A Promise Between Friends

by Carol Rivers

  The conversation turned to dancing, and as Penny and Kath seemed to hit it off immediately, Ruby moved off to join Larry who was talking with an older couple. ‘This is Bruno Cuthbertson and his delightful wife, Marianne,’ he introduced. ‘They run a studio on Wardour Street.’

  ‘Charmed,’ said Bruno flirtatiously.

  ‘Likewise,’ breathed Marianne in a husky, almost masculine voice.

  Ruby smiled at the casually dressed older man with long white hair tied back in a ponytail and his brunette wife who had a boy’s haircut and wore trousers.

  ‘Have you ever posed for a professional photographer?’ Bruno asked.

  Ruby blushed. ‘There’s not many of those in the East End.’

  ‘Then you should come to the studio,’ Bruno invited. ‘I can see great potential.’

  ‘Leave the poor girl alone, you monster,’ Larry broke in. ‘Goodness knows what would happen if she walked into your cave!’

  Ruby wasn’t sure if Larry was serious or not. Marianne saw her doubtful expression and took her arm. ‘Take no notice of these men, chérie. I’m afraid you are in disreputable, but adorable company. You see, here in Bohemia, anything goes!’

  Ruby giggled. She stood still, swaying a little, moving her hips from side to side as she drank her cocktail. This was such a different world to hers.

  And she was loving it.

  It was towards midnight when Ruby noticed a hush in the room. ‘It’s Lady Granger,’ Stuart told her as he placed yet another cocktail in her hand. She watched intrigued as Larry met the latecomer and her escort, carefully slipping the fur stole from the older woman’s shoulders. She had short, grey-blonde hair and her slight figure was tightly encased in a slim black gown. But it was the young man she was with who took Ruby’s attention. He was extremely handsome, with coffee-coloured skin, fine features and short black curly hair. For a moment their eyes met across the room.

  ‘Are they married?’ Ruby asked Stuart.

  ‘No, she has a husband, albeit an absent one.’ Stuart sighed. ‘Johnnie Dyer is rather a dish, don’t you think? But I would never be tempted away from Larry.’ Stuart gave a sudden tinkling laugh.

  Ruby had grown to accept that Larry and Stuart were romantically involved. They made no secret of it and she admired them for that. They had taken her under their wing after Pete’s death and were always there for her if she needed to talk.

  Ruby glanced again at the couple. They were certainly the most intriguing guests of all. Lady Granger must be very rich, she decided. Did her husband know about Johnnie?

  A few minutes later, Ruby felt a little light-headed. She guessed the cocktails were having an effect. So she found herself a small space on a sofa and sank down. This type of partying was exciting but also very exhausting!

  ‘There you are!’ Kath said, flopping down beside her.

  Ruby giggled. ‘Yes, here I am. But where are you?’ She waved her hand. ‘No, I mean, where were you?’

  Kath pointed a crooked finger. ‘Ruby Payne, you’re tipsy.’

  ‘So are you,’ Ruby spluttered.

  Kath hiccuped and frowned under her fringe. ‘I wish tonight would go on forever.’

  ‘So do I.’

  ‘Is it midnight? Has our coach arrived?’

  Ruby kept a straight face. ‘Bernie’s car might turn into a pumpkin.’

  They burst into laughter. Ruby thought how funny it would be when Bernie had, somehow, to get them home at the end of the evening.

  When Ruby woke up the next morning, she couldn’t remember the drive home at all. Thank goodness, she didn’t appear to have a hangover from hell. But she did have a raging thirst.

  ‘Could you pour me some water?’ Kath croaked from the single bed, as Ruby hauled herself up from the bed-settee and stumbled to the sink.

  ‘People say you should have a hair of the dog,’ Ruby mumbled as she filled two tumblers. She shakily made her way back to Kath. ‘But we’ve only got sherry.’

  Kath took the tumbler. ‘You look as though you’ve had a night out on the tiles. Do you know you’ve only got your bra and knickers on?’

  Ruby looked down at her full, rounded figure. ‘Well, it’s better than me birthday suit.’ She nodded to Kath’s naked shoulders. ‘And you’re almost starkers.’

  Kath peeked under the eiderdown and giggled. ‘Oh, so I am.’

  ‘Can I get in with you? It’s taters out here.’

