When he’d finished eating her father looked at her.
“You’d better go to school, Ruthie.”
“It’s the holidays,” Ruthie said, surprised. “We started last week. It’s the holidays.”
He looked at her, and then he began to laugh, very loudly, his face getting redder and redder.
“Christ, it’s the holidays—the holidays,” and some spit came out of his mouth he laughed so much.
“Go wash yourself, Ruthie,” her mother said then.
“Go on. You’d better clean up, too,” but she didn’t look at Ruthie’s father when she said that, only bent over Leon to wipe his sticky face after he’d finished drinking from his cup.
Ruthie washed, enjoying the smell of the soap, the green soap that smelled so good you could almost eat it. She’d tried it once to see if it tasted as nice as it smelled, but it didn’t, and the taste had stayed in her mouth for a long time, sickly and horrible.
“I need some sleep,” her father said suddenly into the quietness of the room.
“Sure you do. You got work to do, eh?” Ruthie’s mother said.
“So there’s no need to bitch, is there? Work or not, I need sleep. I haven’t slept in a bed this past week, you hear me? Not this past week….”
“You’re breaking my heart.”
“Ah, Bessie—Bessela—don’t go on like this. So could I help it? Could I? They picked on me, I tell you—picked on me. I couldn’t stand it—and if I’d stayed they’d have had me God knows where by now, dead, maybe. That what you want? I should be killed in this stinking war? That’s what you want, eh?”
“And is it my fault?” Ruthie watched her mother, watched her face go round again as her voice got higher and higher and louder. “I started the war? It’s my fault you joined the army? I got to live on the Guardians, on lousy handouts from those bloody Rabbis because you can’t be a man, you can’t stay where you can get money for your wife and children to eat on? So I got to be pleased to see you, I got to be happy when you come running back like the stinking animal that you are?”
“You were glad enough to see me yesterday,” his voice was soft then. “You didn’t say no to …”
Ruthie screamed then, because her mother suddenly flew across the room, was scratching at her father’s face, her face twisted and ugly, and then Leon screamed, too, and her mother turned away from her father, and shouted at Ruthie, “Go downstairs! Go out into the street—go on and wait there!”
And Ruthie ran out and downstairs, her legs shaking and wobbling under her, her throat feeling thick and tight so that she couldn’t swallow. She could see it still inside her eyes, her mother’s hands curved widely against her father’s face, his head pulled back and his mouth open as he grabbed at the curved fingers and pulled them away from his face.
She sat on the step, just inside the door, where people couldn’t see her, and she cried, the tears hot on her face, and the shaking inside her going on and on as though it would never stop.
It was like it was at school, when boys in the playground started to fight. She remembered it then, how Lilian once had made her climb on the wall and hold on to the hard bricks with her fingers to watch the boys in their playground hitting each other, and rolling about on the ground. It had been just like now, the thick feeling in her throat, the shaking in her legs, and she had cried because it was so awful to see people hit each other.
She didn’t hear her mother come down the stairs because she was crying so much, not until she felt herself picked up did she know she was there.
“It’s all right, baby, it’s all right. Don’t cry, sweetheart, don’t—please don’t…”
And when Ruthie saw her mother was crying, too, it was worse than ever, and they stayed there in the dim hallway, Ruthie holding tightly to her mother, feeling her arms warm and strong round her, and they cried together. And then it was better. The feeling in her throat went away, and the shaking feeling went away, too, and Ruthie’s mother put her down on the floor, and wiped her face on her handkerchief, and smoothed her hair with her hands, and then wiped her own face, and smiled at Ruthie, a small thin smile.
“We’re going out, baby. Just wait a minute while I get Leon, and we’ll go out.”
“Where is he?”
Ruthie’s mother looked thin-faced again.
“Asleep. It’s only us who are going out—you and me and Leon. He’s asleep.”
When they came out into the street, some of the women were standing by Mrs Fleischer’s door, talking, their heads close and nodding.
“Bessie! You’ve heard?”
Ruthie’s mother stopped, standing leaning forward a little to show she was in a hurry, wanted to walk down the street.
