The Silver Ladies of London

by Lesley Eames

  Aghast, Jenny put her hands to her mouth. Poor, poor Johnnie.

  ‘I’m not blaming you and I’m not blaming Hux,’ Johnnie said. ‘You’ve both behaved honourably, but you belong together. I’m in the way.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Yes.’ He tilted her chin, kissed her forehead, then smiled. ‘Goodbye, Jenny. Be happy.’

  ‘Johnnie, stop!’

  But he got in his car and drove away.

  Fifty-three

  Ruth had seen Johnnie leave the party and supposed his leg was hurting. It was just like him not to make a fuss, but he’d left his hat behind. She picked it up to take it to him only to hesitate, fearful of interrupting a goodnight kiss.

  She stood undecided for a while, then walked slowly downstairs, coughing loudly to warn of her approach. Stepping outside, she realised she’d been overcautious because Johnnie had already driven off. ‘He left his hat,’ Ruth told Jenny.

  When no answer came, Ruth glanced round and was astonished to see her friend in tears.

  ‘Jenny, what’s wrong?’

  Jenny was too distraught to speak, so Ruth simply gathered her close. Had there been a setback in Johnnie’s recovery? More trouble with his parents?

  ‘He’s gone,’ Jenny finally got out.

  ‘Yes, but once he’s rested—’

  ‘He’s broken off our engagement.’

  What? Ruth was staggered. Speechless. Johnnie adored Jenny.

  But he’d been quiet at the party. He’d watched everyone else with an expression she’d taken for indulgent amusement but now realised was the sad smile of someone seeing friends for the last time.

  Ruth didn’t understand it, but one thing was clear. Darling Johnnie had gone without a word to Ruth and she’d never see him again. The pain hit her like a punch in the stomach. She wanted to double over in agony. She couldn’t breathe. Could barely stand.

  But there was Jenny to consider and, as always, Ruth’s own heart had to crack and crumble in secret.

  ‘I can’t go back to the party,’ Jenny shuddered.

  ‘Let’s get you to bed. If anyone asks, I’ll say you’ve got a headache from all the champagne.’

  Upstairs, she waited for Harry to put on a bouncy tune that had most people dancing, then steered Jenny into the sanctuary of the living quarters.

  Jenny sank onto her bed, her lovely face wan. ‘You won’t—’

  ‘Let anyone in? No one will get past me,’ Ruth promised.

  ‘You’re a wonderful friend.’

  No, she wasn’t. Ruth had betrayed Jenny a thousand times in her head.

  Grace gave Ruth a quizzical look as she stationed herself like a guard outside the door. ‘Is Jenny—’

  ‘Headache,’ Ruth explained, then sat and endured her misery until the party finally wound to a close.

  ‘It wasn’t quite what I’m used to, but it was amusing,’ Lady Violet told them, and her crony said, ‘My word!’

  ‘We’ll clear up in the morning,’ Grace insisted. ‘We’re all too exhausted to bother now.’

  Eventually only Grace, Lydia and Ruth remained.

  ‘Now then,’ Grace said. ‘Jenny hasn’t really got a headache, has she?’

  ‘Is it Hux?’ Lydia asked. ‘Has Johnnie found out about Hux?’

  Ruth swapped baffled looks with Grace. Then Grace’s eyes widened. ‘Surely you don’t mean—’

  ‘I just mean they like each other,’ Lydia said. ‘A lot.’

  Ruth was stunned. Being so much in love with Johnnie herself, it had never crossed her mind that Jenny’s feelings had weaker foundations. But Ruth knew all too well that it was impossible to love – or stop loving – to order.

  ‘Jenny must be feeling dreadful,’ Grace said.

  ‘She is,’ Ruth confirmed. Jenny would never have wounded Johnnie deliberately.

  There was neither sound nor movement from her when they crept into the living quarters to go to bed.

  Ruth lay staring sightlessly at the ceiling. Johnnie must be suffering so. And Ruth would never see him again. She buried her face in her pillow and cried silent tears.

  Jenny was pale the next morning. ‘I hate myself for hurting Johnnie.’

  ‘You can’t help your feelings,’ Grace reasoned.

  ‘I love him so much.’

  ‘Of course. But there are all sorts of love.’

  ‘So people keep telling me.’

