A Christmas Promise (4 page)

‘I can’t say it did any damage to that confident personality of his. He was having a fine old time at Dulcie’s wedding last year,’ Nancy sniffed.

‘That can only be a good thing when you’ve lost your sight, don’t you think, Nancy?’

‘Not really. He’s still as cocky – from what I saw the last time he came to visit you all.’

Olive knew her next-door neighbour would love to receive as many visitors as she herself had, and she was still of the opinion that Nancy would be so lucky if only she wasn’t so self-pitying, thinking she was the only one to suffer in this war, although Olive would never say it out loud.

Instead, she said brightly, ‘Dulcie’s coming over later in her motor car. She’s bringing her little daughter, Hope, and her sister Edith’s baby, Anthony, if you’d like to call in and see her.’

‘How come she’s got her sister’s child, then?’ Nancy was not in the least disconcerted to ask such personal questions.

In turn, Olive found herself automatically answering, ‘Edith works is a singer in a West End theatre. She works funny hours and so Dulcie offered to have the little boy …’

‘That’s nice for her,’ Nancy said as her nostrils flared like there was a bad smell under her nose. Olive wasn’t sure who it was nice for, Dulcie or Edith.

‘I’ll see how busy I am,’ Nancy sniffed, but Olive knew she wouldn’t miss Dulcie’s babies, and that her neighbour would be out like a flash when the James-Thompsons’Bentley rolled down the Row.

‘I haven’t seen much of Archie these days either …’ Nancy said, making Olive think that her neighbour wanted to chat all morning. ‘What’s he up to these days?’

‘Nancy, you are like the
News of the World
; you should have got a job in Fleet Street!’

‘Maybe I could have asked the American chap, Drew, was it?’ Olive knew every well that Nancy remembered the name of Tilly’s sweetheart, and she was irritated as the flush of guilt again ran through her veins and caused a small pain around her heart.

‘Here,’ Nancy said in low, conspiratorial tones, ‘talking of Sunday papers, I read that an airman who lived in Belgravia came home early to surprise his wife and got the surprise of his life when he caught her
in fragrance
with another man – and guess what he did after throwing her out?’

Olive decided it was easier not to correct her neighbour and tell her she meant
in flagrante.

‘What did he do, Nancy?’ Olive was curious to hear what Nancy had to say that she hadn’t invented herself.

‘He only went and gave all her belongings – clothes, jewellery, and fur coats – the lot, to charity.’

‘Nooo,’ Olive said, her eyes wide. ‘Fancy doing that – and what happened then?’ Olive, being naturally curious, didn’t mind the odd bit of gossip, as long as it was about somebody she didn’t know and it wasn’t malicious.

‘I don’t know,’ said Nancy. ‘The paper was wrapped around Mr Black’s chip supper, and they didn’t wrap both pages – to save paper, I expect.’

Olive couldn’t recall the last time she had bought a chip supper, even though it was one of the only foods that were not rationed.

‘Maybe Archie still has the newspaper. I’ll ask him later.’

‘I thought he looked nice and comfortable sitting at your kitchen table the other night, when I called around, Olive.’ Nancy was fishing for information now, Olive could tell, but she wasn’t going to fill her neighbour’s mouth so she could spread it around the district.

‘He comes to pick Barney up after work,’ Olive said noncommittally.

‘In his carpet slippers?’ Nancy’s eyebrows rose so high on her forehead Olive imagined they were in danger of slipping right past her hair line. She felt uncomfortable when her neighbour began to delve into her private business, as Nancy could not keep her opinions, or any knowledge she had expertly winkled from unsuspecting people, to herself.

However, Olive, wise to her wheedling ways, told Nancy as little as possible, especially where Archie was concerned, knowing he liked to keep their private life just that – private! That was fine with Olive, who, as a widow, had never had the benefit of a man’s admiration until now, and she wasn’t going to do anything that would upset her Archie.

She could feel her face flaming in the morning sunshine: ‘her’ Archie; when did she become so bold as to think such a thing? Although, Olive knew she would never say so out loud she felt that Archie felt the same way, even though they had never so much as …

‘Did you hear me, Olive?’ Nancy asked. She had taken great delight in the past in spreading malicious gossip about the police sergeant and widower. Archie was the kindest, most upstanding man Olive knew.

‘Sorry, Nancy, did you say something?’ Olive was momentarily disoriented.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Nancy was obviously put out at her lack of attention. ‘You were miles away.’

‘If only,’ Olive said in a low voice that sailed right over Nancy’s head.

