Ruby's War (40 page)

When they got back, her granddad was sitting on the bench against the cottage wall, swatting and cursing at the frantic midges around his head. In the garden, the plants drooped, pressed down by the weight of a threatening storm, and over in the west, the sky was the colour of rabbit fur.

‘I reckon there's rain on the way,' he said. ‘Good thing too. Garden could do with a good deggin' and this heat isn't healthy.'

‘It was even hot by the river,' Ruby said. ‘Look at the dog, how he's panting. I'll take him in and get him a drink.'

‘I'd not go in yet, lass,' he said, patting the dog. ‘There's been a bit of upset. It's Sadie; she's joined up. Papers have come through. I suspected as much, and 'appen it's best. Her mother's upset. Only to be expected.'

‘When?'

‘Couple of weeks, I would think.'

The couple of weeks stretched to almost six before Sadie's travel pass arrived. On the night before Sadie left, Ruby knocked on her door.

‘I know you like it,' she said, handing her two tablets of fern soap wrapped in tissue paper.

‘Thanks,' Sadie said, turning away and slipping them into her case. ‘Thanks very much.'

‘Are you going out? Last night of freedom, before you join up.'

‘Out? Where to?' Sadie asked, fastening the clasp on her small brown suitcase and taking out a cigarette. ‘If you went out, you'd notice there's no one as will even dance with any of us who had a black boyfriend. Not the white GIs, anyway. If I were you, I'd start thinking of moving out as well, once you're old enough.'

It was true that since Con had been arrested, Ruby didn't bother to go out. In fact, all she longed for was to sleep. Sleeping was her escape. In her dreams Con was still there, sitting next to her by the river, and sometimes for a moment, she could hear the rippling water and almost reach out and touch him.

The next day Granddad insisted that they all go into town to see Sadie off. The day was blustery; white clouds blew across the sky, each in turn covering and then revealing the sun.

‘I'll treat you to a cup of tea in the Kardomah,' he said, as they followed him, clutching on to their hats and holding down their skirts at the corner of each street. Sadie wore a sober navy jacket over a pale-blue dress, her hair
pinned up in a neat roll under a shiny straw hat in the same shade of blue. The café was busy, but the waitress found them a place, a high-backed booth near the window. Ruby sat next to her granddad, and looked down the length of the narrow room towards the counter. The hot water hissed in the shiny urns, and the glass cases, that in better times would have held cream cakes, displayed a dejected collection of biscuits and slices of dry-looking tea bread. When the waitress left, Granddad tried to make them laugh, telling jokes about his own training days that they'd all heard him tell before. The tea was served from a silver teapot, along with extra hot water in a white jug that matched the cups and saucers.

Jenny refilled their cups and they drank in silence. In the weeks since Bo's death, the long hours of shift work meant that Ruby had spent very little time with Sadie or her mother; now, sitting opposite the two women, she could see how they'd both changed: Sadie was no longer the cheerful girl who would have giggled and made fun of Henry's stories, and Jenny appeared to have grown smaller, her once-round cheeks now deflated and crinkled under their coating of rouge. She saw Granddad check his pocket watch, and when they'd finished their tea, no one suggested refilling the pot with the hot water for another cup.

They walked two by two along the pavement, Sadie with Jenny in front of them arm in arm. At the station, as they waited for Granddad to get the platform tickets, Ruby gave Sadie a bag of sweets for the journey. For an instant, the old Sadie grinned at her from under the staid little hat.

‘Ruby, the things Mum said about New Year's Eve, it's because she knows it was her fault. She was scared that
when Henry found out what had happened he would tell her to go, that's what was at the back of it.'

Then Granddad called to them from the barrier and the moment had gone. The station was busy and he led the way to the far end of the platform where the train was waiting.

‘Do you remember the last time you were here?' Granddad asked, when Jenny had climbed on board to help Sadie find a seat. ‘There was a young soldier gave us a letter for his girl. I wonder if she ever got it.'

