Ruby's Dream

By Beth Stern

Ruby Ingham's dream is to be a film star.
She sees herself as Rudolph Valentino's lover or as the heroine in a Pearl White epic.
Unfortunately she never achieves her dream in reality but e becomes a very good ballroom dancer.
In real life she is a winder in a cotton mill.

Jack Sherratt, among other things, is a dance promoter and Ruby helps him to buy prizes for the dances. They are. actually on sale or return
and cost 8s.6d each if bought by the dozen from Woolworths.
Jack has an imagination when it comes to occupations. A fortune teller said he would be a rich man one day but his parents are continually worried about his fly-by-night imagination.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Beth Stern
• Release date: Apr 23, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310059421

Book preview

Ruby´s Dream

By Beth Stern

Copyright 2016 Beth Stern

Smashwords Edition

CHAPTER 1

‘Hey up, Joe!’

The sun struggled through the sooty air and the blackened mill chimneys were tall .ghosts in the mist. Damp air swirled about the lodges like wraiths and Jack could see his mother’s washing on the line across the road Not that much stayed clean in Lancashire, what with the soot and the rain. One day, Jack promised himself, when he was older, he’d move down south, where the sun shone and the air was cleaner.

‘Hey up, Jack’ Joe took his last cigarette from his waistcoat pocket and struck a match on The Carter’s Arms tiled wall. The match flared and Jack smelled the sharp odour of phosphorus and the cheap tobacco as it was lit.

‘Still no luck then?’

Joe shrugged and his soft lips turned down. ‘There’s just nowt about, Jack, is there?’

He coughed, spluttering for several minutes but dragged again on his cigarette.

Jack watched his mam’s tabby cat roll over in the sparse sunshine . He could see the poor thing’s ribs clearly through the mangy fur. ‘Aye, even the cat can’t find a bit of a mouse to eat, can it?’ It was potato hash for dinner tonight in their house. His mam made it from what was left on the joint of beef . There ‘d be a few scraps for the cat, mostly gristle. There was very little thrown away in the Sherratt household in the 1920’s.

‘What about you?’ asked Joe

‘I had one,’ said Jack with a grin, ‘ for a whole day.

‘Oh, aye?’ Joe’s interest sparked up and he drew on his cigarette, blowing the smoke high into the sooty air. ‘What was it? Packing or summat?’

Jack laughed. ‘No, you cheeky beggar! It weren’t! It were nowt to do with mill.

He’d always been brighter than Joe. He’d won a scholarship to go to Manchester Grammar School and he should have gone there with a free contract for the train into the city but it wasn’t to be

‘Go on then, clever dick!’ Joe gave his pal a thump on the back. ‘What was it? Tell us!’

‘Clerk at Bamford’s on Union Street,’ replied Jack. He looked up Oldham Road, watching the tram rattle along the rails between the cobbles. There’d be another one in a minute going in the opposite direction, going up the hill towards Oldham. He’d tried for a tram driver but they said he was too young at sixteen. ‘Young lads of your age,’ said the superintendent at the depot, ‘can’t be trusted to bloody behave themselves.’ Jack sighed. He would have loved to be a tram driver. He saw himself sitting in the front of the big vehicle, keeping all the brass shiny and pushing the lever back and forth as the tram drove forward.

‘Bamford’s, eh? ‘said Joe following Jack’s eyes up the street to the uptown tram.. ‘Aiming high, eh? Didn’t they think you were up to it, like?’

Again Jack laughed. He’d always been a happy lad, light-hearted and easy-going, quite different to Joe who was much more serious and often pessimistic. ‘Oh, aye! I was up to it but Bamford’s lad needed a job so ...’ Jack pulled a wry face and shrugged Bamford’s was a well-respected stock brokers in the town.

When he got the job. It meant that he was given the responsibility of running errands and carrying several hundred pounds.

On his very first day Jack had to take a thousand pounds to Bamfords for a customer The teller in the Midland Bank apologised. ‘I’m sorry I can’t give it to you in a single note, sir.’ Jack remembered smiling and saying it was all right. He tucked the two five hundred pound notes into his best waistcoat pocket, trying not to crease them. He would never forget the feel of those crisp notes and wondered if he would ever experience that feeling again.

Joe pinched his cigarette out, saving what was left for another day. ‘I’ve wondered ...’ he said hesitantly, ‘about going in the police.’

‘Dangerous!’ remarked Jack. ‘Me mam’s brother tried that.’

‘But a free uniform!’ Joe liked anything that was free but he would with his family. Food and clothes were always short in a family of seventeen. ‘Look what happened to your Sam.’ Joe asked. ‘He were in hospital a long while, wasn’t he? Terrible scars on his head, aren’t there? And you can tell he’s not right always sitting on that horsehair sofa and your mam having to do everything for him. But I still fancy trying for it. Your Sam was just downright unlucky. Good money and free meals in the canteen. I could get married to Edith on that money.’

‘You?’ questioned Jack surprised. ‘What the heck do you want to do that for? You always said you didn’t want to get married.’

Joe shrugged and patted his waistcoat pocket again for the tab end he’d tucked away for later. ‘Well, women look after you, don’t they? Do washing and cook for you. Look how your mam looks after your Sam.’

‘Yeah, but she can’t do anything else, him being the way he is..’

‘But she loves him, him being her brother. That’s how Edith ‘d be with me. I know she would.’ The remains of the cigarette between his lips and a half smile on his pale face, he closed his eyes. ‘Aye, that’s what I want. It’d work, I know it would.’

‘You’re dreaming, lad,’ said Jack. He and Joe had been friends all their lives, real friends.

‘What I was thinking, like, the police work is long hours and I’ll need somebody like Edith to do all the drudgery, like..’ The snippet of tobacco still in his mouth, he moved it from side to side, but didn’t light it, savouring the odour of the cigarette, and smiled, thinking about Edith and a baby, perhaps, in a crib by the fire. ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ he said. ‘If I could get a job in the police and afford a wife it would be great.’

* **

‘I’m going into business on me own,’ said Jack a few days later. ‘Do ye fancy coming in with me?’

Putting a card into the window of the lorry he had just borrowed Joe Harling turned to look at Jack. ‘Doing what?’ he said, frowning. He jumped down from the lorry’s step and stood back to look at the effect of the card.. He turned to look at Jack to get his opinion.

‘Well,’ Jack said, ‘it was that there lorry of yours It gave me the idea.’ Jack was already out of sight , inspecting the vehicle.

‘It’s not mine!’ said Joe. ‘It’s Mrs Burns! She’s only lent it to me for doing odd jobs and that.’

‘And I thought you were going to get a proper job with the police,’ said Jack.

‘So did I and so did our Edith but it wasn’t to be.’ Joe adjusted the card saying his name and that he was available for light deliveries. ‘Edith hasn’t stopped skriking since I told her it wasn’t to be. She were putting baby clothes in her bottom drawer.’

‘Why wouldn’t they take you?’ asked Jack, walking round the lorry, giving a rear tyre a kick.

‘Hey! Stop that!’ Joe splayed his legs with his heavy work boots to protect the tyre. ‘I’ve only just put a patch on that wheel. ‘I’ve got plans for this lorry. I don’t need you mucking it up.’

Jack leaned against the driver’s door, hands in his pockets. ‘You haven’t said why they wouldn’t take you.