War Baby (23 page)

‘Leave,' he said with an air of finality. ‘Employees of the Ministry have not got time to waste. Wasting time is like wasting food. It is not in the national interest.'

For a moment Mary thought he was joking, but the expression on his face said otherwise. He meant it!

‘Let's talk about you, the happily married woman. I take it you are happily married?'

She felt her cheeks reddening. ‘I think that's a little personal.'

‘Yes,' he said, nodding not so much as though he'd been rude to ask, but more so that he'd put it rather clumsily. ‘What I mean is that I hope he's treating you as well as I would have. You're the only woman I've ever considered suitable wife material. You have that stiff-upper-lip quality that I like. You're a good organiser and it also strikes me that you're not given over to unnecessary hysteria or physical demands like some women I've met. And of course, so many women consider a marriage isn't a marriage unless there are children – lots of children. I think a marriage of two people alone without children is eminently satisfying. A partnership. That's what I regard as an ideal marriage.'

Stiff-upper-lip quality!

She hardly knew what to say, but felt if she did say anything her words would be angry. As it turned out, she was saved from having to answer when along came a little bespectacled man who asked her to follow him to the recording studio.

It took a lot of effort to put Andrew's words to the back of her mind and concentrate on how best to reconstitute dried egg, not to overcook it, how to sweeten it for puddings … it was harder to concentrate than usual.

Once the broadcast was over Andrew's comments sprang straight back to her mind. How dare he call her stiff-upper-lip material? As for his ideas about marriage, well, it sounded as though all he really wanted was a housekeeper! Someone to take over from his mother. Whereas Mike …

She walked so briskly back to the car that even Andrew with his long, spidery legs, could barely keep up with her. Once there she stood waiting for him to open the door.

Inside she bristled. Outside her face was still pink and she was clamping her jaw together so hard her teeth were hurting.

She saw the studio buildings in Whiteladies Road reflected in his spectacles and had a great urge to pull them off and throw them away. His words had stung her as physically as though he'd slapped her face. Was she really the sort of woman who would suit him and not the Mike Dangerfields of this world, the sort of woman who kept a pristine house where nothing dirty or sinful ever got past the front door?

‘Are you all right?' His tone and expression gave no sign of him regretting what he'd done.

‘Yes. Take me home, will you? To the bakery please.'

Mike must be back at Stratham House by now, but she wanted to see her family first. She wanted to see Charlie and she badly wanted to speak to Ruby.

Without knowing it, Andrew had opened her eyes to how she was seen by those around her. It made her even more amazed that Mike had seen beneath the surface to what she could be. He'd had to have done. Why else would he have been so determined to marry her?

As usual Andrew drove silently, hands grasping the steering wheel, eyes narrowed as he traversed the darkening road ahead. He said not a word until they were outside the bakery.

‘I'll let you know about the broadcast from the Savoy. Shouldn't be more than a few days.'

As if she would want to go to London with him! What did she care about giving a talk at the Savoy? Nothing. Well, almost nothing. The fact that Ruby and she had landed the job had pleased their father. He hadn't wanted them to move away from home to work in the forces or in a factory. Ruby was better at it, loved meeting and talking to people, demonstrating their latest dishes, advising on how best to eke out the weekly ration in order to conserve enough ingredients to make a simple cake or pie. Perhaps Ruby was the one who should go to London, though she guessed Ruby wasn't what Andrew wanted.

Andrew had given no sign of realising that she was angry with him, but then he wouldn't, she thought. He was too absorbed in his own little world: his job as a civil servant, his mother, London and everything connected with the privileged upbringing he'd had.

‘How about I take you to lunch on the way home?'

Mary declined. ‘I have to get home. I promised Ruby I wouldn't be long.'

He gave no sign of disappointment, just a slight shrug of his shoulders.

‘Of course you did. We should have made arrangements before we left your village. Remiss of us not to think ahead.'