When the train moved off, they waved until it disappeared, looking as any family might do who were sending a daughter off into the services. As they walked back down the main platform towards the barrier, Granddad gave Jenny his hankie and patted her shoulder. Walking along behind them, Ruby saw that the young woman she'd become – reflected repeatedly through the windows of the station's waiting rooms and bar – had begun to smile.

In the evening, Granddad didn't go to meet Johnny. Instead, they settled down to listen to the radio as they used to do. The next day, the breeze had dropped and the temperature began to climb. The heat and the long hours made everyone at the factory short-tempered, but in the evenings, Jenny and Granddad were content to sit on the old bench, enjoying the cool air and watching the sun slip out of sight. Over the weeks, the riot was gradually forgotten; now the gossip at the factory wasn't about the doings at the camp, but the suspected cheating in the weaving sheds.

‘I've heard they're making cloth for RAF officers in the big factory,' Mrs Rostron said, one dinnertime as they were
sitting in the yard. ‘The docket with the order says fifty yards, but fifty-two is wove. Now who's that for? Who's getting that? It's not right. Does young Trevor Pye know what's happening to it? He's been over there a lot these last couple of weeks.'

‘Trevor? I don't think so,' Ruby said, wiping her neck with her hankie.

‘Well, it's lovely quality. It being for the officers, it will have to be. They want reporting, if you ask me. There's some as is getting rich from this war, while the rest of us can hardly clothe ourselves.'

At the end of her shift, the air outside in the dusty street felt almost as hot as in the spinning room. The main road was quiet; the only vehicle Ruby saw was a jeep, driven by a white GI, who made its wheels spin as he turned sharply into the lane. She crossed the road. At the bridge she stood for a while, looking down at the weak trickle of water, remembering the satisfying gurgle of the river that had flowed there just a few weeks before. It was as though it had never existed; it was as though both the people and the things she'd shared with Con were moving, changing, leaving her.

Inside the cottage it was cool. Ruby washed her face at the kitchen sink and poured a glass of water. The living room was in shadow, except where a book lay in a patch of sunlight at the back of the front door. Con's copy of
Twelfth Night
was crumpled and the edges curled. Inside the grubby cover he'd written: ‘For Ruby'. She remembered the jeep she'd seen turning into the lane; not all the white GIs were the same: Con had told them of northern GIs who didn't object to drinking from a glass that had been
used by a black soldier and would sit with the black GIs in the pub. She went to the gate and looked down the empty lane, wishing the soldier would come back and she could give him a message for Con.

Ruby took the book up to her room. In the last weeks she'd spent hours sitting there, staring at the cottage on her rug, pretending that she was Maggie Joy and that the next day the long-awaited letter would arrive. She stroked the book, knowing it once belonged to his grandma and how much it had meant to him. She turned each page, sniffing, inhaling, searching for a sign. The scrap of paper was hidden between the pages of notes at the back of the book. It was small and could have once been used as a bookmark. The scrap wasn't new; it felt soft, pliant, as though it had been kept in the book for a long time. It wasn't signed, but Ruby knew Con's neat, almost girlish writing.

‘By the time you get this, I'll be on my way home in disgrace. Ruby, I'm glad I hid out and had some time with you. I'm not going to forget you and I'm going to miss you for a long time.'

She didn't hear Jenny arrive home and begin peeling the vegetables in the kitchen, and she didn't hear her granddad, until he called up to her that her tea was ready. Then she slipped the book under her pillow and hurried downstairs.

‘Were you asleep, Ruby, love?' he asked, handing her a plate of tinned meat and salad. ‘Your eyes look heavy.'

Jenny and Granddad sat side by side at the table. It was this new friendliness between them, and her fear that she might disturb it, that made her keep the book a secret. Instead, she blamed her lack of appetite on the weather,
and Granddad happily relieved her of her unwanted Spam. She would have told Sadie, but now Sadie wrote only brief notes to them about her new life at the training camp and her new friends.

