Christmas Wish (37 page)

As her laughter died, Magda began fingering the embroidered flowers on the corner of the tablecloth.

‘I’m applying for a spell with a charity clinic in the East End. It’s something I feel I need to do. I went there that night I got home late. Susan, that old school friend of mine, sent a message that I should come.’

She felt Winnie’s sharp eyes on her and knew she was half afraid of what she was about to hear.

‘Susan’s married now. She’s in the family way again.’

‘She asked you to get rid of it. That’s what she asked you to do.’

Magda was amazed at Winnie’s accuracy.

She nodded. ‘Yes. But I couldn’t do it.’

‘You’d end up in prison if you did. Anyways, there are women ’round who can do that. It’s not any special skill.’

They fell into a pregnant pause, Magda knowing that Winnie was expecting her to say something else; that there was something else to be said.

‘Bradley Fitts was outside where Susan lives waiting for me.’

She heard the sharp intake of breath. On raising her eyes she was surprised at the paleness of Winnie’s face except for a bright red ball on each cheek – as though something red had hit each one and left behind its stain.

‘He’s dangerous. As dangerous as that damned father of his. Curse the day I ever met him. Curse the whole damned family,’ she cried, throwing back her head so that the sinews of her neck looked like twigs. ‘What happened?’

She stared unblinking, her face petrified with fear.

‘He challenged me. I rejected him once some time ago, and I don’t think he liked it.’

‘He wouldn’t. Indeed he wouldn’t.’

‘A knight in shining armour happened to be passing by. I’d met him on the underground just moments before but knew him years ago when I was a kid diving beneath the vegetable stalls in the market. He was kind then. He’s kind now. You ought to have seen that Bradley Fitts. He was back in his car and out of there quick as you like. Then after that, my knight in shining armour walked me home.’

Winnie was eyeing her warily. ‘What did he want, this knight of yours?’

‘Aunt Winnie, you haven’t been listening. He really was my knight in shining armour. He took nothing from me, but gave me advice to stay away from Bradley Fitts. And then he brought me home. No demands were made, not even for a kiss,’ she added, unable to stop smiling and blushing just at the very thought of it.

‘He’s a policeman,’ Magda said.

Winnie scratched her chin and the depth of her frown almost buried her eyes in folds of loose flesh.

‘No uniform?’

‘Good gracious, no. Well-dressed, but no uniform. His name is Daniel Rossi.’

Winnie’s saggy eyelids disappeared as her eyes popped wide open.

‘Rossi? A policeman you say?’

‘What is it, Winnie? What’s the matter?’

Winnie attempted to answer, but trembled, one side of her face sliding downwards and one side of her mouth falling open.

She gave a convulsive movement, throwing her head back as though she were trying to shake it from her shoulders.

‘Winnie!’

A long thin finger pointed at the satinwood cabinet that Winnie had brought with her from the old house.

Magda leapt up, throwing one arm around Winnie’s back, checking her pulse with her free hand.

‘Hang on, Winnie. Please. Hang on.’

The road into the village of Long Ashton was pleasant enough, winding as it did between green meadows. Cattle grazed on the higher ground and sheep on the low-lying salt marshes where tough grass exploded in tufts between shallow pools.

Joseph Brodie staggered his way along the road, leaving a trail of whisky breath behind him. The skipper of the ship he’d worked on from Lisbon to Bristol had paid him off handsomely, though only half of what he’d been paid remained in his pocket. If it hadn’t been for the fact that he’d stolen and supped a bottle of port from the cargo, there could have been half as much again.

Ahead of him was a church spire, which looked not to be too far off the main road.

He rubbed at the ache in his side; the result of too much to drink and having walked too far on an empty stomach. A little rest is in order, he said to himself, and you’ll get that soon enough once you make the acquaintance of your boy again.

His breath curled from his mouth like wisps of hair on an old lady’s head. Resting his hands on bent knees, he leaned forward
to better catch his breath. Once he was sure he was hale and hearty again – as hale and hearty as he was ever likely to be – he straightened himself and thrust his hands into his pockets.

Dust was mostly what his dirty fingers found except for the one thing he was looking for, folded and creased with age, and tucked in a corner.

