A Rare Ruby Read online

  A Rare Ruby

  Dee Williams

  Headline Publishing Group Ltd (2012)

  Tags: Saga, Fiction

  * * *

  About the Book

  When Ruby's father returns, shell-shocked, from the front lines of the Great War, the young girl realises that things will never be the same again. Forced to leave school and help her mother wash clothes, Ruby closes the door on her childhood. When she takes a job at the local laundry, Ruby enjoys the friendship of the other women there, but there's also bitchiness and jealousy amongst the workers. At home there's growing tension with the live-in landlord as Ruby grows into an attractive woman, but not the kind who's willing to use her charms to win favours. Ruby's heart belongs to one man only, a local boy she's known all her life, but there are many battles to be fought before they start a life together...

  A Rare Ruby

  DEE WILLIAMS

  headline

  www.headline.co.uk

  Copyright © 2002 Dee Williams

  The right of Dee Williams to be identified as the Author of

  the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the

  Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

  reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,

  in any form or by any means without the prior written

  permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated

  in any form of binding or cover other than that in which

  it is published and without a similar condition being

  imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2009

  All characters in this publication are fictitious

  and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead,

  is purely coincidental.

  eISBN : 978 0 7553 7303 1

  This Ebook produced by Jouve Digitalisation des Informations

  HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

  An Hachette Livre UK Company

  338 Euston Road

  London NW1 3BH

  www.headline.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Dee Williams was born and brought up in Rotherhithe in East London where her father worked as a stevedore in Surrey Docks. Dee left school at fourteen, met her husband at sixteen and was married at twenty. After living abroad for some years, Dee moved to Hampshire to be close to her family. A RARE RUBY is her twelfth novel, following eleven hugely popular previous sagas set in Rotherhithe.

  Thanks have to go to Carol and Diane, who work at our wonderful Horndean library. They are always willing to help find books for me, which have been invaluable for finding out about laundries and bagwash in the 1900s and 1920s.

  I would like to thank Ron Brown of our local Evening News for his interesting article about laundries which planted the seed for this book. Ron, I have used the bits you couldn’t.

  This is also for Chris Lloyd of Tower Hamlets Research Library for finding me photographs of the working conditions that some of the girls and women had to put up with.

  I would also like to use this opportunity to thank Christine for the beautiful prom dress she made for my granddaughter Emma. She looked lovely. There will be another to make in two years’ time for Samantha.

  Many thanks, everybody.

  Chapter 1

  Ruby Jenkins pushed the kitchen door open with her bottom and dragged the heavy bundle of dirty laundry tied up in a sheet through the doorway. The smell of boiling washing filled the house. She took off her coat and beret and flicked her dark hair away from her eyes. She would have to get her mother to cut her wild hair soon - it was getting out of control. Ruby stood for a moment or two looking at her father sitting hunched in the chair next to the fire. Every time she looked at him, she couldn’t believe this was the man who’d gone off to be a soldier just five years ago, 10 September 1914. Thomas Jenkins had been so proud when he came home from work and told them he had joined the army. He had taken the King’s shilling. He was going to fight for his King and country. The reason she remembered it so well was because it was the day after her ninth birthday.

  Her father looked up. ‘Hello, love.’ He grinned. ‘All right then?’

  Tears filled her brown-speckled eyes and she nodded. He used to be a tall, upright man; now he was broken and sad.

  ‘I’m cold,’ he said, pulling the old blanket he always had wrapped round his shoulders tighter.

  ‘That you, our Ruby? You got that washing?’ yelled her mother from the washhouse at the back of the house.

  ‘Yes, Mum.’ She smiled when her mother called her ‘our Ruby’; it made her feel very precious. ‘Mum, Mrs Barton said could she have it back be Friday.’

  Mary Jenkins came into the kitchen. She pushed back her damp hair and wiped the beads of perspiration from her forehead with the bottom of her overall. ‘Well, let’s hope the weather stays fine. It looks a bit like rain - that’ll be all I need.’

  It was almost the end of October; Ruby’s fourteenth birthday had come and gone. There hadn’t been any celebrations and she had wanted to find work immediately, but her mother told her she would be more use at home; she needed her help doing the washing and collecting and delivering it. Ruby would have loved some money to spend on herself. She never had any as every penny had to go to help the household. They weren’t the only ones suffering. As she walked round the streets in Rotherhithe it upset her to see the many sad men, who once must have had good jobs, standing with trays hanging round their necks, selling matches, bootlaces and the like. Worst of all were the cripples sitting on the pavement with a cardboard sign next to them saying: ‘Kitchener needed me. Now I need you’ that made her turn away. Ruby had nothing to put in the cloth cap in front of them. And she knew things would get worse for everybody now the weather was beginning to turn wintry.

