A Christmas Promise

by Annie Groves

  ‘Drew!’ His name came out in a breathless whisper, and she could see him working his way across the room towards her. Time slowed and a thousand different questions semed to fizz in her mind. What had happened when he went back to America? She knew now that he had been hurt, but why didn’t he want to see her?

  As Drew approached her, she saw his face close up for the first time in so long. She knew every inch of that face; his skin, his soft lips that used to kiss her so tenderly. In his eyes, Tilly thought that she could see all the love of her own reflected in them. Dare she hope?

  For a long time, neither of them spoke, then Drew said above the music and the chatter, ‘Pinch me – I’m dreaming!’ He laughed when Tilly gently pinched his arm – it felt so good to make just to be able to touch him again.

  ‘Look, we can’t talk here. Let’s find somewhere quieter.’ He took her hand and gently manoeuvred her towards the door. Even if she had wanted to resist, Tilly felt she wouldn’t have been able to. Her body seemed to take on a life of its own and she knew she had little choice as Drew’s hands folded tenderly around hers.

  Keeping up with him as he wove a path through the thronging mass of soldiers, sailors and airmen of different nations, Tilly could barely believe this was happening. She had no idea that Drew would be here in Italy. However, she should have realised that there was nowhere else he would ever be at such an exciting time of the war.

  ‘Here,’ Drew said quickly as they left the ballroom and wandered out to the wonderful scented gardens, where the air was thick with the scent of lavender and yellow flowering jasmine arching over the pergola above a long seat.

  ‘I know a little café just down the road. It might be closed now but we can still check it out – there is so much I want to tell you.’ His face was alight with pleasure but Tilly wasn’t sure that idea was a good one, he had still run out on her, hadn’t he?

  ‘I don’t mind staying here,’ she said guardedly, not wanting him to think she would fall into his arms as soon as he snapped his fingers. Those days were over. The war had taught her one thing: she was nobody’s fool any more.

  ‘Gee, it’s good to see you, Tilly. You’re even more beautiful than I remember, and I remember well.’

  Words seemed to fail Tilly as she played with the silk ribbon that tied her little silk bag to her wrist.

  ‘You don’t look so bad yourself,’ Tilly managed, as the little bag fell from her wrist. Flustered, she bent to pick it up, and so did Drew, their eyes meeting as his fingers got to the little bag at the same time and Tilly could feel herself melt into his gaze as their hands touched. Immediately, he noticed the ring on her finger, the one he had given her in the little deserted church the night they went on holiday, the night she would so willingly have given herself to him if only he had let her.

  ‘You kept it,’ he said, caressing her hand and looking into her eyes. ‘You remember what we said?’ His voice cracked a little, the emotion threatening to bubble over.

  ‘I remember,’ said Tilly, The words were etched into her brain, forever reminding her that they had made a solemn vow to each other that they would only ever break up if he were to ask for his ring back or if she were to return it to him.

  ‘You never sent it back …’

  ‘You never asked …’ Tilly could feel her heart flip in her chest as they looked at each other with such intimacy that there were no days or weeks or years between them now.

  ‘Hey, Coleman!’ a loud American voice called from the other side of the piazza. ‘We’re moving out now, so c’mon!’

  ‘Hell, I’ve got to go,’ Drew said anxiously. ‘Can I write to you?’

  ‘Oh, Drew, I’ve got so many questions,’ Tilly exclaimed. She had only just found him and now he was going again.

  ‘And I’ll answer all of them and make everything right, I promise. Do you believe me, Tilly?’

  Tilly hesitated, did she believe him? So much had happened, she was different now and it had taken all of her strength to get through the pain of losing him. She was stronger but he could hurt her all over again. She had heard so many stories of girls who had fallen for GI’s only to be let down. Was Drew just like one of them? Was all of this just a sham? The promises of love and marriage?

  Looking at Drew now, seeing his honest, loving face and feeling his steady gaze on her, Tilly knew it was time to listen to her heart rather than her head. No matter what had gone before, all of her love for him was still intact.

