The Soldier's Bride (29 page)

‘Uhm …’ came the response to her sharp enquiry. ‘Uhm … she’s – been gone quite some time. She should be … oh, er, oh … Here she is – just come in.’ Utter relief sounded in the voice. Another brief silence, then Lucy’s voice, slightly out of breath.

‘I’ve just this minute come in and …’

‘Lucy …’ she interrupted. ‘We’ve had some bad news. Some dreadful news.’

There was a small squeak from the other end, then Lucy’s voice. ‘What?’

‘It’s about Vinny … Her Albert … he’s been killed!’

She had meant to be tactful but her throat by now was awash with tears and she could hardly get the words out, much less use tact. ‘Oh, Lucy, what’re we going to do?’

The phone went dead on a drawn out cry, cutting her off, leaving her hanging on unsure. What would Lucy do? Rush over here, go over to Vinny or merely stay indoors uncertain as Letty herself what to do – perhaps, like her, thinking what she’d heard had been unreal, that it was all a mistake? Would Lucy ring back? Should she ring again?

Taking a deep breath, Letty fought to gain control of herself. She must go and inform Dad. God, what a prospect. She was shaking deep inside her as she went to the shop door, turned the sign to read closed, glancing out at the world beyond.

All was golden and warm, the sunshine mellow, the shadows delicate. A fine September afternoon. She noted it with an impartial eye, yet felt a vague anger that it should be so fine after such news; that it was wrong to be so fine.

Noiselessly she slipped the bolt and went slowly back through the shop and up the stairs to where Dad was sitting in his chair by the window, enjoying a nap.

Letty shook him gently by the shoulder. ‘Dad.’

He came awake, irascible. ‘What’s the time?’ His voice, hoarse from sleep, full of complaint.

‘Dad – Vinny’s neighbour has just telephoned. She’s given us some terrible news.’

‘News?’ The irritation was still there. He hunched his shoulders, chilly from his sleep, peered at the clock registering half-two.

‘What’s up, waking me? Only just this minute nodded off, and yer …’

‘It was Vinny’s neighbour. Vinny’s had a telegram – from the War Office.’ How she managed to get the words out she had no idea.

Dad staring at her, fully awake but not comprehending, was looking at her lips, not her eyes, as she spoke. She saw the colour begin to drain slowly from his face and he seemed to diminish in stature in his chair, his gaze dropping slowly from her face, turned into the distance as though some answer, some miracle would be there to make what he was hearing untrue.

‘My Lavinia? My little daughter …’ Then, as the full force of realisation hit him: ‘Oh God! Oh God! No!’ His voice swelled to a roar as he lifted up his face. ‘Yer can’t! Yer can’t take ’er ’usband from ’er!’

Letty took his hands. ‘We’ve got to get a tram, Dad. We’ve got to go over there to her.’

For a moment he looked blankly at her, then snatched
his hands from her grasp as though her touch had burnt him. ‘I don’t need you. I can go over there on me own. You can look after the shop.’

‘No, I’m coming with you, Dad.’

‘I don’t need you!’

And now anger took hold – that he could still act out his rancour against her at a terrible moment like this, could hate her so that even Vinny’s loss didn’t diminish it.

‘I don’t care what you think,’ she yelled at him. ‘Think what you like of me. But I’m going to Vinny. There’s nothing you can do apart from
you
staying here so you don’t have to be near me. So do what you bloody like!’

She vowed then in an overwhelming rage that never again would she bow in shame before his condemnation of her.

No Sunday market today. In Club Row people were dancing, jigging, laughing, clasping each other deliriously; flags were being waved, whistles blown. Everywhere church bells were being rung.

Letty standing at her shop door could hear those of St Leonard’s in Shoreditch quite distinctly, all the others dissolving in the general cacophony of joy and relief.

The war was over. After four and a quarter years it was over.

There were those who wouldn’t be kicking up their heels. Vinny, widowed just ten weeks before the last gun went silent; herself, the man she’d loved lost a few months after the first gun sounded.

Even while she smiled at the happy people, she let her tears flow quietly, steadily, unchecked. Lots of people were crying; some from relief at a loved one being saved by the signing of a piece of paper; some for one of their family, maybe more than one, for whom the Armistice had come too late. Who would notice her tears?

