The Soldier's Bride (11 page)

He’s missing Mum more than ever on this day, thought Letty, as she had done several times over the past few hours. Last Christmas Mum was here, with us. As ill as she was, her presence filled this flat. And now all that was left was her memory, in every cup, every saucer, in the vases on the piano, in the humblest duster Letty used to polish the furniture with. Mum gazing out from the photograph Dad refused to put away, expression unsmiling as required by the camera though her eyes smiled, the pose military for the purpose of the photographer yet something behind it radiating warmth.

Emptiness surrounded Dad, even with his family about him, cloaked him in a sort of aura, and whatever irritation Letty had felt with him a moment ago disappeared completely. Like her sisters she was adjusting to her loss, it was in the nature of things. They were young. She had David, her sisters their husbands, each ready to challenge or enjoy what life had to offer. Dad had no such panacea, could only look back, live in the past, still living with the dead who had shaped his life.

The telegram came as Letty was closing for dinner. Guessing its contents, she gave the boy sixpence and raced upstairs, tearing open the flap as she went.

‘It is!’ she laughed, reading excitedly. ‘Lucy’s baby! A girl! Six-thirty this morning, seven pounds eight ounces. A whopper for a girl. She’s called Elisabeth Lucilla. Oh, I’m so pleased for her!’

‘Long as they don’t call ’er Lizzy.’ Taking the telegram from her, Dad read it for himself.

‘She won’t shorten it. Spelt with an “s” too,’ Letty said with conviction. Nothing common for Lucy, living in posh Chingford.

‘Be nice ter go over ter see ’er,’ Arthur mused out of the blue as they finished the sausage and mash Letty had kept warm over the range.

Clearing the plates, she looked at him in amazement. ‘You mean that, Dad? You’d travel all that way? The weather so cold and all?’

Unhooking the poker from its stand in the hearth, she vigorously raked at the moribund coals in the grate until the flames began to flicker grudgingly. ‘We’d have to go by train. And we’d have to close the shop for the day.’

Arthur reached up, propped the telegram on the mantelshelf, sank into his chair before the now blazing fire.

‘Can’t afford ter lose money closing up. It’d ’ave ter be Sunday.’

Sunday? Letty’s heart seemed to plummet. With an action that was slow and deliberate her father took his pipe from its rack, his tobacco pouch from a tin box beside his chair. The smooth age-blackened leather had so absorbed
the taint of its contents over the years that the room was instantly filled with the pungent-sweet reek of Navy Cut which every evening he would cut from a plug with a penknife over a sheet of newspaper spread on the table, paring it into suitable slices and rubbing it between his palms into shag to fill the pouch for the next day.

The poker poised in her hand, halfway to its stand, Letty watched him fill the pipe, hands manipulating pouch and bowl together until the bowl was filled. Rewrapping the pouch over itself, he plucked a taper from the narrow wooden case hanging by the hearth and reached it into the coals, bringing the flame to his pipe, sucking at the stem, forefinger expertly tamping the tobacco, the flame plopping audibly with each suck.

Contented, he tapped the taper out against the grate, replaced it still gently smoking in its holder beside the rest, and sat back in his chair to puff a cloud of blue smoke into the air.

Wordlessly, Letty watched the ritual with cold anger growing inside her. Her whole being sensed the satisfaction with which he had made his statement. He knew well how precious her Sundays were to her. He’d been testing her, she was certain, in making the statement. Yet she knew few shopowners would allow themselves to take any other day but that. And she was duty bound to go with him, could not let him travel all that way on his own. He was playing on it.

That evening she scribbled a note to David, dropping it in the post the same night hoping to be in time to save him a fruitless journey.

He would understand how heavily duty fell on her
shoulders, but as the train steamed slowly out of Bethnal Green Station on the Sunday morning, she thought dismally of those precious hours lost to her.

Beyond the soot-grimed carriage window, her breath steaming up the inside of the square panes, the day had a cold grey look. Snow lay thin on the roads they passed, on roofs, in the bare patches of back yards, bleak empty flower beds poking through black and lumpy. A world that was black and white with leafless trees dotted here and there – like birchbrooms in a fit, as her mother used to say of anything that had a stark and standing up look to it.

