Soldier's Valentine (6 page)

He’d expected a frosty-faced woman behind the counter, but instead got a friendly young man with sandy-coloured hair, hazel eyes and delicate features.

‘Take a look at these, sir.’ His long slim fingers took three different cards from a white cardboard box. He set them out on the counter. ‘These are so very romantic, sir. Which one do you think your lady would like?’ He eyed Henry steadily, his smile unwavering.

Henry flushed on meeting the young man’s gaze. The cards were far too pretty for male taste, a flock of doves in a dovecote surrounded by roses and a bright blue sky. A young man should be selling tools and hardware, he thought, not fripperies, flounces and ribbons – or cards like this.

He surveyed each card in turn. ‘There don’t seem to be much between them,’ he said gruffly.

The young man pointed at each card in turn. ‘Well, this one as you can see has a dovecote, this one is almost entirely roses and bluebirds, and this one has this bright red heart and lace all around it.’

Henry chewed his bottom lip. Quite frankly, the sooner he was out of this shop and away from this nancy boy, the better.

‘May I make a suggestion?’ asked the young man, which only served to make Henry fidget and go red in the face. ‘I like the second one best – roses and bluebirds. And inside it says, “To my one and only Valentine”.’

Their eyes met again, Henry’s narrowing slightly, recognising a faggot when he saw one.

‘I’ll take it. How much?’

‘I bought it for you. Happy Valentine’s.’

Mary Anne gasped; her eyes wide with amazement.

Henry did not easily show his feelings. Neither was he one for going into shops unless it was for pipe tobacco.

Tears sprang to her eyes. Henry had gone against his nature to buy her this card. ‘It’s lovely. Did you really buy it yourself?’

He hadn’t bothered to post it but had left it on the kitchen table for her to find.

‘It was me that bought it,’ he said to her. ‘Just in case you was thinking it was from somebody else.’

Mary Anne, her stomach now swollen with their second child, laughed and shook her head. ‘Well, I didn’t think it was the milkman, the baker or the butcher,’ she said laughingly.

At first he was gruff and then he smiled. ‘I thought you deserved it. Thought I didn’t court you enough in the early days and I’ve never been one for pretty words.’

She blinked away the tears. If only he knew how much this meant to her on this day, on Valentine’s Day. ‘You’re a good man, Henry.’

‘Aye. Better be getting off to work.’

The chair legs scraped the floor as he got to his feet.

She sensed his embarrassment and it hurt. They weren’t exactly unhappily married, but Mary Anne was aware of the barrier between them, the one she put down to her own act of dishonesty.

It was always possible Henry might hear the truth about her darling Edward and her first child. News travelled fast nowadays. No matter how careful her parents had been, there was always that chance.

Suddenly the terrible strain of carrying the secret overwhelmed her. The truth was that at this moment her heart was so full of love for him, she burst into tears.

‘Don’t you like it? I would have got a card with them yellow flowers that you grow outside on it, but they didn’t have any. Do you like it?’

‘I do! I do!’

‘Are you ill? Is the baby coming early?’

She shook her head. ‘No. It’s just that … I don’t deserve it. That’s just it. I don’t deserve it.’

She sank down onto a chair, burying her face in her hands.

‘I don’t deserve you. It’s not fair. You know nothing about me. Nothing about Edward.’

Henry stiffened. ‘Edward?’ Who’s Edward?’

She peered at him through the gaps in her fingers, aware the moment had come to unburden the heavy load she carried. There was no going back.

She told it as it was – her engagement to Edward, him getting killed and her being forced to give her baby away.

She was only vaguely aware of the sudden rigidity of Henry’s body.

‘You say his name was Edward and we were in the same regiment?’

His tone was chill and cut her to the bone. But there was no going back.

‘Yes. Edward Ross. Lieutenant Edward Ross. He was in the same regiment as you. He died, just like your friend Lewis died.’ She spoke carefully and honestly, feeling lighter as she unburdened her greatest guilt.

Suddenly, Henry headed for the door.

‘What is it? Where are you going?’

‘To work of course. I have to get to work.’

