by Maureen Lee
The hall and the landing were enormous and four of the spacious bedrooms had bay windows with padded seats – one was still full of Max Hart’s childish toys. The furniture was old and shabby and the carpets as faded as the curtains and the upholstered suites in the two big reception rooms at the front. Here and there, a young Max had scribbled with a crayon on the pale, knobbly wallpaper, though was unlikely to have been chastised by his indulgent mother. Mrs Hart hadn’t thought to cover the furniture or put things away before she set sail for America. The beds hadn’t been made, there was half-finished knitting in the kitchen where dishes had been left to drain. Ruby hadn’t felt inclined to tidy up the times she’d come to make sure everything was all right.
‘It looks as if she’s just popped out to do a bit of shopping,’ Beth remarked. ‘It’s creepy. She’s even left a record on the gramophone with the lid up. It’s full of dust.’
Ruby thought the place had a run-down, appealing charm that hadn’t been evident in the more sumptuously furnished Brambles. ‘Stop moaning and count your blessings,’ she said sternly.
‘Oh, I’m counting them, don’t worry.’ Beth smiled. ‘I never dreamt I’d ever live in a house like this. Bagsy me a bedroom overlooking the park.’
‘Bagsy me the other. Anyway,’ Ruby frowned and looked thoughtful, ‘I think it best if we kept to the back, downstairs too, we’ll use the living room next to the kitchen, so as few people will notice us as possible, but we’ll have to think of a story for the neighbours to explain why we’re here – say we’re housesitting, for instance, that we’ve got permission to stay. We’ll have to get some blackout curtains. It’s lucky Mrs Hart put sticky tape on the windows before she went away.’
‘There’s a sewing machine in the little bedroom, a treadle. Me mam had one the same at home. It’ll do to sew the blackout curtains – and I can make us some clothes.’
They returned downstairs, leaving Greta and Heather trying out the inside lavatory. ‘I’ll arrange to have the mains turned on,’ Ruby said, thinking aloud. ‘I’ll say I’m Mrs Hart’s daughter if anyone asks. It means we’ll have bills to pay, electricity, gas. Tomorrow, I’ll start work again. Probably no one’s noticed I’ve been gone – there wasn’t time to tell them.’
‘Oh, this is the gear!’ Beth picked Jake up and gave him a little excited twirl. ‘You’re a miracle worker, Ruby O’Hagan, you really are. I’m ever so glad I met you.’
‘You can thank Jake’s dad for that. Don’t forget, it was him you met first.’
Chapter 7
It wasn’t long, a matter of weeks, before Ruby was forced to declare the pawnshop runner another casualty of war. Most of her former customers no longer needed to pawn their valuables. Unemployment had vanished at a stroke and wages had risen. Women were taking over men’s jobs, earning fabulous amounts in factories. They delivered post, read meters, joined the Forces, became tram and bus conductors, did all sorts of jobs that had once been the preserve of males.
The world had changed. There was a different spirit in the air. Germany had laid down a challenge and the British people had taken it up with enthusiasm. The pawnshop runner was out of date. She belonged to a world that no longer existed. Ruby would have to find another, quite different job.
Ironically, the new poor were women with families whose husbands had been called up. They were allowed a pitiful sum to make up for the breadwinner being away risking his life for his country.
‘Why aren’t you getting an allowance?’ Beth enquired when Ruby, rather foolishly, conveyed this piece of information and expressed her disgust. ‘You’ve got a husband in the Army.’
‘I told you, it’s pitiful.’
‘How much is pitiful?’
‘About twenty-five shillings,’ Ruby replied, uncomfortably aware the conversation had taken a dangerous turn.
‘Twenty-five bob!’ Beth gaped. ‘Don’t be daft, we could do a lot with that.’
Ruby yawned. ‘I can’t be bothered applying.’
‘I’m surprised you didn’t get it automatically as soon as Jake joined up.’
‘Are you?’ She couldn’t think of anything else to say.
Beth went into the kitchen and Ruby to the garden to watch the children play. She gave a sigh of relief, thinking the subject of allowances had been dropped, but her interrogator appeared a few minutes later.
