A Sixpenny Christmas (12 page)

The kindly Salvationists had welcomed them, and when they left it was getting late. Crabby, shaking his pal’s hand with all the bonhomie of the comfortably drunk, wished Sam luck and then disappeared in the direction of the cheap lodging house.

Sam ambled along, now and then bouncing off a brick wall and cursing as he slid on a patch of ice. When he reached his own road he began to act more cautiously, for here there were no walls or hedges since the front
doors of the houses abutted straight on to the pavement. He checked that, so far as he could tell, his house was unoccupied, then went down the jigger and leaned against the wall. He knew the gate would probably be bolted on the inside, but as he had done so often in the past he reached a long arm over it and gently eased the bolt back. Then, like a cat at a mouse hole, he simply waited.

He was beginning to feel cold, despite the drink he had taken, when he heard the sound of approaching feet. Several people, some in small groups, others singly, had passed the end of the jigger, but these footsteps were accompanied by conversation, and he recognised both Lana’s high piping and Ellen’s comfortable, motherly tones. ‘Well, weren’t that the nicest party we’ve ever been to?’ Ellen enquired. ‘No fightin’, no arguin’, none of that nasty feeling someone were lookin’ for a quarrel. Just a grand dinner, a delicious tea and the best games Granny Meakin could think up.’ She gave a gusty sigh of satisfaction. ‘And no bloody man to be humoured and avoided,’ she concluded. ‘Weren’t it a grand day, our Lana?’

‘Yes, it were lovely. Didn’t you think so, Phil?’

In the darkness of the jigger, Sam shrank back against the wall, cursing under his breath. So it wasn’t just Ellen and Lana carefully negotiating the frozen pavement, but that bloody little nancy boy, Phil Hodges, and very probably his mother and possibly his father too if Mr Hodges, who was a tram driver, was not on shift. Sam presumed they had been included in old Ma Meakin’s invitation for Lana’s sake, and cursed again. He wouldn’t have minded confronting his wife and Mrs Hodges, but
Bill Hodges was a very different cup of tea. During the war he had worked as a stoker aboard a battleship and was a great bull of a man with shoulders as wide as a barn door and fists like Sugar Ray Robinson’s. Like many big men he had the reputation of being as gentle as a child, but Sam did not intend to risk an encounter with a fellow twice his own weight, so he waited until the small group had moved on before letting out a sigh of relief. Since she was accompanied by the Hodges, Ellen might easily have decided to come down the jigger and use the back entrance, but she had not done so, and of course when Sam considered he realised why. The Hodges lived on the opposite side of the road, so had Ellen decided to use the jigger she would have been alone with the kid.

Sam waited, ears pricked. He heard his wife murmuring goodbyes, thanking the Hodges both for their company and for the presents they had exchanged, heard her pushing her key into the lock, pulling the door open and ushering Lana inside. More goodbyes were exchanged amidst much goodwill and laughter. Then the front door was closed and locked once more, and even as Sam watched light bloomed in the kitchen. There was scuffling and movement within and Sam guessed his wife was making up the fire and then damping it down so that it would stay in all night. It seemed a long time, for somehow the knowledge that his wife and child were indoors in the warm made the outdoors seem even colder, but at last the light in the kitchen went out and upstairs the light in the little back bedroom, which was Lana’s, came on.

Fuming with impatience, Sam stared at the window,
saw the curtains pulled across, saw all the lights go out at last and forced himself to wait until he was as sure as anyone could be that the inhabitants of number 21 were fast asleep. Only then did he gently ease open the gate and approach the back door. By now his large stubby fingers were so cold that his first two attempts at getting the key into the lock were foiled by his dropping it on to the back doorstep. He was almost sobbing by the time he managed to get it into the lock, but when he tried to turn it he realised he still had not pushed it in far enough. He gave it another shove and gripped it viciously hard, this time using both hands, for the key was a big old-fashioned one, but even by asserting his full strength he could not get it to turn. It took him three tries and a good deal of sweat before it was borne in upon him that the key simply did not fit the lock.

He stepped back and such was his rage and humiliation that he had actually drawn back his foot, intending to try to kick the door down, when a window above his head shot open and he found himself deluged with a mixture of what he hoped was water and lumps of ice, whilst a voice he knew well said jeeringly: ‘I weren’t born yesterday, you silly old bugger! The scuffers told me to change the locks ’cos they reckoned you might be fool enough to try to gerrin. You’re lucky I emptied the ewer over you and not the jerry. Now bugger off, ’cos there’s no way you’re going to gerrin and if there’s any damage done to my house –
my
house, do you hear me? – then you’ll find yourself in a police cell until you’ve paid for it.’

