Elizabeth Elgin - All the Sweet Promises

‘That’s it, then.’ She drew the thick blackout curtains and the nightly ritual was finished. Carrier bag and coat lay on the kitchen table beside the attaché case. Everything was ready and she returned to the yard to sit on the bench beside the rose tree, to sit and wait, eyes closed, and will her clenched fingers one by one into relaxation.

The bombers were late tonight, but there was still time, she supposed. Double British Summer Time added two hours of daylight and the Luftwaffe needed the cover of darkness. But soon the light would begin to fade; then fire watchers would take up positions on rooftops and each air-raid warden and ambulance driver would feel a churning in his stomach. At fire stations and first-aid posts and rest centres, men and women would look up at the sky just as she, Vi McKeown, was doing now.

She closed her eyes, concentrating once again on her tightening fingers, trying not to think of Richie Daly and the Emma Bates ; trying not to weep when she thought about the waste of a good life, of fifty good lives.

She was still sitting there when the silence began, those few moments of suspended time that came before the sounding of the air-raid sirens. She had come to recognize that silence, to smell it, almost. It was a void so strange and complete that there was no mistaking it. They were coming again; coming to kill and maim and blast and burn.

Reluctantly she rose to her feet, her breathing loud and harsh, the weariness she had been fighting since the air raids started overpowering her senses. God, but she was so afraid. Afraid of tonight and tomorrow and all the empty tomorrows. It was as if the bombing was draining her of all feeling, leaving her so spent that all she wanted to do was to close her eyes and not open them again until it was all over.

The first of the sirens sounded distantly and she ran to the kitchen, gathering up her belongings with hands that shook. Her mouth had gone dry again, fear writhed through her. Turning the back-door key, she looked longingly at the lavatory door. Why did that awful wailing always make her want to pee?

Now another siren had taken up the warning. Nearer, this one, its strident undulation beating inside her head. For just a few seconds she stood petrified; then, taking a deep, shuddering breath, she ran down the entry and into Lyra Street.

The ARP warden, out of work since 1930 and now a man of standing with his steel helmet, army-style respirator and dangling whistle, banged on the door of number five pleading through the letterbox with its occupant.

‘You’ll be safer in the shelter, Mrs Norris.’ Grumbling, he turned to Vi. ‘She does this every blasted night, the stubborn old biddy.’

‘Best leave her,’ Vi offered. ‘She says it’s more comfortable under the kitchen table. Reckons that if her name is on a bomb it’ll find her, wherever she is.’

‘And who are you, then?’ The warden had no time for niceties.

‘Mrs McKeown from number seven, and you’ll not get Mrs Norris out of there, not if you rattle that letterbox all night.’

Poor, silly Ma Norris, who had never been quite right since her three sons were killed on the Somme in the last war. Three telegrams, all in the same week. Enough to drive a saint round the bend.

‘And what about number nine?’

‘Gone to Preston, to relations,’ Vi called over her shoulder, hurrying to the gate of St Joseph’s, where Father O’Flaherty would be checking in his flock. Then, against all her better instincts, she stopped and slowly turned to look back down Lyra Street. Amazed, she shook her head. Never look back, Gerry always said. Just four weeks ago, as they stood at the dockyard gate he had said, ‘Tara well, girl.’ Then he’d kissed her and walked away; and though she waited until he was out of sight, he had never once looked back to where she stood.

All right, so sailors considered it unlucky, she thought defiantly, but women were different. Women did silly things all the time; that’s why they were women. Gently, sadly, she smiled at her house; her house and Gerry’s.

‘I’ll not be long,’ she whispered, then turning abruptly, walked quickly towards the church.

‘And when,’ demanded the Countess of Donnington of her daughter, ‘are you going to give me a date? I mean, I feel so foolish, don’t I?’

The Countess was annoyed. Only that morning she had suffered humiliation at the hands of a shop assistant in Harrods, and anger still raged through her. ‘And please take that towel off your head and have the goodness to look at me when I’m speaking to you!’

‘Sorry.’ Lucinda Bainbridge ran her fingers through her half-dry hair. ‘I was listening, truly I was, and I’m sorry you feel foolish.’

‘Don’t be pert. Just give me one good reason why you and Charles cannot be married at once.’

‘Well, I – I’d like to wait a little while, I suppose.’

‘I see. And had you forgotten you will be twenty in November? Has it ever occurred to you that I was wedded and bedded and well pregnant by the time I was your age? Most of the girls who came out with you are married, so why must you be different?’

‘Perhaps because I’ve always thought it might be nice to have a honeymoon in Venice.’

‘Well, you can’t. No one can go to Venice – or anywhere else, for that matter – until this dreary war is over, so please stop prevaricating.’

‘Yes, Mama.’ Once more Lucinda took refuge beneath the towel and began to rub furiously. Mama was on her pet hobbyhorse again and it was too foolish, really it was, to have a hurried wedding in London, where she hardly knew a soul, when it could all be so lovely at Lady Mead. When the government let them live there again, of course.

‘I mean, Charles won’t always be at the War Office. They could post him to a regiment and send him abroad just like that!’ Elegantly, dramatically, the Countess snapped her fingers. ‘And where would you be if he got killed? You should get married now and get that baby started. That’s all I ask, Lucinda. At least try to see my point of view.’

‘I do. Oh, I do.’ Lucinda accepted her mother’s need for a Bainbridge heir and she understood her feelings of guilt, too, even though no one ever blamed her for the accident. But there had been no more children, and now Cousin Charlie would inherit. But please, Mama, Lucinda pleaded silently, don’t treat me like a complete idiot. I realized a long time ago why you were so set on Charlie and me marrying, and I’m very fond of him, and I’d like to go on living at Lady Mead for the rest of my life. But let me do it in my own time, and don’t make me feel like a brood mare.

‘I mean, don’t you think I’ve got worries enough, Lucinda, what with this terrible war and the bombing? And if those Germans ever get here, we’ll lose everything. They don’t like the aristocracy.’

‘I rather think that’s the Communists.’

‘And what about all the shortages? It’s enough to turn one grey.’

Only that morning she had stood, she, Kitty Bainbridge, had actually stood in a queue for nail polish, and when it came to her turn there was no more left. ‘I’m sorry, modom, don’t blame me for the shortages. There is a war on, you know,’ the common little bitch had said with relish. And soon there would be a shortage of clothing and wouldn’t those shop girls have a field day, then!

‘Worries enough, I said. And when did you last see Charles? You spend too much time with those wounded soldiers.’

‘Airmen, Mama.’

‘You’re running after them morning, noon and night. I suppose you’ll be off with them to the theatre again, when you ought to be with Charles.’

‘Charlie’s fire watching tonight, and I saw him a couple of days ago.’