Copyright

First published in Great Britain by Hamish Hamilton

First published by HarperCollins Children’s Books 1995

This edition published by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2016

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,

HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

The HarperCollins Children’s Books website address is

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Berlie Doherty’s website address is

www.berliedoherty.com

Text copyright © Berlie Doherty 1993

Why You’ll Love This Book copyright © Julia Golding 2009

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2016

Cover illustration © Giodarno Poloni 2016

Berlie Doherty asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Source ISBN: 9780007311255

Ebook Edition © 2016 ISBN: 9780007397631

Version: 2020-04-14

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For Hilda Cotterill

With thanks to the children of Lynne Healy’s class at Dobcroft Junior School in Sheffield, who helped me with their advice and enthusiasm, and to Priscilla Hodgson, Deborah Walters, Mike Higginbottom, the Barnardo Library, Dickens House, The Ellesmere Port Boat Museum and Sheffield Libraries, who all helped me with their knowledge.

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Dedication

Why You’ll Love This Book by Julia Golding

Tell me Your Story, Jim

Chapter One – The Shilling Pie

Chapter Two – The Stick Man

Chapter Three – Rosie and Judd

Chapter Four – The Workhouse

Chapter Five – Behind Bars

Chapter Six – Tip

Chapter Seven – The Wild Thing

Chapter Eight – The Carpet-Beaters

Chapter Nine – The Jaw of the Iron Dog

Chapter Ten – Lame Betsy

Chapter Eleven – The Spitting Crow

Chapter Twelve – Shrimps

Chapter Thirteen – The Lily

Chapter Fourteen – The Waterman’s Arms

Chapter Fifteen – Josh

Chapter Sixteen – Boy in Pain

Chapter Seventeen – The Monster Weeps

Chapter Eighteen – You Can Do It, Bruvver

Chapter Nineteen – Away

Chapter Twenty – The Green Caravan

Chapter Twenty-One – Circus Boy

Chapter Twenty-Two – On the Run Again

Chapter Twenty-Three– Shrimps Again

Chapter Twenty-Four – Looking for a Doctor

Chapter Twenty-Five – The Ragged School

Chapter Twenty-Six – Goodbye, Bruvver

Chapter Twenty-Seven – Barnie

The End of the Story

More Than a Story

About the Author

By the same author

About the Publisher

Why You’ll Love This Book By Julia Golding

It could’ve been you – that might be the slogan on the movie poster if this story of an ordinary boy up against impossible odds was put on to the big screen. Street Child does something quite extraordinary. It dissolves the gap between just reading about the poverty in Victorian London and makes you live it. This is no dry history lesson, but an adventure into the dark underbelly of those times. Within these pages, you will find monsters and heroes, comedy and tragedy, all set against the backdrop of the scary docklands of London. As I read Berlie Doherty’s brilliant and moving book, I was constantly challenged. How would I have fared if I had been left an orphan with no money or friends to help me? Where would I have gone for love and help? What would you have done?

This is the crushing fate that the main character, Jim Jarvis, faces when his mother dies. He journeys through the horrors of the workhouse, finds brief happiness in a fragile existence helping a street seller and comes to a state close to slavery working on a coal boat where he is treated worse than his master’s dog. The book is full of vivid characters, some of whom could be plucked from a horror novel: Grimy Nick and his dog Snipe, Shrimps, the boy named for the toes showing through the end of his boots, the glittering but treacherous Juglini circus troupe. Acts of kindness – a hug from a woman in the workhouse, Rosie’s care for Jim, Josh on the Newcastle collier ship, the boys tending to a dying friend – these are rare moments that shine out from the darkness like diamonds in a shovel of coal.

But what really works is that you can’t help but fall in behind Jim, rooting for him to find a way out of the traps continually sprung on him. He’s not sweet – don’t expect an angelic Oliver Twist waiting for rescue. He’s a child of the streets with all the savvy that goes with that hard life. But you’ll feel for his overwhelming loneliness and when finally – thankfully – someone listens to his story, you’ll want to cheer.

Jim’s story makes you want to go out and change things so others don’t have to go through the same experience, therefore it comes as a shock to realise that he did exist. Maybe not this exact version of Jim, as Berlie Doherty admits, but it is true that Dr Barnado listened to a street child who sketched out a similar tale and then went on to set up the Barnado’s homes that offered such children a refuge.

