by Maggie Ford
She remembered, recalled the dissension with Dad over it, recalled every argument they’d ever had over this one wish to marry David as clearly as if each one had occurred only yesterday.
She thought of the heartaches, the tears, the pain of wanting, glad to know it would soon end; she had prayed so long for this, and now it was almost here. All that she needed was the courage to tell Dad once and for all that she wasn’t going to stand for any more of his argy-bargy, his sulking, his emotional blackmail. She would say it straight and to hell with what he’d reply!
One thing heartened her, gave her hope. Dad and Ada Hall had been getting together a lot more lately. Ada had been perking herself up, making herself look nice. No straggly bits of hair hanging around her neck these days; no tea-stained bodice, tatty shawl, and the man’s cap she once wore was absent. She now wore a shiny black straw hat and her face positively shone from soap and water. Yet even now Letty dared not contemplate how Dad would take to her decision, solid though it was. She really ought to have broken it to him much sooner, but the longer she left it the harder it would become. She steeled herself to face him tomorrow morning without fail. No going back now. On David’s next leave she would become his wife, and nothing Dad or anyone might say about it would make any difference.
Their final kiss as David left was the most poignant she’d ever known – wanting it to last and last, but aware of the impossibility; loathing to break off yet knowing she must. As if some thread still binding them dared them to break it at their peril, they held hands even as they moved apart as they knew they must, arms outstretched until only fingers were touching. Then they too lost contact.
‘Take care of yourself, David,’ she called as he moved off towards his waiting motor car.
‘I will. Don’t worry, darling.’
‘I love you, David.’
She watched him get behind the wheel, draw his gloves over his fingers.
‘I love you too.’
Don’t go, David. Darling, don’t go! She waved as he waved, stood with her hand still raised as he drew away, stood as the vehicle began to gather speed noisily, saw him half turn, his last wave through the misting of her eyes, waved back frantically.
Then he was gone. In a few short hours he would be making his way to his local station, the train to bear him back to his unit in the Midlands.
They would carry on their love in letters to each other, counting the days to his next leave and their wedding day. Meantime she must prepare Dad to accept her plans. Her fixed, immutable plans.
She stood a moment longer staring into the night; a dog was barking in another turning, a cat crossed the road, lithe, quick, body low and even, white paws going like the clappers, disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. Otherwise things were quiet. Quiet as once it never had been in this area.
Things were changing; no longer singing from the Knave of Clubs, people no longer going about in noisy groups. Fighting had been savage, little was left of the British Expeditionary Force, and already in the streets there was a distinct absence of men as more and more rallied to the call to arms. Already there were war widows in Bethnal Green and Shoreditch, Stepney and Hackney.
Carefully she closed the door on the night’s quietness, released the bell on its spring as she always did these days, held it so it wouldn’t jangle.
The stairs creaked faintly as she mounted them. Making as little noise as possible, she reached the top, hung up her hat and coat on the stand, smoothed a hand over her hair coiled low at the back.
In his bedroom Dad’s cough was chesty, unrelenting.
‘Letitia? That you?’
She paused by his half open door.
‘Yes, Dad?’
‘Where’s me cough mixture?’ His breathing wheezed.
‘I’ll get it.’ There was no way in which she’d be able to break her news to him now, nor tomorrow morning, that was certain. But she would tell him, definitely, a little later. When he felt a bit better.
Christmas was quiet, if Dad’s rumbling cough could be discounted; the first time Letty had been without David throughout the whole festival.
Lucy and Jack came over with the girls to spend Christmas Day, though Dad spent more time in bed coughing his heart up, keeping Letty on the run administering medicine, than with his visitors.
‘It’s not very nice for the girls,’ Lucy said huffily, listening to the hawking and spitting in the other room. ‘If they catch anything …’
‘It’s not catching,’ Letty said.
‘Of course it is.’
‘Not Dad’s type, it isn’t. His is chronic – there inside him until the cold weather brings it out. Not like a cold or the ’flu.’
‘Even so.’
