The Soldier's Bride (36 page)

‘I’m sorry,’ he said quickly, looking down into his cup. ‘I just thought …’

‘That you could pick up where you left off?’ she finished for him, hating herself for saying it like that as he looked up sharply. But she ploughed on, pouring out her feelings.

‘You took everything your mother said about me as gospel truth,’ she said, refusing to spare him. ‘But I’m telling you, she didn’t misunderstand or mishear anything. She told you a pack of lies, David. Oh, I know she’s dead. And I
am
sorry. But I’ve got to speak as I find. She lied to you, David. I loved you. I loved you all those years I thought you’d been killed. I’ve never stopped loving you. And I …’

She stopped herself, took a deep breath. He had to be told.

‘I had a baby. Your baby. His name’s Christopher. He’s nine now.’

‘Oh, Christ!’ His face was white, his eyes tightly closed. ‘She never told me that.’

‘She didn’t know.’ Hate his mother though she had, Letty had to be fair. ‘I never told your parents because I thought they might take him away from me. Then I’d have lost the only thing I had left of you.’

Quietly but resolutely she told him how Vinny had taken Chris and brought him up; she obdurately evaded David’s interruptions, asking what his son was like, if he knew about his father, how he’d taken it, if he could see the boy? He must see him!

She went on doggedly, her coffee growing cold, seeing the pain behind his gaze as she told of how she had claimed her son back after so many years and eventually married Billy, a victim of gas during the war; how, married, she could better reclaim her son.

‘He’s a wonderful man – Billy,’ she said. ‘I owe a lot to him. I’m very fond on him.’

David looked worn. ‘Fond?’ he queried bleakly. ‘Not in love with him then?’

‘I don’t know what you’d call love, David,’ she said tonelessly. ‘I don’t know if love is what we had, or if it’s the respect I feel for Billy. All I know is that he’s been a wonderful husband to me and a good father to Christopher, despite being so ill. He never complains and does all he can to make things lighter for me. It’s an honour to look after him.’

‘You nurse both him and your father?’ David questioned.

‘No – Dad got married again. To Ada Hall who used to help in the flat. They live in Stratford now. I suppose that was another reason I married Billy. I was so lonely after Dad left.’

David was frowning at her in pitying amazement. ‘Is that how he thanked you for all you sacrificed for him? He went off and left you on your own! And yet he stopped us time after time from marrying. Jesus Christ!’

‘I was all right,’ Letty said quickly. She didn’t want his sympathy. ‘I had the shop. When I married Billy, we pooled our resources and I bought the one we have now. I’m doing very well, thank you.’

‘And I no longer figure in your life,’ he said half to himself.

Letty wanted in that moment to cry: ‘You do, David. Yes, you do!’ But she held herself in check and saw his shoulders slump.

‘Perhaps it’s for the best,’ she went on, needing to touch him, to know again what his skin felt like. ‘Billy is a wonderful man and I respect him so very much.’

David was looking beyond her into the distance. ‘I envy you. What I wouldn’t give to be able to say the same of my marriage.’

It sounded so terribly bitter that Letty felt tears sting her eyes. She put out her hand then and touched his briefly.

‘Oh, David, I didn’t know,’ she said, seeing him shrug.

‘We tolerate each other,’ he told her. ‘We’ve no children. She’s frightened of having any. I respected her wishes but that wasn’t enough. Now she despises me. She never says so, but I can see it there in the way she looks at me. She considers me weak. Perhaps I am. I suppose I gave up after the war. All those years in captivity, then coming home, finding you … thinking you’d married, forgotten me. I felt let down. Angry. Hurt. God, I felt so bloody hurt! After all that – to come home and … There was this girl. My father had gone into partnership with her father. They have a large department store now in north London – Baron & Lampton’s. You may have heard of it?’

Hardly waiting for her to shake her head, she having little to do with north London departmental stores, he went on, his fingers toying with the coffee spoon: ‘They thought it might be an idea for me and their daughter to marry. Make the business more of a family concern. We married in 1920.’

He let his voice die away. Letty thought that, yes, she could see how the sharp-faced woman she’d met would regard him as weak. She forced her mind back to the day Lucy had first introduced David to her, when she had learned that he’d been married before. That marriage too had been arranged by his family rather than him. Letty recalled how she herself had fended him off time and time again because of her father – David resigned to it without any of the arguments and anger some men would have displayed. Only once had he been really angry. But instead of claiming her, he had gone away and enlisted.