Over a hundred years later, the homes still exist. But so does Jim. Maybe close to where you live in the stairwell of a housing estate, or further off in a slum in a developing country, there are millions of Jims and his sisters living today. I felt it was important to listen to Jim’s tale, but it did also make me wonder how many untold stories there are out there and what we can do about it. What do you think?

Julia Golding

Julia Golding is the author of over 13 novels for young people, including The Diamond of Drury Lane, a historical novel about a feisty orphan called Cat Royal, living in an Eighteenth century London theatre, which won the Waterstone’s Children’s Book Prize and the Nestlé Smarties Gold Medal in 2006. Before becoming a writer, she worked as a diplomat in Poland and later became a policy adviser for Oxfam, somehow fitting in a doctorate at Oxford and three children along the way.

TELL ME YOUR STORY, JIM

Jim Jarvis. Want to know who that is? It’s me! That’s my name. Only thing I’ve got, is my name. And I’ve give it away to this man. Barnie, his name is, or something like that. He told me once, only I forgot it, see, and I don’t like to ask him again. “Mister”, I call him, to his face, that is. But there’s a little space in my head where his name is Barnie.

He keeps asking me things. He wants to know my story, that’s what he tells me. My story, mister? What d’you want to know that for? Ain’t much of a story, mine ain’t. And he looks at me, all quiet.

“It is, Jim,” he says. “It’s a very special story. It changed my life, child, meeting you.”

Funny that, ain’t it? Because he changed my life, Barnie did.

I can’t believe my luck, and that’s a fact. Here I am with food in my belly, and good hot food at that, and plenty more where that came from, he says. I’m wearing clothes that smell nice and that don’t have no holes in, neither. And I’m in this room where there’s a great big fire burning, and plenty more logs to put on it so it won’t just die off. There’s just me and him. The other boys are upstairs in their hammocks, all cosy in the big room we sleep in. And downstairs there’s just me and him, special.

I want to laugh. I’m so full of something that I want to laugh out loud, and I stuff my fist in my mouth to stop myself.

Barnie gives me that look, all quiet. “Just tell me your story.”

My story! Well. I creep back to the fire for this. I hug my knees. I close my eyes, to shut out the way the flames dance about and the way his shadow and mine climb up and down the walls. I shut out the sound of the fire sniffing like a dog at a rat-hole. And I think I can hear someone talking, very softly. It’s a woman’s voice, talking to a child. I think she’s talking to me.

“Mister,” I says, just whispering so’s I don’t chase the voice away. “Can I tell you about my ma?”

Chapter One
THE SHILLING PIE

Jim Jarvis hopped about on the edge of the road, his feet blue with cold. Passing carriages flung muddy snow up into his face and his eyes, and the swaying horses slithered and skidded as they were whipped on by their drivers. At last Jim saw his chance and made a dash for it through the traffic. The little shops in the dark street all glowed yellow with their hanging lamps, and Jim dodged from one light to the next until he came to the shop he was looking for. It was the meat pudding shop. Hungry boys and skinny dogs hovered round the doorway, watching for scraps. Jim pushed past them, his coin as hot as a piece of coal in his fist. He could hear his stomach gurgling as the rich smell of hot gravy met him.

Mrs Hodder was trying to sweep the soggy floor and sprinkle new straw down when Jim ran in.

“You can run right out again,” she shouted to him. “If I’m not sick of little boys today!”

“But I’ve come to buy a pudding!” Jim told her. He danced up and down, opening and closing his fist so his coin winked at her like an eye.

She prised it out of his hand and bit it. “Where did you find this, little shrimp?” she asked him. “And stop your dancing! You’re making me rock like a ship at sea!”

Jim hopped on to a dry patch of straw. “Ma’s purse. And she said there won’t be no more, because that’s the last shilling we got, and I know that’s true because I emptied it for her. So make it a good one, Mrs Hodder. Make it big, and lots of gravy!”

He ran home with the pie clutched to his chest, warming him through its cloth wrapping. Some of the boys outside the shop tried to chase him, but he soon lost them in the dark alleys, his heart thudding in case they caught him and stole the pie.

At last he came to his home, in a house so full of families that he sometimes wondered how the floors and walls didn’t come tumbling down with the weight and the noise of them all. He ran up the stairs and burst into the room his own family lived in. He was panting with triumph and excitement.

“I’ve got the pie! I’ve got the pie!” he sang out.

