Authors: Lilian Harry
‘Ah, uses ’em like slaves, some of ’em does,’ the old man stated. He peered at Sammy. ‘Bet she made yer work, eh? Gave yer lots of jobs to do about the place?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘There you are, see,’ the old man said to Dan. ‘Like slaves.’
There was a silence. Sammy wanted to say that the jobs Auntie Ruth gave him to do weren’t nasty ones, they were just little jobs like his own mother would have given him. Brushing out the fireplace, making his own bed, sweeping snow off the path during the winter – that kind of thing. And cleaning out Silver’s cage, which he’d actually
asked
to do. He wasn’t a slave.
He didn’t say these things because he knew that nobody would listen to him. The old man would talk him down, contradicting all he said, even if it contradicted what he himself had said a minute before. And Dad didn’t really want to hear. He just wanted to get home.
And suppose the old man was right. Suppose Auntie Ruth
didn’t
really want him …
The train chuffed along the track and they all got on. It was full of people going home for Christmas and by the time Dan had got his bike into the guard’s van it was impossible to find a seat. They propped themselves in the corridor and watched the countryside pass by. It was dark by now, and the train was lit by only a few very dim, pale blue lights. It didn’t seem Christmassy at all, apart from some of the other passengers being drunk.
Sammy stared hopelessly out of the window and felt a huge well of tears form inside him. By now, he should have been setting out with Auntie Ruth for the carol singing. Lizzie would be there, and Auntie Jane and Uncle George, and all the other people he’d grown to know and feel at home with. They would have gone round all the houses, singing about shepherds and kings and little babies, and he would have felt a warm glow spreading from his middle and all over him, right down to his fingers and toes. He’d been feeling it for weeks, in anticipation, and tonight it would have been the real thing.
And then there would have been the stocking. He’d been looking forward to the moment when he could hang it at the end of his bed. He knew he was a bit old for a stocking,
because he didn’t really believe in Father Christmas any more – he was nine, after all – but he liked having it and Auntie Ruth seemed to like it too. And there was no doubt that it did make Christmas day specially exciting, to wake up and find the stocking all lumpy and full at the end of his bed.
Best of all would be the party at Auntie Jane’s. It would go on all day, starting with dinner after church, and not finish until nearly bedtime, after all the games and the sing-song. He and Auntie Ruth would walk sleepily home, warm with contentment, and the only fly in the ointment would be that Silver hadn’t been there to share it all. Sammy still didn’t think that was fair.
Now he would be even worse off than Silver, because he wasn’t going to be there at all. He was going to be in the cold, empty little house in April Grove, with no one there but his father. Not Gordon. Not his mother. No decorations, no stocking, no Christmas dinner, no games. He bit his lip hard to stop the tears filling his eyes.
Dan was already wishing he hadn’t come. The nipper didn’t want to come home, that was obvious. He’d been looking forward to Christmas with that Ruth Purslow. And you couldn’t really blame him. She was a really nice woman, he knew that, the sort of woman anyone would be glad to come home to. It was a home you’d be pleased to come to, as well – warm and comfortable, all cleaned up and bright with all those paper chains and that little tree in the corner. And the stocking she’d pushed into the bag he was carrying, along with the present wrapped up in brown paper – that showed she thought a lot of the boy and meant to give him a good time. Despite the old man’s words, Dan knew she didn’t treat Sammy like a slave – more like her own kid.
But that was just the point, wasn’t it? She was treating him like her own kid – and he wasn’t. He was
Dan
’s kid. His place was with his dad, not with strangers. Like it or
not, he was a Pompey boy and nothing was ever going to change that.
It was time he came home for a bit, Dan thought. Time he remembered who he was and where he’d come from – where he was going to have to go back to, once all this was over. Nice and kind as Ruth Purslow might be, she wasn’t his family and Bridge End wasn’t his place. Pompey was his place, same as it was Dan’s, and that was it and all about it.
Dan looked out of the window at the silvery darkness of the woods and fields, and sighed. Cold though it was, he’d liked riding out through the countryside, and it had been warm and welcoming in the little cottage. He could have settled down there for the evening easy as a wink – for the whole Christmas. And that Ruth Purslow, she was the sort of woman who’d make you feel at home, who’d look after you and make life seem – well, a bit more worth living. Like his Nora had, when she was young and well.