‘So he hasn’t dropped any hints as to what is going on war-wise then?’ Nancy asked, and Olive’s eyebrows puckered, wondering what the other woman was talking about.

‘What makes you think he’d tell me?’ Even though she and Archie had become very friendly of late, he still had to remain professional and not tell anybody of the things he knew or heard.

‘Well,’ said Nancy, ‘he must be privy to important information regarding the neighbourhood. Is there anything that we should know about?’ Nancy’s steel Dinkie curlers, miraculously saved from salvage, were rattling under the turbaned headscarf she had taken to wearing, albeit with a coloured-glass brooch at the side, since Princess Elizabeth had been pictured wearing one.

‘All I can say,’ Olive said with all the patience she could muster, ‘is that if he is in the know about what is going on he doesn’t share it with me – and that’s as it should be.’ She had heard enough from Nancy now and, turning, she went to open her immaculately polished front door.

‘So there’s nothing we should know about then?’ Nancy asked. There was a double meaning to the question; Olive knew she wondered if there was anything ‘going on’ between her and Archie.

‘Oh, there is one thing,’ Olive said in a low voice, looking around to make sure there was nobody to overhear. Leaning towards Nancy she whispered, ‘Archie did tell me – in the strictest confidence, of course …’

‘Of course!’ Eagerly moving her forefinger across tightly closed, thin lips, Nancy moved forward so she could capture every precious word.

‘He told me that Mrs Wetherill’s cat got stuck in a sewer pipe and she didn’t miss it for two whole days.’

‘Oh, Olive, you are a one!’ Nancy, colouring now, laughed, and Olive was glad she hadn’t taken offence at being so blatantly duped. Maybe when she had time to think about it, though …

‘Oh, I meant to tell you – about Sunday,’ Olive stopped at the front door. ‘We’ve decided to have a little get-together to celebrate Tilly’s birthday. You can come if you like,’ Olive said kindly.

‘Well, it’s as much your day as hers,’ Nancy said generously. ‘You did all the hard work. You can celebrate even if Tilly’s not here.’

Olive smiled, and without another word she hurried indoors and quietly closed the front door, knowing she would never tell Nancy the things she and Archie discussed in private.

‘David, what would you say if I said we are going to have another child?’ Dulcie, lying next to her husband in their double bed, had never broached the delicate subject of sex before. Their lovemaking had consisted of passionate kisses and they were both satisfied with that – or so David thought. He turned his head towards her, his relaxed body suddenly becoming tense; he knew that this would happen one day – or night, as the case may be – and he thought he was prepared for the time his wife would want more than passionate kisses.

‘Do you think I should go and see our man in Harley Street, Dulcie?’ David asked tentatively. He didn’t want to rush her, knowing she had been quite traumatised by the circumstances in which Hope had been conceived in an air-raid shelter; however, they had been married for almost a year now and they still had not consummated their marriage even though they desperately loved each other.

‘Oh, no, David, I didn’t mean …’ Dulcie’s words tripped over each other in her eagerness to put David’s mind at rest. ‘I wasn’t saying that I should have another baby … No, not that!’ She realised now that she should have mentioned it at the breakfast table or while they were eating dinner, not now, when they were in a vulnerable position.

‘Well, forgive me, darling,’ David said. Leaning his elbow on the pillow and resting his head nonchalantly in the palm of his upturned hand he said, ‘I haven’t got a clue what you mean.’

David was even more handsome now, looking down into her eyes, and Dulcie wished she was able to forget her time during the air raid with the American airman … but she couldn’t. David had never insisted on his conjugal rights – he was the most sensitive man in the world – and she knew that one day he would want to be the husband he thought she deserved. ‘I wasn’t saying that we should …’ She couldn’t bring herself to say the words. ‘It was Edith!’

‘Edith?’ David looked puzzled. ‘What about Edith?’

‘She asked if I would look after little Anthony while she went to work.’

‘We’ve taken care of him since he was born; she hardly knows the little chap, and he thinks she is his aunt; he doesn’t know her as his mother.’ David’s puzzlement was obvious in his sigh ‘… I thought you meant … Oh, never mind all of that …’

You thought I meant to have a child of our own, Dulcie thought as a nip of disappointment bit into her heart. She breathed a sigh of relief that the misunderstanding had not led to anything ‘awkward’, knowing David had been the epitome of masculinity when he was married to Lydia, who had cheated on him and was interested only in his title.

But Dulcie knew she would have to put that to the back of her mind now. Something important had happened today and she had to discuss it with her husband now otherwise she would not be able to sleep.

