The Girl From Seaforth Sands (42 page)

She struggled a moment with paper and string, then let out a squeak. ‘Oh, Amy, you are kind to me! What a pretty, fat little dolly; I have never seen one like it! And it’s so brightly painted . . . I must not call you “it”, though, my pretty darling. You shall be called Mabel, which is quite my favourite name at present.’

‘If you unscrew Mabel, you may get a surprise,’ Amy said, as her small sister squiggled back into bed and began to admire her present. ‘Look!’

And presently she revealed that the fat little wooden doll contained another one, which in its turn contained yet another, until a whole line of fat little wooden dolls were ranged on the counterpane, while Becky squeaked with delight and excitement, and tried to name each doll as it emerged.

‘Where on earth did you get them?’ Minnie asked presently, thoroughly roused by the unfolding drama of the Russian dolls. ‘I can’t recall ever seeing anything like that – how pretty they are. It’s enough to make you wish you was a kid again yourself!’

‘A guest at the hotel showed me one . . . oh, several months ago,’ Amy told her friend. ‘I asked him if he could possibly get me one for my little sister if I gave him the money and a few weeks ago he came back, complete with the Russian doll. Well, chuck,’ she added, addressing her sister, ‘I’m glad you like your present, but Minnie and me’s still worn out, so you can just do as you promised and go back to sleep until daylight.’

‘I don’t mind at all . . . I’ll just fit the dolls back together again first, though,’ Becky said, suiting action to words. ‘Thank you
ever
so much, Amy – I do love you!’

Paddy was down before the rest of the family, helping Suzie to prepare breakfast. Because it was Christmas Day and the main meal would be eaten after they returned from morning service, Suzie usually did a simple breakfast – buttered toast for the females of the family and bacon sandwiches for the men, and today was no exception. Paddy sat before a blazing fire with a slice of bread on the end of a toasting fork held out to the flames, and as each slice cooked it was added to the pile on the plate which stood to one side of the fireplace.

Despite the dullness of the job, Paddy was secretly very excited, more excited than he had been over Christmas for many a long year. About a week earlier Amy had brought her friend, who was to spend Christmas with them, home for tea to meet the rest of the family. Paddy had braced himself to greet Philip with a warmth that he was far from feeling and was delighted to meet Minnie, especially when the girls, in conversation, revealed that Ella Morton was spending Christmas in Manchester with Philip Grimshaw.

At the time, Paddy had continued stolidly eating his tea and had not even looked up from his plate, though he had felt a little rush of excitement at the news. Later, however, when the girls had gone back to the city centre, he had questioned Suzie closely and had learned that Philip and Ella had been going
about together ever since Ella’s emergence from hospital. So I was wrong, Paddy told himself gleefully; Amy’s still fancy free – or at least, if she’s got a feller she’s keeping him pretty dark. He remembered vaguely that there had been talk at one time of Amy going about with a friend of Philip’s, but it had clearly come to nothing. And Christmas is a romantic time, Paddy had told himself, as he slogged up from the beach with his share of the latest catch. Surely I can do something over Christmas to make her think of me as a friend, if nothing warmer?

After much thought in a similar vein, Paddy decided that he would buy her a present and it would be one which would show in some way that he admired her and wanted, once and for all, to forget their past differences. He began to haunt the shops, department stores and markets around Bold Street, Church Street and Renshaw Street, looking for something – anything – which Amy would really like. He was beginning to despair, to think that there was no such gift in the world, when he happened upon a tiny, narrow shop, squeezed between two very much larger ones, in Upper Parliament Street. The word ‘Curios’ had been painted in wobbly white letters at the top of the small window, which was crammed with a wide variety of strange objects all, at first glance, of an oriental nature. Paddy stood before the display, totally fascinated. Richly caparisoned ebony elephants jostled with striped and snarling tigers, ivory warriors and tiny, delicate porcelain cups and saucers, eggshell thin. As Paddy stared a thin, yellow hand, with long, curved nails came into the window space and sought out a tiny porcelain half eggshell, in which lay a beautifully
carved naked baby, complete to the last detail. Paddy took a deep breath, squared his shoulders and pushed the creaking door wide. Inside an ancient Chinese, with his hair in the traditional pigtail, was showing a young seaman the child in the egg and extolling its virtues in a cracked but musical voice. His English, to Paddy’s secret amusement, was the English of the Liverpool docks, but he supposed that if the old fellow had been living here for many years a Liverpool accent would have come more naturally to him than standard English, or even the pidgin English spoken by so many of the Chinese seamen.

