by Maggie Ford
Mary gaze remained steady. “I know he does. He’s never mentioned it. We’ve never spoken of it, but I know. I guessed. And he knows that too.”
She had always felt a sense of having been cheated, of being a victim of an ongoing subterfuge. “Why didn’t you both tell me openly and honestly that he knew? It’s always hurt, being apparently kept in the dark, having to pretend he didn’t know.” Angry tears began to blur her vision. “All this time, Henry. I had a right to be told. I had a right.”
“I know. He wanted to tell you, but I thought it better not to. I had no idea you already knew – or had guessed.”
“And you put him up to marrying me to get yourself out of a hole.”
“I’m sorry, Mary.”
“And thought you’d leave me to think it was out of the goodness of his heart.”
“It was. He’d been in love with you for years before that.”
“And took the opportunity of doing well for himself at the same time. You saw to that, promoting him, gratefully.” Without warning such a deep bitterness rose within her that it made her draw her breath in sharply. It was as though’d been suppressing it all these years, yet she’d always thought that it had never been there, that she had long since come to terms with that which she had guessed at and suspected to be true.
Henry rose from his chair. “It wasn’t like that, Mary. Don’t blame him. I put him up to it. He’d lost track of you, but when I… Mary, he loves you. He’d do anything for you. For you he took on another man’s child. He asked for nothing. What I gave him, in gratitude, as you’ve said, he never asked for. You must believe that. He is a good man, Mary.”
She sat very quiet, but inside she was a mass of conflicting emotion like a corpse moving and writhing with maggots, being given no rest.
She had been staring down at the soft rug on the floor of this well-set-up private room. Now she looked up to see Henry take a deep breath.
“No matter what you think of us at the moment, I need to talk about Helen.” He began speaking swiftly as though fearing to be sidetracked by her obvious distress. “I want to see her future taken care of. I have made a trust for her, as I said. It’s all drawn up, in the hands of my solicitor. It will come to her when she’s twenty-five. I thought she’d still be too young at twenty-one but later she’d be more astute. I want to see her taken care of when I’m no longer around to look out for her.”
Mary brought her mind back to what he had been saying.
“You’re not going to die, Henry,” she said without energy.
She saw him give an ironic grin. The tone of his own voice was flat, formal. “That’s for God to decide. I just want to be prepared, that’s all.”
A nurse came into the room. “Time for you to go, Mrs Goodridge. Your friend needs his rest.”
Yes, thought Mary, friend. From now on that was all he must ever be. She loved him still, enough not to continue with any feelings of bitterness. But no more would they be lovers. She was determined on that point. She was the mother of his child and for all these years had been his lover, yet that part was over, though if ever he were in any trouble she’d be the first to go to his aid.
It was as though something had been drained out of her as she left the convalescent home. She could blame neither man for his part in all this, for she was as bad as both of them.
* * *
“… but from now on, Henry, our marriage will be in name only.”
He smothered a bitter grin as Grace stood over him. Their marriage had always been in name only, apart from that one brief fling in the Loire Valley when the hot sunshine had made her give herself to him, from which moments of abandon Hugh had sprang into being.
And now Grace, plump and resolute, stood before him, though her face was as gentle as ever. “I feel sad, Henry, but our marriage must to all outside eyes appear as it has always been. I don’t think I could stand an unpleasant divorce. What would my parents, my friends say? I can’t tell you how shocked I was by what our sister-in-law – I cannot say her name, will never say her name again – had to tell me. She made her news appear to slip out by sheer accident, but she intended I should hear it, the way she drooled. I refused to give her the satisfaction of knowing how affected I was, but I was sick at heart. I can’t bring myself to mention in words what she said had been going on. But I am glad that poisonous viper gained nothing from me to make her smirk. If she expected it she was disappointed. Henry, have you been paying that woman to keep her secret?”
Henry didn’t answer. A barrier of silence had grown up between them since his homecoming. He was only too aware that Pam had been hell bent on reaping revenge for his refusal to extend Geoffrey any sum beyond his regular director’s remuneration. For months he’d been on a knife’s edge, wondering how much Grace knew, if she cared. But she did care. It was in her eyes the rare times they’d met his. She’d look away quickly. She never smiled at him. She, kept out of his way, particularly during the first few weeks after Pam had made her last demand of money from him and had obviously gone straight to her. He hadn’t known how much Grace had believed, nor dared he refer to it.
Today it had finally come to a head. Something he’d said had made Grace burst out with what must have been simmering inside her all this time. Poor woman. Stolidly he gazed out through the window at the grounds all green in the bright May sunshine and the trees brimming with blossom and new leaves, just so as not to see the tears glistening in those gentle blue eyes as she went on stoically, “It doesn’t matter anyway. Henry, I mean to continue to be your wife. Not for one minute do I imagine you will leave me or you would have done so by now. I believe you too have no wish for divorce, our name dragged through the mire. I can only thank God Hugh has no idea what has gone on – he’s too young. It’s bad enough knowing the country is on the brink of war without us entering into one. He’ll see only two happily married people when he comes home for his summer vacation. He must never know that we are married in name only, as I’ve already said.”
