The Soldier's Bride

by Maggie Ford

  The only man in a family of women, Arthur Bancroft risked a surreptitious wipe of one finger beneath his suddenly moist eyes. ‘You best make yerself scarce now, Lavinia. Before people start arriving,’ he said huskily. ‘Can’t ’ave ’em see yer before yer walk down that aisle.’

  Master of himself again, he ushered his eldest daughter out of the bedroom to be safely hidden in her parents’ room until her entrance in church would take everyone’s breath away.

  At last Letty was free to place herself in Lucy’s deft hands to be helped into her new undergarments and the dress that had been hanging behind the door under a sheet since being made up by Mum’s friend Mrs Hall, a widow who lived above the Knave of Clubs on the corner of Bethnal Green Road. The material had been bought at Debenham & Freebody’s departmental store just off Oxford Street – apple green crepe-de-chine – and went well with her auburn hair. Lucy’s dress was pale blue, and a wonderful job Mrs Hall had made of them both.

  Not too fancy, all right for Sunday dresses afterwards: the bodices pintucked and frilled, with tiny bunches of tulle rosebuds, satin ribbon at the waists, skirts that flared to a small train. Mrs Hall had made the hats as well and they were a sight for sore eyes; a good twenty inches across, a mound of tulle bows with masses of tiny artificial flowers, to be anchored to the hair by huge pearl-headed hatpins.

  Uncomplaining, Letty submitted herself to Lucy’s quick, sure hands. Lucy would have made a good lady assistant in one of those high-class departmental stores like Dickens & Jones, except Dad had never let any of them go out to work as girls of poorer families did. He didn’t seem to think that helping in the shop for just a bit of pocket money was work, and always made sure they never went short.

  Lucy stepped back as far as the bed behind her allowed to view her handiwork just as the shop doorbell tinkled. The shop was closed, of course, a handwritten sign on the door stating the reason.

  ‘There!’ she breathed, satisfied with her accomplishment, as well she might be – for Letty, seeing herself in the mirror on the ancient chest of drawers, couldn’t have faulted her. They stood, the two of them, one eighteen, one twenty, both a dream in crepe-de-chine, beautiful hats, long gloves, waists elegantly slim, faces glowing with pride and excitement. ‘Just in time. Hope it’s none of Albert’s posh lot. After where they live, it will look so cluttered to them here.’

  Lucy had suddenly acquired a much posher voice. Throwing a reluctant look at the cramped and narrow bedroom, she went to the window and glanced down to where the new arrivals stood waiting to be let in.

  In an instant she had withdrawn her head, eyes brilliant, her face animated.

  ‘It’s him! It’s Jack! I thought he was going straight to the church but he’s come here first. Oh, Letty – pr’aps he intends to pop the question. D’you think he does?’

  ‘He’s been calling on you for the last seven months,’ Letty said, smiling at her excitement. ‘Time he did. Not this very minute though.’

  But Lucy wasn’t even listening. ‘I know he’s been thinking about it, the way he talks. I’m sure he’ll get around to asking Dad soon.’

  She’d met Jack Morecross when Vinny’s Albert had brought him one Sunday to meet her. Three years older than Lucy, he was a pleasant-looking, lanky young man with flat gingery hair and earnest blue eyes. He lived not far from Albert, his father having a small printing works inherited from his own father who had retired. A far better catch than the boys from around here, most of whom had no prospects and even less initiative, Lucy had lost no time in hooking handsome Jack.

  Letty couldn’t help feeling a little envious and faintly put out that she wasn’t even walking out with a boy at the moment, not one she’d call halfway worth it anyway. The local boys hung around her hoping one day she’d ask one of them home to meet her dad, but she kept every one of them at arm’s length, her mind set on the Prince Charming who would one day sweep her off her feet. Some hopes of that!

  ‘You’ll meet a nice boy one day, with your looks,’ Mum would say, and immediately refer to Billy Beans whose parents had the grocer’s shop further along Club Row. Rudely handsome and thick-set, about her own age, he was always setting his cap at her, hanging around. Trouble was, she liked Billy but not his name. Fancy – Letty Beans!

  Lucy was back at the window, peering down as Mum’s footsteps echoed on the narrow lino-covered stairs down to the shop.

