‘Of course Ruby is special,’ I said. ‘But don’t you think it’s funny, Sadie; two baby girls born in the same district around the same time, with the same birthmark. It doesn’t add up. It’s too much of a coincidence.’
‘No!’ she said, her voice rising. ‘I want no part in this.’
‘No part in what, Sadie? All I want to know is the truth. Please believe me when I say that I’m not trying to—’
She shook her head. ‘I want no part in it and you can tell Maud that too when you see her. Tell her I want no part in it.’
‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘I won’t tell her we spoke. She’s got enough to worry about with her illness.’
‘She ain’t ill,’ said Sadie suddenly. ‘There’s nothing wrong with her.’
‘Sadie,’ I said. I reached forward and patted her arm gently. ‘She’s seen a doctor and he said that it was TB. There’s been tests and everything. She doesn’t like to show it, but I’ve seen her myself, coughing up blood on her handkerchief.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Not her. She’s had it before and she got through it, she recovered.’
‘TB is not like chickenpox,’ I said. ‘She can have it again.’
‘No, that would be bad luck.’ She shook her head and her eyes moistened. ‘She don’t deserve that. It’s just too much bad luck.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said quietly.
‘I’m sorry too,’ she said.
And then I saw it again, that curious expression on her face – the one she had all those years ago in the shining white room at the hospital, the expression that I couldn’t quite read. Suddenly my head was flooded with sterile metal surfaces and white clinical gowns, with hard metal incubators and the clink of surgical instruments. Somewhere I could smell disinfectant and my stomach churned with the memory of morphine. Sweat trickled between my shoulder blades and the bright orbs of the hospital lights swayed in the almshouse window.
Then Sadie was standing over me again, just how she had done that day.
‘Are you all right, Mrs Marks? You seem to have gone pale.’
I opened my mouth to answer but there was a clatter in the hall, a gust of fresh air and giggles.
Ruby stood in the doorway.
27
Ruby
My name is Ruby Brown – that is what they tell me. But why should I believe them when everything else they say is a lie? Clarence tells me that I was born on a Monday, but that is a lie because everybody knows that ‘Monday’s child is fair of face’, and my face isn’t at all fair. Maudy tells me she is my mother, but that is a lie because everybody knows you can’t have a baby if you aren’t married and there is no ring on her finger. Emma tells me that violets indoors don’t bring bad luck, but that is a lie because I brought violets into the henhouse and the chickens died. They tell me lots of thing but sometimes the lies hide in what they don’t say.
We didn’t spend long with Aunt Sadie. One minute I was looking for somewhere to hide for a game of sardines and the next thing I knew Emma was yelling at me to put on my coat and bustling me right out the door again. It was well before lunch and we’d already walked back past the black church and for what seemed like miles down the long hedgy road.
Emma was talking a lot, and fast, like she didn’t want me to get a word in. I knew why she was doing it; she thought that if she was always talking then I couldn’t question her. She tried to distract me too, wittering on about this and that – the weather that morning, the flowers in the hedgerows, the ruts on the road, the pictures of the posh houses on the billboards, anything at all that she could see – until my head was spinning. She kept on pointing at things and asking questions, then stopping, just long enough to let me nod and then she was off again.
It had all started when I walked in on them, her and Sadie. All I did was open the door and see them both sitting there with faces like stone and right then I knew that I shouldn’t be in that room with them, but it was too late, so I just stood there looking stupid. I could hear them talking before I got in, hear their voices from behind the door, but once I was in there, they stopped dead and stared at me like I was a ghost. That’s when Emma muttered something about leaving and having to get back in time for something or other and how lovely it had been to meet up and she hoped the weather would continue to be good.
Emma stopped gabbling at last and looked around, all desperate, for something to talk about. She didn’t notice that I was dumb anyway. It had shocked me that Emma and Sadie were all tight-lipped like that, and I won’t forget the looks on their faces for a long time. I expected this kind of thing from Maudy and Clarence of course, they always had their secrets, but I didn’t expect it from Emma. I had thought that I could trust her, but just then I wasn’t so sure. So I walked on, lost in my own thoughts, just putting one foot in front of the other.
