‘Southampton, Sam,’ Madge said.
‘Southampton?’ he shouted. ‘What the hell are we doing in Southampton?’
‘You wanted to come here, Sam,’ Madge said softly. ‘Don’t you remember you said you wanted to get away and I said why don’t we go to Southampton?’
Sam looked bewildered, clutching his head and groaning. ‘Me head’s splitting in two,’ he said. ‘I only remember Lime Street. The noise and the steam. Did I get on the train? Why?’
I had a narrow escape at Lime Street if he woke up that much, Madge thought, but aloud she said, as though unwillingly, ‘Your wife threw you out, Sam.’
‘Ellie? Threw me out?’ he said. ‘Don’t talk daft.’
‘Well, not her. It was her brother and her fancy man done it. You’d wrecked the place and very near murdered her,’ Madge said glibly.
Sam looked up. ‘Murdered her?’ he said sharply. A memory of Nellie cringing away from him rose in his fuddled mind and he groaned.
‘Two years is a long time away, Sam,’ Madge said. ‘You was just that mad at what’d been going on. You’re better away from Liverpool for a while. I’ll look after you, Sam.’
‘Her fancy man,’ Sam said. He sat scowling at the floor and Madge said nothing. ‘I must be going bloody mad,’ he said finally. ‘I don’t remember none of it.’
‘It’ll come back,’ Madge said. ‘Mind you, you weren’t half carrying a load of drink. I’ve never seen a fella so drunk or maybe you got a knock on your head in all the fighting.’
She sat down beside him and put her arms round him but he pushed her away and got to his feet unsteadily. He poured the remaining water from the ewer into the bowl and sluiced it over his face and head but his mind remained muzzy.
How could all this have happened and yet he remembered nothing of it? Perhaps he did get a knock on the head.
‘I’m going out,’ he said. ‘Clear me head.’
‘All right, Sam. I’ll come with you,’ Madge said. He made a gesture of dissent but she said quickly, ‘You don’t know where you are.’
‘Too bloody right,’ Sam growled, but they had only walked a short distance when he felt so ill that he was glad to return to the house. He refused the drink Madge offered him and lay in the bed trying to sort out his thoughts but they were still as muddled and finally he fell asleep.
When he woke Madge was beside him, her arm around him, but he slid away from her and went to open the dirty window. His mind was beginning to clear but his memory was patchy. He tried to think back to his last trip and suddenly he remembered the hospital and the doctor telling him that he was sterile. He groaned aloud, striking the window ledge with his fist so hard that the windows rattled.
Madge woke. ‘Sam, what’s the matter?’ she cried jumping out of bed and coming to him but he thrust her away.
‘I’ve gorra gerrout,’ he said, pulling on his boots.
‘I’ll come with you,’ she exclaimed.
‘No you won’t,’ he said roughly. ‘Just tell me the address.’
He went out and walked about trying to think. Had he faced Ellie with that? He couldn’t remember. Was that why he had beaten her and wrecked his house? Once again he remembered her cringing away from him and her battered and bleeding face. Oh God, he groaned aloud.
And she had a fancy man. Was it the fellow he fought with in her brother’s house? He could remember that all right. His anger grew. So Bobby had helped to throw him out of his own house. But it wasn’t his own house.
He thought of old Janey and her hints. What a fool he’d been. Soft Sam. Diddled all along the line. He began to feel ill again and turned back to the house where Madge was waiting for him. She was a tart, he thought, but more straight than Ellie. Looking so innocent as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth and tricking him all the way, he thought savagely.
Madge was surprised when he returned and spoke quietly to her.
‘Come back to bed, Sam,’ she coaxed him and once in bed she exerted herself to rouse his desire.
He took her roughly with none of the tenderness he had shown to Ellie before that last terrible night but Madge seemed to enjoy his roughness.
‘Never mind about them lot in Liverpool,’ she whispered afterwards. ‘They don’t care about you, Sam. Just out for what they can get out of you. Double crossing you and learning that lad to be a snob. They think you’re not good enough for them, but I love you, Sam. We’ll be good together.’
