Meet Ruby

by Penny Matthews

  It was the same when they played movie charades. May was hopeless at guessing the clues, because she didn’t know the names of any movies. She hadn’t heard of any film stars – not even Jean Harlow or Clara Bow – and she didn’t seem to care. It made her look such a bad sport. Ruby loved going to the pictures. Two weeks ago Dad had taken her to a special Mickey the Mouse party at West’s Picture Theatre in the city.

  ‘I’m sorry for your cousin,’ Hilary whispered to Ruby, when the girls were going into the dining room for the birthday feast. ‘She’s nice, isn’t she? But she’s so quiet. She doesn’t know anyone, and she must feel very left out.’

  ‘She’s just shy,’ Ruby whispered back. That was what her mother had told her, when Ruby had complained how difficult it was to talk to May. And it did make sense. After all, May was a country girl, and city life must seem very strange to her. But was it possible that May was quiet because she felt left out? Ruby wasn’t sure.

  The walls of the dining room were decorated with bunches of pink balloons, and the table had been covered with Mother’s best lace tablecloth. The sight of all the birthday food made Ruby’s mouth water – ribbon sandwiches, devilled eggs, brandy-snaps, fairy cakes dusted with icing sugar, and a big jug of lemonade. In the middle of the table was the cake, a cream sponge topped with pink candles.

  ‘There’s ice-cream to come, too,’ Ruby told everyone as they gathered around the table. ‘It took Mrs T almost the whole morning to make it, so you have to leave some room for it.’

  ‘I helped to make the fairy cakes,’ May said, suddenly.

  ‘Oh really, do you cook? Fancy that!’ Marjorie laughed, and then stopped.

  May blushed scarlet.

  ‘Did you, May?’ Dad said in a loud, hearty voice. ‘Well done! We shall have the pleasure of trying them soon. First, though, our birthday girl must open her gifts.’ And Ruby, trying to forget about her embarrassing cousin, sat in the big carver chair to unwrap her presents in front of everyone.

  There were all the usual smaller gifts of soap and embroidered handkerchiefs, hair-ribbons, chocolates, a box of Lakeland coloured pencils, and the latest School Friend Annual. Then came the gift Ruby was waiting for, the special big present from Mother and Dad.

  It was a large box, wrapped in blue tissue paper. Ruby gave it a little shake. There was something fairly heavy inside. Perhaps it’s a telephone, thought Ruby. I’d like my own telephone. But no, telephones are bigger than this. She shook the parcel again.

  ‘Do hurry up and open it, Ruby Q!’ Marjorie said.

  ‘Yes,’ chimed in Brenda. ‘Stop making such a drama of it, Ruby!’

  Off came the tissue paper.

  All the girls crowded around, even May.

  ‘Oh my hat,’ Ruby breathed. ‘A camera!’

  Everyone sighed and exclaimed. Everyone wanted a peek.

  ‘I’ve seen those cameras advertised,’ Brenda said, looking envious. ‘They cost fifteen pounds!’

  ‘It’s the very best you can buy,’ Dad said. ‘Professional photographers use cameras like these. It can shoot at a speed of up to one-thousandth of a second – isn’t that amazing? And here . . .’ He bent down and picked up another box from under the table. ‘I’ve bought you some film for it. A dozen rolls. Don’t use them all at once, will you?’ He kissed Ruby on top of her head. ‘I hope the camera will give you a lot of pleasure, sweetheart.’

  Ruby jumped up and threw her arms around him. ‘Thank you, Dad. It will. I know it will.’

  By the time all the girls had been picked up by their parents, it was nearly dark outside and Mother had to switch on the electric lights.

  While May helped Mother tidy the sitting room, Ruby waltzed off down the hallway, her taffeta Cinderella dress making a deliciously expensive rustling sound with every turn.

  ‘The food was simply smashing, Mrs T,’ she called out, as she whirled into the kitchen. ‘That piggy Brenda had three brandy-snaps!’

  She stopped. Somebody was sitting at the kitchen table, devouring a slice of birthday cake. He was a boy, probably not much older than she was, and he looked half-starved. He was wearing a grey jacket that might once have been part of a school uniform. It was too small for him, and his thin wrists poked out of the frayed cuffs. He was very dirty, too. Ruby could smell him. She wrinkled her nose.

