Meet Ruby

by Penny Matthews

  When it was time for dinner, Gran said grace in her quavery voice, and then Dad carved the roast chicken and Mother served the vegetables. They pulled crackers,and wore paper hats,and Mother and Dad had a glass of sherry each.

  Ruby snapped the chicken wishbone with Dad, and to her annoyance Dad won. He told Ruby that she could make a wish for both of them, but that wasn’t the same as having a wish of your own, was it?

  Feeling bored, Ruby took off her paper hat and put it on Baxter. The little dog immediately shook it off and killed it, littering the floor with torn paper. That made Mother cross. Then Dad poured brandy over the Christmas pudding and tried to set fire to it, but the pudding sullenly refused to burn with a beautiful blue flame as it was supposed to. And after all that Ruby found just one silver coin in her helping of pudding, and it was only a threepence.

  In the evening Dad turned on the big wireless in the sitting room and after a bit of fiddling managed to tune in to the overseas service. They all sat around the wireless and listened to a church choir somewhere in England singing Christmas carols. Considering that the music was coming from so far away the reception was good, just a little crackly.

  Ruby pressed her face to the gilt rosette that covered the wireless speaker, and tried hard to imagine that she was actually in the church, and that it was snowing outside. She wished she really were in England, in a sparkling winter wonderland, and not feeling rather hot and not very happy in Adelaide.

  Ruby almost forgot about Mrs Traill’s gift. She hadn’t put it under the Christmas tree because the brown paper wrapping didn’t look very pretty, but when she opened it, she fell in love with it straightaway. It was a little china fox terrier that looked exactly like Baxter.

  THE days passed, and Ruby’s holiday didn’t get any more interesting. All her friends apart from Brenda were at their beach-houses or had gone to stay with relatives. Mrs Traill went off for her annual holiday on New Year’s Day, giving Ruby an extra-long hug, and Mother took over the running of the house.

  When Mother prepared the meals it was like having picnic food all the time. She hated cooking, so she bought lots of pasties and buns from the baker’s van; and because it was summer they had cold meat and salad nearly every night. Ruby knew there were days and days of picnic food ahead.

  While she waited for Mrs T to come back, Ruby decided that it might be fun to try some baking. It can’t be all that hard if May can do it, she thought. I’ll make some biscuits as a surprise for Mother. She needs something to cheer her up.

  One afternoon, when Mother was out playing bridge, Ruby found Mrs T’s favourite Green and Gold Cookery Book. She flipped through the well-thumbed pages until she found the section ‘Biscuits and Shortbreads’. There were interesting recipes for Stuffed Monkeys and Orange Jumbles and Sunbeams, but finally she chose something called Isabel Biscuits. They needed a lot of ingredients – three pounds of flour and a whole pound of butter, for a start – but the recipe seemed fairly easy.

  Ruby enjoyed stirring everything together, but she realised too late that she should have put on an apron and tied her hair back. Soonthere were bits of sticky mixture on her front and more bits in her hair where it had dangled into the mixing bowl.

  Ruby put blobs of biscuit mixture on baking trays and slid them into the oven. She waited for ten minutes, as the recipe said, but when she had a peek, she found that the biscuits were still raw. The oven can’t be nearly hot enough, she thought. I’d better open the damper to get the fire going. That’s what Mrs T does.

  She waited until she had a fine blaze, and sat down to read her Empire Annual. While she read, she helped herself to what was left in the bowl. It was so delicious that she had another spoonful, and another.

  Mother wasn’t at all cheered up when she saw the pile of burnt biscuits. ‘I’m sure you meant well, Ruby,’ she said, ‘but now we have no butter left, and hardly any flour. It’s too bad of you.’ She was even crosser when she trod in something sticky on the kitchen floor.

  Now it’s me who needs cheering up, Ruby thought, as she found a bucket and a scrubbing brush. These are the worst holidays I can ever remember!

  Next day Mother suggested that they catch the electric tram into town, and Ruby’s spirits rose. She raced to her bedroom to change into her best linen frock, and then had to wait while Mother tried on one hat, and then another, and then another, before choosing the first one. Then she had to wait again while Mother carefully put on lipstick and powdered her nose.

