Authors: Lilian Harry
‘Cowardy-custards. There ain’t bin no bombs anyway. Scared of your own shadows, that’s what you are.’
‘That’s all you know, Micky Baxter.’ Tim squared up to his arch rival. ‘I bet
you
wouldn’t walk through a field of cows and bulls like me and Keith have to, to get to school every day.’
‘Don’t have to go to school,’ Micky countered triumphantly. ‘They’ve took it over for a first-aid post and there’s no teachers anyway. All run off to the country with the rest of the cowards.’ But there wasn’t much real malice in his tone. In truth, he’d missed the other children and was glad to see them back, even the namby-pamby Budd boys. With Gordon Hodges at work all day, there’d been only young Sammy left in the whole of April Grove, and Sammy was just a kid, still tied to his mother’s apron strings.
Sammy saw the other children too and hung about on the edge of the little group, feeling left out. He listened to them talking about Christmas and wished he could share their excitement. Stockings full of toys – the Budds, it appeared, even had pillowcases! – and parties with the whole family coming round for a big dinner and then a tea, with jelly and Christmas cake; none of these things, he
knew, would be happening in the Hodges’ household. And worse still, there’d be two whole days with nobody to play with at all, for everyone would be indoors with their own families and not out in the street.
He trailed home, thinking of the present he had bought for his mother. Soon after the evacuation he had started to go round the neighbours and ask to run errands to earn a penny or two. Sometimes he bought his mother a small bar of chocolate, sometimes he spent it on sweets for himself – an everlasting strip or a string of liquorice bootlaces, or some tiger nuts. Sometimes he gave it to his mother to help buy food and just lately he had begun to collect a small store of coins in his drawer, under his collection of old copies of
Film Fun
.
He’d saved for weeks now, hoping to get enough for a larger bar of chocolate. By the time he’d got enough and gone to the little sweetshop on the corner there wasn’t all that much to be had, since sweets and chocolate seemed to be disappearing now there was a war on, and people had stocked up for Christmas and against the threat of rationing. But when he’d told Mr Sims it was for his mother’s Christmas present the shopkeeper had found a bar of milk chocolate for him and even wrapped it in a scrap of coloured paper. Sammy had put the bar in his drawer, under his comics, and was looking forward to seeing his mother’s face when he gave it to her next morning.
The scullery was cold but there was a small chicken lying on the draining board with some potatoes, a couple of onions, a pound or so of carrots and a stalk of brussels sprouts. They were going to have a proper Christmas dinner after all, he thought with delight. He already knew there would be a pudding because Mrs Shaw from the other end of the street had brought one along a few weeks before, explaining that she’d made too many. It had been sitting in the cupboard ever since.
Nora was asleep in her chair when he crept through the
back door. She had bought some strips of coloured paper a week ago and Sammy had spent his evenings making paper chains, sticking them with home-made paste. They hung round the room and Sammy paused for a moment or two to admire them, then tiptoed upstairs to gloat over his little gift.
Gordon, who had got home early from work because it was Christmas Eve, was already there, lying on the top bunk of the narrow iron-framed bed, and as Sammy came in he grinned at him.
Sammy stopped. Gordon was chewing something and there was an unmistakable smell in the room.
‘Have you got some chocolate?’
‘What if I have?’ his brother retorted.
Sammy glanced at the chest of drawers. There were four drawers, two each for the two boys. In those, and the cupboard in the alcove that had been fitted with a hanging rail, they kept their clothes. They seldom had anything new; Nora bought most of their clothes in second-hand shops or was occasionally given them by better-off neighbours. They were not supposed to go to each other’s drawers – at least, Gordon objected strongly if Sammy ever went to his and Sammy had assumed that the rule applied equally.
It had never been put to the test because he had never had anything Gordon would want, but when he glanced at his drawer now, his brother laughed.
‘What’s the matter? Got a secret?’
Sammy saw that there was a scrap of paper on the floor and his heart sank as he recognised it as the paper Mr Sims had wrapped his chocolate in. With a surge of fear and anger, he jerked open his drawer and dragged out his vest, crumpled from the wash. The bar of chocolate had gone.
He wheeled to face his brother, still grinning on the bed. ‘You pinched my choclit! You stole it! You bin in my drawer and stole my choclit, what I was going to give to
Mum for her Christmas present. You’re a thief, you are, a
thief
!’
‘Garn,’ said Gordon. ‘You never got that for Mum, you got it for yourself. You was going to eat it all on yer own.’
