Nobody’s Darling

by Nobody’s Darling (retail) (epub)

  Heads nodded all round; all except for Lenny, who dropped his gaze to the floor and shuffled his feet back and forth. Lizzie didn’t notice. ‘Good!’ she remarked, turning to her husband. When she saw that he was sound asleep, she tutted loudly and shook her head. ‘Shame on yer, Ted Miller,’ she muttered. All the same, there was a smile on her face as she tucked his legs in and made him more comfortable.

  * * *

  It was growing dark when Ruby made her way along Fisher Street to number ten. ‘I’m sorry, lass, but if it’s our Johnny you’ve come to see, you’ll be disappointed, because he’s just this minute gone out.’

  Mrs Ackroyd didn’t reveal the reason for her son having ‘gone out’, which was to search for his dad who was probably keeping company with drunks and the like. Although she still had a fondness for her feckless husband, there were times when she wished he could have been different. He was more like a child than a man. Yet there was no bad feeling between them. She had grown used to his coming home at all hours of the day and night, wildly excited about this scheme or that, and none of them ever coming to anything. ‘You can come in and see Maureen though,’ she invited, opening the door wider. ‘She’s a deal better, and I know she’d be that pleased if you went up and had a chat with her. Although you mustn’t tire her out,’ she warned, adding with faint amusement, ‘Happen Johnny will be back before you leave.’

  Stepping inside the passage, Ruby told her firmly, ‘It was Maureen I came to see.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, dear.’ She felt foolish, especially when her daughter and Ruby Miller had long been best friends, and Ruby had asked every day for these past weeks when she might be able to come and visit her. Then there were the little notes that had passed between the two girls by way of Johnny or the Miller children. But Mrs Ackroyd reminded herself of the little intimate scene that had taken place in this very passage between her son and Ruby, and she thought it was no wonder that she’d made a simple mistake in thinking the lass had come to pay him a visit – although from what she could see, Ruby gave him very little encouragement.

  Nevertheless, it was painfully obvious to Mrs Ackroyd that her son had set his sights on this particular young lady. Under the circumstances, anyone would have thought Ruby had come here tonight with Johnny on her mind. ‘You go straight up,’ she said brightly, closing the door behind Ruby and pointing along the passage towards the stairs at the other end. ‘You’ll not be disturbed. The lass has finished her supper and she’s had her wash. I left her sitting in the chair staring out of the window. After being so long confined to her bed, it’s a real treat for the darling girl to look out on the world. I would have moved her bed to the window long before, but the doctor left strict instructions that she was to be kept out of any likely draught.’

  She chatted on and on. ‘As it is, I’m not sure I’ve done the right thing in allowing her to sit in the chair there. Mark you, it’s a warm evening, and she’s on the mend now, thank God.’ She led the way down the passage, occasionally looking back to make certain that Ruby wasn’t far behind. ‘I shouldn’t be at all surprised if she didn’t see you coming up the street,’ she said, nodding her head up and down and smiling to herself as though she had said something very wise.

  Maureen was delighted to see her old friend. Ruby tapped twice on the door and when there was no reply, edged it open. And there was Maureen – her thin waif-like figure seated in a dome-backed wicker chair, a brown checked blanket over her knees, and her face turned towards the window. Her brown eyes were round and intense, staring up at the darkened sky with such wonder that anybody might think she had never seen the sun go down before. The window was closed, the sparsely furnished room was stiflingly hot, and even then the girl’s face was grey as parchment.

  Ruby was shocked. Maureen was much thinner than when she had last seen her some weeks since; her cheeks seemed to protrude at a sharper angle and her eyes had sunk deep within their sockets; her mousy-coloured brown hair hung fine and lifeless over her narrow shoulders, and her whole countenance had a look of starvation that frightened Ruby so much that she gasped softly, causing Maureen to turn around. Her eyes lit up then filled with tears as she stretched out her arms in welcome, ‘Ruby!’ she said in a laugh. ‘Oh, Ruby, I’ve missed you so.’