“I can’t stop now …”
“The Levines—you haven’t heard?”
“What’s to hear?” and now Ruthie’s mother stood straight, and shifted Leon to her other arm. “What’s happened?”
“They were in the Chiltern Street shelter—down by the workshop, in the public shelter—and they got it direct. My Lenny was on at the hospital when they brought the people there—thirty-seven killed, he says, no one left of all of them, and the Levines, they was there.”
Mrs Fleischer began to cry, but her eyes were bright under the crying, and she talked without any of the noises people make when their crying is coming from right inside them.
“Oh, my God,” Ruthie’s mother said. “I can’t—oh, my God.”
“You’ll stay here?” Mrs Fleischer wasn’t crying any more, and looked closely at Ruthie’s mother. “You can pay the whole rent for the house? And their things—what’ll you do about them?”
Black Sophie came out of the little crowd of women then. “He’s back, Bessie? Come back? Is he goin’ to tell them he’s here, eh? Go back to the army? You said when he comes back you’ll go away with the children—eh?”
Ruthie’s mother shook her head, and said nothing. She just pushed through the crowd, holding onto Ruthie’s hand and with Leon over her shoulder, and the three of them went hurrying down Aspen Street towards Commercial Road.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
DOWN Aspen Street, across Commercial Road, through the traffic, past the shops and the people, and Ruthie’s mother walked so fast that Ruthie had to run to keep up. Every so often, her mother shifted Leon to her other arm, and her face was damp with sweat as she went along. Ruthie looked up at her, and thought of something suddenly.
“Where’s the pram, Mummy? I’d forgotten. Where is it? I haven’t seen it. Why isn’t Leon in the pram?”
“The pram? You’ve eaten it,” Ruthie’s mother said, and then laughed in a loud voice. “You’ve eaten it. And if they ask me why I did it, I’ll tell them, I’ll tell him, because the kids had to eat the pram and I had to kill myself humping a heavy baby with no pram.”
“I didn’t! Honestly, I didn’t,” Ruthie said loudly. The things she had really done were bad enough. She didn’t want to be blamed for something she hadn’t done. “I couldn’t eat a pram.”
“I sold it. Now, shut up …” Her mother stopped then, leaned against a wall for a moment, Leon up against her shoulder.
“Oh, God. I’m sorry, Ruthie. It isn’t your fault. I shouldn’t talk to you like that. Bad enough the way it is for you, I shouldn’t talk to you like that—I’m sorry, Ruthie, boobalah.”
Ruthie looked up at her, and said the way Mrs Ward at school said when you explained something to her, “That’s all right. I understand.”
Her mother looked at her, in a close sort of way, as though she were looking at her properly for the first time.
“Do you, Ruthie? Do you? Maybe you do, at that. Maybe I don’t think about you enough the way I should—though, God knows, I think and think what should I do for you—do you understand, Ruthie?”
It was funny standing there in the busy road, against the wall by the baker’s shop, listening to her mother talking to her in the sort of voice she used when she talked to the women in Black S
ophie’s shop. She knows, Ruthie thought. She knows I’m getting as big as the other girls, and that’s what she means.
“I think I do,” she said, trying to talk like a big person would, like the women did in Black Sophie’s shop. “I try to, but I can’t always….”
Her mother stared at her for a long time, then she moved, and began to walk again.
“I’ll tell you. I’ll call them, then I’ll tell you. You got a right to know why. I’m doing it for you, after all, aren’t I? You and Leon. And he can’t understand, Christ knows, he can’t. But when he can, if I’m not here to tell him, I want he should know, and you’ll tell him, eh, Ruthie? You’ll tell him why. I’ll call them first—then I’ll tell you.”
Round the corner into Watney Street, past the public house on the corner where decent people didn’t go, God should forbid, past the stalls in the market, past the library to the park. Across the park and the yellow worn grass, past the benches to the other side, where the three red telephone boxes were, with brown paper criss-crossed on their little square windows.
