‘Oh, stop using that expression. There’s nothing manly about him. He’s just a thug and a bully. I hate him.’
Her mother didn’t answer straight away; she simply frowned and looked from her daughter to her mother in bemusement, as if she really didn’t understand what Ruby was so upset about.
‘I don’t think you understand, Ruby. Your brothers, especially Ray, work hard to keep this family going now your father’s gone. Without them I’d probably end up in the workhouse. It’s not asking much of you to help me look after them and your nan. Don’t forget while you were living the life of Riley with the la-di-dah Wheatons, the boys were here working, I was working, and we were all trying to survive the Blitz.’
‘But you sent me away. I didn’t ask to go,’ Ruby shouted.
‘Yes we did. We sent you for your own safety, but you were meant to come back!’
Ruby stared at her mother. Sarah Blakeley was an attractive woman who had kept her looks despite everything she’d been through. There were lines across her forehead and around her eyes, and her lips were pinched, but she still retained her shapely figure and feminine legs that suited high heels. However, she rarely smiled spontaneously, her eyes were constantly unhappy and when she spoke her voice was a monotone. She wasn’t enjoying her life, she was just going through the motions.
After her long chat with her grandmother when they were locked in the bedroom, Ruby had promised that she would try to be understanding of her mother, and at that moment she could see why the woman gave in to Ray on everything. It was the route to an easier life with fewer arguments. Arguments she knew she couldn’t win. She had been bullied and ground down by her own husband all her married life so it had become part of her nature to accept it as her lot in life. Ray had simply stepped straight into his father’s vacant shoes and she had let him. The treadmill for Sarah Blakeley just carried on with no end in sight and although Ruby felt for her she had no intention of getting on it herself.
In bed that night, with Elsie on the other side of the room snoring and snuffling and keeping her awake, Ruby pulled her eiderdown up to her chin and thought about her afternoon with Johnnie from down the street. Those had been the most carefree hours she’d had since her return. He’d made her laugh as she stood in the queues, bought her an icecream and then helped her carry the shopping. He was blatantly experienced in the ways of the world, maybe overly confident, and from what she’d heard was certainly involved in a great many dodgy dealings, but that added an element of danger that attracted her.
On the other side of the coin he spoke lovingly of his family and had a kindly streak that had been obvious the first time she’d met him. As she thought about Johnnie Riordan she couldn’t help but focus on the resentment that existed between him and Ray and wonder if there was some way she could use her newfound friendship with Johnnie to get her own back on her brother.
It was easy for her mother to shrug off Ray’s behaviour, but she couldn’t. Ray had hit her and treated her as a child – her own brother had acted as if she was his child instead of a sibling – and she had no intention of letting that go without taking some sort of revenge that would punish him and, at the same time, distract him enough to allow her to make her escape back to Melton.
She knew that although Johnnie Riordan worked legitimately in a public house he was also a wheeler-dealer with a finger in many pies, some legal, some not. He bought and sold anything that might earn him a few bob, including the things that the ordinary man in the street had no access to in times of rationing and shortages. It had taken her a while to figure out why Ray hated Johnnie so much. Now she knew: it was because he was jealous; because he really wanted to be a part of those activities himself but he didn’t have a quick enough brain to think things up for himself.
Ruby wondered if she could find a way to make that work in her favour, and as she finally dozed off a plan was coming together in her head.
‘You know what, Roger, I’m gonna have to sort this out right now. I’ve got no choice. I can’t let those pricks get away with it any longer, not now they’re messing around close to home – to my home. If I roll over and let them carry on taking the mick like this then every upstart in Walthamstow and beyond will be trying to get his foot in the door – my door, on my turf.’
His irritation bubbling away, Johnnie Riordan slammed his fist down hard on the table, making the teacups rattle in their saucers and his brother-in-law jump nervously.
‘But how’s it your turf?’ the other man frowned. ‘You don’t own Walthamstow, and anyway, what do you reckon you can do to stop them?’
‘That’s what I’ve got to decide. Any ideas?’ Johnnie asked out of kindness more than anything. He didn’t really expect a workable answer.
‘I’m new at this lark so I don’t know nothing; I’m not like you. It’s hard for me after what’s happened and I just don’t bloody well understand any of it. I can’t do it.’
The man sitting opposite Johnnie was so bewildered he looked as if he was about to burst into tears. Johnnie tried hard to keep himself in control. He was fuming at having found out that Ray Blakeley had apparently got his hands on some black-market alcohol to sell on. It wasn’t that Johnnie didn’t have enough of his own, it was that Ray even thought he could try to encroach on his territory.
‘Don’t whine, mate. I know it’s hard for you to get your head round it, but when needs must and all that … It’s not your fault you’re a cripple now, and I feel bad for you, I really do, but your family still need providing for. I’ve given you a good way of doing that so you’ve just got to get on with it. You help me and I’ll help you, but you’ve got to be committed.’
‘But committed to what? What you do’s dishonest. I was never clever, and I’m even dafter now, but that don’t make me bent. I’ve never been bent.’
