by Maggie Ford
Letty, smiling obliquely, went on with what she was dong, losing interest in his tale, her mind wandering.
She liked Billy. Dad was right, if only he’d said it in a kinder way, that had she not met David, it could very well have been Billy she’d be going out with. He’ll make someone a really good husband one day, she thought with a small pang of regret, not because she wasn’t his wife but because at twenty-one she was still no one’s wife.
Had she been told she must wait almost four years to marry David, she’d have deemed it a lifetime. Had she been told she’d still be as far away as ever from marrying him, she’d never have believed it.
So many things got in the way. Dad’s chill last winter had made him susceptible to bronchitis, her time constantly taken up soothing his rumbling cough with big spoonfuls of linctus and boosting his flagging spirits with big doses of encouragement that left her too drained to take much note of the passing of time, of events.
The death of Edward VII last year and the coronation of George V had taken second place to looking after Dad; the excitement of last year’s general election had passed her by, with more things pressing upon her nearer home.
Last June Vinny had another baby, George; nearly lost him, Vinny herself ill for a long time, the baby having to have a nurse. Vinny seldom came to see Dad, Lucy even less now she had her daughter.
Hating to upset Dad further with talk of marriage, of leaving him, like her sisters, to pay him only occasional visits, she’d put off any talk of it time and time again. That she’d marry David no matter what she had no doubts, but in a while she kept telling herself; not just yet. She pleaded with David: a few more months, just a few more months. The months had stretched and stretched. Five more and she’d be twenty-two, and still no nearer being married.
‘D’yer fancy comin’ ter see what’s goin’ on?’
She brought her mind quickly back to Billy. ‘Where?’
‘Over ter Sidney Street. See what’s goin’ on.’
‘They wouldn’t let us anywhere near it. And I can’t really leave the shop.’
‘Yer could ask yer Dad ter give an eye.’
Billy, like most around here, was aware that her father was very seldom in the shop these days. People no longer asked for him. Under her hand it was thriving again, bringing in good money. The window displaying clean and well-displayed bric-a-brac enticed people in, especially the more well heeled who came to the Row out of curiosity.
‘He’s not at all well at the moment. I couldn’t really come. Sorry, Billy,’ she said, and watched his resigned shrug as he waved and left.
Upstairs after she closed she rubbed Dad’s chest with winter green ointment, and put a few drops of Friars Balsam in a bowl of boiling water for him to breathe in to ease his tubes.
‘Won’t be long till you’re rid of me,’ he croaked as she told him about Billy asking her to pop down to Whitechapel. ‘When I’m gorn yer can go orf and ’ave a good time with anyone you fancy.’
‘Don’t talk so silly, Dad!’ She turned on him sharply in the midst of laying the table for supper. ‘Anyone’d think you were at death’s door. Anyway, I wouldn’t have gone out with him.’
‘Yer would ’ave if it ’ad been David Baron,’ he muttered, watching her as she turned her attention to cutting the bread. ‘Like a shot you would ’ave.’
‘You know that’s not true, Dad.’ Letty sawed with angry energy at the loaf she was cutting. ‘It’s you who begrudge me the bit of time I do have for myself. I do all I can for you, willingly.’ She heard him give a snort. ‘Yes, Dad, willingly! You can’t say I don’t. All I ask for is a young man like other girls have, and … Oh, I’m sick of going over the same old ground with you!’
Dropping the slices of bread on to a plate, she turned to confront him. ‘Why can’t you find one good word for him? You’re always going on about Albert and Jack, how well they’re doing. David has just as good prospects as them. His dad’s business will be his one day. But you don’t want that for me, do you? You want me – all to yourself. I manage your shop for you. I manage it very well. I’m too valuable to lose. But don’t be too sure of me, Dad. One day I might get so good I’ll get me own shop, and whether he marries me or not, I’ll be off, looking after me own business.’
He hadn’t said a word. Seldom did these days, let her rant and rave and ignored her. Frustrated, she took the soup off the hearth where it was keeping warm, ladling some into a basin to slam it down on the table.
‘There’s your supper! Don’t say I don’t feed you!’
For a while longer he stared at her, then slowly lowered his eyes, his cough rumbling deep in his chest. ‘Is that what yer think of me, Letitia? That I don’t appreciate what yer do?’
Before the hurt tone, her anger softened, even though she knew he was manipulating her to suit himself. ‘I don’t think that at all, Dad.’
‘Yer sisters don’t care if I live or die, so long as they ain’t affected. My deepest wish is ter see you ’appy. I just need a bit of time. Since I lost yer mum …’
‘Dad!’ Anger began to mount again. ‘When are you going to get over it? How much more time do you want? And what happens to me in the meanwhile? I’m nearly twenty-two. How old will I be when you decide you can cope on your own? When I’m forty-two? When I’m too old to marry? You’ve been married, Dad. I’ve not even had the chance!’
She fled, slamming the door of her bedroom behind her to throw herself across her bed, ignoring his gentle tap on her door, his concerned cajoling voice, until he gave up and went back to his supper, his rumbling cough plaguing her with guilt for her outburst.
Slowly she sat up, gazed at the closed door. If only he wasn’t so afraid of life. How would she feel, frightened of being forsaken, no one else in the world to care about her? But he knew she cared. He’d refused point blank to live with her and David when they married, or have them come to live with him. The even-tempered, wouldn’t-hurt-a-fly sort of person, who underneath was pure bloody-minded. How well she’d grown to know him since Mum had died. The father who had shone like a god in her child’s eyes had proved to be clay through and through. And yet … poor Dad, full of fear. He must be feeling wretched, that cough tearing at him so. She ought to try and relieve it a bit for him …
She gave a deep resigned sigh, got up and opened the door, going to the kitchen to get the winter green jar from off the shelf.
The headlines stated SEIGE OF SIDNEY STREET, with beneath that lurid accounts of the whole drama, the Home Secretary Mr Churchill calling out the army to deal with a man suspected of being involved in what were termed the Houndsditch Murders, the cornered villain said to be one Peter Piatkow alias Schtern, otherwise known as Peter the Painter. The paper described him as twenty-eight to thirty, five foot nine, sallow, with a black moustache. It painted a dramatic picture of exchanges of gunfire that ended when the house in which three ‘anarchists’ had been cornered had gone up in flames, only two bodies being later recovered, neither of them Peter the Painter’s. The reporter already described him in the same vein as Jack the Ripper of legend.
‘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 snapp
ed. 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 …’