Lucy picked at the chicken carcass lying on its dish on the dining table while Jack carefully pared himself an apple by the warm fire and the girls sat at his feet like fairy children and played quietly with their Christmas dolls.
‘It’s not nice for the girls, listening to all them nasty rumbly noises. Makes me feel quite sick, it does.’
Letty wanted to ask if she had as little control over that easily queasy stomach of hers if she’d ever had to clear up her children’s sick – or were they, being her sweet little things, never prone to being sick like other kids? But it was Christmas and Lucy had been good enough to come over for Dad’s sake, so she held her tongue.
Vinny, of course, was still upset by her loss and in no condition to travel, although Albert had telephoned to wish them all a Happy Christmas and hope Dad was feeling better.
Lucy wiped greasy finger tips daintily on a paper doily. ‘When’s your David coming home again on leave?’
‘He’s not long gone back,’ Letty explained. She sipped her glass of sherry, keeping her eyes down. Lucy might be the one to tell, to pave the way in readiness for telling Dad.
‘Lucy … David’s asked me to marry him.’
Lucy gave her a sharp, half amused look. ‘He’s been asking you to marry him for years.’
‘But this time I’ve accepted. This time I mean it. He’s arranging it all, and we’ll be married quietly when he comes home next time on leave.’
Lucy’s eyes had hardened. ‘And what about Dad? What’s he going to do if you get married and leave here?’
Just what I’d have expected you to say, the thought pounded in a brief fit of anger through Letty’s mind. But she kept her expression sweet, toying with her sherry glass, her eyes riveted on it.
‘With David away, I’ll stay on here. By the time the war ends and he comes home, Dad’ll have to fall in with our plans, won’t he? We can set up home here or sell up the shop and move somewhere else, Dad coming with us. He’s lost all interest in the shop anyway and David’s well set up – a partner in his dad’s business now.’
Of course, there was always Ada Hall – her and Dad setting up together. What a lot of problems that would solve! There was still lots of time to tell Dad about her and David, well before his next furlough. However, it was best not to air any of those thoughts to Lucy. Not just yet.
‘I take it you’ve told Dad all about it?’ she said airily.
‘No, not yet.’ In the bedroom he was spitting audibly into his handkerchief – handkerchiefs she must soak in salt, boil in the copper, and scrub clean of phlegm after Boxing Day, a job she loathed.
‘But I’ve got to tell someone or I’ll burst! What d’you think, Lucy? I am right, aren’t I? I’m as entitled as the next one to be married.’
Lucy shrugged dismissively.
‘If everything goes well, darling,’ David wrote in January, ‘I’ll be able to wangle seven days in April. We’ll marry in your parish and I hope your father, Lucilla and Lavinia and their families, will honour us by attending. It’s not certain if my parents will be there, but as I’ve said to you so many times, it is our life. We will live it together no matter what.’ Letty read with conflicting emotion – longing for April, dreading it too, with time growing shorter and shorter and s
till courage failing her in forewarning her father.
He had seemed to improve for a short while from that nasty bout of bronchitis over Christmas. That would have been the time to tell him, but she’d made the mistake of delaying too long, making certain he was completely ready to receive her news. Before she realised he had gone down again, so badly she had to call out the doctor who looked grave and said Dad should by rights be in hospital.
Ill as he felt, his eyes had brightened with fear.
‘I ain’t goin’ inter no ’ospital, that’s straight! Take yer there ter die, they do. Well, I ain’t …’ He’d fought a bout of coughing that left him sweating and continued wheezily, ‘I ain’t goin’ ter no ’ospital. I’ll die ’ere in me bed.’
‘You’re not going to die, Dad,’ Letty said.
‘What’s ’e want to send me into ’ospital for, then?’
‘Because you’ll get better quicker there.’
‘Well, I ain’t goin’, an’ that’s flat!’
‘I wish you had gone,’ she said peevishly after a fortnight of it. ‘You’re wearing me out, you know that? Honestly, Dad, you can be so selfish. You just don’t care how I feel, so long as you’re all right.’