Madge had only heard a stray reference to Sam’s son and his extra lessons but she was well satisfied with the effect of the remark on Sam.
‘He used to think the sun shone outa me,’ he muttered. ‘I suppose she’s learned him different now.’
Madge was too experienced to pursue it further.
‘Are you hungry, Sam?’ she asked.
‘Yes, I am,’ he said in surprise. He picked his trousers off the floor and put his hand in the pocket, pulling out a handful of silver and copper.
‘This is all I’ve got,’ he said in dismay.
‘Yes, they cleaned you out proper, Sam, and the good pay-off you must’ve had from that long trip too. Never mind, I’ve got enough.’
She went out and soon returned with four baked potatoes and a screw of salt and another bottle of rum.
‘Where’d you get these this hour of the night?’ Sam asked and she smiled.
‘This is me home town, remember,’ she said.
Sam felt better when he had eaten two of the potatoes but he refused the rum. Madge had replenished the water jug and he drank some but soon his unbearable thoughts made him seize the rum bottle and gulp from it.
He was sitting on the side of the bed and Madge sat beside him and put her arms round him. ‘Oh Sam, I’m crazy about you,’ she murmured. ‘I fell for you the minute I saw you. I’ve never known a man like you before. You’re my dream man.’
As she talked her hands roamed round his body skilfully arousing him until they fell back on the bed. Although he treated her roughly Madge responded to him with cries and moans of delight.
Suddenly Sam remembered his last night with Ellie and turned away from Madge with a groan of self-disgust. What the hell is wrong with me? he thought. I’m not bloody fit to live.
Madge was clutching him, leaning over him and kissing him frantically.
‘I’m sorry, girl,’ he muttered but she only clutched him more desperately.
‘I don’t mind you being rough, Sam. I like it,’ she murmured. ‘I like it anyway with you. I’m mad about you. I need you, Sam.’
He pulled away from her clutching hands and pulled on his trousers and his boots. ‘I’ve gorra gerraway, gerrout,’ he said desperately and blundered out of the room and into the street.
He walked quickly for hours, trying to escape from his thoughts until he was exhausted.
Sam was a deeply unhappy man, more unhappy than he had ever been during the hardships of his past life. His tough exterior concealed a profoundly insecure and vulnerable personality and his suffering was intense.
A man like George Adams growing up in a close and loving family and repeating the pattern in his own marriage would never be troubled by the doubts which tormented Sam.
The insecurity caused by his father’s rejection and his loveless childhood had been the reason for his doubts and his jealousy of Nellie, yet he had been happy since his marriage.
Proud of his wife and son, of his comfortable home and basking in Tom’s uncritical love and admiration, Sam had grown confident and happy.
Now all that confidence had gone. All the doubts aroused by the ill-natured teasing of his drinking companions on the night of Tommy’s birth, old Janey’s malicious hints and the shattering revelation by the doctor of his sterility made him an easy target for the lies told by Madge.
The picture of Ellie as he had last seen her was constantly in his mind, filling him with self-loathing, and he despised himself for responding so readily to Madge. Yet her declarations of love and admiration for him, and her app
arent desperate need for him, was balm to his wounded self-esteem and he was unable to resist her, especially when he had been drinking.
Madge had lit the gas fire and was sitting by it when he went in and she immediately picked up the bottle of rum.
‘I don’t want none of that,’ Sam muttered. ‘I want me head clear. Did I bring me book with me, me seaman’s book?’
‘No Sam,’ Madge lied, feeling that she needed to know his plans before she produced it.
‘I must’ve left it or lost it,’ he said. ‘I’m gonna get a job. I’m not living off you. Anyhow your money must be very near gone.’
‘It is, Sam, but Kitty’s found me a little job,’ Madge said quickly.
‘I feel buggered now but tomorrow I’ll try the docks,’ Sam said. ‘I might go after round the shipping offices. See if I can get a new book. Have you got any notepaper?’
‘No, but I can get some as soon as she opens,’ Madge said.
