A Christmas Promise (28 page)

‘Corporal Janet Fisher?’ The doctor picked up the docket and read the information it contained, before lifting the hand of the unconscious patient and quietly checking her pulse. Then, turning to the white-uniformed nurse, he asked, in hushed tones, ‘Is she calmer now?’

‘Much calmer, Doctor. She was quite distressed earlier and we had to sedate her.’

‘Well, it looks as if she’s coming round now. Maybe we will learn a little more.’

The water was cool on her lips and she was grateful for the cold liquid to quench her raging thirst; somebody was talking to her …

‘Janet … Janet, are you feeling any better?’

Feeling confused, and her stomach heaving, she tried to get up from the bed but the room began to spin and she felt her stomach heave again.

‘A bowl, nurse, get her a bowl!’

After they lay her flat on the bed without a pillow, she put her hand to her head and her fingers sank into the jelly-like lump on the side of her head. She tried to open her eyes but the light was too bright.

‘All right, Janet, take it easy. You are in the military hospital. Can you remember anything?’

‘No.’ Her voice was just a groan and when she moved her head the room spun and her stomach heaved so she decided it was best to try to keep still.

‘You were thrown from the wall, you fell about six feet and bumped your head and were knocked clean out, but we’ll have you up and on your feet in no time, Janet. Unfortunately, your friend wasn’t so lucky …’

‘My name isn’t Janet …’ she said, beginning to remember … She had been going to get her pendant and her dog tags from Janet … ‘Janet!’ The scream in the quietude of the hospital ward was piercing. ‘I’m Tilly … Sergeant Tilly Robbins.’

‘But that’s the name of the dead girl, isn’t it, Nurse?’

Tilly tried to focus on what they were saying. One minute, they were calling her Janet and, the next they were saying someone was dead!

‘Can I have a drink of water, please?’ Tilly’s voice was barely a croak. She felt as if she was swallowing razor blades and she couldn’t open her eyes, they were so heavy.

‘We will wet your lips, my dear, but we cannot give you anything to drink until the nausea subsides.’ Moments later, Tilly felt a cold wet cloth against her lips and she almost bit the nurse’s finger.

‘I need a drink, I’m dying of thirst, please help me.’ All she wanted to do now was to have a drink of water and to float back to wonderful oblivion. She turned her head and felt the swimming sensation in her skull, the tingle in her throat … she was going to …

‘Get a sick bowl, Nurse Jones … keep one here at all times. We expect this with a fractured skull. She must lie flat; we need to keep the swelling of the brain to an absolute minimum if she is to survive.’

Tilly realised they didn’t know she could hear or understand them. She wanted to tell them that she didn’t care what had happened, all she wanted to do was curl up and go back to sleep, but they wouldn’t let her.

They wanted to ask her questions and make her open her eyes … But she didn’t want to open her eyes, she wanted to go to sleep …

‘Tilly Robbins?’

She could hear the doubt in their voices, and in the fuzziness of her confusion Tilly tried to remember what had happened … She was on her way to meet Janet, she had been so upset about her mother’s letter … She should have collected her pendant and her dog tags but she had forgotten – and she was on her way back when … There had been a lot of fighting … Explosions on all sides … Somebody warned her to get off the wall … More explosions!

‘Janet will be waiting  …  You have to get word back to her  …  Tell her I’m safe … She’ll worry!’ Tilly gave a low gentle laugh, amused at the thought her friend would come in – all guns blazing – demanding to know … ‘She’s got the tags. Tell her I’m … fine …’

‘She’s gone again, Doctor,’ said the nurse dressed in the uniform of the American military hospital. She popped a thermometer under Tilly’s arm and shook her head. ‘She has a temperature, too, now.’

‘The other girl … the one brought in earlier,’ the doctor asked in a low whisper, ‘the one who died of her injuries – her name was Tilly Robbins, it said so on her cardigan.’

‘No!’

Tilly could hear someone screaming, and as she rolled to the other side of the bed and threw up her insides onto the highly polished floor the screaming stopped and she realised the voice was hers.

‘All right, honey, come on you’ll be fine – we’ve got you now; you’re safe.’

