Blue Moon (28 page)

‘Ruby, oh, Ruby,’ he moaned as his fingers went under her chemise and found her hardened nipple. His tongue filled her mouth and every part of her mind was racing; her body began to yield; she was giving herself to the feeling he’d created … And then they heard the key in the door.

They sprang apart. Ruby pulled her clothing together. Jim stood up and, running his fingers through his untidy hair, called out, ‘You’re back early, sir. Is there something I can do to help?’

Ruby heard a man’s voice say, ‘I’ve still got a few boxes in the car. Give us a hand, will you?’

While Jim headed towards the corridor leading to the street, Ruby grabbed her blouse and made her way to the WC. Safely behind the locked door, she dressed and made herself respectable again, before going back out. She could hear the two men bringing photographic equipment into the studio. She glanced at her reflection in the mottled mirror hanging from a nail over the sink. Her cheeks were flushed. She splashed cold water onto her face and reduced the colour a little. Her heartbeat had slowed, but the blood in her veins pulsated with the knowledge:
he loves you … Jim loves you …

‘Hey up, Percy.’

Percy looked up to see Barnabas West, his old friend. Percy hadn’t seen him since they’d shared a billet together in the Black House. Barney was coming across
the pebbles and onto the beach. His cheerful greeting had made Percy jump.

‘Barney,’ he smiled and struggled to his feet to shake his hand. It was a welcome interruption. Percy’s fingers were frozen and the chill wind was eating into his bones. ‘What on earth are you doing in Worthing?’

‘Looking for you,’ said Barney, pumping his hand. ‘You’re a hard man to find.’

‘I can’t think why,’ said Percy. He had been sitting with his back to the sea, still cleaning and repairing the fishing gear, ready for a change in the weather. ‘You knew my family were fishermen, didn’t you?’

Barney shrugged. ‘You may have mentioned it.’

Percy felt a little uncomfortable calling himself a fisherman. In fact he had only managed a couple of trips since he’d been back home. He’d gone out with a young lad close to school leaving age, who was at a loose end, but they hadn’t caught much. Percy had begun to realize that he not only hated fishing, but he just didn’t have the knack for it. Either that, or it was as the other fishermen said, and the boat was cursed.

‘I reckon Nelson caught the king of the mackerel,’ Silas had told him, ‘and never threw him back.’ He’d shaken his head and sucked hard on his pipe. ‘Bad omen that.’

Percy had tried to laugh it off as a silly superstition, but with the kind of luck he was having right now, it was getting harder and harder to dismiss the thought.

‘Is this your boat?’ Barney remarked.

‘It is now,’ said Percy. He spat into the wind and, as if to spite him, it started to snow.

Barney looked around. ‘Is there a tea room or a cafe around here? Somewhere we could talk?’

He helped Percy put everything back into the locker and they set off for the Seagull Cafe on the Brighton Road. It sounded a lot more attractive than it looked, but Percy welcomed the mug of tea, which warmed his hands as he waited for the plate of egg and chips Barney had ordered for him.

‘They want you to come back to HQ and work for the movement,’ said Barney through the haze of blue smoke between them, a mixture of burnt fat in the frying pan and cigarette smoke.

‘I’d like to,’ said Percy, ‘but I can’t afford it. My father was drowned and it’s up to me to carry on, for the sake of my mother and my sisters.’

‘Listen, Perce,’ said Barney, leaning forward in a confidential manner, ‘the movement is growing faster than anyone ever dreamed. The membership already stands at nearly twenty thousand. Twenty thousand!’

Percy choked on a chip. So it really was coming to that …

‘They reckon, if things carry on this way, it’ll be fifty thousand by the summer,’ Barney went on, ‘maybe a hundred thousand by the end of the year and I’m not exaggerating, either. The point is, you don’t have to come back as a volunteer. You can get paid.’

‘I’m not good at paperwork,’ said Percy, shaking his head.

‘It’s not paperwork they want you for,’ said Barney. ‘It’s recruitment.’

Percy stopped chewing and looked up at him.

‘We’ve got the ex-army blokes to drill them, but we need more men. We need one of their own, who can tell them what a difference they can make. We need a working-class man to attract working-class men into the ranks.’

‘And you think I can do that?’

‘We know you can,’ said Barney. ‘You were top dog at the Black House, and people looked up to you. You’re fit, clean-living, a no-nonsense sort of a bloke – just the kind of man we want.’

