by Maggie Ford
When Dad came home, his leg in plaster for weeks afterwards, to limp around, first on crutches, then with a cane right up to Christmas, it was guilt that made her drive herself twice as hard, doing for him, trying to make up for what she saw as her own error. He was so constantly and abjectly apologetic. ‘Nothing but a burden to everyone,’ he’d say almost to himself, his eyes seeking hers for confirmation as well as forgiveness. ‘Of course you’re not, Dad,’ she would tell him, and eager to prove it, found herself taking her own sense of guilt upon her back much as a flagellant of the Middle Ages might have welcomed the self-inflicted wheals upon his willing flesh.
Yet it didn’t quite manage to heal her soul or clear the air. She told him he wasn’t a burden, wanted to add that if she’d been with him he would never have had that fall, convinced of it no matter what David said. But she didn’t dare say that to Dad in case that which she could feel smouldering just below the surface, erupted. Things would be said that might never heal. That was the last thing she wanted.
‘For God’s sake, Dad! I don’t care if it’s lunch or dinner, so long as you’re back from the pub in time to eat it!’
By winter Dad was still using his stick but the leg was more or less back to normal. Everything was more or less back to normal. No more abject apologies; he was back to fault finding, her twinges of guilt back to a more healthy desire to retaliate, to want to go for long walks to get out of his way.
It was the sort of winter that made going out for any walk an effort. Far from being crisp and revitalising, the weather made the body ache from constant huddling inside a coat; made the inside of the coat feel damp to the skin after five minutes of being worn. Evenings came down like a blanket, fog cast yellow haloes around gaslamps and lingered well into the next day, smelling heavily of soot. The trouble was, Dad hadn’t resumed his midday walk down to the Knave as he had done every now and again before his accident, and now the miserable winter weather was throwing them together until Letty felt like screaming.
‘Go and take out your spite on your pals in the pub!’ Taking her own spite out on the bread pudding she was making, she kneaded the soaked ends of last week’s bread viciously into a soggy mass with her knuckles. Dumping in sugar, marg, currants and sultanas, spice and egg, she pounded the stodge vigorously into a dish ready for the gas oven to get hot enough. It never turned out the same as Mum made it. She would use the oven over the range where, cooking slowly, it would fill the flat with a warm spicy aroma. But Mum always had plenty of time to cook. Letty had the shop to mind and no one else was going to do the cooking.
‘Anyway what’s it matter if it’s called dinner or lunch?’
Suggesting he went to meet some of his pals for a drink, she’d said without thinking to make sure to be back in time for lunch. A slip of the tongue. David referred to a midday meal as that, and like a lot of things he said, it had rubbed off on her. Dad leapt on it straight away.
‘I s’pose that’s yer bloke talkin’? All la-di-da. In this part of the world it ain’t lunch! We’re ’avin’ stew, ain’t we? We’re ’avin’ bread an’ jam an’ cake tonight, ain’t we? Yer can’t call bread an’ jam a dinner. That’s tea as I’ve always known it ter be. Dinner’s at dinner time.’
In trousers and wool combinations, braces dangling round his hips, Dad was washing off the residue of shaving soap at the kitchen sink. Gurgling like a drowning man, water cascaded from angular elbows on to the linoleum, darkening the bare patch around his feet. The brownish pattern had worn off into quite a few bare patches where there had been most activity, in front of the gas stove, the sink, around three sides under the kitchen table where years of feet had scuffed at breakfast time. The centre was still almost as new, having always been covered by a succession of kitchen mats, renewed as they wore out. Letty glanced at the water Dad was letting dribble, relaxed seeing it missing the most recent piece of kitchen carpet.
‘So far as I know, the stew’s fer dinner an’ that’s at one o’clock so ’ow yer can call it lunch when …’
‘All right, Dad! We’re having dinner at one o’clock. That suit you?’ She thrust the bread pudding into the oven, closed the door forcefully, and, as the saucepan of milk began to rise to the rim, deftly removed it from the flame before it overflowed, turned off the gas and rushed it to the table to pour over slices of bread and butter layered in a bowl. One of dad’s favourite breakfasts; and baked with sultanas, one of his favourite afters – bread and butter pudding. He loved it. Would have lived on it, but she, for the life of her, couldn’t touch it no matter how well cooked it was. It made her feel sick, the way it slid down the throat.
