Dead to Me (26 page)

‘Miss Taylor!’

Ruby woke with a start at the nurse shaking her shoulder.

She was an older woman, with a heavily lined face. ‘Your friend has regained consciousness,’ she said quietly. ‘I told her you’d found her, come in with her and were still here waiting in the corridor, and she begged me to let you in. Now I’ve got to tell you that it is against the rules. It’s almost six, and we’ll be waking the patients very soon, but I’ll let you in for two minutes, as long as you are very quiet.’

‘Thank you so much,’ Ruby said gratefully. She thought the nurse had kind eyes. ‘But how is she?’

‘She came through the operation on her lung better than was expected, but she is still very poorly. I recommend that after you’ve seen her, you leave the hospital. We can’t have you sleeping in the corridor all day.’

‘No, I suppose not.’ Ruby half smiled. She was as stiff as
a plank and very cold too. ‘I’ll get out of your way just as soon as I’ve seen her.’

Ruby’s eyes filled with tears as she approached Verity’s bed in the corner of the big ward. It was still pitch dark outside, and the only light was a small one above Verity’s bed and another on the ward sister’s desk further down the room. All the other patients appeared to be asleep, faint snoring was coming from a couple of the beds.

Verity’s head was swathed in bandages, but even in the faint light it was possible to see that the exposed part of her face looked like raw liver.

‘Hello,’ Ruby whispered. ‘I’ve had orders I can only stay two minutes. They tell me your operation was a success.’

Verity’s eyes were hidden by swollen, bruised flesh, but her eyelids moved just enough for Ruby to know her friend could see her.

‘I tried willing you to come back. It worked,’ she said, so quietly that Ruby had to bend to hear.

‘So how about that! We don’t need telephones to contact each other,’ Ruby whispered. ‘Don’t try to speak now. You just lie there and rest. I’ve got to go and find somewhere to stay, but I’ll be back for visiting this afternoon. I packed some clothes for you and I’ve got them with me, so when you are well enough I shall be taking you home to Babbacombe. I told the police that Archie was an embezzler. So if he was still on the run, I’m sure they’ll catch him this time.’ Ruby paused, thinking hard.

‘I don’t want you worrying that he’ll tell the police about what you did. I can’t see him doing that without incriminating himself further. Don’t you dare confess anything, either. If push comes to shove you can deny anything
Archie tells them. Now concentrate on getting better, and dream about all the fun we’ll have together soon.’

She saw her friend’s lips move into an attempted smile.

‘Bye now.’ Ruby bent and kissed her forehead. ‘Go to sleep, precious one.’

The nurse came out with Ruby. ‘She’ll be better for knowing you are near,’ she said, putting one hand on Ruby’s arm comfortingly. ‘She couldn’t have a more staunch and reliable friend.’

A lump came up in Ruby’s throat, knowing she didn’t deserve such praise. ‘I’ll be back this afternoon,’ she managed to say.

Ruby had to wait in a transport cafe, the only place that was open so early in the morning. It was grimy but at least it was warm, so she ordered tea and toast, and asked the friendly woman owner if she knew of a hotel or guest house close to the hospital.

‘It ain’t posh enough for a real ’otel around here,’ she said with a wide grin, showing a mouthful of decaying teeth. ‘But our Lil, she takes in paying guests, ’specially when they is waiting for someone in the ’ospital. She’s in Mount Pleasant, and she keeps a tidy house. Trot round there now, love, and see what you think. You look all in.’

Ruby decided as she made her way to Mount Pleasant, just a couple of hundred yards along the main road, that short of the place being a complete slum, she’d jump at anything on offer. She was too tired to tramp around looking anywhere else.

Lil, it transpired, was the sister of the cafe owner and had equally bad teeth, but she did keep a tidy house. She
also had a single room free at the back of the house, which was clean and comfortable, if a little chilly.

