The Promise

by Michelle Vernal

  ‘Constance Downer.’ She forgot to be embarrassed by her work stained hands as she took his hand giving it a small shake in return. She snatched her hand back instinctively as a spark of unfamiliar feelings flared at his touch and was hopeful that the dimming light would hide her reddened cheeks. She waited for a beat, composing herself before agreeing with his sentiment. ‘You’re right, it doesn’t pay to dwell on things.’ She decided to wade on in with the truth. ‘I was imagining the technicolor wardrobe I’m going to have when this war finishes.’ She flashed him a smile. ‘See, I told you it wasn’t deep; in fact, it’s rather shallow.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know about that.’ He smiled, his hand dipping lazily into his trouser pocket and reappearing with a tobacco tin. ‘A technicolor wardrobe you say?’

  She liked the richness of his vowels, and she couldn’t help but smile back at him. ‘I do say, and one day I’m going to have dresses in every colour of the rainbow.’

  The dimples on either side of his cheek gave him a schoolboyish charm, and she guessed he was around the same age as Teddy had been. She took advantage of the opportunity to stare as he deftly rolled a cigarette.

  ‘Smoke?’

  ‘No thank you.’ She hoped she didn’t sound prim and added hastily, ‘But maybe a puff?’

  He flashed her a grin, and she felt something soften and begin to melt inside her. A flame flared, and it illuminated him for a split second as he lowered his head and lit his smoke. As he raised his gaze Constance was struck by the colour of his eyes, neither brown nor green, somewhere in between, and the lashes framing them had a tinge of gold on their tips. She watched as he exhaled with languor, the pungent tang of tobacco drifting toward her. He held the cigarette out, and she reached for it holding it uncertainly between her fingers before putting it to her mouth and taking a small puff. She coughed as it burnt the back of her throat and her eyes watered. She passed it back, scalded.

  He looked amused but not, she saw condescendingly so, and swallowing the burnt taste of ash away she cast around for something to say not wanting their exchange to end just yet. ‘You’re from Canada?’

  ‘Good guess. I don’t like to be mistaken for a Yank. It’s a bit like calling a Scotsman, English from what I gather. Vancouver’s where I call home to be exact which is why I’m down here now. I needed to see the water and breathe in the sea air.’

  ‘It’s hard to make it out what with all those out there.’ Constance pointed at the ships.

  ‘It’s enough to know it’s there.’

  ‘What’s Vancouver like?’ Her eyes lit up with the wonderlust of a young woman who’d been no further abroad than Portsmouth, and even that had been years ago now.

  She listened raptly as he described his city’s delights from the exotic sounding China Town to the Capilano Suspension Bridge that swung out over a deep canyon and was surrounded by totem poles. It was when he began talking about Stanley Park—all four hundred hectares of it—though, that his face lit up. She watched his expression grow animated as he told her about the bald eagles that flew over it, the mute swans and the great blue herons.

  ‘When I was a kid I used to help out at a bird rescue sanctuary after school. That’s what I want to do when this—’ it was his turn to gesture to the naval boats consuming the Solent, ‘—is over. I’m leaving the airforce, and I’m going to go back to school. I want to be a wildlife biologist.’

  Constance had never heard of such thing but didn’t like to show her naivety, and so she remained quiet.

  ‘If I’ve learned anything since I’ve been away it’s that you only get one life and you have to do everything you can to make it the best life it can be.’ He looked a little surprised at his impassioned speech, but it was a sentiment that Constance agreed with wholeheartedly.

  ‘You’re right.’ They exchanged a smile over the haze drifting smoke.

  ‘What about you, what do you do?’

  Constance touched her hand to her face aware that her skin still bore the smudges of toiling at the factory, but it was too late to feel self-conscious now. ‘I’m working in the shipyard at Cowes, riveting.’ It was honest and necessary work, but she wished she’d been able to come up with something a little more glamorous to impress this handsome, young Canadian.

  ‘That’s not easy work I’d imagine, and when this is over?’

