The Soldier's Bride (31 page)

‘Really, Letty,’ said Lucy, offering her a plate of sweet biscuits as they sat by a little table looking out on to budding daffodils in neat beds, ‘you’ve let yourself go since Dad left. You used to dress so well. You’ve lost weight too. You ought to eat proper, you know.’

‘I do,’ Letty said, munching her biscuit.

‘I don’t expect you even bothered to have a proper Christmas dinner all on your own like that. We did ask you. I really can’t understand you staying away like you did. Being so standoffish. It really mystified us all.’

It hadn’t been a case of being standoffish. More a case of after none of them had come nigh or by for months, she’d been expected to go trailing off round to see them, and didn’t see why she should. It went deeper than that of course. The lonelier she was becoming, the less she wanted to drag herself out of it. Months on her own had steadily accentuated a yearning for Christopher, one she fought
against daily; telling herself that it was just as well Vinny hadn’t come visiting. To see him would have destroyed all the self-control she’d built up.

‘Dad was a bit put out, you know,’ Lucy said, reaching for another bourbon. ‘After what he did for you and all, last year.’

Letty knew what was coming, braced herself not to get angry.

‘It really surprised me,’ Lucy said, sipping tea to make her remark appear less pointed. ‘It really did, him giving you the shop.’

‘He didn’t exactly
give
it to me,’ Letty said. ‘You know I pay him rent for it, and the flat as well.’

‘But you take all the profits.’

‘What profits?’ Letty gave a disparaging chuckle. ‘It just about keeps me in shoe leather.’

‘So it appears.’ Lucy eyed her outdated fawn voile blouse and dark brown skirt. ‘It’s positively Edwardian. You look about fifty in that. But then you hardly go anywhere to get dressed up. I suppose you’re putting every penny you make in that shop in the bank, eh? For a rainy day!’

She gave a tinkling laugh that had a caustic edge to it and quickly changed the subject.

Jealous! Letty thought, as she came away. How can either of them be jealous of me? Lucy with her money and Vinny comfortable enough with her father-in-law giving her a substantial allowance – eight pounds a week, Lucy said it was – in memory of his dead son; that on top of her widow’s allowance. And he paid for her boys’ educations.

How dare they begrudge her, having worked in the shop
for Dad most all of her life, this small compensation for what he’d done to her?

The thing she dreaded most happened in August, Christopher’s fifth birthday – Vinny visiting that Sunday afternoon, tormenting her with the five year old, so handsome it hurt to watch him.

‘He’ll be starting school next month,’ she said blithely.

As if she didn’t know how much it hurt – or was it deliberate? For again came the insinuations about the shop. Amazing how Dad could favour Letty above herself and Lucy, he should have divided the place. Letty wouldn’t have been put out, would still have been managing and living in it.

Holding back fury, Letty smiled sweetly.

‘We
could
still share it,’ she suggested evenly. ‘The three of us. You come over to run it one week, Lucy the next, me the next, and so on. We’d share the profits equally, so long as we each work a week.’

Just as she’d expected, Vinny looked as though she’d been hit with a brick.

‘I couldn’t do that! I couldn’t leave the boys. They have to go to school. I have to be here when they come home.’

‘You’ve got someone who looks after them sometimes, haven’t you?’

The shock hadn’t left Vinny’s face. ‘Not on a permanent basis. I couldn’t leave them a whole week at a time every three weeks.’

Letty, knowing a similar excuse would be issued by Lucy, almost laughed. Except that the laugh would have been acrid with contempt. The shop was hers. Would
remain hers. It had been done legally with a proper solicitor and everything. And if Dad or anyone tried to get funny, she’d fight it into court.

She vowed with renewed energy after Vinny left that she’d make it pay if it killed her. Would do what she’d always dreamed of – move to her own shop in the West End. That would show them! And then, when she was rich enough, she would demand Christopher back.

The next few months were busy ones for Letty, trying to put her plans into action. Out went the rubbish she’d lived with so long, most of it put up in the top room out of the way. She shopped around with care for good objets d’art to replace it. With an eye to what the well off would buy, she searched wisely, bargained sensibly and thriftily, arranged what she bought to look more presentable than it really was, everything at modest prices. She put a large sign on the door and in the window: Treasures to Cherish.

By the New Year she had thought of a name for her new shop if the day ever came when she could afford it: The Treasure Chest. Her hopes began slowly to grow. A brave new world, a post-war boom, most men in work – after four years’ slaughter there weren’t enough of them to go round.

