The Promise

  It had been hard enough getting that far out into No Man’s Land on his own, but bent double with a dead weight on his back, making his way through thick mud, with shells exploding all around him, it was almost impossible. He plodded on, however, every muscle and sinew aching with the effort. At one point, when he almost fell sideways into a water-filled shell hole, he wondered why he was doing it.

  A couple of hundred yards from the line French stretcher bearers appeared. ‘You’ll be all right now, Jimmy,’ he said as they drew closer. ‘I’ll leave you now, got to get back and join my men.’

  The stretcher bearers lifted Jimmy down from his back and on to their stretcher. ‘Prenez bien soin de lui. Son nom est James Reilly,’ he said.

  As the stretcher bearers reached the line and other men came forward to help, they turned to look at the Englishman’s rescuer. They knew he was wounded too, he’d had a gash in his tunic sleeve and fresh blood was running down his hand. But he was running at full tilt, leaping over shell holes and around obstacles towards the German line. They shook their heads in wonderment. ‘Il doit être fou,’ one said.

  ‘What was the name of the man who carried me back here?’ Jimmy asked some time later, after he’d been given morphine for the pain. He could only remember fragments of what had happened earlier. But he felt he knew the man’s face and that he’d called him Jimmy.

  ‘Je suis française,’ the nurse said, and shrugged as if that was the end of the matter.

  ‘He was French,’ Jimmy said. The man might have spoken to him in English but he knew he’d been wearing the French blue uniform. It was too hard to make any further attempt to make the nurse understand him because his mind was growing cloudy.

  They moved him again later. He heard someone say Hôpital de Campagne, which sounded like a field hospital. The pain came back from ruts in the road as he was being driven in an ambulance with other men, and he intended to ask about his injuries, but they gave him another injection before he could and then he felt too sleepy to care.

  It was daylight when Jimmy woke again, and he was in a place that looked like a barn with rough stone walls. In the light that came through two small windows, he saw there were perhaps twenty or more other men in there with him.

  He was thirsty and tried to sit up, but to his horror his left arm was gone; there was just a heavily bandaged stump above where his elbow had been. A nurse saw him trying to move and she came over, putting her finger to her lips to tell him to be quiet. She helped him to sit up and drink some water, and it was only when he looked down at the bed that he saw just one mound instead of two beneath the covers.

  ‘They’ve taken my leg and my arm off?’ he blurted out, pointing to where they had been.

  She nodded, and patted his remaining hand.

  He lay down again after his drink, closed his eyes and tried to tell himself this was just a nightmare. Both his leg and his arm felt as if they were still there, he could even wiggle his toes and fingers. But when he slid his hand down under the covers there was only one leg on the right. And he couldn’t make his left arm move either.

  Biting back tears, he lay there listening to the low moans and groans from the other wounded. There was no gunfire; whether that was a ceasefire or because he’d been taken far behind the lines, he had no idea. He could hear rain splashing down outside. It seemed to have been raining for weeks. He would get a Blighty ticket now, but how could he go home like this, a cripple?

  He’d be no use to his uncle in the bar. With an arm gone or even just his leg he might have been able to adjust, but with them both gone, what chance was there for him? And what of Belle? Would she want him like this?

  Chapter Twenty

  Belle and David were washing out their ambulance at the end of the day when Captain Taylor came towards them.

  ‘Reilly!’ he barked. ‘Come to my office when you’ve finished that.’

  Belle looked at David as the officer walked away. ‘What have I done now?’ she asked.

  ‘Maybe he’s going to give you some leave,’ David suggested.

  ‘I can’t see that, there’s plenty of other people been here longer than me,’ she said. ‘Besides, they need every pair of hands just now.’

  ‘Well then, you’d better go and find out what he wants. I’ll finish up here.’

  Belle hurried over to the office, taking off her overall and cap as she went. Through the open office door she could see the captain sitting at his desk, but she hesitated, not knowing whether it was right just to go in.

  Fortunately he looked round. ‘Come on in and take a seat,’ he said. ‘Best close that door behind you.’

