In The Company Of Strangers Part 18

'So would you be interested in doing more than just filling in for a couple of weeks?'

'I'd love it, but I don't know what Declan would say, you see-'

Ruby holds up a hand. 'You don't need to tell me anything about that. Look, I'll talk to Declan. Would you leave it with me? I may not get a chance to talk to him properly until tomorrow morning, but I'll pop over then and we can talk some more.' She reaches up behind her head and tries to gather the strands of hair that have slipped out of the combs. 'My hair is driving me madder than usual,' she says, trying to twist the delinquent hair back into her tight little bun. 'It's always a mess. I haven't had it trimmed since I've been here. I'm terrified of everyone except my own hairdresser in London.'

'You could have it really short,' Lesley says. 'It would be easier to manage and it would suit you. You'd look like Judi Dench you are rather like her, you know.'

'Other people have said that too,' Ruby says, still fiddling with it. 'I'm not sure Dame Judi would see it as a compliment. I can't have it cut. It's my phobia. A nurse cut my hair off after we were bombed, and then for years the nuns hacked it off with kitchen scissors, sometimes even with secateurs. A couple of times they cut it so close with the secateurs that I had little cuts all over my head. It was punishment for something. So I grew it as soon as I escaped from the convent and keeping it long is about . . .' she hesitates. 'This probably sounds silly, but it's about who I am.'

Lesley smiles. 'It must be an awfully long time ago,' she says, keen to know more but aware that this is not the time to ask. 'And I don't think anyone would be confused about who you are if you cut it, not even you.'

Ruby opens her mouth to say something, but Lesley goes on: 'If you do want to keep it long you could do something else with it that would keep it tidier.'

'Really?'

Lesley comes out from behind the counter and goes over to the gla.s.s topped display case of interesting pieces by local craftspeople. Opening the lid she takes out a large double comb clip, in purple perspex shot through with turquoise.

'May I?' she asks, indicating Ruby's hair. And she unwinds the bun and draws the thick silver hair into a ponytail, then twists it like a rope up the back of Ruby's head and clips it into place. 'There you go,' she says, turning Ruby's shoulders so that she can see herself in one of the mirrors. 'What do you think?'

Ruby studies herself, twisting her head from side to side, and Lesley unhooks another mirror and holds it up so she can see the back. 'That's nice,' she says, 'very nice. That clip thing is really lovely. But of course my hair won't stay, bits will keep slipping out, they always do.'

'I think you'll find it's pretty secure the clip is really well made. Shake your head around a bit and we'll see.'

Ruby shakes her head, side to side, up and down, several times. Nothing moves.

'Goodness, you're right,' she says. 'Well that's amazing, but would I be able to do it myself?'

'Of course you would,' Lesley says, and she takes the clip out and shows her again. 'Now you try.'

'I see,' Ruby says, and she pulls her hair together and starts twisting and then secures the clip. 'It's quite easy, and it does feel secure.' She pats her hair a couple of times. 'Thanks, Lesley, I think this might work for me. I'll certainly give it a try,' and she takes one last look in the mirror before heading for the door. 'And we'll talk again tomorrow.'

'Fine,' Lesley says. 'Look forward to it, and Ruby . . . ?'

'Yes?'

'You haven't paid me for the clip.'

Even the twin distractions of Paula's blow-up and subsequent disappearance and the discovery of the marijuana haven't dulled Ruby's senses nor her conviction that something has been set in motion and is moving inexorably to some sort of climax. Indeed, the discovery of Catherine's stash yesterday morning had, she felt, simply brought her and Jackson closer, albeit in the most unlikely circ.u.mstances. Last night she had sat with Alice among the ecstatic crowd and discovered for the first time the Jackson that people around the world had known for decades: the professional musician, the artist, the consummate performer who brought his own unique magic to the instrument and the music. Watching him play gave her the chance to study him closely. He was totally unlike any other man she'd been attracted to. For a start, Jackson was mixed race, his mother from Ethiopia, his father, he'd told her, from North Carolina. Todd was fascinated by his curly silver hair 'mega cool', he'd said and Ruby silently agreed. And when he put the saxophone aside, took the mike from its stand and launched into 'I Just Want To Make Love to You' she was just as weak with longing as she had been when she had ached for Rossano Brazzi to claim her across a crowded room.