She knew she was wrong blaming him. He couldn’t help being ill.
She wrote to David saying how much she was looking forward to the day, said nothing about not forewarning Dad, received David’s replies written in all innocence, talking of wedding plans.
Worn out she was indeed, her time as ever divided between running the shop, running after Dad, keeping the flat in order, cooking for him, shopping.
Even when Billy Beans came home on embarkation leave – destined for the front line, he said – asking her to go out and have a meal with him before he was due to go back, she only just managed to squeeze in an hour or so.
‘You’ll keep an eye on Dad for a couple of hours, won’t you?’ she begged Ada Hall, relieved that the woman expressed delight in doing that favour for her.
Billy looked grand in his corporal’s uniform. ‘I’ll be a sergeant before long,’ he boasted cheerily over pie and mash. ‘When I’ve done active service, they said I’ll get another stripe.’
‘You should have bin an officer,’ Letty told him. ‘You might have stayed in England.’
‘I should jolly well ’ope not. Why I joined, ain’t it, ter fight? Ter see a bit of action. Gawd, what’s the point bein’ in the army if yer don’t see action? No, old gel, I’m lookin’ forward to it, I c’n tell yer.’
‘But if you get hurt or … you know.’
His round blue eyes regarded her, his grin broad. ‘Don’t tell me yer’ll be ’eartbroken? I didn’t fink yer cared.’
‘I do care, Billy. I care a lot.’
‘An’ you engaged to anuvver.’
Letty’s cheeks flushed pink. She looked hastily down at her hands. ‘I’m gettin’ married in April, Billy.’
‘Yer mean yer’ve accepted after all this time? Well, blow me down!’
‘It’s true.’ Did she hear a tinge of betrayed hope beneath that lighthearted banter? ‘I’m sorry,’ she said inadequately, heard his laugh come a little sharply, with humour.
‘What yer sorry for? Ain’t nothin’ ter do wiv me, is it?’
Letty caught at her lip with white even teeth. ‘I thought … Well, I thought you … I’ve always had a soft spot for you, y’know, Billy. We’ve bin good friends. At least, you’ve always bin a good friend ter me.’
She watched him nod contemplatively, almost wistfully. ‘Yeah – a good friend.’ The next instant he had brightened. ‘Right then, eat up, old gel. It’s me last meal wiv yer before I go ter meet me doom.’
‘Don’t say that!’ she cried. ‘Not like that.’
But Billy only laughed.
Letty lay in bed Sunday morning, counting. She counted with urgency and a deal of gnawing dismay.
It was 26 February. She’d not seen her period, hadn’t seen it last month either. She’d never been strictly regular, that was true, her times never any bother – not like some girls who went through agonies of stomach pains and all that. Came and went and that was it.
But not to have taken note in January. What had she been thinking of? She should have been more concerned, she knew that now, yet had let it pass. Why, for heaven’s sake? What brief amnesia had made her not make more of it? Stupid. And what was her excuse? That she’d been so busy with Dad’s bronchitis, it had somehow not registered. But if it hadn’t registered then, it was registering now, and realisation made her go cold beneath the warmth of the bedclothes.
A few minutes later she was chiding her silly imagination. It was fretting over David being away had made her edgy, and edgy nerves always made her irregular. Dad had been such a trial this winter too, no wonder nature was retaliating. By next Sunday she would be laughing at herself as she washed out the squares of towelling in salt water ready to boil and be used again.
From Dad’s bedroom came a chesty spate of coughing.
‘You awake?’ she called, and heard his laboured reply. ‘I’ll be up in a minute, get breakfast.’
‘All right if I lay ’ere a bit?’ he called back.
‘Lay there as long as you like,’ she returned, extra brightly. But what if … What would Dad say? What would everyone say? Not something that could be hidden. God, what was she going to do if …
Now don’t go jumping the gun, she told herself emphatically. You’re just over reacting. It’s nothing.
Springing out of bed, she dressed quickly, went into the kitchen and put on the kettle for her and Dad’s morning cuppa.
