Ruby's War (7 page)

Once the children had filed out, the teacher took her seat, picked up a smart fountain pen, peered at them over her half-moon glasses and asked for Ruby's age and full name.

‘Her mother's dead, you see,' Jenny explained. ‘So she's come to stop with me and my … husband for a while. He's her grandfather. Nothing's settled, you see.'

Jenny's lie made Ruby's cheeks begin to tingle and she stared at the parquet floor. In the next-door classroom, chairs scraped and feet scuffled. Then the door in the wooden partition separating the two classrooms opened. A small boy wearing wellingtons and an oversized jacket came in, carrying an unsteady pile of exercise books. As the door closed behind him, the thin partition shuddered.

Miss Conway winced. ‘Quietly please, Edmund,' she said.

For a moment the small boy froze. Then, realising there 
was no escape, he moved gingerly forwards – wellingtons squeaking – towards the front desk, where he dropped his burden and fled.

From the shelf behind her desk, Miss Conway selected a book –
Lives of the Saints
– and chose two pages for Ruby to read aloud. They were about the life of Saint Catherine. Then she asked her to take two shillings and sixpence from a pound.

‘She seems to have been quite adequately trained,' she said, gazing at the piles of inky books on her desk. ‘If she's fifteen, she is able to start work.'

Ruby looked up at the tall windows and listened to the sound of the children in the playground. She wondered if the girl from the swings and the pretty girl with the dark curls were out there, or if they spent their dinnertime helping with the younger children, as she and Mavis used to do.

Miss Conway got down from her desk and motioned for them to follow her to the door.

‘We have over fifty pupils in each class and very few books or paper,' she said. ‘Since she is a Catholic, I suggest she could join us each morning for prayers and catechism, but I'm afraid I can't offer her a place. If she were a younger child, possibly.'

Miss Conway left them in the little hallway. Ruby followed Jenny back across the playground. This time Jenny didn't take her arm. Instead, her tiny feet hurried on ahead towards the village. Ruby followed, past the recreation ground, the war memorial and the Co-op. When they reached the Railway Inn, Jenny's pace slowed.

‘I'll have to have a little drop of something for my
nerves,' she said, dabbing her face with her hankie.

But when she discovered Granddad and Johnny Fin sitting side by side in the vault, Jenny's nerves were shaken even more.

‘Next time you want your dirty work doing,' she shouted across the bar, ‘you do it yourself. You should have seen how that old bugger looked me up and down, and then she said she'd had enough schoolin', so there's no place for her.'

Bert Lyons, the landlord, smiled and gave Ruby a wink. ‘Well, if the little lass is so clever,' he said, handing Jenny a port and lemon, ‘perhaps they should have given her a job helping out in the school.'

‘Sounds like they could do with the help,' Vera, his wife, said, pouring herself a drink and offering Jenny a cigarette. ‘From what I've heard, there's only three lady teachers for the whole lot of them. And they've had to come out of retirement because of the war.'

Granddad looked across hopefully from the vault, but Jenny ignored the remarks and went to sit by the fire.

‘Well, she's certainly a likely lass,' Johnny Fin said, following Jenny into the best room and setting a tray of drinks on the table.

‘You didn't see this woman,' Jenny said, finishing her first glass of port and accepting a second one from the tray. ‘Send her every day for prayers, but she'll not be able to stay.' Jenny shook her head and took a sip from the second glass.

Johnny Fin lifted his half glass of beer to his lips. Then, placing the glass delicately on the table, he suddenly twitched violently, and Jenny had to grab the table to save the drinks from spilling.

‘Send her every day?' Jenny said again, ignoring the twitches. ‘I told the old bitch what she could do with her prayers and her schoolin'. I gave her a right mouthful, I can tell you.'

For a moment Johnny's whole frame became rigid and he made a short sobbing sound through his nose. Then his body relaxed again. He lifted his glass of beer to his lips and smiled across the room at Ruby.

‘Here,' he said, taking a glass of pink liquid from the tray. ‘Come and sit over here, love. Try this. Bet you'll not have tasted anything like it.'

Ruby took a sip and felt the syrup-sweet liquid pop and fizz in her mouth. It tasted of tinned cherries, followed by a sudden hint of bitterness.

‘It's cherryade,' Johnny said. ‘It's what the children drink in America. They put ice cream in it. I bet that tastes nice.'

