The Soldier's Bride (9 page)

She had sat up to defend herself against Mum’s scolding, but she was already crying, something inside her telling her it was all a wishful dream; the room dark, empty and silent, full of bitterness of reality, and nothing she could do about it.

A gentle tap on her door stopped her in mid-sob. Holding her breath, she gulped back the rest, whispered huskily: ‘Who is it?’

‘David,’ came the answer. ‘I heard you crying.’

She hadn’t realised she’d been overheard, the thin ceiling letting through every sound to Lucy’s old room below; felt suddenly jealous of her private grief, nourished for a few indulgent moments of self pity. She didn’t want even David to share them.

‘I was only dreaming,’ she said, amazed how terse she sounded.

His whisper came back, almost chastened. ‘I thought
you might need me. You seemed so distressed.’ Then, after a small hesitation, ‘May I come in Letitia?’

She hesitated. Dad didn’t know David had stayed, would be horrified to know he’d come into her room. Anyway, it wouldn’t be right, would it? But quite suddenly she didn’t care.

Her face buried in her hands, less from misery than embarrassment at his entering her bedroom at her own invitation and her only in her nightdress, she mumbled her acquiescence, thankful the gas lamp in the street below sent only the weakest of glimmers to the room. All the same, she was being very improper and dared not look up.

She didn’t hear his approach until the edge of her bed dipped under his weight. His hands touched hers, began easing them from her eyes, and, improper or not, it seemed most natural to cling to him, to lift her face to his, allow her lips to be kissed gently. No words; his body against hers gave its own comfort, shutting out the emptiness that had so frightened her. Yet an instinctive fear made her suddenly pull back.

‘No … we can’t. We mustn’t!’ And then, as he too moved back very slightly, confusion. She should never have allowed him to come into her room, but now he was here, how could she allow him to leave?

He held her lightly; the caresses that had threatened to overwhelm her had ceased. David’s voice was low, a whisper.

‘Go back to sleep now, my darling.’ He was moving away, the edge of her bed rising back into place as his
pressure on it lessened. ‘It’s best I go home. I shall come and see you tomorrow.’

But she couldn’t let him go. ‘I was being silly.’

‘No, you weren’t.’ He was close to her again, his words halting. ‘Letitia, my darling, I love you with all my heart. And because of that I could never be so selfish as to allow myself to … I want you for my wife, and until that time … Letitia, do you understand what I am trying to say, my darling?’

Yes, she did understand. Loving him, she did understand. His own past grief had made him compassionate rather than bitter, had not made him hard or selfish. A man to cherish. As he kissed her once more very tenderly before leaving, she knew she wouldn’t cry again tonight.

Arthur Bancroft’s voice was thick with tears as he handed little Albert back to his mother.

‘’Er first grandson. It ain’t fair …’ he managed before his voice gave out and the tears washed over his blue eyes.

Vinny, still weakened from having little Albert under such a sad set of circumstances, held the baby to her like a shield, her face twisting with grief. ‘Don’t, Dad! You’ll start me off again.’

‘Never ever ’ad a chance ter see ’er first grandchild …’

‘Dad!’ Letty’s voice was strong. ‘Go and put the kettle on, love. I’ll make tea when it boils.’

He went like a lamb, as he did these days. Whatever she said, he did; whatever command she gave, he obeyed as if his will had been sapped and he needed to obey to keep himself from falling apart.

Letty shook her head as Vinny’s tears evaporated. ‘He won’t let himself get over it. I know it’s only been six weeks, but we all have to try. I have to. For his sake. I suppose I’m being hard, and I feel it just as much as he does, but Dad just keeps dissolving. A dozen times a day. Like he did just now, seeing the baby.’

‘We shouldn’t have come,’ Albert offered, but his round
face held a partially offended look that immediately put her back up. She tried not to dislike him but his pomposity got right up her nose at times.

‘Don’t be silly.’ She shrugged, vaguely angry. ‘Dad would have been even more upset then. He’s been fretting to see the baby. It’s bound to upset him. Everything upsets him.’

She moved about the parlour as Vinny and Albert sat on the sofa. ‘I can’t believe she’s gone, you know. It’s like the funeral – it’s got a sort of unreal feel to it when I look back. In fact,’ she gave a small apologetic laugh, ‘it does seem odd, but looking back, Lucy’s wedding feels more like it was the funeral. Poor Lucy.’

