I said very little about myself, relieved that I could get away with just nodding and smiling as I pulled the threads through the fabric. But as my needle shuttled up and down, my mind raced with thoughts of how to free myself from the situation and how to introduce a delicate subject into the conversation – the fact that I was a fraud, not an innocent seamstress who had answered her advertisement but a stranger in her home who wanted to take her daughter back.
Suddenly there was a pause. The fabric was still racing through the machine but Maud was looking at me. Her head cocked on one side and her eyebrows raised as if to say, And you?
I smiled, but of all the sentences I was forming in my mind, I could only manage to repeat my Sunningdale Estate address and that I was married to a doctor, but even then I left George nameless, imagining his fury at being mentioned in such company.
Then the clatter of the machine stopped and Maud looked at the apron bunched on my knee. ‘You ain’t doing badly for a doctor’s wife from Sunningdale Estates.’
I laughed, glad that I could at last talk honestly about something. ‘I’m not all that I seem.’
‘Oh?’
‘I used to be a seamstress before I married. My parents ran the dress shop; Flanagan’s, on the green. Did you know it? It’s a tearoom now.’
‘I did,’ she said, ‘I did know it. And I remember the people in there too. A nice man with a moustache, I don’t remember the woman so much though, she was a quiet little thing, always out the back.’
‘That was them,’ I said.
‘I heard it was the Spanish flu that took them.’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m sorry.’
I shrugged, then continued, ‘Worked my fingers to the bone since the age of ten, so I should know what I’m doing. It’s been a while though.’ Then I smiled. ‘I’m surprised I ain’t forgotten.’ I felt myself blush slightly as I said the words. It had been too easy to slip back into my old parlance and I hoped that she wouldn’t think that I was ridiculing her.
Maud smiled again, the same smile she had given me at the door but bigger this time. ‘Once a grafter always a grafter,’ she said. Then the smile spread across her face until her eyes were squeezed into little slits and her mouth became a deep gash, the gums stubbed with brown teeth. I was shocked by the sight of her teeth but her smile was so wide and genuine that I couldn’t help smiling too. Then we laughed together – at what, I don’t know, but a long and genuine laugh.
‘You’re a doctor’s wife now though!’ Maud said as she caught her breath. ‘It’s odd to see a married lady of your class working. Are your children grown?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t have…’ but it was a sentence that I had never been able to finish, not even now, in front of a stranger.
But Maud didn’t seem to notice my discomfort. ‘I would have thought a well-to-do lady such as yourself wouldn’t bother dirtying her hands for a few shillings – you lot are usually all about tea parties and bothering the vicar.’
‘I need the money,’ I said quickly. ‘And nowhere in town would employ a lady who was married.’
Maud shook her head gently. ‘Well, who’d have thought that after all that you’d be down on your luck again! I s ’pose business for a doctor out here ain’t as good as in the city, with all the TB and measles that they get in them slums. The patients must pay better though, all the rich folk round this way. You only need a couple of bunions and the odd chilblain and a medical man could charge what he likes in Missensham. No need for you to turn your hand to this, surely.’
‘He gambles,’ I said and immediately felt guilty for saying it – it was unfair to George. He of all people didn’t deserve that.
She opened her mouth but I changed the subject quickly: ‘You have a lot of children, I don’t know how you cope with five,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s all Clarence’s fault – he’s a randy old bugger, likes me in the family way.’
I blushed and immediately felt ridiculous, like a thirty-five-year-old schoolgirl. I lowered my head, wondering why she had spoken so openly, maybe she had mistaken my false confession about George’s gambling as an offering of trust, or thought that her comment about always being a grafter had made us friends, but whatever had passed between us had put me in her confidence somehow.
‘He blames me, of course,’ she said. ‘Says it’s my desires.’
I looked down, pretending to pick at a thread, but she continued.
‘I’d had plenty of lovers before him, mind you, but I’d never known a man like him before we met.’ She waved a fist in front of her face. ‘Dick like an oak truncheon.’
