A Christmas to Remember

by Katie Flynn

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Katie Flynn

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Letter to the Reader

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Copyright

  About the Book

  A few days before Christmas, Tess Williams rushes into Albert Payne’s tobacconist shop, with two boys in hot pursuit, saying she’s a thief. Albert chases the boys away, and though Tess does not realise it, this incident changes her life.

  Tess lives with her grandmother, Edie, in a small flat on Heyworth Street. She has recently returned from Bell Farm, where she was evacuated during the war, and is being bullied by her schoolmates, but when the handsome Snowy White comes to her rescue she thinks her troubles are over, and returns for a working holiday to Bell Farm and her old friend Jonty.

  This leaves Edie to her own devices, however, and Tess is jealous of the friendship which blossoms between her grandmother and the tobacconist. Yet though Tess resents Albert, it is to him she turns when things start to go wrong . . .

  About the Author

  Katie Flynn has lived for many years in the north-west of England. A compulsive writer, she started with short stories and articles and many of her early stories were broadcast on Radio Merseyside. She decided to write her Liverpool series after hearing the reminiscences of family members about life in the city in the early years of the twentieth century. For many years, she has had to cope with ME, but has still continued to write.

  Now a regular Sunday Times bestseller, and the author of over thirty-four much-loved novels, she is now the UK’s biggest selling author of nostalgic fiction.

  Also available by Katie Flynn

  A Liverpool Lass

  The Girl from Penny Lane

  Liverpool Taffy

  The Mersey Girls

  Strawberry Fields

  Rainbow’s End

  Rose of Tralee

  No Silver Spoon

  Polly’s Angel

  The Girl from Seaforth Sands

  The Liverpool Rose

  Poor Little Rich Girl

  The Bad Penny

  Down Daisy Street

  A Kiss and a Promise

  Two Penn’orth of Sky

  A Long and Lonely Road

  The Cuckoo Child

  Darkest Before Dawn

  Orphans of the Storm

  Little Girl Lost

  Beyond the Blue Hills

  Forgotten Dreams

  Sunshine and Shadows

  Such Sweet Sorrow

  A Mother’s Hope

  In Time for Christmas

  Heading Home

  A Mistletoe Kiss

  The Lost Days of Summer

  Christmas Wishes

  The Runaway

  A Sixpenny Christmas

  The Forget-Me-Not Summer

  Available by Katie Flynn writing as Judith Saxton

  You Are My Sunshine

  First Love, Last Love

  Someone Special

  A Christmas to Remember

  Katie Flynn

  For Graham and Deb – not before time!

  Letter to the reader

  Dear Reader,

  Ideas! People often ask me where my ideas for a story come from, which is not always easy to answer. They come from various sources, but when I’m asked I can usually reel off two or three. The Girl from Seaforth Sands came as a result of driving down a road in Seaforth and seeing a young girl emerging from a doorway like a bullet from a gun and rushing away up the road. I had recently interviewed a lady aged 104 about her life, and it was when she told me that her father was a shrimp fisherman and expected his children to prepare his catch for potting that I remembered how she had also said that she left the house at a run whenever she heard his shrimp-laden handcart come rumbling up the street.

  Well, that was the start of one story, and of course there have been many others. The idea for The Liverpool Rose came after visiting the Boat Museum in Ellesmere Port. It’s a fascinating place and touring the canal boats was a first for me. Then my friend Eileen and her husband Jim took Brian and me for a day out in their narrow boat and I couldn’t wait to put it all into a book.

  But when I started A Christmas to Remember, it was because of a parrot. I was interviewing people for A Village with a View, which is a non-fiction book all about Everton, and I went to the home of a charming couple who owned an extremely intelligent parrot. Whilst I listened to his owners telling me about life in wartime Liverpool, the parrot stood on his perch, fixing me with a bright, compelling eye, and very slowly lifted his right wing as high as it would go. Then, making sure I was still watching, he lifted his right leg, also as high as it would go, and fell sideways off his perch, uttering a shriek of amusement as he did so. He repeated the trick over and over and by the time his owner shut him up by throwing a cloth over his cage I was completely sold on the idea of putting him in a book. He should have been in A Christmas to Remember, but somehow he didn’t fit. I was waiting for him to appear in the story and do his party trick, but he never did; instead Crippen, the pig, took centre stage, so the intelligent parrot will have to stay in my memory, awaiting his chance for stardom.

