Nobody’s Darling

by Nobody’s Darling (retail) (epub)

  ‘Goodness knows where that wretched girl’s gone,’ she snapped at Ruby. ‘Get up to the dining-room and see what the divil she’s playing at.’ As Ruby hurried out into the hall, she glanced back when the Cook began cursing, having just set a large pan on to the table and burned her thumb against its handle. ‘Go on!’ she told Ruby in a shrill voice. ‘Or I’ll flay the pair of you!’ With Ruby going swiftly on her way, the big woman reached down to the shelf below the table and drew out a brown earthenware jug from which she took a great swig. ‘I deserved that,’ she chuckled, then replaced the jug and set about her work with renewed vigour.

  The routine was always the same. Once the table was laid and the food set out on the dresser, Ruby would inform the master and he would accompany his daughter to the dining-room without delay. Usually he greeted her with a warm smile and a cheery ‘Good girl’, but not this morning; because this morning he seemed a million miles away, and his face was set into a grim thoughtful expression.

  ‘Thank you, Ruby,’ Cicely murmured as she followed her father into the dining-room.

  Ruby stood by the dresser as always, waiting to clear the plates soon as ever they were dirty, and hoping against hope that Miss Cicely would pass her the wink that she had spoken to her father and that he had agreed to employ Ted Miller in his foundry. All she got was a downcast expression and a shrug of the young lady’s slim shoulders. Ruby’s heart fell to her boots.

  Coming to the dresser to serve himself from the various tureens, Jeffrey Banks didn’t even glance at the two young women standing either side of the dresser; Ruby to his right and the wretched girl to his left. Instead, he seemed greatly preoccupied and somewhat troubled. As a rule he piled his plate with a healthy helping of bacon, sausages and eggs, with a slice of liver besides, but this morning he returned to the table with only one egg and a crispy piece of bacon; although he filled his cup with tea several times throughout the hour-long ritual.

  ‘Surely you need a more substantial breakfast?’ Cicely remarked with concern, helping herself to scrambled eggs and toast. You’re not ill, are you, Father?’ She had gone straight to the library after speaking with Ruby, but had been unable to approach her father about the matter she and Ruby had discussed, simply because he was not in a listening mood. There was something on his mind, she knew. Yet he was a man who kept things to himself; a trait in his character which often frustrated her.

  ‘Don’t fuss, child,’ he replied impatiently, looking up with a frown on his brow, ‘The breakfast I have is quite enough. And, no, I am not ill.’

  ‘Oh.’ She was hurt by the sharpness of his voice and the dark scowl in his eyes. Her father was a kindly man, and rarely showed ill temper. ‘I haven’t angered you, have I?’

  He looked up and dabbed the corners of his mouth with a napkin. ‘Of course you haven’t,’ he said warmly, the scowl being quickly replaced with a loving smile. In his autumn years, Jeffrey Banks was still a handsome man although the dark brown hair that had once had much the same rich vibrant quality as Ruby’s was now streaked with silver. His features were fine and strong, with only the suggestion of age creeping over the skin, and he walked tall, with a proud bearing that could still draw a flicker of admiration from the ladies. ‘How could you anger me?’ he asked charmingly, and his face became serious once more as he thought long and hard as to whether she should be told of recent developments. Cicely was his only child, and he loved her dearly. Suddenly it did not seem right that he should keep her in the dark, for if he didn’t tell her the state of things, then someone else would.

  He glanced across to where Ruby and the wretched girl were keeping duty, and it crossed his mind that perhaps he should wait until he and his daughter were alone. But then he realised that these two young people knew of Oliver Arnold’s determination to acquire the one remaining foundry he did not yet own; no doubt they had relatives who worked either at his own or at one of Arnold’s foundries, and probably knew more than he himself did. So he decided to speak out.

  ‘Oliver Arnold has made me an excellent offer for the foundry.’

  ‘I see.’ Cicely was not surprised, although she sat up at the news, a look of disappointment on her face. ‘And will you accept it?’ she asked, placing her fork against the plate and playing her long fine fingers against the tablecloth.

  His answer was slow in coming, and when he spoke it was with great dignity. ‘I think not.’ He exchanged smiles with her then, and she thought with amusement that Oliver Arnold could never be the man her father was. The conversation took a different turn when he glanced through the morning paper, making comment on this or that, and in particular remarking on: ‘The City and South London Railway… the first deep “tube” some forty feet below the surface. Doesn’t bear thinking about, my dear,’ he said with alarm, and Cicely thought she would never have the courage to go so deep underground.

