December 1943
At their Wednesday editorial meeting, the last of the calendar year, Emil had almost finished enumerating his list of story ideas for the week. “I’m not sure about this last one. We’ve had an invitation from the Hornchurch Cottage Homes in Essex. They’d like us to do a story on their annual Christmas party for the children. It’s this Saturday, the eighteenth, so we can just fit it in. Kaz? What do you think?”
“Hmm. In theory I don’t object, but I don’t want something syrupy about rosy-cheeked orphans. I’m not—”
“I’ll do it,” Ruby said, surprising even herself.
“Are you sure?” Kaz looked uncharacteristically anxious.
“I don’t mind. And I don’t think there’s any chance of my making it syrupy.”
“True enough,” he agreed. “Very well. Let me know how you get on. Frank—do you mind going with Ruby?”
“Not at all.”
Saturday morning saw Ruby and Frank on a District line Underground train to the wilds of Essex. When they arrived, a scant hour after leaving the PW offices, they discovered the home’s superintendent had sent his car and driver to fetch them.
“This bodes well,” Frank whispered, and she had to hope he was right.
The “cottages” were substantial two-story brick houses, no more than fifty or sixty years old, and were set well apart from one another, with no lack of green space between. Altogether the institution looked pleasant enough, but Ruby wasn’t inclined to pass judgment until she’d seen and spoken with the children who lived there.
Their car pulled up to what looked like a chapel or hall, and there they were greeted by the superintendent himself, Mr. Oldham, who was well into his sixties and had a disarmingly friendly smile.
“Welcome, Miss Sutton, Mr. Gossage. Welcome to Hornchurch, and happy Christmas to you both. Let me show you inside.”
“Is this where the party is being held?” Ruby asked.
“Yes—the hall is the only place here that’s big enough to hold all the children. We’ve nearly three hundred at the moment.”
The first thing Ruby noticed, as they entered the hall, was the noise. She’d expected silence, for the nuns at St. Mary’s had been quick to punish anyone who spoke above the merest whisper at Mass, at gatherings, or even in the dormitories. But here the children were talking and laughing with one another, their assembled voices a happy chorus, and no one seemed to be afraid of how the adults would react.
In true institutional style the girls had their hair cut short; no fussing with braids and ribbons here. But the children were dressed neatly, their shoes were polished, and their faces were clean. Ruby saw no bruises or evidence of mistreatment, though such things were easy enough to hide beneath clothing. Of course she would need to speak with—
“Don’t you agree, Miss Sutton?” Mr. Oldham asked.
“I’m sorry—I didn’t hear you just now. I was busy watching the children.” Frank, she now saw, was on the far side of the hall, melting into the background as he took his photographs.
“I was saying only that the fresh air, here in the countryside, really seems to bring out the best in the children. Most are from Clerkenwell, you see, and often are in a rather sad state when they come to us.”
“I know that part of London,” she said, turning to the superintendent. “I used to live nearby. Are all the children here orphans?”
“Some, but not all. Quite a few have a surviving parent who simply can’t manage.”
“What sort of schooling do they receive?”
“The same state-funded education as any other child. They finish at fourteen, and at that point most are placed out as domestics or, as with many of the boys, in apprenticeships of one sort or another.”
“May I speak to some of the children?”
“Of course, of course. I do ask that you be sensitive in the questions you ask. Nothing about their parents or how they came to live here, please. That sort of thing has a tendency to upset even the most levelheaded child.”
“I’m sure it does. I promise to be gentle with them.”
In the end, speaking to the children wasn’t much different from any other interview. She asked them their names, how old they were, if they had been good, and if they were excited about the visit from Father Christmas. In turn she explained, more than once, that she had a funny voice because she was from America, that she didn’t know any film stars personally, and that she sadly hadn’t brought any chewing gum or chocolate with her.
“I think that’s mostly the American soldiers who have things to share,” she explained solemnly, “but I haven’t been back to the United States in a long time. I’m very sorry.”
As she spoke with them and scribbled down their answers, she remained alert for any signs of distress or fear, but detected none. No one from the home came to hover at her elbow to intimidate with their silent presence. The children didn’t cringe or fall silent when Matron or one of the nursemaids wandered past. Best of all, when it was time for the Punch and Judy show, they reacted as healthy children ought to do, with shrieks of laughter at Punch’s alarming antics and shouted warnings to the other puppets.
