41
RUBY
Early September
Dear Father,
I hope you are well and that the weather has been good where you are. It’s been a little dull here in London so far, but at least it’s dry.
I am still staying with Vera and Stanley and have been very busy doing some work for the newspaper they write for. It still feels strange to be living in a city, and I don’t think I will ever get used to seeing the ruins of all the bombed-out buildings. How terribly people here must have suffered! I wonder if they will ever be able to rebuild it all. And yet everyone seems so cheerful.
I feel fairly well at the moment and the baby is healthy…
I laid down my pen and sighed, gazing out of the open window of my room. It was at the back of Vera and Stanley’s little flat, and from where I sat at my small writing table I could see the building’s tree-shaded gardens below me, lush and green with the last of the summer’s growth. It was the middle of the afternoon; someone was having a bonfire somewhere, and the breeze that blew in smelt faintly autumnal, stirring a sense of nostalgia inside me. Strange to think that this time six years ago I’d been walking on the beach when Alfie and Annie Blythe had come to tell me war had been declared. Six years! How things had changed since that day. It seemed impossibly long ago – a whole other lifetime. What would the Ruby back then think if she’d known where she would end up now?
This was the third letter I’d written to Father since arriving in London. The first two had gone unanswered. I’d tried telling myself that Grandmother had intercepted them, but deep down, I knew that wasn’t true. I was sending them directly to the hospital. How would she be able to get her hands on them before he did? She was sly, unpleasant, and she’d never liked me, but that felt like a stretch, even for her.
There was still a tiny part of me, buried deep, which hoped for a reconciliation – that was why I kept writing, I suppose. The thought of mine and Sam’s baby growing up without a grandfather made me feel achingly sad, even though I couldn’t get Father’s final words to me out of my head.
As for Sam, I wanted to write to him, too, desperately, but how could I when I didn’t even know where he was? Instead, I’d been spending almost every penny I earned through the little bits of newspaper work Vera sent my way on stamps, paper and envelopes, writing endless letters to the US army, the American Red Cross and any other organisation I could think of to ask if they knew of Sam’s whereabouts. So far, I’d had no reply from them either. Stanley and Vera tried to comfort me by pointing out that there was an enormous number of American soldiers being demobbed now the war had ended in Europe, and that they were sure I’d hear something from someone soon.
‘It could take a year or more for everyone to get home, I reckon,’ Stanley said. He had tried to help too, getting in touch with old colleagues of his at the Washington Post, but he’d had no luck either. Sam seemed to have vanished off the face of the earth. But I had to find him. I had to. I loved him. I needed him. And our baby needed him too.
It felt as if an age had passed since I arrived in London, even though it had only been a month or so. I’d been in such a state of shock that the enormity of what had happened back in Bartonford only began to sink in once I was safely at Vera and Stanley’s flat. When we’d got there Vera, who’d met me at the station and managed to commandeer a taxi to drive us back to Leonard Square, had taken my suitcase and jacket, told me to take off my shoes, sat me down on her sofa and made me a cup of tea. I’d been exhausted from a sleepless night, the long journey and, of course, the baby.
‘Oh, Ruby,’ she’d said with a dreadful expression of sympathy, and that was what undid me – I’d burst out crying and couldn’t stop, jagged wails tearing out of me.
Not surprisingly, Vera had been alarmed. ‘Darling, what’s wrong?’ she’d said. ‘Is it Sam? Have you heard from him? Has something happened? Oh, goodness, do stop – you’ll make yourself ill.’
‘It’s Father,’ I’d sobbed when I’d finally been able to speak. ‘Grandmother realised I was pregnant and I had to come clean to them about Sam, and now he’s kicked me out.’
‘What?’ A thunderous scowl had flashed across her face.
‘I don’t know what to do – I can’t go back to Bartonford but I’ve got nowhere else to go-o-o—’
‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous, you can stay here as long as you want, even after the baby’s born if you need to. So put that worry out of your head right now.’
‘But won’t Stanley mind?’
‘Of course not! Why ever would he?! Now, take a sip of tea, blow your nose, calm down, and start at the beginning. Why on earth has that father of yours kicked you out for having a baby with the man you’re engaged to, for goodness’ sake? It’s hardly Jennie Pearson all over again, is it!’
So, once I’d got myself under control, I’d told her everything, including the revelation about my mother running away with an American.
‘Goodness,’ she’d said. ‘Well, I suppose it all makes sense now, why your father and grandmother hated the Americans so much… I always wondered if there was more to it. But do they honestly believe Sam’s like that? Stanley wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him!’
‘I just can’t believe he lied to me like that!’ I’d sniffled. ‘All those years, my mother’s been alive, and he let me think she was dead!’
‘Do you think you’ll try to find her?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t even know where my American is, do I?’
‘Hasn’t he written to you yet?’
Shaking my head, I’d collapsed back against the sofa cushions, my exhaustion suddenly overwhelming me. Dear, dear Vera. She looked exactly the same – as immaculate and stylish as always – and suddenly I’d wanted to cry again, this time because she was being so kind, and I’d missed her so much.
