The House by Princes Park (21 page)

Ruby agreed. It was better than nothing.

There was a meeting the following week. The children were lectured beforehand on the necessity of behaving themselves, and about a dozen women of various ages turned up armed with refreshments and a pile of old sheets to be turned. This involved tearing the sheets in two,
cutting away the frayed centre, and sewing the good ends together to make another, almost new. The women were delighted to discover the sewing machine and took turns using it, apart from Ruby who wanted nothing to do with the damn thing.

It turned out to be an unexpectedly enjoyable afternoon. They told jokes, some quite near the knuckle, gossiped, and sorted out the war between them. When they were leaving, one of the younger women approached Ruby. ‘Would you mind if I brought my kids next week? I have to leave them with me mam and she moans like hell. They could play in the garden. One of us could be designated to look after them.’

‘I’ll do it,’ Ruby offered, groaning inwardly. She didn’t like children much apart from her own and Jake, but she disliked sewing even more. Still, she wanted to do something towards the war effort and it didn’t mean she had to like it.

‘I’ll tell Freda. She can bring her kids too.’

‘If you’re looking after eight children, two more wouldn’t make much difference, would it, Rube?’ Beth remarked a few weeks later.

‘What do you mean?’ Ruby asked suspiciously.

‘It’s just that Olive Deacon, one of the women in the factory, is having to leave because her mam’s gone in hospital and there’s no one who’ll have her two little boys. They’re lovely, Rube, honest. Olive showed us their photey once.’

‘Most kids look nice in photographs. And I’d be having them every day, not once a week like now.’

‘Ah, come on, Rube,’ Beth said in her most cajoling voice. ‘If Olive leaves, they’ll get someone else who won’t be nearly as good. She’s one of our best workers. In a way, it’s your patriotic duty to look after her kids. She’ll pay, naturally.’

‘You bitch!’ Ruby hissed. ‘OK, I’ll have them.’

Roy and Reggie Deacon were little horrors. They told lies, fought with the girls, and taught Jake to wee against the trees. One day, when Ruby thought they were innocently occupied upstairs, she discovered them playing with Max Hart’s well-preserved toys and they had beheaded several wooden soldiers and unstuffed a bear. She comforted herself with the thought that Roy was starting school in September and without him Reggie might behave when he was outnumbered two to one by the girls.

But when September came, Roy’s place was taken by a girl called Mollie whose mother also worked with Beth. Mollie was more badly behaved than Roy and Reggie put together and broke a pretty vase on her first day, one of the few valuable objects in the house that hadn’t been pawned. Ruby gritted her teeth and told herself she was doing her patriotic duty though wasn’t sure if she believed it. Nevertheless, she threw herself wholeheartedly into the task of looking after the children, just as she had done with the cleaning jobs which she’d loathed almost as much.

For almost a year, the bulk of the population had remained unaffected by the war. France had fallen, thousands of French and British troops had been rescued in the great evacuation of Dunkirk, the slaughter on the seas at the hands of German U-boats was horrific. Martha Quinlan was in a constant state of fear for Jim – so was Ruby, though she told no one. These events occurred outside the lives of ordinary people. Although food rationing was in place, the main inconvenience was the tiny amount of tea allowed. But when, in June, 1940, the air-raid siren sounded for the first time, the fact of war became a brutal reality.

Ruby had prepared a shelter in the vast cellar which was
as big as the ground floor area of the house and separated into four sections by thick, brick walls. It was full of mysterious lengths of timber, boxes of books and old clothes, furniture even older than that upstairs, rolls of tattered linoleum and carpet. She cleaned one of the sections, laid a carpet, and furnished it with two discarded easychairs, a sofa with a curled end which she covered with a blanket to hide the holes, and a folding bed. Jake’s cot, which he didn’t use any more but could still squeeze into, was brought down. She fixed a splint on a table which had a broken leg, and filled a box with matches, candles, an assortment of books and board games, and a pack of cards. Then she prayed the shelter would never be used. But her prayers were in vain.

Beth was a light sleeper and heard the siren first. She woke Ruby and they ushered the children into the cellar. Jake stayed asleep and the others played snap and drank lemonade, while gunfire rumbled in the distance. After about an hour, the all clear sounded and they returned upstairs.

‘Well, that wasn’t so bad, was it?’ Ruby commented.

