The Promise

by Lesley Pearse

  She smiled to herself, remembering how when she and Mog had come on the ship they had stood at the rail for most of the journey from Auckland. They had watched the sea curling back, white-tipped as the bows sliced through the blue-green water. They had laughed at themselves for being mesmerized by it, when they had completed a long sea voyage only days before, yet they couldn’t help themselves. They wanted to see every inch of the coastline of this new land they’d come to.

  The engines cut out and the ship glided towards the jetty under the skilful hands of Captain Farquahar. One of the crew leaped ashore, as graceful and sure-footed as a deer, to help the onshore men bring her gently in the last few feet and secure her.

  Even then the passengers made no move to brave the rain. They huddled back under the meagre shelter of the forecastle, save for one man in a long raincoat and a trilby hat. He stood alone at the rail, a small suitcase in his hand.

  He was looking right at Belle, and she wished she could see him better as she thought he must be someone she knew from the town. But the rain was driving into her face, and his was just a blur.

  The gangway was lowered and secured, and suddenly people darted forward to leave the ship. It occurred to Belle then that it would be quite some time, maybe more than an hour, before her box of wallpaper would be unloaded. She could feel her clothes growing damp beneath her coat, maybe from water trickling down from the sou’wester or creeping in on the shoulder seams, and she felt cold and clammy. But something stopped her from turning away to go home.

  Mr and Mrs Brewster, whom she had met on her first night in Russell, came rushing up the jetty from the ship, Mr Brewster trying to hold an umbrella over both their heads.

  ‘Meeting someone, Mrs Reilly?’ he called out.

  ‘No, just collecting a parcel,’ she said. Then, remembering Peggy had told her they’d gone off to Auckland two weeks ago for the imminent birth of their first grandchild, she asked, ‘What did she have, a boy or a girl?’

  ‘A fine healthy boy,’ Mrs Brewster called out. ‘Mother and baby doing fine, but we’re glad to be back.’

  They hurried on by, and other people rushed past her too. A few she knew by sight and smiled at, but there were others she’d never seen before. Further down the jetty the crew and other men from the shipping office were already unloading some crates of chickens from another gangway, and what had been a silent and deserted place was now like an ants’ nest of activity.

  The man in the trilby hat was coming up the jetty now, and his straight-backed bearing and graceful lope were so like Etienne’s she felt a sudden tightness in her chest.

  She pushed her sou’wester back off her face a little and wiped the rainwater away. He stopped, looking at her, then lifted his hat and smiled.

  It was an everyday polite greeting, but only one man she’d ever seen had a smile like that.

  ‘Etienne?’ she mouthed.

  ‘Belle,’ he said, and coming towards her faster now, he swept off his hat, and she saw that fair hair she knew so well, the sharp cheekbones and the blue eyes.

  She thought her mind was playing tricks on her. He was dead! How could it be him? But he was as real as she was, coming towards her.

  In that second she understood why in romantic novels women fainted from shock, even though in the past she’d laughed at such an idea. Her heart was racing so fast she thought it could burst. It really was him.

  ‘I imagined you meeting me in sunshine, dressed in your best finery,’ he said with that French accent that had remained imprinted in her head. ‘Not in a waterproof coat in the pouring rain with a face so pale you look like you might faint.’

  ‘I do feel faint, from shock,’ she said in a shaky voice. ‘I was told you were killed in France.’

  ‘Then Noah didn’t tell you he traced me?’

  She could only shake her head.

  ‘You weren’t waiting here for me?’

  ‘No, I just came to collect a parcel.’

  There were people going past them on both sides. The rain continued to pour down, and Belle lifted her hand and reached out to touch Etienne’s cheek. It was cold, a slight stubble coming through, but by touching him she knew for certain she wasn’t dreaming.

  He took her hand and kissed the tips of her fingers. ‘I told you once before that I would go through fire, flood and any peril to be with you,’ he said, his voice trembling. ‘Please tell me now if you have someone else, or don’t feel the same about me, and I will get back on that ship and go.’

