John was on better terms with his father now. Gerry’s father had been told by a patient about the trouble at the meeting, and in the ensuing row had hit Gerry several times with his walking stick and told him that if there was any more trouble he could get out of the house.
‘He knows damn’ well that I’ve got nowhere else to go, otherwise I wouldn’t stay there,’ Gerry told John gloomily. ‘For two pins I’d chuck the quantity surveying and go to sea.’
‘You’d never get a ship,’ John said. ‘Look at the experienced seamen in the club who are ashore for months.’
‘That’s all that’s stopping me,’ Gerry said quickly, but John felt that he had seized on the excuse. He’s a bit of a windbag, he thought. He felt so even more strongly when they arrived at the Club.
There were several groups within the Club. The one in which Gerry and John moved was of young men like themselves, enthusiastic but inexperienced, idealistic but not yet sure how to attain their goal of a better world for the mass of suffering humanity they saw around them.
There was another group of older men who had been imprisoned for leading demonstrations or heading hunger marches, including one who belonged to the International Workers of the World, a man who had been a police striker, and several seamen who knew something of conditions in America.
These men held themselves aloof but there was one whom John particularly admired. He was a quietly spoken man who reminded John of his grandfather. He was a speaker at one meeting when a man had complained about the apathy of working men and said they were not worth fighting for.
The speaker had said instantly, ‘Don’t ever say that. These men are your brothers. You’ve got to find the cause of the apathy. For every man who just can’t be bothered, there’s another who longs to fight but whose hands are tied because he has a wife and a crowd of children to keep. His day will come, though.’
‘That’s tosh,’ Gerry whispered to John, who disagreed.
‘No, it isn’t. He always talks sense, like my grandad.’
Gerry sniggered. ‘I’d better not say any more about him then,’ he said.
When they entered the Club on the night after John had been injured, the quiet man, George, came to speak to him and ask about the meeting. Gerry kept close to John, and when the older men crowded round implied that the bruises on his face caused by his father’s stick had been received at the meeting.
John was disgusted by his boasting, especially when he remembered him pleading, ‘Don’t hit me, don’t hit me,’ to the youths, and using John’s injury as an excuse to dash away from the meeting. He said nothing about this however as they walked home, but only commented on the toughness of the older men and all they had endured.
‘My old man would be a match for any of them,’ Gerry boasted. ‘Not like yours.’
‘What do you mean?’ John demanded.
‘Well, he’s a bit of a wet Echo, isn’t he?’ Gerry laughed. ‘Too meek to raise his voice, never mind his hand.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ John said angrily. ‘Just because he doesn’t shout and bluster doesn’t mean that he’s soft. Just the opposite, in fact.’ He was amazed to find himself defending his father, but they had reached the corner by then. He parted from Gerry and walked away, still angry.
The cheek of him to criticize my father! he thought. Suggesting that he’s inferior to old Hanson. He told me himself that his mother was screaming at his father to stop hitting him, and his father ignored her. Dad’s only concern was to stop Mum being upset about my cut. And to imply that Dad’s soft! He’s stronger than the doctor, and with a damn sight more principle too. He’d never look at another woman.
John was still in this mood when he was given a Christmas bonus at work. He decided to buy wine for the Christmas dinner, and chose the Burgundy for his father. Now, as he surveyed the table, he felt proud of his contribution to it and thought the wine bottles lent an air of sophistication.
Of all the people sitting around the table, Sarah was the happiest, but her emotion had nothing to do with the array of good things. She was in the throes of first love for a real person, a young man who came every day to the shop.
He was tall, with blue eyes and dark hair growing in a “widow’s peak”, and Sarah fell in love with him as soon as she saw him. Mabel, who carried a store of lines of poetry in her mind and always attributed them to the Bible, told Sarah that this was the real thing. ‘As it says in the Bible,’ she said, ‘“He never loved who loved not at first sight.”’
