Ruby's War (32 page)

‘Not … not the same place,' Mrs Grey said, ignoring Con.

‘It would be awful hard for us to invite anyone to our camp, ma'am,' Con said. ‘You see, the facilities are too poor for us to ask guests. I hope you don't think I'm being rude, but I wanted to put the record right. You see, as I said, I couldn't help overhearing that you ladies have some concerns. Well to be honest, we have some concerns of our own. We're guests in your country, and don't want to give offence. As the other lady said, we enjoy going out into town, but I can assure you ma'am, our behaviour to the girls we meet is respectful. Sure, we joke and we whistle, but so do the English soldiers. We're just doing our best to be sociable and fit in. My father is a minister, and I wouldn't want to shame him or my uniform with my behaviour. I'm sure the rest of the guys are the same.

‘To tell you the truth, it isn't that we are having such a good time. We try to help when we can and we sing when we're asked to. In fact, we're making the best of being here. Don't get me wrong, we wanted to come and help out our country. We're all fighting for the same thing. It's what we all believe in, isn't it?'

Con, and the rest of the youngsters, looked at the two
women. In the stillness, all that could be heard was the chinking of teacups, as the two ladies who'd been serving the tea busied themselves clearing away any crockery that was within easy hearing distance of the group in the middle of the hall.

If it were not for the pounding of his heart, Con would have believed that the words had been spoken by someone else. As the silence expanded, he began to wonder if it was a dream and he would wake in the back of a truck again, with Wes's smelly feet in his face. Then he felt Ruby slip her coarse, warm fingers around his, and Mrs Grey recovered her anger.

‘I'm really surprised that you allow this behaviour,' she said, addressing herself to Father O'Flynn. ‘I shall be asking my husband to speak to Captain O'Donal …'

‘And to the abbot,' Mrs Prendergast added, taking her friend's arm as they headed for the door.

‘Does this mean we can't go to the dance at the camp?' the big red-haired girl called after them, but her question was lost in the sound of excited chatter and Father O'Flynn's appeals for silence. Once the chattering had settled, the old priest, as he always did, ended the refreshment break with a prayer, followed by an exhortation to the dancers to attend the Sunday Mass, in order to secure their admission both to everlasting life, and to future dances.

By Monday morning everyone at the mill had heard about the incident. It was hardly an hour into their shift before Ruby saw Mrs Rostron and one of the other women gossiping between the lines of machines. They turned away quickly, but she'd already learnt enough lip-reading to pick up the words ‘dance' and ‘black GIs'.

As she collected a truck of empty bobbins, Trevor pushed open the door. He blushed when he saw her and tried to speak. Ruby pointed to the stairway and followed him out on to the relatively quiet landing.

‘I've been sent to find out what docket numbers are on the order that's being done in here.'

‘You've been sent to the wrong building,' Ruby said. ‘It's the weaving shed on the other side of the yard you need.'

‘I've been over there,' he said, biting his lip. ‘They told me to come up here. In the office they said I'd got to be quick, because they can't start work unless they have the right docket.'

‘The folk in the shed were having you on,' Ruby said. ‘They don't want to start work, that's all. While you're running around, they'll be stood in there gossiping and having a laugh. They do it with all the young ones – send you on daft jobs. Go back and look for the little glass office, just behind the big doors at the end. You need the tall curly-haired chap in there. Just give the numbers to him and he'll give you the ones they've already done to take back.'

‘How long have you been working here?'

‘Since just after Christmas. Did you only start last week?'

‘Yes, bookkeeping and wages clerk.'

‘Don't worry about it. The novelty will soon wear off, and they'll find somebody else to torment,' Ruby said, as the door swung open and Mrs Rostron peered out.

‘Never mind canoodling,' she said. ‘We're waiting for that truck in here.'

Now that the days were getting longer, Ruby helped her granddad in the garden. Since his illness, he'd found the digging harder and would often sit on an old bench against the house wall, resting between bouts of gardening.

‘Them's coming through grand now,' he said, nodding towards a row of cabbages showing their pearly green heads above the soil. ‘Nice time of year this. The beans is doin' nicely as well. Jenny likes a few beans. She'll be pleased with them.'