It astounded her that he proclaimed this in the plural, as though she wanted to have lunch with him as much as he did with her.

‘My sister's waiting for me. We have important things to discuss.'

 

 

THAT DAY, ONCE
her sister had gone, Ruby made her way over to Stratham House. The house had no back door as such, having been blocked off years ago when the shop on Court Road had been sold off and divided from the main house. Entry was always through the front door, which opened out on to a large garden with an orchard at the far end. Like most houses in the village, the door was left unlocked during daylight hours.

Once the bakery was closed, the housework done and Frances was home from school to help her uncle look after Charlie, Ruby made her way along the high street, down Court Road and along the lane to Stratham House. Once through the door, she went upstairs to the room presently occupied by her sister and brother-in-law.

Mike, she'd been reliably informed by one of the village kids on her way here, had gone up to one of the farms where a land girl had been chased by an escaped pig. The pig was still roaming free and Mike had gone to help catch it. She'd have the house to herself.

Feeling a little apprehensive on entering the bedroom of a newly married couple, she paused in the doorway. The room smelled of her sister's scent, a mix of Wrights' Coal Tar Soap and Evening in Paris, the only perfume still available. She also detected the smell of a man, that salty mix of fresh sweat, Brylcreem and tobacco.

A sudden movement disturbed her reverie, a shock of whiteness from one side of the room. No ghost but the billowing of white net curtains. The wind had risen suddenly. The blue sky that had promised a day of sunshine had turned to a rolling mass of grey, navy and black. The day outside had grown darker and so had the room.

Ruby didn't hesitate to slam the casement window shut and tidy the curtains before the first drops of rain began to fall.

As the house was built of stone with small windows and thick walls, the rooms were inclined to be dark. Even if it hadn't been late afternoon the square room was never filled with light. Thankfully there were no alcoves a dull day could make even darker.

A splash of mint green hung from the wardrobe door. Such a beautiful shade of green. For a moment she just stood there admiring it. She so loved that dress, the simplicity of its softly falling skirt, the slightly puffed sleeves and her favourite sweetheart neckline.

Before the war the skirt would have been fuller, but as fabric was in short supply, war, not fashion, dictated how many yards of fabric a dress should take, the length of the hemline, just below the knee, the suggestion that sleeves should be short rather than long. Ruby had even read an article on how to lengthen suspenders on corsets rather than buy a new pair, how to cut down men's shirts to make children's clothes, to make baby napkins from old Turkish towelling, coats from blankets and how to weave hats from straw.

The material felt soft between her fingers. The dress looked as though it were made of silk, but was in fact made of an American man-made fabric called rayon. Mike had brought it over for Mary as a wedding present. This was why the skirt was fuller than current fabric rules allowed.

Ruby sucked in her breath and pressed her hands to her mouth. ‘Oh my word!'

The words came out in a whisper. What was she waiting for?

In her haste to try it on, she forgot to undo the fastening on the plain navy blue dress she wore on shop days. Tugging it off, her hair became tangled in the button and tumbled forward on to her face.

‘Drat!'

After bringing the dress back down to her shoulders, she untangled her hair from the button and tried again. This time the dress came off though she'd messed up her hair in the process. Not that it mattered that much. On Saturday it would be just as she liked it and would look wonderful. Ivan's eyes would shine with admiration and he'd tell her she was the prettiest girl in the room. He'd also told her she was the prettiest girl he'd ever met.

‘And I bet you've met lots,' she'd said to him.

He'd laughed and thrown back his head, the veins in his throat like stiff twigs. ‘Lots! Yes. Lots! I love girls, I tell you. I love girls!'

Because he laughed, she took it that he was only joking about having known lots of girls. He'd said she was the prettiest and made her feel like a queen. That was good enough for her.

Taking the dress off the hanger, she carefully undid the tiny pearl buttons that fastened it at the front and slid it over her head. ‘Please let it fit,' she muttered.