While the two at the counter argued amicably over the worth of the tiny object cupped in the Chinaman’s hand, Paddy took a thorough look around. There were so many beautiful things here. He guessed they must all be expensive and also that a good many of them were old, and he also thought that any woman would be enchanted by the majority of the objects on display. He was contemplating a tray upon which lay quantities of ivory carvings, when his eye was caught by a flash of green in a display cabinet, just behind the old man’s silk-clad shoulder. Paddy moved a little further along the counter, the better to see what had caught his eye and was immediately enchanted. The cabinet was filled with jade carvings; a tiny frog, jewel-bright, perched on a jade lily pad, an imposing stork, every feather delicately carved, stared malevolently down at the frog and lizards, fish and even tiny figurines, were displayed on the shelves. He was about to turn back to the counter once more, where the seaman had clearly completed his transaction, when he noticed that above the figurines hung a slender gold
chain, upon which there were suspended, at regular intervals, droplets of jade. The droplets were minute by the clasp of the necklace, but grew in size until the one at the apex was the size of a little fingernail, and the whole thing was so delicately beautiful that he longed to hold it in his hand, if only for a moment. What was more, he knew without a shadow of doubt that the necklace would look wonderful round Amy’s slender white throat. The jade would match the colour of those strange but brilliant eyes and the gold would echo the red-gold of her piled-up hair.

Even as Paddy turned towards the old Chinaman to ask the price of the necklace, the man had forestalled him. He produced a little key from a bunch which jangled at his waist and unlocked the cabinet door, throwing it wide and saying, in his high, cracked old voice, ‘The gentleman wishes to admire my jade? What has caught your honour’s fancy?’

‘Oh! Oh . . . er . . . the necklace,’ Paddy said, almost gasping in his eagerness. ‘Can I just take a look at it?’

The Chinaman took the necklace reverently from its place and draped it across Paddy’s hand. Seen close to, it was even lovelier than it had been in the showcase – and even more expensive, Paddy thought despairingly. Nevertheless, he knew that it was the very thing for Amy and he had been saving up, after all. ‘How much?’ he asked boldly. He knew that haggling was a way of life for the Chinese but suspected that he would be no good at it, still . . .

‘The chain is pure gold and the jade is old, very old,’ the man said, naming a figure which made Paddy gasp. It was not that it was so expensive;
indeed, he thought it was probably quite reasonable, but it was more than he had ever spent on a present for anyone, even his mother. If he bought it at the asking price it would reduce his savings considerably. Quickly, before he lost courage, he suggested tentatively that the man might like to accept half the figure named, and after a good deal of wrangling they settled on a sum which Paddy felt he could just about afford. He fished out his money, carefully counted out the required amount and took the small white box which the Chinaman handed to him. Turning to leave the shop, he thought ruefully that the rest of the family would have to make do with inferior offerings this year. But there was no denying it, he had found the perfect present for difficult, disagreeable, adorable Amy Logan.

Paddy was brought abruptly back to the present when the slice of bread on his toasting fork burst into flame. The heat of it travelled along the fork, causing him to fling both toast and implement down on the floor, where he trampled it into Suzie’s rag rug, causing his mother to give an indignant shriek.

‘There now, Paddy Keagan, look what you’ve done to me lovely rag rug, let alone that piece of toast,’ Suzie said, bringing a brush and dustpan across to sweep up the embers of both toast and rug. ‘That’s what comes of dreamin’ when you should be concentratin’. And what’s more, you’ve toasted enough bread for an army, so leave off and start buttering.’ Paddy, considerably chastened, did so and presently the family began to gather round the kitchen table, wishing each other the compliments of the season and eyeing the small pile of presents beneath the Christmas tree, which would be opened when they got back from church. Becky had come
down for her stocking as soon as it was light, but the rest of them had to wait until later in the morning. It was a ritual with the Logan family to open their presents then, so Paddy, who was desperate to see Amy’s reaction to his own gift, would have to wait, as everyone else did.