‘You look like you’re dead on your feet,’ Lil said once they’d agreed terms. ‘I’m gonna make you a nice cuppa tea and put a ’ot-water bottle in yer bed so you can ’ave a kip before you go back to the ’ospital.’

Ruby’s last thought as she drifted off to sleep was that the world wasn’t such a bad place if a stranger could fill a hot-water bottle for her and tell her she was welcome to come and join her family in the living room later, where she had a big fire.

Ruby stayed with Lil for four days. On the second day it snowed, and she thought that would cause problems when she wanted to go home. As it was, she’d had to telephone the Palace and say she couldn’t be sure when she was coming back, as she didn’t want to leave Verity until she was certain she was on the mend.

But on the third day the snow began to melt, and Verity was well enough to talk.

The part of her face not hidden by the head bandage was still livid with bruising, but it didn’t look like liver any more.

‘You must go back to Babbacombe,’ she said haltingly. Her jaw was very sore so speech was difficult, and so far she could only manage liquid food. ‘It’s daft you staying up here in lodgings just to see me for an hour in the afternoon.’

‘I’m scared to leave you,’ Ruby said, stroking her friend’s hand tenderly.

‘He won’t come here,’ Verity said.

The ward sister had already told Ruby that everyone in
the hospital was on alert for Archie turning up and had orders to telephone the police immediately if he should come.

‘I wasn’t scared of him coming, only of you being lonely,’ Ruby said.

‘It is nice not to have to speak. To just lie here and be looked after,’ Verity said. ‘Besides, Wilby will need you.’

Ruby knew Wilby could manage perfectly well alone with Colin and Brian, her newest evacuees, but it didn’t make much sense just hanging around in Lewisham with nothing to do. She was needed back at her work, and the police had secured Verity’s house, so she couldn’t even go up there and clean it. Archie hadn’t been caught yet, so she wasn’t even about to be called as a witness.

‘I’ll go, if you are absolutely sure,’ Ruby said.

‘I am, and I can lie here dreaming of Babbacombe,’ Verity said.

Ruby smiled down at her, thinking how brave she was. Several of the nurses and the ward sister had all remarked on her being the perfect patient, so well mannered, so appreciative of their kindness and help. Some of the other women on the ward were tyrants who never stopped complaining about the most trivial of things, and there was Verity – so badly beaten, it was a miracle she had survived – trying to smile and not even admitting she was in pain.

‘Okay, then, I’ll take all your stuff from Weardale Road back with me, and just leave you a clean nightie and an outfit to wear home.’

‘Home,’ Verity said in little more than a whisper. ‘That sounds so good.’

‘And Wilby said you are to think of it as your home for
ever, if you want it to be. Back sharing a bedroom with me, like old times. We’ll go dancing, swimming, and walking along the Downs, and all this will be just a distant memory.’

She saw a glint of something in Verity’s eye; a terrible sadness, because she felt she would never be completely healed. She would walk to the lavatory again soon, eat proper meals, talk, maybe dance and swim too, but she doubted her friend would ever forget the pain she’d endured both during the beating and even now in hospital.

Or stop being afraid of Archie.

Ruby came
out into the garden and approached Verity, who was lying in a hammock suspended between a fence post and an old apple tree. She was wearing her blue and white spotted swimsuit and looked very relaxed.

‘Stay there any longer and you’ll look like a prune,’ Ruby said waspishly.

‘You’re only jealous because you burn,’ Verity said, squinting in the sun and swinging her hammock harder. ‘Of course I go a beautiful golden shade you can’t compete with.’

‘I hope you fall out of that hammock and break your leg,’ Ruby said. ‘Oh, come on, you lazy devil, let’s go for a walk, I’m bored.’

Verity laughed. Ruby was easily bored. She had said over breakfast that she was going to laze around in the garden all day, as it was her first day off this year when the weather was hot and sunny. But now, at only three in the afternoon, she’d had enough.

