Love Walked Right In Read online

  This book is dedicated to the memory of Jane Pinfield-Wells who, as a child, graciously shared her mother with me and many other foster children during their time of need. Thank you, Jane. R.I.P.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  CHAPTER 1

  March 1937

  ‘Roo-by!’

  Ruby Searle rubbed her floury hands on her apron and put the mixing bowl into the stone sink. Ignoring her husband’s call, she glanced up at the clock and smiled to herself. She had made good time. The casserole was already in the oven and the suet dumplings were ready to drop into the dish twenty or thirty minutes before serving. All that remained was the washing up and the laying of the table.

  ‘Ruby . . .’ Jim, her husband, sounded agitated, but Ruby knew only too well that he often made something sound desperate when it wasn’t desperate at all. Their lives had changed dramatically since Jim fell down some steps some three years before and permanently damaged his legs. When he’d first come out of hospital he’d run rings around her, until her mother pointed out that rushing to do his bidding the second he called did neither of them any good. Still, she wouldn’t keep him waiting too long. She filled the mixing bowl with cold water. If she left it for any length of time, any suet stuck on the side would dry hard and make it difficult to wash up quickly.

  ‘Ruby, where are you?’

  ‘Coming,’ she called. Ruby was an attractive girl with big sultry eyes, and she wore her dark hair in a short bob, rather like the style of the American film star Louise Brooks.

  She’d left her husband outside in the garden and she supposed he was ready to come back inside. He was perfectly capable of getting himself indoors, but because his injury made it an effort, he preferred to get Ruby to help him.

  Their house in Heene Road, Worthing, had been unexpectedly inherited from a family friend. It was only a short distance from the sea, although the road and a high shingle bank hid the beach from view. Even though it wasn’t strictly true, Ruby and Jim kept its old name, Sea View. The house was light and airy, with the sun on the front in the morning and a sunny aspect in the garden throughout the afternoon.

  ‘Ruby, it’s important.’ Jim sounded impatient.

  She washed her hands, hung up her apron and smoothed down her dress. She loved the feel of the material. She had made it herself from an ‘easy-to-make’ pattern and she was rather proud of her efforts. The material was red with white spots. It had a scoop neckline with long raglan sleeves coming from a yoke in a contrasting colour, and she had spent several happy evenings with the treadle sewing machine to get it ready for today.

  The past few years, and more, had been difficult for both of them. Ever since Jim had fallen on the pavilion steps back in 1934 and been crushed under a weight of bodies, there was an ever-present fear that he might never walk again. While he spent months and months in hospital, ‘Magic Memories’ – the photography business he’d founded, his pride and joy – had been put on hold. A year after the accident Ruby had had high hopes that things would at last get back to normal when, on her birthday and after weeks of practice, the whole family had met in the newly refurbished Southern Pavilion on Worthing pier and Jim had struggled towards her on two sticks. Sadly, her happiness was short-lived. A bad infection followed and, when he recovered, the discomfort in his hips meant that Jim couldn’t stand for any length of time, so going back to wedding photography and taking holiday snaps was out of the question.

  Ruby had been devastated. ‘It’s not fair,’ she’d told Bea.

  ‘Life’s not fair,’ her mother had said philosophically. ‘We all have to make the best of what we have. He needs you to be the strong one now.’

  At first Ruby had been angry with her mother, but as time went on, she began to see the wisdom of her words and adjusted to the changes in their lives. As it turned out, it wasn’t all doom and gloom. When they had been lucky enough to move into Linton Carver’s old house, Ruby turned it into a guest house and became the main breadwinner. It was a lot of hard work, but she had never been afraid of that. She had kept reminding her husband that they would be all right, but Jim wasn’t all that happy about it.

  ‘A man should support his wife,’ he’d said mournfully, ‘not the other way around.’

  Ruby had sat on the arm of the chair next to him and put her arms around his shoulders. ‘I still have you, and that’s all that matters,’ she’d assured him with kisses. ‘Anyway, I’m not doing this on my own. We’re a team. We’ll do it together.’