At last it was time for Father Christmas, who arrived with a bulging sack that contained a small gift for every child. His costume was a little moth-eaten and his cotton-wool beard was far from convincing, but the children didn’t seem to notice or care.
By then, Ruby had returned to Mr. Oldham’s side, and they watched as Father Christmas doled out the contents of his sack to the waiting children.
“How do you afford gifts for everyone?” she asked softly.
“It’s a struggle, especially with the war on. But local businesses are very generous, as are our churches here in Hornchurch. And our staff work year round to knit mittens for everyone. Add in a pencil and a handful of sweets, and they’re happy. Or as happy as we can make them. I’m afraid children like these are destined to have modest expectations, not only of Christmastime but life in general. We do our best, though.”
“I can see that you do.”
All too soon, the party was over and it was time for Ruby and Frank to return to London. As soon as they were safely on the train she sat back in her seat, let out her breath, and tried to put her thoughts and feelings into some kind of order.
“You all right?” Frank asked quietly.
“Yes. It wasn’t . . . I mean, it was nicer than I was expecting,” she said after a moment.
“It was.”
“You know about . . . ?”
“You growing up in an orphanage? Yes. Couldn’t help it, really, what with the way Peter was shouting about it that day.”
“Oh,” she said. “Of course.”
“I grew up in one of Dr. Barnardo’s homes. My dad died when I was little, and my mum couldn’t take care of all of us. So she handed over me and my younger brother. Kept the four eldest with her.”
“I’m so sorry, Frank.”
“I was young, but I still remember that day. They had to tear me out of her arms. I was kicking and screaming like a banshee.” He began to fuss with the buckle on his camera bag. “I don’t talk about it much. I suppose it’s the same back in America. People get that look on their face when they find out.”
“They do. Did you ever see her again?”
“No. She died when I was ten or eleven. Long after I’d given up hoping she’d come back for me.”
Ruby nodded. “I remember that feeling. Even though my mother was dead, and the nuns never stopped reminding me of that fact, I still hoped. And then, one day, I just stopped.”
“Stopped hoping?”
“Yes. An awful thing, when you think of it. That a child so young should feel such despair.”
Frank nodded, and for a few minutes neither of them spoke.
“Every so often people would visit the orphanage,” Ruby began, half-forgotten memories crowding in on her. “Couples who wanted a child. They’d sit in the parlor and the nuns would bring out a few children for them to inspect. When I got to be a bit older, I asked one of the nuns, one of the nicer ones, why I never got to go to the parlor. I’d already figured out I wasn’t pretty enough, and I assumed that’s what she’d tell me. But she said . . .”
Frank reached out and took Ruby’s hand, and the solidity of his touch, the understanding that radiated from him, helped her to go on.
“She said my mother had been a woman of low repute. A whore, in her words, although I knew she’d been a maid in a hotel. I can just remember her, dressed in her uniform, going off to work. So I knew what Sister Joan said wasn’t true.”
“Who took care of you when your mum was at work?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember anyone else being there. I think, maybe, she might have left me alone. In the room we shared. Somehow I must have known not to cry . . .”
She stopped there, not sure of her voice anymore. When she was feeling more composed, more like herself again, she squeezed Frank’s hand and gave him her best smile. “The home today wasn’t perfect,” she said. “Places like that never are. But the children . . . they seemed happy enough.”
“They did,” he agreed.
“Did you see their faces when Father Christmas arrived? That’s when I knew they were all right. That they were being cared for.”
“How?”
“They still believed. All those smiling, trusting little faces, and somehow, in spite of everything, they still believed.”
BENNETT REAPPEARED A few days into the New Year, coming through the front door of the PW offices just as Ruby was preparing to go home for the day.
“Hello, Ruby.”
“Hello,” she said, feeling awkward for no good reason at all. “You’re back.”
“I am. Are you free for dinner?”
“No. I mean yes. I mean—I’m not really dressed for an evening out.”
“I was thinking we could go to the Victory Café. See what they have on the menu tonight.”
“I’d love that.”
“Right. Just let me pop my head into Kaz’s office before we go. Won’t be a minute.”
