The Soldier's Bride (13 page)

‘See what yer missed?’ Billy said, showing her the paper. ‘Should have gone wiv me, shouldn’t yer?’

Letty smiled, putting down the paper to attend to a customer while Billy waited to one side.

‘Could always come out wiv me another time,’ he said as the woman left.

Letty laughed lightly. ‘Cheeky devil! You know I’m spoken for.’

Billy did not laugh with her. His usually merry face was serious. ‘Few years now, ain’t it, Let – since yer was spoken for?’

Letty too grew serious, her faced pinched with a faint anger not commonly felt towards Billy.

‘That’s my business.’

His chin gave a sceptical jerk. ‘Seems odd ter me, a couple goin’ out wiv each other so long an’ never gettin’
’itched. Seems ter me, either you don’t love ’im, or ’e don’t love you.’

‘I
am
engaged, Billy,’ she snapped. The ring lay on her finger at last, for all to see, for all the good it did; she realised she’d missed the boat for revelling in congratulatory cries of surprise and wonder. Everyone had already come to suspect she’d had her ring for some time, so there was not much point anyone making a great thing about it. ‘And all in good time there’ll be a gold band next to it. As soon as circumstances – which are none of your business, Billy Beans – permit.’

He put the paper aside slowly, got up from the table on which he’d been perching. ‘Don’t wait too long, Let,’ he said, his tone low and heavy with meaning. ‘See yer later, then.’

She’d grown used to remarks, snide or otherwise, over the length of time she and David had been going out together. No one even bothered to ask when she was getting married, and she somehow managed to ignore the fact that David too did not talk of it so much these days.

He was often as ardent as if they were married and she in turn had put aside that demureness she’d first displayed with him, her need of him was as strong as his need of her. In darkened corners they made no bones of it, though they always stopped before completing the act, both wary of the consequences. Only then did he beg her, his whole being trembling with wanting her and she almost in tears, to leave home, marry him, to hell with sense of duty – what about him?

She was angry with herself for letting Billy’s simple remark evoke these memories. To relieve her anger she threw up her arms in a childishly dramatic gesture, pulled a face at the empty shop – and was immediately caught off guard by the couple coming in. Hastily smoothing her expression, dropping her hands to her side, she smiled at them. Could she help them at all? Looking for a wedding present, they told her, straight-faced.

‘By all means, look around,’ she said, as coolly as she could, and applied her mind to business.

No longer did she rely on the bits and pieces people down on their luck brought in to sell. She’d take short excursions to other second hand shops, pick out what might sell to the more opulent clientele lately coming to the Row.

‘I have to make sure we’ve got what they want,’ she told her father, and saw him smile, not unkindly, but with the derision of one who had been through all that and come out with damaged pockets.

‘We ain’t in bloody Oxford Street.’

‘We could be, one day,’ she told him, ignoring his caution.

Customers looking for quality stuff at reasonable prices, tasteful porcelain, well-made furniture, paintings – especially paintings which she was developing a feel for. She’d begun to know what would or would not sell, know what she was looking for, know how to knock down the prices when she bought, put them up when she sold – not so little that they thought they were being sold rubbish, but not so high that they didn’t think they were getting a bargain. In this
she discovered she had her mother’s people’s blood in her, shrewd yet pleasant, tough yet charming. She wasn’t being vain in thinking that, sensible enough to realise it was gift handed on to her by Mum, coupled with a love of beautiful things from Dad, and as such she was profoundly grateful and tried to remain humble about it. If only she could summon a little something out of her own self – a business head – who knows what she could achieve? Visions of a fine shop in London’s West End filled her dreams. One day, she thought. One day …

The year slipped by; same old water under the same old bridge. Look after the shop all week, look after Dad, the flat; look forward to Sundays, Mrs Hall coming to keep an eye on Dad, Dad complaining he was sick of being looked after by Mrs Hall, always rattling on about her poor Fred and how he gave her everything when she was alive.

‘Silly old bugger gave ’er a dog’s life when ’e was alive,’ he said.

