Ruby Flynn (25 page)

Mary was so thrilled with the compliment that she almost cried. ‘Do I, Betsy?’ she said, her eyes beginning to water. ‘Do I really?’

‘Yes, ye do, now go away and stop bothering Jack. I’ve told you, there’s no way they will let ye go. Besides, Amy loves ye so much, she would never stop crying and the ball would be cancelled and everyone would be so sad.’ Betsy didn’t dare tell Mary yet that both she and Ruby were planning that one day they would somehow get Mary to Galway.

Amy came up behind Mary and whipped her across the back of the legs with the tea towel. ‘You are a dozy dote, Mary. Get the rest of the bread out while I go through the list with Jack.’

Even Amy’s reprimand could not wipe the look of pleasure from Mary’s face. Betsy had said she had lovely blue eyes and that Amy really loved her. Such words would carry her through her chores all day.

Betsy returned to the list. ‘We have a load of ice in the icehouse, Jack. We should ask Jimmy to start sawing some of it up into lumps. We need a heap of it to stop the food going off and people being sick.’

‘God in heaven, no, we don’t want that, of course, lots of ice,’ said Jack, screwing his eyes up and trying to see if he could recognize any of the letters on the list. There was one thing of which he was sure: he had never seen most of the words before.

‘Here, give the list to me,’ said Mrs McKinnon as she walked over to the table, snatching it out of his hand and scribbling something along the bottom with a pen.

Jack’s brow furrowed. Mrs McKinnon’s sharp eyes diagnosed the problem at once. She knew instantly what to do.

‘Do you know, Jack, I reckon there is a lot on this list and you might need a woman’s opinion on some of it. Those quail’s eggs for instance…’ She pointed to the same item Amy had shown him a moment earlier. ‘And the silver sugar balls and the gelatine for the trifles, I’m not even sure you will be able to find them. Why don’t I send one of the girls with you?’

A look of relief crossed Jack’s face.

‘Do you want me to go Mrs McKinnon?’ Betsy’s face lit up and Mrs McKinnon’s heart sank. What was the point of sending Betsy, she couldn’t read either.

‘No, sadly not you, Betsy, not on this occasion.’

Betsy appeared to shrink into the chair as disappointment crossed her face.

‘For pity’s sake, you’re not thinking I have the time to spend a day travelling to Dublin and back are you?’ said Amy. Her voice was pitched high in alarm. ‘Even in Jack’s new van I don’t have that time to spare. Everything would fall apart if I left the kitchen, so close to the ball.’

‘No, of course not,’ said Mrs McKinnon, who was helping herself to a warm biscuit from the plate Amy had just put on the table. ‘I was thinking of Ruby, maybe? What do you think?’

Just at that moment, Jane walked in through the door.

‘Ruby what? Why in God’s name is everyone always talking about Ruby?’ Jane flounced onto one of the stools and picked up an oat biscuit from the plate without asking first and before she bit into it, scowled at everyone around her. Even Amy didn’t feel like taking on Jane this morning.

‘Well, I’m going to be spending much of tomorrow with Lady Isobel,’ said Mrs McKinnon, ignoring Jane. ‘Mrs Barrett, the tailor’s wife, is calling up to the castle in the morning from Bangor Erris to alter one of her gowns. We’ve almost finished everything I put on the cleaning list, and we can easily spare Ruby and she’s good at maths, she can add up well too.’

Amy took little persuasion. Her worst nightmare, with only days left until the ball, would be Jack returning without one of her main ingredients.

‘I agree,’ she said.

Jack nodded enthusiastically. ‘Sounds like a grand idea to me,’ he said. ‘I would be a little nervous leaving some of these things in the van whilst I went in and out of the shops on me own. God, ye have no idea how bad it is in Galway. It’s getting as bad as Dublin now. Sin runs mad through those streets, with no shame. The worst kind of people, tinkers, thieves and beggars, you can’t turn your back for a minute. Rob the coat off yer back they would. A man just isn’t safe in Galway, ’tis a terrible place.’

Mrs McKinnon wondered what Jack would make of Edinburgh, the city of her birth, or Liverpool or London even. It always amused her how those in the west of Ireland regarded Galway and Dublin as places to fear, when she found Galway to be the friendliest city on earth.

‘Well, if we are all agreed, I shall inform Ruby of the plans for the morning, then.’

