Chapter 43
The siren was earlier than usual, although Ruby worried that her sense of time was slipping. It was difficult to keep track without windows.
She sat on the bed, a thin wool blanket pulled taut over the sheets. Hospital corners. Important to keep to a certain standard. At home, she’d have left her bed unmade, but here it seemed like a defiance. Show him he hasn’t got through to you. Hasn’t beaten you.
Not yet.
Ruby’s assessment of her current situation was bleak. She was going to die in this Anderson shelter. And the stupid thing was, she’d known. She’d known the second she’d seen him near the Empire. She’d always known, right from the start.
He was coming. He’d put in concrete steps leading down to the entrance and his slippers scraped on them, bits of grit he’d picked up from the gravel path, leading down from the house.
Of course, he must be thinking the same thing.
He couldn’t let her go – he’d hang for this – and he couldn’t keep her here for the rest of her life.
So he, too, must have been thinking about when, and how, he’d end it.
End her. So it was going to be him or her, one of these days.
She’d see her moment, and she’d take it.
Not today. He was still like a kid in a candy store, as the Americans in the pictures would say, his eyes roving over her body, then his hands.
The cat that got the cream, her mum would’ve said.
Ruby had never much listened to her mum when she was a child, but now she was a grown-up, out in the world, she found her mum’s aphorisms coming to her, and more often than not they were bang on.
He carried the tea tray into the shelter and locked the door behind him. A brass key in a brass padlock. Put the key on a hook by the door. A little game, letting her see the means of her escape, torturing her with the hope.
‘Lot of bombers tonight,’ he said, as he set down the tea tray on an upturned apple crate.
‘Heinkels, mostly.’ The tray had two cups, one for her and one for him, and a sandwich, for her.
He had his own meal up at the house. Got to keep her strength up, he liked to say.
She thought back to the first night, when he’d slapped her.
How it had shocked her. It seemed like a lifetime ago.
A lifetime of being locked in an underground bunker with a man who raped you every evening, straight after tea.
She ate slowly. Not much to write home about. Two thin slices of brown bread and an even thinner slice of cheese. No butter. Not even margarine. There was a slight bloom of mould on the corner of the bread this evening, but she ate it, slowly, trying not to gag.
‘I saw your mum,’ he said. Ruby tried not to show interest.
‘It was your funeral,’ he continued. ‘Good turnout.’
She finished the bread, sipped the tea, washing it down. The tea was too sweet for her, but she drank it anyway.
‘The boy was there. They let him come up. Time off for good behaviour,’ he joked.
Ruby looked up, before she remembered not to.
‘Hardly recognised him, turning into a country lad. New clothes and everything. There was a brute of a farmer brought him up, must be the one who’s looking after him.’
He stood up and took his jacket off. Hung it on the hook by the door.
‘No,’ Ruby said.
‘What’s that?’
‘Leave me alone,’ she said.
He smiled. ‘I didn’t know you felt like that.’
His fist felt like a brick against the side of her head. The pain was bad, but the shock was worse. The outrage.
He had his hands on her. No pretence now. No false civility.
She couldn’t breathe. She was face down on the camp bed, suffocating. She tried to arch back, make some room, but his hand was holding her head. He was sitting on her back, both of her arms pulled back. He was like a dead weight.
‘Going to have to teach you a lesson,’ he said. He let go of her head and she gasped for air. He ripped her knickers off and forced his fingers inside her. One of his nails was broken. She could feel it.
From a long way away, she heard the siren, muffled by the earth that had been piled up around the shelter. She felt the ground shake. A bomb, perhaps. She willed the bomber towards her, praying for a direct hit. Something to kill her before he did.