In the dark pub lounge, the pink liquid was glossy. Ruby didn't want to drink it all at once. She looked into the glass and watched it sparkle, as the little bubbles chased each other up the side. Then with every sip, with each delicious eruption on her tongue, she tried to imagine the wonder of ice cream and cherryade.

‘Come on,' Johnny Fin said, nodding toward the upright piano in the corner. ‘Your grandpa says you've got your dad's musical talents. Have you got a lot of music in that case of yours? Shame you've not brought it. Let's see if I can find something for us to play.'

‘The music in the case is mostly the arrangements for my mum's songs. I used to play for her, and I can pick up tunes from the radio.'

They sat side by side on the stool. Ruby played the songs that were her mother's favourites and Johnny joined in. She was surprised by his capable playing and by his rich tenor voice. As Johnny's gnarled fingers followed her lead on the keyboard, the teacher's meanness, her disappointment that the girl from the recreation ground had a friend and her fear at Jenny's anger all began to dissolve. It was, Ruby decided, a funny school, if the kids were still learning catechism at their age; she could say hers from beginning to end.

‘You fancy a bit of dinner, love?' the landlord asked, waddling over to the piano to bring Johnny another half-pint of beer. ‘There's quite a bit of stuff left from that do last night. You fancy a nice bit of ham, Johnny?'

‘Have you been listening to this?' Johnny asked. ‘Lovely touch. She's a natural, if ever I heard one. I bet that teacher never got as far as hearing you play. Bert'll give you a job in here.'

Bert Lyons shook his head. ‘She's too young,' he said, and went over to lock the front door and switch the lights off. ‘Vera wouldn't have it, and a pub's not the place for a kiddie.'

As she and Johnny were playing, Ruby noticed that her granddad was still in the vault. From time to time, she saw him look out over the top of the bar, as though he were peering from a trench. It wasn't until Vera had handed round plates of leftover ham and slices of bread, that he slipped cautiously into the best room. The sight of the food had helped Jenny's temper, and soon she and Granddad were sitting together, drinking and laughing, with the landlord and his wife. As the afternoon wore on,
Granddad came over to the piano, his railwayman's cap tipped on the back of his head, and took out his mouth organ. Johnny Fin got out his spoons, and they played the songs from their days in the trenches. They were all singing ‘It's a Long Way to Tipperary' when there was a deep rumbling sound and the bottles on the shelves behind the bar began to shake.

‘It's an air raid,' Jenny wailed.

‘No,' Bert said, sliding back the bolts on the front door, ‘it's on the street outside.'

Through the top half of the frosted-glass window, Ruby could see trucks rolling slowly over the railway bridge and snaking back into the distance as far as she could see.

‘It's the Yanks,' Johnny shouted. ‘Another lot of Yanks have arrived.'

On the road outside, the head of the convoy was forced to a halt by a group of women who had left the queue outside the butcher's and were now hugging the two American officers in the back of the leading jeep.

‘Take it easy now, ladies,' protested the sergeant, who was trying to drive the vehicle.

On both sides of the street, people were coming out of their houses cheering and waving. In the shunting yards the engines' hooters were sounded in welcome. Men reached up to shake the hands of the soldiers on the trucks, and the women kissed the ones they could reach. Mr Benson, the ARP warden, cycled along the pavement waving a Union Jack, and groups of small boys ran alongside the slow-moving trucks shouting, ‘Give us some gum, chum.'

The little group in front of the pub stared up at the faces of the black soldiers in the trucks.

‘All right, lads,' Granddad shouted. ‘Nice to see you. You come to help us knock Jerry's block off?'

‘Call in anytime,' Bert shouted, pointing at the sign over his pub. ‘The name's Bert Lyons. I'm landlord here, and the first drinks are on me.'

‘What are you sayin', Bert Lyons?' Vera hissed. ‘Hal said—'

‘Aye, he said a lot of things. Do they look like they can't sit down to you? They're customers like any others and there's nothing wrong with a full pub, whatever colour the folk are.'

Con Hartley gazed out from the cab of the lorry at the fat, red-faced man outside the pub.

‘What's he say?' he asked Wes, the driver.

‘He wants us to call at his pub for a drink. He says the first one's on him.'

Con grinned and shook his head. ‘You'd think we'd won this war already,' he said.

