Dead to Me (23 page)

Now as Ruby stood at Hither Green Station with her hands in her pockets, a bitter January wind biting through her coat, she felt completely resolved that this time she was going to speak to Verity. She turned up the collar of her coat against the wind and began walking towards Weardale Road.

She paused outside number seven before knocking. The paint was very chipped, and it looked as if someone had forced the door with a heavy boot. It felt scary to be back here again, not full of anticipation as she had been for the coronation, but afraid of being rebuffed.

It seemed ages before she heard someone coming, and her pulse quickened. The door was opened just a crack, with the chain still on, but even so she knew it was Verity.

‘Open up, it’s me, Ruby,’ she said quickly. ‘That is, if you’ll speak to me!’

‘Ruby?’ Verity’s voice was very quiet, almost a whisper.

‘Yes, it really is me. Not before time too!’

‘Oh, my goodness,’ came the startled reply.

Ruby expected the door to be flung open wide, followed by either a volley of abuse or a warm hug. But when the door didn’t open wide she assumed her belief that, once
her old friend saw her, everything would be alright was misplaced.

‘I know I was awful to you, but I wasn’t thinking straight back then. I’ve come here twice before and seen you, but lost my nerve.’ The words just poured out in a nervous torrent. ‘Please let me in so we can talk.’

‘I can’t,’ Verity whispered. ‘I want to, but I can’t.’

All at once Ruby realized her friend was in some kind of difficulty. She assumed it was a man; she’d met many who didn’t like their girl having friends.

‘Okay, but can I meet you in a cafe? There’s one at the end of the road.’

‘Not there, go back to the station. There’s one just by it. Wait there.’

‘Verity!’ A deep and loud male voice rang out from inside the house. ‘Who is at the front door?’

‘Go,’ Verity whispered, but reached out one small hand through the crack in the door to touch Ruby’s cold cheek. ‘Wait for me!’

‘It’s only the postman,’ Verity called back. And then, first putting her fingers to her lips like she was going to blow a kiss, she shut the door.

Ruby walked swiftly down the road without looking back, just in case the man she’d heard was looking out of the window. The situation brought back a few memories of scenes from her childhood. It was men coming to the door then, and she had to get rid of them when her mother had another man with her upstairs. She would keep the chain on the door and play dumb, saying her mother had gone out and she mustn’t let anyone in. Sometimes they got nasty, because they sensed the truth, and sometimes
they tried to cajole her. She had grown up wondering why, when her mother had so many men who seemed to adore her, she also had so many who hit her.

She learned by the time she was ten that these men gave her mother the money for drink. Yet she never really discovered why men who wanted sole use of her hit her so often. Why would violence go hand in hand with sex?

Ruby just hoped that man upstairs in Verity’s house wasn’t beating her.

‘Who
did you say that was at the door?’ Archie called out from his bedroom. His door was open, and as Verity turned to look at him she got the same sick feeling that came so often when she was near him.

He was sitting up in bed, wearing a vest, and a smell of stale sweat and unwashed feet wafted out from his room. She hated him so much now that she often dreamed of killing him to escape his clutches. There was a time when she’d been afraid of losing her home in the bombing, but now she longed for it to happen, a direct hit, with him inside it. As he still never went to a public shelter, it was possible. But then he had the luck of the devil.

‘It was Beryl. I’m wanted at work, lines down in Catford. She was going to wait, but I told her to go on and I’d follow in a few minutes.’

‘Haven’t they got anyone else? It’s your day off.’

‘Seems no one else is available,’ she called back as she went into her bedroom. Looking at herself in the dressing-table mirror, she saw the delight at Ruby turning up had brought some colour to her face. She felt there was a glimmer of hope now, as Ruby was the only person in the whole world who was likely to fully understand what had brought her to the life she’d been living for nearly two years.

Aside from the colour in her face, she could see nothing
else to feel good about. She was very thin, gaunt in fact. This was due to rationing, in part, but she felt it had more to do with the pressure she was living under. Her blonde hair had lost its shine, and each time she brushed it she was alarmed how much came out. She never slept well any more, yet she was bone tired.

She took off the drab grey woollen dress she was wearing and changed it for a dusky pink one that was more flattering. Even as low as her spirits were, she was too proud to let Ruby see her looking quite so bad. She brushed her hair and, leaving most of it loose, pinned up the sides on either side of her head with two pretty pink hair slides. A bit of face powder, a touch of Vaseline on her eyelids and some mascara improved her, then she finished off with the last of her pink lipstick.

‘There’s no more where that came from,’ she murmured to herself, putting the empty lipstick case down. ‘Unless you steal some!’

Just the idea of stealing another woman’s lipstick made a lump come up in her throat. Somehow, it seemed worse than taking a ring or a bracelet.

Pushing her feet into her best shoes, tan leather with a two-inch heel, she was ready apart from her coat. She just hoped that Archie wouldn’t notice that she was dressed up. She rarely made an effort with her appearance any more.

‘What time will you be back?’ he called out as she went down the stairs.

‘I’ve no idea, it depends on the emergency,’ she called back. ‘There’s sausages in the meat safe, but you’d better cook yours in case I’m late.’

