The Soldier's Bride (8 page)

Her happiness slowly dissolving while he spoke, she said joylessly, ‘I don’t think he’d take it. Dad’s never been
a strong man except when it comes to his pride. He’s never borrowed money off anyone.’ This last she couldn’t help saying with some pride.

‘It’s your mother’s life we’re talking about. He cannot refuse,’ David said resolutely, and wouldn’t listen to any argument.

He tackled her father one Sunday after Lucy and Jack had gone out for a walk, braving the cold damp breeze with its threat of snow.

Keeping out of the way, Letty waited in the kitchen. Sitting at the narrow baize-covered deal table, she stared aimlessly about: at the kitchen range, its coals blazing bright on this cold day – Mum used to cook delicious bread pudding in the oven above it, which Letty now did; at the cups hanging on hooks on the dresser in the recess beside the range; at the shelves, one above the other, where several durable iron saucepans stood upside down to stop the grease of cooking getting into them; to the heavy iron kettle, still warm from making tea, set on the gas stove; at the copper in the corner; at the sink where, besides dishes, the family washed themselves, a steamy mirror over it.

Beyond the coloured glass of the door was an open landing with an iron rail. It housed a wrought iron wringer, a tin bath that hung on the whitewashed brick wall, and a lavatory in one corner screened by a wooden wall and a door.

Letty glanced again and again at the clock on its own small shelf. Two-thirty, twenty minutes to three, quarter to. David had been with Dad for half an hour – not only about helping Mum, but also she hoped about permission
to marry. She knew with a surge of excitement that Dad would agree to the latter though she hoped he’d agree to both. She remembered how Jack had gone to see Dad and they’d both emerged beaming at the ecstatic Lucy. Letty waited for that wonderful moment to be hers, very soon now, straining her ears to catch what was being said, hearing Dad’s low tones, David’s just a little higher, but both too blurred behind the closed parlour door for her to make out.

Once she heard David raise his voice and her heart sank. Dad hardly ever raised his, never as far as she could remember. But he could be sullenly stubborn when he had a mind to be. Most likely he was being stubborn over the offer of money. As David’s voice modulated, Letty’s hopes rose again.

She sat on in a fever of impatience, jumping up with anticipation as David came back into the kitchen. Then she noticed he had come back alone and that his eyes were shadowed.

‘Your father’s a frightened man,’ he told her after he’d made Letty sit back down on her chair. ‘He said he appreciated what I was trying to do for your mother, but …’

He paused, and Letty watched him move towards the stained glass of the kitchen door to the whitewashed balcony, to stand gazing out, his back to her.

‘You do know,’ he said, without turning round, ‘that her illness has gone beyond any hope of a cure – beyond the help of money?’

She knew but had refused to believe. They’d all refused to believe. It had remained to Dad, dear, quiet-spoken,
dependent Dad to convince them that they must accept that his wife, their mother, would not be with them for much longer, and nothing under God’s heaven was going to alter that. Staring into David’s dark eyes as he turned sharply to look at her, a suffocating weight descended to weigh upon Letty’s chest so that it took a great effort to breathe properly. Her hands flew to her mouth as tears blurred her sight.

‘How long?’

‘The doctor told your father just before Christmas that it could be just a couple of months.’

‘And he didn’t say anything to us?’

‘Perhaps he thought it better not to, or perhaps he couldn’t bring himself to say it.’

‘Oh, me poor dad! Whatever will he do?’ She was on her feet, David coming forward to catch her as she staggered towards him. Her voice was muffled against his chest. ‘David, I can’t think of you and me – of marriage … It’d seem so …’

‘That’s why I didn’t burden him with it,’ he said as her voice died away. Letty straightened, looked at him through her tears.

‘You never said nothing at all?’

His smile was wry. ‘It wasn’t quite the time.’

‘But you do still want to marry me?’ Immediately she wanted to bite back the words. ‘Oh, David, I’m sorry. I don’t know what made me say that. I didn’t mean to sound so – so selfish at a time when …’

He had her tightly in his arms, his lips pressing down on hers, taking her by surprise.

He’d kissed her like this once before, in the taxi when
she’d asked to meet his parents. At least there had been the driver present then to make it seem less abandoned. But here, the two of them alone together with the kitchen door practically closed, she should certainly not be allowing herself to be kissed like this, much less be returning it. Surely a decent girl didn’t allow herself to be kissed in this way until she was married?