  In a moment the two of them were leaving the room, arm in arm and quietly talking, although Ruby was rewarded with a covert smile from Cicely which told her all was not yet lost. With the tiniest flicker of hope rekindled, she helped the wretched girl to lay the tureens in the dummy-waiter and send them back down to the kitchen, where Cook threw out her arms in horror on seeing that the food which she had so meticulously prepared, was hardly touched. ‘Why in Heaven’s name do I bother?’ she asked the ceiling. ‘When I could just as well serve them dry bread and shoe-soles!’

  Ruby was in the scullery washing the breakfast dishes when Miss Cicely came in search of her. ‘I asked him, Ruby,’ she said, ‘but Father says it’s difficult times, and while he’ll keep it in mind, he can’t promise anything.’

  ‘That’s all right, Miss Cicely, I understand,’ Ruby said. But it wasn’t all right and she didn’t understand. The master had a foundry, and a good man wanted work. She couldn’t really see what the problem was. All the same, it wasn’t Cicely’s fault, and Ruby put on a brave face. ‘My dad is sure to find work somewhere,’ she said brightly. When Cicely had gone to prepare for her visitors, Ruby went about her duties with a fervour that prompted Cook to tell her, ‘Slow down, before I faint with exhaustion just watching you!’

  * * *

  That night there was cause for celebration. Because of Miss Cicely’s tea-party, it was eight when Ruby got off the tram and made her way towards Fisher Street. Johnny came to meet her. He looked especially handsome, his long legs clad in his best brown cords and wearing a blue cotton jumper over his white-collared shirt; his smile was dashing as he looked down on her. ‘You must be dead on your feet,’ he said, taking up step beside her and longing to put his arm round her waist. ‘Your mam tells me you went to work on the first tram this morning?’

  ‘Cook needed extra help on account of Cicely having a tea-party.’ Ruby almost confided about her talk with Cicely, but then thought better of it. If it ever got back to her dad that she’d been going behind his back to get him work, there’d be Hell to pay. ‘How’s Maureen?’

  ‘Getting better by the day.’

  ‘I’ll be along to see her later, if that’s all right?’

  ‘She’ll like that.’ They went along in silence for a while, until he spoke again. ‘Ruby?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I was thinking, why don’t we go for a picnic on Sunday?’

  She came to a halt, her dark blue eyes looking up at him in surprise. ‘Is she able to go out? Did the doctor say she could?’ The thought of Maureen up and about again – oh, that would be wonderful!

  It was his turn to be surprised now. ‘Oh, I don’t think Maureen could stand up to that.’ How could he explain that he was thinking of just the two of them? He gazed down on her, his eyes drinking in her lovely face and his arms aching to fold her to him. He had never been so impatient – impatient to be the man she wanted, impatient to make love to her – and always she seemed so unattainable.

  Ruby saw the look in his eyes and her heart turned somersaults. ‘You mean just the two of us, don’t you?’

  ‘Is tha
t so wrong?’

  ‘No. It isn’t wrong. It’s just…’ She paused, thinking of the right way to put it. How could she say it without hurting him? How could she tell him that she was saving herself for a man who could give her all the things she wanted out of life? How could she explain that she would never put her own happiness before the well-being of her family? Johnny would never understand.

  Things were straightforward for him; you fell in love, you got wed, and then you had babies. There was nothing wrong with that, it was what most girls wanted. In fact there were times when Ruby herself would have liked nothing better than to spend her whole life with Johnny. He was quite the most handsome young man she had ever seen, and he could have the pick of the girls from one end of Blackburn to the other. He was kind and good and he loved her. Although she could never confess to him, Ruby had come to realise that she loved him too, loved him with all her heart. It was a wonderful and painful thing. But love wasn’t everything. She had learned that life wasn’t quite so simple. There were other things to be taken into account, and her instincts told her that it would be fatal to let the heart dictate.