You’re just one among millions, she formed the words in her head. Millions of wives, mothers, sweethearts who’ll never see their loved ones again. You ought to try
instead to be pleased for the others and their good fortune.

What good did tears do? They wouldn’t bring David back. You’re only hurting yourself – he wouldn’t have wanted that. You got to make your own life, that’s what he’d have wanted. But it was hard not to cry.

She was crying for Christopher too. The child had lost one father whom he knew nothing about; had now lost another, the one he’d called Daddy. Oh, how badly she wanted Christopher at this minute. Three years old, he would forget that man in time. But could she dare tell him of his real father? Tell him he was a love child, born out of wedlock? A bastard? Her throat tightened at the thought. Not yet. Not for a long time yet. But one day … Dry her tears and think of that day. Plan for that day.

I will get him back, she vowed. He’s mine, not hers.

Standing at the shop door, watching the throng flood by, she made her vow. I will, David – one day I will.

Upstairs Ada Hall and Dad were dancing, full to the eyeballs with beer and gin, doing a jig. The ceiling above Letty’s head was vibrating to it.

Bert Wilkins, now married to Clara Wilson that was, from a few doors away, came past in uniform, Clara clinging to him. He’d been wounded in his foot and been sent home to recover, was to have returned to the front next week. They really did have something to celebrate and Bert was beaming all over his face. So was his wife.

Letty lifted her hand, waved to them, watched them disappear in the crowd.

‘Come on, Let! Comin’ wiv us!’ Ethel Bock was waving a little flag in Letty’s face. Was clinging on to a Canadian
soldier, one arm about his neck, him slobbering over her, his kisses missing most of the time as they were jostled this way and that.

‘Orf up West ter see the celebrations in Trafalgar Square. Comin’?’

Letty shook her head and, without pausing to coax her any further, Ethel and her soldier took off. Ethel’s widowhood hadn’t torn her apart as it had others, she was making the most of it.

Behind her Dad’s voice was slurred by beer and excitement.

‘Me’n Ada’s poppin’ down the Knave fer a couple. You stayin’ ’ere?’

Without waiting for her to reply, they thrust past her, Ada directing a silly smile towards Letty as she shoved her way through the throng in the wake of Arthur.

Ada had practically taken up abode in Dad’s flat; came in as soon as the shop opened, left just before the pub closed, him seeing her home, with a pint in the Public before returning.

Letty turned on her heel, closing the door behind her, shutting out the noise of celebration.

Upstairs, she sat on the edge of her bed. How silent the room was against the muffled noise outside. Isolated, a small corner for a hunted creature to hide in. Letty smiled at the notion, looked down at her hands, the fingers of one massaging those of the other. Becoming roughened by house-work, hardly the hands of a proprietress of a West End shop, were they? Where were those dreams she’d once had of that?

She let the smile die, too hard to maintain, gave a sigh and slowly straightened her back; after a while she stood up and went to the top drawer of her chest of drawers and drew out the small dark blue heart-shaped box. Taking the ring from its bed of padded grey silk, she replaced the box and slid the ring on to her finger.

‘Will you marry me, darling?’

She should have said yes that first time. How could she have been so stupid? She had pushed happiness aside for Dad’s sake. Why? He had never once bothered to wonder what it had cost her – had never once expressed gratitude, had never felt any; only condemnation of the outcome of the love she had sacrificed for him.

‘Yes, David,’ she said aloud to the flowery wallpaper. ‘I’ll marry you.’

The words sounded dead to her ears. The ring heavy on her flesh, unaccustomed as she was to it. She felt suddenly frightened of wearing it, twisted it off and thrust it back into the box, closing the drawer sharply.

‘David! Come back! Let me marry you!’

She stood very still, trying not to acknowledge the stupidity of what she’d said. Instead, she made a silent vow. I shall never put on your ring again, David, until I get your son back. When I do get him back, then I’ll wear it, and I’ll never take it off again.

By midnight much of the jollifications had died away. Here and there singing still floated on the misty November air. A burst beneath her window startled Letty out of a light sleep. A chorus of ‘Goodnight, sleep tight, see yer termorrer!’
assaulted her as the revellers parted company to go their separate ways. A dustbin someone accidentally stumbled against rattled madly. A startled curse, then uncontrollable giggles followed by noisy shushing while an alarmed dog somewhere nearby barked fit to wake every drunk out of his bed.