‘Your breakfast!’ she stated shortly and, as he came to the table, braces still dangling, she went and fished up the floor cloth from under the sink to mop up the puddle he’d left.
It was eight-thirty, just time to run down to Beans for a loaf before opening her own shop.
‘Shan’t be long,’ she said, leaving him to slurp up the milky slop, grabbed up a shopping basket and hurried out. It was a relief to be out of the flat, if only for ten minutes, but by the time she reached Beans grocery just along the road, she wasn’t so sure about being glad. Damp fog clung to her eyelashes, flattened her hair, crept inside the collar of her coat.
‘I do hate winter!’ she grumbled as she paid Billy for the loaf.
‘I could have brought it ter you,’ he offered, but she shrugged.
‘My dad’s really got the ’ump up to his eyebrows this morning. I just had ter get out for a break.’
Funny how she lapsed so easily into cockney with Billy, even if it wasn’t quite so pronounced as his. Being with David had even rounded her vowels, but how thin the veneer was.
Billy grinned affably, didn’t even notice the change in her accent. He still didn’t have a girl, just the odd one occasionally but nothing serious ever came of it. It was surprising really, him being so easy to get on with, always so cheerful. If ever he was grave, it only seemed to improve those good looks of his.
His grin this morning was wide and cheerful as always. ‘Never mind, Let. Thursday termorrer. Early closin’s been a boon, ain’t it?’
Still working for a father much younger than her own, who had years to go before he’d ever hand the shop over to his son, Billy had very little interest in it, living for Thursday afternoons when he could go and kick a ball around in a back alley with a couple of mates, like himself let off on the same afternoon.
‘Thursday,’ Letty said with a doleful smile, ‘I’m usually stuck in the flat with me dad and four walls. With him moaning on about this and that, and me listening.’
‘Never mind,’ Billy said airily. ‘Yer see yer bloke on Sunday, don’t yer? That ought ter make yer cheery.’
‘I suppose so,’ she said absently, her mind on tomorrow. If the fog persisted, she and Dad would be virtually housebound.
Billy was grinning at her like a Cheshire cat. ‘Yer suppose so?’ he echoed. ‘Anyone’d think seein’ yer bloke was a chore. If yer that fed up wiv ’im, yer can always come aht wiv me.’
Letty’s laugh died on her lips. Billy’s smile was as broad as ever but it hadn’t quite reached his eyes, brilliant blue and serious with meaning.
‘I’m not fed up with him,’ she said haughtily. ‘We just don’t see each other every week. People don’t when they’ve been courting for so long …’ She broke off sharply. She hadn’t meant to say that.
Billy wasn’t smiling now, was looking at her quizzically. ‘It ’as been a long while, ain’t it, Let?’
‘That’s nothing to do with you, Billy.’
‘Of course not.’
He watched her thrust the loaf into her shopping bag, watched as she left, his bright blue eyes clouded, then shrugged off his thoughts as the shop door closed on her departing figure.
Letty couldn’t get out of her mind the way Billy had looked at her. It brought up all those things that lurked deep inside her brain, like thieves in shadowy corners, ready to leap
out when you weren’t looking and steal that precious possession everyone cherished: the ability to deceive oneself. It had been months since David had made any mention of marriage. Their relationship had grown so casual that these days they saw each other out of habit. The ring on her finger that had once promised so much, seemed to be the only tenuous link holding her and David to each other. Even his kisses no longer had hunger in them.
Letty hoisted the handle of the shopping basket over her arm, held her coat collar tight against her throat against the creeping cold. In a narrow alleyway two girls on their way to school were bouncing a ball. One had a skimpy coat, the other none at all. The cold didn’t seem to bother them, though Letty noticed the hands of the one bouncing the ball had a bluish tinge. She hurried on, anxious to cover the last few yards home as quickly as possible, her thoughts still on David.