I’m fed up with Pompey, he thought suddenly. Fed up with the shipyard, and the streets, and the bombs, and the fires, and the sheer bloody
misery
of it all. I’m fed up with being on my own. I’m fed up with feeling so bloody
hopeless
.
He looked at Sammy again. Maybe I didn’t ought to have brought him away, he thought, but he’s all I got. Gordon’s never coming home again. He’ll go in the Forces straight from that approved school and God knows what he’ll do then, but he’ll never come home again, not to live. Sam’s all I got left now, all I got to remind me of my Nora. I got to keep a hold on him. I
got
to.
The train steamed slowly through the countryside, stopping at all the small stations along the way. People got off, shouting eagerly to those who had come to meet them. A few people got on. The atmosphere was cheerful and excited, as all the passengers looked forward to being with their families for Christmas.
When the train arrived at Hilsea, Dan gathered his bags
together and told Sammy to stand by them on the platform while he went to get his bike out of the guard’s van. It took him a few minutes to extract it from the other bikes and luggage that had been piled on top of it and the guard, who was anxious to get to his own home, barked at him to hurry up, for Gawd’s sake. Dan, feeling all his misery and frustration well up inside like a ball of smouldering fire, turned on him.
‘Don’t you bloody tell me to hurry up! It’s not my bleeding fault there’s all this luggage, is it? It wouldn’t do you any harm to lend a flaming hand, if you’re in all that much of a hurry to get rid of us.’
The guard flushed with anger. He jerked at the handlebars of Dan’s bike. There was a crashing sound, and half the luggage in the van fell over and tumbled together in a tangled heap. The guard swore.
‘And a happy Christmas to you too, mate!’ Dan snarled, wrenching his bike free and hurling it out on to the platform. ‘Come on, Sam!’ he shouted to the small, lonely figure standing at the far end. ‘Get a move on. We’re going home!’
It wasn’t far from Hilsea halt to April Grove, but it was made more difficult by the damage that had been done to Dan’s bike by its fight with the other luggage in the guard’s van. It was too dark by now to see what was wrong, but there was obviously some obstruction somewhere that made it hard to push.
‘You’d better carry these bags while I push the bike,’ Dan said, handing Sammy the brown-paper carrier bags he had packed. There was still the shopping bag Ruth had given him, containing the stocking and present, and he hung this on the handlebars. It made the bike all the harder to control and that made his temper all the worse.
Together they trailed through the dark streets to September Street and down October Street to April Grove.
Every house was securely blacked out. Even Granny Kinch’s house, which stood right in the middle of the terrace and looked directly up October Street, was dark, the door where she stood all day watching what went on firmly shut. Sammy wondered if Micky Baxter was inside or if he was roaming the streets, getting into trouble, even on Christmas Eve. He looked towards the cul-de-sac end where the Budds lived. Tim and Keith had come home too and would be in there with their mum and dad and sisters Rose and little Maureen. He bet they’d be having a good time.
Next door to number 2 the Vickers would be settling down to the celebrations as well. Sammy had heard that Clifford’s mum and dad had both been killed in the Blitz, not long after Cliff had gone off to join the Army. He wondered if Clifford was there, or if he was fighting somewhere – in Africa, perhaps, like Terry, or in Italy.
He followed his father into the alley and up the garden path. Dan pushed his bike into the coalshed and went straight into the lavatory, not even stopping to open the back door so that Sammy could go inside. Sammy, who wanted the lavatory too, waited anxiously for his father to come out.
At last they were in the scullery. Dan lit the gas and Sammy looked around.
He hadn’t been home for nearly eighteen months. When he left it had been a mess of clutter, old newspapers, dirty plates on the table, dirty clothes piled in one corner, the light dim from the dirty gas lamp. The cold linoleum floor had been greasy and smeared with dirt tramped in from outside, and the fireplace had been full of stale ash.
He had somehow expected it to be the same now but, to his surprise, it looked a bit better. Dan had obviously made some attempt to tidy it up and even done a bit of cleaning. The clutter had mostly been removed, the floor had been washed over, although there were still a few smeary
patches, and the fire was laid, ready to be lit. The table had been spread with fresh newspaper to act as a tablecloth and the only unwashed dishes were a cup and plate from Dan’s meal that morning.