“Ssssh!” His sister Emily was kneeling on the floor, and she turned round to him sharply. “Ma’s asleep, Jim.”

Lizzie jumped up and ran to him, pulling him over towards the fire so they could spread out the pudding cloth on the hearth. They broke off chunks of pastry and dipped them into the brimming gravy.

“What about Ma?” asked Lizzie.

“She won’t want it,” Emily said. “She never eats.”

Lizzie pulled Jim’s hand back as he was reaching out for another chunk. “But the gravy might do her good,” she suggested. “Just a little taste. Stop shovelling it down so fast, Jim. Let Ma have a bit.”

She turned round to her mother’s pile of bedding and pulled back the ragged cover.

“Ma,” she whispered. “Try a bit. It’s lovely!”

She held a piece of gravy-soaked piecrust to her lips, but her mother shook her head and turned over, huddling her rug round her.

“I’ll have it!” said Jim, but Lizzie put it on the corner of her mother’s bed-rags.

“She might feel like it later,” she said. “The smell might tempt her.”

“I told you,” said Emily. “She don’t want food no more. That’s what she said.”

Jim paused for a moment in his eating, his hand resting over his portion of pie in case his sisters snatched it away from him. “What’s the matter with Ma?” he asked.

“Nothing’s the matter,” said Emily. She chucked a log on the fire, watching how the flames curled themselves round it.

“She’s tired, is all,” Lizzie prompted her. “She just wants to sleep, don’t she?”

“But she’s been asleep all day,” Jim said. “And yesterday. And the day before.”

“Just eat your pie,” said Emily. “You heard what she said. There’s no more shillings in that purse, so don’t expect no more pies after this one.”

“She’ll get better soon,” Lizzie said. “And then she’ll be able to go back to work. There’s lots of jobs for cooks. We’ll soon be out of this place. That’s what she told me, Jim.”

“Will we go back to our cottage?” Jim asked.

Lizzie shook her head. “You know we can’t go there, Jim. We had to move out when Father died.”

“Eat your pie,” said Emily. “She wants us to enjoy it.”

But the pie had grown cold before the children finished it. They pulled their rag-pile close to the hearth and curled up together, Jim between Emily and Lizzie. In all the rooms of the house they could hear people muttering and yawning and scratching. Outside in the street dogs were howling, and carriage wheels trundled on the slushy roads.

Jim lay awake. He could hear how his mother’s breath rattled in her throat, and he knew by the way she tossed and turned that she wasn’t asleep. He could tell by the way his sisters lay taut and still each side of him that they were awake too, listening through the night to its noises, longing for day to come.

Chapter Two
THE STICK MAN

They must have slept in the end. The next thing Jim heard was a stamping of heavy feet on the stairs and the rapping of a cane on the floor outside their room.

“The Stick Man!” whispered Emily.

Before the children could sit up the door was flung open and in strode the owner of the house, stamping snow off his boots. He swung off his cape, scattering snowflakes round the room, and as he shook it into the hearth the white embers spat.

“I did knock,” Mr Spink barked. “But when lie-abeds don’t answer then lie-abeds must be got up.”

Emily and Lizzie scrambled to their feet at once. Jim would have crawled under the covers, but his sisters hauled him up between them. The children stood in a limp row in front of their mother.

Mr Spink pushed the damp, yellowy strings of his hair behind his ears and peered over their heads at her. His breath came in little wheezing gasps.

“Is she dead?”

“No, sir, she ain’t dead,” said Emily, fright catching at her throat.

“Sick, then?”

“No, sir, she ain’t sick, neither,” Emily said.

Jim looked at her in surprise. It seemed to him that his mother was very sick, and had been for days.

“Then if she ain’t dead nor sick what’s she doing down there? Lying under the covers like a grand lady with nothing to do! Hiding is she? Counting all her money?” Mr Spink pushed the children out of the way and lifted up the rag-pile with his cane.

The children’s mother had her eyes closed, though the lids fluttered slightly. In the daylight Jim could see how pale she was. He felt for Lizzie’s hand.

“Leave her, sir. She’s tired out, she’s been working that hard,” Emily said. “She’ll be off out to work again soon.”

Jim could tell by the way her voice shook how afraid she was, and how brave she was to talk back to Mr Spink like that.

“Well, if she’s been working, she can pay her rent, and we’ll all be happy. Up you get, woman!” With the silver tip of his stick he lifted the rags clean away from her.

Lizzie knelt down and helped her mother to sit up.