  But as far as Jim was concerned, the life they’d once dreamed of was slipping away for good, and he made it clear he couldn’t see himself playing the role of bon ami to the guests.

  ‘Ruby!’

  Ruby opened the back door and almost tripped over next door’s cat. ‘No, no, you can’t come in now. Off you go, Biscuit,’ she said crossly. ‘Shoo.’ Biscuit mewed and stepped back, his tail in the air. Ruby closed the door firmly behind her. She didn’t want the cat in her kitchen.

  Jim was near the hedge at the bottom of the garden and seemed to be hunched over. As she hurried towards him, her heart almost stopped. Had he slipped out of the chair? She should have come at once. Maybe he had been taken ill with some sort of attack? Oh God . . . was he all right?

  ‘Jim, what’s happened?’

  He turned his head as she came down the garden and beamed. ‘The trap worked, Ruby. Look, I’ve caught the little beggar!’ And Ruby found herself staring into the frightened face of a little grey monkey.

  For the whole of the previous week Worthing had been on tenterhooks because an escaped monkey was running up and down the roofs in Rowlands Road. As it darted from one hiding place to another, people tried to be helpful to those aiming to catch it by waving bananas, but the animal’s fear of being caught was stronger than its hunger and it remained at large. When the story reached the front page of the Worthing Herald, visitors to the town flocked past the Lido and turned inland, craning their necks skywards in the hope of seeing it. Newspaper photographers tried in vain to get that elusive picture. The hunt was also on for the owner of the monkey, but no one seemed to know who it belonged to. Some said it came from the circus in Victoria Park; some believed it belonged to a rich entrepreneur who lived in one of the big houses along Shelley Road; while others thought it had been in the town as part of an exhibition on India and had escaped out of a window. The exhibition had moved to another town, with no mention of a lost monkey, and no one had laid claim to the animal. It was a complete mystery. Once the weekend was over and everybody had gone back to work, the whole thing was treated as little more than a nine-day wonder.

  Then, a few days ago, the monkey had come into their garden and Jim had set himself the task o
f catching it. Ruby wasn’t very keen, but it was the first time in weeks that her husband had shown any interest in anything, so she kept quiet. He had shut himself in the shed for a day or two and emerged with a home-made wire trap. Ruby had raised a questioning eyebrow, but he’d left it on the top of a cold frame and had put ‘bait’ – bits of fruit – all around it. Inside the cage was a large grape, speared on a piece of wire.

  Now that Ruby was face-to-face with the monkey, it was obvious what had happened. The little creature had obviously spent some time walking around the cage, eating the food on the outside and, confident that he was safe, had finally been tempted by the grape inside the cage. But as soon as he’d made a grab for it, the wire triggered a spring and the door snapped shut behind him. Despite his frantic screams, the little monkey was trapped.

  ‘Oh, Jim,’ cried Ruby, ‘poor little thing. What are we going to do?’

  ‘Help me into the bath chair,’ said Jim, ‘and we’ll take it back to the circus.’

  Ruby’s jaw dropped. ‘What – now?’ She was horrified at the thought.

  ‘We have to,’ said Jim. ‘You know they’re leaving today. Come on, there’s not a moment to lose.’

  ‘But it might not belong to them.’

  ‘Well, we’ll soon find out, won’t we?’ said Jim.

  ‘It looks too small to be in the circus,’ Ruby insisted. ‘Don’t they use chimpanzees?’

  ‘If you’ve got a better idea, Ruby,’ Jim challenged her, ‘fire away.’

  The monkey regarded her carefully. It was grey, with a black face and ears, and it had a long S-shaped tail. As Jim talked soothingly to it, the little chap sat on its haunches and tackled the grape hungrily.

  Ruby’s heart sank. The last thing she wanted to do was rush up to Victoria Park. It wasn’t far, but it was far enough – probably a good mile and a half inland. ‘We can’t take it now,’ she protested. ‘The family will be here soon. Percy and Rachel will be here at noon, and Mother, my father and May are walking over at half-past. We can’t be out when they come.’

