The Soldier's Bride (24 page)

Grieve her? That woman wasn’t capable of grief, or so Letty thought, submerged by the waves of her own grief.

Everything felt as though it wasn’t really happening. Deep in her mind’s memory she and David still ran hand in hand through the dappled light of Epping Forest, slowing, kissing, sitting side by side in a sea of fern fronds. Had all that actually happened once? Could a man who had been so alive now be dead, lying shot through the head or the chest on some parched sun-baked field of a strange land, or blown to bits on some dun-coloured beach? No, it couldn’t
happen, not to one so vibrant in life as he had been – not to the man she loved.

Inside her someone was crying, casting wildly about in distress, but her eyes stayed dry. There was Dad’s dinner to prepare, the shop to be tended. Someone would have to do it. Dad wouldn’t. She turned her head away and let his self-righteous rantings pass over her.

From rage Dad turned sullen, his silence in a way more dreadful than his threats; didn’t even grunt his thanks when, forcing herself, Letty got up, set about getting him his midday meal before going back down into the shop.

Bleak as granite, her heart ached physically, each beat a sickening thud against her ribs, her throat constricted from holding back tears.

Work – the cure for despair – was wrong of course in her condition and the shock she’d suffered, but with fierce energy, as though her life depended on it, she polished, swept, lifted things from here to there and back again, far heavier than she should have, manoeuvred unwieldy furniture, quite needlessly. At least it helped to distract the seething wretchedness inside her.

The afternoon passed, how she had no idea. There was still the night, and that she faced with the aid of several spoonfuls of Dad’s cough mixture containing a decent amount of laudanum, the label stating not more than one spoonful every three hours.

This way she managed to get through two days. But she should have known. A startling flow of blood on
Friday morning brought Doctor Levy hurrying back to confine her to bed.

She watched him with huge eyes that implored him to confirm that everything was all right as he turned to Dad.

‘She must stay in bed and not try for any reason to get up. A week at least.’

Twisting her gaze to Dad, Letty saw him frown. ‘But what about the shop? The …’

For answer, Doctor Levy took Dad by the arm, practically propelled him towards the window, and away from her bed. The sibilant sound of his urgent whispering reached her but no clear words, though she saw Dad look at him, startled, then hang his head, nodding dumbly.

Doctor Levy came back to stand over Letty, his dark eyes intense, the smile on his lips professional. ‘You, young lady, listen to me very carefully. I want you to relax, your body and your mind. Think of nothing if that is possible. Just the baby, that it must come into this world well and whole. Do not worry about the shop, about the cooking, about the housework, about your father. If you have any sharp pains, you will call me immediately. Otherwise I will see you in one week’s time.’

He left then, taking up his black bag. Dad followed him downstairs to pay him his fee and let him out.

Whatever he’d said to Dad, it put a stop to the unbearable silence, at least for the time being. Instead terror overlaid his anger, smoothed it, like oil upon water.

‘Yer’ve got ter get well, Letitia. Yer all I’ve got. What would I do if somethink ’appened ter you?’

What had Doctor Levy said to him to put such fright
into him? Not the loss of the baby, perhaps the loss of her? Anyway, she didn’t much care.

‘And the baby?’ she asked wearily, mercilessly, from a sort of perverse compulsion to rekindle his anger, punish him, hurt him, though all she did was hurt herself.

Dad didn’t reply, just mumbled something about staying in bed and went off down to supervise the shop himself – the first time in ages.

He continued in the shop even after all danger had passed, took the reins out of her hands, leaving her with no say at all in its running.

‘
My
shop,’ he corrected tersely when once she quite innocently and from habit referred to it as theirs. And venturing an equally innocent suggestion on its running, she received an acrimonious reply: ‘Look, I don’t need your interference if yer don’t mind!’

It was how he spoke to her now. From being a man of gentle if complaining and at times sulky nature, he’d become sharp-tongued, bitter, most of all unforgiving, the cry for her safety he had offered up counting for nothing now, seldom addressing her without making his feelings for her very clear, casting her down – where she quite obviously belonged.

‘She can’t keep it. Can you imagine the neighbours?’