“Where’s your money, Mrs Jarvis?” Mr Spink thrust his cane under his arm and stood with his hands in his pockets, jingling the loose coins there like little bells, as if they made sweet music to his ears. He saw the purse bag on the floor and peered down at it. He leaned down towards Jim, who backed away from his wheezy breath.

“I’m an old man, and I don’t bend. Pick up that purse for me, sonny.”

Jim bent down and picked it up. He held it out at arm’s length for Mr Spink to take, but the man rolled his eyes at him.

“Is it empty, sonny? Empty?” He said, as if he couldn’t believe it. He saw the pie cloth in the hearth, with the crumbs of pastry that the children had left, and the stain of gravy on it. He started back as if the sight of it amazed him and glared round at them all.

“Did you eat pie last night?”

The girls were silent.

“Did you, sonny?”

“Yes,” Jim whispered.

“Was it a lovely meat pie, all hot and full of gravy?”

“I don’t know.” Jim’s throat was as tight as if he still had a piece of pastry stuck there, refusing to be swallowed. He looked at Emily, who had her lips set in a firm line, and at Lizzie, who was sitting now with her head bent so her hair dangled across her face, hiding it. He looked at his mother, white and quiet.

“I bought it,” he burst out. “It was Ma’s last shilling, but I bought the pie.”

He heard Emily give out a little sigh beside him.

Mr Spink nodded.

“No money.” He nodded again, and for a moment Jim thought he’d done the right thing to tell him that the pie had cost him Ma’s last shilling. Mr Spink put out his sweaty hand and took the purse from Jim. He pushed his fingers into it as though it was a glove puppet, and then he dropped it on the floor and jabbed at it with his stick. He took out his silk handkerchief and flapped it open, wiped his hair and his face with it and then had a good blow.

“Oh dear,” he said. He blew his nose long and hard. Jim stole a glance at Emily, but she wouldn’t look at him. “No money, no rent.” Mr Spink blew his nose again. “No rent, no room, Mrs Jarvis.”

“We’ve nowhere else to go,” said Jim’s mother, so quietly that Mr Spink had to stop blowing his nose and bend towards her to listen.

“Ma,” said Jim. “Couldn’t we go back to the cottage? I liked it better there.”

Mr Spink gave a shout of laughter, and for a moment again Jim thought he’d said the right thing.

“Your cottage! When you came crawling to me twelve months ago you was glad of this place, make no mistake about it. But if you like a cottage better, find yourself a father, and let him pay for one. Can you do that?”

Jim shook his head. He swallowed hard. His throat filled up again.

“We’re quite happy here,” Jim’s mother said. “Give us a little longer, and we’ll pay our rent. The girls can help me.”

Mr Spink flapped his handkerchief again and stuffed it in his pocket.

“I’ve made up my mind, Mrs Jarvis. I’ve a family wants to move in here tonight. There’s eight of them – don’t they deserve a home, now? And what’s more – they can pay me for it!”

He swung his steaming cape back over his shoulders and strode out of the room, and they listened in silence to the sound of his cane, tap-tap-tapping on the floor outside the next room. Jim watched with a cold dread as his sisters moved slowly round the room, gathering up their belongings. They had no furniture, though they had seemed to have plenty when they piled it high on the cart the day they left their cottage. But it had all been sold, piece by piece, and what hadn’t been good enough to sell had been broken up and used as firewood.

“Get your horse, Jim,” Emily said, indicating the wooden horse that Jim’s father had carved for him two Christmases ago. “And Lizzie’s boots. You might as well have them. They’re too small for Lizzie now.”

He picked them up. The boots were too big for him to wear yet, but he folded his arms over them and stuck the wooden horse between them. The children stood by the doorway clutching their bundles, while Mrs Jarvis tied her bonnet and fastened her shawl round herself. She moved slowly and quietly, as if all her thoughts were wrapped up deep inside her and she was afraid of breaking them. At last she was ready. She looked round the bare room. The snow had stopped, and sunlight came watery through the window.

“Ma …” said Emily.

Mrs Jarvis looked down at her daughter. She was pale and strained. “I’m coming,” she said.

“But where can we go?”

“I’ll find us a home,” her mother said. “Don’t worry.”

Chapter Three
ROSIE AND JUDD

Mrs Jarvis used up a lot of her remaining strength that morning. She led the children away from the slums where they had lived for the past year and down street after street until they came to a much quieter part of town, where the houses were big and stately. She leaned against some railings to rest. Emily sat down next to her, anxious for her mother.

