i f6c06dd9cf3fe221 by Unknown (the false prince .TXT) 📕

me!" Sarah knew that it was only the fear of hell as painted so realistically by Father O'Malley that had saved her life on more than one occasion.

Three times, when Kate was but a few months old, she had flown with her into Mrs. Mullen's, next door. Things like that soon got around the fifteen streets, and one day Father O'Malley came and had a talk with Tim up in the bedroom, and an equally long talk with her down in the kitchen. The result, in her case, had been that she never went to confession again without a dire feeling of guilt, whereas, up till then, her great sin, as it would be called, had been something between God and her alone. She could not put it into words, for the result of it was the brightness of her life. But Father O'Malley's probing had reached her very soul, only some instinct, not yet beaten into submission, warning her to risk hell's flames rather than entrust it to any

human, even though he be an agent of the Almighty.

The effect on Tim was to make him attend mass regularly, even Benediction on a Thursday night. He could get sodden drunk on a Saturday and beat her up, but he'd go to mass on the Sunday. There were worse things than having your eyes blacked and being kicked around the room, as Sarah knew; and when he was drunk, strange as it may seem, he made no futile demands on her.

So, taking things all in all, she didn't mind him getting drunk as long as she could get the money out of him beforehand for the rent.

And he usually let her have that; for she knew he had the fear of being turned out on to the street and of having to go to the workhouse. To provide their food she could always do a couple of days cleaning or washing. She had managed somehow, up till last year. But then things in the docks became worse;

sometimes he would only get one shift in in a week. When he returned from his twelve-hour shift, his moleskins red and wet up to the thighs, she had it in her heart then to feel sorry for him . unloading iron ore all day, and only bone broth, thickened with pot stuff, to set before him. And the three-and-six he got for the shift had to go for the rent, not even twopence for baccy, let alone a pint.

With Kate's four-and-six a week and what she could pawn they had existed. They hadn't yet gone on the parish, for they both knew that, before they could get a penny, they'd be told to sell the chiffonier, the saddle and the spare iron bed upstairs that was kept for Kate.

Her mind wandered back and forth over the past, as she stared out into the dark day. Eleven o'clock on Christmas Eve, and you really needed a light, the sky was so low and heavy. Christmas had always brought trouble;

she had never known a happy one, and you always seemed to remember your troubles more at Christmas. She and Tim had been married in Christmas week. She couldn't remember why she had married Tim; perhaps because he was big and quiet. And she had taken his quietness for kindness .

never had she been so mistaken. Or perhaps because she had wanted to get away from Mrs. Marris's, where she worked for sixteen hours a day for

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seven days a week for the sum total of half a crown. She hadn't known Tim very well when she had married him;

it was difficult to get to know a man when you had only half a day off a month. She was then eighteen and Tim twenty-seven. Now she was forty-two and he was fifty-one;

and of all her life shed had only three months happiness . stolen moments of ecstasy and terror; but no one could take them from her .

no one. She'd kept them for over eighteen years; shed manage to keep them till she died. And now things were changing, she could feel the change. It wasn't that Tim had been a prisoner up stairs for six weeks, or that there was a baby in the house;

it was rather a premonition. She'd better mash some tea and take him up a cup. And shed ask Maggie in for one; they'd be quiet, he wouldn't hear. She turned from the window and put the black kettle on to the centre of the red fire.

Then, with a preliminary rattle of the bars to cover her signal, she gave two sharp taps on the back of the grate. After a short pause it was answered by a dull thud. Sarah put the poker down and went to the cupboard at the right-hand side of the fire-place and took from one of its scalloped- edged newspaper-covered shelves the brown teapot. After placing it on the hob, she went quietly through the front- room and gently opened the door, leaving it ajar. She returned to the kitchen and, drawing up the wooden chair near to the clothes-basket at the side of the hearth, she sat smiling wanly down on the sleeping baby lying therein. Presently her gaze wandered around the kitchen. It was all beautifully clean for Kate's coming. Any minute now Kate would come in, and for a whole week shed be here with her in the kitchen. No Tim; just her and Kate and the baby. Her hands, as they lay one on the other in the lap of her white apron, relaxed, her body relaxed, and she slumped, staring unseeing at Tim's arm chair on the other side of the hearth. Never had she known such a Christmas Eve; there