  Hope you enjoy Crippen the pig, and A Christmas to Remember, of course.

  All best wishes,

  Katie Flynn

  Chapter One

  IT WAS ALMOST five o’clock on a dreary December day. Occasional snowflakes floated down and the puddles were rimmed with ice. Albert Payne stood behind the counter of his tobacconist shop and surveyed the almost empty shelves with a jaundiced eye, for his stock-in-trade was still hard to come by. He had sold all his cheap cigarettes earlier in the day, and although the sign over his window read Albert Payne, Purveyor of Fine Tobaccos he had had few customers for his more expensive products. The trouble was that money was short and what cash was available, he knew, would be spent on food for the festivities and toys for the children. Yet he could not help envying the hurrying crowds he could see through his window, with their shopping baskets bulging and their faces wreathed in anticipatory smiles. He thought, without bitterness, that they would be looking forward to a family Christmas, the first since the end of the war, which had been over for four months.

  The holiday was fast approaching, however, and Albert would spend it alone. Furthermore, the shop four doors down from his own had been empty for weeks, and when it first came on the market he had promised himself that he would enquire about rent, rates and so on. He had planned to turn it into a nice little café, or a tea room, because even before the war it had saddened him that his customers were almost always male, save for the odd woman coming shyly into the shop to buy a present for her husband, and he longed for some pleasant female company. If he had opened a tea room he had intended his daughter Janine to be manageress. But he, who had been so active during the hostilities, had left it too late; Janine, ungrateful girl, had spurned his offer of a little business of her own – albeit one her father had every intention of visiting regularly – and had gone off to the States, chasing after some Yank who had promised marriage.

  Albert wondered whether he would do any good by remaining open, since only two people had come in all afternoon and neither of them had actually bought anything. He could change the Open s
ign to Sorry, we’re closed, lock the door and go up to his flat, a cold and cheerless place since he had not yet put a match to the fire, nor turned on the gas beneath the kettle. But if he did this it would seem as though he were giving up, admitting that no last-minute customer would come hopefully in to buy the polished meerschaum pipe, or even better the beautiful leather tobacco pouch which any smoker of good sense must long to possess.

  Albert sighed and told himself that when he closed at six o’clock he would go round to the landlord of the empty shop and find out what rent was being asked. Then he remembered that Mrs Clarke, who was married to his occasional assistant, and came in a couple of times a week to clean the flat and do some cooking, had made a batch of scones the previous day. Albert licked his lips; Mrs Clarke’s scones were delicious, even if you only had margarine to spread on them, but as it happened he had some strawberry jam . . .

  He turned towards the door, intending to put up the Sorry, we’re closed sign, but before he could do so it burst open and a small person hurtled in, nearly knocking him over and ignoring his faint protest. Swerving round the counter, she sat down behind it, saying urgently as she did so: ‘Don’t tell ’em I’m here! Oh, please shut the door; and if they come asking, say you’ve not seen me!’

  Albert stared at his uninvited guest. She was a small girl, shabbily dressed, with mousy hair straggling to her shoulders and large brown eyes, which were now fixed appealingly on his face. ‘Don’t let ‘em get me!’ she hissed. ‘Oh, please, close the perishing door.’

  Albert found himself obeying, but scarcely had his hand touched the latch when the door was thrust open from the outside and two boys, red-faced and panting, tried to push past him until the second of them, the taller of the two, grabbed his companion’s arm. ‘She ain’t here, Fred,’ he said, staring round the empty shop. ‘She must ha’ gone next door.’ He turned to Albert. ‘Sorry, mister; it were a mistake. We’re tryin’ to catch a young thief what stole fruit off me uncle’s stall.’

