The Soldier's Bride

by Maggie Ford

  Arthur shook his head. ‘Ain’t possible. Not with the shop ter look after.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’ Letty’s tone was sharp with disappointment. To be done out of her first spin in a private car belonging to someone in her very own family, done out of the pleasure of being watched going off in it by all the neighbours. ‘The shop’s closed. It’s Thursday afternoon.’

  Since the Shops Act last year, he’d done little but grumble about being forced into early closing once a week; being done out of trying to make an honest living, he said, yet but for her he wouldn’t have made a living at all, the way he’d lost interest.

  Arthur shook his head again. ‘Won’t get me in one of them there contraptions for love nor money. Any rate, someone’s got ter keep an eye on the shop. Don’t want no one breakin’ in while we ain’t here.’

  He was quite obviously out to spoil her enjoyment. Letty’s lips compressed, her chin jutted.

  ‘Then stay and look after your shop! The only time you do is when there’s nothing to do.’

  She saw Lucy and Jack squirm uncomfortably, saw the quick exchange of glances. Jack gave an extra wide smile, speaking hurriedly.

  ‘Hadn’t better be stationary too long.’ He eyed the collection of grubby-faced urchins gathering to stare and touch, fingers already marking the paintwork. ‘Take a run around the block in it with us. I can tell you, it’s an experience. Nothing at all like a motor bus. You’ll enjoy it. What d’you say?’

  ‘I’d like to,’ Letty said defiantly. ‘You coming or not, Dad?’

  But nothing would persuade him. Letty, with hat and coat and a set expression, clambered into the cramped rear seat, trying to calm an animated Elisabeth but giving up. She was never at ease with children, at a loss what to say to them, how to deal with sticky fingers, jerky limbs and penetrating stares. Her collar turned up, a travel blanket over her knees against a chill breeze, instead of an ambitious spin to Southend-on-Sea it was a mile or two around the turnings, she worrying herself sick at having had a go at Dad for no reason than that she was far too ready these days to react to his slightest remark, until she arrived back at the flat to get warmed up again around the parlour fire and get tea for them all.

  For some time Vinny had been growing increasingly restive. Their house in Victoria Park Road no longer held the same attraction it once had for her. It had a cramped, ageing feel to it, wedged between similarly aging terraced houses. Even if it did look on to Victoria Park with quite a lot of greenery, the new motor buses and other motor vehicles passing the front door raised such a dust that nothing ever stayed clean for long.

  Grimly she dusted, thought of Lucy with open countryside all round her; Lucy going on about her fine house, as if Jack had achieved something marvellous instead of having been practically given the house.

  ‘She don’t know which side her bread’s buttered,’ she told Albert after Lucy had her second girl. ‘Two rooms downstairs. Three bedrooms upstairs. And her now with two girls. All that space. And what for?’

  Finding herself expecting again definitely decided Vinny.

  ‘We ought to be looking for something larger,’ she said to Albert around her sixth month. ‘Somewhere further out. The boys need fresh air. Look how rosy-cheeked Lucy’s Elisabeth is. When this one arrives, the house will be so cramped, don’t you think, Albert?’

  Albert looking up from his evening paper took in the small front parlour with pompous self-satisfaction. ‘Three boys sleep in one room just as easily as two. Three of us shared one room when I was young.’

  Vinny’s expression tightened over her knitting. ‘And what if it’s a girl? We’d have to have an extra room then.’

  ‘Not for ten years at least.’

  Vinny pulled a face which said ten more years here would be quite unendurable. ‘And when the family gets even larger?’ she queried.

  Albert frowned. He liked it here, was very comfortable. A short walk each morning to the number 57 tram conveying him to Moorgate to his father’s firm of accountants; moving would mean further to travel. He decided that now was not the time and left Vinny so tight-lipped and tearful for days afterwards that he almost regretted the decision.

  Little Arthur William arrived on 4 August. Being Sunday, David and Letty went that very afternoon to see the baby.

  ‘You must be ever so proud,’ Letty said, feeling faintly envious as she gazed at the screwed up red little face vaguely resembling Uncle Will after a bit too much drink. ‘Fancy that – three boys.’

