Goodnight from London

by Jennifer Robson

  “The cathedral? Did it survive?” Vanessa asked worriedly.

  “The dome was intact this morning. There may be some damage, but it’s still there.”

  “Well, thank God for that.”

  “The hotel where Ruby has been lodging, though, the Manchester—it was hit. More than half of it burned down, including the wing where she had her room. She’s lost everything.”

  It was hard to hear it like that, so bluntly stated, and a traitorous tear escaped before Ruby could blink it back.

  “My dear, dear girl. Come here, you poor thing,” Vanessa crooned, and enveloped her once more in an embrace, loosening it just enough to allow them to walk side by side down the hall. “Let’s get you settled and comfortable. Oh, you poor, dear girl.”

  Vanessa led Ruby down the hall, past a second sitting room, a dining room, and finally down a short run of steps into a conservatory. It looked and felt like a luxurious greenhouse, and the air was warm and moist and smelled wonderful. A large tropical plant arched high over their heads, and there were pots of geraniums, violets, and ferns everywhere.

  “Let’s get you settled,” Vanessa said, propelling Ruby toward a white wicker armchair softened by plump chintz cushions. “Bennett, be a dear and run downstairs to Jessie. We’ll need some tea and biscuits.”

  Something brushed against Ruby’s leg, and she looked down to discover a rumpled orange tabby cat looking up at her. “Mrrow,” he said, and jumped onto her lap.

  “Percy, you scamp. I’ll just take him—”

  “No, I don’t mind. Honestly. I love cats.”

  “He certainly likes you. Normally he’s a bit more standoffish.”

  “I see you’re making friends.” Bennett sat on the chair next to Ruby and nodded toward the cat. “Percy doesn’t take to just anyone, you know.”

  “Did you find Jessie?” Vanessa asked.

  “Yes, and tea is on its way. So . . . I was wondering if Ruby might stay with you for a few days. It may take a while for her to find new lodgings.”

  Vanessa shook her head so hard that strands of hair escaped from her bun and rose in a silver nimbus around her lovely face. “A few days? No, that won’t do. Why on earth can’t she simply stay on with me?”

  “Oh, but I couldn’t—” Ruby began, but Vanessa would not be deterred.

  “Of course you can. It’s only Jessie and me right now, and this house is far too big for the two of us. Do say you’ll stay.”

  Ruby was prevented from answering by the timely arrival of Jessie, a stout, white-haired woman in her early sixties. “Here’s your tea and biscuits, Lady T.”

  “Thank you. Jessie, this is Ruby Sutton. She was bombed out last night and will be staying with us from now on.”

  “I’m awfully sorry to hear it, Miss Sutton. I promise we’ll take good care of you.”

  “I thought we’d put her in Vi’s old room. Is the bed made up?”

  “It is, but I’d rather freshen up the sheets. Won’t take but a minute.”

  Ruby waited until Jessie had departed before protesting any further. “I haven’t said yes. I don’t want to be rude, and you have been so nice, but you don’t know me. How can you be sure that you want me here?”

  This last question appeared to baffle Vanessa. “I don’t understand. Why wouldn’t we want you? You’re friends with Bennett, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “And Bennett is my favorite godson—”

  “Your only godson,” he interjected.

  “My favorite godson,” Vanessa continued, “and his friends are my friends, too. So it’s really very simple.”

  With this, and clearly believing the discussion was at an end, she poured a cup of tea, dosed it with milk and sugar, and handed it to Ruby. “Go on. Drink it down.”

  Not daring to refuse, Ruby swallowed nearly the entire cupful in several long gulps. It still tasted awful, but she could feel the warmth of it all the way down to her toes. She closed her eyes and tried to marshal her thoughts.

  “Just think of the fun we’ll have as we get to know one another,” Vanessa persisted. “Oh, do say you’ll stay. It would make me so happy to have you here.”

  “What about my board? At the hotel I was paying—”

  “La, la, la—we’ll sort all that out later. I’m sure you’ll let me know what’s fair.”

  Ruby looked to Bennett, who didn’t bother to hide his amusement at her plight, and then back to Vanessa. They had her cornered, for there was no gracious way to refuse, and they knew it. For that matter, why should she refuse? She had fallen into a tub of butter, and she was smart enough to know it.