  ‘Johnnie wouldn’t want to marry someone whose affections were fixed on someone else.’

  ‘I should have fought those affections.’

  ‘I’m sure you did fight.’

  ‘I should have fought harder.’

  Grace patted Jenny’s arm as though time would help her to see things clearly.

  An unusually sombre Harry arrived later and Ruth heard him speaking quietly to Lydia. ‘Has something gone wrong between Jenny and Johnnie?’

  ‘They’ve broken off their engagement.’

  ‘Hux thought that might be the case. He feels terrible.’ Harry walked over to Jenny and knelt in front of her. ‘Hux wants you to know he’s sorry for causing you and Johnnie pain. He would have come himself but—’

  ‘I can’t see him,’ Jenny said, alarmed.

  ‘That’s what he thought. But he’s sorry.’

  Nothing was heard from Johnnie over the following days. Ruth parcelled up his hat and sent it to him care of his landlady, but no reply came.

  ‘You’re all being wonderfully gentle with me,’ Jenny said, after a week had passed. ‘I may not be getting married anymore, but you are, Grace. You too, Lydia. It’s sweet of you to avoid the subject of weddings, but you need to press on with your arrangements and I want to help. What are you planning to wear, Grace?’

  ‘I haven’t given it much thought.’

  ‘I’ll gladly make a dress for you.’

  ‘I’m wearing overalls to my wedding,’ Lydia said.

  ‘You’re wearing a dress,’ Grace told her, and that was the end of that argument.

  ‘I’d like to help with the weddings too,’ Ruth offered. ‘I’ll help with anything.’

  ‘No one helps more than you,’ Grace smiled.

  No one else had feelings they needed to hide behind a bustle of activity. Only when Ruth was alone could she allow thoughts of Johnnie to wash over her. Sometimes she’d take out the gifts he’d given her – the camera and the souvenir soap from the Empire Exhibition – and remember his smile as he’d presented them to her. But it was an indulgence she allowed herself only occasionally. Most of the time she fought the temptation in the hope of getting over him sooner, though the weeks became a month and Ruth’s grief remained raw.

  She was thinking about Johnnie as she walked along Oxford Street after buying the buttons Jenny wanted for Grace’s wedding dress. Was he still in London? Would he stop to talk if he saw her in the crowds or rush away as she reminded him too painfully of Jenny?

  Ruth made her way down to the underground station and along to her platform just as a train was approaching. What if Johnnie were on it? What if—

  Ruth screamed as a shove from behind her sent her staggering forward. The dark pit of the train tracks yawned beneath her. She was falling…

  ‘Watch out, Miss!’

  Someone grabbed her arm and hauled her back onto the platform just as the train thundered past.

  It was a man in workman’s clothes. ‘You shouldn’t get so close to the edge, Miss. You know what people are like, pushing forward to get the best seats.’

  Ruth stared at him, wild-eyed. Her heart was pounding so fast she could barely breathe.

  ‘Steady on, Miss. You’re safe now, though your hat’s a goner. It fell on the tracks.’

  He shuffled onto the train. After a moment, Ruth caught up with him.

  ‘It was the crowd pushing forward that forced me to the edge?’

  ‘What else could it have been?’

  ‘Sorry. I’m a little overcome.’

  ‘Let it be a lesson to you, Miss
.’

  Ruth found a seat and sat down. She’d hardly thought of Vic these last weeks but he was out there somewhere. Could he have—?

  No, someone would have seen if he’d pushed her.

  Or would they?

  It could so easily have been her lying crushed on the tracks instead of her hat.

  Ruth was still shaking when she reached her stop, but she’d decided there was no point in alarming the others over what might have been an accident. ‘The stupidest thing,’ she told them. ‘The wind blew my hat under the wheels of a lorry.’

  In all the bustle of Grace’s wedding preparations, no one questioned her story or appeared to notice the nervousness that persisted over the days that followed.

  There was only one awkward moment when she was out on a booking with Lydia. ‘What are you looking at?’ Lydia suddenly asked.

  ‘A nice coat,’ Ruth invented, blushing.

  She’d been staring at a red-haired man, but he was nothing like Vic. Perhaps Ruth was worrying over nothing.

  Grace was adamant that her wedding shouldn’t be extravagant. ‘Owen’s building up his business and I’m building up ours,’ she said firmly.

