Street Child (10 page)

By midday the huge tent was up, and sawdust had been scattered in its ring. Madame Juglini was away for most of the day, but came back at dusk, just as the lanterns were lit around the field, hanging from trees like ripe orange fruit. The tent glowed with yellow gas-light. Jim and Antonio stood by the gates of the field beating drums, and the circus band paraded round the tent, bugles and trumpets blaring into the twilight. Bats skittered over their heads like black rags.

Up the lane came a rumble of wheels, and the children of the circus cheered. ‘The people are coming, the people are coming!’ At the door flap of the tent Madame Juglini was taking money and shouting; ‘Roll up! Roll up, for the greatest show on earth! See the Flying Horses of Arabie! See Madame Bombadini as she flies through the air! See the Strongest Man in the Universe!’

Jim and Antonio ran inside the tent, and wriggled underneath the tiers of benches. They squatted there, arms folded, beneath the drumming feet of the impatient audience. Bits of orange peel and nut shells showered down on them. Antonio smiled at Jim.

It would be all right now. Everything would be all right. Tonight Jim would sleep in the green caravan with the brass door knocker, and tomorrow he would help to take down the big tent with the men and the children. He would march in the procession with his drum. Roll up! Roll up! He closed his eyes, letting the music and the voices swirl round him.

Antonio nudged him. The drums started up a booming roll. The crowd roared. Mr Juglini ran in to the ring and cracked his whip for silence. The band blazed, and into the ring ran the horses, the beautiful, powerful horses, scudding and shining, the thundering, billowing horses. Juglini cracked his whip again, and the horses reared on to their back legs, and into their circle another horse galloped with a woman standing on the saddle, her muslin skirts tucked up high. As the crowd cheered she leaned right back, her arms outstretched, and somersaulted: ‘One, Two Three!’ Juglini shouted. ‘Four! Five! Six!’ the crowd roared. Over she went, and over again, and came up each time smiling and proud. Jim cheered and clapped. He wanted to stand up and shout, ‘Hooray for Juglini’s circus!’

It was then, as the horses turned with a swish of their tails and a prancing of long legs, that Jim saw the thing he had never thought to see again in his life. The entrance flap of the tent was lifted up briefly. He could just make out the face of Madame Juglini, peering and anxious. He saw her hand, stretched up to receive a coin. And next to hers, like a spectre, another face, looming in the glow of the
lantern; a blackened face, and square, with hair like a slipping thatch, and eyes that bulged through like lamps.

Far away behind him Jim could hear the beating of the drums and the blare of the trumpets and trombones, the roar of the crowd. When he paused to look round he could see the glow of the huge tent and the dark shapes of the caravans parked round the edges of the field. He could just make out which one was Juglini’s.

He turned away again and ran until he could run no more. He reached a barn near a farmhouse. The door was open. He crept in and curled himself up in a pile of straw. His last thoughts, as sleep overtook him, were of something that Shrimps had said, long ago.

‘I’d rather sleep in a barnful of rats, and I’ve done that a time or two.’

Jim listened to the scurryings round him. ‘Well,’ he thought, ‘rats is charming company, bruvver. At least they knows where it’s warm and dry.’

The cry of the farmyard cockerel woke him up, and the sun striping through the barn roof. Jim lay still and tense, listening to the sound of the farm-workers making their way to the fields. When their
voices had died away he went out of the barn. Hens cluttered round him and squawked away again. An old woman, swaying as she walked, came out of the farm building carrying two large pails. She swayed past the barn where Jim crouched, afraid, her skirts sweeping up the hens’ grain as they bobbed around her. She went into the milking shed. Jim could hear her talking to the cows, and the low muttering the beasts made.

He dared himself to creep out of the barn again. The old woman had left open the kitchen door. Jim peered in. He could see bread on the table, left over from the men’s breakfast – pies and cheeses, a big jug of milk. He slipped in to the kitchen. Maybe if he asked the woman she would give him food. Maybe she would shut him in a back room and go and fetch Grimy Nick. He didn’t feel he could ever trust anyone again. He glanced round the yard and sneaked into the kitchen, stuffing as much food as he could in his mouth, cramming his pockets till they bulged. He heard a creak on the stair, swigged from the jug and grabbed one last desperate handful of cheese, and turned to see a girl on the middle step, her hand to her mouth. He dropped the jug and ran. The girl followed him, shouting, the jug clattering still on the flagged floor. The old woman hurried out of her milking shed, and all the farm dogs barked. Jim was away like a hare before a hound, streaking up to the lane.

