The Soldier's Bride (32 page)

‘How could you think of taking me on, after …’

‘How could I take
you
on?’ His laugh was self-deprecating. ‘Good God, Let! I’ve been scared stiff all this time ’ow yer could dream of takin’
me
on! In my state of ’ealth!’

But he was grinning all over his face, suddenly exhilarated, and with a small shock Letty realised he was assuming she’d accepted, that she’d said yes.

She hadn’t said yes at all, but how could she say she hadn’t? How could she hurt him like that? She sat there, wondering how all this had happened as Billy went on, his face positively shining, telling her how she’d be able to get back her son, legal like; that her sister couldn’t stop her having back once she was married.

Within minutes, the hope Letty had clung to all these years seemed to be within her grasp. She felt a fleeting sadness for Vinny, soon to know the agony that she herself had seven years ago, suffering every day of her life since then. But she recalled that Vinny hadn’t turned a hair at inflicting that agony upon her, and brushed aside her sadness for her sister.

‘But is that possible? I could get him back, just like that?’ She had been leaning forward eagerly. Now she quickly stood up and strode about the room, turning back to him suddenly.

‘She couldn’t use the law to stop me, could she?’

Billy was grinning from ear to ear. ‘’E’s yours. If yer want ’im back, she’d ’ave no say in the matter. Not once yer married.’

‘What if she won’t give ’im back?’ Fear consumed her.

If it had been possible, Billy’s grin would have grown still wider.

‘She’d ’ave ter. She couldn’t refuse. She never legally adopted ’im as I recall you sayin’!’

Yes, she did recall saying that – quite some while ago. Letty was on her knees beside his chair, gazing up at him. ‘No, she couldn’t, could she? Oh, it’ll be wonderful to have him back!’

There came the slow realisation that this was being discussed as if the marriage had already been arranged: that without her actually having said yes, she had consented to marry Billy.

They were married on 7 December, a Thursday – early closing. Letty didn’t expect her marriage to be a grand or romantic occasion. Not the way it would have been with David.

Billy had treated her with tenderness on their first night; had told her he loved her but didn’t make love to her. Did she mind? He asked, then told her of his terror of reducing it to a mockery by dissolving into a fit of ludicrous coughing. He asked her forgiveness with such dignity that Letty gave it readily, feeling strangely fulfilled, spiritually if not physically, accepting that they shared a gentle caring love that was without lust or selfishness.

Her respect for Billy rose even higher the next morning as she lay beside him in their new double bed, over her shop, their own furniture around them. Then he told her in quiet tones that his father had recently been diagnosed by the doctor as having a touch of heart trouble.

‘Oh, ’e’s all right,’ he said, staring up at the ceiling from his pillow as Letty murmured her concern at the news. ‘But ’e’s bin a bit under the weather for a while lately. ’Im and me mum talked it over and they decided that this year they’ll sell the shop, get themselves a little retirement
place. I didn’t tell yer when I asked yer ter marry me, Let.’

He turned towards her, propping his head up on one arm, his vivid blue eyes taking her in.

‘What I didn’t tell yer was … they made a decision ter take only half of what they get from selling. They said it’ll be enough ter see them out. The rest they’re givin’ ter me. That’s what I didn’t tell yer – in case yer fought I was bribing yer inter marryin’ me. That’s what I meant when I made reference ter a marriage of convenience. I could see by yer expression yer fought I was bein’ funny. An’ then I fought yer wouldn’t take me in marriage because I might assume yer was after me money …’

‘Oh, Billy!’ Letty burst out, but he gave a quiet chuckle, one that set him off coughing. He managed to regain control of himself, returned to being serious again.

‘I wouldn’t have wanted ter embarrass yer, so I didn’t say nothin’. But now I’m tellin’ yer, Let. My intention is ter put that money towards what yer’ve always wanted – yer shop up West.’

Letty sat upright in shock. ‘Oh, Billy – I couldn’t! I couldn’t take your money.’

‘Of course yer can. What’s the point of me ’avin’ it if it can’t be of ’elp ter yer in gettin’ yer dearest wish? It’s what I married her for. Ter make her ’appy.’

‘But I wouldn’t take …’

‘I know yer wouldn’t.’ He sat up now, putting an arm about her and drawing her close. ‘But I want yer to. Mind you, it’ll be a few more months yet, yer know. But come summer, yer can start lookin’ fer yer premises. I’ll be a lot better then an’ can ’elp a bit.’