  ‘I hoped for a girl,’ Vinny said morosely, still weak and drowsy from her ordeal. ‘A girl’s company. Lucy’s so lucky having girls.’

  Lucy felt nothing of the sort, or so Letty deduced from her most recent visit. Every time she visited her, she seemed to end up trying to placate a Lucy still far from resigned to not having had a boy.

  ‘You’ll probably have a boy next time,’ she soothed when she went over to see her one hot August afternoon. ‘You won’t go on having girls.’

  ‘I’m not sure about any next time,’ Lucy said, pushing away the plate of biscuits on the tea table. She still had a remarkably slim waist, untouched by childbearing, and meant to keep it that way.

  ‘At least not for a while,’ she whispered discreetly, the men being occupied talking of things other than babies. She eyed Jack warily. ‘We’re being careful. Three pregnancies … I’m worn out. I told Jack. I said, if he can’t be more careful with me he’d best sleep in another room. I do want more children, Let, but not as quick as it’s been. If the other one had been born proper, I’d have had three now.’

  Letty wanted to comment that had it gone to full-term she might not have had Emily but the boy she longed for, but she thought it better not to say so. As Lucy talked, she took in the plush furnishings, fine furniture, the expensive dress Lucy had on. Jack, like Albert, was doing very well, becoming very successful, yet Lucy took it for granted, didn’t appear to appreciate any of it, spent nearly all her time lamenting what she didn’t have and what she ought to have.

  ‘We’ve had a telephone installed,’ she told everyone when they came to celebrate Dad’s fifty-fifth birthday in October. Letty had it on the Sunday, two days after – thinking he’d appreciate his family all around him. She invited David too, daring Dad to make any objection. She had spent the best part of two days buying things for the party, cooking, making the cake, and if Dad so much as made a peep against David …

  ‘You won’t have to keep relying on telegrams,’ Lucy said through a mouthful of birthday cake. ‘You can telephone us instead.’

  ‘I don’t see how,’ Letty said across the table. Her sister spoke as though having a telephone was the most normal thing in the world. ‘Being as we don’t have one.’

  ‘You ought to, running a shop. Still, you can always use someone else’s. Some shops around here are bound to have one.’

  ‘Of course!’ Letty’s tone was brittle. ‘We can always barge into someone’s home to borrow their telephone, can’t we?’

  ‘You don’t borrow it, you use it.’ Lucy stopped cutting the rest of her cake into small pieces for Elisabeth to handle, to spoon some more trifle into little Emmeline, some of the pink blancmange dripping on to Letty’s snow white table cloth.

  Letty eyed the spots balefully. ‘Telegrams work well enough to get a message to anyone the same day.’

  ‘Yes, but you can’t say all you want to say. You can have a chat on the telephone and get answers straight away. It’s so convenient.’

  ‘Not if the person you want to chat to don’t have one.’

  ‘We’ve been talking about having one installed,’ Vinny pitched in, casting a warning glance at Albert who took the hint, nodded vigorously and turned a threatening glare upon his eldest son who was craftily prodding three-year-old George with a fork to make him grizzle.

  ‘We’ve already made enquiries,’ Vinny added, forking a dainty morsel of swiss roll into her mouth, managing to ignore Lucy’s narrowed eyes, their message
plain: If I have something new, you just have to have the same! Vinny and Albert had bought their automobile one month after Jack had, a new piano three weeks after theirs and were now looking to move again, to the suburbs with a bit of countryside around them, as Lucy and Jack had.

  It was typical of the two sisters and Letty’s glance met David’s across the table, finding his dark eyes glowing with half suppressed amusement, obliging her to conceal an involuntary grin behind a large bite of ham sandwich.

  But despite Lucy and Vinny constantly putting each other down, conversation flowed around the table, and in the kitchen as everyone helped with washing up when tea was over, and afterwards over bottles of beer, a bottle of Scotch – Jack’s present to Dad – and a bottle of sherry. Nice to all be together. Nice to see Dad cheerful, to see him fractionally more friendly towards David. Letty thought she saw the merest twitch of a smile beneath his moustache as he met David’s glance on one or two occasions.