Letty heard the harsh jingle of the bell as the shop door was eased open, ceasing abruptly as it was held in check by someone’s hand. She didn’t hear the door close but the stairs creaked as someone began easing their way up them. There came a smothered laugh, cut off as abruptly as the bell had sounded. Dad wasn’t alone.

Incensed at the notion of what caper he was up to, she was in half a mind to go and confront him. But why should she care what he did?

There was no further sound after his door closed quietly. Perhaps she had been mistaken? He could have been giggling to himself – drunk from celebrating.

Letty lay thinking of Lucy, of Vinny, of Billy. The war over, Billy one of its casualties, condemned for years to an invalid life – how must he feel? She should have gone along to see him but had been too wrapped up in her own sense of loss.

There’d been no word from Lucy. She had Jack’s grandmother nearby – his grandfather had died two years ago – Jack’s parents, her girls. Didn’t need Letty and Dad.

Vinny hadn’t been in touch either. Perhaps, like herself, she’d sat indoors nursing her loss. But she had Albert’s family to comfort her, and her boys about her, didn’t she? Even David’s son.

From Dad’s bedroom a muffled cry, hurriedly stifled, brought her mind scurrying back to the present. Instantly suspicious, Letty lay rigid, listening for the least sound from that room, hating Dad for his lack of consideration.

Listening, she fell asleep, not realising it until she awoke to a bright fresh Monday morning – a world with no war, no more news of fighting to be scanned in the morning paper, only stories of how everyone had celebrated its end.

Letty was in the kitchen getting breakfast for herself and Dad when he emerged from his bedroom, half dressed and needing a shave.

‘How’d yer sleep?’ he asked as he moved past her to the sink for his razor. An odd question to ask, he who seldom asked her anything.

‘All right,’ she said abruptly, hearing him begin to strop the blade into fresh sharpness.

‘Didn’t ’ear me come in?’

‘I heard something. I took it to be you. Wouldn’t be anyone else.’

‘Didn’t make too much noise then?’

‘No.’

She stirred the porridge in its saucepan. Behind her she could hear him frothing his shaving brush in its mug, after a while heard the scrape of the razor across his chin. The porridge was done. She spooned it into two plates and went to lay a cloth halfway across the parlour table for the two of them; preferring breakfast in the parlour rather than have Dad splashing around at the sink, water dripping off his elbows, while she tried to eat.

His bedroom door was slightly ajar as she crossed the
passage; not enough to see into, but a movement caught her eye, a shadow passing across his room.

Letty hesitated, ears pricked, but there was no sound. As if someone was, like her listening. She let her breath out, realising she’d been holding it, and continued on into the parlour, trying not to put words to thoughts.

She was laying the table when she heard a rustling, someone moving hurriedly from the bedroom to the kitchen. Bent over the table in the process of smoothing the folds of the cloth, Letty froze. From the kitchen came whispering. She crept to the door, eavesdropping.

‘D’yer think she ’eard us?’

‘I ain’t sure. We didn’t make no noise, far as I know.’

‘I’d better go, before she comes out.’

Letty took the passage in one catlike leap, made oddly out of breath by the suddenness of her move, and stood looking at them from the kitchen door.

She could have laughed at their expressions, gazing at her like a couple of kids caught with their hands in the sweet jar.

‘Enjoyed it, did yer?’ she said slowly, her chin lifted, tilted, her green eyes gazing sideways upon her father.

‘Letty …’ Arthur stopped, not quite sure of what he should say. For the first time that she could remember shortening her name. ‘Listen … me an’ Ada … we’ve got something ter tell yer.’

‘I bet you ’ave.’ She’d lapsed into his way of speaking, hardly realising it. ‘I bet you’ve got a lot ter tell me!’

‘We’d have told yer last night if you ’adn’t been asleep,’ he said awkwardly. ‘We didn’t want ter wake yer. But
p’raps we ought ter tell yer now. Yer see, me an’ Ada, we’ve decided ter get married.’

Letty gazed full at him now, her chin lowered, no idea what she was supposed to feel, apart from the shock of surprise. It had never once dawned on her that Dad would ever contemplate marrying again; had always imagined Mum’s memory to be as sacred to him as it was to her. Yet here he was, calmly announcing plans to marry Ada Hall of all people – scruffy Ada Hall! After neat and quietly proud Mum, it was unthinkable, sacrilege. How could he?