The Soldier's Bride

by Maggie Ford

  She’d consulted a solicitor who’d told her with the air of one who considered she was wasting his time with so petty a matter that she could get her son back quite legally whenever she pleased. There had never been any formal adoption. Letty had not been able to bring herself to sign anything when Vinny had approached her about it some years ago, and Vinny had shelved the request for the time being. When Albert had been killed in France, she had forgotten it altogether in the shock of becoming a widow.

  ‘Loco Parentis,’ the solicitor had said in a weary tone. ‘In place of a parent.’ The small matter settled as far as he was concerned, he had charged Letty his fee – pretty hefty she thought for such a short appointment – promising she should have no legal problems whatsoever getting back her son. He’d said nothing about the emotional side.

  ‘You must have known this could happen. You should have realised.’

  It was awful to see Vinny’s face so distraught, but Letty had prepared herself. She wondered if this was how she’d looked when Vinny had taken the baby from her, and with that thought hardened herself against those wide staring grey-green eyes.

  Vinny only had herself to blame, had put the final nail in her coffin as mother to Christopher by not coming to Letty’s wedding to Billy. Nor had she visited them since.

  Vinny faced her now, desperately challenging.

  ‘And what will you tell him? That he’s illegitimate? That’s really giving him a good start to living with you!’

  ‘I shan’t tell him anything as yet,’ Letty said. ‘Anyway, he’ll learn from his birth certificate one day. You can’t hide that. I’ll tell him for the time being that he’s coming to me as a sort of holiday.’

  ‘My – that’s rich, that is!’

  Vinny, striding about her fine living room that smelled of lavender furniture polish and cigarette smoke, pretending she wasn’t wringing her hands in anguish, turned on Letty.

  ‘How long d’you think you can keep that up?’ she asked, agitatedly lighting up yet another cigarette, far too distressed to bother with a holder. A cloud of scented smoke was blown through her pursed pallid lips as she exhaled sharply like someone trying to blow up a balloon.

  ‘Sooner or later he’s going to want to come back,’ she said between nervous puffs. ‘He’ll want me – his mummy. For heaven’s sake, the child’s not yet eight years old. He’s bound to want his mummy.’

  ‘He’ll have her,’ Letty said, keeping calm with a great effort. ‘Me.’

  ‘You’re going to tell him that, are you?’ Vinny said with a terse and bitter laugh. ‘Going to tell a nearly eight year old that his mummy isn’t really his mummy – that his aunt is? Oh, yes, he’ll swallow that won’t he? You’ll have him in tears. You’ll end up with him ill, needing medicine from the doctor, to make him quiet. Oh, you’re going to have a terrific time, Letty!’

  The truth of what Vinny was saying began to make Letty unsure. But she clung on. Nothing, no one, was going to make her give up now.

  ‘I’ll take care of that when it comes,’ she said. ‘I can make him happy with me. He’ll get used to being with me in time, and when I think the time’s right, I’ll explain things to him. I shall be all right, don’t worry.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not worrying,’ said Vinny, who looked as if she might fall down on to the floor. ‘I’m not worried at all.’

  ‘Then if you’ll kindly pack some things for him,’ Letty said, all businesslike, seeing despair in her sister’s face.

  ‘I never realised just how cruel you can be, Letty.’

  She smiled sweetly. ‘As cruel as you were when you took him off my hands, and me too weak to do anything to stop you.’

  ‘I did it for the best. What was best for him. And this is all the thanks I get.’ Vinny, her voice almost a wail, stabbed her cigarette out in the glass ashtray on a fireside table and stood gazing down at the thin blue trail of smoke. But Letty wasn’t done.

  ‘You robbed me of the only thing I had left,’ she said stonily.

  Nothing, no amount of weeping and wailing, would pierce the armour she had built up over the years in preparation for just this moment. She needed to be as unemotional as possible so as not to be undermined by the terrible look Vinny directed at her – that hatred, that appeal for pity, that devastation. She wondered if she’d ever be able to forget the look on Vinny’s face.

  ‘And now I’m claiming him back,’ Letty said, tonelessly.