How could she make them understand? But all further thoughts disappeared as a another wave of nausea overcame her and not long after she fell into a strange and fitful sleep, where she dreamed of Janet and Drew and her mother, all of whom seemed to be trying desperately to tell her something …

Tilly lost track of time, she couldn’t be sure how long she had been in hospital. Her head injury, though no longer life-threatening, had nearly killed her. The recovery was slow and it took her some time before she could get a sense of all the events in her head. In reality, it was another three weeks before Tilly woke fully and was able to understand that her friend Janet had been caught up in the explosion. It was hard to believe. But it was true that Janet – her feisty, funny, Scouse friend had been killed when she was shot down on her way to meet Tilly. It was also apparent that there had been a terrible misunderstanding and the authorities had thought that it was she and not Janet who had died. Tilly was devastated by the loss of her friend, but as soon as she was able to make herself understood, she was desperate to get word to her family.

‘You must let my mother know I’m OK. She’ll be out of her mind,’ Tilly pleaded.

The nurse who was attending to her said in a soothing voice, ‘Now, you just rest, we’re doing all we can and the most important thing right now is for you to get well.’

‘But you don’t understand. ’

Tilly’s head was throbbing and she fell back against her pillow, momentarily silent.

Another nurse approached her bed and whispered something in her colleague’s ear. She turned to Tilly.

‘It seems you have a visitor.’

Tilly struggled to focus as the figure coming towards her got nearer. There was something terribly familiar about him – could it be? Was it him? Perhaps she was still unconscious and this was a dream – was he really here?

‘Tilly Robbins, my darling, darling girl.’ Kneeling beside her bed, Drew gently caressed her hand and showered her with kisses. Tears shone in his eyes as he looked lovingly at the most precious sight in the world. His girl, alive and maybe not quite well, but on the mend.

‘Oh, Drew! I can hardly believe you are here.’ Tilly’s voice was choked with emotion and tears were streaming down her face.

‘Hush, now,’ Drew reassured her. ‘Everything is going to be all right. I made a promise to you all that time ago. We’ve waited too long already and now we’re going make our dreams a reality. I am never, ever going to let you out of my sight again, you hear me?’

‘Drew Coleman, my Drew.’ And Tilly fell into the deepest and most peaceful sleep she had had for some time.

When she awoke, Drew was gone.

Olive was sitting near the window in stunned silence. She had been sitting there all day. What could she do? She had no body to bury. She had no remains to visit when she needed solace.

‘Ha!’ Solace! Whatever that meant.

‘Olive, are you all right?’ Archie asked tentatively. He feared for his wife now; he worried she might be in too delicate a state to be able to sustain the child she was carrying.

‘They talk about comfort and goodness but there is none that I can see, Archie. All I can see is devastation and destruction.’

‘What about going to Agnes on the farm for a few weeks?’ Archie asked, knowing that being here in London was doing Olive no good.

Olive continued to stare out of the window onto the street, alone in her grief. As she stared, seemingly into space, she was shaken out of her reverie when she recognised a familiar figure coming up the road towards the house.

‘Archie,’ Olive said in a low, cautious voice, as she looked out of the window, ‘I can hardly believe it, but it’s Drew, and he’s coming here …’ Olive’s words trailed as Archie rose from his seat, closed the front-room door behind him and went to the front door.

Olive buried her face in her hands, knowing that Drew would want to spend some time with them because he and Tilly had been very close. She knew that now. She also knew she would never see her daughter again and she never had the chance to say she was sorry for keeping them apart. How was she going to face Drew now?

Olive could feel the gnawing culpability return to devastate her heart once more and she knew that the blame was all hers. She did this to herself, she drove Tilly away, and now she would be punished to the end of her days, and rightly so!

It was her fault that the two young sweethearts were separated. If she had gone against Drew’s father, her daughter would have been happy. Tilly had been right: it wasn’t her decision or Drew’s father’s decision to make. And they were good kids – they did as their parents expected – and sometimes she knew that even parents got it wrong, no matter how good their intentions.

The voices of the two men in the hallway were low at first, and then they got a little higher, and then she heard Archie cry as if in anguish. Olive could stay still no longer and, pulling her cumbersome bulk from the chair, she got up from her seat by the window and went out into the hallway, to see Archie and Drew hugging each other and crying. Then she, too, was crying, hardly able to draw breath. Drew came to her now, his face wet with tears and his arms outreaching. He took Olive in his arms and they clung together in their grief.

