Ruby...

I found a red rubber ball in the gutter this morning. Picking it up I turned it over in my hands and immediately a film began to play in my head. An old film, not quite black and white, but rather drab and muted colours. A film from the sixties, one of those gritty social dramas - Poor Cow, The L Shaped Room, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.

Anyway here’s the film that played in my head as I stood holding that red rubber ball.

Ruby

She stood, waiting against the garage wall arms folded across the tightness of her deep pink woollen sweater. Her skirt clung to her wide hipped curves, her pale face blank - slack almost. Her lips were lipstick red, echoed by a slight shadow of red in her dull, bleached blonde hair. It didn’t look quite clean.  She was waiting by the old houses at the end of the Close, past the garages. She lived in one of those old, damp houses; the roof dipped and the windows rotted. It looked grimy, on the edge of falling apart, a bit like her really.

Her name was Ruby. Some said that she wasn’t all there, others that she was a gypsy. She looked old to me, but I guess she wasn’t even in her twenties. Unmarried with a child she couldn’t care for and no better that she ought to be they said. A tart, she stood insolently looking up the road as if she was waiting for somebody.

He appeared almost out of nowhere, quickly crossing the road to where she stood waiting. He looked around. All clear. She smiled and touched his arm. Taking out a packet of cigarettes he lit one up with a match, then another from the first. Too tenderly he put one of the cigarettes between her lips. She drew in the smoke, looked him in the eye and laughed. He laughed too.

I knew who he was, just not what he was; at least I didn’t back then. Of course there was talk - there was always talk on the Close - and of course he denied that there was anything to it. He denied so much, too much really, his denials obvious lies to all but him. I watched, and life went on as I stood watching, hiding behind the car as my red ball rolled down the road and disappeared under a locked gate.

Then together, they walked into her house.