The House By Princes Park

by Maureen Lee

  Her father was Jamaican, her mother Irish, and she had two brothers and three sisters, all living at home. She was eighteen, the same age as Ruby, which Jacob found incredible. Ruby seemed more like twenty-five, thirty, compared to this pretty, carefree girl, whose main ambition in life was to sell lipsticks and scent.

  ‘You didn’t mind me talking to you, did you, Jake?’ she said later. ‘You did look lonely, and I thought it was a shame, someone as nice as you sitting on their own.’ She looked at him shyly. ‘Have you got a girlfriend?’

  Jacob swallowed. ‘No,’ he said boldly. He didn’t want to drive her away. It made a change to be flattered. She wasn’t on the game, but in the pub only because it was someone’s birthday from work. She made him feel big, whereas Ruby made him feel small. She was soft, Ruby was hard. When closing time came, he daringly suggested they meet again next Saturday in the same pub.

  She looked disappointed. ‘But that’s a whole week away! Couldn’t we see each other sooner?’

  ‘I’d like to but...’ Jacob paused, but having told one lie, it was easy to tell another, ‘... I’m a bit short of cash. I send money to me mam in Kirkby every week, see. She’s a widder and I’ve got three brothers, all younger than me. She has a job making ends meet since I left home.’

  Beth looked at him emotionally. ‘You’re even nicer than I first thought. Tell you what, we’ll go to the pictures Wednesday, it’ll be my treat.’

  From then on, they saw each other twice a week, which quickly became three. His wages rose by one and six a week and he didn’t tell Ruby, but kept the money for himself. When Beth introduced him to her big, strapping father and red-haired mother, they regarded him with a critical eye and apparently liked what they saw. He said he was a Catholic and was welcomed with open arms into their home, regarded as Beth’s suitor, just as he had been Audrey’s what seemed like a million years ago. It was a position that Jacob liked, uncomplicated, with few demands, apart from the necessity to have a good time. He rather enjoyed his double life, though knew it couldn’t last. One of these days Ruby would find out about Beth, or Beth about Ruby.

  The double life came to an end in an unexpected way.

  It was New Year’s Eve, snowing, the grey sky was heavy with sludgy black clouds. In the coalyard, a mountain of glossy coal had been turned into a thing of beauty by a spangle of snowflakes. Jacob wore gloves as he threw the bulging sacks on to the cart, whistling cheerfully as he worked. His employer, Arthur Cummings, too old and frail to carry on the business by himself, was rubbing his gnarled hands in the doorway of the small house overlooking the yard where he lived alone. His wife had died two years before, they’d had no children.

  ‘Watch’a doing tonight, lad?’ he enquired.

  He knew about Ruby and the girls. Christmas had proved complicated with two women having demands on his time. Beth had been told he was spending the holiday in Kirkby. He was seeing her tomorrow. ‘Just staying in,’ Jacob replied, ‘having a drink with the wife.’

  ‘Good lad,’ Arthur said approvingly. ‘You’re welcome to share a bottle of Guinness with us when you’re finished here. We can toast the New Year a bit early, like.’

  Jacob nodded, though he’d no intention of accepting. Arthur was a nice man, obviously lonely, always offering cups of tea and trying to engage him in conversation. But Jacob couldn’t be bothered. He finished loading the cart, patted the unresponsive horse whose name was Clifford, between the ears, and was about to leap on board, when Beth walked through the wooden gates, startling Clifford, who tossed his head and gave a nervous snort.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he demanded a trifle shortly. The yard was neutral territory. Ruby had never thought to come near.

  ‘I’ve got something to tell you, Jake.’ She looked very pale and her eyes were swollen. ‘I’m in the club.’

  ‘In the what?’

  ‘The club, Jake. I’m expecting a baby. I haven’t told me mam and dad, but we’ll have to get wed straight away. They’ll guess, eventually, but it won’t matter once we’re married. We’ll go to St Vincent de Paul’s tonight and see Father O’Leary, arrange to have the banns called.’

  Jacob froze with shock. ‘I can’t, tonight,’ he stuttered. ‘It’s New Year’s Eve. I promised to spend it with me mam.’

  Beth looked disappointed. ‘The next night, then.’

