Ruby's War

by Johanna Winard

  ‘You heard what they said. This place was the main department store, before it was hit,’ Wes said. ‘If we could go to the PX like the white—’

  ‘Well we can’t.’

  ‘George, the guy last night, he told me about this place, a pub. He wrote down the name. You can get anythin’, if you’ve got the money. A guy hangs out there and he’ll get you what you want.’

  ‘A spiv?’ Wes asked. ‘How you goin’ to find him?’

  ‘Like I told you, I got the name. George said the guy was called Len and he has this walking stick with a handle like the head of a horse, and when a stranger walks in, if you ask if you can buy him a drink, he knows what you’ve come for, but he said don’t go in a crowd, best to go alone. You guys stay here.’

  ‘He might not have anythin’.’

  ‘George said he knew for a fact he’s got some French perfume.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ Holt said.

  ‘No.’

  Ten minutes later Bo was back. Smiling broadly, he dropped a dark-blue box on the table and went to get another cup of tea.

  ‘I reckon we went to the best pub,’ he said, sitting down next to Con. ‘The beer in that place was awful, and a couple of white GIs over at the dartboard looked real mean.’

  ‘I told you I should have come with you,’ Holt said, inspecting the dark-blue box. ‘How could he get French perfume? You’ve bin cheated.’

  ‘No I ain’t. It’s sealed up, I checked, and I recognise the package. Had a girlfriend use the same.’

  ‘Bet you don’t tell Sadie that,’ Wes grinned. ‘It’s looted from the bombed store, I bet.’

  They retraced their steps out of the city centre, along streets full of grubby children, swinging on lamp posts with lengths of old rope and dragging home-made carts filled with bricks.

  ‘I thought they’d have been evacuated out,’ Holt said, as the children mobbed them for pennies and gum.

  ‘They’ll want to be home for Christmas, now the bombing’s stopped,’ Bo said.

  In the next street there were more signs of bomb damage; some of the houses had been flattened, and all that remained of others was an unsupported wall or the broken carcass of a staircase. Half-bricks lay scattered in the road, and there was a smell of burning wood in the air. Unlike the other streets, this one was empty, except for the black man from the restaurant, his wife and two white GIs. The GIs – both little guys – were pushing him and shouting. Con watched Bo’s face and waited. The man was holding two sheets of wood that flapped in his hands as he argued with the soldiers. Bo didn’t move, until one of them, a thin, pasty-faced guy, knocked the wood out of the older man’s hands and it skittered along the ground.

  ‘I said for you to step off the sidewalk,’ the other GI shouted, pushing his chest up against the black guy. ‘Do you hear?’

  It was hard to see why the guy didn’t retaliate: he was older, but the GI who was doing the shouting was a little, runty red-haired guy he could have pushed over with one fist.

  ‘You move out of the way when a white man walks by. Do you hear?’

  The woman picked up the wood, grabbed the black man’s arm and tried to push by the soldiers, but the pasty one swore and spat at her.

  In two strides, Bo was between the couple and the soldiers. He grabbed the pasty guy and punched him. The GI went down so easily, sitting down suddenly in the gutter with his legs out in front of him, that it was clear to Con that he must be drunk. The red-haired guy stared down at his buddy, as if he was finding it hard to understand why he’d suddenly sat down in the road. When he tried to pull his friend to his feet, he fell over himself, and it took both Con and Wes to get the two GIs on their feet again.

  ‘Back off, buddy,’ Holt said. ‘These folk are English.’

  ‘That don’t make it right,’ the pasty-faced GI said. ‘This fuckin’ country. Come on Louie, let’s go. It stinks of blacks round here.’

  ‘You watch it,’ the red-haired GI called, as he and his friend stumbled away. ‘The MPs are around … and …’

  The woman was crying, and the black man took out his handkerchief and dabbed at the spit on her coat.

  ‘We saw the wood on our way into town, and Larry said it was just the sort of stuff he needed. Our little grandson has asked Father Christmas for a fort, you see. And you can’t explain to a four-year-old about rationing. He’s expecting his daddy, our son, back for Christmas as well. He’s in the Merchant Navy, like Larry was. He’s all of a tremble,’ she said, taking hold of her husband’s hand, ‘and his pills are at home. He’s only been out of hospital about a week. We just fancied a walk into town. I must get him back.’

