Far From My Father's House by Elizabeth Gill Page A

and that this was because the work was so hard and so dangerous, they were all for each other and caring.
    He had his own room but he was not required to get up at daybreak and work until dark and that felt strangely free at first. He had his money from the post office so he could afford to take a holiday and still pay Mary Ann and Ralph for keeping him. He took long walks on the beach and through the town and looked for work but jobs were impossible to find and Blake was discouraged and saw himself having to go back to the farm without a future.
    In the end he decided to go to classes and get himself some kind of an education, this having been one thing which Annie had taunted him about, so for the first year that he was away he studied and was encouraged because he worked hard and the teachers liked him.
    The job situation was no better in Sunderland. Ralph had told him that many skilled and younger men had left the area because things in the shipyards were so bad and Blake thought hard about leaving the area altogether. The town seemed to him so noisy but Ralph disabused him of this idea. The clatter and bang of work from the shipyards was absent and after going to the employment exchanges the men hung around the streets. Some of the shipyards were closed. Grass grew up around the gates.
    But to Blake Sunderland was exciting and it was where he went when the money ran out and he could no longer afford to do nothing but study. He lingered there in the East End enjoying the mass of people and the crowded streets. He spent a little money that he had on him, crossing the river by ferry for a ha’penny, buying ice-cream in Grey Street and sitting in a pub in Villiers Street when a customer who had been put out threw a brick through the window. Those sitting near complained of the brick in their beer.
    At night he wandered there, watching the people, the streets filled with bars and when it was late the young men, worse for beer, took to fighting in Villiers and Coronation Streets. He didn’t go into the tempting cinemas or the shops or public houses from which in the early evenings a lot of noise and laughter came. He knew no one but he liked being there and one night as he was passing the Market Tavern there was a sudden commotion. The door opened and a young man was visibly thrown out. Blake didn’t have time to get out of the way, instead he put up both hands and was able to stop the young man from falling full length upon the pavement which he would otherwise have done. He was, Blake estimated, holding up his weight, very drunk indeed.
    ‘I am most awfully sorry,’ he said, ‘you must allow me to apologise and forgive me.’
    He had a posh accent, something Blake thought odd in that area.
    He would have slid on to the pavement but for Blake’s hold on him. The young man, about the same age as he was, smiled unsteadily into his eyes and Blake was reminded of Tommy and how much he missed everyone.
    ‘Can you drive me home?’
    ‘No, I don’t think I can,’ Blake said.
    ‘Why ever not?’
    ‘I haven’t a car. Don’t you have any friends?’ Blake looked vaguely in the direction of the pub.
    ‘I came here to forget my so-called friends, in particular a lady. She was called Winifred Carlton. Perhaps you know her?’
    ‘I can’t say I do,’ Blake said. ‘Do you live in the town?’
    ‘Ashbrooke.’
    Blake got him to what the young man assured him was the correct tram stop but when the tram came the conductor said, ‘He’s not getting on here. Not like that.’
    ‘Can he if I get on with him?’
    ‘I suppose,’ the conductor conceded and off they went.
    It was an unusual experience for Blake to be in the company of someone most happily drunk. Tommy usually ended up crying. And in spite of having to hold up the young man who swayed as they went, Blake enjoyed it. They went through streets he did not know and into the better part of the town and when the young man indicated they got off and walked a short