The Stowaway

XI

A single choice, one choice that was not his own, had forever changed his life. It could have ruined his life, but instead, it had left a permanent, painful scar.

***

Tom Buckley had perhaps had as normal childhood as any other working-class young boy in south-west England. His parents, Thomas and Mary Buckley were very poor, but young and in love.

Tom had quite happy memories of his father taking him to neighbouring Plymouth to see the tall Navy ships moored to the dock. It had been a marvel for a boy at that age.

His father had worked as a fisherman in their village, and they had lived together as a family in a tiny cottage. Tom remembered looking out over the ocean from their little kitchen window, waiting for his father to come home.

Only one day, he didn't.

The sea had not always been Tom Buckley's home. It had once been his father's killer. Thomas Buckley had drowned during a freak storm, and he and his mother were left heartbroken and destitute.

Tom could not remember much from the months after his father had died. Perhaps he had willed himself to forget it, without only the lingering memories of hunger remaining. With nothing to eat, he was starving. He could remember eating grass once he was so desperate.

But one series of events he did remember very clearly. It was a time that he would never  forget, no matter how hard he tried. Roger Hughes entered his mother's life, and there was food again.

Tom remembered Roger smelled like fish and tobacco. At first, Tom had not cared. His hunger was gone. If his empty stomach was being filled, he did not care what the man whispered to his mother.

Only perhaps he should have. Roger wanted to marry Tom's mother. Only he had one condition.

Roger Hughes had no interest in raising the nine-and-a-half-year-old son of a dead man. Tom was too weak and skinny for labour work, and too young to be taken on as an apprentice, not that Roger would have paid.

Roger's condition was simply this: if Mary wanted him to marry her and take care of her, then her son needed to go.

Tom could still see the conflict in his mother's grey eyes as she considered Roger's proposal. He could still feel the utter betrayal that began to tear his guts apart as she seriously thought about choosing anyone over her own child.

A week went by and his mother had not said anything, and Tom had stupidly allowed himself to hope. They had not seen Roger, and so he foolishly believed him to be gone. Yes, they would be hungry, but Tom would provide for them. He was the man. He was not too weak to work.

Mary borrowed a horse and cart from a neighbour, and together, mother and son ventured into Plymouth on a sunny summer's day. Still blind with stupidity, Tom believed that his mother was continuing on the tradition that he and his father had had, in going into Plymouth to see the Navy ships.

Mary stopped the cart when they reached the dock, gave Tom a kiss on the forehead, and then told him to get out.

His happiness, his joy, his hope, and his heart, all shattered on that fateful day. Tom had climbed into that cart as a nine-and-a-half-year-old child with a mother and a future and had climbed out of it as nothing but an abandoned boy that nobody wanted.

***

It was nearing twenty years since Tom had been left on that dock, and the pain still hit him like a punch to the gut. It could still bring him to his knees as his insides felt as though they were tearing themselves apart.