The Soldier's Bride

by Maggie Ford

  Wordlessly, Letty watched the ritual with cold anger growing inside her. Her whole being sensed the satisfaction with which he had made his statement. He knew well how precious her Sundays were to her. He’d been testing her, she was certain, in making the statement. Yet she knew few shopowners would allow themselves to take any other day but that. And she was duty bound to go with him, could not let him travel all that way on his own. He was playing on it.

  That evening she scribbled a note to David, dropping it in the post the same night hoping to be in time to save him a fruitless journey.

  He would understand how heavily duty fell on her shoulders, but as the train steamed slowly out of Bethnal Green Station on the Sunday morning, she thought dismally of those precious hours lost to her.

  Beyond the soot-grimed carriage window, her breath steaming up the inside of the square panes, the day had a cold grey look. Snow lay thin on the roads they passed, on roofs, in the bare patches of back yards, bleak empty flower beds poking through black and lumpy. A world that was black and white with leafless trees dotted here and there – like birchbrooms in a fit, as her mother used to say of anything that had a stark and standing up look to it.

  ‘We’re stupid going on a day like this,’ she said morosely, leaning back on the hard leather seat. ‘We should have waited for a better day.’

  ‘There’s ain’t no better day than today,’ she heard Dad mumble from within the heavy Chesterfield coat he was wearing.

  In the freezing half empty carriage, he looked grey with cold. A thick scarf pulled up to his cap, hands thrust in woollen gloves, he looked like a bundle jerking stiffly from side to side to the sway of the train as he stared stolidly at the three sooty faded prints of watercolour landscapes above the seats opposite. In the first-class carriages there were mirrors as well as pictures, and nice lamps too, and blinds. Third class never had any cheeriness.

  ‘Thought you’d be pleased ter ’ave me go out,’ he went on. ‘Been naggin’ at me enough ter get meself out, ain’t yer? Got yer way now.’

  The bantering note surprised her and he even offered her a warm smile, the way she remembered from the past with such a flood of love, that her lips too parted in an equally warm smile.

  Perhaps she was wrong thinking him unreasonable to want this day to see his new grand-daughter? Perhaps in most things he was not really being deliberately unreasonable? Perhaps it was she, grown so raw and touchy with wanting to be David’s wife, who construed everything Dad did as solely to dig at her?

  She settled back philosophically. Very well, this Sunday she would not be seeing David. There was always next Sunday to look forward to.

  That wonderful prospect warming her soul, Letty forgave her dad for whatever it was she ought to forgive him, magnanimously, totally, and looped both her arms about one of his for warmth in the cold comfort of the railway carriage.

  His day out did Dad no good at all, a chill putting him to bed for over a week, and keeping her running up and down with medicine, menthol rub, bowls of broth – all on top of looking after the shop.

  The housework going to pot, the flat looking a mess, she sent a frantic note to Vinny to come and help. After all, Vinny in Cambridge Heath Road was only a short tram ride away. Albert came over to say that Vinny wasn’t feeling well herself, that little Albert had the start of a cold too – neither of which Letty in her frantic state of mind believed as she battled on alone.

  It was several weeks before Dad was really well enough to get up. He sat crouched in front of the fire, complaining. Trying to do everything herself drew Letty right down and worried the life out of David.

  ‘Get someone in to look after the flat,’ he said decisively, taking charge.

  ‘We can’t afford it,’ she said, swallowing pride with an effort.

  ‘Don’t be silly. I’ll pay for it.’

  But Dad would have taken this as charity. ‘I’ll ask if Mrs Hall might help me out with an odd day here and there,’ she said.

  Mrs Hall, pleased to be asked, was only too willing. In she came, shawl, straw boater, black boots, red face, gravel voice and all and took over. Despite her dictatorial manner, Letty could have kissed her.

  But even when Mrs Hall finally withdrew her services, seeing Dad on the way to getting over the worst, he remained constantly under Letty’s feet, creeping about the place as if he were an old man. She was never free of him. Only when shopping could she breathe easily, drawing in great gulps of the cold fresh air of approaching spring; then, and in the shop. She derived much pleasure from being in the shop, especial satisfaction in buying, haggling over things brought in, judging their quality, pricing them, the triumph when her price was met and she saw pleasure on her customer’s face. And there was always Sunday afternoon to look forward to, when the shop closed and David came.