He had no idea, now, where he was. The river was a long way away, and he could no longer see any signs of villages. A stage-coach rumbled past and he
flung himself into the trees, turning his face away from the dust and the staring eyes of the passengers. What if one of them was Grimy Nick, glittering with revenge?

He limped steadily on. His leg hurt a lot now. He passed a family of beggars, trudging in their bare feet, bundles on their backs.

‘At least you don’t have to carry anything,’ he said to himself. ‘You count yourself lucky, bruvver.’

His boots flapped as he walked. The nails had worked their way out and the soles were like lolloping tongues.

‘Chuck them in a ditch,’ he told himself, but he knew he couldn’t do that. They were Lizzie’s boots, from long ago. They were the only things he had to call his own, beside his name. He shoved one in each pocket. Now he couldn’t even hear his own footsteps. Every now and again a lapwing squeaked in a ploughed field, or a small animal rustled the hedgerow leaves, startling him. He seemed to be walking forever along the silent lanes with the huge grey sky arching over him. He was tense with listening. He imagined he saw Grimy Nick lurking behind every tree, his shadow flittering every time he turned round, his thin, mocking whistle piercing through every bird song.

‘Keep going, bruvver,’ he urged himself. ‘This must lead somewhere.’

At last he came to a signpost. It was a magic thing, he felt that. He traced the letters with his fingers, one by one. ‘“LONDON TOWN”. It has to be,’ he said.

‘You’re going home!’ he whispered. ‘Rosie lives in London Town, Jim!’

Home. He ate some food under his magic signpost and set off again, faster this time. The sun was setting low and red across the fields, but the air was becoming hazier and sootier. London was near, he knew it was.

Everything was growing familiar, yet everything was wrong. He was near the river, near the wharves and the warehouses, but the houses had gone. Everywhere he looked men were hammering and digging, lifting loads of rubble onto carts, heaving great planks of wood down to the water’s edge. Skeletons of houses crumbled into piles of dust. And Rosie’s cottage, and the boatshed where he had first watched the river, had gone.

Jim stared in disbelief at the wreckage around him. It was as if the whole city was being destroyed in order to build a new one.

‘What’s happening?’ he asked someone, a woman who reminded him of Rosie, with fat arms and a brown shawl wrapped over her head and shoulders.

‘They’re building a big new dock here, for all the boats,’ she told him, never taking her eyes off the workmen. ‘Wunnerful, ain’t it! Wunnerful. They say there’s more than two thousand men working here. Fancy! I never knew there was two thousand men in the whole world!’ She laughed, a coarse, grating laugh.

‘But what happened to all the houses?’ Jim asked her. ‘And all the people who lived here? Where’s Rosie?’

The woman laughed again and rubbed her arms. ‘Rosie? I know a dozen Rosies, and they’ve all lost their homes now. Don’t know where any of the Rosies have gone. Pastures new, I hope!’

Jim wandered away from her. She was so fascinated by the builders that she would stand and watch all day, there was no doubt of that, her fat arms folded with patient curiosity, her weight shifting from one leg to the other.

‘You’re on your own now, bruvver, and no mistake. You ain’t got no one.’

Nothing was familiar to Jim any more. He’d lost his bearings. He’d been so used to the slow journey of the
Lily
and the silent company of Grimy Nick that he’d forgotten what it was like to be in the city with its mucky streets and the constant push and stench of the crowds. He wandered round, hoping in vain to see Rosie. He did see one woman selling seafood and he ran up to her to ask her if he could help.

‘Help me?’ she laughed down at him. ‘What can you do to help me, little chap?’

‘I could dance for you, and shout out, “Shrimpso! Whelkso!”’ he told her. ‘It would bring all the people round to buy from you. I used to do it for Rosie.’

‘And as soon as they come, you’d pick their pockets and we’d both be done for it,’ the woman said. ‘Not likely. Clear off.’

Jim moved away from her. Then he started to
skip, glancing at her to make sure she was watching, a little, helpless dance. He was sad and tired and hungry. He didn’t feel like skipping at all. His leg hurt. He felt wretched, deep inside himself, black with wretchedness. The woman shook her head at him and walked away.

‘Give us some shrimps, lady?’ the street boys called after her in their whining voices. She ignored them.

