Ruby McBride
1
21 May 1894
‘Rise and shine chuck, kettle’s on.’
Ruby stretched blissfully, then lifted her arms and wrapped them about her mother’s neck in a tight, warm hug. Even if she was nearly eleven, she hoped never to be too old for a morning cuddle. ‘Is this the special day you promised us, Mam?’
‘It is love, and if you don’t shape yourself, you’ll miss out on a very special breakfast an’ all. I’ve saved a bit of jam to go on us bread and marg this morning.’
The thrill of a day’s holiday from school made Ruby want to shout with joy, and jam on her bread took it into the realms of fantasy. She’d known too many mornings when there’d been no breakfast at all. Inside, she felt a bit sick with the wonder of it, and prayed she wouldn’t disgrace herself by not managing to eat the promised treat.
Molly McBride kissed her daughter and tweaked her snub nose. ‘See you wash yer lovely face and hands especially well this morning. We don’t want her Majesty to see the McBride’s looking anything less than their best, now do we, chuck? Not when she’s come all the way up from London to see us, eh?’ Ruby giggled as her mother gave a huge wink then, one hand at her hip and the other lifting her long cotton skirts she sashayed away, nose in the air, just as if she were the Queen of England herself. Oh, she was a laugh a minute, her mam. But then she leaned over the table, clinging on to the edge as she started coughing, which quite ruined the effect.
Ruby felt the familiar jolt of panic but said nothing, knowing how her mother hated a fuss or any show of sympathy. ‘I won’t let it rob me of me sparkle,’ she would say, but the cough that had got worse all winter was a constant worry at the back of Ruby’s mind. She felt thankful that summer was almost here, for the warmer weather would surely ease it. And Mam didn’t want her to worry about anything today, not with the Queen herself coming to open the Manchester Ship Canal that had cost millions of pounds to build. The big ditch, they called it. Folk had been putting up flags and bunting for days, and there was to be a band.
Apart from Molly McBride’s tuneless singing after her nightly glass of stout, there wasn’t a lot of music in Ruby’s life. And when the opening ceremony was over, there would still be cocoa and bunloaf to look forward to, out in the back yard here. Mam had told her nothing about this, no doubt wanting it to be a surprise but Ruby had heard about it from the other tenants. It was to be a sort of party, all of their own.
After a moment or two the spasm abated and she turned to wink again at Ruby, handkerchief pressed to her mouth. ‘You waken our Pearl and Billy, while I see how far I can mek this jam stretch. We’ll want some butties to tek with us, so it’ll be nobbut a scrape. Now look sharp.’
‘I will Mam.’ Pearl and Billy were curled up beside her like a pair of puppies, keeping each other warm. Ruby gave her sister a little shake but she only grunted and sank further under the blanket and old coats that served as covers, her dandelion bright hair the only sign of her presence in the bed, the fronds intermingling with Billy’s light brown locks. If Ruby hadn’t known that ‘they all came from a different seed though grown out of the same pod’, as her mam liked to explain their different fathers, she would have wondered how it was the McBride’s could be so unalike. Billy, at four, an impish ball of mischief. Six year old Pearl, plump, pretty and a bag of nervous energy with not an unselfish thought in her silly head. And herself, long-legged and scrawny with nut-brown curls that fell to her shoulders when not in their usual braids, eyes to match, set in a pale face beneath winged eyebrows and with a square chin which proved, according to Mam, that she was obstinate as a mule. Oh, but they were as happy a bunch as any family could wish to be. How else could they have survived?
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