Ruby's War (4 page)

Granddad took the seat nearest to the door, and Sadie, who had changed into a Fair Isle sweater and a modest tweed skirt, sat next to their visitor.

Mrs Lathom fell on to the food, and it wasn't until the plates had been collected and the room was beginning to fill with the subtle perfume of spiced plums, that she turned her unblinking attention on Ruby.

‘And who's this?' she asked.

‘This is our Will's girl,' Granddad said.

‘Was it you arriving that caused all that noise last night?' Mrs Lathom asked. ‘When I heard that engine stop outside, I thought they were coming to tell me bad news. It took me hours to get off again.'

After several minutes, during which time everyone at the table applied themselves to the golden pastry and the sweet, luscious filling, Granddad said, ‘Aye, you might have heard us, Nellie. Train was late. We got held up.
Troop trains. All of 'em full. This young soldier, as was getting on one of them trains, he stops us and asked us to post a letter. I think it's to his girl. He gave Ruby the money for the stamp to post it for him. Have you still got that letter, Ruby?'

‘Oh, that's romantic,' Sadie said. ‘Where is it now?'

‘It's in my music case,' Ruby said. ‘Can we go and post it, Granddad?'

‘No letter from my lad,' Nellie said. ‘Sadie's as upset as I am. Only news we've had was a note to say he was fine and a photo of him in tropical kit. It was a sign. He was letting us know they was sending him to the tropics. No wonder I'm suffering, and that dog's pining.'

‘I could tell Ruby where the postbox is,' Sadie said. ‘She could take Bess with her. Bet you'd like that, Ruby?'

‘Our Bess wouldn't go with a stranger,' Nellie said, eyeing Ruby's unruly plaits and grubby blouse.

‘Bess is friendly enough and she's a quiet dog. Let her try,' Sadie said. ‘I'm working. It's dark now, when I get home. Jack wouldn't have thought of that when he asked me to take her out. Tea?' she asked, looking around the table. ‘You stay there, Ma, I'll get it.'

‘Well that's true,' Nellie Lathom said. ‘I don't suppose my boy would have left me, if he'd known that I would have been on my own and having to cope with that dog all this time.'

‘Well that's settled, then,' Granddad said. ‘Ruby can go back with you and take Bess out. You go the way we walked last night, Ruby. Bess will take you. She's walked that way hundreds of times, and there's a stamp machine outside the post office. So you can post that letter.'

When Sadie returned with the teapot, the talk was of the war and the comings and goings of the American troops stationed nearby. Mrs Lathom, who was the kind of person who quickly lost interest in any topic when she was not a central participant, decided it was time to leave.

‘Here's my rations,' she said, opening her bag and placing a twist of tea and one of sugar on the table. ‘I haven't much. They don't consider those of us who have our loved ones fighting, but I'll pay my way. Now, if this child's going to take the dog out, she'd best come with me. Then I could pop back and show Sadie that new pattern I've got for socks.'

Ruby collected the soldier's letter from her room and followed Mrs Lathom to her front door. Bess was a black spaniel with intelligent eyes who, leaving her mistress without a backward glance, led the way to the main road. Once there, she turned in the direction that Ruby had walked with her granddad the night before.

In the daylight, the shops and the church hall looked smaller, and the pub that had been so warm and welcoming in the blackout was closed. Everything was still. As they climbed the railway bridges, Ruby could see a row of poplar trees in the distance, and behind them, way out to the west, the banks of cloud building, bubbling up over the Irish Sea. On the other side of the bridges, there was a second pub and another row of blacked-out shops, including a post office with a stamp machine and a postbox. She took the letter addressed to Miss Maggie Joy Blunt out of her pocket, added the stamps and dropped it in the box.

As they wandered on, Ruby imagined Maggie Joy coming down the stairs and finding the letter on the mat.
She could picture the wedding and herself as guest of honour, dressed in lilac organdie, throwing orange blossom over the happy bride and groom.

Bess trotted by the Co-op and another pub with a war memorial outside. Then, with her tail wagging, she turned on to a recreation ground. A boy of about seven was kicking a football, and an older girl, in a dark coat and brightly coloured pixie hood, pushed a smaller boy on a wooden swing horse. Bess barked, and the children looked up.

