by Jessie Keane
‘Is it appendicitis?’ she asked.
Joe came and leaned against the doorframe, concern on his face. ‘Is it the ’flu, Doc?’ he asked. ‘She’s been like it a couple of weeks now, does it go on that long?’
The doctor was busy prodding at Ruby’s midriff. ‘Last show?’ he asked.
For a moment, stupidly, she thought he was talking about the shows at the Windy. But he was asking when her last period had occurred. Her periods had always been erratic. She thought back. ‘I’m not sure. . .’
Now she was beginning to feel anxious. She thought it could be six, seven weeks since her last period, maybe even longer. She’d been so busy, working and seeing Cornelius – who hadn’t been near her since she’d been off sick, the bastard – and thinking of fun and laughter and dinners at the Ritz, she hadn’t even been noticing what was going on.
‘Six weeks ago, I think,’ she said.
‘I think it must be longer.’ The doctor’s eyes held hers. ‘You seem to be about two months pregnant.’
Ruby felt every muscle in her body freeze. ‘You what?’
‘It’s morning sickness,’ the doctor said, putting his stethoscope back into his bag and snapping it shut with finality. He stood up. ‘Worse in the early stages – you should start to feel better soon.’
The doctor went to the door. Ruby’s panic-stricken eyes met Joe’s. Her brother was looking at her as if she was a stranger.
‘You’re saying she’s up the duff?’ Joe asked in disbelief.
Ruby cringed. She felt even worse now than she had before. Now she felt not only sick but ashamed. She could see the harsh disapproval in Joe’s eyes; he thought she was a slag.
‘She’s pregnant,’ the doctor repeated as he stood beside Joe at the door. He glanced back at Ruby. He knew the family, he knew she was unmarried, he knew everything. Ruby reddened and shrank back into the pillows.
With that, the doctor went off down the stairs and out the front door. Joe stood there, as if transfixed, staring at Ruby. Then suddenly he bellowed: ‘Charlie! Get up here!’
She was just glad that Dad wasn’t up here too. His health – always a problem – had been getting steadily worse. Now he was asthmatic, and what with his bad foot and that, he could no longer manage the stairs. Charlie and Joe had put a bed in the front parlour for him. Thank God for small mercies, she thought. Dad was a spent force now, and she was grateful for that, at least.
Ruby sat at the breakfast table with Joe and Charlie a few weeks later. She’d taken Dad in his breakfast on a tray. The sickness was still bad, but she could force down a slice of bread and jam, a cup of tea. What really choked her was the way her brothers looked at her. Mostly they didn’t talk to her at all. But when they did, their eyes said it all. That she was disgusting, a tramp, a disappointment.
After the doctor’s visit, Charlie was too furious to speak. But later, he had spelled out how it was going to be. She could carry on working at the salvage centre, do whatever the fuck she liked, until she started to show.
‘Then we’ll ship you off, maybe down to Aunt Martha’s in Essex. You can have the kid, then I’ll take care of what’s to be done with it. Then you can come back here.’ Charlie stared at her face, his lip curling in disapproval. ‘I ain’t even told Dad yet, Christ knows how he’d take it. He’s ill enough as it is. And look, you daft mare – don’t for fuck’s sake ever get caught like this again.’
What’s to be done with it. Those words rang around Ruby’s head like a death knell. Like the baby growing inside her was a piece of rubbish, to be disposed of. Like she herself was an embarrassment, to be shunted aside where no one could see the shame she had brought upon the Darkes.
Charlie was terrifying when he was like this: cold and hostile, taking over, directing operations.
‘Who did it then?’ he demanded while they sat at the breakfast table.
Ruby sat there, silent. She knew what Charlie was capable of in the grip of one of his rages. She didn’t want Cornelius hurt. She loved him. She hadn’t broken the news to him yet, but she had every confidence that he would take care of her, and their child, even if he was married.
‘Now come on. I said who the fuck did it?’ Charlie shouted in her face, thumping the kitchen table with his fist. ‘You tell me now, you bitch, or I swear . . .’ He raised his hand.
‘Easy,’ said Joe, looking uncomfortable. Ruby was expecting, after all.
