Ruby

by Marie Maxwell

  ‘That’s a kind thought, Babs,’ George said before turning to Ruby. ‘Have you chosen a name for this little one yet?’

  ‘Why would I do that? There’s no point in me giving her a name and then someone changing it as soon as they take her.’

  Babs and George Wheaton exchanged glances.

  ‘We have to talk to you in private, Ruby. There’s something we have to tell you. The nurses have said you can come outside with us for a walk, so we’ll go somewhere private.’

  Being a doctor himself, George had been able to pull strings that allowed both him and his wife to visit ‘his niece’ freely in the nearby maternity home where she’d gone to have the baby. It was another thing that annoyed Ruby on Gracie’s behalf.

  Babs pushed George’s wheelchair as they made their way along the main corridor to the double doors that led out into grounds. As they walked they all made stilted small talk. Ruby spoke quickly and fired questions about Marian and Keith, and Babs and George told her a couple of amusing but completely irrelevant anecdotes about the surgery. It was all very superficial as the three of them all skirted around the most important subject of all. The baby.

  It had been a perfect pregnancy and an easy birth, with Ruby feeling fit and well physically, and more than ready to leave the hospital when the time came. All she had to do was actually set the wheels in motion to arrange the adoption of her daughter.

  When the plan had been formed all those months ago for her to go to stay with George’s sister, Leonora, in Essex, Ruby had accepted she had little choice but to go if she were to have the support of the Wheatons so she had persuaded herself it was another evacuation.

  Being sent to Melton had turned out OK so she was determined that a stay in Southend would be equally satisfactory if she just focused her mind on the end result. A few months in exile, then she would have the baby adopted and could start her life again, hopefully back in Melton with her friends. But whatever happened she knew she could never go back to the overcrowded terraced house in Walthamstow, where she wasn’t wanted and which was just a stone’s throw away from Johnnie Riordan, the love of her life and the father of a beautiful baby daughter who looked just like him.

  She tried hard to block him out of her mind but she often wondered what he was doing and whether he missed her. However, she knew he had to be part of her past, just as her family were now. Pregnant and in exile, all she had had was Aunt Leonora, who, despite her honorary title of aunt, was really just another total stranger.

  Leonora Wheaton was the spinster of her family, the oldest child of four who had never married because she had become the carer who stayed at home and looked after her ailing mother. After she died Leonora had inherited the family home where she had lived all her life, but instead of staying there she had sold everything and fulfilled her long-held dream of running a seaside hotel. She had bought a run-down seafront property near Southend and turned it into a quiet upmarket establishment for genteel single and widowed ladies, who may otherwise have found having a holiday impossible. It meant Ruby fitted in there perfectly and no one asked any embarrassing questions about her condition.

  She was a kind-hearted woman and a natural-born carer, so she was good to Ruby and went along with the deception because she loved her brother, but she hadn’t been completely able to hide her dismay at the young girl’s situation.

  As they reached a deserted area of the hospital grounds Babs stopped and faced Ruby.

  ‘This is really important, dear. Uncle George and I have been talking and we think we have a solution.’

  Ruby turned away. ‘I’m not changing my mind. I can’t look after a baby, I don’t want a baby and I’m not going to marry Johnnie. I’m sorry.’

  ‘We understand that. But the solution we’re offering may well suit everyone,’ George said. ‘Babs and I think, well, we wondered—’

  But before he could finish his wife interrupted, ‘You’re beating around the bush, George. Let me tell her. Ruby, we want to adopt your baby. We want her, we want her so much …’

  Stunned, Ruby looked from one to the other. It was the last thing she had expected them to say, and something that had never even crossed her mind.

  ‘I don’t understand. You’re saying you want her? You never said before. Why would you want to take my baby?’ Ruby could feel her warning antennae on alert.

  ‘It’s not that we want to take your baby, Ruby dear – that sounds so cruel – we want to adopt her, to have her as part of our family and give her a good life. We feel attached to her already because she’s yours, and we hate the idea of her going to strangers.’ Babs said quickly and intensely.

