There was a cold-cupboard, the door opening onto a metal box clamped onto the outside of the house. Ruby’s stomach groaned as she opened it, praying there’d be food. Her prayers were answered. A bottle of milk and a block of cheese, wrapped in cloth. She found a loaf of bread on the side, ripped it apart and ate, alternating between mouthfuls of bread, cheese, and milk.
She didn’t hear the footsteps behind her. Didn’t see the other woman, even as the marble rolling-pin swung towards her head.
Ruby felt a sharp pain above her ear, then nothing.
It wasn’t like being asleep. She had no sensation of time passing. It was instantaneous. One second the rolling-pin was coming towards her, the next second she was opening her eye, one side of her face pressed against the lino floor, her head pounding with the worst headache she’d ever known.
A pair of flowery slippers appeared, eighteen inches in front of her face.
Something poked her in the shoulder. A broom, held backwards, the handle wavering above Ruby’s face. It poked her again. She opened her other eye. An elderly woman was sitting on a kitchen chair, watching her.
She held the rolling-pin in her right hand, using the left to wield the broom like a knight at a jousting tournament.
‘You been playing the tease?’ she asked. ‘Father tells me all about you girls, prancing around the West End with your tits and your arse on display to the world, as if there weren’t a lick of decency left in people. You were lucky it were Father what brought you in. Could have ended up much worse.’
The woman studied Ruby as if she were a butterfly pinned to a collector’s board.
‘You’ll be wanting to play the good girl. Let him put a baby in your belly. That’ll be the easiest way out of it.’
Ruby didn’t respond. She kept an eye on the rolling-pin. Another knock and she might never wake up.
‘Not like it’s the first time, is it?’ the woman said. ‘Baby-snatcher we call you, Father and I.’
Ruby didn’t respond. Not that it seemed to matter to the woman.
‘Course I knew,’ the woman said. ‘My idea. All you girls sent here, rude not to take advantage. You always seemed like a strong lass. Good bones. I was right, weren’t I? How’s the lad turned out?’
Ruby kept quiet. Frankie was her secret. What felt like a lifetime of keeping it quiet certainly wasn’t going to stop now.
The woman smiled.
‘Father tells me all about him. Got him evacuated for me. Got him away from you and yours. Give it a year and he’ll have forgotten you all.’
‘Stay away from him,’ Ruby said.
‘Or what?’ This was accompanied by another poke from the broom. Ruby grabbed the end of the pole and pulled it away. It clattered on the ground.
‘Always knew you was a strong ’un. Picked you out myself.’
The woman got up from the chair and walked, warily, towards Ruby. She held the rolling-pin ready.
‘Going to put you back in your hole now. You be good and I’ll send you down a bit of fish, keep your bones strong. Make another baby.’
The rolling-pin swung and Ruby heard a crack. The pain was ten times worse this time, but she welcomed the blackness.
80
Cook nodded to the bouncer and tossed him another half a crown. The bouncer stepped out of the way and let Cook through, up the sagging stairs, towards the music.
Cook had a plan, in as much as going back to the last person who’d seemed willing to give information was a plan. In Cook’s experience, when someone grudgingly gave up information, they often held something back, parcelling it out just enough at a time to keep the questioner at bay. It was certainly a technique that had worked for Cook, when he’d found himself in the uncomfortable position of being under suspicion. It gave him a certain sympathy for the woman who’d told him about Ruby and the red-headed conman.
Cook sat, and drank, and tried to let the music wash over him, although music was a stretch for what Cook was hearing. Noises, certainly. Cook guessed they kept the better acts for the peak hours. Bad news for him. Not so easy to think when you were being confronted by the full range of squawks a trumpet could be forced to produce.
Margaret had put it simply. Either there was a girl out there who needed his help, or there wasn’t. Fifty-fifty. If there wasn’t, he was wasting his time. But Cook’s time had no particular value. If he was hit by a bomb, there’d be a few people who’d mourn his death, but life would go on for all concerned. Bill Taylor, his farm manager,would keep things ticking over, providing an income for Mum and Uncle Nob, at least for the duration of the war – as long as the government provided a guaranteed market for every bushel of grain his farm could produce. Frankie would go back to his own people, and Mum would take care of Elizabeth.
The staff door opened a crack, then closed. It had been open for just long enough for Cook to recognise the girl, the one who’d given him the information.
Time to make something happen.
