Ruby McBride

Ruby McBride

Freda Lightfoot

Originally published 2002 by Hodder & Stoughton Ltd. 338 Euston Road,
 

London NW1 3BH

Copyright © 2002 and 2012 by Freda Lightfoot.

All rights reserved.

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

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 permission in writing 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 including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

ISBN 978-0-9570978-3-4

Published by Freda Lightfoot 2012

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‘Lightfoot clearly knows her Manchester well’

Historical Novel Society

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‘Another heartwarming tale from a master story-teller.’

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on For All Our Tomorrows.

‘She piles horror on horror - rape, torture, sexual humiliation, incest, suicide - but she keeps you reading!’ Jay Dixon on House of Angels.

‘This is a book I couldn’t put down . . .
 
a great read!’

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‘paints a vivid picture of life on the fells during the war.  Enhanced by fine historical detail and strong characterisation it is an endearing story...’

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‘An inspiring novel about accepting change and bravely facing the future.’

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Description

The grand opening of the Manchester Ship Canal is a big day for Ruby McBride and her young sister and brother. Its glories fade into insignificance, however, when their mother Molly, due to illness, reluctantly entrusts her beloved children to Ignatius House, and the not-so-tender care of the nuns. Ruby, a rebel at heart, is always on the wrong side of authority, but when she is sixteen, the Board of Guardians forces her into marriage and she has to abandon her siblings, vowing she will reunite the family just as soon as she can.
 

Convinced that her new husband is a conman, she discovers life on the barge is not at all what she expected. She is furious at being robbed of the chance to be with her childhood sweetheart, Kit Jarvis, so resists Bart’s advances for as long as she can. But Ruby’s courage and spirit enable her to rise above the disadvantages of her birth and make a life for herself within the thriving community of waterways folk.

Chapter One

21 May 1894

‘Rise and shine, chuck, kettle’s on.’

Ruby stretched blissfully, then lifted her arms and wrapped them about her mother’s neck in a tight, warm hug. Even if she was nearly eleven, she hoped never to be too old for a morning cuddle. ‘Is this the special day you promised us, Mam?’

‘It is, love, and if you don’t shape yourself, you’ll miss out on a very special breakfast an’ all. I’ve saved a bit of jam to go on us bread and marg this morning.’

The thrill of a day’s holiday from school made Ruby want to shout with joy, and jam on her bread took it into the realms of fantasy. She’d known too many mornings when there’d been no breakfast at all. Inside, she felt a bit sick with the wonder of it, and prayed she wouldn’t disgrace herself by not managing to eat the promised treat.

Molly McBride kissed her daughter and tweaked her snub nose. ‘See you wash yer lovely face and hands especially well this morning. We don’t want Her Majesty to see the McBrides looking anything less than their best, now do we, chuck? Not when she’s come all the way up from London to see us, eh?’
 

Ruby giggled as her mother gave a huge wink then, one hand at her hip and the other lifting her long cotton skirts, she sashayed away, nose in the air, just as if she were the Queen of England herself. Oh, she was a laugh a minute, her mam. But
then she leaned over the table, clinging on to the edge as she started coughing, which quite ruined the effect.

Ruby felt the familiar jolt of panic but said nothing, knowing how her mother hated a fuss or any show of sympathy. ‘I won’t let it rob me of me sparkle,’ she would say, but the cough that had got worse all winter was a constant worry at the back of Ruby’s mind. She felt thankful that summer was almost here, for the warmer weather would surely ease it. And Mam didn’t want her to worry about anything today, not with the Queen herself coming to open the Manchester Ship Canal that had cost millions of pounds to build. ‘The big ditch’, they called it. Folk had been putting up flags and bunting for days, and there was to be a band.

Apart from Molly McBride’s tuneless singing after her nightly glass of stout, there wasn’t a lot of music in Ruby’s life. And when the opening ceremony was over, there would still be cocoa and bun-loaf to look forward to, out in the back yard here. Mam had told her nothing about this, no doubt wanting it to be a surprise, but Ruby had heard about it from the other tenants. It was to be a sort of party, all of their own.

After a moment or two the spasm abated and Mam turned to wink again at Ruby, handkerchief pressed to her mouth. ‘You waken our Pearl and Billy, while I see how far I can make this jam stretch. We’ll want some butties to take with us, so it’ll be nobbut a scrape. Now look sharp.’

