The Soldier's Bride (37 page)

‘If?’ he prompted quietly.

‘What?’

‘You said you don’t know what you’d do if …’

‘I meant – I don’t know what I meant.’

‘You meant if we were never to see each other again?’

‘No.’ She was confused. Then suddenly she wasn’t. ‘I couldn’t bear losing you again. Yes, I’ll come. I’ll make some excuse.’

She was almost panting now, with relief and anticipation. ‘Where do I meet you?’

David sounded equally urgent. ‘Take a taxi to Leicester Square – I’ll be waiting.’

The two of them made their furtive plan – it
was
seedy. Yet as she thought of David, Letty felt elated.

‘Go off orright, did it?’

For a moment Letty stared at Billy. He had been waiting up for her, sitting in the armchair, looked tired. She felt her face grow warm.

‘Did what go off all right?’

‘The lady yer said yer was meetin’. What did she say?’

‘Oh, I said I’d go and see the paintings,’ she lied. ‘Next Saturday at her studio. It’s across London – in Middlesex. I think they’d be worth looking at. I’ll have to stay overnight. She was very nice. I met her husband …’

Embroidering, as those who lie very often do, to sustain the story, to convince listeners of its authenticity with more bits of information than need be. And Billy sat listening, smiling, believing every word. God forgive her!

David had held her hand through the play; had kissed her in the taxi bringing her home; had held her urgently, one hand on her breast.

‘No, David, you mustn’t!’ But her willpower had melted. She had lain in his arms while the taxi driver concentrated on steering his vehicle through the streets, having seen it all before – the couples who rode in his cab to kiss and cuddle and giggle. So long as he got paid well for it, why should he care? He’d smiled broadly at the good tip David gave him, the cab pulling up some yards from Letty’s home.

‘I must see you next week,’ David had begged. ‘I can’t go on like this. Come away with me for the weekend. We’ll go to Oxford. Spend Saturday afternoon and Sunday there.’

‘I can’t.’ Fear and love were stifling her. ‘What excuse can I make?’

‘Say you’ve got some business to attend to.’

‘I can’t!’

‘I’ll say the same to Madge. She won’t even miss me.’

‘My Billy would. There’s the gallery too – I have to be there.’

‘You have your assistant. Darling, I need you! Say you will?’

And here she was, lying in her teeth to the most trusting man God had ever put breath into. It was sickening, yet what could she do?

Oxford bowled her over – or was it that she was with David? In the hotel, calling themselves husband and wife, that night she
was
his wife. But daylight re-awakened conscience. Anxious to appease it, she insisted on returning home immediately. But what a wonderful night it had been. Not to be repeated though without asking to be found out.

Not since her early days with David had she gone out
and about so much. Thinking back, from the time David had first disappeared from her life, hers had been a narrow world in a way, apart from those few years going up West with Ethel.

Now she was rubbing shoulders in Piccadilly, in Leicester Square or the Strand, with flappers, those bright young things with not a care in the world; Letty at thirty-five was mature, her taste fashionable but conservative against the beaded and fringed hemlines flapping around the girls’ rouged knees. With vaselined eyes and Max Factor lips for a Vamp look, shingled hair concealed under shimmering sequined helmets, their escorts dapper in dinner jackets, they hurried on to clubs and dance halls to do the Charleston, the tango, the foxtrot, the shimmy. But none of them was happier than Letty.

David looked so handsome in a double breasted dinner jacket as he took her to the theatre, dinner, or seats at the classier cinemas. At forty-five was still good-looking, a strand of silver here and there amid the dark wavy hair but the dark eyes as fine as ever they’d been. One arm looped through his, Letty felt she was where she belonged, dressed to the nines and feeling a million dollars.

The year was passing like a dream. They still met just one Saturday in four, sometimes in five so as not to arouse suspicion, the odd snatched evening midweek came very seldom, but what joy those evenings were. Beyond help, needing David’s love as she needed air to breathe, Letty tried not to think about Billy; she fretted for David every moment she was away from him. In the intervals between she immersed herself in her business.

‘Yer ’alf killin’ yerself,’ Billy told her, much recovered after a good summer but aware there was still next winter to face.