  Yes, Drew, I believe you,’ Tilly answered, taking the paper and pencil he had proffered, scribbling her serial number and address onto it.

  Drew took her in his arms and kissed her with all of the passion that she remembered and she returned it, hungrily.

  ‘A kiss to build a dream on … remember that?’

  ‘How could I forget,’ she said, recalling the time before he went back to America, when they had been almost his last words to her. And now, once again as her lips tingled to the memory of his kiss, she watched him walk out of her life once more.

  ‘The Battle of Normandy, the operation that launched the invasion of German-occupied Western Europe by Allied forces. Commencing today, 6 June 1944, with the Normandy landings,’ Drew Coleman wrote in his notebook, after leaving the amphibious craft and wading through waist-high water before plonking himself down on the French beach surrounded by thousands of Allied servicemen, who only had one thing on their mind – to win.

  ‘A 12,000 plane airborne attack preceded the amphibious assault of almost 7,000 vessels,’ Drew continued to write, noting the details that would inform his readers the tide of war was on the turn and that nearly 160,000 troops had successfully crossed the English Channel.

  ‘Allied land forces coming from Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States … Free French Forces and Poland also participated in the battle. After the assault phase, there were also minor contingents from Belgium, Greece, the Netherlands and Norway. While other allied nations participated in the naval as well as air forces …’

  Operation Overlord had begun …

  ‘David, I think you’d better come to the farm quickly, and don’t spare the horses, darling,’ Dulcie just managed to say before, shortly after the news of what was now being called the D-Day landing, she went into labour.

  ‘Oh, well, I suppose if you’re going to be born it might as well be on a day that will be marked all over the world.’ She made a stab at humour before the pain beat her to it.

  ‘Agnes, I think I need a midwife,’ Dulcie said, and grimaced as her waters broke on the kitchen floor.

  ‘Oh, lordie!’ Exclaimed Agnes, recognising that time was of the essence. ‘Well, you sort of just pop yourself up those stairs, while you still can, and I’ll call one of the girls to go and fetch Mrs Darnley. She’s delivered a fair few babies in her time, or so she says.’

  ‘That sounds ominous, Agnes. I know these country folk like to think they have everything in hand but— Ohh!’

  Dulcie suddenly doubled up as she reached the top of the stairs and Agnes threw open the front door and yelled at the top of her lungs, ‘Can someone go and get Mrs Darnley, please? We have a baby on the way now!’ The farm, apparently devoid of other human life, suddenly produced ten people from the fields, Barney and Alice included.

  When Agnes got back to Dulcie, she was already in her delivery nightie and her puce-coloured face told Agnes it wouldn’t be long before there was a new addition to the family.

  ‘Is there anything I can do,’ Carlo asked, standing outside the bedroom door.

  ‘Put the pans on the stove, Carlo, we want lots of boiling water,’ Agnes called, making Dulcie comfortable

  ‘You want water for bambino?’ Carlo’s anxious voice came from the other side of the door.

  ‘No, Carlo, I’m thinking of making everyone a cuppa – of course it’s for the bambino, go on, pronto, pronto!’

  ‘How far apart are your pains?’ Agnes asked, having done a first-aid course in case a passenger went in
to labour on the underground, and now she could put it to good use, if she could remember what she had been taught.

  ‘They’re bloody continuous now,’ Dulcie gasped, and Agnes could see they didn’t have much time. Little Hope had been born quite quickly, too, cementing Agnes’s belief that when Dulcie wanted a job doing she wanted it doing straight away – that included introducing her babies to the world.

  By the time Carlo brought up a white enamel bowl of hot water, the cries of an irate newborn baby filled the air!

  ‘My word, he’s got a set of lungs on him, and no mistake!’ Agnes cried with delight as she wrapped the child in a clean sheet put by especially for this occasion.

  ‘I’ve got a boy!’ Dulcie cried, taking hold of her baby son. ‘Wow, what a whopper; he must be eight and a half pounds easily!’