We walked past the station. Emma looked at the ticket office in a strange way, craning her neck up to look at the roof. She went on and on about how she could remember the station being built and how she was on the first train into London – it made her sound very old. But the building looked even older, with mud splashed on the bricks and posters curling off the walls. Emma squeezed my hand and opened her mouth and she looked like she wanted to say much, much more, but then she just looked sad and we walked on again.
We walked past the village green and there she prattled on about the café where she used to live, as if I cared – I didn’t. She squeezed my hand like it was my family who had lived there too, like it should mean something to me. She squatted down right beside me and looked into my eyes, like it was very important for me to know that.
‘My parents,’ she said all wistful. ‘Oh, I wish you could have known them.’
But they were just people who are dead, people who had nothing to do with me.
I didn’t care about any of this, of course, but then I started to wonder if she really did either. And suddenly I thought that maybe she was just trying to get me to forget that I had caught her and Sadie plotting and that she was trying to get me to think of something else.
At the doctor’s surgery, she pointed to the little white building and said that it was where Dr Marks worked; nothing more. I knew this of course, but here she’d got me because I did start to think about other things – about Dr Marks. And how I didn’t want to go back to her house. You see, something had crashed onto the floor as I grabbed my cardigan and ran out door that morning. I didn’t touch anything, but the crash did happen the same time as I was running. I felt my stomach go all warm. Whatever it was, Dr Marks would have found it.
I remembered his face as I had come down to breakfast that morning – the look of hate. He kept staring at my face like I was an ugly little horror. I wanted to shout at him, tell him it wasn’t scabies, like I did with Emma, but something stopped me. He wasn’t the type of man to do that to and, as we looked at each other, something passed between us which Emma didn’t see, like we had a pact to hate each other, but Emma was all thrilled to have me there and didn’t notice a thing.
That wasn’t the first time I had seen Dr Marks, of course; although Emma didn’t know that and he didn’t either. He had come to Rose Cottage when Maudy first got ill with her mouth ulcer. Jim and John had been running around making a nuisance, but I’m shy of posh-types so I stayed in the yard and peeked through the window.
I thought he was a funny-looking man, and I don’t mean in a good way; he was small and thin, with wisps of hair oiled in straight lines over his shiny head. A handkerchief was wound round his face like a comic-book bandit and he had no eyes, just blank little spectacles like cold pebbles.
But it wasn’t any of that that made me hate him. It was the way he covered his mouth before he even came through the door, the way he jumped back when anyone spoke to him and the way he would wipe his hands over and over. I fancied that it wasn’t the illness he found repulsive, it was us.
It isn’t very nice to think like that, I know, but those were the thoughts I had f
or the rest of the way home.
When we got back, Dr Marks was angry. ‘Ruby!’ he shouted as we stepped through the door.
‘Ruby, go upstairs,’ said Emma.
‘No, she must stay,’ he shouted, chopping the air with his hand. ‘She must stay and hear this!’
And so I was stuck wobbling back and forth, one leg stepping to the stairs and the other rooted to the spot until I feared that I would split in two.
He bent down low so that his face was right in front of mine. ‘Have you any idea why I am upset?’ he shouted. His face was terrible. His glasses were so thick that I couldn’t see his eyes, like they had whited themselves out with rage.
‘Something broke,’ I said. ‘I heard it but it wasn’t me, it was the wind as I ran out of the door this morning.’
‘That!’ he shouted. ‘Well at least you will admit to breaking something. Have you anything else to tell me while you are at it?’
I tried to think. We had only known each other for one morning and I already knew all the things he didn’t like about me – the way I slumped at the breakfast table, took too much butter on my knife and chewed with my mouth open. I didn’t think that there could be anything left for him to complain about and I started to wonder if I was drawing breath the wrong way.