It came to her that David had never really possessed a will of his own – at least not one he’d impose on others; he was by no means a weak character, merely easy going, vulnerable to the pressure exerted by others. It was monstrous that any woman could take advantage of that and with the realisation of her sympathy for him, Letty felt love for him again.

Her hand reached out, touched his, tightened on it. She felt love flow from her to him, saw him look up, saw his expression and knew that what had been between them had not died but merely lain dormant, was now reawakened beyond anyone’s capacity to stem it.

For a moment Letty thought of Billy with an overwhelming sadness; she wanted to run away from here, run to him and comfort him with a sort of need to do penance. She could never desert him, but she also knew she would deceive him, unable to control herself as she held tightly to David’s hand across the restaurant table.

‘Give me time,’ she’d said. ‘It’s Christmas the day after tomorrow. I can’t do anything –
think
of anything – until that’s over. He’ll need me over the holiday, perhaps for weeks to come. His chest’s so bad in winter. I must give some time to him.’

January was almost over now and she’d heard nothing from David. She was on the edge and unable to sleep. She resisted the temptation to find his home telephone number; almost rang Baron & Lampton’s, but hadn’t the nerve to.

When at the end of January David rang her while she was in the office, her heart leapt and thumped so much she felt physically sick, having to breathe deeply to calm herself down.

‘I thought I ought not to get in touch too soon,’ he said, his voice clipped and rapid, though he tried to sound nonchalant. ‘Do you think we could meet for lunch – same place as before?’

Her words tumbled out with equal haste. ‘That’d be nice – yes, I suppose I could.’

‘Saturday? This Saturday? Or if you like dinner in the evening? Whichever.’

‘No,’ she said, immediately alarmed. ‘It had better be for lunch.’

An evening together – it was begging for trouble. That’s what frightened her – the upheaval that seeing David again threatened. Her life in its safe little rut, just looking after Billy, a wall built high and strong around them. Frightening to realise how easily that wall was in danger of being breached. She didn’t want to see any intrusion from the world beyond her own. The shop door closed, shutting outside the day’s dealings, the curtains drawn, she and Billy could be safe together. No, she wanted nothing to invade her world. And yet …

‘Lunch then,’ he said. He didn’t sound too disappointed. ‘Say one-thirty – the same place as last time?’

Even this, as she agreed, was one step through the breach he had made. Could she, ought she, take another, then another, until on turning round she found the wall closed up behind her?

Christopher came in from school as she hurried upstairs and followed her into the flat.

‘Been out, Mum?’ His wide dark eyes scanned her. ‘Gosh! You look jolly flushed. Sort of out of breath.’

His own face was bright from the biting January wind after coming just fifty yards from the bus stop at Tottenham Court Road. Cap askew, his satchel hanging haphazardly halfway down his arm, socks down his calves, knees rosy from the cold and hair all tousled, he was a typical schoolboy. Ten this year and he’d adjusted marvellously, hardly ever mentioning his years with Vinny who might as well have left the face of the earth
for all he spoke of her – in fact, for all she ever contacted him or Letty.

‘I’ve had a busy day,’ she excused herself.

‘How’s Billy?’ Chris’s mind flitted from one thing to another with the randomness of a moth. In that he was like his Aunt Lucy.

‘Not too well.’ She was glad to talk of Billy. It made her feel more normal, stopped that sickening beating against her rib cage. ‘The doctor will be in tomorrow to take another look at him. Not much can be done until the weather gets warmer and drier, though.’

‘I think he must be jolly sick of staying indoors all the time,’ said Chris as he dropped his satchel on to the striped moquette settee and clambered out of his coat and scarf. The blue blazer had small dark pear-shaped stains on the lapel. Letty leaped on them, glad of something domestic and safe to tune in to.

‘Oh, look at that, Christopher!’

He drew in his chin, staring down his nose to where she’d indicated.

‘It’s ink.’

‘I know it’s ink. I’m going to have to try and get that out before tomorrow. Why are you so careless?’

‘Wasn’t me,’ said Christopher. ‘Anthony Lovett flicked his pen at me – the nib was full of ink. He did it on purpose.’