  “I guess I’ll stay, then,” she conceded. “Thank you very much.”

  “I’d better be going,” Bennett said. “I need to check on my flat, and I want to make sure Uncle Harry is all right.”

  “I thought he’d decided to stay in Edenbridge for Christmas,” Vanessa said.

  “Not this year. Said he felt lonely. I’ve no idea where he actually spent Christmas Day—I wasn’t even in town.”

  “What about my work?” Ruby asked, suddenly remembering. All this time she’d been sitting in cozy comfort, drinking tea and having her life arranged, while her colleagues were probably standing in the street and surveying the ruins of their professional lives. “I should go and see what happened.”

  “You stay put,” he ordered. “I’ll go by, and if there’s no one there I’ll ring up Kaz.” Gulping down the rest of his tea, he got to his feet, his movements slow and almost labored. He had to be so very tired.

  “Will you come back for dinner?” Vanessa asked. “The girls will be here—they were both working last night, for some odd reason, so we’re having Sunday dinner on Monday this week.”

  “All right,” he said. “But start without me if I’m late.” He bent to kiss his godmother’s cheek, and then, with a reassuring smile for Ruby, he was gone.

  Ruby finished the last of her tea as Percy purred away on her lap, leaning into her hand as she stroked the soft fur behind his ears. It felt so lovely to sit there, in the warmth and comfort of the conservatory, and do nothing. Think of nothing.

  “Did Bennett say how he got that black eye?” Vanessa asked, busily deadheading a nearby geranium.

  “He said he ran into a branch when he was on his motorcycle.”

  “That horrid thing. Why he takes such risks I’ll never know.” She snapped off the last of the withered blooms and turned to Ruby. “Would you like to see your room?”

  “Yes, please.” Not wanting to disturb the cat, Ruby picked him up and deposited him back on the chair. He turned around, wriggling into the cushion, and went straight to sleep.

  Vanessa led her to the third floor and along a short hallway to an open door. The room they entered was huge and bright and, to Ruby’s delight, overlooked the back garden. As charmingly old-fashioned as the rest of the house, it was wallpapered with a pattern of pink rosebuds and trailing vines, and was furnished with a tall chest of drawers, a desk and wooden chair, and a low, overstuffed armchair drawn up by the hearth. The room’s centerpiece, however, was a high brass bed layered with pillows and eiderdowns and blankets. It was so wide that Ruby could lie down sideways with room to spare, and for a moment she contemplated doing just that.

  “You’ve a bathroom of your own just through here,” Vanessa explained, opening its door so Ruby might marvel at its white-tiled magnificence. “Although we are trying to conserve fuel, I insist that you run a bath that’s as deep and hot as you can stand. At certain times, my dear, morale trumps austerity. Today is one of those times.”

  “It’s so lovely,” Ruby marveled.

  “It is nice. Now, there’s a robe on the back of the door. I presume you lost your clothes along with the rest of your belongings, so I’ll rummage through the girls’ trunks upstairs and see what I can find.”

  “Won’t they mind?”

  “Mind? Of course not. They’d be the first to suggest it. What else, wh
at else . . . ? You’ll need something more to eat than biscuits, so I’ll have Jessie bring you some soup and a bun. I want you to have your bath, eat your lunch, and then have a good, long nap. I’m sure you didn’t sleep a wink last night. Oh—and if there’s a raid, we’ve a shelter in the garden. Bennett put it in for us, and he did something with a drain, or perhaps the floor. At any rate, it’s stayed dry so far, and as long as we bring out enough blankets, we’re able to keep warm.”

  “Thank you so much. I—”

  “La, la, la. Off you go and pour that bath, and don’t show your face until you’ve had that nap.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  When Ruby woke from her nap, snugly cocooned in whisper-soft, lavender-scented blankets, it took a moment to remember where she was. And then, as the memories of the night before came flooding back, she resolutely closed her mind against them. This place, this room . . . it felt safe. Here she was warm and comfortable and safe.

