‘He’s real quick, isn’t he?’ Sam said admiringly and the moment of danger passed.
Janey took the first opportunity to make her peace with Sam by praising the child.
Nellie wondered whether Sam would suggest a visit to the market on Saturday night but instead he told her that they were invited to a party.
‘George Adams is having a hooley on Saturday night,’ he said. ‘And he’s asked us.’
‘A hooley?’ Nellie said. ‘Who’d be there, Sam?’
‘Buck Madden and his missus and George’s brother Albert and his wife. Some of Rose’s relations and other people. It’ll be a good do.’
Nellie looked apprehensive. ‘I won’t know anyone, Sam,’ she said and Sam laughed.
‘You’ll know me, girl,’ he teased her, ‘and anyhow you’ll probably know plenty of the women there. You know Buck an’ all. He said they’re always good do’s at the Adams’.’
Nellie prepared carefully for the party, putting the finishing touches to a blouse she had made and on the day washing her hair and pinning it carefully into a neat bun on the nape of her neck. Sam wore a suit he had bought on a trip to America and Nellie felt proud as they walked to the Adams house, though nervous at the prospect of meeting new people.
She would have preferred to leave the baby with Maggie but Janey had been affronted when it was suggested.
‘He should be here in his own place,’ she said, ‘not sleeping with all those kids’ and Sam backed her. He was morbidly afraid that Tommy would be infected with a disease by other children
In the end Nellie had compromised with a makeshift bed for the child on the sofa. She thought that if he was upstairs Janey might not hear him if he woke and cried.
The Adams house was already crowded when Nellie and Sam arrived but Rose Adams took Nellie under her wing and introduced her to the other women. Sam went to join the men in the kitchen where a barrel of ale had been provided.
Nellie was overcome with shyness and could scarcely speak at first but when she felt able to look around the parlour she discovered that she had met several of the women and knew others by sight, so gradually she recovered from her shyness. Buck Madden’s wife came to sit beside her and soon Nellie was laughing at her droll comments.
A rough red wine known locally as Red Biddy had been provided as well as the ale and port wine, for the women, and everyone quickly became merry. One of the men came into the parlour and the other men drifted after him, including Sam.
‘All right, girl?’ he said quietly to Nellie and when she nodded happily he joined a group of men near by.
Presently Rose Adams drew Nellie and Mrs Madden out to the kitchen with her to pile plates with thick sandwiches of corned beef or egg. Other women carried round the sandwiches and plates of spare ribs.
Many more men had arrived bringing with them large bottles of overproof rum.
‘Pinched from the docks, probably,’ Rose Adams whispered to Nellie. ‘I never asked all this lot and I’m sure George didn’t.’
‘These fellas can smell a do,’ Jessie Madden said.
‘Well, as long as they behave themselves,’ Rose said tolerantly.
Everywhere was crowded now but someone found Nellie a seat just inside the parlour door. She could see Sam in the corner with the same group of men and he seemed to be enjoying himself.
Nellie was enjoying herself too. It was all new and strange to her but she was pleased to be accepted by the other women and made so welcome by Rose. All went well until a woman asked Nellie how many children she had.
‘Only one so far,’ Nellie said shyly. A woman who knew her broke in. ‘She keeps him lovely an’ all, don’t you, girl? He’s a credit to you.’
More men were crowding in from the lobby and one of them, named Jed Jones, said jeeringly, ‘Aye, Pears soap, no less, I got told, as if he was gentleman’s son. You’ll have to try it on Sam, girl. See if you can get him to match.’
The next moment Sam had pushed through the crowd and gripped the man’s shirt, pulling him close. Their faces were only inches apart as Sam snarled, ‘Wharra you getting at? Spit it out.’
‘No offence, Sam, no offence,’ the man stuttered. ‘Just agreeing with the women, like – a bit of a joke.’
‘Aye, well save your jokes for your own mates,’ Sam said. ‘Keep your tongue off my wife and child.’
Sam had slackened his grip on the man and George Adams unobtrusively slipped between them. ‘Ale in the kitchen, lads,’ he said and Jed Jones scuttled thankfully away.
‘You can’t do right for doing wrong with some people, lad,’ Rose Adams said to Sam. ‘If you neglect your children they talk about you and if you keep them nice they still talk. Have another sandwich, Sam.’
