The Soldier's Bride (3 page)

She even managed a laugh, but not enough to allay embarrassment in those who knew that their arrival had put her to an inconvenience they could have avoided.

‘We’ve got ter start walking to the church in a few minutes,’ she went on quickly. ‘I’ll go and see how Vinny’s doin’. Her carriage’ll be ’ere soon. Arthur.’ She looked over to her husband, still puffing his pipe. ‘You stay with the bride and bridesmaids to wait for it. You ’ave ter be with the bride to give ’er away.’ She gave the company a broad smile. ‘Lot ter think about when it’s yer first.’

An outbreak of garbled conversation after a brief awkward silence following her departure. Making up their minds to get ready to leave, everyone began to draw together, face the door in a ragged group like a platoon of raw recruits, uncertain if they’d been given orders or not. Letty wanted to run after Mum with some odd idea of apologising, but Mum probably wouldn’t have had any idea why, so she stayed where she was on the far side of Lucy, away from David Baron.

She became aware of him watching her, his eyes softening with understanding. She felt he knew what was wrong with her mother, though no one could have told him. You didn’t talk about things like that, and if you did, only with family, and then only in a whisper, the word itself forbidding anything louder.

He seemed to know just how she was feeling too, but she hadn’t invited his sympathy and her reaction was to take immediate umbrage that a total stranger was seeing right into her soul. And because annoyance was an unreasonable reaction, she felt all the more put out, her face growing hot.

‘Who does he think he is?’ she hissed at Lucy, and heard her giggle. She risked a glance at him as her relations at last decided to jostle out through the doorway and down the stairs, her cheeks on fire when she saw he had come closer to her. Oh Gawd, what was he going to say to her? What could she say in answer? He probably spoke like a toff, and she … she’d probably make a real fool of herself …

She acted instinctively. Grabbing the arm of her fifteen-year-old cousin Bert, she gushed loudly, ‘Come on. Let’s go and tell Mum you’re all off now.’

Those guests intending to, finally left in the small hours, their footsteps echoing along a silent and deserted Club Row. Letty closed the door behind them.

‘I could kill you, Luce, honest I could,’ she hissed, bolting the door top and bottom, throwing the bolts home with fierce energy, taking her spite out on them instead of her sister. ‘Thank God he left early! I don’t know what he’d have thought, us ’aving a knees up. I would have died. That sort’s used ter sittin’ in a circle drinkin’ tea with his little finger stuck out, sipping champagne and nibblin’ lady’s fingers biscuits.’

She couldn’t imagine him bothering to come calling on her after tonight. She wouldn’t be seeing him again. Too much of a toff.

‘And been married an’ all!’

The sickly glimmer from the upstairs gas lamp guided them back through the cluttered shop that always smelled faintly musty. Lucy’s affronted gaze sought out Letty’s dim silhouette.

‘He’s not married now. It must ’ave been tragic, his wife dying, and him so young.’

Letty paused, her foot on the first stair. ‘What d’you mean, young? He was ten years older than me.’

Lucy paused too. ‘Well, he wouldn’t have been when he lost his wife, would he? It was four years ago. You make him sound like Methuselah. Ten years ain’t nothing. And he was ever so handsome.’

‘I didn’t think he was handsome,’ Letty retorted. ‘And what made you think I’d fancy someone second hand anyway? And his wife had a baby.’

‘Born dead!’ Lucy was rapidly becoming short-tempered. ‘Ain’t you got no feelings, Let? What he must’ve gone through, losing wife and baby all at the same time. And all you can think of is how
you
felt ’cos he’d been married and ten years older than you.’

To this Letty could find no reply. She’d been so busy trying to avoid David Baron when she’d discovered he’d been married once, the tragedy he must have endured had not really registered. Now, like a sudden thump in the chest, it did, and she felt so ashamed. But Lucy, overflowing with righteous anger, hadn’t noticed.

‘Ten years ain’t so awful. He had nice manners and talked nice like Jack. You don’t know what you want, that’s your trouble. Jack just mentioned he had this handsome friend, and I thought …’

‘All right!’ Letty cut in waspishly, and began mounting the stairs. ‘I should have been more sociable. But I wasn’t, so there!’ She slowed a little halfway up, Lucy coming up behind her. ‘Anyway, I don’t think he was that good-looking. His nose was too long, and he’d got lines at the corners of his eyes too.’

