Only then did it dawn on Ruby that a heaven-sent opportunity had just fallen into her lap, and that she would be no kind of journalist if she didn’t pull herself together and at least attempt to pose a few questions.
“Have you had a busy day so far?” she asked.
“Fairly busy, I’d say. Tommy?”
“Oh, busy enough, Mrs. R.”
“We started with Mr. Winant, who took me to see a photo exhibit. Very interesting—showed the damage done by the RAF to targets in occupied Europe. Then I had a visit from the president and foreign minister of Czechoslovakia, and then a short visit with the Dutch queen. I thought it was very kind of her to come into London to see me. Don’t you agree, Tommy?”
Mrs. Roosevelt plunged on, not waiting for an answer from her secretary, who was busily annotating a stack of documents. “Then we were off to the British Red Cross to see parcels being made up for prisoners of war. I am concerned that the parcels are only going to men whose families can help pay for them. Would you make a note of that, Tommy, so I can follow up? Last of all was our little luncheon just now. Did you get anything to eat?” she asked Ruby, motherly concern animating her face.
“Oh, yes, ma’am. Thank you.”
“So now we’ve got this press conference, which should be interesting, and then I’m off to see the Duchess of Kent, poor woman. I wish I could stay with her longer. And then what?” she asked, turning to Tommy.
“We said we’d visit some of the YWCA centers in London, and there’s a Halloween dance for servicemen after that.”
Eight engagements in one day alone, with barely a moment to sit or eat or even gulp down a cup of coffee.
“I honestly don’t know how you do it, Mrs. Roosevelt,” Ruby admitted. “We’re all of us—the press who’ve been covering your visit, that is—we’re just about to fall over trying to keep up with you.”
This provoked an especially broad smile from the first lady. “There’s no secret, you know. You simply get up and start your day and keep going. You don’t get tired because you don’t have time to be tired. If I could, I’d do more, but Tommy won’t let me.”
“It’s for your own good,” Miss Thompson said, not looking up from her papers.
Ignoring this, Mrs. Roosevelt turned back to Ruby. “How did you end up working for a British newsmagazine, Miss Sutton?”
“I was seconded, I guess you could say, from The American. They wanted someone in London, and Picture Weekly needed another staff writer.”
“Do you still write for The American?”
“I do, although they don’t use as many of my stories as they used to. Mainly because they’ve another staff writer over here now. But that’s fine. PW keeps me busy enough.”
“How long have you been in England?”
“Since the summer of 1940, ma’am.”
“So you’ve been here through thick and thin,” Mrs. Roosevelt observed.
“Through the Blitz? Yes. It was awful, just awful, but I’m glad I was here. It was . . . I’m not sure how to put it. A privilege? I mean, how many people get to witness something so extraordinary, in ways that are both bad and good?”
“What did you see that was good?”
“Nothing about the Blitz itself was good—I don’t mean that at all. I guess I mean the way people reacted to it. The courage I saw every day. No matter how bad it had been the night before, people would get up and go to work. Even if they had to climb through wreckage to do it. Even if they had to walk for miles. I saw people working in offices and shops with the windows blown out, and they’d find a way to joke about it. I remember one sign in a shop that said, ‘Even More Open for Business,’ and this was a place with its windows just gone, even the front door gone, but they’d opened and were working as if it was a normal day.”
“You say this as though you weren’t doing the same thing yourself,” Mrs. Roosevelt observed.
“Well, the Picture Weekly offices escaped any real damage. We had a few windows shattered, but that was it.”
“You lived through the same nights of bombing, didn’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Was your home damaged at all?”
“It was. I was living in the Manchester hotel, but it burned down at the end of 1940. It was the same night that St. Paul’s came so close to being destroyed.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Roosevelt said, nodding gravely. “I remember that night.”
“A friend found me a place to stay right away. I’ve been very happy with the family who took me in, so I can’t complain.”
“I think you are a very brave young woman,” Mrs. Roosevelt said decisively.
“With the greatest of respect, ma’am, I’m no braver than anyone else,” Ruby insisted. “I came to London to report on the war, and I knew it would be dangerous. So I can hardly object when danger came calling.”
“Well said, Miss Sutton.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Roosevelt. The thing is, though, if anything happens to me, the world won’t stop spinning. Far from it. But you take a lot of risks by traveling overseas and working yourself to the bone, and there are some people who say it would be better for you to stay at home, or that you should confine yourself to the sort of good works first ladies have always done. What would you say to such people?” Ruby readied her notebook and pencil, hoping and praying to get the sort of quote that journalists across England would faint over.
“Well, of course it’s hard work. Anything that is truly worth doing is going to be hard and difficult and even dangerous at times. But peace will only be won with sacrifice and hard work, and I believe I must set an example for others to follow.”
“May I ask what you think of England and its people?”
“I hold them in the highest regard. I can’t help but admire their sense of obligation in fulfilling their duties, for I see it everywhere I go. From the ordinary man on the street to the king himself, I have observed, in my time here, an unswerving devotion to duty, no matter the cost to self. And I firmly believe such devotion to duty will win the war.”
