Ruby's War (21 page)

Ruby adjusted the borrowed headscarf and opened the church door. She took her place at the end of the short row of penitents waiting for Confession, pushing the hem of her coat under her knees to spare her precious nylons from the kneeler's rough surface. As everyone in the small group shifted, edging along the bare wooden kneeler, the sound of each tiny movement tumbled forward, rolling and splashing through the empty church. The chancery light winked in the gloom, and the greenery looped around the feet of each of the saints caught in the glow of the votive candles.

After Sadie had cheeked Father O'Flynn, everyone helped to do her ‘penance'. They'd worked in the hall until late on Saturday and gone back there on Sunday, spending most of the morning under the stage, dragging out the grimy, life-size plaster figures of the Holy Family and the shepherds from behind a pile of old scenery flats.
It had been Con's idea to use one of them – a picture of a garden and a blue sky seen through a French window – as a backdrop for the crib. They'd carried it into the hall, where he'd sketched out the skyline of the town of Bethlehem against the blue sky and the stark domed houses of a Bethlehem street. A few days later, she'd helped Sadie fill them in, using white paint stolen from the camp. Now the flat, with the figures of the Holy Family and the shepherds in front of it, was behind a curtain in the alcove next to the confessional box, waiting to be unveiled on Christmas Eve.

To ease the pressure on her knees, Ruby tried leaning on the bench in front, taking the weight of her body on her arms and cautiously raising each knee in its turn. She sniffed at the unfamiliar scarf. It belonged to Jenny who'd given it her to wear when Father O'Flynn had insisted that, if she was to take the part of Mary in the Nativity play, she must come to Confession. Ruby liked the pattern of fruit and leaves, and the fine, loosely woven wool felt expensive, but the colours – yellow, rust and orange – didn't suit her and she pulled the edges down to cover her red hair.

Each person who came out of the confessional box clattered their way across the church to say their penance in the benches opposite. The first was an elderly man with a twisted ear, who whispered the familiar words of the Hail Mary, as if each prayer was a secret. When the next one – the plump woman who worked in the chemist – walked across, her movements set off an explosion that had barely stopped rumbling before she got up and headed for the door, leaving Ruby to wonder why she'd been given such a small penance.

The door of the confessional led into a small box. There
was a square grille with a narrow ledge in front of it and a kneeler fixed to the floor. Ruby knelt down. At the other side, Father O'Flynn drew the curtain slightly open as a signal for her to begin. The box smelt of caramels and mould. Ruby adjusted the ends of her coat over her knees. When they'd learnt about Confession, she'd imagined that her soul was a dishcloth of coarse knitted cotton and her sins were splodges to be cleaned away. At school, the whole class had been taken to Confession on the first Friday of every month. Then, her sins were always about arguing with her mother, or being jealous of Mavis, who'd a lot of friends. Now, shut in the tiny airless box, Ruby searched her soul, but instead of definite splodge-shaped sins, the knitted cotton was grubby with use. Father O'Flynn asked how long it was since her last Confession, and in the church the kneelers thudded. She wondered if it was a sin to wish that, instead of being Ruby and living with Granddad and Jenny, she was Cordelia, and Doctor and Mrs Grey were her parents. Were dreams sins? In another dream, she was on the stage in the Nativity play, and when she looked down, there was Pearl and her father, dressed as they'd been when they'd gone out to the Christmas dance, smiling up at her. Did that count as vanity, or was it some sort of lie?

‘Have you lost your temper, or said unkind things?' the priest asked.

‘Why did he take my mum away?'

‘It wasn't Our Lord who did that, child. It was just an accident. You must pray to Our Lord to give you strength. I'm sure your poor mother is watching over you. Offer up your suffering to Our Lord Jesus and to His mother.'

Back in the cold church, Ruby watched the puffs of white breath escape from her fellow penitents and hoped that the priest was right. She hoped that Pearl was watching, but each day her memory of her mother, like the perfume on the clothes in her trunk, was fading.