‘Laughter lines,’ Lucy interpreted.

‘Well, I never saw ’im laugh. All he did was look at me, all lah-di-dah like.’

At the top of the stairs, they paused to peer in at the men sitting around the parlour table at their game of pontoon.

Tense faces were lit by the ornamental oil lamp in the centre of the table, replacing the now demolished wedding cake; gone was the noise and laughter of an earlier game of Newmarket in which even the kids could take part, farthings given by parents to put on the four Kings, to be excitedly scooped up if they got as far as laying down a Queen of the corresponding suit. Now all that could be heard was the terse commands breaking an edgy silence. Buy one! Twist! Pay twenty-ones! Bust! And the chink of coins dropped on to a growing pile.

It had been a good wedding. Those who could play the piano taking their turn, everyone gathered around to join in the tunes. Uncle Will, maudlin drunk, had done several recitations, prompted at intervals by those who knew the words better than he did.

Uncle Charlie’s store of near the knuckle jokes had got everyone rolling about, Albert’s people looking a bit bewildered, Vinny going all red and flustered that they should hear such things, as if they were above it all. Aunt Elsie, Dad’s sister, had brought up the tone a bit, playing one or two classical pieces with more gusto than skill. A friend of Dad’s had sung, ‘We’ve bin tergevver now fer forty yers, an’ it don’ seem a day too much’, his eyes trained lovingly on his chubby wife as he continued, ‘there ain’t a lidy livin’ in the land as I’d swap fer me dear ole Dutch.’

One of the younger cousins had done a tiptoe dance, exacting sentimental sighs from the women; one even younger had recited a little poem to even greater sighs of appreciation; an older cousin with a very pleasing voice had la-la’d the tune from
The Merry Widow
and had been so well applauded that she’d sung some more from other musical shows until she’d become thoroughly boring, pleasing voice or not.

The happy pair finally leaving for their new home, a nice rented house in Victoria Park Road, Albert’s side departed not long after with Lucy’s Jack and Mr David Baron. Afterwards the party consisting of close family and friends had developed into a good booze-up.

Everyone had raised the roof in song, shaken the ceiling of the shop underneath to the stamp of ‘Knees Up, Mother Brown’, men’s boots pounding, women lifting their skirts, petticoats flying.

In the small hours, exhausted, they’d slumped down on chairs or the wooden planks set up on beer crates especially for this gathering. They’d gathered around the table to play Newmarket until those who could still walk home finally left, the rest staying until the trams resumed running on Sunday morning, the men to play Pontoon while the women went off to find a bed to fall on for the few remaining hours.

Lucy yawned as they moved past the smoky parlour. ‘All the fun’s over. I’m going to bed.’

‘If we can find one.’ Letty quietly pushed open their parents’ door, knowing exactly what she’d see there. Dresses draped over the chair, hung on the wardrobe doors
and from the picture rail, aunts in chemise, petticoats and drawers lying dead to the world on the bed, only half under the counterpane on this warm night, limbs flung wide in the unladylike need for coolness, kids sprawled sound asleep across their legs.

‘Cheek!’ Lucy said as they closed the door on the second bedroom, just as crammed full of bodies. Mum, of course, had gone up to Letty’s little room to find a little peace away from the rest. ‘Our home and nowhere to sleep.’

She brightened. ‘There’s that mattress at the back of the shop. We could pinch a quilt. Gawd knows, I could sleep on a clothes line!’

Stretched out beside her sister, Letty’s sleepy thoughts drifted. In her head she could hear David Baron’s cultured voice. It had made her so conscious of her own that to protect herself she’d behaved like the brash Cockney she was. She’d laughed raucously, spoken too loudly, got her aitches mixed up, forgot to sound her ts, and all those East End colloquialisms she’d used without even thinking came echoing back to her, stark and hideous, hearing them as David Baron must have done.

He hadn’t batted an eyelid though. The perfect gentleman, behaving as if she was Lady Muck herself. It had made her all the more self-conscious, saying things she hadn’t meant to say. Like when he’d asked if she would like another glass of port, she’d shot back, ‘I can ’elp meself, thank you!’ Lordey – it had sounded awful.

‘Myself,’ she muttered into the darkness at the back of the shop, rectifying the error fruitlessly. ‘Help myself …’ Help …’

Beside her Lucy stirred in her sleep, murmuring, ‘What?’

