Tuppence To Spend (46 page)

The cottage seemed strangely empty, with no one in it but the parrot. Even though the range was still warm and the room bright with colour, the fact that it was Christmas Day and there was no family sitting around, no noise and laughter made it seem unreal. Silver too seemed subdued, as if he knew there was something wrong, and he only mustered the energy to swear once all the time Ruth and Lizzie were with him.

‘I tell you what I ought to have done,’ Ruth said as they walked back. ‘I ought to have asked Dan Hodges to stop with us instead of taking Sammy back to Portsmouth. Then
they could both have had a good Christmas and Sammy would still have been here.’

‘Yes, but he wouldn’t necessarily have stopped here. I expect he’d already made arrangements at home.’ Lizzie glanced at her aunt. ‘You’re not frightened he won’t bring Sammy back, are you?’

‘No, of course not!’ Ruth exclaimed quickly, a sharp edge to her voice. Then she hesitated and said more quietly, ‘Well, perhaps I am, a bit. It was so funny, the way he came out without letting me know beforehand. And the way he said Sammy’s
his
boy … As if he was frightened I was trying to take the boy away from his father.’

There was a little silence. Darkness was closing in and there was a dry, chilly wind in the air. Ruth pulled her scarf more closely round her neck.

‘I suppose he’s right, in a way,’ she said quietly. ‘I haven’t made any secret of the fact that I’m fond of the kiddy. And I’ve been thinking about adopting him, if I could. I don’t want him to go back, Lizzie, and that’s the truth of it. And that’s wrong, isn’t it, because he
isn’t
mine, and I don’t honestly think he ever will be.’ She stopped in the middle of the lane and looked at her niece with eyes that were filled with tears. ‘He’s never going to be mine, Lizzie. I’m going to have to let him go back one day. But not yet, surely. Not for a long time yet.’

Dan Hodges had done his best to give Sammy a good Christmas.

He’d got a small chicken from Alf Hines and a pudding in a tin from the grocer’s shop. He’d made the jelly Ruth had given him, the cake Freda had made had been as good a Christmas cake as he’d ever had apart from the lack of icing, and he’d got the sort of sweets Sammy liked with his ration. Sammy had even found the stocking on his bed on Christmas morning, and there had been a present from his father as well, a Dinky toy car, not new because you couldn’t get toys like that any more, but not very scratched.

Sammy knew that his father had done all he could, but it wasn’t the same as being in the cottage. It wasn’t even the same as being at home used to be, with his mother and Gordon. He’d never had a Christmas alone with his father and neither of them knew quite how to do it.

Dinner was a bit late. Dan wasn’t sure exactly how long to give everything and they all seemed to finish cooking at different times, but eventually he got it all on the table. The chicken was a bit overcooked and the roast potatoes hard, but there were some quite good bits in the middle, and Sammy and his father both enjoyed the baked beans they’d done after the carrots had burnt to the saucepan. The pudding was all right, although the custard Dan had tried to make wouldn’t come out right, it stayed thin and tasted powdery instead of ‘turning’ thick and creamy. Still, it had been a good try and Sammy, seeing his father wrapped in one of Nora’s old pinafores and standing over the gas stove,
stirring the pan, felt suddenly more like hugging him than complaining.

He was astonished by the feeling. He’d never wanted to hug his father before, not that he could remember. He stood in the door to the scullery, staring at him. He looked different today, somehow. More like a dad, instead of someone who was always tired, always worried, always a bit bad-tempered.

Dan turned his head and saw him. He grinned, and that was another surprise.

‘We’ll play that game Mrs Purslow give you, when we’ve had our dinner. What’s it called, again?’

‘“Sorry”,’ Sammy said. ‘It’s a bit like Ludo.’

‘That’s all right then. I used to like Ludo.’

Sammy couldn’t ever remember his father playing Ludo. But after dinner, when they sat down by the fire and started to play Sorry a faint memory stirred in his mind. Perhaps they had done this sort of thing once, long ago, when Sammy was almost too small to understand the game. Perhaps he and Gordon and his father and mother had once sat round like this, shaking the dice and moving counters round a coloured board.

They had tea. The jelly hadn’t set very well, but it tasted sweet and fruity, and the cake was good. There were fish-paste sandwiches and some Spam and beetroot, and although Sammy knew it wasn’t like the tea they’d be having at Bridge End he enjoyed it just the same. Afterwards they did an old jigsaw puzzle that Dan had found in a cupboard, and then it was time to go to bed.