It had taken Dad’s accident to uncover the rift she’d pretended for a long time had not existed. The last time David had spoken of marriage had been after Dad had come out of hospital, and she’d said, ‘David, I can’t. Not now.’ She’d meant to say ‘not yet’, meant to say ‘let Dad get back on his feet’. She should have rectified the aberration then and there, but she hadn’t. Had let it stand. David had gone quiet, the glow in his soft brown eyes that of defeat. He had turned away, and had never asked her again. Somehow Letty felt she was losing him, steadily, surely, powerless to do anything about it.
Perhaps Billy was right. Perhaps she was losing interest …
No! Letty pulled herself up from the thought as she let herself into the shop. No – she loved David, ached with love for him; ached at the thought of never seeing him again. She wanted so much to be his wife and yet … and yet, there was always Dad. Always the same old argument, stretched like elastic between two loyalties, and Dad always the winner because she couldn’t bear to think of him as being the loser.
Letty glanced at Dad ensconced in Mum’s old wooden-armed chair. He was sitting one side of the hearth, feet in carpet slippers propped on the brass fender, she on the other side, darning a hole in one of his socks. In a wickerwork basket beside her several more pairs waited to be darned.
Despite it being April the fire was well banked up, the tar hissing and bubbling within the flames. Coal at near on a shilling a hundredweight wasn’t cheap, but Dad was inclined to feel the cold a lot these days. He didn’t seem to comprehend that money was tight, the shop only just ticking over. She had dreamed such wonderful dreams of expansion, of opening up in the West End, but it wasn’t easy to make headway, a woman on her own. Those dreams gone, it was just ticking over as it always had, with Dad putting in his spoke at every turn to stop her doing what she thought best. Of course it was still his shop. He had the last say. Pity though he didn’t put as much energy in doing something about it as he did in putting obstacles in the way. Letty still felt that, given a free hand, she’d have got somewhere with it.
‘What we need is a telephone,’ she said casually.
Even David’s father, as old fashioned as David said he was in his business, had installed one in both his shops in March. David had told her it had proved a boon; goods ordered by telephone, the order on paper following more conventionally, so that as soon as it arrived the goods were waiting ready to be despatched. Everywhere the telephone was proving itself the best invention in years.
His parents were so pleased that they now had one in their own home. Letty’s thoughts ran wild on a speculation that if Dad could only be persuaded to have one, she could use it to contact David at home. She’d be able to talk to him whenever she wanted, every day of the week. No more long days away from each other. It made her head spin to think about it.
‘What d’you think, Dad?’ she prompted, as he with his feet inches from the extravagant blaze, said nothing. Letty ignored the thought that one of these days those soles were going to catch light, waited for his reply.
‘Well?’ she urged.
His feet came off the fender so sharply she actually did think they had begun to smoulder. He leaned forward, reached for his pipe. ‘What the ’ell for?’
‘A lot of shops have a telephone now.’
She waited as he went through the lengthy ritual of lighting his pipe. ‘I’ve managed fer nearly thirty years without one,’ he rumbled at last.
‘I know, but things are changing.’ Her needle fairly flew in and out of the sock heel, jerky rapid movements. ‘Look how much quicker we can order things.’
‘What do we ’ave to order? Everythink we ’ave is what comes in by ’and. Don’t need a telephone fer that.’
He was right there. They didn’t really need a telephone. Letty bent her head over her darning, frowning, trying to find one reason Dad might accept. Beyond the drawn curtains, April lashed what sounded like its whole reserves of rain at the windowpanes. In the grate the coals slipped with a small crunching noise. In Letty’s mind a single thought dominated – how close she and David could be by the simple expedient of just picking up a telephone earpiece and asking for a number; David’s thoughts in her ear as though he stood beside her, their very thoughts exchanged through the wires.
‘What about illness?’ The idea came without any prompting. ‘Say if you were taken ill, look how quick we could get in touch with Lucy or Vinny.’
‘You expecting me ter be taken ill then?’ The way he said it, he made it sound as if she was putting the wish to the thought.
