Dead to Me

by Lesley Pearse

  ‘I was thinking about work,’ Verity lied. ‘Sorry. How was your day?’

  ‘Busy, we got a big order in for a lady up in Blackheath, new curtains all over her house. She’s picked the most expensive brocades, must be lovely to have enough money so you can buy whatever you want.’

  Aunt Hazel didn’t go out until nearly seven thirty. As soon as she’d gone, Verity ran down the street to the telephone box. Luckily, no one was in it; the cold night was good for something. She balanced her pencil and paper on top of the directories, then rang the number.

  Ruby answered after two rings.

  ‘I thought you were going to let me down,’ she said.

  ‘As if,’ Verity said. ‘Now take down this number and ring me back, because I haven’t got much change.’

  A couple of minutes later they were talking again.

  ‘Now explain,’ Verity said. ‘I thought Michael was “the one” and he loved you.’

  ‘He said he did.’ Ruby began to cry. ‘He even said he’d marry me when I told him I was pregnant. But then he disappeared. He was such a liar, Verity. He told me he was a reporter on the local paper so I went there, but they said they’d never heard of him. I’d already been round to his digs, and his landlady said he left owing her a week’s money. I even went to the pub he used to take me to, where he seemed to know everyone. It appears he’d told them all a pack of lies too. How he was waiting to be taken on by The Times newspaper and he was going to buy an expensive car. I was really taken in by him.’

  ‘Oh dear, Ruby,’ Verity sighed. ‘Are you absolutely sure? Have you been to the doctor?’

  ‘I’ve missed two periods, that’s enough proof. I’m not going to a doc’s, as I’m going to get an abortion. Now have you got a pencil and paper? Cos I’m going to give you Ma’s address. You go round there and explain, and tell her she’s got to sort it for me. She’s got a pal who does them for the tarts around there.’

  ‘You can’t do that, it’s dangerous,’ Verity begged her.

  ‘It’s a bloody sight more dangerous to bring a child into the world that you don’t want,’ Ruby spat back at her. ‘I should know, that was me. I can’t bring a kid up on my own, it’s impossible.’

  ‘But Wilby will help you, and so will I,’ Verity said.

  ‘Forget that idea, it wouldn’t work. Just do what I ask and go and see my ma. She’ll probably be funny with you, but give as good as you get. Insist she does it, or I’ll come back to London and land myself on her.’

  Verity was alarmed at Ruby’s fierceness, she had seen glimmers of that toughness when they first met, but it had disappeared during her time with Wilby. Somehow, she knew there was no point in going on about the dangers, or the rights and wrongs of it. Ruby was determined, and if her mother didn’t arrange it for her, she’d find someone else. That person wouldn’t care a jot about Ruby, only about the money.

  So Verity took down the address.

  ‘The best time to catch her in is around six, when she’s getting dolled up to go out. Her real name is Aggie Taylor, but she makes out it’s Angie Taylor. You aren’t going to like the way she lives, but you knew that anyway. Please don’t let me down, Verity, I haven’t got anyone to fight my corner but you.’

  As Verity walked home she thought about that last statement of Ruby’s. It wasn’t strictly true, Wilby would fight her corner in a heartbeat. But not on this, though. She’d say adoption was the answer, if Ruby really didn’t want the baby. But if Ruby did want it, she’d help bring the baby up and love it like it was her own grandchild.

  Apart from the moral issues, Verity really didn’t want to meet Angie Taylor. Any mother who sent her child out to steal was a bad person, and she doubted Ruby would be in this predicament if she’d been taken care of and loved as a child.

  The following evening, Verity caught the underground to Kentish Town straight from work. She had looked up Rhyl Street in the London A to Z and knew roughly how to get there. Once she had turned off the main road into the warren of narrow, terraced streets behind the wide thoroughfare, she felt quite sick with fear.

  The houses were small here, mostly two storeys, built in Victorian times for working people. There was fog in the air, not so thick that she couldn’t read the street signs, but it made everything look even dirtier and more sinister than it really was in the yellow-tinged street lighting. She thought of Hither Green as poor and dreary, but compared to this part of Kentish Town it was a desirable area.

