‘Ray, this is Uncle George.’
‘What happened to you, then? War wounds?’
‘No. Polio. When I was a child.’
‘Oh right. So as Ma says, this contraption is the reason you want our Rubes to stay here, so she can look after you? She says all the other kids are already home and you two want her as your skivvy.’
As Ruby froze, so George smiled. ‘No. I don’t need looking after. Ruby’s still here because she wanted to finish her schooling here. She’s very clever and doing well. We sent her school reports to your mother.’
‘Yeah, well, it’s not reports Ma needs, it’s another pair of hands to help her out, and that’s what Rubes has got, so off we go.’
Ruby looked from one to another before saying, to try to calm Ray, ‘Uncle George is a doctor.’
But Ray just looked at her as if she were mad. ‘I know that, you daft bint, but I’ve never seen a doctor in one of those. Who’d have thought it?’
‘And I’m going to train to be a nurse when I’m old enough,’ Ruby added.
‘Course you are, Rubes, and I bet that’s the doc’s idea: a nurse in the house to save him a few bob. Shrewd, eh?’
Ruby had to sit through another hour of embarrassment before Ray, having conceded that she could stay another couple of weeks until she was definitely confirmed fit, finally left, informing her he’d be back for her if she wasn’t home within the month.
As Ruby was deep in thought, and going where she didn’t want to go, the train journey into London was over in a flash and, following George Wheaton’s instructions to the letter, Ruby caught the bus to the stop nearest to her road in Walthamstow. She looked around hopefully for her mother, but after a twenty-minute wait in the autumn evening chill she gave up and started walking.
The Wheatons had wanted to drive her back home but, after Ray’s disrespectful behaviour, Ruby wanted to keep her two lives apart so she had determinedly refused. She had insisted that she was old enough to make the trip alone, but as she trudged along the streets and the two suitcases got heavier and heavier she regretted her decision. She kept picking them up and putting them down and changing hands, even though they were the same weight. When she was halfway there she dumped them on the pavement and sat down on one of them to catch her breath.
She looked around at the once-familiar surroundings that she had all but forgotten about when she was living safely in the open spaces of rural Cambridgeshire. Terraced houses with tiny front gardens edged both sides of the road, and the smell of coal smoke hung heavy in the air. Before her evacuation the area had simply been home, but now she viewed it objectively and it felt claustrophobic and grubby.
Amid the familiarity of the streets remnants of the war stood out. There were pockets of emptiness and rubble where houses and shops had once stood, and as she looked across the road at the bombed-out remains of two adjoining houses she thought about who might have been inside when the bomb fell.
Suddenly the recently ended war was real and the loss of life she’d heard about was on her own doorstep.
As she clenched and unclenched her aching hands and tried not to cry, a young man she had vaguely noticed walking along on the other side of the road crossed over and stopped beside her.
‘They look far too heavy for a little thing like you to be carrying; here, let me help you. Where are you going?’
‘To Elsmere Road, the far end, but it’s OK, I can manage perfectly well on my own. I’m just giving my hands a rest,’ she snapped defensively.
‘That’s just past where I’m going so it’s daft for you to carry them on your own. When you’ve got your wind back we’ll get going, but I’m not carrying your handbag.’
The young man’s expression was friendly and his smile wide as he waited for her to stand up again. Once she was on her feet he quickly picked up the cases and loped easily along the street, leaving Ruby almost running to keep up. In no time they were by the familiar front gate to the Blakeley family home.
‘Here, this is the house.’
The man put the cases down on the pavement.
‘Thank you,’ Ruby said, looking up through her eyelashes into a pair of navy-blue eyes. Under his intense gaze she felt strangely shy.
‘You didn’t tell me your name,’ he said.
‘I know I didn’t,’ she replied.
With his eyes still fixed on her, the young man held his hand out. As she took it he gripped firmly and, as he held on slightly longer than was necessary, Ruby felt a strange tightening in her throat that she couldn’t identify.
‘Well, I’m Johnnie, I’m from down the street. I live here; Walthamstow born and bred. Are you visiting?’ he asked, still holding on to her hand.
‘No, Johnnie-from-down-the-street,’ she smiled as she withdrew her hand from his. ‘I live here as well. I’ve been in evacuation for five years and I’ve just come back. It all seems strange, though. I know where I am but it doesn’t feel like home any more. It’s all different.’
