The Promise

by Lesley Pearse

  ‘That doesn’t happen,’ she said, guessing that was what he wanted to know about, but wouldn’t have risked embarrassing her by asking. ‘He rejects any kind of affection from me.’

  ‘Could that be because he is afraid of you having a baby? I did tell him after you had the miscarriage that it wouldn’t be advisable.’

  ‘You did?’ Belle exclaimed. ‘He never told me.’

  She was stunned by this news and she began to cry again. ‘Do you mean I can never have a baby?’

  ‘I am so sorry, Mrs Reilly, I assumed your husband told you this once you recovered. I didn’t say you couldn’t have another child, only that I felt there was a risk of miscarrying again.’

  Belle sniffed back her tears. ‘Well, it’s not likely to happen anyway the way things are,’ she said.

  One of her greatest hopes for the future had been a baby. She’d thought that would be the one thing which would buck Jimmy up. She had thought too it would blot out all memory of Etienne, and a baby would bring joy into Mog and Garth’s life too. Now that had been denied her as well.

  ‘It could be that he’s not just frightened for you, but also fears that he could not support a child,’ the doctor said gently. ‘Men are very sensitive about such things.’

  ‘If he persevered with the leg he could run the bar,’ Belle said. ‘But he seems to enjoy wallowing in misery. I want to shout at him and point out that other wounded soldiers are forced to beg on the streets to put food on the table. But he doesn’t appear to be aware how fortunate he is to have a roof over his head and people who love him.’

  The doctor nodded in sympathy. ‘It is only recently that doctors and psychiatrists have begun to recognize the effects this war is having on soldiers’ mental health,’ he said. ‘There wasn’t the constant bombardment of heavy guns in previous wars, nor such prolonged fighting. Most men died of injuries like Mr Reilly’s. All of us in the medical profession are aware now that in this war it isn’t only the physical injuries we need to treat, but the mental ones too. Sadly at present there is no medicine to help; all we can recommend is rest, peace and quiet, and hope that talking to our patients will eventually dispel the hideous images in their heads.’

  ‘But what if they won’t talk? Or try anything?’ Belle asked, tears streaming down her face. ‘Jimmy won’t even think of allowing me or his uncle to take him out in the wheelchair we bought for him. A walk on the heath or in Greenwich Park might help him, but he refuses. It can’t be doing him any good sitting in a dark kitchen day after day, never seeing a bird, flower or tree.’

  ‘I agree totally,’ the doctor said. ‘He needs sunshine, nature and conversation with others to help bring him out of this. I will come and see him and try and make him see that.’

  ‘He’ll probably refuse to see you,’ Belle said glumly. ‘When I suggested that he talked to you, he said all he wanted from a doctor was for him to put him down.’

  Dr Towle nodded. ‘That has been said by many injured men, but I don’t believe that is really what is in their hearts. I will drop by tomorrow morning while I’m out on my rounds. Don’t tell him I’m coming or he might find an excuse not to see me. Did you say you were coming to see me today?’

  ‘No, I didn’t. It would just have started another row.’

  ‘Then I won’t mention that you called either. The only advice I can give you, Mrs Reilly, is to stand up to your husband. If he is sulking, let him and walk away. Don’t try to appease him all the time, that doesn’t work, and it will just make you more angry with him. And try and get some rest. You look exhausted.’

  After Belle had gone, Dr Towle sat for a moment looking at the brief notes he’d made while talking to her. She had always intrigued him, ever since she and her aunt had lived a few doors down from his surgery when they first arrived in Blackheath. Her looks were enough to get her noticed, but it was more than just that; she had none of the simpering girlishness he was accustomed to, she looked people in the eye, and had a bold manner he found very attractive.

  All the time she had her hat shop in Tranquil Vale she was a regular topic of conversation with both sexes. She was admired for her talent, flair and looks, but there was something more that no one could really put their finger on. Some said she was worldly, and used words like ‘confident’, ‘poised’ and even ‘racy’ to describe her, but even his own wife, who was renowned for her incisive summing up of people, could only suggest she thought Belle had ‘a past’.