They stopped then. Ruthie’s mother pushed Ruthie down onto the bench, and put Leon on her lap.
“Sit here. I got to make a call. Then—just sit here.”
Ruthie watched her mother in the telephone box, watched her through the criss-crossed paper on the glass, over the sandbags piled round the bottom of the box, and tried to work out what the words were her mother was saying into the telephone she held so close to her face. But she couldn’t. She could see her mouth move, her eyebrows moving when her mouth did, but all Ruthie could hear was traffic, and Leon bubbling and snuffling on her lap.
Her mother put the phone down then, and stood still inside the box staring at the mirror over the phone. After a while she leaned forwards and pulled at her hair, staring in the mirror, but not as though she could really see herself doing it, just doing it because the mirror was there and that was what you did when there was a mirror.
She came out of the box then, and sat down next to Ruthie on the bench.
Ruthie looked at her, and said, “He’s ever so heavy. Can I put him down on the grass in the park?”
“Mmm? Oh. Yes. All right. We’ll go in the park.”
They sat on the grass, all three of them, and Leon crawled a little bit, but came back every time. Ruthie just sat, and looked down at the grass, watching the little ants running in between the grass stems, and she wondered how it looked to be so little, to run about next to grass that looked as big as trees because you were so little. Did ants have shelters? She began to watch ants going into very small shelters under the ground.
“It’s a terrible thing, isn’t it, Ruthie? To do such things when you don’t want to but you got to?”
Ruthie looked at her mother, and forgot to think about the ants in their shelters under the ground. Her mother had that grown-up voice again, and Ruthie straightened her shoulders so she should look like a grown-up.
“I do terrible things I don’t want to sometimes,” she said.
“Do you, Ruthie? Like what?”
Ruthie looked at her, and then away, staring across the park to the low wall where the railings used to be, but where there were now only stumps, because the railings had been taken for salvage.
“Like getting wet. I don’t want to, but it just happens.” Ruthie felt her chest begin to shake. Talking about being wet made her chest shake a lot inside.
“This is different,” her mother said, as though she hadn’t really noticed Ruthie was talking about being a pisher. “This I could help, I suppose—if I wanted to go on like I am. But how could I help it, Ruthie? The pram I’ve sold—what else’ve I got to sell? And with the Levines gone, what else can I do? I can’t pay no rent for the whole house—and I can’t sell their things, can I? Somewhere they got family—someone’ll come to get their things, you see if they don’t—and if I go and sell, then where am I? In dead trouble, that’s where. And if they put me in prison what happens to you and Leon?”
“Mummy!” Ruthie stopped trying to look grown up and moved so that she was kneeling next to her mother. “What do you mean? You’re not going to …”
“No, no, baby, it’s all right. But like I said, what else could I do? All I got left of my own I could sell is my wedding ring, and that’s worth a fat lot.” She stretched her hand out and looked at the narrow yellow ring on her finger. “A fat lot I’d get for that, believe me. So I had to do it, you see, Ruthie? I had to, whether I wanted or not.”
“Had to do what, Mummy?”
Ruthie’s mother didn’t seem to hear. “If I let him go on the way he is, what happens to us? I got to get some money coming in somehow. This way, they’ll pay my allowance again, you see? The woman at the Council, she told me. When they get him, they pay the allowance again. Three months it’s been, Ruthie. Three months, and nothing coming in but what the Guardians gave me, and the way they are, that’ll stop soon, the way they hang on to their lousy money.”
Ruthie didn’t understand, but she said again, “I understand, Mummy,” because her mother had been pleased when she’d said it before.
“You won’t hate me for it, Ruthie?” her mother said, and put her arm round Ruthie and held her close.
“I couldn’t hate you, Mummy—not even when you get mad at me,” Ruthie said, feeling pleased with herself. She was saying all the right sort of things, she knew that. She felt her mouth make a smooth round smile because she was so pleased with herself. It didn’t matter it was a lie, because sometimes she hated her mother very much, quite often really. But that didn’t matter.
