Whatever the gossip of Weardale Road had said about this friend, she looked nice, with a generous mouth and a wide smile. Ruby hoped she’d be a better friend to Verity than she had been.
So Ruby didn’t try to speak to Verity that day. She told herself she would write and explain that she’d seen her but was too afraid of rejection to speak.
But the war kind of took over just after that. Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain, and then the Blitz brought so many wounded men to the hospital in the Palace, and she found herself working eighteen-hour days, with no time to think of anything but the suffering all around her.
The second time Ruby came to London was last year, when she accompanied two airmen on crutches who were going home to the north of England, and needed assistance with changing trains in the city.
Ruby could scarcely believe the changes in London with bomb damage everywhere, boarded-up windows, great gaps in the rows of houses around Paddington, and people looking weary and grey. The so-called Blitz might have ended, in as much as the bombing wasn’t every night like it had been back then, but Ruby heard from people that when the bombers came back it was still terrible. There were shortages of everything from paint to petrol, people were living on next to nothing, and it showed in their lean bodies and drawn faces.
Down in Devon, they could still get butter, cheese and meat from various sources. Even strictly law-abiding Wilby didn’t mind a bit of black market produce, so she could feed what she called ‘her family’ – the three evacuees, along with Ruby. They also kept chickens and grew vegetables in the garden, so their diet hadn’t changed that much.
Ruby didn’t get as far as Verity’s house in Weardale Road the second time. She had just come out of Hither Green Station when she saw Verity walking towards her, with a man. She darted into one of the telephone boxes outside the station and watched them. He looked about fifty, a big good-looking man with wide shoulders and greying hair. He fitted with what Verity had said about her father. But surely it couldn’t be him? Verity had always claimed she’d never have anything to do with him again. They appeared to be arguing about something. And it looked to Ruby as if Verity didn’t want to go with him, because he caught hold of her wrist and practically dragged her into the booking hall.
Ruby came out of the telephone box to follow them, hoping for some sign she should engage with them. But the man bought train tickets and then, still holding Verity’s wrist, he headed straight for the tunnels that went up on to the platforms.
He was going on a southbound train out to Kent, but Ruby’s ticket was a return back to Charing Cross. She was tempted to throw caution to the wind and follow them, but she decided that approaching Verity on a busy train when she was accompanied was hardly likely to result in a successful reunion.
So Ruby decided to let it go.
When she got home, she asked Wilby what she thought. But Wilby just pulled a pained face. ‘I’ve told you a dozen times to write to her,’ she said. ‘Last time you went, you discovered her aunt had died and I told you then that you should send her a letter of condolence. But you didn’t listen. Tell me, you silly girl, how many more years is this going to go on for?’
Ruby knew Wilby was right, and that night she lay in her bed crying. Not just because of Verity and what had passed between them, but because of all the sadness, everywhere in the world, since then. Little evacuees had come here from London, poorly dressed, underfed and crawling with lice, yet they’d cried for their mothers and wanted to go home. One of them, Jack, lost his mother when their home was bombed last January in Stepney. Wilby had kept the boy, hoping to adopt him, but just when she thought no relative would ever claim him, his grandmother did.
There were the wounded airmen at the Palace too. Some with terrible, disfiguring burns. They acted tough and brave, but she’d often gone into the wards at night and heard them crying. They knew, as everyone did, that they were unlikely to marry and have children, most would have difficulty in even getting a job. What sort of a thank you was that for someone who had given his youth and health to defend his country?
Daily, Ruby spoke to young women whose husbands were away at the war. Their lives were one long round of anxiety, afraid that any day they would get a telegram to say their man had been killed in action. Some of them had been pregnant when their husband left, others had two or three small children, and they had a hard time coping with everything all alone.
