Our Lizzie by Anna Jacobs

Author:Anna Jacobs
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781466882317
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Chapter Sixteen

December 1913

On the Wednesday before she stopped working at Dearden’s, Sam came to collect Lizzie after work and she rushed out to meet him. “Mrs. D says you’re to come in. She wants to drink our health and give us our present.”

“But—” The protest that he wouldn’t even stop to piss on Peter Dearden’s floor died in his throat. Mrs. D was already waiting just inside the door, so he couldn’t refuse without giving offence or putting himself in the wrong.

“Mrs. D, you haven’t really met my Sam,” Lizzie said brightly, tugging him through the doorway.

His smile became a sneer for a moment because they had met once when he was a lad. Sally Dearden had clouted him round the ears in the school yard and told him to stop fratching with her Peter. She’d clouted her son, too, and said the same thing to him, which had made Sam snigger afterwards.

A quick glance around revealed there were other people in the shop looking at him so he held out one hand. “Glad to meet you properly, missus. My Lizzie’s been happy working here.”

“She’s a good little worker. If ever she needs a job, she’s got one here.”

“Oh, she won’t need to work again. I can keep a wife in comfort and,” he patted his belly suggestively, “I hope my lass will soon have other things to keep her busy.”

Lizzie blushed and stared at the ground, wishing he wouldn’t say things like this. But he seemed really eager to start a family and had refused even to consider using the preventive methods that Mrs. D, in a motherly talk, had told her about. Lizzie would rather have postponed that side of things for a bit.

Sally turned and said brightly to Peter, “You remember Sam from school, don’t you, love?”

“Oh, yes. I’ll never forget those days,” he said. “Never.” Not even for Lizzie, of whom he had grown really fond, could he force a genuine smile to his face.

Sam turned to stare at him. “Neither will I, lad. Neither will I.”

Sally intervened again, sensing the undercurrents of antagonism. The two of them should have forgotten those childish quarrels by now! “And you know my other son, Jack?”

He nodded indifferently to the younger lad. “We’ve met before. How do?”

Jack nodded, his bearing as stiff as his brother’s.

“Well, I’d like to drink your health and give you your present,” Sally said, abandoning the attempt to include her sons in the celebrations. “I have a nice bottle of port upstairs, if you’d like to follow me, Mr. Thoxby? My husband can’t get about much at the moment, so he’s waiting for us up there. Peter—I can leave you to lock up, can’t I?”

He nodded. But he stood and watched them cross the shop and go out at the back before he returned to work. Lizzie looked so small against Sam’s bulk, so bright and alive against his heaviness. It was like—like sacrificing a virgin in the old days, offering her to an evil god.

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