‘You’re all the same at that school – no regard for how much your uniforms cost. A poor family could feed itself for a week on what that blazer’s worth.’

She stopped short, a little guilty at making the comparison as Chris hung his head sullenly. Letty altered her tone.
‘I can’t afford to keep buying new uniforms. Give it to me. I’ll have to sponge it out right now.’

Sponging energetically, she tried not to think of Saturday. She hadn’t told Chris about his father yet. He’d have to be told at some time, but that meant telling Billy who wasn’t well enough for any shocks. A month or two more wouldn’t hurt. In the meantime, she must keep David at bay. After all, she told herself as she dabbed at the uniform, one Saturday each month couldn’t really hurt. What was so sinful anyway, about having lunch with a friend?

In fact David behaved like a perfect gentleman, speaking of his wife, Madge, and Letty of her life with Billy and Christopher. It was all quite innocent.

As February moved into March, Billy slowly improved though each passing winter debilitated him that bit more. He had grown so thin and haggard, Letty hardly recognised the young man she’d know in 1914; would have walked right by had she met him for the first time since then. Yet she knew every inch of his face. It was her job to shave him, wash and dress him, help him to the toilet, so weak had he become during the winter.

Dr Cavarolli said with doleful expression that there was little of his lungs that wasn’t congested with fluid. She could almost see him mentally predicting the time Billy had left to him. Letty refused to acknowledge the gloomy prediction. Billy had years in him yet. Had to have. Life without him was unthinkable.

‘You’re lots better,’ she told him one day when he was at last able to get to his chair by the living-room window.

‘Till – next time.’ He grinned. It was hard for him to maintain that old humour of his these days, yet he could still grin at her, making light of his breathlessness as he fell gratefully into the chair. ‘God – I don’t ’arf fancy – a cuppa! I’d make it – meself – but I wouldn’t – want ter do you – out of the job.’

March slid into April, then May, June, David reluctantly bowing to her wish not to tell Christopher about him just yet though she could see how he longed to meet him. He honoured too her wish to keep their meetings to once a month, but in June insisted on dinner together, her birthday being the previous Monday, and refused to take no for an answer.

‘Birthday treat,’ he said, and as she finally agreed, ‘I’ve tickets for the Wyndham Theatre afterwards.’

‘Oh, no!’ she hissed into the telephone mouthpiece, hoping no one would come into the office at that moment. ‘That’s going too far, David. I can’t possibly. Where’s it going to end? I’m making enough excuses now to Billy. I can’t overdo it.’

All the signs were pointing to this relationship becoming too deep, despite her good intentions. She’d even declined his suggestion of a stroll in Hyde Park, the weather growing warm and heady.

‘And there’s your wife,’ she reminded.

‘I can handle her.’

He sounded so confident that for a moment there was a certain seediness to it all, to what was supposed to be lovely and romantic.

‘Oh, I forgot,’ she said haughtily, forgetting to lower her
voice. ‘She doesn’t care where you are, so long as she’s got her own friends and her bridge parties. Well, Billy’s a different matter. He cares for me and he’s so damned unsuspecting it makes me feel rotten. He thinks I’m attending business meetings, and I detest lying to him like this – he’s so good-natured about my going and leaving him.’

‘Darling, there’s no harm to anyone,’ David said hastily, but she couldn’t subdue the feeling of deceitfulness that had come over her.

‘I can’t start telling him I’m going to even more meetings, and then stay out half the night. I can’t! Not that he’d guess anything but I would know it was wrong. I’m already ashamed of what I’m doing to him. No, I can’t come, David, I’m sorry.’

‘Have you thought what it’s doing to me?’ he asked slowly after a long pause.

‘I know, David,’ she said bleakly. ‘I’m sorry.’

He too sounded bleak. ‘You’re saying you’d rather not see me at all?’

‘I didn’t say that!’ she cried, lowering her voice instantly to a whisper as Mrs Warnes looked up at the glass of the office window. ‘I didn’t say that. I want to go on seeing you, David. I don’t know what I’d do if …’

Her voice was dying away. She hated to think what she would feel if he put the phone down on her. So far she’d been astute, allowing no chance to be alone with him; he hadn’t even kissed her yet, merely allowed his hand to touch hers over the table, and, oh, how she wanted him to kiss her!