Later she bought pen and ink and notepaper and pretended to approve of Sam’s idea of writing to his son. ‘You don’t know what they’ve told him but you can tell him your side, Sam,’ she said.
Sam sat for a long time looking at the notepaper then finally he wrote,
Dear Tommy,
I hope this finds you well as it leaves me at present. Look after your mother.
Your loving father, Samuel Meadows.
Madge managed to be ready to go out as he finished it.
‘I’ll post it for you, Sam. I pass the post office and I’ll get a stamp. If I get the next post he should get it tonight or tomorrow morning.’
Once away from the house she read the letter then tore it and the envelope up and scattered the pieces.
Sam had fallen asleep when she returned and she took the opportunity to slip his seaman’s book into his bag. No use hiding it if he was going to get a replacement but she was determined to keep him with her as long as possible.
Sam watched the post eagerly for the next few days but at the end of the week he said to Madge, ‘I think he’d have wrote be now, don’t you?’
He said nothing of the other hope he had that if his wife knew his address she would write to him.
‘Sam, they don’t want to know about you, lad,’ Madge said. ‘Why don’t you forget them? I love you, Sam. I’m mad about you.’
He had been round the shipping offices but was unable to get a ship without his book, but he got half a day’s work on the docks on the first day he tried. His illness and his prolonged bouts of drinking had left his powerful body thinner and weaker than usual but sheer determination carried him through the long shift.
Madge was surprised and relieved to know that he had been working. She had been afraid that he had gone, perhaps even back to Liverpool, although she knew he had no money for the train fare. Sam kept his thoughts and plans to himself and told her little and he was so moody and unpredictable that she was afraid to ask.
He got another job barrowing coal for a coaster and Madge took advantage of his absence to bring clients into the room. The landlady turned a blind eye as long as she was given her cut of the money and no one saw the men entering or leaving her house by the back way.
Sam gave Madge most of his earnings but he was surprised by the amount of money she seemed to have.
‘Must pay well, waiting on,’ he said one day when she was wearing another new dress.
‘I get good tips, Sam,’ she said glibly.
Often when he returned home she was burning a joss stick and when Sam complained she said they made her feel sexy and immediately began to prove it to him.
The landlady laughed when Madge told her. ‘You’re a caution,’ she said. ‘But you sail close to the wind. You’d better watch out for Big Eddie.’
Madge tossed her head. ‘Sam’s a match for Big Eddie,’ she said, ‘he’s got fists like ten-pound hammers.’
‘He’ll need to be good with a knife and all,’ Kitty said. ‘Not many better than Big Eddie.’
When Madge went back to the room Sam had thrown the joss stick out of the window and fallen asleep in the chair. The smell of the joss stick hung in the air masking other odours.
Madge sat down leaning her arms on the table and devouring Sam with her eyes as he slept. He was all she wanted in a man, she thought, big and strong and rough, yet easily manipulated and believing all she told him about his wife. She felt angry when she thought of his wife and the way he still worried about her and as though on cue Sam stirred and murmured, ‘Ellie, Ellie.’
Madge pressed her lips together and clenched her fists in fury but she controlled it and slipped to her knees between Sam’s legs. One sure way of making him forget his milk-and-water wife, she thought, waking him by stroking and kissing him.
‘For God’s sake,’ he exclaimed as he woke. ‘Don’t you ever get fed up?’
‘Not with you, Sam,’ she wheedled. ‘I’m mad about you,’ but for once it failed to work.
He turned away. ‘I’d rather have a cup of tea,’ he said jokingly and was amazed at Madge’s reaction.
She screamed and yelled, beating her fists on the floor, and Sam said anxiously, ‘Stop it, for God’s sake. You’ll have the house up,’ but she continued her hysterics.
When she screamed at him, ‘You wouldn’t say that to your bloody wife,’ Sam glared at her so ferociously that she fell silent.
‘Keep your bloody tongue off my wife, d’you hear?’ he said menacingly and she nodded, shrinking back from him.
Sam went to the window and stood looking out, trying to control his temper, and Madge slipped out of the room.
She came back with some stew from the cookshop.