  ‘Who’s this, Mrs T?’ she asked in a loud whisper.

  Mrs Traill finished pouring a mug of tea. ‘His name’s Tommy,’ she said. ‘He came to the door looking for work just now. I said we had no job for him, but at least I could give him a good feed, and he can doss down in the garage tonight if he wants to. I’ve spoken to your mother and father, and it’s all right with them. I don’t like to think of a young lad wandering the streets at night.’

  ‘Of course not,’ Ruby said. She shivered at the thought. ‘How old are you, Tommy?’

  Tommy spoke with his mouth full. ‘Fifteen.’

  ‘And where do you live? Do you have a home? You must have a home.’

  ‘Yeah, down the Port. I was apprenticed to a boilermaker there, but he went broke. I thought I’d see if there was any jobs going in the Adelaide Hills.’

  ‘Well, we can give you plenty of food, can’t we, Mrs T? There’s heaps of party left-overs. Nobody wanted the fish-paste sandwiches, so you can have all of those.’

  ‘Thank you, miss. This lady’s been kind enough to give me some bread and that. It’ll keep me going for a good while. And I’m that grateful for somewhere to sleep. I’ll be gone first thing in the morning.’

  ‘He will,’ said Mrs Traill. ‘I’ll see to it.’

  ‘All right, then.’ Ruby looked down at her silver shoes. Then, feeling a bit out of place, she picked up her rustling silky skirts and left the kitchen. She wished she was wearing something that wasn’t quite so noisy. Maybe she should have dressed as Cinderella-in-rags, after all.

  RUBY opened her eyes and looked at her watch. Nearly seven o’clock. It was only the second week of the school holidays and she had practically nothing to look forward to but Christmas, which was still ten whole days away.

  She flopped back on her pillow and listened to the milkman’s horse clip-clopping down the street. There was a quick pad of feet as the milko ran down the side of the house to fill the jug waiting for him in the service hatch. Next the iceman would come, with his loud cry of ‘Ice here!’, and then the baker. If Ruby was up and dressed, Mrs T always let her go out to the baker’s cart to buy the bread, and she was allowed to choose an iced bun as well, or a yeast cake.

  But this morning not even the thought of a soft, fragrant yeast cake could make Ruby feel like getting out of bed. She couldn’t believe that they weren’t going away this year. The Quinlans always, always went to the beach before Christmas. Mother and Dad had friends who owned a villa on The Strand at Port Elliot, which was Ruby’s second most favourite place in the world. When Ruby had asked why they were staying home, Mother had just replied that Dad was too busy to leave his business. And it was true – Dad now seemed to spend the entire time locked away in his study or off at work.

  With no special outings planned, Ruby was beginning to feel very fidgety. So far the only thing she’d done was to spend a day with Hilary. That had been fun, and baby Cecily was adorable – except when she grabbed at Ruby’s long hair. But now Hilary had gone to Naracoorte to stay with relatives, so Ruby couldn’t even invite her for a return visit.

  Something else was different these holidays, and it was a bad thing. Mother and Dad were always fighting. They quarrelled at night, after Ruby had gone to bed, and in the daytime they pretended nothing had happened. Ruby hated it. Late last night she’d heard their raised voices again, and the angry sound had made her heart knock fiercely against her chest. It was ages before she’d got to sleep.

  Now she was startled out of her thoughts by a loud rapping on her bedroom door. ‘Breakfast, lazybones!’ called Mother.

  Ruby dragged herself out of bed. She put on her slippers, shuffled
along to the bathroom, washed her face, dressed, and wandered down to the dining room. Mother and Dad were already there, each reading part of the morning newspaper. Ruby sat down and helped herself to a fried egg from the chafing dish. She put it on a piece of toast and stared at it. The egg, with its round yellow eye, stared back at her. She stuck a fork in it and licked off a tiny piece of yolk. She didn’t feel like eating this morning.

  Dad put down his newspaper. ‘I think it’s time we had some fun,’ he said. ‘How about a visit to the zoo today? We could have a picnic there.’

  Ruby almost jumped out of her chair. ‘Yes! Yes! Oh, that’s a smashing idea, Dad! I’ll bring my camera and take photographs of the animals – I’ve been reading your book on photography, and there are heaps of things I want to try.’

  The fried egg now tasted so delicious that Ruby had another one, and a piece of toast with jam.