‘We’re stupid going on a day like this,’ she said morosely, leaning back on the hard leather seat. ‘We should have waited for a better day.’

‘There’s ain’t no better day than today,’ she heard Dad mumble from within the heavy Chesterfield coat he was wearing.

In the freezing half empty carriage, he looked grey with cold. A thick scarf pulled up to his cap, hands thrust in woollen gloves, he looked like a bundle jerking stiffly from side to side to the sway of the train as he stared stolidly at the three sooty faded prints of watercolour landscapes above the seats opposite. In the first-class carriages there were mirrors as well as pictures, and nice lamps too, and blinds. Third class never had any cheeriness.

‘Thought you’d be pleased ter ’ave me go out,’ he went on. ‘Been naggin’ at me enough ter get meself out, ain’t yer? Got yer way now.’

The bantering note surprised her and he even offered her a warm smile, the way she remembered from the past with
such a flood of love, that her lips too parted in an equally warm smile.

Perhaps she was wrong thinking him unreasonable to want this day to see his new grand-daughter? Perhaps in most things he was not really being deliberately unreasonable? Perhaps it was she, grown so raw and touchy with wanting to be David’s wife, who construed everything Dad did as solely to dig at her?

She settled back philosophically. Very well, this Sunday she would not be seeing David. There was always next Sunday to look forward to.

That wonderful prospect warming her soul, Letty forgave her dad for whatever it was she ought to forgive him, magnanimously, totally, and looped both her arms about one of his for warmth in the cold comfort of the railway carriage.

His day out did Dad no good at all, a chill putting him to bed for over a week, and keeping her running up and down with medicine, menthol rub, bowls of broth – all on top of looking after the shop.

The housework going to pot, the flat looking a mess, she sent a frantic note to Vinny to come and help. After all, Vinny in Cambridge Heath Road was only a short tram ride away. Albert came over to say that Vinny wasn’t feeling well herself, that little Albert had the start of a cold too – neither of which Letty in her frantic state of mind believed as she battled on alone.

It was several weeks before Dad was really well enough to get up. He sat crouched in front of the fire, complaining.
Trying to do everything herself drew Letty right down and worried the life out of David.

‘Get someone in to look after the flat,’ he said decisively, taking charge.

‘We can’t afford it,’ she said, swallowing pride with an effort.

‘Don’t be silly. I’ll pay for it.’

But Dad would have taken this as charity. ‘I’ll ask if Mrs Hall might help me out with an odd day here and there,’ she said.

Mrs Hall, pleased to be asked, was only too willing. In she came, shawl, straw boater, black boots, red face, gravel voice and all and took over. Despite her dictatorial manner, Letty could have kissed her.

But even when Mrs Hall finally withdrew her services, seeing Dad on the way to getting over the worst, he remained constantly under Letty’s feet, creeping about the place as if he were an old man. She was never free of him. Only when shopping could she breathe easily, drawing in great gulps of the cold fresh air of approaching spring; then, and in the shop. She derived much pleasure from being in the shop, especial satisfaction in buying, haggling over things brought in, judging their quality, pricing them, the triumph when her price was met and she saw pleasure on her customer’s face. And there was always Sunday afternoon to look forward to, when the shop closed and David came.

‘Then when
are
you going to tell him?’ David’s voice trembled with barely concealed anger.

‘I don’t know!’ she wailed back at him

They had been sitting, quite contented, on one of
Victoria Park’s benches in the weak April sunshine when the row had blown up out of nothing, some perfectly innocuous remark she couldn’t even recall now. Something about going to see Mum’s grave, she thought. And before they knew it they were at each other, David bringing up her lack of courage at Christmas in telling her father of their plans to marry, and threatening that if she wouldn’t tell him, he would, and soon!

‘I can’t go on dangling on your string,’ he’d said cruelly. ‘When are you going to tell him?’ Immediately provoking tears even as she snapped back at him spiritedly, ‘I don’t know!’ a deep fear beginning to loom that she was in danger of losing David if she didn’t look out.

Since Christmas when his impatience at her reluctance to display the ring had been all too evident, he had been decidedly distant, and she couldn’t blame him. She had always thought herself a woman of spirit, but in this she had failed him; had failed herself. Of course he was disappointed, but it still wasn’t fair to expect her to make choices, to make her decision and just go off and marry him, leaving Dad to fend for himself. Just thinking of Dad trying to cope on his own made her squirm inside.