‘It was scarcely worth breaking our sleep for,’ grumbled Beth.

The next time the siren went, the gunfire sounded closer and they thought they could hear a plane and hoped it wasn’t German. The following day, they heard that six bombs had landed harmlessly in a field.

The siren continued to sound throughout July and bombs continued to drop on fields on the outskirts of the city. Ruby and Beth decided these incidents weren’t worth getting out of bed for, but two weeks later, in August, four people were killed and several injured when a stick of bombs fell on Wallasey.

‘Jaysus!’ Beth gasped when she heard. ‘
Killed
!’ They looked at each other with scared eyes.

Ruby nodded bleakly. ‘It’s the cellar from now on. No more staying in bed when the siren goes.’

It seemed to happen all of a sudden, as if the Luftwaffe had been playing with them and had now decided that it was no longer a game. The raids continued, getting heavier, lasting longer, until one night saw three separate raids on Liverpool causing serious damage throughout the city and killing more people.

The unthinkable had finally happened. In the cellar, Ruby and Beth listened to the planes droning overhead, the bombs screaming to earth, the inevitable explosions, and wondered how such madness could have been allowed to happen. Their worst nightmare had become a reality.

‘I’m almost glad Arthur died when he did,’ Ruby said softly. ‘At least he missed all this.’

There was one good thing to be thankful for; Greta and Heather regarded the raids as a great adventure. They enjoyed playing games and being read to in the middle of the night and Jake usually slept through everything.

No matter how little sleep she’d had, Beth always left promptly for work. One morning, after Beth had gone and Mollie and Roy Deacon had arrived and the five children were in the living room with drawing pads, crayons, and Max Hart’s wooden blocks, Ruby went into the kitchen and was washing the dishes when she heard scratching on the back door. She opened it to find a skeletal cat outside. It miaowed weakly when it saw her, walked shakily inside, then flopped in a heap of scraggy, tortoiseshell fur on to the floor.

‘Tiger!’ Ruby fell to her knees and stroked the strangely thin, furry body. ‘Oh, Tiger, what’s happened to you? You’re no more than skin and bone.’ Tiger regarded her pathetically with his amber eyes. ‘Let’s get you some milk.’

She poured milk into a saucer and the cat managed to raise his head and lap most of it up. He ate half a slice of
bread and Marmite, then Ruby wrapped him in a piece of old blanket and cuddled him, sniffing tearfully, the dishes forgotten. Greta came in and was instructed to look under the stairs for his basket.

‘I can remember seeing it there,’ said her mother.

Tiger was put in front of the fire with stern instructions he wasn’t to be touched. ‘He’s not well,’ Ruby said. ‘I’m nursing him better.’

‘I can’t stand cats,’ Beth said when she came home and was informed of Tiger’s presence.

‘You’d better learn to stand this one because he’s staying.’

‘What if the woman he was left with comes looking for him?’

‘It’s taken weeks, possibly months, for him to get in such a state. If anyone was going to look for him, they’d have done it long before.’

‘Ruby?’ Martha Quinlan said in the tone of voice of someone about to ask a favour.

‘Yes, Martha?’ Ruby rolled her eyes and wondered what the favour was.

‘You know Mrs Wallace who has a wart on her nose and who sometimes comes to meetings? Well, her granddaughter, Connie, lives in Essex, but she’s coming to work in Rootes’ Securities in Speke and needs somewhere to live. Her gran can’t take her, the poor dear only lives in lodgings.’

‘What d’you want me to do, build her a house?’

Martha grinned. ‘No, luv, put her up. You’ve plenty of room. The extra few bob a week will come in handy, won’t it? Connie’s giving up a wonderful job in order to serve her country. She’s a beautician in a posh London hotel, the Ritz, or something. She wanted to join the forces but they wouldn’t take her because her sight’s not too good, so she decided on munitions instead.’

‘Don’t they have munition factories down south?’

‘Of course, luv, but her mam’s dead, her dad’s been transferred to Scotland for some reason, and her brother’s in the Army. She thought it would be nice to be near her gran.’

‘OK,’ Ruby said with a sigh. It was a waste of time trying to refuse. Her patriotic duty would be called into question and she’d be made to feel guilty. ‘Will she expect to be fed?’

‘Only breakfast and an evening meal, luv.’

‘Is that all?’