  It surprised Constance that she didn’t know, she’d never really thought that far ahead and besides, her path to date had been mapped out for her. She’d not had any say as to what she wanted to do, and she knew she was not unique in this, it was a side effect of the war. It had been a case of what was needed and therefore what she should do. She didn’t mind—it was the way it was.

  Looking at Henry, she gave a small shrug. ‘My parents run a haberdashery shop opposite the Pier.’ She waved her arm down the Esplanade in the general direction of Ryde Pier. ‘It’s quiet now, but we scrape by with mine and my sister’s wages—she’s with the land girls. Business will pick up again when rationing finishes so I suppose I’ll work in the shop until—’ she’d been about to say until she got married, but the words died on her tongue. She didn’t want to share this assumption with him, and she changed tack. ‘I guess the island is pretty different to what you’re used to.’ She imagined they must seem like country bumpkins compared to the cosmopolitan and vibrant place he came from.

  She didn’t know much about Canada, even less about Vancouver, but she did know it was the country’s third-largest city. She’d always paid attention when the teacher had turned to the topic of geography at school. It had fascinated her because the world she knew and occupied was such a small one compared to what lay beyond their island home.

  ‘Yeah it is, but the people here are kind, real kind. It’ll sound kind of weird but what I miss is the smell of the Douglas Firs. They’re sweet and fruity, and they just smell like home. Most of all, though, I miss my family.’

  ‘Do you have a large family?’ She pictured him as the middle son with a bossy older sister and a younger brother who was forever getting into trouble. He would be the peacemaker.

  ‘No, it’s just me, my mom and my baby sister. My dad died a couple of years back. He’s why I joined the airforce. I was born in Canada, but I’m half British, Dad was born in Kent. He was in the airforce too. Flew a Handley Page during the Great War. I grew up hearing stories of his time in England, and I guess I wanted to see it for myself and follow in his footsteps. My mom’s done it tough since he died, but we get by. It’ll be hard putting myself through college when I get home, but I’ll do it. We'll manage somehow, and hey it’s gotta be easier than this.’ His gaze drifted above her head out to sea, and something in those unusual eyes of his looked lost, a clue that he would have seen and done things that no young man should ever have to experience.

  ‘I’m sorry about your father,’ Constance said and then found herself telling him about Ted and how Ginny, his widow, lived with them. Henry’s sympathy was genuine. He took one last drag of his smoke and had the good sense not to offer it to her again, sparing them both the embarrassment as he ground it out with his foot. She noticed the motion caused him to grimace. His leg obviously pained him. Constance felt rude for not patting the seat beside her and asking him to join her, but she wasn’t sure that would have been right.

  ‘So where are you billeted?’ she asked this with what she hoped was an air of nonchalance.

  ‘I’m at Darlinghurst House just a ways down the road there.’

  ‘Oh,’ popped out of her mouth. That explained his limp, his injury must be recent. Darlinghurst House was where she and Norma had collected the basket full of socks in need of darning. They’d whiled away their Saturday nights this last month at the library where Norma was on fire watch duty once a week chatting over the fact that they were there knitting no less! And not at a dance flirting with handsome soldiers like Evelyn undoubtedly was. The most excitement offered to them on a Saturday night was giving their needles a rest as they headed ou
tside to watch the dogfights in the skies over the Solent. That was another thing both girls had in common; parents who kept their youngest children on a tight leash since the war had escalated. Darlinghurst too was where her dreaded solo was to be sung in just over a week thanks to the powers that be at the shipping yard factory.

  ‘I’ll tell you a secret.’ Henry interrupted her thoughts.

  Her eyes widened, and she wished Norma could be a fly on the wall to this exchange as he gave her a cheeky grin. She would turn pea-green unable to believe her friend’s luck in meeting a handsome Canadian at the old folly no less!

  He bent down and tugged his trouser leg up. ‘I’ve got you to thank for the fact my feet are warm and dry now because my socks don’t have holes in them anymore.’