The paper he pulled out looked unfamiliar and for a moment he thought it was not the piece he was looking for. Surely that had been whiter and smoother than this piece, which was as wrinkled as a turkey’s gizzard.

Spreading it out on top of an old milestone that said six miles to Bristol, he smoothed it as best he could and yet again read the address.

Church Lane Cottage, Church Lane, Long Ashton, Somerset.

‘Church Lane. Has to be close to the church,’ he said, his words drifting away with the whiteness of his breath. ‘Of course it does,’ he said to himself. ‘Now where else would it be?’

‘Back in you go,’ he muttered, shoving the folded-up paper back into his pocket. ‘You’ll be safe there my boy.’

In his mind he was imagining how grateful his son Michael, now grown, would be to see him. Of course he couldn’t possibly visualise how he would look now. The fact was he could barely remember what the boy had looked like as a baby.

Had he had fair hair, dark hair? Blue eyes, brown eyes?

No matter how hard he tried, no picture popped into his mind. Neither was he realistic about the welcome he was likely to get. As he stumbled along, he considered how lucky he had been that the woman from the workhouse – Miss Burton wasn’t it – had forwarded on the address where his son had gone to live.

‘I know they’re adopting, but I’m not sure they’re going about it the right way. They promised to look after the boy for you indefinitely, not take him over.’

That’s was the gist of the note she’d sent. That had been back in 1928 after the workhouse had closed down and after he’d already settled his other children elsewhere; Magda with Bridget Brodie, his brother’s wife, and the twins back in Ireland with his parents.

He’d been meaning to get round to see his family more frequently, but Joseph Brodie had always been able to find excuses not to do what he should do, but always to favour what he wanted to do – which was mostly get drunk, fornicate and spend every last penny he’d earned.

The fact was that he’d always worked hard, but in order to balance the scales so to speak, he’d also played hard – which meant no money left to meet his responsibilities.

For the first time in his life, Joseph felt emotional about one of his children. He felt as though the boy had been stolen from him without a by your leave.

‘Fifty guineas,’ he muttered to himself as he stumbled and shuffled along the road, the long strides restricted by stiff knee joints. ‘My boy’s worth that. He has to be worth that, not the paltry sum they left at the Seamen’s Mission.’

He kept muttering the same sum over and over as though doing so made the amount he wanted for his boy more acceptable to them that now called him theirs.

The village pub was shut and in darkness, courtesy of licensing hours brought in for the duration of the Great War and never relinquished.

He’d heard rumours there might be another war shortly, which to his mind was a great shame if it meant the pubs would remain shut and barred against a man wanting a drink.

The long walk had proved tiring and the fresh air was setting his lungs tingling. Wiping the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand, he leaned against an ivy-covered wall. To his right was the neglected corner of the churchyard, a place
of moss-covered tombstones and unkempt grass. The sound of a choir singing the wavering notes of
Adeste Fideles
– ‘Oh Come All Ye Faithful’, drifted out to warm the winter’s cold.

The smell of rich earth, newly turned, hung heavily on the damp air as it always did at this time of year when the sun had gone south and the land had been turned by the plough and lay barren, waiting for the first signs of spring.

‘Not much further, not much further,’ he muttered as he waited for the pumping of his lungs and the gripe in his knees to settle down.

Daylight was beginning to ebb and, although not ideal, he thanked his lucky stars he’d managed to get a lift in a coal lorry heading out to some grand house between the city of Bristol and the village of Long Ashton. If he hadn’t he would have arrived in Long Ashton in the dark.

The cottage to which his feet dragged was made of stone, had small windows and no more than a foot wide of planting between the wall of the house and the narrow lane. Even from here he heard somebody singing a Christmas carol in a sweetly feminine voice: ‘Once in Royal David’s City’.

One of the windows showed light and the smell of home cooking made his stomach lurch with desire.

‘Steak and kidney pudding,’ he murmured to himself. ‘Or shepherd’s pie. Or mutton stew.’

The thought of his son feeding him a hearty meal, after first giving him a hearty welcome, warmed him no end.

