Dead to Me (14 page)

Should she take Ruby home with her? She wanted to, but aside from the journey maybe being difficult for her, there was Aunt Hazel. She was always quick to sense anything unusual, and even with the best acting skills in the world Ruby wasn’t likely to be able to hide the fact that she was recovering from something.

Hearing a little sound, she got up and went over to Ruby. She was awake, but with beads of perspiration on her forehead.

‘How are you doing?’ she asked. ‘You look hot. Shall I get you some water?’

‘I think something’s wrong,’ Ruby said in little more than a whisper. ‘I feel really poorly.’

Verity put her hand on her friend’s forehead. It was hot enough to fry an egg. ‘Do you hurt anywhere?’ she asked, suddenly feeling frightened.

‘It feels like I’m tender everywhere, even my arms and legs, I can’t explain better than that.’

‘I’ll get you some aspirin and a glass of water. That should make it better.’

‘Has Ma gone out?’

‘Yes, she had to see someone.’

‘Getting away from us more like. She won’t come back until we’re long gone.’

Verity was shocked that Ruby would think that of her mother, but perhaps she was right. After all, Angie had gone out very early, without a proper explanation. But it wasn’t just shocking to think a mother could care so little for her child, it was very frightening too, as Verity had been banking on her help and advice if anything went wrong.

She got the water and the aspirin, and propped her friend up to take them. ‘I don’t think you can cope with the long train ride home today,’ she said sitting down beside Ruby, who had now slumped back down on the pillow again. ‘You should stay here another night.’

‘You’ll stay with me?’

Verity looked down at her friend and, without an ounce of medical knowledge, she knew something was badly wrong. Being very hot was the only obvious symptom, but Ruby’s eyes looked cloudy too, and that weak voice wasn’t put on.

‘Of course I’ll stay with you until I’m sure you are okay,’ she said. ‘But I’m wondering if I should call an ambulance and get you to hospital.’

‘You mustn’t do that,’ Ruby whispered. ‘I’ll get in trouble, and Ma will too.’

Another hour went past, and Verity sat beside her friend, from time to time wiping her face and neck with a cold wet flannel. But she sensed Ruby was sinking lower, she didn’t seem aware of anything, not even Verity bathing her face.

By eleven Verity was beginning to panic that Ruby might actually die if she didn’t get her help. Whatever the consequence of that help, it wasn’t going to be as severe as death.

‘I’m going to slip out and call an ambulance,’ she said to Ruby. ‘I’ll do all the talking for you, I’ll say you started to miscarry when you got here to see your mum. If I deny you’ve done anything, they can’t prove otherwise.’

Ruby just looked back at her with vacant eyes, it was clear she had gone past the stage of making a decision for herself.

It was very cold out in the street, especially after the close, stuffy air indoors. Verity had noticed a telephone box the day before, two streets away. She ran all the way to it, her heart thumping with fear.

She told the operator that she feared her friend was having a miscarriage, that she’d lost a lot of blood, and she believed her to have a very high temperature. After giving her name and Ruby’s, also the address in Rhyl Street, the operator said she was to go back and wait for an ambulance.

The ambulance took Ruby to the Whittington Hospital in Archway, a hospital Verity had been to once before with her mother when she was about eleven, to visit a sick friend of the family. She had thought it rather exciting to see inside a big hospital. But to go there riding in an ambulance, watching her dearest friend vomiting suddenly and then becoming as limp and lifeless as a doll, was terrifying. She could smell the Lifebuoy soap on Ruby and she was sure the ambulance men could too, she wondered if they would call the police once they were at the hospital.

Once in the casualty department, Ruby was wheeled away and Verity was told to sit in the waiting area. A young nurse came and took some details from her. Verity merely gave her Angie’s address, and said that Ruby had come to visit her mother on the previous day, but in the early hours of the morning she’d begun to miscarry. She said that Ruby had only told her she thought she might be having a baby a few days earlier and that was why Verity had come to visit her.

Whether the nurse believed her she didn’t know. She made no comment at all, just wrote down the little Verity had told her and then went away.

