Ruby's War (8 page)

When Jenny opened the front door half an hour later, she looked flushed and pleased with herself. Then she saw Bess sitting by the glowing fire and the edges of her red mouth fell. Ruby poured the water into the waiting teapot and explained about the letter.

At the news of Jack's imprisonment, Jenny crumpled on to a chair, and Bess slithered under the table.

‘Such a nice steady lad,' Jenny said. ‘Such good prospects, his uncle having the garage and coach business.'

When Jenny had finished her tea, she lit a cigarette and pulled a bottle of brandy from the dresser.

‘You're sitting here and that water's going cold,' she said. ‘You've got the rest of our stuff to do yet. Then you'd best start tea. I'm going to see how Nellie is. There's potatoes in the pantry. Do enough for three. Our Sadie's at work. Then pull some carrots, and there's cold ham in the meat safe. Slice it thin, mind.'

At the end of their first day in the new camp, Bo suggested that they take the landlord of the Railway up on his offer of a free pint.

‘Do you think this landlord is for real?' Wes asked, as he and Con followed Bo and Holt to the bus stop.

Con shrugged. ‘Well, he sounded friendly. In fact, the whole lot of them looked real glad to see us.'

He peered into the gloom. Bo and Holt were barely visible. The only things he could see clearly were the white markings that edged the sidewalk, and he wished the other guys would slow down.

There was a crowd of men waiting at the bus stop. Their cigarettes bobbed as they spoke. He found the accent unfamiliar and had to listen carefully.

‘Where you off to, lads?' one of them called.

When Wes explained that they were going for a drink, there was laughter.

‘Lucky buggers,' a voice said. ‘We're on our way to a twelve-hour shift. That's if the bloody bus ever comes.'

In the light from their torches, the men shuffled and chatted. Under their flat caps their faces looked gaunt and they smelt strongly of a chemical; an acid, he thought.

‘Aye, twelve hours filling bombs to drop on Adolf,' another one said. ‘Look out, here's the bus.'

The men clattered up the stairs. Con climbed on board and hesitated on the footplate. He wasn't sure if he should follow the men in their long, greasy macs up the stairs, or if he was supposed to go downstairs. The inside of the bus was almost dark, lit only by an eerie blue glow. The white people in the seats nearest the door gazed at him.

‘Here, come and sit down, love,' a large woman on the side bench seat called. ‘There's room for all of you, if I move this basket.'

‘Thank you kindly, ma'am,' he muttered, and sat down next to the woman.

‘Can I hold your basket for you, ma'am?' Bo asked, taking the seat next to Con.

‘Oh, no thanks,' the woman said. ‘It's not heavy. I've been taking some things for my daughter. She's in hospital.'

The windows of the bus had been taped over, and Con was beginning to wonder how they would know when they'd arrived at the pub, when the conductress came down from the top deck.

‘Where you off to, lads?' she asked.

‘We'd like to go to the pub called the Railway Inn, please, miss,' Bo said.

‘You off for a drink?' she asked. ‘That's thrupp'nce each, lads, please.'

Each man fumbled in the darkness with the unfamiliar money. The girl shone her torch on their hands, taking three large brown coins out from each soldier. As she picked through the coins in his cupped palms, Con noticed that her red fingernails were chipped and her hands were grubby. It was hard to see her face, but he could make out a cap perched on top of a mass of dark hair. In the half-light her curls took on a strange bluish tinge. As the girl was punching out their tickets, the bus swayed and she grabbed the rail.

‘Nearly had me on your knee there,' she laughed. ‘I'll give you a shout when we get to the Railway.'

‘Here, never mind him,' an old man on a nearby seat shouted. ‘Come and sit on my knee.'

‘You're not as good-looking, Walter,' the woman with the basket said, and Con could hear the girl chuckle and the other passengers' good-natured laughter around him in the darkness.

‘Here we are,' the conductress shouted, from the middle of the bus. ‘The next one's yours.'

As the dark shape moved off, they heard the hissing and clanking from the railway siding.

‘I guess it must be over here,' Holt said. ‘I saw the sidings just before the landlord shouted.'

‘That's right,' Bo said, ‘they were blowing their hooters.'

