by Maggie Ford
‘Goodbye, Auntie Letty.’ His light child’s voice, his innocent eyes, so like David’s, would tear her to pieces, having to resist the impulse to take him up in her arms, smother him with kisses. For that reason she never went to Vinny’s if she could help. When he was brought here, she had no option but to endure the agony of seeing him; the wrench of parting, enduring his brief dutiful peck on her cheek as she held herself back from a natural reaction to hold him close, would leave her drained for days. But purposely to go there and suffer that torture, no.
Two years. Hard to believe David had been gone for longer than that. The pain, thinking of him, was as acute as ever it had been in the beginning. She had contacted his mother one final time last year, had received such a flood of abuse from the grieving woman that she had never dared contact her again, left now in no doubt that David had died in the Dardanelles.
In silence she and Dad had their Sunday dinner. Vinny and Lucy would be here around four. After she had washed up the dinner things while Dad had a lie down, Letty set about relaying the parlour table for his birthday tea, taking the ageing aspidistra off the table to put in the window temporarily, gazing at the leathery leaves. The plant had seen some dramas in this place, had seen grief, despair, love and hatred, and the silence of brooding animosity.
Dad had never got over her ‘shame’ as he called it if he referred to it; she endured his acrimony because to leave would have somehow confirmed that shame she still could not acknowledge to herself. Her son had sprang from a love that had been beautiful, tender, and would have been constant had David not been torn from her by war. It was others who had soiled it, who saw it as dirty and shameful.
The silence that had grown up between herself and Dad had come to rule them; at breakfast, throughout their day, Dad doing the books in silence, going off down the pub with never a goodbye; in the evenings, gazing out of the window in summer, morosely sucking on his pipe; in winter huddled by the fire; silence as she carried herself through the household chores, the washing – hers and Dad’s hanging side by side across kitchen and balcony, stretched between the pegs like carcasses in an abattoir. And she was ready to give her soul to have him say one word to her that was not compounded of bitterness and enmity.
Relations did little to reduce the enmity, only adding fuel: ‘Still goes around bold as brass then?’
How was she supposed to go around? Flog herself in public, shave her head, dash to the nearest convent to take the veil? What option was there but to face the world, hoping it would forget in time, which of course it didn’t. Aunt Hetty and Aunt Mildred, when they came to see Dad, would still look sideways at her. Uncle Will, plainly embarrassed, kept his distance. Uncle Charlie was as jovial towards her as he’d ever been but regarding her now with a sly look as if he could hardly contain his imaginings of her with the man whose child she’d had. Her cousins, now at an age to know about love, sniggered.
She loathed them coming to visit Dad, usually made herself scarce. She hoped none of them would want to attend Dad’s birthday and was relieved when none of them did, not even invited.
Lucy arrived with Vinny and Albert around four. Making excuses for Dad, Letty welcomed them in. She had woken him earlier but when he didn’t respond had left him to get on with it; she took him a cup of tea while they ate sandwiches leaving him to make an appearance in his own time.
‘You managed a cake then?’ Lucy said, her mouth full.
Still warm from the oven because after even one day cake went stale without proper ingredients, its aroma filled the room despite its lack of fruit, was descended upon, not much left of it by the time they’d all had a piece.
‘You really are a marvel, you really are.’
‘Glad you like it,’ Letty said, toying without appetite with her own piece.
‘How did you manage to get the stuff for it? I can’t get hold of anything over my way. So annoying getting to the head of a queue to be told they’re sold out – no more goods expected today. That’s what our grocer writes on his window. No apologies, nothing. So rude.’
Letty nodded, tried to rivet her attention on her as Lucy prattled on, tried to stop her gaze straying towards Christopher, oblivious of her hunger as he played happily, trying to tie his ‘brother’ Albert’s hands together with a piece of ribbon from her sewing basket.
Don’t look at him, she told herself, watch the others. Albert’s nine years old now. Sturdy and cheeky. George eight, Arthur six, both of them little demons. All three promise to be handsome. Lucy’s girls, Elisabeth and Emmeline, also eight and six, were pretty, precocious and quietly confident of getting exactly what they wanted.