‘Cornelius Bray,’ blurted out Ruby in a paroxysm of fear. ‘He works at the War Office.’
The rest of it poured out too. That she’d been working at the Windy, not the salvage yard; and it was at the Windmill Theatre that she’d met Cornelius.
36
Charlie ran over to the corner shop like a long dog. He barrelled inside, slapped the CLOSED sign up, and turned on Betsy, who was frozen in surprise behind the counter.
‘Charlie?’ she said, bewildered.
He rushed across to her and grabbed her by the arm.
‘Ow! Charlie, that hurts,’ cried Betsy.
‘You been covering for her. Ain’t you?’
‘What . . . ?’ asked Betsy faintly, eyes wild with fright.
‘Now don’t play the innocent, Bets. I’m talking about Ruby. She’s up the duff. She’s been lying to us, saying she was doing war work over at the salvage centre, when in fact she was playing the fucking tart at that Windmill place.’
‘I didn’t . . .’ Betsy started.
Charlie shook her, hard. ‘You knew. Don’t tell me you didn’t, because you ruddy well did. You two have always been thick as thieves.’
Not any more, thought Betsy. Now Ruby seemed to much prefer Vi’s company to hers. In fact, she could now see that Ruby had only made use of her, while she was off having fun with Vi. And now look! It had all gone wrong for Ruby, which just about served her right.
‘She asked me to cover for her,’ lied Betsy. ‘It was her idea. I wanted her to tell you, I told her so. You have to believe me, Charlie.’
Something about the earnest expression on Betsy’s face calmed Charlie. He let go of her arm and passed a weary hand over his brow.
‘What are you going to do then, Charlie?’ she asked. It would reflect badly on him, on the entire family, Ruby having a child out of wedlock.
‘Sort it out,’ he said. ‘What the hell else can I do?’
He went across the shop. Flipped over the sign. Opened the door. A copper was standing there.
37
PC Churcher dragged Charlie down to the local nick. Chewy, Ben and Stevie were hauled in too, and Joe, and they were questioned intensively over the mail van robbery. But making this shit stick was proving a lot harder than Churcher had first thought it would be. After long hours, Charlie and Joe and the boys were released.
But Churcher couldn’t let it go.
This injured dog had opened up new possibilities. Patiently and diligently, he took statements from the dog’s elderly owner and his wife, and then he kept an eye on the widow Tranter’s house for a few days, and then, confident that he had something to go on, he reported back to his superior officer at the Yard. Churcher knew he would be in line for promotion if he could bring this case alive again.
‘So, what you got?’ asked his sergeant.
Churcher laid it out for him. Micky Tranter’s widow and her connection to Charlie Darke, who was a known villain who had been questioned in the case though charged with nothing. Charlie had been seen twice this week going into her house; Mrs Tranter with the injured dog, and its owner’s intervention in the street; and the fact that the dog had apparently been run over on the night of the mail van robbery.
‘So you know what I think?’ said Churcher in conclusion while the sergeant sat silent, taking it all in. ‘I think Charlie Darke and his boys did pull off that robbery. They ran over the dog with the van, it was injured. And Charlie took it to his fancy piece for her to sort out.’
‘Maybe,’ said the sergeant.
‘We’ve got to take a look
at that mail van, sir. It was found empty the day after the robbery and put in the pound over near Augustus Street, wasn’t it?’
His superior nodded. Maybe Churcher was onto something. ‘If the van hit the dog . . .’ he said.
‘It’s a big dog. There’ll be a bit of damage, maybe. And blood? Who knows?’
His superior officer looked sceptical.
‘We’ll see,’ he said. ‘Won’t we?’
38
On Friday, Cornelius went to work in the War Office as usual, then went to Waterloo to take the train back down to Brayfield for the weekend. His taxi pulled up outside the station. He’d no sooner paid the driver than someone as big as himself came charging out of the shadows and yanked him off his feet and crashed him into a wall.
‘What the hell?’ he gasped.
All sorts of scum around these days, looking to rob innocent people of their valuables. Deserters and the like. The taxi driver took no notice, he just drove away. He wasn’t about to get involved.
‘Cornelius Bray?’ snarled the man, staring straight into his eyes.
