All the Sweet Promises

ELIZABETH ELGIN

All the Sweet Promises

Dedication

To the Wren ratings of the 3rd & 7th submarine flotillas Holy Loch & Rothesay 1939–1945

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

About the Author

Also by the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

1

Vi looked again at the letter half-hidden behind the sepia vase on the kitchen mantel and wondered bitterly whose fault it had been. Some seaman pissed out of his mind in a dock-road pub, like as not. Ale talk for listening ears. Careless talk, that cost lives.

‘Taking ammo to the Middle East. Danger money this trip, so fill yer boots, lads. Sup up.’ Somewhere, someone had opened his mouth and Gerry had paid; him, and fifty others.

The letter was addressed to Mrs Violet Theresa McKeown and she took it down, holding it between finger and thumb. She didn’t take out the folded sheet. There was no need. Since it arrived four days ago, every last word was beaten into her brain.

‘… and it is with regret we must inform you that your husband Gerald Patrick McKeown has been reported missing, believed lost at sea as a result of enemy action on the night of 23rd/24th April, 1941 …’

There was more, of course, about sympathy and sorrow and about writing again when they had anything more to tell her. She hadn’t been able to read the signature at the bottom of the page, and that seemed wrong, somehow. A man from the shipping line tells you your husband has been lost at sea and you don’t even know his name. There were the initials GWE/BW typed at the top of the letter but they hadn’t helped. Dead is dead, no matter who signs the warrant, though it might have been nice to think that BW had felt compassion when she typed that letter and a bit of respect, maybe, for Stoker Gerry McKeown of the Mercantile Marine.

Vi slipped the envelope into the attaché case packed ready for the shelter. All her important things were in that case: her marriage certificate and wedding snaps; her Post Office bank book, rent book and ration book. And Gerry’s last letter.

‘… Thanks for a fine leave. You are the best there is and I love you, Vi. Take care of yourself …’

She closed her eyes tightly. Gerry didn’t often use her name. Girl, he called her, but this last time he’d called her Vi and written that he loved her, and he’d never done that before. Not ever. But he’d known, hadn’t he, that this trip was his last.

‘Come home to me,’ she’d whispered when he left. ‘Promise you’ll take care. Promise, Gerry.’

But it hadn’t been up to him. The SS Emma Bates’s name was on that torpedo, so he hadn’t had much of a choice.

She reached for her mother’s photograph and laid it in the case with the rest of the things. She was glad Mam hadn’t lived to see another war. The last one had brought her trouble enough. Four kids to rear and a husband coughing away his lungs from mustard gas. Da had died a year after the armistice, so they hadn’t needed to give Mam a pension.

Vi looked around the kitchen and wondered why she had scrubbed the floor and cleaned the window. Tonight there would be another raid, sure as hell there would, and everything would be covered with muck and dust again. Tonight, if the bombers came, it would be for the seventh night in a row; a whole week without sleep. London was almost at a standstill, said the man in the cigarette queue, and now it was Liverpool’s turn. The Germans, he reckoned, were trying to wipe out the docks, yet somehow the city centre seemed to be getting the worst of it – and all the shops and offices and streets of little houses.

Vi closed her eyes. Mother of God, don’t let them get my house. They’ve taken my man and my job; let me keep my home.

The gate handle clicked sharply and she drew aside the lace curtain. A man crossed the yard and rattled the door knob.

‘Are y’there, Vi?’

‘Richie. Come in.’

Richie Daly had sailed down the Mersey in the same convoy as Gerry and now he was home. Vi’s heart contracted painfully then settled into a dull ache.

‘All right, then? Bearing up, are you?’

‘Just about.’ She didn’t like Richie Daly. A shifty-eyed little devil, and his wife always expecting.

‘I see they got Lewis’s, Vi.’

‘Yes. Two nights back.’ No need to remind her. She’d worked there, hadn’t she?

‘So how are you making out?’

‘I’ll manage. There’ll be other jobs. But what brought you, Richie?’

She knew why he had come and what he would tell her, and she didn’t want to hear it. Yet still she asked for news of the Emma Bates.

‘Well, bein’ as how I was there, like.’ He drew out a chair and settled his elbows on the table. ‘Bein’ as how I saw what happened that night …’

‘Yes?’ She sucked in her breath, angrily, noisily.

‘Well, old Gerry didn’t suffer, Vi. Be sure of that. The Emma was just astern of us in the convoy and keepin’ station fine, even though she was a coal-burner.’

‘She’d keep station all right, with Gerry shovellin’.’