Jane sat down at the table. Her resentment had been building by the day. ‘What do you need to tell Ruby and not me? She’s the newest here and it’s all Ruby, Ruby, Ruby. No one has ever had anything to talk to me about. I think I would like to have been the one looking after Lady Isobel, seems like an easy job to me. Why wasn’t I asked, Mrs McKinnon?’

‘Ruby’s coming with me to Galway, Jane,’ said Jack. ‘To help me with Amy’s shopping list for the ball – it’s her brains I’m needing. Now, if it was jolly company I was looking for, tis you I would have taken, for sure.’

‘Really? But why her and not me?’ Jane looked at Mrs McKinnon. How could she reply,
Because you can’t read either, Jane, and would be no use to Jack
?

‘Well, there is good reason, Jane,’ said Mrs McKinnon, pausing while she racked her brains for an explanation that would not offend.

Amy beat her to it.

‘Because you are as thick as the muck heap at the back of the stable and would bring back all the wrong things and then I would have to kill you with my bare hands.’

‘Slightly less tactful than I would have liked, thank you, Amy,’ said Mrs McKinnon, frowning sharply.

As Mrs McKinnon climbed the stairs, she thought that it might be a relief to shift Jane off to Liverpool instead of Ruby. Jane was becoming increasingly surly and difficult to handle and she would miss Ruby badly if she left. ‘Never mind,’ she sighed to herself. ‘Another week and we will all be back to normal.’

*

Ruby had just finished giving Lady Isobel her breakfast when Mrs McKinnon walked in to the nursery.

‘Morning, Lady Isobel,’ Mrs McKinnon said brightly. ‘We have the tailor’s wife calling in tomorrow from Bangor Erris. They are to alter the gown we chose for the ball and she and her husband will stay here until the job is done. If it is all right with you, I’m going to send Ruby here into Galway with Jack.’

Lady Isobel smiled wanly, a smile that gave Mrs McKinnon an inordinate amount of pleasure.

‘That will be a fun day,’ said Ruby to Mrs McKinnon. ‘Well, I’m glad it’s Mrs Barrett and not her husband. He would drive us mad with talk of the football. He runs the boys’ club in Bangor Erris and they say there are only two things he can talk about: the price of a suit and the results from the weekend.’

Lady Isobel gave one of her rare laughs and rose from the sofa. ‘Well, I’m also relieved in that case,’ she said, as she left the room.

‘She’s doing so well, isn’t she?’ said Mrs McKinnon barely keeping the glee from her voice as she plumped up the sofa cushions and Ruby cleared the breakfast things onto the tray.

‘She is, yes,’ said Ruby, although there was an element of hesitation in her voice. Ruby wanted to tell Mrs McKinnon that she simply didn’t believe in this new, perkier Lady Isobel. How could she say, her mouth talks but her eyes cry? No, Ruby did not believe this was a genuine improvement. It was an illusion brought about by an enormous effort. It was false of that she was sure but she did not quite know why.

*

Downstairs, Amy had divided the kitchen into three areas of preparation and had taken on four girls from the tenant farms to help. A haze of flour and the smell of almond paste hung permanently in the air and shrouded the kitchen in a grey mist. Everything was ready for the moment when the maids of honour and apple charlottes needed to be loaded into the oven for baking.

Jane, Danny and the remaining servants had left to go about their duties and the four kitchen girls were in the scullery cleaning the copper pans and china for the table, while two boys, specially hired for the occasion, were cleaning the silver, a chore that would take them the entire week to complete.

Jack was deliberately slow with his tea, as Amy busied around the table clearing away the staff plates and mugs. He took his own mug and stood next to her.

‘Oh, Jesus, you crept up on me, there.’ Amy jumped.

‘With feet my size, that’s not something I do very often,’ said Jack, placing his mug on the wooden drainer. ‘Amy, you know what I want, don’t you? I think it would work well, me and you. We would make a grand couple altogether. What do you think, would you consider it? Go on, would ye?’

Amy looked at him. ‘I’m not who you think I am, Jack,’ she whispered. ‘I am no virgin, to be sure. I’m a broiler, not a roaster.’

Jack didn’t look in the least shocked. ‘Well, I am no virgin, either, so we would be the same there. At least we would know what we was doing. Have you been to confession?’

Amy slapped him playfully on the arm with the dishcloth. ‘Of course I have, the following morning, every time.’

Jack was now genuinely shocked. ‘What, ye’ve done it more than once? Jesus, you need to be married quick woman, to save ye from yerself!’ He grinned at her and then added, ‘Go on Amy, I know all about Rory Doyle, but Jesus, that was a long time ago and he’s long gone and anyway, ye were just a girl. Let me, simple Jack, look after you. I have a very nice house and a new van, ’tis the best around here and I’m thinking of getting my own cow.’