  That night and the next, to Ruby’s surprise, Jacob stayed in, terrified out of his wits. It occurred to him he wasn’t married to Ruby and was therefore free to marry Beth. But he didn’t want a wife, particularly not one who was pregnant. It would be a case of exchanging one miserable life for another, possibly worse. At least Ruby earned a goodly sum and had worked right through both pregnancies. Beth might want to leave Woollies and the responsibility for supporting her and the child would rest entirely on him. He began to see all sorts of qualities in Ruby that he hadn’t appreciated before.

  Beth knew he lived in Foster Court, but not the number. ‘It’s a hovel,’ he told her. ‘Only temporary. I’d sooner you didn’t come.’ Any minute she’d come looking for him or she’d turn up again at the coal yard. Even worse, she might send her father. Jacob didn’t know which way to turn.

  Another day passed. He told Arthur Cummings he needed a day off. ‘I’ve a bit of business to see to. I’ll work all day Sat’ day instead.’ He’d been a good worker and had never taken time off before. Arthur willingly agreed.

  Next morning, he put on in his working clothes and hid in a doorway at the end of the court until he saw Ruby leave with the children in the pram, then went back and changed into his suit.

  He had no idea how to escape the tangle his life had become, other than to run away, get a job on a farm, never look at a woman again for as long as he lived. There were railway stations in town where he could catch a train as far away from Liverpool as he could afford.

  The city throbbed with the noise of traffic, he was jostled on the pavements, his head began to ache as he made his muddled way towards Lime Street station. He paused, trying to get his bearings. He was outside a shop that wasn’t really a shop. ‘Army Recruiting Office’ said the sign over the window. It took him ages to work it out.

  He hadn’t expected to return to Foster Court, but he did. It would take at least two weeks for his application to join the Army to be processed. He’d given the address of the coal yard, Mr Cummings wouldn’t mind, and he’d think of a reason for the different surname, Veering, if it was noticed. His first posting would be with the Army Educational Corps to have his reading and writing skills brought up to standard. Accommodation would be provided, food, his pay would be his own. Most importantly of all, he would be taken care of. From now on, his only obligation would be to King and country.

  Tonight he’d go round Beth’s before she sought him out, arrange to have the banns called, pick a date for the wedding. By the time it arrived, he would be gone.

  Ruby didn’t worry when Jacob didn’t come home for his tea. She’d got used to the way he seemed to lead his own life these days. Sometimes, she wondered if she still loved him, or if she never had, that it had just been a childish crush. He was the first young man she’d ever met, undoubtedly handsome, but under different circumstances, she doubted if she would have given him a second glance. Without the incident with Bill Pickering, their romance would probably have petered out years ago.

  But then she wouldn’t have had her girls. They were on the bed, both asleep. She went over and touched Greta’s white cheek. ‘What would I have done without you?’ she whispered. The pale lips were curved in a wistful smile and she was clutching the rag doll she had christened ‘Babs’. She resembled her father, with the same butter-coloured hair, the same blue eyes and long, fair lashes. She had Jacob’s placid temperament.

  Poor Jacob! Ruby sighed. He was a nice man who’d been expected to act in a way that was quite beyond him. Jacob needed peace, quiet, to be left alone. Jacob, the farmhand, would have worked as hard as any man, harder than some.
<
br />   Ruby made no attempt to touch her other daughter for fear of waking her. At nine months, Heather was a minx, crawling now, into everything. Twice she’d burnt her hand on the iron that had been hidden under the bed to cool. Mother and daughter were very alike. Heather had black hair and almost black eyes. Thin and wiry, very strong, she was almost as tall as Greta who was a year older, often sickly, and still underweight.

  She supposed she may as well eat the stew going cold on the table. Stew was easiest to make on the gas ring in the kitchen – she wouldn’t have dreamt of putting anything in the filthy oven. Cooking was difficult since Heather had started crawling. She didn’t know whether to leave the child in the room with everything dangerous out the way, or take her downstairs where there were different hazards, including cockroaches which Heather couldn’t be trusted not to catch and eat.

  When, oh, when, would they get away from Foster Court!