  ‘The shopping won’t be very interesting,’ Mother warned her. ‘But the summer sales are on, and there are some things I need to buy at Moore’s. You’ll have to be patient.’

  ‘All right.’ Ruby always enjoyed going to Moore’s on Victoria Square. Walking down the wide, sweeping staircase from the first floor made her feel like a movie star. ‘If I behave myself, can I please have a milkshake as a reward?’

  Mother laughed. ‘Of course you may. Shopping first, though.’

  The tram ride down Glen Osmond Road was fun. Ruby sat back on her wooden seat and watched all the people who climbed aboard, hoping she might see somebody she knew. At the Parkside tram stop some rather peculiar people got on: the lunatic asylum was close by, and sometimes Ruby saw some strange things. This time it was a wild-eyed, red-faced woman who kept talking to herself, and a man with a blank, stiff face. Ruby couldn’t help looking at them.

  ‘Don’t stare, Ruby,’ Mother hissed in her ear. ‘It’s very rude.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Ruby. But she was wondering: what would it be like to be insane? Wouldn’t it be awfully frightening? Or would you just not realise that there was anything wrong with you? She shivered, and cuddled closer to her soft, perfumed, entirely sane mother.

  At Moore’s Ruby sat patiently in one chair after another while Mother bought underwear, and socks for Dad, and new school gloves. Then Mother said she wanted to treat herself to something fashionable, and Ruby helped her choose a pair of lounging pyjamas in slithery mauve fuji silk, marked down to twenty-one shillings. Only then did they make their way to the little tea-room in the ladies’ frock department, and Ruby at last had her malted vanilla milkshake while Mother had a cup of tea.

  Mid-slurp, Ruby heard something. It sounded like men’s voices, singing. That wasn’t the sort of thing you’d normally hear in the ladies’ frock department at Moore’s.

  The women behind the counter at the tea-room moved over to a nearby window and peered out. ‘It looks like some sort of parade,’ Ruby heard one of them say. ‘There’s flags and things.’

  Ruby finished her milkshake. ‘Mother, please can we go outside and see what’s happening? It’s a parade or something – I heard that lady say so.’

  ‘Oh, very well,’ said Mother, putting down her teacup. ‘It’s time we were going home, anyway. Help me with these parcels, Ruby, please.’

  Ruby picked up a parcel, holding it by the little loop the shop assistant had tied in the string, and headed for the stairs. When she reached the ground floor she wriggled her way through a crowd of people at the front entrance. What she saw wasn’t at all what she’d expected.

  Hundreds, maybe even thousands of people (poor people, Ruby thought instantly, noticing how they were dressed) were marching into Victoria Square from King William Street. They were singing something about ‘raising the scarlet standard high’, and some were carrying big red flags. Most of the marchers were men, but Ruby saw a few women and children.

  At first it looked like an ordinary sort of parade, but there were policemen everywhere, and even some on horseback. That meant it was something important – and Ruby didn’t want to miss a minute of it.

  ‘Come on, Mother!’ she yelled, starting to run.

  ‘Ruby!’ shouted Mother. ‘Come back here at once!’

  Ruby pretended she hadn’t heard. She dodged and twisted, pushing her way through gaps in the watching crowd.

  At the north-eastern corner of Victoria Square she was caught in a mass of people and found
herself being pushed into the man in front of her. His coat smelt old and musty and sweaty. ‘Urgh,’ Ruby said aloud. She couldn’t move, so she turned her head away and put her hand over her nose.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she heard a well-dressed woman ask a man standing next to her.

  ‘It’s a protest march,’ the man said. ‘You know how blokes without jobs are getting food ration tickets now? Well, the government has taken beef off the ration. Seems like they’re giving them mutton instead, and this lot don’t like it. It’s the Communists who are behind the march, of course. They’re heading for the Treasury so they can have it out with the Premier. This could turn violent.’

  Violent? Ruby felt a little icy tremor trickle down her spine. So it wasn’t a parade after all. Now she looked at them properly, she could see that the faces of the people marching were desperate. Desperate and angry.

  She tried to turn around, but she was trapped. The solid press of people kept carrying her forward, further into the protest. Stumbling, barely able to stand up, Ruby started to panic. Where was her mother? She felt very small, and very alone.