Verity felt her nerves were at breaking point after two hours passed with no one coming to tell her what was happening. The waiting area was full of people in some kind of distress: men with bloody heads as if they’d been in a fight, and others who had come hobbling in with leg injuries. There were several white-faced mothers holding a sick child or baby in their arms, a man with a young girl who looked like she’d broken her arm, and many old people, some of whom were talking to themselves.

Each time an ambulance arrived their patient was wheeled straight in through the double doors where they’d taken Ruby, so she assumed all the people around her had arrived under their own steam and were not considered such urgent cases.

Finally, at three thirty, Verity plucked up courage to go and ask a nurse about Ruby. She said she would find out, but Verity was to sit down and wait.

But this time she didn’t have long to wait, as a doctor came out through the double doors and asked her to
come with him. He led her to a small office and then turned to her.

‘Who did this to your friend?’ he asked point-blank.

‘Sorry! No one did anything to her,’ Verity said. ‘She just started bleeding this morning.’

‘Rubbish,’ he said sharply. ‘Tell me the truth.’

She couldn’t, she’d promised both Ruby and Angie. The only way was to act indignant and stick to her story.

‘I beg your pardon,’ she said, frowning at him. ‘I have told you the truth, and please may I know how my friend is? That, surely, is the important thing right now, not persecuting me for bringing her here for help.’

‘We had to take her to theatre for an emergency D and C,’ he said, his eyes sparking with anger. ‘She had lost a great deal of blood and it’s touch and go if she’ll make it. Maybe you knew nothing of what she’d done, but someone did this to her and they should be horsewhipped.’

Verity felt faint, she slumped back against the office wall, her legs suddenly feeling like rubber. The doctor caught hold of her arm, led her to a chair, and pushed her head down between her knees.

‘Take deep breaths,’ he said. ‘Have you eaten anything today?’

She managed to shake her head, realizing she hadn’t eaten anything since a couple of slices of toast yesterday morning.

‘Well, I suggest you go and get something, we have enough sick people in here to deal with as it is.’

His brusque tone was evidence he had no sympathy for her. She didn’t want any further questions, so she pulled herself upright and slunk out.

She found a bakery close to the hospital and bought a meat pie. At the first bite she remembered the day she had met Ruby for the first time and bought her a pie, and the thought that her friend might not survive made it difficult for her to swallow. But she forced herself to eat – the doctor was right, they didn’t need people fainting in the waiting room. And she had to stay strong in case the police came.

Back in the hospital, she waited a further hour, all the time gnawing at her nails with worry. And when she couldn’t bear not knowing anything, she burst through the double doors and demanded to know how Ruby was.

It was a sister she asked, a small woman who looked too wrinkled and old to still be working.

‘I just need to know,’ she begged her. ‘I don’t know whether to go home, or what. The aunt I live with will be worried about me and she’s not on the telephone.’

‘Just wait here,’ the sister said. ‘I’ll just make some inquiries.’

The smell of disinfectant and other chemicals turned Verity’s stomach as she stood there waiting. There was so much feverish activity and noise too, porters wheeling trolleys with patients on them, nurses scurrying by, a bellowing sound coming from further down the corridor, and close by a child crying.

The old sister came back. ‘Tell me, Miss Wood, is Wilby her brother or just a friend?’

‘No, it’s a lady that she’s very fond of,’ Verity explained, not wishing to admit Ruby lived with her for fear they might contact her. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘The nurse who is with her said she kept saying the name when she was delirious.’

That made Verity a hundred times more worried. ‘But how is she now?’

‘All I can really tell you is that she is in a critical condition. I would suggest that you contact her mother, or this Wilby person, and get them to come here now.’

‘As bad as that?’ Verity croaked out, her eyes filling with tears. ‘But Wilby lives in Devon.’

The sister shrugged. ‘If she is able to get here, it may well make all the difference to your friend. Now I must go, I’ll leave the contacting to you.’

Verity went back into the waiting room and sat down, her head whirling with conflicting thoughts. If Ruby survived and found out she’d told Wilby about this, she was never going to forgive Verity. But if Ruby died, without Wilby knowing, Wilby was never going to forgive Verity.

Whatever she did, Verity knew she was going to be cast out.

‘So what is the
right
thing to do?’ she asked herself.

She knew it was to telephone Wilby. And after that she should go back to Rhyl Street and find Angie.