  Albert opened his mouth to say that the girl who had shot into his shop hadn’t been carrying anything, then realised that to do so would give the game away. Instead he scowled at the lads. ‘I don’t believe a word of it; I reckon you hoped to nick a few fags off my display,’ he said coldly. ‘Gerrout, the pair of you, and don’t come back.’

  The elder of the two boys began to protest but Albert pushed them both out, shut and locked the door and hung up his Sorry, we’re closed sign. Then he walked over to the counter and looked down at the girl still crouching on the floor. ‘What’s up?’ he said bluntly. ‘Don’t try telling me you’re playing Relievio, because it won’t wash. Those young fellers meant business.’

  The girl stared anxiously up at him. ‘Have they gone, or are they still hanging about outside?’ she asked. ‘Suppose they’re hiding somewhere, just waiting for me to come out? Oh, dear, whatever shall I do?’

  Albert saw that the girl’s big brown eyes were full of tears, and went over to the door to check that the lads were not hanging about outside. As far as he could see the pair had disappeared, so he locked up again and turned to the fugitive. ‘They’re not outside; the crowds are thinning and if they had been hanging around I’d have seen them,’ he said. ‘I’m going to make a cuppa in my flat. You can come up and tell me what’s been goin’ on while you drink it.’

  The girl got to her feet with an anxious glance at the door, then followed Albert up the stairs and into his small, chilly kitchen, where he lit the gas and got out the scones. Then he raised his brows at his visitor. ‘Well? Fire ahead,’ he said.

  The girl knuckled her eyes. ‘Well, to start at the very beginning, I was evacuated to a farm in Norfolk during the war and Mrs Bell, the farmer’s wife, sent me a whole ten-shilling note through the post as a Christmas box. She said I was to spend it on whatever I liked, so I thought I’d spend it all on Gran, because she’s so good to me. I’d seen a little Christmas tree which only cost a bob, and then I saw, further along the same stall, a beautiful glass angel. I picked it up and held it out towards the stallholder, along with the ten-shilling note.’ She sighed tremulously. ‘Only the boys must have seen the money and tried to grab it and in the struggle the angel got broken, so then the stallholder tried to grab the note saying I’d have to pay for the angel anyway, and the boys were still trying to get it away from me so I hit out and ran like a rabbit.’ She sniffed, then smiled. ‘I’m very sorry about the angel, and the little tree, because I reckon Gran would have loved them. And I’m truly sorry I led the boys to your shop, mister. I didn’t mean to bring ’em down on anyone else.’

  Albert laughed. ‘I’ve dealt with worse in my time,’ he assured her. ‘The first place looters used to head for when there had been a bad bombing raid was a tobacconist. I used to keep a cudgel under the counter – still do – so I’m not frightened of those lads. They won’t come back, and they won’t attack you a second time, not unless you go waving a purse full of money under their noses again.’

  The girl murmured a protest, but then grinned. ‘It was just the ten-bob note,’ she said. ‘Well, that’s one mistake I shan’t make again.’

  ‘Did you know either of the boys?’ Albert asked. ‘Do they go to your school, or live in the same neighbourhood? If so, mebbe you ought to talk to the scuffers. It’s bad enough having spivs hangin’ round on every corner without thieves like that attacking young girls. But weren’t you shopping with a pal? Kids these days tend to go round in pairs; it’s safer, what with pickpockets and handbag snatchers taking advantage of the Christmas crowds.’ As he spoke he had been making the tea, and now he poured two mugs, one of which he handed to his guest. The girl perched on Albert’s kitchen stool, whilst he sat himself down in the creaky basket chair and waited for her answer.