When tea was over and the washing-up had been done, Ruby escaped up to her room, pleading a headache. In some ways, now the waiting and the hoping were over, it was as though she was moving backwards, back to the time after her mother had died and back to feeling the dull, hungry ache for something she'd lost. She sat on her bed and looked out to the west and the sea. At Everdeane, no one talked about her mother; after she'd died, it was as though she'd never existed. The same thing was happening now: now Con and the other soldiers had gone, everything was changing and they would soon be forgotten. At Everdeane, she'd been afraid that she might begin to forget Pearl as well. Then, the first evening she took her mother's place waiting on the guests in the dining room, Ruby wore the gymslip she'd always worn to school, when Pearl was alive and everything was ordinary and safe. After the funeral Auntie Ethel had said she must earn her keep by looking after the guests. That first time she'd put her gymslip on under her apron it made her feel better. Each time she wore it, when she felt the familiar touch of the coarse fabric pleats against her leg, Pearl was there, serving the guests at the next table and smiling over at her. Ruby took out the lilac dress she'd worn by the river. Then wrapping Con's book inside it, she put them both in the suitcase with Pearl's dresses.

In the following weeks the weather became cooler, and the fruit in the garden grew plump. One Saturday, Ruby
and Jenny spent most of the afternoon picking the ripe blackcurrants for jam.

‘I'll take this lot inside,' Jenny said. ‘Then I'm going to pop down to Lou's with the things our Sadie's sent for her little niece's birthday. We can top and tail this lot tonight after tea, before it's time for
The Man in Black
on the radio. Will you take the washing in when you've done? It'll be dry by then.'

It took Ruby the next hour to pick the rest of the berries. Leaving her granddad digging in the vegetable patch, she took them into the scullery and put them in buckets to steep. Then she went upstairs to change her stained clothes, before bringing in the washing. She was combing her hair, shaking out the stray blackcurrant leaves that had been caught in her curls, when she heard her granddad yell and the cockerel's angry squawk. Ruby looked down from her window, but all she could see was the abandoned spade, its twinkling blade spinning on the ground, and Monty flapping angrily beside it. She thought that it must be a stray dog or a cat in the garden. When Brag, who'd been locked in the living room, began to bark, she knew that whatever was causing the excitement must be at the front of the cottage or in the lane. Ruby hurried through to Sadie's old room, bending down by the low window to look over the front garden. At first she thought it was an argument, that he was seeing off the spiv by the gate, grabbing the man, knocking his hat off and sending his battered suitcase flying. Then she heard Granddad shout again, and this time she could make out the words.

‘It's my boy!' Granddad was shouting. ‘It's my boy!'

Ruby began running, leaving rugs skittering behind her, leaping the stairs' steps and dashing through the living room, almost falling over Brag, as the excited dog chased her down the path to the gate. She put her arms around them, hugging them both, father and son.

When Jenny turned the corner, she heard the stupid dog yapping and slowed her pace, watching the little group: Ruby, Henry and the threadbare spiv by the gate. She hadn't seen Will Barton before, but she guessed who the shabby new arrival must be, and with the first spots of autumn rain chilling her face, she walked up the lane towards them.

With thanks to my agent, Jane Conway-Gordon as well as Susie Dunlop and all her staff at Allison & Busby. My thanks to the staff at Lancashire libraries for their unfailing helpfulness; the cheerful ladies of the Westhoughton Writing Group for their reminiscences and encouragement, and I would particularly like to thank Sheila Clift for her wisdom and friendship. Finally, I would like to thank my husband, Chris, for his relentless supply of brews and sporadic meal production.

The idea for
Ruby's War
began with the reminiscences of older members of my family and their friends about their experiences in WWII. These included not only the deprivations, the long hours and the comradeship, but also their first experiences of meeting men and women from other parts of the world. One incident that was always spoken of softly and with sadness was the US forces' treatment of the African-American soldiers stationed at a nearby military camp.

Part of the process of writing my novel has been to filter both the geography and history of this area of the Northwest through my imagination. This is a work of fiction, but I have used some of the details from the article ‘The Mutiny at Bamber Bridge' by Dr Ken Werrell to frame the action in part of my story. I have also used the Detroit race riots that took place a few days earlier as a motivation for the uprising. This is a theory suggested by Graham Smith in his book
When Jim Crow Met John Bull
.

For those looking for purely historical fact about these incidents and the period, I suggest the following books and articles in the bibliography as starting points.