7
RUBY
October
At the beginning of October, the weather changed. Blustery winds surged down from the north, turning the sea to a sheet of choppy, churning steel, and with them came the approaching anniversary of Mother’s death. Father’s mood darkened accordingly, his night terrors growing worse, and he developed a hollow, hunted look, his face grey. I should have been used to it by now – it happened every year – but it still took a toll.
To distract myself, I made an effort to keep busy – so busy I barely had time to think about anything, least of all Sam. I wasn’t avoiding the possibility of bumping into him when I took Toffee for walks in the gardens in the middle of town instead of up at the dunes; it was just that the weather was bad, and I didn’t want Toffee to get loose and run onto the beach again (although there was little chance of that happening, thanks to his splendid new lead). I took the longer route to work, telling myself it was because I needed the fresh air and exercise, not so I could duck into an alleyway if I saw someone in a khaki uniform approaching. Sam was just someone I’d run into once – all right, twice – and would be unlikely to meet again. Much to my relief, his sergeant hadn’t carried out his threat to report me to Howler.
One Thursday morning, after a few snatched hours of sleep following a long ARP shift, I woke late to discover Father already at the breakfast table, grim-faced. ‘I suppose you’ve heard about the Pearson girl?’ he said.
Still foggy-headed, my mind whirling with everything I needed to do before I got ready for work, I gazed blankly at him. ‘The Pearson girl?’
‘Jennie Pearson. You went to school with her, didn’t you?’
Suddenly, I remembered her. She was my age, a quiet, mousy sort who’d never seemed to be interested in anything much; we’d not been friends then and we weren’t now, but we sometimes stopped to chat when we bumped into each other around town. ‘What about her?’
‘She’s got herself in trouble with one of those American soldiers. He’s denying he had anything to do with it, of course, but her mother is certain.’
‘In trouble? What sort of trouble?’ Then the penny dropped. ‘Oh.’
Father peered keenly at me. ‘You are doing as I asked, aren’t you, Ruby? You are keeping away from those men?’
‘Of course I am!’ I said. To my horror, I felt my face growing warm. ‘I haven’t been anywhere near them!’
‘Good.’ The frown line between his eyebrows smoothed out. ‘Oh, forgive me, I know I worry. But I want what’s best for you.’
‘Of course, Father,’ I said. I bolted down some tea and porridge and rushed back upstairs to clean my teeth. When I went outside, I discovered my bike had a puncture. I didn’t have anything to patch the tyre, so I had to run all the way through the rain to work.
By the end of the morning, I had a raging headache. ‘Oh, go home,’ Vera told me after lunch, when she caught me leaning my elbows on my desk and massaging my temples. I’d taken an aspirin, but it hadn’t done much good.
I smiled wanly at her. ‘I’m all right.’
‘No, you’re not.’ Her tone brooked no argument. ‘There’s never much to do on Thursdays anyway, not once we’ve gone to press. Go on. If Howler asks, I’ll tell him you were having female problems. He’ll go red and mutter into his moustache and disappear back into his office faster than you can say air raid.’
Gratefully, I gathered my things. Before I went, I asked Vera, ‘Have you heard about Jennie Pearson?’
She made a face. ‘Who hasn’t? Apparently the soldier who’s got her in the family way promised to marry her, but he’s changed his mind and won’t have anything to do with her now. People are shunning her in the street.’
‘Yes, that’s what Father said – about the soldier dropping her, I mean. He gave me a talking-to this morning – wanted to make sure I wasn’t associating with the Americans in any way.’
Vera rolled her eyes. ‘He needs to give you some credit – you’ve infinitely more sense than Jennie Pearson! Even if you did start seeing one of the Americans I’m sure you wouldn’t get yourself in a mess like that. I feel sorry for the poor thing, I really do, but that girl was born with cotton wool between her ears where her brains should be. Anyway, what are you still doing here? Shoo!’
I made my way downstairs, looking forward to a quiet house and a few hours to myself before Father returned from work. Perhaps I’d read. I’d borrowed a couple of novels from the library, and I could already hear them calling to me.
My coat pulled close around me against the rain, I ducked into Ropewalk Alley at the side of the Herald offices. It was an unpleasant little cut-through, narrow and dark, the slimy cobbles strewn with rubbish that had spilled out of the bins lined up along one side, but as a shortcut, it would save me at least ten minutes.
As I edged past the rubbish bins, I heard voices – American voices – and footsteps turning into the alley behind me. My heart leapt into my throat, but I stuck my chin out and kept walking; there wasn’t exactly anywhere else I could go.
Behind me, someone whistled. ‘Whoo–ee. Looking fine, lil’ lady!’
If I was Vera, I might have turned round and winked at him – perhaps flipped my hair over my shoulders – but there was something in his tone that made my stomach clench, my hands curl into loose fists. I kept walking, staring straight ahead.