Ruby rested her head against the cottage's rough white wall. She liked this part of the day, sitting with a bowl of vegetables to peel for the next day's meal or just looking at the garden and listening to the birds, until it was time to help Jenny with the tea. Glancing at her granddad on the bench beside her, she noted how the neck of his collarless shirt – now at least two sizes too big – sagged around his scrawny neck, and how the belt on his gardening trousers was pulled in by two extra notches. In the weeks after the theft of the black-market sugar, Ruby had carried buckets of coal upstairs to feed the bedroom fire. It was then, listening for each struggling breath, that she'd begun to fear that he might die, and now – like a faithful old dog – that same wordless dread nudged her awake each morning.

Leaving Granddad contentedly smoking a Player's, she went to help Jenny. The evening before, the remaining scraps from the lamb Bo had brought them at the weekend had been used to flavour the stew of carrot and potatoes that was now simmering in the oven by the fire.

‘This looks thin,' Jenny said, poking at the contents of the pot.

‘It smells good, though,' Ruby said, ‘I could smell it
when I walked in, and I'm that hungry. Shall I set the table? I think I heard the gate. I bet it's Sadie.'

‘You'll have to wait a bit. She can help you sort out tomorrow's tea first.'

Sadie put her gas mask on the draining board and began to untie the scarf she wore turban-style around her head.

‘Peel them two onions for me, love,' her mother said, dropping two sad-looking onions on the draining board next to the oilcloth-covered box. Sadie wrinkled her nose and dug a fingernail into the blackened vegetables.

‘These onions are that soft,' she said, wiping her fingers on her overalls and moving her stylish gas-mask box away from the offending vegetables. ‘They smell horrible as well.'

‘What's the matter with you?' Jenny asked.

‘I've just seen Lou up the lane. She heard this mornin', her Frank's brother-in-law, you remember, Lydia's husband?'

‘The one with two little girls?'

‘That's right. His convoy was attacked and he's missing.'

‘Oh, them poor kiddies.'

‘Lou says she can't stand to think of it,' Sadie said, picking up one of the onions. ‘Lydia must be out of her mind with worry.'

‘What about Frank?' Ruby asked.

‘Oh, he's not on the same ship. They've never gone on the same one for that reason,' Sadie said, slicing one of the onions in half. ‘These will hardly be worth cooking, Ma.'

‘It's either that, or it'll just have to be cheese and potatoes, and there's not much cheese, so I'd do your best. Slice them potatoes thin, Ruby. I was thinkin' of layers and crispin' the potatoes on top.'

‘Well there's not much here, and if there's not much cheese why don't we have a pie instead?'

‘I've done the potatoes thin, but they'd do just as well in a pie.'

Jenny wiped her hands on her apron and opened the door of the kitchenette. ‘I was goin' to make jam window pie tonight as a treat, with that stew not being so tasty. You'll have to go easy with this flour, Ruby,' she said, handing Ruby the large blue-and-white striped flour jar. ‘You know what they say, “flour costs ships” and, if we're havin' cheese and potato pie tomorrow, you'd best let me roll the pastry out. I can get it thinner than you.'

The meal was spoilt not by the stew, which was saved by the addition of plenty of mint and some sage, but by Sadie's sad news.

‘Frank's always said their safety was low down on the list. He told Lou that when they're attacked and they're at their stations, the ship sometimes rolls and they lose their lifeboats …'

‘Thought Frank said it was gettin' better?' Granddad said. ‘More aircraft, supposed to be. Gap narrowing where there was no protection, and radio officers getting more information?'

‘It's just the same if they're hit, the rest still have to go on, and then it's up to the navy to look for them. Lou and me was supposed to be goin' out on Friday as well. Now she's talkin' about tryin' to get time off to go and see Lydia. I don't think they'll let her, but she says she doesn't fancy coming out anyway.'

‘Let's talk about something a bit more cheerful,' Jenny
said, getting up from the table and taking the jam pie from the oven.

