Jane nodded and smiled. “Not a shilling in the till, but you’d think he was Mr. Selfridge himself, the pride he took in this place.”
“Do you recall how he used to scold us for playing hide-and-seek behind all the old wardrobes and chest-of-drawers?”
Jane nodded. “Those were happy days. Even happier when Mum was alive. Now, you said something was the matter and you must tell me what it is.”
Ruth nodded. She allowed her gaze to lose its focus as she composed her thoughts. “There are several men—young men I see in the early morning once, sometimes twice a week, when I’m waiting for the four of you at the kiosk. They go into the pub across the street — almost always at the same time.”
“Cor! What public house opens so early in the morning?”
“Ones like the Fatted Pig that serve men who work through the night. Like those I mean to tell you about. They’re part-time fire watchers with the A.F.S. and theirs is the midnight shift. I overhear some of their talk on the way to the pub. Their full-time daylight job is delivering coal for Mr. Matthews. I suppose you know about Mr. Matthews.”
“You mean the fact that he only hires conchies?”
Ruth nodded. “After losing both of his sons at Dunkirk. Naturally, a father would be consumed with anger over his family being so cruelly singled out. And he’s very bitter, frightfully angry. But rather than direct his anger at the ones really responsible for taking his boys from him, he’s decided, instead, to abhor war in the abstract—all war, including the very one we’re in the midst of fighting. And become a violent pacifist. I say violent because he fired all the men who’d been delivering coal for him who refused to join him in taking a stand against the war. He wanted them to sign statements of conscientious objection. Those who wouldn’t, he sacked.”
“How does this concern you?”
“Those five lads who go to the pub together — they look to be our age, maybe a little older. They are each of them proud conchies — happy to go to Mr. Matthews and present themselves as replacements. And they seem to have taken an interest in the five of us. They watch us from the pub windows as we wait together for the factory bus.”
“There’s no crime in that, Ruth.”
“Of course not. Nor is there crime in whatever scheme they’re devising to put themselves in our way.”
Jane laughed. It was not a laugh of derision but only one of disbelief. “How do you know they are — as you put it — set to put themselves in our way?”
“I’ll tell you. Mr. Andrews, the Scotsman who opens the pub so early in the morning — not only for these lads but for the other night workers who are known to pay a premium for their cockcrow pints — he came out to speak to me one morning last week, before your arrival. He said he’d overheard the five talking amongst themselves about their interest in the five of us. One of them said it was kismet the numbers should come out even and that we should all be in the same vicinity two or three mornings a week, and they were planning to divide us up amongst them, as if it were all some kind of game, to see who could get the farthest.”
“The farthest. Now what exactly does that mean? I should hope it doesn’t mean what you think it means, Ruth. I fancy it’s about winning our favour — winning our hearts.”
“Jane Higgins, you cannot be that naïve.”
“Mr. Andrews knows their character, and if he believes the thing to be all quite innocent…”
“Innocent? Being pursued by men with conquest clearly on their minds?”
“To be pursued by any man, Ruth, when there are so many of us and so few of them round these days, should be taken as flattery at first pitch.”
“Flattery. Are you potty? It’s definitely sport, though. You have that much correct, at least.”
“But isn’t love in its early stages a kind of sport, Ruth? Pursuit and conquest. It is a game, rather. People don’t just bump into each other at a Lyons Corner House, fall instantly in love, and then go skipping off to the vicar to marry.”
Ruth’s brow furrowed. “How can you make light of such a serious matter?”
“Because I ain’t yet seen the serious part of it. These are, no doubt, five lads what spend their dismal days delivering coal to housewives and housemaids and grumpy old men in cardigan sweaters, and then spend half their nights freezing their bums off on draughty rooftops watching for incendiaries, and where and when, I ask you, are they ever to meet interesting girls — that is, girls what haven’t had all the life crushed out of them by falling walls and timbers? You must admit, myself excepted, that the five of us are quite dishy to look at — and very much alive—and who wouldn’t want to take us out for a whirl on the dance floor some night?”
“First, Jane, I so tire of hearing you denigrate yourself. You are pretty in your own way and let’s have done with that! Second, these boys don’t know a thing about us except for what we look like.”
“But isn’t that what the male species considers first? How a woman looks. Later a bloke will have himself the chance to discover if the girl who attracts him’s got a charming personality or a sharp mind or find out if she be C of E or Presbyterian, or — or casts her vote for Labour or Tory, but not until later. I should be rather pleased if they’re looking at us and talking about us and scheming over some way to meet us. There’s only one chap in my life in the bloody here and now, and he is, according to all those who meet him, a worthless invertebrate. I will confess to you, Ruth, that sometimes I come to the parsonage pretending to drop in and visit with you, when it’s really Mr. Mobry I most fancy seeing — not that I find him especially attractive or got himself any more personality than a goat, but what he does have to commend him is this: he’s a man—and not a man what also happens to be my brother, and I should like to have the privilege, at this stage in my young life, to simply sit and exchange a fine how-do-you-do with any man who just happens to be halfway male. I’ve even given thought to darkening the door of that Fatted Pig myself, but I hesitate to do so, as I know the sort of woman who most often mooches into London pubs alone, and I’m not keen on being put in her league. Nevertheless, I hunger for the companionship. You do not. I know it. I’ve always known it. I don’t judge you for it. But you shouldn’t judge me for craving it.”
Ruth sat quietly for a moment, digesting what her friend Jane had just said. “And does it not bother you,” she finally said, “that these men, who’ve taken such a curious interest in us — that they’re conscientious objectors? That they refuse to risk their lives for their country as so many other young men are doing these days?”
Jane shook her head. “There are those who don’t think that war should be the cure for all the evils of the world. They believe God created man for a much higher purpose than slaughtering other members of his species.”
Ruth nodded. “There are those conscientious objectors who believe exactly as you say. They have my respect, they do. But there are also conchies who are conchies for one reason only: cowardice. They won’t take up arms because they’re frightened witless by the possibility of getting themselves killed. They think they have a better chance of surviving this war if they can keep themselves off the battlefield and out of the Navy and R.A.F. altogether. These men I do not respect.”