Ruby McBride

by Freda Lightfoot

  ‘I want to know where me mam is. When is she coming to fetch me? Where’s me mam?’ His high-pitched, protesting voice rang out in the silence of the dining room and dozens of pairs of shocked eyes turned in his direction. Ruby was horrified, and embarrassed on her brother’s behalf. Utterly oblivious, he asked the question again. ‘Where is she, our Ruby? I want me mam.’

  Even strict Sister Joseph failed to silence him. He kept on asking the same question every few minutes. Ruby did her best to hush him, and to console and comfort the little boy, without giving him any explanation. But then how could Billy, at four, understand that his mother was very ill indeed, and couldn’t take care of her own children any longer?

  Following the dish of lukewarm porridge, slice of bread and margarine and mug of milky tea which the McBride children ate with hungry relish, they were ordered to remain where they were until everyone else had filed out of the dining hall and gone to their lessons. Once more Sister Joseph stood before them.

  ‘You must stay here until I come and fetch you,’ she instructed the two girls, then, grasping Billy firmly by the hand, proceeded to march him away. He dragged his feet, let out a great wail of distress, then wrenched himself free and ran back to Ruby to bury his head in her lap. He burst into tears and Ruby wrapped her arms tight about him, holding his quivering little body close, just as Mam would have done. Sister Joseph’s face, normally the colour of sour milk, turned an odd sort of puce but, despite the shivers of fear running down her own spine, Ruby was determined to get an answer to her question this time.

  ‘Where are you taking our Billy? I need to know where he’s going.’

  Her courage was rewarded by a sharp, indrawn breath and a narrowing of the gimlet eyes. Unmoved by the animosity in the gaze glaring at her from beneath the nun’s head-dress, Ruby continued gently stroking Billy’s shaven head with one hand, while keeping a tight hold of Pearl with the other, just in case anyone should try and take her away too.

  ‘Naturally, being a boy, your brother will be in a different section of the house from you girls.’ The venom in the woman’s tone sliced through her like a knife.

  ‘Which section? Where? Will he be in the baby class?’

  ‘Dear me, questions, questions! You’ve got far too much to say for yourself 451. Did no one teach you to speak only when spoken to?’

  ‘I need to know where he is. Mam asked me to look after him. She was most particular about that.’

  ‘Your mother doesn’t care one way or the other what happens to you.’

  Ruby felt all the blood drain from her face. ‘That’s not true. She does care. And she made sure we were properly dressed up for when she fetched us here.’

  Sister Joseph gave a loud snort of disdain. ‘Don’t think you can fool me with those fancy frocks you arrived in. Far too good for the likes of you. I can recognise stolen property when I see it.’

  ‘They were not stolen!’ Ruby cried, appalled by the very idea that this woman from a religious order should think such a thing about her mam. But her interjection seemed to enflame the nun’s temper all the more and she was now wagging a furious finger in Ruby’s face.

  ‘Don’t lie to me 451. Your mother abandoned you. She was clearly no better than she should be. Utterly feckless, like a hundred others of her ilk. Fortunately, that task falls to more responsible guardians now and Billy will be taken proper care of, at last. As for you, 45l, you’d do better to curb that curiosity of yours. If you don’t want it to get you into further trouble.’

  Ruby’s brown eyes seemed to blaze with jagged spears of gold. ‘It’s not true what you’re saying. Mam didn’t abandon us! She never would! She were poorly and had to go in the sanatory.’

  ‘The sanatorium, you mean?’ Sister Joseph blinked, as if this information were new and rather unexpected. She did a swift genuflection. ‘Then we can but trust in the Lord that she will recover. Either way, she is in God’s hands now.’

  Alarmed by the depressing turn in the conversation, and moved by her little brother’s distress, Pearl too suddenly dissolved into tears. ‘Is me mam going to die?’

  Ruby wished herself a million years older and wiser, but Mam had always told her to stand up for herself, and hadn’t she sworn to look out for their Pearl and Billy, so she certainly wasn’t going to let a bad-tempered old nun put her off her stride. She grabbed Pearl and held her close in a fierce hug. ‘No, she ain’t going to die, Pearl. And we ain’t going to be orphans.’

