The House by Princes Park (16 page)

The table was set. A large dish in the middle emitted a thin spiral of smoke through a hole in the lid indicating there was the inevitable stew for tea. Ruby acknowledged Jacob’s presence with a brief nod. ‘Tea’s ready when you’ve had a wash.’

‘Is there water boiled?’

‘I’m not boiling water so you can get tarted up and go drinking in the pub. I’ve told you that before. You can boil your own water.’ She sat down and opened a newspaper she must have found, an action that always particularly irked Jacob. He could hardly read and felt she was showing him up. ‘I’ll have a cup of tea while I wait,’ she said.

‘I’d sooner you boiled the water.’ There was a threat in his voice and she looked at him in surprise.

‘You’d sooner what?’

‘I’d sooner you got off your backside and boiled some bloody water.’ He took a step towards her.

Ruby laughed. ‘This is the first time all day I’ve sat down and I’ve no intention of moving.’

It was the laugh that did it. He wanted her cowed. He was fed up with her being so superior, always on top, him
in the wrong, making him feel like a naughty lad. Jacob raised his hand and slapped her across the face, hard enough to make her cry, beg his forgiveness.

Except it did no such thing. Ruby screamed, jumped to her feet, grabbed the saucepan that had held the stew, and swung it against his head. There was a cracking sound as metal hit bone and Jacob collapsed back on to the bed.

Ruby screamed again and grabbed Greta out of the way. She stood over him, saucepan in one hand and the baby in the other, her cheek as red as a flame. ‘If you ever hit me again, Jacob Veering,’ she said in a grating voice, ‘So help me, I’ll kill you stone dead.’

Jacob didn’t doubt it.

‘I tripped,’ he explained later in the pub. ‘Banged me head against the wall.’

‘Sure it wasn’t your missus that did it,’ joked one of his mates. ‘If so, I hope you gave her what for.’

‘Me missus wouldn’t dare!’ He seethed all night at the unfairness of it all. The feeling grew the drunker he got. Other men got away with knocking their wives about, why not him? But then you couldn’t compare Ruby with normal women. There was something unnatural about her. The harder things got, the greater she thrived, as if life was a battle she was determined to win. Something inside Jacob melted. This extraordinary woman belonged to
him
! A memory surfaced in his sozzled brain, of Ruby, the way she used to poke her head around the cowshed. ‘Hello, Jacob,’ she would say shyly.

She’d loved him then, but not now. He’d spoiled things. Jacob began to feel sorry for himself. As soon as he got home, he’d show Ruby how much he loved her, make everything better.

She was fast asleep, the window open, the curtains drifting to and fro in little puffy waves. His working clothes were
hanging over the sill, though the room still smelled of coal dust. Greta was in her cot at the foot of the bed.

Jacob quickly undressed, trembling with desire not felt since he’d left Brambles. He wanted Ruby as he’d never wanted her before. She’d been little more than a child when they last made love, but now she was a woman, a desirable woman, famous throughout the neighbourhood.

He slid naked into bed, put his arm around her waist, and pulled her towards him.

She woke immediately. ‘What are you doing?’ she said warily, pushing him away.

‘I love you, Ruby,’ he whispered hoarsely. By now, there was a fire in his gut that had to be extinguished or he would go mad. The slippery, struggling, protesting body only added to his passion, egging him on, making the fire get hotter and hotter, until it was scarcely bearable.

‘Jacob!’ she spat. ‘You’re drunk, I can smell it. Let go of me. You’ll wake Greta.’

He didn’t care if he woke the world. The petticoat she slept in tore as he pulled it waist high, dragging her underneath him, positioning himself between the thin legs. He plunged inside her and shuddered with relief. She felt looser than he remembered, but then she’d had a baby since. It did nothing to dampen his enjoyment or inhibit his tumultuous, tumbling climax. He rolled off her, sated, satisfied, ready for sleep.

He never went to the Shaftesbury again, but to a pub where he was a stranger. He felt ashamed of what he’d done and all the things he hadn’t done. They never spoke of the night when he’d taken Ruby against her will. Next morning, there were angry marks on her arms and a bruise on her face where he’d hit her earlier on.

By now, he needed the drink, not just to escape from the frigid atmosphere of Foster Court. In the pub he kept to himself, not wanting to make friends.

His shame increased when, a few months later, Ruby announced she was pregnant, her face accusing. It was his fault. Everything was his fault.

Their second daughter was born the following year, 1937, April again. Ruby called her Heather, after some actress, Heather Angel, who’d been in one of her favourite films of all time,
Berkeley Square
.

