The Soldier's Bride

by Maggie Ford

  ‘Dad ain’t got that kind of money,’ she said succinctly, hoping the hint would sink in. Vinny’s reply, to her mind, was typical – simple and selfish.

  ‘He would if he sold the shop.’

  Vinny’s insensitivity shook her. Letty bit back the obvious retort, and said instead, ‘And what would him and Mum live on afterwards?’

  ‘Well, it does stand to reason.’ Vinny had no idea how she’d evoked Letty’s contempt. ‘Dad is getting on a bit. He won’t want to have that shop round his neck forever. If he sold it, he and Mum could live comfortably once she’s better.’

  ‘It wouldn’t bring in all that much,’ Letty said. What she didn’t say was that without the shop Dad himself would probably fade away. It was his life, the bits and pieces he surrounded himself with, always looking for that special piece. No one else would understand but she did, for she felt the same towards what others would call rubbish. Without his shop Dad would fall apart, go into a decline. Yet there was Mum to think of still. But there was no guarantee, was there?

  Vinny was looking prim. ‘You could work in another shop. You’ve always been clever at selling things. You’ve worked with Dad more than me and Lucy have.’

  ‘He’s never let any of us go out to work, Vinny.’

  Vinny looked blank, shrugged evasively. ‘It’s Mum we must think of now.’ She smoothed the modest bulge in her well-cut black crepe skirt with a careful hand. ‘Beggars can’t be choosers.’

  Letty wanted to blurt out that Dad was no beggar and never would be. But Vinny was right. Anything that might help Mum get her health back had to be considered. Yet asking Dad to give up the shop he’d built up, spend the rest of his life in idleness or taking orders from someone else, wouldn’t be easy. Though he’d do it, for Mum’s sake.

  With Lucy and Vinny unwilling to suggest it, and Vinny demurring at her Albert approaching him, it was left to Letty and she knew she could never bear to see the look on his face. She did speak to Doctor Rudd about it, and received the sad and sympathetic reply that things had gone too far for any good to be got from a sanitorium, and selling the shop for that purpose would be quite futile.

  It was a miserable Christmas. David, compelled to spend it with his parents, managed to slip over late on Boxing Day, but Letty in turn felt obliged to stay in. Mum taking a bad turn and not getting out of her bed made her feel it wasn’t right to go out to enjoy herself.

  Conversation conducted in low tones, David talked to Jack when he came over for a few hours, and Uncle Will whose rude health only emphasised the wasted condition of his sister. The fun of last Christmas missing, the flat had a forlorn atmosphere despite being full of Uncle Will’s family and Uncle Charlie’s too, as if everyone was waiting for something, not daring to contemplate what.

  Dad said little, and spent much of his time sitting with his wife. He ignored David almost to the point of rudeness which Letty chose to disregard, seeing he was almost the same towards Jack, no doubt feeling he could have done without outsiders at this time.

  By January, Lucy had got to the point where she couldn’t stop herself crying at the oddest times: setting the table, brushing the rugs, dusting, sometimes in the middle of reading a book. Once, washing herself at the kitchen sink, she burst into floods of tears so that Letty had to console her, dripping wet over the kitchen floor.

  ‘Shush! Mum’ll ’ear yer!’ At such times, carefully nurtured vowels went to the wall. In grief she was Cockney through and through, and it didn’t matter.

  ‘I … can’t ’elp it! I just … can’t. Without Mum …’ Words were broken by sobs.

  ‘We ain’t goin’ ter be without Mum. Don’t let ’er hear you talkin’ like that. She needs all the strength she can get without you goin’ on.’

  She herself managed to keep on top of things during the day. At night it was a different matter, her head spinning with visions of Mum no longer being there; of Dad trying to cope – dreamy, dependent Dad. Then the tears would come. She’d clamp her pillow tight against her face and sink into a welter of smothered grief. But it didn’t make any difference, except temporarily to relieve pent up feelings.

  David was her strength now. ‘Don’t try to hold back,’ he told her when, embarrassed, trying to stifle her tears, she suddenly gave way with such sobs in his arms that she thought she’d never stop. ‘Let it all out, darling,’ David, who had been through it, was far enough removed from her grief to be her comfort where family were too close to give it. Even Uncle Will had begun to break down whenever Mum’s name was mentioned.