On Boxing Day Sammy woke to broad daylight and lay there for a while, puzzled by the silence in the house and thinking about Bridge End. He wondered if the carol singing had been as good as last year and if they’d had mince pies at the farm. He wondered if Auntie Ruth had found the present he’d made for her and forgotten to give her, in the haste to leave. It was a picture of Silver, painted
with the paint box she’d given him for his birthday, and he’d made the frame himself from bits of wood given him by Uncle George. He wondered how Silver was getting along without him and he pushed his face into his pillow to soak up his tears.

After a while he rolled on to his back. There was no sound from his father. Sammy knew that there had been some bottles of beer in the cupboard under the stairs; he’d seen them when he went to see if his old toy box was still there. It had been pushed to the back but his old toys were still there – a few tin soldiers, their uniforms rubbed and scratched almost away, a tennis ball with a crack in it, some bits of Meccano and a tin money box which was, of course, empty. He’d played with them for a while, then pushed them back again, behind the bottles.

Perhaps Dad had had some of the beer after Sammy had gone to bed.

Sammy got up and went downstairs. The fire had died out and the room was cold and unwelcoming. He thought of the kitchen at Ruth’s cottage, warmed with the glow of the range, and stirred the ashes a bit with the poker. There was no sign of any heat. He went outside, found the ash bucket and cleared the fireplace. There was a bundle of wood in the shed and he laid the fire as Ruth had taught him, putting a few lumps of coal on top.

He went out to the scullery to find something to eat. There wasn’t much – the leftover chicken would be wanted for dinner and the cake must be saved for tea. There was half a loaf of bread, and he sawed off a thick slice and spread it with margarine, remembering the time he’d done that at Bridge End and cut his hand. When he’d eaten that he stood wondering what to do for a few minutes, then let himself out of the back door.

Tommy Vickers was in his garden, collecting a few vegetables. He looked round in surprise.

‘Blimey, my Freda was right, then, when she said your
dad had been out to fetch you home. Here, let’s have a look at you.’ They approached the fence and stood one each side of it, studying each other. ‘Well, you’ve grown, I’ll say that! Twice the boy you were when you went away.’ He raised his voice, calling towards the house, ‘Here, Free, come and see what the cat’s dragged home!’

Freda Vickers came out, drying her hands on a teacloth. ‘Well, if it isn’t young Sammy! How are you, my love?’ She leant over the fence and put both hands on his head, drawing him close so that she could give him a smacking kiss. Sammy felt his cheeks burn with embarrassment and glanced past her down the row of gardens, hoping that no one had seen, but he was pleased all the same. ‘Home for Christmas, then? Have you been having a nice time?’

They all looked at each other. Sammy was sure they must know he hadn’t been having a nice time. Well, not as nice as at Bridge End, anyway. He looked down and scuffled the path with his toe.

‘How d’you like being out in the country?’ Tommy asked, covering up the awkward pause. ‘Learnt to milk a cow yet?’

Everyone asked the evacuees that, as if every house in the countryside had its own cow. Only a few children were actually on farms. But Sammy nodded. He’d helped Uncle George with the milking quite a few times.

‘It’s easy,’ he said proudly. ‘All you do is squeeze its titties.’

Freda looked startled and Tommy grinned. Cheered by this, Sammy went on, ‘I’ve seen lambs being born too. They come out of sheep’s bottoms. Uncle George told me all animals come out of their mothers’ bottoms.’ He stopped, suddenly embarrassed again, and averted his eyes from Freda’s motherly figure.

‘So how long are you stopping home, then?’ Tommy asked. ‘Or have you come back for good?’

Sammy shook his head. ‘Oh no, I’m going back
tomorrow. Auntie Ruth’s expecting me. They’re going to have another party, because I missed yesterday. I don’t suppose there’ll be any more carol singing though,’ he added sadly. ‘Not till next year.’

‘Well, I dare say we’ll see you again before you go back,’ Tommy said. ‘Knock on the door to say cheerio, OK? Don’t go without, mind.’

Sammy nodded and watched them go. He stood by the fence, wishing he could go indoors with them, and just before their back door closed he heard Tommy’s voice, talking to Freda.