Con followed the sound of his friends' voices. These people with their shabby clothes and funny accents might stare, but he thought they meant to be friendly. He'd found them hard to understand, but the white men at the bus stop and the conductress called them all ‘lads' not ‘boys' and there was warmth in their tone, not contempt.

‘Do you reckon anybody can sit where they want here?' Wes asked, as they reached the pub door.

By the time Granddad arrived home from work, Ruby had washed all the clothes and put them on the line. Jenny didn't come home for tea, so she and Granddad ate alone and listened to the news on the radio. When she'd cleared away the pots, Granddad spread his newspaper out on the table and settled down to read before he went on fire-watching duty at the church.

‘Looks like our lads have given Jerry a beating again,' he called to her in the kitchen. ‘That's the idea. If we keep hitting their factories like this, it's bound to hurt production. It says it were a main centre for their engineering that was hit. Made parts for aircraft, warships, heavy guns, all sorts.'

Ruby put the food she'd made for him on the table. It wasn't much, but by stretching out two thin slices of ham and some onion she'd managed to fill the sandwiches for
his breakfast, together with a couple of twists of tea and sugar so that he could make a warm drink in the chilly sacristy.

‘It's me and Johnny on at the church tonight,' he said, taking his coat from its hook near the door and squashing the carefully made sandwiches into the pocket. ‘It's not too bad. You can usually get your head down. Only trouble is, Johnny snores. Sounds like an old engine. The other night, I was well away. He wakened me up. Reckoned he could see a ghost. Turned out, it was the reflection from the sanctuary light. It reflects on the wooden panels at the back of the altar, see. Johnny swore it was moving. I said I'd meet him at the Railway for one first. You'll be all right on your own here, love? I don't know how long Jenny will be across the way, and Sadie's working until late. Then she'll probably go to Lou's. She's going to be upset, no doubt.'

‘Can Bess stay here?' she asked.

‘I suppose so, but watch she doesn't upset Monty if you take her outside. I don't want him upset. Or the hens. They can be put off laying, see.'

When Granddad had gone, she took Bess into the yard. She couldn't hear any sounds from the cottages down the lane, and she thought that Mrs Lathom would be exhausted after so much sobbing and Jenny might be helping her to bed.

When her mother died Ruby didn't cry. She'd had the odd feeling that she was floating above everything, looking down on herself. She didn't cry when Auntie Ethel moved her out of the room she'd shared with her mother and into the box room, or when Ethel had thrown all her mother's
stage make-up away. She didn't cry at the funeral, when her mother's friends from the theatre hugged her and left her face sticky with lipstick kisses. Then weeks later her teacher had read her class a story called
Black Beauty,
about a horse that was treated cruelly. When they read about the horse's death quite a lot of girls cried, but Ruby couldn't stop. In the end, the teacher took her into the office, and the caretaker made her a cup of tea.

Ruby tried to imagine what Jack was like. She wondered if he was handsome. She'd thought the soldier on Preston station was quite handsome and imagined Maggie Joy sitting in her sunny bedroom stroking the creased envelope. She wondered if she should have written on the back to explain to Maggie Joy how her soldier boyfriend had given her the letter at the railway station.

Ruby could hear Bess snuffling in the garden and followed her. On the other side of the lane, she could see the dark outline of Bardley's farm and the illegal slivers of light leaking through the gaps in the milking parlour's wooden door. The sky was clear. It was a night that would be good for the bombers. Then the hens in the shed began clucking, and she called softly for Bess and went back inside.

Bo pushed open the pub door and the others followed. The air was warm and smelt of beer and cigarettes. When his customers fell silent, the portly landlord, who was reading a newspaper on the bar, looked up and reached for one of the glass tankards hanging above his head.

‘Now, lads,' he said with a smile, ‘the first pints are on me.'

On the other side of the bar, a row of men in overalls
and railway workers' uniforms stared over at them, as the landlord took down five glass tankards hanging above his head and pumped each one full of pale golden beer. For a moment, the five pint glasses stood on the bar. Then the landlord handed one to each of them, before taking the final one for himself.

‘Your good health, sir,' Bo said raising his glass to the landlord.

‘And yours too, son,' replied the landlord.