  Checking her wristwatch, she saw it was past five o’clock. She’d been asleep for nearly seven hours, the longest she’d slept since the beginning of September. She stretched languorously and, turning her head, saw that something had been left on the bed. Sitting up, she rubbed the sleep from her eyes and tried to focus. There, draped across the folded quilt at her feet, was a blue woolen dress with long sleeves and a cardigan to match, a full slip for underneath, made of cotton so fine it was nearly transparent, and a pair of silk stockings still in their package. Real silk, not rayon. She touched the dress, her hand shaking a little when she felt how fine and soft it was.

  Ruby tiptoed downstairs a little before six o’clock, drawn by the sound of voices in the front room. Vanessa was standing by the fire, her hair and dress immaculate, and on the sofa in front of the window were two young women so alike they had to be sisters. One was in uniform, and the other, her hair several shades fairer than her sister’s, wore a perfectly tailored suit.

  All too aware that her own fine clothes had been borrowed from one of the sisters, Ruby lingered in the hallway. Perhaps she might simply creep back upstairs without anyone noticing. She took a step back, then another, but was stopped by Vanessa’s sunny greeting.

  “Ruby, darling—there you are. Do come in and meet my girls.” The glamorous pair on the sofa stood in unison and came forward, their smiles unaffected and genuine. If they resented her sudden appearance in their mother’s home, they certainly showed no sign of it. Or perhaps they were simply as talented at acting as their parents.

  “Ruby, these are my girls. Viola and Beatrice.”

  Ruby shook their hands, sat on the chair she was assigned, and did her best to answer the questions they flung at her like confetti. Where are you from? How long have you been in England? How do you know Bennett? What sort of work do you do? Is your hair naturally curly or have you had a permanent-wave treatment?

  They listened attentively to her vague and unenlightening answers, they insisted she drink a glass of sherry as they were doing, and they appeared to be genuinely horrified when Vanessa explained what had become of Ruby’s lodgings and possessions.

  “Thank heavens Bennett was there,” Beatrice said. “He never loses his head, no matter how awful things get. Remember when Papa died? He was the only one of us who didn’t fall to pieces.”

  “Such a dear boy. I don’t know what I would have done without him,” Vanessa said, her expression melancholy. “Oh—there’s the telephone. I’ll just run and answer it.”

  She returned with the news that Bennett had rung to say he would be late. “He told me not to wait for him, so let’s get started. Are you on duty tonight, Vi?”

  “I am, so I’d best hurry. God only knows what Jerry has in store for us.”

  The dining room table was set with china and silver and fine white linens, and though it looked to Ruby as if the king was expected for dinner, she also suspected such finery was nothing out of the ordinary for the Tremaine family. Arranging themselves around the table, the sisters immediately began to complain about the food.

  “I thought we were having mutton,” said Beatrice.

  “I did look, but the butcher only had a piece of scrag end, and I wasn’t about to pay good money for nothing more than sinew and gristle. Jessie made toad-in-the-hole instead.”

  Seeing the look of alarm on Ruby’s face, Viola rushed to reassure her. “Don’t worry—there’s no toad in it.”

  “Oh, yes—I ought to have said so,” Vanessa chimed in. “We English do have the oddest names for food. It’s quite prosaic, I promise. Nothing more than sausages with Yorkshire pudding on top.”

  “Not sausages again,” Beatrice moaned. “The last ones were awful.”

  “I know, but that was an oversight on the butcher’s part. He promised me that these ones are definitely made of pork.”

  “What was wrong with the other ones?” Ruby asked.

  “You do not want to know,” Beatrice hissed. “Let’s just leave it at that.”

  “Such a gamy aftertaste, too,” Viola commented mischievously.

  “Enough, both of you,” Vanessa chided. “Ruby needs a good meal and you aren’t helping things. Pay them no mind, my dear. Apart from the toad—the main course, that is—we’ve mashed potatoes and onion gravy, and Jessie roasted the last of the parsnips from the cold store.”

  As they ate, the conversation turned to the Tremaine sisters’ work. Beatrice, whose uniform was a striking dark blue, was a section officer in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force; before the war, she’d been a geography teacher at a girls’ school. It had shut down for the duration, which had prompted her to join the WAAF. “It had the nicest uniform,” Beatrice admitted with a laugh. “What was I thinking?”