Today she has grasped at her efficient, practical self and held on to it long enough to do what she had to do to without making a fool of herself. In the mirror, thanks to Lesley's attention, she can see that she looks different softer, more modern, not so messy or dated. But what she wants is not just to look, but to feel different to feel like a woman who is still in the game of life rather than merely kicking around on the sidelines.

This evening, now that the final performance is over, the party atmosphere is winding down. Out in the field some campers are getting quietly drunk, setting the world to rights while they cook sausages on their picnic stoves, and others grasp the last hours of the weekend, singing to guitars or strolling among the tents reliving the performances, swapping phone numbers, relating memories revived by the music itself or the mere fact of being once again at a festival. But in the house kitchen Ruby has her hands full. Todd's birthday dinner feels like the sort of ritual meal that in the early years of both her marriages she had believed would be a regular feature of her family life: a heaped table surrounded by children and later their girlfriends and boyfriends, spouses, and then grandchildren. Ruby switches off the heat and pushes the curry and dhal to one side of the stove then fetches Todd's birthday cake from the pantry and counts out the sixteen candles, pressing them into holders and then spearing them into the cake. Todd, Declan and Alice, of course. 'And Fleur,' Todd had insisted, 'and can I ask Bundy and Johno?'

And this morning he had invited Jackson, which she would have done if he hadn't beaten her to it, and since then Lesley has been added to the guest list. Ruby stands back surveying the cake, and then she takes off her ap.r.o.n, bundles it away and walks down the pa.s.sage to change her clothes for dinner.

t's the sort of occasion that makes Declan realise how glad he is that he stopped drinking. Since Todd had unknowingly given him such an emotional kick up the a.r.s.e this morning, he has been feeling exceptionally fragile and wobbly, but if this were a dozen years ago he would by now have been blind drunk, argumentative, rambling and abusive. Ruby has done them proud this evening: several curries, rice, salads and naan bread, followed by a lemon tart and Todd's magnificent birthday cake. Todd's face when he saw the cake had almost reduced Declan to tears again.

'It's awesome,' he'd said, and he did indeed seem awestruck. 'I never had a birthday cake just once I had a cupcake with a candle in it but never a proper cake, a big cake for me.'

Declan thought that Ruby seemed moved almost to tears by this, and looking carefully at her now he thinks she looks different this evening. By the light of the lamps out here on the deck she is a little flushed, her eyes rather brighter than usual, and she's done something different with her hair, which is a big improvement. It's odd, he thinks, watching as she helps Todd to cut slices of cake and hand them around, that he knows so little about her past, particularly about her friendship with Catherine. Everything Catherine had told him about their childhood had been harrowing. It had taken years for the full story of the child migrants to be extracted from reluctant government departments and the defensive organisations to which the children had been sent, and when those stories were finally told they had been met with horror, disbelief, even threats. Now, watching Ruby, Declan wonders how much of what he had found difficult about Catherine was the result of the trauma of her childhood. He curses the self-centredness that has so often dulled his curiosity and blinded him to the reality of other people's lives. Why had he never asked Catherine more about her life? His mind is filled with questions for which it is now too late. But it's not too late for Ruby, not too late to find out what led to all those years of hostile silence to which they never seemed to fully recover.

Todd and the other boys have left the table now. Fleur and Lesley left half an hour ago, just Alice, Ruby and Jackson remain. Alice gets up to make coffee, brings it back to the table and begins to pour it. Jackson yawns, stretching his arms above his head and putting his feet up on one of the chairs that the boys have vacated.

'I was thinking about the birthday cake Catherine made for me years ago, Ruby,' Declan says, adding cream to his coffee. 'I would have been thirteen then and it was all iced in green like a football pitch. You weren't here then, were you?'

She shakes her head. 'No, you were much younger when we met. You were eight, I think, when you were being the crop duster.'

He nods slowly. 'Yes. And the more I think about it the more it seems that you were living here then, is that right?'

'Such a strange career choice at that age,' Alice says, smiling at him.

'I thought it rather sweet,' Ruby says. 'I thought then, and I still do, that small boys whose aerial ambition is crop dusting are unlikely to grow into the sort of men who start wars.'