“We’re here, Mrs. R,” Miss Thompson observed.
“Good, good. Did you get enough from me, Miss Sutton?”
“Oh, yes, ma’am. More than enough.”
The car drew to a gentle stop; outside, a crowd of reporters and photographers already lay in wait. Mrs. Roosevelt sat up straight, adjusted her awful hat, and shook Ruby’s hand with the vigor of a lumberjack. “It has been a pleasure speaking with you, Miss Sutton. I shall look out for your work.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Roosevelt, and thank you as well for allowing me to come along.”
“That was Miss Thompson’s doing. Onward, Tommy?”
“And upward, Mrs. R,” her faithful aide replied. The car door opened, the crowd surged forward, and Mrs. Roosevelt was off, striding forward, shaking hands and dazzling everyone with the glow of her attention.
“Are you coming, miss?” Private Dunn asked, coming round to peer inside the car.
“Oh, yes—sorry. Was feeling a little bowled over. Is she always like that?”
“Always. Never forgets anyone’s name, always has a smile. Always doing nice little things for us. ‘How are you today, Private Dunn?’ she said to me this morning. ‘Have you had a letter from your wife this week?’”
“I’d always thought the stories about her . . . well, they seemed too good to be true.”
“And now?”
“Now? Now I feel like doing cartwheels down the street!”
“You do that, Miss Sutton—but wait until after the press conference. And you’d better hurry on in. Time, tide, and Mrs. Roosevelt wait for no one.”
Dispatches from London
by Miss Ruby Sutton
November 3, 1942
It’s a strange thing to sit in a car across from the most famous woman in the world and have the gift of her attention for a few minutes. She’s the busiest woman in the world, too, and she does more in one average day than most of us manage
in a week. If ever a woman were fitted for her place in history, our First Lady belongs to this time and this place . . .
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
June 1943
Ruby’s exclusive interview with Mrs. Roosevelt, which was greeted with surprise and not a little jealousy by her colleagues at rival publications, quickly led to bigger and better things. On the strength of it, she was granted interviews with Clementine Churchill, who was lovely; Nancy Astor, who was awful; and Dame Myra Hess, the organizer of the classical music concerts at the National Gallery, who welcomed Ruby into her home near Hampstead Heath, performed an impromptu private concert of Beethoven and Schumann, and sent her home with a jar of homemade quince preserves.
Just that afternoon she’d interviewed the Marchioness of Reading, a friend of Mrs. Roosevelt’s and the formidably capable founder of the WVS. While perfectly friendly, Lady Reading had clearly been a woman with a purpose, and that was to talk at length on the mission, current work, and long-term aims of the Women’s Voluntary Service. Ruby had filled nearly an entire notebook with her shorthand scribblings.
She’d do her best to interpret them tomorrow; for now, all she wanted was a quick listen to the nine o’clock news before bed. She had just switched on the wireless when a knock sounded at the front door.
“Were you expecting anyone?” she asked Vanessa.
“No. Perhaps it’s one of the neighbors. Would you mind seeing who it is?”
The knock sounded again, louder and more insistent. Whoever could it be?
She opened the door, feeling more than a little apprehensive, and discovered two men waiting on the stoop. One, overweight and balding, was dressed in civilian clothes. The other, his features blandly unremarkable, wore the uniform of a British army captain.
“Hello,” she said. “May I help you?”
The man in civvies spoke first. “I’m Detective Inspector Vickers of the Metropolitan Police.” He didn’t introduce his companion. “We need to speak to Miss Roberta Anne Sutton.”
“I’m Ruby Sutton,” she said, her insides twisting with abject, piercing fear. They had come to tell her about Bennett. They had come to tell her that he had been killed.
“We need to ask you some questions about your reasons for being in this country.”
Sweet relief—and then apprehension, chill and clammy, began to claw an icy path up her spine. “Wo-would you like to come in?”
The man in uniform took a step forward. “You are being detained under the provisions of the Defense of the Realm Act. You need to come with us.”
“What on earth is going on?” Vanessa had come forward to stand behind Ruby. “I am Lady Tremaine, and I demand to see your warrant card.”
Detective Vickers offered it to her, and once she’d inspected it, accepted the card back without comment.
“What is this all about? Why does Ruby need to come with you?”
“We’re not at liberty to say,” the man in uniform said. “You have one minute to fetch your coat and bag, Miss Sutton.”
“I’ll get them,” Vanessa said. She returned seconds later. “What should I do? How can I help?”
Bennett could be anywhere, and even if he were in London, he might be unable to intervene, constrained as he was by the secrecy of his war work. There was only one other person who might be able to help. “Call Kaz.”
“Where are you taking Ruby? I insist that you tell me.” Vanessa was using her most imperious voice, the voice that made ordinary people freeze in their tracks, but the men ignored her. Already they had taken hold of Ruby’s shoulders and were leading her down the steps.
“If you cooperate, we won’t need to restrain you,” Detective Vickers said. Not wishing to be manacled, Ruby walked obediently between them, and made no protest when they forced her inside the waiting police car. Squashed between the two men, unable to see where they were going, she had no choice but to endure. If she were compliant, if she did as they told her, perhaps someone would decide to explain what was happening.
