The House by Princes Park (25 page)

Of course, the future could lead in a different direction. She might get married...

A scream jolted her out of her musings. The picture of sweet, childish innocence had been spoilt by a classroom revolt. Three-year-old Jake had got tired of being taught
how to spell, particularly by such a hard taskmaster, and was making for the swing – a piece of rope suspended from a tree. Heather was trying to drag him back. ‘It isn’t playtime yet,’ she yelled.

Ruby clapped her hands and the children froze. Heather glared at the little boy who had a mutinous look on his handsome face.

‘Let him go, Heather,’ Ruby ordered.

‘He’s being naughty, Mam.’

‘No, he isn’t. He wants to play on the swing, that’s all. Let him go.’

Heather reluctantly released a joyous Jake. He seized the rope and began to swing with the liberated air of a child who’d spent the day in a real school.

It was a good job Beth wasn’t there. She got annoyed when Heather bossed her son around.

‘I’ll have to put a stop to it,’ Ruby thought. ‘Not just with Jake, but with Greta too.’ It had seemed touching once, the concern Heather felt for her sister, but since Greta started school, it was as if the younger girl resented the older being out of her control, dominating her totally when she was home. Ruby wasn’t sure if it was fortunate or
un
fortunate that Greta didn’t seem to mind, allowing herself to be ordered about without a murmur of complaint. She seemed content never to make a decision for herself, to play what Heather wanted, go where Heather went, unlike Jake, who preferred to run his young life on his own with only occasional interference from a grown-up. He was a lovely child with a lovely nature. Ruby felt sure he would become a fine young man, whereas Heather, she thought wryly, seemed destined to grow up a shrew and Greta a doormat.

She looked at her daughters. Greta was sitting patiently on the grass. Her tiny heart-shaped face, framed by a mop of babyish blonde hair, was fixed on that of her sister,
waiting for her to return to her role as teacher. She was still small for her age, as if her body had never recovered from those first lean years in Foster Court when she always seemed to have a cold and there wasn’t enough to eat – yesterday, quite a few people had assumed she was the four-year-old and Heather, an inch taller, was five.

Looking at Heather was like looking at herself: the same strong features, dark eyes, bony frame. ‘But was I ever quite so sour?’ Ruby wondered. The nuns had said she was wilful, always wanting her own way, but she hadn’t stamped her feet in rage if she didn’t get it, which Heather was apt to do.

‘She’ll grow out of it,’ Ruby consoled herself. ‘Or at least, I hope so.’

Not long after the wedding, a downstairs room became a bedroom for Marie Ferguson, a gruff, good-natured widow in her fifties who worked as a cook in Sefton hospital. She found it easier to live close by, rather than travel daily to her house in a small village near Wigan.

Marie quickly became a member of what was, by now, almost a family. Weekends, she was happy to babysit while Ruby and Beth went to the pictures or, occasionally, a dance.

Beth loved dancing, but Ruby was no good at small talk. She got bored when asked the same questions over and over again. ‘What’s your name? What do you do? Where do you live? Can I take you home?’, the last being met with a firm ‘
No!
’

‘They all seem so
young
,’ she grumbled.

‘You’re not exactly old,’ argued Beth.

‘I
feel
old compared to them.’

‘Anyroad, they’re not all young. There’s plenty in their thirties, even older. What’s wrong with them?’

‘They’re married, that’s what. Their poor wives would
have a fit if they saw them dancing with other women, taking them home, where they’d get up to even worse mischief if they were allowed.’

Ruby had the feeling that she’d gone from young to old in the space of the few days it had taken to leave Kirkby with Jacob and move into Foster Court. Once, she’d loved to dance, but the urge had gone and dancing now seemed a frivolous way of occupying her time. She had lost her sense of fun, she realised sadly. She had grown up too quickly, become an adult too soon, a rather serious, very sober adult.

The following Easter, Heather started school. Ruby didn’t like to admit, not even to herself, that she was relieved to see the back of her troublesome daughter. Jake was happy on his own, and equally happy to start school himself a year later, giving Ruby the long-cherished opportunity to do her bit, even if only part-time.

Martha Quinlan, always an opportunist on behalf of the WVS, immediately found her something to do. Liverpool Corporation were gradually repairing the thousands of houses damaged in the blitz, but this didn’t include decorating the insides; the walls and ceilings stained when water tanks had broken, discoloured when a chimney-full of soot had fallen, or scorched by fire.

