Mrs Thomas’s words had hit home. She was telling her that she was being selfish by concentrating on her own wishes, when she ought to be staying at home as a good daughter should, running the grocery shop with her father. It was totally unheard of among the people they knew for a young woman to go off to live her own life away from her family. My father is so generous and caring, she mused. He only wants us to be happy and fulfilled. Although she had a suspicion that when he told Tommy he could go to sea, he was presuming that he would come home after having had a taste of it. But he’s wrong there, she sighed. Tommy seems to have settled into seafaring life so well that he doesn’t even have time to write. The following day she walked down to the Queen’s Dock, which was situated behind Savile Street, and looked at the ships just as Tommy used to do. From their bedrooms above the shop they were used to hearing the clang of iron and steel, the hoot of steamers and the shouts of porters and seamen as they went about their daily business.