‘I wasn’t! I
wasn’t
! It was Mum’s Christmas present and now I got nothing to give her and it’s all your fault!’ Red in the face, tears pouring down his cheeks, Sammy reached up and snatched at the remainder of the bar, still in Gordon’s hand. Gordon jerked back and Sammy gave a howl of rage and dragged at the blanket that covered the thin mattress. His fury giving him strength, he had Gordon half off the bed before the bigger boy could save himself, and Gordon overbalanced and crashed on top of him. They collapsed on the floor in a tangle of flailing arms and legs, the blanket twisting itself around them as they fought.
Already thin, it ripped and Gordon grabbed an end, pulling it into a strip which he wound swiftly around Sammy’s neck. ‘Take that back! Take back what you said!’
‘Let go! You’re hurting me!’ Sammy’s eyes bulged. Gordon wasn’t pulling hard on the rag but it was uncomfortably tight around his throat. ‘You’re
strangling
me!’
‘Say I’m not a thief.
Say
it.’
‘You
are
a thief,’ Sammy cried, struggling. ‘You took my choclit what I was going to give Mum, so that proves it. And if you strangle me you’ll be a murderer as well and you’ll go to prison and
hang
!’
‘I won’t, because—’
‘What the bleeding hell is going on in here?’
The two boys froze. Sammy, half buried under his brother’s bigger body, the strip of blanket still wound round his throat, stared up at his father with frightened eyes.
Gordon, grinning uneasily, untangled himself and slid the rag away.
‘We was just having a game,’ he said nonchalantly. ‘Being Christmas an’ all.’
His father glowered at him. ‘Well, it didn’t sound like it. It sounded as if someone was being murdered up here.’
Gordon slid Sammy a warning glance. Sammy sat up, feeling his neck. He was breathing quickly.
‘Our Gordon was strangling me because I called him a thief. He pinched something from my drawer.’ He gave his brother a defiant look. ‘You did, you know you did.’
‘Called him a thief?’ Dan gave a short laugh. ‘What have you got that he’d want to pinch? Unless it was something you pinched yourself.’
‘It was my choclit,’ Sammy persisted, ignoring Gordon’s threatening glare. ‘My bar of choclit what I bought Mum for Christmas, and he’s
et
it.’ His eyes filled with tears. ‘Now I got nothing to give her.’
‘I didn’t know he’d got it for Mum, did I?’ Gordon argued in an injured tone. ‘How was I to know that?’
‘It was in my
drawer
. It was under my jumper, all wrapped up.’
‘All right, that’s enough,’ Dan interrupted, tired of the argument. ‘You’d better clear this mess up, both of you, and come downstairs. And no more arguing and fighting, understand? You woke your ma up with all your row. Just when she was trying to get a bit of rest …’
He stamped downstairs and Gordon turned on Sammy. ‘You’ll be sorry you said all that.’
‘It was true. You did pinch my choclit, and then you tried to strangle me. I wish you didn’t live here. I wish you’d got sent to a proved school, like the judge said.’
Gordon made a threatening move towards him and Sammy backed away. ‘Dad said we wasn’t to fight any more. It’s Christmas.’
They straightened the room in silence, spreading the spoilt blanket over the bed. A pile of old
Hotspur
comics
that Gordon had brought home had also fallen off the end and got crumpled, and some of them were torn too.
Gordon looked at them in disgust. ‘I hadn’t even read those yet.’
Sammy said nothing. He went downstairs and buried his face against his mother’s thin breast.
‘Sorry about the row, Mum.’
‘What was it all about? I thought the roof was coming in.’
Sammy hesitated, but Gordon could still be heard moving about upstairs. ‘He pinched my choclit,’ he whispered. ‘I saved up and bought it for your Christmas present, and now he’s
et
it.’ He began to cry again. ‘I got nothing to give you now.’
‘Oh, Sammy.’ She stroked his head. ‘Don’t worry about it, love. It’s the thought that counts. Look, we’ll pretend you did give it to me, shall we? And don’t think about it any more. Gordon didn’t know you meant it for me.’
‘He didn’t ought to have gone to my drawer—’ Sammy began, but she put one hand over his mouth.
‘Never mind now. It’s done and it’s over. Come on, Sammy, it’s Christmas. He’s your brother. We can’t have fighting over Christmas, now can we?’