‘Hey, where you goin’? We just wanna talk to you!’ the voice called. The footsteps behind me sped up; moments later I found myself flanked by two burly soldiers wearing the white helmets of the military police. “Snowdrops” everyone called them, although I couldn’t have come up with a less appropriate name for this pair if I’d tried.
The taller of the two leered at me, leaning against the wall in front of me. To a passer-by, it might have looked casual, but he was blocking my way with his arm. He had blond hair, and a wide, white-toothed grin that didn’t reach his eyes; they were like a snake’s, small and cold in the middle of his fleshy face. Fleetingly, I found myself wondering if one of these two was the soldier who’d got Jennie Pearson in trouble.
‘So, honey, what’s your name?’ he said. ‘I’m Freddie. This is Gene.’
I glanced round at the other soldier, who was standing behind me. He was thinner than Freddie, dark-haired with a humourless expression. ‘Hey,’ he said.
‘Excuse me,’ I said, making to step forwards. ‘I must go.’
Freddie moved his arm down a little. ‘Hey, why the hurry? It’s dinner time, isn’t it? Oh, sorry, lunchtime.’ He said the last two words in a mock-English accent. ‘Why don’t you come up to the club with us and get something to eat?’
‘I’m quite all right, thank you.’ My heart was pounding.
‘Aw, that’s not very polite, is it, Gene?’ Freddie said over my head. ‘I thought these British girls were supposed to be so nice.’
He moved closer. I tried to step back, but I was sandwiched between him and Gene. My stomach twisted.
‘What’s wrong? You already spoken for?’ Freddie drawled. ‘Or ain’t I good enough for you?’
‘Oh!’ I said, pretending to stare at something over his shoulder. ‘There’s my father – the constable. Father!’ I waved. Freddie jerked his head round, and I ducked under his arm and ran.
‘Hey!’ I heard him shout after me. I didn’t slow down until I was several streets away and certain he and Gene weren’t following me.
As I hurried home, I swore I would have nothing more to do with the Americans, even if they begged me. Father was right; I was best keeping well away from them – all of them, even Sam.
But fate had other ideas.
*
‘No buts, no ifs, and no I can’ts,’ Vera said the following morning, flinging a rectangle of paper down on my desk. ‘You’re coming with me, and that’s that, even if I have to tie you up and drag you there. I’m fed up of seeing you moping around with a face like a month of wet Sundays.’
I gazed at the piece of paper. It was a printed invitation from the Americans to a dance at the camp at seven o’clock this Saturday evening – the night before my nineteenth birthday. Vera’s name was written in a looping scrawl at the top, with bring a friend! scribbled at the bottom in the same hand.
‘Where on earth did you get this?’ I asked.
Vera waved a hand in the air. ‘Oh, there’s this soldier – George or John or something. He’s rather sweet on me, I think.’
‘Are you seeing him?’
Vera snorted. ‘Not likely! He’s good-looking, but much too sure of himself. I just let him think he might have a chance, is all.’
‘Isn’t that a bit… awkward?’
‘Goodness me, no! It’s jolly well worth it if you ask me. He’s getting me some stockings next time I see him, and not nylons – silk!’ Vera stretched out a shapely leg, eyeing it critically. ‘Just as well, too. If these get any more holes in them I’m going to have to start colouring my legs with old tea leaves and painting seams up the backs with gravy browning like Elsie Hammond at the greengrocer’s!’
I looked down at my own stockings. They were a mass of darns, sagging at the ankles. ‘Oh, I’m sure he can get you some too,’ Vera said, lighting a cigarette. ‘I’ll introduce you at the dance. Or perhaps your soldier can get you a few pairs.’
‘He’s not my soldier,’ I said woodenly. ‘Stop saying that. I haven’t seen him again since that day he came here. And anyway, I can’t go – I promised Father I’d have nothing to do with the Americans. And Saturday night is mine and Father’s Monopoly night – you know that.’
‘You are not spending Saturday night playing Monopoly.’ Vera sounded positively outraged. ‘That father of yours can spare you for one night – you know he can! And you don’t have to tell him where you’re going!’
Slight panic gripped me at the thought of lying to Father. ‘But I don’t have anything to wear,’ I said. It was true: I didn’t possess a single frock suitable for a dance. All my dresses were plain and patched, let down and let out, faded and threadbare.
‘Leave that to me,’ Vera said. ‘You’re coming to this dance and that’s that.’
Just then, there was a knock at the door. Before either of us could say come in, it opened and Alfie Blythe stuck his head round. In one smooth movement Vera swept the invitation to the American dance into her bag.
‘Oh, hullo, Alfie,’ she said. ‘Got anything for us?’
He handed over the usual bundle of post, but instead of leaving again, stood in front of my desk, knotting his fingers together.
‘Help you, Alfie?’ Vera said brightly.