“Oh, Ruthie, baby, you’re the best friend I’ve got, boobalah, my big daughter—the best friend I’ve got…” and then she was sniffing and crying, holding Ruthie close.
Ruthie wriggled so that she could stroke her mother’s hand. “It’s all right, Mummy. I’ll never hate you,” and she listened to her voice saying it, and watched herself stroking her mother’s hand like a grown-up person would, and laughed a bit inside. Her mother looked so silly, sitting on the grass and sniffing like Leon did.
“I did it for you, you know? You and Leon. If they ask you, and they will, those lousy women, they’ll find out and they’ll ask you, you’ll tell them, eh, Ruthie? Why did she shop him, Ruthie? That’s what they’ll say, and then you’ll tell them, eh, lovey?”
“Mummy did it for me and Leon,” Ruthie said and stroked her mother’s hand some more.
Her mother stopped crying after a while, and then Ruthie said, “What’s shop him, Mummy?”
Her mother looked at her, and smiled a thin sort of smile.
“What I just did. Your father ran away from the army, lovey, see? And so I got no money from them while he was on the run. And now he’s come back and I’ve shopped him—I told the army he’s here, and they’ll come and get him, and I’ll get my money again. Maybe I buy you a new dress, eh, Ruthie?”
“Yes,” said Ruthie. “A yellow one, with ships on, like Lilian’s got. I’d like a dress like that.”
Ruthie’s mother laughed then, and got up, and picked up Leon.
“You’d rather have a dress than a father, eh, Ruthie?”
“But I’ve got a father,” Ruthie said. “I haven’t got a dress with ships on.”
“Yes, you’ve got a father. Such a father. Come on, Ruthie. They should have gone by now. Come on.”
They went back the way they had come, not hurrying now. As they got nearer to Aspen Street, Ruthie’s mother walked slower and slower, until she was just dawdling the way Ruthie did sometimes.
When they got to the place opposite Aspen Street, Ruthie’s mother stopped, and stared across the road at the opening of the street, at Black Sophie’s shop on the corner, at the traffic grinding along the hot road, and the people walking past.
“There’s another thing, too,” she said, and it was as though she were Mrs Ward at school, giving a lesson to the class, explaining to them about the lesson. “With him on the run, how could I go to the count
ry with my children, where they’ll be safe? Tens of thousands have been killed in London this summer, tens of thousands. We’ve escaped by a miracle, a miracle, because by rights we should be in the country. But with him running, how could I go? For all he’s done to his children, his lovely children, how could I leave him not knowing where I am? That’s why. I did it for his good, as well as for my children, you understand? For the good of everybody.”
At the opening of Aspen Street, a car appeared, a big brown one with shapes painted on its sides in blue and green, all swirly in the bright sunshine. Ruthie looked at it carefully. It wasn’t often cars came into Aspen Street, but she remembered then. This car had come before, with the soldiers in red hats and shining white gaiters on their legs. She could see them, inside the car at the front, and then the car turned out of Aspen Street, and moved into the traffic, passed a bus, and disappeared into the heat shimmer far down Commercial Road.
Ruthie looked up at her mother, and opened her mouth to say something, but then she stopped.
Her mother was crying again, staring after the car with tears running down her face, with Leon on her shoulder and pulling at her hair though she took no notice of him doing it.
“Oh, God, Benny, you stupid bastard,” she said softly, and turned her head to wipe her eyes and nose against Leon’s back. And she said it in a soft warm voice, the sort of voice that Ruthie liked, that made her feel comfortable.
“Are we going home, Mummy?” Ruthie asked, and pulled on her mother’s arm. “Are we going home? And can we get the dress today, the yellow one with ships on, like Lilian’s?”
Her mother looked down at her, and then said, “Home? Such a home…”
“Are we going there?”
“You want to?”
Ruthie frowned a little, staring at her mother, trying to see in her face what answer she wanted, what she ought to say.
“I don’t know.”
“I never want to see the bloody place again. They can bomb it tomorrow, for all I care—tomorrow—this afternoon, you hear me? Right this afternoon, for all I care.”
The Burning Summer Page 10