A Christmas Promise (9 page)

‘Oh, Mum, what a wonderful cake. You have outdone yourself this time!’ Tilly clapped her hands with glee. ‘It’s been so long since I tasted birthday cake.’

‘It’s not one of those cardboard covers over a pancake effort, is it?’ Nancy asked.

‘No, Nancy, it is not,’ Olive answered, giving their neighbour a hard stare for ruining the moment; she had stayed up long after everybody had gone to bed to make this cake. Having managed to squirrel away enough dried fruit when it was available, she had bartered with neighbours who were only too pleased to swap a little sugar or margarine for a chicken egg.

As she had not been expecting Tilly home, it hadn’t been ready for her arrival, but everything turned out in the end, except she could not find birthday candles for love nor money, although a compromise had thankfully been reached.

In the centre of the cake, thinly iced, as sugar was so scarce, there was only one candle. Well, it wasn’t a candle exactly, but a taper such as she lit the oven with. Olive had cut it down to cake candle size after she had scraped the wax off to make a wick. But the illusion was perfect and, now, as she proudly held the cake aloft, the house reverberated to voices ordering Tilly to make a wish.

I wish I was Mrs Drew Coleman.
Tilly silently wished, her eyes closed, and then, looking at Rick, who was smiling at her, she immediately regretted her wish. She must put Drew behind her once and for all.

‘What did you wish for?’ Janet, one of her ATS pals, asked, but Tilly wasn’t letting on.

‘It’s a secret,’ she said enigmatically before blowing out the candle to a rousing chorus of, ‘Hip-hip … hooray!’ Olive couldn’t join in as the lump in her throat wouldn’t allow it, although she could not recall a prouder moment, and after saying a little prayer of thanks for her daughter’s safe home-coming, she quickly busied herself getting plates for the cake.

‘Oh, Mum, you have given me the best day,’ Tilly said, tears running down her cheeks. Then, impulsively, she and her mother embraced and burst into another deluge of happy tears.

‘Oh, would you look at us,’ Olive said through her tears as she scrabbled up her sleeve for her handkerchief. Her tears weren’t necessarily for her daughter’s birthday, but they were for Tilly. Quickly, she dried her eyes before offering to cut everybody a slice of cake.

It was the least she could do to take her mind off the terrible thing she had done to her only darling daughter. And if she was any kind of a mother she knew she would confess to knowing that Drew had been in London all this time. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t make her daughter’s twenty-first birthday memorable because of a lie!

‘Having a good time, darling?’ David asked, glad to see the old familiar smile light up Dulcie’s face. She had been so forlorn since her mother died and she needed something like this to cheer her up. He had approached his specialist in Harley Street to see if anything could be done in ‘the old wedding-tackle department’, as his surgeon had called it. The doctor had sounded hopeful when he said there was a lot of research being done regarding war wounds. He also said there was an operation that David might like to try and, looking at his beautiful wife now, David knew that he would stop at nothing to make her happy.

‘I certainly am, thank you, my love.’ Dulcie smiled to her husband, who sat on the sofa behind the door while she stood by the fireplace, her foot tapping to the music on the wireless. She was glad that Agnes had offered to take the two babies upstairs for a little nap as things were a bit smoky and very noisy down here. Giving David a smile reserved only for him, she knew her days of dancing the night away and fighting off the GIs in the West End were just a happy memory. She had something more enduring now, and there was only one thing that would make her more content than she ever thought possible and that was if she and David could be like any other married couple. She longed for the nearness that only a loving relationship with such a wonderful man could bring.

‘Penny for them?’ Tilly asked Dulcie.

‘Oh, it’s our Edith.’ Dulcie didn’t want to go into detail about her and David. ‘Playing up again, as per!’

‘Married to some big impresario from the theatre, I heard.’ Tilly smiled, knowing this was a rumour spread around by Dulcie after she found out her sister was pregnant by her ex-boyfriend, an American fighter pilot called Wilder, who had been killed on a flying mission.

Dulcie looked a little shame-faced and said in hushed tones, ‘You won’t say anything, will you, Tilly, but I could hardly tell someone as straight and above board as your mum that my only sister was one of those unmarried mothers.’

