Nobody’s Darling

by Nobody’s Darling (retail) (epub)

  Lizzie truly believed she had to reprimand Ruby for her own good. It never occurred to her that she might be punishing Ruby for the sin she herself had committed. All she could see was the wrong of it all. Mixing with the gentry was wrong, wanting was wrong, looking beyond the street in which you lived was wrong. Deliberately drawing the conversation away from Ruby’s new work, she asked suspiciously, ‘What happened at the big house, our Ruby?’ Up to now, all Ruby had told her was that she and Cicely had parted.

  Believing it was best to tell the truth, Ruby answered, ‘I was dismissed.’ And, before her mam could explode, she went on in a sad voice, ‘I didn’t want that, Mam. I thought if Cicely moved house, I would be going with her.’ Her eyes were bright with tears as she looked at Lizzie. ‘I’ll miss her, Mam. And I’m so afraid for her.’

  ‘What d’ yer mean, afraid? And whyever did yer get dismissed? Was it the mistress or the master who put yer out?’ At the back of her mind, she had the numbing notion that Jeffrey Banks might somehow have discovered that Ruby was his own daughter, and that was why he had shown her the door. ‘Oh, Ruby lass, whatever did yer do to get dismissed?’

  Her answer satisfied both questions. ‘It was Cicely who dismissed me. She was angry because I tried to warn her against Luke Arnold.’ She went on to explain how she didn’t trust him, and believed that he would make Cicely’s life a misery. Yet she dared not say how she knew these things because then she would have to confess about that deceitful little charade at the party, and would also have to describe how Luke had pushed her into that dark alley, wanting his way with her. If Lizzie knew all of that, there would be no holding her. And so, in order to justify her suspicions of Luke, Ruby told her mam, ‘It’s well known that he wants to wed Cicely only so he can get his hands on the foundry, and Mr Banks’s money. What’s more, I’ve heard it said that he’s a womaniser into the bargain. If Cicely takes him for a husband, she’ll rue the day, I just know it. Oh, Mam, he’ll make her so unhappy.’

  Lizzie was furious. ‘Yer mean to tell me that you’ve said all these things to Cicely Banks? Well! No wonder she threw yer out. She’s a grown woman, and who she chooses to take for her husband ain’t none of yer business, my girl. How many times have I told yer it’s dangerous to listen to hearsay and gossip? Come ter think of it, I ain’t heard no such talk about that young man. And haven’t I warned yer to keep yer tongue between yer teeth, else you’ll dig yer own grave with it?’ She tutted and shook her head. ‘By! Why must yer allus want to speak yer mind, when it’s often best to keep certain things to yerself?’

  ‘Because Cicely’s my friend.’

  Lizzie sprang from the chair, her eyes bright with anger. ‘CICELY BANKS IS GENTRY!’ For some inexplicable reason, she was suddenly fearful. Yet she was instantly sorry for having yelled at Ruby like that. ‘Oh, look, lass, I don’t mean to be hard on yer.’

  She came to stand behind this daughter whom she loved with a ferocity that frightened her. Placing her hands on Ruby’s shoulders, she went on in a softer voice, ‘You can’t know anything of Luke Arnold. Most of the time there ain’t no truth in gossip, and yer should never have told it to yer mistress. I know yer think the world of her, and I know yer hackles would be up if yer thought she were letting herself in for a lot of sorrow.’ She patted her hand agitatedly on Ruby’s shoulder. ‘But it ain’t your place to interfere.’

  She returned to her chair and for a while there was a tense atmosphere between them. But then Lizzie asked something of Ruby that created a greater conflict. ‘I want yer to promise me summat, lass?’

  ‘If I can.’

  ‘I want yer to say that even if Cicely Banks seeks yer out and asks yer to come back you’ll say no. I have a feeling that when she calms down and has time to think on it, that young woman might regret having dismissed yer. Oh, don’t think I don’t know the affection you two have for each other, I’m not such a fool as to believe it was only one way. After all, it were her that got yer brought up from the kitchen to be her personal maid. And, God forbid, yer told me yerself that she treated yer almost like a sister.’

  It was that more than anything that had frightened Lizzie, because it was too near the truth. ‘Will yer promise me, lass? Will yer refuse if she comes after yer? I don’t ever want yer working in that house again. In fact, when I come to think of it, I reckon it might be a real godsend that you’ve found a place with Widder Reece. At least she ain’t gentry as such.’

  She regarded Ruby for a moment, thinking how quiet she had grown and realising that all of this must have been very hard on her.

