A Sixpenny Christmas (17 page)

By the fourth day, Sam’s thirst was so raging that he decided he would have to have at least a couple of bevvies or do something violent, so he went to a dockers’ pub and managed to con several drinks out of men he had once known well. They urged him to remain with them, probably in the hope that he would eventually stand his round, but in this they were disappointed. Sam pleaded poverty, saying that he was saving the rest of his money to buy something nice for his wife and kid. This caused one of the drinkers, a man previously unknown to Sam, to ask him where he lived and what his wife was called.

Sam stared at him, his mind made sluggish by the drink taken after a three-day abstinence. ‘Wass it to you?’ he asked belligerently. ‘I don’t know you from Adam! If I telled you me wife’s name you might let on to her I’ve been drinkin’ . . .’

The man began to apologise, to say he meant no harm, when another man, both younger and larger, broke in. ‘I don’t reckon you’ve gorra home nor a wife neither wi’ a face like the back of a bus and norra penny to bless yourself with,’ he said tauntingly. ‘I seen you comin’ out
o’ the sailors’ hostel earlier. If you’ve a wife and a home of your own what was you doin’ there?’

‘Visitin’ a pal,’ Sam mumbled, and when the docker demanded to know the pal’s name Sam glared at him and left the pub, wishing the man had been older and weaker so’s he could have lain in wait for him and given him a right pasting. He went straight from the pub to a fish and chip shop, then to another pub, but as dusk thickened he began to suspect that he was being followed, probably by the docker who had been so unpleasant, and though he could see no reason for the man’s antagonism he began to worry that he, Sam, might be the one who was beaten up.

By the time he reached the sailors’ home once more, however, he had decided that it was just his imagination. He went to bed thinking he might as well forget all about his wife and child. What, after all, was the point? Ellen had survived without him for half a dozen years. In that time she might easily have left Liverpool altogether, might be almost anywhere in Great Britain. She could not marry again, not whilst he was alive, but she could shack up with somebody else if she left Liverpool. Lying in his bed that night he found that he no longer wanted to live out his old age with Ellen and the girl. They had ruined several days of his time ashore by their provocative behaviour in moving house. He realised that for a couple of nights now his most satisfactory dreams had not been of reuniting with his wife and persuading her he was a changed man. No indeed! His most satisfying dreams had been the ones where he found Ellen in some dark little jigger, shone his torch on his own face so that she should know who attacked her, and then smashed
his fist into her round, pretty face until blood poured from her broken nose and those nice white teeth of which she was so proud lay scattered on the ground.

Next morning he was still of the same mind and decided he would give up the search, forget Ellen and Lana and spend the day having a bit of a spree before he joined a new ship. There were several coasters berthed in the docks; bigger ships too, though he tended to avoid liners, because they mainly wanted stokers, which was hard and filthy work. He was pretty sure he would be able to find a berth of some sort. Seamen were always quitting one ship and being taken on by another, as Sam well knew, so after a day’s debauchery he would leave Liverpool without a regret and head for the high seas once more.

And then, on what should have been his very last day ashore, he had a tremendous piece of luck. He saw a woman climbing into a small and heavily laden car. She had apparently got out in order to buy something from a barrow at the edge of the road, and when she turned to climb back into the vehicle’s front passenger seat he saw, with real astonishment, that it was Ellen. He ran towards the car, meaning to demand where she was going and who with, but as he reached out a hand to grab the car’s canvas hood, rolled down because of the sunshine, the car jerked forward, and Sam grasped at air, lurched, and landed heavily on his behind. He shouted, of course, demanded that the driver should stop and let him have a word with his wife. But either no one in the car heard or they took no notice, because they left him sitting in the roadway cursing whilst they drove off. Several people had laughed when he had fallen and the barrow boy,
who had seen the whole incident, came over to help him to his feet. Sam would have liked to punch him – he was desperate to hit someone – but was forced to mumble thanks instead since the man was both younger and fitter than himself. Rubbing his behind, which had met the road with considerable force, he limped across to the barrow in the man’s wake, pointed at random to a pile of oranges and handed over a sixpence. ‘That woman . . . the one what went off in that car . . .’ he asked breathlessly. ‘Do you know her, lad? What were she buyin’? I’ve got to speak to her before me ship sails.’