Winter slid into a spring that turned swiftly into baking summer. Men sweated profusely in rolled up shirt sleeves. Women rolled theirs up too and fanned themselves with newspapers. Club Row’s caged birds ceased singing, perched in cramped cages in full sunshine, their wings drooping, beaks agape, little feathered breasts panting. Lots of them died, found in the bottom of the tiny cages come Sunday evening, were dumped in dustbins for kids to fish out and hang on strings, whizzed round and round, aping the free flight they’d been denied in life.

The heavy air trapped between narrow streets and
narrower alleys was a yellow haze. Unshod, kids jigged around the incessantly playing barrel organ, boys in hand-me-down breeches, girls with faded dresses hoisted high, showing holed black stockings, darned black drawers. Front doors stood wide open in side alleys to let what air there was flow through claustrophobic tenements. Chairs brought outside on to the pavement, neighbour sat chatting with neighbour, trying to ignore the stink of drains and outside lavatories.

David took Letty on a Sunday trip to Brighton. The sun beat upon a promenade crowded with trippers, bringing out colour whichever way she looked, giving everyone a look of wealth.

The grey tube-shaped dress that showed off her auburn hair Letty had made on her mum’s old Singer, in cotton voile at sixpence three farthings a yard. She followed current fashion, the hem well clear of the ground to show her ankles. The wide straw hat with white daisies and pink rosebuds smothering the crown David had bought for her in Regent Street. It was terribly expensive. Though she’d protested furiously at the cost, now she glowed with pleasure to be wearing it, as posh as anyone.

On David’s arm, his hand over hers, she gazed at the beach below, crowded with sunbathers in cloth caps and straw boaters. Beyond the lines of bathing machines drawn up at the water’s edge, their big wooden wheels in the water, young men in bathing costumes were revelling in a refreshing dip while the ladies, well covered, paddled tentatively at the edge.

Her first sight of the sea had taken her breath away,
the smooth shimmering expanse stretching away to the horizon. Overwhelmed, she’d gripped David’s arm convulsively. ‘Oh ain’t it lovely!’

She drank in the sunshine, savoured the heat beating through the fine stuff of her dress, and as David squeezed her hand in reply, was glad to be alive, offering up a prayer of thanks for Mrs Hall who’d agreed to sit with Dad the whole day. Dad, who had complained of the heat getting at his chest, had also complained that he didn’t need Mrs Hall fussing around him. What he really meant was that he wanted Letty to fuss around him rather than go off with David.

‘I wish we could do it again,’ she sighed on the train home.

‘No reason why we shouldn’t, is there?’ David smiled at her as she sat close to him in the hot carriage crowded by weary passengers and their sticky children.

She didn’t answer. Even now, David could never really understand what it was like to face those resentful glances, the long silences in the wake of her return. She saw a shadow pass over his face.

‘Your father.’ The defeat in his tone served to spoil the lovely day she’d had.

‘No, it’s not,’ she said sharply, sitting upright away from him as far as the plump woman beside her allowed, and remaining that way for the rest of the journey, studying David’s lean handsome face dark, eyebrows drawn down. They didn’t speak again except for short terse directions when needed as the train steamed into Victoria Station and the tube took them on to Liverpool Street. Not until they
were on the tram taking them the rest of the way home through the twilight, did David say anything positive.

‘You worry too much over your father,’ he said as they sat side by side on one long seat, shaken from side to side by the tram’s shuddering. ‘Hear me out!’ he said firmly as she made to interrupt. ‘I’ve tried to be patient and understand, but it’s time you considered what you want from life. No – Letitia, please!’

He drew her arm through his, gripping her hand so tightly that she winced.

‘You said by the time you were twenty-one your father would be well over his loss, and you would be free. But you’re still nursemaiding him as though he were a helpless child.’

‘He still needs me,’ she hissed, her body rigid.

‘
I
need you, Letitia! I need you for my wife. Now! After all this time I’ve a right. I want marriage and children, and I want it to be you who gives me that. No one else!’

He was right. Letty sank dolefully against him. David held her to him, his voice becoming low, persuasive.

‘You know I can give you everything you ever wanted. But you must let go of him. I can’t wait forever.’

‘Oh, no!’ Her body stiffened. ‘You wouldn’t leave me! You can’t!’

All around, passengers half turned at her cry, looked and looked away in embarrassment.