  It was only in the dead of night that the house was still and silence descended. For this reason, Ruby never minded the occasional times when she woke, able for once to hear the girls’ gentle breathing and Jacob’s soft snores. No babies were crying, no women screaming, doors slamming. No one was fighting. Sometimes, she would lie, quite content, until the wheels of the milk cart rattled along the main road, followed by the clink of bottles. As if this was a signal for the area to come to life, doors would open, voices could be heard, whistling, and the steady beat of booted feet as men marched towards the docks to start their day’s work. At this point, Ruby would wake Jacob and get up herself and hope to reach the kitchen before anyone else to boil water for tea.

  When she woke up that night, she realised something was wrong, something was missing. She remembered Jacob wasn’t home by the time she’d gone to bed. And he still wasn’t there.

  She had no idea what time it was. Apart from the children’s breath, the world was soundless. She sat up and lit the candle and for the first time noticed Jacob’s suit wasn’t behind the door on its cardboard hanger. She stayed sitting up, sick with worry and freezing cold, until the milk cart arrived, the dockers had gone to work, when she got dressed, fed the girls, put them in the pram, and pushed it round to the coal yard.

  The sky was leaden and the January morning bitterly cold. When she arrived at the yard, a strange young man was loading the cart with sacks. A grey horse, already harnessed, stared moodily at the ground, tossing its head fearfully when it saw her.

  ‘Where’s Jacob?’ Ruby demanded loudly. Had he lost his job and was too scared to tell her?

  ‘You’d better give Arthur Cummings a knock. He’ll tell you.’ The young man grinned and nodded towards the small house standing on its own in the corner of the yard. ‘Sounds as if he was a bit of a lad, our Jacob.’

  ‘How would you know?’ Ruby snapped.

  An old man, very bent, with rheumy eyes, answered the door. For some reason, he looked extremely moidered. Ruby didn’t waste time with polite niceties. ‘Where’s Jacob?’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘His wife.’

  ‘But I thought...’ He pulled at his snow-white hair and looked even more moidered.

  ‘Thought what?’

  ‘Well, his wife’s already here.’

  ‘I never said I was his wife. I’m his fiancée.’ A girl had come into the hall from the back of the house. She wore a brown fitted coat and a Fair Isle tam-o’-shanter with matching mittens, and would have been exceptionally pretty had her eyes not been so red with weeping. ‘Jake hasn’t got a wife.’

  ‘Oh, yes he has,’ Ruby said fiercely. ‘Me!’ She pointed to the pram. ‘And these are his children. But where the hell’s their father, that’s what I’d like to know. His name’s Jacob, by the way, and you can’t possibly be his fiancée.’

  The girl screamed and burst into tears. ‘Jaysus! It’s even worse than I thought. He’s double-crossed me on top of everything else.’

  ‘Yes, but where is he?’ Ruby insisted.

  ‘He’s joined the Army, girl,’ Arthur Cummings said nervously. ‘The Royal Tank Regiment. He said his wife knew.’

  Arthur was a gentle old man, genuinely upset by his exemployee’s disgraceful behaviour as if, somehow, it reflected on him. He made a pot of tea, which, he said, he was as much in need of as his visitors. The pram was parked in the hall and the two women sat at a chenille-covered table in a comfortable back room which looked as if nothing had changed since the last century. A cheerful fire spat and crackled in the black grate.

  There seemed little point in blaming each other. Jacob had duped them both. Perhaps it was perverse, but Ruby couldn’t help liking the girl who was clearly heartbroken. She loved him, she sobbed, they were getting married next month. Last night they’d arranged to go window-shopping to look at wedding rings and intended to buy one on Saturday. When he didn’t turn up, she’d been worried.

  Ruby glanced at the sixpenny brass ring she’d bought from Woolworth’s. She’d paid for it herself and her finger turned green if she didn’t take it off when she went to bed. She wasn’t sure how she felt other than totally betrayed. Jacob! Having an affair! She hadn’t thought he had it in him. But adversity had never sat well on Jacob’s shoulders and at that moment her own shoulders felt a fraction lighter, knowing that he had gone out of her life. She might cry, tonight and the next night and a few nights to come, if only because the thing that had started so sweetly had ended on such a sour note. But then it had turned sour a long while ago.