  Kath threw back the cover and, careful not to spill the water, Ruby climbed in. There was no room to move in the single bed. But it was much warmer snuggled together.

  Ruby laughed. ‘This is nice.’

  ‘It’s almost worth the hangover.’

  ‘We don’t have to get up as it’s Sunday.’

  Kath sighed. ‘That’s lucky because I couldn’t face the factory.’

  ‘How many gin and sins did we drink?’

  ‘I didn’t count. I was too busy talking to Penny. She lives up the road at Mile End and said we should all get together again.’

  ‘She did seem like a nice girl.’

  Kath nodded. ‘We were the same height too.’

  ‘As long as you had a good time.’

  ‘I did until I saw Bernie,’ Kath complained. ‘He was Mr Grumpy when he picked us up.’

  Ruby suddenly remembered Bernie grabbing hold of her before the party. She could hear him shouting at her, telling her what a little tart she’d turned out to be.

  ‘He said we were drunk,’ Kath continued indignantly. ‘When all we was doing was singing in the back of his car.’

  ‘P’raps we’d better learn the words next time.’ Ruby giggled.

  Kath snuggled close. ‘Thank you so much for taking me.’

  ‘It was a belated birthday present, after all.’ Ruby quickly brought the conversation round to Lady Granger and her escort.

  ‘He was drop-dead gorgeous,’ Kath agreed. ‘But who knows what someone like that is really like?’

  ‘I know you don’t trust men,’ Ruby replied. ‘But they’re not all like your dad.’

  Kath went very quiet.

  They were silent once more, lost in shared memories. Ruby yawned, blinking her eyes and stretching. ‘I’d give my right arm for a hot bath.’

  ‘Me too,’ Kath agreed. ‘We could boil up a few kettles and squeeze in the sink. Only you’d never manage. Not with those huge knockers of yours.’

  Ruby took hold of the thin pillow and swung it at Kath. Soon they were in hysterics until, once again, they snuggled down.

  ‘We are a bit of an odd couple,’ Kath remarked. ‘You small, blonde and all busty. Me tall and as flat as a pancake. But I wouldn’t want anyone else for a best mate.’

  As Ruby, too, drifted back to sleep, she thought of Lady Granger and Anna. They had the same class and style. She knew they were in a league of their own but would it ever be possible to be like them?

  She made a promise to herself to find out.

  Chapter Seven

  It was a foggy November afternoon when Ruby got off the bus at the Mallard Road Estate. Her last visit home had been just before her nineteenth birthday in September. She hadn’t stayed more than an hour. Long enough to be given her card and present; stockings, a bottle of Evening in Paris perfume and a white cotton blouse her mother had made for her.

  It had been an uncomfortable hour. Ruby knew that Pete’s birthday in August, when he would have been twenty-three, had been very hard for her parents. Her mum was still living in the vain hope he would walk in the door. Despite having seen his dead body with her own eyes, she couldn’t accept he was gone. As for her dad, he’d wished her a happy birthday and then promptly left for the working men’s club.

  Ruby pulled her coat around her and shivered in the grey drizzle. The long lines of prefabs looked even more gloomy than usual. In 1945 when they’d moved in, the prefabs were cutting edge. Then, they were called box bungalows. The council’s answer to the post-war crisis in housing.

  Some hopes! she tho
ught as she passed roof after sunken flat roof. Eight years down the line and damp was eating up the flimsy asbestos walls, slowly corroding the steel windows. The gardens were overgrown and neglected.

  Ruby came to a halt at number 24. Butterflies filled her stomach. What mood would her mum be in? She hoped her dad hadn’t gone out.

  Even from where she stood, she could hear the clatter of the treadle. Day and night, her mum worked at the Singer sewing machine. One reason why her dad went to the club, he’d told her. The noise was deafening.

  Dad used to love this garden, she thought sadly. Flowers had grown here, even a little tree. But with Mum being so depressed, he’d lost interest.

  Ruby paused at the front door. She wanted to turn and walk down the broken path. She knew the moment she saw her mum’s face she would be filled with guilt. But living at home was as impossible for her as it was for Dad. She feared that he’d leave one day too. Then what would happen to Babs?

  Ruby knocked loudly and repeatedly on the door. If her dad happened to be out, it was the only way to gain her mum’s attention.