  ‘Why didn’t you say that earlier? Why wait until now?’

  ‘Because neither George nor I dared to consider it as a possibility. We didn’t want to pressure you into anything, you had to make your mind up yourself; but if you’re determined to give her up then surely it’s better that we take her home with us, to bring her up as ours. Better than her going to strangers. We were never lucky enough to have a child of our own; you were the nearest we came to parenthood …’ as Babs’ voice broke George took Ruby’s hand in his.

  ‘Ruby, no one need know anything apart from us; no one will know she’s yours. I have contacts who can arrange the adoption. Then you can get on with your life, knowing your baby is truly loved and well looked after.’ George held her hand tighter. ‘And you know we’d do that, don’t you?’

  Ruby looked from one to the other as she tried to take in just what they were saying to her. Was the couple who meant so much to her ready to push her aside to have the one thing they had apparently always wanted? A child of their own?

  She tried to get this new notion together in her head. When she had gone to visit them with Johnnie, Babs had been insistent that it was wrong for Ruby to deceive her mother, yet when she became pregnant they had whisked her off and hidden her away. Had they done that because they knew from the start that they wanted the baby? Would the baby replace her in the Wheatons’ affections?

  She walked over to the low wall that separated the lawn from a wide paved footpath and sat on it very gingerly, at the same time wrapping her dressing gown tightly around her still swollen body. She chewed her lip and looked into the distance as she determined not to cry. George and Babs followed her.

  ‘So you don’t want me to come back to Melton then? You just want my baby.’ Ruby could hear the whine in her voice, the childish challenge, but at that moment she felt like a child again. She could taste the betrayal.

  Babs and George Wheaton moved simultaneously to either side of her, and Babs, too, sat on the wall. George took her hand again and gripped tightly.

  ‘No, it’s not like that. Of course we want you – we want both of you – but you said you were giving her up anyway so it makes sense to let someone who loves both of you take care of her. Ruby, we love her because we love you. You can be her big sister, her guiding godmother. We’re both getting on a bit now and you can be the younger influence for her.’

  ‘Just think about it, Ruby,’ Babs said. ‘We’re not going to make you do anything you don’t want to do, but you could stay here for a couple of months and then come back to live with us eventually, and no one would be any the wiser. Think about it, at least.’

  Frowning, Ruby looked from one to the other, feeling their expectation.

  ‘No, it’s OK, you take her. I suppose she’ll have a good home.’

  ‘No, no, Ruby, you have to think about it. You can’t make such a big decision just like that,’ George said with a distinct note of caution in his voice, but Ruby wasn’t interested.

  ‘Yes I can, I’m leaving hospital tomorrow morning and I’m not taking her with me. I’ll just leave her here. You can take her in the morning when we leave here and I’ll go back to the hotel. If Aunt Leonora’ll still have me, that is.’ Ruby bit her lip, determined not to cry.

  ‘Of course she will; and don’t worry about anything, we’ll arrange it all … if yo
u’re sure. We’ll come back and collect you as soon as the interest in the village has died down, as soon as there’s no way they can make any connection between both of you.’

  ‘OK.’ Ruby shrugged but she knew it would never happen. If they adopted the little girl then things could never be the same, however much they all wanted them to be. ‘Have you heard from Ray? Or Mum?’

  ‘No, nothing since Ray telephoned all those months ago being obnoxious, but there’s something else we need to tell you. Johnnie Riordan visited a few weeks ago, looking for you. He just turned up on the doorstep out of the blue.’

  ‘You didn’t tell him, did you?’ Ruby’s head turned from one to the other. ‘I don’t want him to know anything. Anything!’

  Ruby felt sick as she once again brushed away the picture of her and Johnnie with their baby, which kept invading her thoughts. It wasn’t going to happen, so she had to live with it.

  ‘No, of course we didn’t, even though he seemed very determined to find out about you. He was very polite, of course, but that’s his way.’

