Free Ruby's War by Johanna Winard

of the dip.’
    â€˜I’m glad to hear it,’ Jenny said. ‘We’re walking into the village.’
    â€˜It shouldn’t interfere with your plans,’ the woman called. ‘Lovely to have met you.’
    â€˜Wonder why somebody that posh is renting one of John Bardley’s old cottages,’ Jenny said, as they watched Iris Bland stumping off up the lane. ‘I bet she’s come out ofthe way of the bombing. Or she’s been bombed out.’
    â€˜She might be a spy.’
    â€˜Oh aye, and what’s she spying at in Bardley’s field?’
    â€˜She could be sending messages to her leader.’
    â€˜She’ll be meeting her maker, if she eats them things in her basket. They looked like toadstools. You never know, she might want some washing or cleaning done. Though she doesn’t look like she has much. Mind you, you can never tell with some posh folk.’
    The old woman was right; once they reached the little stone bridge, the fog disappeared. In the sunlight, the lane looked so much prettier than it had when she’d walked along it the day before. On both sides, the hedgerows stretched into the distance, their glittering line broken only by the occasional stand of trees or an isolated cottage. Between the white lacy branches of one small coppice, she could see an old mansion and wondered how she’d missed it yesterday.
    â€˜Who lives there?’ she asked.
    â€˜It’s been empty a good while. I’ve heard it’s going to be turned into a hospital, once they open the Second Front.’
    In the early morning sunshine, the curtains of spiders’ webs hanging from the iron gates appeared to have been stitched together with thousands of tiny glass beads. The tightly closed gates made Ruby think of the opening stage set of
Sleeping Beauty,
when Pearl had played the fairy godmother at the Theatre Royal. She’d gone to watch the panto with her father. From her place in the darkened stalls, Ruby had listened to the audience applause as the curtain went up, revealing the gates to the enchanted castle and her mother dressed in a beautiful ballet dress.
    At the end of the lane, before they turned down the road of small, pebble-dashed semis she’d walked along with Bess, they came to the large house with the nameplate on the gate.
    â€˜It’s his shirts we’re washing,’ Jenny said. ‘He’s very good about your granddad’s medicine. He knows he was gassed, so he doesn’t charge as much for it. He worked in one of the army hospitals as a young man. He knows what it was like. But you’d best not get ill. We can’t expect him to take you on for free as well.’
    The school was next to the church and consisted of two single-storey buildings. The smaller one was made of red brick, and the other was of older smoke-blackened brick and had tall windows.
    â€˜That’s the church hall and the infant school,’ Jenny said, as they walked by the red-brick building and across the playground. ‘The older children are in this other place. Before the church was built, it was a chapel. Now, keep your mouth shut, unless you’re spoken to,’ Jenny warned, as they came to the heavy wooden door at the end of the old chapel, ‘and don’t say anything about being here for a holiday.’
    They stood together inside a small, square hallway. Through an open door, Ruby could see a table piled with papers and books. Near the door were two battered easy chairs; one had a coat over the back, and the other had a large handbag and a packet of ten Player’s cigarettes on the arm.
    â€˜Looks like where the teachers have their tea,’ Jenny said.
    The other door was closed. Jenny put her ear to it and listened.
    â€˜That’s one of the classrooms,’ she said, as the sound of muffled chanting escaped through the stout door. ‘We’ll have to wait here until they’ve finished. It