‘Don’t say that, David,’ she whispered with just enough presence of mind to lower her voice even though her heart was hitting against her ribs with sickening thuds.

‘God – I couldn’t!’ His own voice was hoarse as though
his throat had tightened enough to strangle him. He was holding her to him in a convulsive embrace. ‘I don’t know what made me say that. But what will happen to us if you don’t leave him? If he refuses to let you … Darling, if you haven’t the strength to break away now, when will you ever have it?’

‘I do have the strength,’ she hissed. ‘But I can’t be hard. He’s all alone.’

‘He is
not
alone. There’s Vinny and Lucy. It’s about time they gave some of their time to him, Letitia.’

‘How? Vinny’s got two children now. Lucy’s expecting again. I’m the only one free to …’

‘The only one enslaved, you mean,’ he cut in. ‘Both have domestic help. You’re still a servant in your own home. I’m sure your Mrs Hall would be happy to earn a few pennies, employed on a permanent basis, instead of your begging her for help when you’re finally too worn out to put one foot in front of the other.’

‘The shop don’t … doesn’t pay enough for that.’

‘To hell with the shop! You could get her for half the rate your sisters pay their domestics and she’d be happy. But that would be too easy for your father. It would mean losing you to me. Letitia, don’t you see, it’s sheer selfishness …’

‘No, I won’t have that!’ Anger had replaced desolation. She broke away from his embrace. ‘I won’t have you both tugging at me like this. I won’t be batted about like an old rubber ball …’

Everyone was staring at her but she didn’t care. ‘Can’t you understand? I’d never be at peace with meself if I walked out on Dad. If I had everything in the world as you
said I could, and saw me Dad left all on his own, I could never …’

‘And what about me, Letitia?’ David’s raised voice took no account of those listening. ‘What of me? Could you live in peace with yourself if you left me on my own?’

‘I love you!’ she wailed, distraught.

‘Then marry me! Next month. Marry me!’

‘What about Dad? I can’t …’

‘All right! Pander to him, be with him until he dies and leaves you on your own – an old maid no one will thank for all the sacrifices she made, least of all your sisters in their fine homes while you play the slave in yours. It doesn’t matter to them or your father if you are happy or not, so long as you’re always there.’

‘That’s not true!’ she yelled desperately.

‘It’s God’s own truth!’ he yelled back, while some in the tram gave a gasp and others tittered, drawn in by this lovers’ quarrel, and a spotty youth in the front called out. ‘Go orn, marry ’im, ducks! Make ’im ’appy an’ sod yer farver!’

The heat had made corset and bodice stick to her skin beneath her muslin blouse, her narrow skirt hobbling her ankles most uncomfortably. David, however, looked so cool in a soft-collared shirt and grey-striped flannel trousers, his jacket over his arm. What it must be to be a man, unrestricted by tight clothing and fashion!

‘I’ve got to sit down a minute,’ Letty gasped, and was surprised by the relief on his face.

‘I began to wonder if you’d ever tire,’ he laughed, helping her down on to the beach, immediately to drop down on the stones himself. ‘I thought you were going on walking to Land’s End!’

She realised then he was as hot and tired as her. Only pride had prevented him from being first to complain. It made her feel better to know it, and laughing, she threw herself at him, pummelling him playfully.

What a lovely holiday it had been after all the problems she’d had just to be here! All that trouble with her father …

He’d been appalled when she had told him she was going away with David for a few days; had become quite nasty about it.

‘Plannin’ ter get up ter no good with ’im, ain’t yer?’
he had accused, but she wasn’t going to be drawn into an argument. She was going to Brighton with David and that was that.

She’d worked hard for it, planned, had somehow engineered Mrs Hall to look in on him, especially in the evenings. It hadn’t been easy.

Mrs Hall had thought it not very seemly, a widow staying the whole evening in the same flat as a man. She deemed it all right during the day and if Letty was away only a few hours, but not for days on end and certainly not after dark. It took a lot of persuading, but Dad seemed less upset at being left on his own than at having his daughter going off for a week with her young man, and that was the hub of it, always had been. He wasn’t so much troubled by her leaving him on his own as by leaving him for someone else, transferring her love. She was the affection he’d lost when Mum had gone and he couldn’t bear losing it again, not for a minute.