‘Just live, Ruby,’ she whispered softly. ‘I can bear it, if you never speak to me again. But I can’t bear the thought of you dying.’

Verity
opened the letter with a Torquay postmark in some excitement, as she had been waiting nervously to hear from Ruby. She felt her friend would only take the trouble to write if she’d decided to forgive her for what she had called her ‘betrayal’. If she had anything nasty to say, she’d use the telephone or speak face to face.

But as Verity pulled a plain white postcard from the envelope she gasped. In large capital letters Ruby had simply written:

YOU ARE DEAD TO ME.

There was no explanation as to why Ruby felt compelled to be this brutal, and the starkness of the message was evidence that her heart had turned to stone and there was no way back now.

Verity was too stunned to cry for a few moments. She could only stare at the words in absolute horror. But at the realization that their friendship, which Verity had valued above everything, was now dead and buried, the tears began to flow.

She had of course known when she telephoned Wilby from the hospital that she was breaking her promise to Ruby. But she wasn’t telling tales out of spite or for attention, it was a desperate situation. No one – not her, not the doctors or nurses – believed Ruby would last the night.
What sort of friend would she be if she didn’t try to contact Wilby, the woman who had done so much for Ruby, so that she could say goodbye?

Or was Ruby so utterly selfish that she didn’t know how important such things were to caring people?

If Ruby had died alone in the hospital, the police or Angie would have had to contact Wilby anyway and tell her what had happened. Did Ruby imagine that was a preferable way to hear of the death of someone you loved?

But setting aside the obligation to inform Wilby, did Ruby have any idea what Verity had been through that night? She had stayed at her friend’s bedside all of those endless, dark hours when Ruby was barely conscious. She had knelt on the floor by the hospital bed and prayed for her to live. She had even believed God heard her and granted her wish, because around seven o’clock on Sunday morning Ruby finally began to rally.

Wilby arrived at ten in the morning, having driven up from Devon in her old Austin, which didn’t even have a heater. She was icy cold, exhausted and stiff from the long drive, yet if she was disappointed in Ruby, or angry with her, she certainly didn’t show it. All Verity saw was love and deep concern for Ruby’s welfare.

There was no doubt Ruby was glad to see Wilby. She was very poorly, yet she clung on to the older woman like she was a life raft, and she didn’t ask how she came to be there. Maybe it would have been better if Verity had stayed there for the rest of that day, so she could explain her actions. But Wilby said she should go home, because she was exhausted, and she said she would make everything right.

As it was, Wilby telephoned Verity at her work the following day, telling her she was staying in a guest house for a few days until Ruby was able to travel.

‘She was so foolish not confiding in me,’ she said. ‘It is true I would never have condoned an abortion. But we could have made plans for adoption, if she felt unable to keep the baby. I don’t blame you for anything, Verity, I know how forceful Ruby can be when she wants to do something.’

Verity cried then, telling the older woman how scared she’d been and that she was afraid Ruby would hate her for calling Wilby.

‘I’m afraid Ruby does think you betrayed her at the moment, Verity,’ Wilby said gently, her voice cracking with emotion. ‘But that will pass once she’s a hundred per cent again. I have told her that I thank you from the bottom of my heart for calling me, I can’t bear to think how I would have felt if I hadn’t got to see her one last time. I stressed that you did the right thing, the only thing. If there is anyone to blame, it’s her own mother, who hasn’t even been to see her. It’s difficult to believe anyone can be that callous.’

Verity had believed then that Wilby was right and that once Ruby was on the mend she would be ashamed she’d ever spoken of disloyalty.

How wrong she was! Two months had passed, Ruby was completely well again and back at work. This ought to have been an apology, and a plea for her to come to Devon as usual at Easter, but instead it seemed their close friendship was over, and Ruby hated her.

The only reason she had come up with for her friend’s
nastiness was that Ruby believed Verity was jealous of her relationship with Wilby. Maybe she imagined Verity had implored Wilby to come to London in the hope that she would look saintly while Ruby looked wayward and bad. It didn’t seem possible that Ruby could be crazy enough to believe Verity would try to turn Wilby against her, or that she was spiteful enough to send such a horrible message, but it was the only thing that made some sense.

