A Christmas Promise (10 page)

‘Italy has surrendered!’ Janet called, and Tilly held her hands over her ears as the other girls cheered. She had a screaming headache, caused no doubt by the copious amounts of alcohol that had been forced upon her at her birthday bash.

‘Oh, that is good news,’ Tilly whispered hoarsely. She had drank far more port than was good for her, she was sure, and not being used to drinking strong liquor she was now paying the price of a booming head and a wobbly tum. ‘I wish Italy had surrendered on my twenty-first birthday.’

Don’t you think your birthday was memorable enough?’ Janet laughed, putting the dust cover over her typewriter, getting ready for lunch.

‘Of course it was,’ Tilly said, ‘but don’t expect me to drink a toast tonight as well. It’s soft drinks all the way from now on.’

‘Until the next time, Robbins!’ Pru laughed, feeling no pain at all, having alternated between a soft drink and an alcoholic one.

‘Clever dick!’ Tilly said in a mock surly voice, knowing she should have done the same.

‘Italy has surrendered!’ Barney cried, as Olive came into the house from the Red Cross shop, and marvelled at his ability to bounce back from the awful news his father had been killed. But, she realised, Barney hadn’t seen his father since he was a young boy, well before the war, apparently.

‘That is good news, Barney,’ Olive said, taking off her coat. He took her hands and they danced around the front room as the twelve o’clock news informed them that the combined British–Canadian–American invasion of Sicily that began in July had reached its goal.

‘Do you think the Germans will surrender next, Aunt Olive?’ Barney asked, his face grim.

‘I hope so, Barney, I really do,’ Olive said, hugging him close; she couldn’t bear the thought of this war going on long enough for Barney to be called up to fight. It was bad enough that Tilly had gone.

A few moments later, Barney said quietly, ‘I’ll have to go into a children’s home then.’ Even though his head was bent Olive could tell he was trying desperately to hold back his grief. ‘Uncle Archie won’t get any money for me once the war is over.’

Olive’s eyes widened as she said, ‘Archie doesn’t look after you because he gets paid for it, Barney.’ She was shocked that the boy thought he was hardly more than a boarder or an evacuee. ‘Archie is very fond of you; we all are. Archie thinks of you like a son. He would be devastated if he thought you didn’t feel part of his family.’

‘But he only took me in because Mrs Dawson lost her son and I had nowhere else to go.’

Barney sounded sensible enough, but Olive knew that, under the surface, he was still that scared little boy whose mother and grandmother – the two women he loved most in all the world – had been killed, leaving him alone.

‘You are not alone any more, Barney, and you never will be as long as we are here.’ She decided it wasn’t her place to tell Barney that Archie was making enquiries about adopting him, reasoning that Archie would want to do that himself.

‘Italy have surrendered, Callum,’ Sally whispered, leaning forward as close to his face as she could get. She had sat at his bedside right through the night, bathing his head with cold flannels and dabbing his cracked lips with lanolin oil. Sally prayed to anybody in the heavens who would listen in the hope that the new medication would break the mucus that was filling his lungs and making his breathing painfully shallow.

All through the night, she had observed Callum carefully, hardly moving from his bedside, watching the strong chest that held a huge and loving heart barely move up or down. At one point, Sally actually prodded him to see if he was still alive, when his pulse was too faint to detect.

‘He’s strong, Sister,’ Matron said, after trying to persuade Sally to get some rest when the sun broke through the dawn clouds.

But Sally knew how fragile he was. One moment he would be sweating profusely and the next he would shiver so violently that the bed shook. It had taken every ounce of her medical knowledge to keep him stable through the night.

‘Please, don’t let him die, Lord,’ Sally cried. ‘I’ll answer every letter Callum ever sent me.’ She knew it sounded ridiculous but she could not think of anything else to offer. ‘You have to be strong for Alice. She must know what her mother was like at her age – and you are the only one who can tell her, Callum,’ Sally whispered as she pressed the cold compress to his forehead to try to break the fever.

‘Don’t die, Callum, please don’t die,’ Sally whispered, as he slipped back into unconsciousness. There was a name on his lips that he called out over and over again.

‘Sarah … Sarah …’ His head would roll from side to side as he fought with every ounce of courage in his body. Eventually, after many injections of penicillin, as the last batch of phials were coming to an end, Sally hoped that he had turned the corner.

His eyelids fluttered and, for a moment, he looked confused. She called Matron over.

‘I think he’s going to make it, Sister,’ Matron said, taking the thermometer and popping it expertly under his arm. ‘His temperature has dropped to normal!’ Sally could not contain her joy and she smiled broadly as the weak autumn sun emerged from behind pewter clouds. Sally was even more relieved to see Callum give her his slow, winning smile.

‘Hello, Sal, where’ve you been?’

‘I’ve been here all the time,’ Sally said, smiling, ‘and you have been so lazy lying there doing nothing.’ Except fighting for your life, she thought, relieved the fever had broken, and daring to believe he was going to grow stronger. Now, she could see the strength come back into his chest as he breathed deeper than in the previous days, and she knew he was quite stable now.

‘You have gone beyond the call of duty, Sister,’ Matron said, and Sally knew that she had gone beyond the call of sleep, too. But she would not, could not, leave Callum while he had been in crisis.