  Constance clapped her hands. She remembered him now. It had been Henry who’d answered the door at the manor when she and Norma had come to return the pile of mended socks they’d laboured over. She recalled having winced at the sight of his battered face, his head had been swathed in bandages, but his eyes had held her attention and she’d thought them rather beautiful. He’d been on crutches, unable to take the basket she, and Norma carried between them, and had called over his shoulder for help from the passing matron. She’d shooed him past where the two girls were poised on the doorstep to the expansive lawn outside to make the most of the sunshine, tsking about there being no better tonic for the soul than sunshine.

  ‘It was you who opened the door when Norma and I returned the basket of mended socks!’

  He grinned and said, ‘I did indeed, and I don’t mind telling you it was a tonic to see your pretty face standing there after some of those po-faced nurses that had been looking after me. More of a tonic than sitting on my own in the garden, sun or no sun.’

  Constance giggled at the compliment. ‘I’ve heard stories about there being weevils in the porridge at the hospital. Is it true?’ Her pert nose wrinkled.

  ‘It’s true, but beggars can’t be choosers.’

  She shuddered at the thought of being hungry enough to eat the writhing oats. ‘Are you better now? I mean you look well apart from—’

  ‘My limp?’

  She nodded.

  ‘It’s a lot better than it was, believe it or not. A piece of shrapnel decided to take up residence in my leg, but I’m nearly as good as new. I’ll be back on duty at Puckpool before the week’s done.’

  Constance felt a stab of jealousy, Warners Holiday Camp at Puckpool Park here in Ryde had been commissioned as the naval branch of the Royal Airforce, and she knew it was home to WRNS as well. Norma’s cousin worked in the pay office there and was stepping out with one of the officers. It was the worst luck that of all the places she could have been sent to work, she’d wound up at the shipyard. She blinked as she registered what he’d gone on to say.

  ‘That’s where it happened, at the camp. There was an air raid, and I didn’t get to the shelter in time. I don’t remember it, but I’m told they found me under a pile of rubble. It coulda been a lot worse, and I got off lightly compared to some of the poor fellas I saw at the Royal.’ He shrugged.

  Constance nodded. He could have died. There were plenty of others that had. He was one of the lucky ones.

  With a start, she became aware that time was marching on. It would be dark soon, and if she didn’t want her dad to set out combing the streets for her, she’d best get herself off home. She stood up, smoothing down the bulk of her coat stalling as she told Henry she had to be off.

  ‘Could I walk you home?’ he asked hopefully.

  ‘I’d like that.’ She smiled shyly linking her arm through his as they set off down the Esplanade.

  Constance felt as though she were walking a little taller as she meandered alongside the tall Canadian especially as Beryl Stubbs, a girl she’d never been particularly friendly with at school hurried past on her way home. Her envious glance didn’t escape her notice.

  ‘So then Constance Downer. What do you do for fun around here?’

  Constance liked the way her name sounded when he said it. She thought for a moment; she wasn’t about to tell him that knitting and listening to the wireless was a leisure time fixture! ‘Well, there are dances, and we go to the pictures.’

  ‘The pictures?’

  ‘Oh, er, the cinema.’

  ‘Ah, now I got you. What’s your all-time favourite film?’

  ‘Casablanca. I went to see it three times.’

  ‘You’re a Bogart fan?

  ‘No— Ingrid Bergman, she’s beautiful. What about you, what’s your favourite film?’

  ‘You’ll laugh.’

  Constance looked up at him. ‘I won’t.’

  ‘You promise?’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘The Wizard of Oz.’

  Constance giggled, and they garnered strange looks from passersby as the tall Canadian Airforce man, and young Connie Downer from A Stitch in Time began to sing at the top of their lungs. “Follow the Yellow Brick Road.”

  Chapter 15

  ‘This is me,’ Constance said as they reached Pier View House. The shop was deserted, and the closed sign hung in the window.

  For the first time since they’d met the conversation dried up with neither of them wanting to say goodnight just yet but not knowing how to prolong things either. It was Henry who broke the silence. ‘Constance, would you like to come out with me on Saturday night? Maybe we could have one of those fish suppers I hear are so good?’