Verity wished she could confide in Aunt Hazel and get her opinion, but she knew that wasn’t an option. Hazel had been very suspicious after that weekend, because Verity was so withdrawn, and her endless probing questions almost drove Verity mad. But she couldn’t, and wouldn’t, tell her aunt or anyone else, as it had been a hideous, pain-filled experience.

No one had come out of it well: not Verity for agreeing to ask Angie to arrange the abortion, not Angie for putting her own child in such danger, and not Ruby, either, if she could turn on the one person who had tried to do the right thing.

Verity felt much the same as she had when her mother committed suicide – a similar burden of guilt, anger too, and a terrible loneliness.

The months passed, Easter came and went, reminding her of Easter egg hunts in Wilby’s garden, going down to Oddicombe Beach and daring each other to paddle in the icy spring water.

Whitsun came, and then the summer holidays, recalling all those things they did on sunny days: water fights in the sea, the competitions to see who could eat an ice cream
cone the fastest, or running full tilt through Brixham to catch the last ferry of the day back to Torquay. There had been the boys they’d flirted with, rides on the bumper cars, eating winkles, drinking a bottle of cider between them and then walking home, because they were too drunk to get on a bus. Happy, golden days. It had never mattered if it rained, or if they had no money. They could have a good time together just sitting chatting and giggling in a bus shelter.

Verity ached to be back there with her friend, she wanted to smell the sea air, hear waves crashing on the shore, and feel the wind in her hair. Her life was so dull and empty now. She didn’t think she would ever laugh again, or ever be as close to another human being as she’d been to Ruby. With nothing to look forward to, no one to share her hopes and dreams with, she even thought of doing as her mother had done, ending it all in the gas oven.

The only reason she didn’t do it was because of Aunt Hazel. Even if her sister had been a trial to her, Hazel had been devastated by her death. Verity knew her aunt really loved her, and she couldn’t put her through more tragedy.

So she did her best to hide her sadness, she went to work as normal, talked to her aunt over their tea as she’d always done, and went to bed early so she could read. Reading was always a way of shutting out unwanted thoughts, of escaping to a better, kinder world.

All through the spring, summer and autumn, every Saturday morning when her aunt was at work she cleaned the house from top to bottom and then took herself off to the library. She would choose a couple of new books, but then she’d go into the reading room and read newspapers and magazines until the library closed.

She liked the reading room, the sloping wooden desks, high stools, the peace and quiet, and the huge trees which surrounded the building. Even in bad weather, when old people came in from the rain to get warm and the air became thick with the smell of wet clothes and body odour, it was still her place of safety and tranquillity.

The rumbling threat of war and what was happening in Germany fascinated her, and she wanted to know everything. Even if she’d bought a newspaper every day, she still wouldn’t get a broad picture of what was happening elsewhere in Europe and around the world – for that she had to read a cross section of newspapers and specialist magazines, and the library had them all.

In March she read how German troops crossed the border into Austria, defying the Treaty of Versailles which had forbidden the union. In May she read about how Hitler and Mussolini met in Rome, in June how all Austrian Jews were given a fortnight’s notice to leave by their employers, and in August that Germany had mobilized its armed forces. The civil war in Spain was still continuing. Meanwhile, the leaders of Britain, France and Italy met up with Hitler in Munich for talks which lasted until the early hours. They emerged with a settlement which allowed Hitler to take control of portions of Czechoslovakia. On the 30th of September, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain arrived back in England waving a piece of paper which he said would guarantee ‘peace for our time’. On the 1st of October, Hitler led his troops into Sudetenland. The Czech Prime Minister described it as ‘the most tragic moment of my life’.

Many people, including Aunt Hazel, still believed war
could be averted, but Verity didn’t. In November, when she read about
Kristallnacht
, the ‘night of broken glass’, when synagogues were bombed or burned out, and the shops and homes of Jewish families were ransacked, she found herself weeping openly about man’s inhumanity to man.

But while Verity was thinking about what war would mean for her and Hazel, and encouraging her aunt to lay in stocks of tinned food, Hazel was more interested in finding her niece a young man. ‘It isn’t right that such a young and pretty girl spends every evening at home listening to the wireless,’ she said plaintively on a weekly basis. ‘Why haven’t you got any friends? What is wrong with you?’