The room had grown hot. Despite the day being fine, Dad had a fire halfway up the chimney, and now sat staring into it as though he’d rather they all went home.
Lucy, fanning herself with a hankie, asked, ‘Can we have the window open a bit?’ And he, loath to deny her, nodded. Her girls went and sat by it, sedate as little nuns, gazing down into the street. Vinny’s two older boys, bored by adult talk, were fretful, wanting only to go home or downstairs into the street to play with the local children.
‘Can we, Mum? Can we go down?’
But Albert was having none of it. Removing his pipe from his mouth to regard them with an eye severe enough to meet his wife’s approval, he declared it would not be good for them to mix with street urchins, his views bolstered by Vinny adding her own glares as she scooped two-year-old Christopher on to her lap to supervise his enjoyment of the last piece of cake. Letty, watching the action, said nothing.
‘Why are you my aunt?’ Emmeline turned from the window to give Letty a quizzical look.
Taken momentarily off guard, Letty fixed suspicious eyes on the girl. Had Lucy been taking carelessly in front of her? She wouldn’t put it past her sister.
‘Because I’m your mother’s sister,’ she said, even-toned.
‘Mummy says you’re a maiden aunt. What is a maiden aunt?’
Emmeline’s questions were always direct, posed without thinking, her mother’s daughter. Letty’s reply was equally frank. Meet like with like whether it hurt or not, she’d learned that policy well.
‘It’s an aunt who’s not married yet, Emmeline.’
‘Mummy says you’re too old to get married now?’
Lucy’s voice cut sharply through the inquisition, for once being prudent. ‘That’s enough questions, Emmeline love. And just look at your hands – all filthy from that windowsill. The trouble with London, nothing stays clean.’
Through the narrow aperture the squeals of a dozen children playing under the window, rose up, shrill and excited. ‘Gotcher! Gotcher!’
George had squeezed himself between his cousins and was staring down longingly. He risked another plea. ‘Can I go down, Mum?’
Below him a ring of grubby kids were counting who’d be ‘it’.
‘Inky-pinky pen’n’ink, I smell a great big stink. It – must – be – you.’ Repeated again and again as each dropped out until two were left. ‘Inky-pinky pen’n’ink …’
‘Can I, Mum? Please?’
The last one out had covered her eyes, the others scattering, into doorways, around corners, crouched behind dustbins.
‘Ready! Comin’!’ The sharp high cry, born of the East End, echoed along the street.
Cautiously the girl, skinny knees sticking like pale moons through holes in her black stockings, dress threadbare, pinafore grey from washing, hair tangled, uncombed for weeks, moved off from the battered tin can at her feet.
George held his breath, saw a boy’s figure creeping out from behind a dustbin, wanted to yell to the girl, ‘Look out!’ But she had seen another hopeful and shrieked, ‘See you! See you, Annie Wallace! See you. Come out!’
The discovered had stood up. The rest remained concealed, but the boy had crept nearer, eyeing the guardian of the tin can, hand out ready to grab it.
Too late she saw him, leapt back to defend the tin. The boy leaped too, his hands sna
tching it up before she could touch him.
‘Tin Can Tommy!’ At his triumphant bawl childish figures emerged from everywhere.
The girl was furious. ‘I touched yer! I touched yer first!’
‘No, yer didn’t.’ The boy gripped the tin possessively. ‘Didn’t get nowhere near me.’
‘I did. I touched yer. I bloody did!’
‘No yer didn’t.’
‘Yer rotten cheat! I did. Yer bloody cheat!’
‘Cow!’
‘Don’t yer call me a cow, yer boss-eyed bloody cheat!’
‘Cow! Silly cow!’
The abused stamped a foot, putting all her energy into it. ‘Tain’t fair. I ain’t playin’ no more. You cheat, Tommy ’Awkey.’
‘An’ you stink!’
A yelp as her hand flashed out, smacking the boy full on the cheek. George from his vantage point forgot about wanting to go down to join in, beside himself with enjoyment of the entertainment.