‘It isn’t dishonest, it isn’t bent and you’re not daft, just a war victim.’ Johnnie struggled to keep his anger down. ‘Well, yeah, OK, it is a bit dodgy but, like I said, when needs must; and right now needs must. I’ve got a living to earn and you’ve got a family to take care of.’
Johnnie was sitting in his sister’s kitchen along with his brother-in-law, Roger Dalton. After they’d got home from the local pub Betty had made them a huge pot of tea, put it in front of them with a couple of home-made biscuits, while at the same time threatening them with their lives if they woke the two sleeping children upstairs.
Johnnie adored his elder sister and her children, and he even liked her husband, which was lucky, as he lived with them and contributed more than his fair share to the family budget.
Johnnie had been living with their widowed mother until the year before when, with very little notice, she had told him she was going off to be a live-in housekeeper in central London for a very wealthy elderly gentleman she’d met while working in the menswear department in Selfridges.
It had been a surprise but neither he nor Betty had been upset. Betty was pleased that her mother was enjoying her life again and had persuaded her beloved little brother to leave the temporary accommodation where he and their mother had been living since being bombed out of the old family home, and come to lodge with her instead. Johnnie was also pleased for his mother but, with an eye always on a chance, he had viewed his mother’s change of circumstances more cynically and could see that her affluent employer was a connection that he might well be able to cultivate in time.
All in all it had worked well for the whole family.
‘I reckon a good battering should do it, nothing too serious but enough to stop his fucking nonsense.’ Johnnie leaned back in the chair and blew smoke rings in the air as he thought about it. ‘That Ray likes to think he’s a hard nut, but he’s just another little punk without enough brains to be even a half-decent entrepreneur. As for Bobbie, he could be squashed underfoot in an instant. A few hard kicks up the arse should knock them down to size.’
‘Entrepen what?’ Roger looked quizzically at his brother-in-law.
‘Supply what?’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, Roger, anything anyone wants that we can get our hands on. We’re the middlemen. But you know all this; I’ve explained it over and over.’ Johnnie sighed and banged the palm of his hand against his forehead in frustration.
‘I know, but I’ve never heard it called that before. I thought it was just the black-market stuff.’
Johnnie sighed and leaned forward. ‘Now listen to me, don’t even mutter that expression under your breath, never mind out loud. We’re businessmen – does that make it easier for you to understand? Anyone asks, we’re businessmen. Don’t say anything else. OK?’
Roger Dalton frowned and shrugged. He had never been the sharpest knife in the drawer but, before signing up to fight in the army, he had had a steady job in a local factory and had worked hard to provide for his family. Now, thanks to a random grenade, he was officially an invalid with a gammy arm that hung lifelessly by his side, a shattered knee that didn’t bend, and an eye patch covering an empty eye socket while he waited to be fitted with a false one. But worse than the physical damage was the effect the explosion had had on him psychologically. Roger had returned from convalescence a nervous wreck who rarely slept and who jumped at the slightest sound. He was getting better – mostly thanks to his wife – but Johnnie had also more than contributed to his painful recovery.
Johnnie was determined not to see his sister go without, so he was doing his best to help by getting Roger into a bit of wheeling and dealing alongside him, but it was hard work and he could only use him on the periphery of his blossoming business. There was no way Roger could cope with anything complex and Johnnie wasn’t convinced he could be trusted not to talk inadvertently about his business to the wrong people.
‘I saw you down the High Street talking to his sister earlier. Betty told me who she was. Is she like her brothers?’
‘You never said hello – where were we?’ Johnnie asked sharply.
‘You were standing by the alley looking at her all daft, like. So is she like her brothers?’
‘I wasn’t looking at her like that, you idiot!’ Johnnie said a little too quickly. ‘But no, she’s not a typical Blakeley. An old head on young shoulders, that one; all classy and bright as a button, thanks to spending five years away from the no-hopers in her family. I think she’ll give the bloody Blakeley boys a run for their money eventually. She especially hates Ray so she’s a good one to have on our side. We can make use of her if we play our cards right; get some info from her when we need it.’
‘Do you want to go out with her then?’ Roger asked curiously. ‘She’s a bit of a looker, but don’t tell Bet I said that.’
‘Get off, she’s far too young for me – not even sixteen yet,’ Johnnie replied quickly, but with a lack of conviction. ‘But there’s something about her, the way she carries herself, her conversation … I dunno, she just seems way older than other girls her age. If I didn’t know I’d have put her at twenty.’
‘So you do want to go out with her?’ Roger pushed with a wide grin.
‘I said, she’s too young for that, but I do want to be friends with her so I can keep tabs on the two toerags.’
‘So are we going to have to batter ’em then? The Blakeleys?’
‘No we’re not, I’m going to get someone else to do it. We don’t want to get in any bother ourselves, do we?’
Again Roger looked vague and Johnnie could feel his patience evaporating.
‘Look, I’ve got to have a good think about it first. Maybe we could find Ray’s stash and nick it. He has to store it somewhere, probably in that garage where they both work. He couldn’t tell anyone we’d done it, could he? It’d drive him crazy and get him into some real bother.’ Johnnie smiled at the thought, then stood up. ‘Still, enough of that now, we’d better get ourselves off to bed before our Betty has a go. Me and her are off up west tomorrow to see Ma in her classy joint. Might even get to meet the rich toff she’s working for.’
