The Soldier's Bride (26 page)

In October Arthur Bancroft had his fifty-ninth birthday; he’d had no intention of making much of it, but Lucy insisted.

‘Cheer you up, Dad,’ she said to him on the telephone. ‘We all need cheering up – the way the war’s dragging on. Three years! Me and Vinny thought we’d come over and make a day of it with you. Bring the children. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Dad? Seeing the children?’

‘Lavinia, she won’t … will she be bringin’ … the other one?’ he asked circuitously, his moustached lips close to the mouthpiece in case Letty overheard.

His other grandchildren he took on his knee and gently teased. ‘K-A-T, cat.’ He’d chuckle at the slighting way they looked at hm. ‘No, Grandad, C-A-T!’ He would regard them solemnly, say, ‘No K-A-T, cat.’ Until they either got off his knee in a huff or he would give in and have them hug him, relieved that he was wrong and they were right. His way of loving them was to tease.

But that one … From the very first, squalling and red-faced in its crib, he’d felt nothing for the baby Letty had given birth to; could not abide the boy if truth was known. Two years old now, the narrow delicate features framed by dark wavy hair, the dark eyes wary and uncertain. Not a bit like his mother, he was the image of his father, the man who’d had his fun with her and gone off to war and never come back – damn whether it was the war’s fault or not!

‘You mean Christopher?’ Lucy’s voice held total innocence, her father’s fumbling for words utterly lost on her. ‘She wouldn’t leave him at home all on his own, now would she?’

‘There’s that woman who looks after ’er boys sometimes.’ Silence at the other end denoted a shrug from Lucy. Arthur Bancroft went on purposefully, ‘It ain’t fair on Letitia, yer know. The circumstances regarding ’im bein’ what they are.’

‘It’s about time she got over that.’ Lucy’s voice had gone huffy.

‘Ain’t fair on me neither, you don’t ’ave ter live with ’er. ’Er goin’ into a sulk for days after she’s seen ’im. Lavinia knows ’er and me don’t get on best of times. She should ’ave more sense.’

‘I know, Dad.’ Lucy’s tone was stiff. ‘But you and Letty ought to try, being as you’ve both got to live there. I can’t tell Vinny to leave him behind. I couldn’t upset her like that. Honestly, Dad, me and Vinny are trying to come and make your birthday nice for you, and all you do is make us feel as if you don’t want us.’

She sounded petulant, ready for tears. Arthur quickly modified his own tone.

‘No, it’ll be nice to ’ave yer.’

He listened indifferently to Lucy, now placated, going on about her latest letter from Jack, still at the rear, safe, to her great relief; how she and the girls missed him, and oh, when would this war ever end? Automatically he answered her queries as to his own health, assured her that his chest wasn’t troubling him as yet; finally said goodbye, and went to inform Letty, in the briefest possible terms, what her sisters had planned for his birthday.

It was immaterial to Letty how Dad celebrated it, except that she’d have to queue for hours for something to put in
sandwiches; must make a cake too, if she could lay her hands on the ingredients.

In 1917 the war was in its third year, London bombed by Zeppelins then aeroplanes – the Allen & Hanbury’s factory hardly half a mile away destroyed, bringing home how awful it must be for the lads at the front. Then the German naval blockade with merchant ships being sunk and everything in short supply. Letty would do her best with what she could get, of course, but as with everything these days, she felt little enthusiasm preparing for Dad’s birthday, viewed it more with trepidation, knowing that Vinny bringing her boys meant bringing Christopher.

With fierce strokes, Letty spread the marge on the bread she’d cut thin and even for the sandwiches. A square of cheese and some slices of ham sat on the kitchen table by her elbow, the result of two hours of queuing outside Billy’s dad’s shop, for she couldn’t be so underhand as to whisper in his ear, knowing how others must stand for hours for a small portion of this or that. Even so, Mr Beans had slid an extra slice of ham on top for her.

Laying the fillings on the marged bread, she covered each one with another slice automatically, her mind on Christopher, the name that had been given to her son.

To everyone he was Vinny’s boy. Had always been. Dear God, how easily they kidded themselves into believing it, she thought bitterly as she cut the sandwiches across; thought that if they persevered long enough they could kid her into believing it too, didn’t realise that to her he would always be her child, hers and David’s.

An innocent to adult intrigue, the child had no knowledge
she was other than he’d been told she was. To him she was Auntie, Aunt Letitia, Auntie Letty. How could she tell him otherwise?