“Now you’ve got to be good,” Mrs Jarvis said to them. “I’m going to take you to the house where I used to work, only you must be good. Promise me now?”

“Ma! Course we’ll be good,” Emily said.

Mrs Jarvis nodded. “Yes. You’re always good,” she said. “That’s one thing I did right, anyway.”

In the window behind them a finch sang in a tiny cage. It only had room to hop from the floor of its cage to a little perch, and down again, hop, hop, hop, up and down.

“Listen to that bird,” said Jim.

“They only sing when they’re on their own,” Emily told him. “He’s singing for a friend.”

“Poor little thing,” said Lizzie. “Trapped in a cage.”

“We’d better go on,” their mother said. “I’m going to take you to see the only friend I’ve got in the world. Rosie, she’s called. You’ve heard me talk about Rosie at the big house?”

The children nodded. It was a long time since their mother had worked in his lordship’s kitchen, but she still had stories to tell them about it.

“And if Rosie can’t help us,” she sighed, “nobody can.” Emily helped her up again and they moved slowly on, pausing as the carriages swept past them.

When they reached the big house at last, Mrs Jarvis was exhausted and sat down on the steps to rest again. The children gazed up at the tall building.

“Is this where we’re going to live?” asked Lizzie.

“It’s too grand for us, Lizzie!” said Emily. Even though she was only ten, she knew that families like theirs didn’t end up in houses like these.

Jim’s eyes were fixed on something he could see on the top steps, just by the front door. It was an iron boot-scraper, and it was in the shape of a dog’s head. The huge snapping mouth of the dog was wide open, so people could scrape the mud off their boots in its teeth. “I’d never put my foot in there,” he said. “Not even with Lizzie’s boots on, I wouldn’t. It’d come snarling down at me and bite my toes right off.”

When their mother was rested she picked up her bundle again and led the children down some steps to the basement of the house. She sank against the door, all strength gone.

“Be good,” she murmured to them. She lifted the knocker.

They heard rapid footsteps coming. Mrs Jarvis quickly bent down and kissed both the girls on the tops of their heads.

“God bless you both,” she said.

Emily looked up at her, suddenly afraid. She was about to ask her mother what was happening when the door was opened by a large, floury woman in a white pinafore. She had the sleeves of her dress rolled up so her arms bulged out of them. Her hands and wrists were covered in dough and as she flung up her arms in greeting Jim could see that her elbows were red and powdery.

“Annie Jarvis!” the woman gasped. “I never thought to see you again!” She hugged her, covering her with bits of dough. “You ain’t come looking for work, have you, after all this time? Judd’s going spare, she is, looking for a new cook. She’s got me at it, and my dough’s like a boulder – you could build cathedrals out of it, and they wouldn’t ever fall down! She’ll soon put me back on serving upstairs!”

While she was talking she hauled Mrs Jarvis and the children into the kitchen and set stools for them round the stove, balancing herself on a high chair and scooping up more flour. She pushed aside the big mixing bowl and sat with her elbows on the table, beaming across at them, and then her smile changed. She reached over to Mrs Jarvis and put her hand on her forehead.

“Hot!” Her voice was soft with concern. “You’re so hot, Annie, and white as snow.” She looked at the children, and at the bundles of clothes and belongings that they were still clutching. “You’ve been turned out, haven’t you?”

Mrs Jarvis nodded.

“You got anywhere?”

“No.”

“And you’re not fit for work. You know that? There’s no work left in you, Annie Jarvis.”

A bell jangled over the door, and Rosie jumped up and ran to the stove.

“Lord, that’s for the coffees, and I ain’t done them. Anyone comes down, and you duck under the table quick, mind,” she said to the children. The bell rang again.

“All right, all right,” she shouted. “His lordship can wait five minutes, can’t he, while I talk to my friend here?”

She glanced at Mrs Jarvis again, her face puckered in frowns. “My sister, as good as. No, he can’t wait. His lordship waits for nothing.”

As she was talking she was ladling coffee and milk into jugs and setting them on a tray. She rubbed her floury hands on the pinafore, took it off and changed into a clean one, and as a quick afterthought she poured some of the coffee into a cup and edged it across the table towards Mrs Jarvis.

