Annie's Promise
Authors: Margaret Graham
Tags: #Chick-Lit, #Family Saga, #Fiction, #Historical, #Love Stories, #Loyalty, #Romance, #Sagas, #War, #World War II
Contents
In the mid-1950s, Britain looks forward to a prosperous future. And Annie Manon has come home to the North-east to keep a promise.
With husband George and her brother Tom, Annie is eager to start a new life for her family. And with her fledgling fashion business she looks forward to providing work for the women of Wassingham.
But not everything is rosy with the prospect of renewed hope. As well as her painful wartime memories, Annie must cope with an accident that cripples her husband, and she must deal with the increasingly unreasonable behaviour of their daughter Sarah.
When Sarah leaves home for London, Annie is torn between love for her only child and the need to keep her promise to Wassingham’s womenfolk.
Margaret Graham has been writing for thirty years. Her first novel was published in 1986 and since then she has written a further twelve novels, and is now working on her fourteenth. As a bestselling author her novels have been published in the UK, Europe and the USA.
Margaret has written two plays, co-researched a television documentary – which grew out of
Canopy of Silence
– and has written numerous short stories and features. She is a writing tutor and speaker and has written regularly for Writers’ Forum. She founded and administered the Yeovil Literary Prize to raise funds for the creative arts of the Yeovil area and it continues to thrive under the stewardship of one of her ex-students. Margaret is now living near High Wycombe and has launched Words for the Wounded which raises funds for the rehabilitation of wounded troops by donations and writing prizes.
She has ‘him indoors’, four children and three grandchildren who think OAP stands for Old Ancient Person. They have yet to understand the politics of pocket money. Margaret is a member of the Rock Choir, the WI and a Chair of her local U3A. She does Pilates and Tai Chi and travels as often as she can.
For more information about Margaret Graham visit her website at:
www.margaret-graham.com
For Sue
My then eleven-year-old daughter, Annie, whose birth spurred me to write my first novel
Only the Wind is Free
(reissued as
After the Storm
), had long been trying to persuade me to write a sequel – so that at last she could know the fate of her namesake Annie Manon when she returns to Britain after the Second World War.
Annie’s Promise
is due entirely to her nagging! But I’m immensely grateful to her because it was a great pleasure to become involved with Annie Manon again, a character imbued with the essence of my mother – another Annie.
My thanks to my Aunt Doris who spent twenty years in India and was so generous with her memories and memoirs and – as always – Sue Bramble and her staff at Martock Library. Also, my thanks to Chatterley Whitfield Mining Museum, Stoke-on-Trent and their splendid guides – all retired miners – and to Beamish, The North of England Open Air Museum.
I especially want to thank certain friends (who wish to remain anonymous) for their help with drug experiences in the 1960s.
Young Sarah Armstrong felt the sun on her face. The heat had caused the lettuces in the allotment to look limp and parched. She hugged her knees, resting her chin on them, laughing as her cousin Rob Ryan flicked grass at his brother Davy, and groaning when her other cousin, Teresa Manon, tightened her mouth and said, ‘When Davy smiles like that his face creases and it looks as though his freckles meet. You die when that happens.’
Sarah looked at her and wanted to punch her nose. ‘Still a bundle of laughs then, Terry.’
‘My mother doesn’t like you to call me Terry, especially now I’m ten, but then you wouldn’t care about that. My mum said you’d lower the tone when you came home.’
‘That’s why Davy’s smiling, because I’m back and I’m lowering the tone, but then we’re only nine – we’ve got another year to improve.’ Sarah pulled a face at Davy. ‘It’s a grand smile, look, it’s made the sun come out, or has it come out because I’m here?’ She gave a regal wave and ducked as the boys bombed her with grass darts, then chased her round the raspberry canes, netted against the birds. Davy caught her and pulled her to the ground, tickling her until she screamed. Then Rob stuffed grass down his shirt. Teresa had not joined in, but she never did. She just pursed her lips together like a prune and sniffed.
Sarah lay on the ground, laughter still in her throat, closing her eyes against the sun. She was so glad to be back here in the north east, in Wassingham with its slag heaps
and back to backs, and Grandma Betsy, Uncle Tom, Aunt Gracie and the boys. It was July 1956, her father Georgie was out of the Army, and her mother Annie was starting her textile business. They had come home and would live in her mother’s house in Gosforn an hour’s drive away. Unfortunately Teresa’s family lived in that town too, but you couldn’t win them all.
‘Give us a swig of water, Rob,’ Davy called.
Sarah rolled on to her side and watched as he flapped his shirt and the grass scattered to the ground. She loved Davy, he was three months younger than her and they’d always fitted somehow.
‘Give us a minute.’ Rob was dragging the bottle from the bag.
Davy sprawled on the ground beside her, and she watched him flick back his auburn hair. ‘Your mum said we could go for picnics, now I’m back,’ Sarah said.
Rob tossed them the water bottle and Davy drank from it, throwing his head back. His throat moved and suddenly Sarah felt as parched as the lettuces, and hungry. When would lunch be ready? She looked towards the entrance to the allotment but there was still no sign of her mother.
She sat up to take the bottle from Davy, and put it to her lips. The water was warm. Then she passed it to Teresa who wiped the neck carefully with her handkerchief before sipping once, twice. She patted her mouth and replaced her handkerchief. Only then did she hand it back to Rob who looked as though he could kill for a drink.
