Ruby's War Page 6

  ‘We’ll go by the lane,’ Jenny said, locking the front door behind them. ‘Here, give me your arm. I thought this stuff would have cleared by now.’

  The sky was still a clear pale blue, but beneath it, the early mist covering the fields had thickened into a milky fog. Ruby shivered and pulled on her newly discovered gloves. There was no sign of the hens; even Monty the cockerel was quiet. Instead of turning towards the main road as Ruby had expected, Jenny headed up the lane.

  Despite the mist Ruby recognised most of the landmarks from her journey back from the village the day before. Close to the cottage the surrounding fields belonging to the farm were separated from the lane by a stout wooden fence. Beyond the fence, the mist had spun a dense web around the trunks and lower branches of the silent trees at the edge of the field, and fine tendrils had penetrated the neatly clipped hedge that pressed against it.

  As they walked towards the stone bridge, Ruby heard footsteps rustling the frost-stiffened leaves. She imagined German paratroopers creeping along the other side of the neatly clipped hawthorns and was sure she felt Jenny’s hand tighten on her arm. Then a basket appeared on top of the hedge, and an imperious female voice boomed out from the fog.

  ‘I say, there. Take my basket would you, whilst I negotiate the fence.’

  A large lady, wearing a tweed hat over her trailing grey hair, clambered on to the second highest rung on the old gate. She was dressed in a pair of men’s corduroy trousers and an old, torn jacket. After a great deal of panting, she threw a muddy leg over and climbed down.

  ‘How do you do,’ she gasped. ‘I’m Iris Bland. I live down the lane at the end cottage.’

  ‘Next to Nellie Lathom?’ Jenny asked.

  ‘Is she the lady with the adorable little spaniel? I’m afraid I don’t know her. I’ve only just arrived. My things are coming later today. I thought I’d explore. Do you live nearby?’

  ‘I … I live at the white cottage on this side of the lane with my daughter.’

  ‘Ah, then we’re neighbours,’ the woman said, taking off the shapeless hat and rubbing her purple face. ‘You seem to have quite a flair for gardening. How delightful. I’ve discovered some fungi, but I suppose you’re an expert on wild foods. There’s much less mist once you get out of the dip.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Jenny said. ‘We’re walking into the village.’

  ‘It shouldn’t interfere with your plans,’ the woman called. ‘Lovely to have met you.’

  ‘Wonder why somebody that posh is renting one of John Bardley’s old cottages,’ Jenny said, as they watched Iris Bland stumping off up the lane. ‘I bet she’s come out of the way of the bombing. Or she’s been bombed out.’

  ‘She might be a spy.’

  ‘Oh aye, and what’s she spying at in Bardley’s field?’

  ‘She could be sending messages to her leader.’

  ‘She’ll be meeting her maker, if she eats them things in her basket. They looked like toadstools. You never know, she might want some washing or cleaning done. Though she doesn’t look like she has much. Mind you, you can never tell with some posh folk.’

  The old woman was right; once they reached the little stone bridge, the fog disappeared. In the sunlight, the lane looked so much prettier than it had when she’d walked along it the day before. On both sides, the hedgerows stretched into the distance, their glittering line broken only by the occasional stand of trees or an isolated cottage. Between the white lacy branches of one small coppice, she could see an old mansion and wondered how she’d missed it yesterday.

  ‘Who lives there?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s been empty a good while. I’ve heard it’s going to be turned into a hospital, once they open the Second Front.’

  In the early morning sunshine, the curtains of spiders’ webs hanging from the iron gates appeared to have been stitched together with thousands of tiny glass beads. The tightly closed gates made Ruby think of the opening stage set of Sleeping Beauty, when Pearl had played the fairy godmother at the Theatre Royal. She’d gone to watch the panto with her father. From her place in the darkened stalls, Ruby had listened to the audience applause as the curtain went up, revealing the gates to the enchanted castle and her mother dressed in a beautiful ballet dress.

  At the end of the lane, before they turned down the road of small, pebble-dashed semis she’d walked along with Bess, they came to the large house with the nameplate on the gate.

  ‘It’s his shirts we’re washing,’ Jenny said. ‘He’s very good about your granddad’s medicine. He knows he was gassed, so he doesn’t charge as much for it. He worked in one of the army hospitals as a young man. He knows what it was like. But you’d best not get ill. We can’t expect him to take you on for free as well.’

  The school was next to the church and consisted of two single-storey buildings. The smaller one was made of red brick, and the other was of older smoke-blackened brick and had tall windows.

  ‘That’s the church hall and the infant school,’ Jenny said, as they walked by the red-brick building and across the playground. ‘The older children are in this other place. Before the church was built, it was a chapel. Now, keep your mouth shut, unless you’re spoken to,’ Jenny warned, as they came to the heavy wooden door at the end of the old chapel, ‘and don’t say anything about being here for a holiday.’

  They stood together inside a small, square hallway. Through an open door, Ruby could see a table piled with papers and books. Near the door were two battered easy chairs; one had a coat over the back, and the other had a large handbag and a packet of ten Player’s cigarettes on the arm.

  ‘Looks like where the teachers have their tea,’ Jenny said.

  The other door was closed. Jenny put her ear to it and listened.

  ‘That’s one of the classrooms,’ she said, as the sound of muffled chanting escaped through the stout door. ‘We’ll have to wait here until they’ve finished. It can’t be long off dinnertime. I think they’re saying their prayers.’

  In the chilly entrance hall, Ruby tugged nervously at the hem of her short gymslip. She hoped that the teacher would put her in the same class as the girl she’d met on the swings. If she had a friend, then staying at Granddad’s might not be so bad: she would be at school all day, and at weekends she and the girl could take Bess for walks, so Jenny couldn’t say she was in the way.

  After a few minutes, a serious-looking boy with thick glasses came out of the classroom carrying a handbell.

  ‘Is your teacher in there?’ Jenny asked. ‘Will you tell her I want to see her?’

  The boy went back inside. When the classroom door opened again, a tall lady with wiry, marmalade-coloured hair followed him into the hallway.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she said. ‘I’m Miss Conway.’

  Miss Conway wore a custard-coloured blouse buttoned to the neck. An oval lattice-work brooch of dull, silver-grey metal sat between the points of the collar. She was what Ruby’s Auntie Ethel would have called ‘a good class of guest’. Above the sound of closing desk lids and excited voices, Jenny explained that she’d brought Ruby to start at school that day.

  The teacher didn’t reply but led the way to the front of the classroom. A large, brown desk stood on the top of a plinth. Miss Conway climbed the three steps and gazed around.

  The room fell silent. There were about fifty children in the class, some sitting in pairs at heavy iron-legged desks, others behind long tables arranged around the walls. They were all between thirteen and fifteen. The girls wore jumpers or cardigans in different colours and styles; none of them wore gymslips. The younger boys wore grey, green or black pullovers, and most of the older boys wore jackets. Ruby could see the girl from the recreation ground sitting in the middle row next to a pretty girl with curly hair. The girl from the swings and the pretty girl smiled and whispered together as if they were best friends. Miss Conway brought a thick leather strap down sharply on the desk, making the exercise books dance and ending the quiet hum of chattering
voices. Then with a nod to the child nearest to the door, she dismissed her class.

  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.