Strangely there are no photos of Bob and Ruth, but I include this bit of writing because it is so moving and revealing and because I remember "Aunty" Ruth so fondly too.
Returning to civvy street gave me no problems. I uickly picked up the threads, caught up with old friends and contacted the East Finchley Communist Party branch. That's when I met Ruth Brown. Not only did we share a surname, as my maiden name had been Brown, but we discovered that we had both been at Hornsey high School. To cap that, I discovered that her husband Bob shared the same birthday as my husband Jerry, as well as his punning sense of humour. then when her second daughter was born on my birthday and Ruth named her Zelda Brown after me, i was quite certain ours was a friendship made in heaven. We were destined to be best friends I thought and so we were until death did us part.
When we first met in September 1945, Ruth already had one daughter, Naomi. Our husbands were still in the forces: Bob in the army in Holland and Jerry in the navy on the China Seas, but by February 1946 both were demobbed. Bob had worked in the accounts department of the BBC before the war and his job awaited him on his return to Britain. Until she had Naomi Ruth had worked for the GPO and been very active in the trades union. Slight of figure and only 5 feet 1 tall, it seemed odd to think of her frightening the life out of the bosses, but her reputation as a shop steward and negtiator was formidable. Bob was 5 feet 11, thin and bespectacled, and had read everything lenin had ever written. Orphaned as a young child, he had been brought up by a working class couple and had an unhappy and deprived childhood. That had made him determined to improve himself. He was what the Party called a worker-intellectual.
Jerry admired him greatly and they both enjoyed each other's company. We marvelled at how alike they were and Ruth called them the "two-headed troll". Neither Bob nor Jerry could express affection easily, but they loved strongly.
Ruth and i becae pregnant around the same time, although my Sue was born in November 1947 and young Zelda waited until my birthday on December 26th to arrive. There is often a strong bond between women who have their babies at the same time, and ours was particularly strong. We went to the clinic together and helped each other through the worrying baby illnesses. We understood each other's feelings of imprisonment in four walls when the children were small, so together we pushed our prams to Cherry Tree Woods most afternoons, where we discussed the books we had read, gossiped about the people we knew and worried about world affairs. And gradually we opened up to each other about our past and how we felt about our present lives. Husbands, naturally, figured large in our conversations.
We performed our Party duties together, too. The Daily Worker had to be sold, the Party literature distributed and leaflets pushed through letterboxes. Sometimes all four of us would go out together or Bob and Jerry might arrange to meet us at a pub when we had finished our Daily Worker sales rounds. At that time we were concentrating our efforts on homes for the homeless, pressurising our council to build more flats for the workers. We carried out a survey of the whole of Finchley, showing on a crudely drawn map every bomb site and empty plot of land on which they could build and then we presented it to councillors.
Our party meetings were interesting and enjoyable, sometims discussing current ppolitical issues and sometimes critically evaluating marxist literature. Arthur and ken, the two RAF lads i had met at Woolwich Poly, were back home in Finchley and had joined our branch, and they brought along their friend henry, who had been in Malta throughout the war. He became like a member of the family for both Ruth and myself, and he remained my friend until his death.
At Christmas 1947 I started what became a tradition. I opened my home to all comers on the Saturday before Christmas for a party. Jerry got a barrel of beer from our local and we had lots of spirits and we made a bowl of punch to warm us up. We played games like Murder and Charades, and there was always someone to start the singing. The other tradition that started at that time was spending Boxing Day at the Browns for a joint celebration of mine and young Zelda's birthdays.
Like all comrades Ruth and I worked hard to amke a success of the local Daily Worker bazaar to raise money for the newspaper. The Finchley labour movement turned out en masse for these events. The Labour party worthies came and locals poured in. Jerry dressed up as Father Christmas and was a wow with the kids.
We moved out of Finchley when Sue was 18 months old. Not long after that Bob and Ruth moved to Enfield Lock, to a little council house that backed on to a brook. Beyond that were fields across which one could walk to Epping in one direction and to Waltham Abbey in the other. The River Lea and the canal criss-crossed the fields and anglers fished from their banks.
