by Jessie Keane
Bitch, she thought, wishing for a kind word, for reassurance, for an end to this grinding awful pain that had started hours ago, after midnight. Now the bedside clock said ten past four.
But she didn’t expect kindness from this woman – or from anyone else, come to that. She’d committed the cardinal sin of being unmarried and becoming pregnant. She was aware of the Irishwoman’s sneering disapproval – but right now Ruby didn’t even care. Her whole world had become boiled down, concentrated into this mammoth battle of endurance against a flooding sea of pain.
And then it started – the shriek of the air-raid siren.
The midwife stiffened and drew back. ‘Damn, isn’t that all we needed?’ She lunged forward, starting to heft Ruby from the bed. ‘Come on, better get you down the shelter.’
Ruby cringed away from her, teeth gritted as another unholy wave of pain hit her.
She shook her head.
‘Come on,’ said the midwife. ‘D’you want one of those bloody doodlebugs to get this child before it’s even born?’
‘I’m not. Having this baby. In the fucking shelter,’ Ruby managed to get out between gasps.
‘Now don’t be a silly girl,’ said the midwife briskly, and bustled back in for another try.
Ruby’s lips drew back from her teeth in a snarl. ‘You deaf? I’m not going out to the shelter, I’m having this baby right here.’
‘Then you’re having it on your own,’ said the midwife, jaw set and eyes unfriendly.
‘Fine,’ yelled Ruby to the woman’s back as she left the room and stomped off down the stairs. ‘That’s just bloody fine, for all the sodding use you’ve been so far!’
Downstairs she heard the raised voices – his voice, louder than the others.
The loud one. She remembered she’d thought that the moment she’d first seen him among his big group of mates. Voice like a foghorn; that was him, all right.
The back door slammed. The midwife was gone, heading down the garden to the Anderson shelter.
Another great boiling wave of pain was building in her midsection.
‘Ah shit, here we go again,’ she groaned, and clung to the old brass headboard as it hit her.
The siren stopped.
And then she heard something else: the hum of a motor.
Shit. Doodlebug.
She pushed and heaved and writhed like an animal.
Just so long as the bloody motor kept going, she and the baby were safe. And him downstairs, him and her, the snooty cow, what were they doing? Had they gone out now to the shelter too, was she all alone, completely alone, in the house?
But no. She could hear their voices down there.
She actually felt glad the midwife had gone. The woman’s overwhelming air of disapproval had been depressing Ruby for half the night. For the moment it was just her and the baby, battling against the odds, and she preferred that. Now, things were at a crucial phase. She could feel it.
And then the motor stopped.
Shit.
She kept pushing anyway, and then – oh miracle of miracles! – she felt something give deep inside her, and the baby, still attached to her by the thick red pulsing worm of the cord, corkscrewed out with a wet slither onto the papers. Then Cornelius appeared in the doorway, and Vanessa, with her snooty face twisted in disgust at the mess and the blood.
Silence.
Then, suddenly, the baby started to cry.
Ruby saw their attention fasten upon it; a girl, her daughter, only not hers because she was giving her up right now, or maybe she wouldn’t even get the chance to do that, maybe the child was going to die with its first breath . . .
The doodlebug struck. It felt like an earthquake must feel; the battered old building shook to its foundations. Vanessa let out a quavering cry of fear. The explosion rocked the bed. The lampshade swung crazily, but somehow the light stayed on, sending mad shadows dancing over the three adults and the bloody newborn. A shard of plaster cracked off from the ceiling and struck the edge of the bed before tumbling to the floor. Ruby leaned forward and put her hands over the little girl’s head, a protective gesture, noting with wonder the wispy blonde hair still sticky with the birth fluids.
Missed us, thought Ruby, and the two of them approached the bed. Killed some other poor sod stone-cold dead, but not us. Not this time.
‘Look,’ said Cornelius to his wife. ‘It’s a girl – but look, she’s blonde, you see?’
Ruby watched them both with hatred. Him big and golden, her small, mousy, thin, terribly refined. Ruby had never seen a more ill-matched pair than these two. Yet, here they were. Together. Cornelius Bray and his wife, Vanessa.
