Nameless (18 page)

‘But we’re not afraid of them,’ said Tito.

‘Of course not. But why not play a cleverer game? We have them watched. Sooner or later, they’ll go to fetch the money, and when they do – we pounce.’

Tito wasn’t over-pleased with this idea, but what the hell? They had plenty from their own businesses, without plundering the Darke haul. And Astorre’s word was law.

46

Ruby’s time was approaching fast. Her only contact with her old life now was Charlie, who kept calling round to keep an eye on her. Charlie had negotiated the deal for her. She had already been paid half the amount that Cornelius and Vanessa were willing to give for her child – ten thousand pounds. The final ten thousand – chicken feed to them, a fortune to her – would be paid when they had the child,
her
child, safe with them.

‘After all, the sprog might be born dead or something,’ said Charlie. ‘They got a point, I s’pose.’

Ruby sat in the same window day after day, looking out on a street she didn’t know, at people she didn’t know either. She wore an old pawn-shop-purchase gold wedding band when she went out, to look respectable, but she rarely did. When she went to the shops, no one spoke to her because no one knew her. She liked it like that. She had her ration book, she went to the grocer’s and bought food, but she talked to no one.

She had a story ready, just in case anyone enquired. She was a war widow, and she had been bombed out of the East End and that was why she was here. That was the story. But she never needed to use it, because no one asked, no one spoke.

She missed her friends at the Windy; in particular, she missed Vi. But she didn’t feel she could talk to her, not while all this was going on. Charlie said Betsy wanted to call on her, but Ruby had said a flat no to that. Betsy would be all sympathetic on the surface, gloating beneath.

Sometimes the sirens went and she had to go down the shelter, but mostly she just sat in the window, hugging her huge bump, feeling the child inside her kick like a centre forward and feeling a rise of joy at the movement – and then an overwhelming blanket of sadness would steal over her as she thought of what she must do.

It was going to be a girl, she thought. She was massively fat with the child, and boys only carried at the front, everyone knew that. So a girl it would be, a little black-haired girl like her, that she could dress up and play with and . . . but no. She had to stop that train of thought, right there.

The child – even if it
was
a girl, a useless girl and not the boy she knew Cornelius craved – was not hers. She had sold it, for its own good. She had to keep reminding herself of that. The child would benefit, and she had to hope it was blond, and male, for its sake.

She might be bereft and heartbroken, but the child would be happy, well-fed, cared for, given a far better start in life than she could ever hope to provide as a single disgraced woman of uncertain origin.

All too soon, it was time. Ruby awoke in the night and felt the cramping take hold of her. She staggered from the bed, her waters breaking as she stood up, liquid cascading down her legs. She staggered to the next room, and woke Charlie, who phoned Cornelius.

‘One thing’s for damned sure,’ said the stocky Irish midwife Charlie had called in to attend her, without sympathy, ‘you may not have felt it going in, but you’re certainly going to feel it coming
out.
Now come on. Push harder.’

Ruby had never known such pain. She sweated and shuddered on the bed, spreadeagled and horribly uncomfortable on crackling sheets of old newspaper that the midwife had laid out underneath her.

Bitch,
she thought, wishing for a kind word, for reassurance, for an end to this grinding awful pain that had started hours ago, after midnight. Now the bedside clock said ten past four.

But she didn’t expect kindness from this woman – or from anyone else, come to that. She’d committed the cardinal sin of being unmarried and becoming pregnant. She was aware of the Irishwoman’s sneering disapproval – but right now Ruby didn’t even care. Her whole world had become boiled down, concentrated into this mammoth battle of endurance against a flooding sea of pain.

And then it started – the shriek of the air-raid siren.

The midwife stiffened and drew back. ‘Damn, isn’t that all we needed?’ She lunged forward, starting to heft Ruby from the bed. ‘Come on, better get you down the shelter.’

Ruby cringed away from her, teeth gritted as another unholy wave of pain hit her.

She shook her head.

‘Come
on
,’ said the midwife. ‘D’you want one of those bloody doodlebugs to get this child before it’s even born?’

