A PROMISE TO KEEP

Chapter One

   ‘Thursday!’
   Thursday Tilford, enveloped in a mass family embrace, laughed and cried and kissed all at once, and finally begged for mercy.
   'You’re suffocating me! I can’t breathe –’ They stepped back and she found herself with just her mother’s arms still around her. Thursday, the tears brimming from her eyes, held her close for a moment.
    'Oh, Thursday,’ Mary said at last, pulling a hanky from her sleeve and wiping her wet cheeks, ‘it’s so good to have you home again.’
   'It’s good to be here. But it’s not for long, mind,’ Thursday warned her. ‘I’ve only got a few days’ leave and then it’s back to Haslar. The war’s not over yet by a long chalk.’
   'No, but it could be soon,’ Jenny piped up. She had gone back to her favourite position on the hearthrug where she had been playing with little Leslie. ‘They say there’s something really big going on all along the south coast – tanks and all sorts heading for the beaches, and –’
   'And you didn’t ought to be talking about it!’ her father said sharply. ‘For goodness sake, our Jenny, the war’s being going on for nearly five years, you ought to know by now about walls having ears and all that. I hope you’re not opening your mouth like that when you’re working down at the hospital.’
   'Course I’m not,’ Jenny said in an injured tone. ‘It’s just in the family. Anyway, Thursday’ll be there to see for herself soon. I bet Portsmouth’s one of the main places the invasion’s going from –’
   'Jenny! That’s enough.’ Walter gave her an angry glance. ‘Family or not, we didn’t ought to discuss it. It’s too easy to let something slip when we shouldn’t – not that we know any secrets,’ he admitted, ‘but you just don’t know who might be listening or what they might pick up on. Least said, soonest mended.’ He opened his tobacco pouch and stuffed his pipe, pressing it down hard with his thumb. Jenny folded her lips wryly and shot Thursday a comical look. Thursday felt her lips twitch. Not much had changed at home, she thought. They might all be two years older than when she had last seen them and Jenny training as a nurse at the Royal Infirmary, but Dad was still doing his best to rule the roost and Jenny still cheeking him and getting away with it.
   'Well, never mind all that,’ Mary said, giving Thursday’s arm a little shake. ‘Come and sit down, love, and I’ll make a cup of tea. We’re all pleased to see you back safe and sound, and that’s the main thing. I can’t tell you how worried I was, all the time you were at sea.’
   'And we’re all waiting to hear about Egypt,’ Jenny added. ‘Aren’t we, Dizzy?’
    Denise nodded. She had pulled Leslie back on to her own lap and he leaned into her and slid his thumb into his mouth. Thursday knelt beside her cousin and gazed at her little godson, marvelling at his soft cheeks and long lashes. ‘I’ve missed two whole years of him,’ she mourned. ‘He was still a baby when I went away – he’s a real little boy now.’
   'Three years old,’ Denise said proudly. Her face clouded a little. ‘And his daddy hasn’t seen him since he really was a baby.’ She looked at Thursday. ‘How was Vic, when you saw him? He’s hardly told me anything.’
    Thursday hesitated. She’d still not decided how much to tell Denise about the injuries her young husband had received in Africa. ‘I’ll come round and have a chat tomorrow,’ she said quietly. ‘We can’t talk properly in this scrum. But he’s all right, Dizzy, and he talked about you and Leslie all the time. You don’t have to worry about that.’
    Her uncle Percy cleared his throat. ‘The main thing is, he’s safe, or as safe as anyone can be these days. And Denise knows she’s always got me and her mother to turn to.’
   'That’s right,’ Flo agreed. ‘It’s just as well she stopped at home with us when Vic was called up. She can carry on with her job and I can look after the baby. Not that he’s any trouble at all, the dear little soul,’ she added, chucking her grandson under the chin so that he giggled and curled himself more deeply in his mother’s lap.
    Thursday smiled and turned to take a cup of tea from her mother. ‘And how about our Steve, have you heard from him lately?’
   'Oh yes, he writes regular. He doesn’t say a lot, mind you, they’re not allowed much paper for a start, but he seems to be going on all right and I don’t think they treat them too badly either in prison camp. They have football matches and get up concerts and that sort of thing, and we’re allowed to send parcels, when there’s anything to send, which isn’t all that often. I don’t think the food’s very good but at least he’s alive and more or less safe.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t like thinking of him treated like a criminal, but I don’t mind admitting I’d rather that than have him fighting.’
    Thursday nodded. The Tilfords were lucky that Steve was a POW. She thought sadly of her cousins Mike and Leslie – Mike posted missing, believed killed, at Dunkirk and Leslie shot down in his Spitfire. No wonder poor Auntie Flo thought the world of her grandson, named after them. He and Denise were all she had left now.