Sammy gazed at her. He saw the thin face that had once been so pretty, the greying hair that he could remember being as fair and golden as his own. He saw the blue eyes that had begun to fade, the skin that looked like yellowed paper. His mum was old, he thought, old and poorly, and she didn’t want to be upset at Christmas.
He looked around at the paper chains and thought of the little chicken and the pudding from Mrs Shaw.
‘We’ll play games,’ he said. ‘We’ll have chicken for dinner and play games after. It’ll be a proper Christmas, won’t it, Mum?’
‘Yes,’ she said, smiling at him. ‘It’ll be a proper Christmas.’
*
The wireless was playing carols when Sammy woke next morning. One of his mother’s old stockings was hanging on the end of his bunk and he pulled it eagerly towards him, feeling the roundness of the orange in the toe. There wasn’t much else inside – a few nuts, half a dozen new marbles, a ball and a pair of socks Nora had got for him. There was a puzzle to do, and a tin whistle as well as a Mars bar from Dan. Sammy sat in bed looking at the presents with pleasure.
Gordon hung over the edge of the top bunk. ‘Father Christmas been, then?’
Sammy looked at him cautiously, knowing that his brother was going to say that Father Christmas didn’t exist. ‘I’ve got a new ball. And a Mars bar. I’m going to give it to Mum.’
Gordon shrugged. ‘That’s OK, then. Here.’ He handed down an old copy of
Film Fun
, which had probably come from Sammy’s own collection, but which he didn’t mind looking at again because he liked Laurel and Hardy on the front page. ‘Happy Christmas.’
‘Thanks.’ Sammy reached under his bed and found a copy of
Hotspur
that he’d got from Bob Shaw down the road, only a week old and hardly torn at all. ‘This is for you.’
They grinned at each other, then Sammy rolled out of bed and pulled on his shirt and grey flannel shorts. He ran downstairs and found his mother making tea.
‘Happy Christmas, Mum.’ He pushed the Mars bar into her hand and she tried to give it back.
‘No, Sammy, that’s yours.’
‘I wanted to give you choclit,’ he said stubbornly, and she gave him a kiss and hugged him for a moment.
‘We’ll go up to the church after breakfast. I always like the service on Christmas Day.’ The family weren’t frequent churchgoers, but Nora liked to go on special days – Christmas, Easter, Harvest Festival – and she liked the
boys to go with her. Gordon had refused last time, but Sammy enjoyed the singing (though he wasn’t so keen on the kneeling down and praying) and he particularly liked the carols, especially those with sheep in them.
Gordon had given up carol singing two years ago when someone in Old Portsmouth had chucked a bucket of dirty water over him. He’d only ever done it for the money anyway and reckoned you could get more going down to the harbour, where you could wallow in the mud for pennies that people threw in from the ferry Hard.
Gordon came downstairs with a bottle of beer for his father and a handkerchief, with her initial embroidered in one corner, for Nora. As Sammy had expected, he wouldn’t go to church with them, but when they came home he and Dan had peeled the potatoes and got the sprouts and carrots ready. They put the wireless on for some more music and the King’s speech, and Nora cooked the dinner, but the effort left her exhausted. She fell asleep in her chair and Dan, who had been to the pub, dozed off on the other side of the fireplace.
‘Dunno what the King was on about, all that stuff about a “family of nations” and the “freedom of the spirit”,’ Gordon grumbled. ‘Anyway, what’s it to him, all posh and comfy in that palace eating off gold plates and getting servants to do the washing-up. Let’s go out and play football.’
Sammy picked up his new ball and the two boys went out into the street and kicked it about for a bit. After a while, Micky Baxter appeared and joined them.
‘Boring old Christmas.’
‘Get any good presents?’ Gordon asked. ‘Our Sam got this ball.’
‘It’s not bad,’ Micky said judiciously and added with a swagger, ‘I got my mum and gran gold necklaces.’
The two Hodges boys stared at him. ‘Gold necklaces?
Real
ones?’
‘Yeah.’ He looked cocky and nonchalant, both at once. ‘’S easy. I know this place, see. They’re all left laying about. You can just walk in, help yourself.’
‘I’d like to get Mum a gold necklace,’ Sammy said enviously.
‘Well, you can’t, not now. Doors’ll be shut, see.’ Micky looked at Gordon. ‘I could show you, though.’
‘Now?’
‘If you like.’
The two older boys looked at each other. A glance of understanding passed between them. They turned to walk up March Street, then Gordon turned back towards Sammy. ‘You stop here.’