I took a guess and pointed at the wireless. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I was just playing a game – I didn’t know what that knob did.’
He shook his head angrily, as if me merely opening my mouth was a waste of his time. Had I not made my bed? Had I left my shoes in the lounge? I opened my mouth again but he took the breath out of it.
‘Theft!’ he shouted. ‘I’m talking about theft!’
‘George!’ Emma’s hand shot up to her mouth.
‘Oh yes, Emma. I warned you about bringing tinkers into the house.’
‘You must be mistaken.’
‘No, no not this time.’
‘Five shillings,’ he said. ‘Five shillings taken from the pot on the mantelpiece. It was for the milkman – do you not want milk next week, young lady? Because you deserve to go without.’
‘Ruby, did you do this?’ said Emma. ‘Did you take the money?’
I shook my head.
‘George, please think! Are you sure the money was there to start with?’
That look came over his face again, the look he had when he examined Maudy, that look of disgust, and this time he was looking at me.
‘George, just wait.’ Emma’s hands were out in front of her, as if she was holding back an invisible Dr Marks made of air. ‘Just because Ruby is poor doesn’t mean she is a thief. You are just believing what you want to believe.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘You know exactly what I mean.’ She stared at him, her face suddenly all fierce. But his eyes were staring too and I fancied that I could see the line in the air which connected them.
Then suddenly Emma was all smiles. ‘Look, George, there must be an explanation – lots of things could have happened.’ She was pushing the air again, but this time it was as if she was pushing him back, ever so gently.
‘Oh really, I can’t think of any other rational—’
‘Mr Tuttle!’ she shouted all of a sudden. ‘He is in and out of this house all the time. Everybody says that he drinks. And he was in the house today and Ruby and I have been out since dawn.’
Dr Marks’s mouth was already open, but then he stopped and let out a little gasp. Then there was a loud squeal and his hand shot into the air. I jumped, I thought that he was going to hit me and I ducked from the blow, but it never came. Dr Mark’s hand went straight to his back and he doubled over. Then he cried out again and I realized that his raised hand wasn’t anything to do with me, just pain – pain from his back.
Emma put her fingers up to her forehead and rubbed the sides in little circles. She told me to go upstairs and get a bottle of medicine from the bedside table. I went up and tried to waste time but the bottle was easy to find and looked just like Emma had described – blue glass with lots of sides like a hole in honeycomb. I took my time coming back and stood outside the door listening.
‘George,’ Emma, spoke slowly and quietly. ‘It’s only five shillings.’
He sounded weary. ‘It’s the principle of the matter and then there are the other misdemeanours too: the sticky fingers on the bookcase, the untuned wireless and the vase.’
‘The vase?’
‘She broke the vase. She broke it as she was leaving this morning.’
‘That was an accident wasn’t it, Ruby?’
And then I realized that Emma knew I was hiding and I opened the door and nodded like I meant it. ‘The vase on the sideboard was just an accident, Dr Marks.’ I said in my poshest voice.
‘That big pink egg-shaped thing? George, you always hated it!’
‘I know, but it was a wedding present from my aunt and, well, it’s just everything; the vase, the wireless – you know the reception has just not been so crisp since I caught her playing around with it this morning.’
Emma took the bottle from me and smiled all knowingly – I wanted him to sleep and she knew this, and soon he would be.
‘You know what Ruby’s mother told me?’
‘What?’
‘That I know nothing about children – I see now she was right. I’m sorry, George, I suppose I just didn’t know what little troublemakers they are.’ She smiled at me and winked.
I wasn’t happy being called a troublemaker, but I could be grown-up sometimes and Emma’s smile meant that this was one of those times, so I smiled back, all grown-up.
Dr Marks grunted and the liquid poured from the blue bottle.
*
That evening Emma tucked me in to bed.
‘Emma?’ I said.
‘What, darling?’
‘About Maudy – about her being ill with this mouth ulcer. How long will it take her to get better? When can I go back home?’