  He didn’t sound angry, but he seemed flustered as he straightened up his blotting pad, put the top back on his ink bottle and tweaked his collar.

  ‘I won’t beat around the bush,’ he said eventually. ‘I’m sorry, but this is bad news. I got a call earlier to say your husband was wounded several days ago at Ypres.’

  Belle gasped and turned pale. That was the last thing she had expected.

  ‘How bad is he hurt?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m afraid he’s lost both an arm and a leg.’ The captain’s voice softened in sympathy and he leaned nearer to her.

  Belle’s eyes filled with tears. She must have seen a hundred or more men with such injuries, and felt for them all. But this was her Jimmy, not just a stranger passing through.

  ‘I am so very sorry, Mrs Reilly, breaking news like this is never easy, but to a member of my team it is even worse,’ he went on. ‘Furthermore, I have to warn you that in the next day or two you will get a letter informing you your husband is missing, presumed dead. You must disregard this, as it was sent before it was known he was in hospital.’

  Belle just looked at him, not knowing what to say.

  ‘You see, it transpired that he was rescued by a French soldier during an assault,’ the captain explained. ‘He carried your husband back to the French lines on his back, almost certainly saving his life. But the French field hospital he was taken to didn’t pass on the information he was with them straight away. Hence the mix-up. However, earlier today, when it became known what had happened, the CO telephoned me to explain and ask me to prepare you.’

  ‘A Frenchman rescued him?’ Belle wiped her eyes on a handkerchief.

  ‘Yes. Strange, really, the French are known for gallantry in battle, but not for rescuing our fallen men. Your husband’s regiment was next to the French line, and I’m told that in the confusion of battle it is quite common for men to stray into another regiment’s patch.’

  ‘So will my husband be brought here?’

  ‘I would think so, but that isn’t certain. I did of course ask that he should be.’

  ‘Thank you for that.’ Belle got up. She wanted to get away from Captain Taylor before she broke down completely.

  ‘I will tell you which ward he’s put in when he arrives here. I am so very sorry, Mrs Reilly.’

  Taylor was by nature cold and starchy, but just the way he addressed her as Mrs Reilly instead of his usual mere Reilly was evidence he did feel for her and wished to convey his sympathy.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ she said, and left his office.

  Once outside Belle felt completely dazed. When Jimmy had first joined up she’d worried all the time about him, but after he was wounded at the Somme she supposed she had bought into his view that nothing further would happen to him. Besides, as far as she knew he hadn’t been at the front since then. It just didn’t seem possible that he’d lost a leg and an arm; it was too horrific to imagine.

  Stunned and feeling quite faint with shock, she wandered down a passage between two wards towards the hospital fence.

  Jimmy’s soldiering was over now, but this wasn’t how it was supposed to end. In so many of their letters they’d both written about what might come next. There had been the rosy little plan for a guest house by the seaside, and Jimmy often mentioned other places in England he’d like to see – the Lake District, the
Norfolk Broads and Devon – usually because he’d met someone from one of those places.

  They couldn’t do any of those things now. Once he was fit to travel he’d be sent back to England, and she assumed she would go with him. She couldn’t even begin to imagine how they would live back at the Railway; he’d never be able to manage the stairs, let alone work in the pub again. She might have dressed wounds, washed and fed patients and given them bedpans at the Herbert, but she’d never been in sole charge of someone with two missing limbs.

  She had so wished that something would happen which would solve her dilemma about whether it was to be Jimmy or Etienne she should be with after the war. Her dilemma was solved now, of course, as she certainly couldn’t even think of leaving Jimmy with such severe wounds. But fate was so cruel – why did it have to be something like this? Jimmy had done nothing to warrant such a catastrophic fate, or was this the ultimate punishment for her faithlessness?

  It was bad enough that she would have to go home and face the gossip about her; she felt certain Mrs Forbes-Alton had continued to spread her poison. Now added to that she would have to take care of Jimmy and live with all the problems that would bring, as well as her huge burden of guilt.