  Belle was much admired for her voluntary work at the Royal Herbert. Word got around that she was conscientious and capable, yet when she went off to France many people thought driving an ambulance was inappropriate work for a young married woman. The poisonous Mrs Forbes-Alton fanned the flames by claiming she was leading her daughter Miranda astray, and the gossip mounted. Later, shortly after Miranda’s tragic death, there was that scurrilous article about Belle in the newspaper, which people passed around gleefully.

  He remembered the trial and subsequent hanging of the man Kent. At the time he’d felt great sympathy for all his innocent victims, and was shocked to discover that Belle Reilly was one of them. Yet as he had pointed out to his wife, who sadly was almost as bad as Mrs Forbes-Alton in condemning Belle, it took great courage to survive and make sure the man was brought to trial.

  So what could he say to her husband to make him buck up? Would it be fair to drop a hint he might lose his lovely wife unless he did so?

  Belle missed the doctor calling on Jimmy as she had gone out in the afternoon to try to buy some meat and queued for over an hour, only to find by the time she got to the counter that the butcher had nothing left to sell. She managed to get some eggs and cheese though and was planning to make a savoury tart for their supper.

  She was very hot and weary, and when she got back into the kitchen to find Jimmy still sitting there just as he had been when she’d left, it was on the tip of her tongue to say something sharp. But to her surprise he looked up and smiled at her.

  ‘You look all in,’ he said. ‘Did you have to queue a long time?’

  It was the first time he’d even acknowledged there was such a thing as a queue to get rations, much less shown any sympathy.

  ‘Over an hour, to get nothing at the butcher’s,’ she sighed. ‘I hope Garth manages to wangle a rabbit or something from someone tonight.’

  She went to the sink and filled a glass with water, gulping it down in one. ‘Where’s Mog?’ she asked.

  ‘She went off to the sewing circle and Garth’s taking a nap. Dr Towle called round earlier.’

  ‘Really?’ Belle said. ‘So who let him in?’

  ‘I did. I can open the door,’ Jimmy replied, but there wasn’t the usual sarcasm in his reply. ‘He gave me a lecture on apathy.’

  Belle sat down at the table, arranging her face with a suitably surprised expression.

  ‘He said I must get outside more, and I should practise walking with the peg leg every day, gradually keeping it on for longer.’

  ‘And what did you say to that?’

  ‘That I would.’

  Belle really was surprised now. ‘That would please us all,’ she said. She wanted to add that she’d said the same thing over and over to him for weeks now but he’d ignored her.

  ‘I suppose I have been apathetic,’ he admitted. ‘The doc pointed out that the muscles in my remaining leg and arm will grow weak if I don’t use them. And being out in sunshine will make me feel better.’

  ‘So what about a spot of practice now?’ Belle suggested. ‘You could do it in the bar while it’s closed. There’s not so many obstacles in there to get round.’

  ‘Not now. I’ll start tomorrow when Garth’s around to help me.’

  Belle thought that sounded like a delaying tactic.

  ‘I will do it, Belle. I promise,’ he said. ‘You aren’t strong enough to support me. And I’ll be better with Garth.’

  To Belle’s surprise Jimmy didn’t renege on his promise. Every morning, once Garth had
finished the work in the cellar, Jimmy went into the bar with him and practised. The counter was just the right height to hold on to with his remaining arm, and when he reached the end unaided, Garth helped him to turn, then supported him on the way back.

  Each day they did a little more, gradually increasing the time until he was walking for an hour. At first he got sore patches on the stump of his missing leg where it rubbed on the socket of the artificial one, but Belle or Garth massaged the stump each night with surgical spirit to harden it.

  Belle was so delighted to see the effort Jimmy was making that she overlooked his tetchy moments, and in the afternoons she helped him out into the back yard to sit in the sunshine for a while. At long last he was brighter in himself, and one Sunday afternoon he even agreed that he would go out in the wheelchair as long as Garth felt up to pushing him.

  Belle and Mog were thrilled that they could all go out together. They both dressed up and put on their prettiest hats, and Garth wore a striped blazer and a straw boater. Even Jimmy entered into the spirit of the occasion, allowing Belle to help him into the green linen jacket he used to wear behind the bar.

