Ruby's War (29 page)

After Granddad and Con had left the cottage, Ruby was alone until Jenny arrived home pale and exhausted from her shift at the factory. As she took off her headscarf and lit a cigarette, the hens began to squawk.

‘Where's your granddad?' she asked.

‘Con called for him earlier. I think … Well, he didn't really say. I think they went fire-watching.'

‘Fire-watching?' Jenny said, grabbing her torch and heading for the door. ‘Fire-watching, with his chest? I'll give 'im fire-watching.'

It was hard to make out the figures in the dark garden. Ruby stood next to Jenny and listened. Somewhere in the thick night, something moved. Ruby held her breath and wrapped her arms around her body. Jenny's torch – a quivery, uncertain orange – swept the garden, picking up two figures that were half concealed by the Anderson shelter. For a moment there was silence. Then they heard the rattle of Henry's familiar wheezing cough, followed by the clatter of the shelter door and Johnny and her granddad tittering together like schoolboys. The sound made her feel safe, and when Jenny walked back in the house and slammed the door, she decided to wait for them, planning to slip away upstairs once Jenny had begun her scolding. She was pulling her jumper over her fingers to keep them warm when she heard the sound of breaking glass. Ruby thought for a second that the two dafties had
stepped on the cold frame, but Johnny's frightened yell sent her running up the garden. He put on his torch, guiding her along the path to where a body, rigid and cruciform, lay groaning pitifully. Ruby scrambled over her granddad, pulling out his pockets until she found the small pill bottle.

Gradually, as the pain gave way, they got Henry into the cottage. Once they were inside, they helped him out of his coat and into his armchair. Jenny, who was sitting at the table, didn't move, but went on eating her stew. Ruby poured brandy and warm water into a glass and held it to the old man's lips, as Johnny looked on anxiously, twisting his cap in his hands.

‘We got wind of old Prendergast storing black-market sugar,' he said. ‘Young Con offered to help us.'

‘That's what you brought here, is it?' Jenny asked. ‘Black-market sugar you've stolen from Prendergast?'

‘Nowhere else to hide it. It's in the shelter. I'll move it on. I'll get someone tomorrow. But n-not tonight. Don't worry I'll k-keep it moving, until we've got customers. Leave it to me.'

‘He was much better, almost ready to go back to work. All three of them – this one as well,' Jenny said, nodding towards Ruby, ‘haven't been earning, but eating and under my feet all the time. I've had to work extra shifts. No other money coming in. Then, I come home tonight, and now look at him.'

‘I don't think it was Con's fault,' Ruby said.

‘Oh, you don't, miss? And how do you know? You can keep your nose out. You've caused enough trouble as it is.'

Jenny got up from the table and Granddad, whose colour was returning, waved Johnny to a seat.

‘Now, I'll thank you to be on your way, Johnny Fin,'
Jenny said, replacing the brandy bottle. ‘You'll clear that sugar out by tomorrow. I don't care how. And don't call round for a while, and you can tell Con the same thing. We've more than enough problems, without inviting more.'

The next day Ruby put on her cream jumper and tartan skirt and went to the factory. She was shown into a small, dusty office. The manager, a plump man in shirtsleeves, studied her over some rolls of cloth.

‘You'd normally come with a parent,' he said. ‘I'd want to see that your parents have given you permission.'

Ruby explained that her mother was dead and that she lived with her granddad who was too ill to come with her.

‘Irene, give her a form, will you?' he said.

When the middle-aged woman got up from behind a typewriter to hand her the form, Ruby noticed that, in addition to the usual desks and cupboards, the office also had two camp beds.

‘You get him to sign that form, and then you can start,' he said. ‘I'm going up to the spinning room now, so you can come and look round. You'll be working nine hours. That's the regulations for a girl your age, but there's overtime, but not fire-watching,' he said, nodding towards the camp beds. ‘You're too young.'

He put the light on and led the way up a flight of wooden stairs. All the mill's windows were blacked out and no hint of the outside light came through. At the top of the steps, he pulled open a brown door. The noise, the incessant pounding, filled her body. She gasped with the shock of it, and her mouth filled with a sticky heat. The man beckoned to a woman who edged towards them
between the long rows of pumping machines, trundling a huge box on wheels behind her. She wore a short-sleeved blouse under a sleeveless wrap-around overall. Tendrils of hair escaped from under her turban and stuck to her damp face.