Lucy and Vinny were having a meeting over cups of tea at Lucy’s house, while the children played in the garden – Lucy’s two girls sitting on the grass playing nurses, Vinny’s three boys played war, battles not always play, necessitating the meeting being interrupted four times on this one afternoon for Vinny to sort out her sons.

‘I don’t know how your Albert can stand the noise they make,’ Lucy said, screwing up her face against the yells and subsequent fits of tears from an unluckily landed punch. ‘Him so fastidious and …’ She was going to say ‘starchy’, but thought better of it.

‘He’s hardly ever home to worry about it,’ Vinny came back at her, her smile brittle, well aware what description her sister had in mind.

Lucy had always been jealous of her Albert, Jack being such a long streak of nothing for all he had money, and that only thanks to his parents’ business after all. She was sorry for Lucy, of course, her Jack having been conscripted into the army two months ago. But it had taken Lucy down a peg or two, even if she was a little bitter now over Albert’s continuing success, his ability to keep out of the war so far.

‘So much work at the office these days, sometimes doesn’t get home until the boys are in bed. Making money hand over fist.’

Lucy looked down at her hands, steeling herself against another outburst of yelping as her own two angels, oblivious to the boys, went on bandaging their dolls in serene preoccupation.

‘Is there all that much work in accountancy? What with the war and everything, I mean? Are there that many men left to want accounting done?’

She missed Jack terribly. Vinny could never begin to understand what it was like not having a man come home each evening, no matter how late. It had devastated her and she’d gone to Dad with her woes weeping bitter tears, but there had been nothing he could do. Jack’s father’s printing
firm was hardly essential to the war, could afford to lose one of its members to its country. Lucy harboured a secret hope that before long Albert’s job too would be found equally as unessential – there was some comfort from knowing he could soon be in the same boat for all his high and mighty success. Not that Jack was fighting for his country exactly, but printing booklets and pamphlets in Aldershot. Lucy prayed the job would last the duration.

She brought her thoughts back to the business in hand, was about to air her opinion of Letty’s embarrassing indiscretion when there came yet another small interruption.

‘Can I have some water, Mummy?’ George, Vinny’s middle son, a chubby little boy whose fifth birthday had been two months ago, stood in the parlour doorway, a bucket of dirt he’d dug up from the bottom of the garden dangling from one soiled little hand.

‘What for?’ Vinny anxious to get on with the meeting, twisted her head impatiently and noticed with a twinge of dismay the brimming bucket.

‘I wanna make a pie.’

Vinny noticed the distaste on her sister’s face.

‘No, love. It’ll make a mess all over your auntie’s path.’

‘I won’t put it on the path.’

‘I don’t think so, Georgie. Just go and play with the others.’

‘But Mummy!’

‘No, Georgie! You’re not at home. Now go and play.’

‘But …’

‘
GO AND PLAY
! No water!’

She ignored the crestfallen boy trudging out, the brimful
bucket in danger of tipping dirt on the floor before he ever got to the garden door, and turned back to Lucy.

‘What do you suggest then?’ she asked as George, now on the garden path, stood looking back at the house, a determined set to his rounded jaws.

‘What I suggest,’ Lucy said, eyeing the child in case he came back for another go at his mother, ‘is one of us takes it.’

For a second, Vinny’s eyes brightened avidly. If it was a girl … She still grieved for the one she’d lost, wanted to try again, but Albert, with the fear of being called to war hanging over every man, had said they should be careful, at least for a year. He had hardly touched her in bed since then and Vinny was feeling spurned. Albert, however, usually so pliant at home if not at work, was having his say on this occasion, and she knew he was right.

If on the other hand Letty were to give birth to a boy, it would mean another one to look after. Yet, even if it was a boy, a new baby would fill a gnawing emptiness. Vinny realised she was one of those women who constantly needed babies around them, knew she wanted Letty’s baby with all her heart.

‘I’ll take it!’ she burst out impulsively. Albert couldn’t object to that. Not like making a baby, bringing it into the present world of strife and danger. This one would be adopted and it wasn’t as if it came from a stranger. Her sister’s – almost like her own flesh and blood really.

Lucy gave her a straight look. ‘Don’t you think you’ve got enough with that lot?’