  ‘Mummy!’ she called. ‘Mummy! Mummy!’

  Around her the singing turned to shouting, and then a woman screamed. The high, anguished sound made Ruby’s insides shrivel. Something bad was happening. Now she could hear jostling and yelling, the sounds of a scuffle. The crowd moved back in a wave of bodies and then parted, and Ruby saw, right in front of her, a policeman lying on the ground. His head was bleeding, and men were hitting him with iron bars.

  With each sickening thud, Ruby flinched. She wanted to yell, ‘Stop it! You’re hurting him! Leave him alone!’, but she could only whimper with fear.

  Moments later a line of uniformed policemen moved forward and the wounded man was carried away. There was fighting everywhere – police batons against sticks and bricks. A policeman on horseback charged into the middle of it, and a man attacked his horse with a heavy piece of wood. The big police grey started to back away, snorting. Another policeman came to help, swinging his baton.

  One of the protesters fell to the pavement and lay unconscious, almost at Ruby’s feet. She shrank away, terrified, as still more policemen came and dragged him away. Where the injured man had been, she could see a wide smear of blood. She felt as if she might faint, or be sick.

  Suddenly she was aware of her mother’s voice, and Mother’s firm gloved hand grasping her by the arm. ‘Ruby, we have to get out of here. Hang on to me, and don’t let go.’

  They struggled through the surging, shouting crowd. ‘Excuse me, please!’ Mother called. ‘Excuse me!’

  Ruby tripped over a red flag that had been dropped or thrown to the pavement. The faces all around her became a shouting, angry blur. She was elbowed in the head and kicked in the shin, but she felt no pain. All she wanted to do was escape.

  Just as Ruby felt sure that she and Mother would be knocked to the ground and trampled on, a policeman pushed his way forward. ‘Make way!’ he yelled, stretching his arms wide to hold people back. ‘Let the ladies through!’

  Out in fresh air again, Ruby began to sob with relief. Her head was hurting now, and when she pulled down her sock she could see the start of a big livid bruise on her left leg.

  ‘Thank goodness you’re all right,’ said Mother. She brushed down Ruby’s dress with trembling hands. ‘I shouldn’t have let you anywhere near that mob.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have run away from you,’ Ruby hiccupped. She was shaking all over, as if she had a fever. ‘I’m so glad you found me. If you hadn’t, I think I’d have died.’

  When at last they boarded the tram to go home, Ruby realised that she’d dropped the parcel she was carrying.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mother,’ she said. ‘It was your silk pyjamas.’

  ‘Never mind,’ said her mother. She sighed. ‘I really shouldn’t have bought them in the first place. I daresay somebody will have picked them up, and they’ll be a luxury for some poor woman.’

  ‘At least they weren’t awfully expensive,’ Ruby said. ‘Twenty-one shillings isn’t a great deal of money, is it?’

  Mother looked out of the window. ‘No, I suppose not,’ she said, but there was something in her face that Ruby couldn’t read. Surely Mother wasn’t really upset about the lost pyjamas?

  As the tram rumbled and ground its way up Glen Osmond Road, Ruby squeezed her mother’s arm. ‘I thought I’d lost you forever in that horrible crowd,’ she said. ‘I was so scared I called out for you, except I called you Mummy! Isn’t that funny? I haven’t done that since I was little.’

  ‘Oh, Ruby,’ said Mother, and Ruby saw that her eyes had filled with tears. ‘Sometimes none of us are quite as grown-up as we think we are.’

  RUBY’S bruise went from thundercloud purple to a sickly yellow, and soon faded away. She forgot how frightened she’d been, and instead started to imagine what the girls at school would say when she told them about her adventure.

  The riot had been reported in both the Adelaide newspapers. Seventeen Persons Injured in the Affray one headline said. Women Trampled Upon by Frenzied Crowd. There were pictures of the injured policemen, too, with their heads bandaged. Two thousand rioters were involved, and twelve of them had been arrested. Absolutely everybody would have heard of it. Ruby wished she’d had her camera with her, so she could have taken photographs.