  Dad had taken to ignoring David’s presence completely. But then he ignored everyone now. He seldom went down to the shop and it was left to her to run it alone. At least it gave her something to occupy her mind through the day. As if by some sort of telepathy, Dad had spoken of selling up to get Mum away to a sanitorium and it had been left to her to tell him to see Doctor Rudd first. After he’d done so, he hadn’t spoken of it again, but had become even more quiet and withdrawn.

  ‘Dad worries me,’ she said to David. He’d taken her to see a farce at the Whitehall Theatre, hoping it might take her out of herself for a while, concerned by her drawn features and loss of weight.

  ‘You can’t give in now, Letitia,’ he’d said. ‘Your father needs all your strength. Lord knows, he’ll have little support from anyone else once Lucilla is married.’

  Dad needed her strength, yes. And that strength she got from David. In the taximeter cab home, a transport David favoured, it being private, and hang the cost, she told him how Dad was behaving, apologised if he was being churlish.

  ‘He’s like it with all of us,’ she excused, then went on to tell him about Vinny’s idea of selling the shop to pay sanitorium fees. She heard David draw in an angry breath.

  ‘That’s preposterous!’

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ she murmured glumly. ‘But what else can we do? I couldn’t face telling him. He loves his shop so much. I ended up getting him to see Mum’s doctor. I think he must have explained how hopeless it all was, because Dad went all quiet and he hasn’t said anything about it since.’

  Dad’s silence stemmed of course from being told of the hopelessness of Mum’s condition. David took it as referring to the unlikelihood of selling property without profit, unthinkable in his circle.

  He was quiet for a while, lost in thought, until Letty was sure she had said something to upset him.

  ‘I wonder if perhaps I could help?’ he said at last. ‘I should have offered sooner but I felt I might be interfering in family concerns. Now, of course, it needs to be said. After all, I shall soon be one of the family, won’t I? Once we’re engaged.’

  ‘Engaged!’ Everything else flew out of her head. ‘You’re asking me to get engaged to you?’

  ‘I’m asking you to marry me, my darling,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Oh, David! Oh, you can’t be!’ Her head was whirling, her throat dry. He was smiling at her confusion.

  ‘But I am.’ He was holding her to him, her tears dampening the collar of his overcoat in a flood of joyful disbelief.

  Her excitement moderating, he held her a little from him, his face grown grave. ‘Listen, my love. It wouldn’t be wise to say too much to anyone just yet, to Lucy or Vinny or your father. Too many things to think about. We will be married, yes. In say a year’s time. But listen,’ he continued hastily as she made to interrupt. ‘If I can help your mother … By help, I mean financially towards getting her abroad for a cure. I can do that, Letitia. I’m pretty well solvent. If your father feels he must pay me back at some time, that will be fine with me. Though that isn’t a condition, you understand, darling.’

  Her happiness slowly dissolving while he spoke, she said joylessly, ‘I don’t think he’d take it. Dad’s never been a strong man except when it comes to his pride. He’s never borrowed money off anyone.’ This last she couldn’t help saying with some pride.

  ‘It’s your mother’s life we’re talking about. He cannot refuse,
’ David said resolutely, and wouldn’t listen to any argument.

  He tackled her father one Sunday after Lucy and Jack had gone out for a walk, braving the cold damp breeze with its threat of snow.

  Keeping out of the way, Letty waited in the kitchen. Sitting at the narrow baize-covered deal table, she stared aimlessly about: at the kitchen range, its coals blazing bright on this cold day – Mum used to cook delicious bread pudding in the oven above it, which Letty now did; at the cups hanging on hooks on the dresser in the recess beside the range; at the shelves, one above the other, where several durable iron saucepans stood upside down to stop the grease of cooking getting into them; to the heavy iron kettle, still warm from making tea, set on the gas stove; at the copper in the corner; at the sink where, besides dishes, the family washed themselves, a steamy mirror over it.

  Beyond the coloured glass of the door was an open landing with an iron rail. It housed a wrought iron wringer, a tin bath that hung on the whitewashed brick wall, and a lavatory in one corner screened by a wooden wall and a door.

