It was too much for Ruby and she felt the tears of guilt break through and roll down her cheek. Standing up she went over the woman, leaned forward and hugged her tightly.
‘Well, I never – what was that for?’
‘Because I’m a selfish cow, Nan, and I’m sorry.’
Elsie Saunders’ eyes also filled up. ‘You’re a good girl, Ruby, and it’s a crying shame they made you come back here. Your mother shouldn’t have done that and I told her so when Ray went to get you. She should have let you get away from this, even if she can’t.’
‘I want to go back there, Nana, I want to go back so badly, and they want me back. I could finish school and get qualifications. I want to train to be a nurse. It wouldn’t mean I’d be gone for ever. Aunty Babs was teaching me how to sew my own clothes and grow fruit and vegetables, and I had real friends. But how can I go back now I know what’s going on here? I can’t leave you and Mum with Ray.’
Ruby started to cry. She didn’t want to; she didn’t want there to be any possibility of Ray finding out she was upset, but she couldn’t help it.
‘Don’t you cry, Ruby love. Listen to me: you have to go back. You can’t stop Ray being as he is, as your mother let him be, so don’t sacrifice yourself. I saw what he did – my eyes are bad, but not that bad – and anyhow, I know that sound. He’s his father’s son all right.’ She reached her hand up and gently touched her granddaughter’s swelling face. ‘Now, as we’re locked in together, why don’t you tell me all about your time away? We haven’t had time for more than a few words since you’ve been back and it would be so nice to hear all about it.’
It was Sarah who opened the door a couple of hours later. ‘Your dinner’s ready and the boys have gone out. I told Ray he shouldn’t have locked you in. He gave me the key.’
‘Then why didn’t you let us out? He locked Nan in here as well, and he hit me you know; hit me around the face. Look.’ Ruby pointed to her swollen cheek.
Her mother glanced at her. ‘That’s going to really bruise up. I’ll find the witch hazel. But you shouldn’t have upset him. He told me what you said. You wouldn’t have spoken to your father like that, would you?’ The woman pursed her lips and shook her head slowly. ‘Anyway, what’s done is done. Just remember next time, Ray can get carried away but he doesn’t mean it badly; he’s just trying to look after everyone the best he can.’
‘He is not my father. He locked the door with Nana in here. You should have let us out straight away.’ Ruby was incensed and so was her tone but her mother simply shrugged.
‘But there’s no harm done, is there? And you’ll know for next time. He is the man of the house now.’
‘Oh, stop using that expression. There’s nothing manly about him. He’s just a thug and a bully. I hate him.’
Her mother didn’t answer straight away; she simply frowned and looked from her daughter to her mother in bemusement, as if she really didn’t understand what Ruby was so upset about.
‘I don’t think you understand, Ruby. Your brothers, especially Ray, work hard to keep this family going now your father’s gone. Without them I’d probably end up in the workhouse. It’s not asking much of you to help me look after them and your nan. Don’t forget while you were living the life of Riley with the la-di-dah Wheatons, the boys were here working, I was working, and we were all trying to survive the Blitz.’
‘But you sent me away. I didn’t ask to go,’ Ruby shouted.
‘Yes we did. We sent you for your own safety, but you were meant to come back!’
Ruby stared at her mother. Sarah Blakeley was an attractive woman who had kept her looks despite everything she’d been through. There were lines across her forehead and around her eyes, and her lips were pinched, but she still retained her shapely figure and feminine legs that suited high heels. However, she rarely smiled spontaneously, her eyes were constantly unhappy and when she spoke her voice was a monotone. She wasn’t enjoying her life, she was just going through the motions.
After her long chat with her grandmother when they were locked in the bedroom, Ruby had promised that she would try to be understanding of her mother, and at that moment she could see why the woman gave in to Ray on everything. It was the route to an easier life with fewer arguments. Arguments she knew she couldn’t win. She had been bullied and ground down by her own husband all her married life so it had become part of her nature to accept it as her lot in life. Ray had simply stepped straight into his father’s vacant shoes and she had let him. The treadmill for Sarah Blakeley just carried on with no end in sight and although Ruby felt for her she had no intention of getting on it herself.