‘This is Elsie – Mrs Rostron. She'll show you what to do. She's thinking of starting here, Elsie,' he said. ‘I thought doffing. I know they're short-handed.'

Mrs Rostron took a rag out of her pocket and wiped her neck. ‘She ever done this sort of work?'

‘No. She'll want showing.'

Mrs Rostron wrinkled her forehead and walked out of the door, pulling the box full of bobbins behind her.

The next day, Granddad stayed in bed. For weeks now, the sky had been grey and sullen, each day moving drowsily through the half-light, and it was hard to remember a time when it hadn't been so dreary. Ruby waited until mid morning before she took up a tray with two cups of tea. Granddad was sitting up in bed, choosing seeds for the spring. Once he was sipping cheerfully at his tea, she told him about the factory and gave him the form.

‘It's a nasty, rough place for a little lass,' he said. ‘Jenny has a sharp tongue sometimes, I know. It was me that she should have taken it out on. I'm an old fool. Why don't you go back to work for Mrs Grey? You like it there, playing the piano, and it pays your way.'

Ruby shook her head. ‘I'm grown-up now,' she said, ‘and Doctor Grey said it would be more patriotic to work at the factory. Jenny's having to pay for us all.'

Henry sighed. ‘It should be me as is bringing in the money, not you. She's right, all I've done is make me chest
worse, and she's takin' it out on you and poor Johnny.'

‘And Con,' Ruby said. ‘She told Johnny to tell him he's not welcome.'

‘Well, if you're determined to do it. You can do one thing for me, though. Call in on Maud. I'll let Johnny know to leave some sugar for her, and you could pick her some veg, but don't let on. Perhaps you could have your baggin' there some days, for a bit of company. I'm not sure you'll take to some of them women at the factory. Some's all right, decent folk, but they tease the young 'uns.'

‘Would she let me take her dog out? What sort is it?'

‘Dog? Our Maud's not got a dog.'

‘But she got bones for it at the butcher's.'

Granddad handed back the form and shook his head. ‘They'd be for a stew for her and Joe. She's a proud woman, you see. She'd not want the rest of them to know she can't afford meat. It's fine tellin' us what rations we can have. With the war coming, there's more work about, but if you're too old or ill to work, you can't afford the prices anyway. No point tellin' the likes of Maud and Joe they can have good cuts of meat. They can't afford 'em, rations or not.'

Ruby didn't mind the women in the factory. The work – putting empty bobbins on the spinning machines and taking them off again when they were full – was hard, because there were so many machines in the room. She hated the noise and the thick, damp heat. At the end of each shift, she was glad to escape outside into the cold, smoky air. Then she wished the hours would slow down, until she had to go back to work again.

There wasn't anyone of her own age in the same room,
and most days she and Elsie Rostron sat together to eat their food. Elsie had two sons, one in the army and one in the navy. Her daughter worked at the factory as well, but because she had young children, she didn't do many hours. Like most of the people at the mill, Elsie Rostron knew her granddad, and she also knew Alice and Dick.

‘I saw Alice,' she said, during one of their tea breaks. ‘She was asking after you. Asked if you was all right, after your accident. Said to tell you she felt terrible for letting you go that night. She wasn't sure what had happened. Said Doctor Grey didn't say much, except that you wasn't coming back. Her niece is working there now. Said it was funny, because she'd found the tin of peaches and your basket in the garden, but she couldn't understand, if you'd been hurt there, why you didn't go back in the house and tell her.'

Ruby couldn't think clearly. It was only a couple of weeks after she'd begun working in the spinning room, and her head still throbbed from the constant noise.

‘I fell twice,' she said. The lie made her mouth dry, and she sipped greedily at the cold tea from her billycan. ‘I slipped in the garden and … my torch … I couldn't find it and I couldn't find my basket,' she said, feeling her face begin to burn as she struggled on. ‘I slipped in the garden and … Then I was walking, and this truck came really close … and I fell.'