We would go over there on a Sunday afternoon and have a long walk with them and their dog Rex. They were very proud of the dog and boasted that even though he had only one testicle he was definitely cock of the walk around Enfield. Ruth and I would walk in front chatting away, with the kids trailig behind. She would show the children the different wild flowers and other delights on which Ruth was such an expert. behind us would follow Bob and Jerry, earnestly talking about their jobs and such like manly pursuits, and the dog would bound to and fro between us, now and again giving his attention to the odd horse or cow that stood in the fields. Before it got dark we would return to Ruth's for high tea. It was aways the same: ham, cheese and salad with lots of bread and butter, pickles an home made sponge cakes.
In front of Ruth's house was an industrial estate on which there was a GPO factory. When her third daughter Ursula was old enough to go to school Ruth went there to work and once agai became a shop steward and later a convenor. She stayed there until her retirement and loved every minute of it. bob stayed at the BBC too, becoming head of his department. When he retired he took up archaeology and spent a lot of tie on digs. He enjoyed the painstaking work and the convivial company. It was whilst scrambling around on a dig that he collappsed and died - and we couldn't think of a better way for him to go!
After Bob's death Ruth was always invited to come with Jerry and me on holiday each year. He was fond of her as I was and we had some good laughs on our travels together. After jerry died Ruth and I continued to explore the continent together and on one trip to Spain young Zelda joined us. After that holiday Zelda and I became very good friends.
The next Christmas Zelda phoned me to say that Ruth had been feeling poorly all week and wouldn't be able to coe to my party. When I phoned the next week t see how she was i realised something was very much amiss Zelda, who was a nurse, had moved in with Ruth in order to look after her because she feared it was liver cancer. i had to face the fact that i was going to lose Ruth after 42 years of deep and loving friendship.
When I first visited her after the news, I found her looking drawn and thinner, but cheerful She was very positive, telling me how she traced the pain with her fingers travelling around her stomach, willing the pain to vanish. She laughed about getting to know her body so intimately after all these years and how she instructed it to be rid of that turbulent intruder. She told me about her neighbour's troubles and compalined with annoyance that the Enfield Preservation Society to which she belonged was losing its battle with a loval pub that wanted to build an extension on the open common land around it. And she read aloud to me the assages she had enjoyed in the book I had given her for Christmas. There was no talk of death, only of continuing hopes and of holdays we might share in the future.
The next time i saw her she was visibly failing and was sick several times, but she remained cheerful She told me she had dreamt of me the night before. We had always told each others our dreams and nightmares. "All the family were gathered together" she said, "and then you came and said you wanted to show me something. You took my hand and led me to the door. When you opened it I saw a beautiful scene. There were grassy hills, a blue sky, a clear river and a purple hero flying acorss the sky". I was speechless, choked with emotion, because she was telling me she knew she was dying and I had been the one she had dreamt about. I was the one she told she was dying.
The next Saturday that I visited her she started talking of the past, of her grandmother who had looked after her when her mother died. We talked of our two headed troll and what we had put up with from those two men. Then just before I left she confessed she wanted a good send off with plenty of flowers. She remembered how the whole neighbourhood had lined the streets for the funeral of the local good hearted prostitute. Grateful clients and neighbours she had helped sent flowers an it was a right royal send off, she said.
After that visit the decline was fast. The following Saturday Sue came with me and Ruth was obviously pleased to see her. They chatted for a short while but Ruth was obviously very tired.
Then I discovered that Ruth had given her favourite painting of flowers to a friend, so I phoned Joan and asked her to paint some more for Ruth. Poor Joan, she found it hard, because she kept remembering how the card she had ainted for her own grandmother had arrived just the next post after she died. The feelings of sorrow from that time made it difficult for her to start the painting, but she did it - a lovely composition o spring flowers, primulas and freesias.
I have to admit that all the way to Ruth I kept wondering whether she woudl be gone before I could give it to her. But when I arrived she lay, tiny and frail in a pretty flower-covered nightie, hardly able to speak, her eyes closing every now and again as she floated off into sleep.
I gave her the painting. "Oh, it's lovely" she muttered. "Tell Joan I love it" and she went off to sleep with a smile on her lips. Every now and then she would wake and say something. "You're having some nice dreams," I said. "Will you tell me about them?" She opened her eyes wide and replied quietly "Remember the house with the little animals? They were such tiny animals. You shouldn't eat them, should you? No, you shouldn't eat little animals".
Those were the last words I heard her say.
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