  She was glad, for David’s sake. It couldn’t be easy for him sometimes, Dad’s peculiar attitude towards him. How he managed to survive it so philosophically always mystified her.

  Following last year’s holiday, Letty had suffered agonies of remorse, letting David make love to her like he had and then to throw his offer of marriage in his face! It was her fault that their Sundays together had become intermittent.

  After a while things did right themselves, but knowing the effect it had had on them both, she avoided getting into that situation ever again, though she ached for that most wonderful of sensations that had touched her on that deserted pebble beach. What it was she didn’t know and she wondered if it could be harmful? Whether it was or not, she knew she wanted to experience it again. The trouble was, it would only lead to David begging her to marry him, and being unable to let herself say yes would lead to another quarrel. Better not to let the situation arise in the first place.

  David hadn’t mentioned taking another holiday. Letty wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or disappointed. At least she didn’t have to go through the business of facing Dad’s vituperations. Then again, she wouldn’t have lovely memories to tide her over another winter with him. Last winter he’d had his bronchitis again, had kept her running around after him. The thought of facing the next made her spirits plummet. And then, in September, David pulled the rabbit out of the hat.

  ‘I’ve booked us into a hotel in Brighton,’ he told her. ‘It’s all arranged. Your Mrs Hall will do the honours by your father as she did last year. I’ve given her five pounds for herself and she’s glad to oblige.’

  I bet she is, Letty thought. ‘I won’t say anything about Brighton to Dad,’ she said. ‘I’ll make up some excuse. I’ll say I’m spending a few days with your parents.’

  ‘You will not! You’ll tell him exactly where you are going.’ His brown eyes had become hard, obdurate. ‘You’re twenty-three. Old enough to do whatever you choose to do. And you’re going on holiday with me.’

  Letty melted. Whatever David said. And next time he asked her to marry him, she would say yes.

  Chapter Nine

  ‘David – something’s wrong!’ Letty ripped open the flap of the telegram handed to her at the desk as they came in from a morning stroll along the prom. Feverishly she dragged out the single sheet and scanned it, the fresh colouring the sea air had given her draining from her face.

  DAD BROKE LEG STOP COME HOME IMMEDIATELY STOP VINNY

  Alarm widened her eyes. Her expression already filled with guilt, she handed it to David.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ she said, beseeching him to understand.

  ‘Of course you have to,’ he said simply, immediately taking charge of her. ‘Go up and start packing. I’ll pay the bill and find out the time of the next train.’ He put a comforting arm about her shoulder, pulled her briefly to him. ‘Now don’t worry.’

  But she was frightened. ‘I shouldn’t have come. I should have stayed there with him. He wouldn’t have fallen if I’d been with him.’

  ‘Now that’s silly. You couldn’t have prevented it.’

  ‘But I might have done. I might have altered the situation, just being there. He would have been in a different place and not gone and fallen if I’d been with him.’

  ‘You don’t know that!’

  Letty glanced again at the telegram. ‘She doesn’t say how serious it is or if he’s in danger. She’s hiding something from me!’ Panic began to grip her.

  ‘It’s a telegram, darling,’ David soothed, his arm pressed tighter. ‘It has to be short or it’ll cost the earth to send.’

  ‘But perhaps …’

  ‘Look, darling, no more perhaps. Go and pack. In a couple of hours you’ll know the worst – or the best. Now go on!’

  ‘How could you be so selfish?’ Vinny’s tone was sharp, her lips tight. Letty could see she’d been crying.

  There had been no welcome, but straight into accusations the moment she and David came into the flat.

  ‘To leave him looking after the shop all on his own! He had to go running up and down those stairs to see to customers. No wonder he fell.’

  ‘What, down the stairs!’

  She could have protested at Vinny’s attitude, defended herself that Dad had looked after the shop last year when she’d been away, and he wasn’t exactly an invalid even if he behaved like one. But she was in too great a state of shock to argue.