The rest of the players watched wordlessly as the can went flying, landed clattering along the pavement. The boy’s hand came up but the girl was already off. Apron flying like a flag in a high wind, knees going up and down, flashing pale through the threadbare stockings, she legged it down the street, shrieking abuse behind her, the boy in useless pursuit. As they disappeared, the watchers reformed into a circle, beginning solemnly to count out who next would be ‘it’.
George’s yearning to be there among them returned. ‘Can I go down and play, Mum?’
Emmeline had joined in. ‘Can I too, Mummy?’
Lucy, in conversation with Vinny, threw the child a look of extreme distaste. ‘No, you can’t. You’re not mixing with toe rags like that. Whatever next?’
Letty, still stinging from Lucy’s suspected reference to her as a maiden aunt, gave her a look. ‘It was toe rags like that you used to play with once. Though I imagine you’ve forgotten – conveniently.’ The last uttered with a curl to her lip. She saw Lucy redden.
‘I hope I’ve moved on since then – tried to better myself.’
‘Nice to have had the opportunity to move on,’ Letty said acidly. ‘Some of us aren’t so lucky.’
‘No one asked you to stay here.’
No, no one had. It had just been assumed hers would be the role of companion to Dad, condemned to be a spinster because he’d been too full of his own needs to let her pursue hers. And her reward? To have some precocious eight year old chirpily refer to her as an ‘old maid’. She held Lucy in a steady look which her sister read clearly enough.
‘Some of us had no choice,’ she said slowly, ‘but to end up as a maiden aunt out of duty to someone else. You’re as selfish as him!’
Instantly she regretted the remark, saw her father stiffen, saw his head lift sharply; knew her words had bitten. But Lucy saw nothing but her own injured pride. Lines formed around her lips.
‘I don’t know how you can say such things! You had plenty of chance to get married. And now you’ve got no one. No wonder he went off and left you! Who’d want a person who cheapened herself like you did?’
‘He didn’t leave me. He was killed.’
How had she said it so coldly? How could she feel nothing from Lucy’s remarks? Oh, but she did – the pain, the emptiness, the awful bitterness, not from what Lucy had said, but that Lucy had not the tiniest notion of the wounds she opened.
Dad was scooping tobacco from his pouch into his pipe, didn’t look up, didn’t look towards her though his face was tight. She saw his hand reach up, fumble for the matches on the mantelshelf above him.
‘By the clock, Dad.’
Amazing she could be so matter-of-fact, amidst all that turmoil going on inside her. She wanted to throw the matches in his face, run screaming from the flat. Yet here she was being quietly practical, rebuking herself in silence for being so when he didn’t acknowledge her, merely took up the box, extracted a match, struck it and applied the flame to the pipe bowl.
Vinny was looking anxiously from her to Lucy, holding Christopher defensively. But Lucy merely tossed her head, tutted, got up. Sweeping over to her daughters, she heaved the sash window closed with a sharp scrape, instantly muffling the cries of the children below.
‘Trouble with autumn,’ she said briskly, ‘you do get a cold wind springing up suddenly. It’s gone quite chilly. Here, Dad, I’ll put a bit more coal on the fire, shall I?’
All attention, dripping honey over Dad, and he regarding her with fatherly love as he never now regarded Letty. It was sickening.
Billy had come home. Letty went to ask if she could pop up to see him, as a friendly gesture.
Billy’s mother looked as though she had shrunk in size, and the expression in his father’s eyes, not quite looking at her but somewhere beyond as he nodded his consent, made Letty hurry up the stairs to their parlour.
What she saw made her hand fly to her throat for all she tried to look natural as she approached him. In a civilian shirt, waistcoat and trousers that looked too large, Billy was sitting in a chair by the fire; the man hardly recognisable as the one who had so cheerfully gone to enlist that Saturday three years ago.
‘You don’t look half bad,’ she said, over bright. ‘Not half as bad as I thought you’d look.’
He looked as old as his father, except that his father’s hair was white and his was still fair, but the gloss was gone and his moustache had a thin stiff spikiness. It was the eyes that looked old, and the mouth, tight in a crooked sort of way as if it would never again smile spontaneously; had lost the knack. The gas in his lungs had given his cheeks a pinched look, colourless now, and he breathed as though he were panting, shallow and spasmodic.
