Ruby McBride (9 page)

‘But where are we going?’

‘We’ll talk about that later.’

‘What if I get cold or hungry? What will I do then?’

Ruby felt close to panic, not having a single idea in her head as to where they should go or what they should do, yet desperate not to be a nuisance to anyone. Pearl’s selfishness wasn’t helping. ‘Stop saying I ... I ... I! There’s three of us here. We’re all in this together.’

‘You don’t have to rush off this minute,’ Marie said, having followed them outside. ‘Wait till our Kit gets back at least.’

‘No thanks, best if we get on our way.’ Now that she’d made up her mind to accept the inevitable, Ruby knew that seeing Kit again would only undermine her resolve.

Coping alone on the streets proved to be every bit as dreadful as Ruby had feared. She did her best for her family, but somehow the tricks she’d learned from Kit didn’t seem half so much fun on her own, or half so easy to accomplish. They were chased off the allotments by an angry old man when he caught them pulling carrots, and Pearl nearly fell in the river when they tried, and failed, to catch fish. Billy found what might have been mushrooms but since Ruby wasn’t sure, she made him throw them away in case they were poisonous toadstools. The little boy didn’t even have the energy to cry.

Unfortunately, not even exhaustion kept Pearl quiet. ‘I’m hungry,’ she’d wail, or ‘I need a rest,’ at what seemed to be half-hourly intervals throughout the long days and nights.

‘Oh, Pearl, do please shut up. We’re all hungry and tired. Your constant complaining doesn’t help.’ Ruby grew increasingly afraid, felt exhausted much of the time, as well as freezing cold, her clothes never quite drying out from one rain shower to the next. And, worst of all, Billy began to cough.

They slept in doorways, under railway bridges or in back alleys, with nothing to cover them but dirty sacks and any old newspapers they found lying around. Sometimes even this relative shelter would be denied them by one or other of the marauding gangs who roamed the area and proved to be far less obliging than Kit’s lot. So they would move on, further and further away from the territory they knew well.

One night they were trailing sadly about under the labyrinth of railway arches and the Bridgewater Viaduct that spanned Castlefield, the slap of water in the nearby Rochdale Canal hardly noticeable above the rumble of trains thundering overhead. Somewhere in the distance a whistle blew. No doubt a gang leader calling his lads together, a common enough practice. Ruby paid no heed. She felt light-headed with hunger and fatigue, shivering with cold, and was desperately searching for a safe place to sleep which wasn’t already occupied, or wouldn’t leave them vulnerable to intruders
 
when a figure stepped out from behind a pillar right in front of them. Ruby’s heart seemed to leap into her throat.

`What way is this to treat a friend, to buzz off without so much as a goodbye?’

She flung herself into his arms and kissed him full on the lips. For a precious moment Kit responded and she felt herself held tight and warm and safe, his body hard against her own. She was a child still, yet somewhere, deep inside, the woman she was to become stirred into life and Ruby became all too aware of the masculine scent of him, the warm strength of his young body. And she recognised too, in that magical moment, that he was equally aware of hers.

He let her go abruptly, with a casual shrug of embarrassment, avoiding direct eye contact as he thrust his hands deep in his pockets, as if keeping them from further mischief. ‘I don’t know where you thought you were going, rushing out of Salford like that, but you don’t seem to be making much of a job of it.’ His scathing glance took in the bedraggled appearance of the other two, and Ruby gave a sheepish smile.

‘We don’t have your skills.’

He gave a slow smile that turned her heart right over. ‘Then you’d best come home with me and have some more lessons.’
 

Whether she would have gone with him or not, Ruby was never to discover. At that moment Charlie and Clem, who had obviously been acting as lookouts, burst upon them like a pair of harbingers of doom, falling over each other to speak.

‘It’s the Coal Wharf Gang, they’ve heard we’re on their patch.’

‘Scarper!’

Before any of them had time to think, let alone make a run for it, they were set upon from every direction. Fists and clogs were soon flying, shouts went up, blood flowed, teeth were broken, jaws cracked. Ruby grabbed Billy and Pearl, her one thought to protect them, and the three clung together, shaking with fear, as the battle raged between the two rival gangs. It was terrifying to watch, and the fear she felt for Kit and his lads grew, for they were seriously outnumbered.

Then a shout went up. ‘It’s the rozzers!’

‘Look out, they’re after you, Kit, and mean business.’

But it wasn’t Kit the police were after, at all.
The three McBride children were suddenly plucked from behind the arch where they were hiding, and found themselves caught up in the arms of the law.

They soon learned that
Sister Joseph, having remained obstinately persistent throughout these long weeks, had pestered her tame constable to keep a lookout. So it was that on this night when sheer exhaustion had driven the children out into the open, they’d finally been spotted.
 

As boys ran in all directions, most making an escape but
many failing to do so, Kit too was taken into custody, along with Charlie and Clem. Ruby’s last sight of Pongo and Jackdaw was of them haring away down the canal towpath. She felt glad that they, at least, had got away.

They were all brought before the magistrates where their punishments were issued with no trace of leniency. No one was interested in listening to their stories, or wished to hear how they’d been desperate to find out the truth about their dying mother, how Billy had been bullied and that they’d wanted only to earn an honest crust and live a normal family life together. Nor did anyone give a thought to how Marie and her four younger children would manage without Kit’s help and the money he brought in.

