Free The House by Princes Park by Maureen Lee Page B

satincushions, pleated curtains, and electricity. He felt uncomfortable with Ruby who was teaching him to dance, had taught him to drink coffee, and told him things she’d heard on the wireless or read in Emily’s newspaper, about people he didn’t know who lived in countries he’d never heard of. He’d never opened a newspaper in his life and could read and write only a little.
    She dazzled him. He was in awe of her, She knew everything. At night, he went to sleep with her graceful, twirling figure in front his eyes, hearing her voice. He forgot what Audrey looked like. He used some of the money he was saving for the wedding to buy a suit in Ormskirk market.
    ‘We could have bought it in town on Saturday afternoon when you’re off,’ Ruby said when she admired the cheap suit which was navy blue with a lighter blue stripe. She squeaked with horror when Jacob said he had never been to Liverpool.
    ‘Never
been
! Lord, Jacob, I’ve been dozens of times.
Dozens
!’
    ‘I know.’ Her frequent expeditions, by train, tram and ferry filled him with admiration. He hated leaving Kirkby. Even in Ormskirk, a small market town, he felt overwhelmed by so many people, panic-stricken in the narrow streets, his chest tight, wanting to run away to where there were open spaces and a clear, unrestricted sky, to where he could breathe. He only felt at home with the soil and the crops and the animals that he tended. There were times when he wished he’d never met Ruby, who’d caused such havoc in his heart that he no longer knew what he wanted.
    Christmas was never-ending party time at the Rowland-Graves’s. Emily ate Christmas dinner with Ruby – the food had mostly been prepared the day before by Mrs Arkwright – nursing the pleasant thought that later she would enjoy herself in a very different way.
    She regarded herself as having been doubly blessed. She genuinely loved Ruby, who was a perfect companion; loyal, uncomplaining, intelligent, with a cheerful disposition. It was a pleasure to be met by her sunny, happy face whenever she entered the house. They’d been to Midnight Mass together and it was a delightful experience that she would have missed if the girl hadn’t been there. At the same time, the Rowland-Graves were providing all the excitement and fun that Emily had always longed for. Life had never been so good or so fulfilling.
    ‘Will you be all right on your own?’ She asked the inevitable question while making preparations for the evening ahead.
    Ruby was sitting on the bed, watching the painstaking proceedings. She gave the inevitable answer. ‘I’ll be fine.’
    As soon as Emily had gone she put the light on in her bedroom without drawing the curtains, a signal to Jacob, watching across the fields, that it was safe to come.
    Fifteen minutes later, Jacob came, drawn to the light like a moth to a flame.
    Ruby had been at Brambles for two years and would shortly be sixteen. ‘We should really have a party,’ Emily said the week before. ‘But you don’t know anyone, do you?’
    ‘Not a soul,’ Ruby said innocently. Only Jacob, scores of bus conductors, a barrow lady called Maggie Mullen from whom she regularly purchased an apple, Mrs First, who had a sweetshop in the Dingle, a girl her own age, Ginnie O’Dare, who worked by Exchange station and whom she often met on the train. There were loads more people she knew by sight. But none of these people could she ask to a party.
    ‘We can’t just let your birthday pass without doing something,’ Emily said. If she took her out to tea, as she had done last year, it wouldn’t interrupt her hectic sociallife. Perhaps it was guilt that made her decide to splash out on an expensive gold watch for a present.
    ‘Can we go to the pictures?’ Ginnie O’Dare was always on about the pictures and Ruby was curious as to what they were like.
    ‘What a lovely idea! We’ll go to a matinée. There’s a Greta Garbo picture on in town,
Grand Hotel
. I’d love to see