The Soldier's Bride (45 page)

Lapsing into silence, he lay wrapped in his own thoughts then suddenly leaned over and kissed Letty, the kiss growing strong and lingering.

‘Let’s forget what might be,’ he whispered. ‘Just think of what is. You and me.’

‘Mmm!’ Letty moaned longingly. Her mind closing to everything else, she melted luxuriously against hands that held a sort of desperation in their touch.

Chris was home. Twenty-one in a few weeks’ time, he had left Cambridge for good. Letty proudly noted how handsome her son was; noted too that three years of study hadn’t given him the slightest idea what he wanted to do in life.

‘Plenty of time to worry about that,’ he said. He’d been home for three weeks and had already brought home two girls, one after the other. Neither lasting more than a week, he had now brought home a third.

‘She won’t last either,’ Letty said to David with an impatient lift of her chin. ‘It’s his not wanting to settle down that worries me.’

‘He will in time,’ David said with proud parental tolerance.

David would have liked to have been closer to his son, Letty could sense it. There had never been that bond between them she’d imagined there would be. From the very start Chris had treated him more as an uncle than a father; in fact, she suspected, he still looked on Billy as more of a father figure. He still talked of Billy, a reminiscent smile lighting his clear, handsome features.

It pained her to see David trying so hard to be close to him, and Chris casually fending him off. Still slightly immature despite his college education, he had absolutely no idea how deep his father’s need of him went.

For all his broad shoulders, his height, his twenty-one years, he was a boy still. He had a likeable arrogance about
him that made him popular, that made Letty proud of him, but which did nothing towards making him a man.

David booked a table at the Waldorf Hotel for his birthday. He had suggested a proper birthday party for whoever Chris cared to invite, but he had shrugged, said that his friends wouldn’t come to a family birthday party. Getting together in someone’s room with a few chums from university, yes. But family parties? He didn’t think so.

Letty, knowing his university chums, was glad. She persuaded David to limit it to just a small dinner for themselves and Chris, then afterwards he could do whatever he wanted. Fortunately Chris seemed quite happy about the arrangement, though insisted on inviting a friend – a strange female he called Bunny who wore horn rimmed spectacles, had slightly protruding teeth and talked incessantly about politics.

She monopolised most of the conversation with unswerving venom against the Jarrow marchers who had walked three hundred miles to London to state their case – so poor, yet they could afford the boot leather, she observed. She herself was obviously well off. She also denounced the German Chancellor, Adolf Hitler, for marching into the Rhineland, and wondered where that would lead; and she pontificated against the Rome/Berlin/Tokyo Axis pact which she said the British saw as a threat to future peace, though Letty herself hadn’t thought it a threat as such, if she thought about it at all. Lastly she spoke of War that had broken out in Spain in July.

‘Of course, the majority of us are for the Royalists, aren’t we, Chris?’ she said, ‘us’ meaning people like her,
Letty deduced. ‘Lots of us are thinking of going to Spain to support them. We have to fight for the rights of others, not just ourselves, even if it does mean with our lives! You’re thinking of going, aren’t you, Chris?’

She laid a hand, heavy with huge rings and chunky bracelets, over his, blue eyes gazing very intensely into his dark ones, while Chris gave his parents a sidelong glance, and half nodded.

Letty drew in a sharp breath, fear spreading through her like spilled oil. ‘Christopher! You’re not!’

‘I was only thinking of it.’ He toyed idly with his crêpes suzette, stuffing a large piece into his mouth to prevent the need to say more, prevented too by the loquacious Bunny going off at another tangent.

‘I say, this business of Edward and Mrs Simpson is rather off, don’t you think? He’ll never be allowed to marry a divorcee. Imagine … Queen Wallis!’ She gave a peal of laughter that made heads turn.

Letty smiled, wishing this birthday dinner would hurry to its end.

‘What’s this about going to fight in Spain?’ she taxed Chris later. ‘Don’t you think you should first sort out your life here?’

‘It’s only an idea,’ he said, not meeting her eyes so that she knew it was more than that. ‘It’s just that I can’t see myself settling down to some boring old job. There’s nothing in England.’