‘Why are you known as Ruby O’Hagan, not Veering?’
‘Why not?’ Ruby countered weakly.
‘Because it’s what happens when people get married, soft girl. The woman takes the man’s name. Me, I was looking forward to becoming Mrs Veering.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘You and Jake weren’t married, were you? Don’t argue,’ she snapped, when Ruby opened her mouth to insist they were. ‘I know for sure because there’s no way in the world you’d turn down twenty-five bob without good reason.’
‘Oh, all right, we weren’t.’ Ruby shrugged.
Beth went pale. ‘So, he could have married me.’ She burst into tears. ‘I’ve always told meself he went away with a broken heart because we couldn’t get wed.’
‘Well you were wrong.’ Ruby was inclined to give the occasional emotional outbursts concerning Jacob short shrift. ‘I bet he went away happier than he’d been in a long time. He was escaping from us both, not to mention his children – including Jake.’
‘You’re as hard as nails, Ruby O’Hagan.’
‘No, I’m not. I’m a realist. I’ve never seen the point of crying over spilt milk. We’ve got more important things than Jacob to think about at the moment – ourselves. I’m not making enough for us to live on. I need to find another job. Just try thinking about that!’
‘I’ve already thought about it.’ Beth sniffed and wiped her eyes with her sleeve. ‘Why don’t I get a job instead of you?’
Ruby stifled a laugh. Beth was upset enough, it wouldn’t do to upset her further, but what on earth could she do? She thought the world of her, but to put it bluntly, Beth was useless. She wasn’t very strong nor particularly clever. She glided dreamily through life and nothing could hurry her. Looking after children, doing housework, was the most she could be trusted with. ‘What sort of job?’ Ruby asked, feigning interest.
‘In one of them munition factories. You said yourself the wages were good. I can be the husband for a change. You can stay at home and be the wife.’
‘You think you can manage that, do you?’
‘Well, I can try.’
‘All right then, try.’ Ruby hid a smile, knowing it would all end in the inevitable tears and she’d be looking for a job herself in a few weeks’ time. She could take over Beth’s! ‘Let’s see how you get on.’
Ten days later, Beth started work as a fly presser at A. E. Wadsworth Engineering, a small factory on the Dock Road that had recently converted to war work.
‘I’m going to stamp out parts for aeroplanes,’ she said importantly when she returned from the interview. ‘The wages are three pounds, five and six a week. I get a five bob rise after six months. It’s ever such hard work.’ She grimaced. ‘You should see the size of the press I have to operate. It’s huge.’
The first day she came home, her hands wouldn’t stop shaking and she went to bed straight away. During the night, Ruby heard her sobbing quietly, but decided to leave her to it, doubting that she’d last the week.
On the second day, her right arm was paralysed from using the heavy machine and she could hardly walk from the tram stop on her swollen feet. She refused anything to eat and cried again in bed.
Wednesday, she cried before she went to bed. The women she worked with were horrible and the men made fun of her. ‘One of ’em said I had the strength of a gnat.’
‘Cheek!’ Ruby expostulated.
Thursday, she arrived with a bandage on her thumb. ‘I caught it in the machine.’
‘Is it still all there?’
‘The machine or me thumb?’
‘I don’t care about the machine. What about your thumb?’
>
‘It’s just bruised, Rube. Don’t worry.’
Ruby worried again on Friday when there was no sign of Beth by half-past five. She arrived two hours later, slightly unsteady on her feet, and looking twenty years older than at the beginning of the week. ‘I went for a drink with me mates,’ she announced. ‘I’m a little bit tiddly.’
‘Mates!’ Ruby shrilled. ‘What mates? I thought everyone was horrible or made fun. You’ve got a cheek! I took ages making your tea and now it’s ruined. I’m not making another.’
‘S’all right, Rube. I’m not hungry.’ Minutes later, she was fast asleep in the chair.
Ruby wouldn’t have felt quite as irritated at the way things had turned out if she hadn’t found it so hard to look after three small children as well as clean a very large house and keep the garden tidy. Now that Jake was walking, he couldn’t be let out of sight.
‘We need a playpen,’ she informed his mother.