  ‘No, indeed, you are vagrants, which is worse,’ Sister Joseph tartly informed her, as if it were all their own fault that their mother was sick and hadn’t been able to provide for them.

  ‘What’s a vagrant?’ Ruby could have bitten off her own tongue almost the moment the question popped out of her mouth. Just seeing the acid smile beneath the wimple warned her that the nun would take great pleasure in telling her.

  ‘In this instance, it means you are the offspring of a destitute, in dire need of discipline and obedience.’

  Both girls looked bewildered, as well they might. For the benefit of their improved education, Sister Joseph continued with her explanation as she resolutely hustled them out of the dining room and down a long, empty corridor which smelled of beeswax polish and sawdust, mingled with something far less pleasant. `It is our task to inculcate these essential traits into rough, urchin children such as yourselves. To teach you to respect your betters and combat the delinquent lifestyles you have so far been subjected to. What we do not need here at Ignatius House are unruly, naughty little guttersnipes with too much to say for themselves. Our aim is to produce quiet, orderly and well-mannered children who understand the meaning of moral rectitude. It is our Christian duty to rescue you from the life of crime and the corrupt environment you have hitherto known in order to rehabilitate you. In short, we will turn you into newly reformed, Christian boys and girls.’

  Ruby had understood little more than one word in ten, nevertheless she felt outraged by the lecture. She might only be a child but she knew when she was being insulted. ‘We didn’t lead no life of crime. Mam allus did her best for us. Give us a right walloping, she would, if we did owt wrong. But she loved us. And she allus said we should mind our manners and say our prayers every night. So we don’t need to be reformed, thank you very much.’

  This outburst caused Sister Joseph to halt in her tracks and stare down at her charge open-mouthed. The long, terrible silence which followed seemed to stretch into eternity before she found her voice. ‘Never, in all my years at Ignatius House, have I encountered such gross insubordination. Indeed, I fear the task of salvation is going to be more difficult than I imagined. Your defiance, 451, will be curbed. And I shall personally see that it is.’ Whereupon, she plucked Billy from Ruby’s grasp and carried the little boy away, kicking and screaming.

  Ruby did her utmost to conform, if only for the sake of her brother and sister, but it made no difference. As punishment for her insolence on that first day, she was denied any opportunity to see her brother, even at playtime in the afternoon. At least she and Pearl could be together but Ruby knew Billy must miss them dreadfully, and worried about him all the time. He would be sobbing his heart out every night, probably wetting his bed even more than usual, and feeling desperately alone and unwanted. Ruby worried over how his chest was, or if his eczema was still troubling him. She asked the other children if they had seen him but nobody had. Boys were only allowed to stay at the home until they were ten, and were kept in a separate wing of the house although they were generally allowed to visit their sisters during recreation hour.

  But not Billy.

  One night in the dormitory when Ruby was on her way to the bathroom with Pearl, who was afraid to go alone in the dark, a hand grasped her shoulder, making her squeal in alarm.

  ‘’Ere, are you the sister of Billy McBride?’

  ‘Yes, I am. Why, have you seen him?’

  ‘Don’t tell anyone I said so, but the other boys are giving him hell. My brother S
am’s in the same dormitory and he told me. Billy’s the littlest, see, so they’re making him do all the work, and making him suffer summat shocking if he don’t do it right.’

  ‘Are you telling me our Billy is being bullied?’ Ruby was appalled, a rush of anger flooding through her at the thought that anyone, particularly boys bigger than him, could bully her little brother who would never hurt a fly. She must do something to stop it, at once. But what? What could she do? Her mind was in such a turmoil of emotion, Ruby hardly heard the girl’s next words.

  ‘Aye, and our Sam says he’s had three cold baths this week already for wetting his bed. If he don’t get “cured” soon, he’ll catch bloody pneumonia; that’s if he isn’t beaten to a pulp first. Either way, he’s a right mess. Getting worse, not better.’