    It was obvious that Leslie was the apple of everyone’s eye. It seemed almost impossible to believe that Uncle Percy had refused to look at him when he was born. He and Flo had been horrified when Denise, at only fifteen, had admitted that she was pregnant, and furious with Vic even though he’d believed her to be eighteen. The fact that Denise had lied to him didn’t excuse him taking advantage, Percy had raged. They weren’t married, not even engaged, nor likely to be if Percy had anything to do with it. He’d wanted the girl sent away somewhere quiet to have her baby and get it adopted, but at this Flo had put her foot down. Out of wedlock or not, she told Percy, this was their grandchild, and it could be the only grandchild they’d ever have. They couldn’t, they just couldn’t, let it go to strangers.
    Walter and Mary had been just as dismayed. Girls who had babies without being decently married were ostracised, and the whole family tainted. Flo’s stance had surprised them – she’d always been one to worry about what the neighbours would say - but she’d been so determined that everyone had had to accept it, and with Denise flatly refusing to give up the baby Percy had been forced to agree to their marrying as soon as Denise turned sixteen. And as Mary had observed, babies brought their love with them. Even if they hadn’t been wanted, they all seemed to make themselves a place in the family, and little Leslie Michael Stephen – named after his two uncles and Thursday’s brother Steve – had been barely a fortnight old when he’d won his grandfather round. Even Vic, who had got his call-up soon after his son’s birth, had been accepted, especially by Flo who had never forgotten the way he had comforted her when she’d got the news about Leslie. As good as a son to me, she’d said, and refused to let Percy say another word against him.
    As Mary handed round the tea and a plate of biscuits, Thursday sat in her mother’s armchair, trying to get used to the feeling of being at home again after two years in Egypt. She looked round at the familiar room and the faces she’d missed so much. There’d been changes while she’d been away. The saddest was that her little dog, Patch, had died. Mary had written to tell her he was ill with distemper, and Thursday had known at once what the next letter would say. When it arrived, she’d left it unopened for a whole day, waiting till nightfall to read the bad news. Oh Patchie, she’d thought, the tears dripping on to the sheet of paper, oh Patchie. And she’d remembered how he’d come to her as a puppy on her twelfth birthday, struggling out of the cardboard box in which her father had brought him home and licking her face as she lifted him into her arms. He’d been with her during all her growing-up years, her special friend, rushing to meet her when she came home from school or work, sleeping on her bed whenever he could sneak up the stairs, keeping so close to her that Steve had once said he was glued to her leg. And now he was dead. Patchie. Her Patchie.
    Thinking about him brought the tears to her eyes again. Now she was home, it was as if he’d only just died, and the sorrow of knowing he would never rush to her again came as fresh as on the day she’d received her mother’s letter. Then, catching her mother’s eye, she blinked back the tears and smiled. I’ve cried for him once, she thought. I’m not going to spoil this homecoming by doing it all over again.
   'Is Auntie Maudie coming over? I want to see her before I go back.’
   'She’s on duty a lot this week. I thought we’d pop over to Ledbury on the train one afternoon. Day after tomorrow, if that’s all right with you.’
   'I’ll come too.’ Jenny suggested. ‘We can talk about operations and things.’
    Mary frowned. ‘You know I don’t like –’
    'It’s all right, Mum, I’m only teasing. But you can’t expect three nurses to get together and not talk about their job! I always have a natter with Auntie Maudie when I go over, and she’s sure to be interested in what Thursday’s been doing.’
   'Of course she will,’ Thursday said. ‘And I want to thank her again for the little nurse’s watch she lent me. Uncle Bill gave it to her in the first world war, and I’ve worn it all the time – it’s been a godsend on the wards.’
   'Well, so long as you don’t start talking about blood,’ Mary said, and everyone laughed. ‘Now look, we didn’t know just what time you’d be getting home today so I haven’t done anything special, just a few spam sandwiches, but we’re all here again for Sunday dinner. Your father’s going to kill one of the hens –’
   'Not Aggie!’ Thursday broke in, and her mother gave her an exasperated look.
   'No, not Aggie, I daresay she’ll outlive us all if you’ve got anything to do with it. One of the others, that you don’t know so well. And don’t go down the garden giving them all names – you know once they’ve got names nobody likes to eat them. And there’s plenty of veg from the allotment, and some soft fruit for pudding, so it’ll be a real old-fashioned Sunday dinner. When d’you have to go away again?’
‘I knew you’d ask that,’ Thursday said. ‘I’m just surprised you’ve waited so long – usually you ask the minute I walk through the door. “Hullo, Thursday, nice to see you, when are you going again?” Can’t wait to get rid of me, as usual –‘
   'Thursday! You know I didn’t mean that!’ Mary’s face was pink as everyone laughed again. ‘Oh, you’re awful, the lot of you. I can’t say a word without getting picked up on it… I only want to know so that I can make arrangements. And so I don’t wake up one morning to find you’ve gone.’