  It was a beautiful occasion even so. Jenny had made Grace a delicately pretty white organdie wedding dress with a handkerchief hemline and a lace-trimmed veil. Harry drove Grace to church in the flower-bedecked Silver Lady, then walked her up the aisle followed by Jenny, Lydia and Ruth in their Silver Ladies uniforms as Grace had refused to agree to new bridesmaid dresses. ‘Your uniforms will look lovely,’ she’d insisted. ‘Besides, they feel right to me as I’m so passionate about the business.’

  Owen waited at the end of the aisle, his eyes agleam with love. Sitting in the wheelchair Owen had bought for her, Grace’s gran watched the ceremony with obvious joy. Afterwards they celebrated with a simple buffet in a room above the George pub.

  A week’s honeymoon in Brighton followed and Grace returned looking radiant. She moved straight into Owen’s house as there was plenty of room now Owen’s cousin had taken a separate property, though he’d left behind a daughter, Gwyneth, who wanted to help look after Mrs Lavenham while Grace was working.

  Hux had declined his invitation, pleading a prior commitment. ‘He’s being sensitive,’ Grace had approved, though she hadn’t long returned from honeymoon when Ruth overheard her talking to Jenny.

  ‘You shouldn’t punish yourself for being attracted to Hux,’ Grace said. Jenny had shrunk into herself since her broken engagement, guilt sitting heavily on her slender shoulders.

  ‘I deserve to be punished. I let Johnnie down.’

  ‘You mistook your feelings. Johnnie wasn’t bitter, was he?’

  ‘He was kind. Forgiving.’

  ‘Then it’s time you forgave yourself. Keeping Hux away isn’t helping Johnnie. It’s just making you and Hux miserable. I think you should give yourselves a chance.’

  Lydia’s wedding took place in a church near Fairfax Park, where she was walked down the aisle by her awkward but proud father. Frank Grey still had a long way to go to become a loving and supportive father but at least he was trying which was more than could be said for either of Ruth’s parents. Lydia looked stunningly elegant in the white satin dress of slender simplicity, which Jenny had made for her. Jenny had also made bridesmaid dresses for Ruth and herself, and a Matron of Honour dress for Grace, after agreeing to make them in the Fairfax Park racing team colour of dark green.

  Lydia controlled herself for the ceremony but behaved like a hoyden at the reception. Held at Fairfax Park itself, it was a riotous occasion with dancing in the clubhouse, fairground rides outside and even racing on the track – Lydia having tugged off her beautiful dress and scrambled into overalls – until Sam decided the alcohol consumption made driving dangerous.

  Unsurprisingly, Hux was Harry’s best man, but he kept a respectful distance from Jenny until the party was well underway. Ruth saw him choose a moment when Jenny was alone to walk over and sit next to her.

  ‘I’m sorry about Johnnie,’ he said gently. ‘I know how much you care for him.’

  ‘I do. But I understand now that I love him as a brother rather than a husband, and Johnnie deserves better than that.’ Jenny had won through her struggles to a calm acceptance that Johnnie’s decision had been the right one for both of them.

  ‘Johnnie does deserve better,’ Hux told her. ‘So do you. I may not have known you for long, but I do know I love you the way a man should love his wife.’

  ‘I love you too, Hux.’ Jenny smiled at him, a little shy but ready now to move forward into another exciting chapter of her life.

  Ruth crept away to give them privacy. When she saw them again, they were holding hands as they waved Lydia and Harry off on honeymoon. No one knew where they were going because they didn’t know themselves. They simply got into Harry’s car and drove off.

  They returned ten days later with merry tales of a night spent in a ditch following a puncture, another night when Harry leapt onto a hotel bed and broke it, and even a flight in an aeroplane. ‘It was all a hoot,’ Lydia reported happily.

  Hux was visiting regularly and Ruth knew his marriage to Jenny couldn’t be far away even if neither of them had mentioned it yet, perhaps out of respect to Johnnie. If they asked Ruth to be their bridesmaid, she’d be performing that service for the third time. Three times a bridesmaid and never the bride, the saying went. Ruth fought hard against the feeling of depression it brought.