Nellie was trembling with shock and fear. She wondered whether Jed Jones was one of the men who had been in the Volunteer on the night of Tommy’s birth or one of those who had been with Charlie West on the street corner. She was relieved when Sam took the sandwich and crouched down beside her chair to eat it.
‘All right, girl?’ he asked.
Nellie managed to smile at him and say quietly, ‘Isn’t Mrs Adams nice?’
‘George is a good mate too,’ Sam said.
Neither of them mentioned the incident which had just happened although both were disturbed by it.
Nellie was even more disturbed a little later when Sam had rejoined his friends and she had carried plates to the kitchen with Rose. Among the group with Jed Jones was Charlie West and he raised his glass mockingly to Nellie.
She ignored him and rushed into the scullery with the plates but he followed her.
‘Hello, Nell,’ he said in a caressing voice. ‘You’re looking very nice tonight.’
Nellie blushed and kept her head bent and Jessie Madden said warningly, ‘Beat it, Charlie. Don’t be trying to cause trouble.’
Charlie laughed. ‘Aye, I believe Sam’s in good form tonight,’ he said, ‘but he can’t object to me praising his wife.’
In a lower voice he said to Nellie, ‘I won’t say nothing to praise the child because there’s a bit of a doubt there, isn’t there?’
Nellie looked at him as though mesmerised like a rabbit with a stoat and said nothing.
Charlie said even more quietly, ‘Sam won’t mind, will he? Soft Sam.’
Jessie came beside Nellie again. ‘Are you still here?’ she exclaimed to West. ‘Beat it or we’ll make you wash them plates.’ He laughed and turned away and Jessie said, ‘What was he saying to you, girl? A proper troublemaker, that feller.’
‘Maggie Nolan says he’s a pansy,’ Nellie said, not answering the question.
Jessie was easily diverted. ‘She’s right,’ she said, ‘but he’s always trying to make up to women to hide it, like.’ She laughed. ‘I should’ve offered to kiss him. That would’ve got rid of him quicker than the thought of washing dishes.’
Rose Adams paused beside them. ‘Is something up?’ she asked.
Jessie said, ‘Only that bloody Charlie West trying to make up to Nellie. I shifted him.’
‘Is he here?’ Rose exclaimed. ‘Now I know he’s just pushed in because me and George can’t stand him. I haven’t seen him.’
‘You wouldn’t. He’s such a bloody little runt,’ Jessie said.
Nellie still felt uneasy when they all went back to the parlour where a man was reciting ‘If’ amid laughter as he forgot the lines and had to be prompted by his wife, interspersed with comments like ‘You daft fool’ from the woman and ‘You nagging cow’ from the man.
‘I got learned that at school,’ Buck said. ‘I don’t remember them words in it though.’
It was all good humoured and the man was followed by others who sang or recited.
Nellie was again sitting near the door and Sam had moved to lean against the wall behind her. She was beginning to relax and forget Charlie West when suddenly he pushed through from the lobby followed by some of his cronies who shouted, ‘Come on, Charlie. Give us a song
.’
Nellie peeped at Sam but he was still smiling and she remembered that he knew nothing of what had happened while he was at sea.
Charlie West stepped into the centre of the room and began to sing ‘Roses of Picardy’, holding his glass aloft and looking soulfully round the company as he sang. To some it might have appeared just chance that he looked directly at Nellie as he sang the line, ‘But never a rose like you’, but Nellie gasped and Sam started forward.
His way was unobtrusively barred by George Adams and at a nod from George, his brother, a big burly man, interrupted Charlie.
‘Eh, enough of that soppy stuff,’ he shouted drunkenly, lurching to the centre of the room and pushing Charlie into a group by the window as far as possible from Sam, ‘let’s have a proper song. “Blow the Man Down”.’
He began to roar out the verse and the guests joined in the chorus, holding glasses aloft and swaying from side to side. Unseen by most of them Sam grabbed Nellie’s arm and pulled her out into the lobby. ‘Get your shawl. We’re going,’ he snapped.