The siren started sounding the all-clear.
Outside was bedlam. Shouting, screaming, the horrible crackle of flames nearby. But in here it was quiet. They all stared, transfixed, at the baby girl.
Cornelius’s eyes rose and met Ruby’s. There was a hint of guilty unease in them, which surprised her. She’d never suspected he had even a grain of conscience in his entire body. ‘The midwife will be back in a minute,’ he said.
Another spasm gripped her and she gritted her teeth again, clutched a hand to the headboard.
Just the afterbirth, coming away.
Only it wasn’t.
It was another baby, spiralling out to lie beside its sister.
Twins? No one had told her she was giving birth to twins!
She touched the child’s head and the eyes opened. A boy. The tiny scrap of hair was dark.
Ruby saw Vanessa take a half-step back, her lip curling in distaste. ‘Good God, it’s . . .’ she started to say, then bit her lip, cutting the words dead.
Ruby heard the midwife returning and lay back, exhausted, amazed.
They would take the girl. That was the deal. But the boy . . . she stared at him writhing there, now starting to cry. Her heart leapt at the sound. They wouldn’t want him; you only had to look at him to see that. The boy would be hers. A surge of pure gladness hit her then, where before there had only been sadness and pain. She had a consolation prize. She would give up her daughter; but she still had a son. She clung to that; it made it all a little easier to bear. Everyone would disapprove, look down their noses at her, but she would take it. She would have to. Because she was going to hold on to him, even if it killed her.
‘Christ!’ Now Charlie loomed in the doorway, gazing down at the two babies. One blonde, one dark. Twins, but not alike. Not at all.
The midwife had cut the cord and was now cleaning the girl up. The boy still lay there, abandoned, squirming, on the sodden newspapers.
‘That’s enough now,’ said Charlie. He took a wad of notes out of his pockets and started peeling them off. He handed some to the midwife. ‘Here.’
‘The boy . . .’ said the midwife.
‘Oh. Right. Well, cut the cord. I’ll see to him,’ said Charlie.
The midwife cut the boy’s cord and tied it off. She placed the little girl in her mother’s arms. Ruby looked down at her baby girl, feeling pure untrammelled love for the first time in her life. The Irishwoman went off downstairs. Charlie came forward without a word. Grim-faced, he took the baby from Ruby and handed her to Vanessa, who stood there, speechless, gazing down at the baby, while Ruby lay there in mess and blood like a butchered beast of the field, her purpose served.
Ruby saw Cornelius draw close to his wife, stare down at the daughter who was, after all, half his. While their attention was focused on the baby girl, Ruby reached out a gentle, shaky hand to touch the boy’s head. Then Charlie came back to the bed, carrying a sheet. He lifted the baby boy into it, wrapped him securely.
‘No . . .’ said Ruby urgently.
‘I’ll see to this one,’ he said.
‘No . . .’ said Ruby, feeling like her guts were being ripped from her as she heard the baby start to wail. ‘No!’
‘Now don’t be stupid, I’ve got to get shot of it,’ he told her bluntly.
And he was gone, out of the ro
om.
She closed her eyes. Tears spilled over as she watched Vanessa go too, leaving with her little girl.
She lay back amid the blood and sweat, and sobbed exhaustedly into the pillows. The afterbirth would come away soon and then, then, if she could summon the will to move or even care what happened any more, she would get out of the bed and start to clean herself up.
How did I come to this? she wondered.
It had all started so easily; she could still see it, that bright room with the chandeliers, could still hear their laughter, smell the cigar smoke and brandy and the overwhelming scent of wealth. Like entering a foreign country. That’s what it had felt like to her, on the evening when she first met him. She’d had a glimpse into another world – a world of ease and privilege.
But that world had never been meant for her.
‘Ruby?’ He was back. Her blond god Cornelius was standing over the bed, looking down at her, sweat-stained and hollow-eyed; the sad remnant of the woman he had used.
Now she looked at him and felt the last vestige of her once consuming love dissolve into hatred. She lay there, open for everyone to see, exposed, ruined.
‘Go away,’ she told him coldly.
