‘The Co-op have got a big bakery just past the Barracks,’ Miss Boote said at last. ‘They’re gettin’ ready for the Christmas rush and lookin’ for temporary staff. It pays well, because it’s temporary,’ she added. ‘You’d get eighteen bob a week, mebbe more.’
‘But I don’t know anything about baking,’ Sara said doubtfully. ‘What good would I be to them?’
‘Go along and find out,’ her grandmother said decisively. ‘Sara, my dear, if you can just get work for a few weeks it will tide you over until something more suitable comes up. I’m afraid you won’t get anything but temporary work this near Christmas; for the most part firms are suited.’
So Sara went along to the Co-op bakery and got a job, though not the one she had imagined at all. She rushed into the house at six that evening, with her hat on the back of her head and one shoelace undone, to announce the moment she got through the doorway, ‘I got it!’
‘Wonderful,’ her grandmother said, giving her a hug. ‘What’re you doin’, flower?’
‘You’ll never guess! I’m delivering, on a big old bicycle with a huge metal carrier at the back and another at the front. Each carrier has a big basket on it . . . they asked if I could ride a bicycle so I said I could . . .’
‘But you can’t,’ her grandmother observed, aghast. ‘Oh, queen, you’ll get killed! The roads are so dangerous, all that traffic, horses, cabs, motor cars, trams . . .’
‘I shan’t get killed because I’ll be careful, and the job starts on Monday, so I’ve time to learn on Miss Boote’s machine,’ Sara said. ‘And you’ll never guess – it’s twenty-two and sixpence a week and they’ll want me until mid-January – a whole lovely month!’
And then Christmas arrived, and when Miss Boote announced that she would be serving Christmas dinner to the poor, and Sara said she would like to go along, Mrs Prescott said that she might as well go too.
‘I’m not a Salvationist, but I believe in giving practical help where it’s possible,’ she said. ‘And what’s more practical than serving a Christmas dinner? Besides, it would be no pleasure for me, to eat alone.’
‘We wouldn’t let you do that, Gran,’ Sara said at once. ‘We’ll be back mid-afternoon, won’t we, Clarrie? We thought we’d eat our main meal in the evening.’
‘Nevertheless, that would mean I’d be alone all day and I’m not standing for it,’ Mrs Prescott said firmly. ‘How I’m to get there I don’t know, since the trams run a Sunday service on Christmas Day and I’m afraid me walkin’ days are over, but I’ll get there somehow. I might get a taxi; I don’t think I could walk.’
‘I’ll give you a seater on my delivery bike, Gran,’ Sara teased. She had learned to ride the machine just in time to start the job, and though she admitted privately to Gran that she and her loaves, cakes and puddings had several times met the hard ground, she had managed to dust both herself and her bakery goods off so that no one knew what had happened.
‘And since they’re going to sack me halfway through January I don’t suppose it matters whether someone tells on me or not,’ she had told her grandmother when describing her experiences on the bike. ‘Besides, I haven’t fallen off nearly so often lately. I’m getting quite good at it.’
The problem of getting about was becoming a very real worry for Mrs Prescott however, and though of course Sara knew a taxi was possible, fares would be a problem.
‘It won’t be long before she can’t manage to step up to the tram,’ Sara told Clarrie Boote, when her grandmother had gone early to bed one night. ‘I suppose we could run to a taxi on Christmas Day, but what about other events?’
Miss Boote said little, but that evening she turned up with a wheelchair. It wasn’t new and it wasn’t smart, but it worked.
‘There you are, Mrs P, your chariot,’ Clarrie said proudly, bringing it round to the front door. ‘All you need is someone to push you, and you’re away!’
‘Where did you get it?’ Sara marvelled. ‘You are so clever, Clarrie!’
‘I asked Major Brett what happened to his old mother’s chair, and he said we could have it. She died twelve months back,’ Clarrie explained. ‘They’re ever so handy if your legs aren’t so good.’
So Christmas Day dawned and the three women set off. Clarrie and Sara took it in turns to push the wheelchair, not bothering to bring the bicycle because Clarrie was in uniform and Sara wore her only decent garment, the grey flannel suit.
