Ruby

With his even features, dark brown hair and a jaunty moustache, he looked older than nineteen. His clothes were clean, his shoes polished and he looked presentable enough – smart, even – but he had an arrogant swagger in his walk and more than a hint of aggression in the angry eyes that stared out from behind horn-rimmed spectacles. As she watched and listened, Ruby decided that, despite his being her brother, she really didn’t like Ray Blakeley one bit.

As Ruby surreptitiously studied him from the other end of the table, Babs quickly made some thick cheese and pickle sandwiches and put a plate in front of him along with a chunk of cold apple pie, a big mug of tea and a white napkin tucked inside a ring.

Ruby watched in fascination as, ignoring the napkin, Ray stuffed the food in his mouth, washing each mouthful down with a swig of tea and dribbling as he talked with his mouth full. Within a few minutes the plates were clean and he looked at Babs, leaned back in his chair, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and belched. ‘Another cuppa’ll really go down a treat, missus.’

It was at that moment that Ruby, overwhelmed with shame, knew he was being deliberately uncouth; that he was being provocative. She also knew that her mother would be equally horrified because none of them had been brought up to speak like that to anyone, let alone an adult, or to behave like that at the table.

As she stared at her brother in disgust a door next to the walk-in pantry opened and Dr Wheaton came through from his surgery at the other side of the rambling old house. His wheelchair clunked as he expertly wheeled himself across the stone-flagged kitchen floor and manoeuvred himself up to the table.

‘Ray, this is Uncle George.’

‘What happened to you, then? War wounds?’

‘No. Polio. When I was a child.’

‘Oh right. So as Ma says, this contraption is the reason you want our Rubes to stay here, so she can look after you? She says all the other kids are already home and you two want her as your skivvy.’

As Ruby froze, so George smiled. ‘No. I don’t need looking after. Ruby’s still here because she wanted to finish her schooling here. She’s very clever and doing well. We sent her school reports to your mother.’

‘Yeah, well, it’s not reports Ma needs, it’s another pair of hands to help her out, and that’s what Rubes has got, so off we go.’

Ruby looked from one to another before saying, to try to calm Ray, ‘Uncle George is a doctor.’

But Ray just looked at her as if she were mad. ‘I know that, you daft bint, but I’ve never seen a doctor in one of those. Who’d have thought it?’

‘And I’m going to train to be a nurse when I’m old enough,’ Ruby added.

‘Course you are, Rubes, and I bet that’s the doc’s idea: a nurse in the house to save him a few bob. Shrewd, eh?’

Ruby had to sit through another hour of embarrassment before Ray, having conceded that she could stay another couple of weeks until she was definitely confirmed fit, finally left, informing her he’d be back for her if she wasn’t home within the month.

Two

As Ruby was deep in thought, and going where she didn’t want to go, the train journey into London was over in a flash and, following George Wheaton’s instructions to the letter, Ruby caught the bus to the stop nearest to her road in Walthamstow. She looked around hopefully for her mother, but after a twenty-minute wait in the autumn evening chill she gave up and started walking.

The Wheatons had wanted to drive her back home but, after Ray’s disrespectful behaviour, Ruby wanted to keep her two lives apart so she had determinedly refused. She had insisted that she was old enough to make the trip alone, but as she trudged along the streets and the two suitcases got heavier and heavier she regretted her decision. She kept picking them up and putting them down and changing hands, even though they were the same weight. When she was halfway there she dumped them on the pavement and sat down on one of them to catch her breath.

She looked around at the once-familiar surroundings that she had all but forgotten about when she was living safely in the open spaces of rural Cambridgeshire. Terraced houses with tiny front gardens edged both sides of the road, and the smell of coal smoke hung heavy in the air. Before her evacuation the area had simply been home, but now she viewed it objectively and it felt claustrophobic and grubby.

Amid the familiarity of the streets remnants of the war stood out. There were pockets of emptiness and rubble where houses and shops had once stood, and as she looked across the road at the bombed-out remains of two adjoining houses she thought about who might have been inside when the bomb fell.