  Whenever she felt herself weakening, Ruby would remind herself of the difference between being poor and being rich. Being poor could mean being hungry. It was being cold on a winter’s night, huddled together in bed beneath two thin blankets while the wind howled through the chinks in the window-frames and the rain trickled in to rot the sill; it was seeing her baby sister lying in a cradle made out of an old orange-box found on the cobbles in the market-place. Being poor was never seeing her mam dressed up, and it was being helpless while her dad was out of work. It was seeing the wrinkles deepen in her mam’s face, and her dad going grey before his time. Being poor was working like a dog, and being afraid when the work was taken away. Being poor was being humiliated on the street when a kindly neighbour was moved to pay your bills. The scene out in the street with the milkman haunted her still. Ruby didn’t mind for herself. But she wanted her family to have the very best in life.

  Maybe if she had never been employed at Jeffrey Banks’s lovely old house, she might never have seen the better things. But she had seen them. And now she wanted all of these things for her mam and dad and the young ’uns. And if that meant she had to sacrifice love and marriage, then it was a sacrifice she was prepared to make.

  Johnny was angry. He knew Ruby had ideas that didn’t include him. Yet he sensed her deeper feeling for him, and he warned himself to be patient. ‘It was just a thought,’ he said, beginning to walk on.

  Ruby followed him. ‘All the same, it was a lovely thought.’

  ‘But you won’t come?’

  ‘Not this Sunday.’

  ‘Next Sunday?’ He wasn’t about to give up that easily.

  ‘Maybe.’

  Her answer made Johnny smile. ‘Be careful. I might hold you to that.’

  ‘I only said “maybe”.’ She was smiling now. He always did that. He always warmed her heart in spite of her trying to harden it against him. They were at Ruby’s house now. ‘Don’t forget to tell Maureen I’ll be in to see her later.’ She walked up the white-stoned step to the front door.

  He made no answer but gave her a long lingering look that bound them together for one exquisite moment. ‘I’ll tell her,’ he promised. Then he strode away.

  Ruby watched him go. ‘Don’t wait for me, Johnny,’ she murmured lovingly. ‘Or you’ll wait forever.’

  As it was bath-night, Lizzie had decided against waiting for her husband before they had their evening meal: a few meaty tit-bits got from the butcher for a few coppers, thrown into a pot of vegetables to make a wholesome stew. Ted’s helping could stay warm in the oven. It wouldn’t spoil. ‘He said we weren’t to wait, ’cause there was no telling what time he’d be home,’ Lizzie told Ruby.

  ‘But it’s nearly nine o’clock, Mam.’ Ruby was worried. ‘Where can he be until this hour?’

  ‘Happen he’s gone to see the shift-foreman at one o’ the mills.’ Lizzie was worried too, but she wasn’t about to show it in front of the childer. There’d been enough upset in this house, what with Lenny fighting again and Lottie screaming with her first teeth coming through. ‘He’ll be home soon, you’ll see,’ she said, dropping to her knees before the tin bath which was placed in front of a small cheery fire. ‘Meanwhile, you an’ me have to get the young ’uns washed and abed.’ She rolled up her sleeves and dipped one elbow into the water. ‘That’ll do. Fetch the babby, will yer, lass?’

  When she looked up at Ruby, her small hazel eyes betrayed none of her own apprehension. ‘Aw, an’ stop fretting. Yer dad’ll be home soon enough, I tell yer.’ She collected the babby from Ruby’s arms and lowered her gently into the water.

  Little Lottie screamed all the while she was being bathed, and screamed after she was dried and handed back to Ruby. ‘Little sod. Anybody’d think I were trying to drown her,’ Lizzie said indignantly. Then, feeling sorry, she added, ‘Poor little thing. It’s still cutting its teeth and there ain’t much anybody can do about that.’ She gave orders that Dolly was next, and the girl came obediently to her side. In a minute, she was stripped and sitting in the bath. ‘Don’t get the soap in me eyes, Mam,’ she pleaded, and Lizzie was quick to assure her, ‘If yer sit still an’ stop fussing, I’ll be finished afore yer know it.’

  When her head was bent into the water and the soap was rubbed hard into her scalp, with Lizzie promising to ‘drown any lice that might be hiding there’, Dolly screwed up her eyes and feared the worse.

  ‘Can I play out ’til it’s my turn?’ Lenny had been sulking in the scullery, but now, when it seemed his mammy would be too busy to worry about him, he came out to try his luck. He was bitterly disappointed because Lizzie told him to get back in the scullery and have a strip-wash at the sink. ‘Then get to yer bed, young man. Happen you’ll think twice next time yer tempted to go punching some lad in the nose!’

