His anger made him shovel furiously until a man tapped him on the shoulder.
‘What are you trying to do? Do other fellas out of a job?’ he said unpleasantly. ‘Leave some for the next shift.’
Sam mumbled an apology and slowed down but another man leaned across him to talk about his brother who had only managed one half day’s work in the week.
‘Bloody strangers taking the bread out of our mouths,’ he said.
Sam was tempted to crash his fist into the man’s face but he restrained himself. They won’t see much more of me, he thought grimly. I’ll get a ship if I have to camp out in the offices. Get on board with proper mates, not like he was here, a resented outcast.
He was morose and taciturn when he went back to the room. Madge said nothing, only gave him a mug of tea generously laced with rum. While he ate his meal she chattered about her mythical job as a waitress, until his mood lifted a little and he agreed to go with her to a public house.
It was one that Madge knew well, with an alley at the back which she found very useful. She saw many men she knew there and glanced at them sideways as she walked in behind Sam.
While he ordered drinks she was able to exchange a few whispered words with one of the men and before long she touched Sam’s arm.
‘Just going round the back to the lav,’ she whispered and slid out of the door.
Before long she was joined by the man she had spoken to and she returned to Sam a little later, with the money in her pocket increased.
Sam’s gloomy mood had returned and he steadily drank himself into a truculent, vicious state of mind.
Meanwhile Madge had visited the alley four times with different men, the spice of danger of being caught out by Sam adding to her pleasure. Absorbed in his own misery Sam had noticed nothing but a sudden silence alerted Madge.
Big Eddie had walked in, his wide-brimmed trilby at a rakish angle and his coat swinging from his shoulders. Two henchmen walked a step behind him. Big Eddie approached Sam.
‘You got big ideas, man?’ he asked smoothly.
Sam swung round and as Eddie’s hand went to his pocket Sam’s fist flew out and connected with his chin. All the frustration and anger that had been building up for months was behind the blow and there was an audible crack. The coloured man seemed to be lifted off his feet and fell spreadeagled on his back.
The knife had clattered from his hand and his henchmen bent over him anxiously. The pub was silent but the landlord moved swiftly.
‘Out,’ he roared, and as though by magic, four hefty men appeared and manhandled Sam to the door.
The landlord grabbed Madge and flung her after Sam.
‘And don’t come back,’ he shouted. ‘I seen you in and out all night like a blue-arsed fly. This isn’t a bleeding knocking shop.’
‘I’ve got a weak bladder,’ Madge shouted and the men laughed derisively as they went back inside.
The combination of the drink and the fall on the cobblestones stunned Sam temporarily but when Madge tried to help him to his feet he pushed her away.
‘So that was the game?’ he said bitterly. ‘Right under me nose too.’
‘He’s wrong, Sam. I’ve got a weak bladder,’ Madge cried, trying to take his arm, but he pushed her away. He set off at a furious pace for the lodging with Madge running to keep up with him. ‘Honest to God, Sam, it’s not true,’ she moaned.
They reached the room and Sam snatched up the water jug and poured the water over his head into the bowl then splashed his face with it.
‘You make me mad the way you do that,’ Madge shouted, ‘like a bloody horse,’ but immediately she flung her arms round him. ‘I’m sorry, Sam. I didn’t mean it, I love you, Sam,’ but he pushed her away.
‘Gerroff,’ he yelled. ‘I must be bloody thick. All this time. The money, the clothes…’
‘It was tips, Sam,’ she said.
‘Tips!’ he said scornfully. ‘You must think I’m a right bloody gull. Believing everything you told me.’
He dragged his bag from under the bed and opened it, then looked in disbelief at the seaman’s book lying inside it.
‘Me book was here all the time,’ he said. He turned to Madge. ‘You knew it was here,’ he accused her.
‘Honest, Sam, I didn’t. I thought you must’ve left it behind,’ she said but he looked at her with disbelief.
‘I could’ve gorra ship. I thought I’d have all the messing getting a new book and it was here all the time.’
He began to fling his gear into the bag with Madge crying and trying to impede him but he was soon packed.
He seemed to have sobered up and he looked in disgust at Madge as she screamed and flung herself about hysterically.
‘What’s going to become of me?’ she howled grabbing at his bag. ‘Don’t go, Sam. Don’t leave me.’ She managed to fling her arms round his neck. ‘I won’t go with no one but you, Sam,’ she whimpered. ‘I’ll get a proper job. Stay with me. We’re good together.’
He pulled her arms from his neck and held her at arm’s length. ‘I don’t care,’ he said roughly. ‘Do what you like. I’m just mad to think what a bloody fool I’ve been. Couldn’t see what was sticking out a mile. Joss sticks!’
He hoisted his bag to his shoulder and went to the door but she still tried to cling to him. He shook her off.
‘Women,’ he said, ‘I’m finished with the whole bloody lot of you.’
Kitty was peeping from her kitchen but she quickly withdrew as he clattered down the stairs.
Sam walked down to the docks thinking that he would find somewhere to doss down for the night before trying for a ship the next day. He stopped at an all-night stall and bought a pint of coffee and a bacon sandwich and asked the man about lodging houses for seamen.