  ‘How is he worse? What do you mean, a right mess?’ But her informant had gone, slipping away in the darkness as quietly as she had come.

  Ruby decided she could wait no longer. She saw little point in asking the nuns for help. They’d done nothing so far and Sister Joseph never would, not in a month of Sundays. Besides which, she’d already branded her as a liar. Instead, she went on a hunger strike. For dinner that day it was pork and potatoes, followed by sago pudding. Ruby refused, absolutely, to eat so much as a mouthful. She could feel Sister Joseph’s eyes upon her the full length of the dining room.

  Guessing what Ruby was up to, Pearl was so concerned that she broke the no-talking rule and begged her to eat. `Don’t do it, Ruby. You’ll only make things worse.’

  Sister Joseph was approaching, bearing down upon them like a ship in full sail, her boots beneath the flowing skirts of her black robes click-clacking on the polished wooden floor. ‘Were you talking?’ she demanded of Pearl. Girls instantly bent their heads and applied themselves diligently to their food, hoping to avoid trouble themselves. ‘Do not attempt to deny it, 452. A lie is a thousand times more sinful, and I distinctly heard you speak. Stand up. Let everyone see the girl arrogant enough to break rules.’

  Pearl scrambled to her feet, the tears already spilling over and running down her cheeks. As she stood up, the rag doll, which she always carried with her, fell to the floor. Sister Joseph pounced. ‘What is that doll doing in here? Give it to me this minute.’

  ‘Leave it alone!’ The words had burst out of Ruby’s mouth before she’d had time to give them any thought. The effrontery of her daring to issue an order to Sister Joseph brought an instant and terrible silence. Not a sound in the long dining hall could be heard as every knife and fork stilled its clatter, every breath was held. Yet even that didn’t stop her. ‘That doll is all our Pearl’s got to remind her of our Mam. Don’t you dare take it away.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘I said, leave her alone. And leave me little brother alone, an’ all. Someone is bullying him. For all I know, it could be you what’s put ‘em up to it, ‘cause you’re the same. A great big bully. Well, you can save yer nastiness for me. I’m big enough to take it, and I’ve no intention of eating another mouthful in this damn’ place until I get to see our Billy. So you can stick yer sago pudding!’ Whereupon she turned the dish upside down and tipped the resulting mess all over the table. A gasp went up, echoing shockingly around the room.

  For a moment Ruby thought Sister Joseph might explode. Her face went from pink to white to a dark red, very like the colour of Auntie Nellie’s best chenille tablecloth, her thin lips almost disappearing in a tightly folded pucker of fury.

  The moment was saved by Sister George, a gentle soul who hated confrontation of any sort. She scurried over, picked up the fallen doll and ordered Pearl to sit down and get on with her dinner. ‘I shall mind Dolly for you until you’ve finished. It isn’t appropriate that you bring her into dinner, 452. Sister Joseph is quite right in that. She will also speak to 451 later about her insubordination, will you not, Sister?’ And, swivelling around, she smartly clapped her hands together so that with one accord hundreds of girls picked up their knives and forks and continued with their meal. All except for Ruby.

  Acutely aware of Pearl weeping silent tears as she struggled to eat the food set before her, and of Sister Joseph standing behind her in a mute, condemning silence, yet she made no move to pick up her own knife and fork.

  When the meal was finished and grace said as usual, the other girls all trooped out to begin their afternoon lessons. Ruby was instructed to stay behind. She sat with the untouched meal in front of her, staring at the slops of sago pudding spilled all over the board table throughout that long afternoon. More plates were set before her at supper and again she was left seated at the table throughout the evening right up to bedtime when, finally, she was sent to bed. The next morning at breakfast, the plates of food were still present at her place, joined by the morning dish of porridge and slice of bread and marg. Ruby didn’t touch a morsel. She felt ill and light-headed yet had no intention of giving in.

  ‘Are you going to eat that food 451 ?’

  ‘Not unless I can see our Billy. And have you given our Pearl her doll back?’