Letty kept very still until she settled again, trying to obliterate her bruised pride in sleep, but David Baron kept getting in the way. Thanking Mum and Dad for their hospitality, turning to her: ‘Delighted to have made your acquaintance, Miss Bancroft,’ so formal she could have screamed. She had shrugged as if it hadn’t mattered a jot to her. But it had mattered. It hurt that he hadn’t asked to see her again. It was no compensation that his last glance had been for her; she interpreted it as one of reproach for the way she had shown herself up.

Furious with herself, she turned over. Facing away from Lucy, she stared into the darkness of the shop, its faint mustiness enveloping her. How could Lucy call him handsome? The boys around here were much better looking and far more robust. They spoke roughly but you knew how you stood with them. But David’s maturity had given him a certain attractiveness … Oh, well, too late now. She closed her eyes before the morning light became too strong to let her sleep.

‘I should have been nicer to ’im,’ said Letty, desultorily flicking a feather duster over the vases on the piano. The last of their guests had gone home, leaving the flat with a forsaken air, having been so full of people the night before.

Lucy had her mind more on Jack and when he’d get around to talking to Dad about their engagement. ‘Nothing you can do about it now,’ she murmured, disinterested, her
arm working like a piston rod to bring up the dining table’s mahogany shine.

Letty gave the feather duster another listless flick. ‘He might be coming with your Jack this afternoon?’ she suggested hopefully.

Jack called every Sunday. He and Lucy usually took a tram to Victoria Park, the only bit of decent open space in the East End and a wonderful place for courting couples and family picnics. It had deer, a lake with a Chinese pagoda on an island in the centre, a huge ornate Victorian drinking fountain, lots of shrubberies and secluded walks, football fields, tennis courts. It extended all the way to Hackney Downs, almost like being in the country.

Lucy would return after kissing Jack goodbye, eyes sparkling, face glowing – and not all from the fresh air. Mum would give her a quick glance, then look away, and Dad’s face would bear an anxious expression.

Letty wished someone was taking her to Victoria Park so she could be looked at like that. ‘Don’t suppose I’ll see him again, anyway,’ she muttered.

‘Don’t suppose you will.’ Lucy’s tone was offhand. ‘You made it plain you didn’t want nothing to do with him.’

‘I didn’t make it
that
plain. I just didn’t want him thinkin’ I was chucking meself at him.’

She gave the vases a last flick and transferred her attention to the gilt frames of two large pictures hanging side by side on the wall by the door. They’d come out of Dad’s shop years ago, had been on the wall for as long as she could remember, hadn’t been moved for years, the wallpaper behind them still light while the rest had darkened.

One of them depicted a young woman with the classical softly round face and figure and fair abundant tresses beloved by the Victorians. She was clad in flowing diaphanous amber material. Her back to a low, seawashed obelisk, she was bound loosely by golden chains, wrists crossed upon her breast, a dramatic love-lorn gaze cast heavenwards. A green and angry sea foamed about her thighs and dark storm clouds rolled above her, split by the occasional patch of palest blue.

The other showed the same maiden, unchained and embracing the stone while the sea receded though her gaze was still cast heavenwards at the clouds and still wore the same forsaken expression. Letty had often wondered what story the pictures told, but no one could ever tell her.

Lucy had slid the chenille cover back in place and was starting on the piano.

‘All I can say,’ she went on, removing the vases one by one before polishing, ‘is that after my Jack put ’imself out to bring him, you could have been more civil to him. Anyway, it’s your lookout, not mine. Me and Jack’s got more serious things to talk about today.’

What she meant was, she was going to have to push him again to talk to Dad, though it was hard to see why Jack was so scared. Her father was a quiet man, a bit stubborn but never the argumentative sort, and he already looked on Jack as a very worthy young man, very suitable.

Jack always came about two o’clock, after Sunday dinner. Washing up done, Mum having her usual Sunday afternoon lie down with a glass of Guinness – to do her blood good, as she always said – Dad down in his shop,
Lucy sat by the window in her Sunday best. Her bridesmaid’s dress still to be modified, she was in her dark blue suit and a high-necked cream blouse, her cream straw hat pinned to her hair. She looked a picture, her back stiff with anticipation as she waited for Jack.

Letty sat at the table, her weekly copy of
Peg’s Paper
under her elbows, her chin in her hands. She too was in her Sunday best, though she wasn’t going anywhere. But just in case.