‘Mouth ulcer?’ She looked shocked and I started to think that a mouth ulcer must be a terrible thing.
‘She was chewing her cheek,’ I said. ‘Does that mean it’s bad?’
Emma sat on the end of the bed and wrung her hands, for a long time she didn’t say anything. Then her mouth dropped open like she had suddenly thought of something and she smiled. ‘Would it be so bad,’ she said, ‘if you came to stay with me forever?’ There was a funny little furrow in her brow and the blacks of her eyes were really big, as if she was trying to look right into the middle of me.
I didn’t want to live with Dr Marks so I looked away and pretended to play with the knitted rabbit from the nursery. But then her big eyes went all watery and I felt cruel.
‘I suppose it wouldn’t be so bad,’ I said quietly.
‘Good.’ And suddenly she looked happier. Then she said: ‘It’s nice that you are playing with that rabbit. You like animals don’t you, Ruby?’
I shrugged.
‘I know you do – rabbits, that grey mare you told me about, and those chickens.’
‘And Smokey,’ I said.
‘Well animals don’t just come from farms,’ she said. ‘Would you like to see some animals -- animals from other countries?’
I nodded.
‘Well good, we shall go to the zoo at Regent’s Park and when we get back we shall talk about the mouth ulcer and what it means.’
I knew very well what it meant – it meant Maudy chewing all day. But I wasn’t about to pass up a trip to the zoo that I could brag about to the boys. ‘Good,’ I said. ‘I suppose that will keep me out of trouble for a day, nice and far away from Dr Marks.’
‘Oh, darling, I didn’t mean it in that way.’
‘He doesn’t like me.’
‘He will come to like you.’ Then she added, ‘It’s not your fault. He doesn’t like any children. He’s never liked children.’
‘How do you know that?’ I said.
‘He told me that he didn’t,’ said Emma. ‘He decided tha
t he didn’t like children a long time ago.’ And then she looked sad.
28
Emma
I spent all of the following afternoon repairing the vase. I sat at the kitchen table opposite Ruby, sheets of old newspaper spread between us. I had thought it would be a fun activity for us to do together; to sort through the pieces and match them up like a giant jigsaw puzzle, but I think Ruby saw it as a punishment and just sat quietly, turning the shattered fragments over in her hands.
‘I’m sure once this is done he’ll be much happier,’ I said brightly, trying to make it seem that George could be as easily fixed as the vase, but Ruby remained silent.
When I had finished, I held up the vase to show her. I had made a terrible job of it. The once smooth curves were now jagged triangles of porcelain, webbed with brown seams of gummy glue, which buckled at the press of a finger. It was as if the big pink egg had been hard boiled and smashed with a spoon. Ruby laughed when I held it up and I smiled, encouraged by the first sign of happiness I’d seen all day.
‘It’s just like humpty-dumpty,’ I said. ‘Humpty-dumpty sat on a—’
‘I’m ten,’ said Ruby.
After she had gone to bed, I tidied the lounge; straightening the chairs, replacing the cushions and gathering up the scattered pages from George’s newspaper. I wiped the fingermarks from the wireless, then tried to retune the set, nudging the dial ever so gently, but still there was no music, no voices, just the hiss of static. In the end I gave up and turned it off.
I got out my purse and found five shilling coins to replace George’s milk money. But on the mantelpiece, next to the housekeeping pot, was something that made me stop and press the coins hard into my palm.
It was a single violet this time, a bright star of petals drooping over the side of the glass. I felt my heart flutter against my ribs as I remembered the violets that had appeared in the study, followed by George’s denial, and then what my mother had said – violets indoors brought bad luck. But odd numbers were worse, and worst of all was a single violet: bad luck, stolen money, broken porcelain… death. The shillings tinkled into the pot. And in my head it was 1926; the end of my youth, the end of the affair. Nothing could be fixed now. Death was on its way.
The Liar Page 17