‘What about all this law you’ve been studying? If that doesn’t interest you any more, your father could find you a good position with him if you wanted it. It’s an expanding
business. Employs hundreds of staff. As managing director, your father would find you something worth while.’

The handsome young face grimaced. ‘I want to see a bit of the world. Have a bit of excitement.’

‘Then go abroad on holiday!’ she railed at him, beset by fear. ‘There are so many places you can go. It needn’t cost you a penny. Your father and I will pay for it. Why not take a cruise to America or somewhere? But not Spain, darling. You can’t want to go there.’

‘They’ll need men. It’s serious, you know, Mum. I don’t want to holiday. I want to help in preventing upstarts from imposing their will on a country – like Mussolini’s doing in Abyssinia. We have to help prevent tyrants and dictators from invading other countries.’

‘No one’s
invaded
Spain,’ she argued desperately. ‘It’s their own quarrel. It had nothing to do with anyone else. And, anyway, what can you do on your own?’

‘There are thousands who think the same as me, Mum. If everyone went, like they did in the last war, it would help stop it. Bunny says it’s the thin end of the wedge.’

Letty’s mouth was bone dry. ‘Don’t you realise, you could be killed?’ She saw him smile nonchalantly.

‘Don’t be silly, Mum! It won’t be that kind of war – just peasants fighting the government. And we’ll be with the government troops with heavy artillery. I’ll be all right. Don’t worry.’

It was like hearing a little boy about to meet an opposing rugby team. But she remembered the war of twenty years ago. Albert Worth, Vinny’s first husband and Chris’s foster father, a slightly rotund, pompous but kindly man, had been
killed; Billy, a strong young man, was gassed, wrecked for the rest of his life before dying prematurely; David, Chris’s own father, was taken prisoner by the Turks and to this day had never spoken about it.

What in God’s name did Chris know about what he saw as the excitement of war? Of bullets that tore away jawbones, shell splinters that blinded, bombs that shredded men to pieces, gas that choked them to death? And now they had even more horrific weapons: planes that flew at four hundred miles an hour to drop bigger, more devastating bombs.

To Chris going to war held a similar pull as it had for men like Billy – a promise of adventure, excitement and noble heroism.

The truth was, he wasn’t settled here at home. How could he be? David arriving at weekends, sharing her bedroom, then returning to his home in Barnet on the Sunday. To Chris it must seem sordid, embarrassing. She knew how he must feel, but to wish himself into a war … it was unthinkable.

Her blood going cold, she recalled her sister Vinny’s words at her dad’s funeral: ‘I hope you never have to lose him, like I had to do.’

It sounded frighteningly prophetic now – almost like a curse.

The last days of 1936 were full of portents. The country’s new king announced his decision to abdicate rather than take the crown without Wallis Simpson; people felt for him as he gave his reasons. Some, like Letty, knew only too
well the pain he must have experienced to come to this. But to everyone it was a blow. Preparations for his coronation were quickly transferred to his brother, to be crowned George VI on 12 May 1937.

In December Crystal Palace burned to the ground. Having become an institution, many considered it an ominous sign and weren’t so much surprised as alarmed by the abdication a few weeks later.

In December too David was told that his father-in-law was slipping away fast. He and Madge hurried to the bedside, sat until the early hours, but Lampton passed away without regaining consciousness.

They attended the funeral some days later, then with the solicitor and interested parties heard Lampton’s will. Letty waited that weekend, but when David didn’t show up, was left in a ferment of anxiety as to why. She dared not telephone, Madge possibly being there, she had no wish to put the cat among the pigeons – cat being the operative word in Letty’s thoughts where Madge was concerned.

A week of heart-rending uncertainty, indecision, insomnia, niggling anger which she managed to submerge when David turned up the following weekend. Anger that dissipated as he came in from the wintry weather, offering her a kiss that was just as cold. His face was bleak as he took off his trilby, scarf and overcoat, hung them in the hall.

‘How did it go – the funeral?’ she asked as they went on into the living room. She couldn’t bring herself to ask the reason for his not seeing her, but busied herself mixing him a warming scotch and soda while he sat down in the armchair by the brightly glowing gasfire.