  ‘Did he say anything about Mum or Nana?’

  ‘He said he’d spoken to your grandmother and that she was well.’ Babs answered. ‘She told him everything was much the same apart from Ray, who was still behaving very badly. I have to confess we felt really uncomfortable lying to him, knowing that you were having his baby. I wish you could have married him, Ruby, kept the baby …’

  Ruby shrugged. ‘I have to get back now. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  She stood up cautiously and, without looking at them again, turned to walk back to the ward and her last day with her baby.

  The next morning Babs and George Wheaton collected Ruby and her baby daughter from the hospital and they all went back to the hotel where Ruby had been staying during her pregnancy.

  It was a four-storey terraced building right on the seafront on the borders of Thorpe Bay, and had been tastefully and expensively renovated. The ground floors housed the communal lounges, dining room, kitchen and reception area, two more floors were single guest rooms, and the top floor was Leonora’s spacious private flat where Ruby had been staying. There were just two live-in staff and their quarters were down in the basement. The hotel was Leonora Wheaton’s life and she spent most of her time in the office behind the small reception desk on the ground floor.

  Because of George’s wheelchair they couldn’t go up to the flat so they were all cramped into the office on the ground floor in an embarrassed silence as Babs gave the baby her first bottle away from the hospital and carefully got her ready for the drive back to Melton with Babs at the wheel.

  ‘Do you mind if we called her Margaret? Then she can be Maggie or Meg. What do you think? We think it really suits her.’

  ‘I don’t care what you call her,’ Ruby answered abruptly. ‘Just take her and go. Please? I can’t stand any more of this. Just go.’

  Babs handed the baby to George while she collected everything up.

  ‘We’ll talk on the telephone …’

  ‘I’m sorry, but I just want this over with.’

  ‘Ruby, you know you’ll always be a daughter to us, don’t you? You’ll both be our daughters. Nothing’s changed.’

  ‘If you say so,’ Ruby answered. But she knew it wasn’t true. Everything had changed.

  That night Ruby allowed herself to cry for the first time over what might have been. She cried for the loss of her baby, she cried for what might have been with Johnnie, she cried for the change in her relationship with Babs and George Wheaton; but she didn’t shed a single tear for her mother and brothers. As she saw it, none of it would have happened if they hadn’t dragged her away from her carefree life in Melton back to Walthamstow.

  At that moment she desperately wanted to make them pay for how they had ruined her life.

  Thirteen

  Walthamstow, the month before

  As Johnnie Riordan was driving his motorcycle down Elsmere Road he saw Elsie Saunders, Ruby’s grandmother, sitting on an upright chair in the tiny front garden of the Blakeley house. It was the first time he’d seen her sitting outside so he went home, parked his bike, and, after a few minutes’ hesitation, walked back up the street and stopped at the gate. Her concentration was on the knitting needles that were clicking furiously in her lap so she didn’t notice him standing there.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Saunders. My name’s Johnnie Riordan. I’m a friend of Ruby’s. I live down the street at my sister’s house. Don’t know if you know her – Betty Dalton? Married to Tony?’ He smiled disarmingly, turning the charm up high.

  The woman peered up at him but didn’t answer. Johnnie wondered if she was having trouble seeing him so he stepped closer and gently touched her arm.

  ‘I wondered if you’d heard anything from her.’

  ‘And what’s that got to do with you? She never said anything about you to me. Not a clue who you are.’ She glared up at him through the new spectacles she was adjusting to.

  ‘I’m a friend. We got to know each other when she came back from her evacuation. Just a bit worried ’cos she sort of disappeared.’

  ‘Not your job to worry, young man.’

  ‘Well, no, but we were friends and she’s been gone for months. I didn’t expect it to be that long. I thought she was going away for a couple of days, but so long as she’s OK …’

  ‘Well, Sonny Jim, seeing as what happened before she went I doubt she’ll ever come back, poor kid, but if she does I’ll tell her you were asking.’

