A Summer Promise
Contents
Yorkshire, 1938
Maddy Hebditch has been living in poor conditions with her cantankerous grandmother since she was orphaned when she was very young. And although life is hard, Maddy has her friends Alice, Marigold and Tom to help her.
Together the four spend their summers exploring the Dales and making plans for the future.
Until war breaks out and everything changes.
Maddy joins the ATS, where she is recruited for one of the most dangerous jobs a woman could do in wartime: work on the ack-ack sites.
All four face dangers as the war worsens, but when Tom is terribly injured Maddy’s world falls apart ...
Katie Flynn
has lived for many years in the north-west. A compulsive writer, she started with short stories and articles and many of her early stories were broadcast on Radio Merseyside. She decided to write her Liverpool series after hearing the reminiscences of family members about life in the city in the early years of the twentieth century. For the past few years, she has had to cope with ME but has continued to write. She also writes as Judith Saxton.
A Liverpool Lass
The Girl from Penny Lane
Liverpool Taffy
The Mersey Girls
Strawberry Fields
Rainbow’s End
Rose of Tralee
No Silver Spoon
Polly’s Angel
The Girl from Seaforth Sands
The Liverpool Rose
Poor Little Rich Girl
The Bad Penny
Down Daisy Street
A Kiss and a Promise
Two Penn’orth of Sky
A Long and Lonely Road
The Cuckoo Child
Darkest Before Dawn
Orphans of the Storm
Little Girl Lost
Beyond the Blue Hills
Forgotten Dreams
Sunshine and Shadows
Such Sweet Sorrow
A Mother’s Hope
In Time for Christmas
Heading Home
A Mistletoe Kiss
The Lost Days of Summer
Christmas Wishes
The Runaway
A Sixpenny Christmas
The Forget-Me-Not Summer
A Christmas to Remember
Time to Say Goodbye
A Family Christmas
Available by Katie Flynn writing as Judith Saxton
You Are My Sunshine
First Love, Last Love
Someone Special
Still Waters
A Family Affair
Jenny Alone
Chasing Rainbows
All My Fortunes
Sophie
Harbour Hill
The Arcade
We’ll Meet Again
The Pride
Katie Flynn
For Ken Mack who helps others without thought for himself and always has a cheerful smile.
Once more I should like to thank Jean Hughes for helping me to get a picture of life in the ATS; how those girls stuck the conditions and the work I shall never know, but I take off my hat to them. Thanks also to Carol Hainstock for telling me about the Ripon Hornblower and the limestone caves as well as some of the beauty spots (which I could reach) for which the Yorkshire Dales are famous.
Dear Reader,
I started writing this particular book when I decided to have a bit of a break. My friend Carol highly recommended the Yorkshire Dales, so Brian and I set off to have a look at a part of the country we seem to have missed, and were immediately enchanted. Not only is it beautiful and magical but, as I soon discovered, it is believed to be the setting for a book I have always loved;
The Water Babies
by the Reverend Charles Kingsley. I immediately got out my illustrated version of the story and began to research, which was a joy. Just find yourself a beck in the Dales, and there are a great many to choose from, and look into the depths of the water, and if you have a good imagination you will immediately begin to see tiny figures going about their business. When Tom became a water baby he was four inches high, so when Maddy begins her search and embroils her friends in that same search she is looking for a tiny boy quite easily mistaken for a flickering trout or some other denizen of the not-so-deep waters.
From then on my characters began to make themselves felt. I saw with awe the Malham Cove cliffs down which the little climbing boy was thought to have descended and I, who have no head for heights, did not wonder that he came ‘all over queer’ in the cottage of the kind old lady.
But I digress; my characters were growing up and leading their own lives, very different lives from those conjured up by the Reverend Kingsley. There was Maddy looking after her cross-grained old gran and the neighbours and friends who take over her care as Maddy, now an adult, joins the ATS as a ‘girl gunner’ and moves away from her beloved Dales.
So in this book, you can get to relive your childhood and learn about the far from glamorous life of women in the Second World War.
I do hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!
All best wishes
Katie Flynn
MADELEINE HEBDITCH, SECURE
in her little truckle bed in the room at the farm which had been hers all the time she had lived here, was fast asleep and dreaming. It was a familiar one – the dream of the dresses – and sometimes she thought it was more like memories than a dream, so real was it and so happy at first, and then spiked with such a cruel sense of loss.
The dream always started logically, with little Madeleine no more than three or four years old, certainly too young to have started school, and dressed in a wonderful pink frock with a wreath of tiny roses on her straight and shining hair. Her mother was trying to pin the wreath securely, but the roses did not wish to remain upon her daughter’s small head, and every time she stood back exclaiming ‘That’s fixed it!’ Maddy would move, the wreath would slide off and the two of them would collapse into giggles.
Later in the dream she was in a church and knew that she was at a wedding and must behave with decorum, for she and another girl of about her own age were both bridesmaids and train bearers. Solemn as judges, they dared not even smile until the ceremony was over and they were being led by their mothers out of the churchyard and into the hall where the wedding breakfast was already spread out on long trestle tables.