  Constance had been planning on pleading with her mum and dad to be allowed to go to a dance she knew was being held at the local school hall with Norma on Friday night, but this was an opportunity not to be missed. Norma could still go, if she was allowed, she could meet up with the rest of their crowd there. ‘Oh I’d like that, but I’d have to check with my parents first.’

  ‘Well since I’m here maybe I could, you know, introduce myself to them.’

  Constance smiled up at him and all the while her heart began to race. He wanted to meet her parents! ‘Will you wait while I let them know you’re here?’

  ‘Sure.’

  She left Henry standing on the footpath outside the haberdashery shop and set off down the sidepath that lead around the back of Pier View House. Before she rounded the corner, she looked over her shoulder and saw him pacing with his hat held in his hands. He was so handsome; she could pinch herself because she must be dreaming!

  ‘Mummy!’ Constance called from the bottom of the stairs, flying up them and into the kitchen as though she had the hounds of the Baskervilles after her.

  Ginny was setting the table, and her mother had her back to her at the cooker. She turned spoon in hand to see what had her daughter in such a flap. ‘What is it, what’s happened, Connie?’

  Constance tried to catch her breath. ‘There’s someone who wants to meet you and Daddy. He’s waiting outside on the street.’

  Ginny watched on as Eleanor Downer’s shoulders relaxed at the realization that there was no bad news. ‘Ginny, would you mind keeping an eye on this?’ she asked, gesturing to the pan she’d been tending to on the stove before slipping her apron over her head and passing it to her daughter-in-law. ‘And who is this someone?’ she asked Constance, smoothing her skirt. She had an inkling given the way her daughter’s cheeks were flushed, and her eyes were sparkling that this someone was a ‘he.’

  ‘Mummy, his name’s Henry Johnson, he’s in the Royal Canadian Airforce, and he’s recuperating from an injury at Darlinghurst House. He walked me home from the folly,’ she blurted, eager to get it all out lest she get back downstairs only to find Henry had given up on her coming back to get him.

  ‘What were you doing at the folly? You know you’re supposed to come straight home.’ Eleanor frowned.

  ‘I just fancied sitting in the fresh air for a bit after being in the factory all day, that’s all.’ She didn’t want her mother getting side-tracked, so she rushed on. ‘He wants to take me for a fish supper on Friday night. Please
say yes. Please, please, please!’

  Amusement lit up Eleanor Downer’s features as she forgot about the folly, focussing instead on her daughter’s coltish excitement. She exchanged a glance with Ginny who was also smiling, a rare sight these days. ‘Well, then Connie,’ Eleanor said. ‘Don’t leave the lad hanging about on the street, best you tell him to come on up.’

  ͠

  Constance, her stomach flip-flopping, led Henry through to the sitting room. Her mother was standing by the fireplace alongside her father who up until a moment ago, she knew would have been relaxing in his favourite chair listening to the wireless as was his custom at the end of the working day.

  ‘Mr and Mrs Downer, it’s a pleasure to meet you,’ Henry said, stepping forward with his hand outstretched toward her father. The two men shook hands, and Constance noticed the freckles scattered across the back of Henry’s. He turned his attention to her mother. ‘You’re surely not Constance’s mother? Her elder sister perhaps?’

  Her mother giggled despite the cliché, and Constance knew he’d won her over. Eleanor Downer had not giggled in ever such a long time.

  Ginny poked her head in through the door to say that dinner was ready before stepping shyly forth to be introduced to Henry. Even she seemed to blossom and shake off a little of the heavyweight she perpetually dragged around as he chatted amiably to her.

  ‘Now tell me, Henry, what do they feed you at the camp of yours?’ Eleanor interrupted wary of the meal turning into a congealed mess if she didn’t serve up shortly.

  Henry took the bait. ‘Well now Mrs Downer, the cook does her best, but the food’s not a patch on my mom’s home cooking.’

  ‘Then perhaps you’d like to join us for supper? Its nothing fancy but it is home cooking.’