Some of the married women who worked at the Palace kept telling Ruby to make the most of the opportunities this war offered. She had the job other women envied, because they just saw her as a pretty face behind the reception desk. In fact her role was not just ornamental, as they seemed to think. Aside from keeping all the patients’ records, she was the sympathetic ear when distraught relatives arrived to see badly wounded airmen. She made bookings for these people to stay in nearby hotels, arranged transport for them. She relayed messages to everyone, from surgeons down to cleaners, and every memo pinned up in the canteen, every instruction on what to do if there was an air raid, and even the menu of the day, was typed up by her and distributed to the right place.
The hospital manager had told her on several occasions that she was a ‘treasure’. This was because she had earned the reputation for sorting out any problem. But when older women told her to make the most of opportunities, they didn’t mean furthering her career but finding herself a good husband. The Palace probably was an ideal hunting ground, not just amongst the officers who were patients but also the doctors, friends of the patients, and men who were in administration.
But Ruby just wasn’t interested in luring any man, not an officer, bus driver or air-raid warden. Even she thought it was odd that a girl who had once been such a flirt didn’t attempt it any more. She had lost the desire for men ever since her abortion. Sometimes, if she drank enough at a dance, she could flirt a little with dance partners, perhaps even kiss them and fake some passion. But no amount of drink could ever make her go further than kissing. Sometimes she felt she was dead inside.
Now as Ruby stood at Hither Green Station with her hands in her pockets, a bitter January wind biting through her coat, she felt completely resolved that this time she was going to speak to Verity. She turned up the collar of her coat against the wind and began walking towards Weardale Road.
She paused outside number seven before knocking. The paint was very chipped, and it looked as if someone had forced the door with a heavy boot. It felt scary to be back here again, not full of anticipation as she had been for the coronation, but afraid of being rebuffed.
It seemed ages before she heard someone coming, and her pulse quickened. The door was opened just a crack, with the chain still on, but even so she knew it was Verity.
‘Open up, it’s me, Ruby,’ she said quickly. ‘That is, if you’ll speak to me!’
‘Ruby?’ Verity’s voice was very quiet, almost a whisper.
‘Yes, it really is me. Not before time too!’
‘Oh, my goodness,’ came the startled reply.
Ruby expected the door to be flung open wide, followed by either a volley of abuse or a warm hug. But when the door didn’t open wide she assumed her belief that, once her old friend saw her, everything would be alright was misplaced.
‘I know I was awful to you, but I wasn’t thinking straight back then. I’ve come here twice before and seen you, but lost my nerve.’ The words just poured out in a nervous torrent. ‘Please let me in so we can talk.’
‘I can’t,’ Verity whispered. ‘I want to, but I can’t.’
All at once Ruby realized her friend was in some kind of difficulty. She assumed it was a man; she’d met many who didn’t like their girl having friends.
‘Okay, but can I meet you in a cafe? There’s one at the end of the road.’
‘Not there, go back to the station. There’s one just by it. Wait there.’
‘Verity!’ A deep and loud male voice rang out from inside the house. ‘Who is at the front door?’
&
nbsp; ‘Go,’ Verity whispered, but reached out one small hand through the crack in the door to touch Ruby’s cold cheek. ‘Wait for me!’
‘It’s only the postman,’ Verity called back. And then, first putting her fingers to her lips like she was going to blow a kiss, she shut the door.
Ruby walked swiftly down the road without looking back, just in case the man she’d heard was looking out of the window. The situation brought back a few memories of scenes from her childhood. It was men coming to the door then, and she had to get rid of them when her mother had another man with her upstairs. She would keep the chain on the door and play dumb, saying her mother had gone out and she mustn’t let anyone in. Sometimes they got nasty, because they sensed the truth, and sometimes they tried to cajole her. She had grown up wondering why, when her mother had so many men who seemed to adore her, she also had so many who hit her.
She learned by the time she was ten that these men gave her mother the money for drink. Yet she never really discovered why men who wanted sole use of her hit her so often. Why would violence go hand in hand with sex?