  ‘Nearer nine and a half, I’d say.’ Agnes laughed, and then, with tear-filled eyes, the two women laughed together. Agnes bent down and kissed Dulcie’s cheek and said fondly, ‘Oh, Dulcie, you are clever.’ The moment was so overwhelming that Agnes had to leave the bedroom, to go to fetch the water to wash mum and baby. ‘I’ll need more water, Carlo.’

  ‘And?’ Carlo asked, eager to hear the news.

  ‘A boy!’ Agnes laughed and then burst out crying. She had never delivered a baby before and it was the most miraculous thing she had ever done.

  ‘Agnes?’ Dulcie asked when she came back into the room. ‘What was your father’s name?’

  ‘John,’ said Agnes in a small voice.

  Dulcie looked at her son and said, ‘Welcome to the world, David John James-Thompson.’

  ‘Wow, he’ll have to be strong to carry that lot around with him,’ Agnes said laughing.

  ‘Dulcie’s had a little boy,’ Archie said, thrilled, and hugged Olive, when he came home for his lunch.

  ‘Oh, that’s wonderful news, Archie. Is everything OK? Mum and baby fine?’

  ‘Fit as fleas,’ Archie said triumphantly. ‘It’s all that good country air and no raids to worry about.’

  ‘Now don’t start that again, Archie. You know I won’t leave London without you.’

  My Darling Sally,

  By the time you get this letter the big push will already have started and, as much as I know you will be worried about me and the rest of the men, I don’t want you to be. All I ask is that you look after yourself and stay safe until I am home again and we can become the wonderful loving family we are both so used to, because as soon as I can get home I am going to marry you, Sally, so go to the jeweller’s and pick some rings – one for you and one for me …

  Your ever-loving Callum xx

  Sally sat at Olive’s table reading this latest letter, which had been written six weeks ago, knowing she had to concentrate, but her mind kept wandering back to the beautiful two days she had spent with Callum in Liverpool. She would have loved to have waved him off as his ship sailed, but he had silently left before she woke. And now all she had of him were his letters, which she had read a thousand times.

  It was July now and the wireless had just given the news that the German resistance in Normandy was broken, which was all well and good, she thought, but it hadn’t stopped them sending those terrifying V1 doodlebugs over.

  Sally was thrilled beyond measure that Callum had mentioned that they were going to be married when he came back to London, and she had made arrangements for a special licence as he asked her to do.

  However, she did not have time to daydream about it now because the wards were in feverish preparation for the forthcoming casualties from the Normandy landings, and after the wards were emptied of non-urgent cases and scrubbed until they shone, the first convoys of servicemen began to arrive.

  As news of the arrival of convoys at the railways and dockyards filtered out to the London public, and many crowds were at the quays and railway stations ready to cheer them from the ships or trains and into the ambulances, they were given gifts of precious chocolate and cigarettes. Unwittingly, some Londoners were giving their valuable rations to young German prisoners of war – who were not much older than Barney, thought Sally, as she escorted the stretchers to the waiting ambulances.

  When they got back to Barts, she oversaw the admission of the young German captives, who were being kept prisoner in a more secure ward while they were being treated, guarded by military police. Treating them as she would any other patients who were scared and far from home, Sally knew that, given the kind of injuries many of them suffered, there wasn’t much chance of them leaving in a hurry.

  TWENTY-SIX

  ‘They did it!’ Janet cried when she met Tilly for lunch. ‘Our boys have given Jerry a bloody good kick up the backside!’

  ‘All by themselves?’ Tilly laughed, although she couldn’t help worrying if Drew had landed safely, disappointed once more that he hadn’t written. She understood that there must have been so many other more important things for him to worry about, but she couldn’t help but be anxious, all the same. The only letter she had received today was from her mother telling her everything she should have been told in 1942. To add to her concerns, she knew the first wave of the military had been fiercely attacked and many Allied servicemen killed.

  ‘I don’t know how you can keep all this top secret information to yourself, Tilly. I’d be too excited and want to tell someone.’

  ‘I know.’ Tilly laughed as she sat down at the table opposite her best friend with her lunch tray. They hadn’t had the same day off for weeks and there was a lot to catch up on.

  ‘So, any news of Drew?’ asked Janet, who knew Sally’s story now.