‘It’s the elderly that need help,’ Martha explained. ‘Young ’uns can distemper the walls in a jiffy. The old people get distressed when their homes look a mess, and painters and decorators are as hard to find as ciggies, not that they could afford ’em if they weren’t.’

So Ruby spent four hours every morning painting houses. She learnt how to plaster holes and mix cement, arriving home stinking of turpentine, her black hair streaked with paint.

It was 1943 and the war showed no sign of ending,
though the people were continually promised victory was ‘just around the corner’. The invasion of France was expected any day, but in the meantime, another invasion had taken place, much to the delight of young women throughout Britain – and the dismay of the men.

The Yanks had arrived. Hordes of cheerful, outgoing, engaging young men in well-fitting uniforms, generous to a fault, had taken over the country. They were everywhere, pockets stuffed with chewing gum and cash, convinced that every British woman, young or old, could be had in exchange for a pair of nylons.

Nowadays, Ruby looked forward to the weekend dances. It was like entering a fresh, new world, talking to young men from places like Texas or California who had done things she’d only seen in films; worked on ranches, driven Cadillacs, played baseball, been to Radio City, Hollywood, Fifth Avenue, Niagara Falls...

Or so they said. She only believed half she was told, but the Americans’ good-natured high spirits came as a relief after the horror of the air raids and the continuing shortage of virtually every single thing that made life bearable, particularly food.

She went out with quite a few, never more than twice, otherwise she would have found herself engaged, a crafty way the Yanks had of getting women into bed who couldn’t be got there by easier means. There was a measure of cynicism in Ruby’s fraternisation with the ‘enemy’, as Charles called them, and she often returned home laden with oranges, candy, tins of ham, and other delicacies rarely seen in war-torn Britain and which Charles happily consumed, despite their dubious source.

Ruby had known Beth was in love before Beth knew herself. They were at a dance at the Locarno, a foxtrot had just ended, and Ruby returned to their spot under the
balcony. Beth was already there, holding hands with a tall, black American sergeant.

‘Rube, this is Daniel,’ Beth said shyly, and there was a look on her face, and on Daniel’s, that said everything.

It came as no surprise when they got married six months later in the same church where Connie had married Charles, though it was a very different sort of wedding. Beth wore a simple white frock she’d made herself and there were no bridesmaids. The only guests were Beth’s immediate friends whom she now regarded as her family. There was hardly time for a sandwich and a glass of wine before Daniel and the best man had to return to the base in Burtonwood, where he would continue to live, while Beth and Jake remained in Mrs Hart’s house.

Daniel Lefarge was a lawyer. Back in Little Rock, Arkansas, he fought for equal rights for Negroes. He was one of the few educated black men in the state.

‘It’s terrible there,’ a wide-eyed Beth said to Ruby on the night of her wedding. Everyone else had gone to bed and they were finishing off the last of the wine. ‘We’re not allowed in restaurants or bars. We can’t sit by whites on the buses. We have to use separate lavatories.’

Ruby raised her eyebrows. ‘We?’

‘Black people,’ Beth said firmly. ‘I’m black, like Daniel.’

‘I always thought of us, of you and me, as the same.’

‘If I was the same as you,’ Beth explained, ‘Daniel would have been refused permission to get married. Black servicemen aren’t allowed to marry British girls if they’re white. It was decided in the Senate because it would cause trouble when they returned home with a white bride.’

‘That’s daft!’ Ruby expostulated.

‘It may seem daft to you, but not to Americans, particularly in the South where Daniel comes from. White people there consider negroes less than human.’

‘Will you be happy in that sort of atmosphere?’ Ruby felt fearful for her gentle, sensitive friend, who didn’t seem
to realise the awfulness of what she was saying. ‘Remember the time when we were evacuated to Southport? You were terribly upset.’

‘I’d be happy anywhere with Daniel.’ Beth’s face shone. ‘And so will Jake. They adore each other.’