The following afternoon, Ruby sat happily on a small wooden chair eating one of Pauline's sandwiches and watching the school clock track the hours to the beginning of the performance. Unlike Miss Conway and some of the choir, Ruby didn't suffer from performance nerves. Sitting by the pipes, with her blue cloak already pressed and hanging from a nail above the window, she was cocooned against the growing hysteria in the hall. It was a true state of grace: she'd got out of doing Doctor Grey's washing and had Pauline all to herself. On the other side of the room, the serious boy playing Joseph was having his false beard attached by his mother.

‘Sit down there, Trevor,' his mother said, dropping a cardboard box on to one of the small tables. ‘Miss Conway has asked me to use as little glue as possible. It's difficult to replace, and they are hoping to do
The Pirates of Penzance
before Lent. There are quite a few beards, but she's given me the most suitable. Goodness, it doesn't look very clean.'

Trevor folded his body into a tiny infants' chair, but when his mother shook out the beard, the stale make-up holding it together escaped, leaving the horrified woman clasping two ragged clumps of black horsehair. Behind the shelter of the blue cloak, Ruby and Pauline giggled and shared the last sandwich.

‘His mother wants him to be a priest,' Pauline whispered.
‘She told my ma she goes to Mass every Friday to pray that he has a vocation, but he hasn't had the call yet. Anne thinks he'd be nice-looking without his glasses. She even sent him a note in class pretending to be me and asking him to take them off. He didn't, and now he goes red every time he sees me. I think that's why I'm the angel instead of Mary. Still, Anne is prettier and she has dark hair, and in the picture we have in our house, Mary's hair is dark, although it's not curly like Anne's.'

‘No. It's because you have blonde hair,' Ruby said. ‘Angels always have blonde hair.'

Pauline looked pleased and hitched her coat over her flimsy white tunic. ‘I want my hair like Sadie's. I want it cut short and permed just like hers. Mum says I'm too young and I'll have to wait until I start work.' Pauline adjusted her tinsel halo and sighed. ‘Sadie's that pretty. I saw her waiting for the bus with one of them black soldiers. Is he her boyfriend?'

‘Mmm, Bo,' Ruby said, watching Trevor's mother furtively applying glue to her son's face.

‘He's really handsome. Mum says all of 'em are that good with the kids. They're always playing with them on the rec. You work at Doctor Grey's, don't you? I don't fancy skivvying for folk. I'm going to work in a factory. A girl I know is starting at one next week making tents. It's really good money, but I don't know if they'll take someone my age on. Some places they want older, but I've asked her to find out for me.'

‘Lou, Sadie's friend, she works there. It's good hours, but she says it's mucky work. It's the wax. It gets in their eyes. It makes their noses bleed, as well. So now, they only
work on tents for half a day, and another shift works on them in the afternoon. Lou said they looked that daft, all of 'em coming home with their noses plugged. Hers was still bleeding that night.'

On the other side of the room, Trevor's mother was persuading him into his costume.

‘He'll have to take his glasses off,' Pauline said fidgeting with her wings. Then, lifting the delicate things from their place on the table to hide her face, she whispered, ‘Joseph wouldn't have worn glasses.'

The two girls studied Trevor, who was now dressed in an old dressing gown and had a tea towel on his head.

‘Them black soldiers from the camp are coming to sing with the choir,' Pauline said. ‘Miss Conway's not that pleased. I heard her say to Father O'Flynn that it was a waste of time teaching the little 'uns to sing, if they was goin' to do it. But he said they'd just do one of their own songs and “Silent Night”, and the children could do the rest. And then they're goin' to give out presents at the end. Are you invited to the kids' Christmas do at the camp? I am. Me and Anne will be helping with the infants. You should ask if you can as well. I think she'll be coming, if she's well enough by then. She wanted to come and do this instead of you, but her mum said she couldn't, as it might have put her back. Her mum works at the same place as Sadie. Anne has to look after her little brother and sister and their neighbour's kiddie as well. Her and Anne's mother work opposite shifts, so they all have their teas together. Depending on whose mum is at work, they have them at Anne's, or Anne and the little ones go next door. I've been helping. All the kids have been ill, and I've
already had mumps when I was four. I'm going to her house on Boxing Day. Her mum's making us a party.'