  But she knew this wasn’t a time for thinking about herself. Jimmy was her husband, she’d promised before God that she’d love him in sickness and in health. She must remember too that he’d never given up his search for her when she was snatched from the streets of Seven Dials. She must make up for her adultery by standing by him, loving and protecting him.

  It began to rain again, and in the distance she could hear the rumble of heavy guns, another reminder of what Jimmy had been through. Her thoughts turned to all those wounded she’d seen caked with mud, their haunted eyes reflecting the hideous nature of war, and her tears for Jimmy flowed.

  All the girls in the hut were full of sympathy for her when she eventually went back in, soaked to the skin. Even Sally’s eyes filled with tears as Belle told them her distressing news. But it was Vera who took charge, peeled off Belle’s damp clothes and helped her into her nightdress, then hugged her tightly and let her cry.

  ‘He will be able to get about eventually,’ she said soothingly. ‘He can have an artificial leg fitted. I’ve seen people with them and they manage just fine. You said he’s a patient man, and that’s all it takes.’

  Sally brought her a mug of tea and a slice of a cake she’d been sent from home. ‘My grandfather lost a leg in the Crimean War,’ she said. ‘He had a wooden one made, and he could get about as quickly as I could. But they make really good ones now, and while Jimmy’s convalescing they’ll teach him to use crutches and all kinds of things to help him look after himself.’

  Belle didn’t point out that Jimmy wouldn’t be able to use crutches with only one arm; she couldn’t when they were all being so kind and well-meaning.

  In the early hours of the morning, and unable to sleep, Belle wrote Etienne a final letter. She told him about Jimmy and said she knew he’d understand that it had changed everything and that her duty lay with her husband.

  There was so much more she wanted to tell him, that her heart felt as if it had been torn in two, that she would hold an image of him in her head till her dying day, but she knew it wasn’t right to say such things. So instead she finished up by saying she hoped he’d stay safe, and wished him happiness and good fortune when the war was over.

  It was a week later that Jimmy came in on the hospital train. Sally was the driver who picked him up at the station, and she gave Belle the message during the afternoon as they passed on the road.

  ‘He seemed cheerful and not in too much pain,’ she called out of the window. ‘Can’t wait to see you of course. I took him to Ward K.’

  Belle ran towards Ward K as soon as they’d finished work for the evening, without washing and changing first. She needed to get it over as she was scared. She might have seen countless men with monstrous injuries before, but this was different, it was her Jimmy.

  ‘He’s over in the corner.’ Sister Swales waved her hand towards the end of the ward. ‘But I’ll warn you now, he’s very low.’

  Sister Swales was not Belle’s favourite nurse. In her forties, she was stout, with sprouting hair on her chin, and she treated all the VADs and auxiliary staff with disdain. Belle had only helped on her ward once, and she was so dismissive that Belle had vowed never to go back. She even dreaded bringing new patients to Sister Swales’s ward as she was invariably rude. But it was said by the other senior nurses and doctors that she was one of the best sisters in the whole hospital.

  ‘Do you know if there is any reason for him being low?’ Belle asked.

  The Sister looked down her nose at Belle. ‘If you had lost two limbs I’m sure you wouldn’t be joyful,’ she said.

  ‘Of course not.’ Belle curbed her irritation as she needed the woman’s approval. ‘What I meant was, my husband is usually a very cheerful, stoic man, I wondered if there was a medical reason for the way he is.’

  ‘None whatsoever,’ she said. ‘Perhaps he’ll tell you what is troubling him. But don’t stay long, he needs rest.’

  Jimmy was lying in the bed in the corner staring at the ceiling. He didn’t turn his head as Belle approached. He had his right arm in the sleeve of his hospital pyjamas which were buttoned up, with the bandaged stump on the left inside the jacket. There was a cage under the bedcovers to protect the stump of his leg, and he had a still livid scar on his left cheek.

  ‘My darling,’ she said, her voice cracking with emotion, ‘I don’t know what to say. It’s so awful and I’m so sorry.’