The barrow boy shrugged wide shoulders. ‘I dunno her name, though she often buys from me,’ he said. ‘But I do know where she were goin’. It’s some farm in them mountains in Wales – what’s they called? Oh aye, I know. Snowdonia.’

‘Snowdonia!’ Sam ground his teeth. ‘What’s going on? Who were the feller what were drivin’ the car?’

The man laughed. ‘I dunno. She were just tellin’ me her pal what lives on a farm in Wales had a bad fall a couple of days ago and has been took into hospital; she’s goin’ to give an eye to the feller’s kids and keep house whilst his wife’s laid up.’ He laughed again. ‘Eh, lad, but you should ha’ seen yourself when the car shot forward and your bum met the tarmac; it were enough to make a perishin’ cat laugh.’

Once more, only the size and strength of the barrow boy saved him from a punch on the nose, which was just as well, Sam thought afterwards, since it was at this moment that the man’s erratic memory disgorged the most useful piece of information yet.

‘Cefn Farm; that’s where she said they were bound,’
he shouted as Sam turned away. ‘But you don’t want to follow them there; it’s right out in the wild. She telled me it were five or six miles from the nearest village, some Welsh name wi’ thirty or forty letters. But if you’re real keen to gerrin touch you could always write.’

‘Ta,’ Sam shouted, actually beginning to smile. ‘But I’m off to me ship; we’s bound for Jamaica to pick up a load of mahogany. She’ll sail on the tide whether I’m aboard or no, so I can’t afford to be late. I’ll catch up wi’ me old woman next time I’s ashore.’

Satisfied that the man would probably forget him the instant he was no longer in sight, Sam hurried towards his favourite alehouse. What did Ellen matter anyway? He did not intend to hang around in Liverpool until she saw fit to leave her pal and return home. Tomorrow morning he would sign on with one of the ships taking crews aboard and forget all about his selfish wife.

He had almost reached the pub when a hand fell on his shoulder and a voice he had almost forgotten spoke in his ear. ‘Well fancy seeing you after so long, Sam O’Mara! I hope you’ve not been pesterin’ Ellen or the little ’un, because if you go anywhere near either your wife or your daughter you’ll be back in Walton jail before you can say knife.’

Sam swung slowly round; yes, his worst fears were realised. It was bloody Constable Jamieson. But Sam reminded himself that on this occasion at least he had done nothing wrong, so he met the policeman’s eyes defiantly. ‘If you think I meant to come back here when I’ve kept away for so long, you’re mistook,’ he said, his voice taking on a truculent whine. ‘I don’t know where me wife’s gone, nor I haven’t tried to find out. Me ship’s
come in for repairs, but I’ll be off within a day or so, don’t you fret. Liverpool’s the last place on earth I want to be.’ He looked slyly at the constable. ‘Though surely that court injunction can’t still be in force, can it? I’ll be retirin’ in a year or two and mebbe then I’ll want to come back home.’

Constable Jamieson shrugged, then delved into his pocket and produced an official-looking brown envelope, which he pushed into Sam’s reluctant hand. ‘Well, I’ve done my duty,’ he said. ‘Good thing you registered at the seamen’s hostel, else you might never have got your mail.’ He touched the brim of his tall helmet and grinned mockingly at his companion. ‘Good day to you, sir.’

Sam was tempted to tear the envelope up without opening it, but instead rammed it into his pocket and hurried to the pub. Once there he fortified himself with several drinks before ripping it open and staring with increasing disbelief at the documents it had contained. The covering letter informed him that he had owed maintenance for his wife and child for the past five years, and could pay off the arrears monthly or alternatively hand over a lump sum so large that Sam nearly fainted. Incredulous, he showed the letter around the pub, telling himself that it must be some sort of joke, that Constable Jamieson must have spotted him earlier, decided to give him a bad scare, and filled in the forms himself. However, other drinkers in the pub, after one look at the documents, assured him that it was no practical joke but the sorry truth. Because he had never been back to Liverpool, never registered at a seamen’s hostel in Great Britain, the authorities had been unable to trace him. But now that they knew his details he would be unable to visit any
port in the country without a demand for money following his arrival as night follows day.