  ‘He’s brought his friend, he said he would. Yoo-hoo, Jack!’ Leaning out, waving, Lucy’s joyous giggle told of her wave being returned. She withdrew her head as the shop door was opened to admit him. ‘His dad’s a friend of Jack’s dad. Jack and me thought he’d be company for you.’

  Letty felt distinctly annoyed. ‘You thought … Honestly, Lucy, you do take a lot on yourself! I can find me own company, thank you.’

  Lucy looked a little ruffled. ‘I thought you might like someone a bit more interesting than them around here. He’s ever so educated.’

  ‘I don’t care if he’s Tolstoy,’ retorted Letty, having once had War and Peace inflicted on her at school. ‘I don’t want someone I don’t know tagging around after me all day, telling me how educated he is. What do I say to ’im? I wish you hadn’t of done it.’

  Lucy was pouting, her good intentions in ruins. ‘Well, better than the weeds around here. Jack says he’s ever so handsome. He’s got pots of money. His name’s David Baron. He’s twenty-eight and …’

  ‘Twenty-eight! I don’t want no twenty-eight …’

  She broke off as the arrivals were shown into the parlour, but Lucy already had her by the hand, pulling her along, hurrying to welcome Jack. They reached the parlour as the doorbell tinkled once again, compelling Mum to go back downstairs.

  Jack was standing self-consciously by the sofa, staring down at his hat held in both hands. His friend was also politely bare-headed, but if he felt at all ill at ease in a strange home, he didn’t show it. He was tall and dark-haired, and stood very still with his eyes steady. Dark eyes, Letty saw as Lucy dragged her into the room after her. He certainly did look well off, and so very mature in a well-cut charcoal grey suit that Letty felt her cheeks begin to burn, feeling even more angry with Lucy who left her standing to rush over and take Jack’s hand.

  Someone coughed and Letty turned to the window. Dad stood there semi-obscured by the sunlight pouring through the thick lace curtains. Neither expecting nor approving of this invasion by his second daughter’s admirer and some complete stranger to boot, when both would have been better going straight to the church, he was busying himself filling his pipe to cover the resulting embarrassment.

  Lucy’s hand was confidently on the stranger’s arm, drawing him towards her sister. ‘Letty,’ she began in her very nicest voice, ‘this is Mr David Baron, Jack’s friend. David, this is my sister, Letty …’

  ‘’Er name’s Letitia,’ came a deep rumble from behind the smokescreen of Dad’s now kindled pipe. A reek of Navy Cut had filled the room. ‘If yer goin’ er introduce people properly, Lucilla, then get their names right.’

  Her aplomb shaken, Lucy threw him a look, but any hope of further introductions was stopped short by an invasion of relatives surging like the hordes of Gengis Khan through the door: Uncle Will, who was Mabel’s brother, his wife Hetty, and three adolescent cousins, Bert, George and Ethel; then Arthur’s sister Mildred, husband Charlie, and two more cousins, Violet and Emma, just coming up to adolescence. The room was suddenly a mass of people, with everyone kissing everyone else as if they’d all come together from the ends of the earth, when in fact all of them lived just a tram ride away, Uncle Charlie’s lot from Whitechapel and Uncle Will’s from Stepney.

  ‘We all met up at the door,’ Charlie of the constant ribald jokes explained jovially. ‘Thought we’d pop in instead of going straight to the church. Funny you thinkin’ the same thing, Will. So we all met up together at the door, didn’t we? Funny that. Funny coincidence.’

  Mabel, out of breath, hid a cough with her handkerchi
ef. Letty, her mind taken off Mr David Baron for the moment, saw her sink into her chair set between the sofa and the fireplace. She looked like a little ailing mouse, wanting only to crawl away into a hole, out of sight. Letty’s eyes tingled with sudden tears, the lining of her nose became acutely sensitive and her throat constricted. She fought the emotion, sniffed, bit on her lip. Couldn’t start dissolving into tears in front of everyone, especially in front of the self-assured stranger.

  ‘You all right, Mum?’ she said, knowing immediately she’d intruded on her privacy as all eyes turned to her.

  Mabel smiled and got up out of her chair, her tone terse with the effort to sound unconcerned. ‘Them blessed stairs. Wear you out, them stairs do.’