It struck her as she put on her navy-blue coat and her felt hat of the same colour that anyone overhearing the dialogue between her and Archie would never imagine she hated him. But Verity had realized the first time he hit her, after he’d got rid of Amy, that appeasement was a smarter way than challenging him.

Slipping out quickly, Verity ran up the road towards Hither Green. It was good luck she’d had the day off today; if she’d been at work when Ruby called, Archie would never have told her. She hoped that her good luck would hold, because she hadn’t had any for a very long time.

Since Miller sent her that last letter telling her he’d got another girl, nothing in her life seemed worth anything. She went to work each day, and she maybe fooled all her old friends most of the time into believing nothing was wrong. Yet there were questions sometimes about why she never wanted to go to the pub after work or to a dance. Beryl once said it was like a light had gone out inside her, and asked if it was to do with her father. Verity almost broke down then and told her the truth, that he was a thieving blackguard who blackmailed her into burgling houses. But how could she confide in Beryl? She would take Verity straight to the police station. And she couldn’t expect any sympathy from them, because she’d got in too deep.

Ironically, Archie claimed she brought him good luck. But that was only because the information she got about cancelled telephone lines was always good. Verity mostly had Wednesday afternoons off, and that was when Archie liked to do the jobs. He felt marching up people’s garden paths in broad daylight attracted much less attention than being spotted at night. Not that he did anything more
than force the window locks and stand guard, Verity took all the risk.

Her heart was pounding at the thought of seeing Ruby. It didn’t matter to her how long they’d been estranged or why. Just the knowledge that there was a possibility they could pick up where they left off, was enough.

Mick’s cafe by the station was a grubby little place used mainly by railway workers and other workmen. The windows were streaming with condensation, so it was impossible to see in. But to Verity it was as good as The Ritz, because it was a place of safety for a little while.

As she opened the door Ruby came rushing towards her, arms wide to embrace her friend. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ she whispered against Verity’s hair. ‘I was so nasty.’

Verity took a step back, holding Ruby’s forearms, and smiled. ‘None of that matters. We’re together again now.’

They took a table right at the back of the cafe, and Ruby went up to the counter to order fried spam sandwiches and tea.

‘I was sort of hoping they might have bacon and egg,’ she said as she came back to the table. ‘But they do say there’s a war on.’

Verity giggled. ‘I’ve grown to like spam. And they fry the bread here too. I’ve heard it’s becoming quite a delicacy and talked about in every major city,’ she joked.

For a moment the girls just looked at each other across the table, the years apart falling away. Verity moved first, reaching out to touch one of Ruby’s unruly curls which had escaped from her beret and looked like a little
corkscrew. ‘You look so sophisticated,’ she said. ‘And even lovelier than I remembered.’

‘That’s a super thing to say,’ Ruby said, her eyes shining. ‘Completely untrue, of course. And now I’m probably going to upset you again by saying you are too thin, you’ve lost your bounce, and I sense something bad is going on in your life. You are going to tell me everything.’

Verity loved Ruby more than ever for that blunt appraisal. She needed to unburden herself and she was glad she hadn’t fooled Ruby she was fine by just sticking a couple of pretty hair slides in her hair and a slick of Vaseline on her eyelids.

‘My dad is the problem. He’s back,’ she began. ‘I don’t call him Dad, just Archie, and it turns out he isn’t my dad at all. Mum was pregnant when she conned him into marrying her.’

Ruby nodded. ‘When I came here last, I saw you with a big man, I thought that might be who he was. But he looked as if he was dragging you into the station against your will.’

‘He probably was,’ Verity shrugged. ‘But for you to understand how it all came about I’d better go back to when Aunt Hazel died.’

‘A neighbour of yours told me about that, that was back before the Blitz began,’ Ruby said. ‘I’m so sorry. I should’ve written then, but I couldn’t find the words.’

Verity reached across the table and put her hand over Ruby’s. ‘Please, no more apologies, we must draw a veil over all that and forget it. I was in financial difficulties when Aunt Hazel died. I needed to get a lodger, and that meant sprucing up the house and getting a bathroom put in.’

As clearly and quickly as she could, she told Ruby about how when her mother was alive she’d sold various valuable items from their old house to a shop in Blackheath. Later, after Aunt Hazel died, she’d gone back with some more things and Mr Rosen had told her about people running off and leaving their houses, because they were afraid of what war might bring.

She stopped there, not sure if she could go on.

‘Don’t stop, Verity, you need to tell me,’ Ruby said. ‘I won’t judge you, whatever you did.’

‘What he said about people leaving their homes gave me an idea.’

‘To break in and rob them?’ Ruby whispered.

Verity nodded. ‘Well, I didn’t do it right away. You see, I met this lovely man, Miller, a gardener. He’d lost his job and home cos the people he worked for were some of those lot who moved away. So he came as my lodger.’

‘Just the lodger?’ Ruby smiled.

Verity smirked. ‘Yes, just. He never became anything else, not until I was waving him goodbye when war broke out. He was turned down for the forces, as he had a heart thing, so they sent him to work for the Forestry up in Scotland.’