  Ruby looked to Viola, who wasn’t in uniform. “Are you allowed to talk about your work?” she asked hesitantly.

  “I am—it’s not the slightest bit important, though.”

  “Nonsense,” Vanessa insisted. “Vi is working two jobs right now, and I’m so terribly proud—”

  “Honestly, Mama. I’m not doing anything out of the ordinary. Not compared to some.”

  “Allow me to disagree.” Vanessa turned to Ruby, waving away her daughter’s protests. “Vi inherited her dear father’s talent. Before the war she was in show after show in the West End, but she’s given it up to volunteer for ENSA.”

  “‘Every Night Something Awful,’” Beatrice intoned solemnly.

  “Horrid girl,” their mother commented. “It’s the ‘Entertainments National Service Association,’ in point of fact.”

  “I know,” said Ruby. “We did a story on ENSA a few months ago. The group we featured were all musicians, though.”

  “There are all sorts in ENSA,” Viola explained. “My group does a variety show, mostly at factories during the day. Our ‘lunchtime follies,’ we call them. Sometimes the shows are in the evening, but between the blackout and the air raids it’s easier if we put on a quick performance during the lunch hour.”

  “Vanessa said something about a second job?”

  “Oh, yes. Well, at night I’m a fire-watcher at my old theater. There’s a group of us who do it.”

  “When do you sleep?” Ruby asked incredulously.

  “I don’t, not much. But I don’t mind.” Her expression grew somber. “I’m really sorry about your lodgings. Last night . . . it was endless. We stood on the roof of the theater and watched the bombs rain down, and there was nothing we could do.”

  “I’m sure that you and everyone else in the fire services did your best. You saved St. Paul’s. That in itself was a miracle.”

  The rumble of a motorcycle outside brought the conversation to a halt. The front door opened and closed, and the sound of footsteps in the hallway grew louder.

  “We’re in the dining room,” Vanessa called out.

  Bennett appeared in the doorway, still shrugging out of a worn leather jacket. It was dampened by snow, as was the knitted watch cap he pulled off his head. His face was drawn and weary, and there w
ere dark streaks of soot across his forehead and cheekbones.

  “Sorry I’m late. Let me hang this up and wash my face. Then I’ll be fit for company.”

  When he returned, his face and hair damp but clean, he dropped into the chair next to Ruby and grinned at her reassuringly. “All settled in?”

  “Yes, thanks. How are you?”

  “Tired.”

  “Have you eaten? Let me fetch you something,” Vanessa offered, and rushed off in search of Jessie.

  “So? What did you find?” Ruby asked.

  “My flat is fine—no damage at all. Uncle Harry is unhurt, although he lost his car. Left it parked on the street and an incendiary fell right on top of it. He was fit to be tied.”

  “And the PW offices?”

  “Not so much as a scratch.”

  Vanessa returned, bringing with her a heaping plate of dinner. Bennett started eating, not pausing until he’d consumed more than half of it.

  “Sorry. Was starving. Where was I . . . oh, the magazine. Your building is fine—I think I said that already—but St. Bride’s is gone.”

  “The church next door? That’s awful.”

  “The walls and steeple are standing, but the interior is burned out. The fire even melted the bells.” He set down his fork and knife and rubbed at his temples, his shoulders slumping. “It was a Wren church. Built after the Great Fire.”

  “I don’t know why you’re so upset,” Viola said, her voice oddly strained. “It’s a building, not a person.”

  “Yes, but it was a masterpiece of—”

  “It’s a structure made of stone and bricks and wood. It can be rebuilt. But we can’t raise the dead, can we?”

  Viola stood, her eyes bright with unshed tears, and walked quietly out of the room. Bennett followed her right away, his face a portrait of torment.

  Vanessa reached across the table and grasped Ruby’s hand. “Viola was engaged to an RAF pilot,” she said softly. “He was killed in August. She struggles with it still, as I’m sure you can understand.”

  “I do. I visited Coventry after the bombings, and I met a policeman there who said much the same thing to me. How buildings can be raised again, but our dead are lost forever.”