‘Now for a tidy up,’ he said to himself. In response to his own advice, he lifted his hat with one hand and smoothed his hair with the other. ‘You’ll want your son to be proud of you, won’t you now.’

Though his clothes were dirty and in need of repair, and his whole demeanour was not much better to behold than a tramp travelling the roads all year round, Joseph Brodie had decided
that he was presentable enough, and in that knowledge, which was sure only to himself, he lifted the cast-iron knocker and gave the door a damned good clout.

The singing stopped abruptly and a murmur of voices seemed to rise and then fall, then rise again, as though the folk within were arguing as to who should answer the door.

‘If it’s her or him – Mr and Mrs Darby that is – then I’ll say I’ve come to claim my boy. If it is Michael, then I shall say …’

The door opened before he had chance to finish rehearsing what he would say and how he would say it.

The boy looking out at him was nothing like the baby he’d fostered out. For a start he didn’t seem too shy of manhood; what had he been expecting? Of course he was close to being a man!

‘Can I help you, my good man?’

The voice crackled between high and low as it does when a boy is crossing over from childhood to manhood. Not that he could remember what the boy had sounded like as a baby let alone a child.

‘Michael. My, but you’ve grown. I hardly recognised you, my boy. Though I dare say, you won’t be recognising me. ’Tis your father, Joseph Brodie. Your father who’s been away at sea all these years.’

Joseph spread his arms assuming the boy would feel an explosion of joy and run into them, lamenting how much he’d missed his father and how everything would be made up in time.

Michael Darby stared aghast at the dirty, dishevelled man with the prickly beard, the sunken eyes and the hunched shoulders. On sniffing, he caught the stink of whisky or some other such strong drink that neither he nor his parents would ever countenance consuming.

As for the claim that this man was his father … Michael recoiled at the very thought of it. His face clouded. He had not
the patience of his adoptive father who sermonised on the giving of charity all year round, not just at Christmas.

‘Here,’ said Michael taking half a crown from his pocket, a small amount from a sum he’d earned writing music for Mrs Anderson who taught music and gave concerts. ‘Take this. Don’t spend it all at once and don’t drink it away. Now be off with you. And Merry Christmas.’

The door was slammed so forcefully, that the shock wave blasted into his face causing him to take a step back to steady himself.

He stared at the door, not quite able to comprehend why he hadn’t been given the welcome deserving of a long-lost father.

Coming to no obvious conclusion, he turned his attention to the half crown, closing his fist over it whilst hoping that the pub he’d passed had now reopened its doors.

Inside Church Cottage, Aubrey Darby, who had just finished writing his Christmas Day sermon, enquired of his son why the angry expression.

‘Some tramp at the door,’ said Michael, slumping down in front of the piano then picking up a fountain pen, seemingly intent on the piece of music set before him. ‘I gave him half a crown and told him to clear off.’

Aubrey Darby sighed as he got to his feet. It wasn’t easy being a vicar with a headstrong son who wasn’t entirely convinced that God really did live in his heaven. But he’s at that age, Aubrey told himself. Sixteen and thinks he knows everything. He’ll come back to it.

He got up, stood behind Michael and laid his hand on his shoulder.

‘My boy, your charity is commendable, but telling him to clear off afterwards was not the Christian thing to do. Whatever did he say to you to deserve that?’

Michael huffed into his music sheets. ‘He said he was my
father. Can you believe that? That dirty, foul-smelling man said he was my father.’

The moment the words were out, Michael felt the hand that had lain softly on his shoulder tense. When he looked up into his father’s face, he saw a sweaty upper lip and fear in a face where he had never seen fear before.

‘Did he give you a name?’ His father’s voice was tremulous as though the question was reluctantly asked and that the answer would be reluctantly received.

‘Brodie. Joseph Brodie.’

The vicar of St Anne’s church visibly paled above the whiteness of his dog collar.

‘Did he say where he was going?’ he asked Michael, already half a dozen steps towards the door and reaching for his hat.

Michael felt his face warming as he lifted his eyes from the music sheet. He stared at the Reverend Aubrey Darby not wishing to confront the sudden oddness of his behaviour, though conceding that it chilled him to the bone.