  ‘Certainly not is the answer to both questions. You are a bad influence upon him, and set an equally bad example to your sister with this outrageous behaviour. For a little guttersnipe such as yourself to have the effrontery to question the judgement of your betters almost beggars belief.’

  For four days she held out. The routine changed somewhat. It was decided that missing classes would only enflame her obstinacy, so the food was removed and Ruby was sent to continue her work as usual. Each mealtime, the same congealed dishes were set before her.

  When this didn’t work fresh food was brought, and it was true that the more appetising aroma almost weakened her resolve, but then she thought of Billy’s sad little face, his frightened eyes at being made to sleep on a straw pallet and threatened with the horror of being dumped in a cold bath by way of a ‘cure’. Ruby found it hard to imagine a more dreadful punishment for a very human failing. Wasn’t it enough that his mother was sick, possibly dying? She thought of his misery and sense of isolation at being kept from his sisters; the fear he must feel at being bullied by the older boys, and held on to her resolve. She would not eat until she could see him, and know that he was well.'

  Chapter Four

  It was kindly Sister George who finally broke the deadlock. One afternoon during the hour when the children were allowed to play games she brought Billy to see his sisters. He flew straight into Ruby’s arms and the three McBrides hugged and sobbed and clung on to each other as if they might never let go.

  ‘I am not in any way condoning your bad behaviour,’ Sister George sternly informed Ruby, ‘but we cannot have you fading away before our eyes. And I do understand your concern for Billy. I have recently discovered that you were right, he was being put upon by the older boys, which is not at all pleasant, though I doubt he has come to any real harm.’ She wagged a finger in his face. ‘It was very naughty of you not to tell us, Billy. If we had known, we could have done something.’

  Ruby put a protective arm about the little boy’s shoulders. ‘How would he find the courage to tell when he gets punished for the silliest of mistakes, like wetting his bed when he’s upset?’ she challenged before starting to examine his arms and legs, much as Mam might have done. She found several scratches and any number of bruises, which she showed to Sister George with a flush of triumph.

  ‘Little boys are always falling down and hurting themselves. As I said, I’m sure nobody meant him any real harm and I’ve spoken to the boys concerned. As for the bed wetting, all children must learn one way or another. It may sound cruel but this method generally works in the end.’

  But Ruby wasn’t satisfied. ‘If he’d been allowed to see us, his family, regular like, he might well have told us that he was being badly treated. Then we could’ve made sure he was happy and content, so that he wouldn’t wet his bed.’

  Sister George fingered the silver cross that hung about her neck, looking uncomfortable. �
�I think I’ve heard enough on this subject 451. I will speak to Sister Joseph and make sure you are allowed to see Billy once a day during recreation, so long as you strive to curb this tendency of yours to defiance. I can in no way condone such behaviour. For your part, you must apologise to Sister Joseph for your obstinacy and carry out whatever punishment she deems appropriate. Is that clear?’

  Pearl kicked on her ankle, and Ruby bit her tongue. ‘Yes, Sister.’

  The punishment was to scrub out the girls’ lavatories every day for a week. Ruby had to carry out this task on her hands and knees on the stone floors, as well as scrubbing the wooden seats of the earth closets which smelled strongly of urine and vomit. She did it gladly.

  Sister George kept her word and Billy was allowed to see them every day after that. Little by little the pinched look eased from his small, anxious face; the tired bruises caused by countless sleepless nights faded, though he never quite returned to the lively, boisterous little boy he had once been. Something had changed in him, and Ruby didn’t know how to get it back.

  From that day on it became perfectly clear to Ruby that she had made an enemy. Sister Joseph was infuriated by Sister George’s intervention, but it was on Ruby that she took her revenge.

  Never, for one moment, was she permitted to perform a simple task if a worse one could be found. Every question she was asked in class seemed to be a thousand times more difficult than the ones required of the other girls; every sum more complicated. Ruby’s spelling had to be correct in every detail, her lettering perfect, or she would be made to copy her work out again. If she were one minute late for morning mass, she would be forced to polish the dormitory floor, another task largely conducted on her hands and knees, which Sister Joseph considered to be highly appropriate.