‘You know Edith came to see me today?’ Dulcie’s voice held a tentative note and David, leaning on his elbow looking down at her so adoringly, nodded.

‘She came to tell me that she has been offered another job.’

‘Oh, yes?’ David offered. ‘Am I not going to like this, Dulcie?’ But his ghost of a smile encouraged her to continue.

‘The job is abroad, with ENSA …’

‘How long for?’ David asked, nonplussed.

Dulcie shrugged; he would feel her sister’s desertion of her son keenly, knowing he could not father a son of his own; he could not understand Edith’s selfishness as Dulcie did.

However, as the hands of the clock slowly revolved and she lay awake listening to the steady breathing of her magnificent husband, Dulcie realised that he had given her far more than she had ever given him, and for that she felt humbled. It wasn’t a feeling she was comfortable with, though, and she wondered if the time had come to give him what he wanted most in all the world – a son of his own. First thing tomorrow, she was going to see her sister and put it to her that Anthony would be much better off with her and David. She was going to ask Edith to give her son up for adoption.

And as the new day dawned, David listened to his wife’s steady breathing. He and Dulcie had everything they could possibly dream of – except the loving intimacy that every married couple enjoyed and took for granted. He loved Dulcie with all of his heart, and he had done since the moment he saw her standing behind the perfume counter of Selfridges department store. With each day that passed since their wedding, he had showered her with everything he thought a woman could want, except the one loving intimate thing he couldn’t give. And he so badly wanted to show her just how much he loved her. As he watched her seemingly sleeping so peacefully with not a care in the world David vowed that he would go and see the consultant that day. Surely, something could be done.

The house was unusually quiet now that all the girls had gone. Olive wandered through the silent hallway towards the kitchen. The mantel clock sounded louder than usual. She had hardly noticed it before as there was always somebody coming or going, and the constant chatter made the soft tick-tick-tick almost imperceptible. Now Olive wasn’t sure if she liked the sound of the unrelenting passing of time.

She wasn’t given to bouts of melancholy usually, but she was becoming more worried about her family and friends now that she had time on her hands and had promised herself she would find more useful things to occupy her time. She had volunteered for more hours at the Red Cross shop, and she and Audrey Windle, the vicar’s wife, were also teaching less domesticated young women the joys of making do and mending in the church hall every Thursday afternoon. There they showed young women how to turn a collar on a child’s shirt – or their husband’s, if he wasn’t away fighting the war. The only way to get through this awful war and stop herself from worrying was to keep busy, she reckoned. She lifted a hessian sack that contained clothing donated this morning and put it on the kitchen table, intending to take it to the shop later.

Some of the clothing that had been brought to the exchange lately was so tatty-looking that, before the war, she would have ripped it up for dusters, but this was no longer an option. Most of the younger women who had come to the mending classes were so pitifully grateful they could send any of their children who had not been evacuated or who had come back home to school looking half-way decent.

Many thoughts filtered through Olive’s head as she prepared to do her daily chores. The war, in many Londoners’ eyes, seemed never-ending now; people were bone weary no matter how much the Pathé News people tried to convince the world that ‘London Could Take It’.

If the truth were told, London was sick and tired of it – and ‘taking it’ wasn’t an option!

From the time the Americans entered the war Olive knew that Mr Churchill was certain of an Allied triumph. She also recognised, after avidly following the nightly news, that the Germans’ disastrous campaign in Russia over the winter and the Allies’ success in East Africa and at El Alamein had improved this guarantee. Nevertheless, the longed-for Second Front, designed to attack Hitler’s Atlantic Wall on the north coast of France, still seemed a long way off. And as days turned into weeks she knew that it was still hard to endure the prolonged absence of husbands, sweethearts but, most of all, her daughter.

Sally had thrown herself into her work at St Bartholomew’s Hospital as well as raising her three-year-old half-sister, Alice, who was also being looked after by Olive and Agnes. She doted on the little girl, and her presence at number 13 was part of the reason why Agnes hadn’t gone to the farm long ago. Although Olive knew that the Germans had other countries to fight now, she did worry that London was still not safe. Raids were an ever-present terror and were growing more frequent again of late. She vowed that when she and Sally had a moment she would broach the subject once more of Alice being evacuated. She knew how heart-breaking it would be for all of them to see little Alice being farmed out to somewhere quiet, but it was for the best, especially if the Axis powers turned on Britain once more.