“Go on,” she urged. “Take it for all the good bread you’ve baked for him.” She ran to the door with her tray rattling in her hand and paused to pull a face at the bell as it jangled again. “There’s only one home left to you now, Annie. It’s the House, ain’t it, heaven help you. The workhouse!”

As soon as Rosie had left the kitchen and gone upstairs with her tray, Jim slid off his stool and ran to his mother. She sipped at her coffee, holding the cup with both hands.

“We ain’t going to the workhouse, Ma?” Emily asked her.

The children had heard terrifying stories about workhouses. Old people spoke of them with fear and hate as if they were worse than hell on earth. They’d heard that people who went there sometimes had to stay for the rest of their lives. People died in there. Some people slept out in the streets and the fields rather than go to the workhouse. The two girls sat in silent dread each side of their mother.

“Help Rosie out with her bread, Emily,” Mrs Jarvis suggested, her voice steady now, and stronger. “It’d be a good turn that she’d appreciate, and his lordship would too!”

Emily did as she was told. She washed her hands in the jug of water on the side and then poured some of the frothing yeast into the bowl of flour. A few minutes later Rosie came down. She put her finger to her lips and pointed up the stairs.

“I’ve asked Judd to come!” she mouthed.

There was the rustle of a long skirt on the stairs, and the housekeeper came in, stern and brisk. Jim tried to slide under the table, but she stopped him with her booted foot.

She came straight to Mrs Jarvis and stood with her hands on her hips, looking down at her. “Rosie tells me you’re in a bad way, Annie Jarvis,” she said. “And I must say, you look it.”

“I haven’t come to make trouble, Judd,” Mrs Jarvis said. “And I’m sorry if I’ve interrupted the work. I’ve only come to say goodbye to you and Rosie, because you’ve always been so kind to me.”

“If we’ve been kind to you it’s because you’ve always done your work well, and that’s what matters,” Judd sniffed. She looked over Emily’s shoulder as the girl dolloped her dough on to the table and pushed her hands into it to knead it. Rosie dodged behind her, her hands clasped together, her face anxious. It was as if Emily was performing some kind of magic, and they were afraid to break the spell, the way the three women watched her in silence.

“Can cook, can you?” Judd asked Emily at last.

“She can cook as well as me,” said Jim’s mother. “And she can scrub the floor for you, and run errands. She can sleep on the kitchen floor and take up no room.”

“She wouldn’t need paying,” Rosie said. “She’d be a saving, Judd.”

Emily flattened and rolled the dough with the heel of her hand, stretching it out and folding it over time and time again, listening with every nerve in her body to what the women behind her were saying.

“But I couldn’t do anything for the other girl,” Judd said.

“Judd, I’ve a sister who’s cook at Sunbury. She might give her a chance,” Rosie said. She stood on the tips of her toes like a little girl, her hands clasped behind her back and her eyes pleading. “If you just let little Lizzie sleep down here with Emily till Sunday, and I can walk her over to Moll’s then.”

“I don’t want to know they’re here, Rosie. If his lordship finds out, it’s every one of us for the workhouse. You know that, don’t you? I don’t know they’re here, these girls.”

Judd swept out, her straight back and her firm stride telling them that she had never seen these girls in the kitchen. They listened to the swing of the door and for the clicking of her boots on the stairs to die away.

“It’s the best I can do to help you, Annie,” Rosie said. “I can’t do no more.”

“It’s more than I expected,” Mrs Jarvis said. “At least you’ve saved my girls from that place.”

She stood up unsteadily. “We’d better go,” she said to Jim. “It’s not fair to Rosie if we stay here any longer.”

“I’ll leave you alone to say your goodbyes, then,” said Rosie. She touched her friend quickly on the shoulder and went into the scullery, her face set in hurt, hard lines. They could hear her in there, banging pots around as if she was setting up an orchestra.

Emily said nothing at all, and that was because she couldn’t. Her throat was tight with a band of pain. She couldn’t even look at her mother or at Jim, but hugged them quickly and went to sit down at the table, her head in her hands. Lizzie tried to follow her example, but as soon as Mrs Jarvis had put her hand on the door that led up to the street she burst out, “Take us with you, Ma. Don’t leave us here!”

“I can’t,” her mother said. She didn’t turn round to her. “Bless you. I can’t. This is best for you. God bless you, both of you.”