'Sounds about right,' Jackson says. 'What would you say about a boy who at seven wanted to be in charge of the ghost train at the funfair?'

'I'd say that boy would turn out to be a lot of trouble,' she says, smiling at him. And briefly Declan has the sense that something subtle is pa.s.sing between them, something more than pleasant conversation.

'And you'd be dead right,' Jackson says, holding her gaze for just a bit longer than one might expect.

'So were you?' Declan intervenes, frustrated by the interruption of his attempt to grasp a shadowy memory. 'Were you living here then?'

'I was, for a while,' Ruby says. 'Would you like some more cake?'

He shakes his head. 'No thanks. But you weren't living here later, not at the time of the football cake? It was soon after Mum died and it was just Catherine and Uncle Harry then.'

Ruby shrugs and looks away as she starts to draw the plates across the table towards her to stack them. 'I guess so, but I certainly wasn't living here then.'

'So what happened?' Declan asks, leaning towards her across the table. 'Why were you living here before that, because wasn't Uncle Harry here then too?' Something has changed, Declan can feel it but doesn't know what it is. It's as though some sort of chill has descended and in the light of the tall candles in the lanterns the colour seems to have drained from Ruby's face. Even so he goes on, intrigued now by the prospect of what he doesn't know, by the huge gaps in their related histories, gaps that have always been there but which are now, suddenly, so fascinating.

'So, where was Catherine then?' he asks. 'Was she away or something? I've never really known much about what happened before that time, when Mum died and I started coming here more regularly. Did you live here with Catherine and Uncle Harry then?'

Silence descends like the safety curtain in a theatre, hiding the turmoil happening backstage. Ruby has stopped stacking. Jackson swings his legs off the chair and leans forward too.

'But that time that Declan's talking about,' he says, 'when he was a little kid, that would have been when you were still married to Harry, wouldn't it? Before Catherine cut in and stole him from you.'

Ruby fires him a look that could slash tyres at fifty metres, and Jackson actually tilts backward in his chair as if to dodge its power.

'Well, that's how Catherine put it,' he says. 'That's what she told me. She and Harry had an affair. It broke your heart, she said, and that's when you left and went to England, and you didn't talk to each other for years, until she went to find you in London . . .' He stops suddenly. 'What?' he asks, looking at Ruby, who appears to have turned to stone. 'What did I say?'

Declan gulps for breath, his heart lurching around in his chest. 'No,' he says, narrowing his eyes to focus on Ruby's face in the candlelight. 'You were never married to Harry, were you, Ruby? Catherine didn't-'

'Excuse me,' Ruby says, getting to her feet. She leans towards Declan and rests a hand briefly on his shoulder. 'You and I will talk about this another time.' And she turns away from the table and disappears into the house.

Alice takes a deep breath and knocks lightly on Ruby's door. Half an hour has pa.s.sed and it's clear that she's not coming back to the table. Jackson had wanted to follow her, to explain and apologise, but Alice had stopped him.

'I really think it would be better if you didn't,' she'd said. 'Ruby's a very private person, give her a bit of time.'

'But what did I do?' he asked. 'I mean, you guys, you're family, and her close friends, it's not as though you didn't know.'

'We didn't know,' Alice said, looking across at Declan, who still seemed speechless. 'I've only known her a couple of months and Declan only met her that one time as a child before she arrived here after Catherine died.'

'Jesus, what have I done?' Jackson had said, burying his face in his hands. 'Catherine told me the whole thing, all about her life. I only met her that weekend but we talked, shared a couple of bottles of wine, exchanged our stories, so I thought . . . I thought . . .'

'You thought it was common knowledge.'

'Sure, Alice, that's it exactly,' he says. 'Declan, man, I'm so sorry.'

Declan shakes his head. 'It's not your fault, Jackson. I guess I'd have found out eventually anyway, but it doesn't really matter now. It's all so long ago.'

'It still matters to Ruby, though,' Alice says softly. 'However long ago it was it's obviously very painful for her.'

'I thought well, I guess I didn't think,' Jackson says, 'I a.s.sumed that because Catherine told me . . .'