‘We mustn’t …’ she tried to say, words muffled by his kisses.

Against her lips, David was murmuring, ‘Because you love me, my darling. Because I love you. Because we will be married, my sweet precious darling.’

At that moment it didn’t seem like her, Letty Bancroft, eighteen and a half years old, ignorant now of the strong passions that flow in the veins of lovers, making them oblivious to all else. At this moment she felt as old and wise as time itself, yet strangely buoyant and young, gasping against his lips, her body willing to be crushed against him, his to use as he would.

When suddenly David released her, she reeled slightly, with an effort regained her balance, stood blinking as the scruffy everyday appearance of the kitchen came back into focus. A laugh broke from her as her breath returned. ‘Oh, David, I do love you so,’ she gulped, amazed to see how glum his expression had become, knowing he was thinking of her mother.

In under a year Arthur Bancroft had seen his youngest daughter mature from a giggly girl who’d had all the local boys mooning after her, to a woman whose eyes held a
faraway look. Letty was in love and love somehow had made her sad.

He too felt sad, a sad empty pit inside him. He didn’t want to lose his little girl to any man, but that was the nature of things; there was nothing he could do about it.

He took her aside. ‘I know you and your David are lookin’ ter get engaged,’ he said. ‘I want ter see you ’appy, Letitia, but all I can think of right now is yer mum.’

Letty put her arms about his hunched shoulders as his voice faded disconsolately. ‘I know, Dad. Don’t worry yourself about us. You’ve got enough to worry about with Mum.’

‘It’s not that I don’t want ter see you and ’im ’appy. I just feel there ain’t nothing in life fer me any more. When …’ He stopped sharply, then began again. ‘If any-think was to ’appen to yer mum, there wouldn’t be nothink left fer me.’

Letty’s throat constricted. ‘Don’t talk like that, Dad. Mum’ll be all right.’

‘Lucilla getting married soon an’ all,’ he went on dolefully. ‘I got no ’eart in it. ’Oo’s to ’elp prepare fer it?’

Letty gave him a comforting squeeze. ‘What d’you think I’m here for, Dad? I’ll sort out all the necessaries, so long as Lucy pulls her weight too. That’s if she wants a halfway decent wedding.’

It was good to see a small measure of relief creep into those grey eyes. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said firmly, and just as firmly put aside all thoughts of David’s proposal of marriage. That could wait for the time being. There were more pressing matters, and at least planning Lucy’s wedding in
April gave her something other to think about than Mum’s fast dwindling health which was frightening them all.

There was little to do regarding Lucy and Jack’s wedding after all, subdued affair that it was, accompanied by quietly flowing tears from almost all those who attended, hearts full of commiseration not only for their sad loss but the timing of it. Three weeks to the day Lucy was due to walk in joyful triumph up the aisle of Holy Trinity Church in Old Nichol Street, her mother’s funeral service had been conducted in that same church, the coffin borne along that same aisle before being put into the ground in East London Cemetery at Manor Road.

Ill luck had followed upon ill luck. The day after Mabel Bancroft died, Vinny gave birth to a boy. The shock of not being at her mother’s bedside as she passed quietly away made Vinny so ill she wasn’t able to attend the funeral either, and weakened by grief of it all, she was still confined to her bed by the time Lucy’s wedding arrived.

The absence seemed to heighten the loss of her mother and Lucy broke down in the middle of her vows and had to be given a seat for a little while to recover herself.

‘We should have postponed the wedding,’ Letty gulped, tears streaming down her cheeks as much from her own distress as Lucy’s. She felt David’s hand tighten almost painfully on hers, dabbed them from her cheeks and lifted her head bravely, her back long and straight, just like Mum’s.

All around her, relatives were still in black in respect of a dear one recently gone from them, and as Lucy stoically
got up from her seat to resume her vows in a small trembling voice, the church echoed to the sniffling of the women and the damp surreptitious blowing of noses into men’s handkerchiefs.

Beside Letty in the front pew, her father made no sound at all, but she could see his tears running silently and steadily down his narrow cheeks. She had to admire the way he had conducted his daughter along the aisle, his stance upright as he gave her away to Jack. It was only when he finally eased into the pew that he sagged at all. Letty held his hand a great deal of the time, endeavouring to give him what small comfort she could find to give.