  It was hard work pushing the chair up the hill on to the heath, but once there the going was easy. As always on a Sunday afternoon, there were crowds of people out enjoying the sunshine. But there were few men between eighteen and fifty; those they saw were all in uniform and home on leave, walking with their wives or sweethearts. The groups of children having picnics or playing ball games were being watched over by mothers and grandparents.

  Jimmy seemed more at ease when he saw other men with arms in slings or on crutches. There were even a couple of men in wheelchairs too, but he was visibly saddened by the number of women wearing black, or a mourning band on their arm.

  He reached out for Belle’s hand at one point, a silent gesture that said he was at last thinking of the plight of others rather than just his own disability.

  When they got to the boating pond, Garth and Mog left Jimmy and Belle while they went off to get ice creams for them all.

  Belle sat on a bench next to Jimmy, watching the children sail their boats. ‘Do you remember that day we came over here from Seven Dials? You said your mother had brought you here when you were about seven?’

  He looked round at Belle and smiled. ‘Yes, I remember, that was one of the best days ever. I never thought that six years later I’d be sitting here in a wheelchair though.’

  ‘At least you are sitting here,’ she said reprovingly. ‘You could be in one of those mass graves in France. And I’d be just another one of those hundreds of war widows with nothing left but my memories. We can’t alter what’s already happened, but we can still choose our future.’

  He held her eyes with his for a few long seconds. ‘Maybe if I can master the peg leg, we could still get the guest house by the seaside,’ he said.

  ‘That’s the spirit,’ she said, reaching out to caress his cheek. ‘We’ve got through the worst of it now, it can only get better.’

  Vera’s disturbing letter about men dying of Spanish flu over in France arrived the day after Mog had read out a report in the paper that there were cases of it in London and in various other cities around the world.

  Belle had been inclined to think that the newspapers were exaggerating this so-called ‘epidemic’ because they had run out of steam in reporting on the war. But she knew Vera wasn’t an alarmist.

  ‘They are dying overnight,’ Vera wrote.

  It’s absolutely terrible. I took in six sitting cases one day, all with injuries that could be patched up in no time. Two days later three of them had high fevers, one died on the first night, the other two the next day. They are putting suspected cases into an isolation ward, but it comes on so fast, one minute they look fine, the next they are sweating buckets and losing all control of everything. The strangest thing is that’s it’s taking the fit and young, old folk and children don’t seem to get it.

  Vera’s letter had come in early August, and within a week Mog reported two deaths from Spanish flu in the village, both women in their mid-twenties. Garth noticed that the bar was becoming less busy, he thought because people felt it best to stay out of crowded places. In the queues at the shops everyone seemed to know someone who had this terrible flu, or had already died from it.

  Soon it was obvious that the press weren’t scaremongering or using the epidemic as a diversion from reporting on the war. The flu was here, cutting down people who had been healthy and strong. Belle saw two hearses pass the door of the Railway in just the time it took her to clean the brass on the doors one morning. Fear was in the air; she saw it in women’s faces as they hurried to the shops, and Mog’s sewing circle stopped meeting, whist drives were cancelled and people walked rather than catch the omnibus.

  Then Garth became ill. Mog had never known him even to have a cold before, but he complained of a sore throat at midday, and by four in the afternoon he was shivering so violently he had to take to his bed.

  Dr Towle came that evening and told Mog she was to wear a gauze mask over her mouth and nose while taking care of him. All he could prescribe was plenty of fluids, and to sponge Garth down if he grew feverish.

  ‘Stay away,’ he said firmly to Belle and Jimmy who were hovering by the bedroom door. ‘Leave Mrs Franklin to nurse her husband. And keep the bar closed for the time being.’

  Belle heard Mog come out of her bedroom during the night and slipped out of bed to catch up with her as she was going downstairs, her arms full of bedlinen.

  ‘How is he?’ Belle asked. ‘Can I do anything?’

  ‘He’s really poorly,’ Mog said, her lower lip quivering. ‘He’s lost control of …’ She stopped short in embarrassment and Belle realized the sheets were soiled. ‘He’s delirious. I’ll just take these down to put into soak.’