  Nothing in her life had ever been as moving as his words. There was so much she wanted to ask, yet at the same time the only thing which was really important was that he was alive, and he’d come right across the world to find her.

  She drew his hand to her lips and kissed it. ‘There is no one else. You took my heart back in France and you still have it. But we can’t stand here in the rain. Come home with me. We’ll talk as we go.’

  ‘Noah tracked me down in February, he told me you had just left England,’ he said as they began the path along the path by the shore. ‘I thought he would’ve written to you about it, but as he hasn’t, I’d better explain. I wasn’t killed at the time Jimmy was wounded; it seems that his friend who informed him of that imagined that the French only decorate their dead. I was very much alive then. Noah was told this – I believe he said it was just before Christmas – but then he got a letter a couple of days later saying I was reported missing, presumed dead.’

  ‘Why didn’t he tell me this?’ Belle shook her head in puzzlement. ‘Mog and I were with him at Christmas.’

  ‘Yes, he told me that. It seems both he and Lisette felt there was no point in telling you about it if I did turn out to be dead. So they decided to have it verified, one way or another, before they said anything. Lisette thought I could’ve been taken as a prisoner of war.’

  ‘Were you?’

  ‘No. I was just wounded at Passchendaele. Mistakes can be made if a man isn’t taken to a dressing station by his regiment’s own stretcher bearers. It seems I was picked up by Canadians, stripped of my uniform because of the mud on me, and my personal belongings went astray and my regiment weren’t informed because it was thought I was a French Canadian.’

  ‘But that’s awful! Couldn’t you tell them who you were?’

  ‘It was madness there,’ Etienne shrugged. ‘So many badly wounded, too few doctors and nurses, but I didn’t realize then what they thought. All I cared about was that I was warm and dry again, and in a bed. It would have come to light very quickly, if I hadn’t got the influenza. As it was, I was put in a quarantine ward in the hospital, and by all accounts I was delirious for days.’

  ‘But you came through it,’ she said breathlessly. ‘That is so wonderful!’

  He laughed. ‘Yes, I thought so! It left me very weak, and I went home to Marseille to recuperate. I did ask the doctor at the hospital to inform my regiment, but it looks as if more mistakes were made with that. The war ended, France was in turmoil, hundreds of men missing, and I was staying with friends, not at my farm, all of which were reasons Noah couldn’t find out if I was dead or alive.’

  ‘But he never told me he was going to check to see if you were really dead. What made him even think you might not be?’

  ‘You’d told him that I’d said I would put him down as next of kin. He knew the army of any country is usually very good at notifying that person when someone is dead or missing. That made him suspicious. But he didn’t voice these suspicions as he didn’t want to give you false hope.’

  ‘I don’t understand why he didn’t send a telegram or write when he found you were alive. We’ve had a letter from him since we got here.’

  Etienne turned to her and stroked her cheek. ‘I expected him to tell you. Maybe Lisette thought it was more romantic this way. Perhaps he thought it might cause problems with Mog. He said she was very fond of Jimmy.’

  ‘She was, and it’s going to be difficult to explain why you’ve come.’

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nbsp; ‘You could tell her that the parcel you were expecting wasn’t there, so you collected me instead.’

  Belle laughed. ‘The parcel was wallpaper. She’ll say you aren’t much good to stick up on the walls!’

  Etienne grinned. ‘Then I must do my best to charm her.’ He paused for a moment, looking concerned. ‘I really didn’t think much beyond finding you, Belle. But now I am here, and I find you haven’t been able to prepare Mog, we must be very careful of her feelings.’

  In the shock at his arrival Belle hadn’t actually considered that. All at once she was fearful of Mog’s reaction to her bringing someone home who was a stranger to her. They had no guest bedroom either.

  ‘I think it would be better if I stayed in a hotel,’ he said. ‘Is there one here?’

