Authors: Lilian Harry
Her words were drowned by a sudden heavy knocking on the back door. Ruth jumped, startled, and looked at Sammy. ‘Whoever can that be? I hope it’s not bad news about Terry. Or Alec – or Ben …’
After the evacuation from Crete, Terry had gone back to Africa, where he was in the desert fighting against Rommel’s troops. Alec was at sea yet again, after getting home only twice during the entire summer, and Ben had been called up. He’d gone into the Air Force and, to everyone’s surprise, become a pilot. He was stationed somewhere in Sussex and, like the others, couldn’t get home for Christmas. The gathering would be smaller than ever this year, Ruth thought, with George the only man in the family left.
She hurried to open the door, her heart in her mouth, fully expecting to see a telegram boy in his dark-blue uniform, a brown envelope in his hand and his red bike propped against the fence. Instead, she found herself tilting her head to stare into the dark eyes of Dan Hodges.
Ruth’s heart leapt. They stared at each other for a moment, then Dan’s brows drew together and the swift uprush of unexpected emotion sank away, leaving her dismayed and apprehensive. She lifted one hand to her mouth.
‘
Dad
!’ Sammy was behind her, his voice high with excitement. Still bemused, she stood back as he pushed past her and clasped his father’s arm. Dan looked down and she
saw the expressions chase across his face. Surprise – uncertainty – and, finally, a faint softening of the hard features, a glimmer of emotion in the dark-brown eyes.
‘Dad, have you come to spend Christmas? We’re going carol singing as soon as it’s dark. There’ll be mince pies and
everything
. I’ve got a stocking to hang up. I’m going to get
presents
.’
Dan looked down at his son but said nothing. He laid his gloved hand on the boy’s head and spoke to Ruth.
‘I come to take him home.’
Ruth stared at him. ‘Take him
home
? But – but it’s
Christmas
!’
‘Well, I know that, don’t I? That’s why I come. Place for a nipper at Christmas is in his own home, with his own dad. I rode me bike out –’ he indicated the battered black cycle leaning on the fence ‘– and we’re going back on the train. There’s one in forty minutes, so the bloke at the station told me. I can put me bike in the guard’s van.’
‘But –’ Ruth could find nothing to say. Sammy had dropped back a little and was staring from one to the other, his eyes wide and a little frightened. She gestured helplessly. ‘You’d better come in. You must be frozen after that ride. I – I was just making a cup of tea.’
‘I don’t want to take advantage,’ he said harshly, following her in. ‘If you’ll just put the boy’s bits and bobs together – I wouldn’t say no to a cuppa, all the same,’ he conceded, dropping his gloves and scarf on the table. ‘It’s freezing brass monkeys out there, if you’ll pardon the expression. I’m shrammed.’
Ruth slid the kettle over on the range and took some cups down from the dresser. She was glad of the occupation, to give her time to get over the shock of Dan’s sudden appearance. Did he really mean to take Sammy back to Portsmouth now – tonight? On Christmas Eve, when the child had been looking forward so much to the carol singing and the party? Didn’t he realise how much a
part of the family Sammy had become? She looked at Silver, sitting on his perch in the corner, as if for help, but the parrot was quiet for once and merely stared back at her.
The kettle began to whistle. Ruth spooned tea into the pot, adding one extra in spite of Lord Woolton’s advice, and went to the larder to get the milk. It looked fresh and rich as she poured it into the cups, not like that thin stuff she’d heard they got in the towns. It was milk like that, and butter, and eggs straight from the hens, that Sammy needed. Look how it had built him up. Why he was twice the kiddy he’d been when he first arrived.
‘You don’t really mean to take Sammy home now, do you?’ she asked, putting the cups of tea on the table. ‘Would you like something to eat? I’ve made some bread, fresh, and there’s some blackberry and apple jam, you’d be welcome to a slice.’
Dan hesitated. ‘I don’t want to take your rations.’
‘It’s all right,’ Ruth said quietly. ‘You’ve had a long ride. Here.’ She set the loaf, freshly baked that morning, on the table, and put the dish of farm butter and the pot of jam beside it. ‘Sammy picked the blackberries,’ she added. ‘Didn’t you, Sammy?’
‘Yes,’ he said. He sounded subdued after his first excited welcome – the most exuberant Ruth had ever seen – and sat at the table beside his father, watching as Dan spread the bread Ruth had given him. ‘In September. They grow wild on the hedges. They’re free.’