  It was quite obvious that most if not all of the houses were multiple occupancy; many had the front doors open, and she could see prams lined up in the hall. Most houses didn’t even have curtains so she got glimpses of meagrely lit rooms with many children and adults clustered around a fire. Furniture as she knew it seemed non-existent. She saw iron beds in some rooms, but there appeared to be little else.

  Her flesh began to crawl at the thought of how it must be to live that way. She had been dreading calling on Ruby’s mother all day, but now she just hoped she’d be in so she could say her piece and get away from here.

  Number 32 Rhyl Street was just as wretched as its neighbours, and two ragged urchins of about eight or nine were huddled in the doorway.

  ‘I’m looking for Angie Taylor,’ Verity said. ‘Do you know if she’s in?’

  ‘I seed ’er come in about ten minutes since,’ the slightly older boy said. ‘You a street walker an’ all?’

  ‘No, I’m not,’ Verity said with some indignation. ‘Now go on in before you freeze.’

  ‘Can’t yet, our ma’s workin’.’

  Verity gulped, realizing immediately what that work was. She had a sixpence in her coat pocket, she gave it to the boys. ‘Go and buy some chips,’ she said. ‘It’ll be warmer in there.’

  ‘Thanks, lady!’ The boy who’d spoken before grinned at her. ‘Angie’s upstairs front.’

  The bare wooden stairs hadn’t been swept for months, and the whole house smelled of damp, of fried food and something else even more unpleasant which Verity didn’t recognize. There was only one door upstairs, at the front of the house, and she rapped on it.

  ‘Who is it?’ a voice called out.

  ‘Verity Wood, a friend of Ruby’s,’ she called back.

  ‘Whatcha want?’

  ‘It’s private,’ Verity called back. ‘Please let me in?’

  The door was unlocked. There stood a much older, raddled and plumper version of Ruby. Her red curly hair was loose on the shoulders of a dirty green dressing gown, beneath which was a black petticoat. Verity knew her to be thirty-four, but she looked older.

  She beckoned Verity to come in and shut the door. Under the room’s central light her red hair gleamed just like Ruby’s.

  ‘Where d’you know Ruby from?’ she asked, taking a packet of cigarettes from her dressing-gown pocket and pulling out a cigarette.

  ‘We met on Hampstead Heath three years ago,’ Verity said. ‘We’ve remained friends. I go down to Torquay and stay with her now and then. She asked me to come to you, because she’s pregnant and she wants your help in getting rid of it.’

  It hurt Verity to say something so serious in such a cold, uncaring way, but she felt there was no point in trying to be more tactful, best to get it over and done with.

  There was no surprise on the older woman’s face, or even concern. ‘Why ask me? Why the hell does she think I’d even know anyone?’

  ‘She is asking you, because you are her mother,’ Verity said, her voice quavering with nerves. The room was a real pigsty, squalid, smelly and strewn with dirty crockery, cosmetics and clothes. The sheets on the unmade bed were so ingrained with dirt they must have been on there for a year, and there was underwear drying in front of an open fire. ‘And she knows you have contacts who can help her. She said to tell you that if she can’t get rid of it, she’ll have to come back here and stay with you.’

  ‘She ain’t bloody well doing that!’ the woman exclaimed in horror. ‘She oughta bin more careful. I told ’er if
a geezer put ’er under pressure to do it, to suck ’im off, that way she wouldn’t get up the spout. I can’t do no more than tell her.’

  Angie’s suggestion brought back a vivid recollection of what Verity’s father had made her do to him, and she gagged involuntarily.

  ‘That is truly disgusting,’ she managed to get out. ‘What sort of a thing is that to say to your own daughter?’

  ‘A bloody sensible thing,’ Angie fired back, coming closer to Verity and prodding her in the chest. ‘Once you’ve got over ’aving one cock in yer mouth it won’t ever bother you again. Most men like it better an’ all. And you can’t catch nuffin, either.’

  Verity remembered Ruby’s advice about giving as good as she got. So she prodded Angie back, but the older woman’s chest was like prodding a huge marshmallow. ‘I don’t want to hear your vile schemes to avoid pregnancy or disease. I just want you to tell me you’ll arrange this thing for Ruby, and quickly.’