She took Jim’s hand and bundled him quickly out of the door. Jim daren’t look at her. He daren’t listen to the sounds that she was making now that they were out into the day. He held his face up to the sky and let the snowflakes flutter against his cheeks to cool him. He had no idea what was going to happen to him or his mother, or whether he would ever see Emily and Lizzie again. He was more frightened than he had ever been in his life.

Chapter Four
THE WORKHOUSE

Jim and his mother walked for most of that day, but they made very slow progress. They rested a bit near a statue of a man on a horse and after a very short distance they had to stop again for Mrs Jarvis to scoop water from a fountain. And on they went, trudging and stopping, trudging and stopping, until Jim’s mother could go no further. She put her arms round Jim and pressed her head down on to his shoulder.

“God help you, Jim,” she said.

It seemed to Jim that she was simply tired then of walking and that she decided to go to sleep, there on the pavement. He squatted down beside her, glad of a chance to rest, feeling dizzy and tired himself, and was aware of a worry of voices round him, like flies buzzing. Someone shook him and he opened his eyes.

“Where d’you live?” a voice said.

Jim sat up. Already it was growing dark. There were people round him and some were kneeling by his mother, trying to lift her. “We used to live in a cottage,” said Jim. “We had a cow and some hens.”

“Where d’you live now?” It was a different voice, a bit sharper than the last one. Jim tried to remember the name of the street where they had rented a room in Mr Spink’s big house, and couldn’t. He couldn’t understand why his mother didn’t wake up. He looked round for his bundle and saw that his wooden horse had gone. He clutched Lizzie’s old boots.

“You haven’t got nowhere?” the same voice asked.

Jim shook his head. Someone was doing something to his mother, rubbing her hands, it looked like, dabbing her face with her shawl. “Get them to the workhouse,” someone said. “There’s nothing we can do for her.”

“I’m not taking them there,” another voice said. “Prison would be better than there. Tell them we caught the boy stealing, and let them put them both in prison.”

“Someone stole my horse,” Jim heard himself saying. He couldn’t keep his voice steady. “I didn’t steal anything.”

“Give him his horse back,” someone else said. “It’s all he’s got, ain’t it? A pair of boots what’s too big for him, and a wooden horse. Give it back.” There was a burst of laughter and some children broke away from the group and ran off.

The next minute there was a shouting from the far end of the street, and the people who had been crouching round Jim and his mother stood up and moved away. He heard other voices and looked up to see two policemen. “Get up!” one of the policemen ordered. Jim struggled to his feet. “And you! Get up!” the other one said to Jim’s mother. She lay quite still.

The first policeman waved his hand and a boy with a cart ran up. Between them they lifted Jim’s mother on to it. Jim watched, afraid.

“Take ’em to the workhouse,” the policeman said. “Let them die in there, if they have to.” The boy began to run then, head down, skidding on the snowy road, weaving the cart in and out of the carriages, and Jim ran anxiously behind. They came at last to a massive stone building with iron railings round it. Weary people slouched there, begging for food. The boy stopped the cart outside the huge iron gates and pulled the bell. Jim could hear it clanging in the distance. At last the gates were pulled open by a porter who glared out at them, his lantern held up high.

“Two more for you,” said the boy. “One for the infirmary, one for school.” The porter led them into a yard. There on the steps on each side of the main door stood a man and woman, as straight and thin and waxy-faced as a pair of church candles, staring down at them. The boy held out his hand and was given a small coin, and the master and matron bent down and lifted Jim’s mother off the cart and carried her into the house. The boy pushed his cart out and the porter clanged the gates shut.

The matron poked her head sharply round the door.

“Get in!” she told Jim, and pulled him through. “You come and get scrubbed and cropped.”

The doors groaned to. They were in a long corridor, gloomy with candle shadow. In front of them a man trudged with Jim’s mother across his shoulder.

“Where’s Ma going?” Jim asked, his voice echoing against the tiles like the whimpering of a tiny, scared animal.

“Where’s she going? Infirmary, that’s where she’s going. Wants feeding and medicine, no doubt, and nothing to buy it with neither.”

“Can I go with her?”

“Go with her? A big strong boy like you? You can not! If you’re good, Mr Sissons might let you see her tomorrow. Good, mind! Know what good means?” The matron closed her ice-cold hand over his and bent down towards him, her black bonnet crinkling. Her teeth were as black and twisted as the railings in the yard.

She pulled Jim along the corridor and into a huge green room, where boys sat in silence, staring at each other and at the bare walls. They all watched Jim as he was led through the room and out into another yard.

