The House by Princes Park (8 page)

‘I’ll come back,’ she whispered to herself. ‘I’ll come back tomorrow or the next day, and one of these days, I’ll come back for good.’

She got off at the tram sheds and walked up and down the tiny streets. Women sat contentedly on the whitened steps outside their neat houses, enjoying the brilliant sunshine. Children swung from the lamp-posts, played hopscotch on the pavement, whip and top, or two-balls against the walls.

Ruby sighed enviously and supposed she’d better be getting home.

On Saturday night, Emily went to the theatre wearing a new grey silk costume and a little matching hat with a veil, her fox fur laid casually around her shoulders despite the gloriously hot day.

‘You’ll be all right won’t you, dear?’ she said worriedly. ‘You can read a book or listen to the wireless. I’ll tell you what the play was about when I get home.’

‘I’ll be fine,’ Ruby said stoutly.

As soon as Emily had gone, she went upstairs and changed into the spotted dress from Blacklers. It clung to her thin body and, she was pleased to note, emphasised her small breasts, making her look very grown-up, particularly when she piled her black hair on top of her head, securing it with a slide.

She went into Emily’s room, searched through the jewellery box on the dressing table which had been left in a terrible mess, and helped herself to a pearl necklace and earrings – Emily had gone out wearing her ‘good’ pearls. She tried on a pair of red, high-heeled shoes. They were only a bit too big.

Downstairs, she switched on the wireless and was met by a thunderous blast of classical music which she turned off in disgust, deciding to play one of her favourite records instead: a selection of ballads sung by Rudy Vallee, and so hauntingly lovely, they made her go all funny inside.

Ruby began to sway as she watched the record spin around. ‘Goodnight, Sweetheart’ was one of her favourites. Unable to resist, she kicked off the shoes, flung her arms in the air, and danced around the room, very slowly, hugging herself. The music was causing a sweet, nagging ache in her tummy, it always did, making her want things she couldn’t define. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine someone in the room with her, a man. They were dancing together. She was being kissed by invisible lips in a way she’d never seen people kiss before. Ruby had no idea where the thoughts came from. She must have been born with them.

Rudy Vallee began to sing ‘Night and Day’, and still Ruby danced, losing herself completely in the glorious, romantic music, unaware that she had an audience.

Outside the window, Jacob Veering, his face shiny after a thorough scrubbing, wearing his one and only suit, didn’t think he had ever seen anything so beautiful as the strange young lady fluttering like a butterfly across the room. He
had never known anyone like her. His tongue would form a lump in his throat whenever she spoke to him, and it was all he could do to answer.

Jacob already had a girlfriend, Audrey Wainwright, whose father owned a farm much bigger than Humble’s. There was an unspoken agreement that they would marry one day and he would transfer his labour from Humble’s farm to Wainwright’s, where he would live and work for the rest of his life. He wasn’t particularly looking forward to the future, but nor did he regard it with dread. As long as he could work on the land, have a place to live, enough to eat, and no one abused him, Jacob would be content, if not happy. Being a man he would need a wife and Audrey Wainwright would fill this role. He assumed she felt the same. The word ‘love’ had never been uttered during their relationship, but if either had noticed they didn’t seem to mind.

But now, as he watched Ruby dance, sensations he’d never felt before were causing tremors in Jacob’s normally stolid heart. It was pounding for one thing, so hard and so fast that he felt frightened. He had the urge to smash the window, climb inside, catch Ruby by her tiny waist and twirl her round and round till they both fell dizzily to the floor in each other’s arms. Yet he knew he could never bring himself to touch her. She was out of bounds to someone like him. She was a creature from another world to which Jacob, the farmhand, didn’t belong.

She looked so strong, and yet so frail, and there was an expression on her face that he envied, a dreamy, lost expression, as if she was somewhere else entirely than the room in which she danced. Jacob had never felt like that and he wondered what it was like. He also wondered if she remembered she had invited him to the house that night. Well, there was only one way of finding out. He knocked on the front door.

When she answered, Jacob gasped. Her eyes were
starbright, her cheeks were flushed, and she bestowed upon him a warm look of welcome that caused his heart to pound even more.

‘I didn’t think you’d turn up!’ She reached for his hand. ‘Come and listen to the music. I’ve been dancing. Can you dance?’

