Ruby McBride

by Freda Lightfoot

  Ruby McBride

  Freda Lightfoot

  Originally published 2002 by Hodder & Stoughton Ltd. 338 Euston Road,

  London NW1 3BH

  Copyright © 2002 and 2012 by Freda Lightfoot.

  All rights reserved.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. Nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  ISBN 978-0-9570978-3-4

  Published by Freda Lightfoot 2012

  ‘A bombshell of an unsuspected secret rounds off a romantic saga narrated with pace and purpose and fuelled by conflict.’ The Keswick Reminder on The Bobbin Girls

  ‘a fascinating, richly detailed setting with a dramatic plot brimming with enough scandal, passion, and danger for a Jackie Collins’ novel.’

  Booklist on Hostage Queen

  ‘You can’t put a price on Freda Lightfoot’s stories from Manchester’s 1950s Champion Street Market. They bubble with enough life and colour to brighten up the dreariest day and they have characters you can easily take to your heart.’

  The Northern Echo.

  ‘Lightfoot clearly knows her Manchester well’

  Historical Novel Society

  ‘Kitty Little is a charming novel encompassing the provincial theatre of the early 20th century, the horrors of warfare and timeless affairs of the heart.’

  The West Briton

  ‘Another heartwarming tale from a master story-teller.’

  Lancashire Evening Post on For All Our Tomorrows.

  ‘She piles horror on horror - rape, torture, sexual humiliation, incest, suicide - but she keeps you reading!’ Jay Dixon on House of Angels.

  ‘This is a book I couldn’t put down . . . a great read!’

  South Wales Evening Post on The Girl From Poorhouse Lane

  ‘paints a vivid picture of life on the fells during the war. Enhanced by fine historical detail and strong characterisation it is an endearing story...’

  Westmorland Gazette on Luckpenny Land

  ‘An inspiring novel about accepting change and bravely facing the future.’

  The Daily Telegraph on Ruby McBride

  Description

  The grand opening of the Manchester Ship Canal is a big day for Ruby McBride and her young sister and brother. Its glories fade into insignificance, however, when their mother Molly, due to illness, reluctantly entrusts her beloved children to Ignatius House, and the not-so-tender care of the nuns. Ruby, a rebel at heart, is always on the wrong side of authority, but when she is sixteen, the Board of Guardians forces her into marriage and she has to abandon her siblings, vowing she will reunite the family just as soon as she can.

  Convinced that her new husband is a conman, she discovers life on the barge is not at all what she expected. She is furious at being robbed of the chance to be with her childhood sweetheart, Kit Jarvis, so resists Bart’s advances for as long as she can. But Ruby’s courage and spirit enable her to rise above the disadvantages of her birth and make a life for herself within the thriving community of waterways folk.

  Chapter One

  21 May 1894

  ‘Rise and shine, chuck, kettle’s on.’

  Ruby stretched blissfully, then lifted her arms and wrapped them about her mother’s neck in a tight, warm hug. Even if she was nearly eleven, she hoped never to be too old for a morning cuddle. ‘Is this the special day you promised us, Mam?’

  ‘It is, love, and if you don’t shape yourself, you’ll miss out on a very special breakfast an’ all. I’ve saved a bit of jam to go on us bread and marg this morning.’

  The thrill of a day’s holiday from school made Ruby want to shout with joy, and jam on her bread took it into the realms of fantasy. She’d known too many mornings when there’d been no breakfast at all. Inside, she felt a bit sick with the wonder of it, and prayed she wouldn’t disgrace herself by not managing to eat the promised treat.

  Molly McBride kissed her daughter and tweaked her snub nose. ‘See you wash yer lovely face and hands especially well this morning. We don’t want Her Majesty to see the McBrides looking anything less than their best, now do we, chuck? Not when she’s come all the way up from London to see us, eh?’

  Ruby giggled as her mother gave a huge wink then, one hand at her hip and the other lifting her long cotton skirts, she sashayed away, nose in the air, just as if she were the Queen of England herself. Oh, she was a laugh a minute, her mam. But then she leaned over the table, clinging on to the edge as she started coughing, which quite ruined the effect.