‘You don’t look half bad,’ she said again, inadequately.
He managed to smile but the knack had gone.
‘You ’ad ter – see me at me worst. Didn’t cher?’ he said, the quip weak. He seemed not to have enough power for sentences of any length. As he coughed, it was a dry wheezing that didn’t ease him. ‘Should have waited. A few weeks. The doctors say I’ll improve. A few weeks – yer’d have seen me at me best. Could have swept yer – off yer feet. Then.’
Impulsively, Letty put her hand out to him, touched his arm. ‘I know you’re going to get better, Billy. Just give it time.’
His eyes travelled down to the hand, her left hand. She’d long ago placed her engagement ring back in its box, put the box into a drawer. To display the ring David had given her seemed a sort of sacrilege. Not so had it been a wedding ring.
‘Yer didn’t get married then?’
Letty edged the hand behind her back.
‘He enlisted.’ She hoped her eyes would stay dry. ‘He was killed.’
There, she’d said it dry-eyed, her eyelids hadn’t even flickered, she remained staring aridly at Billy.
It was he who lowered his eyes, once vivid blue, the whites now bloodshot. He began to cough, conquered it with an effort, cleared his throat ineffectually. It made her want to cough in sympathy.
‘It was over two years ago – 1915.’
Billy’s lips twisted into a travesty of a grin. ‘Chance fer me then, except I ain’t nobody’s chance any more.’
‘Oh, Billy, don’t say that!’ she blurted out, and the tears forced themselves slowly over her lower lids and slid down her cheeks.
Lonely tears – for herself; for a son to whom she was auntie; for a young man made old; for a man whose body lay unsung, bones bleached white on some sun-parched plain; for the waste of it all.
Chapter Sixteen
‘Ain’t you ’aving nothing? Ain’t feelin’ off colour, are yer?’
The question was more peevish than concerned as Letty sank down in the armchair after dishing up Dad’s supper, her own bowl of stew untouched.
Sighing, she laid her head back. ‘Touch of the ’flu, I think. I don’t know.’
These last few days she’d felt achey, but told herself she would work through it as she carried on down in the shop. The door opening and sh
utting, customers letting in gusts of cold damp February air while she hovered close to the oil stove as often as she could, she now felt feverish, her head as though it were full of cotton wool.
‘Oughter see the quack,’ he said as he finished supper and went to sit by the fire a moment, his own bronchial state rattling his chest. ‘’Ave a look at both of us while he’s about it.’
The blazing fire uncomfortably affecting her already fiery cheeks while the rest of her remained shivery, Letty smiled.
‘Fine pair we are.’
He didn’t return her smile. ‘If yer go down with the ’flu, I can’t look after the shop in my state of ’ealth.’
The remark didn’t anger her; didn’t even hurt. Living under his unforgiving shadow so long, hurt and anger were more or less moribund.
‘You can always get Ada Hall to come in,’ she said listlessly.
It was an idea worth thinking about but he didn’t bother saying so. She might be better by morning. With a rumbling cough, he heaved himself out of his chair, thinking of bed, neglecting to say goodnight.
Letty had been lucky, getting over it like she had. Three miserable weeks of ’flu had worn her out completely.
‘People goin’ down with it right, left an’ centre,’ said Ada Hall, who had volunteered to come in and nurse her. ‘Needs a woman ter look after ’er,’ she’d said and offered her services there and then, much to Dad’s relief. He had kept himself as far away from Letty as possible.
Vinny’s boys had all gone down with it, and Letty in her more coherent moments had been worried sick for Christopher, unable to do a thing about it, unable even to lift her thumping head much less stir herself to get over there. Vinny reported all her boys were recovering, but Lucy was keeping her girls strictly away and wouldn’t have dreamed of coming over to nurse Letty, so it was Mrs Hall who had stepped in.
‘It’s really bad round ’ere,’ she had supplied as she fed Letty the medicine the doctor had left, warmed her feet with stone hot water bottles, coaxed her to take hot soup from a spoon – ‘Ter keep up yer strength,’ she’d said, and stoked up the little bedroom fire.