Unlike Greta, Heather was an active, boisterous baby, hardly sleeping, always crying, demanding her mother’s breast, scarlet with incomprehensible anger. Ruby, the pawnshop runner, acquired a giant pram, pushing it along the streets of the Dingle, a baby at each end: quiet Greta, sitting up, and Heather, bawling her bad-tempered little head off.

The girl approached him first. Jacob wouldn’t have dreamt of talking to a woman on his own initiative. It was Saturday night, the pub was crowded, a pianist was thumping out tunes he vaguely remembered from the time he’d spent in Brambles listening to the gramophone with Ruby.

‘When they begin, the beguine,’ the clientele roared lustily.

‘You look lonely, luv,’ the girl said, slipping on to the bench beside him. She was neither white nor black, but an attractive pale brown, with dark gingery hair a mass of curls and ringlets.

‘I’m all right, thanks,’ Jacob said stiffly, assuming she was on the game and looking for a customer. If so, she was out of luck. He had ninepence in his pocket, not enough to pay for the cheapest prostitute in all of Liverpool. Which was a shame, because she was very pretty. Her small, pointed breasts showed prominently through her red jumper, and she had smooth, satiny skin. He was a normal, virile man, with a normal man’s desires – desires that went
unfulfilled. He and Ruby slept in the same bed, but he was too scared to touch her.

‘What’s your name, luv?’ the girl enquired.

‘Jake Veering.’

‘I’m Elizabeth Georgeson, but everyone calls me Beth. D’you come from round here?’

‘No, Kirkby.’

‘What are you doing in these parts, Jake?’

Jacob wasn’t sure what he was doing there. Ruby had brought him and he’d meekly followed, but he couldn’t tell the girl that.

‘Lost me job,’ he said, ‘came looking for another.’

‘Did you find one?’

‘I’m a coalman, Edge Hill way.’

‘Me Gran lives in Edge Hill,’ she cried, smiling delightedly. ‘I’ll tell her to look out for you in future. I live in Toxteth meself.’ She worked on the tool counter in Woollies in Lord Street. ‘But I’m hoping to be transferred to cosmetics any minute.’ Her brown, velvety eyes glowed. ‘I can’t wait.’

Her father was Jamaican, her mother Irish, and she had two brothers and three sisters, all living at home. She was eighteen, the same age as Ruby, which Jacob found incredible. Ruby seemed more like twenty-five, thirty, compared to this pretty, carefree girl, whose main ambition in life was to sell lipsticks and scent.

‘You didn’t mind me talking to you, did you, Jake?’ she said later. ‘You
did
look lonely, and I thought it was a shame, someone as nice as you sitting on their own.’ She looked at him shyly. ‘Have you got a girlfriend?’

Jacob swallowed. ‘No,’ he said boldly. He didn’t want to drive her away. It made a change to be flattered. She wasn’t on the game, but in the pub only because it was someone’s birthday from work. She made him feel big, whereas Ruby made him feel small. She was soft, Ruby
was hard. When closing time came, he daringly suggested they meet again next Saturday in the same pub.

She looked disappointed. ‘But that’s a whole week away! Couldn’t we see each other sooner?’

‘I’d like to but...’ Jacob paused, but having told one lie, it was easy to tell another, ‘... I’m a bit short of cash. I send money to me mam in Kirkby every week, see. She’s a widder and I’ve got three brothers, all younger than me. She has a job making ends meet since I left home.’

Beth looked at him emotionally. ‘You’re even nicer than I first thought. Tell you what, we’ll go to the pictures Wednesday, it’ll be my treat.’

From then on, they saw each other twice a week, which quickly became three. His wages rose by one and six a week and he didn’t tell Ruby, but kept the money for himself. When Beth introduced him to her big, strapping father and red-haired mother, they regarded him with a critical eye and apparently liked what they saw. He said he was a Catholic and was welcomed with open arms into their home, regarded as Beth’s suitor, just as he had been Audrey’s what seemed like a million years ago. It was a position that Jacob liked, uncomplicated, with few demands, apart from the necessity to have a good time. He rather enjoyed his double life, though knew it couldn’t last. One of these days Ruby would find out about Beth, or Beth about Ruby.

The double life came to an end in an unexpected way.