  One evening when Owen was visiting his cousin and Ruth didn’t want to play gooseberry to Jenny and Hux, Ruth spent some time in Grace’s house.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ Grace said. ‘Owen and I would love you to live with us when Jenny marries. Don’t think you’d be in the way because we’ve already got Gran and Gwyneth. Besides, I’d welcome another pair of hands around the place.’

  Grace blushed and Ruth suddenly guessed the reason. ‘You’re not—’

  ‘A little Tedris. Sooner than we’d thought, but we’re delighted and Gran’s over the moon.’

  ‘I’m thrilled for you.’

  ‘You’d be comfortable here too. No car parts littering the place.’

  Lydia’s flat was a grand apartment in Belgravia, but it was never tidy.

  ‘Did you hear Lady Violet sat on a spanner?’ Ruth asked. ‘Now she’s insisting they have a maid. She and Lydia get on very well considering they’re both forceful personalities.’ Lydia had taken Aunt Violet out in the Silver Lady tonight.

  ‘You won’t forget what I said about moving in?’ Grace asked, when Ruth got up to leave.

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ Ruth promised.

  Owen usually walked Ruth back up the mews, but tonight Grace came out to watch her walk up alone. ‘Wave when you’ve arrived safely,’ Grace said.

  Ruth was thoughtful as she headed towards the office. She really didn’t want to live alone – she was too nervous – but neither did she wish to impose on her friends. Perhaps she should take lodgings where she could feel independent yet safe.

  Even now her eyes were searching the shadows and her ears listening for suspicious sounds. She neared Silver Ladies with relief. Hux’s car had gone, but Jenny had the office light on, projecting welcoming squares of brightness onto the cobbles.

  Ruth turned and waved to Grace, confirming all was well. It was only as she turned back that her heart jolted suddenly.

  Was there something solid in the shadows just beyond the garage gates where the light didn’t reach? Could it be Vic lying in wait for her?

  Fear tingled down to Ruth’s fingertips. She tiptoed backwards, praying he hadn’t seen her. But then she heard a groan and halted. ‘Johnnie?’

  If only it weren’t so dark!

  Another groan came from the shadows and this time Ruth was certain. Rushing forward, she found Johnnie slumped on the ground, his face stained with gleaming darkness. Blood?

  Obviously he’d returned to see Jenny, but what had happened? Had he stumbled? Hit h
is head on the wall?

  ‘Evening, Ruthie.’

  The voice chilled Ruth to her core. She turned slowly as Vic stepped from the shadows on the opposite side of the mews.

  ‘Did you really think I’d disappeared? Even after I’d said hello in the underground station?’

  So he had pushed her and could easily have killed her. Clearly, Vic would stop at nothing.

  Ruth’s body was weak with terror, but her mind struggled free. She glanced down the mews, but Grace had gone. Jenny might hear Ruth scream and telephone for help, but it would take time for help to arrive and if Jenny rushed to Ruth’s aid herself, she’d be in danger too.

  ‘What do you want with me?’ Ruth asked, horribly aware of Johnnie lying injured and in need of help but trying to buy more thinking time by keeping Vic talking.

  ‘Revenge, of course. No one causes trouble for me and gets away with it.’ Quick as lightning, he grabbed her throat.

  Ruth gasped but found she could breathe. Just. ‘You brought it on yourself.’

  ‘I wanted a share of good fortune, that’s all. But you had to set the police on me and I’ve been running from them ever since. It’s no life, being on the run.’

  His body smelt sour. Unclean.

  ‘Why did you hurt Johnnie?’ She could see him out of the corner of her eye. The man she loved.

  ‘He got in my way. Tried to stop me.’

  ‘Stop you from what?’

  ‘This.’

  He thrust her round and she saw a strange light beginning to flicker in the gap between the cobbles and the bottom of the garage gates. Ruth knew a moment’s puzzlement, then understanding burst into her brain.

  It was fire. Vic was burning Silver Ladies. While Jenny was upstairs.

  ‘No!’ Ruth cried, only to choke as Vic tightened his fingers.

  Her feet scrabbled on the cobbles as he dragged her into the shadows from which he’d emerged. Vic’s hand left her throat momentarily but was replaced almost immediately by his arm. He bent to pick something up, and when he straightened again, Ruth heard a match strike. Her heart kicked in panic. He was going to burn her too!