  ‘And I’ve missed you.’ Rushing forward, she threw her two arms round that tiny figure, astonished when it felt like she was holding fresh air. They clung to each other and laughed, and Maureen cried until the tears spilled down her face on to Ruby’s shoulder. ‘Thank you for your notes,’ she said, ‘I read them over and over. Oh, Ruby! I knew you’d come as soon as ever you were allowed.’

  Ruby pushed herself away, sniffling and giggling and trying to see her friend’s face through a veil of tears. ‘Look at you!’ she cried, lifting a stray lock of hair from the other girl’s forehead. ‘You’re as thin as a pikestaff. You’ll need to put some fat on your bones before I take you out. I’m not having folk staring at me and thinking I’ve brought a scarecrow out for a walk.’

  She drew the girl against her and they held each other quietly for a minute. Presently Ruby told her in a soft sober voice, ‘I won’t let you be ill any more, and I won’t let anybody keep us apart again.’ She had been shocked to her roots by Maureen’s gaunt appearance. ‘Did the doctor say when you could go out?’

  Maureen pulled away, smiling now, her face lit from within. ‘Soon, he said… next week maybe, if I’m feeling stronger and the sun’s shining.’ Her smile widened. ‘I am feeling stronger, Ruby. Every day I’m feeling stronger.’

  ‘Then we’ll have to make the sun shine for you,’ Ruby promised. Falling to her knees and lovingly gripping her friend’s frail white hands, she murmured, ‘I’ll get my mam to have a little word with him up there.’ She turned her deep blue eyes to the sky outside. ‘She knows him better than I do.’ Ruby believed in God, and had felt his presence inside her, but she rarely talked to him because, in spite of going inside his house to gaze at the beautiful things there, she didn’t know how to hold a ‘conversation’ with someone she couldn’t see; not like her mam who reckoned she could ‘see the Good Lord at every turn’.

  There was so much to talk about, and as Maureen said, ‘Reading notes isn’t the same as talking proper to each other, is it?’

  ‘’Course it’s not,’ Ruby agreed. She had sent the notes via Johnny, or sometimes just slipped them under the front door; mostly at night when thoughts of her friend weighed heavy. Being too weak at times to hold a pen, Maureen had written back only once, and that was when she dictated a reply to Johnny, saying, ‘I want to talk about so many things, Ruby. But I’d rather wait until we see each other like we used to.’ She’d understood, and had returned a message telling Maureen that she too was looking forward to the day when: ‘We can walk side by side down Fisher Street, just like we used to’.

  ‘But I’m here now,’ she said warmly. ‘Your mam promised we won’t be disturbed for a while yet, so we can talk to our hearts’ content.’

  And that was exactly what they did. Maureen talked about how she hated being shut up in this small room, although she was never lonely because her mam and Johnny wouldn’t let her be. ‘And he’s promised soon as ever he can afford it, he’ll do the front parlour up and move me downstairs.’

  Wisely, Ruby didn’t dwell on Maureen’s illness. Instead, she related all her own news to the inquisitive girl, vividly describing the two new gowns that Cicely had bought in Manchester only last week. ‘A pale blue one with pretty ribbons round the hem, and a grey walking-out one with a bonnet to match.’ She didn’t tell how Cicely had promised to find her a bundle of gowns that she didn’t have need of any more; somehow it didn’t seem right to Ruby that she should be bragging about a thing like that, when poor Maureen was still confined to wearing her nightshift.

  She went on instead to reveal how her dad had been thrown out of work and how the whole house seemed to have grown darker these past few weeks, with her mam worried about paying the
rent and feeding her little army. ‘But now everything’s all right again, because our dad came home this very night with the news that he is to start at Banks’s foundry on Monday morning.’ Ruby’s dark eyes shone with merriment and her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘He was drunk too! Our mam gave him the length of her tongue, but he didn’t pay no attention, because he went right off to sleep. I don’t think our mam really minded though, because now she can pay Mrs Donaldson back, and we won’t have to hide from the rentman next week.’ She actually clapped her hands and laughed. But then the laughter died away as she said in a gruff voice, ‘I hate being poor.’