Henry retained his silence. She really did believe her words, that she had brought about a change in their marriage. All that had really changed was that Mary – she and William now practically running the restaurant in his continuing absence taking care of himself – was estranged from him by her own wish. Their relationship would never return to what it had been, that he knew, and he in turn understood and respected that wish. It was that, more than his state of health, which had kept him from visiting London. It was that too which made him sit in, day after day, or stare out at the grounds of his home, smoking incessantly despite his doctor’s orders, because he was bored and lonely and missing Mary.
* * *
These were strange days. William reported regularly to Henry on how the restaurant was doing, he and Mary still holding the fort remarkably well as a gorgeous summer slowly passed. With Henry’s agreement they had opened a roof garden, he organising the funds from his home, to the appreciation of those who came to dance away the warm summer evenings in the open.
* * *
In the Lett family there had been much discussion about the restaurant’s continuance since the deterioration of Henry’s health. Needing someone to pick up the reins – temporarily, he’d hoped – he’d spoken to his sisters about who would carry on for the while and had received negative replies. Neither wanted to be saddled with it, their husbands each with their own businesses to concern them. As shareholders they reaped the benefits, but getting their hands dirty, as it were, was a different matter.
Geoffrey had shown himself plainly scared of taking over more or less on his own. “You know me, old man. I could do it with you behind me, us two. But taking it all on my shoulders, on my own…”
Henry had shrugged, defeated by Geoffrey’s lack of spunk. Geoffrey was still the handsome and debonair man he’d been in his youth, and just as feckless, just as weak under his devil-may-care exterior. But blood was thicker than water, and Henry had chosen to believe him innocent of Pamela’s sc
heming. She’d led him by the nose and still did. Yet it was very much on her money that they continued their high life though now the country was at war, a lot would change.
It was Mary who had come to the rescue, she and William. They had made a wonderful job of it. He felt proud of them, the place busy as ever it had been, perhaps more so. Many of the old guard still visited but since the outbreak of war the restaurant had been thronged by service uniforms, high and low-ranking officers and their wives or girlfriends turning it into a lively place. Dance bands and cabarets played every Friday and Saturday evening, the old days a thing of the past. Glen Miller music was played now instead of Count Basie, bop instead of jazz, the roar of voices singing “Hang Out the Washing on the Siegfried Line” rather than ‘Tipperary”. A noisy defiance of Hitler’s threats to the British way of life had replaced the sophistication of past years. Money still rolled in as it had always done apart from those one or two blips over the last ten years, his mad scheme to expand nearly doing for him, the crash of 1929 and later his apathy. Well, life went on, but sometimes he no longer felt part of it, Mary going on without him. He just hoped she’d be happy.
* * *
Mary stood to one side watching the sea of uniforms. It was a strange sort of situation, she in practice, if not in title, taking her husband’s place as Letts’ restaurant manager, keeping an eye on everything that went on, while Will had virtually taken over from Henry. The two Lett brothers were rarely seen, Henry temporarily retired, as he called it, to his home in Halstead Green, and Geoffrey with only his director’s remuneration and his wife’s money to keep him. What he got up to these days Mary did not know nor care.
She heard the air raid warning start up, a signal for diners and dance band to retreat to the basement that William had pursuaded Henry to have strengthened, there to continue their evening. Others would leave to go to public shelters. The raid would go on into the night, the music being all but drowned out by what was going on outside over their heads.
Here, as in every city in Britain at present under attack, there was a determination to show Hitler that he would never subdue the British spirit as he had the rest of Europe. In defiance they would roar out “Knees Up Mother Brown”, do the Lambeth Walk and the Hokey-Cokey.
She glanced across at William and saw him nod to her to get everyone moving. Going to where the band still played, she announced over the mike that dinner and dancing would continue in the basement for those wishing to stay, and that if they would repair in orderly fashion downstairs, a complimentary glass of champagne would be served to every customer.
Mary thought of Helen as she always did during these nightly air raids. Helen, eleven years of age, was safely in the country, evacuated to the home of an acquaintance of Henry in Buckinghamshire. Should anything happen to herself or Will during what people were calling the Blitz, what would Helen do? Would Henry take responsibility for her then? There was still that small rankle in his having distanced himself from his part in her child. There was the generous trust he’d made for her, of course, but the giving of money – if one has it – is always far easier than the taking up of responsibility.
Before Helen left home last year, she and Will had meant to explain to her about her true father. But at ten she’d seemed so young, and on top of being sent away, it would have been too much for a child of her age to take. In the end they’d decided to shelve it until things returned to normal and Helen would have them by her side to help cushion any sense of rejection that such news might cause. Mary had watched her child leave with sandwiches for the journey, the little parcel tag tied to her lapel, her large hazel eyes brimming with tears, and had known she’d made the right decision. To have heaped such news on top of the trauma of evacuation would have been more than Helen could have borne. Will had agreed that she’d done the right thing.
