Annie Groves - A Christmas Promise

‘Yes, and that is the very reason I don’t want to give her away,’ Sally said, her heart breaking at the thought of little Alice being evacuated to the countryside. Even though the air raids weren’t as bad as they had been in earlier years of the war, they were still a threat. Now, Sally acknowledged, three-year-old Alice was the most precious gift she had ever received.

‘Maybe a visit to Liverpool would clear your head?’ Olive ventured as she turned back to her chores.

‘I feel as if I’ve left it too late, as if I should have laid my ghosts to rest by now, Olive,’ Sally said, though Olive was shaking her head as if not believing a word of it, ‘but more than that …’ She struggled to find the right words.

‘You feel as if you’ve deserted your home city and locked away your memories in a bomb-proof box?’ Olive suggested.

The twenty-six-year-old nurse gave a self-conscious half-laugh. ‘Well, maybe … But it’s more than that – something I can’t explain.’

‘You want to make your peace, perhaps –,’ Olive smiled kindly – ‘and maybe thank somebody up there who is looking down on you and granting you small mercies?’

‘Oh, Olive, you always know the right thing to say.’ Sally’s eyes lit up and she hugged her landlady as she would have done her own mother if she were still alive. ‘And that is why it is so difficult for me to say this to you now …’ Sally marvelled at Olive’s ability to put people’s minds at rest, no matter how sensitive the subject. ‘I have something to tell you.’ Sally’s tone was hesitant, almost cautious. She touched Olive’s arm. ‘Drew is shortly to leave hospital.’

Olive stopped what she was doing and stared into the muddy-coloured water before saying in a low voice, ‘Is he going back home to America?’ Olive liked Drew. He was a lovely young man, who had shown her daughter, Tilly, a lot of attention back in the day when they were very young and life was a little more carefree.

‘I don’t know,’ Sally replied. ‘He said he was going to a wedding but he didn’t say whose wedding it was.’

‘I don’t mind as long as it’s not my daughter’s.’ Olive couldn’t quite carry off the mirthless laugh, and Sally knew she had hit on a raw subject here and must take things slowly.

‘This war has changed everyone – especially Tilly,’ Olive said eventually. ‘She’s no longer the giggly girl who lost her heart to the young Fleet Street journalist. She’s a grown woman with a mind of her own; a young woman who has joined the ATS and will fight for her country, if necessary. She and Rick are courting now!’ Olive’s voice rose a little and Sally suspected she was starting to panic when she said, ‘He thinks the world of her … they are in love …’

‘I’m not disputing that, Olive,’ Sally said in the same tone she used with patients who had just been given overwhelming, terrible news. ‘Are you all right, Olive?’

‘She and Rick could set up home here. In London!’

‘Close enough for you to see her regularly?’ Sally offered, knowing Olive had always been terrified her only daughter would go and live in America. And if the scenes on the newsreels were anything to go by, Americans were still not having as bad a time of the war as the people here in England had to endure. It would be such a temptation to a young, love-struck girl to want the things this country could not offer.

‘Will you go and see Drew before he is discharged from Barts, Olive?’ Sally asked in a low voice, knowing Drew hadn’t wanted to see Tilly while he was in hospital; he couldn’t bear the thought of her seeing him as an invalid.

‘It’s for the best if we leave the past where it lies.’ Olive resumed scrubbing the carrots with renewed vigour.

‘He’s walking now,’ Sally answered in tones usually reserved for church, ‘and although he will never be deemed fit enough to fight for his country, he is doing fantastically well on his walking stick.’ Her manner became more enthusiastic as she continued: ‘The doctors say that when his spine is strong enough he may even be able to discard the stick – isn’t that wonderful after all he has been through?’

Olive wished that Sally would drop the subject of Drew; it was far too painful for her to revisit the memories of her daughter’s traumatic separation, and she still felt a fierce guilt for her own part in that. Just as she had done that day she met up with Drew’s father in a chic London hotel to map out their children’s future, knowing that Tilly would never forgive her if she found out.

Drew’s father had begged her not to tell Tilly his son was in a London hospital. Olive remembered how easily she had complied with his wishes, not wanting Tilly to go through the same heartache that Olive herself had gone through: caring for a husband who had been so badly injured in the First World War that he was an invalid for the rest of his short life.

But the decision to keep Tilly and Drew apart hadn’t been hers to make, Olive knew that now. It should have been Tilly’s choice. Olive believed back then that she had done the right thing. But now she wasn’t so sure.

She had always held her own counsel; being widowed at such a young age and forced to bring up a child alone did that to a woman. She’d had to be strong and make quick decisions, but none had been faster or easier than the one she made that day when Drew’s father asked her not to tell Tilly that the man she loved had been in a life-threatening accident, which had left him in a coma for months, almost paralysed from the waist down. Her decision had been for the best.

For the best … The words kept going around in her head. Olive knew that if the truth ever reached Tilly’s ears … That was the real reason she stared, wide-eyed at the ceiling in the small hours …

‘Olive, are you all right?’ Sally hadn’t realised that the news of Drew leaving hospital would hit her landlady so hard as to drain her face of any colour. Olive stared ahead out of the kitchen window. Then she took a deep breath.

‘Of course I am,’ she said with forced brightness. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’ She told herself that Tilly was happy with Rick, that she had done the right thing in not telling her only daughter that Drew was here in London. But that didn’t ease the tearing sensation of culpability that ripped into her whenever Drew’s name was mentioned in this house.

‘Well, if you’re sure …’ Sally realised that the news had come as a shock to Olive. ‘… I have to go now.’ Sally knew she should stay to discuss the matter, but she would be late if she didn’t go now. Picking up her navy-blue cloak from the back of the door, she said in a voice loaded with understanding, ‘It’s going to be all right, I’m sure of it.’

‘Alice is still having her breakfast … I’ll drop her off at the child-minder before I go to the church hall,’ Olive said in a far-away tone of voice that told Sally the subject was now closed.

‘Thank you, Olive. I’ll pick her up on the way home.’ Sally was still wondering whether to go or to stay, but realised this was something that Olive had to sort out herself.

Oh, Callum, please don’t do this to me, Sally silently begged as she took the blue envelope from the post-woman at the front door and recognised the neat handwriting of her former sweetheart.

A kind-hearted Scot and uncle of little Alice, Callum had given up his teaching job to serve as an officer in the Royal Navy for the duration of the war. It was in the senior service that Sally’s fiancé, George, had been so tragically killed when his ship was torpedoed back in 1942.

Taking a deep breath, Sally slipped the envelope into the pocket of her outdoor uniform.

‘See you later, Olive. Bye, Alice, be good,’ she called before slamming the front door behind her.