  Ruby felt the familiar jolt of panic but said nothing, knowing how her mother hated a fuss or any show of sympathy. ‘I won’t let it rob me of me sparkle,’ she would say, but the cough that had got worse all winter was a constant worry at the back of Ruby’s mind. She felt thankful that summer was almost here, for the warmer weather would surely ease it. And Mam didn’t want her to worry about anything today, not with the Queen herself coming to open the Manchester Ship Canal that had cost millions of pounds to build. ‘The big ditch’, they called it. Folk had been putting up flags and bunting for days, and there was to be a band.

  Apart from Molly McBride’s tuneless singing after her nightly glass of stout, there wasn’t a lot of music in Ruby’s life. And when the opening ceremony was over, there would still be cocoa and bun-loaf to look forward to, out in the back yard here. Mam had told her nothing about this, no doubt wanting it to be a surprise, but Ruby had heard about it from the other tenants. It was to be a sort of party, all of their own.

  After a moment or two the spasm abated and Mam turned to wink again at Ruby, handkerchief pressed to her mouth. ‘You waken our Pearl and Billy, while I see how far I can make this jam stretch. We’ll want some butties to take with us, so it’ll be nobbut a scrape. Now look sharp.’

  ‘I will, Mam.’ Pearl and Billy were curled up beside her like a pair of puppies, keeping each other warm. Ruby gave her sister a little shake but she only grunted and sank further under the blanket and old coats that served as covers, her dandelion-bright hair the only sign of her presence in the bed, the fronds intermingling with Billy’s light brown locks. If Ruby hadn’t known that ‘they all came from a different seed though grown out of the same pod’, as her mam liked to explain their different fathers, she would have wondered how it was the McBrides could be so unalike. Billy, at four, an impish ball of mischief. Six-year-old Pearl, plump, pretty and a bag of nervous energy with not an unselfish thought in her silly head. And Ruby herself, long-legged and scrawny with nut-brown curls that fell to her shoulders when not in their usual braids, eyes to match set in a pale face beneath winged eyebrows, and with a square chin which proved, according to Mam, that she was obstinate as a mule. Oh, but they were as happy a bunch as any family could wish to be. How else could they have survived?

  There was no doubt in Ruby’s mind that her mam more than made up to her children for what they lacked in material possessions, or in food for their empty bellies, by filling them instead with an endless supply of love and laughter.

  ‘A kiss don’t cost anything,’ she’d say and, however hungry and bone weary she was after a long day’s work, she’d always find the time to pull the three of them on to her lap, pour herself a drop of stout to keep up her strength, and relate some tale she’d learned from her old dad. He’d dro
wned at sea when Molly had been quite a young girl and nothing, as she would carefully explain, had ever been the same since. `That’s why we’re in this pretty pickle today, because me mam hadn’t anything for us to live on after that, once me da’s wages stopped coming in,’ she would say. `So I never had a chance, see? She died of a broken heart, bless her. Me brothers and sisters all went their separate ways, God alone knows where. I married the first bit of dish rag who offered to put a roof over me head, and look where that got me.’

  Billy, being the baby of the family, would be asleep in no time during this story telling. Pearl would soon grow bored and wriggle down to go off and play with the rag doll Mrs Bradshaw-from-upstairs made for her, but Ruby would listen with rapt attention, and smile at the familiar tale which changed very slightly with each retelling. ‘But you loved the bones of him, Mam, didn’t you?’ she would prompt, since she adored to hear about this unknown person who was her own father.

  ‘Eeh, didn’t I just! He was the kindest, dearest man on God’s sweet earth. So handsome, he was, that all the girls were chasing him.’

  ‘But you were the one who hooked him.’ Ruby didn’t entirely understand what this phrase meant, but her mother used it often and she loved to see the shine of happiness light up Mam’s hazel eyes at the words.