Ruby crossed her fingers as she slipped the dress over her head, uncrossing them so she could button it up. Once it was on she opened the wardrobe door to observe her reflection in the full-length mirror attached to the inside of the door.

The sight took her breath away. The dress fitted perfectly and made her feel like a film star. The skirt fell in a vaguely bell shape and ended just below her knees, and the soft material floated around her.

The only light in the room came in from the window, dimly reflected in the wardrobe mirror. The room had turned unnaturally dark for the time of day. There was just enough reflected in the mirror for her to see herself. She ran her hands down over her hips. Her hair fell luxuriantly around her face and over the mole she had once hated, but no longer, not since the day Ivan had called it her beauty spot.

Satisfied that she looked fabulous, she began pulling it off over her head. Yet again she'd forgotten one button and ended up with it stuck halfway over her head and covering her face.

‘I thought you'd gone.'

Startled at the sound of Mike's voice, she turned round, the wardrobe door crashing shut when she let go of it. The room turned even darker until she managed to pull the dress down enough to see.

She stammered for the right words through the material clinging around her mouth. ‘I didn't … hear … I mean … you mustn't …'

‘Of course I mustn't. Do you want me to give you a hand with that dress?'

‘No!'

‘It's okay. I'm not going to touch you. I promised I would wait until you're ready and I will. I'm off to check on the hens. Then I'm off back up to the farm. They need a hand.'

Then he was gone, leaving Ruby standing there, the dress still stuck around her head.

If he had lingered, perhaps she would have laughingly informed him of his mistake, that this was Ruby not his wife, Mary, and that Mary had gone into Bristol as planned.

Ruby stared at the closed door. What was that he had said?

I've promised to wait until you're ready and I will.

Was she correct in what she was thinking? Perhaps it was rash to jump to conclusions, but it sounded as though this married couple weren't yet married in every sense of the word. She could hardly believe it. Was there something wrong with one of them? She knew that her sister had been nervous, but to have not made love yet! No! It couldn't be true. She must have misunderstood.

Once the dress was back on its hanger, Ruby stared anew at her reflection. Even though her sister had lost a little weight, it could almost be Mary standing there; they were identical twins after all. She swept her hair back from her face.

Sucking in her bottom lip she considered what to do next. Should she go downstairs and wait for Mike to come in from collecting eggs and tell him he'd been mistaken? She visualised laughingly revealing his mistake. Somehow she guessed he wouldn't think it a laughing matter. He might well be mortified. She made a decision. She had to speak to Mary, the only person she could share it with.

Quickly, before he returned from the hen house, she was back in her own clothes, the green dress taken down from the hanger and rolled up under her arm, her shoes off so she wouldn't be heard descending the stairs.

The front door was open, the smell of wet cabbages coming in from the garden and bird droppings from the hen house. Looking out of the door, she spied Mike's broad back. He was bent over, changing soiled straw for fresh; the hens preferred to lay their eggs in clean straw and they needed all the eggs they could get.

Judging the time was right, she was out of the door and through the garden gate before he could see her. Once outside the garden, she clambered back into her shoes and headed for home, not stopping until she was at the top of Court Road.

Taking a breath, she decided to speak to Mary the minute she got home, preferably the moment she alighted from the car. It was best if she warned her of what had happened before Mike had chance to speak to her and realise that she had gone to Bristol. Seeing as he was up at the farm all day, he wouldn't know otherwise and it might be best if he didn't.

Decision made, she dashed round to the back door of the bakery and into the kitchen where her father was sitting with Charlie on his lap. Charlie was chomping on a Farley Rusk, his few sharp baby teeth nibbling tentatively all around its outer rim. Her father looked up, his eyes shining with pride. ‘That's his second Farley's Rusk. He's going to grow into a strapping lad is our Charlie.'

‘Just like his granddad,' Ruby called over her shoulder as she ran up the stairs, the dress tucked under her arm. Once the dress was safely hanging in her wardrobe, she dashed back down again.