by Maureen Lee
‘Me and Moira often worried that one of the lads would meet a girl and leave the other bereft,’ said Ellie, who was Rob’s mother, or might have been Larry’s – Ruby didn’t think she would ever remember who was who. ‘But, as it is, it’s worked out perfectly, both falling in love at the same time. Mind you, they’ve always done things together.’ Moira was Larry’s mother, or possibly Rob’s.
‘I’m very pleased,’ Ruby murmured.
‘Of course, we wouldn’t dream of letting you pay for the double wedding. That’d be too much to expect. Perhaps we could get together sometime and discuss the expense.’
‘I didn’t know they were planning on getting married,’ Ruby said faintly, deeply hurt that no one had told her.
‘Oh, they’re having too good a time at the moment to make plans, but Moira and me assume it’s on the cards. Don’t you?’
Ruby smiled, relieved she hadn’t been left out. ‘I think I always have, right from the minute they first met.’
Ellie linked her arm. ‘Come and have more sherry. You look as if you need it. I bet you feel shattered, meeting so many people in one go. I know I would. Oh, look, our Chris has arrived. I must introduce you to me disgraceful little brother.’
‘What did he do that was so disgraceful?’
‘He entered a seminary, became a priest, then gave it up. That was fourteen years ago, but our mam still hasn’t got over the shock.’
She half expected an ex-priest to look romantic, slightly decadent, possibly debauched, but Ellie’s brother, Chris Ryan, was none of these things. Instead, he was a distracted, untidy man about her own age, with a pleasant face and a lovely smile. She noticed he was wearing odd socks.
‘Oh, look at your tie,’ Ellie said fussily. ‘Have you got it on upside down or something?’
‘I don’t seem able to get the knot right,’ Chris said mildly, smiling at Ruby. ‘So, you’re shortly to become a member of our family, or I should say families. You must find it all very confusing. I’m never quite sure which of these people I’m related to, yet I’ve known at least half of them all my life.’
‘Don’t worry about it, luv.’ Ellie patted his hand. ‘If you need reminding, just ask me.’ She winked at Ruby. ‘Don’t take any notice of him. He’s putting it on. There’s a brain as sharp as a razor in that ugly head. Excuse me a minute, while I fetch some sherry.’
‘And a beer for me, please, sis.’
‘Go on, ask,’ said Chris when Ellie had gone.
‘Ask what?’
‘Ask why I stopped being a priest. I know Ellie will have told you. For some strange reason, she tells everyone. I think she revels a bit in having a disreputable brother.’
‘I wanted to ask, but didn’t like to,’ Ruby confessed.
‘That makes a change. Most people ask straight out.’
‘OK, so why did you stop being a priest?’
‘I’m afraid there was nothing scandalous about it. I didn’t have an affair with a nun, as most people seem to think. I lost my faith, which coincided, quite fortunately, with the start of the war. It meant I had no crisis of conscience when I left and joined the Army.’
‘Did you enjoy the Army?’
He made a rueful face. ‘My only problem was, although I was anxious to fight for my country, I wasn’t too keen on killing Germans. I was glad when it was all over and me and a German had never come face to face.’ He took her elbow. ‘I spy two empty seats. Let’s sit down.’
‘How do you use this razor-sharp brain of yours?’ Ruby asked when they were seated.
He looked at her enigmatically. ‘You’ll never guess.’
‘I’m not even going to try and guess what an ex-priest does.’
‘I’m a policeman, a detective sergeant. Plain clothes, I’m pleased to say. I could never get used to wearing a helmet.’
Ruby shook her head. ‘I can’t see you in a policeman’s uniform.’
‘Thank the Lord you never will. I was hopeless on traffic duty. I used to bless everything and it went in the wrong direction.’
She laughed. ‘Is that why you were promoted?’
‘I suspect so. The powers-that-be probably wanted me out of harm’s way.’ He waved his hand dismissively. ‘Enough about me, Ruby. Let’s talk about you. What do you do?’