Nellie snatched up her shawl and managed to fling it around her before she was pulled out of the front door and along the street. Sam strode along, gripping her arm, his face dark with anger, and Nellie had almost to run to keep up with him.
‘Sam, you’re hurting me. My hair’s coming down. Stop,’ she pleaded but Sam was oblivious to her protests. His grasp on her arm never relaxed nor the speed with which he strode along and Nellie was breathless and dishevelled, and grateful for the darkness which hid her distress. Sam never spoke although Nellie sobbed, ‘Sam, Sam,’ as she was pulled along.
When they reached Johnson Street Sam thrust Nellie before him into the house, then both stood aghast.
Janey lolled insensible in Sam’s chair, an empty gin bottle on the floor beside her, and Tommy lay on the floor sobbing – hoarse, hiccuping, hopeless sobs which showed that he had cried for hours.
Nellie snatched her arm from Sam’s grasp and flew to the baby. She snatched him up. ‘Look at his face,’ she cried. Two long scratches furrowed his cheek, which was red and inflamed, and his clothes were soaked.
The meek and sobbing wife was instantly transformed into a fury. ‘You gave her that gin,’ she yelled at Sam. That’s why she wanted him here. Have you got wood between the ears or what?’
‘It was just for minding him, like,’ Sam mumbled. He had approached to look at the child but Nellie was holding Tom close as she pushed past Sam and snatched a napkin from a string over the fireplace and dry clothes from a drawer.
She cuddled and soothed the baby, but her fury increased when she sat down to change his clothes and found that there were more scratches on his tender skin from an open napkin pin and red marks as though from slaps.
‘What’s she been doing to him?’ she said with a controlled fury more powerful than a shout. ‘Get her out of here. Out of my sight or I’ll kill her.’
Sam obediently hauled the old woman to her feet, turning his head aside as he was assaulted by her foul breath, and half dragged, half carried her into the parlour.
When he returned Nellie was taking a tin of Vaseline from a cupboard, still cradling the child in her arms. He was calm now, only hiccuping occasionally and clinging to his mother. Nellie sat down again without looking at or speaking to Sam and he sat down in the corner of the kitchen while she soothed the scratches with Vaseline and dressed the child in his dry vest and nightgown.
‘There was an open pin in her neckshawl,’ Sam volunteered at last. ‘She must have been trying to nurse him like and it scratched him.’
‘Lucky that was all she did,’ Nellie said grimly. ‘She could’ve fell him in the fire the way she was.’ She had the baby over her shoulder now with his head snuggled into her neck as she gently rubbed his back and crooned to him.
Sam tentatively came forward and crouched by Nellie’s knee. ‘All right, Tommy lad?’ he said quietly to the baby.
He looked so miserable that Nellie relented and lifted the child round to sit on her knee facing his father.
‘Dada,’ Tommy said and began to sob again but he soon stopped when Nellie cuddled him and Sam gently stroked his head.
Later when the child was settled in his cot and they were undressing for bed Sam noticed the bruises on Nellie’s arm where he had gripped her.
‘Did I do them, girl?’ he asked in dismay.
Nellie nodded. ‘And I lost all me hairpins an’ all,’ she said.
‘I never meant to hurt you, Ellie,’ Sam said humbly. ‘It’s just me bloody temper runs away with me.’
‘It nearly did a couple of times tonight,’ Nellie said with newfound courage.
Sam scowled. ‘I didn’t expect to see them lot at the do,’ he said.
Nellie said quickly, ‘They only pushed in, Rose said. They weren’t asked.’
‘That little runt Charlie West,’ Sam said. ‘I’ll swing for him one of these days.’
‘Maggie says he’s a bum boy,’ Nellie said hoping to make Sam laugh. ‘She says he makes up to women but he’d run a mile if they took any notice.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ Sam growled. ‘I think he likes it both ways. Does he make up to you?’
For a moment Nellie hesitated. It was a perfect opportunity to tell Sam about West, but she thought of Charlie’s hints about the baby, and his involvement with Janey, and of Sam’s unreasonable jealousy, and only said, ‘No, Sam. He’s thick with Janey but he goes in and out her side door.’
Sam said nothing but he had noticed her hesitation. Later in bed he made love as passionately and urgently as he had done on his first night at home but Nellie felt too drained by the emotions of the evening to be aroused by him.