  Letty glanced again and again at the clock on its own small shelf. Two-thirty, twenty minutes to three, quarter to. David had been with Dad for half an hour – not only about helping Mum, but also she hoped about permission to marry. She knew with a surge of excitement that Dad would agree to the latter though she hoped he’d agree to both. She remembered how Jack had gone to see Dad and they’d both emerged beaming at the ecstatic Lucy. Letty waited for that wonderful moment to be hers, very soon now, straining her ears to catch what was being said, hearing Dad’s low tones, David’s just a little higher, but both too blurred behind the closed parlour door for her to make out.

  Once she heard David raise his voice and her heart sank. Dad hardly ever raised his, never as far as she could remember. But he could be sullenly stubborn when he had a mind to be. Most likely he was being stubborn over the offer of money. As David’s voice modulated, Letty’s hopes rose again.

  She sat on in a fever of impatience, jumping up with anticipation as David came back into the kitchen. Then she noticed he had come back alone and that his eyes were shadowed.

  ‘Your father’s a frightened man,’ he told her after he’d made Letty sit back down on her chair. ‘He said he appreciated what I was trying to do for your mother, but …’

  He paused, and Letty watched him move towards the stained glass of the kitchen door to the whitewashed balcony, to stand gazing out, his back to her.

  ‘You do know,’ he said, without turning round, ‘that her illness has gone beyond any hope of a cure – beyond the help of money?’

  She knew but had refused to believe. They’d all refused to believe. It had remained to Dad, dear, quiet-spoken, dependent Dad to convince them that they must accept that his wife, their mother, would not be with them for much longer, and nothing under God’s heaven was going to alter that. Staring into David’s dark eyes as he turned sharply to look at her, a suffocating weight descended to weigh upon Letty’s chest so that it took a great effort to breathe properly. Her hands flew to her mouth as tears blurred her sight.

  ‘How long?’

  ‘The doctor told your father just before Christmas that it could be just a couple of months.’

  ‘And he didn’t say anything to us?’

  ‘Perhaps he thought it better not to, or perhaps he couldn’t bring himself to say it.’

  ‘Oh, me poor dad! Whatever will he do?’ She was on her feet, David coming forward to catch her as she staggered towards him. Her voice was muffled against his chest. ‘David, I can’t think of you and me – of marriage … It’d seem so …’

  ‘That’s why I didn’t burden him with it,’ he said as her voice died away. Letty straightened, looked at him through her tears.

  ‘You never said nothing at all?’

  His smile was wry. ‘It wasn’t quite the time.’

  ‘But you do still want to marry me?’ Immediately she wanted to bite back the words. ‘Oh, David, I’m sorry. I don’t know what made me say that. I didn’t mean to sound so – so selfish at a time when …’

  He had her tightly in his arms, his lips pressing down on hers, taking her by surprise.

  He’d kissed her like this once before, in the taxi when she’d asked to meet his parents. At least there had been the driver present then to make it seem less abandoned. But here, the two of them alone together with the kitchen door practically closed, she should certainly not be allowing herself to be kissed like this, much less be returning it. Surely a decent girl didn’t allow herself to be kissed in this way until she was married?

  ‘We mustn’t …’ she tried to say, words muffled by his kisses.

  Against her lips, David was murmuring, ‘Because you love me, my darling. Because I love you. Because we will be married, my sweet precious darling.’

  At that moment it didn’t seem like her, Letty Bancroft, eighteen and a half years old, ignorant now of the strong passions that flow in the veins of lovers, making them oblivious to all else. At this moment she felt as old and wise as time itself, yet strangely buoyant and young, gasping against his lips, her body willing to be crushed against him, his to use as he would.

  When suddenly David released her, she reeled slightly, with an effort regained her balance, stood blinking as the scruffy everyday appearance of the kitchen came back into focus. A laugh broke from her as her breath returned. ‘Oh, David, I do love you so,’ she gulped, amazed to see how glum his expression had become, knowing he was thinking of her mother.

  In under a year Arthur Bancroft had seen his youngest daughter mature from a giggly girl who’d had all the local boys mooning after her, to a woman whose eyes held a faraway look. Letty was in love and love somehow had made her sad.