  She stood in the kitchen and took in all the poverty they now had to endure. So much of their home had finished up in the pawnshop with no hope of it ever being redeemed. All they owned was a table and four chairs, none of them matching, and two very tatty brown brocade armchairs that Ruby and her younger brother Tom had found in a derelict house. They had laughed and giggled as they dragged them home but it wasn’t really funny when the horsehair stuffing constantly spilt out when anyone sat on them. She looked at the cracked mirror over the fireplace, which came from another of her and Tom’s scavenging expeditions. Even her mother’s prized possession, the brass fender that had ‘Waste Not Want Not’ written on it, had long since been sold. Only a solitary clock stood on the mantelpiece; there
were no ornaments.

  In one room, Ruby and Tom slept on a thick feather mattress. There was no bed and only one blanket: they used coats to cover them. Last winter had been bitter and they had had to huddle together to keep warm. Ruby had hated scraping the frost off the inside of the window every morning. She remembered the chilblains she’d had on her hands and feet and said a silent, desperate prayer: Don’t let it be so cold this year.

  Her mother and father shared the other room. Her mother had determined to keep her bed, she said it reminded her of happier times. Ruby recalled the day she came to this house with her mother to look at the rooms. Mr Cox, the old man who lived there, said he would be prepared to move upstairs and let them have the downstairs for a minimal rent, just two shillings a week. That was a lot less than the five shillings her mother had struggled to find each week when they lived further up the road at number sixty Hill Street. Mr Cox was a bachelor and lived alone, and as part of the agreement her mother had to do his washing and cooking, as there weren’t any facilities upstairs.

  Ruby didn’t like him. He was short and fat, and smelt of beer and stale pee. She hated it when he threw his dirty washing down the stairs. She would pick up his dirty underpants and socks as if they were about to bite her. If she came out of the closet and found him standing there, she always wondered whether he had been watching her through the knotholes in the wooden door. Sometimes, when he came down and sat at the table with them, Ruby found his eyes were on her. Thankfully most of the time he ate upstairs alone. Once she had told her mother her worries, but Mary had dismissed them as being silly.

  ‘Why would he be interested in a slip of a girl like you? He’s been good to us and he sits and talks to your father. So don’t you go upsetting him with your childish notions.’

  Ruby was shocked when she found out from the girls at school what men wanted from young girls. Was it just childish notions?

  She particularly hated it when her mother was cooking something special Mr Cox had bought for himself, which her family would not be sharing. The succulent smell of meat or fish would almost make her mouth water.

  Every time Ruby passed her old house a lump would come to her throat and she’d give a little smile at her fond memories. The front room with its lace curtains always gave out the lovely scent of lavender polish when the door was opened. Her mother used to polish the brown leather three-piece suite with so much pride. The front doorstep was religiously whitened every morning. Gawd help you if you stepped on it and left a dirty footprint, you’d end up with a clip round the ear. Now all that had gone. Ruby looked down at her black button boots. They were scruffy, dirty and too small for her, they hurt as they rubbed the many darns in her lisle stockings. She remembered when her boots were new; now the soles were worn through and there was only cardboard stuffed inside between her feet and the ground. The thought of the winter and wet feet made her shudder. Before the war her father had worked in the biscuit factory. He’d had a good job and they hadn’t gone hungry and her mother hadn’t had to do other people’s washing - and, best of all, she’d gone to school. One at a time she gently ran her boot up the back of her legs to try to bring the shine back.

  ‘Ruby, bring that load out here and sort through it,’ her mother interrupted her thoughts. Mary Jenkins was a proud hard-working woman who kept the two rooms and kitchen with its range for cooking, plus the washhouse, which had running water and a boiler, as clean as she could. They were lucky they only had to share the outside closet with the old man, not like some round their way. Sometimes as many as six families had to share. Her mother fed them as best as the pittance she got for taking in washing allowed, making sure Mr Cox upstairs always had the best of whatever they had.

  Ruby smoothed down her grey frock. It had once belonged to her mother and fitted her well enough, but now her bosoms were developing it was getting tight and cutting under her arms. How she wished for some new clothes. Tom was now wearing a pair of his father’s trousers that her mother had cut down to fit him. They were much too big and the legs hung down well below his knees. She said he would grow into them. Tom hadn’t complained, he said they would help to keep his knees warm in the winter. As far as Ruby could see things were never going to get any better. She sighed as she pushed and heaved the bundle into the washhouse. Even though it was cold outside the heat and steam in the small room was overpowering.