I wished I hadn’t mentioned the children, but she was laughing raucously again and making wild gestures with her hands while the linen sailed through the hammering Singer as if it had a life of its own. ‘Not that I mind, of course.’ She leaned over and jabbed me in the ribs. ‘About his dick, I mean!’
I smiled weakly, my cheeks burning. Honestly! George and I never spoke about such things and he’d even blushed on our honeymoon when I’d caught him looking at the naughty postcards on the seafront; grainy photographs of Edwardian women dressed in long bloomers, their breasts covered with little parasols. And of course, the act itself was performed in silence and never mentioned afterwards.
But then Maud smiled again, that ridiculous gape of a smile, and I couldn’t help giggling along with her while she talked. Her foot was working furiously on the pedal and her mouth was just as active: children, babies, families, Clarence and dick – dick, dick, dick!
I nodded and smiled but my eyes drifted. The children had run into the yard, giggling, flashes of shadow in the window as they dodged past each other. There was the boy in the flat cap who had come to Little Willow, but others too – it seemed like hordes –running so fast that I wondered that it could just be the five she mentioned. I watched through the grubby glass, always looking out for the girl, but there were only glimpses to be had – a flash of pinafore, a trailing lock of hair and never a face.
‘I wonder if I could trouble you for a glass of water, Mrs Brown?’ I said, feigning an effort to get up from behind the laden table. ‘Maybe one of your children could—’
‘Ruby!’ she yelled.
Ruby came in the back door her hair windswept and chest heaving. The sight of her was such a shock that I jabbed my needle into my thumb, a dome of blood swelling from the skin. Ruby! I had expected ‘Violet’, of course. But no, the little girl was called Ruby.
‘Ruby, get the lady a glass of water.’
I suddenly started to worry, after all, this girl had fled my pursuit just days ago. I put my hand to my forehead, pretending to shield my eyes from the sun and searched her face for recognition but found none and she stared back at me, as she would a stranger.
‘Ruby?’ I said quickly. ‘Is that your name?’
‘You don’t need to talk to her like that.’ Maud laughed. ‘She ain’t five.’
‘Of course,’ I said, embarrassed. ‘How old are you, Ruby?’
Ruby shuffled her feet and stared at the floor and I realized my question had sounded like a demand.
Mrs Brown looked at me weirdly out of the corner of her eye. ‘Well go on then, Ruby, tell the lady!’
‘Nine.’
‘Say it nicely: “Nine, Mrs Marks’’
‘Nine, Miss-us-Marks.’
The birthmark was brighter now that her face was flushed from the exercise. Four red marks, the highest one smudged under the eye. It was the same one I had seen on my frail baby daughter and it was the same one I had recognized nine years later among the crowds in the lido. It had to be the same. It just had to be.
‘It ain’t scabies,’ said Ruby suddenly. ‘No need to stare.’
‘She’ll stare if she wants to, you little shit!’ growled Maud, taking a swing at the back of Ruby’s head but only catching her hair.
‘No!’ I said quickly. ‘I’m sorry, Ruby, I wasn’t staring at anything.
I just thought you had a lovely face.’
She looked awkward, but I thought I saw the flicker of a smile.
‘Don’t you bother with all that, Mrs Marks, she don’t like to talk about her face. Never does, you won’t get nothing out of her about that. Now, what are you waiting for?’ growled Maud to Ruby. ‘Run and get the water!’
Ruby turned and ran out the room, the sound of an iron pump clanking from the yard.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I must have seemed so strange, you see, I had a daughter once—’ I hesitated, trying to avoid saying what was so painful. ‘She would have been exactly your daughter’s age.’
Maud leaned over and patted my knee. ‘I had a brother, Alphie, much older than me but just a young-un when he bought it. Passchendaele – blown up in the trenches, what was left of him trampled into the mud. Sometimes I look at fellas of that age and wonder what he would have looked like – whether he would have been like them.’