In bed that night, with Elsie on the other side of the room snoring and snuffling and keeping her awake, Ruby pulled her eiderdown up to her chin and thought about her afternoon with Johnnie from down the street. Those had been the most carefree hours she’d had since her return. He’d made her laugh as she stood in the queues, bought her an icecream and then helped her carry the shopping. He was blatantly experienced in the ways of the world, maybe overly confident, and from what she’d heard was certainly involved in a great many dodgy dealings, but that added an element of danger that attracted her.
On the other side of the coin he spoke lovingly of his family and had a kindly streak that had been obvious the first time she’d met him. As she thought about Johnnie Riordan she couldn’t help but focus on the resentment that existed between him and Ray and wonder if there was some way she could use her newfound friendship with Johnnie to get her own back on her brother.
It was easy for her mother to shrug off Ray’s behaviour, but she couldn’t. Ray had hit her and treated her as a child – her own brother had acted as if she was his child instead of a sibling – and she had no intention of letting that go without taking some sort of revenge that would punish him and, at the same time, distract him enough to allow her to make her escape back to Melton.
She knew that although Johnnie Riordan worked legitimately in a public house he was also a wheeler-dealer with a finger in many pies, some legal, some not. He bought and sold anything that might earn him a few bob, including the things that the ordinary man in the street had no access to in times of rationing and shortages. It had taken her a while to figure out why Ray hated Johnnie so much. Now she knew: it was because he was jealous; because he really wanted to be a part of those activities himself but he didn’t have a quick enough brain to think things up for himself.
Ruby wondered if she could find a way to make that work in her favour, and as she finally dozed off a plan was coming together in her head.
‘You know what, Roger, I’m gonna have to sort this out right now. I’ve got no choice. I can’t let those pricks get away with it any longer, not now they’re messing around close to home – to my home. If I roll over and let them carry on taking the mick like this then every upstart in Walthamstow and beyond will be trying to get his foot in the door – my door, on my turf.’
His irritation bubbling away, Johnnie Riordan slammed his fist down hard on the table, making the teacups rattle in their saucers and his brother-in-law jump nervously.
‘But how’s it your turf?’ the other man frowned. ‘You don’t own Walthamstow, and anyway, what do you reckon you can do to stop them?’
‘That’s what I’ve got to decide. Any ideas?’ Johnnie asked out of kindness more than anything. He didn’t really expect a workable answer.
‘I’m new at this lark so I don’t know nothing; I’m not like you. It’s hard for me after what’s happened and I just don’t bloody well understand any of it. I can’t do it.’
The man sitting opposite Johnnie was so bewildered he looked as if he was about to burst into tears. Johnnie tried hard to keep himself in control. He was fuming at having found out that Ray Blakeley had apparently got his hands on some black-market alcohol to sell on. It wasn’t that Johnnie didn’t have enough of his own, it was that Ray even thought he could try to encroach on his territory.
‘Don’t whine, mate. I know it’s hard for you to get your head round it, but when needs must and all that … It’s not your fault you’re a cripple now, and I feel bad for you, I really do, but your family still need providing for. I’ve given you a good way of doing that so you’ve just got to get on with it. You help me and I’ll help you, but you’ve got to be committed.’
‘But committed to what? What you do’s dishonest. I was never clever, and I’m even dafter now, but that don’t make me bent. I’ve never been bent.’
‘It isn’t dishonest, it isn’t bent and you’re not daft, just a war victim.’ Johnnie struggled to keep his anger down. ‘Well, yeah, OK, it is a bit dodgy but, like I said, when needs must; and right now needs must. I’ve got a living to earn and you’ve got a family to take care of.’
Johnnie was sitting in his sister’s kitchen along with his brother-in-law, Roger Dalton. After they’d got home from the local pub Betty had made them a huge pot of tea, put it in front of them with a couple of home-made biscuits, while at the same time threatening them with their lives if they woke the two sleeping children upstairs.
Johnnie adored his elder sister and her children, and he even liked her husband, which was lucky, as he lived with them and contributed more than his fair share to the family budget.