‘It was a nice service, wasn’t it?’ Amy said to Minnie, as the two girls followed the rest of the family out of St Thomas’s. ‘But listening to the sermon and singing all those carols has given me a good appetite. Dad bought a goose from one of the stalls in St John’s Market and Suzie took it down to the baker’s early, so as to have it ready for one o’clock; that’ll just give us time to open the presents before we eat.’

No one ever spent much on Christmas presents for adults, though they tried to make sure that children had as good a time as they could afford. Minnie had bought token presents for Bill and Suzie – pipe tobacco and chocolates – but had not attempted to buy for the boys, or for Charlie’s new wife, a pleasant girl called Lottie, who was already six months gone with child. Amy herself had bought mufflers for her brothers, a pair of silk stockings for Suzie and a pile of little gifts for Becky, and she and Minnie had agreed not to exchange presents this year. Amy knew that Suzie and Bill were going to give Minnie two handkerchiefs and a bag of peppermints and guessed she herself would receive something similar from her father and stepmother. So it was without any particular excitement that she joined the family around the tree to open her presents.

Charlie and his wife opened their gifts first, as did
Gus, and then the three of them went off to the baker’s to fetch back the goose while the rest unwrapped their packets and parcels. Amy, seeing the small white box with her name written neatly on the lid, picked it up and glanced thoughtfully around her; surely she had opened all the presents from her family? Who could this be from? There was only her own name upon the lid, but then it was a small box with little room for anything else.

The box was fastened with string and red sealing wax. Amy undid it and lifted the lid, then gave a gasp of pure delight. Reverently, she lifted the jade and gold necklace out of its bed of cotton wool and held it up so that it sparkled in the thin sunlight slanting through the window. ‘Look!’ she said, her voice clear and yet hushed. ‘Oh, look at this! Isn’t it just the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen? But who . . . ?’

For a moment there was total silence. Everyone stared at the delicate necklace swinging from Amy’s forefinger and nobody spoke. Then Paddy cleared his throat. ‘I gorrit in a curio shop on Upper Parly,’ he said gruffly. ‘I thought . . . I thought it ’ud suit you.’ Amy’s eyes travelled doubtfully from the necklace to Paddy’s face and then back to the necklace. For once in her life, perhaps for the first time, she found herself completely bereft of words. From anyone else, from any one of her brothers or friends, she would have greeted the gift with the pleasure it deserved, but coming from Paddy, who had always hated her . . . or had he? For the first time it occurred to her that on several occasions lately, when he could have been rude or dismissive, he had been polite, almost friendly. She seemed to remember that at some point over the
past few months he had more or less said they ought to forget the old antagonism and try, at least on the surface, to behave like civilised, rational people. He had not used those very words, of course, they were probably not part of Paddy’s vocabulary, but that was what he had meant.

She looked up at Paddy through her lashes, realising abruptly that the silence had stretched for too long; if she did not speak soon . . . ‘You really shouldn’t have, Paddy,’ she said stiffly, trying to meet his eye, but he would not look at her, watching the necklace as it hung from her fingers with an intensity which she found more embarrassing than a glance exchange between them. ‘It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, but it must have cost a great deal and . . . I . . . I shouldn’t accept it from you.’

Paddy looked up at her; it was difficult to read the expression in his dark eyes, but at least he met her own as she made an attempt at a friendly smile. ‘Are you sayin’ you won’t take it?’ Paddy asked baldly. ‘Are you sayin’ I ain’t even good enough to give you something pretty, as a Christmas present?’

Amy was still searching for a reply which would enable her to give back the gift without appearing downright hateful, when Bill spoke. ‘Of course she ain’t sayin’ any such thing,’ he said gruffly, ‘no daughter of mine would be so bleedin’ rude, let alone ungrateful.’ He turned to Amy. ‘Why, queen, next thing we know you’ll be askin’ young Becky for the money for them Russian dolls you give her this morning. Or offerin’ to pay me so much a pound for the spuds what I grew for Christmas dinner.’