‘Yes.’ He stared fixedly down. ‘Well, one minute the old tub was there and the next –’ He slammed a fist into the palm of his hand. ‘They was carryin’ ammunition, see. They wouldn’t know a thing, any of them. Commodore didn’t even stop to look for survivors, so don’t worry yourself none.’

But she did worry and she needed to know every last detail.

‘Where did it happen?’

‘Two days out from Halifax. Canadian destroyer escort had just left us.’

‘But I thought he was going to Alexandria.’

‘Naw. The Emma left Liverpool without cargo; took RAF bods to Canada then loaded up with cordite and shells for the return trip. It was a clear night. We was all sittin’ targets. Always at night those bastards do it. It’s a dirty way of fightin’, but it was quick for old Gerry.’

‘Yes,’ she said dully. ‘Quick.’

‘Ah, well.’ He got to his feet, pushing the chair legs against the floor tiles with a grating that set her teeth on edge. ‘I’ll be goin’.’

‘It was good of you to come, Richie.’

Liar. You hate him for coming because he’s told you that Gerry isn’t just missing, but dead.

‘’s all right. Just thought you’d rest a bit easier if you knew he didn’t suffer none. Well – I suppose I’d better get goin’…’

That’s right. Shove off. I don’t want you here. It’s Gerry I want. It’s him should’ve been coming home tonight.

‘Hey, listen.’ He turned, foot in door. ‘What about a drink, eh?’ He reached out, placing a hand on either shoulder, pulling her nearer. ‘I’ll be in the Tarleton about nine; will I see you, Vi?’

‘No, you’ll not.’ She shrugged away his hands with an exaggerated gesture. ‘At nine o’clock we’ll all be in the shelter, like as not. And won’t your wife be needing a hand when the sirens go? Getting near her time again, isn’t she?’

‘Aw, don’t worry about Lil. It’s you I’m thinking about, Vi. A well-set-up woman like yourself must be – you know …’ He was grinning. A dirty little grin.

‘No, I don’t know. Must be what?’

He was too stupid to catch the contempt in her voice or heed the warning that narrowed her eyes.

‘Well, missin’ it, like. Y’know. A bit of the other.’

‘Oh, I see. And you’re offerin’…?’

‘That’s right.’ His eyes brightened and he reached for her again, a hand trailing her breasts. ‘I’ve been at sea a long time. Come on upstairs, Vi.’

He pressed nearer and she felt the hardening in his loins. There were small ginger hairs on his chin and his groping mouth stank of beer. Disgust shivered through her, and stepping out of the reach of his hands she hissed, ‘Get out of my house, you mucky little sod! Bloody get out, or I’ll swing for yer!’

The sepia vase hurtled across the room and she heard the crash as it shattered against the tiles, heard the slamming of the door and running footsteps. Then the red mists cleared and she sank to her knees, picking up the pieces, moaning softly. Gerry’s mam, God rest her, had given her that vase. ‘Maybe you can find a use for it, girl.’

The tears came then; great gasping sobs she had been unwilling and unable to cry since the day of the letter. They came from the deeps of her heart and rose to a wail of anguish.

‘Gerry lad, why, why? You said you’d come home. You promised.’

She knelt there long after the sobs were spent, hugging herself tightly, eyes closed. The floor was hard and cold and her knees throbbed with pain, but still she crouched there. Gerry was dead and she was alive. Sore knees were a small part of her penance.

Stiffly, reluctantly, she rose to her feet and began to sweep up the litter of broken china. She had never liked that vase. Probably Ma McKeown hadn’t liked it either.

‘Thanks, Ma.’ A small, sad smile lifted the corners of Vi’s mouth. ‘I found a use for it.’

The smile flickered and faded. Since the arrival of the letter a coldness had grown inside her, and a pain in her throat that wasn’t really a pain but a hard, tight ball of anger. It got in the way when she had tried to cry yet it allowed no room for self-pity. All her feelings had been for Gerry, with the coal-pitted hands, who had never harmed a soul. Gerry, with the bitty hair, whose right foot turned in when he walked. Gerry, who had loved her.

Sighing, she lifted the dustbin lid and watched the brown china pieces slip from the shovel, then raised her eyes to the May sky. It was hard to believe that very soon that innocent sky could throb with the sounds of death. Liverpool was taking a beating, and rumours were free for the asking on every street corner and in every food queue. There had been rioting down by the docks, some said, but no one knew exactly where; and Mrs Norris swore they were throwing the dead into mass graves, and half of them good Catholics without the last rites.