They had left early. Sara woke before seven and went downstairs to make tea for them all. After that she helped her grandmother to dress and then made breakfast. It was still only seven-thirty in the morning as they wended their way through the empty, echoing streets, talking softly so that they woke no one who still slumbered. The air was crisp, with a nip in it, the pavements and hedges rimed with frost, and as the darkness gradually gave way to dawn they drew gradually nearer their destination.
‘Well, I never thought I’d be goin’ off to work on Christmas Day,’ Mrs Prescott said over her shoulder as her two companions swung along the pavements in the first pale dawn light. ‘Apart from the years when your parents asked me over, Sara, I’ve had quiet Christmas Days, by and large. And aren’t I looking forward to this one, with lots of people to talk to and lots of laughter!’
‘You can be sure of that,’ Clarrie said. ‘We laugh a lot, in the Army.’
‘It’s funny,’ Sara said, jumping the cracks in the paving stones as she walked along as though she was still eight years old and not eighteen. ‘I seem to laugh much more now than I ever did at home – or at school, either, for that matter. I go to back doors and bakeries and retail outlets as they call them, and everyone’s jolly, they all have a laugh with me, tease me about the bike, the way I ride it, even the way I talk. All sorts of things make them laugh – the way I pull my skirt over my knees, how I wobble all over the road when I glance over my shoulder, how I look in the rain when I’m as wet as a herring . . . It’s amazing, really it is. Why, even when I worked in Barringtons, Miss Warrender and I would have a good old giggle.’
‘Aye. They say religion’s the opiate of the poor, but I think laughter is, meself,’ Clarrie said. ‘Belief in God is good, it gives you a glow and satisfaction, too. But laughter takes you right out of yourself, like.’
‘In that case, I’m surprised the rich haven’t taken out a patent on it and refused to allow others to indulge,’ Gran said from her wheelchair. ‘Still, let’s be thankful that we can still laugh all we like. I’m sure I still do . . . especially now I’ve got you two young’uns using your legs for me!’
‘They don’t think much o’ laughter, the rich,’ Clarrie observed. ‘Nor the powerful, for that matter. When did a teacher ever encourage her class to laugh? When a maid giggles, chances are she’ll get give the order of the boot. And do you know why? Laughter puts folk down, that’s why. It makes the pompous look foolish and the proud trip and fall.’ She grinned at them. ‘That’s why I’m in favour of it,’ she declared, ’and why you’ll always hear laughter in the Army ranks. How are you feelin’, Mrs Prescott? I never realised before how bumpy the pavements are!’
‘It’s the kerbs that are worst, I think, and cobbles, of course,’ Sara said. ‘Never mind, Gran, you’re nearly there – just think of the Christmas dinner we’re going to be preparing, and serving . . .’
‘And eating,’ Clarrie put in. ‘There’ll be plenty, there always is.’
‘All right then, and eating. Just put up with the bumps for another few hundred yards and you’ll be in sight of the Barracks!’
Grace and the black and white kitten had found each other on Christmas Eve, when the pubs were spilling their customers out on to the pavement with shouts of ‘A merry Christmas!’ and much laughter.
Grace had been hanging about outside the Mile End pub on Scotland Road, partly because she knew from experience that landlords – and customers – would sometimes feed starvelings such as herself and also because when the bakers in Scott’s, which was next door to the pub, finished their night-shift they were generous with leftovers – buns that hadn’t risen right, the ‘corners’ of the big, square fruit cakes they made and sold by the piece, farl which had gone stale and so on.
She was managing quite well, was Grace, mainly because she did her best, now, to keep away from her home. Nights were dangerous there, unless you worked it so Da was asleep before you went in, so Grace usually slept rough except when it was so bitterly cold that she was afraid to be out. But though her father was bad tempered in the morning quite often, he was rarely violent. Violence went with the drink, or with the frustration of having no money and therefore being unable to drink.
So there was Grace, bundled up in any number of old, torn rags, sitting in the corner of the pub doorway waiting for closing time. And here by the pub she stood a good chance of food. Men with a bellyful of beer would hand over the remains of their carryout, or a few coppers, to a child such as herself provided she was around at the right time.
And the kitten, tiny, milky-eyed, clearly must have got the message, for it came round the corner, huge ears pricked, tiny, thin body poised for flight . . . and walked almost into Grace’s arms.
