The Soldier's Bride by Maggie Ford Page A

She couldn’t believe I could still cherish my wife’s memory and yet carve out a new life of my own. Letitia …’
    She sat looking down at her hands in her lap, felt him turn to face her. ‘I have never been able to tell her about us. Not because I am in any way ashamed of you. I admire you, wish I were as certain of myself as you are. But I dread my mother’s inevitable reproach that I am casting aside my wife’s memory. I’ve no wish to put you through that.’
    He fell silent, gazing at Letty, but she couldn’t meet his look although she felt its intensity. For some while she could find nothing to say. Though so much she wanted to say surged through her head, all of it would sound nonsensical if she did put it into words.
    ‘I wonder what she’d think if she knew where I lived?’
    ‘For God’s sake, Letitia!’ The sharpness of David’s tone made her jump. ‘Why do you put yourself down so? You’re as fine as anyone I’ve ever met, and I love you! I love you, Letitia.’
    In the dimness of the taxicab, he leaned forward and kissed her. It was long and lingering, full of passion. Almost stifled, Letty felt herself melt into it, closing her eyes at the delicious feel of it. David’s breath was sweet and warm, and who cared what the driver thought of them?
    Beyond the cab, Bethnal Green Road in full spate at ten o’clock at night reminded her that this wonder must end very soon.
    ‘We’re nearly home, David!’ she just about managed.
    His response was to call to the cabby to stop. ‘We’ll walk from here,’ he said, paid the man his fare, then holding her arm through his walked with her the short distance to her road, passing the Knave of Clubs on the corner. In the glow from the pub windows, the frosted glass etched by advertisements for Nicholson’s Matchless Dry Gin and Walker’s Whisky, he slowed. Nearby, the hot chestnut stand wafted nutty smoke, the bearded vendor turning the roasting nuts on a blackened metal sheet, hands protected by scorched woollen gloves, his cheeks a fiery red from the heat of the brazier.
    All around Letty, people surged by, the door to the Public pushed open time after time, emitting laughter, rushes of warm air into the chilly night, the potent smell of beer and tobacco and sawdust.
    ‘I want you to come with me next Sunday to meet my parents,’ David said abruptly. And now, after weeks of clamouring for that honour, Letty was caught by fear, by foreboding, wishing she’d kept quiet.
    ‘I should have waited a bit longer,’ she told Lucy, who could hardly wait to hear how she had got on. ‘I should never have gone.’
    ‘Was she horrible to you?’ Lucy asked avidly over the teacups.
    It was teatime, the table laid halfway across. There were only the two girls to have tea. Dad was downstairs, would be up as soon as he closed the shop, and Mum had gone to bed. She tired quickly these days. Lucy would take her a cup and a bit of cake later. She ate very little, as if the act itself tired her. At night Letty lay awake listening to Mum coughing, Dad getting up regularly to get her medicine for her. It was all so worrying.
    ‘Horrible ain’t the word,’ she said acidly, putting the last of the Sunday fruitcake on the table next to the cheese dish. ‘I’ve never felt so uncomfortable in all my life, and I was so sorry for David, he was so worried. And he behaved so different there than when he’s with me – all stiff and starched, as though he was watching every word he said and everything he did – just like I was! And all the time I sat there I didn’t know where to put me faceor what to do with me hands, I was so nervous.’
    As Lucy cut bread and buttered it, Letty told of the imposing double bay-windowed house with its large high-ceilinged rooms and its heavy Victorian furniture. ‘They did have some lovely things,’ she said. The way David’s mother had received her. ‘Her face all stiff, it was like looking at a white ship all posh, standing off