Night had fallen by the time they left the office, but the moon that greeted them as they stepped outside was full and fair and cast enough light, at least to Ruby’s blackout-attuned eyes, to cast every detail of the streetscape into sharp relief.
Rather than turn left and continue along to the street, Bennett paused and, looking over his shoulder at the ruins of St. Bride’s, asked, “Do you mind?”
“If we visit? Not at all.”
Although the steeple rose high above them, the church beneath was a barren shell. Its roof was gone, burned away by the same fires that had destroyed Ruby’s lodgings, and within the nave nothing remained but cold, old, soot-stained stone.
“Everyone talks about St. Paul’s having survived,” Bennett said as they stood at the edge of the fenced-off ruin, his eyes fixed on the desolation before him. “Yet something like fifteen Wren churches were destroyed during the Blitz. Just look at this place.”
“Did you ever visit it before it was destroyed?”
“Many times. I’m the furthest thing from a religious man, but I loved this church. And this is only one example of what has been, and still will be, destroyed. Europe will be a charnel house by the time this war is done.”
“It’s a building, Bennett. I don’t know . . . I can’t find myself moved to care. Not the same way I care about what happens to people. So many have died already. So many are starving or suffering.”
“I don’t disagree. The thing is . . . no one remembers the tide of human suffering from the last war. Never mind we were all brought to our knees by grief. No matter that we vowed it would be the war that put an end to war. Yet here we are, a quarter-century later, and we’ve forgotten. All that grief has been washed away, and with it our memories.”
“It won’t last forever. You know it won’t. And when it’s over, you can create new memories. Happy ones.”
“I wish I could believe you. I wish—”
“We should go,” she said, though she was reluctant to interrupt him.
“Yes, you’re right. Enough of my pontificating. I brought my motorcycle with me—do you mind?”
“No,” she said, although she was a little nervous of it. At the same time, she rather looked forward to sitting behind him, her arms locked around his middle, the heat of his body keeping her warm.
Jimmy and Maria greeted them joyfully, and their dinner—a carbon copy of the one they’d shared when she’d first come to London—was as delicious as she remembered from her first visit to the café.
Ruby told him of Christmas with the Tremaines, Kaz, and Uncle Harry, and how they’d made do with braised rabbit for lunch and, horror of horrors, elderberry wine for the toast to the king, since Harry’s wine cellar had finally been depleted. Bennett admitted to having missed Christmas lunch entirely, and though her heart seized at the idea of him alone and hungry while she’d been happily surrounded by friends, she didn’t press him for details. And then, lingering over the bottle of vinegary wine that Jimmy had unearthed, they talked of nothing much at all, until it was nearly ten o’clock and Bennett was hollow-eyed with fatigue.
The house was still and quiet when he brought her home, and as she couldn’t bear to see him go, not just yet, she asked him to stay on and share a cup of tea in the kitchen. Sitting at the homey old table, the cats twining around their legs, gave Ruby the odd and entirely unreliable feeling that all was right with the world. But perhaps, just perhaps, it was a taste of a future, of a shared life, that might yet be.
“You’re leaving again,” she said at last.
“I am. I won’t be back for a long while.”
“Will you come back to us? To . . . to me?”
His hands enveloped hers. “I hope I will. I want it more than anything.”
“I want it, too. I want you safe and whole and free of the obligations that take you away from me. But you need to know that I do understand why you must keep the promises you made. I do. Because if you broke them, you see, you wouldn’t be the man I know. The man I . . .” She faltered, unable to go on.
He nodded, but rather than say anything, he simply looked in her eyes, and it was a long time before he spoke again.
“I must go.”
They started up the stairs, Ruby a few steps ahead, but when they were only halfway up he caught at her hand and gently turned her around.
“Ruby,” he said, his eyes darkened by grief. He framed her face with his hands, his big hands that were so warm and gentle, and he kissed her with such sweetness, such yearning, that she felt she must surely die from the pain of it.
At last he pulled away, his mouth coming to rest against her ear. “Don’t come to the door with me. Don’t look back.”
And she obeyed him. She let him brush past her, heard him walk down the hall, heard the soft click of the front door as it latched behind him. And only then did she sit on the stairs, her knees giving out, as she, the girl who never cried, let the tears stream down her face until her eyes were dry and she could cry no more.