  ‘Well, no, I was alone. I only came back to Liverpool at the beginning of the autumn term, so I don’t know many people. In fact the girls in my class . . . well, they don’t seem to like me very much.’ She gave a watery smile. ‘You know what kids are like, or perhaps you don’t, but I can tell you they tend to follow the lead of anyone who’s pretty or popular, and for some reason Marilyn Thomas, who’s both, seems to dislike me a lot.’ Albert saw her forehead wrinkle into a frown. ‘I can’t understand why. She manages to keep her head above water in class and her mam runs a corner shop, so she always seems to have sweets and stuff. She’s generous too, handing out liquorice sticks and penny dabs to her friends, and she always has nice clothes and lots of pocket money.’ Having begun to unburden herself, the girl continued. ‘Miss Cracknell, my teacher – the kids call her Clackem because she’s pretty free with slaps and nips – was all right at first, only then I realised she’d made a mistake in the maths question she had given us and I said so, and – and when she disagreed I got out my old exercise book from the Norfolk school and showed her where her working was wrong. Ever since then she’s hated me. And that makes it easier for Marilyn to pick on me, because Miss Cracknell turns a blind eye.’

  Albert dropped a saccharin tablet into his tea, stirred it vigorously and took a big swallow. ‘Have you thought of asking Marilyn outright? Why she hates you, I mean?’ he said mildly. ‘I know Mrs Thomas; I know most of the retailers on Heyworth Street, and she seems a decent enough woman.’ He stared very hard at his visitor. ‘Come to think, Mrs Thomas isn’t the only one I know. I’ve seen you marketing round here, haven’t I? With an old lady?’

  ‘That’s right. The old lady’s my gran, Mrs Williams,’ the girl said eagerly. ‘We live above the milliner’s shop. And I’m a Williams too, Theresa Williams, only most folk call me Tess.’

  ‘And I’m Albert Payne, as you’ll guess since it’s written on my door and above my shop window,’ Albert said. He held out a hand. ‘How do you do, Miss Williams . . . or may I call you Tess?’

  They both laughed and Albert spread jam on two of the scones and gave one to the girl. ‘Mrs Clarke cleans for me and does a bake once or twice a week to keep me going – she’s done so
ever since Mrs Payne died – and I can tell you she’s a very good cook. Her scones melt in the mouth. By the time you’ve eaten yours and drunk your tea you can be certain those lads will have given up ages ago.’

  Tess said that this seemed an excellent notion since she was sure that her attackers would not continue to hang around in the dark, and Albert warned her again against shopping alone. The girl nodded. ‘But I don’t mean to do any more shopping today,’ she said. ‘For one thing it isn’t only the boys I’m scared of, it’s the stallholder whose angel they broke. I mean to buy Gran something really nice for Christmas, and I plan to get myself a job in the next few days so I’ll have a bit more spare money. I’d love to get a bird for Christmas dinner; just a small one, you know.’

  Albert grinned. ‘A sparrow?’ he suggested. ‘That’s what I’ll be having, a nice little roast sparrow, along with potatoes and Brussels sprouts, of course. That’ll make a grand Christmas dinner.’

  They both laughed, though Tess sobered up immediately, saying that she did not mean to let Gran’s first peacetime Christmas dinner be blind scouse. Then she cast a hopeful glance at Albert. ‘I suppose you don’t need a delivery person, Mr Payne? Or someone to serve the customers on the run up to Christmas?’

  Albert shook his head regretfully. ‘Sorry, queen. I’m not exactly rushed off my feet, even at this time of year,’ he said. ‘Were you job hunting this afternoon?’

  Tess nodded vigorously. ‘Yes, but no luck. Well, I’d only tried a couple of shops – Deering the bakers and Gaulton the greengrocer – but they were fixed up, so—’

  ‘If you were looking for counter work you’ve got to be tidy and neat as a new pin,’ Albert interrupted. ‘And if you were looking for delivery work you’d need a bicycle. But didn’t you say your gran lived over Miss Foulks’s shop? Hats and such would be light enough for a kid like you to deliver, only you’d have to smarten yourself up a bit before applying for the job.’