  Facing Vinny had been the easy part. Her predictions proved to be alarmingly correct.

  ‘Will I be going back home soon, Aunt Letty?’ Christopher had only been with her three days so far. His dark eyes so like David’s, that they tugged at her heart, had gazed questioningly at her.

  She had tried to smile. ‘Don’t you like it here with me and Uncle Billy?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I’d like to see the zoo again, but …’

  ‘Then I’ll take you again tomorrow.’

  Easter holidays finished next week. There were still so many explanations – why he would be going to a different school; why he was to remain with his Aunt Letty and not go home to ‘Mummy’.

  She could stall him, she was sure, but there would come a time when he became suspicious, resentful at being kept here. The fun of all the things there were to do in London would pall eventually. Then what?

  Letty felt sick at the mere prospect. How was she going to combat his bewilderment, the tantrums when they came, perhaps even having to face final admission of defeat and allow him to go back? His happiness had to come before hers. What was her love worth if all it considered was her own selfish need?

  There were other worries too. Her time nowadays was taken up with escorting him here and there, keeping his mind occupied, keeping him happy. The shop would go to pot even though Billy was ready to stand in for her.

  ‘S’long as I don’t lift nothin’ too ’eavy, too quick,’ he told her, laughing, shamed by the admission, ‘it’s no trouble ter me.’

  It was painful to see how hard he fought not to be a burden. Cheerful even if she herself was down – her mood not always at its best in the morning – he inevitably managed to cheer her up with his crooked grin.

  ‘That’s what I like ter see,’ he’d banter in the face of her scowls. ‘An angel poppin’ out of me bed first thing!’

  How could she be grumpy with him? She’d put her fluctuating mood behind her, for his sake: his stoic disregard of his own pain, his ready grin, his wonderfully gentle consideration of her, working so hard to put her back on an even keel. Letty said prayers of thanks to the Almighty for Billy.

  Three days of Christopher, an energetic child she discovered, used to boisterous brothers and feeling the loss of them for all they saw less of each other going to school, had already frayed her nerves; she wondered how on earth she was going to persuade him into a different school, rehearsed every other second how to break it to him.

  Then at the end of his first week came a godsend in the form of the boy who’d come to live in the flat next-door some months ago.

  Mr Solomons had retired the previous summer, he and his wife going to live with relatives elsewhere. The shop had lain empty for months, boarded up frontage stacked with itinerant market traders’ bird cages. Eventually in November it was bought and turned into a pet shop that, as well as birds, sold mice, rabbits, kittens, puppies, even goldfish in glass tanks.

  It was a source of fascination to Christopher – in fact, the whole Sunday market with its birdsong as well as the yapping of dogs and cooing of pigeons intrigued him. Pigeons had become popular with East End men with little to do but stand around in apathetic groups outside the labour exchanges, though things had improved a bit lately.

  Pigeons obsessed Christopher from the first day.

  ‘Can I have one?’ he begged at the end of his first week.

  ‘Let ’im ’ave one,’ Billy said indulgently.

  ‘Where are we going to keep it?’ Letty asked, not daring to say no.

  ‘Out back
in the yard.’

  The yard was a short expanse of concrete, divided from others just like it by a three-foot wall, each a refuse dump for the shop to which it belonged.

  ‘We’d have to build a hutch of some sort,’ Letty said.

  ‘A loft.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘It’s a loft. An ’utch is fer rabbits. Yer need a pigeon loft.’

  ‘You can’t build one …’

  She broke off, knowing she’d touched a sensitive spot, but Billy’s grin didn’t diminish though she knew he’d felt it.

  ‘I’ll ask me dad if ’e’d ’elp,’ he said.

  Mr Beans still seemed healthy enough despite his heart condition, and with the shop being taken over in a month’s time by new owners, he did very little in it now. Yes of course he’d help Billy. Work was not a problem, worry was. A bit of activity such as woodwork didn’t entail worry.

  By Easter weekend Christopher had his pigeon loft and two pigeons to put in it. A book out of the library which Letty sat and read to him showed how to take care of them. Christopher was in raptures.