'It's just unfortunate,' Declan said then. 'My family it's a strange jumble of people, most of them quite disconnected and with almost no sense of a collective history. Ruby would have known Harry's mother, my Aunt Freda, really well. She and Catherine worked at their hotel for years when they left the convent. She probably knows more about my family than I do. But for now, what are we going to do about Ruby?'

Cautiously Alice taps again on Ruby's door. 'It's me, Alice,' she says. 'May I come in? I've brought you a cup of tea.'

There are footsteps and the key is turned in the lock. Unsure whether this means it is now locked or unlocked, Alice tries the handle and it opens. Ruby, still fully dressed, is crawling back onto the still made bed, which is scattered with hardback notebooks. Her face has a crushed expression; she looks used up, bereft.

'I came to see if you're okay,' Alice says, setting the tea on the bedside table and then sitting uncomfortably on the foot of the bed. 'We, all of us, we were worried about you.'

'I'm okay,' Ruby says. 'Actually no, I'm not okay, obviously. I'm sorry, I . . .'

'There's nothing to apologise for,' Alice says. 'Jackson wanted to come, but I thought you might prefer . . .'

'No . . . not tonight,' Ruby says, bundling some tissues in her hands. 'I can't talk to him tonight, tell him that will you, Alice? Tell him it's not his fault. And Declan too. I must explain it all to him, and I will but not tonight.'

They sit there for a while in silence.

'It's all a very long time ago . . .' Alice ventures.

'Yes, and you must think I'm overreacting. These things happen, after all, husbands defect, they have affairs, marriages survive or they don't mine didn't. Harry was a charming philanderer. His mother warned me of that many times but I chose not to listen. Catherine wasn't the first but until then I had managed to look away. He was good to me in every other way, and I have to admit that I had married him as much to become part of the family as for himself more, perhaps. But then it was different, it was Catherine's deception that really mattered.' Ruby heaves a sigh and moves her legs so that Alice has more room on the bed.

'She must have been very important to you,' Alice says.

'Hugely. You see, back in 1944 after the bombing, I was taken to a hospital. No one seemed to know anything about my mother. They just kept saying she'd probably turn up soon. But a few days later they packed me off to an orphanage. I was four years old and frantic because I thought she wouldn't know where to find me. Anyway, she never turned up and soon after that I was told she was dead, my father too. I never believed it. Then one day a man came to the orphanage and told us we were going to a place where the sun always shone and we would live by the beach. I was still frightened that Mum wouldn't find me but they told me, over and over again, "She's dead, she's dead, the bomb killed her." Catherine and I met on the dock and I don't know what would have happened to me if I'd had to get on that ship alone. They kept telling us how wonderful it would be and how much Jesus must love us to have picked us to go to Australia.

'So we made that terrible journey together, and then the convent I don't know how I'd have survived all that without Catherine. I can't begin to describe what that was like. The nuns seemed to thrive on humiliating and hurting us. Our clothes were little more than rags, the soles of our shoes were full of holes. Everything we did was wrong they seemed to hate us and went out of their way to grind us into the ground. Nine years we were there, nine years, and all that time Catherine kept me going. She was a year older but she always seemed more than that, she was such a knowing person. An old head on young shoulders, Freda Benson said once.'

Ruby pauses to take a small sip of her tea.

'She and her husband Maurice ran Benson's Hotel and Catherine and I were sent there together. Things got difficult sometimes then. I had relied on Catherine for so much, but once we were let loose on the world I began to resent that. We had this little power struggle going on for a while but we got through it, and we kept looking out for each other, doing everything together.'

'Was the hotel okay I mean, were they kind to you there?' Alice asks.

Ruby nods. 'Yes, yes it was good. Freda Benson was a lovely woman. She expected us to work hard but she mothered us and that was something we both needed. She gave us everything we'd been deprived of till then a nice place to live, people who seemed to care about us. We had nice uniforms and we were earning money, so we could actually go shopping for new clothes. Neither of us had ever done that before, we couldn't remember ever having new clothes. We were so nervous when we first went shopping that Freda had to come with us.