Jim sank down on to his heels. One of the boys hunkered down next to him.

‘You remind me of Skippin’ Jim,’ he said. ‘He used to come round ’ere.’

Jim looked at him. ‘You don’t know a boy called Shrimps, do you?’

‘Course I do!’ the boy laughed. ‘Everyone knows Shrimps.’

‘Know where he is?’ Jim asked.

The boy jumped up and darted off, and Jim followed as best as he could, dodging between barrows and stalls right round the back of the market-place. It was dusk, and the stalls had their red wax candles glowing among their fruits and fishes. The little boy snatched at some apples on his way past one stall, and so did Jim. They grabbed out at cheeses and pies, and the child took off his cap and stuffed it full with his takings. Jim’s spirits were up. He could hardly believe he was really going to see Shrimps again, after all this time. He knew for sure, as he ran along, that the voice that had been in his head all these months had been Shrimps’s.

‘Wait till I tell you everything I’ve done, bruvver!’ he thought as he ran. ‘Make your ears tingle, it will.’

At the back of the market there were some piled up wooden crates that had held tea from India and spices from Zanzibar, and the little boy wriggled his way through them. He stopped by an upturned crate that was filled with straw. Lying on top of the straw, deep in the shadows, was a thin, pale ghost of a boy, a bundle of bones dressed in dirty rags.

‘Here’s Shrimps,’ the child told Jim. ‘Only he’s badly now. Awful badly.’

He emptied his cap of the stolen food. ‘Here y’are Shrimps,’ he said. ‘Some bits to eat and that, like I promised. Only I can’t stop, there’s work to do. But someone’s come to see you.’ He motioned to Jim to take his place and ran off again.

Jim crawled between the crates.

‘Shrimps?’ Jim said. He felt awkward and shy. ‘It’s Skipping Jim. Remember?’ The boy didn’t answer. Jim could hear the rasping of his breath.

‘You all right?’ He could hardly see him, except for the orange tufts of his hair sticking up above his white face. His fingers fluttered like pale moths, edging and fumbling as he pulled his sack towards his face. Jim knelt down and broke open an orange with his thumbs, squeezing the juice into Shrimps’s mouth.

‘When you’re better,’ he said, ‘we’ll go round together, like you said.’

He kept his voice bright, but inside he was deeply afraid. He sat for a long time listening to the way Shrimps’s breath rasped and shivered in his throat. The market sounds clamoured into the night, and long before they died down Jim crawled into the teachest next to Shrimps to try to keep him warm.

Next morning Jim searched round for sacking and straw to help to make Shrimps more comfortable. He managed to prop him up so he could eat more easily. But the boy only pecked at food.

‘Shrimps,’ said Jim, uneasy. ‘What’s up with you?’

‘Old age, bruvver.’

In his heart Jim was afraid it might be the cholera. Many people were dying of that, he knew.

‘What really happened, Shrimps?’

‘I got beat up, didn’t I? This old gentleman give me a guinea, honest he did. Probly thought it was a farthing, but he give me a guinea, fair and square. I think he took a fancy to me charming face.’

‘I believe you.’

‘And I was follered down this alley. Some bloke said I’d nicked it off the old gentleman and I had to give it back. And when I said I hadn’t they started kicking me and punching me like I was a rag doll. But I wasn’t going to give me guinea up, was I? It was a present. Sooner give it me ma than them blokes. So I stuck it under me armpit. Anyway, they must’ve knocked me out good and proper. When I
came to, me jacket had gone and me guinea wiv it, and all me laces, too. So the lads brought me here. Carried me, they did.’

‘You should be in the hospital.’

Shrimps panicked then. ‘I don’t want no ospickal. I don’t want no ospickal.’ He was so scared that he tried to scramble out of the crate, knocking over the pot of water Jim had brought for him.

‘I won’t take you there,’ Jim promised him. ‘Not if you don’t want to go.’

Soon Shrimps drifted off to sleep. It frightened Jim, watching him. It reminded him of the way his mother had been. He was afraid to leave him, and he was afraid to stay with him. When Shrimps woke again he coughed as if his body would break in half. He leaned back after the fit, exhausted.

‘Fink I swallowed a fly, Jim,’ he said. ‘Must’ve slept wiv me mouth open.’

As he was drifting back to sleep again Jim told him about Rosie’s grandfather and about Grimy Nick and Snipe. He told him about the terrible night when he thought he’d murdered Grimy Nick, and about the circus, and about Grimy Nick’s appearance in the big tent.