Jealousy nibbled at Ruby's stomach. Through the window, she could see parents arriving with the younger children. Johnny and the caretaker began carrying in long wooden benches for the audience to sit on, and the haven she'd been sharing with Pauline started to fill with excited infants. Then Trevor's mother beckoned to them to follow her to the back of the stage, where she helped Pauline fix her wings and tugged at the white veil on Ruby's head, until she was satisfied that it completely covered her hair. As the children began the first carol, they could see through a gap in the curtain that, with the exception of the chair occupied by Captain O'Donal, the seats reserved for dignitaries at the front of the hall were empty.

‘Doctor Grey has probably been called out on an emergency,' Trevor's mother said, peering over Ruby's shoulder. ‘Mrs Grey is still quite poorly, and the Prendergasts have pleaded war work.'

Then Father O'Flynn began the first Bible reading, Pauline and Ruby took their places on the stage and the old gentleman in charge of pulling back the curtain balanced on the balls of his feet and reached for the rope.

After the second reading, when Ruby followed Joseph out in front of the curtain for their encounter with the innkeeper, she was pleased to see that Doctor Grey had arrived, but instead of Mrs Grey, the seat next to him was occupied by a lady who was expecting a baby and a couple of very elderly men with walking sticks were sitting in the Prendergasts' seats. The next scene was in the stable. As the crib was hurriedly set up and the straw scattered,
she heard the GIs begin to sing a soft, melancholy song she didn't recognise. Everyone took their places among the straw. Instead of a baby in the crib there was a light bulb, but when the choir came to the end of the song and the curtains were about to be drawn back, the light symbolising the Holy Infant went out. As the old man working the curtains tottered and swayed, the caretaker, whose job it had been to set up the crib, frantically worked the switch, but no light came on. On the other side of the curtain, the noise began to build. Then suddenly Trevor darted forward and gave the bulb a sharp twist. Instantly, the crib was ablaze with light, the curtains were drawn back to reveal the tableau, the audience gasped and softly the GIs began to sing ‘Silent Night'.

Con and Holt watched the performance from the back of the hall. Earlier, when the band of infant angels had left the classroom, they'd carried the boxes of candy bars and other treats in from the truck. When the guys at the camp heard that the priest had stood up for the black GIs, they'd all wanted to come and sing, or buy candy for the kids, and it was certain that the old priest wouldn't want for a free drink while the truck companies were stationed nearby. The only person who didn't seem too happy was Captain O'Donal. He hadn't said as much but he looked uneasy, and they'd all noticed that things around the camp had become tighter: the huts were checked more carefully for inappropriate reading materials, card games were regularly broken up and gambling of any kind was punished. There'd always been black newspapers going around the camp, but O'Donal, if he'd known that copies were being handed around, hadn't taken too much interest. Now any
articles from these papers were confiscated. Still, as more men moved in, it was harder to keep watch on all of them, and there was a new guy on his way whose job it would be to organise the promised leisure facilities.

Con recognised most of the readings and carols as those his father used at Christmas in his church in Paradise Valley, and if he'd closed his eyes, he could almost have been at home. The thing that had surprised him most was Ruby's confident performance. On the stage, in front of the audience, she'd become a different girl, and when the curtains opened on the final tableau, it was as though a painting of the Nativity had come to life in front of them. As the choir began to sing the people got to their feet and joined in, many of them weeping, hoping, he guessed, that by next Christmas the war would be over. Con felt the same way: he found it hard to remember the feeling of excitement that had driven him to enlist in the first place. In the early days, when he'd first joined up, he'd been desperate to become a soldier. A lot of the guys he'd met in training wanted the excitement of leaving the States, and he had as well, but most of all he'd wanted to fight for America, because his country was under attack. Now, after the trouble with the white GIs, he thought that even if they'd let him, he might be too scared to fight. He wanted to be the boy he'd been in Paradise Valley, and this time he'd have listened to his mother and gone to college. It wasn't something he could admit to anybody, not even to his parents. He felt for their letter in his pocket and swallowed hard.