She told him she was a landlady and how it had come about, going back to the day she and Beth had returned from Southport and found Arthur Cummings had died and they’d moved into Mrs Hart’s house overlooking Princes Park. She told him a surprising amount, about Connie and Charles and all the other people who’d stayed, and how they’d sheltered in the cellar and enjoyed a sing-song during the raids, about Beth going to work, the children she’d looked after, Matthew Doyle, her lodgers, Greta’s party the other week, how pleased she was the four young people had got together, that she liked Larry and Rob very much.
‘Gosh! I’ve been talking for ages,’ she said, flustered, when she’d finished. ‘You’re a very good listener. I’m surprised you didn’t die of boredom.’
‘I’ve been anything but bored.’ He was watching her with a strange expression on his face, a face that seemed rather more than pleasant now that she looked at it properly. It was sensitive, intelligent, immensely attractive. Why hadn’t she noticed before? His eyes were dark grey, his nose and mouth a bit too wide. All of a sudden, Ruby’s heart began to beat excessively loud and painfully hard.
‘Our Ellie never brought the sherry or the beer, did she?’ Chris said lightly. ‘Don’t dare move from that chair while I fetch them.’ He threw her a glance that sent her heart into overdrive. ‘If I come back and find you gone, you’ll become a wanted woman, and the entire constabulary of Liverpool will be dispatched to bring you in.’
Chapter 10
The November sky was the colour of slate. It scowled through the windows of Mrs Hart’s house where Ruby was in the kitchen making a list of O’Hagan guests for the forthcoming wedding. Beth was flying over from America, Martha and Fred Quinlan were coming, so were Connie and Charles. Greta and Heather had invited loads of friends from work, otherwise there’d only be six people on the brides’ side of the church, including herself. Not that she cared. It wasn’t her fault that she didn’t have hordes of relatives.
The double wedding would take place on the Saturday before Christmas. Ruby was making a cake for Martha to ice. The Whites were paying for the flowers, the Donovans the cars, and the three families were sharing the cost of the reception. The wedding gowns were already in the hands of a dressmaker – Heather’s regal white velvet, and Greta’s determination to look like a fairy requiring dozens of yards of organdie and tulle.
Ruby was buying her own outfit, but couldn’t decide on the colour. She changed her mind by the day. Pink was too light, brown too dark, red too bright, blue babyish, white or black out of the question. Purple had been her favourite for two whole days until Chris said it was the colour mourners wore to royal funerals.
‘What about peach or apricot?’ he suggested.
‘Too fruity.’
‘Green?’
‘Unlucky.’
‘There’s no colours left. You’ve rejected the entire rainbow.’
‘I’m considering burgundy or maroon.’
‘Too miserable.’
‘Grey?’
‘Depressing.’
‘You’re a lot of help. I know, navy blue!’
‘I’d feel as if I was with a woman copper.’
‘I might not go,’ Ruby said gloomily.
‘That seems the only solution. I suggest that before our own wedding we join a nudist colony so we can get married with nothing on. All you’d have to worry about is the colour of your lipstick.’
Ruby stretched lazily and remembered she’d thrown a cushion at him. This last year, a kind fate had showered the O’Hagan women with the most generous of blessings, first the girls, then their mother.
She and Chris Ryan were in love. They had recognised this remarkable fact the fir
st time they met. ‘I love you,’ Ruby whispered, as if he was in the room with her, able to hear, able to answer, say, ‘I love you too.’ Or maybe the precious message had carried across the miles and he had heard, sitting at his desk, or out on a case, or in that horrible bar where he went with his colleagues for a drink. She looked at her watch; almost noon. He could be anywhere.
The future stretched ahead, a glorious vision of endless days filled with happiness. As yet, they’d made no firm plans, apart from a wish to get married next summer. They hadn’t decided where to buy a house, where to go on their honeymoon, should they have a big wedding or a small one?
‘Small,’ said Chris.
‘Big,’ said Ruby.