‘Ghosts is s’posed to be white and fin, not coalie-black wiv eyes like fires,’ chuckled Shrimps.

When Shrimps slept again Jim went off in search of food and help. One stallholder threw a cabbage at him, and he caught it before it hit him. ‘Thanks, mister!’ he shouted. He ran back to the crates with it, broke up some boxes for firewood, and that night he begged a light from the night-watchman. He ran
back to the crates with his flare blazing and cooked the cabbage in the water pot over the fire. He ate well that night, and even Shrimps managed to swallow some of the soupy liquid.

‘That was a feast, Jim,’ he said, belching softly and lying back. His face in the firelight was full of deep shadows. ‘I’ll be better soon.’

But Shrimps didn’t get better. He had been starving for too long. Jim didn’t know what to do to help him. He brought him fresh straw to lie on but it was all he could do to roll him over and stuff it underneath him. Shrimps was afraid that their hiding-place would be found by the police. He made Jim pile up more and more boxes round them. The nights were bitterly cold, and the sun was so weak that the daytime was hardly warmer. Winter was upon them.

Jim had asked all the costermongers at the market for help. Some of the women came to peer at Shrimps in his crate, but they’d seen many a child in that state before, and they just shrugged. The street boys brought him things to eat, but he was too ill to touch it.

‘Needs a doctor, he does,’ one of the women said.

‘He can’t go to the hospital. I promised him,’ Jim said. He was desperate for help. Didn’t anybody care? ‘He’s scared of being taken to the workhouse.’

The woman nodded. ‘Nowhere else for him,’ she said, turning her back on the crate, rubbing her arms for warmth. ‘’Cept a pauper’s grave, and that’ll be a blessing.’ She was already walking away as she said it.

Jim tried begging for money. He waited outside
the theatres where Shrimps used to sell his laces to the rich people. ‘Please,’ he would say to the ladies and gentlemen stepping out of their carriages, ‘my brother’s ever so ill. Please can I have some money for a doctor?’ But they would turn away as if they hadn’t really seen him. When he went back to Shrimps he didn’t even try to get him to eat. He just moistened his lips with water. Shrimps’ eyes flickered open.

‘Lovely bit of beer, that is,’ he whispered, and fell asleep again.

One night Jim went to the theatre queue again, but this time he didn’t ask for money. He skipped for them instead, and when they saw that he wasn’t holding his cap out for coins, and how lightly he danced, they started to take notice of him. Through the ragged holes in his trousers they could see the deep scar on his leg, but he danced as well as he had ever done. When quite a few people were gathered round him he stopped and clapped his hands.

‘Can anyone give me the name of a doctor, please?’ he shouted. ‘One that won’t charge money?’

Nobody answered him. The theatre doors opened and they swarmed in, forgetting him.

The woman with the coffee-cart called him over. She gave Jim a mug of coffee to warm him up.

‘Seen you skipping,’ she said. ‘How’s that friend of yours? He still bad?’

Jim nodded. He wished he could carry the mug of coffee to Shrimps, but he knew it wouldn’t do any good. Jim gulped the coffee down. ‘I’m looking for a doctor for him. Don’t know one, do you? One that won’t charge. I could do jobs for him.’

She frowned. ‘There is a doctor of some sort, not far from here. But I’ve never heard of him doing any doctoring, like. Barnie something, they call him. The little kids next door to me go to his school.’

‘School? I don’t want anything to do with school.’ Jim remembered the schoolroom at the workhouse; the lofty room, and the boys quiet and afraid at their desks, the pacing schoolmaster.

‘The Ragged School. Ain’t you heard of it?’ the woman went on. She stopped to serve someone with pickled eggs and coffee. ‘All I know is it’s somewhere kids go when they don’t have money to pay for school. They do a lot of praying.’

Again Jim remembered the schoolroom with the painted arches: God is good. God is holy. God is just. God is love. He could hear again the thin chanting of the boys’ voices as they recited it every day.

‘No,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I wouldn’t go there, missis. Never.’

‘Suit yourself,’ she said. ‘He’s the only doctor I know of.’

But during that night Shrimps grew worse. He was hot and feverish, and weak though he was, he coughed all the time. Jim put his hand under his friend’s head to prop him up. He pulled away the straw to push some fresh under, and saw that it was spotted with blood.