It was Mabel who found that he worked in the office of an engineering works and that his name was Michael Rourke. Sarah was happy just to think about him all the time, and to pick out the largest and best pie for him, smiling at him in a bemused way as she handed it to him and their hands met. He seemed as shy as her and they might have gone on like this for months if Mabel had not given matters a push.
She bustled round when he came in the shop and took over the pie queue as soon as Sarah began to serve him, so that they were free to exchange a few words. Michael mentioned that he had seen the film Naughty Marietta, and Mabel immediately joined in, gushing about the singing of Jeanette Macdonald and Nelson Eddy.
Sarah was ready to resent Mabel’s taking up Michael’s attention until she suddenly found that he was asking her out.
‘It’s on all week at the Regent in Crosby,’ he said. ‘Would you like to see it?’
‘But you’ve already seen it,’ she said.
He smiled at her. ‘I don’t mind seeing it again. It’s very good.’
Sarah could remember very little about the film. She sat all the time in a happy dream, stealing glances at Michael in the dim glow of the screen, flattered to realize that he was doing the same to her. She wondered whether he would ask to kiss her good night or simply do it.
Eileen Reddy had told her that it said in Peg’s Paper that a girl should not allow a man to kiss her on a first date. It made her look cheap, and kisses should be kept for the one you really loved. Sarah had agreed at the time but now she knew that she wanted Michael to kiss her, and hoped that he would not think her cheap if she allowed it.
She need not have worried. They sat close together on the tram home, but when they reached Egremont Street Michael held out his hand. ‘Goodnight, Sarah,’ he said. ‘Thank you for your company.’
‘Goodnight, and thank you,’ she said. Michael held her hand for a moment longer and smiled at her, looking deeply into her eyes. Then, as a woman approached, he said goodnight again and turned away.
Sarah went up the steps to her house, thinking with a touch of her grandmother’s dry humour that perhaps Michael read Peg’s Paper too.
The shop had grown busier as Christmas approached and another assistant had been engaged, named Anne Fitzgerald. Sarah liked her immediately. They were almost the same age and Anne had been working in another cake shop for a few months.
‘It was awful,’ she told Sarah and Mabel. ‘The owner was an Australian. He made lovely fruit cake, but what a bully! He thought he was dealing with kangaroos. All we ever heard out of him was: “Jump to it.”’
‘You won’t get any bullying from Mr and Mrs Dyson,’ Mabel told her, ‘but you have to pull your weight like Sarah’s done since she started.’
Anne was fascinated by Sarah’s account of her night out with Michael, and commented that she would have expected a fellow with looks like that to be more experienced.
He still came in the shop every day, but made no attempt to ask Sarah out again. Mabel told her she should encourage him. ‘He’s shy,’ she said. ‘You’d never have had that date if I hadn’t helped things along. I asked that woman if she’d seen Naughty Marietta, and then he said he’d seen it too, so I gave him the wink to ask you.’
‘Oh, Mabel, I’d never have gone if I’d known,’ she exclaimed. ‘I suppose that’s why you sent me round to serve that loaf, so I wouldn’t hear you.’
‘You enjoyed yourself, didn’t you?’ Mabel demanded.
<
br /> ‘Yes, but I’d rather have gone out with him because he wanted to ask me.’
‘But he does! He’s just too shy to get round to it, that’s all. Tell him you like George Raft. Rumba’s on in Crosby this week, and he can take you.’
‘I couldn’t,’ Sarah gasped.
‘You’re as bad as he is,’ Mabel said. ‘You’d ask him, wouldn’t you, Anne?’
‘No, I wouldn’t,’ she said. ‘I think if he wants to ask Sarah out, he should conquer his shyness and do it.’
‘You two are living in a dream world,’ Mabel said. ‘You’ll learn.’ But in spite of her irritation with them she spoke to Michael about the film and told him that Sarah liked George Raft.
Sarah was unaware of this and was surprised and pleased when Michael asked her to go to the pictures with him again. This time he held her hand during the film but when they returned home, instead of the kiss she expected, he shook hands with her and wished her goodnight. Sarah told herself loyally that she preferred a shy boy rather than a pushy type, but wondered how long it would be before Michael managed to kiss her.