‘I’m not. Having this baby. In the fucking shelter,’ Ruby managed to get out between gasps.

‘Now don’t be a silly girl,’ said the midwife briskly, and bustled back in for another try.

Ruby’s lips drew back from her teeth in a snarl. ‘You deaf? I’m not going out to the shelter, I’m having this baby
right
here
.’

‘Then you’re having it on your own,’ said the midwife, jaw set and eyes unfriendly.

‘Fine,’ yelled Ruby to the woman’s back as she left the room and stomped off down the stairs. ‘That’s just bloody
fine,
for all the sodding use you’ve been so far!’

Downstairs she heard the raised voices –
his
voice, louder than the others.

The loud one.
She remembered she’d thought that the moment she’d first seen him among his big group of mates. Voice like a foghorn; that was him, all right.

The back door slammed. The midwife was gone, heading down the garden to the Anderson shelter.

Another great boiling wave of pain was building in her midsection.

‘Ah
shit
, here we go again,’ she groaned, and clung to the old brass headboard as it hit her.

The siren stopped.

And then she heard something else: the hum of a motor.

Shit. Doodlebug.

She pushed and heaved and writhed like an animal.

Just so long as the bloody motor kept going, she and the baby were safe. And him downstairs, him and
her
, the snooty cow, what were they doing? Had they gone out now to the shelter too, was she all alone,
completely
alone, in the house?

But no. She could hear their voices down there.

She actually felt glad the midwife had gone. The woman’s overwhelming air of disapproval had been depressing Ruby for half the night. For the moment it was just her and the baby, battling against the odds, and she preferred that. Now, things were at a crucial phase. She could feel it.

And then the motor stopped.

Shit.

She kept pushing anyway, and then – oh miracle of miracles! – she felt something give deep inside her, and the baby, still attached to her by the thick red pulsing worm of the cord, corkscrewed out with a wet slither onto the papers. Then Cornelius appeared in the doorway, and Vanessa, with her snooty face twisted in disgust at the mess and the blood.

Silence.

Then, suddenly, the baby started to cry.

Ruby saw their attention fasten upon it; a girl, her daughter, only not hers because she was giving her up right now, or maybe she wouldn’t even get the chance to do that, maybe the child was going to die with its first breath . . .

The doodlebug struck. It felt like an earthquake must feel; the battered old building shook to its foundations. Vanessa let out a quavering cry of fear. The explosion rocked the bed. The lampshade swung crazily, but somehow the light stayed on, sending mad shadows dancing over the three adults and the bloody newborn. A shard of plaster cracked off from the ceiling and struck the edge of the bed before tumbling to the floor. Ruby leaned forward and put her hands over the little girl’s head, a protective gesture, noting with wonder the wispy blonde hair still sticky with the birth fluids.

Missed us
, thought Ruby, and the two of them approached the bed.
Killed some other poor sod stone-cold dead, but not us. Not this time.

‘Look,’ said Cornelius to his wife. ‘It’s a girl – but look, she’s blonde, you see?’

Ruby watched them both with hatred. Him big and golden, her small, mousy, thin, terribly refined. Ruby had never seen a more ill-matched pair than these two. Yet, here they were. Together. Cornelius Bray and his wife, Vanessa.

The siren started sounding the all-clear.

Outside was bedlam. Shouting, screaming, the horrible crackle of flames nearby. But in here it was quiet. They all stared, transfixed, at the baby girl.

Cornelius’s eyes rose and met Ruby’s. There was a hint of guilty unease in them, which surprised her. She’d never suspected he had even a grain of conscience in his entire body. ‘The midwife will be back in a minute,’ he said.

Another spasm gripped her and she gritted her teeth again, clutched a hand to the headboard.

Just the afterbirth, coming away.

Only it wasn’t.

It was another baby, spiralling out to lie beside its sister.

Twins? No one had told her she was giving birth to twins!

She touched the child’s head and the eyes opened. A boy. The tiny scrap of hair was dark.

Ruby saw Vanessa take a half-step back, her lip curling in distaste. ‘Good God, it’s . . .’ she started to say, then bit her lip, cutting the words dead.

