Dead to Me (13 page)

It was quite obvious that most if not all of the houses were multiple occupancy; many had the front doors open, and she could see prams lined up in the hall. Most houses didn’t even have curtains so she got glimpses of meagrely lit rooms with many children and adults clustered around a fire. Furniture as she knew it seemed non-existent. She saw iron beds in some rooms, but there appeared to be little else.

Her flesh began to crawl at the thought of how it must be to live that way. She had been dreading calling on Ruby’s mother all day, but now she just hoped she’d be in so she could say her piece and get away from here.

Number 32 Rhyl Street was just as wretched as its neighbours, and two ragged urchins of about eight or nine were huddled in the doorway.

‘I’m looking for Angie Taylor,’ Verity said. ‘Do you know if she’s in?’

‘I seed ’er come in about ten minutes since,’ the slightly older boy said. ‘You a street walker an’ all?’

‘No, I’m not,’ Verity said with some indignation. ‘Now go on in before you freeze.’

‘Can’t yet, our ma’s workin’.’

Verity gulped, realizing immediately what that work was. She had a sixpence in her coat pocket, she gave it to the boys. ‘Go and buy some chips,’ she said. ‘It’ll be warmer in there.’

‘Thanks, lady!’ The boy who’d spoken before grinned at her. ‘Angie’s upstairs front.’

The bare wooden stairs hadn’t been swept for months, and the whole house smelled of damp, of fried food and something else even more unpleasant which Verity didn’t recognize. There was only one door upstairs, at the front of the house, and she rapped on it.

‘Who is it?’ a voice called out.

‘Verity Wood, a friend of Ruby’s,’ she called back.

‘Whatcha want?’

‘It’s private,’ Verity called back. ‘Please let me in?’

The door was unlocked. There stood a much older, raddled and plumper version of Ruby. Her red curly hair was loose on the shoulders of a dirty green dressing gown, beneath which was a black petticoat. Verity knew her to be thirty-four, but she looked older.

She beckoned Verity to come in and shut the door. Under the room’s central light her red hair gleamed just like Ruby’s.

‘Where d’you know Ruby from?’ she asked, taking a packet of cigarettes from her dressing-gown pocket and pulling out a cigarette.

‘We met on Hampstead Heath three years ago,’ Verity said. ‘We’ve remained friends. I go down to Torquay and stay with her now and then. She asked me to come to you, because she’s pregnant and she wants your help in getting rid of it.’

It hurt Verity to say something so serious in such a cold, uncaring way, but she felt there was no point in trying to be more tactful, best to get it over and done with.

There was no surprise on the older woman’s face, or even concern. ‘Why ask me? Why the hell does she think I’d even know anyone?’

‘She is asking you, because you are her mother,’ Verity said, her voice quavering with nerves. The room was a real pigsty, squalid, smelly and strewn with dirty crockery, cosmetics and clothes. The sheets on the unmade bed were so ingrained with dirt they must have been on there for a year, and there was underwear drying in front of an open fire. ‘And she knows you have contacts who can help her. She said to tell you that if she can’t get rid of it, she’ll have to come back here and stay with you.’

‘She ain’t bloody well doing that!’ the woman exclaimed in horror. ‘She oughta bin more careful. I told ’er if a geezer put ’er under pressure to do it, to suck ’im off, that way she wouldn’t get up the spout. I can’t do no more than tell her.’

Angie’s suggestion brought back a vivid recollection of what Verity’s father had made her do to him, and she gagged involuntarily.

‘That is truly disgusting,’ she managed to get out. ‘What sort of a thing is that to say to your own daughter?’

‘A bloody sensible thing,’ Angie fired back, coming closer to Verity and prodding her in the chest. ‘Once you’ve got over ’aving one cock in yer mouth it won’t ever bother you again. Most men like it better an’ all. And you can’t catch nuffin, either.’

Verity remembered Ruby’s advice about giving as good as she got. So she prodded Angie back, but the older
woman’s chest was like prodding a huge marshmallow. ‘I don’t want to hear your vile schemes to avoid pregnancy or disease. I just want you to tell me you’ll arrange this thing for Ruby, and quickly.’