Then the dream changed, and for a moment the scene was obscured by mist. The pink dress had disappeared and Maddy was wearing school uniform, a gingham dress in a rather dowdy shade of brown, and when she put her hand to her head there was no wreath of roses but only two tortoiseshell hair slides to keep stray ends of hair off her face. Her mother, wonderfully pretty in a pale green silk dress, had hold of her hand and was murmuring that everyone had to go to school, that she was going to the very best school in Southampton and she must try to be happy there. ‘We could have sent you to a boarding school, but Daddy and I could not bear to part with you for a whole term at a time, so you’re going to be a day girl. You’ll come home every afternoon to our dear little house by the docks, and when Daddy gets shore leave he’ll join us the minute he can,’ she told her daughter. ‘And every night when I put you to bed I’ll tell you another episode of the story you love the most.’
Maddy had been sucking her thumb as she always did when relaxing, but now she removed her thumb with a plop and spoke for the first time. ‘You mean the one about Tom, the poor little chimney sweep, who became a water baby?’ she said hopefully. ‘That’s my favourite of all your stories. And don’t forget, Mummy, you promised that when Daddy next had leave you would take me to water baby country so I might see little Tom for myself.’
Click. The scene changed again. Now they were in Daddy’s new car. She was in the back with the beautiful picnic basket whilst Mummy sat in the passenger seat and Daddy drove. They were on their way to visit Maddy’s grandma who lived on a farm in the Yorkshire Dales and would show Maddy the animals and birds she kept, and perhaps they might even see a water baby! And Maddy had leaned forward and tugged Daddy’s shoulder, asking him if they were nearly there, and the car had swerved and crashed into a wall and no matter how often she dreamed the dream she never expected the terrible crash or the screams. Terror had gripped her, but when her mother shouted at her to run as far from the car as she could she had scrambled out of the wreck and tried to pull her parents free, but she was only five, and before either could be moved there was a belch of flame and a great deal of screaming and Maddy felt herself lifted bodily and carried away from the car though she fought to get free, to return to her parents. But she remained cradled in a strange person’s arms and bidden not to look. Only she had, of course. Had seen the flames higher than a house, had heard someone saying it was the petrol and adding that no one could survive such a conflagration. She had continued to fight her captor, screaming: ‘Mummy! Daddy!’ But the arms only held her tighter.
‘It’s too late, sweetheart,’ her rescuer had said gently. ‘They’ve gone; be thankful that you, at least, are still alive.’
But she had not been thankful. Her parents were her raison d’être and without them life held no charm, and the pain of her loss was so great that she could not face it. She knew that her happy life was over and that what was to come was now her responsibility and hers alone. As the woman bore her away she knew there would be no one now to tell her bedtime stories, to tuck her up, to walk through the quiet streets of Southampton to deliver her safely to school.
Click. The scene changed again; this time she was wearing a drooping black dress, far too large for her, and the quiet select streets of Southampton loomed out of the mist and became the farmyard at Crowdale where an old woman waited by the kitchen door to take her in. ‘I can’t promise her much except food, clothing and an education at the village school,’ the old woman said. ‘And in return she can give me a hand about the farm.’ She scarcely so much as glanced at Maddy. ‘Now that her parents are dead I reckon I’m her only living relative. I’m not fond of children, but you needn’t worry – I’ll do right by her, see she’s brought up to be of some use in this world.’ She had turned to Maddy. ‘Is that all you’ve got? One tiddy little suitcase? Ah well . . .’ she had looked disparagingly over Maddy’s clothing and buttoned shoes, ‘I expect the rest of your gear will be sent on later. Have you got any clothes suitable for farm work? You don’t want to muck up your Sunday best.’
‘No,’ Maddy said in a tiny voice. She plucked the black dress. ‘They gave me this to wear at the funeral. My aunt Jerusha says it’s good stout material . . .’
Her grandmother interrupted without apology. ‘Aunt she calls herself, does she? Well aunt or no aunt, she was asked if she would take you on and she said she couldn’t, so you’ll have to make do with me.’ She had given Maddy a tight little smile. ‘Come along in, girl. I’ll show you your bedroom.’
And then there was a sense of terrible sadness and Maddy awoke to find tears running down her cheeks.
Lying in her small bed, as she had so many times in the past, Maddy tried to recall the dear little house by the docks, and the school she had attended for so short a time, but without success. She knew, of course, that there had been a car crash, but her knowledge ended there; she could remember nothing prior to being plucked from the burning wreckage, save that they had been on their way to visit her gran.
She had asked Gran, of course, told her she had nightmares, but Gran had merely shrugged. ‘You’ll outgrow ’em,’ she had said placidly. ‘Don’t worry your head about it. Now let’s get on with our chores or we shall be behind all day.’
1938
MADDY CAME OUT
of the old farmhouse at a stealthy trot. She had no wish to alert Gran to the fact that she had left the house a great deal earlier than usual, but if there was one thing at which Gran excelled it was sleeping. In fact, when Maddy had tiptoed past the door of her room, the only sound from within had been that of resounding snores, interspersed with the little mumblings and chokings which escape from someone deep asleep and probably dreaming.
Maddy smiled to herself; she could not help it. So much for getting up early and traversing the stairs as if each one were booby-trapped. She might have worn climbing boots and stamped loudly on every step as she landed on it, and Gran would have continued to snore.