The Promise

by Lesley Pearse

  ‘Why should I do anything for you, a mere trollop?’ the older woman snorted with disdain.

  ‘Because if you don’t I shall shame your family name as you have done mine,’ Belle said. ‘Believe me, I know things about you all that would not just make people in Blackheath sit up and take notice, but would also reach the national press.’

  ‘What rubbish! There is nothing whatsoever about our family that is shameful.’

  ‘No?’ Belle raised one eyebrow and smirked. ‘A woman who gave out white feathers makes sure her sons have desk jobs for the war? How hypocritical is that? When her daughter is killed in France she basks in the reflected glory that she was doing her bit for the war, yet the truth is Miranda wanted to go to France to get away from you.’

  ‘My sons are doing vital war work, and who would believe that Miranda wanted to get away from me?’

  ‘People would believe it if I was to let the newspapers publish your letters to her,’ Belle said. ‘And I have them, I brought them home from France. It is hard to believe any mother could write such cold, unfeeling letters.’

  ‘People of my standing do not wear their hearts on their sleeves like the working classes,’ Mrs Forbes-Alton retorted. ‘If they were published I’d get nothing but sympathy for my loss. It would be you who would be vilified.’

  ‘I agree your class are not emotional about their children, possibly because you put them in the hands of nursemaids at birth,’ Belle said. ‘But of course there is also the matter of the abortion Miranda had in the summer of 1914. How does abortion go down among people of your standing?’

  The woman blanched and caught hold of the back of the chair to steady herself. ‘What can you mean? I cannot believe you’d claim such a vile thing.’

  ‘Do sit down before you fall down,’ Belle said sweetly. She was beginning to enjoy herself now and she could almost hear her old friend applauding her.

  ‘She didn’t do that, she couldn’t have,’ the woman blustered, but she sank down into the chair.

  ‘Oh yes she did. That’s how I got to know Miranda. I took care of her when she collapsed outside my shop after having it.’

  ‘That is malicious rubbish!’

  ‘Not at all. Think back. I’m sure you must recall the afternoon in August of 1914 when she telephoned and left a message with your maid to say she was staying the night with her friend in Belgravia? She telephoned from my shop. I walked back here with her the following morning once the baby had come away. She had a bruise on her forehead and she told you she’d fallen down in the street.’

  Belle watched the other woman’s face and she could see that she did remember that day.

  ‘How can you make up such a thing when Miranda is dead?’ Mrs Forbes-Alton asked, but the power had gone out of her voice.

  ‘You know I am not making it up. I even have proof in a letter from her thanking me for my help,’ Belle said. ‘Even you must have wondered how and why we became such close friends.’

  Again she saw something flit across the woman’s face. No doubt she was remembering times when she’d berated her daughter for choosing the company of a ‘common shop girl’ instead of someone of her own class.

  ‘She had an affair with a man she met in Greenwich Park. He was a scoundrel and a married man too. Poor Miranda thought he loved her, but as soon as she told him about the baby she was carrying, he disappeared. She risked her life having an abortion because she knew you would disown her.

  ‘Of course I have no wish to drag my dearest friend’s name through the mud,’ Belle went on. ‘But if she had lived to know what you did to my aunt and me, she would have been utterly disgusted by you and would have urged me to use every last thing I know about her to shame you.’

  Belle paused again for a moment to let her words speak for themselves.

  ‘I grew to love Miranda,’ she said eventually. ‘And she loved me too. In truth I was the only person who cared about her at all until she met Will Fergus, the American sergeant she met in France whom she intended to marry. I’ll bet you didn’t even reply to his letter after her death, did you?’

  The woman opened her mouth and then closed it.

  ‘I thought not,’ Belle said. ‘And he was a good man. Miranda was the happiest she’d ever been in her whole life when she met him. But you couldn’t understand why he and I were so distressed at her death, because you never cared about her. What sort of a woman are you that you couldn’t love your own child?’