A couple of days earlier when their ship had docked, Con hadn't been sure what to expect. The only things he knew about England came from the cinema. In his hometown of Detroit the newsreels had shown bomb sites, people walking to work with rolled umbrellas and shops with signs outside that read: ‘Business as usual'. On the ship coming over, they'd shown them English films about men in uniform who'd talked about ‘the Hun' and smoked pipes, and women in floaty dresses who drank tea from tiny cups in gardens full of roses. The destruction caused by the enemy bombing of Liverpool was the first he'd seen. But it wasn't the devastation that had surprised him so much
as the shabbily dressed white people lining the streets, the rows of cramped houses and the hundreds of grubby kids begging for chocolate and gum. He picked up some more gum and threw it out for the children.

‘Thanks, mister,' a small boy shouted.

Con waved, pulled up his collar and shivered. The countryside was green and pretty, but it was also damp and cold. It had been a long day. They'd heard that the camp they were heading for was new and had been built especially for them. He rolled his head and stretched the muscles in his neck. He was ready for a shower, some hot food and then a good sleep between soft blankets in a warm, dry hut.

Once the convoy had left the village they made better progress. The light was fading, and the deepening twilight drained the colour from the surrounding farmland. Behind a stand of slender trees, Con could see the grey sky slashed with bitter orange. By the time the trucks reached a second village it was almost dark and the streets were empty. A line of Military Police in jeeps directed the Quartermaster Truck Company off the main road and into the camp. The convoy drew up in front of a US flag hanging disconsolately from a pole, and the men on the trucks gazed around in silence at the motley assortment of broken-down huts.

Once inside their hut, Con could feel his buddies' resentment crackle between the patched, water-stained walls. No one spoke as they unpacked their gear; they all knew that white soldiers would not have been housed in such a shabby collection of buildings. Con lay down on
his bed. Wes was the only one of them that he knew well. He looked over, but Wes had his back to him. Wes was the nearest to him in age, and the only one who knew that he'd lied about his own age and enlisted using doctored papers. That was only a few months ago, but it could have been a lifetime away.

Con rolled on to his side and curled up, putting his arm under his head to shield his nose from the reek of mildewed bedding. As a child, he'd been protected from racism. In his school there was a mix, black and white. The white kids were the children of the Jews, Syrians and Armenians who owned shops in Paradise Valley. Segregation was there. He knew about it; his grandma was from the South. But it didn't touch his life, until he joined the army. In the US Army it wasn't possible to ignore it. Where Con slept, where he ate, where he could go for recreation, were all regulated by his colour.

He looked around the hut. On the ship over, he'd watched each of the guys deal with the humiliation in his own way. Bo Little, who was the eldest in their group, burned with a barely suppressed fury. He'd got a reputation for his quick temper, and Con had learnt to stay away from him when he was angry. Michael Holt, Bo's closest buddy, shared his feelings, but Holt's anger burned more slowly. Holt read a lot, he knew how to argue his corner, but he stayed out of the way of any trouble. The other guys were from the South and had plenty of practice hiding their resentment, but from their tight shoulder muscles and the way they avoided looking each other in the eye, Con knew they felt this slight as deeply as the other men.

He looked out of the ill-fitting window. The cloud had come in low and was covering the stars. When he was unhappy and couldn't sleep, Con recalled the poems his grandma had taught him when he was a small boy. He closed his eyes and drifted away to the gentle rhythm of her voice reciting one of her favourite bits of Shakespeare.

That night Ruby lay in bed and wondered if Jenny might make Granddad send her back to Everdeane. For a moment, just before she fell asleep, she began to believe that it might happen and that Auntie Ethel would have no option but to agree. Ruby smiled, imagining walking down the prom to meet Mavis from school, but then Auntie Ethel's face with its thin mouth floated into her mind.

‘It's as likely as a seagull singing “Roll out the Barrel”,' she told the empty room.

Next morning Grandma Jenny looked very pale. She was standing by the cooker with a red headscarf over her hair. Underneath it, Ruby could see the row of steel clips holding the curls flat against her forehead. Jenny lit a cigarette. The outline of the lipstick she'd worn yesterday was still around her mouth. After inhaling a couple of times, she coughed and spat into the sink.

As quietly as she could, Ruby took the plates from the kitchenette, set the table in the living room and poked the fire. Then she took the padded lids off the brass boxes on the corners of the fender. One contained old newspapers and the other had thin sticks inside for kindling. She blew on the ashes and fed the still-live coals with thin scraps of wood and knots of paper. Once the flames strengthened, she
carefully built a pyramid from the precious nuggets of coal. When she heard Granddad's clogs on the stairs, she picked up the kettle from the hearth and took it into the kitchen.