‘No,’ Jacob said thickly. He allowed himself to be pulled inside and immediately felt ill at ease in the richly furnished house with carpets on the floor and ornaments and pictures all over the place. There were velvet chairs in the room into which she led him and the music was louder here. A man was singing about his heart standing still and Jacob wished his own heart would do the same. He couldn’t take his eyes away from the little curls that clung damply to Ruby’s slender neck and his hand was tingling from her touch.

She smiled at him. ‘Would you like something to eat? There’s a big apple pie for tomorrow, but Emily won’t care if we eat it.’

‘Wouldn’t mind,’ Jacob grunted, wishing he didn’t sound so surly.

He was dragged into a big scullery where he gaped at the extraordinary cream stove, the shallow cream sink, the green painted cupboards, the black and white check-tiled floor. She took a golden-crusted pie out of the larder. ‘Would you like tea or coffee?’ She gestured to him to sit at the big table in the centre of the room.

‘Tea.’ He had never had coffee and had no idea what it was like. She made him feel very ignorant, a bit of an oaf, with her gramophone and coffee and a scullery the likes of which he’d never seen before – he had a feeling people like her called them ‘kitchens’.

He watched as she poured water into what was definitely a kettle, but instead of putting it on the peculiar stove to boil, she attached it to the wall with a plug. Overcome with curiousity, he said, ‘What’s that?’

‘It’s an electric kettle. Haven’t you seen electricity before?’

‘They have it in the pub by the station, The Railway Arms.’

‘I didn’t even know electricity existed until I came to live with Emily. We had paraffin lamps in the convent and the food was cooked in an oven by the kitchen fire. It was called a range.’

‘The convent?’

She put milk and sugar on the table and sat opposite him, folding her thin arms. ‘The convent where I grew up.’

‘But Mr Humble said you were Mrs Dangerfield’s niece or something, a relative.’

‘Oh, no.’ She laughed and her wide mouth almost reached her ears. ‘I’m an orphan. The convent was an orphanage, still is. Emily just wanted a friend and she picked me.’ She preened herself.

‘Don’t you mind being an orphan?’ Jacob missed not having a father, but at least could boast a mother, even if she hadn’t been up to much.

Ruby shrugged carelessly. ‘Seems a waste of time, minding. What help would it be?’

Jacob stared at her, blinking. The fact that she was an orphan, that she didn’t truly belong in a grand house like this, had brought her, in a way, down to his level. At the same time, it only made her seem more remarkable and untouchable that she had so quickly made herself at home, fitting so easily into rich people’s ways, though she didn’t talk posh like Mrs Dangerfield.

The kettle boiled. She got up, switched it off, and made the tea. ‘Do you take sugar?’

‘Two spoons, ta. How did your mam and dad die?’

‘I don’t know if they’re alive or dead. Sister Cecilia said I wasn’t even a day old when I arrived at the convent.
There was a note to say I was called Ruby O’Hagan, that’s all.’

‘O’Hagan sounds Irish. Ruby’s nice.’ Jacob blushed.

‘So’s Jacob. Would you like some pie?’

Jacob nodded. ‘I’ll have to be going soon. I’m meeting someone in the pub for a drink.’ He didn’t say it was his future father-in-law.

‘Oh!’ Ruby pouted. ‘I thought you’d come for longer. You can come again next week. Come whenever you like, ’cept when Emily’s here. You can tell if the car’s in the drive.’

‘OK, ta.’

The pie finished, Jacob left by the rear door. When he got to the front, he heard music. Looking back, he saw Ruby bending over the gramophone. Suddenly, she turned and began to dance. Jacob stood watching for ages and ages, and it was all he could do to tear himself away.

From that week on, life for Ruby was no longer dull. Two, three, sometimes four times a week, whenever Emily was out, she would catch the train to Exchange station and explore Liverpool – the centre of the city and its environs. She discovered the Pier Head where ferries sailed across the Mersey to Birkenhead, Seacombe, and best of all, New Brighton where, if she had enough money, she bought fish and chips, ice cream, and made herself pleasantly sick on the fairground.

‘I hope you’re not coming down with something,’ Emily would say in a concerned voice when she couldn’t eat her tea.