Percy kept his eyes on his plate. ‘There are some things I don’t agree with,’ he began.

‘You and me both, pal,’ said Barney. ‘But everybody is entitled to have a personal opinion. Fascism doesn’t deny the right to free speech; in fact we champion it.’

Percy jabbed at the yolk of his egg with a chip and they both watched the yellow liquid run onto the plate.

‘Where is the perfect organization anyway, Percy?’ said Barney persuasively. ‘If you find it, don’t tell me to join. I’ll mess it up on day one.’

‘Fishing has been in my family for generations,’ said Percy, finally looking up at his friend.

‘Like Jesus said,’ Barney grinned, ‘Fascism will make you a fisher of men.’

Their eyes met, as Barney’s blasphemy hung between them.

Percy smiled. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Give me a few days to think about it.’

CHAPTER 23

Bea had spent some time putting May’s birthday presents away. It was Saturday, January 20th, and although May’s birthday had been on the Tuesday, this was the best day for a birthday tea. Coming so soon after Christmas made it a little difficult, but Bea did her best to make the day special. It hadn’t been much of a celebration, but she had managed to give her youngest child a small cake, some sandwiches, and jelly and ice cream for her eighth birthday. May had invited three little friends over, and Ruby had helped by organizing some games. The old favourites were the best: Blind-Man’s Buff, Pass the Parcel and Hunt the Thimble. It wasn’t as lavish as her previous birthday had been, but Bea was confident that May had enjoyed herself; and when her daughter blew out the candles on her cake, Bea had made a wish on her behalf that her birthday next year would be much better.

Bea had also got into the habit of keeping a weather eye on some of her neighbours. Times were hard for everybody and she couldn’t do much, but sometimes a friendly face and a chat over a cup of tea were all that
was needed. If they weren’t too proud, she would rub the duster over the furniture and sweep up. Sometimes she would take the sheets home to wash. She never looked for payment or reward, but it often came anyway. She had been coming to Mabel Harris’s place for years. ‘There’s a couple of self-seeded potatoes still in the ground,’ Mabel had said one day. ‘You dig ’em up and we’ll share ’em.’ The ground was hard and it was difficult to get the spade in, but the crop had served them well. The potatoes were a good size and healthy.

Mabel’s little garden was a wilderness now. When her husband was alive, it had neat rows of potatoes, carrots and runner beans. Mabel herself had been a seamstress, but with the advancing years, her arthritis made it too painful to sew. As she gradually got rid of her sewing things, whatever she couldn’t sell she gave to Bea. Ribbons, poppers and buttons were always useful, and Bea put them in her sewing box.

Today Bea had little energy to work, so she satisfied herself with a bit of dusting and washing up some dishes left in the sink. After that, they sat down for a friendly chat.

‘I hate to ask you this,’ said Mabel, ‘but I’m really worried about my nephew.’

‘Linton?’ asked Bea.

Mabel nodded. ‘He’s never been the same since the war, and his chest gets really bad in this weather. He hasn’t been to see me for a couple of weeks, and my legs won’t take me as far as Heene any more.’

‘Are you thinking he’s ill?’

Mabel shrugged her shoulders. ‘To be honest, I don’t know, Bea. He was with your Nelson at Ypres, and his death upset Linton something rotten.’ She sighed. ‘There are times when I think the gas didn’t just affect his lungs, but his brain as well.’

‘Why’s that?’ Bea asked.

Mabel got up and went to her dresser. It was lined with cups and saucers, with a card or two propped against them. Bea knew that some of them had been up there for donkey’s years, but Mabel couldn’t bear to throw them away. Pride of place was given to the last birthday card her husband ever bought, before he died. Mabel took off the lid off a Royal Albert teapot, her pride and joy, and tipped it up. It rattled as she moved it and something fell out. When she brought it to Bea, Bea was surprised. It was a piece of lead in the shape of a bullet. She frowned and looked up with a puzzled expression.

‘When my Jack died,’ said Mabel, ‘I needed money, so I decided to sell some of his things. I found this in his best suit pocket. When I showed it to Linton – honestly, Bea, I thought he was going to pass out.’

Bea swallowed hard. She’d seen something like it before, but for a minute she couldn’t for the life of her remember where. ‘Why was Linton upset?’ asked Bea.

‘He wouldn’t say,’ said Mabel. ‘I was going to chuck it away, but after Linton’s reaction, something made me keep it.’

