Just outside the station Ruby could see Derek Yardley, the Wheatons’ driver, watching through the fence. As the train moved away she saw him raise a hand and wave. To all intents and purposes it was a friendly wave but she could see his stone-cold eyes staring directly at her. She hated him with a passion. He was the one person she certainly wouldn’t miss, and she knew without doubt that he was pleased to see the back of her, too.
Ruby remained dry-eyed and outwardly unemotional but inside she felt sick and angry at the thought both of what she was leaving behind and of what she was going back to.
It just wasn’t fair.
Five years previously, amid many tears and tantrums, the ten-year-old Ruby had fought desperately against being evacuated from her home and family in wartime East London to the safety of a sleepy village in the Cambridgeshire countryside. Just the thought of going had been terrifying to the young girl, who had never been away from home for even a night. But once she had adjusted to the change, she had settled in and her time with Babs and George Wheaton had turned into the happiest of her life. She had stayed on long after the other evacuees had returned home.
But now the war was over and, despite pleading for Ruby to be allowed to stay indefinitely, her host family had been told that their evacuee had to return to her real family.
Ruby’s eldest brother, Ray, had visited a few weeks previously and stated in no uncertain terms that it was way past time for the only daughter to do her bit for the cash-strapped family. Her mother wasn’t prepared to agree to her staying away any longer.
Leaning back in her seat, Ruby closed her eyes. She was dreading it.
After five years living with the very middle-class country GP and his wife, who had picked her randomly from the crocodile of scared evacuees transported to the village school playground, Ruby had changed dramatically. She had morphed from a frightened shadow of a child into a self-confident and popular young woman with a good brain and a quick wit, although there was still a certain stubbornness about her that could surface quickly if she was crossed.
She had also grown accustomed to being loved and cared for, even spoiled, by her childless host parents.
It was all so different from her other home, a small terraced house in Walthamstow where she had lived for the first ten years of her life; the home where she had been brought up, the youngest child with three brothers who had constantly overshadowed her early years with their boisterous masculinity and smothering overprotectiveness; the home where her bedroom was the tiny boxroom and her role was to be seen and not heard, especially by her father. Ruby thought that her mother probably loved her in her own way, but she didn’t have any time for her, and Ruby’s enduring memory of those first ten years was of constant loneliness and anxiety. She hadn’t actually been unhappy at the time because she didn’t know any different, but now she knew how childhood could and should be.
Sitting in the carriage, carefully avoiding any eye contact with the other passengers, Ruby could feel the old anxiousness returning, but she resisted the urge to nibble around the edges of her nails as she had when she was a child.
There was something niggling her, a thought that she couldn’t quite get hold of. She could see how her mother would be run ragged and struggling to cope with a house full of adults, but she couldn’t understand why anyone in her position would fight to add an extra person into the mix, an extra mouth to feed. It simply didn’t make any sense.
When Ray had unexpectedly turned up on the doorstep a few weeks previously to order her home, Ruby had been mortified. The gawky schoolboy she remembered had turned into a sneering young man. Ray Blakeley had gone from rowdy boy to ill-mannered lout, the kind of person Babs and George had always encouraged her to avoid at all costs.
‘Ruby? There’s someone here to see you. I’ve sent him round to the front door,’ George had shouted through the hatch in the door that joined his village surgery to the house.
Ruby had run down the stairs from her bedroom expecting to see one of her friends in the lobby, but instead there was a young man. She looked at him curiously for a moment and then realised.
‘Ray? What are you doing here?’ She couldn’t keep the shock out of her voice.
‘Now that’s not a nice way to talk to your big brother, is it, Rubes?’ he grinned. ‘No hello? No long time no see? No nothing at all?’ With both hands in his pockets he looked her up and down critically and shook his head. ‘I dunno, look at you done up like a dog’s dinner. Looks like I got here just in time before you get any more stupid ideas above your station. Mum told me you’re all la-di-dah now.’
‘I’ve just got back from the town; I was just going to get changed,’ she countered defensively.
‘Just got back from the town,’ he mimicked her voice and enunciation with a wide grin. ‘Just got back from the town. Posh talk there, girl.’
As a bright scarlet blush crept up her face, Ruby could feel herself shrivelling inside, reverting back to the trampled-over child she had been before her evacuation. But then she noticed Babs standing in the kitchen doorway, observing quietly, and her confidence returned.
‘Aunty Babs, this is my oldest brother, Ray. He’s come to see me,’ Ruby said brightly, looking for a distraction.
Ray glanced dismissively at the woman before turning his attention back to Ruby.
‘Oh, no, you’ve got it wrong, Rubes. I haven’t come to see you, I’ve come to take you back home. Now.’
