Prologue
RUBY
Bartonford, Devon, 1939
It was a sunny morning at the beginning of September when Alfie Blythe came tearing through the dunes to tell me war had finally been declared.
The sky was brushed with feathers of cloud, the sea silver-calm, the breeze fluttering my hair around my face as I meandered up the path from Bartonford beach with Toffee, Mrs-Baxter-down-the-lane’s fox terrier, zigzagging in front of me and cocking his leg on clumps of marram grass. I was daydreaming about starting my new job as office girl at the Bartonford Herald tomorrow, and making a mental checklist of chores I needed to do when I got back to the little cottage Father and I shared in the grounds of Barton Hall hospital: prepare lunch, polish my shoes, press my skirt and blouse.
I’d heard all the talk of war, of course. Father, one of the head psychiatric doctors at the hospital, was forever making worried predictions from behind his newspaper at breakfast, and every evening we turned on the wireless to listen to news reports about the imminent horror in Europe. I’d overheard conversations in the butcher’s and the greengrocer’s about the possibilities of food rationing, gas attacks and bombs. And there was the blackout, which had begun a few days ago. But I was only fourteen; to me, war seemed like something out of a Hollywood film, not something that could happen in the sleepy little Devon town of Bartonford. It certainly wasn’t something that could happen to me.
‘Ruby!’
I turned and saw Alfie running towards me, cheeks pink and chest heaving, his little sister Annie close behind. The Blythes lived next door to Mrs Baxter, just down the road from the hospital; Alfie’s mother was cook and housekeeper at Barton Hall, and came in twice a week to clean for Father. Alfie and I had been friends ever since we started school.
‘Have you heard?’ he wheezed when he and Annie reached me. ‘We’re going to war! Chamberlain has just announced it on the wireless!’
I stared at him. ‘Gosh.’ It came out sounding rather flat, not because I didn’t care but because I was thinking, I must get home. I must see if Father’s all right. Even Alfie’s breathing – small and slight for his age, he suffered from asthma – didn’t worry me like it usually would.
‘Ma says there’s gunna be no jam in the shops. And marg on our bread ’nstead of butter!’ Annie piped up.
‘Oh, shush, Annie.’ Alfie had recovered a bit now, although his breath still whistled in his throat. ‘Pa says it’ll all be over in six months. But I saw you coming up here earlier and I thought you’d want to know.’
‘Th – thank you.’ I bent to clip Toffee’s lead to his collar. ‘I must go. Goodbye, Alfie.’
I ran all the way home.
‘Oh, isn’t it terrible?’ Mrs-Baxter-down-the-lane said when I called in to return Toffee. ‘I can’t believe this country is going to war again, and so soon after the last one! If Edward was here…’
Edward Baxter had served in the Devonshire Regiment with Father. One night, in a trench at Ypres, their unit had been waiting to go over the top when they were gassed. Father had been one of the lucky ones; Mrs Baxter never saw Edward again. She wrung her hands, knotting her swollen, arthritic fingers together. ‘Our poor boys. You mark my words, Ruby, it will be a terrible time for us all.’
When I entered the cottage the house was silent, not the quiet of an empty house but the hush of a storm about to break. Father was sitting in the parlour, the wireless still hissing. He turned to me, white-faced, the scar on his cheek livid as a brand.
‘Father, is it true?’ I said. ‘Are we at war?’
He nodded. ‘Oh dear,’ he said. ‘Oh dear, oh dear.’
A spasm of coughing shuddered up from deep inside him and he fumbled his handkerchief from his pocket, pressing it to his mouth. I hurried to the kitchen for a glass of water and his tablets. The gas attack that killed Edward Baxter had not only left the marks on Father’s face and hands but also caused permanent damage to his lungs, which flared up whenever he was ill or distressed.
I gave him the water and tablets and sat down in the other armchair, waiting for his coughing fit to pass. The parlour was gloomy – the cottage was overshadowed by the high wall that separated the hospital grounds from the road outside – and the air smelled faintly of last night’s cabbage, and furniture polish. Like the rest of the cottage, it was neat but shabby. It had Anaglypta wallpaper painted a curious shade of green, an ancient sofa and chairs, a bookcase and a threadbare rug, all of which belonged to the hospital. The only piece of furniture that was our own was the piano, which no one ever played; on the top stood my mother’s photograph, in a silver-gilt frame. Looking round at it all I was assaulted by a sudden pang of longing to be back on the beach, surrounded by the sea and the sky and the bright calls of the gulls; to be back in that moment before Alfie came running up to me and war was still something people were just talking about in the grocer’s, the butcher’s and the post office.
Father ignored the tablets, sipping the water until his coughing subsided. He had a glassy, faraway look on his face, the one he got when he shouted himself awake at night and I had to run to his room and grab his flailing arms to stop him sending the jug on the washstand smashing to the floor, or when he trembled at the sound of Alfie’s father’s motorcycle backfiring out in the road. I knew he was back in that muddy trench in Belgium in 1915, cowering with the rest of his regiment as the shells screamed overhead.
‘We’ll be all right, Father,’ I said, in the cheerful tone I always used when he was like this. ‘I doubt old Hitler’ll bother with a place like Bartonford.’
He frowned at Mother’s photograph, working his hands together. Gradually, his gaze cleared. He looked so forlorn that I got up, went over to his chair and crouched down beside him, patting his hand as if he were the child and I the adult.
‘I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to you, Ruby,’ he said. ‘You’re all I’ve got.’
‘I know, Father. And I’m not going anywhere. We’ll be safe enough here, you’ll see.’
He gave me a smile, although his eyes were still full of worry. ‘You’re a good girl. I don’t know how I’d manage without you, I really don’t.’
‘Let’s have a cup of tea,’ I said, still in that bright voice. ‘We’ll both feel better then.’
He nodded slowly. I stood and went through to the kitchen to put the water on to boil.
Many years have passed since then, but that day still stands out as clearly in my mind as if it was yesterday. Remembering it, I can’t help wondering why the moments that change your life – the ones that really, truly change it forever – can feel so insignificant at the time. When Alfie came to find me, I felt certain it would be the declaration of war that would tip my world on its head. Now I realise it wasn’t until that German plane fell from the sky, four years later, that the wheels were set in motion for everything else that followed. It makes me wonder: if we could see our fate bearing down on us like a juggernaut, would we do things differently? Would we try to step out of its way?
Would I have loved you, even though it made me reconsider almost everything about what I thought mattered to me, and what family really meant?
Yes. Of course I would. There’s nothing I’d have done differently – nothing at all.
Because to not know you? To not love you?
To not have Ellen, who, for so long, was the only person who could bring a smile back to your face?
That would have been far worse.