‘I’m fine,’ she sang. ‘I’ve got hidden strength.’ She tried not to dwell on the underlying truth that her strength came from David’s love.

Many people would remember 1925 as the year Madame Tussaud’s Waxwork Exhibition burnt to the ground, the year Mr Winston Churchill lowered income tax by sixpence and gave widows a ten-shilling pension as well as the elderly insured at sixty-five, the year Amundsen flew over the North Pole and Oxford sank in the Boat Race.

Letty would remember it quite differently. She would recall sitting in the circle seats at the Tivoli in the Strand, David’s arm about her shoulders as he smiled down at her, she hastily wiping away her tears at the overwhelming climax to King Vidor’s stupendous war film,
The Great Parade
. She watched it without shuddering, knowing David was with her, was alive. Nevertheless she was embarrassed as the pitiless cinema lights went up at the end to reveal her reddened eyes.

She’d remember it too as a year of torment, of longing, of furtive meetings. David was asking more and more to see his son, despite the photos she gave him. David would kiss her hungrily in darkened taxis as she hurried home to Billy, thinking the world of her husband while aching for those stolen minutes with David, minutes that had become her very life’s blood.

Billy no longer smiled so readily.

‘I didn’t fink yer’d need ter go ter so many meetin’s.’

‘Nor me,’ she lied, becoming adept at it. ‘Goes with the job, I’m afraid.’

‘’Oo are they, the people you ’ave ter see?’

‘Oh … just people.’

‘Same ones every time?’

‘No, different ones.’

‘What sort of people?’

‘Well, you know.’ She could feel herself growing irritable with him. ‘Art people. Dealers. Collectors. You know. I do have to do a lot of negotiating for some of the things I sell. There are auctions. Important auctions. You don’t like going to them. You get bored.’

He had never been that interested, art going over his head, so she had never browned him off by including him or showing to him all that came in. Which was just as well as, although she hadn’t planned it, it did serve as an excuse. That was, so long as he didn’t start delving as he was doing now.

She watched him shrug, not entirely convinced, hoped he wouldn’t ask any more questions, detested the way she was having to lie, with no idea how to make it all right for him without lying. A year of scheming was beginning to get her down, making her feel vaguely ill. The Sunday before Christmas, Billy as expected having gone down with his chest, she decided she must have some respite from deception, at least for a couple of months, or go out of her mind.

Billy in bed listening to his beloved wireless set, Christopher out somewhere with friends, Letty sat at the table in the living room, pen in hand, a sheet of writing paper before her, reading what she had written so far.

Darling,

I’ve been thinking about us and I feel angry with myself, tormented by every second we’re apart. But I have to have a little time to do some thinking. I know it’s going to be awful for you, darling, but I must try to give myself a little time to recoup from the misery we are causing to ourselves. I really do feel I have to be with Billy over Christmas and give my whole attention to him – that’s if I can possibly tear it away from you whom I love so much I could die. But I do need to try not to think only of myself. A few weeks, that’s all. I owe him that. His chest trouble has started up again – it always does in winter. I shall have to watch him, be with him all the time in case it gets any worse. I wish I knew how to tell you how I feel about him. I can’t understand how I can be so devoted to him and yet love you as I do; how I can want to nurse him yet can be so unfaithful to him. How can I make you understand how I feel when I don’t really know myself?

Please understand, darling. It probably appears terribly selfish to you but don’t telephone me. I’ll let you know when circumstances allow me to see you again. If you want me to, that is. But never forget, David, I love you very much.

She stared at the letter, re-reading before going any further. It sounded so awful, so pathetic. How could she write such drivel to him? If it didn’t make him laugh, it would hurt him.

‘Letty!’

Billy called from the bedroom. Immediately she was on alert, knowing the sounds. He’d been struggling with his lungs on and off for nearly a week. It had started up, as it usually did, as the year grew damper in late-October. The ever present bronchial cough, at first slight but becoming more persistent. Then, as the fluid built up, the damaged air passages unable to cope, these full-blown attacks.

‘Letty!’

‘Coming!’

It was awful to watch him struggle for breath, nostrils dilated, lips blowing in and out with the effort, eyes turned to the ceiling, and that terrible fluid rattling.

‘Hang on, Billy!’