  Jim looked at his watch. ‘There’s a good hour and a half before they get here. Plenty of time to get to Victoria Park and back again.’

  Ruby opened her mouth to say something, but the expression on his face told her arguing would be a waste of time. With a resigned sigh, she trudged wearily back towards the house.

  Once Jim was sitting in the bath chair with the cage on his lap, Ruby pulled on her coat and hat. She turned her back so that he wouldn’t see her blinking back her tears. Jim could be so infuriating at times. This wasn’t meant to happen. By the time they got back, she’d be hot and out of breath from pushing him all the way to the park and back. It was hardly the best way to greet her relatives, but it seemed as if the monkey sensed her irritation more than her husband did.

  Normally Ruby enjoyed walking down Heene Road, a road that was cut in two by the road leading to Goring and beyond. Once part of the village of Heene, which had been swallowed up by the ever-growing popularity of Worthing during the Victorian era, the southern end of Heene Road consisted mostly of large houses with big gardens, while the northern end was flanked by more modest terraced houses. The Great War had put an end to the upper-middle-class households with live-in servants, leaving behind a genteel poverty and live-in lodgers.

  The old-fashioned bath chair – the only contraption Ruby could afford – was unwieldy, and Jim was no light weight. In 1935 someone had lent them a wheelchair for a while, but it had to go back for a relative, and being inactive for so long meant that Jim’s weight had ballooned. Ruby covered the monkey’s cage with a piece of blanket and, once it was in the dark, the monkey became less agitated. As she pushed the chair, Ruby almost envied it. If only she could cover herself with a blanket and find a bit of peace and calm.

  Right now, she felt cross. Cross with herself, and cross with Jim. She should have dug her heels in and refused to go, but if she had, Jim would only have sulked. This was spoiling what had promised to be a happy occasion with the family. Thank goodness she had got everything ready for them. But just in case finding the monkey’s owners took longer than Jim thought, she’d left a note on the kitchen table to say where they were. She had thought of popping next door to ask Mrs McCoody to look out for Percy’s car, but she knew how much her neighbour liked to talk. If she stopped to explain what had happened – and, knowing Mrs McCoody, she would have to share every little detail – the whole trip would take twice as long.

  Biscuit followed her down the road, mewing. Ruby shooed him away again. ‘I don’t understand what’s wrong with that stupid cat today.’

  It was hard work pushing the bath chair. Jim wasn’t very good at steering the front wheel at the best of times and, with the monkey’s cage on his lap, he was easily distracted. At the end of the road they hit a stone on the pavement and the chair jolted sharply forwards. The cage slid dangerously near the ground.

  ‘Look out!’ Jim snapped. ‘You nearly had both of us on the ground.’

  Ruby’s face flushed with anger. ‘You’re the one steering,’ she said tetchily. ‘I’m doing my best.’

  Jim was immediately contrite. ‘Sorry, love.’

  While he heaved himself back into the seat, Ruby gripped the wire to put the cage back onto his lap. At the same time she felt a sharp set of teeth on her fingers. ‘Ouch – the little beggar bit me!’

  ‘For God’s sake, Ruby, be careful,’ Jim said. ‘Did it break the skin?’

  Ruby examined her fingers. ‘No.’

  ‘You could have ended up with blood poisoning,’ Jim went on. ‘There’s no telling what an animal like that has been eating. Use a bit of common sense!’

  Fuming, Ruby held her tongue and pushed onwards, but as they turned into Cowper Road, Jim said, ‘Oh, bugger! I think it’s just peed on me.’

  With an exaggerated sigh, Ruby stopped the bath chair and rearranged the cage, this time on top of the blanket, but too late to prevent the wet patch on Jim’s best trousers.

  ‘What’s the time?’

  ‘Five past eleven.’

  This was going to take a lot longer than they’d both thought. Ruby pursed her lips and set off for a third time.