‘What d’you mean, a lot better?’ Letty queried, pulling away. ‘Anyone’d think you was ill.’

This time Billy’s chuckle was bitter. ‘We ain’t reached the ’ard part of winter yet. Yer know what it does to me, Let. The worse months is yet ter come. I wonder at yer takin’ me on like yer did, Let, wivout questioning what yer was in for. I wonder at meself fer lettin’ yer. Lovin’ yer made me selfish. You was a proper nurse ter yer dad what was always very bronchial – a proper ’andful as I recall, yer sayin’ many a time. I reasoned that if I made a point of never moanin’ yer’d find me less of an ’andful. But I shouldn’t have asked yer ter take me on, Let. Even though I love yer.’

‘Oh, you are a chump, Billy!’ she cried, throwing her arms about him. ‘All these years we’ve known each other. I’d have married you years ago if you’d persisted. Except that when …’

She let the words fade away, not wanting to think of the past, of David, which would have made her nostalgic and spoiled this morning. The past ought not to be dwelled on and worried at like a sore place not allowed to heal.

‘I know,’ she heard Billy say in a low voice.

‘You don’t know at all, Billy Beans!’ she blurted, her mind searching for some alternative excuse. ‘If you must know, it was your name. I’d have let you propose to me years ago if …’

‘My name?’ He was looking at her, puzzled, demanding an explanation. Letty gave in.

‘I didn’t fancy being called Letty Beans.’

For a moment longer he stared, then laughter exploded
from him. She had to thump him before he would stop and the pair of them were in stitches.

It was a bad winter for Billy. Letty was kept on her feet looking after him. It was just like Dad’s winter bronchitis, but Billy she nursed willingly, with love, respect and admiration that grew daily for the stoicism with which he behaved – with never a whine, never a cross word, more often than not with wry humour.

If she could come to love a man totally without once experiencing sexual fulfilment with him, Billy was that man. As March blew itself out and he began to gain ground, inch by inch, as an army determined on victory might, Letty knew she loved him with all her heart, that if anything should happen to him, she would be devastated, she spent the moments before dropping off to sleep in frantic prayer that he would live to a ripe old age, despite his gas-torn lungs.

‘Fer you!’ Pleased as punch, Billy watched Letty’s expression change from surprise to delight as she came into the room.

‘Lor, it’s not me birthday! What on earth made you get that?’

She stared at the polished rosewood box, the turntable, the dark shiny disc ready for playing, the horn soaring above like a great wing.

‘I fought yer wanted one. Yer did, didn’t yer?’

‘Oh, Billy – a gramophone!’ she cried rapturously. ‘Oh, it’s lovely! You do think of some lovely things!’

He’d thought of something else too. ‘Easter in a couple
of weeks,’ he said. ‘Your boy breaks up from ’is school. Might be a good time fer us to ask fer ’im back.’

In the midst of her delight, a chill of foreboding clutched at Letty; a fear she’d always had lurking somewhere at the back of her mind, that to ask would be to ask in vain, that it was better not to rather than suffer failure and be destroyed by it. And now she was terrified.

‘Better write to yer sister first,’ Billy advised as she made to protest. ‘It’s not fair ter break it to ’er sudden. Best ter ’ave a word wiv a solicitor first, ter be sure of yer rights.’

She thanked God for Billy. She’d never have had the courage, would have been lost before she’d started. He was her strength. She would put it to Vinny delicately, of course, but she’d do it.

In the end there was no way to put it delicately as she stood in Vinny’s living room, her body so taut she feared it would snap were she to move.

‘He’s mine, Vinny. I’ve explained it all. By law you were only minding him until I was able to have him back. I was told that.’

She’d consulted a solicitor who’d told her with the air of one who considered she was wasting his time with so petty a matter that she could get her son back quite legally whenever she pleased. There had never been any formal adoption. Letty had not been able to bring herself to sign anything when Vinny had approached her about it some years ago, and Vinny had shelved the request for the time being. When Albert had been killed in France, she had forgotten it altogether in the shock of becoming a widow.

‘
Loco Parentis
,’ the solicitor had said in a weary tone. ‘In place of a parent.’ The small matter settled as far as he was concerned, he had charged Letty his fee – pretty hefty she thought for such a short appointment – promising she should have no legal problems whatsoever getting back her son. He’d said nothing about the emotional side.