  ‘It’ll cost yer,’ she said, her green eyes, so like Ruby’s, narrowing because she thought she was going to earn from this.

  ‘No, it won’t,’ Verity said firmly. ‘You’ll get it done for nothing, and done properly and safely, because she’s your child and you owe her. It was you who sent her off to that house in Hampstead to rob it, and you never even went to the court to try and help.’

  ‘Good job I never went, as it turned out. She got lucky, didn’t she?’

  Verity felt sickened by this woman, but she knew she’d got to try and like her enough to get her to agree to help Ruby.

  ‘Yes, she got lucky, and now you’ve got to make sure her luck holds. It won’t, if she has to have this baby. You know she’ll come back here to Kentish Town, and before long she’ll have no choice but to work the way you do. I don’t think you’d want that, would you?’

  Verity took a photograph of Ruby from her bag. Wilby had taken it back in the summer. The black and white picture didn’t capture the beauty of Ruby’s hair and eyes, but she still looked stunning, leaning back against a tree in Wilby’s garden, laughing because Verity was pulling faces at her.

  She handed the picture to Angie. The older woman made a little gasp.

  ‘She looks lovely, doesn’t she? And she’s got a great future ahead of her in the hotel trade. But that and everything else will go, if she has the baby.’

  ‘That Mrs Wilberforce will look after ’er, won’t she?’

  For the first time Verity heard a note of concern in the woman’s voice.

  ‘She would, but Ruby will never tell her, she’d be too afraid of disappointing her. That’s what Ruby’s like – loyal, loving – and she’d take anything rather than hurt her. Just like she was prepared to get a prison sentence rather than grass her mother up for sending her out robbing,’ Verity said.

  There was a moment or two of silence. The only sounds were Angie inhaling on her cigarette and the crackle of the fire.

  ‘Alright, I’ll arrange it,’ she said eventually. ‘Tell her to make out to that Mrs Wilberforce she’s coming up here to stay with you for a few days. And coming to see me to talk. She can ’ave it done ’ere and stay the night. I can arrange it for next Friday. Tell ’er to be ’ere by four in the afternoon.’

  Verity must have looked puzzled, as Angie laughed. ‘It don’t ’appen straight off,’ she said. ‘My mate does the thing, then we wait. By evening it will start to work, it’ll all be over by midnight, and then we can get our heads down.’

  ‘Ruby said she didn’t care about the risks, but I do,’ Verity said. ‘What are they? Could she die?’

  ‘The risk of dying ain’t any bigger than ’aving a baby when you live around ’ere,’ she replied. ‘My friend knows what she’s doing, she’s a nurse. If she thinks our Ruby’s in trouble, she’ll tell me to ring for an ambulance. Course I’ll ’ave to lie through me teeth to the doctors there, make out she just started miscarrying, but they’ll see to ’er, so don’t you worry.’

  ‘Okay, then.’ Verity felt sick and faint just at the thought of it. ‘I’ll tell Ruby. But you must phone her too. Tell her you’ll look after her.’

  Angie smirked, showing bad teeth. ‘Yeah, alright, but I want you ’ere an’ all, I ain’t dealing wiv her on me own.’

  Verity didn’t intend to leave Ruby alone with her mother. ‘I’ll be here,’ she said sharply. ‘Please put some clean sheets on the bed.’

  ‘Hoity-toity,’ Angie exclaimed. ‘Who d’you think you are?’

  ‘A good friend of Ruby’s,’ she said quietly, and wrote the telephone number in Babbacombe on a small card. She wrote down her own name, with the number and extension at Cooks too, and handed it to the older woman. ‘Next Friday, then? Telephone Ruby before then. And that’s where you can contact me in an emergency.’

  ‘You ought to join the bloody police force,’ Angie said, her voice heavy with sarcasm. ‘You’re bossy enough.’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ‘What on earth is the matter with you?’ Aunt Hazel snapped at her niece. ‘I asked you to keep an eye on the sausages while I paid the insurance man, and you’ve let them burn!’

  Verity was jolted back to reality. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, looking at the sausages which were now black, and seeing the kitchen was full of acrid smoke. ‘I was thinking about work. But they’ll be alright, it’s only the skin.’