  ‘We’re all poor,’ Maureen said thoughtfully. But it didn’t seem to worry her; not like it worried Ruby. She merely shrugged her shoulders and said Johnny had told her how his boss, Oliver Arnold, had set his mind on getting hold of Banks’s foundry at any cost, and Ruby explained how she heard Jeffrey Banks tell his daughter the very same. ‘But he won’t sell,’ she remarked knowingly.

  ‘Bet he will if the money’s right,’ Maureen argued.

  Ruby thought different. But there were other matters she would rather discuss, and soon the pair of them were deeply engrossed in talk of what they would do when Maureen was better; of how things used to be before she was taken badly; of friends who had left the street, and of boys she used to ‘fancy’, like the ginger-haired young man who had moved to Leyland Street a year ago and who, according to Ruby, was now working for the undertaker. ‘He’s tall and thin as a lamp post, and grown awful coarse in the face,’ she said. Maureen sighed and said wasn’t it a shame how people changed when they got older? Then Ruby was shocked when Maureen asked if she loved Johnny.

  ‘No, I don’t,’ she lied, and her face went a deep shade of pink.

  ‘Well, he loves you.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Has he told you?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Well, all right then… yes, he has.’

  ‘And did you say that you don’t love him back?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not? You just told me you don’t love him?’

  Ruby hated being asked all these questions, and she hated herself because she had lied to her best friend. ‘I’d forgotten how nosy you can be,’ she said, but she had to smile.

  ‘You do love our Johnny, don’t you?’ Maureen was insistent.

  ‘All right then. Yes, I do.’ Ruby dropped her gaze to the floor and shifted uncomfortably against the rug.

  Maureen was quiet then, sensing that she had probed too deep. Stroking Ruby’s hair, she said softly, ‘I’m sorry.’ Then, in a lighter tone, ‘Like you said, Ruby, I’m too nosy.’

  ‘No. It’s all right. I don’t mind you knowing, so long as you don’t tell Johnny.’ She paused then, not certain how to explain her innermost thoughts to her friend, not even knowing whether Maureen would understand her. And how could she expect her to, when her own mam didn’t understand her? ‘Johnny frightens me,’ she murmured.

  ‘Frightens you!’ Maureen gaped at her in disbelief. ‘How can our Johnny frighten you?’

  ‘Because I like it when he walks down the street with me. I feel proud and warm inside. And when he kissed me the other day, I didn’t want him to stop.’ Strange, she thought, how she could reveal all her deepest secrets to Maureen when she couldn’t talk to anyone else about them, not even her own mam.

  ‘I don’t understand.’ Maureen’s thin white face was creased with confusion. ‘How can that frighten you?’

  ‘Because he makes me forget all the things I’ve promised myself.’ Ruby leaned back her head and gazed out of the window. The sky was fringed with darkness, a safe and beautiful mantle enfolding the world like a mother’s arms. Darkened clouds like puffs of gossamer drifted slowly over the chimney tops, making Ruby feel especially dreamy. ‘I don’t want to live in Fisher Street forever,’ she whispered, as though some higher being might hear her and put a stop to her dreams. ‘One day, me and our mam and all the young ’uns will live in a big house, and mam can have whatever she wants for the rest of her life. We’ll have servants to light the fire, and a carriage to take her into Manchester where she can shop to her heart’s delight. It won’t matter how much money she spends because we’ll have plenty more where that came from. She can buy as many fine gowns as she wants, we’ll build extra wardrobes to fit them in, and shoes too… black patent ones for best, and stout dark boots for walking; she can have hats with feathers that touch the ceiling, and a pretty little maid to help her dress.’

  She brought her gaze back to Maureen and her expression was deadly serious as she went on in a quiet voice, ‘One day, when I’m old enough, I intend to have all these things. In all my life, I never, never want to be poor again.’