Letty transferred the sandwiches on to two plates, not much caring how they looked, although her natural skill made the finished arrangement pleasing despite her embittered thoughts being elsewhere.

She ought never to have let Christopher go so easily. But then she had been powerless, weakened by the shame others had put on her, by her own grief and confusion. Today, she’d have made sure he wouldn’t have been taken from her. But things had gone on too long. He’d never understand now. Would be confused and frightened if she took him away now, tried to explain. Knowing only Vinny as his mother, to be told she wasn’t, that someone else was? A two year old boy? She couldn’t.

‘Goodbye, Auntie Letty.’ His light child’s voice, his innocent eyes, so like David’s, would tear her to pieces, having to resist the impulse to take him up in her arms, smother him with kisses. For that reason she never went to Vinny’s if she could help. When he was brought here, she had no option but to endure the agony of seeing him; the wrench of parting, enduring his brief dutiful peck on her cheek as she held herself back from a natural reaction to hold him close, would leave her drained for days. But purposely to go there and suffer that torture, no.

Two years. Hard to believe David had been gone for longer than that. The pain, thinking of him, was as acute as ever it had been in the beginning. She had contacted his mother one final time last year, had received such a flood
of abuse from the grieving woman that she had never dared contact her again, left now in no doubt that David had died in the Dardanelles.

In silence she and Dad had their Sunday dinner. Vinny and Lucy would be here around four. After she had washed up the dinner things while Dad had a lie down, Letty set about relaying the parlour table for his birthday tea, taking the ageing aspidistra off the table to put in the window temporarily, gazing at the leathery leaves. The plant had seen some dramas in this place, had seen grief, despair, love and hatred, and the silence of brooding animosity.

Dad had never got over her ‘shame’ as he called it if he referred to it; she endured his acrimony because to leave would have somehow confirmed that shame she still could not acknowledge to herself. Her son had sprang from a love that had been beautiful, tender, and would have been constant had David not been torn from her by war. It was others who had soiled it, who saw it as dirty and shameful.

The silence that had grown up between herself and Dad had come to rule them; at breakfast, throughout their day, Dad doing the books in silence, going off down the pub with never a goodbye; in the evenings, gazing out of the window in summer, morosely sucking on his pipe; in winter huddled by the fire; silence as she carried herself through the household chores, the washing – hers and Dad’s hanging side by side across kitchen and balcony, stretched between the pegs like carcasses in an abattoir. And she was ready to give her soul to have him say one word to her that was not compounded of bitterness and enmity.

Relations did little to reduce the enmity, only adding fuel: ‘Still goes around bold as brass then?’

How was she supposed to go around? Flog herself in public, shave her head, dash to the nearest convent to take the veil? What option was there but to face the world, hoping it would forget in time, which of course it didn’t. Aunt Hetty and Aunt Mildred, when they came to see Dad, would still look sideways at her. Uncle Will, plainly embarrassed, kept his distance. Uncle Charlie was as jovial towards her as he’d ever been but regarding her now with a sly look as if he could hardly contain his imaginings of her with the man whose child she’d had. Her cousins, now at an age to know about love, sniggered.

She loathed them coming to visit Dad, usually made herself scarce. She hoped none of them would want to attend Dad’s birthday and was relieved when none of them did, not even invited.

Lucy arrived with Vinny and Albert around four. Making excuses for Dad, Letty welcomed them in. She had woken him earlier but when he didn’t respond had left him to get on with it; she took him a cup of tea while they ate sandwiches leaving him to make an appearance in his own time.

‘You managed a cake then?’ Lucy said, her mouth full.

Still warm from the oven because after even one day cake went stale without proper ingredients, its aroma filled the room despite its lack of fruit, was descended upon, not much left of it by the time they’d all had a piece.

‘You really are a marvel, you really are.’

‘Glad you like it,’ Letty said, toying without appetite with her own piece.

‘How did you manage to get the stuff for it? I can’t get hold of anything over my way. So annoying getting to the head of a queue to be told they’re sold out – no more goods expected today. That’s what our grocer writes on his window. No apologies, nothing. So rude.’

Letty nodded, tried to rivet her attention on her as Lucy prattled on, tried to stop her gaze straying towards Christopher, oblivious of her hunger as he played happily, trying to tie his ‘brother’ Albert’s hands together with a piece of ribbon from her sewing basket.