Running to the narrow kitchen, she poured boiling water from the kettle kept gently steaming for this emergency up to the air-hole of the inhaler, added a teaspoonful of friar’s balsam, averting her face from the pungent steam she had come to loathe.

A towel wrapped around the inhaler to keep the temperature up, she hurried back with it to Billy. It would ease him. She’d had all this with Dad, though never to this extent; his affliction stemming from natural causes, rather than the wilful warring of men, had never seemed so cruel, so heartless.

Slowly the steaming balsam took effect. The wheezing of Billy’s clogged lungs reducing, his breathing growing easier, Letty relaxed a little as he recovered enough to grin up at her, half in loving gratitude, half apologetic.

‘I’ll be – orright now. Yer can – take this – away.’

Busy with him, she didn’t hear Christopher come in.

‘Keep it by you in case you tighten up again,’ she instructed. ‘As soon as it begins to cool, call me and I’ll put some more hot water in it. Will you be all right for a moment? I’m in the middle of writing a letter.’

‘Didn’t mean – ter disturb yer, Let.’ His apology wrung her heart.

‘You didn’t disturb me, Billy. I was only putting pen to paper for something to do.’

‘Who’re yer writing to?’

‘Oh, just a business letter.’

‘Well …’ He smiled wanly at her. ‘You get back to it.’ She was reluctant to leave him. All the time she’d been tending him, half her mind had been on tearing the letter up, perhaps telephoning David instead. On the phone she could better argue her case, be more adamant, gauge his reaction easier.

She’d made up her mind as she reached the living-room door across the tiny hall. She opened it and immediately froze, all resolution swept from her.

Christopher stood in the centre of the room, a ten year old with the expression of one twice his age, dark eyes narrowed, young face twisted.

In his hand, creased and distorted where he’d screwed it furiously into a ball then opened it again to confront her with, was the letter she had left on the table.

Letty’s eyes were fixed on the letter. Heat flooded through her, exploded in a welter of fear-borne anger.

‘Christopher! Who gave you permission to … What’ve you been doing?’

‘Reading,’ he said expressionlessly.

‘You’ve no right to.’

‘It was open on the table. I couldn’t help seeing it.’

She stood petrified, wanting to snatch it from him, not daring to. It would only emphasise her guilt. Perhaps he didn’t truly understand the significance of it. He was only ten years old. She made herself smile. Her mouth felt stiff. She held out her hand, came forward.

‘It’s only a silly bit of writing, darling. I was making something up … out of boredom,’ she added quickly. ‘We can throw it away now. I’ve done with it.’

His expression hadn’t altered. ‘Who’s David?’ he demanded.

‘Just a name, darling.’

‘It’s somebody’s name. You wrote that you love him.’

‘A silly game I was having, that’s all. Something to do.’

‘Does Billy know? About your silly game, Mum?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Chris!’ she blustered, reaching out again for the letter. ‘Give it to me and we’ll throw it away.’

‘He
is
a real man, isn’t he?’ Chris sounded as though he was being strangled, his voice husky and tight. ‘You said you loved him lots of times in it. He’s someone you’ve met, isn’t he, Mum?’

‘He’s nothing of the sort.’

‘But you do know him – this David, don’t you? He’s not pretend.’

‘Chris …’ She reached out both hands to him, but he backed off.

‘Are you going to leave me and Billy?’

The plea was of sheer desolation. A boy confused for
half his life by the subterfuge of adults was now being confronted by a new deceit that he seemed to imagine would touch him in the most cruel way: leaving him cast aside completely. She had to tell him. Had to explain.

‘It’s not what you think,’ she began. ‘Christopher, that letter – it was to your father. I was told he was killed in the war but he wasn’t. Last year I met him again and I still love him. I can’t help it. But I wouldn’t leave you and Billy. David’s married now, you see …’

Her voice faltered at the expression on his face, the anger turning to hatred, lips curling away from his white teeth in a snarl. But there were tears in his voice.

‘A whole year you’ve known about my father? And you never told me, you kept him a secret from
me
…’

Suddenly he stopped, his gaze directed beyond her. Instinctively she swung round, the sounds of Billy’s distressed breathing reaching her as she saw him standing in the doorway, leaning heavily against the doorjamb.