‘I’ll buy one as soon as I can afford it,’ Beth promised in the same airy tone Ruby used to adopt in Arthur’s house when told something was urgently required.
Greta and Heather demanded constant attention. ‘How am I supposed to play with you, keep an eye on Jake, clean this place, and prepare the food?’ Ruby shrieked.
‘Beth didn’t shout at us,’ growled Heather.
Six months later, in March, Beth got the promised five-shilling raise. She loved her job and claimed it made her feel very much part of the war effort.
Ruby sulked. She didn’t feel she was contributing anything towards the war. By now, a playpen had been acquired, the girls were encouraged to help with the housework, and a rota had been drawn up so only a certain number of tasks were carried out each day. There was time for a walk to the shops each morning, a visit to the park in the afternoon, an occasional ride into town on the tram. She responded to the call to ‘Dig for Victory’, and planted vegetables in the garden.
But it wasn’t enough. She was bored out of her skull. Martha Quinlan suggested she join the WVS and Ruby said she’d love to, ‘But what would I do with the children?’
‘We can have meetings in your nice big house,’ Martha said. ‘You don’t have to be an active member like me. We meet regularly to roll bandages, knit blankets, make toys, do all sorts of useful things. Before Christmas, we made gift parcels for the troops. Last week, we stuffed mattresses for evacuees – some of the poor little mites still wet their beds.’
Ruby agreed. It was better than nothing.
There was a meeting the following week. The children were lectured beforehand on the necessity of behaving themselves, and about a dozen women of various ages turned up armed with refreshments and a pile of old sheets to be turned. This involved tearing the sheets in two, cutting away the frayed centre, and sewing the good ends together to make another, almost new. The women were delighted to discover the sewing machine and took turns using it, apart from Ruby who wanted nothing to do with the damn thing.
It turned out to be an unexpectedly enjoyable afternoon. They told jokes, some quite near the knuckle, gossiped, and sorted out the war between them. When they were leaving, one of the younger women approached Ruby. ‘Would you mind if I brought my kids next week? I have to leave them with me mam and she moans like hell. They could play in the garden. One of us could be designated to look after them.’
‘I’ll do it,’ Ruby offered, groaning inwardly. She didn’t like children much apart from her own and Jake, but she disliked sewing even more. Still, she wanted to do something towards the war effort and it didn’t mean she had to like it.
‘I’ll tell Freda. She can bring her kids too.’
‘If you’re looking after eight children, two more wouldn’t make much difference, would it, Rube?’ Beth remarked a few weeks later.
‘What do you mean?’ Ruby asked suspiciously.
‘It’s just that Olive Deacon, one of the women in the factory, is having to leave because her mam’s gone in hospital and there’s no one who’ll have her two little boys. They’re lovely, Rube, honest. Olive showed us their photey once.’
‘Most kids look nice in photographs. And I’d be having them every day, not once a week like now.’
‘Ah, come on, Rube,’ Beth said in her most cajoling voice. ‘If Olive leaves, they’ll get someone else who won’t be nearly as good. She’s one of our best workers. In a way, it’s your patriotic duty to look after her kids. She’ll pay, naturally.’
‘You bitch!’ Ruby hissed. ‘OK, I’ll have them.’
Roy and Reggie Deacon were little horrors. They told lies, fought with the girls, and taught Jake to wee against the trees. One day, when Ruby thought they were innocently occupied upstairs, she discovered them playing with Max Hart’s well-preserved toys and they had beheaded several wooden soldiers and unstuffed a bear. She comforted herself with the thought that Roy was starting school in September and without him Reggie might behave when he was outnumbered two to one by the girls.
But when September came, Roy’s place was taken by a girl called Mollie whose mother also worked with Beth. Mollie was more badly behaved than Roy and Reggie put together and broke a pretty vase on her first day, one of the few valuable objects in the house that hadn’t been pawned. Ruby gritted her teeth and told herself she was doing her patriotic duty though wasn’t sure if she believed it. Nevertheless, she threw herself wholeheartedly into the task of looking after the children, just as she had done with the cleaning jobs which she’d loathed almost as much.