‘So are the apples,’ Ruth added. ‘They come from my sister’s orchard. It’s just the sugar that’s a problem, but the government did let us have extra for making jam, so we all made as much as we could.’
He’s not interested in all that, she told herself. He’s hungry and thirsty, and glad of what he can get, but he hasn’t come all this way to hear about jam-making. He’s come for Sammy. He’s taking Sammy away for Christmas.
He’s taking Sammy away from
me
.
‘You don’t really want to take Sammy back to Portsmouth, do you?’ she asked again, after a moment, during which Dan ate as if he were famished. ‘We’d got things all planned. We’re going carol singing this evening and to dinner with my sister tomorrow. There’s church as well, and games – he enjoyed it so much last year,’ she added pleadingly, seeing no change in Dan’s dark face. ‘And this year – why, he’s almost like one of the family. In fact, I was going to ask you—’ She broke off abruptly, but not before Dan, raising his eyes suddenly, had caught her expression. Their eyes met and she caught her breath. He knows what I was going to say, she thought. He knows I want to keep Sammy here – not just for Christmas, but for always.
There was a long silence. Dan chewed his bread and kept his eyes fixed on her face. He swallowed and drank some tea. Then he got to his feet. ‘Come on, Sam. Pack up what you got to take with you. We got a train to catch.’
Ruth was on her feet too. ‘Mr Hodges –
Dan
– please! He’s been looking forward to it so much. We’ve been making plans for weeks. Look at all these decorations.’ She waved her hand about the room, bright with paper chains and firelight. ‘Sammy made all these himself. He’s been so happy—’
‘Well, he can be happy with me. We got decorations too, ones he made with his mother. I’ve put ’em up, all ready for him. I’m his father, Mrs Purslow, and I’ve still got a home for him to come to. Where else should a boy be at Christmas but in his own home, eh? Tell me that. And I want him there. I missed enough, this past year, what with my other boy being away and their mother passing on. I don’t want to miss no more. I wants my boy with me for Christmas, and that’s it and all about it.’ He turned again to Sammy. ‘Go on. Go and get your stuff together.’
Sammy looked from one to the other. ‘Auntie Ruth …’
‘Go on, Sammy,’ she said quietly. ‘Go and do as your
father says. If he wants you to go home for Christmas you must go. It’s for him to say.’
‘But – the carol singing—’
Dan turned on him. ‘Bugger the carol singing! You can sing carols in the train. You’re coming with me, d’you hear? Now go and do as you’re told, or you’ll feel the flat of my hand!’
Sammy turned and scurried up the stairs. Ruth, horrified, stood by the table, one hand held out as if to stop Dan Hodges in his tracks. ‘Mr Hodges! You can’t—’
‘I can and you know I can.’ He paused, steadying himself, and looked at her. ‘Look, I’m not saying you ain’t been good to him, Mrs Purslow, and I’m not saying he ain’t had a good billet here with you. But he’s
my
boy, when all’s said and done, and I got me rights.’
‘Of course you have.’ Ruth put a hand to her forehead. ‘Of
course
you have. It’s just that – if only you’d let me know sooner. If only
Sammy
had known … You will bring him back, won’t you?’ she asked, filled with sudden dread. ‘Once Christmas is over – you will let him come back?’
There was a silence. Then Dan shrugged.
‘Have, to, I suppose, won’t I? The war don’t look too good and we’re busy in the yard. Bloody ships being sunk, left, right and centre. All the same, it looks like the bombing’s over and that’s the reason he’s here.’ He lifted his cup again and drained it. ‘Ta for the tea, Mrs Purslow, and I’m sorry about this but Sammy
is
my boy and it’s only right we should be together at Christmas.’
‘I know.’ She stood miserably by the table, not knowing what to say next. Then a thought struck her. ‘His presents! His
stocking
! Look, you can take them with you, can’t you? I’ll put them in a bag. Only don’t let him see them, will you? Look, there’s this one empty, for him to hang up tonight, and this one full, for him to find in the morning. And here’s his present – a game and a book. And – and –’ she cast about wildly for something else to make Sammy’s
Christmas a happy one ‘– here, take the rest of this loaf, and the butter and jam – and there’s some cakes in this tin, you can have those – and this packet of jelly, good job I hadn’t already made it.’ She was thrusting the things into a shopping bag as she spoke. She grabbed some fruit from the bowl on the dresser, a few Cox’s pippins, a couple of pears, an orange she’d been saving for Boxing Day. As she pushed them into the bag, Sammy came down the stairs, not clattering as he usually did, but quietly, as if even his boots were reluctant to leave. He dragged a couple of brown-paper bags behind him, bulging with his few clothes, hastily rolled into untidy balls.