Ruby heard the midwife returning and lay back, exhausted, amazed.

They would take the girl. That was the deal. But the boy . . . she stared at him writhing there, now starting to cry. Her heart leapt at the sound. They wouldn’t want him; you only had to look at him to see that. The boy would be hers. A surge of pure gladness hit her then, where before there had only been sadness and pain. She had a consolation prize. She would give up her daughter; but she still had a son. She clung to that; it made it all a little easier to bear. Everyone would disapprove, look down their noses at her, but she would take it. She would have to. Because she was going to hold on to him, even if it killed her.

‘Christ!’ Now Charlie loomed in the doorway, gazing down at the two babies. One blonde, one dark. Twins, but not alike. Not at all.

The midwife had cut the cord and was now cleaning the girl up. The boy still lay there, abandoned, squirming, on the sodden newspapers.

‘That’s enough now,’ said Charlie. He took a wad of notes out of his pockets and started peeling them off. He handed some to the midwife. ‘Here.’

‘The boy . . .’ said the midwife.

‘Oh. Right. Well, cut the cord. I’ll see to him,’ said Charlie.

The midwife cut the boy’s cord and tied it off. She placed the little girl in her mother’s arms. Ruby looked down at her baby girl, feeling pure untrammelled love for the first time in her life. The Irishwoman went off downstairs. Charlie came forward without a word. Grim-faced, he took the baby from Ruby and handed her to Vanessa, who stood there, speechless, gazing down at the baby, while Ruby lay there in mess and blood like a butchered beast of the field, her purpose served.

Ruby saw Cornelius draw close to his wife, stare down at the daughter who was, after all, half his. While their attention was focused on the baby girl, Ruby reached out a gentle, shaky hand to touch the boy’s head. Then Charlie came back to the bed, carrying a sheet. He lifted the baby boy into it, wrapped him securely.

‘No . . .’ said Ruby urgently.

‘I’ll see to this one,’ he said.

‘No . . .’ said Ruby, feeling like her guts were being ripped from her as she heard the baby start to wail. ‘
No!
’

‘Now don’t be stupid, I’ve got to get shot of it,’ he told her bluntly.

And he was gone, out of the room.

She closed her eyes. Tears spilled over as she watched Vanessa go too, leaving with her little girl.

She lay back amid the blood and sweat, and sobbed exhaustedly into the pillows. The afterbirth would come away soon and then,
then
, if she could summon the will to move or even care what happened any more, she would get out of the bed and start to clean herself up.

How did I come to this?
she wondered.

It had all started so easily; she could still see it, that bright room with the chandeliers, could still hear their laughter, smell the cigar smoke and brandy and the overwhelming scent of wealth. Like entering a foreign country. That’s what it had felt like to her, on the evening when she first met
him.
She’d had a glimpse into another world – a world of ease and privilege.

But that world had never been meant for her.

‘Ruby?’ He was back. Her blond god Cornelius was standing over the bed, looking down at her, sweat-stained and hollow-eyed; the sad remnant of the woman he had used.

Now she looked at him and felt the last vestige of her once consuming love dissolve into hatred. She lay there, open for everyone to see, exposed,
ruined.

‘Go away,’ she told him coldly.

‘Ruby . . .’

‘Didn’t you hear me, you fucking bastard?’ Ruby shouted suddenly. ‘
Fuck off!
’

He left the room. She watched him go, listened to his footsteps going down the stairs, then the door opening, then closing behind him. In the silence, she could hear fire engines roaring to the scene of the blast. Finding death and destruction.

She had her own tragedy here.

Her little girl was gone. Her son was gone.

Ruby lay back and let the hot, gut-wrenching tears come. Soon, she might begin to feel she could move, do something. Right now, she could only cry, and despair. And she swore to herself as she lay there that she would never, ever, fall in love and let a man use her again.

47

Charlie took the boy over to one of his contacts in Finsbury Park. He rapped on the door and it was opened by a bug-eyed monster with the face of a fly.

‘
Shit
,’ said Charlie, startled. The baby wrapped in his arms gave a whimper and he bounced it irritably against his chest.