  ‘I did care for her,’ Mrs Forbes-Alton said weakly.

  ‘No, you didn’t. She was right in thinking you’d throw her out on to the street if you’d known about the baby. You destroyed my aunt’s happiness too, and yes, before you ask, she knows everything about Miranda, yet she has never breathed a word of it to anyone, not even after what you’ve done to her. But I am not so kind. I want some rough justice.’

  ‘How much do you want?’

  Belle threw back her head and laughed. ‘You think I want money from you? I wouldn’t take as much as an old coat of yours if I was freezing. I’ve already told you part of what I want, and that is to see Mrs Franklin reinstated in all the village events. I want you to greet her warmly in church, in front of all those small-minded acolytes who suck up to you.’

  Belle could see the woman was going to agree to that.

  ‘You said “part” of what you want,’ she said cautiously.

  ‘Yes. I want to see Mrs Franklin happy again, but the other part is that you speak to Mr Blessard’s superiors on that rag of a newspaper he works for. You tell them he twisted your words when you were griefstricken about your daughter, and that what he printed about me was lies. And you make sure they dismiss Blessard.’

  ‘How can I do that?’

  Belle was delighted to see how scared she looked.

  ‘If you and your husband can get your sons safe desk jobs in Whitehall for the duration of the war, this little thing shouldn’t prove a problem. You must stress that I could have sued the papers for slander, as all I was doing in Paris was learning millinery. And you can point out that my husband is a war hero, and that I’ve spent the war caring for men at the Herbert and driving ambulances. As long as they print an apology and the scurrilous story is quashed for good and my sweet, kind aunt can hold her head up in the village again, that will do.’

  ‘I don’t know that I can do this.’

  Belle shrugged. ‘Well, if you don’t, you know what’s going to happen. I’ll start talking, very loudly. I’m betting you won’t want your other daughter’s chances of marriage being scuppered by this – I heard she’s become engaged to a viscount.’

  Pure terror flitted across the older woman’s face. ‘Please don’t do that, Mrs Reilly,’ she begged. ‘I’m sorry that I hurt you and your aunt. I was very upset at Miranda dying and that man put words into my mouth, but I’ll try and put it right.’

  ‘You must do more than try. I’ll give you just two weeks. Keep firmly in your mind that I have nothing left to lose. The war has made my husband a cripple, I’ve lost my best friend and my good name. You on the other hand have everything to lose. If this matter isn’t put right within two weeks, then I shall start my own little campaign against you and your family.’

  With that Belle got up, smoothing down her coat, and walked proudly to the door. ‘No need to see me out,’ she said. ‘I can find my way out of anywhere and anything.’

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Mog came running into the kitchen one afternoon in April, her small face flushed with excitement. ‘They asked me if I would run the cake stall at the summer fête,’ she blurted out. ‘I can’t believe it! Mrs Parsons said that I was the best cake maker in the village and I was an inspiration to the younger women.’

  Belle was doing the ironing, and although Mog’s triumph was hardly important when just a few days earlier they’d heard the sobering news that the Germans had broken through the Allied lines in France, it was a victory for Mog. Belle stood the flat iron on its end, and w
ent over to hug Mog. ‘Quite right too,’ she said. ‘If anyone deserves something good to happen, it’s you.’

  Jimmy was sitting by the stove reading a newspaper and looked up with a smirk. ‘I’ve been telling people for years you are the best cake maker in London.’

  Mog glowed even more at that. ‘But how will I get the ingredients with it all on ration?’ she asked anxiously.

  ‘They’ll expect you to make Garth pull some strings to get them,’ Jimmy said.

  Garth did keep in with black marketeers, and the odd pound of ham, butter or cheese came his way, but Belle felt the way Jimmy had phrased his remark implied that Mog had only been shown favour today because of her husband’s ability to get hold of anything.

  Jimmy had never been cynical before he went to war, but he was now. His old warmth and sense of humour did surface again now and then, but sadly most of the time he was very dour.