She lay awake for a while wondering why Sam was so bitter about Charlie West. Had he been the ringleader when Sam was taunted on the night of Tommy’s birth and the one to call him Soft Sam?
What had Janey told West about their marriage? She had certainly said something that allowed West to drop hints to her and to taunt Sam. Perhaps about how clever she had been in arranging the marriage.
Surely Janey had not told West anything about Leadbetter? Oh God, I wish we could go right away from here, miles away, she thought despairingly. Just me and Sam and the baby and Bobby, but she knew it was a hopeless wish.
The next morning she was able to conceal the bruises on her arm but the scratches were very noticeable on the baby’s face. Sam was still asleep when Nellie carried the child downstairs but Bobby and Janey were in the kitchen, Janey drinking tea and Bobby eating bread and jam.
He came immediately to look at the child. ‘Wharrave you done to your face, lad?’ he exclaimed.
‘He scratched it on a pin in Janey’s neckshawl,’ Nellie said, looking resentfully at the old woman.
‘No, he never,’ Janey exclaimed. ‘Crying little get. Don’t ask me to mind him no more. Never stopped whingeing.’
Nellie drew in her breath in outrage but before she could speak Janey had gone into the parlour, banging the door.
‘It was her,’ Nellie whispered to her brother. ‘Sam found the pin open in her neckshawl and she’d hit Tommy an’ all. I could’ve killed her.’
‘She had him in the parlour when I come in,’ Bobby said. ‘Said she didn’t want Maggie nosing in because he was crying. She couldn’t hear him in there.’
‘Did you see him? Was he all right then?’ Nellie asked.
‘I just went to bed,’ Bobby confessed. ‘I’m sorry, Nell. I thought he was asleep.’
‘It’s not your fault, lad. It’s mine – and Sam’s,’ she added angrily. ‘It was him wanted Janey to look after him and gave her gin an’ all. Paralytic she was.’
Her anger with Sam flared up afresh and she scarcely looked at him or spoke to him when he eventually came downstairs. Tommy was playing on the rag rug and Sam lifted him into his arms.
‘Them marks don’t look so bad this morning, do they?’ he said.
‘Bad enough,’ Nellie sai
d grimly, banging his breakfast on the table.
‘Is your arm all right, girl?’ Sam asked.
‘I’m not worried about me arm,’ Nellie exclaimed. ‘It’s leaving me child to be knocked about be that dirty old crow.’
Sam hurriedly shovelled down his bacon and egg and escaped without speaking further. I don’t know what’s come over her, he thought. That carry-on last night and the way she is now. I didn’t know she had it in her. Always thought she was that quiet and frightened like. Maybe there’s a lot I don’t know about her.
He had reached the Volunteer and he shrugged his thoughts aside and went in. George Adams and Buck were already there.
‘Bringing the empties back,’ George said and Buck greeted Sam cheerfully.
‘A good do, wasn’t it, Sam?’
‘It was,’ Sam agreed. ‘You and your missus went to a lot of trouble, George.’ He felt ashamed when he reflected that George had twice narrowly saved him from getting into a fight.
‘Sorry I lost me rag, like, a coupla times, George,’ he muttered.
‘That’s all right, lad,’ George said. ‘Me and our Albert got rid of that lot. I don’t mind anyone pushing in, like, as long as they behave themselves but them lot were just looking for trouble.’
‘One of them fellas, named Jones – me dad sailed with his father years ago,’ Buck said. ‘He was a trimmer like me dad and one time when they was on the old Maury Jones was caught stealing from his mates.’
‘From his mates!’ George exclaimed.
‘Aye. You know they only took a few singlets and pants and that aboard – didn’t have much to take anyhow – and they caught this fella stealing from their lockers. Me dad said the men fixed him for it, said he musta been glad to get ashore at the end of the trip and he left the sea after that. Lived near us but to the day he died me dad wouldn’t look on the same side of the street he was on. Stealing from mates. You can’t get no lower than that. No wonder the son’s no good.’
Sam felt with shame that Buck was talking to ease any awkwardness and he said gruffly to George, ‘I didn’t behave no better than them, though. And dragging the wife home early an’ all.’
A Wise Child Page 9