For almost a year, the bulk of the population had remained unaffected by the war. France had fallen, thousands of French and British troops had been rescued in the great evacuation of Dunkirk, the slaughter on the seas at the hands of German U-boats was horrific. Martha Quinlan was in a constant state of fear for Jim – so was Ruby, though she told no one. These events occurred outside the lives of ordinary people. Although food rationing was in place, the main inconvenience was the tiny amount of tea allowed. But when, in June, 1940, the air-raid siren sounded for the first time, the fact of war became a brutal reality.
Ruby had prepared a shelter in the vast cellar which was as big as the ground floor area of the house and separated into four sections by thick, brick walls. It was full of mysterious lengths of timber, boxes of books and old clothes, furniture even older than that upstairs, rolls of tattered linoleum and carpet. She cleaned one of the sections, laid a carpet, and furnished it with two discarded easychairs, a sofa with a curled end which she covered with a blanket to hide the holes, and a folding bed. Jake’s cot, which he didn’t use any more but could still squeeze into, was brought down. She fixed a splint on a table which had a broken leg, and filled a box with matches, candles, an assortment of books and board games, and a pack of cards. Then she prayed the shelter would never be used. But her prayers were in vain.
Beth was a light sleeper and heard the siren first. She woke Ruby and they ushered the children into the cellar. Jake stayed asleep and the others played snap and drank lemonade, while gunfire rumbled in the distance. After about an hour, the all clear sounded and they returned upstairs.
‘Well, that wasn’t so bad, was it?’ Ruby commented.
‘It was scarcely worth breaking our sleep for,’ grumbled Beth.
The next time the siren went, the gunfire sounded closer and they thought they could hear a plane and hoped it wasn’t German. The following day, they heard that six bombs had landed harmlessly in a field.
The siren continued to sound throughout July and bombs continued to drop on fields on the outskirts of the city. Ruby and Beth decided these incidents weren’t worth getting out of bed for, but two weeks later, in August, four people were killed and several injured when a stick of bombs fell on Wallasey.
‘Jaysus!’ Beth gasped when she heard. ‘Killed!’ They looked at each other with scared eyes.
Ruby nodded bleakly. ‘It’s the cellar from now on. No more staying in bed when the siren goes.’
It seemed to happen all of a sudden
, as if the Luftwaffe had been playing with them and had now decided that it was no longer a game. The raids continued, getting heavier, lasting longer, until one night saw three separate raids on Liverpool causing serious damage throughout the city and killing more people.
The unthinkable had finally happened. In the cellar, Ruby and Beth listened to the planes droning overhead, the bombs screaming to earth, the inevitable explosions, and wondered how such madness could have been allowed to happen. Their worst nightmare had become a reality.
‘I’m almost glad Arthur died when he did,’ Ruby said softly. ‘At least he missed all this.’
There was one good thing to be thankful for; Greta and Heather regarded the raids as a great adventure. They enjoyed playing games and being read to in the middle of the night and Jake usually slept through everything.
No matter how little sleep she’d had, Beth always left promptly for work. One morning, after Beth had gone and Mollie and Roy Deacon had arrived and the five children were in the living room with drawing pads, crayons, and Max Hart’s wooden blocks, Ruby went into the kitchen and was washing the dishes when she heard scratching on the back door. She opened it to find a skeletal cat outside. It miaowed weakly when it saw her, walked shakily inside, then flopped in a heap of scraggy, tortoiseshell fur on to the floor.
‘Tiger!’ Ruby fell to her knees and stroked the strangely thin, furry body. ‘Oh, Tiger, what’s happened to you? You’re no more than skin and bone.’ Tiger regarded her pathetically with his amber eyes. ‘Let’s get you some milk.’
She poured milk into a saucer and the cat managed to raise his head and lap most of it up. He ate half a slice of bread and Marmite, then Ruby wrapped him in a piece of old blanket and cuddled him, sniffing tearfully, the dishes forgotten. Greta came in and was instructed to look under the stairs for his basket.
‘I can remember seeing it there,’ said her mother.
Tiger was put in front of the fire with stern instructions he wasn’t to be touched. ‘He’s not well,’ Ruby said. ‘I’m nursing him better.’