In June, 1944, on D-Day, Daniel Lefarge was among the first American troops to storm the French beaches. From that day on, Beth lived in a state of terror. Daniel’s letters were few and usually arrived weeks late. Beth rarely ate breakfast, but lingered behind the front door with a cup of tea, praying that the postwoman would come. If she did, and there was nothing from Daniel, her disappointment was evident in her tragic face. On more than one occasion, Ruby travelled all the way to A. E. Wadsworth Engineering to deliver a letter with a French postmark that had arrived after her friend had gone to work.

Another Christmas, the sixth of the war, and hopefully the last. Allied troops were slowly advancing across Europe and, at last, victory was in sight.

In the New Year, Charles and Connie found a place of their own, a little cottage in Kirkby, not far from Brambles where Ruby used to live. Beth was advised that shortly she would no longer have a job. Marie Ferguson was making plans to go home.

As soon as the conflict was over, Beth and Jake were going to live in America with Daniel’s mother – he would join them as soon as he was demobbed. There would only be Ruby and her girls left in the house, to which its owner could return any day.

She took down the blackout curtains and began to put the house, as far as she could, back to its original order. There were marks, scars, wear and tear, things broken, missing, changed, that couldn’t be hidden. Mrs Hart was unlikely to think Ruby, who’d only been asked to keep an
eye on the place, had tamed the wild garden out of the kindness of her heart – even established a vegetable patch – or varnished the front door when the original varnish had worn away altogether and she’d felt ashamed of the bleached, bare wood.

She had every intention of facing Mrs Hart, confessing what she’d done, but preferred not to be living on the premises when the woman walked through her newly varnished door. But finding somewhere to live was proving difficult, if not impossible. She roamed the streets, anxiously perused the cards in newsagents’ windows, scoured the
Echo
, but nearly half the properties in Liverpool had been destroyed or damaged. It wasn’t just Ruby desperate for somewhere to live.

The months passed. February gave way to March, March was suddenly April, the Allies were approaching Berlin and victory was imminent, but still Ruby hadn’t found a job or somewhere to live. She and Beth had built a little nest egg between them, but her half would quickly disappear if there wasn’t a wage coming in. She had nightmares about returning to somewhere like Foster Court, and the bad dreams occurred almost nightly as time went by and still nothing had turned up.

At the beginning of May, it was reported that Hitler had killed himself. The following day, Berlin fell. A victory announcement was expected by the hour. Ruby, working in the home of Mrs Effie Gittings, was listening to the wireless in the next room while she distempered the parlour walls an insipid pale blue, the only colour available apart from white. Mrs Gittings kept abandoning the wireless to discuss the latest news and fetch cups of tea as insipid as the distemper.

‘You work ever so neat,’ the old lady said admiringly. ‘It’s nice having a woman do the decorating. Men make splashes on the furniture and look daggers if you dare complain. At least one good thing’s come out of this
terrible war; women have shown they can work as good as men in most jobs.’

Later, as Ruby trudged home, she had an idea that made her want to dance along the pavement.
She would become a painter and decorator!
She liked the idea of being her own boss, working her own hours, being home when the children finished school. As soon as she was settled elsewhere, she’d have leaflets printed and deliver one to every house in the Dingle. She would become well-known again, like the pawnshop runner, not that fame was her objective, but making a living was. The future suddenly looked challenging and exciting, full of hope, and by the time she reached the house, her decorating company had expanded to the extent it had a staff of ten, all women. She would think of a clever name to call herself, something catchy.

At the gate, she paused. The ‘settled elsewhere’ bit had still to be resolved. Some of her excitement faded. Before she could lift a paintbrush, she had to find a place to live.

Sighing, she opened the front door, ready to make for the wireless in case there’d been any news, but froze when she heard footsteps upstairs, heavy, male footsteps.

‘Who’s there?’ she called shakily. For a brief second she wondered if it might be Max Hart.

A young man appeared at the top of the stairs, nothing like Max. ‘Who the hell are you?’ he demanded angrily. ‘There’s people living here, but there bloody well shouldn’t be. This house is supposed to be empty.’

It had always been Ruby’s belief, ever since she was a little girl and couldn’t have put it into words, that the best form of defence was attack. Besides which, she disliked the young man on sight. He looked about twenty-one, five years younger than herself, was very tall, very thin, with brilliantined black hair and a pencil moustache. The trousers of his cheap, chalk-striped suit were several inches too short, exposing shabby brown boots. Not that she
presented a pretty picture herself in her paint-stained slacks and jumper.