He had even made an effort to decorate the place for Christmas. He’d found the old paper chains that Sammy and Nora had made together and hung them round the walls in a single string. He’d put a couple of brown-paper parcels, tied with string, on the shelf, and in the middle of the table there was a cake, with a plaster Father Christmas on it that Nora had bought years ago. The plaster was chipped now, making the red coat look a bit ragged, but you could still see who it was meant to be.
Sammy stood in the doorway and gazed around. There was no tree, and he knew there would be no carol singing and no big party. He felt again the bitter disappointment of all he was missing, but he could see that his father had really tried and knew that he mustn’t see the tears that were so close. He bit his lip hard and gave Dan a wobbly grin.
‘Happy Christmas, Dad,’ he said in a small, shaky voice, and put the carrier bags on the table. ‘Happy Christmas.’
‘It just doesn’t seem like Christmas now, without Sammy,’ Jane said sadly. ‘It’s so queer, because we’re missing all the others too – Terry, Ben and Alec – and yet it’s Sammy we seem to be missing most. It’s because he’s the only kiddy, I suppose. Christmas just isn’t Christmas without kiddies.’
‘It’s because we knew the others were going to be away,’ Lizzie said. ‘I can’t say I’m missing Sammy more than Alec, because I’m not – not more than Ben or Terry, either. I miss them all. It’s just awful not having them here, and worrying about what’s happening to them … But we were expecting to have Sammy, to keep us bright, and now he’s not here it seems hardly worth having Christmas at all.’
Ruth said nothing. They were at the table, having finished their Christmas dinner. It was just the four of them
– George and Jane, Ruth and Lizzie. It didn’t seem like a Christmas dinner at all, not when you remembered all the past Christmases, with the table crammed with people, all talking and laughing at once. The jokes, the silly remarks, the laughter. The games afterwards, the songs, the stories round the fire … How could you do all that with only four people? Now, it seemed to have lost all its colour.
They listened to the King’s speech. His hesitant voice sounded as if he too was having difficulty in finding something to be cheerful about. Of course, it was good that America was now coming into the war, but so many other countries had joined in as well that it was hard to know if there’d be any real advantage. There was fighting everywhere and the Yanks were bound to look after their own interests first. With the Japs to go after, would they even bother coming to Europe?
The King didn’t say all that, but it was there, somehow, in the doubtful tones of his voice. It wasn’t like the other year, when he’d talked about standing at the gate of the year and putting his hand into the hand of God. That had been poetic, and encouraging too. Now, it seemed that all they had to look forward to was more and more fighting. Years and years of it, and how could it ever come to a proper end, with nearly every country in the world at each other’s throats?
‘Let’s clear up and have a game of something,’ Jane said at last. ‘We’ll get one of the board games out – Ludo, or Monopoly. We’ve got to do
something
.’
‘I might go back early,’ Ruth said. ‘I promised Sammy I’d go and see to Silver around teatime anyway. He was worried stiff the bird would be lonely, being left by himself on Christmas Day.’
‘Oh, you can’t do that,’ Jane protested. ‘You’ll be all on your own Christmas evening. Pop over and give him his tea or whatever he has, and then come back here again. We can at least have the evening together. We’ll play a few records.’
‘I’ll walk down with you,’ Lizzie said. ‘We’ll have a chat to Silver and then come back. I’m not spending my day off sitting here with just Mum and Dad!’
‘Thanks very much,’ Jane said tartly, but she gave her daughter an affectionate nudge. ‘Yes, you go down with your auntie. Nobody ought to be on their own on Christmas Day.’
‘Your mum’s right,’ Ruth said sadly as they walked down the lane. ‘People shouldn’t be on their own today. And it’s right that Sammy should be with his own dad. But I can’t help missing him all the same.’ She drew in a shaky sigh. ‘If only I could be sure he’s having a good time …’
‘Surely his dad wouldn’t have come all this way on his bike to fetch him if he hadn’t meant to give him a good time,’ Lizzie said. ‘He’s not a bad sort of chap, is he?’
‘Well, I don’t think he is, really. He just gives the impression – and being so big, he’s a bit – well, intimidating. But you know he’s been here a time or two now, and he’s had a meal with me and Sammy once or twice, and when he settles in a bit you can see quite a different sort of man. I think he’s had a hard life and it’s made him seem hard too. And it’s different being in Portsmouth now, with all the bombing. Everyone’s a bit different these days.’