'Harry, Freda and Maurice's son, was working in England and we'd heard a lot about him, but we'd been there a couple of years before he came home. That's when things started to change. He was handsome and good fun and he really took to both of us. We were always together, the three of us, going to the movies, eating fish and chips by the harbour. On our days off we went to the beach or sailing with Harry's friends, or to the races. We were doing things we'd only dreamed of until then. And then Catherine fell for this friend of Harry's Jack, his name was and she was gone. I mean, we were still living together at the hotel, still working together, but her head wasn't there anymore. He was rather dashing, very handsome and extremely rich, and Harry said that Jack had just turned her head and there was no way it would last.

'So then there were just the two of us, and Harry and I ended up spending a lot of time together. We were really good friends, and then one day he told me he loved me, and asked me to marry him. I don't know if he ever really loved me, but he was lazy, really, he wanted a wife who'd look after him, make things easy for him. And we got on well.'

'Were you in love with him?' Alice asks.

Ruby shakes her head. 'No, to be honest I wasn't. I did love him, but not in that incredibly romantic, falling in love way. I felt safe with him, and I loved the Bensons and the idea of this big sprawling family. I wanted to be a part of that and I was sure I would spend all my life with them. I felt I had found something that could never be s.n.a.t.c.hed away from me.

'Freda and Maurice owned this place as well as the hotel. They'd inherited the properties from Maurice's father, who'd inherited them from his father. Harry wanted to move down here and plant vines. It was a time when people were exploring the possibilities of the wine industry and he wanted to turn Benson's Reach into a vineyard. He always had big ideas but he wasn't very good at following through. So we moved down here. Catherine was still in Perth, still working at the hotel, still seeing Jack, but then it all crashed. He left her for someone else and she was devastated. She stayed on there for a while and the Bensons made her a.s.sistant manager . . .' Ruby hesitates, taking several deep breaths, pressing tissues against her eyes.

'You don't have to go on,' Alice says, 'you don't have to tell me this.'

Ruby shakes her head. 'I want to,' she says. 'I need to, I've never told it to anyone except Owen; we didn't marry until after Harry's death. You know what this is like, you shroud something in silence and then you find you can't speak, but when you do you daren't stop.'

They sit in silence for a few minutes and Alice sees that Ruby is gathering herself together in a way that will enable her to finish the story, and she remembers both the pain and the relief that comes with the telling.

'About that time Maurice had a stroke,' Ruby continues, 'and although he recovered it was clear that he was going to need a lot of care. Freda decided to sell the hotel, and they bought a house by the beach in Cottesloe, so Catherine had no job. Actually, that's not right, she could have kept the same job with the new owners, but she said she couldn't bear to stay on there without the Bensons. So we told her to come down here for a break while she made up her mind what to do.

'It was good at first, like the old days back at the hotel, the three of us together again. It never occurred to me . . .' She stops and rests her head back against the bedhead, closing her eyes. 'It never occurred to me that it wouldn't be all right. I was bored and pleased to have Catherine's company. We'd been down here a few years by then and I was getting a bit lonely. It was obvious that Harry had no real commitment to earning a living, and of course he didn't need to. So I decided to get a job. I was used to bar work, so I went down to the local pub and they took me on straight away. Harry thought it was a bit beneath him to have his wife working at the pub but I liked it.

'When Catherine arrived she said she was going to get a job too, but we both urged her to have a few weeks off before she started looking. Well, she never did start looking. She was good in the house, did some of the cooking, the washing, all that, but I don't even remember her looking at the job ads in the local paper. But the three of us enjoyed each other's company, so it didn't seem to matter.

'Then one day I wasn't feeling too well, I was dizzy and nauseous. I didn't realise it at the time but I was pregnant. It was the evening shift at the pub and it was pretty quiet so I left early and came home and that's when I found them, Catherine and Harry, here in this room, in that horrible old wooden bed. I was so naive, I a.s.sumed it was the first time, but it turned out that it had been going on since soon after Catherine arrived. Oh, I know it's not an unusual story since then in all my years of working with women I've heard far worse. Catherine wasn't the first. I knew Harry had strayed before, but he was discreet and he always came back. I don't think I would ever have left him, because that would have meant leaving the family that was so precious to me.