  Mrs Traill put together what she called a scratch picnic lunch for them. Then, while Ruby hopped about with impatience, Dad dealt with some business matters in his study. At last they drove into town in Dad’s new Buick, parking in War Memorial Drive.

  As they walked over the bridge to the zoo, Ruby saw something unexpected on the bank of the River Torrens: a scattering of tents and shelters and rough-looking huts.

  ‘What’s happening there?’ she asked. ‘Is it a circus?’

  Dad glanced down. ‘Hardly,’ he said. ‘It’s a campsite for homeless men. It’s been there for a while now.’

  ‘It’s nothing more than a haven for tramps and thieves,’ said Mother, her voice tight. ‘I hate to think what might happen in such a place. No respectable person would ever go there, much less live there.’

  ‘I can’t agree with you, Winifred,’ Dad replied. ‘Plenty of decent men have lost everything they have through no fault of their own, and living on the river bank is a reasonable option for them. Ration tickets from the government give them enough to eat, and they can look for work – not that there’s much of that around. Good luck to them, I say.’

  Ruby expected her mother to argue, but to her surprise Mother looked away and said nothing. Quickly Ruby opened her camera, stared down into the viewfinder, and adjusted the focus. She took a careful shot of the distant campsite before following her parents across the bridge.

  It was a hot, sunny day, but the zoo seemed fairly empty.

  ‘Not so many people come these days,’ said the man who sold them their tickets at the gate. ‘Plenty of folk are doing it tough, and when all’s said and done, the zoo’s a luxury, ain’t it?’

  Even the animals seemed rather depressed, Ruby thought, as she looked around for what Dad’s book called ‘promising photographic subjects’. The polar bears walked up and down, up and down in their hot enclosure with its tiny pool of slimy-looking green water, and the lions were slumped on the concrete floor of their big barred cage. The monkeys were still cheerful, though, yelling and chittering, and of course the giraffes were as tall and aloof as ever.

  For some reason the giraffes reminded Ruby of her cousin May, although May didn’t have a long blue tongue, thank goodness. Squinting against the sun, Ruby aimed her camera up the neck of the nearest giraffe.

  When they’d walked for a while Mother said she was tired, so they all sat on a bench under a shady plane tree to eat their lunch. Afterwards Dad gave Ruby a shilling for an elephant ride.

  Mary-Anne the elephant was waiting patiently outside the elephant pavilion, which looked like a little Indian temple. Four children were already strapped into the saddle, which was really just two wooden benches, one on each side. Mary-Anne’s keeper helped Ruby up to join them, and then the elephant began her slow walk, lifting one big, heavy foot after another.

  Ruby hugged herself with excitement. How high up she was! She grinned at the little boy next to her, and he grinned back, shyly, and then turned and whispered to the child next to him. Suddenly Ruby wished she had somebody to share the ride with, too. She wished Hilary were there. Or Marjorie. Even Brenda would be better than nobody.

  The wooden saddle creaked and lurched as the old elephant made her way around the track, led by her keeper. The sun shone, the trees made flickering shadows, and Ruby could hear a lion roar. Or was it a tiger? She closed her eyes. I could be in Africa, she thought. Or in India. I could be an Indian princess, dressed in a sari and covered in gold and jewels . . .

  She opened her eyes again, and looked across to where Mother and Dad were sitting. She took aim with her camera and photographed them. In the viewfinder they looked very tiny.

  After the ride the keeper tethered Mary-Anne, rewarded her with some bananas, and put a ladder against her side to help the children down. Ruby stroked the elephant’s flank to say thank you. Mary-Anne’s grey-brown skin was hard and thick, like old boot leather.

  Ruby ran back to her parents. ‘That was smashing! Where shall we go next? We haven’t been to see the birds yet – or the seals! We have to see the seals! It’ll be their feeding time soon – I saw a man go past with a bucket of fish!’

  ‘Slow down, Ruby,’ Dad said. ‘Your mother has a bad headache. I think we’d better just go home.’

  ‘Oh.’ Ruby turned to her mother. ‘Are you sick, Mother? Is it the heat?’

  ‘No, Ruby. It’s just . . . I’m not feeling very well. I’m sorry to spoil your day.’

  Dad put his arm around Ruby. ‘To make up for it, we’ll stop at the corner shop on the way home and you can have an ice-cream cone.’