Once she was married and no longer a landlady, for the first time in her life she would be a lady of leisure, though knew she would quickly get bored. There’d be time to learn things, study, think about a career. Chris had suggested she become a teacher. One of his mates on the force had left and was now in a teachers’ training college.
Ruby, who was inclined to think she could do anything on earth, thought it a marvellous idea, until she remembered aloud that she hadn’t been very keen on looking after other people’s children during the war.
‘You’d be teaching them, not looking after them,’ Chris pointed out. ‘You might need qualifications before they’d let you in, but you can study for them at home.’
She promised to think about it. She also thought, though she didn’t tell him, about the possibility of having more children of her own. For the umpteenth time she thought about it again, sitting at the kitchen table, making the guest list for her daughters’ wedding. It would be different this time, having babies with a proper husband at her side, enough money to feed and clothe them, loads of Chris’s relatives to provide support if she needed it. Ellie White and her family were delighted that Ruby and Chris were together.
The doorbell rang and the sound barely made an impression on Ruby’s consciousness. She jumped when it rang again, and prayed it was Chris, who occasionally called if he was in the vicinity.
It wasn’t Chris, but a strange woman in an expensive fur coat who was about to ring the bell again. ‘I thought you weren’t in,’ she said in a quiet, cultured voice.
‘Can I help you?’ Ruby enquired. She looked too posh to be selling something.
‘You’re Ruby O’Hagan, aren’t you? Oh, there’s no need to ask, I recognised you months ago, the first time I saw you.’
Ruby searched her memory, but couldn’t recall having seen the woman before and certainly not within the last few months. She looked in her sixties, with a small, tight, very ordinary face, greying hair. ‘I’m sorry, have we met?’
‘I suppose you could say we met briefly. My name’s Olivia Appleby.’ She swallowed nervously. ‘I’m your mother.’
What did you say to a mother who’d dumped you in a convent when you were less than twenty-four hours old? Ruby had no idea. She showed Olivia Appleby into the living room, then went to make tea. In the kitchen, she tried to collect her thoughts, make sense of things while waiting for the kettle to boil. She took out the best china, set the tray with a lace cloth, put sugar in the little painted bowl and milk in the matching jug, polished the teaspoons on her skirt. When everything was ready, she took a deep breath, picked up the tray, and carried it into the next room.
‘I suppose you don’t know what to say,’ remarked Olivia Appleby when she went in. She was sitting uncomfortably on the very edge of the settee, clutching her knees, as if she too found the situation difficult. The fur coat had been thrown on a chair and she wore a smart black suit underneath.
‘How did you find me? How long have you known where I live?’ Ruby asked. She was curiously empty inside, as if all emotion and feeling had drained from her body. She felt nothing for this well-spoken, well-dressed woman, neither love nor anger, but there was a vague sense of resentment that she’d turned up to disrupt her life after all this time.
‘I’ve known about you for two months. Since then, I’ve been trying to pluck up the courage to come.’ There was a slight tremor in her voice. ‘I found you through, well it’s a long story, but I’ll tell you in as few words as possible.’ She took a deep breath. ‘When I was expecting you, I lived in Bristol with a woman called Madge Cookson. She was a midwife of sorts. You’d only been born a matter of hours when someone took you away.’ A look of pain passed over her face. ‘Madge swore she’d no idea where you’d gone.’ She shrugged tiredly. ‘We stayed in touch with the occasional letter, Christmas cards, that sort of thing. Earlier this year, in August, Madge died. When her son wrote to tell me, he enclosed a letter. On the envelope, Madge had written it was to be sent to me on her death. It said, the letter, that she’d promised never to tell where my baby had been taken, but didn’t want to carry the secret to her grave and you’d gone to the Convent of the Sisters of the Sacred Cross in Abergele. She also said you’d kept your real name, Ruby O’Hagan.’ She smiled wanly at Ruby. ‘My first thought was truly horrible – I wished Madge hadn’t lived until almost ninety, that she’d died years and years before, when you were still a child.’