  She shook her head and tutted as he strolled sullenly back into the scullery. ‘Think yourself lucky yer dad ain’t back yet, or yer might have felt the weight of his boot on yer arse, yer little bugger!’ In fact, both Lizzie and Lenny knew full well that Ted Miller was not the kind of man to lift his boot to anybody, let alone his own son; although that son might have felt the weight of Lizzie’s hand round his ear if she’d seen how he gave the scullery wall a good kick that split the plaster and sent it falling to the floor like a snowfall.

  The next half-hour was like bedlam. Lenny whistled defiantly in the scullery, splashing and banging about in the sink, the twins rolling about on the mat laughing and playing and waiting their turn in the tub, Dolly yelling and crying when her hair was being washed, and despite Ruby walking her up and down, little Lottie screaming blue murder throughout. ‘Gawd love and save us, I think I’ll go mad!’ Lizzie yelled above the din. Then came the sound of somebody singing at the front door, and the twins bolted up and out into the passage.

  When they came rushing back again, they were laughing and shouting. All eyes turned to the parlour door, and Ruby couldn’t believe what she saw there. Her dad was drunk! Never in her life had she seen her dad drunk. Clutching a small earthenware jar, he clung to the door-jamb, swaying and chuckling, with the twins clinging to his legs and holding him upright. ‘He’s tipsy like Johnny’s dad!’ laughed Ralph, and Frank hugged himself with glee.

  In a minute Lizzie had scrambled to her feet, leaving Dolly splashing in the tub. ‘Ted Miller!’ she cried, putting her hands on her hips and glaring at him through narrowed eyes, ‘Shame on yer!’ She was so astonished at the sight of her husband that she couldn’t think of anything else to say. ‘Shame on yer!’

  He fell on her then, almost knocking her to the floor. ‘He set me on!’ He was laughing through the tears. ‘The bugger set me on!’ He flung his arms round her and squeezed her until she laughed and shouted, ‘Who? Who set yer on?’

  Breathless with excitement and unable to stand up straight because of the booze, he held her at a dist
ance, swaying and winking, until, having teased her long enough, he told her, ‘Jeffrey Banks, that’s who.’ He gave Lizzie the earthenware jar, ‘I’ve brought you a drop o’ the good stuff so’s you can drink to us good fortune.’

  He looked sheepish under Lizzie’s disapproving glare. ‘I’m sorry, lass – but, oh, I were that excited. And, well, I had a shilling left and I felt I should drink to the occasion. I bumped into an old mate from Arnold’s, and what with one thing and another… well, I am sorry, lass, honest to God I am.’ He laughed out loud. ‘Oh Lizzie… Lizzie! Yer old fella’s got work at last. But it were a close thing. Oh aye, it were a close thing. The foreman had just finished telling me how they weren’t setting on yet, and that he’d take me name and let me know if owt turned up, and when I were giving me name, who d’yer think stepped out of the inner office, eh?’

  He winked and grinned until Lizzie felt like pushing him out of the chair. ‘Go on,’ she encouraged, and he set himself back into the chair, saying in a grand voice, ‘Jeffrey Banks himself, that’s who. He asked me if it were our Ruby who worked at his house, and I said it were, and, well… he said he’d heard that I were a good worker, and that he had need of a responsible boiler-man.’ Suddenly, a thought occurred to him and he peered at Ruby, who was smiling broadly at the news. ‘I hope it weren’t you that told him I were a good worker?’ When she looked suitably indignant, he appeared satisfied, telling Lizzie, ‘I’m to report for work on Monday morning. There! What d’yer think to that, eh? Ain’t yer proud o’ yer old man?’ His chest seemed to swell to twice its size.

  Lizzie was torn two ways. She was thankful that he was in work again. But now there were two members of her family working for Jeffrey Banks, and so she was twice indebted to him. ‘I’m very proud o’ yer sweetheart,’ she said softly, hugging him close. That said, she straightened her back and looked about at the childer who had been both amused at their father’s unusual appearance but delighted at his news. Now they grinned at their mam and she shook her head. ‘This is the first time a Miller’s ever been the worse for drink, and so long as I’m alive, it’ll be the last.’ She looked from Dolly, who was bent in the bath with her hair dripping all over her face, to the twins who were cuddling each other, then at Ruby, who was beside herself with delight, and finally Lenny, who had come to the scullery doorway and was still scowling. ‘Is that understood?’ she demanded. ‘There’ll be no drinkers in this house. Not while I’m alive, there won’t.’