By now Letty was accustomed to being on her own, managing her own affairs. She felt she did it very well. With Club Row always crowded on Sunday mornings, her shop had become more busy. Paying Dad his rent on the dot, it had begun showing more profit than she had at first hoped and her dream of branching out looked more like becoming reality some day.

Then with the spring of 1921, suddenly the Treasury coffers were revealed to be empty. Two million thrown out of work as summer came, their dreams of a land fit for heroes diminishing fast, Letty’s dreams of success faded along with them as her till fell unnervingly quiet.

‘I don’t understand politics,’ Letty complained to Billy. She saw a lot of him, spending most of her evenings with him and his family.

‘How can things go so quickly from being rosy to everyone being out of work?’ she asked, looking towards his father for an answer.

Mr Beans drew reflectively on a cigarette; he would have chain smoked but that too much smoke in the room tended to affect Billy’s chest.

‘The economy,’ he said sagaciously, his cockney richer even than Billy’s, ‘’an’ strikes. Them that’s still in work. Wantin’ ’igher wages an’ shorter hours, an’ sod everyone else! A bloody daft government – that Lloyd George and ’is National Insurance Act. Wiv less comin’ in from National Insurance because so many’s aht of work, it’s costin’ the government even more!’

Letty, more interested in her own problems than politics – she’d have to be thirty to vote – saw her own hopes going down the drain.

‘Scrimping and scraping fer me future,’ she told Billy later as they took a slow stroll in the summer sunshine. They never went very far, because of Billy’s health. ‘The shop’s just one up-hill struggle, with nothing to show for it in the end. And I had such high hopes earlier this year!’ Strange how things could change between last December
and now. All her clothes came secondhand from The Lane – Petticoat Lane as the Wentworth Street Market was known. She saved on food, and now no longer went to the pictures as she used to with Ethel Bock. Anyway Ethel Bock was now Ethel Baker – had married in April – with a baby on the way and Letty saw little of her.

‘The only ones doing any good are pawnbrokers,’ she scoffed. It wasn’t nice to think that she was a single step from that trade; that were she to lower her principles, she’d thrive.

‘I ain’t out ter make money on other people’s troubles like that,’ she said firmly, her cockney surfacing as always in Billy’s company. ‘I wouldn’t want ter score off other poor devils, just ter make money.’

The fine porcelain she had spent out on, the bright ormolu and highly polished furniture had gradually crept to the rear of the shop, giving way to more ready sellers: sturdy crockery, second hand dinner services, chipped at the edges, serviceable brown tea pots, jugs, slop basins, heavy glass sugar bowls – the stuff Dad always used to make his money on. Letty was well aware that she had fallen into the same trap as he had.

‘I don’t know why I bother,’ she told Billy. ‘Certainly not for Christopher, because sometimes I think I’ll never get him back. He’ll soon be six.’

He knew about Christopher. She had told him some time ago how David had been killed in Gallipoli, and how she’d been made to feel the shame of her condition, her child taken from her for his own good when she’d been too weak to resist. Afterwards, it had been too late to get
him back. Billy hadn’t made any comment, just nodded understandingly.

Letty sat with Billy in the parlour over his father’s shop. The room redolent of steak and kidney pudding from dinner time, was bright with an early evening May sun. She had been seeing a lot more of Billy this past year, these days confided in him much more. She confided in him now – about Christopher.

She sat on the sofa as usual. Billy, in the armchair by the window, wore a grey flannel jacket and a brown and fawn Fair Isle pullover in spite of the sun’s slanting warmth. He hadn’t improved as much this year as last. It had been a bad winter for him and he hadn’t properly recovered. His illness was like that – one season good, the next bad.

‘Time for me to get Christopher back,’ she said. ‘Hard to believe he’ll be seven this August. If I ever do, he’ll be old enough not to want to leave me sister. Won’t be doing him any favours, will I, telling ’im about himself? He’ll probably hate me. Not as if I was married. I don’t suppose I’ll ever be that. Too many surplus women younger than me won’t find husbands, with so many gone in the war. It would have been nice to have been married, though.’

‘It ain’t too late,’ he said, so quietly that she didn’t at first catch what he’d said but went on thinking of what might have been, how a life could be so wasted and not through anyone’s fault. Perhaps Dad’s fault in the beginning, but not now. Time had dulled the pain anyway.