It was now nearly Christmas and he had said nothing about seeing her again, but on Christmas Eve when he came to the counter he slipped an envelope into her hand.
Inside the envelope was a Christmas card which simply said, ‘Christmas Greetings from Michael’, but there was also a very pretty topaz brooch wrapped in tissue paper.
Sarah’s first impulse of pleasure was quickly clouded by the thought that she had not bought him a present.
‘I thought of it but I didn’t want to seem forward. If I’d only known he was going to give me one,’ she said.
‘It’s a pity he didn’t have the nous to give it to her yesterday,’ Mabel said to Anne. ‘I think Sarah’s going to have an uphill struggle with this fellow.’
Sarah was delighted with the brooch and the thought that Michael had chosen it especially for her, and as she sat at the Christmas dinner table her hand kept straying up to touch it, or she glanced down at it and smiled blissfully.
The family knew all about Michael, both from Sarah’s account of her visits to the cinema with him and from Mabel who had met Sally and told her about him.
‘He’s a bit backward in coming forward, if you know what I mean,’ she said. ‘But better that than the other way,’ unconsciously echoing Sarah’s thought on the subject.
Kate and Mick were happy too, Mick because he had received a Meccano set for Christmas and Kate because her mother had made her a brown velvet dress, and a coat and a bonnet-shaped hat trimmed with some of the brown velvet.
When she came out of church with her parents, several people had told her how pretty she looked, and now as she sat at the table she could see her reflection in the mirror above the sideboard.
John had poured white wine for Cathy and Sarah, and cherry wine for Mick and Kate, and Greg drew the cork of the Burgundy. He held the bottle above John’s glass and looked at him inquiringly.
‘Just a little, please, Dad. It may be too dry for me,’ John said with a worldly air.
Greg guessed that he was quoting the wine merchant, but only said quietly, ‘There’s a little to try. It’s a good wine but tastes vary.’
He put the bottle down and began to carve the turkey and the beef, and the tureens were uncovered and passed round the table which had been extended so that Cathy was further away from Greg than usual. But she smiled at him, a smile of such pure happiness that Greg stood holding the carving knife and smiling back at her as though they were alone in the room.
‘Oy, more turkey please,’ Mick said, and Greg hastily began to carve again.
How lucky I am, Cathy thought, looking around her, Greg for my husband and these good children. Life was perfect now all her worries were over. No money worries, her father’s health better, and most of all Greg and John good friends.
She felt a rush of pride and tenderness as she looked at John. He was a son any mother would be proud of, she thought. Greg hadn’t liked his being friendly with Gerry, but they seemed to have quarrelled and John spent his time now with friends from the office or with his grandfather, and the discord between him and his father seemed to be a thing of the past.
She suddenly realised that Sarah and Mick had filled her plate and Mick was pushing the gravy boat to her and saying loudly, ‘Oy, wake up at the back there.’
‘I was miles away,’ Cathy said, laughing.
When the meal was over and cleared away, they gathered up their gifts for Lawrie and Sally and Josh, and went over to their house. Everything was ready there with the meal cleared away, and the sofa and chairs and stool arranged in a semi-circle round the fire.
There had been a vague suggestion that it might be better to meet in Cathy’s parlour where there was more room, but no one wanted to break with the tradition of Christmas Day at the old home. Everyone had spent a great deal of thought on the presents they had chosen and everyone had money to buy them this year.
Even Mick had a paper boy’s round now, so Kate was the only one who was unable to buy gifts, but she was more interested in receiving than in giving, and quite happy to distribute the presents that her mother provided for her.
There were cries of delight and “Just what I wanted” as the presents were opened, then Kate played with her dolls’ sweet shop and other toys and Mick read a Beano Annual, while the rest of the family sat around the fire and talked. Josh’s armchair had been brought in and he sat puffing his pipe. Greg and Cathy sat together on the sofa. Sarah had put her stool close to her grandma and linked her arm through Sally’s, and John sat close to his grandfather.