  ‘The ladies on the fête committee wouldn’t know about such things,’ Mog said. ‘But maybe they’ll have something in their store cupboards to help me out.’

  Belle was tempted to pull Jimmy up on what he’d said, but decided it was better to let it pass as Mog hadn’t appeared to see it as a slight. In the past couple of months he had improved in some areas. He talked more and he had taken over doing the accounts. He also had fewer nightmares.

  Yet even though Belle felt sad she couldn’t bring the old Jimmy back, at least she had succeeded in getting Mog accepted back into the community, because Mrs Forbes-Alton had done exactly what she had insisted upon. An apology had appeared in the Chronicle which said that the reporter Mr Blessard had wilfully exploited Mrs Forbes-Alton’s grief following the tragic death of her daughter and had made claims about her friend Mrs Belle Reilly that were unfounded.

  It went on to report that Jimmy had been seriously wounded in action, and that the newspaper was very sorry to have added to the family’s distress at such a difficult time. The final statement was that Mr Blessard had been dismissed.

  The article was on the inside of the paper, so well tucked away that not everyone would have spotted it. But regardless of how many people saw it, Mrs Forbes-Alton must have been frightened enough by Belle to make certain that the story got round the village, and she immediately included Mog in several fund-raising teas she had organized. One such tea was in her own house and Mog had come back from it incandescent with delight that she was no longer being snubbed.

  Belle felt she had triumphed over the woman, but she had never told Mog anything other than that she’d spoken to Mrs Forbes-Alton about Miranda. Then a few weeks after the piece in the Chronicle, PC Broadhead called in at the Railway to say that Blessard had been arrested for throwing a brick through the newspaper office window while drunk. Blessard claimed he’d been unable to find another job and had lost his home as he couldn’t pay his rent. The police had shown no sympathy, instead telling him he should enlist immediately which would solve his problems.

  There was no doubt that the army needed more men, even weasels like Blessard. They had raised the age limit for conscription to fifty-one, and Garth, who had only recently passed that milestone, joked that he’d never been so glad to admit his true age. The Americans had finally arrived in large numbers in France and gone into battle, and although they were inexperienced they had given Britain a surge of real hope that victory was possible.

  Belle had received a letter from Vera saying that Etaples had been bombed, though fortunately the shells missed the hospital. But she said other hospitals nearer the front had been hit, power lines had gone down and operations had to be done by oil lamps. There were so many wounded coming in that in one four-day period 273 operations were carried out, the doctors and nurses starting work at eight in the morning and carrying on till one the following morning. With so many American doctors and nurses moving to the new American hospitals, the staff that remained were all overworked, sometimes with just one nurse on duty alone at night in a big ward.

  At the end of March Germany’s Big Bertha gun shelled Paris from seventy miles away. Vera said it made everyone fear the gun could be turned on them next, as if it wasn’t already bad enough with enemy planes flying overhead nightly.

  None of this alarming news was being reported in the newspapers, but they made much of the Red Baron, Germany’s famous ace pilot who had finally been shot down. Perhaps the press felt it was important to raise morale with some good news, as everyone was so weary and despondent.

  The government had put up posters urging everyone to ‘Set their Teeth and See it Through’, and that was all anyone could do. People were afraid of the Zeppelins and bombers and struggled with prices that kept on rising, with food shortages, rationing and long queues just for a loaf of bread or half a pound of sugar. In every town and city there were many men out on the streets with missing limbs, blinded or with other serious injuries. Hospitals, nursing and convalescent homes were full to capacity, yet still more wounded were brought back daily and the death toll rose remorselessly.

  Shell shock was something people hadn’t heard of until the battle of the Somme, and then it was generally thought to be an excuse for cowardice. Back then, thanks to the glorification of the war by the press, few people fully appreciated the horrors men at the front had to endure. But that view had begun to change as wounded men revealed the true nature of war. Many women had observed a husband, brother or son home on leave who shouted out involuntarily at sudden loud noises, had nightmares or was withdrawn, and now the public were becoming far more sympathetic.