It was true that she tended to burn if she wasn’t careful, redheads usually had that problem. She seemed to think blondes ought to share it. But Verity tanned easily, despite her hair colour, and she couldn’t resist teasing Ruby with it.

‘Walk to where? We can’t go to the beach, as it’s all blocked off. Surely you don’t want to walk into town?’

‘No, just a little stroll along the Downs, make eyes at a few servicemen, buy an ice cream.’

‘But I’d have to get dressed,’ Verity protested. ‘I didn’t want to until we went out tonight.’

‘Gosh, I’m asking so very much of you,’ Ruby said in exasperation, giving her a withering look. ‘In years to come, when you are an old, fat spinster, you’ll look back and wonder why you wasted your youth and beauty lying in a hammock when there were handsome young soldiers milling around, any one of whom could be the man of your dreams.’

‘Put like that, I’d better go and get changed, then.’ Verity swung her legs out of the hammock and stood up. ‘My tan is going to make my turquoise sundress look amazing. Are you sure you won’t feel inferior to me?’

Ruby sniggered. They were always teasing each other, making out that they were a couple of femmes fatales. Neither of them really believed it of themselves. But since Verity had come here to live, after her discharge from hospital, this act and the laughter that came with it had helped both of them to overcome their problems.

It had taken Verity a long time to get better. Two weeks in Lewisham Hospital might have been long enough to set her broken bones and heal her pierced lung – the bruises and lacerations were much better too – but she had terrible nightmares, screaming out in her sleep about Archie. Then a particularly nasty bout of flu, which brought on a bad chest infection, laid her low again. It was only towards the end of April, when the weather grew warmer and she
was able to go out in the garden, that she really began to recover physically. But both Wilby and Ruby were afraid the mental scars were never going to fade.

Archie Wood hadn’t been found by the police. Like before, he had disappeared into thin air, and not knowing if he might turn up in Babbacombe hadn’t helped Verity’s recovery. Wilby tried her best to convince her that, even if he managed to find out her address, he would never dare come to the house. Verity acted like she believed that, but Ruby knew it was a pretence. As the girls shared a room, she had soothed her friend out of too many nightmares about him to believe she was over it.

But brothers Colin and Brian, the evacuees from Bristol, age nine and seven respectively, helped with her recovery by making her laugh and waiting on her when she was unable to get about much. They adored her because she read to them, played board games and helped with their model making. To them she was like a big sister, one who always had time for them.

By May she was well enough to go back to work and was taken on by the Post Office doing outside repair and maintenance on telephone lines, just as she had in London. Wilby was delighted when she began to put on a little weight too, as she had been painfully thin.

It was once Verity was back at work, paying her way and feeling useful, that she began to revert to the twenty-year-old she really was. It started with taking more interest in her appearance, curling her hair, putting on make-up, revamping some of her clothes, and making a new dress out of material Wilby had put by long before the war. Then, just last week, she had suggested she and Ruby go to a dance.

Verity’s poor state of health had been a perfect excuse for Ruby to avoid going out. But now that her friend was listening to shop girls talking about all the airmen in and around Babbacombe, and what fun they were at the local dances, she wanted to see for herself. Ruby felt she had to pretend to be enthusiastic, even if she wasn’t interested.

They now called the Palace, where Ruby worked, RAF Hospital Torquay, and along with the many wounded officers being nursed there, there were dozens of other servicemen working in roles as diverse as doctors through to maintenance men. On top of that, since June 1940 there had been hundreds of airmen coming to Babbacombe for the No. 1 Initial Training Wing. This initial training for pilots, observers, wireless operators and air gunners took place in the local hotels. As most of these men were billeted in and around Babbacombe, no one could fail to notice them, even if Ruby ignored them.

Last December, when Pearl Harbor in Hawaii had been bombed by the Japanese, America finally entered the war, and began sending troops to England. Some of them came to Torquay when they were off duty, and Verity came home from work with tales from other girls that the Yanks were perfect gentlemen, that they were extremely generous and, in the main, much more fun than their English counterparts.