Ruby just hoped that man upstairs in Verity’s house wasn’t beating her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
‘Who did you say that was at the door?’ Archie called out from his bedroom. His door was open, and as Verity turned to look at him she got the same sick feeling that came so often when she was near him.
He was sitting up in bed, wearing a vest, and a smell of stale sweat and unwashed feet wafted out from his room. She hated him so much now that she often dreamed of killing him to escape his clutches. There was a time when she’d been afraid of losing her home in the bombing, but now she longed for it to happen, a direct hit, with him inside it. As he still never went to a public shelter, it was possible. But then he had the luck of the devil.
‘It was Beryl. I’m wanted at work, lines down in Catford. She was going to wait, but I told her to go on and I’d follow in a few minutes.’
‘Haven’t they got anyone else? It’s your day off.’
‘Seems no one else is available,’ she called back as she went into her bedroom. Looking at herself in the dressing-table mirror, she saw the delight at Ruby turning up had brought some colour to her face. She felt there was a glimmer of hope now, as Ruby was the only person in the whole world who was likely to fully understand what had brought her to the life she’d been living for nearly two years.
Aside from the colour in her face, she could see nothing else to feel good about. She was very thin, gaunt in fact. This was due to rationing, in part, but she felt it had more to do with the pressure she was living under. Her blonde hair had lost its shine, and each time she brushed it she was alarmed how much came out. She never slept well any more, yet she was bone tired.
She took off the drab grey woollen dress she was wearing and changed it for a dusky pink one that was more flattering. Even as low as her spirits were, she was too proud to let Ruby see her looking quite so bad. She brushed her hair and, leaving most of it loose, pinned up the sides on either side of her head with two pretty pink hair slides. A bit of face powder, a touch of Vaseline on her eyelids and some mascara improved her, then she finished off with the last of her pink lipstick.
‘There’s no more where that came from,’ she murmured to herself, putting the empty lipstick case down. ‘Unless you steal some!’
Just the idea of stealing another woman’s lipstick made a lump come up in her throat. Somehow, it seemed worse than taking a ring or a bracelet.
Pushing her feet into her best shoes, tan leather with a two-inch heel, she was ready apart from her coat. She just hoped that Archie wouldn’t notice that she was dressed up. She rarely made an effort with her appearance any more.
‘What time will you be back?’ he called out as she went down the stairs.
‘I’ve no idea, it depends on the emergency,’ she called back. ‘There’s sausages in the meat safe, but you’d better cook yours in case I’m late.’
It struck her as she put on her navy-blue coat and her felt hat of the same colour that anyone overhearing the dialogue between her and Archie would never imagine she hated him. But Verity had realized the first time he hit her, after he’d got rid of Amy, that appeasement was a smarter way than challenging him.
Slipping out quickly, Verity ran up the road towards Hither Green. It was good luck she’d had the day off today; if she’d been at work when Ruby called, Archie would never have told her. She hoped that her good luck would hold, because she hadn’t had any for a very long time.
Since Miller sent her that last letter telling her he’d got another girl, nothing in her life seemed worth anything. She went to work each day, and she maybe fooled all her old friends most of the time into believing nothing was wrong. Yet there were questions sometimes about why she never wanted to go to the pub after work or to a dance. Beryl once said it was like a light had gone out inside her, and asked if it was to do with her father. Verity almost broke down then and told her the truth, that he was a thieving blackguard who blackmailed her into burgling houses. But how could she confide in Beryl? She would take Verity straight to the police station. And she couldn’t expect any sympathy from them, because she’d got in too deep.
Ironically, Archie claimed she brought him good luck. But that was only because the information she got about cancelled telephone lines was always good. Verity mostly had Wednesday afternoons off, and that was when Archie liked to do the jobs. He felt marching up people’s garden paths in broad daylight attracted much less attention than being spotted at night. Not that he did anything more than force the window locks and stand guard, Verity took all the risk.