The talk was all of old times which the older people were happy to recall and the younger ones loved to hear about, and Sally recalled the Christmases when she and Lawrie were young, spent with their neighbour Mrs Malloy and her lodger Paddy.
‘Remember Paddy’s fiddle?’ Lawrie said. ‘He could make it sing.’
‘And Mrs Mal’s tales of her days in service,’ Sally said. Cathy had heard the tales as a child and repeated them to Greg and her children, and they all smiled as they remembered them.
‘Remember Paddy’s suit and his shoes?’ Lawrie said suddenly. ‘God bless him and Mrs Mal. They helped us to weather the storm.’
‘Aye, she helped me all my life,’ Sally said simply. ‘But never more than then. God rest them both.’
‘Hard times, girl,’ Lawrie said. ‘But we had each other and we got through.’ They smiled at each other and Sarah felt her eyes filling with tears, but she gripped her grandmother’s arm and blinked them away. Greg stood up and refilled the glasses and Mick produced his mouth organ and suggested that they sang Christmas carols which he would accompany on the mouth organ.
They had a hilarious time as Mick’s accompaniment raced ahead of them or fell behind, and they all laughed too much to finish the carol.
After tea they drew around the fire again and Kate sat on her father’s knee and Mick on the rag rug with his head against Cathy’s knee. Josh volunteered to recite a monologue then Lawrie told a ghost story of a phantom ship and Greg one about a haunted house which made Kate cling to him, and Sarah and her grandmother draw close together. They had turned out the gas and sat in the flickering light of the fire. When they lit the gas again, Cathy looked round the circle as they all blinked their eyes.
She smiled. ‘It’s been a lovely Christmas, hasn’t it?’
They all agreed and Lawrie said cheerfully, ‘Aye, the best yet.’
None of the family realized then what a milestone in their lives that Christmas would be, and how often every detail of that happy time would be recalled by each of them throughout the rest of their lives.
Chapter Twenty
After Christmas the weather became even worse, bitterly cold with high winds and torrential rain. Lawrie scarcely went out except to visit old friends who lived alone in nearby streets, and once to visit an old workmate who was in the Royal Infirmary.
It was a s
hort journey and the day was dry, so even to Sally’s anxious eyes, he seemed unaffected by his outing.
New Year’s Eve was piercingly cold but Lawrie and Greg went out into Egremont Street before twelve o’clock. The tradition was that the man of the house was the first to enter after twelve to “bring in the New Year”, carrying bread and coal as a token of prosperity. They met Walter and other men waiting outside.
On the stroke of twelve the sounds of hooters and sirens from the many ships in the Mersey filled the air, with church bells and even fog horns adding to the noise. The men wished each other Happy New Year then each went into his own house to be greeted by wife and family, before everyone poured out into the street again to exchange greetings and good wishes.
Cathy hugged and kissed her mother then turned to her father. ‘A Happy New Year, Dad,’ she said.
‘Happy New Year, love,’ he said, hugging and kissing her. ‘Happy times now, eh, Cathy pet?’
‘And even happier to come, Dad,’ she said. Lawrie turned to kiss Sarah and Josie swooped down on Cathy.
‘Happy New Year, Cath,’ she shouted exuberantly. ‘With plenty of “please be at’s”, we hope.’
The noise was deafening, with the sound of a drum being beaten and someone playing a saxophone to add to the sound of bells and the ships’ hooters. Everyone seemed to want to greet Lawrie, but before long Sally spoke to John who touched his grandfather’s arm.
‘I think Grandma wants you,’ he said. ‘She says the table’s laid.’
‘Right, lad,’ Lawrie said immediately, and followed the family into his house. The table was laid with spareribs, bunloaf and mince pies, and Mick and John started to eat even before Greg and Lawrie had poured drinks. They all drank to the New Year but before long Kate was falling asleep on Greg’s knee and they took her home to bed.
There is a Season Page 26