Under duress, Ruby had agreed they could try the Saturday night dance at the Baptist Church Hall in St Marychurch. It was tonight, but Verity had talked of nothing else all week, and what they would both wear.

She had a pink and white candy-striped dress with a sweetheart neckline, a full skirt and short sleeves, which
was very flattering and made her waist look tiny. She planned to curl her hair and leave it loose in a style copied from Veronica Lake, the Hollywood actress who many people thought she looked like.

Ruby hadn’t felt inclined to even think about what she would wear. But Verity had rummaged through her clothes and found a slinky, emerald-green satin dress which she’d never seen before and demanded Ruby try it on.

‘I can’t wear that, I look like “brass” in it,’ Ruby said dismissively.

The real reason she was reluctant to wear it was because she’d worn it on her last evening with Michael, the man who had got her pregnant. She’d told him about the baby that night, and had been so certain he would promise to marry her right away.

‘Top brass?’ Verity joked, knowing quite well that Ruby meant it made her look like a prostitute.

In fact she looked like a film star in the green dress; it clung to her curves, and the colour enhanced her green eyes. But Verity guessed she was afraid of wearing it again in case it brought back all the memories she’d tried so hard to erase.

‘Don’t try to be funny. If I say I can’t wear it, I mean it,’ Ruby snapped.

Verity wasn’t going to give up. ‘You can and you will wear it. It’s wartime, clothes are rationed and hard to get. You can’t possibly relegate a dress as nice as that one to the back of the wardrobe because of some sad associations. Besides, I bet you wowed everyone who saw you in it the last time?’

Despite her reservations, Ruby couldn’t help but half
smile, remembering how every male head in the room had turned to look at her that night.

‘That’s settled, then.’ Verity held out the dress to her friend, with an expression that suggested it was best not to argue. ‘Put it on and be glad you’ve got something so nice to wear, most girls our age are looking quite shabby.’

‘What made you suddenly get so bossy?’ Ruby sniped at her friend.

‘When I saw you were becoming drippy,’ Verity replied. ‘And I’ll get even bossier, if you don’t pull your socks up!’

At seven that evening Wilby watched the girls walking up the road to the dance from her bedroom window, and she felt her heart swell a little with joy. She knew that the time and trouble they’d spent on their appearance this evening meant they were both finally turning a corner. She’d been concerned about Ruby since the start of the war. It just wasn’t normal for a young woman to wrap herself up in her work to the exclusion of any social life. She wouldn’t discuss it, always saying she was fine, and refusing to acknowledge she might have a problem.

It was easier to understand Verity; she had lost her mother and her aunt. Her best friend wouldn’t speak to her, and then her stepfather marched in with cruelty and humiliation, and her boyfriend found someone else. Yet she had begun to laugh again before her wounds were even healed. She looked ahead with hope for the future. She was a whole lot stronger than she looked.

Wilby hoped that tonight both girls would let their hair down and have the kind of fun that had been missing from their lives for so long. She actually pitied the other
girls going to the dance tonight, as her girls looked like beauty queens, and she didn’t think anyone else would get a look-in with these two outshining them.

‘Have a great time, and let’s hope there are no air raids to spoil it,’ she murmured to herself as she turned away from the window to go and tuck Colin and Brian into bed.

They hadn’t been troubled too much in Torquay by bombs so far. There had been many air-raid warnings but most were false alarms. The first serious one had been in April of last year, while the Plymouth Blitz was going on. A house in the Warberries was destroyed and two children killed. In May, thirty-one high-explosive bombs were dropped by Luftwaffe pilots leaving raids in Plymouth and jettisoning their bombs before returning to their bases in France and the Low Countries. Luckily, there were no serious casualties.

With so many evacuees arriving in Torquay from Bristol to escape the terrible air raids there, and because Plymouth was being hammered almost daily, there was a general fear that Torquay might be next. Back in June, the town had been attacked by four aircraft, and although there were no casualties, people saw it as a warning.