For a moment Letty couldn’t answer, with an effort quenched a spark of anger. Outside the wind buffeted the window. She eyed the small puffs of smoke billowing back down the chimney and into the room from the downdraught. The chimney needs cleaning, came the abstract thought in the midst of her cogent reply to Dad’s unkind and totally uncalled for remark.
‘Who’d have thought you’d go and break your leg last summer?’ she countered manfully. ‘If we’d had a telephone, Mrs Hall wouldn’t have had to go running all round the place looking for one to call Vinny on.’
‘Lavinia,’ he corrected sharply, and this time Letty’s anger rose unchecked.
‘Fer God sake, Dad, I don’t care! I’m trying to hold a conversation with you. It don’t matter if I call her Lavinia or Vinny. Just stop treating me as if I was a kid!’
But Dad had effectively cut her argument short, which was what he had meant to do. And now his faded blue eyes swivelled towards her, a natural gesture much the same as she used, but where with her it was attractively provocative, from him it only appeared crafty and mean.
‘We wouldn’t ’ave needed any telephone,’ he said slowly, ‘if you’d have been ’ere, would we?’
So it was still there, under the surface, still simmering. Letty’s voice trembled beneath a wave of guilt she’d thought had healed along with Dad’s leg.
‘I’d still have had to go running around …’
The words died away. What was the point? Whatever she said was not going to subdue the sense that Dad’s accident had somehow been her fault. Like an invisible chain, it still bound her to him; so invisible, there was no way to sever it without wounding herself.
Fastening off the darning wool, she twisted the repaired pair of socks into a ball and automatically picked up another, examining the threadbare heels with her finger.
Chapter Ten
Nothing could have surprised Letty more than David drawing up, somewhat jerkily, outside the shop one Saturday afternoon in June in a splendid new Morris Oxford motor car. Dumbfounded, the dead litter of last Sunday’s market going unnoticed underfoot, she stood staring at the black paintwork glittering in the late sunshine while David grinned up at her from the driving seat, impish as a schoolboy.
‘My father has made me a partner in his business. This is to mark the event. £180 straight from the showroom. What d’you think of it?’
Touched by her wide-eyed amazement, the maturity of his thirty-four years sloughed from him like dead skin as he watched her green eyes dart and flicker, heard her exclamations, disjointed by excitement.<
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‘Oh David, it’s wonderful! You never said … about being made a partner. Or this. Oh my, it’s wonderful. And a motorcar!’ Goggle-eyed, she took in the vehicle, shaking her head in disbelief. ‘Fancy now!’
‘We could go for a spin,’ he cut through her incoherence. ‘I could drive you over to Lavinia and Albert’s and show it off to them.’
She looked at him, her expression dulling. ‘Oh, but it’s late.’
Vinny and Albert had moved out to Walthamstow, to a larger house, double-fronted, bay-windowed, with a garden; almost as good as Lucy’s.
With three growing boys, little Arthur nearly two years old, they had certainly needed more room. But Walthamstow! Trust Vinny to go all posh. At least, with both sisters doing nicely thank you, Letty felt she could now hold her head up when she visited David’s parents – not that she did very often if she could help it, their continuing so disapproving and distant towards her, no matter how properly she behaved.
Vinny’s new home, large though it was, still gave as much an impression of lacking space as her old house had done, alive and noisy with three boisterous boys. So different to Lucy’s with its air of never being truly lived in. Her two girls never romped, cried, got into mischief. If Elisabeth so much as spoke a quarrelsome word, Lucy would promptly get herself a headache. Nor did Letty reckon there’d be any likelihood of the family ever becoming larger.
Having abstained so long from allowing Jack anywhere near her, Lucy now seemed incapable of producing another child, girl or boy. Almost as though she’d put a curse on herself. Fret over it though she might, Letty couldn’t imagine her with any more children in her immaculate home. She’d probably have a breakdown if she had to put up with what Vinny put up with, and her expecting again in November.
Letty much preferred the chaotic upheaval of Vinny’s home despite Albert’s increasingly unbearable pomposity. She had never particularly liked Albert whose sleek youthfulness was fast fulfilling its promise of rotundness as he grew older. It would be fun to see his expression when David displayed this beautiful motor car to him.