Don’t look at him, she told herself, watch the others. Albert’s nine years old now. Sturdy and cheeky. George eight, Arthur six, both of them little demons. All three promise to be handsome. Lucy’s girls, Elisabeth and Emmeline, also eight and six, were pretty, precocious and quietly confident of getting exactly what they wanted.

The room had grown hot. Despite the day being fine, Dad had a fire halfway up the chimney, and now sat staring into it as though he’d rather they all went home.

Lucy, fanning herself with a hankie, asked, ‘Can we have the window open a bit?’ And he, loath to deny her, nodded. Her girls went and sat by it, sedate as little nuns, gazing down into the street. Vinny’s two older boys, bored by adult talk, were fretful, wanting only to go home or downstairs into the street to play with the local children.

‘Can we, Mum? Can we go down?’

But Albert was having none of it. Removing his pipe from his mouth to regard them with an eye severe enough to meet his wife’s approval, he declared it would not be good for them to mix with street urchins, his views
bolstered by Vinny adding her own glares as she scooped two-year-old Christopher on to her lap to supervise his enjoyment of the last piece of cake. Letty, watching the action, said nothing.

‘Why are you my aunt?’ Emmeline turned from the window to give Letty a quizzical look.

Taken momentarily off guard, Letty fixed suspicious eyes on the girl. Had Lucy been taking carelessly in front of her? She wouldn’t put it past her sister.

‘Because I’m your mother’s sister,’ she said, even-toned.

‘Mummy says you’re a maiden aunt. What is a maiden aunt?’

Emmeline’s questions were always direct, posed without thinking, her mother’s daughter. Letty’s reply was equally frank. Meet like with like whether it hurt or not, she’d learned that policy well.

‘It’s an aunt who’s not married yet, Emmeline.’

‘Mummy says you’re too old to get married now?’

Lucy’s voice cut sharply through the inquisition, for once being prudent. ‘That’s enough questions, Emmeline love. And just look at your hands – all filthy from that windowsill. The trouble with London, nothing stays clean.’

Through the narrow aperture the squeals of a dozen children playing under the window, rose up, shrill and excited. ‘Gotcher! Gotcher!’

George had squeezed himself between his cousins and was staring down longingly. He risked another plea. ‘Can I go down, Mum?’

Below him a ring of grubby kids were counting who’d be ‘it’.

‘Inky-pinky pen’n’ink, I smell a great big stink. It – must – be – you.’ Repeated again and again as each dropped out until two were left. ‘Inky-pinky pen’n’ink …’

‘Can I, Mum? Please?’

The last one out had covered her eyes, the others scattering, into doorways, around corners, crouched behind dustbins.

‘Ready! Comin’!’ The sharp high cry, born of the East End, echoed along the street.

Cautiously the girl, skinny knees sticking like pale moons through holes in her black stockings, dress threadbare, pinafore grey from washing, hair tangled, uncombed for weeks, moved off from the battered tin can at her feet.

George held his breath, saw a boy’s figure creeping out from behind a dustbin, wanted to yell to the girl, ‘Look out!’ But she had seen another hopeful and shrieked, ‘See you! See you, Annie Wallace! See you. Come out!’

The discovered had stood up. The rest remained concealed, but the boy had crept nearer, eyeing the guardian of the tin can, hand out ready to grab it.

Too late she saw him, leapt back to defend the tin. The boy leaped too, his hands snatching it up before she could touch him.

‘Tin Can Tommy!’ At his triumphant bawl childish figures emerged from everywhere.

The girl was furious. ‘I touched yer! I touched yer first!’

‘No, yer didn’t.’ The boy gripped the tin possessively. ‘Didn’t get nowhere near me.’

‘I did. I touched yer. I bloody did!’

‘No yer didn’t.’

‘Yer rotten cheat! I did. Yer bloody cheat!’

‘Cow!’

‘Don’t yer call me a cow, yer boss-eyed bloody cheat!’

‘Cow! Silly cow!’

The abused stamped a foot, putting all her energy into it. ‘Tain’t fair. I ain’t playin’ no more. You cheat, Tommy ’Awkey.’

‘An’ you stink!’

A yelp as her hand flashed out, smacking the boy full on the cheek. George from his vantage point forgot about wanting to go down to join in, beside himself with enjoyment of the entertainment.