  ‘Of course down the stairs!’ Vinny snapped back at her. ‘Mrs Hall wasn’t here and he laid like that at the bottom until a customer came in and found him. Think how embarrassed he must have been, being found like that. Half an hour he laid there, you know that? I think you ought to be ashamed of yourself, Letty, leaving Dad to go off to … to …’ Her face coloured up and she glanced towards David standing quietly to one side. ‘You know what I mean. Dad said you and … Well, I won’t tell you what Dad said. But I’m really shocked, Letty. Really upset that …’

  ‘He can speak then?’ At last Letty gathered her wits, interrupted, slow fury filling her that Vinny was practically accusing her of indulging in indecency.

  ‘Of course he can speak,’ Vinny said tartly.

  ‘Where is he?’ With an effort Letty gained command of herself. Dad had broken his leg Vinny had said. He wasn’t at death’s door and was sufficiently himself to go leading off about her, able to vilify her enough to have incensed Vinny who now saw her as little more than a prostitute.

  ‘Where do you think? In the London. They kept him in. I got there as quick as I could when Mrs Hall telephoned me from one of the shops. Pity you haven’t got a telephone. It would have been so much easier. She had to run around all over the place to find one. Lucy is at the hospital now, but I thought I should wait here for you.’

  To give me a piece of your mind, Letty thought as Vinny went on. ‘You’d best go there to see him – that’s if you can spare the time.’

  Anger blazed up inside Letty. ‘Don’t talk to me like that, Vinny! Anyone’d think I didn’t care for Dad …’

  Vinny’s eyes blazed. ‘The way you went off, enjoying yourself while Dad had to go and have a fall, what else can anything think?’

  ‘I didn’t know he was going to have a fall, did I?’

  ‘But you shouldn’t have gone off and left him all on his own while you went … well, enjoying yourself.’

  ‘He wasn’t on his own. He had Mrs Hall.’

  ‘But she wasn’t here!’ Vinny’s voice had risen to a shriek. ‘You should have been here!’

  ‘And what about you?’ Letty’s voice too was hitting the ceiling. ‘It’d be nice if you could be here sometimes. You or Lucy. But, oh, no! You’ve both got your own lives to lead, haven’t you? I mustn’t have no life, must I? It wouldn’t hurt one of you to come over now and again and keep an eye on Dad while I get a bit of rest from him.’

  ‘Is that what it’s called? Rest! I’d have called it something else!’

  ‘Mind your own business!’ Letty flared. ‘It’s because of Dad that
me and David’s not married yet. I’ve given up everything because no one else raised a finger to look after him. You and Lucy never wanted to know, did you? Until something like this happens, then it’s: “Where was Letty? She should have been here.” I’ve been here, day and night, ever since Mum went, and not one word of thanks from either of you. Nor even Dad. All of you take it for granted. It’s because of you two that I’m still here, still not married. You’re all selfish! Every one of you!’

  Vinny’s response was a scream of outrage, but David, who had been doing his best to get between them, finally made himself heard.

  ‘That’s quite enough! Yelling at each other is not going to help. I think we should go and see your father. Don’t you agree, Lavinia?’

  Such was the authority in his tone that Vinny stared at him for a moment, her mouth opening and shutting, then with a last scowl towards Letty, nodded dumbly.

  ‘So yer come ’ome then?’ Propped up by pillows, the clinical white sheet and faded pink coverlet stretched board tight across his chest, his leg hidden beneath a cradle, Dad looked as uncomfortable as he possibly could be, and in pain. Despite the surly welcome, sympathy flooded through Letty at the sight of him at the mercy of nursing staff and the pervasive smell of anaesthetic and hospital carbolic.

  ‘Lavinia let us … She let me know,’ she stammered.

  ‘Good job she could get ’ere, bein’ as no one else could.’

  She knew who he meant but wasn’t prepared to start up any argument with him in his present condition, even in her own defence.

  ‘Good job she could,’ she echoed limply, desperately hoping he’d keep off the subject now.

  To her surprise, and in a way gratitude, he did, for the whole time he was in the London. In another way it put her all on edge. Had he made a great thing of blaming her, moaning as he usually did, she’d have defended herself to the utmost, but his silence had the effect of causing her to blame herself. It was silly and she was angry at herself, but there it was.