‘Is that Jack Lathom's dog?' the girl asked. ‘What you doing with it?'

‘I'm taking her out for Mrs Lathom,' Ruby said, as Bess dragged her over to the swing. ‘She lives near my granddad.'

‘Have you been evacuated?' the girl asked.

‘No. I've come to stay with my granddad for a bit, but I usually live with my auntie.'

‘Where's your mum and dad?' the older boy asked.

‘Shut up, our Jimmy,' the girl said, ‘that's rude.'

‘My mum died in an accident,' Ruby said, bending down to stroke the dog.

‘Throw her a stick,' the boy said. ‘Jack used to.'

‘I've not to let her off the lead.'

‘Was she hit by a bomb?' the girl asked, climbing on to the swing with the smaller child and adjusting his grey balaclava.

‘No. It was an accident in the blackout. She was hit by a taxi.'

‘We saw a bomber,' Jimmy said, pointing over the rows of terraced houses. ‘He come swooping over here. Right
over the rec. You could see the Jerry pilot inside. He comes right over here and then he turned and headed over to the railway lines and the factory. Then there was this bang, and he'd killed some folk on Ward Street. Twenty-five. One kid was killed on his way to buy some toffees.'

Contemplating this particularly cruel injustice, the children gazed silently over the rooftops.

‘Are you coming to our school?' the girl asked. ‘It's over there by the church.'

‘I don't know,' Ruby said. ‘I only got here last night, and I'm fifteen, but I sometimes helped with the little ones at my school.'

‘You can have a swing,' the girl said, lifting her little brother off the swing horse. ‘You could put Bess on your knee. She'd like that.'

The children took turns to hold the dog on the swing, and Bess, who appeared to be enjoying the novel experience, smiled broadly.

‘Have you ever tasted ice-cream cake?' Jimmy asked, sticking out his bright-red knees to take Bess's weight. ‘We have. The Yanks give us a party, 'cos our dad's in the war. They come and collected us in trucks and took us to the base. We're going again at Christmas. We're all getting a present from Father Christmas. He's coming there to see us. He's an American. I bet you didn't know that.'

The girls grinned at each other over the younger child's head, and Ruby was about to ask the girl her name, when she jumped off the swing and picked up the smaller boy.

‘We'll have to go,' she said. ‘Jack sometimes took Bess down by the churchyard, and then up the road. If you keep on going, you'll come to a crossroads. Turn right, go up to
the next crossroads and turn right again. Then go up that road, until you come to the river. You'll be able to see the Lathom's cottage from there.'

As she watched the children go, Ruby pushed her cold fingers deep in her pockets and felt the raw wind on her cheeks. The rec was deserted, except for the hens clucking in their run on the other side of the field. She turned and headed back to the road. On one side, there was a newsagent and a butcher, and on the opposite side, there was a row of terraced houses with a clog shop at one end and a chemist shop at the other. As the main road spooled out into the distance, she could see more shops, a petrol pump and at the edge of the village, rows of privet hedges and larger houses.

Bess trotted by the blacked-out shops, until they were almost opposite the turning between the chemist shop and a white pub. There was no traffic on the road, and all the house doors were shut tight against the cold, grey afternoon. Ruby walked along, until she could see up the road the girl had pointed out. There were two larger terraced houses facing the crossroads. In one, the curtains had been drawn right back. A lady with a pale face sat in the window, and as they walked by, she raised her frail hand and waved.

Bess crossed the main road and walked purposefully by a small whitewashed chip shop that was squashed in between the pub's yard and a row of terraced houses. At the end of the row of houses, she trotted by the church and into a small wood at the back of the churchyard the girl had mentioned. Once inside the wood, she put her head down and snuffled through the deep, dry leaves, drawing
Ruby further into the shelter of the little copse. It was clear that this part of the walk was going to take some time, and Ruby found a seat on a bare oak branch low enough for her feet to touch the ground. As the dog rummaged around her, a thick warm smell of autumn rose up from the earth. Bess's tail went on busily wagging until she found a stick. Then sitting down with her discovery in her mouth, she looked quizzically at Ruby. When she didn't move, the dog dropped it at her feet and leant her silky warmth against Ruby's knees.