‘Ruby . . .’
‘Didn’t you hear me, you fucking bastard?’ Ruby shouted suddenly. ‘Fuck off!’
He left the room. She watched him go, listened to his footsteps going down the stairs, then the door opening, then closing behind him. In the silence, she could hear fire engines roaring to the scene of the blast. Finding death and destruction.
She had her own tragedy here.
Her little girl was gone. Her son was gone.
Ruby lay back and let the hot, gut-wrenching tears come. Soon, she might begin to feel she could move, do something. Right now, she could only cry, and despair. And she swore to herself as she lay there that she would never, ever, fall in love and let a man use her again.
47
Charlie took the boy over to one of his contacts in Finsbury Park. He rapped on the door and it was opened by a bug-eyed monster with the face of a fly.
‘Shit,’ said Charlie, startled. The baby wrapped in his arms gave a whimper and he bounced it irritably against his chest.
The fly monster pulled its head off to reveal the plump and pasty face of Hugh Burton. Hugh gave a sly grin. He was wearing a long grubby white apron. ‘Made you jump, didn’t I?’ he said, and it seemed to please him, the fact that he had given a hard nut like Charlie Darke a turn.
Charlie moved inside, shutting the door behind him. Burton gave him the creeps, but he was useful. Crazy, of course, but useful. He’d been a fire-watcher all through the Blitz and now he was also a rubbish man – that is, he disposed of people that gangs wanted rid of. He had the stirrup-pump that he used in his fire-watching work, and with it he transferred sulphuric acid from a bucket into a big vat he kept in the cellar, and it was there that he disposed of his victims. They melted to nothing in that stuff, bones and all.
‘Got a job for you,’ said Charlie, indicating the child in his arms.
Burton looked at the kid, then at Charlie. ‘Cost you,’ he said. ‘Fifty.’
‘That’s fucking robbery,’ said Charlie.
‘No, it’s fucking murder,’ smiled Burton. ‘I take the risks, you cover the cost. That’s the way it works. You know that. And it leaves no trace,’ he added. ‘None at all.’
Charlie gave a disgusted click of the tongue and thrust the child into Burton’s pudgy arms. Didn’t he have enough to think about, without all this kid business from Ruby? Neither he nor Joe had seen Chewy, Stevie or Ben for months. They hadn’t even shown up to collect their final payment, and that was worrying. Ben’s wife Moira had been round, shouting the odds, asking what the fuck was going on. But the truth was, Charlie didn’t know. His boys had simply vanished.
Charlie pulled out a wedge and peeled off five tenners, and gave them to Burton. He pushed them into his trouser pocket, and nodded. Charlie took one last look at his nephew, then opened the door. He paused there, looked back again.
‘Throttle the poor little bastard first, will you?’ he asked.
Another nod.
The deal was done. Charlie went out of the door, satisfied that the whole thing had been sorted away, neat and tidy. Just the way he liked it.
Jenny Phelps née Burton was whistling under her breath as she walked up the path to her brother Hugh’s place. She was clutching a tea towel in her hands to keep the casserole she carried from burning them. She often did this, popped over to Hugh’s with a morsel left over from her own family’s meagre dinner, because he was useless, unmarried, a bit of a misfit really, the poor sod.
She put her key in the door, calling out ‘Yoo-hoo!’ like she always did.
As she swung open the door, it hit an obstruction. Not expecting it, she was taken off-balance. The casserole dish slipped from her grasp and smashed on the stone step, spilling the precious neck end of beef and gravy all over her stockings, shoes, the door, everything.
‘Bugger!’ she cried out. Her legs stung where the hot liquid had splashed them. That messy sod Hugh, he never cleaned, he was always leaving junk all around the place. What had he left here now, right in the way of the door . . . ?
She edged inside and looked down. Hugh was lying on the floor, face-up, wearing a long grubby white apron. His gas mask was nearby. His eyes were half-open. Jenny was a nurse and she’d seen a fair few corpses during the war, and she only had to glance at her brother to see that he was dead.
‘Oh no – oh, Hugh,’ she said, starting to cry.