  He turned to look at her and attempted a smile. ‘No reason for you to be sorry, it’s the lottery of war. But I’ll be no use to you now, it would’ve been better if I’d died from the injuries.’

  ‘Don’t say that,’ she said reprovingly and bent to kiss him. ‘I love you and need you and I can only be glad you are alive. This is a terrible shock to you and it’s no wonder you feel that way, but it’s early days yet.’

  ‘What does early days mean? You think I’m going to sprout a new leg?’

  His sarcasm was hurtful, yet she knew what she’d said must have sounded trite. But she couldn’t think of anything to say that expressed what she thought and might soothe him. What could anyone say to a loved one who had lost two limbs?

  ‘Of course not. Oh Jimmy, I can’t find the right words,’ she said despairingly. ‘It’s awful, horrible, but I know we will get used to it in time. Remember, I see injured men all the time. It’s surprising how some of them learn to cope.’

  ‘Spare me the pep talk,’ he said curtly and turned his head away.

  ‘Now look here, Jimmy Reilly,’ she said firmly. ‘This has happened, we can’t make it go away, so we’ve both got to learn to live with it. Don’t turn on me, I didn’t make you join up.’

  He didn’t answer, just stared at the ceiling.

  ‘If you aren’t going to talk to me and tell me all about it, then I might as well go,’ she said after a little while. ‘I’ve been working since seven this morning and I haven’t had anything to eat since midday.’

  He sighed. ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart,’ he said very quietly. ‘I always thought I was one of the lucky ones who were going to go home intact. I wasn’t even scared that day. I ran out thinking, get this over with and tomorrow I’ll be back behind the lines safe and sound. Then bang, a shell exploded. The force of it blew me off my feet.’

  She reached out and stroked his cheek. ‘Captain Taylor said a Frenchman rescued you,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, he did. He got me on his back and carried me. Strange, I could swear he called me by my name, but maybe I imagined that ’cos I was hurting like hell.’

  ‘You didn’t know him then?’ she asked.

  ‘No. At least I don’t think so. It was all hazy, I can’t imagine why he picked me up, we’re supposed to keep going on an assault. And I’d already seen a few Frogs hit and lying there in the mud.
I wondered today why he helped me and not one of his own.’

  ‘Well, I’m very glad he did,’ she said and kissed his cheek. ‘You’ve got to get yourself stronger and then we can go home.’

  ‘Nothing will ever be the same again,’ he said and his voice cracked and tears sprang up in his eyes. ‘I won’t even be able to wheel myself round in a chair as I’ve lost my arm too. I’m helpless now, Belle.’

  ‘Not helpless. Your right arm is fine, and depending on where they amputated your left one, you might be able to get around on crutches after a bit. Your mind, eyes, ears and voice all work, your internal organs are all fine. I’ve seen men much worse off than you.’

  ‘But how long will it be before you get tired of looking after me?’ he said. ‘I’m not trying to gain your sympathy, Belle, I’m just being realistic. I’m not a man any more, I can’t work and keep you. You’re young and beautiful, you shouldn’t be saddled with a cripple.’

  ‘I married you for better or worse, in sickness and in health,’ she said soothingly. ‘If it was me in that bed with those injuries, I know you’d take care of me. So why would you think I’ll grow tired of looking after you?’

  He just looked at her, his eyes which were usually so expressive now as cold as amber glass. ‘Go and have your supper,’ he said. ‘I’m glad I’m here now near you, and maybe tomorrow I’ll be more cheerful about everything.’

  Belle stroked his hair back from his forehead. She didn’t know what more she could say to him to reassure him they still had a future together. It all looked so bleak to her too. But she did know she intended to care for him, whatever that took.

  In the days that followed, if it hadn’t been for Vera and David, Belle felt she might just have fallen apart. Physically Jimmy was recovering well, there was no sign of infection in either of his stumps, but he swung from being withdrawn to the point where he didn’t want to speak to anyone, to being so angry he even shouted at the nurses. She was also told he was suffering from nightmares.