  ‘Then when are you going to tell him?’ David’s voice trembled with barely concealed anger.

  ‘I don’t know!’ she wailed back at him

  They had been sitting, quite contented, on one of Victoria Park’s benches in the weak April sunshine when the row had blown up out of nothing, some perfectly innocuous remark she couldn’t even recall now. Something about going to see Mum’s grave, she thought. And before they knew it they were at each other, David bringing up her lack of courage at Christmas in telling her father of their plans to marry, and threatening that if she wouldn’t tell him, he would, and soon!

  ‘I can’t go on dangling on your string,’ he’d said cruelly. ‘When are you going to tell him?’ Immediately provoking tears even as she snapped back at him spiritedly, ‘I don’t know!’ a deep fear beginning to loom that she was in danger of losing David if she didn’t look out.

  Since Christmas when his impatience at her reluctance to display the ring had been all too evident, he had been decidedly distant, and she couldn’t blame him. She had always thought herself a woman of spirit, but in this she had failed him; had failed herself. Of course he was disappointed, but it still wasn’t fair to expect her to make choices, to make her decision and just go off and marry him, leaving Dad to fend for himself. Just thinking of Dad trying to cope on his own made her squirm inside.

  ‘I can’t see as our marriage could ever be happy under circumstances like that,’ she fought to explain, through her tears. ‘Me knowing I’d left him in the lurch as if I didn’t even care, and feeling guilty about it for the rest of me life. And I would, you know. I’d be unhappy, and I’d make you unhappy because I was. I want to marry you, David. But it’s not easy with Dad, feeling I can’t leave him. And it’s not fair, asking me to choose between you. I just can’t. You’ve known what it’s like living alone in a home that was once so happy. You still don’t like being in your house on your own after … after …’

  She trailed off, uncertain whether harking back to his own grief was a good thing. Then, to her surprise, he caught her, and hugged her to him. Even gave a low chuckle, bringing the row to an abrupt end.

  ‘Hasn’t it occurred to you,’ he chided gently, as if what he had to say had occurred to him long ago, ‘that if you wanted, he could come and live with us? I could look for a house with an extra room and he could be on his own or spend any time he wished with us.’

  ‘But that’s not fair to you!’ Letty pulled away to gaze sceptically at him. ‘It’s not what most people starting married life would want to do. You don’t really want to put up with having my dad with us?’

  ‘I’d put up with anything to make you happy, my sweet darling,’ he said with conviction.

  ‘Oh, David,’ she sighed, all her misery gone in a single sweep. She drank him in with her eyes. ‘Why didn’t we think of that before? It’s the answer to everything.’

  Such a simple solution! Before going down to open up the shop on the Monday morning, she screwed up all her courage and told her dad outright that David had asked her to marry him, would be coming as soon as she said yes to seek his permission formally. She said she wasn’t prepared just to go off and leave
her father all on his own and so David had thought of a way where Dad wouldn’t be lonely. She said it all in the face of his stony silence and even stonier stare.

  She told him what David so generously and selflessly proposed for him, and all the time her confidence dwindled little by little and prepared herself for argument. But she didn’t expect such a bitter response.

  ‘Yer askin’ me to leave ’ere – the ’ome yer mother died in? Yer askin’ me ter forsake her memory so’s your conscience is clear?’

  She thrust that injustice behind her, keeping her voice level. ‘Dad, it don’t matter where we are, we’ll never forget Mum. Never.’

  ‘That’s mighty good of yer.’ Beneath the stiff moustache the lips curled bitterly. ‘But I prefer ter stay ’ere, where she died.’

  Fighting not to lose her temper, she brought out the alternative, rehearsed against the likelihood of refusal. ‘If you like, Dad, we could live here.’

  Thinking what David might say to that, her father’s outburst caught her unprepared. He turned on her so sharply that she flinched.

  ‘I don’t bloody well want you bringin’ anyone ’ere, sod-din’ well tellin’ me what to do in me own bloody ’ome!’