‘There’s a common lodging house just across the road there,’ the man said. ‘Only sixpence a night but you’d have to watch yourself. They’d cut your throat for your bootlaces, never mind your boots.’
‘They wouldn’t try twice,’ Sam growled.
‘No, I don’t expect they would,’ the man said.
The lodging house was comfortless but clean and Sam went to the same stall for his breakfast after having a wash and shave for twopence. Strangely he felt more like himself than at any time since he came ashore from his last trip and he chatted easily to the stallholder and other customers.
He told them that ‘she’ had hidden his book but he had found it and was now looking for a ship.
‘Women,’ the stallholder said, shaking his head. ‘And that’s why you wanted the doss house.’
‘You done right,’ another man said. ‘I tell you what. The Adair’s leaving for New York today and one of her crew got knifed last night. In hospital. If you’re ready to go you might get taken on.’
An old man with a flowing beard and an overcoat tied with string said sonorously, ‘There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at its flood leads on to fortune. Grasp the chance, young man.’
Sam took his advice to such good effect that before nightfall he was on the Adair, his gear stowed in his locker and ready to start his watch as the ship headed out to sea. He was back in familiar surroundings among men he understood and where he was accepted but he was surly and morose and made no friends.
He brooded constantly on his wrongs. His mother had been right with her constant cry when he was a young child.
‘If you take to the sea, son, keep away from bad women in ports.’
I’ve got bad women in two ports, he thought grimly, Southampton and Liverpool.
Madge was an out-and-out old tail but Ellie was no better, taking another man into the house before he’d turned his back hardly, and maybe while he was away at sea.
The idea grew in his mind that he would back off when the ship reached New York and never go back to England. When they docked he drew as much money and took as much gear off as he could without arousing suspicion.
With his reputation as a loner it was easy to
evade his shipmates and he struck away from them into the teeming streets near the docks.
He held up his head and strode along. He was finished with his past life, he thought, and one thing for sure, no one would ever call him Soft Sam again. No one would ever find him an easy mark again.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Although Nellie bravely decided to put the past behind her and make a fresh start it was not easy. She might replace her furniture and alienate her friends so that she was not reminded of Sam but in the still hours of night her heart betrayed her.
Then she lay wakeful night after night weeping bitter tears for the husband she had lost, as she remembered past happiness and wondered whether she would ever see him again.
She tried to weep silently, now that only a curtain divided her bed from Tommy’s, but sometimes she thought that on the other side of the curtain her son too wept for his father.
It was never mentioned between them and during the day they both tried to appear cheerful and it was easier for Tommy because new horizons were opening for him. Miss Helsby had told him that it was too late for him to try for a scholarship but there was no reason why he should not fit himself for a good position in life.
She encouraged him to join the public library and gave him a course of reading and he was invited to her house every Saturday morning. There she coached him in mathematics and started to teach him Spanish and he was always invited to lunch.
It was only some time later that he realised that Miss Helsby had used this time to unobtrusively teach him table manners and polite behaviour.
She corrected his speech too on these Saturday morning visits and discussed the books he had read and suggested others, opening up for him a world far removed from the bleak and poverty-stricken world he had been born into.
Nellie still hoped to carry out her idea of supplying pies to small shops but the enquiries she made showed her that it was not practicable.
‘I couldn’t do it while we was still here with no proper kitchen,’ she told Tommy. ‘But even if I could I think I’d be out of pocket. It seems they’d want all the profit for themselves nearly and I’d have to stand the loss of any they don’t sell.’
‘We’d be better with a shop of our own to sell them, Mam,’ Tommy said.
‘Oh yes, lad, and pigs might fly,’ Nellie scoffed, dismissing the idea but gradually it grew on her. She could use some of Janey’s money to get started.
Her cleaning job had finished and until now she had been afraid to use more than a few shillings of the money, feeling that it was all that stood between herself and Tommy and destitution. Now she thought, nothing venture nothing gain, and began to look for suitable premises.
After a long search she found the ideal place. It was really a big old house but the ground floor consisted of a large front room which had been used as a shop, a living room and a roomy kitchen. Upstairs there were three bedrooms and a bathroom and attics.
Best of all it was on one of the routes to the docks. There was also some waste ground behind it and a water tap by the side of the shop. ‘Carters could stop to water their horses and come in for a pie,’ Nellie told Tom, as he now wished to be called.
After some bargaining she managed to rent the property and paid fifty pounds key money. The landlord agreed to have the house cleaned for her and she and Tommy distempered all the rooms in cream.
‘You never get no time to play, lad,’ Nellie said remorsefully, ‘between this and all the stuff for Miss Helsby.’
‘I’ve enjoyed doing it, Mam,’ Tom said.
Neither of them acknowledged that they were pleased to have every moment occupied with hard work so that they had no time to brood and to be so exhausted every night that they slept soundly.
Tom was excited at the prospect of having his own bedroom again and Nellie, who had decided to open a general shop in the front room, was busy arranging for counters and stock.
She was dismayed by the amount she was spending but she told herself that she still had plenty of money and the sovereigns and rings if she was desperate.