  She even managed a laugh, but not enough to allay embarrassment in those who knew that their arrival had put her to an inconvenience they could have avoided.

  ‘We’ve got ter start walking to the church in a few minutes,’ she went on quickly. ‘I’ll go and see how Vinny’s doin’. Her carriage’ll be ’ere soon. Arthur.’ She looked over to her husband, still puffing his pipe. ‘You stay with the bride and bridesmaids to wait for it. You ’ave ter be with the bride to give ’er away.’ She gave the company a broad smile. ‘Lot ter think about when it’s yer first.’

  An outbreak of garbled conversation after a brief awkward silence following her departure. Making up their minds to get ready to leave, everyone began to draw together, face the door in a ragged group like a platoon of raw recruits, uncertain if they’d been given orders or not. Letty wanted to run after Mum with some odd idea of apologising, but Mum probably wouldn’t have had any idea why, so she stayed where she was on the far side of Lucy, away from David Baron.

  She became aware of him watching her, his eyes softening with understanding. She felt he knew what was wrong with her mother, though no one could have told him. You didn’t talk about things like that, and if you did, only with family, and then only in a whisper, the word itself forbidding anything louder.

  He seemed to know just how she was feeling too, but she hadn’t invited his sympathy and her reaction was to take immediate umbrage that a total stranger was seeing right into her soul. And because annoyance was an unreasonable reaction, she felt all the more put out, her face growing hot.

  ‘Who does he think he is?’ she hissed at Lucy, and heard her giggle. She risked a glance at him as her relations at last decided to jostle out through the doorway and down the stairs, her cheeks on fire when she saw he had come closer to her. Oh Gawd, what was he going to say to her? What could she say in answer? He probably spoke like a toff, and she … she’d probably make a real fool of herself …

  She acted instinctively. Grabbing the arm of her fifteen-year-old cousin Bert, she gushed loudly, ‘Come on. Let’s go and tell Mum you’re all off now.’

  Chapter Two

  Those guests intending to, finally left in the small hours, their footsteps echoing along a silent and deserted Club Row. Letty closed the door behind them.

  ‘I could kill you, Luce, honest I could,’ she hissed, bolting the door top and bottom, throwing the bolts home with fierce energy, taking her spite out on them instead of her sister. ‘Thank God he left early! I don’t know what he’d have thought, us ’aving a knees up. I would have died. That sort’s used ter sittin’ in a circle drinkin’ tea with his little finger stuck out, sipping champagne and nibblin’ lady’s fingers biscuits.’

  She couldn’t imagine him bothering to come calling on her after tonight. She wouldn’t be seeing him again. Too much of a toff.

  ‘And been married an’ all!’

  The sickly glimmer from the upstairs gas lamp guided them back through the cluttered shop that always smelled faintly musty. Lucy’s affronted gaze sought out Letty’s dim silhouette.

  ‘He’s not married now. It must ’ave been tragic, his wife dying, and him so young.’

  Letty paused, her foot on the first stair. ‘What d’you mean, young? He was ten years older than me.’

  Lucy paused too. ‘Well, he wouldn’t have been when he lost his wife, would he? It was four years ago. You make him sound like Methuselah. Ten years ain’t nothing. And he was ever so handsome.’

  ‘I didn’t think he was handsome,’ Letty retorted. ‘And what made you think I’d fancy someone second hand anyway? And his wife had a baby.’

  ‘Born dead!’ Lucy was rapidly becoming short-tempered. ‘Ain’t you got no feelings, Let? What he must’ve gone through, losing wife and baby all at the same time. And all you can think of is how you felt ’cos he’d been married and ten years older than you.’

  To this Letty could find no reply. She’d been so busy trying to avoid David Baron when she’d discovered he’d been married once, the tragedy he must have endured had not really registered. Now, like a sudden thump in the chest, it did, and she felt so ashamed. But Lucy, overflowing with righteous anger, hadn’t noticed.

  ‘Ten years ain’t so awful. He had nice manners and talked nice like Jack. You don’t know what you want, that’s your trouble. Jack just mentioned he had this handsome friend, and I thought …’

  ‘All right!’ Letty cut in waspishly, and began mounting the stairs. ‘I should have been more sociable. But I wasn’t, so there!’ She slowed a little halfway up, Lucy coming up behind her. ‘Anyway, I don’t think he was that good-looking. His nose was too long, and he’d got lines at the corners of his eyes too.’

