The Soldier's Bride (7 page)

Outside in the early dark of the winter evening, a hand bell was ringing, a voice calling some undistinguishable word, but its message was understood well enough. Lucy jumped up and hurried to the mantelshelf where some coins were always kept in an ornate jar.

‘Shall we get some for tea?’ she asked, but didn’t wait for an answer, was out of the parlour door and yelling down the stairs: ‘Dad – I’m getting some muffins for tea!’

Letty had the parlour window open, the cold December air hitting her face like an icy hand as she called to the man immediately below, his face hidden by the large flat tray balanced on his head. All she could see was a foreshortened view of legs, one hand swinging the bell, the other hand gripping the tray’s rim, and on the tray a cloth covering the delicious muffins, some of which she would soon be toasting by the fire.

Lucy had come out. The tray was put down on the pavement, showing the man’s cloth cap white with flour. Six muffins were put in a paper bag from a bundle on a string around the man’s waist, Lucy’s coins received and dropped into the pocket of his apron. The tray hoisted adeptly back on to his head, the muffin man went on his way, energetically swinging his bell as Lucy came in and up the stairs, yelling to Dad: ‘Tea’s getting cold!’

Lovely to eat the muffins, dripping with butter, around the fire, Letty’s face hot from the flames, then to go back to the
table to pour another cup of tea for herself just as she fancied. No sitting on ceremony around a posh laid table, watching every word she said, every mouthful as if she was eating cotton wool.

Afterwards, David had taken her to see the house he still owned, the one he had bought for himself and his wife to live in. It had given her the creeps. Loss had seeped into the very walls, not because the poor woman and her baby had died there but because the house itself had died. For all his furniture there it felt so empty, desolate, a shudder had run through her and she knew nothing would induce her ever to enter the place again, much less go and live there when David proposed marriage to her – if he did.

‘Most of the time,’ he’d explained, ‘I stay with my parents. I pay a woman to clean and dust it, open the windows to air the place. But I can’t bring myself to live here on my own, if you see what I mean.’

She did see what he meant, that even now his sense of loss had not gone away, that she wasn’t certain that it would ever go away, for all he said he loved her.

After the silent house, and the silent street where he lived, the busy thoroughfare of Bethnal Green Road had been a tonic. The people were vibrant, noisy, not afraid of life. Everywhere was full of bustle and urgency;
groups meandering, talking, sharing jokes on street corners; girls in long lines, arms linked, swinging along, home sewn skirts brushing their ankles, second hand blouses and jackets concealing blossoming bosoms, straw hats embellished with wax cherries or a linen flower, boots clumping in unison on the pavement. The quips thrown by boys strolling in groups were readily flung back: ‘Does yer muvver know yer out?’ ‘Does yours?’ ‘Wanna drink?’ ‘Not wivart me friend.’ ‘Oo’s yer friend?’ ‘She’s Alice, I’m Ethel!’ Life was vital, death seldom thought of.

Dad gone to see how Mum was, Letty told her sister about the house David cherished like a mausoleum, its desolate atmosphere. Even as she spoke of it, she couldn’t help a shudder.

‘It’s always the same when men live on their own,’ Lucy said with the slow deliberation of someone who imagines they possess a world of wisdom. ‘Look at old Mr Ford – he lived alone.’

What she meant was the two-roomed pigsty in which Mr Ford, for whom they’d run errands as children before he’d died, had lived alone. The place had stunk from neglect.

‘I understand what you mean,’ she said sagaciously. ‘All that house needs is a woman’s touch to make it all nice and cosy again. You’re ever so lucky having a ready made home to go into and everything.’

But Lucy didn’t understand at all.

‘I only hope I haven’t caught it,’ Vinny said.

She sat with her sisters in the parlour as Dad let the doctor out after he’d seen Mum. The doctor came to see her quite a lot now, his bills beginning to mount up.

‘I hope none of us have.’ Letty gave Vinny a look. Just like her to think of herself first! Though that was a bit unjust, Vinny had her condition to think of. Six months, and she was filling out well around the middle. ‘Mum’s always made sure she didn’t give it to any of us. So long as Dad ain’t got it, that’s all.’

‘It would have showed up by now if he had,’ Lucy said, her pretty face puckered thoughtfully. ‘Since you’ve shared with me, he’s slept up in your old room so’s he won’t catch anything. Mum was always very insistent on that, and …’

She stopped on seeing her father standing in the door, his narrow face dark at her reference to Mum in the past tense. His tone as he reprimanded her was heavy with the fear that lurked inside them all.