  ‘Ruby?’ Babs Payne opened the door. ‘I wasn’t expecting you.’

  ‘Hello, Mum. Are you busy?’ Ruby kissed her mother’s cheek and stepped inside.

  ‘Never too busy for you.’

  For a hopeful moment Ruby looked into her mother’s eyes. Was she any better? Babs wore her khaki sewing overall with its many pockets and a turban tied over her frizzy fair hair. Her pale face, once youthful a few years ago as she turned forty, was now lined and aged. ‘I thought I’d call by. Is Dad in?’

  ‘He’s out the back. Trying to mend the guttering. I told him Pete would do it. Your Dad’s no good at jobs around the house.’

  Ruby’s heart sank. ‘But, Mum, Pete’s not coming home.’

  ‘Not this weekend, no. The guttering could wait though. Your dad just gets restless. Go and make yourself a cuppa. I’m on the machine in the front room.’

  Ruby watched her mother scuttle back to her work. She’d deliberately misunderstood about Pete. But Ruby knew if she were to press the point, Babs would get upset. Their conversation would end in tears and her dad wouldn’t thank her for that.

  Ruby stood in the hall, looking around the dark, depressing prefab. The damp was getting worse. The cloying smell turned her stomach, but her mum never noticed. Once more Ruby fought the urge to leave. Even the fog smelled better than this. But she knew she must stay. At least for an hour.

  ‘Ruby, is that you?’ her dad called as she walked through the kitchen door and into the back yard. A tall man, thinner now than he’d ever been but still with a full head of wavy fair hair, he had Pete’s broad shoulders and her brother’s beautiful brown eyes. Ruby could see the suffering had left its mark on his wizened features, as it had on her mum’s. She knew Pete had meant everything to him. And nothing would ever change that.

  ‘Hello, Dad.’

  ‘Come here and give us a kiss.’

  Ruby smiled as she hugged her father. He still felt the same strong man, yet he was changed. He’d not only lost Pete but her mum too. Or at least, the woman he’d married.

  ‘What brings you over?’

  Ruby shrugged. ‘You and Mum of course.’

  Dave Payne nodded. ‘I’m glad you caught me in. It’s billiards this afternoon.’

  ‘Are you going to the club? I thought Mum said you were doing the guttering.’

  He shook his head. ‘It was only a nail needed.’

  ‘Is she any better?’

  ‘What do you think?’ He patted his jacket pockets nervously. ‘I’ve had me fill, gel. I can’t take much more. Pete’s always there, for her anyway. For me there’s just a bloody great nothing. She feeds me and washes the clothes and cleans the house. Then she’s back at her sewing machine, driving me nuts.’

  ‘Oh Dad, I’m sorry.’

  ‘It ain’t your fault. You did the right thing, moving out.’

  Ruby didn’t feel any the less guilty. She’d left her dad to live in a madhouse. But it was sink or swim and she was still young enough to swim.

  ‘I’m going round the side way,’ he told her, stamping his boots on the crazy paving and loosening the dirt in their soles. ‘Tell your mum I’ll be back in a couple of hours.’

  ‘Ain’t you coming in for a cuppa?’

  ‘I’ll catch a game with the boys if I hurry. Don’t mind, do you?’

  ‘Course not.’ She did mind. A lot. She wanted to talk to her dad. To listen to his deep voice and see him sitting next to her mum in the kitchen, his arm around Babs’s shoulders, and Pete standing there, making them all laugh like he used to. But what she wanted and what she had were two different things. She had to settle for at least having a dad to hug, even if only for ten minutes. And a mother who was more than a screw loose, but at least still functioned enough to keep the house going in some sort of order.

  ‘Take care of yourself,’ her dad said, giving her a quick pat on the arm. ‘And give Kath me love. I take it you and her are doing all right?’

  ‘Yes, Dad, thanks.’ She knew he wanted to get away. To leave while the going was good. Before emotion got the better of him. Before they were forced to acknowledge the truth. That things wouldn’t be, couldn’t be, the same as they were. Not by a long shot.

  ‘I’ll be off then.’

  She wanted to hug him again, to be safe in his arms, but instead she watched him walk over the weeds and brown grass, ignoring the pile of rust and rubbish that had accumulated, that once he’d have disposed of in the blink of an eye.