  ‘I ain’t asking much, lass,’ Lizzie persisted. ‘Yer mam don’t ever ask much of yer, but now I need yer answer. Promise you’ll not go back even if she asks yer?’ She waited anxiously for she knew it was indeed a lot to ask.

  Ruby had to think deeply on what her mam had put forward. If the truth were told, she had not even anticipated that Cicely would come after her, therefore had had no cause to contemplate what she might do if that happened. If Ruby knew anything at all, she knew that Cicely’s love for Luke Arnold had blinded her to everything else. It was highly unlikely that Ruby would ever be asked to set foot in that house again. Even the master had been unable to persuade Cicely to a change of heart.

  ‘All right, Mam,’ she conceded. ‘You have my word.’ To Ruby’s mind it was a promise that she would never be tested on. ‘I won’t let Cicely persuade me to go back.’

  Lizzie was delighted. ‘Well, that’s a relief,’ she said. ‘I’m glad you’ve got work with Widow Reece, and I dare say if we all pull us belts in, we’ll manage well enough with a smaller wage.’ She settled back in the chair and glanced at the clock. ‘I hope yer father’s staying clear of them troublemakers from Arnold’s foundry. There’s summat brewing there, I reckon, and I don’t want Ted mixed up in it.’

  Ruby got out of her chair and, kissing her mam on the forehead, told her, ‘We can talk later if you like. I want to see Maureen before she’s settled for the night.’

  She needed to tell her friend all the news. Besides, Maureen was the only one who knew the whole truth: about Luke Arnold, the party, and everything. It was good to have someone she could confide in. The only thing Maureen disapproved of was Ruby’s reticence with Johnny, why was it that while one opened his heart, the other closed hers?

  Ruby was disappointed to find that Johnny was out but Maureen greeted her with a big hug and a warm smile. Within minutes Ruby was pouring out her heart: about Cicely and Luke, about Widow Reece and her new post, and how she meant to listen and watch until there was nothing she needed to know about the business of making and selling hats.

  Maureen listened eagerly. She adored Ruby, and knew there would come a day when her name would be known far and wide. As always, Ruby’s enthusiasm excited and thrilled her. Yet at the same time she was sad because she suspected that the price Ruby must pay was her love for Johnny. To Maureen’s mind, Ruby would be losing something very precious. Far more precious than all the money and influence in the world. But nothing would ever be allowed to diminish Ruby’s dream. It had grown with her until now it was as dear to her as her own life.

  Now, while she listened as Ruby outlined her future at the milliner’s, Maureen was afraid. She knew without a doubt how determined and ambitious her friend was, but what concerned her most was where this new step into unknown territory would lead.

  As Ruby so rightly pointed out, Widow Reece had given her a wonderful opportunity. Put that together with Ruby’s natural talents and consuming ambition, and it made a heady brew.

  Chapter Twelve

  On Thursday 12 June, something happened which was to shape Ruby’s future for a long time to come.

  She had been working at the milliner’s for almost a week when a letter was delivered from Jeffrey Banks to the house in Fisher Street. Flustered by the unceasing demands of her two youngest, and aching all over from scrubbing the flagstones on the scullery floor, Lizzie groaned out loud when the knock came o
n the door, ‘Who can that be at this time of morning?’ she grumbled.

  ‘Happen it’s our Ruby forgot her pack-up,’ Dolly suggested lazily. She had been washing her own little corner with a bit of rag and a bowl of water given to her by Lizzie, and imagined herself all grown up. ‘It’s a nuisance, isn’t it, Mam?’ she asked with a frowning face. ‘’Cause the water runs all in the cracks if you don’t mop it up straightaway.’

  ‘Aye, well, happen you’ll mop it up for me, will yer, lass?’ she asked with a chuckle. ‘And keep an eye on that little scoundrel there.’ Lizzie inclined her head towards young Lottie who was crawling over the carpet on all fours. ‘Don’t let the little sod get into any mischief, will yer?’

  ‘I’ll clip her ear if she don’t behave,’ Dolly said in a sombre voice, staring at the infant as though she had done something awful. When the bemused Lottie merely gurgled at her, Dolly giggled. ‘See, Mam?’ she announced. ‘Lottie knows what you say, don’t she, eh?’ Addressing the infant again, she repeated in a firm voice, ‘I will. I’ll clip your ear if you start yer bawling.’