‘I can’t see as our marriage could ever be happy under circumstances like that,’ she fought to explain, through her tears. ‘Me knowing I’d left him in the lurch as if I didn’t even care, and feeling guilty about it for the rest of me life. And I would, you know. I’d be unhappy, and I’d make you unhappy because I was. I want to marry you, David. But it’s not easy with Dad, feeling I can’t leave him. And it’s not fair, asking me to choose between you. I just can’t. You’ve
known what it’s like living alone in a home that was once so happy. You still don’t like being in your house on your own after … after …’

She trailed off, uncertain whether harking back to his own grief was a good thing. Then, to her surprise, he caught her, and hugged her to him. Even gave a low chuckle, bringing the row to an abrupt end.

‘Hasn’t it occurred to you,’ he chided gently, as if what he had to say had occurred to him long ago, ‘that if you wanted, he could come and live with us? I could look for a house with an extra room and he could be on his own or spend any time he wished with us.’

‘But that’s not fair to you!’ Letty pulled away to gaze sceptically at him. ‘It’s not what most people starting married life would want to do. You don’t really want to put up with having my dad with us?’

‘I’d put up with anything to make you happy, my sweet darling,’ he said with conviction.

‘Oh, David,’ she sighed, all her misery gone in a single sweep. She drank him in with her eyes. ‘Why didn’t we think of that before? It’s the answer to everything.’

Such a simple solution! Before going down to open up the shop on the Monday morning, she screwed up all her courage and told her dad outright that David had asked her to marry him, would be coming as soon as she said yes to seek his permission formally. She said she wasn’t prepared just to go off and leave her father all on his own and so David had thought of a way where Dad wouldn’t be lonely. She said it all in the face of his stony silence and even stonier stare.

She told him what David so generously and selflessly proposed for him, and all the time her confidence dwindled little by little and prepared herself for argument. But she didn’t expect such a bitter response.

‘Yer askin’ me to leave ’
ere
– the ’ome yer mother died in? Yer askin’ me ter forsake her memory so’s your conscience is clear?’

She thrust that injustice behind her, keeping her voice level. ‘Dad, it don’t matter where we are, we’ll never forget Mum. Never.’

‘That’s mighty good of yer.’ Beneath the stiff moustache the lips curled bitterly. ‘But I prefer ter stay ’ere, where she died.’

Fighting not to lose her temper, she brought out the alternative, rehearsed against the likelihood of refusal. ‘If you like, Dad, we could live here.’

Thinking what David might say to that, her father’s outburst caught her unprepared. He turned on her so sharply that she flinched.

‘I don’t bloody well want you bringin’ anyone ’ere, sod-din’ well tellin’ me what to do in me own bloody ’ome!’

‘But he wouldn’t …’

‘I don’t want to ’ear another bloody word about it!’ he swore again venomously.

It wasn’t the venom but Dad’s swearing that shook Letty. He never swore at her, hadn’t in her life as she could remember. Not even when she’d caused uproar from Mum by coming in with clothes torn from climbing railings or shinning up lamp posts to hook a skipping rope over the bracket to swing on, or came home with hands filthy from popping
tar bubbles in the road in summer. He had always stood by frowning but leaving Mum to do the shouting and walloping, had cuddled her afterwards when Mum wasn’t looking, one hand around her shoulders pulling her briefly to him, helpless as she was before Mum’s asperity. He’d never lost his temper with her, never sworn at her in his whole life.

She had often heard him, of course, come out with a mouthful down at the Knave of Clubs with his mates, good round cockney oaths, but he had always maintained a civil respect in front of women, said that swearing in any shape or form in women’s company didn’t make a man any more a man.

To hear him now tore at her like a verbal cudgel beating about her head, bruising, splitting the skin of her own self respect.

‘You bloody well listen ter me fer a change! Time something was said about this. I ain’t ’aving ’im and ’is fancy manners around me fer the rest of me life. Next thing yer know, I’ll find meself bein’ wheeled around in a bleedin’ barf-chair, told what ter do, where ter go, ’ow ter think. I’ll ’ave yer to know this is
my
’ome. I do what I please in it.’