  When she heard the chink of the side gate, she gave a soft sigh and turned back to the prefab. The kitchen door had a broken pane of glass in its frame, and the greying net curtain hanging behind drooped. Once upon a time, Pete would have helped Dad replace the glass and Mum would have hung a new curtain.

  Babs walked into the kitchen as Ruby went in.

  ‘Dad’s gone for a game of billiards at the club,’ Ruby told her mother.

  ‘Your brother will see to the repairs,’ Babs said cheerfully. ‘Now, I’ll put the kettle on. Why don’t you go in the front room and warm up? There’s a nice fire going.’

  Ruby watched Babs busy herself over the stove. The kitchen was in need of a scrub. There were patches of mould on the walls and the table and chairs had been worn down to the bare wood. She couldn’t bear to look any more, so she did as Babs told her.

  But when she arrived in the front room, Ruby gasped. There were clothes strewn everywhere. Over the chairs and sideboard, hanging from the picture rail and old leather sofa. Labels were attached to materials. Hems were tacked up, others had patterns attached. The sewing machine took up most of the dining table.

  It was chaos.

  ‘What’s all this?’ Ruby asked as Babs walked in with two teacups balanced on their saucers.

  ‘Business is brisk, dear. Let me clear one of the chairs.’ Babs put the cups down on the sideboard. She shuffled the clothes from a seat. ‘Park yourself there, love. You can talk to me while I work.’

  ‘Mum, the fire’s almost out. It’s very cold in here.’

  ‘Is it? I wrap up warm. Lots of layers under me overall.’ She sat down at the sewing machine. ‘I have to have this ready for Monday. You don’t mind if I carry on, do you?’

  ‘S’pose not.’ Ruby shivered. Apart from the cold, the smell of mould was overpowering.

  Babs slipped on her round spectacles and off went the treadle. Her slippered feet went up and down. Ruby flinched as the noise grew louder.

  ‘Are you keeping well, Mum?’ Ruby shouted above the treadle.

  ‘Not bad.’

  ‘Does Maggs Jenkins still pop by?’ Ruby knew that her mum had one good friend in the street who lived a couple of doors down.

  ‘Not so much these days.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘I’m very busy, you know. I have customers to please.’

  Ruby sighed as her mum continued to thread the material under th
e needle of the sewing machine. No wonder her dad had gone out. What sort of life was this for him? Did her mum really have all these customers? Or were they just another figment of her imagination? Her poor dad. How could he live in this?

  ‘I’ll take the cups out.’

  Babs just nodded.

  Ruby threw away the cold tea and rinsed the dirty china. When all was clean and tidy she went out to the hall. She realized she hadn’t even taken off her coat. But it wasn’t just cold, it was freezing.

  The door to Pete’s room was ajar. She went inside. Why did it surprise her every time she saw the interior? It was just as Pete had kept it.

  For a boy, Pete had always been very particular, Ruby reflected as she stood gazing around. He’d disliked untidiness and clutter in any shape or form. From very young, he had cleaned his room himself. Kept it spotless. Unlike me, Ruby thought with a rueful smile. She was only too ready to leave her mess to Mum, who had, once every month, turfed out the debris and swept the lino.

  Dad had put up the dividing wall between her bedroom and Pete’s. It was very thin hardboard. She remembered listening to Pete’s music through the partition, echoing from his Dansette record player. Frankie Laine, Jo Stafford and Kay Starr. Pete couldn’t play enough of them.

  Now she looked at the record player and her heart gave a twist. It stood silent on the lacquered black-and-cream sideboard supported by thin, splayed legs. His collection of records was stacked under the set of teak shelves screwed to the wall. Slowly she walked over to browse Pete’s books. He’d had his favourites; The Little Grey Men, King Solomon’s Mines and The Three Musketeers. Well-thumbed copies, too old or too flimsy to stand upright, steadied by plaster Scottie dog bookends. A volume of poetry, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, which she’d read once and not understood; a man had killed the thing he loved most, the meaning of which – as Pete had predicted – was lost on her.

  Ruby drew her fingers over the polished sideboard, moving slowly to stand by the small settee. Next to it stood the wardrobe, far too large for the room. But Pete had thought nothing of spending a fortune on clothes. Ruby smiled as she recalled his many suits and pairs of shoes.