  Ruby loved her camera. So far she’d shot two rolls of film, and Dad had taken them to the chemist to be developed. On the Monday after the riot, he brought the photographs home. They were packed in a little red-and-yellow folder with two pockets, the prints on one side and the negatives on the other. Dad explained that the negatives could be used to make more prints, if you wanted extra photographs to give away.

  Ruby didn’t want any extras. Most of the photographs were disappointing. There were a couple of blurry shots of Baxter in the back garden, a shot of Mother with no head, one of Dad with his eyes closed, and several views of the house in which it seemed to be sliding down a hill. The photograph of the homeless men’s campsite beside the Torrens was much better. It was so clear that you could see lots of details, like bits of packing-case furniture, and a billy boiling on an outside fire.

  The zoo photographs weren’t bad either: Ruby was especially pleased with one of a polar bear standing on its hind legs. The shot of the giraffe was simply awful, though – she’d aimed her camera right into the sun, and the giraffe’s long neck was just a slab of darkness. It could have been a tree or something.

  ‘It takes a while for you to understand what your camera can do,’ Dad told her. ‘Don’t give up just because your first photographs aren’t what you expected.’

  ‘I know, Dad. I’ll keep trying.’ Ruby stared at the photograph of Mother and Dad she’d taken when she was riding the elephant. They were very small and distant, but she could see that Mother’s mouth was open. She looked . . . shocked. But that was the thing about photographs, Ruby thought: they captured just a single second, and that single second might show something that wasn’t really true at all. In the very next moment Mother might have been laughing.

  Two weeks after the riot, Ruby had a terrifying dream. She dreamed that she was trapped in a crowd of people. The sour smell of their bodies filled her nostrils so that she could hardly breathe, and her legs were so heavy she couldn’t move them. She screamed and screamed for her mother, but could make no sound. When she woke up, her mouth was dry and her heart was pounding.

  Ruby decided not to tell Mother and Dad about her nightmare because they were both still so gloomy. They were always talking about ‘the financial crisis’. This was something to do with money. Apparently there wasn’t enough of it, and people all over the world were losing their jobs. Ruby only knew that she was tired of hearing about it. After all, it didn’t really affect her. Something else was bothering her far more.

  Mrs T was still on holiday. She should have come back by now. And this time she hadn’t sent Ruby a postcard as she usually did. Ruby h
ad a collection of them, photographs with Greetings from Mount Gambier or A Souvenir of Melbourne printed on the front.

  Ruby had peeped into Mrs T’s bedroom, which Mother always called ‘the maid’s room’, and seen how bare and empty it was. Even the crinoline-wearing china lady that usually stood on the dressing-table had gone.

  There’s something funny going on, she thought, and I have no idea what it is.

  For the last night of the school holidays Mother had offered to cook a special dinner. Ruby had asked for roast beef with lots of gravy, and sherry trifle to follow.

  Ruby set the dining-room table with the good silver, and when the food was ready she helped Mother carry in the serving dishes. Poor Mother, Ruby thought: she looks so tired, and her hair has started to come undone, and she’s forgotten to take off her apron.

  In spite of all Mother’s hard work, dinner was a disaster. The beef was dry and overcooked, and the gravy was too salty. The roast potatoes had gone far beyond the crispy stage and had turned into small brown rocks. The cabbage was stringy mush.

  ‘It’s delicious, really,’ Ruby said, chewing on a hard piece of potato. And then: ‘Mother, when is Mrs T coming back? She’s having an awfully long holiday. It’s been more than five weeks now, hasn’t it?’

  Mother didn’t reply. She looked at Dad.

  Ruby stopped chewing.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘What’s wrong?’

  Dad put down his knife and fork. ‘I’m afraid Mrs Traill isn’t coming back,’ he said.

  Ruby swallowed, almost choking. ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t say “what”, please, Ruby,’ Mother said automatically. ‘Say “I beg your pardon”.’

  ‘Ruby, sweetheart, we didn’t want to spoil your holiday,’ Dad said. ‘But the fact is . . . thefact is that Mrs Traill . . . The fact is that we’ve decided that we can manage without her.’

  Ruby was so shocked that at first she couldn’t speak. Finally she said, ‘But why? We’ve never managed without Mrs T before. She’s – she’s important! She’s been with us ever since I was five years old! Please let her come back!’