Alfie looked straight at me. ‘Er, you see, the thing is—’
My heart sank.
He cleared his throat, his Adam’s apple bobbing. ‘There’s a dance at Dad’s works on Saturday night. I, er, I was wondering if you might like to go with me, Ruby.’
He looked so hopeful that I felt like absolutely the worst person in the world as I stammered, ‘I – I’m sorry, Alfie, but I can’t. I – Vera and I are going to see a film.’
Alfie pressed his lips together and gave a curt little nod. ‘I understand.’ Before I could say anything else, he left, closing the door softly behind him.
Vera laughed.
I shook my head at her. ‘Hush! He’ll hear you!’ I was still hot and cold all over with guilt.
‘I’m sorry. But it’s just too funny. The poor boy’s besotted with you.’
I glared at her. ‘He’s not. Stop saying that! And it’s not funny at all.’
‘Oh, but it is. Don’t you see? You’ll have to come to the American dance now. Alfie only lives just down the lane from you – if he doesn’t see you going out on Saturday night he’ll think you were fobbing him off.’
I slumped back in my chair with a sigh. ‘OK, you win.’
‘Jolly good.’ Vera gave a triumphant little smile. ‘Now, let’s work out what you’re going to wear.’
That evening, I braced myself to talk to Father. ‘Father, there’s a dance on Saturday night…’ I began as we ate our lamb chops.
‘Oh?’ he said, not looking up. As usual, he had a notepad on the table beside him and was frowning at it, his fork in his left hand and a mechanical pencil in his right. I remembered the time not so long ago when he’d stabbed the pencil into his potatoes by mistake, and I wondered if he might do it again. I felt slightly hysterical laughter bubbling up in my throat and swallowed hard.
‘It’s at the A – at Alfie’s father’s works,’ I said, the lie tumbling smoothly out of my mouth.
‘Well, I suppose you do need to let your hair down every now and then,’ he said, scribbling something down. ‘It can’t be much fun, staying in with your aged father every Saturday night.’
He still didn’t look up from his notes. I let out a silent, relieved sigh.
On Saturday evening after work I went back to Vera’s to get ready. She rented a room at the top of one of the tall houses on the seafront, where she’d lived ever since coming to Devon from the Home Counties five years ago. When I’d first got to know her and she’d told me about herself, I’d been a little surprised she’d come here instead of going to work on a newspaper in London or another big city, but she’d said she used to visit an aunt and uncle in Devon when she was a child, and had wanted to live here ever since, so when the job at the Herald came up, she applied. ‘Anyway,’ she’d added with a wink, ‘I always thought Bartonford could use a bit of glamour.’
Although I would’ve been nervous about bombing raids if I lived here, I loved to visit. The room was as different from the poky little cottage at Barton Hall as it was possible to get, large and airy, with windows set into the sloping ceiling looking out to the sea on one side and over the roofs of the town on the other. Although the furniture was old and shabby, Vera had draped bright silk scarves over the armchairs and a pretty shawl across the bed. There was a cheerful hooked rug on the floor, photos of Hollywood actors and actresses pinned to the walls, and a bright fire crackled in the grate.
Vera lent me her second-best dress, a dark green silk she’d bought in London just before the war. ‘It’s a tatty old thing really,’ she said dismissively as I put it on, but it was a hundred times nicer than anything I owned: mid-calf length with short sleeves, fitted at the waist with a little belt and flared slightly at the hips. It had shoes to match, which Vera stuffed with newspaper to make them fit.
‘No,’ I said firmly when she advanced on me with her makeup case.
‘But you can’t go to a dance without anything on your face!’
‘Really, Vera, I mustn’t. I told Father I was going to the dance at Blythe’s. He’ll get suspicious if I—’
‘Oh, do stop worrying about your bloody father,’ she snorted. ‘You can wash it off before you go home. He’ll never know. Unless he’s psychic?’
It was no use protesting. I closed my eyes and let Vera go to work. ‘Where’s all this from?’ I asked as she expertly flicked a pencil through my brows. ‘You can’t get makeup anywhere these days.’
‘A little bird.’
‘A little American bird?’
I opened my eyes just in time to see one side of her mouth quirk up in a smile. ‘Perhaps.’
When she’d finished, I went to look in the mirror, which was standing in the corner with another shawl draped over it.
‘Wait!’ Vera stepped in front of me, brandishing a bright red Max Factor Hollywood Tru-Color lipstick, which looked brand new as well. ‘There,’ she said after she’d slicked it onto my lips and shown me how to blot them with a tissue so the colour didn’t smudge. She pulled the shawl off the mirror.
I gazed at my reflection, turning this way and that to get a better look at myself. The green of the dress brought out copper highlights in my hair and lent a creamy tint to my pale skin, and Vera’s expertly applied makeup made my eyes look enormous, and turned my mouth into an alluring Cupid’s bow. I smiled. The girl in the mirror didn’t look like me at all; she was extraordinarily, thrillingly grown up.