  ‘He didn’t walk out on me,’ Tilly said, her face clouded. ‘In fact he didn’t walk at all for months.’

  ‘I don’t understand. What are you saying, Tilly?’ Janet stretched her hand across the table, concern for Tilly wreathed across her face.

  ‘I’m saying that he couldn’t walk – he had broken his back in a car accident. He didn’t want me to know … He didn’t want anybody to know …’

  ‘How awful for him … But I must say, he is very strong-willed to be able to keep something like that from you.’

  ‘He had a lot of help from our interfering parents! His father asked my mother to keep it from me and she thought it wise to do so.’ Tilly gripped the handle of the cup so hard it broke, spilling tea all over the table. In the distressing confusion she wiped the table with a clean handkerchief and then burst into tears.

  ‘How could my own mother do that to me, Janet? How could she keep such devastating news from me?’

  ‘Maybe it was because the news was so devastating that she didn’t want you hurt.’

  ‘She didn’t want me to “waste” my life pining for the man I loved, you mean?’

  ‘Come on, Till,’ Janet said quietly as she reached for Tilly’s hand after the waitress had come to the table and efficiently cleared the mess before bringing another pot of tea and fresh cups, ‘she only did what she thought was best, I’m sure.’

  ‘Well, I’m not so sure,’ said Tilly as tears trailed down her cheeks. ‘How could she do that to her own daughter?’

  ‘You said that she had to look after her own husband, your father, from an early age?’

  Tilly nodded as the realisation dawned on her; it mustn’t have been easy for her mum to bring her up after her father had been injured in the First World War.

  ‘I’m sure she didn’t want the same thing for you. It would be like history repeating itself.’

  ‘But wasn’t it my decision to make?’ Tilly asked. ‘I had a right to know.’

  ‘And what would you have done about it?’ Janet disputed Tilly’s explanation that she would not have gone to pieces. ‘You would have tried, come hell or high water, to get over to America!’

  Janet gave a mirthless laugh but was silenced when Tilly said, ‘He wasn’t in America – he was in London. They sent him over to Barts Hospital for ground-breaking surgery. Kill or cure by the sounds of it. And he was there for m
onths.’

  ‘Wow,’ Janet said in a low voice, all banter forgotten now. ‘That is a blow, I’m sure.’

  ‘Drew was less than ten miles away from me and I didn’t even know.’ Tilly sounded desperate now, and Janet jumped up from her chair and went round to the other side of the table to give her friend a reassuring hug.

  A little while later, when Tilly was calm again, Janet went back to her chair and poured the tea, spooning a little extra sugar into Tilly’s cup.

  ‘I’m sure it will all be fine in the end. Strange things happen in wartime – we all know that – and I’m sure your mum would never have done it if she thought it was going to hurt you this much. Didn’t you say yourself it was kill or cure? What if Drew had died? I know you think it was your decision to make, but you can see why your mum wanted to save you from more heartache, can’t you?’

  Tilly sniffed into the clean handkerchief that Janet had given her and nodded, knowing her mother would never deliberately set out to cause her any distress, but she just wished that she would treat her as a grown-up, as the British Army did.

  When she got back to her office Tilly realised that Janet still had her dog tags and her pendant and that she had never asked for them back after the ball. There had been so much activity that both of them had clean forgotten. Almost immediately, the telephone rang. It was Janet to tell her she had just remembered the same thing and Tilly said she would collect them from her later in their favourite café. However, the pendant and her afternoon’s work was soon forgotten when she spied the familiar handwriting on another envelope. It was a second letter from her mother.

  ‘Pregnant!’ Tilly cried. ‘And already married! Well, that’s very nice, I must say!’

  Tilly had arranged to meet Janet in the café after she had cleared up her files in the throne room office. She was on her way there after work, down the hot, dusty road surrounded by hills of rubble, when suddenly there was an almighty explosion that shook the ground under her feet and seemed to vibrate to the hills beyond, boom after boom. Tilly threw herself to the ground and curled up into a tight ball, edging herself towards the wall of the nearby building, getting as close as she could.