‘Who was the someone who took me away?’
‘My father. He dragged you from my arms.’ She cradled her arms and shivered violently. ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’
‘There’s an ashtray around somewhere.’ Ruby found one on the sideboard and put it beside the untouched tea. ‘Have you been to the convent?’
‘I went as soon as I read Madge’s letter. It’s no longer an orphanage, hasn’t been for years.’ She paused to light a cigarette, breathing in the smoke with an expression of relief, as if she’d been aching for a cigarette for ages. ‘At first, I thought they’d refuse to give me the information I wanted, but the Mother Superior was young and very understanding. She couldn’t see the harm after so many years. There was a mad search in the basement for files, and the long and short of it is I learnt you’d gone to live in Liverpool with an Emily Dangerfield.’
‘Emily left, years ago.’ Ruby felt as if she was listening to the story of some other child’s life, not her own.
‘I found that out straight away. I then resorted to the telephone directory, though thought it unlikely you’d be in. You’d have married, I reasoned. But say you’d had a son? He’d be an O’Hagan. All I had to do was ask his mother’s name. I found an R. O’Hagan at this address and drove here straight away, stopped the car outside.’ She stubbed the cigarette out and immediately lit another. ‘I saw you at an upstairs window. You’re so like your father, I wanted to cry. I went away and cried somewhere else, then I drove home. That was September. Since then, I’ve been trying to pluck up the nerve to come back.’
Ruby knew there were dozens of questions she should ask, but couldn’t think of a single one.
‘I’m surprised you never married,’ commented the woman who claimed to be her mother.
‘I did. His name was Jacob and he was killed in the war. I kept my own name. It would take too long to explain why.’ She didn’t want to. All she wanted was for the woman to go away and never come back because it was disquieting to discover she had a mother when she’d managed quite well without one for thirty-eight years.
‘I’m so sorry about your husband. Have you any children?’
‘Two girls; Greta and Heather. They’re getting married in December. It’s a double wedding.’
‘I suppose you’re up to your eyes. I remember when my own daughter...’ She broke off, embarrassed. ‘I meant, my other daughter. Oh!’ she cried. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any chance of us becoming friends? It’s been too long.’
‘I reckon so,’ Ruby said slowly and felt ashamed when she saw the look of anguish on Olivia Appleby’s pale, unhappy face.
‘Perhaps I should go. I’m sure you’re very busy and I’m probably holding you up.’ She reached for her coat.
‘Please, don’t.’ If she left, Ruby would kick herself later for not asking things she’d always
been curious to know. It would also be very cruel. This woman had clearly grieved for her lost child far more than the child had grieved for its mother. She tried to imagine how she would have felt if one of her daughters had been torn from her arms when only a few hours old and she’d never seen her again, but it was impossible. ‘Tell me about my father?’ she said trying to make her voice sound warm and friendly.
The woman smiled properly for the first time, a sweet, almost childish smile. Her eyes lit up. ‘His name was Thomas Gerald O’Hagan. We met in France towards the end of the First World War. I was a nurse, he was my patient.’
‘Did he know about me?’
‘No, he died before I knew I was pregnant. He was an American, born in Boston.’
‘An American!’
‘His father had a bookshop where Tom worked. We were going to get married after the war.’ Her head drooped. ‘He was my one and only love. I never fell in love again. I married Henry Appleby for companionship. He was a widower, much older than me. I never told him about you. I was only forty when he died.’ She twisted the wedding ring on her finger. ‘It was a good marriage. We were content with each other. We had three children – a daughter and two sons, all married now, leading their own lives, and providing me with grandchildren. I have eight,’ she said with a touch of pride.
‘Ten.’
She flushed. ‘Ten, counting yours.’ She leant forward and looked at Ruby anxiously. ‘Tell me, have you been happy? I’ve thought of you constantly over the years; on your birthday, or whenever I saw a girl your age. Madge told me this would happen. I’d wonder what you were doing, where you were living, but most of all I longed to know if you were happy.’