‘You must have known this could happen. You should have realised.’

It was awful to see Vinny’s face so distraught, but Letty had prepared herself. She wondered if this was how she’d looked when Vinny had taken the baby from her, and with that thought hardened herself against those wide staring grey-green eyes.

Vinny only had herself to blame, had put the final nail in her coffin as mother to Christopher by not coming to Letty’s wedding to Billy. Nor had she visited them since.

Vinny faced her now, desperately challenging.

‘And what will you tell him? That he’s illegitimate? That’s really giving him a good start to living with you!’

‘I shan’t tell him anything as yet,’ Letty said. ‘Anyway, he’ll learn from his birth certificate one day. You can’t hide that. I’ll tell him for the time being that he’s coming to me as a sort of holiday.’

‘My – that’s rich, that is!’

Vinny, striding about her fine living room that smelled of lavender furniture polish and cigarette smoke, pretending she wasn’t wringing her hands in anguish, turned on Letty.

‘How long d’you think you can keep that up?’ she asked, agitatedly lighting up yet another cigarette, far too distressed to bother with a holder. A cloud of scented smoke
was blown through her pursed pallid lips as she exhaled sharply like someone trying to blow up a balloon.

‘Sooner or later he’s going to want to come back,’ she said between nervous puffs. ‘He’ll want me – his mummy. For heaven’s sake, the child’s not yet eight years old. He’s bound to want his mummy.’

‘He’ll have her,’ Letty said, keeping calm with a great effort. ‘Me.’

‘You’re going to tell him that, are you?’ Vinny said with a terse and bitter laugh. ‘Going to tell a nearly eight year old that his mummy isn’t really his mummy – that his aunt is? Oh, yes, he’ll swallow that won’t he? You’ll have him in tears. You’ll end up with him ill, needing medicine from the doctor, to make him quiet. Oh, you’re going to have a terrific time, Letty!’

The truth of what Vinny was saying began to make Letty unsure. But she clung on. Nothing, no one, was going to make her give up now.

‘I’ll take care of that when it comes,’ she said. ‘I can make him happy with me. He’ll get used to being with me in time, and when I think the time’s right, I’ll explain things to him. I shall be all right, don’t worry.’

‘Oh, I’m not worrying,’ said Vinny, who looked as if she might fall down on to the floor. ‘I’m not worried at all.’

‘Then if you’ll kindly pack some things for him,’ Letty said, all businesslike, seeing despair in her sister’s face.

‘I never realised just how cruel you can be, Letty.’

She smiled sweetly. ‘As cruel as you were when you took him off my hands, and me too weak to do anything to stop you.’

‘I did it for the best. What was best for him. And this is all the thanks I get.’ Vinny, her voice almost a wail, stabbed her cigarette out in the glass ashtray on a fireside table and stood gazing down at the thin blue trail of smoke. But Letty wasn’t done.

‘You robbed me of the only thing I had left,’ she said stonily.

Nothing, no amount of weeping and wailing, would pierce the armour she had built up over the years in preparation for just this moment. She needed to be as unemotional as possible so as not to be undermined by the terrible look Vinny directed at her – that hatred, that appeal for pity, that devastation. She wondered if she’d ever be able to forget the look on Vinny’s face.

‘And now I’m claiming him back,’ Letty said, tonelessly.

Facing Vinny had been the easy part. Her predictions proved to be alarmingly correct.

‘Will I be going back home soon, Aunt Letty?’ Christopher had only been with her three days so far. His dark eyes so like David’s, that they tugged at her heart, had gazed questioningly at her.

She had tried to smile. ‘Don’t you like it here with me and Uncle Billy?’

‘Oh, yes. I’d like to see the zoo again, but …’

‘Then I’ll take you again tomorrow.’

Easter holidays finished next week. There were still so many explanations – why he would be going to a different school; why he was to remain with his Aunt Letty and not go home to ‘Mummy’.

She could stall him, she was sure, but there would come a time when he became suspicious, resentful at being kept here. The fun of all the things there were to do in London would pall eventually. Then what?

Letty felt sick at the mere prospect. How was she going to combat his bewilderment, the tantrums when they came, perhaps even having to face final admission of defeat and allow him to go back? His happiness had to come before hers. What was her love worth if all it considered was her own selfish need?