The beer was the colour of honey but tasted bitter. Con found the sensation of warm beer in his mouth unpleasant. He tried to avoid meeting the eyes of the silent men on the opposite side of the bar and forced the bitter liquid down. Bo was the first one to put his pint glass back on the bar, and with relief, Con did the same.

‘That's a mighty nice drink, sir,' Bo said, wiping a line of white froth from his pencil-slim moustache.

‘Aye, we like to think so,' replied the landlord. ‘Cheers.'

‘Aye, cheers,' called the men on the opposite side of the bar, suddenly nodding and smiling as Con put the glass to his lips again.

The room on their side of the bar was in semi-darkness, lit only by the wall lights and the blazing coal fire. An elderly couple with sunken faces sat at one side of the fire, and on the other side of the hearth, a British soldier and a plump light-haired girl whispered together. The only other customer was a lone man in a raincoat, sitting under one of the wall lights reading a newspaper. By contrast, the opposite side of the bar was full of customers. They were, Con noticed, all men. Some sat at the bar, others at tables playing cards and three more, a fat clergyman and two
men in caps and mufflers, threw arrows at a bullseye on the wall.

‘You ever played darts, son?' an elderly man at his elbow asked.

Con smiled shyly. ‘No, sir,' he said.

‘Well, don't get Henry to show you how,' the landlord laughed. ‘He can't play for toffee.'

The old man, who wore a porter's cap set at a jaunty angle, pulled a face, and the men on the opposite side of the bar chuckled.

‘You settled in at the new camp?' he asked, as the landlord refilled his glass.

Remembering the humiliation of the night before, Con looked down at his feet, unsure what to say.

‘I was in the last lot. Me and Johnny Fin, here,' the old man said, nodding in the direction of another old man who'd just walked in the bar.

The second man smiled and extended a large hand. When Con took it, the man's face suddenly contorted in a series of twitches, as though he'd been electrocuted.

‘N-n-nice t-to m-m-meet you,' he stuttered.

‘Here you are, Johnny,' the man in the porter's hat said, handing his friend a pint.

To Con's surprise, when he was handed the drink, the man's twitches stopped and he walked steadily over to the piano.

‘I'm Henry,' the old man said, shaking each of their hands in turn, ‘Henry Barton.'

‘My father was there, as well,' Con said. ‘In France. He came out of it okay, but his friend was shot. Sniper.'

‘It was the gas that got me,' Henry said. ‘Johnny, there,
carried me for miles on his back. Wouldn't be here, if it wasn't for him. Any of you lads play?' he asked, nodding over to the piano.

‘Wes does,' Con said. ‘Come on, Wes, when's the last chance you got to play?'

‘Move over, Johnny,' Henry shouted. ‘Let's see what this lad can do.'

The landlord leant over the bar and grinned at the three other soldiers.

‘If the rest of you lads are interested,' he said, nodding over to the fat priest who was grinning at them from the other side of the bar, ‘Father O'Flynn wants to know if you'd like to learn how to play darts. You'll be all right with him,' he said, winking at them. ‘He's had some of the Yanks playing like champions in no time.'

‘Except that Hal and his mate,' one of the old men wearing mufflers called, as Bo and Holt made their way through to the other side of the bar, and Con followed Wes over to the piano. ‘They couldn't play for toffee.'

‘You play as well, son?' Henry asked Con.

‘Me? No sir, I don't.'

‘He can sing, though,' Wes said with a wink.

‘Only in church, and my grandma said I make a bullfrog sound tuneful.'

As Wes played and Johnny sang, Henry told Con about the time he and his old friend Johnny had spent as soldiers.

‘The last lot did for poor Johnny's career,' he said, accepting the pint of beer Con brought him from the bar. ‘As a young man he was the prizefighter “Gentleman” Johnny Finlay. You might have heard of him. Fought all over the world.'

‘Is the … twitch … from the war?'

‘Oh no, that's the boxing. Punch-drunk,' Henry said, pointing to his own head. ‘Odd thing is, you'll notice when it gets busy, he waits on tables and collects glasses. Lives over the shop, so to speak, and helps out around the place. When he carries a tray of drinks, or piles of empties, he's as steady as a rock, but the rest of the time … Doesn't seem to bother him when he's playing, neither. No. He reckoned he'd seen so much killing in the war, he never fancied the fight game after. Mind you, by then he was too old, anyway.'