‘You was lucky. Though, couldn't you have gone in and borrowed a torch? I wouldn't have liked to walk all that way without one.'

The first week she'd begun working at the mill, Ruby had taken Maud and Joe some vegetables from Granddad's
garden. She'd knocked at the door, and when Auntie Maud answered it, she'd asked her in. They'd sat in the little living room and talked about the factory. Maud told her how she and the other weavers used signals and lip-reading to talk to each other and how, when the mills had closed for the men to check the boilers, they'd all gone away for a holiday by the sea. Ruby remembered people from different mill towns coming to the seaside and walking in big laughing crowds along the prom. Maud told her stories about the days out, and she found a photo of herself standing in front of one of the looms on the day some dignitaries came to inspect the factory. The photo showed Maud as a young woman, staring back unsmilingly at the camera with the looms pounding around her.

‘How did you stand it?' Ruby asked. ‘The noise and—'

‘I would go back tomorrow, if they'd let me. I was one of their best weavers. Had more frames than anyone else,' Maud said, her face brightening. ‘Never had any fault in the cloth I wove. I've heard there's all sorts coming out of there now as wouldn't have been passed when I was there.'

To avoid Mrs Rostron's questions, Ruby began having her dinner with Maud and Joe. She was afraid to take too many vegetables and only dared steal the odd egg, but she tried to help in other ways: each evening when she made her baggin' she'd slip in a little extra and invited Auntie Maud and Joe to help themselves, which they sometimes did, and she always took a twist of tea with her or some sugar. Some days she would play snap with Joe, or she would take an old newspaper, because one of his favourite things was drawing glasses and moustaches on the photographs. Other times Joe would be lying very still, hardly breathing
at all. Maud would put a cold tea cloth on his head, and she would rub his hands and tell her ‘Joe wasn't himself'.

One day when Joe looked quite poorly, Ruby called in again after work to see if he was better and found him sitting up happily playing dominoes with Johnny Fin.

‘Maud said you might call,' he said, pulling up a chair for her near the board. ‘Joe's started looking forward to you coming.'

When it was Joe's turn, Johnny called out for him what tiles he needed to put down. The games were quite slow, because Joe took a while to decide which dominoes to play. Ruby soon realised that Johnny could see Joe's tiles and often changed the order in which he put his own tiles down so that Joe would win. Each time he won, Uncle Joe got really excited and everyone had to clap and cheer for him.

‘Is Jenny still mad?' Johnny asked, as they were turning over the tiles at the end of a game.

When he mentioned Jenny's name, Maud, who had been reading the newspaper through her magnifying glass, made a disapproving noise and went into the scullery.

‘There's no love lost there,' Johnny said, nodding in the direction of the scullery door. ‘She thinks Henry is a fool for taking up with Jenny and that it'll end up with trouble. Maud thinks he'd be better off without her, and there's no point arguing.'

‘Granddad's much better. He's hoping to be back at work by the end of the month. Should be getting milder by then, and the money from the sugar has come in handy.'

‘Aye, well, once he's on the mend and back at work, perhaps it will all be forgotten.'

They played dominoes until the factory hooter made
her jump and she noticed that the blackout curtains had been drawn.

‘I'll be off,' she said. ‘I'll try and catch a couple of the women. They live further down the road than our cottage.'

‘No, stay,' Johnny said. ‘Let's finish this game, and then I'll be going your way. I've got a bit of business with John Bardley.'

Outside coal smoke hung damply over the narrow streets. Ruby shivered and put her arm through Johnny's.

‘How are you, Ruby, love?'

‘I just … Well, I don't like to go out. I think he might …'

‘Oh, I don't think you'll see him again.'

‘Why …? You mustn't …'

‘Oh, don't worry, my pet. Though it's what I'd like to do. N-n-no. Th-that sister of his has told … Well, it's come from Dick, really. They couldn't make out what had happened. I know they … Well, his sister, Mrs Grey, told them that he went out in the garden and heard somebody, and when he went to tackle them … for t-trespassing … they knocked him down and stole his wallet. I don't know if that's what he told her, or if she's made it up. Then Alice and Dick were foxed, you see. They thought it was funny that you fell and hurt yourself, and then the same night he gets attacked.'