  He too felt sad, a sad empty pit inside him. He didn’t want to lose his little girl to any man, but that was the nature of things; there was nothing he could do about it.

  He took her aside. ‘I know you and your David are lookin’ ter get engaged,’ he said. ‘I want ter see you ’appy, Letitia, but all I can think of right now is yer mum.’

  Letty put her arms about his hunched shoulders as his voice faded disconsolately. ‘I know, Dad. Don’t worry yourself about us. You’ve got enough to worry about with Mum.’

  ‘It’s not that I don’t want ter see you and ’im ’appy. I just feel there ain’t nothing in life fer me any more. When …’ He stopped sharply, then began again. ‘If any-think was to ’appen to yer mum, there wouldn’t be nothink left fer me.’

  Letty’s throat constricted. ‘Don’t talk like that, Dad. Mum’ll be all right.’

  ‘Lucilla getting married soon an’ all,’ he went on dolefully. ‘I got no ’eart in it. ’Oo’s to ’elp prepare fer it?’

  Letty gave him a comforting squeeze. ‘What d’you think I’m here for, Dad? I’ll sort out all the necessaries, so long as Lucy pulls her weight too. That’s if she wants a halfway decent wedding.’

  It was good to see a small measure of relief creep into those grey eyes. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said firmly, and just as firmly put aside all thoughts of David’s proposal of marriage. That could wait for the time being. There were more pressing matters, and at least planning Lucy’s wedding in April gave her something other to think about than Mum’s fast dwindling health which was frightening them all.

  There was little to do regarding Lucy and Jack’s wedding after all, subdued affair that it was, accompanied by quietly flowing tears from almost all those who attended, hearts full of commiseration not only for their sad loss but the timing of it. Three weeks to the day Lucy was due to walk in joyful triumph up the aisle of Holy Trinity Church in Old Nichol Street, her mother’s funeral service had been conducted in that same church, the coffin borne along that same aisle before being put into the ground in East London Cemetery at Manor Road.

  Ill luck had followed upon ill luck. The day after Mabel Bancroft died, Vinny gave birth to a boy. The shock of not being at her mother’s bedside as she passed quie
tly away made Vinny so ill she wasn’t able to attend the funeral either, and weakened by grief of it all, she was still confined to her bed by the time Lucy’s wedding arrived.

  The absence seemed to heighten the loss of her mother and Lucy broke down in the middle of her vows and had to be given a seat for a little while to recover herself.

  ‘We should have postponed the wedding,’ Letty gulped, tears streaming down her cheeks as much from her own distress as Lucy’s. She felt David’s hand tighten almost painfully on hers, dabbed them from her cheeks and lifted her head bravely, her back long and straight, just like Mum’s.

  All around her, relatives were still in black in respect of a dear one recently gone from them, and as Lucy stoically got up from her seat to resume her vows in a small trembling voice, the church echoed to the sniffling of the women and the damp surreptitious blowing of noses into men’s handkerchiefs.

  Beside Letty in the front pew, her father made no sound at all, but she could see his tears running silently and steadily down his narrow cheeks. She had to admire the way he had conducted his daughter along the aisle, his stance upright as he gave her away to Jack. It was only when he finally eased into the pew that he sagged at all. Letty held his hand a great deal of the time, endeavouring to give him what small comfort she could find to give.

  The guests returned to the flat for the wedding reception more from a sense of duty, it seemed, than to celebrate a marriage. The wedding breakfast was strangely far more subdued than the funeral lunch three weeks previously. Then even Dad had chuckled at Uncle Charlie’s dry wit, the full impact of his loss having not quite hit him until later; not hit anyone until later, Mabel Bancroft, a dear sister, aunt, mother, was gone from them forever.

  Unfortunately for Lucy, it took her wedding to bring it home. Whatever had stimulated each to react so perversely to grief on the day of the funeral was missing on this day. Food hardly touched, they talked in whispers. There was no laughter, not even from Uncle Charlie. Congratulating Lucy and Jack on what should have been their happiest day, voices faltered, tears were sniffed back, words like ‘Oh, my dears,’ were uttered waveringly in place of ‘So happy for you both’.