  She saw the horror in her friend’s eyes and was sad. ‘Try and understand, Maureen,’ she pleaded softly. ‘Being poor frightens me more than anything in the world. Money could buy so much happiness. I know that now. All the time our dad’s been out of work, our mam’s been hard put to feed the family. I’ve seen her push her own food on to the young ’uns’ plates when she thought no one was looking, and at night when she’s sent us all to bed while she waits downstairs for our dad, I’ve heard her crying. For years, she’s worn the same two skirts and the same tattered old shawl. There’s never enough food in the cupboard, and we don’t have enough blankets to keep us warm, even on a summer’s night. In the winter we have to count the number of cobs we put on the fire, and even when our dad was in work, there were times when he had to walk because he couldn’t afford the tramfare. Our mam always puts on a brave face, but I know how she’s feeling inside, and I can’t stand it.’

  She sighed, and when she spoke again it was from the heart. ‘Sometimes I don’t understand why I feel the way I do, and sometimes I feel ashamed because I’m never content. But I can’t help it, Maureen, and I want you of all people to try and understand how I feel.’

  ‘Money won’t buy happiness, Ruby. Life isn’t like that.’

  ‘How can you tell? All we know is what we have. Every working day I see the difference money can make, and it makes me sad to see how folks such as we have to scrape for every penny.’ She stiffened, a hard determined look coming into her eyes as she said firmly, ‘I’ve seen what it’s like to be rich, and I know what it’s like to be poor. My mind’s made up, Maureen. I want to be rich. I will be rich one day.’

  ‘And what about love?’ Maureen wanted to know. She could never remember Ruby being this way, and suddenly felt the need to protect her. ‘What if you don’t love this rich man you intend to wed?’

  Ruby thought hard, her face turned downwards and her brow creased in a deep frown. She had asked herself the same question so many times, and each time it hurt to think about it. It hurt now. Presently she looked up, her dark eyes filled with a kind of wonder yet strangely saddened. ‘It won’t matter,’ she lied, ‘I don’t know if I can even say that I love Johnny, because I’m not really sure what it is to love in that way. I only know that I love my family with all my heart, but that’s a different kind of feeling than the one I have for Johnny. If it’s “love” to feel happy with someone… if it’s “love” to think about someone day and night, and to glow inside whenever they look at you, then, yes, I do love Johnny in that special way.’ Her voice fell to a whisper and Maureen had to lean forward to hear. ‘Anyway, happen I’m too young to know about that kind of love.’

  ‘My mam wasn’t much older than you when she got wed,’ Maureen said brightly. ‘So you’re wrong to think that way.’ Ruby was right about one thing though: Maureen didn’t understand her. She didn’t understand the intensity of these strange feelings that lived inside Ruby and made her so restless. She didn’t understand the point of someone longing for what she couldn’t have. But she adored Ruby, and hated seeing her so unhappy. Johnny could make her happy though. If only she would let him take care of her, things would be all right. ‘You and Johnny would be go
od together,’ she suggested hopefully. ‘Then, later on when you got wed, he’d work his fingers to the bone for you.’

  ‘NO!’ There was a look of determination in Ruby’s dark eyes as she shook her head. ‘We’re neither of us old enough to be thinking like that. And even if I was, I couldn’t let myself love him. If I’m to get out of Fisher Street, then I mustn’t think about marrying. Love can spoil things too, you know.’ Suddenly she was angry. Her dreams were too important to be threatened.

  ‘What do you mean? How can love “spoil things”?’ Life was wonderfully simple to Maureen. A man and a woman fell in love and then they got wed. Every day she dreamed about it happening to her.

  ‘It can spoil things because it can force you to make decisions that you might spend the rest of your life regretting. I’ve thought long and hard about what I want to do with my life, Maureen, and my mind’s made up. I’d rather wed a rich man and not love him, than wed someone I love and be poor forever. I owe it to my family, to find them a better way of life, and I promise you… the very first chance I get, I’m going to take it.’

  ‘Oh, Ruby! Ruby!’ Maureen grabbed her hands and shook them hard, but her eyes were soft as she said, ‘I can understand now why our Johnny “frightens” you. It’s because you do love him, and because you’re afraid he might make you forget these other things.’ She bent her head to Ruby’s and the two of them were lost in deep thought. After a while, Maureen whispered, ‘I really will try and understand all the things you’ve said, Ruby. But if our Johnny “frightens” you… then you frighten me even more.’