‘Henry. He was one of yours. Edward. He was one of your compatriots.’

He stopped by the door, looked at her sidelong and nodded. ‘Yes. He was.’

‘It won’t make any difference to us, will it, Henry? I love you and I’m still your wife.’

‘Of course you are, Mary Anne. Of course you are.’

The sound of the door slamming shut reverberated around the house.

Mary Anne sank into a chair regretting what she had done. She fingered the beautiful card. She knew her husband well enough to realise it must have taken a great deal of courage for a man like him to buy such a thing. He was a man’s man, not given over to doing anything overly romantic or silly. He had all day to get over what she’d told him, and if he loved her enough he would. She was sure of it. The card alone told her that.

Only the fact that young Harry began crying brought her back from dark thoughts. Before going to him, she put the card up on the mantelpiece.

Her son had been teething for a few days, but the bright red rash he’d broken out in worried her. She needed for him to see a doctor. There was no point in going to see Doctor Belman in Old Market without checking she could afford to pay for his services. Luckily, her parents had left her with a few pounds for emergencies.

She kept the money in a tea caddy in the larder. The tin was blue and white with pictures of handsome Indians waiting on favoured white people in fine clothes sitting around bamboo tables.

Mary Anne took out the money and began counting it. There didn’t seem to be as much money as there had been. She frowned. She hadn’t spent that much of late except for material with which to make her growing son some new clothes.

Another thought came to her; Henry had found her secret store of cash and borrowed some. She decided to ask him later, then thought better of it. Having burdened him with such heavy news about Edward and the baby, perhaps it was best leaving it for another time.

Young Harry began crying more lustily and was red in the face. After bundling him up in a blanket, she dashed out, heading for the taxi stand where she hoped to find her husband.

‘Ain’t seen ’im,’ said one driver.

The others looked sheepish as though they knew but weren’t telling.

‘If you could tell him I’ve taken Harry to the doctor’s. Tell him he has a fever.’

Doctor Belman examined Harry carefully. ‘Get some teething powders from the chemist, give him half of one three times a day and keep him warm until the fever breaks. It is only teething, but wise to keep him indoors.’

With that in mind, she waited in the rest of the day for Henry to come home. She’d purchased the teething powders and given them to her baby, but she did need to do some shopping for their evening meal. After the weekend, there was nothing much left in the larder to make a meal from.

By six o’clock there was still no sign of her husband so she took Harry into Mrs Oliver next door.

‘The doctor said to keep him indoors. I’d be grateful if you could have him until I get back. I just need to pop out and get a few things.’

Mrs Oliver was a ruddy-faced widow who had given birth to twelve children and would have had more if she’d been able to.

‘Bless you, I’d love to have him. I’d have him for keeps if you’d let me. Now come here, my babby. Let’s see if your Auntie Reenie can get you to sleep.’

Harry went willingly into Mrs Oliver’s arms. She turned to Mary Anne advising her to wrap up warm. ‘Soon be spring though. I see your crocuses are in flower. Lovely they are.’

‘Yes. They are.’

Despite the cold weather, Mary Anne rushed off with her coat half undone, wanting to get the shopping over with as quickly as possible so she could get back to her house, her husband and her son.

The shops would be open as usual until ten o’clock or so. She dashed from one to another, buying vegetables, but more especially a decent piece of steak for Henry’s supper. It
wasn’t often they could afford steak, but tonight was special. At least she wanted it to be special, but her stomach churned with nerves even though she assured herself that Henry loved her. First as last, they were husband and wife. There were also the words of the marriage service –
for better or for worse
.

Henry Randall finally got thrown out of the Red Lion when his language and his aggression had gone beyond what the landlord would tolerate.

The moment he saw the bright yellow of the flowers she loved, he wanted to destroy them.

‘Slut! Cow!’

He kicked out at the pot, but the sight and sound of it breaking was not enough to assuage the anger he felt. Not just anger though, he’d gone out of his way to marry her, thinking by doing so he’d outgrow his past. If she’d never told him about Edward Ross – Lieutenant Edward Ross – he could have made the marriage work. As it was the silly mare had only compounded the great wrong he’d done and the wrongs that he and Lewis had done together.