‘If I could gerrin there I’d . . .’ Sam broke off. Rage would get him nowhere except, as she said, into a prison
cell. So, though it went against the grain, his tone changed. ‘Ellen, my love, it’s a mortal cold night and I’ve nowhere to lay me head . . .’ He was rudely interrupted.

‘If you go right now, without giving no more trouble, then I won’t report you, ’cos it’s Christmas, but if I see your face anywhere near me or mine again I swear you’ll regret it,’ Ellen said, and to Sam’s astonishment her voice was quite calm, almost friendly, but very very definite. Ellen O’Mara had stated a fact and nothing he, her lawful husband, could do would change it. Sam turned away from the kitchen door and slunk across the courtyard and out of the gate, but when he reached the jigger his fury erupted and had to find expression in some act of violence. He still held the useless key in one fist and he turned and flung it with all his force at the bedroom window.

‘Don’t worry, you ugly cow,’ he yelled as the key crashed through the glass. ‘If I’d gorrin I’d have rung your bleedin’ neck, so be thankful, ’cos next time . . . next time . . .’

But Ellen had closed the window with a final snap and the threats that would once have terrified her were made in vain. Sam slammed the back gate but did not bother to shoot the bolt. His rage had at least warmed him up, but now the knowledge that he must walk all the way to Crabby’s doss house chilled his flesh, and brought once more the self-pitying tears to his eyes. He emerged from the jigger, realising it was midnight as the street lamps began to go off one by one, telling himself that he would get his revenge on Ellen and the kid, but not now, not tonight, probably not for many nights to come. He was just about to turn right towards the docks
when a hand – a very large hand – seized him by the collar and a voice he did not immediately recognise spoke in his ear.

‘Hello ’ello ’ello, what have we here?’ The hand did not ease its grip but a large flashlight illumined Sam’s far from beautiful features. ‘So it’s you, Sam O’Mara, makin’ that damn awful row. Botherin’ your poor wife again, eh? Couldn’t you even let her have her Christmas in peace? Well, she’ll have a rare quiet Boxing Day, ’cos you’ll be in the cells for breaking the terms of your injunction. I just hope Judge Martin is taking the session you’ll come up in, ’cos he’s a hangin’ judge he is. I’m tellin’ you, O’Mara, when your wife reports what you’ve done, your feet won’t touch the ground.’

Sam began to whine that he’d done nothing, that he’d merely wanted to call on his wife and child to wish them both a happy Christmas, but Constable Jamieson, clicking the handcuffs round Sam’s beefy wrists, gave a disbelieving laugh. ‘You’re a lying toad, O’Mara, always were, always will be,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I know you, so you must know me and you must realise that I’ve been keeping an eye on your wife ever since the court hearing. Who am I, O’Mara?’

Sam looked up – for though the two men were almost of a height Sam was subconsciously trying to make himself seem as small and innocent as possible – into what he could see of the face beneath the high domed helmet. ‘Oh, Gawd, Police Constable Jamieson,’ he said wearily. ‘Wouldn’t you know it? Just my luck to walk bang into the one feller I most didn’t want to meet.’

Alex Jamieson chuckled. ‘If you’ll take a bit of advice, O’Mara, you won’t hang around this area,’ he said. ‘While
you’re just about anywhere in Liverpool you’ll be tempted to start up old habits, and it won’t do. You’ve got a good wife there and a grand little girl; why not give them and yourself a bit of a break? You’ve been to sea, haven’t you, in the past? Well, I know you have, because you were with the merchant fleet during the war, as I recall.’

As he spoke they were making their way towards the nearest police station, and Sam was reminding himself that at least the cell which awaited him would be warm. He would very likely get a cup of tea, too, and later on a cooked breakfast. And nothing to pay, either, he thought, trying to make the best of things.

‘O’Mara, cat got your tongue? I just asked you . . .’

‘Sorry, sorry,’ Sam said quickly. ‘Yes. You’re right, I were with the merchant fleet, but that were a fair while ago; I dunno as I could face going to sea again. I were seasick at the start of every voyage . . .’

