Put Out the Fires by Maureen Lee Page A

attacked with a pair of garden shears. Tomorrow, before she went to look for a job, she’d go to the hairdresser’s and have a perm.
    The plaits themselves looked pathetic now they were no longer part of her. Shivering, Ruth put them out of sight in a drawer. They made her think of dismembered limbs.
    “The kettle’s boiling,” her father called, “and I’ve no idea how to make coffee.”
    “Coming!”
    Ruth took a final glance at herself in the mirror. She could never be the old Ruth Singerman again, and Ruth Hildesheimer no longer existed. From now on, she would be an entirely new person altogether.
    She squared her shoulders and went downstairs.

Chapter 5
    Tony Costello had found a kitten, pure white with a black patch over one eye and three black paws. It came crawling out of the wreckage of a bombed house one Saturday morning when Tony was out searching for shrapnel—the jagged metal remnants of bombs. His mam complained bitterly about having such horrible reminders of the war on the sideboard as if they were ornaments, but Tony was proud of his collection and the bigger the pieces the better as far as he was concerned. One day, he might have enough to build a bomb of his own.
    The kitten came tripping purposefully over the rubble towards Tony, mewing loudly as if it recognised a friend.
    “Can I keep him, please, Mam?” he pleaded when he took it home. He’d die if she said no.
    “Oh, I suppose so,” she said reluctantly. “But you’ll have to see to it yourself. I’ve enough to do without having a cat to look after on top of everything else.”
    “It’s not a cat, it’s only a kitten.”
    “In case you haven’t noticed, kittens turn into cats, just like little boys turn into men.” She poured milk into an old saucer and as they watched the kitten lap up the drink greedily, Eileen ruffled her son’s fine blond hair. She found it hard to refuse him anything nowadays. Although he appeared quite happy, she felt she’d let him down as badly as she had Nick. “What are you going to call him?”
    “Snowy?” he suggested after an earnest think.
    “That’s nice. There’s an old shoebox in the washhouse along with the waste paper. If you crumple a bit of newspaper inside, it’ll do for a bed.”
    “Ta, Mam,” Tony said blissfully. “I suppose I’d better make him a gas mask.”
    Eileen grinned. “Aren’t you the clever clogs! Anything to keep you busy. Now, get from under me feet, else I’ll never get this pie done before your dad’s home for his dinner.”
    Tony trotted away contentedly clutching the kitten and Eileen rolled a circle of pastry out and placed it carefully on a plate which contained a mixture of stewing steak and potatoes, fluting the edges with a knife. She marked off the section containing most of the meat for Tony.
    After putting the pie in the oven, she collected the remaining pieces of pastry for a jam turnover. It would do for tomorrow’s pudding with custard. In previous days, the turnover would have been eaten for supper or cut in slices for anyone who might drop in for a cup of tea, but nowadays you couldn’t be as generous with your food as you used to be, tea in particular. Two ounces a week for each person wasn’t nearly enough, though it was more than anyone’s life was worth to let Sheila hear you complain, not with so many merchant seamen losing their lives in the effort to keep the country’s belly full - well, half full!
    Francis often brought home little treats which she suspected were black market. Last week, for instance, he’d turned up with a lovely piece of ham for Sunday dinner which had lasted through to Tuesday sliced cold. Eileen felt uneasy about getting more than her fair share of rations. She would far sooner live on the same amount of food as the rest of the street - not counting the Kellys, next door, who ran a thriving black market business - but it was awfully difficult to turn down half a dozen eggs or a couple of pork chops when