She let her voice die away, the two watching her as she moved about aimlessly, hearing Dad filling the kettle in the kitchen, the dull metallic scrape as he put it on the stove. You could hear everything in this flat. Remembering, she let her voice fall. ‘Every time I pass Mum’s room, I think she’s still there.’

It was Dad’s room now. He kept it as neat as he kept himself; too neat – as if his own sanity depended upon it. He went round adjusting objects, picking them up, replacing them in different positions, then picking them up again, going through the same procedure. He drew Letty’s attention to anything out of place in the flat, not content until she had put it right.

‘I wish you’d leave things alone, Dad,’ she said, a bit too sharply perhaps. Grief had made her sharp. ‘I never know where anything is!’ He’d look at her in a hurt fashion, retreating without a word.

He did little in the shop. When it came to facing customers his self-confidence would dissolve and he’d call up the stairs to her: ‘Letitia – will yer? I’m occupied. Letitia?’ his tone impatient, echoing the panic inside him.

Lately she was more down there than in the flat, Dad retreating to Mum’s chair that he’d now made his own. He’d gaze vacantly out of the window for hours on end and it wrung her heart to see him, but she was doing everything now, seeing to the shop, looking after the flat, him, his washing, his mending, cooking, and she only had one pair of hands.

‘If you could do something up here, Dad. Like the washing up, that’d be a help. There’s not all that much with just us two …’

She could have bitten her tongue, seeing the bleak look on his face, and in mute misery they’d clasped each other so as not to be destroyed by their mutual loss.

Letty looked over at Vinny. ‘You and Lucy are lucky, not living here any more. You don’t know what it’s like, Dad under your feet all the time. I do everything now Mum’s gone. I can’t even go out with David without feeling guilty for leaving Dad on his own. You don’t know what it’s like. Thank God David understands.’

She shouldn’t really have opened her heart to either of them. All it produced was uncomfortable looks that remained there until they left.

Thank God David did understand, behaved wonderfully about it all, because Dad didn’t. Hardly speaking when David came on Sundays, he’d go off to his room as soon as dinner was over, and any Saturday evening David came, retreated – to ‘lie down’ as he put it. It left the two of them alone, true, but as Letty saw it Dad somehow resented David.

‘Has he done anything to upset you, Dad?’ she taxed him.

It was Monday. The weekend had been hot and sunny, ideal weather for a stroll. For Dad’s sake she’d stayed in. And what had he done? Gone to bed, out of David’s way, she was sure of it.

Dad was washing at the sink while she prepared breakfast. His reply was evasive as he reached for the towel from the hook beside him. ‘Not as I know of.’ But Letty wasn’t prepared to leave it at that.

‘When Jack and Albert were courting Lucy and Vinny …’ She ignored the look he gave her at her use of her sisters’ shortened names and ploughed on: ‘You weren’t ever funny with them.’

‘I ain’t ever been funny with no one,’ he defended himself.

‘Then why keep ignoring David? He’s never done you any wrong, Dad.’

Arthur sat down at the narrow deal table where Letitia had placed a pile of toast and marmalade for him, his eyes averted from her face.

‘Then what’s so wrong about my David?’ she persisted indignantly.

And now he did look up, his mouth beneath his moustache turned down by the bitterness of desolation, bitterness that suddenly overflowed before he could stop it.

‘That’s it –
your
David!’ he muttered. ‘I s’pose yer’ll be the next one – goin’ off an’ leaving me? Not one of yer care a bloody toss ’ow I feel. Ain’t seen Lucilla since ’er weddin’ and the other one’s come
once
. That’s ’ow much they care fer me. An’ now
you
want ter go off.’

‘That’s not fair, Dad!’ she broke in, furious. ‘All these weeks I’ve stayed in. I don’t ever go out when David comes here, because I don’t want to leave you alone. I try my best!’ Anger caught the torrent of words in her throat. Gagging with rage and frustration, she slammed down the knife she’d been using to butter toast and fled from the kitchen.

Later that week she wrote a stinging letter to Vinny and Lucy. She suggested to Dad that he went with her to see them but it was trying to get a cat to swim; he refused point blank, saying he’d never been one for travelling and that Jack was capable enough of bringing Lucy to see him.

Vinny and Albert deigned to make another visit on the following Sunday, but Jack came alone, apologising for Lucy not being with him.