‘It’s not fair. I dunno why I can’t go as well.’ Roger’s voice was childlike, his tone sulky. ‘Why does Betty want to go with you and not me? I’m her husband.’
It irritated Johnnie when Roger behaved like this, but he tried to make allowances for everything he’d been through.
‘Because you and Aunty Clara are keeping an eye on the kids for a change, and my motorbike don’t take three.’
‘But I want to go as well.’
‘Too bad,’ Johnnie interrupted. ‘I want doesn’t always get. Your missus needs a break sometimes, and I’m taking her out so stop bloody moaning on like a sissy.’
As soon as the words were out he felt guilty. ‘Anyway, I’ve got a job you can do if you want an extra couple of bob; just an hour or so while the kids are at school.’
Roger’s face lit up. ‘What’s that then?’
‘I’ll tell you about it in the morning,’ Johnnie replied, giving himself a few hours to think of something that would help his brother-in-law’s self-esteem.
Five
1940
A large group of children all aged around ten stood in two raggedy lines. They faced forward obediently and, even though the boys feigned bravado, each and every one of the children was noticeably scared and nervous. Hands and feet fidgeted and eyes either darted around, taking in the unfamiliar scene, or stared down at their shoes.
Ruby Blakeley was in the middle of one line, her small suitcase and gas mask at her feet, tightly holding hands with the equally terrified small girl beside her. Her heart was thumping and tears were threatening to overflow once again from her already red eyes; all she wanted to do was run out of the gates and keep on running until she got back home. What had seemed a bit of an adventure when they had set off for the train station earlier that same morning had quickly turned into a nightmare once the reality of the situation sank in. They were leaving their families, homes and everything familiar to go and live far away with complete strangers.
Once the selection process got underway her thoughts became confused. On the one hand she desperately wanted to be picked, but on the other she didn’t want to have to go home with any of the strangers who were milling around the playground, chatting with each other.
As they had neared the village, Mrs Sparrow, one of the accompanying teachers, had stood up at the front of the coach and briefly explained to the thirty children on board exactly what would happen once they had reached their destination.
‘To make sure you all understand I’ll repeat everything you were told earlier on the train, so listen very carefully. Those of you with red dots on your labels are getting off at the first village and the other half with blue dots will be taken to the next village with Miss Flynn. The other coaches, with the children who are accompanied by their mothers, have gone elsewhere. We’ll be ticking your names off the list as you get off so don’t any of you be trying to stay on board if you’re in the first group.’
The usually stern teacher smiled down at the sea of small faces to ease the tension and paused while every child looked down at his or her name label.
‘Once you’re matched with your host family they’ll take you to their home where you’re going to live with them until London’s safe again. These are kindly people who are doing their war duty so we expect you to repay them by doing as you’re told at all times, being helpful and behaving well. You’ll be attending school while you’re here, so you’ll make some new friends; and don’t forget, Miss Flynn and I will be staying with our groups for the time being. We know you’re going to miss your families but you all have to be brave. It’s for your own good, remember, to take you all away from the bombing.’
A few minutes after she had finished speaking the coach pulled over to the side of the road and stopped. It was the moment of reality for the children, and some of the girls
had started to cry openly while most of the boys chewed their lips, fiddled with their hankies and stared out of the windows, pretending not to care.
‘All right, children. Red dots collect all your belongings and follow me. Quickly! Tell me your name and show me your label as you get off.’
The children scrambled off the coach and formed a crocodile before hesitantly following their teacher into the church hall next to the local school. After a brief respite, which included hot chocolate and biscuits, they were instructed to line up back in the school playground and the process began.
Only three children were picked before Ruby. Then she saw a woman point to her.
‘Ruby Blakeley, step forward, please,’ her teacher said, and she took the smallest step forward with her eyes firmly on the ground. ‘Ruby! Manners!’
Swallowing hard, she looked up just as a tall, imposing woman stepped up to her and smiled.
‘Hello, Ruby. I’m Mrs Wheaton. You’re coming home to stay with me.’
Despite the lady’s friendliness, Ruby was terrified, and she couldn’t stop herself from shaking as she bent down to pick up her sparse belongings.
‘You look frightened, Ruby, but don’t be. Think of this as a nice holiday,’ the woman said gently before taking Ruby’s free hand and walking her up the main village street. She talked all the way, explaining about the village and pointing out the shops and landmarks, but the ten-year-old was so wrapped up in her own fear she found it hard to even concentrate, let alone respond.
‘Here we are, Ruby, just in here. This is where we live. We don’t have any children ourselves but your schoolfriends will be staying nearby. I was part of the committee that organised the billets so you just have to ask and I can tell you where they all are. And you’ll make new friends at school.’
Ruby looked around as they approached the house. From the exterior it reminded her of ‘the big house’ up in Woodford, where her mother was employed as a cleaner. During the school holidays she had sometimes gone with her mother and waited impatiently on the wall outside, wondering about the inside, but not once had she been allowed over the threshold; and she had never met her mother’s employer.
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