  ‘The Duke of Marlborough is just here.’ Belle pointed to the public house a few yards ahead. ‘If they have a room free, that might be the best plan. You go in and ask – I can’t come in there with you, they don’t allow women in bars here. But I’ll wait for you just past it.’

  Etienne went into the pub and Belle walked on a little way, then waited. Her heart was thumping and she felt faintly sick with the shock, yet her heart was singing.

  He was alive, her love had come right across the world to find her. She wanted to shout out her joy.

  But she couldn’t give him a hero’s welcome as she would like. Mog was no fool. Whatever they said, she would know that no man would ever come this far to see a woman unless he loved her. She would question and question until Belle admitted the whole truth, and even though Etienne had saved Jimmy’s life, she was likely to take against Etienne out of family loyalty.

  Etienne came out of the pub just a few minutes later to say he had a room there. ‘If it would be better for you to tell Mog about me tonight alone, I could stay here now and see you tomorrow,’ he said.

  Belle thought about that for a few seconds. ‘No, that would look even more suspicious,’ she said eventually. ‘No one in this town would leave an old friend alone on their first evening here. And that is what you are, Etienne, an old and dear friend.’

  He sighed and looked troubled. ‘I think she will see from our faces that we are more than that.’

  ‘Perhaps, but she has a lot to be grateful to you for, saving me in Paris and rescuing Jimmy. Just promise me that however much she probes, you won’t admit we spent the night together in France. We’ll admit you came to the hospital once, but only that.’

  As Belle went up to bed later that evening with Mog, Etienne having just left to go to his hotel, she believed the meeting had gone perfectly.

  Mog had been astounded to see the man she’d heard so much about in the past and thought was dead, brought to her house. For a few moments she could only stare at him, but she recovered quite quickly to fire questions at him. Why hadn’t he written first? Wasn’t it a bit odd to come all this way on a whim? Was he intending to stay in New Zealand? And why was he presumed dead anyway?

  Etienne handled her questions with gentle charm. First he explained about being wounded, then the flu, and gave the reasons why Noah had been unconvinced he was dead.

  ‘Noah and I had stayed in touch since Belle returned to you from Paris,’ he said, giving her the full background. ‘Through him I learned you had all moved to Blackheath and that Belle had married Jimmy. It was an extraordinary thing that I ran into Jimmy in France. He said things that made me realize who he was, and had we been alone together I might have told him who I was too, but such a conversation was impossible when he was with other men.’

  ‘Extraordinary too that you happened to be there when he was blown up,’ Mog said tartly.

  ‘Not that odd. The French often fought side by side with the British,’ he said, not rising to her sarcasm. ‘I’m sure he told you so. I thought I saw Jimmy the previous night in the distance. Maybe thinking that meant I was subconsciously looking out for him. I can’t comment on that, but I believe you have been told how it was that day, driving rain, mist so thick you could only see a few yards ahead. Both British and French got mixed up in the assault because we had to make our way round huge shell holes. I must have seen a hundred or more men killed or wounded that day, English and French. But when this man was hit close to me and his helmet fell off as he tumbled into the mud, I recognized him as Jimmy and helped him.’

  ‘Why did you?’ she asked. ‘Jimmy said you weren’t supposed to help the wounded.’

  ‘Because of Belle of course,’ he shrugged. ‘Had there been any stretcher bearers close by I would’ve called them. But they couldn’t come out under such heavy fire, and I couldn’t leave him to drown in that water-filled shell hole.’

  Mog warmed to him after that. She dished up the lamb stew she’d made for supper and it was she who told him how they’d coped with Jimmy’s injuries and finally his and Garth’s deaths from flu.

  Just the way Mog was with him made Belle think she found nothing suspicious about an old friend turning up. Mog trusted Noah’s judgment implicitly, and as it was he who had brought this about, that meant Etienne should be welcomed.

  They talked about the house then, and the plans she and Belle had for dressmaking, millinery and selling haberdashery. The only question Mog did fire at him for a second time was to ask why he’d chosen to come to New Zealand.