I nodded. ‘Thank you for being so understanding.’ I wanted to say more – to tell her about Violet, the birthmark and what had happened to her. I’m not sure why exactly, maybe I thought that it would encourage Maud to talk more about Ruby and that I might get an explanation, a confession even. I was about to open my mouth but then I remembered that, long ago, George had warned me not to talk of such things, because the details would upset me and, as I felt tears pricking my eyes, I feared that he had been right and, in the end, I said nothing more.
Ruby returned with the water, walking steadily and holding it aloft like a ring bearer at a wedding. The water was warm; a white cloud swirling under the rim of the glass. I moistened my lips on the glass and pretended to drink. I thanked her, smiling and trying to catch her eye, but she turned on her heel and soon she was running in the yard again, just the flash of her pinafore in the windowpanes.
‘Now,’ said Maud brightly, ‘what was I talking about?’
I felt my face warm again and smiled blankly hoping she wouldn’t remember.
‘Ah, yes, with Clarence, how I got in the family way…’
*
I walked back home with my wages in my pocket – a couple of shiny florins. I would put them in the jar on the mantelpiece and would probably forget about them. But right now they meant everything: a memory of a strange but happy day, perhaps the beginning of many more; the warmth of the family; a new friendship; and time spent with Ruby, a girl who I was sure was my daughter. I had promised to return the following Thursday, and then all Thursdays after that, and suddenly a day that had been long and empty like any other became full of excitement and promise. I fingered the coins in my pocket. The sun was bright in the lane, the dust dappled with the shadows of birds flickering through the hedgerows and the fields were sunk with deep pools of violets.
8
Ruby
My name is Ruby Brown. That’s right: Ruby like a gemstone, brown like mud. On the day that Emma came to the cottage, I was a ruby to her – her beautiful glittering jewel. But to Maudy I was mud…
‘Ruby! Ruby! Just look at what you made me do!’ she yelled.
I’d not even left my bed, so I ignored her, but it did me no good because she dragged me out of the warmth and sat me in the yard with a washtub and a big pile of the boys’ undies. She gave Andy a book of sums and some threat about either learning numbers or mucking out chickens. Jim and John, Maudy decided, were beyond hope, so she just shooed them out the door.
I was stripped down to my drawers and covered in suds when I heard the rumble of the van in the lane.
‘It’s Fatkins!’ I shouted. ‘Fatkins is here!’
Maudy’s head popped up over the sewing machine. ‘No, blast it! What’s the time?’
‘I don’t know, do I!’ I said. ‘You, you never showed me how.’
‘No, no – it’s too early. It can’t be him.’
‘It is,’ I yelled. ‘It’s ‘Fatkins and—’
But Maudy was already in a bad mood and she wasn’t about to take any chat from me. ‘Ruby! Don’t you call him that, he’s your cousin, show some respect and he ain’t fat!’ She was trying to sound all school-mistressy but it didn’t work – she had never set foot in a school and her voice just sounded silly.
‘I said “Atkins”,’ I said. ‘I mean, what I meant to say was “Mr Atkins”.’
‘I heard what you said and it weren’t that! Do you know what he’ll do if he hears you call him that? He’ll stop driving all this way and I’ll lose all my jobs. How easy do you think it would be for him to get another worker up in Oxworth? He only drives all this way because we’re family.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘You’re right, Maudy; he doesn’t look fat when he’s stood next to Aunt Sadie.’
There was nothing school-mistressy about Maudy any more: ‘Ruby!’ she screamed. ‘I’ve had enough of your lip! Get off your arse and get rid of that filthy water. And get yourself dressed while you are at it – you’re an embarrassment you are.’
I couldn’t get back inside quick enough and I ran into the backroom to do as she said, but my pinafore just wouldn’t go on right, one arm got all twisted inside itself and I couldn’t find my shoes.
I still wasn’t ready by the time the van rumbled into the yard, and before I knew it Maudy was yelling at me to answer the door and I had to run back into the kitchen with, one arm still out of my pinafore.