And Tilly, her own darling girl, had lost her sweetheart, Drew, not through action or fighting in the war, but in a motor car accident that had left him in a coma for a long time, and who had been brought to London for major, experimental surgery on his back, to help him walk again. Olive pulled at the skin around her knuckles and her forehead pleated as she frowned … She had tried so desperately to put the thought of Drew leaving hospital out of her mind. Tilly would never forgive her for not telling her that her sweetheart was so, so close and that she could have gone to see him any time she felt like it.

‘Hi, Aunt Olive!’ Barney’s deepening, fourteen-year-old voice made her jump as he came through the back door, and Olive was sure she had a guilty look about her as she turned to see him carrying new-laid eggs in the turned-up bottom of his pullover. ‘I found these.’

‘You found them before they were lost, you mean.’ Olive smiled, going to fetch a bowl to put the eggs into. Barney was a good lad, she thought, knowing Archie – and herself, if she was honest – had done a really good job of taking care of him, with help from the rest of the inhabitants of number 13, of course.

There had been no word of Barney’s father, who was away fighting and hadn’t been back home since Barney’s mother and grandmother had been killed during the blitz back in 1940. Archie had said many a time that he would love to adopt the boy, but with things being the way they were he hadn’t looked into it yet.

Barney had wandered into Archie and Mrs Dawson’s life before she died tragically last year, and Archie, being the kind-hearted man he was, continued to take care of the lad. Now, Barney was almost as tall as Archie, and already taller than Olive, and he made her feel much safer when he stayed in Dulcie’s old room when Sally was working nights at the hospital.

Agnes’s time at Article Row had come to an end. She had to try to make a new life for herself. Since Ted died, she knew she had to rise to the challenge and not rely on others to make her life bearable and whole. She was going to take her rightful place on the farm.

She had tried to keep in touch with Ted’s mum after he died, hoping they could bring comfort to one another, but Mrs Jackson wanted nothing to do with her. It was as if she blamed Agnes for Ted’s death in some way, and she had no compunction in telling Agnes exactly what she thought of her always nipping at Ted’s heels. But it wasn’t like that. Truly it wasn’t.

Taking a slow deep breath to calm her racing heart as she walked home to Article Row, Agnes knew she must not think about that now. It would only bring on one of those episodes Olive called a ‘nervous attack’, when her heart would beat so wildly she felt it would burst inside and choke her.

No, her time in London had come to an end and she had to move on in more ways than one. She was determined to leave first thing tomorrow morning.

Agnes wondered if Olive would expect a week’s notice. She had paid her rent up until next Saturday so Olive wouldn’t be out of pocket, but Agnes knew that if she had to stay until then she would never leave at all. She would find too many reasons to stay if she had time to think about it. In her heart Agnes had already said the painful goodbyes, cried silent tears on the way home –
home
? She had envisioned the whole leaving scenario in her head before steeling her resolve in a way she would never have found possible before Ted’s death, and as she turned into Article Row she felt ready to face her future. But by the time she reached the front door, her nerve was lost.

‘Oh, Agnes, I feel so helpless,’ Olive said as Agnes took off her coat.

Seeing her landlady’s stricken face, Agnes threw her regulation railway coat over the banister and rushed to her side.

‘What is it? Have you heard news of Tilly? Has something happened?’ The questions tumbled from Agnes’s lips so fast they were tripping over each other.

Olive lifted her hand. ‘No it’s nothing like that, it’s just …’ She hesitated momentarily and then sighing she said with little conviction, ‘Take no notice, I’m just being silly … It’s the war, the rationing, the grey expressions on people’s faces … and not hearing from Tilly for so long.’ Her final words caved in on themselves and Agnes was alarmed to see the woman whom she considered to be her mainstay, crumble. In seconds she was wrapping her arms around the older woman’s shoulders, gently shushing like she used to do when trying to comfort one of the younger children back at the orphanage.

‘Tilly will be fine and we’ll all get through this war, Olive, you’ll see.’ With her sensitive heart Agnes couldn’t tell Olive just now that she, too, intended to leave Article Row. But Agnes knew she could not leave it too long. Life in the centre of London was too fast for her without Ted to rely on, and with the never-ending threat of air raids she couldn’t take much more. Like everybody else, Agnes knew she needed peace and quiet but there was little chance of that while she stayed in London. The opportunity that awaited her on the farm in the Surrey countryside could save her sanity, she was sure. She would tell Olive – just as soon as she could pluck up the courage – but she would have to prepare her landlady first; Olive deserved more than a goodbye note propped up against the sugar bowl.

‘Ignore me, Agnes,’ said Olive. ‘I’m being silly. Now, what were you going to tell me?’

‘Oh, it was nothing,’ Agnes said. Not today and perhaps not even tomorrow.