Mrs Hart’s linen cupboard was raided and a bed prepared for Connie Wallace whose bespectacled, perfectly made-up face had to be seen to be believed. She was a plain woman made striking by the skilful use of cosmetics. Her eye shadow was two different shades of blue and the lashes were so long that Ruby and Beth were green with envy until told that they were false. Rouge was applied with a brush and lipstick with a pencil. ‘They’re from America,’ she said. There was a beauty spot on her chin when she remembered.

Her spectacles were shaped like bird’s wings, the frames black flecked with gold, also from America. ‘I’m terrified of breaking them, because they can’t be replaced till this ruddy war’s over.’

In the cellar during the raids, she taught Ruby and Beth how to apply make-up so it showed off their best features, though the exercise usually ended in shrieks of laughter.

By now, the evidence of the damage caused by the raids was all around them. Houses had been replaced by mounds of rubble or just the roofless skeleton left, like a grotesque statue, the sky visible though the gaps that had once been windows. Churches had been damaged, hospitals, schools, cinemas, numerous factories. Hundreds of people had been killed and hundreds more injured.

Ruby wondered how she, how everyone, managed to carry on. Yet somehow they did, and mainly, they managed to do it with a smile and a cheerfulness that was catching, including Ruby herself. She had no choice. It was either that or be miserable and admit defeat, and there was no way Ruby O’Hagan would do either.

In November, two things happened, both totally unexpected.

Beth always arrived home with the
Liverpool Echo
, which Ruby would read if she had time. The paper wasn’t only concerned with war news. Other things, mundane in comparison, were happening on the domestic front. People were getting married for one, and having their wedding photographs published. Ruby never read the weddings page, but one night a man’s vaguely familiar face caught her eye as she was about to turn over. Interested, she scanned the text beneath.

‘The marriage took place last Saturday at the Holy Name church, Fazakerley, between Mr William Simon Pickering and Miss Rosemary Louise McNamara...’

Her insides did a somersault and she read no more.

Bill Pickering
! He wasn’t dead. Jacob hadn’t killed him after all. He’d been alive all this time.

‘What’s the matter, Rube?’ Beth asked in a concerned voice. ‘You’ve gone as white as a sheet.’

‘Nothing.’ It had all been in vain – the running away, the years spent in Foster Court. She could have stayed in Brambles and Jacob could have continued to work on the farm. By now, she would have long grown out of him, she felt sure of that. She bunched the paper in a ball and threw it across the room.

‘I thought we were supposed to save waste paper?’ said Beth.

‘We are.’ The gesture had got rid of some of her anger. Things that had happened couldn’t be undone. Anyway,
had things gone differently, she wouldn’t have had her girls.

It was Beth who discovered Jacob Veering was dead. A woman at work had shown her a photograph of her brother who was in the Royal Tank Regiment and shortly due home on leave. ‘He was with this other chap in the photey. They had their arms around each other. I couldn’t believe me eyes when I saw the other chap was Jake. “Who’s that?” I asked, pointing to him. Me heart was in me mouth. I wasn’t sure what I wanted her to say, perhaps that Jake might be coming home with her brother. Instead, she said, “Oh, that’s Jacob, one of Albie’s friends. Poor chap got killed at Dunkirk.” “Are you sure?” I asked. “Sure I’m sure,” she said. “They were sitting next to each other waiting for a boat to fetch them home when the Jerries strafed the beach. Jacob was hit in the head. He died in Albie’s arms. Albie was dead upset.”

There was silence for a while, then Ruby sighed. ‘Well, I’m glad he died in someone’s arms.’

‘Is that all you’ve got to say?’

‘What d’you expect me to say, Beth?’

Beth was stronger now. She didn’t cry. ‘Oh, I dunno. I don’t know what to say meself. I’m surprised I’m not more upset.’

‘It means we’re both widows, in a way. We’re only twenty-two, we can have new relationships.’ She thought of Jim Quinlan.

‘I don’t want a new relationship,’ Beth said flatly. ‘One was enough.’

Ruby wondered how she would tell people that the man who was supposed to be her husband was dead. She wasn’t prepared to cry and mope around, pretend to be sad. Though, thinking about it, she
was
sad. Jacob was the father of her children, the first man she had ever loved. She hadn’t even a photograph to show the girls when they
grew up. ‘This woman at work,’ she said, ‘would she loan you the photo to have a copy made?’