Cornelius stiffened. This wasn’t anything as simple or straightforward as a robbery. The man knew him.
‘Who wants to know?’ asked Cornelius. His attacker wasn’t familiar to him. He was tall, hard-muscled, dark-haired, and his grey-blue eyes were both icy and manic.
‘Charlie Darke,’ said the man, clutching harder at the front of Cornelius’s camel-hair coat. ‘You bastard, you got my sister up the gut.’
‘What?’
‘My sister. Ruby. She’s pregnant. And it’s yours.’
Cornelius’s head spun with the force of this assault and these words. He tried to assimilate the information he’d just been given, but all he could think was that this man looked crazy – mad enough to kill him.
‘I didn’t . . .’ he started.
Charlie yanked him away, pulling him off balance, further back into the shadows where no one could see them. Cornelius staggered against the wall, feeling skin scrape off his hand, feeling the sting of it. His briefcase fell to the ground.
‘Don’t lie to me, arsehole. You got her pregnant.’
‘Not me.’ Now Cornelius was shaking his head. He’d been so careful. He hadn’t wanted complications. He’d used French letters each and every time they’d had sex.
But remember that time when the condom split? asked a tiny voice in his brain. He stiffened, thinking fast. It had split, just once. And once was enough. But denial was his only option. He was married, his wife was pregnant. He couldn’t complicate things any further, they were bad enough already.
‘It wasn’t me,’ he said.
‘Yeah, it was,’ said Charlie, thumping Cornelius’s head back against the wall to emphasize his point. ‘You got her pregnant . . .’
‘Well someone did,’ said Cornelius, and his weak grin of denial enraged Charlie all the more.
He gave the posh bastard’s head another whack against the wall. ‘You sayin’ my sister’s a slut? She ain’t. The poor silly cow thinks she’s in love with you, says you’ve told her how much you love her too. So now you’re going to do the right thing by her.’
‘Did she tell you I’m married?’
Charlie froze. ‘You’re what?’
‘Married. So you can pound me black and blue, but I can’t “do the right thing”, can I?’
‘You fucker,’ hissed Charlie. ‘You been turkin’ my sister and you’re a married man?’
‘Look,’ said Cornelius, ‘I can pay to get rid of it. Whatever she wants, I’ll pay. It’s not a problem.’
‘What? My sister, go to one of those back-street abortionists with a length of wire and a packet of Omo to scour her out with? You’re joking, mate. You’ll pay all right. I’ll be in touch to let you have the bill for your little pleasures, all right? You pay up for our girl, or I’ll fucking kill you.’
39
The journey home was fraught and fearful after that. On the train, Cornelius was transfixed by the idea that Ruby’s thuggish family might somehow contact Vanessa, and tell her about Ruby’s condition. Vanessa’s nerves were always taut as a bowstring; she was delicate at the best of times. Now, with the baby coming, she would be more than ever in need of peace and stability.
What if Charlie Darke got in touch with her and told her about Ruby and the baby she was carrying – his baby? Oh, it was his. For all his bold words when he’d been talking to Charlie, he didn’t doubt that. Ruby had been a virgin when they met, and she was in love with him; he knew that. She wouldn’t want any other man, she loved him.
He picked up his car at the station and sat in it for long moments, staring at the rain on the windscreen. Sighing, he started the engine and slipped the car into gear. He was in a mess, but it wasn’t unsalvageable. Vanessa hardly ever came up to town. She loved the country and never wanted to leave it. Ruby was an East Ender, a London girl through and through; the two would never cross paths.
They mustn’t.
Finally he turned into the drive and passed the brightly lit gatehouse. His mother – Lady Bray, widow of his late father Sir Hilary – lived there. At other times he would have stopped, told his mother that she mustn’t keep these lights on, and she would say, with all the hauteur of one born to privilege, ‘Why shouldn’t I? We’re miles out in the country, is Hitler going to bomb us out here? I don’t think so, dear.’
It was a conversation they’d had many times. She would be unapologetic, he would smile indulgently. But this time he didn’t stop the car. He drove on up the long, winding driveway to the main house and pulled up outside. The last of the day’s light was going, but he could still see its big outline, solidly comforting, black against the paler sky.