  By now, Beth was weeping inconsolably. Ruby reached over and touched her arm. ‘You’ll have to try and forget him,’ she said in the tone of a mother addressing a child. ‘You’re only young. You’ll find someone else.’

  ‘I’ll never forget him and I don’t want anyone else,’ the girl wept. ‘Me life’s ruined. I can’t go back to work. I’ve told everyone I’m getting married. Some of ‘em have already got me a present. They were coming to St Vincent de Paul’s to watch.’

  ‘Tell them you’ve called it off,’ Arthur suggested. He was sitting between them like a referee, having taken their predicament to his heart.

  ‘That’s a good idea,’ Ruby said encouragingly. ‘Say you’ve changed your mind.’

  Beth looked at them, her face tragic. ‘I would, I could, except... except, I’m having Jake’s baby. When me dad finds out, he’ll kill me.’

  There was a knock on the door. ‘Not another young lady looking for Jacob, I hope,’ Arthur said plaintively when he went to answer it, but it was only his new employee announcing he was on his way.

  The knock must have reminded Heather she was being neglected and she set up a plaintive wail.

  ‘I’ll have to be going,’ Ruby announced. ‘I’ve got things to do, important things, people to see.’

  ‘But what about me?’ Beth cried.

  Ruby frowned. ‘What about you?’

  ‘You’ve got to help me.’

  ‘No, I haven’t. I’ve been left in a bigger pickle than you. I’ve got two children to support, rent to pay, a job to do.’

  ‘But you haven’t got a broken heart, not like me,’ Beth said passionately. ‘You’re not the least upset, I can tell. No wonder he turned to me. You must have been neglecting him something awful. It’s your fault he went away. You drove him to it.’

  ‘Hold on a minute, girl,’ Mr Cummings interjected. ‘I don’t think you’re being entirely fair.’

  ‘Nothing is fair.’

  ‘Jacob only left home after he met you,’ Ruby pointed out. ‘It was probably learning about the baby that did it. He wasn’t capable of supporting one family, let alone two.’

  ‘He supported his mam and little brothers, didn’t he?’

  ‘Did he thump! He hasn’t seen his mam in years and he was an only child. He could hardly bring himself to support his children. It was the bookie and the beer that took most of Jacob’s money.’

  ‘Oh!’ Beth started to cry again.

  Perhaps that last remark had been unnecessarily brutal. Ruby felt
sorry for the girl. She looked too soft-hearted by a mile and was right to claim Jacob had been neglected, but it was his own fault. He’d been treated with the utmost sympathy when they’d first arrived at Foster Court. Another woman wouldn’t have let him lie on that damned bed for more than a couple of days, let alone six months, supporting him, fussing over him. He’d probably still be there, she thought darkly, if Greta hadn’t arrived. He’d treated his daughters with indifference, as if they were nothing to do with him, that somehow Ruby had managed to conceive them on her own.

  ‘You’re better off without him,’ she said abruptly.

  ‘How can you possibly say that!’ the girl cried.

  ‘She’s been married to him for two years,’ Mr Cummings put in. ‘She should know. Meself, I considered him a nice lad, but he’s gone down in me estimation as from this morning.’

  Beth shivered. ‘I’m nearly three months gone. I’ll have to leave home before I start to show. I’d prefer to go sooner rather than later, under me own steam, as it were, because I’ll be chucked out, anyroad, once me dad finds out. At least I’d avoid a good hiding.’

  ‘That makes sense to me,’ the old man opined, nodding his white head.

  ‘Yes, but where would I go?’ She spread her hands and shrugged helplessly. ‘Could I stay with you?’ She looked hopefully at Ruby. ‘I’m sorry about what I said before. I didn’t mean it.’

  Ruby snorted. ‘Believe me, you wouldn’t want to stay with me. No one in their right mind would want to live in Foster Court. The room was cramped enough with Jacob and he was out most of the time. You and me’d be falling over each other and there isn’t the space for another baby. And what happens when you stop work? Am I supposed to keep you?’

  ‘I don’t care how squashed it is. I tell you what,’ Beth said eagerly, ‘I’ll do the cleaning in return for me keep. You won’t have to lift a finger.’