She’d wrapped me in a motherly hug, then wiped the tears off my face with a hanky as if I were a small child. ‘You look all in,’ she’d said. ‘Finish your tea and then I’m sending you for a lie-down. We’ll find Sam, and you can decide what you want to do about your mother, but first, rest, and no arguments.’
Now, sighing again, I crumpled the letter to father up in my fist. As I turned to drop it into the little wastepaper basket beside my writing table, I felt the baby stir inside me, a faint, mothlike fluttering. I pressed my left hand against the slight swell of my stomach and felt it again beneath my fingers. The light coming in through the window caught the ruby in my silver ring – I wore it on my finger again now – and made it wink.
Oh, Sam, I thought for the millionth time. Where are you? The thought of not having him here when the baby arrived terrified me. Oh, I wasn’t worried about what people would think – I could buy a wedding band, and lie and say the father had been killed in the war so people would think I was respectable – but I knew what it was like to grow up without a parent. I didn’t want that for our child, too. And it didn’t seem fair, somehow, that after Sam and I had been through so much, we’d been torn apart again and that he might never get to meet his own son or daughter.
I clenched my hands into fists. Please, God, let him be OK. Let him still be alive. Let him write to me. PLEASE.
I pushed my chair back and went through into the little kitchen next door to get a glass of water. What I’d said in my discarded letter to Father was true: the baby was healthy, and I felt well again now – the sickness and exhaustion of the first few months had more or less passed – but I was still plagued by a deep weariness that seemed to have seeped into my bones and set like concrete. Despite Vera and Stanley’s insistence that I could live with them for as long as I wanted, and Vera promising me that after the baby was born they’d get me a proper job at the newspaper, the whole situation felt impossible, endless. Without Sam, I simply didn’t know what I was going to do.
I took a glass down from the cupboard, wondering who I should write to next – the American Red Cross again? They were probably sick of hearing from me by now. I’d just turned on the tap when I heard feet pounding up the stairs outside the flat. The door burst open and then Vera was calling me: ‘Ruby! Ruby, where are you?!’
‘In here!’ I called back. She came flying into the kitchen. She was breathing hard, her hair in disarray, her shoes were dusty and there was a hole – an actual hole – in one of her stockings. She looked as if she’d run all the way here from the newspaper office half a mile away. I stared at her, taking in her wide eyes and the hectic colour of her face under her foundation and powder. ‘What’s wrong?’
She waved something at me – a rectangle of white paper. ‘It’s Sam,’ she gasped.
A wave of freezing cold went through me. My ears started to ring and black spots began to dance in front of my eyes, just like they had that day Stanley’s letter arrived at the Herald offices and I thought Sam had been killed.
‘Oh, hell,’ I heard Vera say. Next thing I knew, I was sitting in a chair with my head between my knees, while the black spots and noise in my ears slowly cleared.
‘I’m so sorry – I’m such a goose! What a fright I must have given you!’ Vera filled me the glass of water I’d not got round to pouring yet. ‘Sit up – slowly – and drink this. Everything’s all right!’
Taking the water, I looked up at her and saw she was grinning from ear to ear. ‘You – you mean Sam’s all right?’ I said.
‘Yes! Read this!’ She thrust the piece of paper into my hand. I looked at it and saw it was a cable, with the address of a telegraph office in Philadelphia, USA, at the top.
Stanley, it said. Making my way to New York with Meggie. Need to get to England. No money for passage. Hate to beg but if you can help please reply to this straight away & if you’re in touch with Ruby please tell I love her & sorry for not writing. Sam.
A sound that wasn’t quite a sob, wasn’t quite a laugh escaped me. I clapped a hand to my mouth, letting go of the cable, which fluttered to the floor.
‘Stanley’s already replied,’ Vera said, talking fast. ‘He’s booking passage on a ship for Sam and his sister and is wiring him some money as we speak. When they arrive in England we’ll sort out paperwork, get them to London, whatever it takes. Stanley’s got all sorts of useful contacts who can help out. So don’t worry about a thing, OK? And for goodness’ sake, Ruby, breathe. Think about the baby!’
‘Why didn’t he write to me?’ I said, my voice sounding high and strange. ‘What’s he been doing?’
‘Well, you’ll be able to ask him yourself in a few weeks’ time, won’t you? Oh, goodness, I can’t leave you like this. Stay where you are while I nip downstairs to the office and tell them I won’t be coming back in this afternoon. Then I’ll get us both a nip of brandy. I’m sure the doctor would tell me off but I don’t think a tiny bit will hurt you, under the circumstances.’
I nodded, and swallowed. ‘Has Stanley told him about the baby?’
‘No – do you want me to ask him to?’
‘I think it would be a good idea, don’t you?’
‘Righto. I’ll go and phone now,’ she said. ‘And I mean it – don’t move a muscle,’ she added warningly over her shoulder as she went out. I watched the door close behind her, and leaned down awkwardly to scoop the cable up off the linoleum. Then I sat staring at it, my eyes hot with tears, an incredulous smile slowly breaking across my face.