  ‘Aye, I did that. The minute I clapped eyes on him, and him on me, we knew we were destined for each other. Destined, that’s what we were. Toby McBride and me were meant to be together. Two peas in a pod, Romeo and Juliet, a pair of star-crossed…’

  Ruby interrupted, since she knew this description could continue indefinitely and they were coming to the part which puzzled her the most. ‘Then why did he leave, Mam, if he loved you so much? Why did he go back to Ireland without you? And without me?’

  Here, her mother would hug her tight and smother her with teasing kisses. ‘Now how could you go anywhere without me? You were still in me tummy at that time, bless you.’

  ‘Was Da happy for me to be in your tummy?’

  ‘Of course he were. Said so the minute I told him. Nay, I’m sure he meant to come back, for he loved me right enough. Said as much before he flitted off across the Irish Sea. "Know that I’ll always love you, Molly," he says. "There’ll never be another colleen as pretty as my sweet Molly."‘

  Ruby would frown at this, a familiar ache of disappointment starting up in her tummy at the puzzle of it all. ‘But he didn’t come back, did he?’

  ‘No, drat him, he didn’t. Some chit must have waylaid him. But that’s how it is with fellas, d’you see? Responsibility and commitment are not words to be found in their dictionary.’ Ruby would watch, wide-eyed, as her mam refilled her glass, worrying whether she should suggest she have her tea before she drink any more but not liking to say so, in case there was nothing to eat.

  ‘Like all men he was not to be trusted, the lying, thieving, no-good piece of ... Oops, hearken at me, about to use a foul word in front of me own childer. He just couldn’t resist any bit of skirt what danced by, and I’ve no doubt that’s what happened. He went chasing after another bit of skirt.’

  Ruby would struggle to picture the shadowy figure of her father running after a long black skirt as it danced alone down an unknown street in Ireland, and failed miserably. It didn’t make sense. `How can a skirt dance, Mam?’

  ‘Oh, believe me, precious, there are some what’ll dance to any tune, given half a chance. That’s life, Ruby precious. Nothing lasts forever. Not the lovely Toby, nor either of the good-for-nothing wastrels who took his place. You remember that, girl. Love you and leave you, that’s men all over. So make the best of it while it lasts, because come the first drop of rain, they’ll be gone.’

  Seeing the tears spilling down her mam’s pale cheeks and hearing the racking cough start up again, the conversation would be swiftly brought to an end and Ruby would be filled with shame. It was ever a mistake to talk about her da, for it always had the same effect. She really should be more considerate.

  Now Ruby put these concerns to one side and scrambled out of bed, hastily rubbing the sleep from her eyes as she started pulling on a few more layers of clothing over those she’d slept in. There was always a raw chill here in the cellar which comprised their home. Not that this troubled her overmuch, for she’d long since grown used to a bit of discomfort. They’d lived in a dozen places over the years but Ruby didn’t care how many times they moved, so long as the family were all together, the three of them with their lovely mam. She splashed cold water on her face and scrubbed at her teeth with a salt rag, just as Mam had taught her, then hurried back to the thankless task of waking her brother and sister.

  Grasping her sister’s shoulder Ruby shook her again, more firmly this time. ‘Wake up, Pearl. Morning has come, at last.’ Hardly having slept for excitement herself, she couldn’t see why her sister wasn’t equally eager for the day to begin.

  Pearl’s blue eyes blinked open, then closed tight again, as if she couldn’t bear the morning light, though very little penetrated the grime of the single window. ‘Leave over, Ruby. I’m stopping here a bit longer, in the warm.’

  Ruby ran her hand beneath her four-year-old brother and sighed with relief that for once he hadn’t wet himself. The sooner she got him to the lavvy, the better. Gathering him in her arms, she lifted him from the bed and carried him out to the back yard where she sat him on the cracked wooden lavatory seat. She’d learned the importance of getting to the one privvy early, before the rest of the tenants in the building started queuing for it. Still half asleep, he proceeded to do his duty while Ruby held on to him, making sure he didn’t fall down the long drop of the tippler lavatory as some small children had been known to do.