‘Kitty’s using the kitchen,’ she said. ‘So this was all I could get.’
Sam took his cue from her and said nothing about what had happened earlier.
‘Smells good,’ he said. ‘Better than the oodle we had on board.’
Later they went out together to a public house, but stayed only a short time before moving on to another one, and then another. Madge wanted as many people as possible to see her with Sam.
In spite of her brave words to the landlady she was nervous of Big Eddie, a huge coloured man who ran a stable of girls and kept them in line with his expertise with a knife. He also used his knife to discourage any opposition.
So far she had been lucky. Many of the local prostitutes were amateurs, supplementing meagre wages or housekeeping money, but she had been having as many customers as the professionals run by a minder. Sooner or later she would be challenged about it but she hoped that the sight of Sam would make them think twice.
She was lucky too that she was able to use her room. For a cut of the proceeds Kitty was prepared to turn a blind eye but Madge knew she would repudiate her without hesitation if she was ever found out.
She feared Sam’s reaction if he ever learned of her activities but she was unable to stop. She craved the money and the luxuries it bought and even more the satisfaction of her insatiable desire. That’s why they keep coming back to me, she thought. They know I need it as much as they do.
Although Sam told himself that he was finished with everyone in Liverpool, whenever he heard a Liverpool accent he could not resist questioning the speaker. So far he had found no one who knew people he knew, or Johnson Street, until he met a man in a dockside pub during his break from work on the docks.
‘You from Liverpool?’ he asked and the man grinned.
‘Aye, you an’ all be the sound of yer.’ He held out his hand. ‘Purrit there, wack.’
He told Sam that he lived in Kirkdale and drank with his mates near Derby Road occasionally.
‘Where else do you drink?’ Sam asked and felt as though his heart missed a beat when the man said, ‘The Volunteer.’
They discussed the landlord and barmen and various customers and at last Sam brought the conversation round to Johnson Street.
‘Me mate lives in the next street,’ the man said. ‘They were talking in the Volley
about some girl from Johnson Street going to college. Some fortune teller told her ma about it, they said.’
‘Did you see anyone from the end house?’ Sam asked. ‘A little woman and a lad?’
‘Where the moneylender lived?’ the man exclaimed. ‘The fella from there was drinking in the Volley. On his own. Drinking brandies and never offering anyone a wet. The lads were talking about him when he went out. They reckoned he’d found some of the old girl’s money after she died, behind a brick in the wall. The lad let the cat outa the bag but the fella said he was making it up. A fortune in gold sovereigns, they said.’
Sam was silent with shock. So it was true. He thought he had accepted Madge’s tale about Ellie with another man but now he realised how much he had hoped she was wrong. And a swine who calls me lad a liar, he thought, but then like a hammer blow he remembered the doctor’s words. Tommy was not his lad.
He realised that the man was looking down at his empty glass and he said hurriedly, ‘Have another. Have a brandy or a drop of rum.’
‘No thanks. I’ll stick to the ale,’ the man said. He was obviously trying to think of something else to tell Sam and finally he said, ‘I think the lad’s name was Tommy.’
‘Did you see him?’ Sam asked eagerly.
‘No, only the landlord said young Tommy was the one should have gone to college. It was wasted on a girl because they only got married anyway. Another fella said Nellie could’ve rigged Tommy out for college with the money, only they were keeping it dark about finding it.’
He could remember no more and Sam thanked him and went back to work, his mind in turmoil. He was working in the hold of a ship, with a cloth tied round his nose and mouth to protect him from the grey dust which rose in choking clouds. His eyes smarted and his misery and anger grew.
Another man sitting in his chair, lying in his bed with Ellie. He ground his teeth at the thought. No wonder I never got no answer to me letter. Maybe they kept it from him. And old Janey dead. Good riddance, he thought.
It was her fault I got married, I could have still been drinking with me mates when I was ashore and staying in the Seaman’s only for her. Sometimes he had thought of going back to Liverpool, just to see how the land lay, he told himself, but now he swore that he would never return. He had served his purpose there and he wasn’t wanted now.
A Wise Child Page 38