Dulcie, Tilly noticed, said all of this without a hint of irony, although her own baby had been born ‘early’.

‘I’d have been the talk of Article Row if Nancy ever got wind of our Edith having a baby out of wedlock! And now the cheeky mare is talking about travelling abroad and singing for the troops with that ENSA.’

‘Oh, we had them visit when we were—’ Tilly stopped suddenly, knowing she could not divulge where she had been posted. ‘Never mind,’ she said, and then changed the subject back to Edith.

‘What is she going to do with her son?’ Tilly knew that even though they had their spats, the Simmonds family were quite close when their backs were against the wall.

‘That’s what I wanted to know,’ Dulcie said, patting her platinum-blonde curls, ‘but if I’m honest I know exactly what’s going to happen to little Anthony.’ She smiled now in that knowing way she had, which seemed to imply whoever she was talking to could read her mind. Tilly looked puzzled and Dulcie leaned forward. ‘We’ll take care of him, same as we’ve always done – I’ve put the feelers out with David to see how the land lies adoption-wise …’

‘You want to adopt your sister’s child?’ Tilly was astounded at the idea.

‘It’s more common than you think, Tilly,’ Dulcie said knowledgeably. ‘Well, we have had him almost since the day he was born. I sometimes imagine I’ve got twins. I love Anthony the same as I love Hope – they come as a little team – they’ve even got their own way of talking to each other and they understand every word …’ Dulcie threw her head back and roared with laughter at the thought. ‘I’m telling you, they make my day complete, the pair of them.’

‘And how is David feeling now? I heard he had to go back into hospital,’ Tilly said, always interested in the lives of the girls who lived or used to live here, and whom she considered her family now.

‘Oh, yes, that.’ Dulcie chose her words carefully. ‘He had to go in and have his legs looked at.’ Then she looked over to where her husband was sitting on the sofa talking to the vicar and she gave him her broadest smile.

David was a satisfied man. He was happy with his lot. However, as he looked at his beautiful wife now he wondered how she could ever be truly happy with a man like him. Surely she wanted more from their marriage? A lot more than he had been able to give. Dulcie was young, she had vitality and beauty, and lit up a room just by walking into it, he knew, and when she spoke she had her audience spellbound. He was a very lucky man and knew he would do anything to make her happy. As the vicar excused himself and went to replenish his tea cup, David decided that if she wanted a son then he was going to do everything in his power to give her one.

An overwhelming sensation was mounting inside David. He remembered the surgeon telling him that the return of his virility may be slow, and it had been a while now since he had had his operation. David vaguely remembered the feeling from the old days; however, this new awareness was different. He had never experienced it before – not even with his first wife – this potent and powerful feeling: an unquenchable desire to be with his wife.

Momentarily, David and Dulcie’s eyes locked, and he knew what the new feeling was. It was an intense love. He had blocked out the pain that he had felt when Dulcie told him of the night in the shelter during an air raid when she, a virgin, had been taken against her will.

David worried that she would still relive the night when their daughter, Hope, was conceived and recognised that she was the only good thing to come out of that terrible night. He and Dulcie were lucky that they could discuss their concerns, but was she ready to make that first tentative step into a fully functioning marriage? He didn’t know.

As the afternoon turned to evening, Dulcie came and sat next to him on the sofa and he put his arm around her, risking good-humoured banter from the other guests.

‘Shouldn’t you two be getting your hot-water bottles ready around now?’ Rick laughed. ‘An old married couple like you should be well past the cuddling stage, I should imagine.’

‘Well, you imagined wrong, old boy.’ David laughed, and drew his giggling wife even closer, giving Nancy cause to tut and shake her head at their open show of adoration.

‘Disgraceful,’ she muttered. ‘You wouldn’t catch me and Mr Black behaving in such an outrageous way. There is a time and a place for everything.’

‘I’m still wondering if she’s ever called him anything other than Mr Black?’ Tilly whispered to Agnes.

‘It’s been a long day.’ David’s eyes told Dulcie that he adored her with every fibre of his being. ‘It’s getting late, darling, we will have to take the children home.’

