The Soldier's Bride (21 page)

Not taking his eyes from her, David laid his officer’s cap aside on a small rickety table. ‘You are certain, aren’t you, darling?’

‘I am, David,’ she answered resolutely. ‘I am – really I am.’

As though testing her resolution, his lips came upon hers, bore her slowly lower until they were on their knees
beside each other. He eased her down, with no resistance, unbuttoned her blouse front, her bodice, the cloth of his officer’s uniform harsh and cold against her breasts.

Words raced through her mind. We mustn’t be too long. Dad … But she dared not give substance to them in case David drew away in anger, or that resignation she knew so well. Besides, the blood was pounding in her ears, her head, her heart, and time was a precious commodity. How much of it did they have? In France men were dying – a war meant to end by Christmas showed no signs of ending. If David were to be called to the front. If she were never to see him again …

Fear made her clutch at him, receive him in a need to smother the visions flooding her mind’s eye. Perhaps it was fear that made him savage with her, made him plunge into her as if more in lust than love, and she welcomed its sharp pain and the responsive welling up of that unbelievable, thrilling, frightening, joyous surge from the very depths of her; at that moment no one, nothing, mattered but the two of them.

David’s dark eyes were glowing, those narrow features as animated as any boy’s.

‘I shall arrange everything, don’t worry, darling. On my very next leave we’ll be married. Fine with you, my love?’

She on his arm as they left the cinema, he cutting an adventurous, youthful figure in his lieutenant’s dress uniform. Letty’s glad heart pounded with eagerness, all reservation swept away.

‘Your wife,’ she murmured as she clung to him.

‘My wife.’ His arm, with hers threaded through it, tightened her hand against his side.

It had been a wonderful week. They hadn’t ventured far – December didn’t lend itself to jaunts down to Southend or walks in the park – but such diversions weren’t needed. They had each other. And Dad had grudgingly warmed to David, a soldier on leave, a figure of respect. How could even Dad resent him?

More likely he had no alternative. Still in the grip of bronchitis and Ada Hall, who constantly popped in with remedies and hot broth, he was being spoiled rotten and seemed content enough to leave Letty free to be with David.

In the darkened seats of the cinema, they had hardly looked at the flickering screen; the phonograph music and laughter from the audience at the antics of a Knockabout Keystone comedy passed over their heads as David had laid tender and lingering kisses on her ready lips in the obliging semi-darkness.

His hand on her coat-enshrouded breast had been almost more than she could cope with and she had longed for the seclusion of her shop’s back room, to have him all to herself.

As they emerged with the crowds into the clinging damp cold of the December evening, David spoke of marriage as he had done every day of his leave. It was Friday, he would be going back tomorrow, and still she hadn’t found courage to confront Dad.

‘I’d have liked you to have the most splendid wedding ever,’ David breathed wistfully against her ear after they
made love again, this for the last time before he would leave for his unit tomorrow morning.

‘A wedding as your sister Lavinia had. I remember everyone was so convivial. But the way my parents feel, I don’t think they’ll ever be any different. But you must never worry. They’re unmitigated snobs but it’s me you’re marrying, not them. And your father … I know he still hasn’t reconciled himself to the fact that you must leave him eventually and make your own life …’

‘Oh, David, please,’ she began, with no wish to think about Dad, but he stopped her with a gentle hand to her mouth.

‘I know, darling. It has never been easy for you. And I love you for your loyalty, your patience with your father, even to sacrificing all you want in this world. If I win only half that loyalty, I shall count myself the luckiest man alive.’

‘You’ll have it all, David. I promise you will.’

‘I know, my sweet,’ he said, and in the darkness his smile seemed to shine. ‘You deserve so much that’s good. We’ll make our wedding as memorable as we can in the circumstances, and to blazes with other people. You’ll have the finest wedding gown we can buy. I shall have to be in uniform, of course. We’ll have a small wedding breakfast – not many guests, but it’ll be the best. We’ll spend our honeymoon in Brighton where I first took you to see the sea. Do you remember, darling?’

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 still 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.