The three McBrides were accused of delinquency, as well as gross misconduct and ingratitude to the sisters of Ignatius House. It was decided that they needed to be protected from the evils and degenerative influences of city life, and that the only recourse was for Ruby and Pearl to attend the Girls’ Reformatory for a term of four years. Billy was to be sent to a farm school to learn a trade. Charlie and Clem were likewise condemned to the reformatory. Kit Jarvis, a well-known hooligan in the eyes of the magistrates, was to be consigned to the rigours of the reformatory training ship for a period of three years where a final attempt at reformation would be made. It was made quite clear to him that if this didn’t work, his next place of residence would be in Her Majesty’s prison.

Kit cast one final glance in Ruby’s direction, and although the blue eyes glittered with outrage rather than good humour, his grin was as cocky and insolent as ever. Ruby suddenly found herself grinning back, her eyes silently begging him to understand that although they could do what they liked to his physical person, they could never crush his spirit. She certainly intended that to be the case so far as she was concerned. But as he was led away, her heart was aching, for she held little hope they’d ever meet again.

Chapter Seven

1900

After almost four years in the reformatory, Ruby was to be allowed out on licence. She was eighteen and could hardly wait. It meant that although she would still be under the watchful eye of Miss Crombie, the Superintendent, she could at last get a job and start a new life. Strict rules would be enforced such as a monthly report from her employer and, should she lose her job for any reason, she would be obliged to return to the reformatory.

This was not the first time she’d been allowed out on licence. It was, in fact, the fourth. Each of her other prospective positions had lasted less than a month, one of them barely a week. The trouble was that Ruby had never quite acquired the necessary degree of obedience and subservience. What was worse, the more those in authority attempted to mould her to their rules over the years, the more fiercely she’d held on to her own strong will.

There had been the case of the woman who had tested her honesty by placing a sovereign clearly in view on her dressing table. Ruby had handed it back to her employer together with her resignation, saying she wouldn’t work where she wasn’t trusted.

Then there’d been the jealous wife, so certain that Ruby was sharing her husband’s bed that one night when Ruby had gone out to fill the coal scuttle, she’d found herself locked in the coal
shed as punishment for her supposed sins. After hammering and knocking on the door for an hour to no effect, Ruby had squeezed out through the back window and walked the seven miles back to the reformatory. The woman had been furious, accusing her not only of depravity but of absconding from her duties as well.

It was common to be employed by those who wished only to exploit reformatory girls by promising them respectable employment while having quite other requirements in mind. And then there were the snobs who were quite happy to get a reformatory girl as they were cheap, so long as the neighbours never found out. Ruby, naturally, was not prepared to lie about her past, nor keep it a secret.

‘I’m not ashamed of what happened to me. I’ve committed no offence save to be poor. The worst thing I ever did was to run away from the nuns,’ she would say to anyone who cared to listen. ‘I did it to find Mam for our Billy, and because he was being bullied, only I was too late. Mam was already dead of consumption and nobody had bothered to tell us. So if you don’t like it, you can always send me back.’ Which was generally what they did.

It choked her up whenever Ruby thought of Billy. If only they hadn’t been too late and Mam had still been alive, everything would have been so different. Memories of that moment they’d torn him from her arms to take him to the Farm School would torture her for as long as she lived. His cries and sobs still echoed in her head. She’d thought nothing worse could ever happen, but then less than a year after that, he’d been packed off to Canada. His big chance, he’d told her in his letter. A wonderful country with acres and acres of land, thousands of trees and limitless fresh air. Just like Mam had wanted for him. There was even a family ready to take him as one of their own. Would Ruby agree to let him go?

She’d seriously thought about objecting, although whether the Board of Guardians would have listened was another matter. She and Pearl had talked about it for hours but, in the end, had agreed that it might well be a new beginning for their little brother. What did Salford have to offer to the likes of Billy McBride? It might at least be better for his health.

They’d been allowed one final meeting to say goodbye, at which they’d all wept copious tears and clung together, reluctant to let go for this last time. Ruby had made him promise to write every week and he’d kept his word, at first. Now they were lucky if they got more than half a dozen letters a year. This year they’d had two. That first family hadn’t worked out and he’d been moved on, but he sounded happy enough, always looking on the bright side. Ruby could only hope this increasing silence between letters was a good omen and meant that he was well, busy working and enjoying life.

There were times too when she thought of Kit Jarvis, the boy who had tried to help them, and she’d feel an odd sort of ache inside, a longing to see him again. She could remember every exciting detail about him: the masculine scent of his skin, the warm hardness of his young body, the brilliant blue of his eyes. How had he fared in the training ship? She’d heard those places could be pretty tough, far worse than Ignatius House and the reformatory put together.

But all of that was in the past. Today, Ruby was being considered for the post of housemaid by a merchant who apparently owned a fine house close to the Duke of Bridgewater’s at Slate Wharf. Ruby wasn’t too clear where exactly that might be, nor did she recognise his name, Barthram Stobbs, but then it was many years since she’d last visited the area and she’d been but a child at the time. Besides, if he was offering escape from the reformatory, he’d need to have two heads and a hunchback before she refused anything he offered.

Even Miss Crombie was doing her utmost to get her the job by painting a rosy picture of her, despite Ruby being considered as one of her most troublesome inmates. ‘The girl has an individual, determined nature and although she has in the past been somewhat wilful, is nevertheless capable of being agreeable, when she puts her mind to it. And she is most certainly clean. Oh, dear me, yes, Mr Stobbs. As are all our girls. What’s more, she is a hard worker, I’ll give her that.’ The woman’s expression clearly stated that she might wish for more success in other directions.

Ruby became aware that Barthram Stobbs was studying her with surprisingly close attention, and felt herself grow pink under his scrutiny. What was it that he found so fascinating about her? She began to wonder if she had a smut of soot on her nose.