Her heart was pounding at the thought of seeing Ruby. It didn’t matter to her how long they’d been estranged or why. Just the knowledge that there was a possibility they could pick up where they left off, was enough.
Mick’s cafe by the station was a grubby little place used mainly by railway workers and other workmen. The windows were streaming with condensation, so it was impossible to see in. But to Verity it was as good as The Ritz, because it was a place of safety for a little while.
As she opened the door Ruby came rushing towards her, arms wide to embrace her friend. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ she whispered against Verity’s hair. ‘I was so nasty.’
Verity took a step back, holding Ruby’s forearms, and smiled. ‘None of that matters. We’re together again now.’
They took a table right at the back of the cafe, and Ruby went up to the counter to order fried spam sandwiches and tea.
‘I was sort of hoping they might have bacon and egg,’ she said as she came back to the table. ‘But they do say there’s a war on.’
Verity giggled. ‘I’ve grown to like spam. And they fry the bread here too. I’ve heard it’s becoming quite a delicacy and talked about in every major city,’ she joked.
For a moment the girls just looked at each other across the table, the years apart falling away. Verity moved first, reaching out to touch one of Ruby’s unruly curls which had escaped from her beret and looked like a little corkscrew. ‘You look so sophisticated,’ she said. ‘And even lovelier than I remembered.’
‘That’s a super thing to say,’ Ruby said, her eyes shining. ‘Completely untrue, of course. And now I’m probably going to upset you again by saying you are too thin, you’ve lost your bounce, and I sense something bad is going on in your life. You are going to tell me everything.’
Verity loved Ruby more than ever for that blunt appraisal. She needed to unburden herself and she was glad she hadn’t fooled Ruby she was fine by just sticking a couple of pretty hair slides in her hair and a slick of Vaseline on her eyelids.
‘My dad is the problem. He’s back,’ she began. ‘I don’t call him Dad, just Archie, and it turns out he isn’t my dad at all. Mum was pregnant when she conned him into marrying her.’
Ruby nodded. ‘When I came here last, I saw you with a big man, I thought that might be who he was. But he lo
oked as if he was dragging you into the station against your will.’
‘He probably was,’ Verity shrugged. ‘But for you to understand how it all came about I’d better go back to when Aunt Hazel died.’
‘A neighbour of yours told me about that, that was back before the Blitz began,’ Ruby said. ‘I’m so sorry. I should’ve written then, but I couldn’t find the words.’
Verity reached across the table and put her hand over Ruby’s. ‘Please, no more apologies, we must draw a veil over all that and forget it. I was in financial difficulties when Aunt Hazel died. I needed to get a lodger, and that meant sprucing up the house and getting a bathroom put in.’
As clearly and quickly as she could, she told Ruby about how when her mother was alive she’d sold various valuable items from their old house to a shop in Blackheath. Later, after Aunt Hazel died, she’d gone back with some more things and Mr Rosen had told her about people running off and leaving their houses, because they were afraid of what war might bring.
She stopped there, not sure if she could go on.
‘Don’t stop, Verity, you need to tell me,’ Ruby said. ‘I won’t judge you, whatever you did.’
‘What he said about people leaving their homes gave me an idea.’
‘To break in and rob them?’ Ruby whispered.
Verity nodded. ‘Well, I didn’t do it right away. You see, I met this lovely man, Miller, a gardener. He’d lost his job and home cos the people he worked for were some of those lot who moved away. So he came as my lodger.’
‘Just the lodger?’ Ruby smiled.
Verity smirked. ‘Yes, just. He never became anything else, not until I was waving him goodbye when war broke out. He was turned down for the forces, as he had a heart thing, so they sent him to work for the Forestry up in Scotland.’
Verity went on to explain that her aunt had always intended to put a bathroom in, and she wanted one desperately too. Miller went off one weekend to see some relatives and she decided she was going to burgle a house while he was gone to get the money for the bathroom.