When her mind became more balanced she had worried about the source of the money but she gradually realised that old Janey must have been a receiver of stolen goods, particularly jewellery, and she hoped that the money she had found had come from these activities rather than from moneylending.
I don’t mind handling that money, she thought. It would be rich people what got robbed and they don’t care how they make their money. Grind the likes of us down while they do it, but moneylending’s different. Blood money off poor people. She hoped that the moneylending money was in the basket which was stolen or was the money hidden in the wall and found by the tenants who followed her.
Nellie managed to square her conscience in this way and spent the money with an easy mind. She was too hard worked and worried at this time to have much time to brood and in later years she often thought that this had been her salvation.
The thought of Sam with another woman was always a nagging pain in her mind and it was almost a relief when she was told Sam had sailed for New York and abandoned his ship there.
She avoided her old neighbourhood but one day she had been to a wholesalers in Stanley Road when she met the landlord of the Volunteer.
He tipped his hat and walked on then he stopped and called, ‘Mrs Meadows!’
Nellie turned back.
‘I don’t know whether you know this. One of them McGregor lads was saying that Sam signed on for a New York trip and he backed off there. Thought you might like to know.’
Nellie thanked him quietly and walked on, pain tearing at her as fresh as when it was new, although it was now over a year since Sam left. At least he was not with that woman, Nellie thought, but in some ways he seemed almost more lost to her. She told Tom what she had heard and he looked hopeful.
‘I don’t think my dad will like it there, Mam,’ he said. ‘Since the Wall Street Crash in 1929 the whole of America is in a bad way. No work and farmers losing their jobs and wandering the roads. Dad might be glad to come home.’
‘Did Miss Helsby learn you all that?’ Nellie said in amazement.
‘No, Mam, I read about it,’ Tom said with a grin.
Nellie told Tom that a lady she had worked for was providing the money for the shop and she was glad that she did when Tom met Bella. She questioned him about his mother’s venture then said bluntly, ‘That all costs money, lad. I hope your mam’s not going into debt for it, Tommy.’
Tom told her the tale Nellie had told him and Bella said she hoped Nellie would do well. ‘Tell her our Amy’s at the high school. She looks real posh in her uniform,’ she said.
On earlier occasions Tom had met Gertie and Katy.
‘I suppose your mam’s made new friends now, Tommy,’ Gertie said resentfully and Tom told her that his mother never left the Grey Street rooms, which was true.
Katy had only said, ‘I haven’t been back to see your mum, Tommy, because I didn’t think she wanted to see me. She’ll need time to get over it, I know. Tell her I’m always here if she wants me.’
Tommy had not given his mother the messages, only told her he had seen the neighbours. He sensed that his mother was ashamed of being deserted, and wanted to avoid people who knew of it, so hurt pride on both sides kept the friends apart.
I know I made them feel unwelcome when they came to Grey Street, Nellie thought, but I don’t care. I don’t want nothing more to do with that part of me life.
She had decided to open her shop as a general shop at first and only started making and selling pies when she was used to ordering goods and serving in the shop. Trade was slow and after a week she rose at five o’clock one morning and made two-dozen pies to sell.
Tom was at school and Nellie had no one to confide in. She became increasingly agitated as only five pies were sold during the morning. This was a daft idea, she thought, but suddenly there was a rush of customers and by one o’clock all the pies had gone and she could have so
ld more.
As soon as Tom came home she left him to serve in the shop and rushed out to buy more ingredients and the next morning she made four-dozen pies. Only two were left at the end of the day and she and Tom ate them for their evening meal as she had no time to cook one.
Tom’s theory that on the first day the sudden rush was caused by carters who had bought pies telling others seemed true and most of the pies were bought by men on wagons. One of the men commented that the pies would be nicer hot and Nellie felt frustrated. She could have warmed the pies in the oven but she was unable to leave the shop.
The man who had supplied Nellie’s stock had given her a card which read, ‘Please do not ask for credit as a refusal often offends.’
‘Put that up behind your counter, lass, and stick to it,’ he advised her. ‘I know a lot of small shops keep going by giving tick but you need to know your customers and you don’t know yet who you can trust.’
‘That’s something I never thought of,’ Nellie said dismayed and the man told her that it was important.
‘You’ll get a lot trying it on because you’re new,’ he said. ‘Just be firm. Later on you could oblige some of your regular customers but get rid of the scroungers first off.’
Nellie was glad of his good advice when various people asked for their purchases to be put ‘on the book’ but the word soon went round that the new woman was as hard as nails and the scroungers went elsewhere.
‘You done right to refuse them lot, girl,’ one of her regular customers said. ‘I knew they’d try it on, thinking you was soft. I’m glad you were able for them.’
She was a fat woman named Bessie and Nellie became friendly with her as the weeks passed. She was able to tell Nellie details about her other customers which made them more interesting to her.
Nellie was particularly interested in a thin dark girl named Jean Hughes. She was a widow with two young sons and something in her barely concealed sadness gave Nellie a fellow feeling for her. She bought little and carefully and Nellie sensed her desperate poverty.
A Wise Child Page 39