Vera smiled again. ‘You’ll do. And keep the lipstick. Birthday present for tomorrow.’
‘Oh, no, I couldn’t possibly—’
‘You could and you will. No arguments.’
As we walked to the town square to catch the bus laid on by the Americans to take people up to the camp, nerves gripped me. What if Sam was there? What would I say to him? And – my stomach dropped momentarily – what if I bumped into Freddie or Gene? I kept my head down and my coat pulled close around me, not looking at anyone else in the queue. It seemed as if half the town was there. And I tried very hard not to think about Father, all alone back at the cottage, thinking I was at Blythe’s Works with Alfie.
We arrived at the camp at half past seven. Until now, I’d only seen it from a distance. As we walked up to the gate, the towering wire fences around the perimeter loomed above us. Keep out! they seemed to say. Keep away!
‘Vera, are you sure—’ I began.
‘I do hope there’s something to eat,’ Vera said over her shoulder to me as she handed our invitation to the guard on sentry duty. ‘I’m famished.’
‘Plenty for everyone,’ the guard said with a wink, waving us into the camp.
‘Well.’ Vera straightened her jacket, smiling her Lauren Bacall smile.
As we made our way through the rows of huts and canvas tents, I heard music up ahead, bright and jazzy. My heart beat fast, keeping rhythm.
‘Where on earth is the dance? In one of the huts?’ I’d seen pictures of the insides of the American army’s Nissen huts in Father’s Times; I was trying to imagine the beds pushed back against the curving walls, a gramophone cranking out the latest dance tunes.
‘Gosh, no! It’s in the recreation hall,’ Vera said.
‘Recreation hall?’ Then I remembered the dance hall old Tom Bidley had told me about the day I found out the Americans were coming to Bartonford.
We turned a corner and I saw another Nissen hut, an enormous one, with rows of windows along the sides – all blacked out, of course – and huge, roll-back steel doors, waves of music and voices escaping into the night every time they opened to admit someone. The inside was even more impressive. There were bright flags and bunting hanging from the ceiling, and a band – a real band! – performing on a stage at the back. The polished wooden dance floor was crowded with bodies, moving in time to the music, and lined up against one wall were tables groaning under the weight of more food than I’d seen all year: whole joints of meat, soft white bread, butter, grapes and oranges, even a pineapple, next to rows of bottles of what looked like dark-coloured, fizzy vinegar with Coca-Cola embossed on the sides.
More tables, with chairs pushed under them so people could sit down, had been arranged across the opposite side of the hall. Everything was bursting with colour and noise, as if someone had waved a magic wand over this tiny portion of drab, bomb-scarred Devon and brought it back to life for a night. I stood just inside the door, my nerves forgotten – the war forgotten – drinking it all in. I was relieved that Vera’s green silk didn’t look too shabby in comparison to the dresses the other women were wearing.
Then I spotted Freddie, weaving through the crowd towards us. All at once I felt as if someone had poured ice-cold seawater over me. It was a mistake to come – a terrible mistake, I thought desperately. I should leave at once. But I was rooted to the spot.
‘Hey, gals, care to dance?’ he said with a wide, white-toothed grin, staring at me. If he recognised me, he didn’t give any indication. His eyes were as cold and expressionless as they had been the first time I met him.
No, don’t!I wanted to shout as Vera said, ‘Oh, why not,’ and offered up an arm for Freddie to take. ‘Don’t look so downhearted, doll,’ he said to me. ‘I’ll come back for you later.’ A shudder went down my spine as he whirled Vera away, leaving me by myself.
I felt like an animal cornered in a cage, startled and staring. All I wanted was to go home – back to Monopoly and cocoa with Father – but the bus back into town wasn’t until a quarter to ten, and the night was moonless and cloudy. It would be madness to try and walk home in the dark in these heels, and anyway, all my things were at Vera’s. I was stuck here.
I edged through the people thronging the dance floor until I reached the food. A soldier was serving doorstop sandwiches, carving the meat off an enormous joint of hot beef so tender it was falling apart. Despite everything, my stomach growled. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had roast beef, or bread that didn’t taste and look like it was made from sawdust and floor sweepings.
‘Here you are, ma’am.’ Before I knew what was happening the soldier had thrust a plate with a towering sandwich on it into my hand.
‘Oh, I wasn’t—’ I protested, but he’d already moved on to someone else. Pink-cheeked and flustered, I picked up a bottle of Coca-Cola, wondering if it tasted better than it looked, and retreated to an empty table in the corner where I could hide. I had to admit, the sandwich was good. So was the Coca-Cola, although it was overpoweringly sweet and the bubbles tickled my nose.
‘Er, hi.’ Someone slid into the seat beside me.