The Promise

by Michelle Vernal

  These saved trinkets and scraps of paper would mean nothing to a stranger, but Constance treasured them. Somehow during wartime, it had become vitally important to hold onto those things she held dear lest she blink and they were gone.

  As a girl, she'd take the book out from time to time when the coast was clear. There she’d sit cross-legged on her bed, carefully turning the brittle, tannin pages hoping this time she’d find something to hold her interest. She was always left feeling disappointed by the time she’d turned to the last page. It was like biting into an apple that promised to be crisp and sweet only to find it floury. For all Mrs Parker’s drama when she’d handed it to her, she’d have thought it would contain at least one recipe for eye of newt and toe of frog. A proper witch’s brew.

  Instead, the elaborately inked swirls were no more than wordy entries for simple herbal remedies. These were of little interest to Constance, and so she’d put the book back, unwilling for whatever reason she couldn’t put her finger on, to share it with the rest of the family. She’d asked her mother once about Molly, but her tart expression brooked no further badgering on the subject, and she’d let it lie. Molly, she’d concluded was a skeleton in the Downer family cupboard. Sometimes she’d wondered as she prepared her tinctures, teas, and poultices what her mother would say if she’d known what trade her only surviving child had wound up plying on the ground floor of Pier View House thanks to Molly’s journal. It would have had her turning in her grave for sure, Constance thought.

  Her fingers touched on the rippled surface of a shell. She took it from the box turning it over in her hand and admiring its deep pink tones. As she waited for Jill’s soft knock to tell her it was time to get up she held it to her ear and listening to the echo of the sea her mind once more wandered through the door that seemed to be opening wider each day into the past.

  Chapter 13

  1944

  Constance sat down on the stone bench off to the side of Appley Tower. It was the start of the working week, and she’d not long got off the bus from Cowes. Her bones ached, and her fingers were stiff with the long shift just finished at the shipyard. Appley Bay, she thought gazing out in front of her was a very different scene to the one of her childhood. Back then all she’d seen when she looked out to the water was the ferry plying its lazy way back and forth. That, and a smattering of fishing boats casting their nets wide as they bobbed atop the water.

  Now, the sea was packed with ominous, hulking steel ships plotting their next move, poised in their strategic positions. Constance felt as though she could step from one of those great floating monoliths to the other, and jump off once she reached Portsmouth. Something was coming; it was something big, everybody sensed it. It was in the air being whispered about but never properly spoken of.

  The folly, beside which she sat was still standing sentry, miraculously unscathed. Constance had always loved it, having grown up thinking of it as her miniature castle with its turrets at the top. She smiled now, thinking back to all the games of princesses imprisoned by a nasty witch being rescued by knights in shining armour that she and Norma had played here. Occasionally they’d managed to rope a real-life knight in, well that’s if you counted Jonathon Martin with his knobbly knees. She smiled recalling how those knees of Jonny’s were always bruised or grazed from his many boyish adventures, and how his socks used to sit in a woolly puddle around his ankles.

  Poor Jonathan. The Martins had moved inland feeling it would be safer when the bombs began to rain down on Wight. A few short weeks after they moved, the cottage they’d relocated too suffered a direct hit from an incendiary as they slept. None of the Martins had survived. There’d been too much loss, Constance thought shuddering, far too much. Her brother Ted’s recent death, just on two months ago, was so very raw and close to the surface.

  Ted was in the Forty-Sixth Infantry Division and had been killed in battle at Monte Cassino in January. He’d only left home a month earlier. Poor Teddy had been waiting with bated breath to turn eighteen to enlist. He would have lied about his age and sailed away long before then too if it wasn’t for Ginny. They’d been sweethearts since they were fourteen, having met when Ginny was sent from Southampton to Ryde at the start of the war to stay with an aunt and her family. Her father, a widower, was killed at the Portsmouth Dockyard soon after and so Ginny had stayed on Wight.