  ‘I hope it doesn’t cause you any trouble,’ Larry said, shaking Bo’s hand. ‘At one time I could have …’

  ‘I’m just glad we happened by,’ Bo said, as they walked with the couple down to the corner of the street. ‘You folks should report it to your police. We’re on our way to the docks,’ he said, when they came to the crossroads, ‘but we’ll stay here and wait until you’re safely on your way.’

  ‘We don’t get much trouble, not round here, anyway,’ the woman said. ‘Not the same as if we go outside the area. It’s with it being a port. People have settled round here from all over. My family are from Portugal, originally. My dad was a saddle maker. He wasn’t keen on Larry at first, but we’ve been married nearly thirty years. How are you finding it where you are?’

  ‘Folks are mostly very friendly,’ Bo said.

  ‘Good. Pleased to see you over here, I expect. They think you’re all good at singing and dancing, no doubt,’ the woman smiled, ‘but they’d not like it if you married their daughters.’

  ‘Come on, Janey,’ her husband said. ‘She’s concerned for our youngest, you see. Army, he picked. Didn’t want to go to sea … Last letter home, he sounded a bit down, and she’s concerned that folk where he is might not be too friendly.’

  ‘I got a girl and they don’t seem—’

  ‘Not yet,’ the woman said, ‘you’ve not been here long enough, love, but when the novelty wears off …’

  Once the couple were out of sight, Con and the others headed back to the trucks, passing the remains of shops and the empty spaces where houses had been. They’d walked a couple of blocks, when a group of five white GIs stepped out from a deserted patch of land and barred their way. Two of them were the guys who had been harassing the couple; the others were bigger, and to Con, they looked meaner and not so drunk. The tallest was about Bo’s height, but heavier.

  ‘Willy here tells me you saw fit to interfere when some old black was getting high and mighty,’ he said.

  There was no one around. The houses stood open to the chill grey air. Con glanced up and down the street. He thought that the river and the docks must be quite near, because he could smell the sea.

  ‘Don’t you even think about it, boy,’ the second-tallest GI said, standing directly in front of him. ‘You just keep coming.’

  ‘You need a lesson,’ the pasty GI said. ‘It was the big guy that dropped me, Don. He was the one that was giving us lip.’

  ‘If you got a problem with that, buddy,’ Bo said, nodding to the largest man and walking on to the deserted ground, ‘then let’s sort it out.’

  ‘Told you he was lippy,’ the pasty GI said, as they all followed Bo on to the scrubby waste ground.

  Don, the biggest guy, had already begun to unbutton his tunic. He moved slowly, although he wasn’t as drunk as his buddies. The second-tallest GI, a thin guy with a blue shadow on his chin, took Don’s coat and grinned. Then Don wheeled around and made a grab for Bo’s shirt, tugging him off balance, bringing his knee up sharply, but Bo was too fast and landed a heavy strike to the side of his face. When the larger man staggered, the circle of soldiers widened, and Con saw a knife blade flash. He leapt for the arm and the blade. He and the blue-chinned GI rolled on the floor. The guy was drunk and sweating furiously, but he was heavier than Con, and he wouldn’t release the knife.
Con’s arms burned with the effort. Around them boots kicked up the dust and bodies rolled and fell. Then the GI under him flopped; his head rolled to one side and the knife fell out of his fingers. Con dived for it, but a boot kicked it away and he was grabbed and hauled to his feet. He saw the half-brick Wes had in his hand, and then the knife on the ground between his boots. Con snatched the handle, throwing it, watching it turning in the air, before it disappeared over a broken wall. Blood trickled from the motionless GI’s head. Con sat down heavily beside him on the dusty ground. The guy was much smaller than he’d thought and not so old as he’d imagined. It began to rain. The wind was lifting the grubby curtains hanging through the windows of the empty houses. On the other side of the bombsite, ragged streamers of wallpaper flapped from the wall of a once-cherished parlour. The GIs, both black and white, were silent. Then two of the white GIs picked up the unconscious man, and without a word, both groups walked in opposite directions down the empty street.

