Classic Bestsellers from Josephine Cox: Bumper Collection. Josephine Cox

was that then?’ The landlord took up a cloth and began to wipe the counter.

      ‘My family … the farm. They were my life.’ Michael recalled the pleasure of bringing in crops and gathering the harvest. There was no greater feeling in the world than labouring under the sun, stripped to the waist with the sun on your back and God’s green and plentiful land stretched out before you. ‘I expect you think I couldn’t work if I tried,’ he accused the two men, ‘but I’ve worked my fingers to the bone on that place, and never regretted a single minute of it.’

      ‘So why did you leave it?’ The landlord was cynical. He’d heard it all before, from vagabonds and dreamers, who lied through their teeth every time they opened their mouths. He observed Michael, with his filthy beard and grubby clothes, and wondered why this one should be any different.

      ‘Things just got on top of me.’

      Michael mentally relived the events that had combined to bring him to his knees: the bad seasons and failing harvests, the inevitable debts that piled up out of his control, the awful worry of it all, leading to sleepless nights and a kind of madness by day. Then his mother’s passing – the burial of his stillborn son … his eyes filled with tears.

      ‘I thought I were man enough to deal with it all,’ he said in a choked voice. ‘Only I weren’t, or I wouldn’t be here talking to you, would I?’

      The slight fellow with the tash regarded him with suspicion. ‘Under all that dirt and grime, you look able enough to work,’ he observed. ‘It might do you the world o’ good if you turned your hand to a day’s honest labouring. Make a bit o’ money. Get yourself cleaned up and find decent lodgings. You never know, you might eventually find it in yourself to go home and put things right.’

      Michael angrily dismissed his suggestion. ‘What would you know?’ he growled. ‘You weren’t there! You know nothing.’

      ‘Well, I know what I see, and that’s enough!’ The big man felt no sympathy for him. ‘As far as I can tell, you’ve no damned right to feel sorry for yourself,’ he snapped. ‘Wasting your miserable life roaming the back streets, grubbing for food and talking of what you’ve lost, when there are good, hardworking men who would give their right arm to own a farm and have a loving family.’

      Michael did not like the picture the other man was painting. ‘Like I said … you know nothing.’

      ‘Look at yourself!’ the fellow went on heedlessly. ‘You’re a disgrace. You smell o’ dog-piss and midden rubbish, and here you are, telling us you’ve got a farm an’ family to keep you warm, and you expect such as us to feel sorry for you!’

      Narrowing his eyes, he gave Michael a suspicious look. ‘Or are you lying? Mebbe you don’t have a farm, or even a family, come to that. Mebbe you’re just a dreamer like the rest of us.’

      ‘I’m no liar! I worked the farm alongside my father. And I do have a family, just like I said.’ Michael lowered his gaze. ‘The best family a man could ever have.’ Shame engulfed him.

      ‘Oh, you do, do you?’ The slight fellow’s eyes glittered with hatred. ‘Well, aren’t you the lucky one, eh?’ Prodding Michael in the chest he said threateningly, ‘Well, I’m not so lucky, more’s the pity. I’ve got no family, y’see? There’s no farm neither. I eat, sleep and exist in a back room in some dingy lodging-house. Some days, I’m lucky to earn a crust by sweeping the streets, clearing away the muck that you and your kind leave behind. But I’ll tell you this much, my friend! I can walk down the street holding my head up high, ’cause I don’t beg nor steal from nobody!’

      Momentarily silenced by the other man’s outburst, Michael quickly downed the dregs of his ale, and called for another.

      ‘You’ve had enough!’ Stirred by the slight fellow’s brave words, the landlord took the jug away. ‘What’s more, I don’t like the look of you, so I’ll thank you to leave.’

      Seeing how the situation was worsening, Michael didn’t argue. Instead, he bade them good day and made his way out.

      He walked awhile, then sat down on the bench outside the marketplace and began to wonder what it would be like to ‘go home and put things right’, like the fellow suggested.

      ‘I’m not ready to go home,’ he murmured. Made uneasy by the idea of walking back into Potts End, having to face the suffering his leaving must have caused, his courage left him altogether. One day he’d go back and ask Aggie for her forgiveness, but not yet.

      Getting up from the seat, he began his aimless wanderings again. Yet in the turmoil of his mind he had not forgotten the incident in the alley. He recalled John’s kindness, and the words he had shouted after him. He found himself repeating them now. ‘ “The derelict site by the canal. You’ll find me there most days”.’

      He paused, the merest whisper of a smile lighting his face. John Hanley, he thought with a tut. Whoever would have thought it, eh? And the burning question: Did he recognise me, I wonder?

      Michael thought of all the places he’d been to all over Liverpool, and suddenly realised which site John had meant. In fact, many a time he had rested his weary bones in that old outbuilding.

      As he moved on, John’s generous offer continued to haunt him. Now, when he was sinking so low he could hardly recognise himself, it was something to think about. But did he really want to see John in such close quarters?

      Salmesbury was a small place, where everyone knew almost everyone else. John must be aware of his desertion of family and responsibilities. But then, as he recalled, John Hanley had been sweet on his Emily. So what was he doing here in Liverpool?

      Thinking of Emily, his beloved daughter, with her sunny smile, her cheeky plaits and her love of life, Michael fell against the wall and began to weep. Afterwards, when the pain was eased, he squared his shoulders and walked on.

      Suddenly he was overwhelmed with a need for his family.

      But there was a way to go yet.

Part 4 June, 1907 Ghosts

       Chapter 10

      WAKING WITH A start, Emily scrambled out of bed.

      Quickly putting on her robe, she went on tiptoe to the door and let herself out onto the landing, where she stood for a time, her ear cocked for the sound she was sure had woken her. Was it Grandad, having one of his bad dreams? She glanced towards his room. Or was it Cathleen?

      She gave a long, weary sigh. Whoever it was must have settled down again. The house was quiet now.

      Making her way along the landing, she wondered whether she really had heard a cry. I must have been dreaming, she thought. The first bad dream was some two years ago, the night after John had written to tell her he’d found somebody else. Since then, haunted by memories and regrets, she had forgotten what it was to sleep through the night.

      As quickly and quietly as she could, Emily checked the child. Satisfied that she was all right, she then went on to check her grandfather. Thomas Isaac too, was sound asleep, his contented snores reverberating through the house. No problem there. She smiled; that dear old man was never a problem.

      Now, as she turned away, she caught sight of something out of the corner of her eye. Moving nearer to the landing window, she peeped out.

      There was a light on in what used to be the brick-built storeroom, but which Clem Jackson had recently claimed as his own private place. Unwanted and cramped in the farmhouse, and needing somewhere to take his long procession of women, he had turned the storeroom into his own little kingdom.

      Emily was relieved that he’d put a distance between them. What she and the family really wanted, though, was for him to go away