Read Online Across the Mersey by Annie Groves - Free Book Online Page B

green tufts of the carrots marked the place where the summer crop finished and the autumn veggies began.
    Sam had taken on a second allotment with three other men on which they were planning to keep chickens under the small orchard of fruit trees they had planted there.
    The evening air was full of the scent of the nightstock that had seeded itself in the small bed next to his rose-covered tool shed where Sam germinated the flowers that Jean loved.
    Jean opened the gate to the allotments and walked down the neat path that divided Sam’s. He must have heard her coming because he stopped work and turned round, shading his eyes from the evening sun.
    ‘I’ve brought you a ham sandwich,’ she told him. ‘You can’t go working like that without something to give you a bit of energy.’
    She sat down on the wooden bench he had built years ago when he had first got the allotment and she had been carrying Grace. She’d come down here many a sunny afternoon and evening then, bringing Luke in his pushchair so that she could sit and talk to Sam as he worked.
    His brusque, ‘How’s Grace?’ eased relief into Jean’s anxiety. She knew him so well and she could guess how he was feeling right now. Sam loved his children and she knew that Grace’s tears would have upset him, no matter how angry he was feeling.
    ‘She’s upset, just like you are. She got caught on the hop when Sister Harris said she wanted to put her up for proper nursing training. You know how she’s always wanted to be a nurse.’ She bent down to pull out a piece of chickweed that must have escape Sam’s normally keen eye for weeds, before admitting, ‘I blame meself really, Sam. I’m the one that’s always told her that money doesn’t grow on trees, and with the four of them to feed you can’t be expected to pay for expensive treats. She’s been a good girl, you know that, always bringing home little treats,as well as giving me a fair bit of her wages. Mind you, like I’ve told her, it was wrong of her going saying what she did without talking it over with us first.’
    ‘Wrong? Aye, it were that all right. I do me best, Jean. It’s bad enough having ruddy Edwin and that sister of yours looking down their noses at us, without me own daughter …’
    Sam turned back to his digging.
    So that was it! Jean had known that something more than Grace’s admission that she didn’t think her family could afford to pay for her training had got him all wrought-up.
    It was hard for a proud decent man like her Sam, who had grafted all his life, to see men like Edwin smirking and sneering, just because they’d done better for themselves.
    ‘Well, as to that, I wouldn’t swap my life for our Vi’s – not for anything, I wouldn’t. I reckon you’re in the right of it, love, when you say that Edwin hasn’t come by his money as honestly as he might have done.’
    Sam stopped digging and turned to look at her. ‘It gets my goat, it really does, having to listen to him boasting about what he’s done and what they’ve got,’ he admitted reluctantly. ‘It makes me feel like I’ve let you and our kids down, Jean. I saw the look on our Luke’s face when young Charlie was talking about that car of his.’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘All our Luke’s got is a bike.’
    ‘Sam Campion, I’m ashamed of you,’ Jean scoldedhim. ‘Luke’s never given that car of Charlie’s a second thought, I know that for a fact. It’s that Charlie’s joined the TA he minds. We’ve brought our four up to know better than that. Come and sit down here with me, love,’ she told him, patting the seat next to her and then reaching for his hand.
    ‘I’ll tell you straight that I couldn’t live like our Vi does – not for a minute, I couldn’t. I was only telling meself when we came back after visiting them how glad I was to get home. And I’ll tell you something else. I’m the one who’s got the better husband, and it isn’t just me that thinks so. Our Francine’s