  ‘You’ll do no such thing,’ Lizzie warned. Just then another knock at the door echoed loudly through the house. ‘By! Some folks is that impatient,’ she moaned. ‘Watch the young ’un, that’s all,’ she instructed, ‘I’ll not be a minute.’ Clambering to her knees, she slopped the cloth back into her bucket and wiped her hands on the tail end of her pinafore. That done, she took another glance at the two children and put the bucket up on the dresser out of reach of small hands. ‘Be good now,’ she warned, before going at a hurried pace along the passage to answer the door. ‘Wait on!’ she yelled as the knocks grew more impatient. ‘Wait on, yer bugger. I’m on me way.’

  When Lizzie flung open the door and saw the gentry carriage outside, her heart nearly stopped. The first thought that leaped to mind was that a contrite Cicely had come to collect Ruby. Yet there was no sign of her, nor of her father.

  Regarding the uniformed driver with mingled fear and suspicion, Lizzie kept the door closed to within an inch. Peeping from within the safety of her own domain, she demanded in a shrill unwelcoming voice, ‘Who are yer? And what’s yer business at a decent woman’s door?’

  The tall moustached man held out his hand. ‘I’ve been told to deliver this in person.’ When she made no move to take it, he insisted, ‘It’s for a Ruby Miller. She does live here doesn’t she? He had a strange-sounding voice, high-pitched and forced, like the wind that came from the bellows when Lizzie squeezed them to light the fire.

  Convinced that Ruby was in some kind of trouble, she demanded, ‘Who wants to know, eh?’

  ‘Jeffrey Banks, that’s who.’ With growing impatience, he thrust the letter forward.

  Lizzie would not be intimidated. Her round brown eyes shifted to the vehicle. ‘Jeffrey Banks don’t keep no carriages. So who’s is that, eh? And how do I know it’s him that’s sent yer?’

  ‘I don’t see that it’s any of your business, but the carriage is hired. The young lady of the house is to be wed on Saturday, and there’s much toing and froing.’ He stepped forward, causing Lizzie to shrink away. ‘So, you see, I’m rushed off my feet. Either you take the letter, or I’ll be obliged to leave it on the step,’ he warned. ‘I’m not particular,’ he added sharply. He was feeling peeved. It wasn’t often he was asked to run errands like a common messenger boy, and it went against the grain with him. What was more, he detested venturing into a street such as this, which to his mind was nothing more than a slum inhabited by people who had neither brains nor scruples.

  ‘Give it here then.’ Lizzie stuck her arm through the narrow gap in the door. ‘I’ll see she gets it.’ Once the letter was in her fist, she slammed the door shut. ‘Toffee-nosed git!’ she muttered as she went slowly down the passage, turning the letter over and over in her hands. ‘What’s all this about?’ she asked herself. ‘Why would the master be writing to my Ruby?’

  In the parlour she placed the letter high on the mantelpiece, propped up behind the clock, its two ends jutting out either side and frightening her with its formal appearance. ‘I hope they ain’t asking her to go back,’ she murmured. ‘I know our Ruby’s given me her word, but all the same it would be a temptation, I know, being as how she thinks the world of that Miss Cicely.’

  Dolly came to stand beside her and they both stared at the letter for what seemed an age. ‘Ruby won’t break her promise,’ Dolly presently announced in a stern little voice. She knew about the promise Ruby had made their mam, because she’d heard her parents talking about it and her dad saying, ‘Aw, Lizzie, it weren’t fair to ask the lass to do that.’

  ‘Hey!’ Lizzie glanced down at the little figure beside her. ‘Who asked you, eh?’

  ‘She won’t though. Ruby never breaks a promise.’

  Lizzie stroked the girl’s head. ‘Aye, lass,’ she admitted, ‘you’re right. All the same, I can’t help wondering what’s in that there letter.’

  ‘Open it then.’

  Lizzie was shocked. ‘By! I can’t do that, and shame on yer for thinking such a thing!’ She propelled the child back to the damp patch on the scullery floor. ‘Get on with yer work,’ she instructed, ‘and mind yer mop that floor dry, else yer mam’ll likely upend herself on it.’

  When the child was busy at her work, Lizzie dropped to her knees, dipping the cloth in the suds, wringing it out then slapping it on to the flagstones which she rubbed with increasing vigour until they shone like bright wet pebbles. And all the while her mind was on that letter and on Ruby. As Dolly had pointed out, Ruby would never break a promise, but it would be a pity if she were made miserable because of it, especially when she was getting on so well at Widow Reece’s shop.