  It was with the knowledge he’d be leaving that Ginny and Ted had gotten married a month before Teddy’s coming of age birthday. Ginny had made a beautiful bride although there were tense and tearful moments on her part in the prior weeks as to her dress. It was Constance’s elder sister Evelyn who’d come to the rescue in the end. Her friend Margaret’s cousin who’d gotten married before rationing had begun to bite had dug out her gown on the condition that Ginny pass it on to anyone else who should need it. Their mother, a seamstress, had altered it to fit her soon to be daughter-in-law’s petite frame and the white satin had hung beautifully on her in time for her big day.

  And what a day it was. The sun had beamed down on the Downer family despite it being mid-winter, and the promise of a bright future had been palpable. Ginny had moved into Pier View House after the wedding, squeezing in alongside the rest of them, and it was as though she’d always been there. Then, four short weeks later it was time for Teddy to go. Constance closed her eyes conjuring up her precious last images of her brother. She liked to take them out and examine them as though giving them an airing would allow her to hang onto him that little bit longer.

  They’d all gone down to the Pier to wave him off. Mum’s hair, she’d noticed as they milled around waiting to say their goodbyes, had more daubs of grey in it these days than the vibrant auburn of her youth. She’d set it in careful pin curls and was dressed in her Sunday best. A freshly pressed handkerchief now crumpled, clutched tightly in her hand as she dabbed at her eyes, all the while sniffing. Dad stood, stoic beside her. His hat was tilted at what he liked to think was a rakish angle. It was important to look the part in their line of business; he’d tell them all as he fiddled with the arrangement of his hat in the mirror that hung over the sideboard. A peacock if ever there was, their dad! He’d maintained a stiff upper lip and a ramrod back that day, unlike his wife, as he gave his eldest child, and only son, a nod farewell.

  Evelyn who was the middle child of the three Downer children had dressed for the occasion too. She’d been busy eyeing the youngest Duff lad up, whose birthday had fallen the day before Ted’s. Constance was surprised to see how well he looked minus his butcher’s apron. She looked at him from under her lashes while he marched proudly alongside Ted down the Pier. Unlike her sister though she had the presence of mind to give no clues away as to where her mind might be wandering. Evelyn’s sharp intake of breath at the sight of Robert Duff, duffle bag slung over his shoulder looking impossibly handsome in his uniform earned her an elbow in the ribs from mum.

  Then there’d been Ginny. She’d put such a brave face on things for Ted’s sake. She’d waved to him until Constance had thought her poor sister-in-law’s arm would drop off, but when the Solent’s horizon swallowed him up, she’d been inconsolable.

  Constance opened her eyes, seeing but not seeing the hub of activity on the Solent in front of her as she carefully stored the memory of that final scene away for another day. She hadn’t understood the gravitas of saying goodbye to Ted. The possibility that she might not see him again was not something she’d entertained. It was childish of her, she understood now. Dad, standing there squinting into the sun, would have known what his boy faced. He’d done his duty in the First World War and still cried out in his sleep from time to time all these years later.

  It would have been cruel to share this knowledge with Ted or any of them for that matter because it wouldn't have changed things. What was to come was as inevitable as the tide that had been inching its way up the beach as they huddled together watching him leave. So it was, her brother had left them all with the excited gleam of an impending adventure
in his eyes, sure that he’d be back to a hero’s welcome before the year was out to live his life with his pretty, young wife.

  The sounds of family life above the haberdashery shop on the ground floor of Pier View House, which her parents had run since they were first married, were different with Ted gone. It was the absence of his boisterous banter—Constance would often think as she lay in bed fully dressed. That was the custom in case the need to troop down to the freezing Anderson Shelter at the bottom of the garden arose. It was funny how quickly one grew used to change no matter how hard one fought against it, and how she couldn’t recall a time when they’d slept soundly and uninterrupted.

  It had become increasingly clear as the fighting showed no signs of abating that the Nazis, nocturnal and efficient creatures that they were, had decided the Islanders should be the recipients of the bombs that didn’t quite make it all the way to Southampton or Portsmouth. Their motto it would appear had been waste not, want not.