Amy almost laughed, but she could see that Jack was deadly serious.

‘Merciful Mother, Jack. Have I waited all this time to be proposed to wearing an apron up to me elbows in soapy water in the sink with a promise of a cow? Get out of my kitchen, go on.’

‘Not until you give me an answer,’ said Jack.

Amy moved a big pan around in the sink, shook the water off her arms and picked up a towel to dry her hands.

‘I’ll promise you this,’ she said, smiling up at him. ‘I will give you me answer after the ball is over, when I’ve had a bit of time to think. ’Tis a big question you have asked me, Jack, and I don’t want to give ye the wrong answer. We can’t rush into this. Marry in haste, repent at leisure, isn’t that what they say?’

Jack couldn’t conceal his disappointment and knowing he was potentially only days away from rejection, he took the audacious move of taking a step closer to Amy and kissing her on the lips.

‘That was a bit of a liberty!’ said Amy, when at last he pulled away, but at that very moment Danny burst in through the back door.

‘The salmon, they’re jumping,’ he shouted.

‘Well, thank God for that,’ said Amy. ‘My prayers are answered. I need twenty for the table.’

Amy and Jack stood at the back door and watched as the stable boys all ran together towards the river, laughing, shouting and throwing their caps in the air.

‘There’s no better place to live than here ye know, Amy,’ said Jack. ‘We all spend our lives looking into the distance, thinking we’ve missed something, wondering if being somewhere else entirely would make us happier than we are today and do you know what I think makes us happy?’

Amy put her hands into her apron pocket and looked at Jack. ‘I can’t know, Jack, because I don’t think I’ve been happy for a very long time.’

‘Well, I might be able to help you there. Knowing where you belong, and who you belong with, that helps. Looking at what is around you and realizing how lucky you are and appreciating everything you do have and not feeling sad about what you don’t. There isn’t one person at Ballyford who doesn’t think there is something better lying beyond the river for them. Even Lord Charles, look at him, with his new shipping empire, when all along, he has the best in the world right here on his own doorstep. I know I’m not as grand as those paintings on the wall in the castle and I don’t have a fortune or a big ship, but I’m here, in the place where you belong and I’m waiting for your answer, Amy, I’m waiting for you, for me to make you happy. When I stand at those pearly gates, me and the Lord and anyone else, we will all be stood there just the same, wearing and carrying what we came into the world with, which was nothing and all that will have mattered was who we spent our time with.’

Amy blushed. ‘Go on, get going, ye daft lump. I need ye here early tomorrow to collect Ruby and get going to Galway.’

Jack wandered to the saddlestone, lifted his reins and climbed up onto his cart.

‘Well, I’ve waited for years. A week won’t hurt,’ he said to his cob, as he trotted her on towards the gate to collect the milk churns and begin his day’s work.

Charles woke and for a brief moment he was confused. He forced his mind to focus on his whereabouts before he opened his eyes. He heard the noise of the horse-drawn milk float trundling down the cobbled street. The sound of the glass bottles jangling sounded much louder than they actually were and pierced through his beer-fuddled brain and he sat up quickly. He had arrived back in Liverpool last night, changed almost immediately and was out on the town within the hour.

Now, a feeling of guilt flooded in and his first thought was of Ruby.

‘Aggh, Ruby, Ruby, Ruby, Ruby,’ he said to himself in anguish. ‘Why did I ever go looking for you?’

He wondered how Ruby felt about him, a man in his thirties. She probably found him repulsive. He doubted there were many women like Stella.

‘I far prefer older men, much more stable and reliable,’ she had told him. ‘I’ve moved out of me ma’s, but she ’as her spies everywhere, she’d kill me if she knew what we was up to.’

She would indeed, he thought as feeling of self-loathing swamped him.

Charles wondered how what had what seemed so exciting in the evening could feel so sordid in the cold light of day. His dalliance with Stella had failed to heal him in the usual way. It had not cleared his mind or made him forget. He let his thoughts wander to their journey up the stairs and her enthusiasm to remove as many of his clothes as fast as possible, and his own to do the same with hers.

Once it was all over, Charles felt around on the floor, located his trousers and his cigarettes and matches. He always left his silver lighter at home on his away nights. He lit two cigarettes and passed one over to Stella. As he exhaled, he realized he had forgotten nothing. It was all still there persistent and nagging. Ballyford, the ball and Ruby.