Granddad was leaning against the meat safe. The buttons on his vest were open, and under the frost of white hairs, his mottled chest shuddered.

‘Give him a minute, love,' Jenny said, taking the kettle from her. ‘He'll be better when he's had a drink. You take the bread through and I'll get his medicine.'

Ruby sat by the fire listening to each gasp, willing every breath to be easier than the last. Then Jenny bustled in carrying the teapot.

‘He's going outside,' she said. ‘He'll not be long. Cut him two slices, and one for you.'

About twenty minutes later Granddad came into the living room dressed in his railwayman's waistcoat. His breathing was back to normal, but he moved unsteadily, as though he'd been walking all night. After one silent cup of tea, he picked up a slice of bread and smiled.

‘What Jenny says is right, Ruby, love,' he said. ‘There's no point in trailing to school every day, just to read a book.'

‘They're taking on at the mill,' Jenny said, pouring herself another cup of tea. ‘I'm going to see if I can get on. You'll be better off staying here and helping out. Trailing backwards and forward, just for a bit of religion, is a daft idea. You can always read your catechism here.'

‘Helping out here,' Granddad said, doing up the silver buttons on his waistcoat, ‘is better training for a lass than reading that stuff. You'll pick up all sorts from Jenny. How to do the doctor's shirts, and a bit of cooking. What do you say?'

‘I help Auntie at Everdeane,' Ruby said. ‘When I go back I can—'

‘That's settled then,' he said, getting up and reaching for his white muffler. ‘You can start with the doctor's washing.'

Jenny laughed and shook her head. ‘How come things allus work out your way?' she asked.

Granddad put on his railwayman's jacket and cap. ‘There'll be a bit more all round,' he said. ‘There's Ruby's ration book, and if she does the doctor's shirts … I'm off, Ruby, love. Boiler's lit and the water's ready,' he called, as he closed the door.

‘Is your dad as cheeky as him?' Jenny asked, as they watched Granddad tip his cap on to the back of his head and set off down the path whistling.

The washing was done in the small brick scullery off the kitchen. Jenny put the shirts into the tub and began pressing and twisting the handles of the posser, forcing the hot soapy water through the clothes, until it oozed, then squirted and finally poured squelching and glugging through the holes in the round copper plunger. When she was out of breath, she rested on the posser's wooden handle.

‘It's hard work,' she said, wiping the steam from her face. ‘Here, you have a go, until I've washed up. Then we'll see how you got on.'

Ruby took the posser and pushed down.

‘Try not to splash and get it all over yourself,' Jenny said. ‘The water's supposed to stay in the tub.'

When Jenny came back, she took the pair of wooden tongs from their hook on the wall and pulled a couple of shirts out of the tub. Her glasses were quickly covered in
steam and she had to take them off to inspect the shirts.

‘Them's clean enough,' she said. ‘Now, use the tongs to get them out and put 'em in these buckets, and then rinse them in the kitchen sink. Then they come back in here to the mangle. Have you used one before?'

Ruby nodded. ‘I've used Auntie's. Me and Uncle Walt used to do it. I know how to starch as well, and how to do the Dolly Blue.'

‘Once you've got them out of the way, put the next lot in. That's all our stuff, but there's no use wasting hot water. I should be back by then. I've made up the starch, but you say you know how to do it, and how to use Dolly Blue?'

Ruby nodded, and although Jenny had tried to hide it, she knew she was impressed.

‘Your dinner, some cold potatoes and pickled beetroot, is on the kitchenette,' Jenny said, using Granddad's shaving mirror to apply a layer of lipstick to the faded outline sketched around her mouth and pulling the clips from her row of stiff curls. ‘Keep your eye on that fire. I should be back soon.'

As Ruby worked, carrying buckets of clean shirts through to the sink, the smell of warm soapy clothes gradually filled the kitchen. The dripping buckets made a dark path across the floor, from the dolly tub in the scullery to the sink and back again to the mangle.

As she waited for the sink to fill with cold water, Ruby stretched up to look at herself in the shaving mirror hanging above it. Her face looked pink and tendrils of dark-red curls stuck to her cheeks. She didn't look like her mother, who had brown eyes and pale blonde hair. Her dad once told her that she'd got her blue eyes and
red curls from his mother, Lucy, who had died when he was seventeen.