  Ted being taken from them changed everything. The boy, far too young to be the bearer of such news, had delivered the telegram to the shop. His eyes filled with feeling too big in his sombre face, as he handed Ginny the official envelope. It was those eyes of his that had given the game away from the instant he walked into the shop on a wild and windy day, ‘it is with regret we inform you—'

  In the minutes before receiving this news, Evelyn, who’d not long tossed her coat over her father’s stool, had been holding court. She had her hair tucked up in a turban and was clad in her overalls; the belt cinched so tightly at the waist that Constance had wondered how she could breathe let alone speak. Nevertheless, she could and had been spouting off about how she’d learned to milk a cow this week. Further evidence of this was the billy of milk she’d given their mum on this rare trip home from Norris Castle Farm. There was such a sense of friendship, and despite the hard work, fun amongst the Land Girls, Constance always thought with a touch of envy as she listened to her sister’s stories of their shenanigans.

  She was sure these tales Evelyn brought home with her were heavily censored for their parent's benefit. Her sister’s backbreaking work was much sweetened, she knew by its proximity to the castle. It had been converted to soldiers’ barracks, hence the cinching of the belt. The girls at the shipyard factory in Cowes where she worked were, for the most part, a coarse bunch who were there under sufferance. She’d have given anything to join Evelyn at Norris Castle farm but they were full, and she was needed elsewhere.

  Dad was busy tuning Evelyn’s chatter out as he sorted the pile of drab olive coloured trousers that had been brought in for repair from the camp at Puckpool Park. His wife carrying out a meagre stocktake thanks to rationing, and pondering whether to touch on making shorts from old pillowcases or skirts from trousers at her ‘make do and mend’ class later that week, rolled her eyes. She still found it hard to believe that Evelyn, who’d always been hard pressed to help with so much as peeling the spuds, survived the daily demands of the Land Army. It had been the making of her daughter in her humble opinion.

  As for Constance, she was home early from her loathed work riveting thanks to the air raid siren having sounded a false alarm. She could have gone with Lil and the others back to her house where they planned on practicing the numbers they’d chosen for their upcoming performance at Darlinghurst House. She’d begged off though, telling them she wasn’t feeling the best. In truth every time she thought about getting up in front of all those soldiers and the nursing staff to sing she really did feel sick. Their factory manager thought it would be good form for some of his girls to entertain the poor lads recuperating at Darlinghurst House with a bit of sing-song.

  Constance, who often sang as she sorted her rivets, was one of the first to be put forward, and how could she say no? Although, when bossy Doris Cosby, their pianist, suggested she sing Vera Lynn’s “The White Cliffs of Dover” solo she had been sorely tempted.

  So instead of battling her nerves as she sung about the bluebirds over the white cliffs of Dover, she’d been balanced on a stool behind the shop counter. She didn’t want to be on her own upstairs and was busying her hands by unpicking a childhood jumper. It had seen better days and could be reused in her and Norma’s sock darning efforts for those same soldiers at Darlinghurst House.

  So there they all were minus one. The Downer family gathered like the cast of a play ready for the opening scene, and Constance could recall the words that had run through her head upon Ginny tearing open the telegram to confirm what they already knew. She had asked herself, how on earth could anything bad happen on such an ordinary winter’s day?

  How could she have been thinking wistfully of shirking her chores, and wrapping up to go for a stroll along the seafront just a few minutes before her world, as she’d known it, tipped on its axis? And all the while her lovely, kind-hearted big brother had been dead.

  That was when the reality of war had come crashing home for Constance. Until then she’d been rather removed from it. Her days before this news had felt as though she were play-acting in an exciting, albeit at times terrifying, drama. Oh, she didn’t much like the role she’d been given bussing down to Cowes each day to put in long hours at the shipyard factory to toil at a grimy mundane task. Needs must, though, and with rationing had come austerity. The meagre wages she pocketed weekly helped to put food on the table at home. Nevertheless, it was a drama, which although always just close enough to nip at her heels, had not yet gotten close enough to bite. That afternoon, however, she was wounded deeply.