‘That was the war …’ He paused for a moment and then raised his eyes upwards. ‘Ah! I was a bit slow there! Of course you’re Ruby; Ruby Blakeley, the missing sister who’s been having such a time of it she didn’t want to come home again. And none of your brothers came to meet you? They should be ashamed of themselves, leaving you to drag your own cases through the streets.’ Johnnie Riordan shook his head slowly, his disapproval all too obvious.
‘I wasn’t dragging them, I was carrying them,’ Ruby frowned. ‘How did you know all that about me?’
‘Your brother Ray has a very loose mouth; blabs all the time. Lucky he missed call-up; we’d have lost the war after he’d given chapter and verse to Hitler’s spies.’
Ruby tried not to laugh. ‘And you? Why didn’t you go and fight?’
‘Just missed out, but I’ve been doing my bit in other ways.’ He winked.
‘That’s what they all say … So how do you know my brothers?’ she asked curiously.
‘Ah! That’s for me to know and you to find out.’ He winked again, and another very strange feeling fluttered gently through her chest. ‘And I’m sure you will very soon, just as soon as you tell your brothers you met me. I’ll be seeing you then, Ruby of the red hair!’
With a wide grin, a tip of his hat and a flamboyant backward wave the man strutted down the road in the direction from which they’d come. Ruby watched as he casually kicked a ball back to a group of children playing in the middle of the road and then disappeared into a gate halfway down the street.
She guessed he was older than she – he certainly looked it – maybe even older than her brothers, and he had an edge of danger about him that excited her momentarily; but she knew it wasn’t the time to be thinking about handsome young men.
She was home, but all she wanted to do was turn and head back to the security of Melton and to the Wheatons, the substitute parents who had cared for her and loved her as their own.
She pulled back the wooden gate, took a couple of steps along the short concrete path and, after banging sharply on the door knocker, waited impatiently for what seemed an age before the door opened.
‘Hello, Mum,’ she smiled.
The woman looked at her for a moment before registering that this was her own daughter.
‘Ruby! Hello, dear, you’re early. I was just going to walk down to the bus stop to meet you, but you’re back here already.’
‘I was right on time. I waited for you for ages …’
‘Not to worry. I had so much to do I must have got behind. But you’re here now so in you come.’
The woman who had opened the door was small and round with wavy faded red hair pulled back from her face and tucked up in an old voile headscarf that was tied on top of her head. She was wearing an enveloping flowery apron and neatly darned woollen slippers.
Her appearance told Ruby that there was no way she had been getting ready to go out, and she felt hurt that the mother who had stated how desperate she was to have her daughter back home couldn’t even be bothered to walk down the road and meet her off the bus after such a long journey.
Sarah Blakeley held the door right back, then turned and shouted. ‘Arthur? Your sister’s here. Come and take her cases to her room.’ She turned back to her daughter. ‘Ruby, you go back out and shut the gate before those little urchins across the street start swinging on it again. I’m just sorting your brothers’ tea and then we’ll have ours after with Nan.’
Her eyes widened as she looked at her daughter properly for the first time. ‘You’ve grown, Rube – I nearly didn’t recognise you – and you look very glamorous, but a bit too old for your age. Did that Babs woman give those clothes to you?’
‘Yes, she made me lots of clothes and altered some of hers for me.’
‘Not really suitable for a fourteen-year-old …’
‘I’m fifteen, soon be sixteen,’ Ruby sighed.
‘Still not quite right, though. I’ll try them on later. I haven’t had anything new for years.’
And that was the total of her welcome home from her mother after five years away.
Ruby stood for a moment on the threshold and stared straight ahead at the faded wallpaper in the narrow hallway and the staircase that disappeared off into claustrophobic darkness. She didn’t even want to go in, let alone live there again. She wanted to run; but then she heard her grandmother.
‘Is that you home, Ruby?’ a voice called out. ‘Come and say hello to your old nan.’
‘Coming, Nan. Just going back to shut the gate.’
As her mother turned and walked back to the kitchen, Ruby’s brother Arthur bounded down the hall past her and grinned. ‘Hello, sis, decided to come home at last? Ray said you’d landed on your feet in that big posh house. He said you’ve gone la-di-dah and we’ve got to knock it out of you now you’re back!’