He stood and looked at her. ‘Auntie Ruth …’
‘It’s all right,’ she said, bending quickly to kiss him. ‘It’s all right, Sammy, my love. You go with your dad and have a nice time, and we’ll have another party when you come home. I – I’ll think of you, when we’re singing carols.’ She straightened and looked at him, her eyes full of tears. ‘Oh,
Sammy
!’
‘Auntie Ruth!’ He flung his arms round her waist, burying his head against her. ‘Auntie Ruth, I don’t want to go to Portsmouth! I want to stay here with you. Tell him I don’t have to go! Tell him I don’t!’
Ruth bit her lips hard. She looked up in dismay and saw Dan’s expression tighten. She unravelled Sammy’s fingers from her pinafore and clasped his hands, looking intently into his tearful face.
‘I’m sorry, Sammy, but he’s your dad and if he says you must go, you have to do it. You’ll be back here in a few days, I promise. Now, you go with him, and be a good boy and have a happy Christmas.’
He looked at her as if he had been struck. Then, turning away, he trailed slowly towards the back door and out into the garden.
Dan gave her a curt nod. His face was shuttered. He wound his scarf round his neck again and picked up his
gloves. ‘I’ll say goodbye, then. I’m sorry if this comes a bit sudden, Mrs Purslow. It ain’t been easy …’ He followed Sammy out into the gathering dusk, collecting his bike from the fence as he went.
Ruth stood in the doorway and watched them go, the big man and the small, hunched boy. The wind seemed colder than ever and there was cloud appearing again in the sky. Perhaps there wouldn’t be a moon after all.
The carol singing had lost its appeal. She would go, but she wouldn’t feel the same joy in it. She wouldn’t see Sammy’s picture of shepherds, washing their flocks by night, or hear his clear little voice singing ‘Once in Royal David’s City’. She wouldn’t tuck him up in his bed, or see him hang up his stocking, or kiss him goodnight. She wouldn’t hear his excited cries in the morning as he woke to the lumpiness of a filled stocking, or see his eyes grow huge as he discovered a silver threepenny bit in his helping of Christmas pudding.
The two figures had disappeared. She went back into the cottage and closed the door. It was cold inside, from the air she had let in, and colder still because Sammy was no longer there.
Would he really come back? She’d talked to him as if he would, as if they’d have another party for him to make up for the Christmas he’d missed. But there had been something in Dan’s eyes, in his voice, that filled her with foreboding.
The man was lonely, she thought. He’d lost his wife and both his boys, and he was desperately lonely. He wanted someone back in his home, in his life, and Sammy was the only one. Once he’d got him there, he wouldn’t let him go.
Poor Dan, she thought sadly. Poor, poor Dan.
‘Oh, Silver,’ she said in a voice full of tears, ‘do you think we’re ever going to see our Sammy again?’
Silver stood on one leg on his perch and scratched his head with the other. For once, he seemed lost for words
and his beak remained closed as she scratched his head. She sighed and went to the cupboard to fetch her coat.
Silver didn’t speak until she was just going out of the front door. She heard his voice as she stood for a moment letting her eyes get used to the darkness.
‘Sod the little bugger,’ she heard, and then, in Sammy’s own voice, half Portsmouth, half country, ‘Sam, Sam, shine a light. Ain’t you playing out tonight?’
It seemed a long, exhausting journey back to Portsmouth.
Sammy, still bewildered by the sudden change in events, trotted beside his father along the lane to the little station. There was only one more train until after Christmas and the only other person waiting was an old man who lived some way out of the village. Sammy had seen him once or twice but never spoken to him.
‘You one of the ’vacuees?’
Sammy glanced at his father, who nodded. ‘My boy is. I’m taking him home for Christmas.’
The old man nodded. He had a small cardboard suitcase, its corners fraying and broken, and he was wearing a long mackintosh and had a scarf wound several times round his thin neck. Bushy eyebrows showed under his flat cap and there was hair sprouting from his nostrils. He stared down at Sammy and Sammy backed away a little.
‘Right thing too. Nippers oughter be in their own places at Christmas. Us Bridge Enders don’t want ’em under our feet then. Don’t want ’em at all, tell the truth. Glad to see the back of ’em.’
‘The widow woman Sammy was with seemed all right,’ Dan said doubtfully. ‘She didn’t want him to come away.’