‘Was?’ he queried. ‘What d’yer mean, was? Yer mum looks a lot perkier than she’s been fer a long time. Don’t yer ever say “was” when yer talk about ’er.’

‘No, of course not, Dad. I didn’t mean …’

Crestfallen, Lucy watched her father move away from the door, going into Mum’s room, closing the door softly behind him.

‘I didn’t mean it that way!’ she burst out, her eyes brimming with sudden tears. ‘I didn’t.’

‘Of course you didn’t mean it,’ Letty hurried to soothe her. ‘Dad’s full of worry, that’s all. He knows you didn’t mean it that way.’

Lucy’s face was buried in Letty’s shoulder, her body shaking with sobs. ‘I don’t want Mum to die … I don’t want her to die.’

‘She ain’t going to. Mum’s strong inside. Inside she’s got a lot of willpower.’

‘And people do get cured these days,’ Vinny said, her voice steady and unemotional. Vinny who visited Mum as rarely as she decently could, saying one in her present condition couldn’t be too careful, as brazen as you like, had the solution. ‘You can go for a year or so somewhere like Switzerland, to a sanitorium. They say the clear air and the high altitude can cure.’

‘If we’d got the money for it,’ Letty said over her shoulder, still hugging Lucy whose tears were slowly abating. She almost yielded to an impulse to ask if Vinny, so ready with her solutions, might be as ready to help towards paying. Her Albert wasn’t short of a bob or two by all accounts. Vinny boasted enough about how she could afford this, afford that. But she knew that even if Vinny were to offer, Dad would be too proud to start borrowing from anyone, though it would be nice to have had the opportunity of refusing.

‘Dad ain’t got that kind of money,’ she said succinctly, hoping the hint would sink in. Vinny’s reply, to her mind, was typical – simple and selfish.

‘He would if he sold the shop.’

Vinny’s insensitivity shook her. Letty bit back the obvious retort, and said instead, ‘And what would him and Mum live on afterwards?’

‘Well, it does stand to reason.’ Vinny had no idea how she’d evoked Letty’s contempt. ‘Dad is getting on a bit. He won’t want to have that shop round his neck forever. If he sold it, he and Mum could live comfortably once she’s better.’

‘It wouldn’t bring in all that much,’ Letty said. What she didn’t say was that without the shop Dad himself would probably fade away. It was his life, the bits and pieces he surrounded himself with, always looking for that special piece. No one else would understand but she did, for she felt the same towards what others would call rubbish. Without his shop Dad would fall apart, go into a decline. Yet there was Mum to think of still. But there was no guarantee, was there?

Vinny was looking prim. ‘You could work in another shop. You’ve always been clever at selling things. You’ve worked with Dad more than me and Lucy have.’

‘He’s never let any of us go out to work, Vinny.’

Vinny looked blank, shrugged evasively. ‘It’s Mum we must think of now.’ She smoothed the modest bulge in her well-cut black crepe skirt with a careful hand. ‘Beggars can’t be choosers.’

Letty wanted to blurt out that Dad was no beggar and
never would be. But Vinny was right. Anything that might help Mum get her health back had to be considered. Yet asking Dad to give up the shop he’d built up, spend the rest of his life in idleness or taking orders from someone else, wouldn’t be easy. Though he’d do it, for Mum’s sake.

With Lucy and Vinny unwilling to suggest it, and Vinny demurring at her Albert approaching him, it was left to Letty and she knew she could never bear to see the look on his face. She did speak to Doctor Rudd about it, and received the sad and sympathetic reply that things had gone too far for any good to be got from a sanitorium, and selling the shop for that purpose would be quite futile.

It was a miserable Christmas. David, compelled to spend it with his parents, managed to slip over late on Boxing Day, but Letty in turn felt obliged to stay in. Mum taking a bad turn and not getting out of her bed made her feel it wasn’t right to go out to enjoy herself.

Conversation conducted in low tones, David talked to Jack when he came over for a few hours, and Uncle Will whose rude health only emphasised the wasted condition of his sister. The fun of last Christmas missing, the flat had a forlorn atmosphere despite being full of Uncle Will’s family and Uncle Charlie’s too, as if everyone was waiting for something, not daring to contemplate what.