  ‘But he wouldn’t …’

  ‘I don’t want to ’ear another bloody word about it!’ he swore again venomously.

  It wasn’t the venom but Dad’s swearing that shook Letty. He never swore at her, hadn’t in her life as she could remember. Not even when she’d caused uproar from Mum by coming in with clothes torn from climbing railings or shinning up lamp posts to hook a skipping rope over the bracket to swing on, or came home with hands filthy from popping tar bubbles in the road in summer. He had always stood by frowning but leaving Mum to do the shouting and walloping, had cuddled her afterwards when Mum wasn’t looking, one hand around her shoulders pulling her briefly to him, helpless as she was before Mum’s asperity. He’d never lost his temper with her, never sworn at her in his whole life.

  She had often heard him, of course, come out with a mouthful down at the Knave of Clubs with his mates, good round cockney oaths, but he had always maintained a civil respect in front of women, said that swearing in any shape or form in women’s company didn’t make a man any more a man.

  To hear him now tore at her like a verbal cudgel beating about her head, bruising, splitting the skin of her own self respect.

  ‘You bloody well listen ter me fer a change! Time something was said about this. I ain’t ’aving ’im and ’is fancy manners around me fer the rest of me life. Next thing yer know, I’ll find meself bein’ wheeled around in a bleedin’ barf-chair, told what ter do, where ter go, ’ow ter think. I’ll ’ave yer to know this is my ’ome. I do what I please in it.’

  ‘It’s mine too, Dad!’ she shouted back, standing up to him because there was no alternative, defiance stiffening her spine. ‘I loved Mum too. But I do have a life to lead, and me and David thought …’

  ‘I don’t want ter know what you and ’im thought! If yer want the truth, I got no time fer ’im. As far as I’m concerned, he’s a bloody snob. I don’t like ’im, an’ I don’t intend tryin’ to. But I tell yer this – I ’ope and pray ’e’ll find ’imself some gel oo’s a snob like ’imself and push off. I just ’ope ’e’ll leave you standin’ one day. Or die. It’d be a blessin’ in disguise. P’raps then you’ll find some bloke more your class. Someone like Billy Beans, ’oo can knock spots of ’im fer looks – could give yer as good an ’ome as anything that la-di-da bugger could. Even though yer’ve turned yer nose up at ’im more times than any bloke could take, he still fancies yer. P’raps it’d bring yer down a peg or two – give yer time ter think how I feel, being cast off like you’re castin’ me off, yer mum ’ardly dead and buried a year …’

  He turned away, his face wet and twisted out of shape. Letty’s appetite for argument gone, she turned and ran down the stairs headlong, blindly, almost falling. In her head was some vague thought, quite unconnected with what had been said upstairs, that she must open up for their customers, that someone must be there waiting impatiently to be let in.

  How could Dad have wished such a terrible thing on David? Said in temper of course. Lots of people never mean what they say in temper, but to have been devastated himself by grief and still to wish it on her, his own daughter, even in temper, like a curse … Surely he hadn’t realised what it was he was wishing on her?

  Tears were flowing down her cheeks now, though she hadn’t realised she was crying. Compelled by habit to open always at nine o’clock, she fumbled with the bolts, fingers trembling, refusing to obey her. But it didn’t matter any more. Giving up, she let herself sag against the age-pitted frosted glass, stood leaning against it, sobbing out her anguish in great heaving, shuddering gasps.

  Chapter Seven

  Arthur Bancroft watched his daughter narrowly as she came back into the parlour after letting David out, to set about preparing for bed.

  He hated Sundays when David Baron came into the flat as if it was his right. Sundays the flat wasn’t his any more. He felt in the way, the pair of them begrudging his even sitting well out of the way in the corner in Mabel’s chair. And pride wouldn’t allow him to skulk off into the kitchen to sit there on a wooden chair. Why should he? It was his home. His only escape was to go to bed. But then again, why should he?

  As she took her David downstairs and through the shop to say their lingering goodbyes – and God knows what they got up to in the dark behind the door – he had sat in the parlour, too on edge now to go to bed. He had stared out at the last fading light of a miserable June evening, straining to catch the faint elusive murmur of voices. Every time they lapsed into silence he had held his breath, visualising the man holding the woman close. His thoughts had been bitter as always.