  Tomorrow Verity had to meet Ruby and go with her to Kentish Town. She was frightened for her friend, and scared of what she was going to see. She had told her aunt she was going with Ruby to meet her mother, to act as a kind of mediator, and she would stay the night.

  Her aunt had spoken to Wilby on the telephone a few times and thought she was a real ‘lady’, so she couldn’t see any good reason for Ruby wanting to see her real mother, who she referred to as ‘a bad lot’. Verity felt much the same so she’d had to invent a plausible story with Ruby to tell both Wilby and Hazel. The one they’d come up with was that Ruby felt that in order to finally put the past behind her, she really needed to know her mother’s background – in the hope that it would shed light on why she’d been such a bad mother.

  Wilby was entirely convinced, but then she’d suggested many times before that Ruby should meet up with her mother. She was the kind of person who believed any problem could be solved by discussion; Ruby had mentioned that she often had people coming to her house to talk over their problems with her.

  But Aunt Hazel was a very different kind of person; she hadn’t had Wilby’s good education, or her experience with damaged children and their destructive parents. Hazel was a black and white sort of person who saw people as either good or bad, and didn’t believe they could change. So she took the view Ruby should keep well away from her mother – and she didn’t like the idea of her niece being with her, either. Verity knew if she could see the way Angie lived, she’d be absolutely horrified, so she’d made out she was just a weak, rather dim woman who found it hard to cope.

  ‘I should’ve told you to bring your friend here to spend the night,’ Hazel said. ‘But I suppose it’s too late to change the plans now. I just hope this woman gives you a decent meal, and the bed is clean and comfortable.’

  Verity had a mental glimpse of the squalid room and the filthy sheets on the bed, and wished once again that she hadn’t got to spend a night there. ‘I’m sure it won’t be anywhere near as bad as you imagine,’ she told her aunt. ‘From what Ruby’s told me, it sounds like her mother really is trying to pull herself together.’

  ‘Pity she didn’t try when Ruby was still a child,’ Hazel sniffed. ‘I bet she only wants Ruby back now because she’s working; there’s a lot of women like that. You tell Ruby not to be stupid and fall for any old blarney.’

  ‘She likes Wilby and being in Babbacombe too much to want to go back to her mother. She just needs to lay a few ghosts, and see how things are with her mum. I can understand that.’

  ‘Times have changed,’ Hazel said thoughtfully. ‘Back when I was a girl no one would have dared speak out a
bout their parents, not even if they beat them black and blue and half starved them. Our mother was nasty, and our father was as weak as a jellyfish. But we put up with it, it’s just the way it was.’

  Verity felt terribly sorry for her aunt. She hadn’t had much of a life, pushed out by a prettier younger sister, bullied by her parents and then expected to stay and take care of them. It was no wonder she could be so cold and brusque. But just this once Verity wanted Hazel to know she cared, so she put both her arms around the older woman and hugged her.

  ‘You’ve been so kind to me,’ she said. ‘Just saying thank you isn’t really enough, but I want you to know that you are very special to me.’

  ‘Oh, get away with you.’ Hazel pushed her away. Yet her lower lip was quivering, proving she was touched and struggling not to show emotion. ‘I only did what anyone would do for their family. Besides, I like having you here with me.’

  Verity reached out and patted her aunt’s cheek tenderly. ‘And I like being here too. So don’t worry about me being away for a night, I’m not going to come to any harm.’

  Verity left work at two in the afternoon the following day to get to Paddington Station to meet Ruby. She’d said she had a dental appointment to go to. She was carrying a small overnight bag and she’d taken the precaution of adding a small bottle of Dettol, a packet of sanitary towels, soap and a clean towel. She wasn’t convinced Angie would have cleaned the place up.

  Ruby’s train had already arrived when she got there, and she was waiting by the news-stand wearing a dark blue coat, a cream woolly beret and matching scarf. She looked very pale, all her usual bounciness gone. ‘Before you ask, I’m not scared,’ she said, even before she greeted her friend. ‘I just want it to be over and done with. So don’t try to talk me out of it.’