Every day she waited. You can’t be overdue two months running, she told herself. Any day now and you’ll be laughing. The days strung themselves out towards Saturday. Sunday came and still nothing. Every time she thought about it – there were times when the day’s toil did bless her with a degree of forgetfulness – her heart would thump with sickening thuds against her breastbone.
Monday morning, as she raced for the toilet on the landing beyond the kitchen, left her in no more doubt. Being sick into the pan, she heard Dad call. ‘You orright, Letitia?’
‘Yes, Dad.’ She straightened up, wiping her mouth and moving back into the kitchen for a cup of water to rinse away the foul taste.
‘You bein’ sick or somethink?’
God, how sounds travelled in this blessed flat? ‘I must have eaten something last night.’
Dad’s cough rumbled towards her. ‘Can’t see ’ow. I ’ad the same as you an’ I feel orright.’
‘Things affect people different,’ she said, heard acquiescence in the chesty clearing of his throat, and smiled slowly.
Odd how with the knowledge comes the will to face up to a thing and see it in perspective. She was marrying David in April. Why get all in a sweat about her condition? She’d be married before it ever showed, and to blazes with those who wanted to count on their fingers.
She would write to David and tell him. He’d be thrilled to bits. Might even arrange to get the wedding brought forward. She wrote the letter then went down to open up as the postman arrived with one from David.
Chapter Thirteen
Letty put her own letter to one side, feverishly opened that from David, heart pounding excitedly. But as she read, all her joy faded, replaced by disbelief.
Darling Letitia, my sweetheart, how can I tell you? Our division has been told just a moment ago that we are going overseas. We embark tomorrow morning. No idea where. Not much time to write with all that is going on here, except to say you cannot imagine how completely devastated I am …
How devastated he was! Letty felt she was about to collapse, the words seeming to swim off the page before eyes that refused to focus properly.
I know you must feel the same, and I cannot be there to comfort you. But I pray to God to send me back to you as swiftly as possible. I pray you will be strong to face however long our parting will be with all the courage and fortitude I know you to posse
ss, and I pray fate will be kind to us and reunite us before we hardly know it. My love, I know I shall be in your arms again soon; that this war will not last much longer. Have to finish now. Being called away. Everything here is in turmoil. So for now, my love, please be strong. I love you. I love you.
The last words, written in haste, had become so virtually illegible that Letty could decipher them only with difficulty, except that she knew them instinctively, words of love, melting into the hasty kisses he had scrawled.
Vaguely she saw her own letter lying on a table where she had left it. The sight dragging her out of the state of shock that threatened to engulf her, one hand flew to her throat in panic. It had to reach him before he left!
Galvanised into sudden action she snatched it up, whirled round to yell up the stairs to her father still making his way through his breakfast: ‘I’ve got to go out!’ Her own voice sounded unfamiliar, high with urgency. ‘To post a letter.’
‘Post a letter? ’Oo’s goin’ ter look after the …’
Letty didn’t wait for the end of his protest, was outside before he’d completed it, hurrying to the slim red postbox at the end of the street as fast as the narrow hemline of her skirt allowed.
If David didn’t get this letter in time … Did they send letters on to troops going overseas? She didn’t know. All she knew was that he must learn her news. Not that it helped her, left to face the pointing fingers of condemnation of others.
But she didn’t think of that as she ran, breathless, to the pillar box, thrust the letter in and ran back; nor for some time afterwards, not until the shock had lessened some days later, though even then it seemed she was living in a dream, merely going through the motions of living from day to day, hardly aware of what she was doing while Dad looked on, frowning, that she might be going down with something.
By the following week he was looking at her critically, mystified by the listlessness that had now descended upon her. It was only a matter of time before he began to grow restive, began to take exception to his own peace of mind being affected by her attitude.
‘What’s up with you?’ he demanded, eyeing her reproachfully as, with the shop closed for dinner, she dished up a lamb stew she had left simmering all morning. ‘You ain’t ailin’ or somethink?’