Brayfield had been in his family for four generations. Built of glowing rose-red brick with cream stone quoins at the corners, the Elizabethan manor house was a pink jewel set in acres of green. It had two outer gables and a smaller central one, and a stunning clock tower to one side.
Brayfield was, in every way, a grand house and he adored it. It was in his blood. It should be full of children, bursting at the seams with them. Now – at last – that dream would come true. Vanessa was expecting their first child, hopefully the first of many.
He parked beside the big circular fountain of Neptune that guarded the front entrance, and for the first time saw the other car there, a Riley. Frowning, he turned off the engine, got out, locked the car and went up the steps. The porch light was off because of the blackout. He slipped his key in the door, fumbling slightly, and was stepping inside, laying his briefcase aside, shrugging his coat off, when Mrs Hayter the housekeeper came hurrying along the hall, her stern face pale and anxious.
‘What is it?’ Instantly he was on the alert. ‘Whose car is that?’
‘I called the doctor. Mrs Bray . . .’ Her voice trailed away. Her eyes lifted to the stairs.
His heart suddenly in his throat, Cornelius took the stairs two at a time and crossed the landing to the master bedroom. He threw open the door. The doctor was there, a thin little man wearing half-moon spectacles. His head turned as Cornelius came into the room.
Cornelius stared at his wife, lying there pale and sickly-looking in the bed. She was fully dressed in a white blouse and a beige rucked-up skirt. The front of the skirt had a bloodstain the size of a dinner plate on it. There was a primrose-yellow towel wedged up between his wife’s slim legs, and the yellow was rapidly turning a dull brownish-red.
‘Vanessa!’ He ran forward, sat on the bed, clutched at her hand. ‘My God, what’s happened?’
‘I’m sorry,’ said the doctor. ‘I’m afraid she’s lost the baby.’
Cornelius felt like he must be going mad. ‘No!’ he shouted, springing to his feet.
Vanessa was crying silently. She looked appealingly at Cornelius. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I’ve let you down again.’
‘No! No you haven’t, don’t be silly. It’s just one of those awful things that happen.’
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‘Yes. To me. Always to me.’ Vanessa started to sob.
The doctor drew Cornelius to one side. ‘Call the housekeeper up here, Mr Bray. She needs a woman with her, help her get cleaned up. And the baby . . .’ He lowered his voice. ‘It’s in the toilet bowl. It’s dead.’
Cornelius’s stomach clenched hard with horror. He stood up and walked on numb legs to the door out onto the landing. This couldn’t be happening. In one day, he had learned that his mistress was pregnant, which was a nuisance, a liability; and now this. Was it God’s hand at work, punishing him for his sin of ungovernable lust? Because now his wife had lost their longed-for baby, which would have been cherished and adored.
He called the housekeeper up to attend to Vanessa. The doctor beckoned him out onto the landing and, when Mrs Hayter had gone in to help Vanessa, the doctor closed the bedroom door gently.
‘Mr Bray,’ he said quietly, ‘I’m terribly sorry.’
Cornelius looked at him. ‘But these things happen, don’t they? Every day of the week. And then people go on to have healthy babies.’
‘Mr Bray . . .’
‘Obviously she needs to rest more. I’ve told her about bending and stretching in the garden, we have a gardener for that sort of thing, I have warned her . . .’
‘Mr Bray.’ The doctor interrupted this feverish flow of words, his tone sharp. ‘Mr Bray, I’m sorry, but I have to tell you that your wife shouldn’t be put through this again.’
‘What?’ Cornelius’s face was blank.
‘She isn’t physically or even mentally strong enough to bear children, Mr Bray. That’s what nature’s trying to tell us, and that’s what I’m telling you now. She’s fragile.’
‘What? But surely . . .’
‘Mr Bray.’ Now the doctor’s face was hard. ‘Listen to what I’m telling you, for the love of God. One more miscarriage like this could kill her. I’m warning you.’
Cornelius turned away from the words that were hurting him too much. Of all the horrible, twisted jokes to be played on a man, this had to be the worst. His mistress was giving birth to a child he didn’t want – and his wife had just lost the child he did want.