She nodded as his voice whispered right into her heart and, her eyes locked into her husband’s meaningful gaze of adoration. Dulcie delightedly surmised it was also going to be a long, glorious night  … 

‘Who’s the best girl in the whole wide world? Tilly Robbins, that’s who,’ Rick laughed, and slid down onto the arm of the sofa, a bottle of beer in one hand and a half-smoked cigarette balancing a precarious line of grey ash in the other.

Tilly gave a tight smile. She really liked Rick – he was the most lovable rogue she had ever known – the only problem was, she wasn’t sure she wanted to commit to a rogue, lovable or otherwise, and he seemed much keener on her than she was on him. He told her daily that he thought she was smashing girl but, try as she might, she could not reciprocate. The words just would not come. They laughed and went to dances and the pictures, and enjoyed the same things – but there was something missing.

When he was incapacitated and needed her, she was there for him and she always would be – as his friend – but as for being his girl, Tilly didn’t feel the exploding fireworks, the vitality, or even the zing that she had experienced in the past with Drew. She and Rick shared many things but she imagined that the girl who married him would have to have stamina to put up with his effervescent personality, his rapier wit and his love of all things ‘dodgy’. Whereas, she was brought up to believe that you got what you paid for – and nothing else.

Rick clearly wanted more than to be good friends, and she wasn’t ready for that yet. Indeed, she might never be ready to give herself completely to him, and it was wrong of her to keep him hanging on in the hope that one day she would succumb to his obvious charm.

She could never love anybody the way she loved Drew Coleman. And if she couldn’t have him, she didn’t want anybody. She was scared, knowing that she couldn’t trust any man ever again because she had no intention of being hurt like that again.

‘I won’t be a moment,’ Tilly told Rick, wishing he would go home now. ‘Did you have a nice day?’ Olive asked brightly.

‘The best, Mum. You did a wonderful job – as always.’

As the last of her guests left the house Tilly felt tired, and emotionally drained too. All she wanted to do was crawl into bed and go straight to sleep until she had to travel to Whitehall tomorrow. She and the other three ATS women had received instructions to report to the War Office when their leave was over, but Tilly had been trying to put it out of her mind.

Retreating to the bathroom, she locked the door behind her as the gentle chatter of her mother and Audrey Windle floated from the kitchen below. Peace at last, Tilly sighed, running cold water into the basin before splashing her face and feeling the cooling water ease the raging heat from her cheeks and eyes. Tilly couldn’t cry – it would spoil Mum’s day.

Going into her bedroom, Tilly saw, through blurry eyes, the birthday presents that littered her bed.

‘You should have been wedding presents …’ she whispered, and the party that had gone on downstairs should have been her and Drew’s wedding reception. If only things had been different …

‘If I had a pound for every “if only”, I would be a very rich woman today,’ she said to her reflection in the dressing-table mirror. Then, standing tall, she took a deep breath. No! She had to put all that behind her now. She was an adult now. A new leaf would be turned.

Looking out of the window at the pale blue sky the next morning, Tilly saw that the tranquil Row, silent now, had miraculously been left untouched by enemy fire. She had to make the most of her last hours at home for her mother’s sake, and, taking another deep breath, she tried to think happy thoughts; be thankful for everything she had, instead of dwelling on what might have been. There had to be a bright side, she couldn’t cave in now, and like the rest of the country she had to carry on. Although she was apprehensive of what the future might bring, she was also excited. And in that excitement she vowed to take her mind off Drew Coleman – wherever he may be.

‘I had a wonderful day, Mum,’ Tilly said, when she came downstairs, ‘the best ever.’

‘I am so glad you were able to get home,’ Olive smiled, pushing thoughts of Drew Coleman to the back of her mind and swallowing down her guilt. ‘I thought it was very good of the army to let you come home for your twenty-first birthday – I must write and thank them.’

‘You do that, Mum.’ Tilly gave a watery smile, thinking that if she wasn’t being shipped out to somewhere then she certainly wouldn’t have been home for her birthday. However, if her mum wanted to believe her only daughter had gained a special dispensation to come home and celebrate, then, Tilly smiled indulgently, who was she to ruin the illusion?

‘Mum, would you undo the clasp on my pendant, please?’

‘Aren’t you going to take it with you?’ Olive tried not to look hurt.