  ‘For much the same reason as you,’ Etienne said with one of his Gallic shrugs. ‘My farm had suffered while I’d been away, and there is so much sorrow and anger too in France. We lost even greater numbers than the British. I was already considering a new start somewhere. Then when Noah got in touch, and told me about everything that happened to you and that you’d emigrated here, New Zealand seemed a good place for me to start again. The climate in the North Island isn’t so different to France; I could farm here, or fish, which is something else I like. So where else would I start but by going to a place where there is an old friend?’

  Etienne left soon after that, and as Belle showed him out, he drew her away from the front door and kissed her. It was just the same as the first kiss back at the hospital, like a flame flaring up inside her. She knew then that the hardest part of this was going to be hiding how she felt about him. They wouldn’t be able to conduct the leisurely, chaste courtship that was expected of a recently widowed woman. She wanted him now, to be naked in his arms, to drown in ecstasy with him.

  ‘Tomorrow we’ll find a way to be alone,’ he murmured into her neck as he kissed it. ‘I love you, Belle, and together we’ll find a way around all the obstacles.’

  Belle went indoors then and leaned against the closed door to compose herself before facing Mog’s inevitable questions.

  There were no real obstacles. They were both free, although there were those prudish ideals about widowhood which others set such store by. Belle really didn’t care if people chose to see her as a flighty strumpet who would be dancing on her husband’s grave by carrying on with a Frenchman, but she was concerned that any improper behaviour would reflect back badly on Mog.

  ‘He isn’t as I imagined him,’ Mog said when they went to bed.

  ‘How did you imagine him then?’

  ‘Low class,’ Mog replied. ‘Villainous looking!’

  Belle chuckled. ‘He does look tough. I was scared to death of him when we first met back in Brest.’

  ‘I wouldn’t like to see anyone get on the wrong side of him,’ Mog said. ‘But he’s also got a soft, charming side.’

  Belle was delighted that was Mog’s opinion and she got into bed beside her.

  The lamp was turned out and Mog fell silent. Yet Belle sensed she was deep in thought, not dropping off.

  ‘Did you have a love affair with him back in Paris?’

  The question seemed to fill the dark room.

  Belle knew Mog meant after Etienne had rescued her from Pascal, not in France a year ago. ‘No, of course I didn’t,’ she said truthfully.

  ‘But you fell for him?’

  It was tempting to deny it, espec
ially in the dark when her face couldn’t give her away. But Mog didn’t deserve to be lied to.

  ‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘But he never told me he felt that way about me, and that was that.’

  ‘I knew there was something when you came home. You didn’t say much about him but I had a feeling. Why did you marry Jimmy?’

  ‘Because I loved him, and because we were right for one another.’

  ‘But you saw Etienne again. Was it while you were at the hospital?’

  ‘Yes, he came to see me, it was after Miranda was killed. He knew her American sweetheart.’

  ‘And you fell for him all over again?’

  ‘No, it was just a friendly visit, nothing more.’

  There was a long silence and Belle hoped Mog had run out of questions.

  ‘You can’t hope to fool me,’ the voice that had admonished her so often as a child came through the dark. ‘Just you remember I worked in a brothel for most of my life. I’ve seen hundreds of men at their worst, and now and again at their best. I learned to read what the expressions on their faces meant. Just the way a man walks tell me things most women would never know. And I know that Etienne loves you. I also know he’s had his way with you. I saw it in his eyes.’

  Belle lay there rigid with tension. Mog had never been a prostitute, she had only been the maid in Annie’s brothel. It had never occurred to Belle before that this woman who had cared for her since a baby, as if she were her own child, had gained such depth of knowledge just by observing others.

  ‘Now you’ll tell me when it was. My guess is that it was just after Miranda was killed.’

  Mog had often used the expression, ‘Be sure your sins will find you out’ in the past, and Belle knew this was the time of reckoning.

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered, ‘it was. Just one night and then he went back to the front. I know I shouldn’t have. Heaven knows I suffered enough guilt afterwards.’