  ‘I’ll do that,’ Belle said, taking the bundle. ‘I’ll make you some tea too. Would you like a sandwich or something?’

  Mog shook her head. ‘I couldn’t eat, I’m too scared. I know he’s a strong man, but this is really serious.’

  ‘Things always look worse at night,’ Belle said to reassure her. ‘You go back in with him and I’ll see to these. I’ll tap on the door with your tea in a minute.’

  ‘Could you get me some more sheets and another towel?’ Mog said. ‘I’ve changed the bed, but it’s bound to happen again. I could do with some more hot water too.’

  The next morning when Mog came out of the bedroom again, her face was grey with exhaustion. ‘He’s even worse,’ she said. ‘I’ve sponged him all over, tried to make him drink, but I can’t bring his temperature down. He doesn’t even know me.’

  Belle washed the soiled sheets and towels and hung them out to dry. She made some beef broth and tried to persuade Mog to let her sit with Garth so she could get some sleep.

  ‘He’s my husband and I have to look after him,’ Mog said. ‘I’m worried enough that you might catch it just from being in the same house. So don’t come close to me. And don’t you dare go in that room.’

  Belle and Jimmy felt they had to obey her wishes. Jimmy sat in the yard outside while Belle busied herself with chores. Later she managed to get Mog to eat some scrambled egg and toast, but she scuttled back upstairs immediately afterwards, and as she opened the bedroom door, from downstairs Belle heard Garth call out something unintelligible.

  ‘I’m going to go and get the doctor again,’ she said to Jimmy. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’

  A stout, middle-aged woman answered the door at the surgery. She was wearing a navy-blue dress and looked like a housekeeper. ‘The doctor is out on his rounds,’ she said curtly, when Belle asked that he called to see her husband. ‘As you can imagine, he’s rushed off his feet with this epidemic. He’s been telling those he can’t get round to see to cool the patients down and make them drink; there is nothing more he can do.’

  ‘But I’m afraid Mr Franklin will die,’ Belle implored her.

  ‘I’ll tell him y
ou called,’ the woman said. ‘That is all I can do.’

  The doctor didn’t call. By midnight Belle knew he wasn’t coming and she was getting more and more frightened. Mog was exhausted, she’d washed and changed Garth dozens of times, tried to make him drink, and she wouldn’t allow Belle to take over so that she could get a couple of hours’ sleep.

  ‘I’m not having you falling ill too,’ she said through the closed door. ‘I can doze in the chair here, you and Jimmy go to bed.’

  They did go to bed, but although Jimmy fell asleep, Belle couldn’t as her ears were pricked for a call from Mog.

  She must have finally dozed off as she woke with a start at a sound from the landing. It was light now, so she guessed it was around five in the morning. She jumped out of bed and rushed out of the room. Mog was standing by her bedroom door, tears pouring down her face.

  ‘Has he …?’ Belle asked.

  Mog held her hand out as a signal to come no closer. ‘No, but he’s going to. His face has turned black. He’s barely breathing now.’

  Through the open door Belle could see Garth. He seemed to have shrunk, and his normally ruddy face was tinged with black, his red hair slicked down with sweat, and there was a vile smell wafting from him.

  ‘Does he know you now?’ Belle asked in a whisper.

  ‘No, not now, he did a while ago, and I thought that meant he’d turned a corner,’ Mog sobbed. ‘He asked me what was for supper, and said I made the best meat pies in London. I told him I’d make the biggest pie he’d ever eaten if he’d just get well. Then he drifted off again.’

  ‘Oh, Mog.’ Belle wished she could hold her and comfort her, but each time she moved nearer Mog held out her hand to stop her. ‘Shall I run for the doctor again?’

  Mog shook her head. ‘Only God can save him now, and I don’t think he’s inclined to. The only man I ever loved and he’s taking him from me.’

  She turned then and went back into the bedroom, shutting the door and leaving Belle shaken to the core at her words.

  Garth died just after seven that morning. Belle had been sitting on the stairs in case Mog called her, and she heard a prolonged wheezing sound which then stopped abruptly. Seconds after she heard Mog cry out. The sound of heartbreak.