‘Like most funerals,’ he said woodenly. ‘Though there wasn’t much crying done. Most were more eager to hear what he’d left them. He’d outgrown their love years ago, I think. His brother Robert seemed the most upset.’

‘And Madge?’

‘Madge!’

His scathing tone made her look at him as she handed him the drink.

‘What’s wrong, David?’ she asked.

It was a while before he answered, sipping his scotch, staring into the fire while she went and sat opposite.

‘He said once that as long as I was married to her, he would divide his shares in the company equally between us. He left me one hundred. To Madge, he left nine hundred.’

Letty’s heart went out to him. ‘Oh, David, that’s really hateful. He must have been as vindictive as she is.’

‘He was all right,’ David excused quickly. ‘It was her – she got to him. She must have done.’

‘Does that mean she has control?’

‘No.’ He smiled bitterly. ‘Not quite. Oddly enough, I have. But only by a fraction. The shares my father left me just about give me the edge over her. Trouble is, the rest are held by Lampton’s brother Robert, and my cousin Freddy.’

The shareholders in Baron & Lampton’s had never strictly interested Letty before now. With her own business to deal with and all that it entailed – hers still a one woman band and shares of little concern – she’d heard the names mentioned, but had taken little account of them.

Now they assumed momentous significance in her mind. David supplied the reason within seconds.

‘All she has to do now is to nobble her uncle.’

‘But you said he doesn’t like her, that you and he get on well.’

‘True. But it doesn’t mean that she might not try to twist him round her finger.’

‘I don’t think she could,’ Letty said with conviction.

‘You don’t know her,’ David said despondently, but Letty still felt confident.

‘There’s still your cousin Freddy. He’s on your side, isn’t he?’

David nodded without speaking, remained gazing into the fire, and Letty could see he wasn’t convinced, realised then just what damage Madge could do, knew just how keen she would be to do it.

Not knowing quite what to say, how to comfort him, she came and sat on the arm of his chair, wordlessly putting her arm about him. It mattered little to her if David had no business, had not a penny in the world, but it mattered to him – it mattered that he hoped to leave his shares to Chris, for his future, a future he could now see being plucked away from his son by the wife he detested.

It was quite wrong to expect Chris to settle down, even if Madge hadn’t hit the roof when David suggested finding somewhere for him in the company. ‘The last thing I would sanction would be having your bastard around,’ she said in front of everyone prior to their monthly board meeting. Mr Hawke of Hawke & Walsall, Company Secretary, had frowned his disapproval of her remark.

‘Most uncalled for,’ he said when they had gone into the meeting. ‘A most unseemly remark. She may hold a tidy investment in this concern, but she does not sit on the board and has no say here. She certainly should not be coming here for the sole purpose of stirring up dissension no matter how you and she, Mr Baron, conduct your private lives.’

‘I can’t stop her coming here,’ David said stiffly, as he took his seat at the head of the long polished oak table, a secretary with her notebook and pencil at his side. ‘And Mrs Baron and myself consider our private lives to be private, you understand?’

Mr Hawke had frowned even deeper, the lines on his face forming canyons. ‘Quite. But if I may venture to say so, you might think it best, under the circumstances, not to
allow your boy … er, your son … to come into the company – at least for the time being. Better all round, don’t you think?’

David nodded wordlessly, wondering how to explain to Chris.

In fact Chris had no interest in being found a job in his father’s firm.

‘It’s nice of Dad, but I want to see what I can do off my own bat.’

‘Are you thinking of going in for law?’ Letty probed with purpose.

‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ he said apologetically. ‘Can’t see myself in it somehow. Stuffy lot, solicitors. Wouldn’t mind a stab at politics though. Bit young for it yet perhaps, but I’d like to make a start.’

Somehow, Letty couldn’t see much future in counting local votes, canvassing, listening to speakers, or whatever budding politicians of twenty-two got up to. But he was at least thinking of something.

Ideas of going to fight in Spain had faded with the going of Bunny. He had a different girl now, had been with her for six months which Letty thought encouraging. A pretty girl – tall and skinny, with a pleasant face and extremely fair fluffy hair which Letty suspected was ten per cent natural, ninety per cent peroxide. Her name was Eileen Cochrane, a sister of one of Chris’s erstwhile college chums.