At seventeen and not much more than a year older than his sister, Arthur had always been closest to Ruby in all ways and she had never taken offence at him the same way she had with her other brothers. He was a lump of a boy who had always had a certain slow innocence and openness in his nature, unlike Ray and Bobbie, who could both be mean and devious when the mood took them. She was pleased to see that, on the surface at least, Arthur seemed the same good-natured lad she remembered and she hoped that Bobbie, the middle brother in both age and temperament, had maybe grown up and away from Ray. Life back home would certainly be easier if her oldest brother was the only unpleasant one in the family.
‘You could try, I suppose, or I could teach you how to be posh as well? It’s not that bad, you know, there’s nothing wrong with good manners.’ She laughed as she put an arm around his waist and hugged him affectionately, much to his embarrassment.
‘Get off,’ he muttered as he pulled away, making her laugh.
‘I’ve really missed you, Arf. You look so grown up now and you’re so tall. It’s a shame you didn’t come to the country, you’d have loved being out in the open. I had a friend Keith who you would have loved playing with. He even had a gun to shoot rabbits and pigeons. It was great fun – even school – and Uncle George and Aunty Babs were so nice to me. I love them so much.’ She paused as she realised exactly what she’d said. ‘But I love you all as well, especially you, and even Ray.’
‘We’re boys. Dad said boys who were evacuated were cowards.’ Arthur bristled and squared his shoulders. ‘Dad said we had to look after ourselves and Mum, and that’s what we did. We weren’t girls …’
‘Weren’t you scared you might get killed with all the bombs?’ Ruby asked curiously, still aware of the bombed-out houses she’d seen.
‘No. We weren’t scared. And now the war’s over and we won! Ray said you weren’t away because of the bombs, he said the posh people wanted you because the bloke’s a cripple and she’s barren. Ray said—’
‘That is such rubbish,’ Ruby interrupted angrily. ‘Lots of different people took in evacuees and some of the hosts were really horrible to them. I was really lucky that I ended up where I was. Especially as no one from here bothered to check if I was OK.’
But Ruby knew that she was wasting her time. Arthur really didn’t understand.
‘Ruby, are you going to come and see me?’ called Nan. Ruby turned away from Arthur and started towards the parlour.
‘I’m just going to see Nan and then I’ll tell you all about it,’ she said.
Arthur picked up the cases and followed close behind her.
‘You’re supposed to be taking them to my room.’
‘I am. Didn’t Mum tell you? You’re going to be sharing with Nan in the parlour. Ray’s got your old room.’
‘You’re joking. I can’t share with Nan. And what about the things I left?’ Ruby turned and looked at her brother in horror.
‘I think Ma got rid. Ray took your room as soon as you went away. Can’t see him coming back in with me and Bobbie now he’s the head of the house, can you?’ Arthur laughed.
‘Why can’t Nan share with Mum?’
‘’Cos of the stairs, you idiot.’
‘Why can’t I share with Mum?’
Arthur laughed. ‘I dunno …’ Pretending to spar, he skipped around and punched his sister hard on the arm, the way he used to when they were children, but now he was physically a man and the punch hurt.
‘Don’t do that, Arthur,’ she snapped at him. ‘Don’t hit me, don’t ever hit me. We’re not children any more. Adults don’t hit each other.’
‘Ooh, get you, Duchess. Ray was right. He said you think you’re better than us now.’
Looking angry and still unaware of his own strength, he pushed at her and she stumbled backwards slightly.
‘Well, I’m definitely better than Ray, I promise you that,’ she snapped back angrily as she struggled to stay on her feet.
The door was open so Ruby turned straight into what used to be the front parlour, where they would all have dinner on high days and holidays, and formal tea when the parish priest visited, but everything that had been in there was gone, including the familiar battered piano that Ruby had loved to try to play.
Instead there were two narrow iron-framed beds with a bedside cabinet each, a wardrobe and a tallboy, which took up half the room, leaving just enough space for a chest of drawers with a jug and bowl atop and her grandmother’s armchair in the small bay of the window. Arthur dumped the cases on the bed nearest the door and went out again without saying another word. Ruby knew she’d hurt his feelings but she was upset herself. She was, however, determined to make it up to him later because she knew he was the only one who she could rely on.