Verity went on to explain that her aunt had always intended to put a bathroom in, and she wanted one desperately too. Miller went off one weekend to see some relatives and she decided she was going to burgle a house while he was gone to get the money for the bathroom.

‘I remembered stuff you’d told me when we first met, and so I just did it. Only the one house, I didn’t take much, just a silver jug, and I found some cash in a box. That paid
for the bathroom to be put in.’ She paused then, because the waitress was coming with their tea.

‘I didn’t feel bad about it, Ruby, at least not then,’ she said once the waitress was out of earshot. ‘I kind of justified it to myself. I told Miller it was some money Aunt Hazel had left, and we did the tiling in the bathroom ourselves. Later that summer, when it was obvious war was going to come any time, and Miller got sent to Scotland, Cooks of St Paul’s – where I was working – moved out of London. So I applied to the Post Office and got myself trained up to fix telephone cables. I still work there.’

‘So you did this burglary before the war. Never again?’

‘That’s right. I came to be really ashamed of doing it. Then Amy became my lodger. I worked with her at the Post Office.’

‘The buxom brunette girl I saw you with?’

Verity looked askance at her. ‘You saw me again? And didn’t speak.’

‘That was the first time I called. I waited in the cafe on the main road and you got off the bus with Amy. Maybe if you’d been alone I’d have been brave enough to speak. Then the second time was when I saw Archie pulling you into the station. How could I approach you then?’

‘It’s a good job you didn’t.’ Verity shook her head, as if bewildered by the evil he was capable of. ‘You see, he turned up when Amy was there and he’d obviously fallen on hard times, so I let him sleep in Amy’s bed and she came in with me. Then one day she just left, both my house and her job, with not a word of farewell, nothing. Archie said she was afraid of me.’

Ruby snorted with laughter. ‘Afraid of you? Who could be afraid of you?’

‘That’s what I thought. But he said I’d changed because of Mother and Aunt Hazel dying, and also he maintained that Amy was intimidated by me because I was clever, reading and knowing about world news and stuff. I suppose I felt a bit flattered, really, it stopped me thinking he’d got rid of her for his own ends.’

‘So just to interrupt, have you heard from or seen Miller since he went to Scotland? That’s a strange name, by the way. What was he like?’

‘He was kind, funny, easy-going. And he made my garden so pretty,’ Verity said, and her eyes filled with tears. ‘He wrote to me every week. He didn’t actually say he was in love with me, but there was a kind of understanding that we had something special. I hear women say all the time how the war altered everything, and that’s just how it was. I couldn’t rush off to Scotland to be with him, and he couldn’t come down here, either. Then Archie turned up and Amy went. The Blitz started, and suddenly I get a letter from Miller saying he’s sorry but he’s met someone, and it wouldn’t be fair to her to keep writing to me.’

‘Oh no!’ Ruby exclaimed.

Their fried spam sandwiches arrived, and for a few moments neither girl spoke while they took their first bites.

‘This is seriously good,’ Ruby said with her mouth full. ‘I shall have to train Wilby to make it like this. Though she’ll probably say so much fat isn’t good for you. But to get back to Miller, at least he told you the truth, so few men do that.’

‘I know,’ Verity agreed. ‘I just wish we could’ve had a bit more time together before he wrote me off. I really thought he could be “the one”.’

‘Look how many times I thought I’d found “the one”,’ Ruby smirked. ‘But we’ve got sidetracked. Now let’s get back to Archie. Did he go to prison? Or is he still on the run?’

‘I don’t know anything about him, at least I don’t know the truth. When he turned up, I told him to go or I’d call the police and turn him in. But he said they weren’t looking for him any more, because he’d sorted it all out with them. He implied he’d paid back the money he took.’

Ruby raised both eyebrows.

‘I know,’ Verity sighed. ‘Only a fool would believe that. But if he is still a wanted man, he doesn’t hide himself away. Okay, he told the neighbours he’s my uncle, Gerald Wood, but the police have never been back to ask if I’ve seen him. Maybe he did wriggle out of it. Anyway, to get back to the point, one day I got a bit tough with him, because I needed a lodger who paid their way, and that’s when he blackmailed me. Seems he got into conversation with the jeweller I sold Mum’s stuff to, because he still had the silver pheasant that came from Archie’s family in his shop window. The jeweller described me, and told Archie I’d also brought in a silver cream jug which sounded like it was taken from a house in Blackheath.’ Verity paused, hanging her head in shame. ‘I don’t need to go into all of that, but the gist of it is that Archie realized what I’d done and saw he could use it to make me do anything he wanted.’

‘Just a minute. Does the jeweller know who you are or where you live?’

‘No. If he did, the police would have been round by now. I expect he thinks I came to him from miles away.’

Ruby just sat back in her chair for a moment looking at Verity, then she shook her head in dismay.

‘It was a bit daft selling the stuff from the house you robbed more or less on their doorstep!’ she said. ‘I should’ve given you my expert advice on how to burgle efficiently!’

Verity knew that was supposed to be a joke, but she couldn’t laugh. Instead she looked rueful. ‘I know it was daft, I should’ve thought it through. But in my defence at least that proves I’m not a habitual criminal.’