But was it wrong? Was it wrong to love someone despite their gender? It didn’t
feel
as though it was.

The fact was that soldiers did get to be brothers in arms; they looked out for each other and, in the absence of females, things sometimes went further than that.

He’d now committed himself to marriage. He had become just an ordinary respectable man, no longer the proud warrior he had once been. He could have just about coped with her having been engaged to a fellow soldier and having had a child by him. The worse thing was that Lieutenant Edward Ross had been that soldier, the officer who had shot his beloved Lewis.

The yellow crocus glowed in the gathering twilight even though they were scattered over the flagstones. He let out an angry roar. Soon they were crushed and broken beneath his boots.

He flung open the back door and bellowed her name. There was no response. The kitchen was empty though the smell of something cooking – mutton stew he thought she’d said this morning.

This morning, St Valentine’s Day, he’d given her a card, which was now sitting on the mantelpiece.

Like the crocus, it seemed to mock him. Fancy writing those soppy words for her, citing how pure of heart she was, pure in every way in fact. But she wasn’t pure and not being pure had aroused a terrible demon in him.

He tore the card from the shelf, glancing at it briefly before flinging it into the fire. How could he have been such a fool? He’d convinced himself that Mary Anne would be a fitting and respectable replacement for Lewis, the love of his life. Damn them all. Damn the society that dictated what love should be. He had to buckle down. He knew that and at least a family – having children – might go some way to replacing his loss.

Although most of the thoughts in his mind were befuddled by drink, one truth stood out: Edward Ross, Mary Anne’s sweetheart, had killed the love of his life. Edward was not around to hate and heap revenge on, but Mary Anne was and by God she’d pay. She would most certainly pay.

The first thing she noticed was the pot of crocuses she loved so much. The pot was broken in two, the earth and the bright yellow flowers trampled underfoot. At first she thought Henry had fallen over it on his return from the pub. On reflection, the devastation was too thorough, too purposeful. He’d done it deliberately.

She picked up the odd one or two that had survived the onslaught, crushing them to her face, breathing in their perfume for the last time.

After picking up the broken pieces and sweeping up the mess, she went back into the house.

The moment she entered the scullery, she saw what he’d done. The Valentine card had been hurled onto the fire where the birds, the roses, the words of love, curled into blackness.

‘No!’

She reached for the poker, threw it down and then reached for the tongs. It was no good, the paper, now black and indistinguishable from the coals, fell to pieces.

She cursed the man who she knew now lay drunk in bed, cursed herself too that she’d believed this marriage could work, thinking he loved her enough to know the truth. Henry, she now realised, was a jealous man. He would have things his way and would not tolerate being taken for a fool, because that’s how he would view this. She’d had a child. He should have been told and that, she decided, was why she had to stick by him. It was her sin, her failure to own up to what she had done.

Mary Anne patted her stomach, feeling the slight bulge of the child now growing within. Whatever happened, she would not abandon this child or any others that she bore Henry. This marriage would be for better or for worse – for the sake of her children and in memory of the child born on St Valentine’s Day, her last link with Edward and the love they’d shared.

It was two weeks following Prime Minister Chamberlain declaring war on Germany that Mary Anne Randall knew for certain she had a little problem.

Her neighbour Biddy Young crossed one knee over the other, puffing and wheezing in an attempt to straighten a stocking seam. ‘Done the hot baths?’

They were sitting in Mary Anne’s washhouse, a brick-built lean-to tacked onto the back wall. The house nestled in a squat terrace built in the nineteenth century and typical of many in the city of Bristol and way beyond. It had a door and a window and a hole in the pan tiles where the stack puffed steam from the boiling washing.

Mary Anne grimaced as Biddy tugged the grimy toe of her stocking through the hole of her peep-toed shoe. Biddy had a tinsel bright glamour, face powder and lipstick applied after the briefest of washes and stockings worn until the toes were black or the legs laddered beyond repair.