Suddenly the recently ended war was real and the loss of life she’d heard about was on her own doorstep.

As she clenched and unclenched her aching hands and tried not to cry, a young man she had vaguely noticed walking along on the other side of the road crossed over and stopped beside her.

‘They look far too heavy for a little thing like you to be carrying; here, let me help you. Where are you going?’

‘To Elsmere Road, the far end, but it’s OK, I can manage perfectly well on my own. I’m just giving my hands a rest,’ she snapped defensively.

‘That’s just past where I’m going so it’s daft for you to carry them on your own. When you’ve got your wind back we’ll get going, but I’m not carrying your handbag.’

The young man’s expression was friendly and his smile wide as he waited for her to stand up again. Once she was on her feet he quickly picked up the cases and loped easily along the street, leaving Ruby almost running to keep up. In no time they were by the familiar front gate to the Blakeley family home.

‘Here, this is the house.’

The man put the cases down on the pavement.

‘Thank you,’ Ruby said, looking up through her eyelashes into a pair of navy-blue eyes. Under his intense gaze she felt strangely shy.

‘You didn’t tell me your name,’ he said.

‘I know I didn’t,’ she replied.

With his eyes still fixed on her, the young man held his hand out. As she took it he gripped firmly and, as he held on slightly longer than was necessary, Ruby felt a strange tightening in her throat that she couldn’t identify.

‘Well, I’m Johnnie, I’m from down the street. I live here; Walthamstow born and bred. Are you visiting?’ he asked, still holding on to her hand.

‘No, Johnnie-from-down-the-street,’ she smiled as she withdrew her hand from his. ‘I live here as well. I’ve been in evacuation for five years and I’ve just come back. It all seems strange, though. I know where I am but it doesn’t feel like home any more. It’s all different.’

‘That was the war …’ He paused for a moment and then raised his eyes upwards. ‘Ah! I was a bit slow there! Of course you’re Ruby; Ruby Blakeley, the missing sister who’s been having such a time of it she didn’t want to come home again. And none of your brothers came to meet you? They should be ashamed of themselves, leaving you to drag your own cases through the streets.’ Johnnie Riordan shook his head slowly, his disapproval all too obvious.

‘I wasn’t dragging them, I was carrying them,’ Ruby frowned. ‘How did you know all that about me?’

‘Your brother Ray has a very loose mouth; blabs all the time. Lucky he missed call-up; we’d have lost the war after he’d given chapter and verse to Hitler’s spies.’

Ruby tried not to laugh. ‘And you? Why didn’t you go and fight?’

‘Just missed out, but I’ve been doing my bit in other ways.’ He winked.

‘That’s what they all say … So how do you know my brothers?’ she asked curiously.

‘Ah! That’s for me to know and you to find out.’ He winked again, and another very strange feeling fluttered gently through her chest. ‘And I’m sure you will very soon, just as soon as you tell your brothers you met me. I’ll be seeing you then, Ruby of the red hair!’

With a wide grin, a tip of his hat and a flamboyant backward wave the man strutted down the road in the direction from which they’d come. Ruby watched as he casually kicked a ball back to a group of children playing in the middle of the road and then disappeared into a gate halfway down the street.

She guessed he was older than she – he certainly looked it – maybe even older than her brothers, and he had an edge of danger about him that excited her momentarily; but she knew it wasn’t the time to be thinking about handsome young men.

She was home, but all she wanted to do was turn and head back to the security of Melton and to the Wheatons, the substitute parents who had cared for her and loved her as their own.

She pulled back the wooden gate, took a couple of steps along the short concrete path and, after banging sharply on the door knocker, waited impatiently for what seemed an age before the door opened.

‘Hello, Mum,’ she smiled.

The woman looked at her for a moment before registering that this was her own daughter.

‘Ruby! Hello, dear, you’re early. I was just going to walk down to the bus stop to meet you, but you’re back here already.’

‘I was right on time. I waited for you for ages …’