  ‘Is it today we see the ships, Ruby?’ He started to scratch the rash of eczema on his knees and Ruby gently stopped him. ‘It is, Billy.’

  ‘I mean to go on a big ship meself, one day.’

  ‘’Course you do, love.’

  Back in the cellar Ruby gave him a thorough scrubbing with carbolic soap, paying particular attention to behind his ears, making him yelp in protest, before quickly dressing him and leaving him to pull on his own socks and clasp his clogs while she turned her attention to Pearl. ‘Aren’t you up yet, you lazy tyke? Our Billy’s up and dressed already. So am I. Come on, breakfast is nearly ready. And there’s jam!’

  ‘I’m coming, I’m coming. Stop yer nagging.’

  When still she made no move, Ruby half dragged her from beneath the covers and Pearl let out a yowl of indignant protest when a wet flannel was slapped on her face.

  Giggling, Ruby shared a conspiratorial glance with Mam, who was carefully scraping margarine on to thick slices of bread at the old wooden table which they grandly called ‘the kitchen’, though there was no stove and anything they needed to cook had to be taken down to the bakehouse on Clarendon Road. Ruby didn’t mind the closeness of their living quarters because she never felt alone there. The cellar might smell of boiled cabbage and bad drains, be running with damp, thick with cockroaches and the peeling wallpaper someone had once optimistically put on alive with fleas, but it was their sanctuary and she felt safe in it.

  This was because Mam guarded her precious charges every minute of the day, save for the hours when she worked on the fish market and left them with Nellie Bradshaw, the old woman who lived directly above and spoiled them something wicked, though she’d scarcely two ha’pennies to rub together for herself. Nevertheless, Auntie Nellie, as she liked to be called, was a soft touch for a gob stopper or sherbet dab. If she’d no money for such a treat, she’d give them a crust of bread to chew on till their mam came home and, for this special day, had managed to get some flawed loom ends of cheap cotton from the mill and helped Mam to dye and make them up into brand new frocks for the two girls, the first they’d ever had in their lives, which proved that something important was going to happen. Ruby had sensed this anyway from the whispered conversations between the two women as they’d cut and stitched and made their
plans.

  ‘I must have ‘em looking decent,’ her mam kept repeating, over and over. ‘I can’t let ‘em go if they don’t look respectable. And I’ll not have any toffee-nosed official think I don’t look after ‘em proper.’

  ‘No one would think such a thing, Molly, just look at their little faces. Picture of health they are - unlike you, chuck. A good long rest is what’s needed to set you right. Anyroad, we’re probably wasting us time when they’ll only be given summat different the minute they get there. Eeh, but I’ll miss you when you’ve all gone.’

  Puzzling over this mysterious conversation, Ruby wondered if perhaps the Queen herself might be handing out new clothes down by the canal, though this seemed unlikely. And why should Auntie Nellie miss them? They’d only be gone for a few hours, wouldn’t they? But then it was probably just that Mam had been planning this day for weeks, and seemed feverishly determined that all must go smoothly. She absolutely insisted that no matter what the cost, both her girls should be dressed up to the nines for the day and although Ruby might protest that it was unnecessary, she was secretly delighted with her dress.

  It was navy blue, fastened down one side with shiny brass buttons they’d bought on the Flat Iron Market, and with a white sailor collar trimmed with a paler blue braid. Once she’d finished her breakfast, Ruby was at last allowed to put the dress on, smoothing the crisp new cotton with awed reverence. Then Mam set about braiding her long brown hair. It was always worn this way so she didn’t catch anything, but, in honour of this day, the plaits were fastened with stripy ribbons, of which Ruby was inordinately proud. So pleased was she with the effect, she didn’t even wince or complain whenever Mam pulled the hair tight on her scalp.

  By the time this onerous task was completed, Pearl too was up and dressed in a sailor frock identical in every way save for its being a paler blue, because pastel colours suited her fair colouring.