‘Oh, that looks grand, Jenny, love,' Granddad said, as the smell of blackberry jam filled the room. ‘Jam window pie.'

‘Let's hope so,' she laughed. ‘I had to swap the rest of the eggs for this jam.'

‘If Lou wants to do something for Lydia's little girls,' Ruby said, ‘why doesn't she bring them up here for a break? They'd get fed, and we could take them to the seaside. Con said he wants to take us to the seaside for the day.'

‘When did he say that?'

‘After the dance, when they dropped us off. Said we could all go in one of the lorries. We'll be goin' on a Sunday, so we could take some of the little ones from the school.'

‘He'll need passes. Bo said they—'

‘He said he was goin' to see them about it, and tell them it's not fair.'

‘It's one thing puttin' them two stuck-up women in their place,' Jenny said, topping the helpings of pie with mock cream, ‘it's a different thing to tell them at the camp.'

‘They were talking about it at work,' Ruby said. ‘I heard them.'

‘There's all sorts of gossip goin' about,' Sadie said, catching Ruby's eye. ‘I reckon her and that Prendergast woman are starting a lot of it, and folk are daft enough to believe it, 'cos of who it comes from. She said she was goin' to report Con to them at the camp; if she does, he might not get any passes at all, and they might take it out on the rest of them.'

‘I thought it was brave,' Ruby said. ‘He was only saying
to Mrs Grey what he thought, and it wasn't rude. He was polite.'

‘Well, you've changed your tune,' Jenny said. ‘It's only a couple of months ago you thought the sun shone out of her backside. If she has complained, I bet I can guess whose side they'll take, and it'll not be his.'

Con had hoped to see the new lieutenant alone, but when he opened the door, instead of the new guy, it was one of the other lieutenants and Captain O'Donal who were waiting to see him. It was clear that the confrontation at the dance was on their minds, and he got the usual lecture about being visitors in the country and respecting the way the British did things. As he listened to the lecture, Con fixed his eyes on the maps and copies of orders pinned on the wall behind O'Donal's head. Unlike the shabby huts that made up the rest of the camp, the administration building was a neat wooden construction that he guessed had been purpose-built, and from what he could see, it didn't leak.

‘Are you listening to the captain, soldier?' the lieutenant yelled.

‘Yes, sir,' Con barked.

The sudden holler made Captain O'Donal's eyes flicker, and when Con asked for permission to speak, the captain glanced uneasily at the lieutenant, before nodding and shifting forward in his chair. The lieutenant, unlike O'Donal, was a southerner and a regular soldier, and like most southerners in his position, bitterly resented his posting to an all-black unit.

‘From what I understand, sir,' Con said, addressing
himself to the captain, ‘the British don't have laws about whites and blacks mixing …'

‘That's enough,' the lieutenant roared. ‘We'll not have a lecture from an uppity …'

It was little more than a beat, but was enough time for O'Donal's colour to rise, and for the lieutenant to gobble down the word.

‘What happened, then?' Wes asked the next day, as they were grooming the baseball pitch.

‘I was dismissed,' he said, remembering his heart's involuntary leap, as he flicked his gaze from the senior officer and looked straight into the lieutenant's pale-grey eyes, knowing that the swallowed insult would lay hard and dry for a long time in his gullet.

‘Didn't get the chance to ask for any pass, or ask about the seaside.'

Sarge Mayfield, who'd wandered down to the pitch, shook his head. ‘He wouldn't have given you one anyway. If you'd come to me, I'd have told you that. The seaside towns are all for white R&R. We could perhaps get a truck and take these kiddies to see
Bambi
, or somethin' in town. You won't get a pass to go to the seaside, no matter how many kids you want to take. Let me go to O'Donal. I'll have to get him on his own.'

‘He's runnin' scared of some of the more experienced lieutenants,' Wes said, leaning on his rake. ‘That's always been the problem. That lieutenant is dumb, but he's regular army.'

Mayfield grinned. ‘It's true what they say about you young northern boys, you sure are somethin' else, but take
care: the guy is old South and he's not goin' to take that off you. You faced him down, and he'll be after your hide.'