Free The Girl From Seaforth Sands by Katie Flynn Page A

from morality and mutton into safer channels, and by the time the meal was finished all three were in good charity with one another, and Aunt Dolly washed the dishes and sang hymns as she did so, always a sign that she was happy with life.
    Suzie had still not returned from her job search by the time Paddy went to bed but this did not worry her son in the slightest. If Mam had got bar work she would not return anyway until after closing time for she would be required to clean down, wash glasses and make all respectable for the next day. But, Paddy thought drowsily to himself as he curled up under his ragged blanket, Mam being out late was a good sign; it meant she had almost certainly got work of some description. Money therefore wouldcontinue to enter the Keagan house for longer at least.
    On this happy thought, Paddy slept.

Chapter Three
    Amy was standing in front of the sink, scrubbing potatoes, when the back door burst open and Albert, lugging a heavy shopping basket, entered the room. He went over to the table and piled the contents of the basket upon it, giving vent to a relieved whistle as he put his burden down. ‘Phew! Them’s heavy,’ he said, as Amy turned away from the sink to grin at him. ‘Me arms is as long as a gorilla’s. How come the older I am the heavier the shopping gets? Do you think it’s ’cos we eats more as we get older, queen?’
    ‘Well, you bleedin’ well eat more, I can vouch for that,’ Amy said. ‘I never knew how hard our Mary worked till she left school and went into service.’ Mary had gone to what their mother had described as ‘a good family’, who lived in Manchester but had had connections with Seaforth and so had advertised for members of staff locally. ‘Now that I’m doing what she used to do I’m fair wore out, honest to God I am. You don’t know you’re born, our Albert. You want to give our mam a hand with the fish stall, or go from door to door with bags of shrimps, before you moan about a few messages.’
    ‘That’s women’s work,’ Albert pointed out, throwing himself on to one of the hard kitchen chairs and reaching into a bag from which he produced a large purple plum. He saw Amy looking at him and hastily bit into the fruit. ‘It’s all right, Mr Evans give it me, seeing as I bought up half the bleedin’ shop,’he said, holding out the remains of the fruit to his sister. ‘Halves is fair, though, wouldn’t you say?’
    ‘Thanks, Albert.’ Amy bit gratefully into the sweet flesh. He wasn’t a bad boy, she concluded. It wasn’t his fault that Mammy worked her so hard and seemed to expect more of her than she ever had of Mary. The truth was, Amy knew, that Isobel had grown used to Amy’s habit of doing a bunk whenever the opportunity occurred, almost always when work was in the offing. Consequently she worked Amy twice as hard, in the certain knowledge that Amy would do her best to get out of at least half the tasks she was set. What Isobel did not appear to realise was that, with Mary gone, there was no one else to do the work. If Amy only delivered half the shrimps she was given to sell, then only half the money would arrive home when evening came and since Mary was no longer able to finish off the selling for her sister, Amy’s slackness would be immediately discovered – and punished.
    Albert, on the other hand, was still treated as someone who would one day have to earn his own living at that toughest of all trades, inshore fishing. Therefore, as with her other sons, Isobel seemed to think that his childhood should be relatively untrammelled except, of course, when he went to sea with his father to help with the fishing, which he did from time to time.
    Amy finished the plum and threw the stone into the rubbish pail under the sink. Then she went over to the table and began to unpack the shopping, since Albert, with his feet up on another chair, was reading an elderly copy of the Echo , which had been wrapped round a couple of fine