‘She can’t face coming here … well, at the moment, so soon after … you know,’ he explained awkwardly, his smooth longish face concerned. ‘Even at home she keeps bursting into tears, what with thinking of her mother … and the wedding and … all that.’

Dad was staring bleakly out of the window as Letty brought in tea and a bit of cake on a tray for them. Jack, sitting on the edge of the sofa, looked ill at ease, grateful for David’s company next to him.

‘It should have been postponed,’ Letty said coldly, handing Jack his tea. ‘Like I suggested.’

‘She didn’t want that,’ said Jack, staring glumly into his cup. ‘I think what upset her was not having her mother there at her wedding.’

‘You’re looking better now, Lavinia,’ David was trying to change the subject, watching the way Arthur Bancroft’s face was working. But Jack was as blind as a bat to everything but his absent Lucy.

‘She keeps saying if only the wedding had been a few months earlier she’d have had her mother to see her married. It upsets her terribly.’

Yes, Letty thought, startled by a twinge of resentment, all Lucy thinks about is how
she
feels, not how Dad feels, or me. Seconds later she regretted the thought. Weren’t they all thinking of themselves, of their grief, their pain? What of Mum, denied the sight of her first grandchild, cheated out of seeing her last two daughters wed? At the funeral the vicar said she had gone to a place of tranquillity and joy, was whole again and at rest, they should not be sad for her. In other words they were sad only for the gap she’d left in their lives, but at least they kept it to themselves as much as possible. It wouldn’t hurt Lucy to think less of herself and more of Dad, and come to see him.

In August David took her completely by surprise, saying, ‘I think it’s time we got engaged.’ That was it, no arguments, even if she had wanted to. He wasn’t given to forcefulness, but when he was Letty’s adoration knew no bounds. On the Sunday he took her, all flushed with excitement, up to Regent Street and bought her engagement ring, a band of five large diamonds, far finer than Vinny’s or Lucy’s.

‘You can’t afford that,’ she gasped, having expected something much more modest. ‘Not for me.’

‘Who else for, if not for you?’ he laughed as he slipped it lovingly on her finger.

She hadn’t told Dad where they were going – hated the deception, but he’d only have said something to spoil it. By now she knew he had no fondness for David. He’d never actually said so, but she sensed he worried for her, perhaps thought David too high class for her, had her dangling on a bit of string. Well then, when she showed him the ring, perhaps he would see that David was serious after all.

He’d watched her with dull condemnation as she was getting herself ready to go, hardly able to contain her excitement, her cheeks aglow.

‘Goin’ out then, are yer?’

‘For a little while.’ She’d been unable to meet his gaze. ‘Mrs Hall is coming in to keep you company.’

‘While you go off gallivantin’ with ’im.’

Today was too important to argue that she wasn’t off gallivanting with ‘him’, as Dad lately referred to David.

‘We won’t be gone long, Dad.’

Even if it hadn’t been for a special reason, it was good to escape, to get out of the flat, away from the shop. All week she lived for her weekends and David. He was her salvation; made the days between more bearable. She’d think
of Sundays with David as she swept and dusted, mended Dad’s socks and turned his collars. Lifting waterlogged sheets from the copper to guide them sopping through the mangle’s wooden rollers, turning the wrought iron wheel, seemed that less tiring. How much lighter her heart to think of Sunday as she pulled flat irons off the hob of the kitchen range to iron the dried linen, her arm sweeping tirelessly back and forth as she dreamed.

‘’Ow long?’ Dad’s eyes sought the ornate clock on the mantelshelf.

‘An hour or two, that’s all.’

Bound now to stick near enough to her promise, her afternoon with David would have been spoiled by fretting to be home before Dad noticed but for the ring encircling her engagement finger. She kept holding out her hand at arm’s length to see the stones reflecting the sunlight with dazzling shafts of everchanging multi-coloured flashes, tilting her head this way and that for a better effect.

‘I still can’t believe it’s mine,’ she kept saying as they walked in Hyde Park in the time left to them. Everywhere, couples strolled in the sunshine, families picnicked on the grass, rowed on the Serpentine. She and David were feeding the ducks with buns he’d brought; she saw him glance at his pocket watch. A little of her happiness fled. ‘I suppose we’ve got to go home. Show Dad my ring.’