‘But I don’t want to go back.’ As soon as the words were out she realised she’d made a mistake. ‘I mean, I’m not ready. You can’t just turn up without warning and expect me to go with you. I’ve got school and all sorts of things …’
‘No choice there, Rubes darling. School’s done for you, and Mum wants you back home, what with the old man more than likely dead, please God.’ He paused and grinned before continuing, ‘But you know that. Enough mucking around – she’s writ often enough – so now she’s asked me to come and get you; drag you, if I have to. Time to stop being all duchesslike and get back to where you belong.’
Babs stepped forward quickly, held her hand out and smiled.
‘I’m pleased to meet you, Ray. I’ve heard so much about you. Dr Wheaton and I were so sorry to hear about your father. I have sent my condolences to your mother.’ Her smile widened in welcome. ‘But you’ve had a long journey and you must be famished. Come through to the kitchen and I’ll make you some tea and find you something to eat. If I’d known you were coming I’d have had a meal waiting.’
As he ignored the proffered hand it was obvious Ray was confused by the welcome, and he stared suspiciously at this seemingly genial woman. But when Babs and Ray locked eyes for several moments Ruby could see that the gauntlet was down, although she wasn’t sure who had thrown it.
‘OK, must admit I’m bloody starving; but then we have to get back.’ He looked back to his sister. ‘You go and get your stuff packed as quick as you can while I have a feed. I can’t muck around all day. And I hope you’ve got your train fare else you’ll have to run behind.’ He laughed as he held his hand out palm up towards Babs and rubbed thumb and forefinger together theatrically. ‘Oh, and we expect a bit of payback for keeping our Rube here for so long …’
Ruby could feel crushing embarrassment taking over her whole body. Ray was behaving like a complete lout and she couldn’t figure out why. He’d always been a bully but she didn’t remember him being quite so bad-mannered.
‘Oh dear, Ray, I’m really sorry but I don’t think Ruby should travel today. She’s been a bit under the weather the last few days.’ Babs Wheaton’s expression was suitably apologetic. ‘There’s a lot of mumps going about the village. We’re not sure if Ruby’s got it yet, but it can be really bad for young men. I wouldn’t like to see you or your brothers go down with it. The side effects could be really nasty …’
As he thought about it Ray Blakeley screwed his eyes up and stared intently at his sister’s neck. ‘She looks all right to me, and
she’s just come back from town.’ Again he put on the silly voice. ‘She wouldn’t be out and about if she were that bloody sick …’
Babs reached forward and placed her palm on Ruby’s forehead.
‘Your sister’s such a good girl, she’s putting on a brave face and pretending to be fine, but we’re worried the mumps may be in the incubation period. We’re not sure yet.’ Again Babs smiled. ‘But we’ll soon see. Now let’s go and see what I can conjure up to feed you, but don’t sit too close to Ruby. Just in case.’
Her words hung in the air as Babs led the way through into the kitchen and motioned for the brother and sister to sit at opposite ends of the vast farmhouse table. As he looked around the homely room with a slight sneer on his face, Ruby studied Ray and tried to work out whether he was being deliberately uncouth for effect.
With his even features, dark brown hair and a jaunty moustache, he looked older than nineteen. His clothes were clean, his shoes polished and he looked presentable enough – smart, even – but he had an arrogant swagger in his walk and more than a hint of aggression in the angry eyes that stared out from behind horn-rimmed spectacles. As she watched and listened, Ruby decided that, despite his being her brother, she really didn’t like Ray Blakeley one bit.
As Ruby surreptitiously studied him from the other end of the table, Babs quickly made some thick cheese and pickle sandwiches and put a plate in front of him along with a chunk of cold apple pie, a big mug of tea and a white napkin tucked inside a ring.
Ruby watched in fascination as, ignoring the napkin, Ray stuffed the food in his mouth, washing each mouthful down with a swig of tea and dribbling as he talked with his mouth full. Within a few minutes the plates were clean and he looked at Babs, leaned back in his chair, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and belched. ‘Another cuppa’ll really go down a treat, missus.’
It was at that moment that Ruby, overwhelmed with shame, knew he was being deliberately uncouth; that he was being provocative. She also knew that her mother would be equally horrified because none of them had been brought up to speak like that to anyone, let alone an adult, or to behave like that at the table.
As she stared at her brother in disgust a door next to the walk-in pantry opened and Dr Wheaton came through from his surgery at the other side of the rambling old house. His wheelchair clunked as he expertly wheeled himself across the stone-flagged kitchen floor and manoeuvred himself up to the table.
‘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.
TWO
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, she 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?’
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.’
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