Vi wished she could fire a gun and shoot down those bombers if only for what they had done to Gerry, but it was easy to be brave in this small, precious house when the sun still shone in the evening sky and a west wind blew away the stench of bombing and burning and broken bodies. It was a different matter when the sirens wailed and she hurried, dry-mouthed, into the clammy cold of St Joseph’s crypt. Fear came easily then, even though it was the deepest and safest shelter for streets around. And when the all clear sounded, even though the realization that she had survived yet another night sent relief singing through her, there was the agony of wondering what she would find when she returned to Lyra Street. Mary had told her not to be a fool, to come to her house and get a decent night’s sleep. Mary lived in Ormskirk, and so far they had been lucky there. But Vi needed to be in her own little home. It was all she had left now, so she had thanked her sister and left it at that.

Breathing deeply, fighting sudden fresh tears, she stared at the whitewashed walls of the tiny, tidy yard. Gerry was gone, but his rose still grew there. Last autumn he had planted it.

‘A red rose for Lancashire, girl.’

‘But Gerry, it’ll never grow.’ Not here, she had thought. Not in this airless back yard with its cat-fouled alley, yet now it bore shining green leaves and four fat flower buds – and Gerry would never see them.

The fingers on the clock of St Joseph’s church pointed to eight, though it had long since ceased to chime the hours. Chiming clocks and the ringing of church bells were forbidden for the duration of hostilities, or until the invasion came. They’d ring out loud and clear then.

But maybe there wouldn’t be an invasion. It was nearly a year since Dunkirk, and if they’d been going to come, surely they’d not have waited this long.

The potman at the Tarleton had it all worked out, though. The Germans would invade, he said. The air raids on London and Liverpool and Birmingham and Clydeside were to knock out communications and close roads and railways and make everybody so pig-sick that they’d welcome Hitler with open arms. He’d gone on saying it until people complained and the landlord was forced to tell him that such talk amounted to the spreading of gloom and despondency; it was almost as bad as careless talk and would land him in the Bridewell if the police got to hear about it.

Eight o’clock. Soon it would begin to grow dark, and she hadn’t seen to the house yet.

Since the bombing had started, the ritual checking of number seven Lyra Street had given Vi comfort. It was all she had left of Gerry, now. The ugly little terrace house was her husband, her lover and the child she had never conceived. It was, she supposed, her last link with sanity.

Almost without thinking she reached down to turn off the gas and water taps, then climbed the narrow stairs and pushed open the door to her right, smiling at the riot of roses that covered the walls. Her bedroom wallpaper never failed to give her pleasure. It was like awakening each morning in a garden in the country, though Gerry had cursed something awful, matching up the roses and rosebuds on the uneven walls. They had ignored the seriousness of the news bulletins that night and taken a trip down the Mersey on the Royal Iris to celebrate the finishing of their bedroom, though Mr Chamberlain had told them next day that they were at war with Germany. So Vi called them her last-day-of-peace roses and vowed they would remain there until the war was over, even if it lasted four years, like the last one had done. Now those roses reminded her of Gerry, who had pasted them there, and she wondered if she would ever find the courage to scrape them off.

Sighing, she began to fill a carrier bag with essentials; an insurance, she supposed, in case the worst happened. Shoes first, then a towel, soap and toothbrush; and stockings and knickers, of course, and room enough left for her handbag, gas mask and a warm woolly scarf.

There was nothing to check in the front parlour; hardly anything to say goodbye to, for the room was empty of furniture and must remain that way until the shops would once again have chairs and sofas and rugs and curtains to sell.

Vi walked across the echoing emptiness to gaze at the mantel shelf and the reminders it held of Gerry. A vase from Shanghai; a pair of plates, hand-painted with gold dragons, from Hong Kong and, on his last trip but one, the two goblets. They were heavy and sparkled when she held them to the light, and she thought they were the most beautiful things she would ever own.

‘But whatever’ll we do with crystal glasses, Gerry?’

‘We’ll drink out of ’em, thick ’ead,’ he assured her solemnly. ‘When this old war’s over we’ll have wine every Christmas, and that’s a promise, girl.’

So she had placed them on the mantel with the vase and the dragon plates, and Gerry had promised her two more, next time he docked in Cape Town. Now, not knowing why, she lifted them down. Usually she never took anything but essentials to the shelter, but tonight, after Richie Daly had blundered into her kitchen, she needed the comfort of those glasses. Gently she placed them in the carrier bag.

‘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.’

Two days ago, in this very room, Mama. Charlie got annoyed with me because I wouldn’t let him. Called me frigid and said all the other chaps’ girls were willing enough, and would it matter all that much if he put a bun in the oven for me? So I let him, Mama, right there on the sofa, and it wasn’t a bit nice, and in the end Charlie went off in a huff …