‘He will still be here when you come back – take that overdue leave,’ Matron ordered.

‘I … if anything …’ Sally didn’t want to leave him now, but she knew if she didn’t get some rest she would not be able to continue to look after others because she would collapse. ‘Let me know straight away.’

‘Off you go, Sister.’ Matron smiled, and Sally had no choice but to leave Callum in the capable hands of the people she trusted.

Sally lay in her bed, reading the first letter Callum had sent her after George died, and knew for sure now that she had given Callum a raw deal. Not because he was now sick and unable to take care of himself; this thing she felt wasn’t pity, even if she never thought he, as strong as an oak tree, would be felled by something like appendicitis.

But she had locked him out of her life and ignored the man whom she had once imagined she loved … No, a man she
had
loved. And if she was honest with herself she knew that she could easily love him again. But after reading these letters she doubted she would ever get the chance.

The earlier letters, just after Morag and her father’s deaths, were still bound by a lilac ribbon, unopened, because she had been so angry with Callum for not understanding how she felt and siding with his sister … Sally understood now that he had had no choice: Morag was his sister. Morag had also been her friend, her confidante, and Sally now accepted that she was the only woman who deserved a place in her father’s heart apart from her beloved mother …

The next bundle of letters had been opened – the ones Callum sent when George was alive and the ones she had enjoyed most of all. Sally felt a shiver of guilt even now, knowing she looked forward to these letters as much as she did George’s and that had been the reason why she wouldn’t open Callum’s mail that came after George’s death and were bound in a black ribbon. They were the ones she started to read now.

Through every emotion she had ever felt, Sally knew the one that stood out above any other was guilt. She knew also that this destructive emotion had eaten away inside her like a cancer, growing and growing, taking a little more of her each day until she had become a woman she didn’t even recognise. The kind of woman her own mother would have advised her to cross the street to avoid. She had lost sight of the kind-hearted girl she had once been and saw only the embittered crone she had allowed herself to become, and all in the name of the mistaken emotion she thought she felt for George – love!

But the feelings she had for her fiancé were nowhere near love; it was as far away from love as it was possible to be, and her mother would most certainly have crossed the street to avoid her. She and George were bound together by circumstance – she knew that now. He was kind and thoughtful, which was all she thought she needed in a man: someone to look after her like her father had always done. Someone who would protect her and who would make a nice home for her and the idyllic family they would have. There was no real passion in their relationship … She and George were like a comfortable pair of slippers before they had even become engaged; they were like an old married couple before they even had a chance to walk down the aisle – she knew now that she would have tired of that eventually.

It might have taken years before she considered that her head had been turned by the promise of a life in New Zealand, far away from her home in Lilac Avenue – she would realise too late that she had accepted George’s proposal at a time when she was emotionally unstable and needed someone to love her and for her to love someone back … But would George ever have been that man? After reading Callum’s letters now, filled with wit, irreverence and life, she doubted it. And that would not have been fair to George. He would have deserved better than that.

Tearing open the first of Callum’s letters, bound in date order, Sally could hardly read the words as exhaustion made her eyelids so heavy she could hardly keep them open, but she knew she had to read this one, though it broke her heart into a thousand pieces. This letter told of the news Callum had received about his fiancée – she never even knew …

Sally could hardly read the beautifully neat handwriting as tears blurred her vision, and, as one dropped onto the naval-issue writing paper, she quickly wiped it away so it wouldn’t smudge the words. The letter went on to tell her that Callum had lost the girl he had been engaged to marry.

It was obvious by the poignant wording of the letter that Callum had been in shock and still thought of her as a friend. Someone he could pour his heart out to, someone who would understand his situation. As she continued to read the letter, Sally felt a wave of ice-cold air envelop her, and realised that Callum didn’t have anybody else to turn to. Whereas she had been cosseted and protected when George died, Callum had to carry on with his duties and put his own personal feelings to one side for the good of the country. Servicemen like Callum could and would never run to their bedrooms to cry into their pillows like she had when George was killed. She had been like a growling bear, wearing her pain like a banner and rejecting anyone who tried to help; whereas, Callum sounded like a lost lamb in shock, calling out for the comfort of a friend. He wanted her to explain to Alice that he hadn’t forgotten about her and that he would come and see her as soon as he was able … and he finished by telling her to assure Alice he would bring her something nice …

By the time she had finished reading the letter, Sally could hold in her sobs no longer. How selfish and cruel she had been to Callum in not answering his letters and only ever thinking of her own pain, not caring who else might be going through the same thing – and there were many, many people who were in the same situation but who had nobody to turn to.

She also realised how lucky she was that Callum had not given up writing to her. How many other men would grant a girl the privilege of his deepest feelings unless … unless … Oh, it was no good, Sally would never be able to forgive herself for the way she had treated Callum from the moment she had discovered that his sister had comforted her father … But all of that lessened in importance now. All that mattered was that Callum should grow stronger and be well again … She didn’t deserve to have a friend like Callum … who wondered how she had been coping when he was going through his own heartache … and who loved Alice as much as she did  … 

After four days of having almost no sleep at all, Sally’s eyes closed and she slept … and she slept … and she slept.