When he finally managed to let her go, Drew looked up, and Olive saw that he was laughing as he was crying, and then he said, in his loud American voice, ‘She’s alive! My Tilly’s alive. My darling Tilly’s alive! Tilly’s alive – here, look!’ He handed Olive a piece of paper, giving details of the hospital Tilly had been taken to in Italy.

‘Oh, my God!’ Olive said, her face pale as her hands flew to her white, dry lips.

‘I got the news when I was on my way back to join the Eighth Army. News had filtered through that two ATS girls had been hit and that one of them was Tilly … Every instinct in my body told me that it couldn’t be her – it couldn’t be my girl; I’d have known it – I’d have felt it. I got there as soon as I could! I went straight to the hospital. I saw her. She’s got one helluva bandage on her head but she’s alive! Olive, she’s alive.’

Olive danced around the hallway in a triangular chain with her husband and Drew.

‘I’m getting back over there tonight, but I had to come and tell you in person – I knew you’d be devastated. I couldn’t tell you in a telegram. Do you want me to give her a message?’

‘Tell her I love her and I want her home now … Drew, will you bring her home to me?’

‘You bet I will, Mrs Robbins!’

‘And Drew, it’s Mrs Dawson now – but you can call me Olive.’ And they all burst out laughing, especially when he realised her wider girth since the last time he saw her.

‘Oh, gee, Olive, I didn’t realise. I was too—’

‘I know, Drew.’ Olive laughed, and, before he had to leave, Olive told him all about the wedding and the holiday on the farm.

‘Tell Tilly her mother will be in Surrey, most likely,’ said Archie in a voice that brooked no argument, and Olive nodded.

‘Those doodlebugs are terrifying. Tilly will feel better if we’re in the country.’

‘She sure will, especially now she has lost her best friend,’ Drew answered, and Olive’s brow furrowed.

‘It was a case of mistaken identity,’ Drew said. ‘There was a yearly ball at some palace. Tilly and her friend took off their identity tags and she put them into her friend’s bag – it was her friend who was killed … Corporal Janet Fisher … The confusion was made even worse when the cardigan that Janet was wearing had Tilly’s name sewn into the lining. They were so close, they must have shared everything …’

‘Oh, no, poor Janet. She was with us at Christmas … she was Tilly’s best friend.’

‘I know,’ said the Drew, his head bent. ‘Tilly’s going to have a lot to deal with when she comes home.’

Olive was stunned. For a moment, she didn’t know what to do or what to say, and then another knock on the door brought Nancy Black hovering in the hallway.

‘She’s alive, Nancy,’ Olive breathed. ‘She’s alive!’ Olive hugged Nancy, who, up until that moment, had held her own council for once on what she thought and when she released Olive her face was wet with tears.

‘She’s just like my own girl,’ Nancy said. ‘I was stunned to the core when I heard the bad news and now it’s good news. I can’t believe it! I really can’t.’ And with that, she went back out into Article Row and told everyone who passed that Tilly Robbins was alive. As Drew left, Olive was inundated with relieved neighbours, while Archie was busy making jubilant cups of tea for well-wishing neighbours who came to enjoy the good news. And it was only later, when Olive could catch her breath that she found a quiet moment to shed a tear for Janet’s mother, who would be receiving bad news today.

Tilly, recovering from a fractured skull and broken ribs, was told she was to be transferred to the American hospital ship,
Quietude
, which was sailing via Southampton. From there, she would be transferred to RN Haslar, the naval hospital in Gosport, where she would be cared for by the wonderful Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service. Tilly would arrive on a Tuesday evening in mid-July and she couldn’t wait.

However, her journey of sail was made much more enjoyable by an older nurse, Brigadier Pauline Hall, who had nursed in the very place where Tilly’s father had been received treatment after being injured at Passchendaele.

‘My brave Tommies,’ Brigadier Hall said, with such an air of wistfulness that Tilly had to smile. ‘I loved them, one and all. How is he faring now?’

‘I’m afraid I can’t remember him as well as you can,’ Tilly said without self-pity. ‘I was very young when he succumbed to his injuries.’