The Soldier's Bride by Maggie Ford Page B

the parlour as Vinny and Albert sat on the sofa. ‘I can’t believe she’s gone, you know. It’s like the funeral – it’s got a sort of unreal feel to it when I look back. In fact,’ she gave a small apologetic laugh, ‘it does seem odd, but looking back, Lucy’s wedding feels more like it was the funeral. Poor Lucy.’
    She let her voice die away, the two watching her as she moved about aimlessly, hearing Dad filling the kettle in the kitchen, the dull metallic scrape as he put it on the stove. You could hear everything in this flat. Remembering, she let her voice fall. ‘Every time I pass Mum’s room, I think she’s still there.’
    It was Dad’s room now. He kept it as neat as he kept himself; too neat – as if his own sanity depended upon it. He went round adjusting objects, picking them up, replacing them in different positions, then picking them up again, going through the same procedure. He drew Letty’s attention to anything out of place in the flat, not content until she had put it right.
    ‘I wish you’d leave things alone, Dad,’ she said, a bit too sharply perhaps. Grief had made her sharp. ‘I never know where anything is!’ He’d look at her in a hurt fashion, retreating without a word.
    He did little in the shop. When it came to facing customers his self-confidence would dissolve and he’d call up the stairs to her: ‘Letitia – will yer? I’m occupied. Letitia?’ his tone impatient, echoing the panic inside him.
    Lately she was more down there than in the flat, Dad retreating to Mum’s chair that he’d now made his own. He’d gaze vacantly out of the window for hours on end and it wrung her heart to see him, but she was doing everything now, seeing to the shop, looking after the flat, him, his washing, his mending, cooking, and she only had one pair of hands.
    ‘If you could do something up here, Dad. Like the washing up, that’d be a help. There’s not all that much with just us two …’
    She could have bitten her tongue, seeing the bleak look on his face, and in mute misery they’d clasped each other so as not to be destroyed by their mutual loss.
    Letty looked over at Vinny. ‘You and Lucy are lucky, not living here any more. You don’t know what it’s like, Dad under your feet all the time. I do everything now Mum’s gone. I can’t even go out with David without feeling guilty for leaving Dad on his own. You don’t know what it’s like. Thank God David understands.’
    She shouldn’t really have opened her heart to either of them. All it produced was uncomfortable looks that remained there until they left.
    Thank God David did understand, behaved wonderfully about it all, because Dad didn’t. Hardly speaking when David came on Sundays, he’d go off to his room as soon as dinner was over, and any Saturday evening David came, retreated – to ‘lie down’ as he put it. It left the two of them alone, true, but as Letty saw it Dad somehow resented David.
    ‘Has he done anything to upset you, Dad?’ she taxed him.
    It was Monday. The weekend had been hot and sunny, ideal weather for a stroll. For Dad’s sake she’d stayed in. And what had he done? Gone to bed, out of David’s way, she was sure of it.
    Dad was washing at the sink while she prepared breakfast. His reply was evasive as he reached for the towel from the hook beside him. ‘Not as I know of.’ But Letty wasn’t prepared to leave it at that.
    ‘When Jack and Albert were courting Lucy and Vinny …’ She ignored the look he gave her at her use of her sisters’ shortened names and ploughed on: ‘You weren’t ever funny with them.’
    ‘I ain’t ever been funny with no one,’ he defended himself.
    ‘Then why keep ignoring David? He’s never done you any wrong, Dad.’
    Arthur sat down at the narrow deal table where Letitia had placed a pile of toast and marmalade for him, his eyes averted from her face.
    ‘Then what’s so wrong about my David?’ she persisted indignantly.
    And now he did