  Her tone was dismissive as she shrugged and pulled a face; immediately Johnnie started laughing. ‘I can see where Ruby got her fighting spirit from.’

  ‘In this house it’s stand and fight or lie down and let the buggers walk all over you. Ruby fought back; me and her mother just lie here and let them do whatever they want.’

  She placed her knitting on the wall and wriggled forward on her chair. As she started to stand up Johnnie leaned forward to help her but she swatted him away impatiently, grabbed the front wall with both hands and heaved herself up.

  ‘Ruby told me things, you know, but she didn’t want Ray to know we were friends. I know a lot about what she went through and why she didn’t want to be here. She told me you were the only one who understood. If there’s anything I can do to help?’

  ‘You can pass me that walking stick.’ The elderly woman looked around, checking that no one else was nearby to hear her words. ‘I’ll say if I hear anything, so if you see Ruby you’ll tell me, will you? I just want her to be all right, that’s all. She’s a good girl and they did wrong by her.’

  ‘I know. I’ll tell you if I hear anything.’

  After she’d fully turned to go indoors Johnnie had walked slowly back down the street, thinking hard about Ruby Red, the classy and clever young girl whom he’d met by chance and instantly been fascinated with. The attraction he had felt for her wasn’t the same feeling he’d had with other girls, and he had enjoyed the slow burn of the embryonic relationship, but then he’d made the mistake of losing control and having sex with her despite her being only sixteen.

  He had realised the next time he’d seen her that she was ashamed and embarrassed, and he hated himself for making her feel that way, but there was no going back.

  Initially he’d felt so guilty he’d been almost pleased when she’d gone away, but then she hadn’t come back and now she was at the forefront of his thoughts again. He wondered if the urge to find her was because he was backed into a corner with Sadie, who, encouraged by Bill Morgan, was eagerly making plans for a party at the Black Dog to announce their engagement.

  An engagement that Sadie wanted, that Bill Morgan wanted, but not one that Johnnie himself wanted. But he saw it as a chance to ingratiate himself further with Bill, who treated Sadie as the daughter he’d never had.

  He leaned on the lamppost outside his house and watched a young courting couple walking along, completely absorbed in each other. He realised he had never felt like that with
Sadie Scully. He liked her a lot and they had fun together, but he wasn’t in love with her.

  Then it hit him like a bullet between the eyes. He was in love with Ruby Blakeley.

  He decided then and there to go to Melton as soon as he had a free day. He knew he would be better able to judge the Wheatons’ reactions to his questions if they were face to face. But first he would have to arrange for a day off from the Black Dog and also find an explanation that would keep the very possessive and volatile Sadie happy.

  A week later he walked up the path to the Wheatons’ front door and knocked. As he waited he saw Derek Yardley looking out of the window of his flat over the garage. He smiled and waved, but the man just frowned and dropped the curtain.

  ‘Good day, Mrs Wheaton,’ Johnnie smiled confidently as she opened the door. ‘I’m wondering if you know anything about Ruby. She’s missing.’

  One look at the shocked expression on her face and he knew that the Wheatons were somehow involved with Ruby’s disappearance.

  ‘I’m worried about her and I know you know where and how she is.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Riordan, but Ruby doesn’t live here. We haven’t seen her for a while.’

  ‘But is she OK? Why didn’t she come back?’

  Johnnie stayed where he was, hoping that Babs Wheaton’s natural good manners would get him into the house. The woman wasn’t being unfriendly and her expression was neutral, but there was a determined line to her mouth.

  ‘I’m sorry you’ve had a wasted journey, Mr Riordan. You’re welcome to come in and have a cup of tea before your journey home but I really don’t want to talk about Ruby. It’s not my place. Have you asked her family?’ She stood back and motioned for him to go in.

  ‘I’ve spoken to her grandmother. She’s worried about her welfare, but I think she’s also pleased Ruby has made a run for it and got away!’

  ‘Do you take sugar in your tea?’ Babs Wheaton asked with a smile, effectively ending the conversation.