It was New Year’s Eve, snowing, the grey sky was heavy with sludgy black clouds. In the coalyard, a mountain of glossy coal had been turned into a thing of beauty by a spangle of snowflakes. Jacob wore gloves as he threw the bulging sacks on to the cart, whistling cheerfully as he worked. His employer, Arthur Cummings, too old and frail to carry on the business by himself, was rubbing his
gnarled hands in the doorway of the small house overlooking the yard where he lived alone. His wife had died two years before, they’d had no children.

‘Watch’a doing tonight, lad?’ he enquired.

He knew about Ruby and the girls. Christmas had proved complicated with two women having demands on his time. Beth had been told he was spending the holiday in Kirkby. He was seeing her tomorrow. ‘Just staying in,’ Jacob replied, ‘having a drink with the wife.’

‘Good lad,’ Arthur said approvingly. ‘You’re welcome to share a bottle of Guinness with us when you’re finished here. We can toast the New Year a bit early, like.’

Jacob nodded, though he’d no intention of accepting. Arthur was a nice man, obviously lonely, always offering cups of tea and trying to engage him in conversation. But Jacob couldn’t be bothered. He finished loading the cart, patted the unresponsive horse whose name was Clifford, between the ears, and was about to leap on board, when Beth walked through the wooden gates, startling Clifford, who tossed his head and gave a nervous snort.

‘What are you doing here?’ he demanded a trifle shortly. The yard was neutral territory. Ruby had never thought to come near.

‘I’ve got something to tell you, Jake.’ She looked very pale and her eyes were swollen. ‘I’m in the club.’

‘In the what?’

‘The club, Jake. I’m expecting a baby. I haven’t told me mam and dad, but we’ll have to get wed straight away. They’ll guess, eventually, but it won’t matter once we’re married. We’ll go to St Vincent de Paul’s tonight and see Father O’Leary, arrange to have the banns called.’

Jacob froze with shock. ‘I can’t, tonight,’ he stuttered. ‘It’s New Year’s Eve. I promised to spend it with me mam.’

Beth looked disappointed. ‘The next night, then.’

That night and the next, to Ruby’s surprise, Jacob stayed in, terrified out of his wits. It occurred to him he wasn’t married to Ruby and was therefore free to marry Beth. But he didn’t want a wife, particularly not one who was pregnant. It would be a case of exchanging one miserable life for another, possibly worse. At least Ruby earned a goodly sum and had worked right through both pregnancies. Beth might want to leave Woollies and the responsibility for supporting her and the child would rest entirely on him. He began to see all sorts of qualities in Ruby that he hadn’t appreciated before.

Beth knew he lived in Foster Court, but not the number. ‘It’s a hovel,’ he told her. ‘Only temporary. I’d sooner you didn’t come.’ Any minute she’d come looking for him or she’d turn up again at the coal yard. Even worse, she might send her father. Jacob didn’t know which way to turn.

Another day passed. He told Arthur Cummings he needed a day off. ‘I’ve a bit of business to see to. I’ll work all day Sat’ day instead.’ He’d been a good worker and had never taken time off before. Arthur willingly agreed.

Next morning, he put on in his working clothes and hid in a doorway at the end of the court until he saw Ruby leave with the children in the pram, then went back and changed into his suit.

He had no idea how to escape the tangle his life had become, other than to run away, get a job on a farm, never look at a woman again for as long as he lived. There were railway stations in town where he could catch a train as far away from Liverpool as he could afford.

The city throbbed with the noise of traffic, he was jostled on the pavements, his head began to ache as he made his muddled way towards Lime Street station. He paused, trying to get his bearings. He was outside a shop
that wasn’t really a shop. ‘Army Recruiting Office’ said the sign over the window. It took him ages to work it out.

He hadn’t expected to return to Foster Court, but he did. It would take at least two weeks for his application to join the Army to be processed. He’d given the address of the coal yard, Mr Cummings wouldn’t mind, and he’d think of a reason for the different surname, Veering, if it was noticed. His first posting would be with the Army Educational Corps to have his reading and writing skills brought up to standard. Accommodation would be provided, food, his pay would be his own. Most importantly of all, he would be taken care of. From now on, his only obligation would be to King and country.

Tonight he’d go round Beth’s before she sought him out, arrange to have the banns called, pick a date for the wedding. By the time it arrived, he would be gone.

Ruby didn’t worry when Jacob didn’t come home for his tea. She’d got used to the way he seemed to lead his own life these days. Sometimes, she wondered if she still loved him, or if she never had, that it had just been a childish crush. He was the first young man she’d ever met, undoubtedly handsome, but under different circumstances, she doubted if she would have given him a second glance. Without the incident with Bill Pickering, their romance would probably have petered out years ago.