Dad said little, and spent much of his time sitting with his wife. He ignored David almost to the point of rudeness which Letty chose to disregard, seeing he was almost the same towards Jack, no doubt feeling he could have done without outsiders at this time.

By January, Lucy had got to the point where she couldn’t
stop herself crying at the oddest times: setting the table, brushing the rugs, dusting, sometimes in the middle of reading a book. Once, washing herself at the kitchen sink, she burst into floods of tears so that Letty had to console her, dripping wet over the kitchen floor.

‘Shush! Mum’ll ’ear yer!’ At such times, carefully nurtured vowels went to the wall. In grief she was Cockney through and through, and it didn’t matter.

‘I … can’t ’elp it! I just … can’t. Without Mum …’ Words were broken by sobs.

‘We ain’t goin’ ter be without Mum. Don’t let ’er hear you talkin’ like that. She needs all the strength she can get without you goin’ on.’

She herself managed to keep on top of things during the day. At night it was a different matter, her head spinning with visions of Mum no longer being there; of Dad trying to cope – dreamy, dependent Dad. Then the tears would come. She’d clamp her pillow tight against her face and sink into a welter of smothered grief. But it didn’t make any difference, except temporarily to relieve pent up feelings.

David was her strength now. ‘Don’t try to hold back,’ he told her when, embarrassed, trying to stifle her tears, she suddenly gave way with such sobs in his arms that she thought she’d never stop. ‘Let it all out, darling,’ David, who had been through it, was far enough removed from her grief to be her comfort where family were too close to give it. Even Uncle Will had begun to break down whenever Mum’s name was mentioned.

Dad had taken to ignoring David’s presence completely. But then he ignored everyone now. He seldom went down
to the shop and it was left to her to run it alone. At least it gave her something to occupy her mind through the day. As if by some sort of telepathy, Dad had spoken of selling up to get Mum away to a sanitorium and it had been left to her to tell him to see Doctor Rudd first. After he’d done so, he hadn’t spoken of it again, but had become even more quiet and withdrawn.

‘Dad worries me,’ she said to David. He’d taken her to see a farce at the Whitehall Theatre, hoping it might take her out of herself for a while, concerned by her drawn features and loss of weight.

‘You can’t give in now, Letitia,’ he’d said. ‘Your father needs all your strength. Lord knows, he’ll have little support from anyone else once Lucilla is married.’

Dad needed her strength, yes. And that strength she got from David. In the taximeter cab home, a transport David favoured, it being private, and hang the cost, she told him how Dad was behaving, apologised if he was being churlish.

‘He’s like it with all of us,’ she excused, then went on to tell him about Vinny’s idea of selling the shop to pay sanitorium fees. She heard David draw in an angry breath.

‘That’s preposterous!’

‘That’s what I thought,’ she murmured glumly. ‘But what else can we do? I couldn’t face telling him. He loves his shop so much. I ended up getting him to see Mum’s doctor. I think he must have explained how hopeless it all was, because Dad went all quiet and he hasn’t said anything about it since.’

Dad’s silence stemmed of course from being told of the hopelessness of Mum’s condition. David took it as
referring to the unlikelihood of selling property without profit, unthinkable in his circle.

He was quiet for a while, lost in thought, until Letty was sure she had said something to upset him.

‘I wonder if perhaps I could help?’ he said at last. ‘I should have offered sooner but I felt I might be interfering in family concerns. Now, of course, it needs to be said. After all, I shall soon be one of the family, won’t I? Once we’re engaged.’

‘Engaged!’ Everything else flew out of her head. ‘You’re asking me to get engaged to you?’

‘I’m asking you to marry me, my darling,’ he said quietly.

‘Oh, David! Oh, you can’t be!’ Her head was whirling, her throat dry. He was smiling at her confusion.

‘But I am.’ He was holding her to him, her tears dampening the collar of his overcoat in a flood of joyful disbelief.

Her excitement moderating, he held her a little from him, his face grown grave. ‘Listen, my love. It wouldn’t be wise to say too much to anyone just yet, to Lucy or Vinny or your father. Too many things to think about. We will be married, yes. In say a year’s time. But listen,’ he continued hastily as she made to interrupt. ‘If I can help your mother … By help, I mean financially towards getting her abroad for a cure. I can do that, Letitia. I’m pretty well solvent. If your father feels he must pay me back at some time, that will be fine with me. Though that isn’t a condition, you understand, darling.’