Bea turned it over in her hands. ‘“Victory,”’ she read on the side. ‘What does it mean?’

Mabel shrugged. ‘With things as they are, I’ve got a lot of time to think these days,’ she said, ‘and I remember the odd things my Jack did, in the days before he died.’

Bea was intrigued. ‘What things?’

‘He was never one for flowery language, if you get my meaning,’ said Mabel, ‘but if he told me once, he told me a hundred times that he loved me.’

‘Are you saying he had a premonition he was going to die?’

‘I don’t know what I’m saying,’ said Mabel. ‘All I know is that when I showed Linton this thing, it upset him so much that he hasn’t been the same since.’

‘I’ll go to his place tomorrow,’ said Bea.

‘You’re an angel,’ said Mabel.

‘I know,’ Bea smiled. ‘And modest with it too.’

With the coming of the long-awaited electrification of the railway line between Victoria and West Worthing on December 30th, the dignitaries who came promised all sorts of new amenities, which would bring new jobs to the area. An eighteen-hole golf course was promised on Lower Warren Farm in Broadwater; a hippodrome cinema was to be built in Rowlands Road; an Astoria cinema in Bath Place; and a palace of dreams called The Showboat in Liverpool Terrace, which, with its nautical design, porthole windows and such, would give the appearance of a great ocean liner. Everything was supposed to be up and running by June 1934, but Ruby couldn’t wait that long. She needed a job and she needed it now.

In his first letter from Dorset, Jim had shocked her by saying that he planned to stay a lot longer in Wimborne. It seemed that the celebrated photographer had taken quite a shine to him and wanted to teach Jim a lot more than the prize allowed. The deal was open-ended, but Jim hinted that he might be away for some while.

He had already been gone for three weeks before Ruby finally found a job. She hated lying, but when they’d asked her for a reference, she told them that although she could get a character reference, she had been looking after her sick mother since she’d left school and this would be her first job. They accepted her on face value, and Ruby was to begin as a ward cleaner in the hospital on Lyndhurst Road the following week, on Monday the fifth. It wasn’t much of a wage – less than she’d been getting at Warnes and, from the sound of it, she was going to have to work very hard – but she would be able to pay her way at last. This was going to be a long haul and, if she was going to marry Jim, it didn’t matter anyway.

She still kept up her German lessons. John Coffey had a steady business now, but he still found time to set her a challenge and she knew it comforted him to speak in his mother tongue, even if it was only with a stumbling beginner. Since Ruby had lost her job Percy had been a bit grumpier and, although her mother accepted what Ruby had told her about needing a change from the hotel, she couldn’t really understand why. Bea kept pressing her, but Ruby gave no explanation.

She started work at her new job at seven, making tea for all the patients on her ward. The night-staff were getting ready for the day-staff to take over at eight, so the first hour was quite challenging. After making the tea, Ruby had to collect the water jugs and glasses, alongside the empty cups, and wash them up. After that she cleaned the ward itself. She was thorough and methodical. Everything was wiped with a damp cloth and the floors were mopped and dried. At any time she might be called upon to clear up a mess, or to make toast and a boiled egg for someone who had just been admitted, or for someone recovering from an operation and who had missed the dinner trolley. The only time she left the ward was to empty bins, and she quickly taught herself to watch out for amorous doctors and to keep out of Matron’s way.

Matron was a bit of a tartar, but she was never vindictive, like Mrs Fosdyke; and funnily enough, all that Ruby had learned in Warnes paid off. More than once Matron had complimented Ruby on her neatly kept linen cupboard. And it didn’t take long for Ruby to work out a better system of doing things. Her ideas ensured they never ran out of linen, or anything else, under her care. Working at the hospital didn’t take much thought, but once she got into the swing of things, she enjoyed it. Some of the nurses were a bit snooty, but others were very friendly and it seemed that, once she had proved herself to be hard-working and conscientious, everybody liked her.

The hospital was closer to home than Warnes, which
was just as well because the February weather was awful. Bitterly cold winds compacted the snow, which had fallen since the beginning of the year. The hospital was bursting at the seams with patients, especially the old, who had fallen on the ice and broken bones. Few of them survived; once infection set in, or in some cases shock, not even the best nursing could save them. Ruby had to get used to the most cheerful of souls going downhill very quickly. It was the one drawback of an otherwise enjoyable job.