Johnnie had been living with their widowed mother until the year before when, with very little notice, she had told him she was going off to be a live-in housekeeper in central London for a very wealthy elderly gentleman she’d met while working in the menswear department in Selfridges.
It had been a surprise but neither he nor Betty had been upset. Betty was pleased that her mother was enjoying her life again and had persuaded her beloved little brother to leave the temporary accommodation where he and their mother had been living since being bombed out of the old family home, and come to lodge with her instead. Johnnie was also pleased for his mother but, with an eye always on a chance, he had viewed his mother’s change of circumstances more cynically and could see that her affluent employer was a connection that he might well be able to cultivate in time.
All in all it had worked well for the whole family.
‘I reckon a good battering should do it, nothing too serious but enough to stop his fucking nonsense.’ Johnnie leaned back in the chair and blew smoke rings in the air as he thought about it. ‘That Ray likes to think he’s a hard nut, but he’s just another little punk without enough brains to be even a half-decent entrepreneur. As for Bobbie, he could be squashed underfoot in an instant. A few hard kicks up the arse should knock them down to size.’
‘Entrepen what?’ Roger looked quizzically at his brother-in-law.
‘It’s what I am and what I’m going to make you. Supply and demand. I’ve told you before, we find those who haven’t got it but want it and then we supply it.’
‘Supply what?’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, Roger, anything anyone wants that we can get our hands on. We’re the middlemen. But you know all this; I’ve explained it over and over.’ Johnnie sighed and banged the palm of his hand against his forehead in frustration.
‘I know, but I’ve never heard it called that before. I thought it was just the black-market stuff.’
Johnnie sighed and leaned forward. ‘Now listen to me, don’t even mutter that expression under your breath, never mind out loud. We’re businessmen – does that make it easier for you to understand? Anyone asks, we’re businessmen. Don’t say anything else. OK?’
Roger Dalton frowned and shrugged. He had never been the sharpest knife in the drawer but, before signing up to fight in the army, he had had a steady job in a local factory and had worked hard to provide for his family. Now, thanks to a random grenade, he was officially an invalid with a gammy arm that hung lifelessly by his side, a shattered knee that didn’t bend, and an eye patch covering an empty eye socket while he waited to be fitted with a false one. But worse than the physical damage was the effect the explosion had had on him psychologically. Roger had returned from convalescence a nervous wreck who rarely slept and who jumped at the slightest sound. He was getting better – mostly thanks to his wife – but Johnnie had also more than contributed to his painful recovery.
Johnnie was determined not to see his sister go without, so he was doing his best to help by getting Roger into a bit of wheeling and dealing alongside him, but it was hard work and he could only use him on the periphery of his blossoming business. There was no way Roger could cope with anything complex and Johnnie wasn’t convinced he could be trusted not to talk inadvertently about his business to the wrong people.
‘I saw you down the High Street talking to his sister earlier. Betty told me who she was. Is she like her brothers?’
‘You never said hello – where were we?’ Johnnie asked sharply.
‘You were standing by the alley looking at her all daft, like. So is she like her brothers?’
‘I wasn’t looking at her like that, you idiot!’ Johnnie said a little too quickly. ‘But no, she’s not a typical Blakeley. An old head on young shoulders, that one; all classy and bright as a button, thanks to spending five years away from the no-hopers in her family. I think she’ll give the bloody Blakeley boys a run for their money eventually. She especially hates Ray so she’s a good one to have on our side. We can make use of her if we play our cards right; get some info from her when we need it.’
‘Do you want to go out with her then?’ Roger asked curiously. ‘She’s a bit of a looker, but don’t tell Bet I said that.’
‘Get off, she’s far too young for me – not even sixteen yet,’ Johnnie replied quickly, but with a lack of conviction. ‘But there’s something about her, the way she carries herself, her conversation … I dunno, she just seems way older than other girls her age. If I didn’t know I’d have put her at twenty.’
‘So you do want to go out with her?’ Roger pushed with a wide grin.
‘I said, she’s too young for that, but I do want to be friends with her so I can keep tabs on the two toerags.’
‘So are we going to have to batter ’em then? The Blakeleys?’
‘No we’re not, I’m going to get someone else to do it. We don’t want to get in any bother ourselves, do we?’