Verity had no ready explanation. All through the year Aunt Hazel had regularly asked if she was going to have a holiday in Babbacombe. And why didn’t Ruby write to her any more? Verity’s response that it was because Ruby was courting now, and she had no time for anyone else, seemed to appease Hazel. But she did say waspishly that girls who forgot their old friends the minute a boy came into their lives were not real friends at all.

Verity wished so much that she could forget Ruby, but it just wasn’t possible. So many things reminded her of her friend: books they’d read together, magazines they both liked, the sight of another girl with curly red hair in the distance, a raucous laugh like hers on the train going to work. The song ‘September in the Rain’ was always on the wireless, and Ruby had loved it. Meat pies, fish and chips, chocolate eclairs; sometimes Verity thought that there wasn’t anything in the world which wasn’t connected in some way to her friend.

She wanted to telephone Wilby and beg her to tell Ruby just how sad and alone she felt, but she was too proud to go that far. It would only make her look pathetic.

On the 23rd of December, Verity arrived home from work to find a policeman ringing the doorbell. She knew even without being told that something had happened to her aunt.

‘I’m so very sorry,’ the policeman said once they were inside. ‘Your aunt, Miss Ferris, was taken ill suddenly this afternoon at her work. They called an ambulance but I’m afraid she died on the way to the hospital. It was a heart attack.’

Verity felt as if she’d gone into free fall down a deep pit. It couldn’t be true, surely. Hazel wasn’t that old, she always seemed fit and healthy. And why should it happen at Christmas? The very worst time in the whole year to lose someone you loved.

The policeman put the kettle on, he even offered to light the fire, and he hugged Verity when she cried. He was a kind man, probably in his fifties, with a lined face and tired-looking eyes. He said he was Sergeant Michaels and that he lived by Hither Green Station. He suggested that he get a neighbour to stay with her, but Verity said she’d rather he didn’t.

‘I’m best on my own,’ she said. ‘It gives me time to sort out my thoughts.’

‘But you’re too young to be alone, and it’s Christmas Eve tomorrow,’ he pointed out.

Verity just shrugged. She had helped her aunt decorate a small tree for the parlour and put up some decorations
last Sunday. Verity had pretended excitement to please Hazel, she’d even bought some new red and gold baubles for the tree to convince her. She’d bought her aunt a red wool dressing gown with satin reveres. If she’d bought it in a shop, it would have been very expensive, but as she’d got it from Cooks – at wholesale price, less staff discount – it had been a real bargain. She had gone to great pains to wrap it beautifully, and tied it with red satin ribbon, before putting it under the tree. Aunt Hazel had joked that she’d be creeping down in the night to shake and prod it.

‘I have to go to work tomorrow. It’s the Christmas party too,’ Verity told the policeman. ‘I won’t want to be at that, of course, but it will give me a chance to tell my boss I might need some time off after Christmas.’

‘I will knock on your neighbours’ door and tell them what has happened,’ Sergeant Michaels said, his tone firm like a school teacher. ‘You’ll need someone to tell you all the things you must do when arranging the funeral and your aunt’s affairs. And they will keep an eye on you too.’

Verity nodded. ‘Fair enough, but please tell them to leave me tonight, I really couldn’t cope with anyone fussing round me.’

He insisted on lighting the fire before he left, and urged her to put a hot-water bottle in her bed for later. ‘Now make sure you eat something,’ he said, patting her shoulder as he prepared to leave. ‘This couldn’t have come at a worse time, you won’t even be able to busy yourself with arranging the funeral until after Boxing Day. But you make sure you keep warm, and if you need some help or advice you can always come to the police station. We’ll be open all over Christmas.’

After he’d gone, Verity sat by the fire with another cup of tea and stared into the flames. She felt curiously numb, as if she was looking through a window and watching someone else’s problem. She thought how she would never again hear her aunt’s bedtime ritual of lighting her lantern before going out to the lavatory. Neither would she wake tomorrow to hear her riddling the ashes in the kitchen fire, and coaxing it back into life with some kindling and paper. She wanted such thoughts to make her cry again – that would be normal, and to be expected – but no tears came.