  Now as she sat on the bench beside the folly, Constance felt the cold of the stone slab beneath her begin to seep through to her underclothes. She flexed her fingers, scrunching them into fists before unfurling them and stretching them long. They throbbed with the fiddly, dirty work of sorting through the rivets for the correct thickness and length needed, and she eyed her blackened nails with distaste. It kept her busy though, and when she was busy, her mind didn’t dwell on Ted. At least she didn’t have to heat the rivets in the furnace or hold on to them with the wretched dolly as they were pounded into place. The latter was mouthy Myrtle’s job.

  Myrtle had deemed her not strong enough for much, and so she’d been set the task of sorting. She took comfort from the fact she was doing her bit for the war effort. She could hold her head up high knowing Ted would be proud of her, even if it wasn’t where she’d seen herself when she’d been hunched over her school desk. It earned enough for her to pay her way at home too, and mum’s grateful expression when she handed her wage packet over told her that it was helping keep the family afloat. Rationing had hit their little shop hard.

  She was supposed to go straight home after work. The air raid sirens regularly sounded these days coupled with the never-ending drone of doodlebugs too noisy to sneak their way across the night sky. She didn’t want to go home, though, not just yet. It wasn’t five o’clock yet, but the air was growing dense and moist with encroaching nightfall. Spring was a good month or so off yet, but despite the cold, she wanted to sit for a while. It had become her custom to perch here for ten or so minutes before venturing home.

  It was her quiet time, a chance to unwind from the boisterous, and sometimes lewd chatter in the factory. It was a time in which to brace herself for the oppressive atmosphere grief had brought with it at home. She sighed heavily watching the fine mist escape her mouth like wisps of smoke, and the plumes of white reminded her of Evelyn who had taken the habit up in recent times. Her sister had it easy living up at Norris Castle Farm, she mused. Popping in on her family now and again with a pat of butter or a billy of milk and regaling them with her tall tales. Oh, she knew Evelyn was casting her life as a Land Girl in a positive light, it was Evelyn’s way. She wouldn’t let on that it was hard, back-breaking work but even knowing this each time she left, Constance found herself restless, and a little resentful of her sister’s freedom.

  Now, she retrieved a hanky out of the pocket of the coat she wore over the top of her overall un
iform. The coat had belonged to Evelyn, and the colour, a rather bland brown in Constance’s opinion had served to warm her sister’s amber features whereas it made Constance with her English rose complexion look insipid. At least it kept the chill out, she thought, shrinking down inside it. One day, she vowed swiping at her face before inspecting the blackened smudges left behind on the hanky, when this blasted war was over she’d have a rainbow wardrobe. She’d have dresses of pink and yellow, and a red coat and—

  ‘Hello,’ a melodious, and richly accented voice echoed behind her.

  ‘Oh!’ She startled, spinning around on the seat. A tall, young man in uniform she recognized as being Airforce was standing on the path behind the folly.

  Chapter 14

  Constance had no idea how long the young man standing behind her had been there. The folly loomed large to his left, and the path to his right was deserted. He sensed her fright and held his hand up. ‘Hey there, sorry I didn’t mean to startle you.’

  Her heart slowed back down to a regular beat; there was something about his smile that made her feel at ease. ‘I was lost in my thoughts; I didn’t hear you coming.’ She picked his accent as belonging to the Canadian contingent that had been stationed on the island. As she looked at him properly, she had the strongest sense that they’d met before, but she couldn’t think where.

  ‘Penny for them. Isn’t that what you British say?’

  She raised a smile ‘It is, but I’m sad to say they weren’t very deep thoughts.’

  ‘It doesn’t pay to think too deeply given the times we’re living in.’ He took his hat off, rubbing his fingers across a short buzz cut before nodding at her and taking a step forward. He had a limp she saw, by the awkward way he moved. ‘I’m Henry Johnson by the way. It’s a pleasure to meet you.’ He thrust his hand out toward her.