A whimpering sound made her pause. At her brother’s feet was a bundle. It was moving slightly. She crouched down and pulled back the blanket.
It was a tiny dark-skinned baby.
Having delivered the kid to the rubbish man, Charlie went over to the house where his sister was living. She was still lying in the filthy bed, alone. She looked up dully as he came into the bedroom. Saw that his arms were empty; saw that her child was gone.
‘What did you do with him?’ she asked, sounding numb; without feeling.
‘Took it over to a friend of a friend,’ said Charlie. ‘He’ll be looked after, brought up proper. Don’t worry.’ He looked at her, still lying there, wallowing in her own mess, the lazy cow. ‘Ain’t it time you got yourself tidied up?You can come back home tomorrow morning, it’ll be as if nothing happened. You can go back to the ruddy Windmill, if you want to. Do what you like.’
Ruby turned her head into the pillows. ‘I’m not going back there,’ she said. If she hadn’t been tempted away by all the false glitter of showbiz, she’d never have met Cornelius Bray: and she would never have known the agony of giving up her babies.
‘No? Well, something else then.’
He didn’t even care, she could hear it in his voice. The problem of her and the bastard kids was solved; that was all Charlie cared about. One job finished, on to the next. That was Charlie.
But her heart was shattered into tiny pieces. One job finished, on to the next. She couldn’t do that. She couldn’t pretend she hadn’t just given birth. That she had a son, and a daughter; one dark, one fair.
But as usual the men in her life had taken charge, sorted it all out. Her dad had beaten her. Charlie had dominated her. Cornelius had fucked her.
Now it was over. That was the end of all that. She would never let a man control her again. Never again let one raise a finger to her. Never, ever, let one inside her. She swore it, on her babies’ lives. Silently, vehemently, she swore that, from now on, things would change.
48
When Charlie left Ruby that night, he went on over to Rachel’s. She was expecting him. He had to stop on the way and take shelter down the Tube when the wailing sirens told of another raid. He sat down there and thought about her. Only Rachel gave him any solace these days. Ruby was a fucking nuisance; couldn’t the daft mare have kept her legs together? And her mate Betsy was no better, pestering for a walk up the
aisle now she had his engagement ring on her finger.
Still, there were compensations to be had in Betsy’s house. Her dad had got several of Charlie’s boys into the docks already, and lots of boxes of goodies were falling onto the quayside and breaking open as a result, ruining the fruit and textiles within so that the boys just had to take them home and sell them at a nice profit – what else could they do?
Betsy and her marriage talk! Fucking women, who needed them? But he knew he needed Rachel. He lived for the times when he could go there, just talk to her or bed her, feel her silky skin against his, drown in the sweet hay-meadow scent of her hair.
He knew he was in love with Rachel Tranter, and that he would never give her up. Even if he did marry Betsy, and he supposed he would, he would keep Rachel too. That went without saying. And if Betsy found out and kicked off, fuck her. Who was the boss? He was.
When the all-clear sounded he trotted up the steps and walked on to Rachel’s. He turned the corner into her street, feeling happier now he was going to see her, whistling ‘When the Red, Red Robin’ under his breath, and that was when he saw it.
The fire engines.
The crumbling masonry still falling, disintegrating.
A vast crater where the bomb had struck.
Rachel’s house wasn’t there any more. Neither was the whole row of houses that had spanned out on either side of hers.
They were all gone.
Every one of them, flattened as if they had never been.
He ran forward, flung himself at the spot where her front door should have been. There was nothing there but smouldering splinters.
A fire officer was grabbing him, trying to haul him back. ‘Steady on, sir, it’s still burning . . .’
It was. The debris was alight, and there was nothing there, no sign of life, just this awful, blistering ruination. He could see a remnant of Rachel’s kitchen curtains, the green with tiny sprigs of yellow, being enveloped by flames. Somewhere in all that mangled wreckage was her bedspread, the one they had made love on, its rose-coloured softness turning to mush under the jets of water. He thought he caught a glimpse, a faint dim sparkle of her hair slide, the one he liked to pull loose from her hair before he caressed it, buried his face in it. He bent and snatched it up.