‘It’ll cost yer,’ she said, her green eyes, so like Ruby’s, narrowing because she thought she was going to earn from this.

‘No, it won’t,’ Verity said firmly. ‘You’ll get it done for nothing, and done properly and safely, because she’s your child and you owe her. It was you who sent her off to that house in Hampstead to rob it, and you never even went to the court to try and help.’

‘Good job I never went, as it turned out. She got lucky, didn’t she?’

Verity felt sickened by this woman, but she knew she’d got to try and like her enough to get her to agree to help Ruby.

‘Yes, she got lucky, and now you’ve got to make sure her luck holds. It won’t, if she has to have this baby. You know she’ll come back here to Kentish Town, and before long she’ll have no choice but to work the way you do. I don’t think you’d want that, would you?’

Verity took a photograph of Ruby from her bag. Wilby had taken it back in the summer. The black and white picture didn’t capture the beauty of Ruby’s hair and eyes, but she still looked stunning, leaning back against a tree in Wilby’s garden, laughing because Verity was pulling faces at her.

She handed the picture to Angie. The older woman made a little gasp.

‘She looks lovely, doesn’t she? And she’s got a great
future ahead of her in the hotel trade. But that and everything else will go, if she has the baby.’

‘That Mrs Wilberforce will look after ’er, won’t she?’

For the first time Verity heard a note of concern in the woman’s voice.

‘She would, but Ruby will never tell her, she’d be too afraid of disappointing her. That’s what Ruby’s like – loyal, loving – and she’d take anything rather than hurt her. Just like she was prepared to get a prison sentence rather than grass her mother up for sending her out robbing,’ Verity said.

There was a moment or two of silence. The only sounds were Angie inhaling on her cigarette and the crackle of the fire.

‘Alright, I’ll arrange it,’ she said eventually. ‘Tell her to make out to that Mrs Wilberforce she’s coming up here to stay with you for a few days. And coming to see me to talk. She can ’ave it done ’ere and stay the night. I can arrange it for next Friday. Tell ’er to be ’ere by four in the afternoon.’

Verity must have looked puzzled, as Angie laughed. ‘It don’t ’appen straight off,’ she said. ‘My mate does the thing, then we wait. By evening it will start to work, it’ll all be over by midnight, and then we can get our heads down.’

‘Ruby said she didn’t care about the risks, but I do,’ Verity said. ‘What are they? Could she die?’

‘The risk of dying ain’t any bigger than ’aving a baby when you live around ’ere,’ she replied. ‘My friend knows what she’s doing, she’s a nurse. If she thinks our Ruby’s in trouble, she’ll tell me to ring for an ambulance. Course I’ll ’ave to lie through me teeth to the doctors there, make out
she just started miscarrying, but they’ll see to ’er, so don’t you worry.’

‘Okay, then.’ Verity felt sick and faint just at the thought of it. ‘I’ll tell Ruby. But you must phone her too. Tell her you’ll look after her.’

Angie smirked, showing bad teeth. ‘Yeah, alright, but I want you ’ere an’ all, I ain’t dealing wiv her on me own.’

Verity didn’t intend to leave Ruby alone with her mother. ‘I’ll be here,’ she said sharply. ‘Please put some clean sheets on the bed.’

‘Hoity-toity,’ Angie exclaimed. ‘Who d’you think you are?’

‘A good friend of Ruby’s,’ she said quietly, and wrote the telephone number in Babbacombe on a small card. She wrote down her own name, with the number and extension at Cooks too, and handed it to the older woman. ‘Next Friday, then? Telephone Ruby before then. And that’s where you can contact me in an emergency.’

‘You ought to join the bloody police force,’ Angie said, her voice heavy with sarcasm. ‘You’re bossy enough.’

‘What
on earth is the matter with you?’ Aunt Hazel snapped at her niece. ‘I asked you to keep an eye on the sausages while I paid the insurance man, and you’ve let them burn!’

Verity was jolted back to reality. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, looking at the sausages which were now black, and seeing the kitchen was full of acrid smoke. ‘I was thinking about work. But they’ll be alright, it’s only the skin.’