    Thursday gave her mother’s arm a squeeze. ‘You know I wouldn’t do that. And I’m only teasing, you know that too. I’ve got a week – so that’s next Wednesday, thirty-first of May.’ She stretched her arms, nearly knocking her cup off the arm of her chair. ‘A whole week at home! Luxury.’
   'Time to tell us all about Egypt,’ Jenny said wistfully. ‘I wish now that I’d volunteered as a VAD, instead of going for state registration and getting stuck here in Worcester. Would have done, if I’d know you could go to places like that.’
   'You’re better off as you are if you want to be a real nurse. We’re just dogsbodies most of the time, doing all the dirty work. Though we do get to do talk to the patients a bit more – the QARNNs just don’t have the time. But we’ll never be trained like you are.’ Thursday took another ginger biscuit to show her appreciation, knowing that her mother would have saved these specially for her return. ‘Anyway, what I want to know now is what’s been going on while I’ve been away. How about Mrs Hoskins, is she home or is she off with that fancy man of hers again? And what about that boy who got sent to approved school, is he back terrorising the neighbourhood? I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.’
    Jenny giggled. ‘You certainly have! Freddy Barnes went into the Army and he’s won two medals already – his mum’s like a dog with two tails. And as for Mrs Hoskins, she’s had so many fancy men even she’s lost count, and –’
   'That’s enough, Jenny!’ Mary said sharply. ‘You know what we think about that sort of gossip. And I’m surprised at you for encouraging her,’ she told Thursday. ‘I’d have thought you’d have learnt better, being with those other girls. They tell me a lot of the VADs are real upper-class.’
    Thursday grinned. ‘They are. But they like a good gossip as much as anyone else. It’s just upper-class gossip, that’s all. You should hear what they say about the lords and ladies they know and what goes on in big houses with al those bedrooms. Why, Louisa Wetherby once told me –’
   'Thursday!’ her mother expostulated, and the girls dissolved in giggles. Thursday winked at her sister and cousin, and whispered, ‘Tell you later,’ and then said aloud, in a demure voice, ‘Sorry, Mum. Let me get you another cup of tea, and then you can tell me all the things you want to tell me about, all right?’ She got up and took her mother’s cup, then bent suddenly and kissed her. ‘And d’you know what? It feels much more like being at home when you tell me off than when you treat me like an honoured guest. So just carry on that way, will you? Because that’s what I’ve missed most.’
    Mary shook her head at her. ‘Stop it, Thursday, you’ll have me in tears again. As if I’ve ever told you off! Didn’t tell you off enough, that’s what your father always used to say.’
    Thursday smiled and went out to the kitchen. She filled the kettle and put it on the stove, then stood leafing through the pile of cookery books and pamphlets her mother had collected. Potato Pete’s Recipe Book: Two Ways of Reconstituting Dried Eggs: Try Cooking Cabbage This Way… She turned to find her cousin Denise standing beside her. The younger girl looked at her.
   'You will tell me the truth about Vic, won’t you? What happened to him and – and how he is now? I’m sure there’s more than he’s told me, and I’ve got to know.’
    Thursday laid her hand on her cousin’s arm and nodded. ‘I will. I promise. But you mustn’t worry, Dizzy. He’s just the same as he ever was, really. And he misses you and Leslie all the time.’
    Denise nodded and sniffed, brushing her hand across her eyes. ‘I miss him too. I really do love him, Thurs, I always did. It wasn’t just a – what did they call it? Infatuation? We really did love each other. That’s why I lied to him about my age. I was so scared I’d lose him if he knew the truth.’
   'Well, that’s all over now.’ Thursday warmed the teapot with a drop of hot water from the kettle. ‘You’re married and you’ve got your little boy, and one day soon Vic’ll come home and you’ll be able to get a place of your own and settle down properly.’ The kettle boiled and she made the tea. ‘Go and get the cups, Dizzy. And I’ll come and see you tomorrow and tell you all about when I saw him in Egypt.’
    She stood for a moment alone in the kitchen, listening to the chatter from next door. There would be a lot of talking to do in the next few days, a lot of stories to swap and a lot of reassurance to give. And then she would be going back to Haslar, the naval hospital on the shore of Portsmouth harbour where she had first become a VAD. Another kind of homecoming, in a way. I wonder how much will have changed there, she thought. And I wonder what’s going to happen next. Something big, Jenny said – perhaps even an invasion. Can this really be the beginning of the end of the war, after all this time?
    Denise came back with the cups and Thursday began to fill them with tea. Just for now, she’d forget all about it. Just for now, it was enough to be at home in Worcester with her family.

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