‘Hello, Ruby.’ Fatkins filled the doorway, his head bowed. ‘How’s my favourite cousin?’ he said it like I was a grown-up, a proper lady from Missensham. It didn’t really bother me whether he meant it or not because he was nice like that and I knew he would say it whether my pinafore was twisted or even if I was a pig in a dress.
‘Very well,’ I said in my best church voice. Maudy always said that I should be polite to Fatkins and Aunt Sadie because they were proper people and would look out for us. ‘Very well,’ I said again, and then it just slipped out: ‘Fatki—’
Henry shrieked and clapped his hands: ‘Fat-kins-fat-kins-fat-kins-fat…’
Maudy jumped up quickly and I thought she would slap me but her hands went to her mouth. ‘Oh shit!’ she barked. ‘The last ones ain’t bagged yet!’ Some aprons were still hanging on the washing line and she barged past Fatkins to get them.
Fatkins smiled politely, like he was trying to ignore a bad smell.
I ran at Henry but he was too quick and dodged past me out the door, still chanting, ‘Fat-kins-fat-kins-fat-kins-fat…’
Fatkins looked relieved when Maudy shoved past him again, a pile of green aprons hanging from her arm. They had left a big damp mark on her chest but she smiled at him like everything was fine. Maudy had a good way of lying that didn’t even show on her face – her smile said that the aprons were dry and pressed and smelling of roses.
Fatkins took the aprons from her, rubbing the damp between the tips of his fingers, then he sighed, folded them together neatly and put them carefully into one of the factory sacks. He wrote in his book, not looking up. His pencil moved quickly, not like Andy who had to concentrate hard on the letters, or Maudy who just pretended she could read and write. When he’d finished, he showed Maudy what he’d written.
‘So this time it is twenty per sack, as agreed?’ He pointed his pencil at a heap of bulging sacks, stabbing the air six times as he counted.
She nodded.
‘That’s five shillings then.’ He tore the sheet out of his book and handed it to her.
She took it and held it close to her face, but her eyes didn’t move over the numbers the way his did. ‘Yes,’ she said firmly. ‘I can see that’s what it says.’ But I knew that the receipt would just go in the dresser with all the others without a second glance.
‘I’ll take this lot to the van and get you your money.’ Fatkins grabbed a sack from the floor and lifted it high on his back as if the aprons inside had turned to feathers. Then he was out of the door and slamming it into the van.
Maudy gave me a wink and bent her arm up like a circus strongman.
‘Told you, didn’t I!’ she whispered. ‘It ain’t fat, it’s muscle – look how fast he moves them sacks, even with his limp. You know how Andy struggles with them.’ Just as Maudy’s nephew wasn’t fat to her, he wasn’t a cripple either, just a brave veteran, wounded doing his duty in some foreign hellhole.
Fatkins leant against the draining board. ‘I’ve left next week’s lot in the yard – five sacks. Andy can bring them in for you. Forty-odd aprons this time, dyed and hemmed, just as before, but these are for upstairs, so there’s a monogram, must be embroidered. Like this.’ He took a scrap of material from his pocket. ‘Mr Walker wants quality, so use the thicker thread. We are nearly out of the red, so you will have to dye what you’ve got left over. It’s a penny for each apron. Mr Walker says he can’t afford to give any more’.
Maudy nodded grimly.
He made a note in his jotter. ‘Right! So it was five shillings I owe you for last week.’ He reached into his bag.
‘Only five shillings,’ said Maudy sadly.
‘Aunt Maud, we agreed—’
‘Oh, I know that, darling, it’s just that this is a big job and it may take me longer than usual, you see, it takes an age for the stove to boil the water for the carmine now. I need money for a man to take a look at it or I’ll still be dyeing that thread into next week.’
‘I’ll take a look for you, Aunt Maud,’ Fatkins said, squatting down beside the stove. He opened the little door and swung it back and forth on the hinge.
I felt my face go all hot. I didn’t like it when the stove got mentioned. I didn’t like the way Clarence blamed me and I didn’t like thinking about the Bad Thing again.
The Liar Page 5