So when the air-raid sirens sounded, there was anxiety, and a scrabble for the nearest shelter. Just recently the Council had delivered Anderson and Morrison shelters to everyone. But Wilby didn’t need one, as she had a cellar. She’d put chairs, camp beds, blankets and a big supply of candles down there some time ago. But so far they’d never had to stay in there for more than an hour before the all-clear sounded. This was much to Colin and Brian’s dismay; they actually wanted to sleep down there.

Wilby had had three different sets of children since the start of the war. The first two girls and little Joseph went home for Christmas in 1939 and didn’t come back. The second bunch, three sisters from Stepney, came when the London Blitz began, but their mother wanted them home again when the bombing eased. There was also the little orphaned boy Jack, who she had wanted to keep and perhaps adopt. But that wasn’t to be, and now she had Colin and Brian. It looked like they might stay till the war ended, because they were very happy in Babbacombe and were getting on well at school. Their mother came down on the train once a month to see them, but as she was working in an armaments factory and had no other family to help with the boys, she felt they were better off in Devon, however much she missed them.

The boys had wormed their way into everyone’s affections. They were funny, loving and enthusiastic about everything, from helping turn the handle of the mangle on washing day to feeding the chickens, or dancing.

The dancing had begun because Ruby teased them and said they had to learn to do the waltz. She had gone to ballroom dancing lessons back when she first came to live here, and loved it, but she imagined the boys would be horrified and run a mile. But to her surprise, when she put a record on the gramophone and made Colin hold her, he looked so eager it actually brought a lump to Wilby’s throat.

Brian was equally enthusiastic and, in just an hour, both boys had learned the basic waltz steps. Since then, they’d practised every night, and now they’d moved on to the quickstep and the foxtrot.

Wilby often thought that, of all the bad things there were about war, there were some good ones too. Young evacuees like Colin and Brian were learning about a world beyond their own home, with different food, people and values. They would return to their mothers with a wealth of new experience under their belts. Rationing, although universally hated, was teaching people to be frugal, less greedy, and more imaginative too. People were doing things for the common good, rather than just for themselves. Many were much kinder to strangers, because they hoped their loved ones would be treated well while they were in strange towns or countries.

‘I’ve been blessed,’ Wilby murmured to herself as she made her way down the stairs. ‘Two lovely girls to care for as if they were my own; and the little boys to borrow for a while. How lucky am I to hear laughter and chatter every day, and know I’m needed.’

‘I can’t imagine actually dancing with a grown man,’ Ruby sighed as they walked up the road. ‘I’ve got too used to Colin as a partner and him only reaching my chest.’

Verity giggled. She’d had dancing lessons at her school in Belsize Park, but she hadn’t kept it up when they moved to South London. When she worked at the Post Office there, she had gone dancing with the other girls. But it was rare to get a partner who could do anything more than shuffle around the floor, so she’d forgotten almost everything she once knew.

Little Brian had insisted on coaching her as soon as she was well enough to stand and move around. She found it hilarious that a small seven-year-old could be such a good
dancer. He’d told her one day that he wished he could have tap dancing lessons so he could become as famous as Fred Astaire.

‘I’ll settle for anyone taller than me tonight who doesn’t step on my toes,’ Ruby said. ‘Though I draw the line at bad breath and sweaty hands.’

Verity glanced at her friend. Ruby really had no idea how lovely she was, with those coppery curls, her creamy, lustrous complexion and her devastating green eyes. Just a couple of days earlier Colin had asked why Ruby didn’t have a sweetheart, when she was so beautiful. Verity couldn’t tell him the real reason; that her friend had hardened her heart towards all men after her abortion. But aside from Ruby’s indifference to men, Verity knew many men wouldn’t even try to win her round, as they would assume they’d never stand a chance with such a beauty.