‘One more won’t make any difference to me. I’m used to all that shemozzle.’

‘I was going to say, I would take it. After all, my two are never any bother …’

Vinny almost laughed. Lucy could make bother out of anything, certainly out of her two, without either of them lifting a finger to cause one. With Lucy everything was heavy going; her headaches, her so-called palpitations of which she’d complained this last year if the smallest thing went wrong, her overwhelming fear since Jack had been taken into the army.

‘… and I haven’t any boys,’ continued Lucy, unaware of the way Vinny’s lips twitched even though she tried to compress a smile. ‘You know I’ve always wanted a boy. It has always been an upset to me that I couldn’t really have any more children. I just suppose I’m not made for breeding, like you are.’

Vinny let the remark go by, stored it up for some future occasion, though one small dig as immediate deposit was to hand.

‘And what makes you think
you
could manage? You found things hard going enough when Jack was here. How could you manage with a baby now he’s not? You know you’re not equipped to deal with extra worry. But I’ve always been able to cope with anything that comes along. I really do think I should take it.’

‘I …’ Lucy began, then her blue-grey eyes widened in horror as she glanced out of the window to the garden beyond. ‘My God!’

Vinny too gave a gasp, following her glance with equal horror but hers laced with mortification.

At the end of the garden, George had solved the problem of lack
of water to make his mud pie. He was piddling into his bucket of earth with all his might.

‘
GEORGE
!’ Vinny was up on her feet and making for the door, halfway up the garden before Lucy could rise.

‘You little sod! I can’t take you anywhere!’

The bucket clogged with nicely dampened mud, went flying, landing with a dull thud on the pathway. Georgie caught a whack around the ear from his mother’s hand, followed by two on the legs, and was dragged in and flung towards Lucy’s elegant bathroom for a good scrubbing.

She hurried out to her girls who had witnessed that small winkle gushing out its contents – a sight not for little girls – and shooed them indoors, followed at a discreet distance by the two other boys. She prayed Vinny would soon depart, leaving her to restore her home to normal.

No more was said that day on the fate of Letty’s baby, and she remained ignorant of any meeting, her time coming ever nearer.

She seldom went out now, had terminated her weekly visits up West with Elsie Bock, had certainly long ago ceased being down in the shop, Dad recruiting a willing Ada Hall to help him.

The shop had always been Letty’s salvation and she missed not being there. Little was left for her now but to waddle about the flat, cumbersome and ungainly, her once slim figure no more. Nor would ever be again, she often thought. Not for her the loving compliments of an adoring husband and father to be, she looked as much a mess as she felt. What point caring for one’s hair, brushing it for hours until it shone as glossy as a horse chestnut? She’d had it
cut short last month, not because of the current fashion but for easier management. Its natural curl surprised her, ceasing to be pulled almost straight by its own weight. Had she taken care of it, it would have flattered her oval face, now pale from staying indoors, but all it did was stand out from her face like the mane on the unkempt pony that drew the milk cart through the streets every morning, a jaded-looking creature in much need of care and attention, like herself.

If Ada Hall wasn’t in the shop, she was upstairs, cleaning and tidying as if it was her own home.

‘Don’t want ter get yerself tired, love,’ she’d say. ‘Got ter think about that little ’un inside yer. Though Gawd knows what yer’ll do with it once it’s out. You unmarried an’ all. Really upset yer dad, it ’as, the neighbours seein’ yer in that condition. I do think ’e’s taken it really well. Some would of turned yer out, yer know that.’

Vinny turned up on Sunday afternoon, her and Albert in their car, offering to take Dad off Letty’s hands for a few hours.

Letty, with about a week to go before the baby was due, was only too glad to see the back of him for a while; a blessed relief from the strain of the atmosphere now existing between them.

Left to herself, she went down to the closed shop, took time to wander around it, savour its familiar mustiness, think of when not so long ago she’d had sole charge of its running, stocking it as she thought fit, selling at prices she had fixed.

It was Dad now who managed it once more, and with
her not there to keep an eye on what he did, it had reverted to its old clutter, his customers offered the junk while the choicer pieces were hidden out of sight for his own personal enjoyment. A business that no longer ran efficiently but limped along as it used to do.