  Yet sympathy alone couldn’t help the worst affected. Many would never be able to hold down a job again, some became violent, others turned to drink or even suicide. Still more would languish in mental asylums and would never recover.

  Likewise, at the start of the war most people thought that all deserters were cowards and should be shot. But the tide had turned there too, for even though courage was still applauded and cowardice despised, the vast majority of people thought it wrong to execute someone who ran in a moment of pure terror.

  Belle could see the war had changed so many things. On 6 February women over thirty had been finally granted the vote. This was something Mog was thrilled about, but which Garth viewed with anxiety. Some of the social niceties that Belle and Mog had to learn when they first came to Blackheath were virtually extinct. Class distinctions were less marked now as people were drawn together in grief at the loss of loved ones. Society women mixed with working-class girls for the war effort; officers often became indebted to the men they commanded.

  Chaperones were a thing of the past; young couples seized the moment, never knowing if it would be the last. Women had risen to the challenges of wartime and had not only taken over traditional male jobs, but were excelling at them. No one was surprised any more to see female conductors on the trams and omnibuses and there were many female ambulance drivers in London. Factories, farms, shops and offices all over England had as many women on their staff as men, and women could even go into a public house now without eyebrows being raised.

  Garth had finally set aside his long-held prejudice on this, though it was more to do with economics than a true change of heart. If he didn’t let a soldier on leave bring his wife or sweetheart in, they’d go elsewhere. Mog helped him serve most nights, and Belle too at the weekends, but only because their help came free.

  Yet the change Belle had really hoped for had not materialized in Jimmy. He might talk a little more and help Garth by doing the accounts, but he was making no attempt to help himself. He was fitted for an artificial leg, but he wouldn’t persevere and practise walking with it. Dr Towle had tried to persuade him to see a psychiatrist friend of his to get him out of his dejected state of mind, but he refused. As for lovemaking, Belle had tried every sensual trick she’d ever learned to get him interested in it again, but he had set his mind against it, and often called her a whore for trying to please him. Even if she just cuddled up to him, he stiffened, and she couldn’t remember when
he’d last kissed her. Now she rarely even tried any more, it was just too hurtful to be rejected.

  There were many nights when she lay awake sadly remembering the man who could barely wait to get her into the bedroom. Sometimes they had made love the whole night, only falling asleep at daybreak, and back then he’d worshipped every inch of her.

  She never undressed in front of him now. On past occasions when she had, he’d claimed she had no shame. She had raged at him, but all that did was create an atmosphere which permeated the whole house. He wouldn’t talk about it, he refused to get help, and Belle had finally accepted that this was the way it was going to be for ever.

  Keeping busy was her way of getting through each day. She altered clothes for neighbours, she made a few hats for a dress shop in Lewisham, and she’d taken over cleaning the house and bar so Mog had more freedom. But there were times when she despaired. Seeing couples walking hand in hand, mothers laughing as they chased toddlers up on the heath, and families having picnics in Greenwich Park were reminders of what might have been if Jimmy hadn’t been wounded.

  She told herself that thousands of other women accepted the cards they’d been dealt, and that she was lucky she and Jimmy had a home with Garth and Mog. But even though she could accept all the limitations that came with a disabled man, she resented Jimmy wallowing in self-pity. And she was afraid that one day she would crumple under the weight of responsibility for him.

  ‘Will you help me organize the cake stall?’

  Mog’s question brought Belle back to the present.

  ‘Of course I will,’ she replied. Whatever else was wrong in her life it was good to see Mog bubbly and happy again.

  ‘I thought maybe you could paint a nice banner for above the stall,’ Mog said. ‘With cakes and things, really jolly and eye-catching.’

  Garth came into the kitchen with a letter in his hand. ‘That bloke in the hardware shop just brought this in,’ he said, handing it to Jimmy. ‘It was addressed wrong. Looks like it’s from France.’