  Dad was trying hard to be jolly, so Ruby tried too. She made herself look extra pleased. ‘Strawberry?’

  ‘Whatever you want.’

  When they walked back across the bridge, Ruby looked over at the homeless men’s settlement again. In the distance she could see people moving around. She wondered where that boy Tommy was now.

  TWO days before Christmas there was a knock at the back door. Baxter, who was in the kitchen with Ruby, started barking and barking. ‘Go and see who it is, Ruby, there’s a dear,’ Mrs Traill said over the noise. ‘I’m all buttery fingers making this shortbread.’

  Ruby shut Baxter in the laundry and then opened the back door to see a man dressed in an old army greatcoat. He had a dog with him, a thin, dusty black-and-tan kelpie with hopeful eyes.

  The man had been a farmer in the Mallee, he told Ruby, and conditions there were so bad that he’d just walked off his farm and never looked back. He’d do anything for a couple of bob, anything at all.

  Ruby ran to get her father, who was working in his study. ‘There’s a man outside, looking for work,’ she said. ‘He looks so hungry and he has a dog with him, such a sweet dog – oh, Dad, just imagine if that was Baxter!’ Tears came to her eyes at the thought of Baxter being homeless and starving. ‘Isn’t there something he can do for two shillings?’

  And so Dad set the man to raking the gravel driveway, which didn’t really need raking, and sweeping the front veranda, which didn’t really need sweeping. Ruby patted the dog as he lay on the lawn, ears pricked, guarding his master’s greatcoat and swag.

  When the man had finished, Dad gave him a pound note, because it was nearly Christmas, and Mrs Traill invited him inside and gave him a cup of tea.

  Ruby went into the pantry and found a half-eaten leg of roast mutton and a couple of cooked sausages in the ice-box. ‘These are for your dog,’ she said, putting them on the kitchen table.

  Mrs Traill grumbled a little, but she wrapped the meat in newspaper and gave it to the man. Then she wrapped up some freshly baked mince pies for him as well. ‘His Christmas won’t be very festive, poor soul,’ she said, when he’d left, his dog trotting at his heels.

  Baxter, released from the laundry, spent a lot of time suspiciously checking every corner of the kitchen before jumping into Ruby’s lap with a sigh.

  ‘What will that man’s Christmas be like?’ Ruby asked, stroking Baxter. She tried to imagine it – no home, no job, no family to care about you.

  Mrs Traill went to the stove to t
ake her shortbread out of the oven.‘He might get a meal in one of them charity soup kitchens,’ she said. ‘Or a rabbit cooked on a camp fire. Maybe he’ll have nothing but a mouthful of dust along the road.’

  ‘At least he has his dog,’ Ruby said. She imagined the dog eating the sausages, and smiled.

  ‘That dog’ll never get a sniff at those sausages,’ observed Mrs Traill, as if reading Ruby’s thoughts. ‘He’ll be lucky to get the scrag end of the mutton.’

  On Christmas Eve Ruby’s gran, Dad’s mother, travelled down from Aldgate to stay with them for a couple of days. Usually Mother and Dad had a big festive party for all their friends on Christmas Eve, but this year they didn’t. This year everything was so quiet and so un-festive that Ruby felt as if she should be walking around the house on tiptoe.

  On Christmas morning Mrs Traill put everything in the oven ready for their midday dinner, set the plum pudding to boil, and then went off to spend her own Christmas with her sister in Woodville. She gave Ruby a hug, a card with holly on it, and something knobbly wrapped in brown paper to open later.

  Before dinner the family went into the sitting room to open the presents piled beneath the Christmas tree. For her special present Ruby had asked for a tennis racquet with a wooden racquet press – all the girls were playing tennis now, and Hilary’s father was having a tennis court put in. She was pleased to find a box of chocolates and The Empire Annual for Girls under the tree, but to her disappointment her main present was a new dressing-gown. It was a very nice dressing-gown, blue, and with a fancy ‘R’ embroidered on the pocket, but what good was a dressing-gown when you had your heart set on a tennis racquet?

  Her grandmother’s gift was a hand-knitted face flannel. Ruby never expected very much from Gran, and she could imagine how difficult it must have been for her to knit the flannel with her swollen, arthritic fingers. She thanked her grandmother and kissed the old woman on her wrinkled cheek.