Tomorrow Verity had to meet Ruby and go with her to Kentish Town. She was frightened for her friend, and scared of what she was going to see. She had told her aunt she was going with Ruby to meet her mother, to act as a kind of mediator, and she would stay the night.

Her aunt had spoken to Wilby on the telephone a few times and thought she was a real ‘lady’, so she couldn’t see any good reason for Ruby wanting to see her real mother, who she referred to as ‘a bad lot’. Verity felt much the same so she’d had to invent a plausible story with Ruby to tell both Wilby and Hazel. The one they’d come up with was that Ruby felt that in order to finally put the past behind her, she really needed to know her mother’s background – in the hope that it would shed light on why she’d been such a bad mother.

Wilby was entirely convinced, but then she’d suggested many times before that Ruby should meet up with her
mother. She was the kind of person who believed any problem could be solved by discussion; Ruby had mentioned that she often had people coming to her house to talk over their problems with her.

But Aunt Hazel was a very different kind of person; she hadn’t had Wilby’s good education, or her experience with damaged children and their destructive parents. Hazel was a black and white sort of person who saw people as either good or bad, and didn’t believe they could change. So she took the view Ruby should keep well away from her mother – and she didn’t like the idea of her niece being with her, either. Verity knew if she could see the way Angie lived, she’d be absolutely horrified, so she’d made out she was just a weak, rather dim woman who found it hard to cope.

‘I should’ve told you to bring your friend here to spend the night,’ Hazel said. ‘But I suppose it’s too late to change the plans now. I just hope this woman gives you a decent meal, and the bed is clean and comfortable.’

Verity had a mental glimpse of the squalid room and the filthy sheets on the bed, and wished once again that she hadn’t got to spend a night there. ‘I’m sure it won’t be anywhere near as bad as you imagine,’ she told her aunt. ‘From what Ruby’s told me, it sounds like her mother really is trying to pull herself together.’

‘Pity she didn’t try when Ruby was still a child,’ Hazel sniffed. ‘I bet she only wants Ruby back now because she’s working; there’s a lot of women like that. You tell Ruby not to be stupid and fall for any old blarney.’

‘She likes Wilby and being in Babbacombe too much to want to go back to her mother. She just needs to lay a few
ghosts, and see how things are with her mum. I can understand that.’

‘Times have changed,’ Hazel said thoughtfully. ‘Back when I was a girl no one would have dared speak out about their parents, not even if they beat them black and blue and half starved them. Our mother was nasty, and our father was as weak as a jellyfish. But we put up with it, it’s just the way it was.’

Verity felt terribly sorry for her aunt. She hadn’t had much of a life, pushed out by a prettier younger sister, bullied by her parents and then expected to stay and take care of them. It was no wonder she could be so cold and brusque. But just this once Verity wanted Hazel to know she cared, so she put both her arms around the older woman and hugged her.

‘You’ve been so kind to me,’ she said. ‘Just saying thank you isn’t really enough, but I want you to know that you are very special to me.’

‘Oh, get away with you.’ Hazel pushed her away. Yet her lower lip was quivering, proving she was touched and struggling not to show emotion. ‘I only did what anyone would do for their family. Besides, I like having you here with me.’

Verity reached out and patted her aunt’s cheek tenderly. ‘And I like being here too. So don’t worry about me being away for a night, I’m not going to come to any harm.’

Verity left work at two in the afternoon the following day to get to Paddington Station to meet Ruby. She’d said she had a dental appointment to go to. She was carrying a small overnight bag and she’d taken the precaution of
adding a small bottle of Dettol, a packet of sanitary towels, soap and a clean towel. She wasn’t convinced Angie would have cleaned the place up.

Ruby’s train had already arrived when she got there, and she was waiting by the news-stand wearing a dark blue coat, a cream woolly beret and matching scarf. She looked very pale, all her usual bounciness gone. ‘Before you ask, I’m not scared,’ she said, even before she greeted her friend. ‘I just want it to be over and done with. So don’t try to talk me out of it.’

‘Then all I’ll say is that whatever you do, going ahead, or backing away, I’ll be right beside you,’ Verity said.

Ruby half smiled. ‘I knew I could depend on you. Now let’s just get there. It’s going to be quite an ordeal, seeing Ma again.’