  Her mother, a thin wiry woman, was at the sink scrubbing shirt collars and cuffs up and down the wooden washboard. Her straight grey hair always escaped from its hairclip and fell round her face. She tucked the offending hair behind her ear. ‘Somehow that woman always manages to get a navy sock in her load. It’s not the first time that everything’s gone blue and I’ve had to wash that load all over again. I’ve nearly finished here, so when you’ve done that you can help me take that lot out of the copper and put it through the mangle,’ she said over her shoulder.

  ‘Can Tom help me?’

  ‘He’s had to go and get me some soap.’

  Ruby tied the thick sacking apron round her waist and stood on the box next to her mother. Although she was as tall as her mother now she felt safer on the box as she leaned over the bubbling copper. Very carefully she wound the washing round and round the stick. She was always terrified of splashing the boiling water over herself as she pulled up as much washing as she could hold, then gently lowered it into the tin bath that stood next to her.

  Her mother helped her carry the tin bath to the deep sink and tip the clothes out just as Tom came bounding through the scullery.

  ‘Just bumped into that Ernie Wallis. D’you know, he told me he was gonner take some of Mum’s customers away from her.’

  ‘I’d like to see him try,’ said Ruby.

  ‘Don’t stand there looking at your sister, give her a hand.’

  Ruby shivered as she ran the cold water over the clothes and pummelled them up and down. When she’d rinsed them, she twisted them to get out as much water as she could, then lifted them into the tin bath again. ‘Tom, grab that handle.’

  Between them they lifted the heavy bath and after many stops to rest, managed to manoeuvre it into the small back yard. Ruby took a breath when the cold hit her wet apron then penetrated through her thin clothes and on to her stomach.

  ‘That Ernie Wallis is a big bully,’ said Tom, peering under the fringe of his dull blond hair. He was nine years old, small and thin for his age, and the image of his mother. Although he looked frail, with two hands he expertly turned the handle on the big mangle as his sister fed the sheets through the wooden rollers and then placed them into a wicker basket.

  Ruby gave him a big smile. It wasn’t fair. They couldn’t afford the slate he needed to write on at school, so he didn’t go. Although Ruby tried to help him with his sums and reading, it wasn’t the same as going and sitting in a classroom. She had loved going to school, and her teacher, Mrs Grey, was always saying that Ruby was a bright girl who should go far. But when her father had joined the army she’d had to stay at home and help her mother. And, after the war had ended, her father couldn’t work any more so they had had to move from their house.

  ‘I’m gonner bash that Ernie Wallis when I grow up,’ said Tom.

  ‘I don’t think Mum will like that.’ Ruby was grinning.

  Tom quickly glanced around and moved closer to his sister. ‘He called Dad a silly old fool. He said I’ll be like him when I grow up. I won’t, will I?’

  That remark took the grin away from Ruby. ‘Course you won’t. It was the war what done that. Dad’s shell-shocked.’

  ‘I ain’t ever gonner go to war.’

  ‘You won’t have to. That was the war to end all wars. Come on, help me put this lot on the line.’ Ruby thought about Ernie Wallis. He was tall and good-looking. When they’d both been at school she’d looked up to him. In fact, like most of the girls, she had adored him, but he always ignored her. When his father had been killed at the beginning of the war he’d been very upset and had had
to leave school to help his mother support his three younger sisters. The last time she’d seen him he’d been pushing a pram with furniture on it; he hadn’t spoken to her. Was he taking the contents of their home to the second-hand shop? Was that why he was nasty to Tom? Was he angry with what life had thrown at him?

  Ruby and Tom’s hands were freezing as between them they pegged the sheets on the line. Ruby pushed the clothes prop under the rope so the washing could catch the slightest breeze.

  ‘Can’s see it drying much today,’ she said, picking up the wicker basket.

  That evening Ruby sat with Tom at the old table, trying again to teach him how to do his sums. In the washhouse, damp washing hung from the airing poles close to the ceiling. A line had been strung up under the mantelpiece, and the clothes horse, full of Mrs Barton’s washing, was taking all the heat from the fire. Ruby watched the steam gently rising.

  ‘Mum, I was talking to Milly in the dairy, she asked me if I knew of anyone who had a room to let.’

  ‘Well, we ain’t got a room. Ruby, I’ve told you before - I ain’t gonner have strangers walking about this place taking the mickey out of your father.’

  ‘But Mum, at least you’ll have a couple of shillings every week. It’s gotter be better than having all this washing all over the place every day, and having to pawn most of our things, and I could go out to work.’

  ‘That’s as may be. But as I said, I don’t want anyone laughing at him, and I certainly ain’t having that means test man round. And I can’t see him’ - she raised her eyes to the ceiling - ‘letting me have anybody else move in. What sort of job d’you reckon you could get anyway?’