‘Better seasick than in the dock on a charge of grievous bodily harm or worse,’ the police constable said grimly. ‘You’re going to have to make a choice, O’Mara; you either forget you have any rights over Ellen and the little ’un and stay clear, or you get as far away from Liverpool as you can. So if I were you I’d tell the judge when the court reopens after the Christmas break that you’re applying for a job aboard ship, so’s to keep clear of your family. Savvy?’ And Sam, thwarted of his longed-for revenge, said wearily that he supposed he would take Constable Jamieson’s advice.

By the time Sam had paid his debt to society – he was given three months for breaking the injunction – spring
had arrived. Constable Jamieson, who had met Sam the day after he had emerged from Walton prison, was disappointed to find that his incarceration had not been the salutary lesson the court had intended. Perhaps it was because he was heading for the nearest pub and resented the constable’s stopping him to have a word, but his whole attitude made it plain that he blamed Ellen and the kid for his imprisonment, and judging by the spiteful gleam in his eye would have taken revenge if only he could have thought of a way of doing so without getting caught.

Naturally enough, the constable had asked Sam whether he had yet tried for work either as a docker or aboard one of the many ships whose home port was on the Mersey, but Sam had growled that he’d scarce had time to turn round since his release and had not yet thought of work; he would collect the dole until a job turned up.

Alex had opened his mouth to tell the man that work was unlikely to land in his lap, but Sam was already moving off and Alex did not attempt to follow him. However, he determined to keep an eye on Ellen and the child, just in case Sam really had not learned his lesson.

As soon as he could he went to the house in Dryden Street, only to find it deserted. He went round to a neighbour, a fat slatternly woman who beamed a welcome at the policeman and ushered him into her dirty kitchen, offering a cup of tea in a stained mug which she had obviously just drained herself. ‘I reckon you’re wonderin’ where the O’Maras ha’ gone,’ she said as soon as she had closed the back door behind him. ‘Her old feller come out of the jug yesterday – he’s a bad ’un he is, as
I reckon you know – so she’s lit off to live with her mum for a bit. Someone telled her Sam were going to sign on a ship, but if the ship’s home port were Liverpool he’d still be back here every three weeks or so. Here, come on! Everyone knows scuffers need a cup of char every hour on the hour.’ She thrust the dirty, much-used mug towards him and judging by the twinkle in her eye Alex guessed that she knew why he was refusing it.

‘But Sam knows where Mrs Meakin lives,’ he pointed out, hoping to deflect her mind from the tea. ‘That’s the first place he’ll look; if he’s fool enough to try to contact her again, that is.’

The woman chuckled. ‘Mrs Meakin’s done a swap. They’ve moved out to Old Swan; one of them tall, wobbly three-storey houses. I’m the only person what knows where they’ve gone and I swore I’d not tell a soul, ’cept for yourself.’

‘Right,’ Alex Jamieson said briskly. He grinned at his companion, took a heroic swig of tea from the dirty mug and patted her shoulder. ‘Best give me the address, so’s I can check that Sam ain’t hangin’ around there.’

The woman chuckled wheezily and whispered the address, which Alex wrote down in his incidents book. Then he left her to continue on his beat, hoping that Sam would soon grow tired of life on the dole and start looking for a berth.

A week later he had to accompany a heavily pregnant woman to the maternity hospital. She had fallen in the street and started her pains, and having seen her into safe hands he was about to leave when he heard someone call his name. Turning, he saw that it was little Flossy Manners, and retraced his steps, smiling. He liked Flossy,
and admired her grit and determination, because despite every sort of difficulty she had stuck to her guns, worked morning, noon and night until she was taken on as a probationer.

‘What are you doing here?’ she asked, grinning up at him. ‘Going to have a baby, Constable Jamieson? If so, I’ll put you on my ward, then you can be sure of getting the best possible attention.’

Alex laughed, but shook his head. ‘Not today, thanks, you cheeky young varmint,’ he said. ‘But I’ve been meaning to have a word with you. You live on Dryden Street, so you’ll know Ellen O’Mara – the one who had a baby on the night of the storm five years ago? Her husband beat her up until she got an injunction against him. Well, he got three months inside for breaking it and got out just over a week ago. He’s a feller with a big thirst as well as big fists, so I’ve been keeping an eye. Most of the dock police know him and yesterday one of ’em told me Sam had signed on a coaster, one of them small to middlin’ ships which only get back to their home port every six or nine months. All things being equal, I reckon he’ll have forgotten his grudge against poor Ellen after a voyage of that length, but it would do no harm for you to keep an eye open and let me know if you see him hanging about.’