The Promise (49 page)

She made him drink some water when he’d finished, then tucked him back into bed. ‘Don’t try to get up again, just call me,’ she said. ‘I’ll be right here.’

Belle spent the night in the easy chair with a blanket round her, but every hour or so whenever she heard Jimmy make a sound, she got up, sponged him down because he was burning up and tried to make him drink a little. Although she was frightened and felt very alone, she was glad Mog hadn’t woken.

It was a relief to see the first signs of dawn in the sky and hear a bird chirruping somewhere close by. But as the early morning light began to come into the room she was horrified to see Jimmy’s face looked grey and sunken.

‘Will you drink some more water for me?’ she whispered when she saw his eyelids flickering as if he was trying to open them.

‘Let me go,’ he croaked out.

‘No, Jimmy, you must try and fight this,’ she said, putting her arm beneath his shoulders and lifting him so he could drink.

He opened his eyes then, and as the light caught them they looked like molten gold, the way they had when she first met him at the age of fifteen in Seven Dials. ‘I can’t. I’m tired of fighting. You’ll have a better life without me.’

‘I won’t, Jimmy, I need you,’ she pleaded. ‘We can have a good life, we belong together.’

‘We’ve already had all the good there can be,’ he said, and his voice was clearer now, his eyes fixed on hers as if daring her to interrupt. ‘The man you loved died out there in Ypres, long before the shell crippled me. Even if I’d come back in one piece, I wouldn’t have been the Jimmy you knew: the filth, the brutality, the stink of dead bodies, the mud and the roar of guns killed him off. I don’t believe in anything any more, not King and Country, not God, I’ve got nothing left inside me.’

‘You might think that now, because you are sick, and your uncle has just died,’ Belle sobbed, horrified by the ring of truth in his words, yet desperate to make him believe otherwise. ‘All that horror you went through is over now. Look at what I went through in Paris! I thought the same as you, that I could never forget it and be happy again. But I did, because you didn’t give up on searching for me, and when I got back you made me feel whole again. I can do that for you too.’

‘No, you can’t. All living with me will do is pull you down,’ he said, his voice growing weaker again. ‘Let me go, Belle, remember me how I used to be.’

She put both her arms around him, held him tightly against her shoulder and wept. She could feel tremendous heat coming from him and that made her break away to lay him down again. His eyes had closed and his breathing was laboured. She unbuttoned his pyjama jacket and began sponging him down with cold water.

‘I’m not going to let you go,’ she said fiercely. ‘I love you, so does Mog, we need you. We can make you forget the war, we’ll move to the seaside, we’ll get the best artificial limb maker in the country to help you. You are still the Jimmy I married, I know you are.’

‘What can I do to help?’ Mog’s voice at the door interrupted Belle.

Belle turned her head. ‘Don’t come in, but will you go and get Dr Towle?’

Mog said she would, and Belle heard her going down the stairs and the sound of the side door opening and closing behind her.

A few minutes later Jimmy retched, and before Belle could get a bowl or even help him sit up, he vomited. It came spouting out of his mouth, bilious yellowish-green and foul smelling, all over the pillows and himself. Belle removed the pillows and was just about to take off his pyjama jacket, when she noticed another smell and she realized he’d defecated too.

She knew this had happened to Garth several times, but until now Belle had not considered how Mog, such a small woman, had managed to strip him, wash him and remake the bed with clean linen by herself. Belle had dealt with such things before in the Royal Herbert, but not alone.

Gritting her teeth, she pulled back the covers and stripped off his pyjamas, using them to clean up the worst of it. She quickly got some fresh linen from the cupboard on the landing, and some hot water from the bathroom, and washed him on the folded-over sheet. He was moaning softly, becoming delirious, and once she’d got him clean she put a new sheet on one side of the bed, then rolled him over on to it and managed to pull the rest from under him and tuck it in all round.

She had finally got the covers over him again, not attempting to put clean pyjamas on him, when Mog got back.

‘The doctor said he’d be here as quickly as possible,’ she said from the doorway. ‘He’s got to see another patient first. I’ll take the dirty stuff down and make you a cup of tea.’

It was nearly nine that morning before the doctor arrived, and during that time Belle had had to change the bed twice more. It had begun to rain, and with the windows shut she knew the room must smell like a farmyard.