'So it was much less about Harry deceiving me than about Catherine. I couldn't believe that after what we'd been through together she could do that to me. This might be hard to understand but the nuns had treated us with contempt they called us every awful name you could think of, and they seemed always to be finding new ways to shame and degrade us. They peeled away every shred of self-esteem and each time we put our heads up it would happen again. They reduced us to nothing, but with Freda's help we'd clawed our way to a normal life, to a future and a real sense of self-worth. We'd been like sisters, closer than many sisters. I had survived the convent because of Catherine, and I think she felt the same about me. And then I walked into that room and everything I had become just seemed to evaporate. I was reduced to nothing again, and this time it was Catherine who had put me there. That was what destroyed me, that she smashed what we'd had, ground it under her heel just like the nuns.'

Ruby stops, picks up her tea again and sips it.

'It must be cold by now,' Alice says, moving to take it from her. 'I'll get you some more.'

Ruby shakes her head. 'It's still warm.'

'So what did you do?' Alice asks.

'I left here that night. Got in the car and drove to the Bensons' house. It took longer in those days four hours, maybe more. Freda was devastated and furious with them both. She made a bed up for me, made me tea and toast. By then it was about four in the morning and she said to get some rest and we'd sort it out in the morning. But I couldn't rest, I tossed and turned and paced around the bedroom, and by daylight I felt so terrible I needed a doctor. It was a miscarriage and it seemed as though Catherine had taken everything from me, even my unborn child.

'I knew then that for me it couldn't be sorted. There was no way I was going back to Benson's Reach, nor to Harry, there was no way back for me to Catherine, not after that. She took that precious friendship and destroyed it, the thing that had enabled me to survive. I was back to being the grovelling worm child I had been in the convent only then I'd had her, and now I had nothing.' Ruby stops, sighing heavily. 'And then twenty five years later she turned up in London looking for forgiveness.'

'Did you forgive her?' Alice asks.

Ruby shrugged. 'I don't know. That sounds silly but it's true. You can say, yes, I forgive you, let's put it all behind us, move on, all that stuff. But how do you know if, deep inside yourself, you've forgiven? How do you know if one day it might not all come back again, rising up inside you like some awful serpent? That's what I was battling with when I came back here the past all of it here, at Benson's Hotel and in the convent. Back in the seventies I did a ritual burning of everything that reminded me of it. I thought that would be the end of it, but of course it wasn't. It was just a way of burying my head in the sand. When Catherine turned up in London years later looking for forgiveness, I froze. We hadn't been in touch for all those years and there she was, suddenly, standing on my doorstep. I had no time to prepare for that, she gave me no warning. It felt like another raid on my life, another invasion that she'd orchestrated. I realised then, for the very first time, that it was typical of her. All through the years we were together I had felt I was in her debt, that she had kept me going, that I owed my life and my sanity to her. But that day I suddenly saw the other side of it. Catherine was an emotional bully and that was why we kept falling out when we got out of the convent and went to the hotel. I got a taste for independence, but she needed my dependence on her, and as that began to dissolve she would punish me.

'When she turned up on my doorstep all those years later I felt I had to invite her in. She was standing there with her suitcase, obviously intending to stay, and I fell straight back into letting her call the shots. It's ridiculous, of course, I was a grown woman in my fifties, known for being a.s.sertive, making decisions, taking authority by the throat and shaking it, and yet I couldn't say no to Catherine. So how could I really forgive her while I was still battling with that? And there was something else.

'A couple of weeks after I'd left Benson's Reach and after the miscarriage, when I was still staying with Freda, Catherine turned up at their house it was without warning then too. Freda was out and I answered the door and Catherine insisted on coming in. She said she had to apologise, to ask for forgiveness. She talked about how important our friendship was to her, how much she loved me. And then she said, "Come back, Rube, it'll be okay, really it will. Harry and I will look after you, the three of us we'll all be together." She was offering me a place back in my own home. "Harry and I will look after you," - she wasn't moving out of my way, she was taking over. And of course Harry was just as much to blame in all this, but it mattered so much less. Catherine didn't only want my husband, she wanted my life.'

Alice shakes her head, speechless for a moment.

'I'm sorry,' Ruby says, 'I shouldn't have unloaded all this onto you.'

'No!' Alice says, 'It's not that, it's just all so . . . complex and sad. So when she left you with the controlling share in Benson's Reach, do you think she was giving you something back? Trying to make amends?'