It was the gentle friendliness, as though they had always been pals, that brought the tears. Ruby rested her cheek on the dog's bony head and rubbed her gauzy soft ears. For a while, inside the green house of rhododendrons and laurels, Bess allowed herself to be hugged, kindly licking each tear as it dripped from Ruby's chin, before tactfully placing the stick on her lap.

‘All right,' she said, wiping her eyes on the sleeve of her mac, ‘you show me where, and don't run off, or we'll never get to come again.'

Bess led the way through the copse and on to a field at the back of the church. When Ruby slipped off her lead, the dog did two excited circuits of the uncut grass before returning to wait expectantly by her stick. Ruby had little experience of dogs – they were not permitted at Everdeane – but she'd watched as people walked their pets on the sands, and threw the stick as far as she could across the field. When the dog returned and she took hold of the stick again, there was a great deal of growling and wrestling. Then Bess dropped it but continued to guard her prize, growling softly when Ruby tried to pick it up. Eventually, to indicate
the first part of the game could begin again, she suddenly sat down and looked up hopefully at Ruby, who threw the stick once more. They played happily, until the long, wet grass soaked into Ruby's socks and made her shiver. The pale-grey sky was growing darker, and the next time the dog raced back with her prize, Ruby clipped the lead back on to her collar.

The road from the church to the crossroads was edged with an orderly border of semi-detached houses, daintily curved street lamps and a number of short avenues, each with its own identical row of dwellings in the same red-brick and pebble-dash.

At the first avenue, a woman with a smart new pram turned the corner, and a railwayman who was peddling by on a heavy, black bike waved to her.

‘How's babby, Mrs Smith?' he shouted, as his bike squeaked by.

‘Oh, she's grand now, thanks,' the woman said. ‘Her chest's much better.'

The woman smiled at Ruby and bent down to pat Bess. She wore a fitted brown coat and a round crocheted cap embroidered with a daisy chain on the crown of her light brown hair.

‘Look, Kathleen, a doggy,' she said.

A beautiful, dark-eyed baby looked around the pram's hood, pointed a pink-mittened hand at Bess and made a gurgling sound.

‘Doggy,' the woman said, beaming with pride. ‘That's right, love, it's a doggy. She's just started talking,' she said to Ruby. ‘It's the first time she's been out in three weeks. She's been really poorly.'

At the crossroads, Bess turned by a decrepit wooden garage with a charabanc parked beside it and headed towards a railway bridge. The land around was flat, with little to break up the long hedges, except for a couple of stands of trees, a few scattered cottages and a large house partly hidden by trees. The nameplate on the gate read: Doctor H. Grey MD. The house looked older than the smaller ones along the main road and had high windows and a handsome porch built of pale stone.

In between investigations, the dog kept up a steady pace, and Ruby found that if she shifted the lead from hand to hand, holding it in one and keeping the other in her pocket, she could manage to stay quite warm.

When they reached the river and were in sight of the cottages again, Ruby dawdled. She picked up a leaf and dropped it from the stone bridge into the shallows, imagining it riding the rippling water, until it met a much larger river travelling west. After a while, Bess became restless and they wandered to the end of the lane. For a moment, before she turned the corner, when her view of the cottages was still partly obscured by the trees and hedgerows, Ruby's heart lifted. It was a familiar sensation: after her mother had died, each time she'd arrived back from school or from an errand, and sometimes just before turning on to the prom, she would suddenly feel sure that her father would be at Everdeane waiting for her. Yesterday, when she'd heard Granddad's voice, she'd felt the same involuntary optimism. It was a delusion that reason and experience couldn't crush, and now it had followed her to Granddad's cottage. Ruby quickened her pace, expecting some sort of sign that he'd arrived at the cottage to collect
her. At the gate she hesitated, gazing at the blank windows, hoping to see some hint that her father was already there. Hiding Bess's beloved stick under a bush, she ran up the path and pushed open the door.

Mrs Lathom was nodding by the open fire, a half-knitted sock for a deserving soldier unfinished on her lap, and Granddad was reading the newspaper. He looked up and smiled.