‘Hey, little feller,’ Grace said. He was so soft and fluffy, so wide-eyed and wondering! ‘Come an’ see what I’ve got!’
He came. He purred astonishingly loudly, his whole body vibrating with the sound. He rubbed against her skinny ankles, then jumped on to her knee. He accepted a share of a nice, soft currant bun, then he stood on his hind legs, reached up . . . and licked her chin.
Grace had forgotten what it was like to know a flood of total, complete love. She kissed the kitten between its ears, on the end of its tiny pink nose, and then she tucked it up warm, against her body, protected from the wintry chill.
‘You an’ me, we’s both strays, kitty,’ she told it as it settled, purring, close to her heart. ‘We’ll be give some nice food presently, an’ then we’ll find somewhere snug to sleep, jest you an’ me. An’ tomorrer’s Christmas Day – we’ll go to the soup kitchen down the Scottie an’ ’ave somethin’ to eat . . . we’ll ’ave a real good Christmas will us two.’
The kitten purred on and when the pubs were empty and Grace had pennies in her pocket and her collecting bag full of bits and bobs of food, the landlady, cleaning through, put her head out of the door.
‘Here, chuck – you goin’ home, now?’
Grace, wordless, shook her head, ready to run. But there was no need, on this occasion, at least.
‘You’re one of the Carbery kids, ain’t you?’ the landlady said. ‘Eh, we’ve ’ad your ould feller in ’ere once or twice. Well, tomorrer’s Christmas . . . no, by ’eck, it’s today already! Come on, then, you can sleep in the bar. Just this once, mind.’
Grace needed no second invitation. She was over the threshold and curling up on one of the brass-studded leather benches before you could have said ‘knife’.
‘Thanks, missus,’ she said, as the landlady closed the outer door and went through the room to return to her own quarters. ‘We’re ever so grateful.’
‘We?’ the landlady said, raising her brows. ‘’Oo’s we when you’re at ’ome?’
‘Me an’ me kitten; he’s asleep in me jacket,’ Grace said.
The landlady laughed.
‘You’re both welcome,’ she said. ‘I’ll get you a breakfast tomorrer, set you up for the day, like.’
Grace thanked her again as the older woman left the room, closing the door gently behind her. Then she snuggled down. What a Christmas this would be – breakfast, a kitten . . . what more could she ask?
Brogan arrived in Liverpool from Crewe on just about the last train to run on Christmas Eve and went out for a drink with his father before settling down for the night. They went to the Queen’s Arms on the corner of Salop Street and Walton Road and had an enjoyable time, for Brogan knew a number of the regulars there and they all wanted to know how he was going on.
He enjoyed telling his former workmates that he was now an engine driver, and he enjoyed the conviviality, the bright bunches of red-berried holly, the mistletoe bough nailed to the central beam, but all the while he talked, sang, listened to singing, his mind was elsewhere.
If Sara’s still in Liverpool with her gran I’m going to go round, tell her how I feel about her, ask if we can exchange letters, be friends again, he kept telling himself. This time I’ll not sit like a tongue-tied fool in her gran’s front parlour whilst she wonders what on earth’s wrong with me. Tomorrow I’ll go round there and give her the present I’ve bought and ask her to come for a bit of a walk with me.
And once we’re out of the house and by ourselves, without her gran a-listening from the kitchen, I’ll tell her about Polly, because when you love someone you don’t have no secrets from each other, and I’ll ask her to be . . . well, I’ll ask her if she’ll be my girl.
‘Brogan, you aren’t singin’, kiddo,’ one of his erstwhile workmates said to him as the pub rocked to a spirited rendering of
Hark the Herald Angels
. ‘What’s up, then? Are ye too ’igh-nosed for the likes of us, now?’
‘Cat’s gorris tongue,’ someone called out. ‘Or ’e’s in love; tek your pick.’
Brogan just smiled his slow, good-natured smile and sat back in his seat and thought of Sara. She was so pretty, so lively . . . so very, very special! Of course she was a lady, but then wasn’t his mammy a lady, too? Not rich nor important, but a lady, nevertheless. So there was no harm in him at least asking Sara . . .