  The afternoon of Christmas Eve was dark and cold, but inside the cottage it was snug and cheerful. Although Sadie’s arm was painful, she was in a good mood and sat on the couch listening to the radio and giving Ruby directions on how best to clip the little candleholders to the Christmas tree.

  ‘I don’t care how bad this arm is, I’m going to the pictures with Bo next time he gets a late pass, no matter how many pills I have to take to stop it throbbing. I’m not missing the new Bogey film for anything. Leave messing with that tree, Ruby, and come and help me with my nails. You can be my manicurist. Get that little stool and sit here in front of me. Be careful with the nail polish, though, it has to last for the duration.’

  ‘I’ve not finished here yet,’ Ruby said, trying to make the holders balance on the branches and the candles stand up straight.

  ‘This is more important. I can’t let everybody see me with chipped nails. I look bad enough as it is with this arm all wrapped up. Come and see if my hair’s dry at the back. I can’t reach to undo the hair clips. What time’s Alice expecting you?’

  ‘She said to be there by five at the latest. I don’t think it will be dry,’ she said, unrolling Sadie’s butter-coloured hair from one of the metal clips. ‘No. It’s still damp. You’ll have to leave it in, and I’ll—’

  ‘I can’t do that. There’ll be people calling round later for a Christmas drink. Tell you what, I’ll sit on the stool with my back to the fire and you sit on the floor.’

  Ruby left the little tree to squat unwillingly on the rag rug. She hated the job: it was fiddly and time-consuming, and she’d too many things to do already. Sadie edged the stool nearer the fire, and supporting her bad arm with her knee, she gently pushed up the sleeve of her cardigan. The exposed flesh at the edge of the bandage looked angry, and Ruby could see that the swelling had spread out from the original wound. When she took her arm, Sadie winced. Under the bandage, the damaged limb looked swollen and the bruising had turned her fingers to a lurid shade of purple. Ruby dipped the tiny brush into the deep-red nail varnish and steadied a discoloured finger. Sadie closed her eyes and hummed softly to the music on the radio. Since she’d hurt her arm, Sadie had seen to it that Grandma Jenny’s rules about the use of the radio and the amount of wood and coal that could be put on the fire didn’t apply to her. It was possible for her to get Jenny to agree to anything she wanted, but the extra wood that Bo had sent over for them helped as well. He’d also sent them a leg of pork for Christmas dinner, but now it wasn’t certain that he would be there to help them eat it: all four GIs were in trouble with the officers at the camp and hadn’t been to the cottage for days.

  Not that any of it worried Sadie as much as her loss of wages, and that she wasn’t well enough to go out to any of the dances and parties with Lou. Ruby was sure that – if she’d had a boyfriend – she wouldn’t have been as willing to go off to dances, just because he couldn’t get passes out. She dipped the polish in the bottle and began on the next finger. Sadie’s eyes were closed and her breathing shallow. Ruby sighed. And she wouldn’t have been fretting to go dancing at the American club, when she knew that her boyfriend wouldn’t even be allowed in.

  Sadie opened her eyes and inspected her nails. ‘Why don’t you make us a brew and come and sit with me for a bit before you go?’

  Ruby cut herself two slices of bread and filled the kettle. As she sat on one of the brass boxes to toast the bread, Sadie blew on her nails and sipped her tea.

  ‘I wish we still lived in town,’ she said. ‘Christmas was much better when we lived in the pub. I loved it there at Christmas. It was always lively. Always something going on, but Christmas was best. It’s that boring here. Always the same folk, and always wanting to know your business. Gets me down, it does.’

  ‘I didn’t know you’d lived in a pub,’ Ruby said, easing the bread off the fork and turning it over.

  ‘Mum was the landlady, and a good one. My dad, Arthur, he had a couple of pubs and a bookie’s.’

  ‘Did he die?’

  ‘No. Got married. Muriel. Twenty-five. She has a little lad. Told Ma and me to get out. No papers. Nothing to say we could stop. Don’t you go saying nothing to her about it. She doesn’t like it broadcast. Have you told the Greys yet that you’re finishing?’

  Ruby shook her head and scraped the remnants of jam from the side of the jar. ‘No. They’ve been good to me, and I like playing for the dances.’