“You always do,” he’d said, holding her close after Helen had gone.
By now the restaurant was nearly empty. The sirens were dying away. There came the distant sound of anti-aircraft fire. Soon London would erupt with noise: the explosion of falling bombs and the ringing of ambulance and fire engine bells. It was not as frantic here as in the East End with its docks and warehouses, where buildings still smouldered from last night’s raid, but the odd shower of bombs would fall here all the same.
She glanced across the now empty dance floor towards Will and a surge of affection filled her. Natural of him to have stuck by her. Her mind went briefly back to the day he’d told her of Pam’s visit, how he had heard her out and then calmly told her she was barking up the wrong tree – that he was already aware of his wife’s affair with Henry.
Whether that was true or not she didn’t know to this day, but she remembered how she had felt as he said that if she really wanted to go back to Henry, he would never stop her. She had shaken her head so violently, bursting into tears, that he had drawn her close, his arm about her while she had sobbed out her heart on his chest, he gently patting her back to comfort her. When she had recovered enough to tell him that all she wanted was him and intended to stick by him to the end of her days, he’d soothed away her tears and for the first time she had returned his love with all her being.
From the door that led to the basement stairs he signalled to Mary to hurry herself. She looked up at him as though lost in thought.
“Come on!” he urged and saw her nod. But still she held back.
“I’ll follow you down,” she called across the restaurant to him. “I just want to make sure the main door is locked. We don’t want any unsavoury characters wandering in when we’re not here.”
She laughed. He laughed too. “Don’t be too long about it,” he called. She looked so beautiful to him, so poised, standing there in that slim, shimmering, deep green evening dress, her hair swept up from her temples, her grey eyes so alive. It was the last sight he ever had of her.
* * *
Steadying his pint of beer, the man caught William’s shoulder as he passed.
“Sorry, mate! Didn’t spill any on you, did I?”
“No, that’s all right. No harm done.”
The collision brought him out of his reverie, seeing young Edwin Lett sitting across the pub table to him. The noise of a lunchtime pub buzzed in his ears as he blinked at the lad.
“Is Helen’s mother still alive?” Edwin was asking.
Forcing his mind back to the present, he shook his head, watching the man with the beer find a table just along from the one they were sitting at. “No. A bomb landed across the road to the restaurant during the Blitz. She was hit by flying glass.”
He realised he had been telling Edwin quite a bit about Letts, but how much had been in words and how much in his mind, he couldn’t say.
“I’m sorry,” Edwin was saying. “It must have been awful for you.”
“Well, it’s a long time ago now. All I wanted to tell you was how it was and how it could be again, if one wanted it to be – the restaurant, I mean.”
It struck him that Edwin wasn’t exactly showing that much interest in the restaurant, though he was looking thoughtful about something.
“Did you tell Helen about her father after your wife died?” he asked and, resigning himself to putting aside the matter of Letts, William swallowed his disappointment and shook his head in reply.
“It never seemed like the right time. She and I became very close after her mother’s death and, once I’d lost Mary, I couldn’t face the thought of losing Helen too.”
“I see. But was she upset, my uncle dying?”
“A little. He was a friend of the family. But not in the way she would have been if she’d known he was her father. And we support each other – we’re like best pals.” William couldn’t stop the whimsical grin widening his lips. “Until I suppose she meets a nice young man whom she finds herself eager to spend the rest of her life with.”
He saw Edwin’s eyes light up momentarily and dared feel optimistic – remembered the admiring glances he’d gi
ven Helen on the day the will had been read, in fact the way both young people had exchanged silent interest in each other. But this wasn’t what he was about at this moment.
“What do you think about the restaurant, then?” he queried. He saw the boy look at him as though his thoughts had been miles away.
“The restaurant?” Edwin blinked. “Oh, you mean about Letts being returned to its old form. Yes, I suppose it could be done.”
William warmed instantly to his subject. “You bet it could be done. Think of it, Edwin, filled to capacity, thriving, as great a place as ever it was. But it will take quite a lot of money. And a good deal of enthusiasm. The sort of enthusiasm I’ve always had for it. I’d be sad to see it all go.”
For a moment Edwin said nothing as he sipped at his gin and tonic. Then he said slowly, “I’ve got money. What my parents left me. Quite a bit. I don’t know if it’d be enough to buy Hugh and my uncle’s second wife out.”
Edwin’s eyes had moved towards the pub entrance. They lit up quite suddenly, and following his gaze, William saw his daughter walking in, her expression blank as she glanced around at the sea of faces trying to glimpse one she recognised. Seeing him, her face brightened up and she came over.
“Daddy…”
Seeing Edwin, her grey eyes opened wide. “Hello again. How nice to see you. Have you been here long?”
As she looked at Edwin, William saw a glow in her eyes, and glancing at the young man, noted the self-same glow. He leaned across the table to him, his mind already way ahead of these two young people, as Helen sat. Henry’s generous trust for his natural daughter lay just waiting to be used.