  It was then he discovered Danny, while watching Grandfather Beans up the ladder securing the small slatted box with its perches and sleeping box to the wall several feet up on uprights to keep it out of reach of cats. The boy next-door dangled over the wall.

  ‘Watchyer doin’ mister?’ When told he said, ‘We’ve got pigeons. ’Omin’ pigeons. Dad keeps ’em at me uncle’s ’ouse over ’Ackney way. No room ’ere ter train ’omin’ pigeons.’ An authority on them, the boy next-door.

  ‘I’m having mine as pets,’ Christopher said readily.

  ‘Mind the cats round ’ere don’t ’ave ’em fer Sunday dinner,’ said the boy. ‘Wot’s yer name?’

  ‘Christopher Worth. I’m staying with my aunt. What’s yours?’

  ‘Danny Carter. Wanna see me mouse? Got it downstairs. Me dad gave it me.’

  Over the low wall they hung, with heads together. From that moment sprang a friendship, so intense, so miraculous, Letty could hardly contain her joy. When St Nicholas’s School resumed after the Easter holidays and Christopher discovered that his newfound friend went there, almost a new boy himself, he looked less keen to go home just yet to the clean Walthamstow air where older boys said swear words with nicer accents, tormenting the swift-growing Christopher as a skinny squit. Here he’d be described as ‘skinny as a sparrer’s kneecap’, which Danny had already called him, and which seemed more preferable.

  Letty jumped on the opportunity as it presented itself.

  ‘Would you like to stay here for a while then?’ she suggested. ‘I can ask your … ask my sister to let you. You can go to school for a while here with Daniel. What do you think, Christopher?’

  He nodded absently, his mind more on his friend’s new mouse snuggling in his pocket, on temporary loan.

  ‘He’s really called Danny by his friends, and he says I’m Chris ’cos Christopher’s too long for anyone ter say.’

  Letty noted the slip in speech, felt a little sad that some of the advantages of his upbringing were already in jeopardy, at the same time considering it a small sacrifice to win the love of her son one day.

  Chapter Twenty

  Letty spent the rest of her morning after the shopfitters had gone adding her own little touches. When she had done all she could for the time being, pangs of nervous hunger prompting thoughts of getting home, she let herself out, locked the door behind her with an air of satisfaction, and returned the key to her handbag.

  A scruffy handbag for one who’d just taken a lease on Oxford Street premises! Her clothes could have been more fashionable too – serviceable plain green autumn coat and brown tam-o’shanter. Not what you’d call the height of fashion. That would come later, would have to if she wanted to show herself off as proprietress of this place. Until then, money wasn’t to be wasted on high fashion; not after taking on such an exorbitant lease.

  The money Billy’s parents had given him would help, but for how long if profits didn’t justify the rent of the place? It was taking a heck of a gamble branching out into the West End like this.

  Letty still felt guilty at taking Billy’s money, even though he’d said it was as much hers as his. She felt more guilty because he hadn’t wanted a penny for himself. But she’d dreamed of this moment for so long that when these premises came up she couldn’t help but yield to his urging, and Billy had been genuinely delighted for her.

  Even so, she had still to stock the place with what the better class of shopper was looking for. No money from Dad’s shop, of course. It was his and he wanted to keep it, to continue living on the rent it would bring in. She couldn’t blame him for that, though she had hoped he might have offered his daughter some help.

  There had been his pictures though – his two lovelorn maidens. She could keep them, he’d said, for old time’s sake. But a need for cash overriding sentiment, Letty found herself offered fifty pounds each for them by an art dealer who claimed there was no interest in Victorian art. No interest – at fifty pounds each! She took them to another art dealer and got half as much again, enough to pay for the décor, lighting and furnishing of her new premises.