No, Teresa, you haven’t changed a bit, have you, Sarah thought, hugging her knees again, looking down at the cracks in the ground which her mother, as a child, had thought went all the way to Australia. Sarah liked the idea of sitting where her mother had once sat. She looked up again at the old shed which smelt of creosote and the nettles which her dad said attracted butterflies. He had sat here too, when he was her age.
She closed her eyes and saw the shape of the shed against
her lids. Would it be roast beef for dinner? Her mum said no one cooked Yorkshire pudding like Grandma Betsy and she was right. She looked towards the lane again. No one was coming. A growing girl could die of hunger. It was all right for the grown ups, they’d all be there, sitting round Betsy’s table drinking beer or tea and dipping crusts into the fat before Betsy made the gravy. ‘You’ll want to play,’ her mum had said as she clattered them out of Betsy’s kitchen, ‘and the grown ups will want to chat.’ Davy had said, ‘No, we want to eat.’
Rob was standing up now, looking towards the lane too. ‘I’m so hungry I could eat a horse. Where’s your mam then, Sarah?’
Davy aimed a grass dart at him. ‘Sit down, it’s only been half an hour, it’ll be a while yet. Let’s have a gang, what d’you think? A gang for the summer now that Sarah’s back.’
Teresa said, ‘Gangs are common, they’re for council school children. We’re not allowed them at the convent.’
Sarah remembered her mum’s words as they’d driven over that morning. ‘Be nice to Teresa, we’re back with the family and she might feel put out, you know, jealous. She’s been the only girl for so long and if we’re coming back to the north for good we don’t want to spoil it. I’m being serious, Sarah. I know you don’t get on with her very well but you’ve got to try. Families must stick together.’
Sarah dug her chin down hard on to her knees, swallowing the words ‘toffee nose’ and saying instead, ‘But this would be a gang of cousins.’
‘Teresa’s got a point, but it’s not common, it’s just childish,’ Rob said, looking bored and playing jacks with the pebbles he carried everywhere.
Davy held his nose and pulled an imaginary chain. ‘You’re only eleven and it’d be real good so stop that click-clicking.’
Sarah smiled. ‘There you are, Terry, it’d be a way of getting together …’
Teresa was standing up, dusting off her dress. ‘Anyway, they’re not really family. My father says their dad’s not really his brother, he’s Grandma Betsy’s bastard.’
Sarah watched Teresa’s face screw up against the sun, she saw the redness on her forearms where the sun had caught her skin, the green stains on her bum from the dock leaves which her cousin had so carefully placed between her and the ground.
She didn’t watch Davy’s face, or Rob’s, she just felt the silence all around and the anger which was choking her. She moved towards that smug cruel face, but then Rob sprang to his feet, hauling up Davy, grabbing Sarah’s arm.
‘Davy’s right. It’s a canny idea to have a gang and if Teresa doesn’t want to join us she can go and get stuffed. Who needs a convent snob anyway?’
‘That’s right,’ Davy shouted at Teresa. ‘And we know our dad’s a bastard, everyone does, thank you very much, and it doesn’t matter to anyone except you. And anyway, Barney Ryan was brave, he was killed in the trenches and he loved our grandma, Da told us and he would have married her, he would, so there.’
Sarah stood with them, watching Teresa, hating her, but then she saw the uncertainty in the other girl’s face, the flush in her cheeks, the shame. Perhaps her mother was right and Teresa was jealous? Perhaps she was just hitting out because she was frightened of being pushed out. Sarah had felt like that sometimes when her da had been posted to another area and she had had to leave her friends behind. She had hated the letters they’d written talking of new friends, it made her feel alone, angry, frightened. Sarah touched the other girl’s arm.
‘Look Teresa, be part of this, we’re family, we really are and anyway Betsy’s really kind to be our grandma too. She needn’t be. She really only belongs to the boys but she treats us all the same. You know she does. Come on. Our parents wouldn’t like it if we weren’t friends.’
Sarah saw Davy shake his head at her, his eyes still angry but she said again, ‘Come on, Teresa, they sent us here to play.’ She looked towards Davy again and now he nodded and so did Rob.
‘Yes, come on, Teresa, Sarah’s right,’ Rob’s voice was tight.
Davy was looking towards the shed, the fence with its spare tyres, its old doors, then at the bar at the entrance to the allotment. ‘OK, we’ll all be in it, but first we’ll have to pass a test to prove we’re good enough. That’s fair, isn’t it?’
Sarah nodded, looking at Teresa, who paused, then said, ‘I suppose so.’
‘Right,’ Davy said, pointing to the allotment entrance. ‘We all need to swing three times over the bar without putting our feet to the ground.’
Sarah grinned. Her da had taught her when they’d been back on one of their holidays. It’d be easy.
Teresa was looking down at her dress.
Sarah pitied the girl. Uncle Don would never swing over a bar let alone teach anyone how.
‘I’ll help you. I’ll keep your feet off the ground.’ Sarah volunteered, touching Teresa’s shoulder.
Teresa looked at her, her eyes travelling over the dungarees that Sarah wore. ‘It’s all right for you. It’s always all right for you, you’re wearing those stupid dungarees your mother makes.’