feet.
The door was open so Ruby turned straight into what used to be the front parlour, where they would all have dinner on high days and holidays, and formal tea when the parish priest visited, but everything that had been in there was gone, including the familiar battered piano that Ruby had loved to try to play.
Instead there were two narrow iron-framed beds with a bedside cabinet each, a wardrobe and a tallboy, which took up half the room, leaving just enough space for a chest of drawers with a jug and bowl atop and her grandmother’s armchair in the small bay of the window. Arthur dumped the cases on the bed nearest the door and went out again without saying another word. Ruby knew she’d hurt his feelings but she was upset herself. She was, however, determined to make it up to him later because she knew he was the only one who she could rely on.
As she looked around all she could see in her mind’s eye was her bedroom back in Cambridgeshire, the large and airy room with a wide comfy bed, a huge walnut wardrobe with drawers underneath, a matching dressing table and a ruby-red chaise longue that Aunty Babs had covered to match the curtains.
It was all hers but she’d had to leave it behind, and now she was standing in a room less than half the size, which she was going to have to share with her incapacitated grandmother. It just wasn’t fair and, try as she may, she couldn’t understand why they had wanted her back to cramp the house even further.
Keeping a determined check on the tears that were threatening at the back of her eyes, she went over to the bay where her grandmother was sitting.
‘Hello, Nan. I’m back and it looks like I’m sharing with you. I’m sorry.’
‘Oh, it’s not your fault, Ruby dear. The war’s meant we all have to make sacrifices, and Sarah was good enough to take me in so I can’t grumble. Now come up close so I can see you; my eyes aren’t what they used to be.’ As Ruby moved closer the woman grabbed her hands and pulled her down. ‘Ooh, you’re a proper young lady, you are now, by the looks of it. Ray said you’d grown up. Now tell me all about it while you unpack. There’s some coat hangers on the side. You’re going have to use the picture rail for now to hang your clothes until I have a sort-out.’
‘I’ll unpack later, Nan, I’m so tired …’
‘All night, dear. Then can you help me through to the back? We can have a cuppa before tea. I don’t eat with the boys – they’re too noisy and there’s not enough room at the table. Me and your ma eat after they’ve all finished and gone out doing whatever it is that young men do nowadays. You’ll be eating with us, I suppose.’
Ruby didn’t answer; she just couldn’t think what to say. She was both horrified and saddened as she looked at the elderly woman with stooped shoulders and cloudy eyes, who was peering up at her expectantly, waiting for an answer. One hand rested atop a wooden walking stick and the other gripped a vast dark grey crocheted shawl around her shoulders.
During the five years she had been away Sarah Blakeley had visited her daughter every other year on her birthday, but as Ruby hadn’t been home at all she hadn’t seen her grandmother in all that time, and she was shocked to see how much she’d aged.
It was on one of the birthday visits that her mother had told her that Nan, already a widow, had been bombed out of her own house in Stepney and come to stay with the family, and after her eyesight had deteriorated there was no way she could live alone. So there she had stayed, despite the overcrowded accommodation.
‘Shall we go through to the back now, Nan? How do you want me to help you?’
‘Just let me take your arm. It’s the rheumatics, they kill me in this weather and make me feel ancient.’ She laughed. ‘Oh, it’s good to have you home. You can help your mother around the house. Those boys are such hard work for her, what with her job and me being no use to her any more.’
‘I’ve not come home to look after the boys, Nan. I’ll help when I can but I’m going to be a nurse. I’m going to get a job and save up to start training when I’m eighteen.’ Ruby smiled down at her grandmother hanging on her arm.
‘Ooh no, Ruby, I don’t think the boys’ll let you do that. Oh no, dear, no.’ The woman’s voice rose sharply and she shook her head so violently Ruby took a couple of steps back. ‘They said you were coming home to look after me and help your mother in the house. That’s why they wanted you home … and they’re a real handful for your poor mother, especially with no father to make them take heed.’
‘I’m not doing that. If I can’t go to school then I’m going to work.’
The old lady pursed her lips and blew out air noisily. ‘I wish it was so, but I don’t think so dear I really don’t …’
Ruby stopped listening as she wondered how to stop Ray from taking over her life now, as Nan had reminded her, their father wasn’t around to control the boys.
Ruby hadn’t seen her father since the day she had been shipped off to Cambridgeshire, but she had rarely given him a thought. Frank Blakeley had always been so distant with her that she might as well not have existed in the family; it was as if she were invisible. He would, however, often rough and tumble fiercely with his sons to teach them to be men, and discipline them harshly for the smallest misdemeanour, his belt being the favoured tool of formal punishment, or his hand around the back of the head for an instant reprimand.
It was usually Ray who was the recipient of the fiercest beatings because he just would not give in. Ruby and Arthur would cower together, staying as quiet as possible when their father was beating Ray into submission, each of them praying for him to apologise and end it, but he rarely would. It meant that afterwards, despite the pain and the silent tears, Ray would be victorious.
Believing that girls were the responsibility of their mothers, Frank had never laid a finger on his daughter; but he had never interacted with her either. The news that he was dead had been a shock and she had felt sad – he was her father after all – but nowhere near as upset as some of the other evacuees had been when they had received similar news during the war. In the years she was in evacuation George Wheaton had been more of a responsible father figure to her than her own father had in the previous ten, and she adored him for it.
‘Mum?’ Ruby said as she helped her grandmother down the step into the back room. ‘Are you there, Mum?’
She had expected her brothers to all be there to welcome her back; for her mother to be waiting for her; but no one seemed to be around.
The room was long and dim, with a single standard lamp alight in the corner; it was dominated by an impressive round table with large bulbous feet, which was covered in a shiny oilskin tablecloth and encircled by six hard-back chairs. The alcoves either side of the chimney breast had built-in dressers, which were filled with assorted crockery, serving dishes and the best sherry glasses. A wooden canteen of cutlery had pride of place on one side, and two large Chinese-style vases, which had previously stood either side of the fireplace in the parlour, on the other.
As her grandmother sat at the table and shuffled herself comfortable, Ruby went through the scullery to the back door, which was wedged open with an old iron pot. She stepped out into the back yard, trying to ignore the outside lavatory, which she knew she would have to get used to using again. Just the thought of it made her feel nauseous.
‘Mum? Where are you?’
‘Out here, Ruby, just getting the washing in. I should have done it hours ago. Can you come and help me?’
‘Nan