  There still remained the need to stock the place. Full of optimism, she’d secured a loan from the bank, repayable at four per cent per annum. How it would be repaid if her shop didn’t realise her hopes, heaven only knew, but Letty’s optimism knew no bounds. Last November’s elections had given the Conservatives a clear victory, Lloyd George abandoned for Bonar Law. Groups of young boys had paraded the streets prior to the results, chanting ‘Vote! Vote! Vote for Bonar Law. Punch ole Lloyd George in the eye …’ People were more hopeful for the future than they’d been since 1921. Parliament had its first ever woman MP, so why shouldn’t a woman like Letty Beans make a fist of her own venture?

  Snapping shut her handbag, she walked briskly off along Oxford Street, head erect, carriage upright, exactly as her mother’s had been at thirty-three, unaware how like Mabel she was, strong-minded and proud.

  At Tottenham Court Road bus stop she caught a number 22 back to Shoreditch. It ought to have been a taxi the way she felt, but until she’d made some money in this new, almost crazy, venture a bus home was good enough.

  She sat on her seat, taking in the other passengers, exhilarated. She kept thinking, What if they knew I have a gallery in Oxford Street? Mustn’t say shop. Narrow enough to be called a gallery. At least she hoped it would be worthy of that title. It was a crazy undertaking. But if she hadn’t done it now, she never would have.

  ‘Now it’s done out, it’s smaller than I’d have liked,’ she said when she and Billy and Christopher went back in the afternoon.

  Her speech had improved since Christopher had come to live with them. It was for his benefit as much as her own; if she set a good example he might not lose that nice way he’d had of speaking.

  ‘But it does have an attractive display window,’ she went on.

  The window consisted of small square panes surrounded by highly polished dark wood frames, the door very much the same design.

  They stood gazing around. The interior décor of a tasteful Wedgewood blue with a touch of oatmeal gave a feeling of tranquillity, Letty said. Glass shelving to throw back the new electric lighting. The floor was carpeted in a darker blue.

  All her life Letty’s feet had touched unyielding linoleum. Ironic to think that this shop was far cosier than the flat she lived in.

  ‘It’s got a very select look about it, don’t you think?’

  Billy readily agreed. Christopher stood saying nothing, his narrow face sullen.

  ‘True the premises either side are small,’ Letty continued, trying not to look at her son. ‘But that adds to the charm, don’t you think? Small things and places look expensive.’

  Billy was being entirely supportive, but Chris – as she now called him, like his school chums did – clung to his sullen and withdrawn expression, showing no interest. Tall for eight y
ears, even after eighteen months with her, he was still reproachful, had not forgiven her.

  She’d been forced to explain everything to him much sooner than she’d really wanted to in the face of his fretting for Vinny. She had thought he would understand; had thought that because he was her and David’s son, he would feel about it the way she did. He hadn’t.

  Looking back on it, Letty hoped she’d never have another experience like it, felt sick every time she thought about it.

  ‘I don’t believe you!’ he’d yelled at her. ‘You’re telling lies! I know who my mother is, I want to go back home!’

  How she persuaded him that she wasn’t telling lies, that she was his mother, she could hardly recall, but somehow she managed to tell him about David, about her shame, about how he’d been taken from her and brought up by her sister.

  Chris had gone into himself after that, grew silent and brooding, sat for hours on his own, spoke only when compelled to, and then only the tersest of replies. But he didn’t ask again to go back to Vinny. As the months progressed he did seem to say more, but there was no spontaneity in anything he said, except when he was with his friends in the street. It hurt Letty to see him so natural with them and so stiff and formal with her.

  His school reports had been disastrous every term, his teachers demanding to see her over him. She had spoken with Chris about it, had tried to be philosophical and patient. He had listened silently, his eyes dull, his obedience a barrier she couldn’t pierce.

  His features were narrow like David’s had been, so heartrendingly handsome. It raked her soul to see them so sullen, so unforgiving. Letty wasn’t sure he’d truly understood the real significance of what she’d told him, but to discover that she and not Vinny was his mother had thrown him into confusion. Letty knew how hard it must be for him. She was painfully aware that he still used all sorts of means to avoid having to call her ‘Mum’ or ‘Mother’.

  ‘It’ll be a great asset,’ she went on purposefully. ‘Having nice premises each side of us like this.’