  Victoria Park, a large area of green sandwiched between terraced houses and a school, was almost empty. The big top and the animals were gone, although there were a few circus people milling around, clearing up the rubbish. A couple of children played outside a caravan. Eventually Ruby caught up with one man and they showed him the monkey.

  ‘’Taint ours,’ he declared firmly, as he sniffed back the dewdrop on the end of his nose and wiped it with the back of his hand.

  ‘He must be,’ said Jim. ‘Who else would have a monkey?’

  ‘Sorry, mate,’ said the man, shaking his head and walking away.

  ‘Well, we can’t keep him,’ Ruby called after him desperately. ‘I run a guest house near the sea. The guests won’t take kindly to a monkey running around the place. Isn’t it possible you can give him a home?’ The man hesitated, and Ruby crossed her fingers behind her back. ‘He’s very tame.’

  ‘Sorry, darlin’,’ said the man. ‘Wrong sort. That’s a grey langur. Comes from India. Got any organ-grinders left in Worthing?’ He chortled, revealing a line of brown and broken teeth. ‘Them’s the sort they use.’

  There was nothing left for it but to trudge all the way back home with the wretched thing. Ruby and Jim didn’t speak, but the atmosphere between them was very tense. They arrived back at Sea View just as her brother Percy and her sister-in-law, Rachel, pulled up in the car. For Ruby, coping with a lost monkey was overtaken by the thrill of seeing her four-month-old niece again.

  ‘Hello . . . hello, sweetheart. How are you both? Hasn’t she grown . . . Oh, you’re beautiful. Come in, come in.’

  Jim struggled out of the bath chair and, using his two sticks, wobbled towards the back door. Biscuit was back again, mewing and threading himself around people’s legs. ‘Damned cat,’ murmured
Jim as he pushed it away with his foot.

  ‘Hang on a minute, mate.’ Percy was unloading gifts from the boot of the car: flowers, some fresh eggs and a couple of bottles of beer. ‘I’ve got something here that might help you.’

  Inside the house, Ruby and Rachel hugged each other, then Rachel held her at arm’s length. ‘New dress?’

  Ruby nodded. ‘I made it myself,’ she said, giving a twirl.

  ‘It’s gorgeous,’ said Rachel, ‘and red really suits you, with your dark hair.’

  ‘You look amazing as well!’ Her sister-in-law was looking particularly lovely in a green silk blouse with a fan-tail at the back of the waist. Her black pencil skirt complemented it perfectly.

  Rachel stooped to take Alma out of her Moses basket and put her into Ruby’s arms. The two of them looked at each other. Alma was a pretty child with thick, dark hair like her mother, and she had her father’s merry eyes. She was awake and regarded Ruby with a curious stare, her mouth poised in an ‘oooh’ shape. Ruby’s heart melted as she smiled and talked softly to her niece.

  Percy pushed the door wide open and Jim crashed inside.

  ‘Look what he’s brought me, Ruby,’ said Jim. He was walking behind a brand-new upright wheelchair. Ruby gasped with delight. ‘It’s the very latest model. Isn’t it terrific?’

  It certainly was. She’d seen a chair just like that in a magazine. It was very expensive, an Allwin Ensign with padded armrests, a sturdy canvas seat and a back that could be placed in two separate positions. The frame was metal, and the sloping handlebars made it look a lot easier to push than the bath chair. It had a footrest for Jim’s feet as well. ‘It can be folded away,’ said Percy, demonstrating, ‘so it won’t take up too much room.’

  ‘Percy, it’s amazing,’ said Ruby, giving her brother a kiss on the cheek. She could hardly take it in. ‘It must have cost a fortune. You shouldn’t have done it.’

  ‘Why not?’ Percy shrugged. ‘We’re family.’

  The two men took themselves off to the sitting room with the beer bottles and a couple of glasses, while Ruby handed the baby back to her mother.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Rachel, jerking her head towards the monkey cage, which had been left on the floor by the back door. Ruby pulled back the blanket and her sister-in-law exclaimed, ‘Good Lord!’