‘I’ll eat it later.’ She usually did, better by then. Her appetite was voracious, though she never put on weight. Emily remarked she was growing taller.

She went by tram to every possible destination: Bootle, Walton Vale, Aigburth, Woolton, Penny Lane, getting off along the way, or at the terminus, where she roamed the
streets, envious of the way people lived so closely together. A few times, she strolled along the Dock Road, possibly the busiest and most frenziedly noisy place of all, with its foreign smells, hooting, blaring traffic nose to tail, the funnels of enormous ships soaring over the dock walls. The pavements were packed with people jabbering away in languages that were rarely English. She had to push her way through, heart lifting at the exhilerating strangeness of every single thing.

The Dingle remained her favourite place, perhaps because she’d gone there first. A few of the tram conductors got to know her and greeted her as a friend.

The money for fares Ruby found in Emily’s large collection of handbags where there were always a few coins that would never be missed. It wasn’t stealing. She knew, if asked, Emily would give her money to buy sweets or comics or coloured pencils from the post office, but possibly not to travel the length and breadth of Liverpool by various means. It seemed less troublesome to help herself to money than tell a lie.

Sometimes Emily arrived home before her and when she got in Ruby would say she’d been for a walk.

‘In the dark, dear!’

‘It was light when I left. I didn’t realise I’d walked so far.’ Emily didn’t notice she always made the same excuse.

Jacob usually turned up in the evenings when Emily was out. Since the night he had seen Ruby dance, Jacob had discovered that sitting in the Wainwrights’, as he did most nights, with Audrey, her mam and dad, and two younger sisters, talking or playing cards, drinking tea and eating Mrs Wainwright’s rather dry home-made scones, then retiring with Audrey to the stuffy parlour to exchange a few chaste kisses, had lost what little thrall it had. It had never held much, but seemed the thing to do when you were courting.

He still felt uncomfortable in Brambles with its satin
cushions, pleated curtains, and electricity. He felt uncomfortable with Ruby who was teaching him to dance, had taught him to drink coffee, and told him things she’d heard on the wireless or read in Emily’s newspaper, about people he didn’t know who lived in countries he’d never heard of. He’d never opened a newspaper in his life and could read and write only a little.

She dazzled him. He was in awe of her, She knew everything. At night, he went to sleep with her graceful, twirling figure in front his eyes, hearing her voice. He forgot what Audrey looked like. He used some of the money he was saving for the wedding to buy a suit in Ormskirk market.

‘We could have bought it in town on Saturday afternoon when you’re off,’ Ruby said when she admired the cheap suit which was navy blue with a lighter blue stripe. She squeaked with horror when Jacob said he had never been to Liverpool.

‘Never
been
! Lord, Jacob, I’ve been dozens of times.
Dozens
!’

‘I know.’ Her frequent expeditions, by train, tram and ferry filled him with admiration. He hated leaving Kirkby. Even in Ormskirk, a small market town, he felt overwhelmed by so many people, panic-stricken in the narrow streets, his chest tight, wanting to run away to where there were open spaces and a clear, unrestricted sky, to where he could breathe. He only felt at home with the soil and the crops and the animals that he tended. There were times when he wished he’d never met Ruby, who’d caused such havoc in his heart that he no longer knew what he wanted.

Christmas was never-ending party time at the Rowland-Graves’s. Emily ate Christmas dinner with Ruby – the food had mostly been prepared the day before by Mrs Arkwright – nursing the pleasant thought that later she would enjoy herself in a very different way.

She regarded herself as having been doubly blessed. She genuinely loved Ruby, who was a perfect companion; loyal, uncomplaining, intelligent, with a cheerful disposition. It was a pleasure to be met by her sunny, happy face whenever she entered the house. They’d been to Midnight Mass together and it was a delightful experience that she would have missed if the girl hadn’t been there. At the same time, the Rowland-Graves were providing all the excitement and fun that Emily had always longed for. Life had never been so good or so fulfilling.

‘Will you be all right on your own?’ She asked the inevitable question while making preparations for the evening ahead.

Ruby was sitting on the bed, watching the painstaking proceedings. She gave the inevitable answer. ‘I’ll be fine.’

As soon as Emily had gone she put the light on in her bedroom without drawing the curtains, a signal to Jacob, watching across the fields, that it was safe to come.