‘I dunno. It ain’t what Dan said to me the other day. What he told me was he had a good mind to bring Sammy home for good. He didn’t say for definite, I know, but when I saw the nipper out in the garden just now I thought—’

The door slammed. Sammy felt the sound throb through his body. He stood very still.

For good. For
good
. That meant
always
. It meant he wasn’t going back to Bridge End. It meant he would never see Auntie Ruth, or Uncle George and Auntie Jane, or Lizzie or Terry or Ben again,
ever
. It meant he wouldn’t see Silver.

He turned and went slowly into the house. He stared at the table where they’d played Sorry and done the jigsaw puzzle. He looked at the fire he’d laid so carefully, and the plate with the crumbs from his bread and marge. Then he dropped into his mother’s armchair and curled himself into a tight ball.

Dan found him there when he finally stumbled down the stairs, thick-headed from his lonely drinking after Sammy had gone to bed the night before, miserably uncertain of himself and whether he’d given the boy the Christmas he ought to have. He stood for a moment at the scullery door, looking at the huddled figure, then swore to himself and stamped out of the back door to the lavatory.

It’s no good, he thought, standing in the tiny outhouse.
I’m no good as a father. I was no good as a husband and I’m no good as a dad. And this bloody war’s just making everything worse. It’s taking everything away and poor bloody sods like me just don’t have a chance.

Dan Hodges went back to work the day after Boxing Day, leaving Sammy alone in the house. Although it was a Saturday there was no weekend off for the shipyard or the docks. Two days had been lost for Christmas and the time had to be made up. ‘I might have to go to sea again,’ he said to Sammy. ‘It’ll only be for two or three days. There’s a bit of grub left over and there’s a few bob on the mantelpiece with the ration books, so you can go up the shop and get a few bits in. I’ll be back by Tuesday for certain.’

Tuesday seemed a very long way away. Sammy had been used to being left at home on his own, before going to Bridge End, but Ruth had never left him for more than an hour or two. The days stretched ahead of him, bleak and empty.

‘But when can I go back to Bridge End?’ he asked. ‘Auntie Ruth’s expecting me.’ He had spent all day yesterday persuading himself that he’d been mistaken in what he had heard. Mr Vickers must have got it wrong. Dad couldn’t be meaning to keep him in Portsmouth, he just couldn’t. Now, he began to wonder again, and to panic.

Dan rubbed his hand across his face. He felt tired and bewildered. All Christmas Day he’d thought he and Sammy were getting on OK. He’d thought it could work out, keeping the nipper at home so that they could be like a proper father and son, talk to each other about what they’d been doing during the day, even do things together once the war was over and there was time for these things. A bit of fishing in Langstone Harbour – watching the football down at Fratton Park. That sort of thing. Him and Sammy, and Gordon too, once he was home again. A proper family.

But finding him all huddled up in the chair in the
morning had spoilt all that. He’d suggested more games of Sorry, he’d found another jigsaw, but nothing seemed to work. Sammy seemed to have retreated from him, become a stranger again. They couldn’t talk to each other any more.

It’s that Ruth Purslow, he thought. He’s more fond of her now than he is of his own dad. And to tell the truth, Dan couldn’t really blame him. Ruth was a real nice woman, the sort of woman any boy would like for a mother, the sort of woman any man would like for a wife, if it came down to it, with that warm smile and that coppery hair and those green eyes. But Sammy was
his
boy just the same. It wasn’t right that he should get too attached to strangers.

He looked at Sammy’s anxious face. ‘We’ll see about that when I get back. There ain’t no hurry, is there? School don’t start till the week after next.’

‘No, but—’

‘We ain’t had a bad time, have we?’ Dan said, looking at him. ‘I’ve given you a good Christmas. Best I could manage, anyway.’

‘Yes, Dad.’ Sammy knew that his father really had done his best and it was wrong not to be grateful. He knew that Auntie Ruth would tell him that he mustn’t grumble, not when people did their best. Mum would have said the same.

‘Well, then,’ Dan said. ‘You spend a bit of time at home with your dad, all right? Won’t hurt you.’

‘No, Dad,’ Sammy said. ‘Can I go out to play?’

‘Well, I suppose so. Can’t stop in on your tod all day. Don’t get going off anywhere with that Micky Baxter, mind, he’s been in trouble again. Never out of it, that boy, and why they never sent him away like our Gordon’s beyond me … The Budd nippers are home, you can play with them if you like. Frank Budd’s all right.’