The faint glow of a police station’s blue light, dimmed for the blackout, eventually heralded their destination. The car turned left into a courtyard, stopped suddenly, and then she was hustled up a dark flight of stairs, in through a pair of double doors, and along a deserted corridor.
A door opened. Her handbag was torn from her arm. She was pushed forward, into a small room made bright by a single, swaying lightbulb. The door clanged shut behind her, a lock clicked into place, and she was alone.
The cell was smaller than her cabin on the Sinbad had been, with no fixtures apart from a narrow bench along one wall. She sat, her knees suddenly unable to bear her weight. Would Vanessa know how to find Kaz so late at night? Did she even have his telephone number?
She’d taken off her wristwatch to help Jessie with the dishes and had forgotten to put it back on, and of course there was no clock in the cell. Time stretched thin, and after a while—it might have been half an hour or half the night—she began to feel very tired. Deciding that she might as well sleep while she could, she took off her coat and cardigan, folded the latter into a pillow, and, stretching out on the bench, covered herself with her coat.
It was cold in the cell, though, and the light was so very bright, and she couldn’t stop her fears from burrowing a poisonous path into her heart. So she sat up again, shivering, and waited for whatever might come next.
The door opened suddenly, swinging wide on screeching hinges. “Get up,” Detective Vickers said. “Come with me.”
Gathering her things, she followed him down the hall and into a larger room. The army officer from earlier was seated at a large table.
“Sit down, Miss Schreiber,” he said, indicating a chair on its opposite site.
Ruby froze. It had been years since she had heard that name.
“Didn’t you hear me? Sit down.”
Detective Vickers took his place next to the unnamed officer. “It has come to our attention that you are in this country under false pretenses. We believe that you knowingly entered Great Britain with the aid of counterfeit documents on the second of July, 1940, for purposes yet to be determined—”
“My passport was genuine,” she broke in. “My employer handled the application process.”
“Really? Do you have it in your possession for us to examine?”
“No. It was destroyed in the Blitz. My lodgings burned down at the end of 1940.”
Detective Vickers frowned, and then scribbled something in a notebook he’d pulled from his coat pocket. “I see. Do you have any other supporting documents? A birth certificate, for instance?”
“No,” she admitted. “My birth certificate was destroyed as well.”
“So you have nothing to prove that you are Roberta Anne Schreiber, alias Ruby Sutton, formerly of New York City?”
“Not as such.”
“And the name of Schreiber?” the army officer prompted. “Is it familiar to you?”
“Yes,” she said, although she knew it would damn her. “It was my birth name.”
“So Sutton is your married name?”
“No. I . . . I changed it.”
“Because Schreiber is a German name,” the officer stated.
“No—I mean, yes, it is a German name, but that isn’t the reason I changed it. I changed it long before I came to England.”
Again it was the officer who spoke. “With the intention of implanting yourself at an English newsmagazine? And thereby finding a way to place false information, or possibly encoded information, in the stories you wrote?”
“What? Oh, my God—no. Of course not. I changed it because I thought I’d have a better chance of getting a job if I had a more American-sounding name.”
“Did you change it officially?” Detective Vickers asked. “Presumably there are mechanisms for making such changes in the United States, just as there are here.”
“No. I mean . . . it never occurred to me. And so what if I changed my name? Plenty of people do. You aren�
�t chasing down Cary Grant or John Wayne, are you?”
“If we discovered they had provided false documents for the purposes of obtaining a passport and entering this country, we would,” said the officer. “Because that’s what you did. Your passport, as registered upon your entry in 1940, was under the name of Roberta Anne Sutton, born in New York City on July 12, 1916. Is that how it was made out?”
She nodded.
“And since you have already admitted your change of name was not formalized in any fashion, you must have obtained your passport by providing the United States government with a false birth certificate.”
He had her there. “Yes,” she admitted.
“And you did so in order to obtain a passport and gain entry into this country.”
“Yes, but only so I might take up the job I had been offered. They’d have given it to someone else if I’d told Mr. Mitchell the truth.”
Detective Vickers and the officer exchanged knowing glances. “By ‘truth,’ do you mean the truth about your name?” the officer asked. “Or were there more lies?”
Detective Vickers leaned across the table, his brow creased in a forbidding frown. “I must warn you, Miss Schreiber, that you are on extremely shaky ground here. Anything less than complete honesty—”
“I lied on my job application to The American. I said I attended Sarah Lawrence College, but I didn’t. And I grew up in New Jersey, not New York.”
“Where in New Jersey, Miss Schreiber?”
“St. Mary’s Orphan Asylum. In Newark.” This provoked a further round of note-taking.
“I only did it so I could get a job,” she added, even though it was clear they weren’t interested in hearing her excuses. “I tried again and again, but no one would hire me. If I’d had a more American name, or if I’d had a better upbringing, they might have considered me, even without a college degree. But all of it, together, put me at the bottom of the list of candidates every time.”
“Is your employer here in England aware of these fabrications?” Detective Vickers asked.
“No—of course not!”
Goodnight from London Page 22