Angie’s room in Rhyl Street was marginally improved from Verity’s previous visit. The bed was made, clothes had been picked up, and there were no unwashed cups or dishes lying around. Yet it was still dirty; there were balls of fluff on the lino, thick dust on the mantelpiece, and the oilcloth on the small table didn’t look as if it had been wiped over in months.

Angie did, however, seem genuinely pleased to see Ruby, admiring her clothes, her hair and how tall she’d grown. But she didn’t attempt to embrace her.

‘Well, you ain’t my little girl any more,’ she said, looking her up and down. ‘Shame with all that learning and posh talk you got from that snooty woman that you didn’t learn to keep your knees together.’

‘Well, I’ve had a lifetime of lessons from you on how to lie on my back,’ Ruby retorted, her tone harsh and her
face like stone. ‘But don’t you worry, Ma, I won’t make the same mistake again. You get me sorted out and I’ll be out of here.’

‘I was only teasing, don’t you go all snotty wiv me,’ Angie said. ‘The woman will be ’ere soon, and I got a cheap rate cos you is my kid. So don’t come all lah-de-da or she might put the price up.’

They had a cup of tea while they waited for the woman to come. Angie spoke about some people in the road that Ruby used to know, and she said she was worried about what she’d do if war broke out. ‘A few bombs round ’ere and the ’ouses’ll come down like a pack of bleedin’ cards,’ she said. ‘I reckons I’d be better off movin’ out of London.’

Verity saw Ruby’s look of panic that her mother might turn up in Babbacombe, and felt she had to chip in. ‘You’d be best moving to a small town up north,’ she said. ‘The Germans will be targeting the ports mostly. In fact I think all places on the coast will be at risk.’

‘Is that so?’ Angie said. ‘I didn’t think of that.’

‘Anyway, it might all blow over,’ Verity said, even though she knew that wasn’t likely, not the way things were going.

Angie clearly wasn’t very bright, or sensitive, as she launched into telling her daughter how the abortion was going to be done, in very graphic terms.

‘She’ll get you to perch on a stool wiv yer legs wide open and she gets the end of the enema tube and puts it right up inside. Takes a while cos she ’as to get it right in the neck of the womb. Then she pumps in the soapy water. You know when it’s in the right place cos the water don’t come out. Then she’ll bugger off, and we wait for the pains to start and it all to come away.’

Verity had a dozen questions. Was this enema thing sterile, could the soap cause a violent reaction, how bad would these pains be? And what if something went wrong and Ruby died? But she couldn’t ask them for fear of frightening Ruby still more – and anyway, Angie was already talking about how they used to do this procedure with a knitting needle.

‘Alright, Ma, shut up now,’ Ruby said in a shaky voice. ‘I don’t want any horror stories. And don’t let the woman tell me any, either.’

‘The pains are getting stronger,’ Ruby whispered to Verity.

Verity had nodded off, even though she’d intended to stay awake lying beside her friend. But at the mention of pains getting stronger she was awake instantly. ‘What can I do?’ she asked. She looked at the clock on the mantelpiece; it was three in the morning.

‘Nothing, just stay there and keep me company. Don’t wake Ma up, she gets on my nerves.’

Angie was asleep in an armchair, her slippered feet up on a footstool, and she was snoring for England.

Angie had put a scarf around the central light to make it softer, and the fire had been banked up to keep the room warm, but even if the soft lighting masked how ugly and grubby the room was, what Verity had seen earlier was so ghastly she doubted she’d ever forget it.

The abortionist was called Evie, a small red-headed Irish woman who appeared supremely confident and knowledgeable, but when she got Ruby on the stool and then put her hand right up inside her, talking all the while about how she had to open the cervix, Verity felt sick.

She had already grated Lifebuoy soap into a bowl of boiled water, and she whisked it vigorously until the water was pink and frothy.

Once she was satisfied she’d opened up the cervix, with one end of the enema douche in the soapy water, she slid the other end right into Ruby until she squealed. ‘That’s it, then,’ Evie said. ‘It always makes my ladies call out when it’s in right – bit like the thing that got you in this way, ducks.’

