they get the benefit of everything you do – don’t you care?’
‘I already told you I don’t care.’ Ruby lied easily, not wanting Johnnie Riordan to see her as downtrodden. ‘In a way I feel sorry for Ray. He’s just jealous he didn’t get to live where I did during the war. His face nearly hit the floor when he saw it all when he came to order me home. It was so nice there – clean with lots of fresh air – it makes this bombed-out place look like a slum.’
‘Oi! Hang on now, missy.’ Johnnie stopped walking and faced her. ‘I live round here, so does my sister and her kids, and it’s all right, thank you very much. Apart from your bloody brothers, that is. If anything’s wrong round here it’s Ray and Bobbie. They lower the tone.’
Although he was half-smiling there was an anger in his words that made Ruby pull herself up. She suddenly realised what a snob she sounded.
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that, I really didn’t. I meant the size of the houses and the gardens and everything – it’s all so much smaller here, and overcrowded. It’s so different from where I was out in the country with open fields, fresh air and no bomb damage, I’m still getting used to it back here.’
‘Apology accepted. I didn’t really think you’d be such a duchess, despite what your brothers say.’
Johnnie resumed walking and Ruby strode alongside him.
‘Good,’ she smiled. ‘I’m not like that at all! And yes, I did ask about you. I wanted to know who you were before I spoke to you again. But I have to say that I didn’t ask Ray – as if I’d do that – I asked Mum, and she went and told Ray.’
‘And am I all right to talk to?’ he asked.
‘No you’re not. Ray went nuts and has forbidden me to even look at you, never mind have a conversation. You are the villainous enemy, a spiv who he hates, who hates him, a really nasty piece of work and far too old. And you think you own the place.’
‘Bloody hell, Ruby, far too old? I’m only nineteen! Though, thinking about it, I suppose the rest is true enough.’
Ruby kept her expression serious for a few moments before bursting into laughter.
Johnnie joined in as they quickly turned the corner, out of sight of the street, neither of them wanting to be seen with the other by their immediate neighbours, although for different reasons.
Despite the age difference they looked good together. Ruby was tall, at five foot seven, and certainly looked older that her years in the classy tailored clothes that she had brought back with her. Despite her slenderness she was shapely, with a tiny waist, neat breasts and wavy auburn hair, which was fixed back from her face with large grips and sugar water. Johnnie meanwhile was just under six foot, with broad shoulders. His fair hair was a little too long at the front, his features were even, and he had a natural loping grace that emphasised his long legs. They made an attractive couple as they walked along together, and Ruby felt comfortable with him alongside her, albeit with a large shopping basket looped over her arm between them just to be sure.
As they strolled slowly to the High Street Ruby told him a little about the Wheatons and her life with them.
Her time in evacuation had been spent in a small village so she had socialised with a far broader age range than when she had been living in Walthamstow. Her evacuation years, during which she’d had both dancing and tennis lessons, had served her very well, leaving her self-assured, graceful, and as comfortable around boys as she was with girls; but these assets now, in her original city surroundings, made her feel like a fish out of water.
Melton in Cambridgeshire, where Ruby had been sent to stay, was situated between Cambridge and Saffron Walden, and a long bumpy bus ride from either town. In typical village style, there was just one main street, but with narrow lanes and tracks running off, leading to outlying farms and cottages. The High Street was edged with an assortment of shops and houses, with Dr George Wheaton’s surgery and family home at the top of the gently winding hill and the village school at the bottom. It was a slow and easy way of life, even in wartime, and because it was a few miles from the nearest towns, everyone knew everyone else and their business.
At the school, instead of clusters of children of the same age grouped around the playground, as there had been at Ruby’s Walthamstow school, pupils of all ages, including the evacuee children, played together both in and out of school. There had been a natural wariness on both sides when the evacuees first arrived, but after the initial settling-in period, when there were natural divisions, an integration of sorts had happened. Keith and Marian Forger, the children of the local greengrocer, had very quickly become Ruby’s closest friends.
Marian was two years older than Ruby and her brother, Keith, was Ruby’s age. They lived with their parents over the shop in the village itself, and their cousins lived about a mile away in two adjoining cottages tied to an outlying farm where their respective fathers worked. Their family was close and all the cousins played and socialised together.
It was Keith who had held out the hand of friendship to the very scared ten-year-old Ruby on her first day at the village school, and she had had a huge soft spot for him ever since. He was short and wiry, with straw-coloured hair that never quite behaved, a splattering of freckles on his nose and hazel eyes. Ruby had adored him from the very first moment he’d smiled and befriended her, and, despite rapidly outgrowing him in size and maturity, she’d continued to adore him the whole time she was there.
Keith was a rough-and-tumble boy with no academic aspirations, who was happiest helping his father in the shop and with deliveries, while his sister, Marian, was the brains of the family. She was determined to go to university and become a doctor; she was also a brilliant comedienne and imparter of the facts of life as she knew them. The five farm cousins were all experts in animal husbandry so there was nothing Ruby didn’t quickly learn about the birds and the bees and the ways of boys. The related group of children had drawn her in and become like brothers and sisters, and it had been nearly as hard to say goodbye to them as it had been to leave the Wheatons. But she’d promised she would keep in touch and had insisted she would be back as soon as possible.
As she gave Johnnie the description of her life in Melton, Ruby felt her eyes misting and a huge wave of homesickness swept over her.
‘… And I’m going to go back just as I promised, as soon as I can persuade Mum and Ray that they don’t really want me here after all. I mean, they don’t want me, they just hate the idea of me being with the Wheatons and liking it.’
‘Best of luck to you then,’ Johnnie said sympathetically. ‘I hope you manage to talk them round and then I can come and visit you. I’ve been to the seaside at Southend and up west to the city but I’ve never really been to the country apart from getting up to no good in Epping Forest a few times.’
‘Oh, it’s so different to here, all open spaces and everyone knows everyone. It’s just nicer, I suppose. We all had so much freedom. It was just so different and—’
‘OK, OK, that’s enough, I’ll take your word for it.’ Johnnie Riordan grinned as he interrupted her and held his hands up as if in defeat. He and Ruby had got to the queue outside the grocers. ‘I’ve got to see someone, so you go and get started with your shopping and I’ll meet you on the corner by the butcher’s in about an hour and help you with the rest of it. I’d take you for a tea and a bun but we might be seen.’
Ruby smiled to herself as he walked away. There was something about him that cheered her up and made her feel like a grown up. An hour later she stood on the corner and tried not