  ‘They’ll not want you as much after Christmas, and the factory work’s regular. You know how much you’ll have every week. Not frightened to spend, like you are now, in case she doesn’t need you for a couple of weeks. Anyway, I thought you didn’t like it there, after the way she was with the lads?’

  ‘I think it was a misunderstanding.’

  ‘Misunderstanding, my hat!’

  Ruby skewered the second piece of bread and shrugged. ‘No different than going to the camp or the American club.’

  Sadie, who had been admiring her nails, looked up. ‘How do you make that out?’

  Ruby felt her cheeks redden. ‘You and Lou go dancing with the white soldiers, and Bo and the others aren’t allowed in there.’

  ‘I’ve only been once, and that was to keep Lou company, and we was asked to go from work, as part of the war effort.’

  ‘You should have said no. Does Bo know you went?’

  ‘No. And don’t you go sayin’. Anyway, it’s not the same. They’ll not change anything, just because me and Lou don’t go to a dance, but Mrs Grey and the Prendergasts … well, what they say goes round here.’

  ‘Father O’Flynn didn’t let it stop him, even though …’

  ‘I thought you was in a hurry,’ Sadie snapped, picking up her mirror and inspecting her neatly plucked eyebrows.

  The Christmas Eve party at the Grey’s was busy and lively. When Mrs Grey gave her a Christmas present, a handkerchief, embroidered with sprays of heather, she felt it was a sign that the discord, caused by the Nativity play and Mrs Grey’s differences with Father O’Flynn about the black soldiers, had been forgotten; although she noticed that the old priest hadn’t been at any of the Christmas celebrations.

  There were twelve people for dinner. When she arrived, Alice was already at work in the kitchen. Ruby helped with the preparations until seven, when she was called into the drawing room to play for the guests. After the meal, Mrs Grey and her guests danced to records and then they played parlour games, so she wasn’t needed. She hoped that Alice would say she could go, but instead she had to help Dick with the washing-up and clearing the pots away. Later, Mr Rollo slipped out of the party and made them a drink with egg and brandy in it. Alice told him he was wasteful and that she would report him to madam, but she was laughing when she said it.

  Mr Rollo often came into the kitchen; he said it was more entertaining than sitting with his sister’s friends. Alice often grumbled about him, because he spent all day in bed and then left his room in such a mess. She and Mr Watts didn’t believe he was ill and thought that a man of forty-
five should be making his own way in the world. It was true that he was always hanging around in the house. Sometimes during the day, when they were cleaning, he’d come into the drawing room and get her to play for him. Alice complained that he was holding up the dusting, but he made her laugh and she always gave in. A few days before Christmas, he’d given Ruby some new songs and asked her to learn them for New Year’s Eve. She’d said she couldn’t, that she hadn’t got the time, but Alice had said she should, because Mr Rollo wanted to sing them for Mrs Grey and she would be pleased.

  After the Greys and their guests left for midnight Mass, Ruby helped Alice clear away. It was almost midnight when – giggling together at one of Mr Rollo’s silly jokes – they finally pushed open the kitchen door and rolled in the old wooden trolley stacked high with dishes that still needed to be washed. Her granddad was sitting at the table, his narrow chest heaving. Alice fussed and scolded him for coming out on such a cold night, when he should have been in bed. Under Dick’s instructions, he was given a dose of Friar’s Balsam and warm water to drink, and once the pots were cleared away, Dick poured a small tot of rum for both of them to protect them against the damp on the journey home.

  The next day – Christmas Day – both Sadie and Granddad were ill, and although Bo and the other GIs got passes to have their Christmas dinner at the cottage, they were due back at the camp by five.

  ‘It’s crazy,’ Bo complained, struggling out of his rain-soaked coat. ‘There’s nothing for us to do in the camp today. I don’t think we even have to leave early in the morning. It just gets the guys more frustrated for nothing.’

  They decided to wait until after the Christmas dinner to open the presents stacked up around the tree. Johnny Fin was the last to arrive and added a welcome bottle-shaped parcel to the pile. Even though Granddad’s chest was bad, he came downstairs for Christmas dinner, and after a warm whisky and water, he was soon tucking in to the pork and roast potatoes.

  ‘Well, here’s hoping that it will be over by next Christmas,’ Johnny said, when Bo had filled everyone’s glasses.