She looked out at the clear sunny morning. Monty was scratching in the yard, and the clattering and hooting from the engine sheds filled the air. The hawthorn hedge along the bottom of the garden sparkled with hoar frost, and the roofs of the houses in the distance glittered. She wondered if her father had stood here looking out of this window, thinking about his mother, and if he'd felt the same dull ache in his chest. She plunged her hands into the icy water, moving the dull ache briefly to her fingers.

By ten o'clock she was dipping the little muslin bag of Dolly Blue into the water, swirling it by its wooden peg and lifting it out again, before cupping her hands, dipping and testing the colour, until the mixture had turned the water blue. As she was sinking the last of the shirts into the sky-blue water, she heard shrieking. Ruby put down the damp shirt and listened. It wasn't the metallic howl of the rails that she'd heard on the bridges. She thought it might be Bess and hurried to the front door.

Across the lane, Mrs Bland and a plump grey-haired postman were holding Mrs Lathom up by the arms. They were standing by her garden gate, and between each deep inhalation, Nellie Lathom threw back her head and wailed. Ruby hurried over to ask if she could help. Each explosive sound only ended when Nellie's teeth slipped down, forcing her to gasp and close her mouth. Ruby thought of a difficult toddler whose tantrum was being controlled by its parents, but then she felt ashamed and looked away. There was a letter on the path. She picked it up.

‘She's had a bit of bad news,' the postman said, as Mrs Lathom gathered her strength again. ‘Her lad's been taken prisoner. Sometimes folk are relieved, you know, missus,' the postman said. ‘They're feared that they've been killed.'

This did not reassure poor Nellie, who groaned and sank to the ground with her head on her breast.

‘Can you walk, my dear?' Mrs Bland asked, pulling the taller woman up. ‘Put your arm around me. That's right. Now, my good man, if you'll assist me to the door of my cottage, we won't delay you further.'

As they struggled to help the distraught woman down the lane to the end cottage, Mrs Bland turned to Ruby. ‘I wonder, my dear,' she said. ‘Could you help? Would you check my neighbour's house? Make sure the fireguard is up and check there's nothing on the stove. Then if you would close the door. I'm going to take my neighbour into my house. She's had rather a shock. So, if you would bring the door key there.'

Inside the neat cottage, Ruby found Bess looking out from under the table. When she bent down to rub her chin, she felt the poor dog tremble.

‘It's all right, Bess,' she said, as the dog sniffed tentatively at her hands. ‘Don't worry. I'll come back for you.'

Mrs Bland's tiny cottage was packed with boxes and trunks. Large pieces of furniture stood in a huddle in the centre of the room. Mrs Bland appeared between two large cupboards and smiled.

‘Thank you, my dear. I thought tincture of valerian would be helpful,' she said, waving a small brown bottle in her hand.

Ruby squeezed between the furniture. Mrs Lathom was
sitting in a chair wrapped in a cream blanket edged with frayed blue satin. A single bed was propped against the wall, and the room was very chilly. Ruby shivered. Her sleeves were wet, and the soapy water on the front of her gymslip had soaked through to her skin.

‘I'm going to make tea,' Mrs Bland said, heading for the kitchen door. ‘I thought we might need smelling salts, but I think she'll be all right. If she does feel faint, dear, put her head between her knees.'

After a few minutes, Mrs Lathom noticed Ruby standing by the chair and began to groan.

‘Oh, poor Sadie. You'll have to tell her my boy's a prisoner of the Japs. Oh, my poor boy. Sadie, where is she? She'll be heartbroken.'

‘She's at work,' Ruby said, hoping that Mrs Bland would come back quickly. ‘There's no one in but me.'

‘Here we are,' Mrs Bland said, carrying a silver tray with a matching silver teapot, milk jug and sugar basin. ‘Hot, sweet tea. Thank you, my dear,' she said. ‘I think we can cope now.'

‘Shall I take Bess?' Ruby asked. ‘She's frightened.'

After some reluctance, Mrs Lathom agreed that she could take the spaniel home with her, and Ruby found it easy to encourage the dog out from under the table.

Once they were back at the cottage, Ruby left Bess sitting on the rug by the fire and went to peg the shirts on the line. When she came back, the dog was still trembling, and Ruby wondered if Bess should have a blanket as well. She built up the fire, putting on the tiniest pieces of coal from the scuttle, and shared out the cold potatoes between them. Bess ate her share greedily,
but when Ruby offered her a small slice of beetroot, the vinegar made her sneeze. She would have liked to listen to Workers' Playtime, but it didn't seem right after such bad news. Instead, she filled the kettle and tried to think …