Sam brooded over this and finally came to the conclusion that there was only one course open to him. He must find Ellen and somehow persuade or scare her into promising to contact the authorities, and say that she had no need of Sam’s money. But thinking it over, he knew that what he most wanted to do was to pay her back for the fright he had received upon opening the envelope.

For the rest of the evening, Sam plotted and planned, having decided that he would never have a better opportunity to catch Ellen on the hop than he had now. Thanks to the barrow boy, he knew where she would be living for the next two or three weeks at any rate. And he had sufficient money in his pocket to keep him whilst he put his scheme into action.

He took a deep draught of porter. Yes, it was all bloody Ellen’s fault, for it must be she who had alerted the authorities to the fact that she had received no maintenance. Well, if he caught up with her she would receive more than maintenance, he thought vindictively. But it would do no good to batter Ellen for what she had done to him. He would have to work out some plan by which he could get Ellen to renounce her claim to his money. He had realised that finding one woman in the surging crowds of Liverpool was just about impossible; it had been sheer luck that his path and Ellen’s had crossed that morning, a piece of luck which might never occur again. By now he had acknowledged that wherever she was living Ellen would never take him back, and that his only reason for following her was to exact revenge for the way
he had been treated. He could not remember ever receiving a hard knock of any description without making sure that he got his own back. Sooner or later – sometimes a great deal later – the person who had hurt, insulted or merely jeered at Sam O’Mara would receive their just deserts. If he did not punish Ellen for the contents of that envelope it would niggle at his mind for ever. No, if he was to have any peace he must make Ellen suffer, and suddenly his mind cleared and he realised what he must do.

The injunction forbade him to approach Ellen or their home, but it assumed Ellen remained in Liverpool. Now he knew that she was off to a farm in Snowdonia, many miles from her home. He could come across her there, by accident on purpose so to speak. Sam lurched up to the bar and got himself another drink, then returned to his corner, reflecting savagely that it would have been summary justice if he could have gone into Ellen’s house and prigged enough to fill his pockets with cash, but since he had no idea where Ellen was living that was out of the question. He thought hard. If he were still a docker things would be very different; he could move at will about the port and take advantage of any opportunity that came his way. He knew various methods by which a docker could leave the wharves a good deal richer than when he arrived, but he was a seaman and could only legitimately visit the dock in which his ship lay. Rack his brains as he might, he could not bring anything to mind which would suit the present situation.

Finally he decided, much against his will, to take a week’s work in the slaughterhouse, hefting carcasses on and off the lorries which would deliver them to butchers’ shops as far as twenty miles away. It was gruelling work,
for Sam did not have the knack of an experienced handler, but by the end of the week he had not only managed to earn a decent wage, but learned that there was a market for bones and unwanted bits of carcass among the many dog owners in the city. Armed with the money he got through this illicit trade as well as with his week’s wages, Sam sloped off to begin the journey into Wales.

Ellen had heard from Molly how very remote Cefn Farm was, how deeply buried in the mountains of Snowdonia, but because she had no experience of country living she was appalled by the great mountains towering above the little farmhouse, and by the silence. There was always the sound of the wind, of course, and the occasional roar of a plane’s engine as it passed overhead, but mostly there was silence. Catering for six, too – for Jacob still took most of his meals in the farmhouse – was very different from what she had been used to; rationing had come to an end some years before and Ellen was astonished and not a little dismayed to find that Rhys took it for granted that she would bake her own bread. At first Ellen said nothing, but after a couple of days Rhys drove her down to Bangor to visit Molly and her friend explained the situation. ‘Shop bread doesn’t keep, particularly at this time of year when the weather’s so hot,’ Molly had said. ‘For some reason, home-baked bread lasts longer. I usually bake once a week, and then I don’t just make the bread but cakes, buns, pies and puddings as well.’ She had looked at Ellen’s appalled face, giggled, and put a comforting hand on her arm. ‘Don’t look so horrified, Ellen. You see, hill farming is hard work and everyone gets very hungry. I don’t believe
I’ve ever seen a fat hill farmer, but they need plenty of good food to keep them going. I’ve known Rhys to carry a sick sheep across his shoulders for miles, and when you think of the terrain . . .’