The guests returned to the flat for the wedding reception more from a sense of duty, it seemed, than to celebrate a marriage. The wedding breakfast was strangely far more subdued than the funeral lunch three weeks previously. Then even Dad had chuckled at Uncle Charlie’s dry wit, the full impact of his loss having not quite hit him until later; not hit anyone until later, Mabel Bancroft, a dear sister, aunt, mother, was gone from them forever.

Unfortunately for Lucy, it took her wedding to bring it home. Whatever had stimulated each to react so perversely to grief on the day of the funeral was missing on this day. Food hardly touched, they talked in whispers. There was no laughter, not even from Uncle Charlie. Congratulating Lucy and Jack on what should have been their happiest day, voices faltered, tears were sniffed back, words like ‘Oh, my dears,’ were uttered waveringly in place of ‘So happy for you both’.

Lucy spent more of her time in her old bedroom being
comforted by her new husband than in the parlour. By five o’clock they left very quietly for their new home, accompanied by tearful good wishes, Lucy again breaking down knowing her mother was not there to cry over her. The guests left as soon afterwards as politeness allowed.

The house gone suddenly silent, Dad went to the bedroom he had once shared with his wife, closing the door softly without saying a word.

Letty, taking him a cup of tea, a futile token of comfort but all she could think of, found him curled up under the coverlet, keeping to his own side of the double bed as though the half that had once been his wife’s must forever remain sacrosanct.

He was asleep. Scant lashes lowered gently against his thin cheeks, his mouth beneath the droop of his moustache looked even more drawn down, full of sadness. Looking at him Letty felt fresh tears spring, felt she was intruding upon his sleeping grief. Gently she put the cup down on the little cane table beside the bed without waking him and retreated quietly back to the parlour.

‘Oh, David,’ was all she could say as she buried her face in his shoulder, seeking the comfort of his understanding arm.

The parlour with its empty chairs, its lonely ornaments, even its wall emanating a sense of something gone from the flat, seemed as if it would never again be filled with sound. It was as if the flat had died – the same impression she’d had in David’s house – and now she understood. The place had absorbed love but was no longer able to give it back.

Even though Mum’s old friend, Mrs Hall, was still
busying herself clearing away the remains of the wedding feast – just as she had done the funeral lunch – energetically brushing crumbs off the parlour rug, her presence nowhere near compensated.

‘Doin’ me bit for yer poor mum, Gawd bless ’er,’ she said in a low respectful whisper and nodded lugubriously towards Letty. ‘You look just about done in, luv.’ And then to David. ‘You give good care ter that gel, son. She’s worth every penny there is on Gawd’s earth.’

‘And I know it,’ he said in a low firm tone.

Her obligation performed, Mrs Hall finally left. ‘Yer’ve got a good man there, luv,’ she said as Letty went downstairs to show her out. ‘Don’t you ever let ’im slip through yer fingers.’

‘I won’t,’ she said fervently. ‘Thanks for all you’ve done.’

‘Me pleasure, luv. Glad to of bin of ’elp to yer poor muvver, Gawd bless ’er.’

Letty, sitting in one corner of the sofa as the light faded from the room, watched David come back in with his hat from the hallstand in the passage, was very still as he came to stand in front of her, ready to leave and yet loath to go. In desperation, she took the initiative.

‘David, stay here the night. I don’t want to be on me own.’

‘Your father is here,’ he said, but he had read her expression; knew the empty aura of the place appalled her. Once it had been so full of life with her sisters moving busily about the flat, chattering, voices raised in laughter or argument; her mother restoring order.

‘I’m being silly,’ she pleaded. ‘Me nineteen in a few weeks’ time. But I ain’t strong enough, all on me own, with Dad shut in his room and me …’ She gazed up at him with imploring eyes, a child at this moment. ‘Please stay, David. You can have Lucy’s room. I can take my old one. At least I’ll have you near me to call on.’

Sometime in the night Letty awoke and found herself crying. Her room full of morning light, Mum had come in to tell her off for still being in bed instead of up and ready for school. She’d been well again, that spring in her step Letty well remembered with the old zest for life that had given Dad impetus in making his shop the success it had once been.