‘I will, Mam.’ Pearl and Billy were curled up beside her like a pair of puppies, keeping each other warm. Ruby gave her sister a little shake but she only grunted and sank further under the blanket and old coats that served as covers, her dandelion-bright hair the only sign of her presence in the bed, the fronds intermingling with Billy’s light brown locks. If Ruby hadn’t known that ‘they all came from a different seed though grown out of the same pod’, as her mam liked to explain their different fathers, she would have wondered how it was the McBrides could be so unalike. Billy, at four, an impish ball of mischief. Six-year-old Pearl, plump, pretty and a bag of nervous energy with not an unselfish thought in her silly head. And Ruby herself, long-legged and scrawny with nut-brown curls that fell to her shoulders when not in their usual braids, eyes to match set in a pale face beneath winged eyebrows, and with a square chin which proved, according to Mam, that she was obstinate as a mule. Oh, but they were as happy a bunch as any family could wish to be. How else could they have survived?

There was no doubt in Ruby’s mind that her mam more than made up to her children for what they lacked in material possessions, or in food for their empty bellies, by filling them instead with an endless supply of love and laughter.

‘A kiss don’t cost anything,’ she’d say and, however hungry and bone weary she was after a long day’s work, she’d always find the time to pull the three of them on to her lap, pour herself a drop of stout to keep up her strength, and relate some tale she’d learned from her old dad. He’d drowned at sea when Molly had been quite a young girl and nothing, as she would carefully explain, had ever been the same since. `That’s why we’re in this pretty pickle today, because me mam hadn’t anything for us to live on after that, once me da’s wages stopped coming in,’ she would say. `So I never had a chance, see? She died of a broken heart, bless her. Me brothers and sisters all went their separate ways, God alone knows where. I married the first bit of dish rag who offered to put a roof over me head, and look where that got me.’

Billy, being the baby of the family, would be asleep in no time during this story telling. Pearl would soon grow bored and wriggle down to go off and play with the rag doll Mrs Bradshaw-from-upstairs made for her, but Ruby would listen with rapt attention, and smile at the familiar tale which changed very slightly with each retelling. ‘But you loved the bones of him, Mam, didn’t you?’ she would prompt, since she adored to hear about this unknown person who was her own father.

‘Eeh, didn’t I just! He was the kindest, dearest man on God’s sweet earth. So handsome, he was, that all the girls were chasing him.’

‘But you were the one who hooked him.’ Ruby didn’t entirely understand what this phrase meant, but her mother used it often and she loved to see the shine of happiness light up Mam’s hazel eyes at the words.

‘Aye, I did that. The minute I clapped eyes on him, and him on me, we knew we were destined for each other. Destined, that’s what we were. Toby McBride and me were meant to be together. Two peas in a pod, Romeo and Juliet, a pair of star-crossed…’

Ruby interrupted, since she knew this description could continue indefinitely and they were coming to the part which puzzled her the most. ‘Then why did he leave, Mam, if he loved you so much? Why did he go back to Ireland without you? And without me?’

Here, her mother would hug her tight and smother her with teasing kisses. ‘Now how could you go anywhere without me? You were still in me tummy at that time, bless you.’

‘Was Da happy for me to be in your tummy?’

‘Of course he were. Said so the minute I told him. Nay, I’m sure he meant to come back, for he loved me right enough. Said as much before he flitted off across the Irish Sea. "Know that I’ll always love you, Molly," he says. "There’ll never be another colleen as pretty as my sweet Molly."‘

Ruby would frown at this, a familiar ache of disappointment starting up in her tummy at the puzzle of it all. ‘But he didn’t come back, did he?’

‘No, drat him, he didn’t. Some chit must have waylaid him. But that’s how it is with fellas, d’you see? Responsibility and commitment are not words to be found in their dictionary.’ Ruby would watch, wide-eyed, as her mam refilled her glass, worrying whether she should suggest she have her tea before she drink any more but not liking to say so, in case there was nothing to eat.
 

‘Like all men he was not to be trusted, the lying, thieving, no-good piece of ... Oops, hearken at me, about to use a foul word in front of me own childer. He just couldn’t resist any bit of skirt what danced by, and I’ve no doubt that’s what happened. He went chasing after another bit of skirt.’