Dr Towle was dishevelled, unshaven and his eyes were red-rimmed. Clearly he too had been up most of the night. But he managed to smile at Belle and offer his commiserations before examining Jimmy.

‘Mrs Franklin said he was taken ill after his uncle’s funeral yesterday evening,’ he said, then went on to ask how quickly the high fever and sickness had come on.

‘Could he go to hospital?’ Belle asked.

‘I’m afraid there isn’t a bed free anywhere,’ the doctor said. ‘And even if there was, subjecting him to the journey now would only make his condition worse. Sadly, Mrs Reilly, you are already doing everything that can be done to help him.’

‘Is he going to die?’ she whispered. Jimmy appeared to be unconscious but she couldn’t be sure of that.

Dr Towle made a gesture with his hands that implied Jimmy was in God’s hands now. ‘About a third of the patients I’ve seen so far have recovered, but none of them had such high temperatures as your husband. With any other illness youth and strength are a great advantage, but it doesn’t seem to be so in this particular one.’

‘We can’t lose him too!’ Belle looked at the doctor in horror. ‘Isn’t there anything you can give him?’

‘I wish there was,’ he said glumly. ‘Try and get him to drink warm water with a little brandy. Sponge him down, keep the room warm but well ventilated. That is all I can offer. I’ll come back this evening to see how he is.’

All that day Belle struggled to get Jimmy to drink, and when the liquid just ran out of his mouth because he wouldn’t or couldn’t swallow, she resorted to using a glass dropper from a medicine bottle and squeezed a few drops of water mixed with a little brandy between his lips. He drifted in and out of consciousness, in and out of delirium when he said things that made no sense. But now and again he spoke a few words that she could understand.

‘I looked at the picture of you so often that it cracked in the end,’ was one thing. Belle knew he meant a picture that was taken of her on their wedding day. She’d found it was missing from the other photographs after he’d gone to France.

‘The other men used to tell me no woman could ever love a man with red hair,’ was another thing he said.

But mostly he spoke the names of friends he’d made in the army, and although she didn’t know who they were she was glad he was thinking about good times.

Dr Towle came back in the evening as promised, praised Belle for using the dropper and seemed pleased to hear there had been no further vomiting. ‘There is no real pattern to this disease,’ he said. ‘Some of my patients have appeared to be at death’s door, but then they recover. Others don’t seem so seriously ill and they just slip away. I find it baffling, and I so much wish there was more I could do.’

‘It’s a comfort that you called,’ Belle said. ‘While he’s quiet like this I feel hopeful.’

‘Can you cope another night with him? You look worn out, Mrs Reilly. I could find a nurse to help you.’

‘I think he’s better with just me taking care of him,’ Belle said, remembering the dragon of a nurse he’d sent when she lost the baby.

‘Well, try and get forty winks while he’s quiet,’ the doctor said. ‘I must go now, I have dozens more patients to call on. But I’ll be back in the morning, and hopefully by then there will be an improvement.’

Belle slipped downstairs later and ate some soup, bread and cheese that Mog had prepared, but as soon as she’d eaten it she was back with Jimmy. She managed to nod off in the chair for over an hour, but awoke to find him delirious again.

Again she sponged him down, dropped the water and brandy into his mouth, changed the sheets that were soaked with both sweat and urine, and tried to comfort him as he rambled incoherently. ‘I couldn’t find our lot,’ he said at one point, grabbing her hand so hard it hurt. ‘I couldn’t see, I kept slipping in the mud, and I fell over dead men.’

Belle guessed he was remembering that last attack. He rattled out words that had no meaning for her: creeping barrage, Very lights, Aunt Sally and Forby. But it didn’t matter that it made no sense to her, she had a feeling he thought he was talking to another soldier.

‘A man was cut in half by shrapnel,’ he said at one point. ‘His bottom half kept running for a while.’

‘Shhh,’ she said, bathing his forehead. ‘You are safe now, you’ll never see such things again.’

About two in the morning he became lucid for a little while. He turned his face towards her and tried to smile. ‘It is you, Belle! I thought I was dreaming. I told the lads I had to stay safe to get home to you. And I did.’

‘Yes, you did, and now you have to drink some of this to make you better,’ she said, offering him a glass of water. He even lifted his head on his own and drank a mouthful or two before slumping back on the pillow.