  Time and again, Lizzie paused in her labours to glance at the letter. She glanced at it on her way into the scullery, and she thought about it when she swilled the dirty water into the yard; she stared at it on her way back into the parlour, and then again when she was feeding the infant at her breast. She peeked at it when she laid the sleeping bairn into its makeshift cot, and later on, when she was sipping her tea. Her frantic eyes kept going to it all the while she was telling Dolly a story about elves and fairies, and she felt it burning into her back when she was blackleading the range. The clock ticked away the minutes, and the minutes turned into hours, and the hours couldn’t go quick enough. ‘Come home, our Ruby,’ she muttered beneath her breath. ‘I shan’t rest ’til I know what’s in that there letter.’

  Lizzie would not have been so keen if she’d known that the contents of that letter were bound to fuel Ruby’s ambitions, taking her further down the very road her mother so feared.

  At four-thirty the twins came home, starving hungry and noisier than a wagon-load of monkeys. Lizzie sent them into the yard where they could argue and shout to their hearts’ content. Ten minutes later, Lenny dragged himself into the parlour, his torn shirt hanging round his shoulders in strips and his face a mass of bruises. ‘God bless and love us, you’ve been at it again!’ Lizzie complained, and once more he was sent to wash, change and ‘Keep yerself in yer room ’til yer father comes home!’

  When Ted came in just after six o’clock, Lizzie had relented and Lenny was sitting at the table with the twins and Dolly. They were all scrubbed and shining, and waiting patiently for their tea. Lottie was fast asleep in her box, with a full tummy and a contented smile on her face. ‘I’m glad one of you is out for the count,’ Lizzie observed with a little grin as she made her way into the scullery. There was cheese and bacon dumpling for tea, and a slice of jam pie afterwards. As she went to and fro, her eyes were constantly drawn to that long envelope which stood behind the clock and seemed to fill the room from end to end.

  ‘There’s a letter from Jeffrey Banks to our Ruby,’ she told her husband as they ate their tea.

  ‘Oh, aye?’ He followed her troubled gaze to the mantelpiece, ‘It’ll be summat and nowt,’ he said dryly.

  Lizzie was astounded at his lack of concern
, ‘Well now, you don’t seem worried, I must say,’ she remarked, regarding him out of the corner of her eye. ‘I wondered if it were a summons for her to go back to working there, and yer know I’m not in favour o’ that, don’t yer?’

  ‘Aye, I know it, lass,’ he admitted. ‘But to tell the truth, I can’t see no harm in Ruby being personal maid to Cicely Banks. They’re a good family and Cicely’s father’s seen me all right. If it hadn’t been for him, I’d be out of work and we’d not be sitting here enjoying such a nice spread at the table. You can’t deny that, now can you?’ He collected a large juicy piece of dumpling on to his fork and poked it into his mouth. For the moment he was unable to comment further, but his thoughts were racing ahead, and he had more on his mind than Ruby being offered her old place back. There was something wrong at the foundry where he used to work, disturbing murmurs about second-grade materials and ‘money changing hands in high places’. He was no stranger to such rumours, but they were growing stronger. Until now he had dismissed them, because he himself had seen nothing untoward. Besides, it was dangerous to pay attention to malicious gossip. Still, there was something. And it was getting harder and harder to put it out of his mind.

  ‘We’ll know soon enough when she comes home,’ Lizzie was thinking out loud. ‘I do hope she won’t go back to Jeffrey Banks’s household. God knows, I don’t want her in that house. I should never have let her go there in the first place…’ She was startled when Ted cast her a quizzical glance. ‘Well, I mean… she’s doing so well at Widder Reece’s, ain’t she?’ she added quickly. In her heart she shrank from the prospect of Ted ever discovering that he was not Ruby’s father. And, worse, that Jeffrey Banks was! It was her worst nightmare.

  ‘I can’t think why you’re so set against Jeffrey Banks and his daughter,’ Ted remarked. ‘And, anyway if Cicely has asked Ruby back, and things come right between them, it isn’t for us to say anything. It must be Ruby’s decision. She’s not a child any more. She’s grown and responsible. It isn’t for us to say how she earns a living, so long as it’s decent. We should be grateful that she fetches a wage in. What! There are women of her age already wed and pushing prams about.’ He reached out and, to the amusement of the watching children, put his hand over hers, assuring her fondly, ‘She’s a good lass, and yer mustn’t fret over her.’ He looked up at the mantelpiece. ‘That’s Ruby’s letter, and it’s Ruby’s business. She doesn’t even have to tell us about it if she doesn’t want to.’