diary to Will too?’ Vera suggested when she found the small blue leather book in her locker. ‘I bet she’s written all sorts of things about him in it. And she wouldn’t want her mother reading it.’

  Belle agreed. Then they folded up all the clothes and put them in the suitcase. A little later Belle carried it over to Captain Taylor’s office.

  In bed later, she read the diary, and for the first time since the accident she found someth
ing to smile about. The writing was as irrational and flippant as Miranda had been. One day she wrote a whole page very neatly, on others she scrawled just one line. There was one entry which made Belle splutter with laughter. It was 19 January. ‘Sister Fogget might be an excellent nurse and a good example to a know-nothing idiot like me, but I’d like to tie her to the bedsteads she makes me scrub, and beat her with a wet towel.’

  On the day they’d left England she’d written, ‘Poor Belle, struggling not to cry at leaving Mog. But I’ll convert her to being as uncaring as I am.’

  A few days later the entry read: ‘Belle was made for this, she has a smile that would make a blind man see, and a lame man walk. She’s even turned me into a half decent person.’

  Will was there too. The day she met him she’d written, ‘Met Will, a Yank, in Calais. I am fast. I took one look at him and knew he was the one I’d been waiting for. Kisses that made me weak with longing. I hope I had the same effect on him.’

  Belle closed the diary then. She’d skimmed through it quickly and seen all the later entries were about Will, and she felt it should only be read by him. She hoped it would make him smile and see how meeting him had changed Miranda for the better. And above all it would comfort him to know that he was in her heart right up to the moment she died.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Sally walked past Belle as she was cleaning out her ambulance at the end of the day. ‘Captain Taylor asked me to inform you there’s someone waiting to see you in the drivers’ room,’ she said curtly.

  Belle assumed it was Will. It was two weeks since the evening they went down to the level crossing and placed flowers for Miranda there. That evening had been particularly painful because the crushed ambulance had still been there, lying on its side by the track. The cab looked as if it had been opened with a giant tin opener to get Miranda’s body out, but although the heavy rain had washed away her blood, the horror of the moment when Belle saw the train crash into it came back to her anew. For Will it must have been simply devastating to see how Miranda met her end. He broke down, sobbing so hard that Belle wished she’d never agreed to show him where the accident happened.