He closed his eyes then and Belle felt he’d turned the corner and was sleeping, so she went back to her chair. Around an hour later she got up again on hearing him making an odd rattling noise in his throat. She moved the lamp a little closer to him and saw his face had grown darker, just the way Garth’s had.

‘Oh, please no!’ she exclaimed. She felt for his pulse and found it was weaker, and when she put her hand on his forehead it was very hot. Frantically she sponged him down again, talking to him and begging him to rally round. But there was no response. His eyes fluttered open now and again, but he didn’t even try to speak.

‘Jimmy, you must stop this,’ she said in the firm voice she used to speak to the soldiers in the ambulance. ‘You can get better, you must get better. Do it for me, don’t leave me alone.’

Suddenly Mog was beside her. Small in stature she might be, but she seemed to fill the room with determination. ‘Come on, Jimmy,’ she said. ‘Don’t upset Belle like this. We both need you. We love you.’

His eyes opened. ‘I love you both,’ he said in a rasping whisper. ‘Look after one another, I can’t stay any longer.’

Belle looked at Mog in horror and could see from the expression on her face that she knew he was dying.

‘I never told you before but I think of you as my son,’ Mog said. ‘I’m that proud of you!’

He tried to smile, but it was just the slightest movement of his lips. ‘You were like a mother to me,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t let Belle grieve for me. Stay close to her.’

‘I’m here, Jimmy,’ Belle said. ‘And I’m telling you that you must fight this.’

His eyes turned to Belle and his hand fluttered as if he was wanting to lift it to touch her face. ‘My Belle, my beautiful Belle,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry for everything, but it’s for the best.’

Belle picked up his hand and kissed his fingers. ‘You’ve got nothing to be sorry for, and it’s not for the best,’ she said brokenly as tears rolled down her cheeks.

She felt his hand go limp in hers and her fingers felt for his pulse. She could feel nothing.

‘Oh, Mog!’ she cried out.

It was Mog who took Jimmy’s hand and laid it down. She closed his eyes and kissed his cheek. ‘Goodbye, son,’ she whispered. ‘Garth and your mother are waiting for you.’

‘No, Jimmy,’ Belle sobbed. She slid down on to her knees on the floor, her head resting on his chest. ‘There was so much more I wanted to say to you.’

The two women stayed there for some time, both crying, then Mog got up and lifted Belle up, rocking her against her shoulder the way she used to do when Belle was a small girl.

‘Everything is worse in the night,’ Mog said softly. ‘But he was right, it was for the best. He hated being so helpless. He knew it would never get better for him. You come and get into bed with me now. We can’t do anything until it’s light.’

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Belle heard a knock on the side door of the pub as she and Mog were sitting in the kitchen, but she ignored it. It was a week since Jimmy’s funeral and people had been knocking ever since. Occasionally it was someone calling to offer help and sympathy, but mostly just to ask when the bar would be open again. There was a notice pinned to the door that it was closed due to bereavement, but that had not deterred them.

Both Belle and Mog were finding it hard to get through each day. Time hung on their hands with no one for them to take care of. They felt empty and tearful and had no real idea of which way to turn. The constant knocking made it worse, as it was a reminder there were decisions to be made.

The knocking grew louder. ‘It could be Dr Towle,’ Mog said.

Belle got up wearily. Mog might be right, at the funeral the doctor had said he’d pop by in a week to see how they were.

‘All right, I’m coming,’ she muttered as she walked to the door.

But it wasn’t the doctor, it was Noah. He took off his hat as he saw her and smiled hesitantly.

‘Oh, my goodness,’ she exclaimed. ‘Noah! What a surprise!’

It was at least three years since she had last seen him, but although his impeccably tailored pale grey tailed coat, waistcoat, pin-striped trousers and hand-made shoes told of his success, his rosy, still boyish face held an expression of such sympathy and understanding that Belle was taken right back to the time in Paris when he’d done so much to help her. Just seeing him made her instantly feel better.

‘I hope I haven’t called at a bad time? I was in France and didn’t get your letter till I got back yesterday,’ he said. ‘I can’t tell you how sorry I am that I wasn’t here to support you and Mog when you needed it most. Both Lisette and I wept for you both when we read your letter, and we were so sad that we’d missed the opportunity to pay our last respects to both Garth and Jimmy.’