She felt only sadness for Dad now. At nearly sixty-three, he wasn’t the man he’d once been. In the pub every night,
drinking away the rent money with Ada’s help. She was a dirty old drab; her brother’s nice house a tip now. Letty had been there once. Never again. She thought sadly of the dad she’d known as a child – the fastidious dreamer, the collector of beautiful things.

She still had his paintings on the wall, those lovelorn maidens with the sea foaming about their loins, the wallpaper behind them lighter than the rest of the room. Still had a lot of Dad’s treasures up in the top room too. Poor Dad. He didn’t care any more.

It wouldn’t have hurt Vinny or Lucy to see him more often. Perhaps she should have made more of an effort, but it was hard to forget how different her life could have been if he’d been kinder to David …

She broke off abruptly from her reverie, looking at Billy.

‘Sorry, what was that you said?’ she asked quickly.

‘Oh, … nothin’ much.’ He smiled at her, his breathing laboured.

Now she felt guilty. ‘No, what was it? Tell me!’

‘I said it ain’t too late. I do remember you once sayin’ yer wondered what yer was doin’ it all for. Why not do it for yerself?’

‘Myself?’ she queried, lips twisting into a sneer. ‘What a laugh!’

‘Fer me then?’

Letty stared at him and saw him shrug, grinning self-consciously, suddenly embarrassed.

‘Just a thought,’ he said quietly.

Letty felt emotion rise inside her, making her want to cry. There was no nicer person than Billy. He hadn’t deserved
what he’d got and she was so very fond of him. But had she heard him right? Surely he hadn’t been trying to propose?

She dropped her eyes, fiddling with the frill of her dress, a sky blue one she’d bought in a proper shop. She might not care for dressing up these days, but one thing she always did when going to see Billy was to dress nicely, brush her bobbed auburn hair until it shone like finely polished mahogany, put on a dab of Californian Poppy and a bit of pink lipstick. Why this compulsion to look good for him, she wasn’t sure – just that she felt she had to.

Billy’s grin had faded when she looked up again. His bright blue eyes, wide and honest and unsmiling, were fixed on her. He seemed eager yet fearful.

‘Let, I know I ain’t much of a catch, but I wouldn’t be a burden to yer. I won’t be offended if yer say no. I expect yer to really. But I just ’ave ter ask, just this once. If yer say no, I won’t ever ask yer again.’

She didn’t know what to say now; what to think. She
was
fond of him – but to marry him, if that’s what he was asking …

‘I’ve always loved yer,’ he said, speaking fast. ‘From years back. But yer looked as if yer never ’ad eyes fer me, an’ when yer started goin’ out wiv that bloke – ’e was such a toff, I fought, well, she’s got a decent one, an’ I couldn’t ’ave ’alfway given yer what ’e could. So I backed off.’

He gave a dry chuckle. ‘Never did get meself a steady gel after that. I suppose none of ’em ever came up ter you in me estimation. But now, when p’raps I could ’ave yer fer me own, the war goes an’ ’ands me this bloody dose of crap in me lungs! I can’t even ’elp me dad lift a couple of
boxes of soapflakes wivout coughin’ me lungs up and bein’ as out of breaf as if I’d been running a thousand yards race. Me, what was strong as an ox before I went into the bloody army …’

He stopped suddenly, realising he’d been going off the track, giving her no chance to get a word in. He shook his head in confusion.

‘What I’ve bin tryin’ ter say, Let, is I’m not askin’ yer ter fall in love wiv me. That’s too much to expect. But a sort of partnership. What they call a marriage of convenience. But yer can say no.’

At last, Letty found her voice.

‘Oh, Billy, I can’t.’

There were visions of David running through her head as though he were still there, still alive. For an instant it was as if she was betraying him by even listening to what Billy was saying.

It was like a dart going through her to see the eagerness disappear and be replaced by a bleak but stoic expression.

‘Just thought I’d ask – get it off me chest.’

He said it so simply that thoughts of David fled.

‘Oh, Billy, I didn’t mean to say that. I mean, I’ll …’

There was more to accepting than just saying yes. So much to be explained, to be understood, by him and by her. She felt such affection for Billy, such a tenderness, but it wasn’t love – not the sort she’d known. It would never be like that. There was only one love of that sort and it was unfair to accept him as second best. She’d have to explain.