Angie found that very funny, and poured herself some gin, but Ruby was white-faced and wide-eyed. Verity watched how Evie began squeezing the rubber bulb on the tube, pumping the soapy water into her friend.

‘I expect Angie’s told you,’ she said. ‘Soap is an irritant, and it starts up contractions. It’ll be no worse than your period – a few aspirins and you’ll be fine.’

The whole thing was over in half an hour. Angie paid Evie, and she packed up her enema douche and her cheese grater, and left hurriedly. Ruby said she just felt bloated, nothing more.

It was a very long evening. Angie didn’t have a wireless to distract them, and she carried on drinking gin and going on and on about the arguments she’d had with neighbours, how her landlord kept threatening to throw her out, and how the children downstairs made so much noise.

The children were indeed noisy, they appeared to be playing some game in the hall, and their shrill voices were very irritating. There was a baby crying at the back of the house too, and every now and then a man would bellow for it to shut up. But there was noise from the street too: boys kicking a tin can around, women shouting for their
children, drunks coming home singing and falling over. But by twelve it grew quiet, and that must have been when Verity fell asleep.

‘How bad is the pain?’ Verity whispered.

‘Strong, but bearable,’ Ruby whispered. ‘But I think I’m losing a lot of blood. Can you get me another pad?’

Verity hadn’t taken off her blue tweed skirt and toning twinset in case she had to rush out to get an ambulance or anything. But Ruby was in her nightdress, and she was lying on the clean towel Verity had brought with her.

As Verity pulled back the covers to help her friend change the pad, she was shocked at how much blood there was, and the smell of Lifebuoy was very strong.

‘Don’t look so alarmed,’ Ruby said. ‘You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs, I expected a lot of blood. Just throw the pad on the fire.’

Verity had found it distressing and embarrassing to watch the procedure Evie did, as she’d never seen another woman’s parts before, but that embarrassment was gone now, her only concern was her friend’s safety. Angie continued to snore as Verity sat beside her friend and rubbed her lower back for her, which appeared to help the pain. But the severity of the pain and the amount of blood she was losing was very frightening, and when Verity saw lumps of what looked like liver coming away she helped her friend on to a chamber pot and prayed silently it would soon be over.

A sudden small splash and the almost immediate lessening of pain suggested the deed was finally done, and it was only then that Angie woke up.

Verity felt nauseous but she managed to tell the older woman she thought it was over.

‘I’ll check,’ she said, helping her daughter off the chamber pot and peering into it. ‘Yeah, it’s done, you’ll feel better now, luv,’ she said to Ruby. ‘I’ll get rid of this, and Verity can make us all a cuppa tea.’

‘Do you feel better now?’ Verity asked her friend, once Angie had gone out of the room. She helped her to lie back on the bed. ‘I’ll wash you and put a clean pad on, shall I?’

‘Did you see it?’ Ruby asked, catching hold of Verity’s hand.

‘No, I couldn’t bear to look.’

Ruby began to cry silently. Verity held her in her arms and cried too, sharing her distress at what had just happened and the tiny life that was now gone.

‘What’s up wiv you two?’ Angie said from the doorway.

Verity hadn’t heard her come back, and she turned her head towards the woman, but couldn’t bring herself to speak.

‘No point in gettin’ all soppy about it,’ Angie said. ‘It’s done now.’

Ruby had slept after Verity washed her, and Angie went out saying she needed to see someone. Verity sat in the armchair by the fire and tried to read a magazine. But the light was too dim – and anyway, she couldn’t take anything in, because her mind kept constantly returning to what she’d witnessed.

It was still only eight in the morning, although it felt much later, as she’d had so little sleep. Ruby had intended to catch the four o’clock train home, but Verity wasn’t sure she should do that. It seemed far too soon to be going anywhere.

She turned to look at her friend sleeping. She was still very pale, but Verity thought that might be because of the poor light in the room. Outside it was a typical cold, dark January day, the street still quiet. Two old ladies emerged from the house opposite carrying shopping baskets, they looked pinched with cold.

The best solution seemed to be to leave Ruby here for another night, Verity thought. She could come back in the morning and go with her to Paddington to see her off. But she really didn’t want to leave her friend to Angie and her less than tender mercies.