Mourning Ruby (31 page)
Part One
Chapter One
: ‘She was a good-looking girl, too…’ from Chapter One of
Oliver Twist
by Charles Dickens
Chapter Two
: ‘the wife wants a child…’ from ‘The Farmer’s in His Den’ (Traditional)
Chapter Six
: ‘For the sword outwears its sheath…’ from ‘So, We’ll Go No More a-Roving’ by George Gordon, Lord Byron
Chapter Nine
: ‘I have mislaid the key. I sniff the spray…’ from ‘Old Man’ by Edward Thomas
Chapter Ten
: ‘But never met this Fellow/Attended, or alone…’ from ‘A Narrow Fellow in the Grass’ by Emily Dickinson
Chapter Twelve
: ‘Life has become better, Comrades, life has become more cheerful!’ Slogan taken from a speech made by Stalin in December 1935
Chapter Thirteen
: ‘beautiful today the surf on Porthkidney sands/and the standing out of the lighthouse, sheer…’ from ‘beautiful today the’ by Helen Dunmore
Chapter Fourteen
: ‘After great pain, a formal feeling comes./The nerves sit ceremonious, like tombs…’ from ‘After Great Pain a Formal Feeling Comes’ by Emily Dickinson
Chapter Fifteen
: ‘We wove a web in childhood,/A web of sunny air…’ from ‘Retrospection’ by Charlotte Brontë
Chapter Sixteen
: ‘Out of the wood of thoughts that grows by night…’ from ‘Cock-Crow’ by Edward Thomas
Chapter Seventeen
: ‘To know the change and feel it, When there is none to heal it…’ from ‘In a Drearnighted December’ by John Keats
Chapter Twenty
: ‘If ever I forget your name, let me forget home and Heaven!’ from
The Woodlanders
by Thomas Hardy, Chapter XLVIII
Chapter Twenty-one
: ‘And to get to him – to his very heart…’ from the second Voronezh notebook of Osip Mandelstam, translated by HD
Chapter Twenty-two
: ‘Golden fleece, where are you, golden fleece?’ from
Tristia
by Osip Mandelstam, translated by HD
Chapter Twenty-three
: ‘We dip our heads in the deep blue sea…’ from ‘The Big Ship Sails on the Alley-Alley-O’ (Traditional)
Part Two
‘Have you left the ground in murkiness, all clammy, grey and soaking…’ from ‘The Call of the Air’ by Jeffrey Day
Part Three
Chapter Twenty-five
: ‘When shall we meet again, sweetheart,/When shall we meet again?…’ from ‘The Unquiet Grave’ (Traditional)
Final Chapter: Heaven’s Gate
: ‘Have you tumbled from the sky until your wires were shrilly screaming…’ from ‘The Call of the Air’ by Jeffrey Day
Epilogue
: ‘A field is enough to spend a life in…’ from ‘Crossing the Field’ by Helen Dunmore. A line from this poem also heads the Prologue to the
Boomdiara
section of the novel.
‘How Far is it to Babylon’ is a traditional rhyme.
The song which Will sings in his bath, ‘Boomdiara’, is a traditional campfire song which occurs in many variants.
The hymn which Florence teaches to Claire is by Mary Howitt.
The song which Frizell sings in the Mess is ‘The Last Rose of Summer’ by Thomas Moore.
Table of Contents
PART ONE: Shoebox Story
1. Foundling
2. Baby Aeroplanes
3. An Engine has Failed
4. Mr Damiano’s Dream
5. The Death of Stalin’s Wife
6. A Jump Five Floors Up
7. Fall or Fly
8. A Yellow Cardigan
9. First Christmas
10. Damiano’s Dreamworld
11. Moscow
12. Thanks to Stalin
13. Barnoon is Heaven
14. We Are As We Are
15. Reproaches
16. Flyer and Catcher
17. How My Mother’s Vision Came True
18. Living Statues and the Dwarf Shakespeare Act
19. Our Business is Pleasure
20. Adam
21. The Moscow Veteran
22. Golden Fleece
23. The Deep Blue Sea
24. The Birthday Party
PART TWO: Boomdiara
Prologue
1. Florence, 1917
2. Madame Blanche
3. Speaking English Perfectly
4. The Aerodrome
5. Sweet Dreams
Story development at 30 September
PART THREE: Flight
25. Painted Lady
Final Chapter: Heaven’s Gate