  My Letitia in his arms. Damn him! Taking her from me …

  ‘He’s gone then?’ he growled as she came back into the room.

  ‘Yes. Of course.’

  Her tone was sharp. It had been this way since that day when he’d lost his temper, voiced his opinion of David Baron. If only he could take back what he’d said. It drummed in his head at night, clamoured for release in apology, but he couldn’t. Not now. It would only make it worse after all this time. His only escape was in surly sarcasm, meant to scourge himself rather than censure her.

  ‘Good of yer to ’ave stayed in today.’

  ‘Weather wasn’t nice enough, was it?’ she threw back at him, the inference that it, and not he, held the greater importance for her.

  ‘I s’pose if it’s nice next Sunday, you’ll be off out?’

  ‘Don’t know yet, do I?’

  Following her out to the kitchen, he watched her set the table ready for breakfast. She always did it the previous night to give herself time in the mornings to open up the shop. He had no interest in the shop any more; no interest in anything. Not even Lavinia’s new baby, George, born three weeks ago, gave life any meaning with Mabel gone.

  ‘If it rains as hard as today, I’ll probably stay in and keep you company again, Dad. That’ll be nice for you, won’t it?’

  He curled his lip at the sarcasm as he sank down on one of the two kitchen chairs to stare into the unlit grate.

  ‘Don’t bother on my account.’

  ‘If that’s what you want, bugger the weather! We’ll go out.’

  She turned abruptly to get cutlery from the dresser drawer. She made a point of using swear words now and could feel his baleful gaze, like fingers on the back of her neck, knowing her reasons.

  There was no triumph to hurting him. But he had hurt her. Let him know how it felt. Even so, there was no pleasure in it. If anything it hurt her the more to be this way towards him. Anyway, one week from today she would be twenty-one and he could do nothing about where she went or what she did. Next week she vowed she would put on her engagement ring, waggle it in front of him and dare him to stop her marrying David. Then again, could she bring herself to do that? Would natural love
and emotion still rule, keep her as servile as ever?

  The shop bell jangled sharply, making her jump as Billy Beans burst in, his wide bright blue eyes gleaming with excitement.

  ‘There’s somefink goin’ on up Whitechapel Road. There’s coppers all over the place. Crowds of people. On the corner of Sidney Street.’

  He’d taken to popping in quite a lot since the girl he’d been walking out with had transferred her affections to another. Had been going out with her for some two years on and off, often more off than on, it seemed to Letty, until finally a more attractive face than his, so he said, had terminated their walking out together for good. Letty thought the girl, who came from somewhere the other side of Brick Lane, must have been barmy even to consider Billy, with his fair wavy hair and strong broad face, inferior in looks to this other lad.

  A thick, well-cut moustache, which Letty strongly suspected he had grown for the girl’s sole benefit, added to his strong good looks.

  ‘Sidney Street?’ she queried, turning back to what she’d been doing before he’d burst in, meticulously wiping the grime of ages off a gilt picture frame she’d just bought for ten and six.

  ‘You know!’ Billy was waving his arms about. ‘Mile End Road and Cambridge Heaf Road. You know. The crossroads there.’

  ‘Of course I know. By the London Hospital.’

  ‘That’s right. Just been seein’ me bruvver in there. ’Ad operation on ’is ’pendix. But ’e’s orright now.’

  Letty went and closed the shop door which Billy had left wide open in his excitement, letting in the cold. Born in a field, Bill. Never seemed to feel the cold; always too animated, she supposed. And it was cold, only into the seventh day of the New Year, 1911.

  Billy was going on. ‘Someone said they got some bloke ’oled up there. ’Eard they’ve called out the army, and the ’Ome Secretary too. Someone said he saw him gittin’ aht of a automobile wiv ’is top ’at and cigar an’ everyfink. Wish I’d seen ’im. Aint never seen no one important. Someone said they’d cornered a Russian anarchist. I bet ’e was after our new king and ’im not bin on the frone a year yet.’