  ‘Laughter lines,’ Lucy interpreted.

  ‘Well, I never saw ’im laugh. All he did was look at me, all lah-di-dah like.’

  At the top of the stairs, they paused to peer in at the men sitting around the parlour table at their game of pontoon.

  Tense faces were lit by the ornamental oil lamp in the centre of the table, replacing the now demolished wedding cake; gone was the noise and laughter of an earlier game of Newmarket in which even the kids could take part, farthings given by parents to put on the four Kings, to be excitedly scooped up if they got as far as laying down a Queen of the corresponding suit. Now all that could be heard was the terse commands breaking an edgy silence. Buy one! Twist! Pay twenty-ones! Bust! And the chink of coins dropped on to a growing pile.

  It had been a good wedding. Those who could play the piano taking their turn, everyone gathered around to join in the tunes. Uncle Will, maudlin drunk, had done several recitations, prompted at intervals by those who knew the words better than he did.

  Uncle Charlie’s store of near the knuckle jokes had got everyone rolling about, Albert’s people looking a bit bewildered, Vinny going all red and flustered that they should hear such things, as if they were above it all. Aunt Elsie, Dad’s sister, had brought up the tone a bit, playing one or two classical pieces with more gusto than skill. A friend of Dad’s had sung, ‘We’ve bin tergevver now fer forty yers, an’ it don’ seem a day too much’, his eyes trained lovingly on his chubby wife as he continued, ‘there ain’t a lidy livin’ in the land as I’d swap fer me dear ole Dutch.’

  One of the younger cousins had done a tiptoe dance, exacting sentimental sighs from the women; one even younger had recited a little poem to even greater sighs of appreciation; an older cousin with a very pleasing voice had la-la’d the tune from The Merry Widow and had been so well applauded that she’d sung some more from other musical shows until she’d become thoroughly boring, pleasing voice or not.

  The happy pair finally leaving for their new home, a nice rented house in Victoria Park Road, Albert’s side departed not long after with Lucy’s Jack and Mr David Baron. Afterwards the party consisting of close family and friends had developed into a good booze-up.

  Everyone had raised the roof in song, shaken the ceiling of the shop underneath to the stamp of ‘Knees Up, Mother Brown’, men’s boots pounding, women lifting their skirts, petticoats flying.

  In the small hours, exhausted, they’d slumped down on chairs or the wooden planks set up on beer crates especially for this gathering. They’d gathered around the table to play Newmark
et until those who could still walk home finally left, the rest staying until the trams resumed running on Sunday morning, the men to play Pontoon while the women went off to find a bed to fall on for the few remaining hours.

  Lucy yawned as they moved past the smoky parlour. ‘All the fun’s over. I’m going to bed.’

  ‘If we can find one.’ Letty quietly pushed open their parents’ door, knowing exactly what she’d see there. Dresses draped over the chair, hung on the wardrobe doors and from the picture rail, aunts in chemise, petticoats and drawers lying dead to the world on the bed, only half under the counterpane on this warm night, limbs flung wide in the unladylike need for coolness, kids sprawled sound asleep across their legs.

  ‘Cheek!’ Lucy said as they closed the door on the second bedroom, just as crammed full of bodies. Mum, of course, had gone up to Letty’s little room to find a little peace away from the rest. ‘Our home and nowhere to sleep.’

  She brightened. ‘There’s that mattress at the back of the shop. We could pinch a quilt. Gawd knows, I could sleep on a clothes line!’

  Stretched out beside her sister, Letty’s sleepy thoughts drifted. In her head she could hear David Baron’s cultured voice. It had made her so conscious of her own that to protect herself she’d behaved like the brash Cockney she was. She’d laughed raucously, spoken too loudly, got her aitches mixed up, forgot to sound her ts, and all those East End colloquialisms she’d used without even thinking came echoing back to her, stark and hideous, hearing them as David Baron must have done.

  He hadn’t batted an eyelid though. The perfect gentleman, behaving as if she was Lady Muck herself. It had made her all the more self-conscious, saying things she hadn’t meant to say. Like when he’d asked if she would like another glass of port, she’d shot back, ‘I can ’elp meself, thank you!’ Lordey – it had sounded awful.