“Joseph!” the matron called, and a bent man shuffled after her. His head hung below his shoulders like a stumpy bird’s. He helped her to strip off Jim’s clothes and to sluice him down with icy water from the pump. Then Jim was pulled into rough, itchy clothes, and his hair was tugged and jagged at with a blunt pair of scissors until his scalp felt as if it had been torn into pieces. He let it all happen to him. He was too frightened to resist. All he wanted was to be with his mother.

He was led back into a huge hall and told to join the queue of silent boys there. They stood with their heads bowed and with bowls in their hands. There were hundreds and hundreds of people in the room, all sitting at long tables, all eating in silence. The only sound was the scraping of the knives and forks and the noise of chewing and gulping. All the benches faced the same way. Mr Sissons stood on a raised box at the end of the room, watching everyone as they waited for their food.

Jim was given a ladle of broth and a corner of bread.

“I don’t want anything,” he started to say, and was pushed along in the queue. He followed the boy in front of him and he sat on one of the benches. He glanced round him, trying to catch someone’s eye, but none of the boys looked at him. They all ate with their heads bowed down, staring into their bowls. The boy next to him sneaked his hand across and grabbed Jim’s bread. Jim ate his broth in silence.

After the meal the man with the hanging head gave Jim a blanket and showed him a room full of shelves and long boxes where all the boys slept. He pointed to the box Jim was to sleep in. Jim climbed into it and found that he only just had enough room to turn over in it, small though he was. He tied Lizzie’s boots to his wrists in case anyone tried to steal them. The dormitory door was locked, and they lay in darkness.

During the night an old woman prowled up and down the room with a candle in her hand, holding it up to each boy’s face as she passed. Jim could hear boys crying, stifling their sobs as she came and went, little puffs of sound that were hardly there at all. He lay with his eyes closed, the candle light burning red against his eyelids as she approached and stopped by him. He could hear her snuffly breath, and the creak of her boots. He hardly dared to breathe. He lay awake all night, thinking about Emily and Lizzie and worrying about his mother. He longed to see her again. If she was better maybe she could ask Mr Sissons to let them go.

As soon as it was morning the door was unlocked. Old Marion’s place was taken by the bent man. He shouted at the boys to queue up in the yard for their wash.

“I’ve already broken the ice for you,” he told them. “So no thinking you can dodge it.”

Jim ran after him. The man was so stooped that the top half of his body was curved down like a walking stick, and when Jim spoke to him he swung his head round to look at the boy’s feet.

“Please, sir …” Jim said.

“I’m not sir,” the man said. “I’m only doing my turn, like the rest of them. I’m only Joseph, not sir.” He swung his head away from Jim’s feet and spat on the floor. “I hate sir, same as you.”

“Please, Joseph, tell me where the infirmary is.”

“Why should I tell you that?” Joseph asked, his eyes fixed on Jim’s feet again.

“Because my ma’s there, and I’ve been good,” Jim said. “Mrs Sissons said if I was good I could go and see Ma in the infirmary today.”

“So you was the boy as came in last night, and your ma was brought on a cart?”

“Yes,” said Jim. “Please tell me where the infirmary is.”

Joseph made a little chewing noise. “Well, it’s upstairs,” he said at last. He rubbed his nose with the back of his hand and tilted his head sideways, squinting round at Jim. “Only the message I was given by Mrs Sissons is, don’t bother taking the boy up there, because his ma …” He stopped and shook his head and chewed again. “Your ma’s dead, son.”

Chapter Five
BEHIND BARS

Jim forced his fists deep in his pockets and turned his face away. There were boys all round him, shuffling out to the cold yard, and they blurred into smudges of grey. He screwed up his eyes against the terrible blinding white of the sky. He wouldn’t cry here. His lungs were bursting and he thought he would never be able to gasp for air again, but he couldn’t cry here. The only person he wanted to be with was Rosie. She would know what to do. She would tell Emily and Lizzie. But there was no chance of being with Rosie.

“I want to go home,” he said.

Joseph swung his head and spat. “Home?” he said. “What d’you mean, home? What’s this, if it ain’t home?”

So, Jim thought, this is my home now, this huge building with iron bars at the window and iron railings outside. His parents must be Mr and Mrs Sissons, as thin and waxy-pale as candles. And if they were his parents then his brothers and sisters were the shambling, skinny boys who slept and sobbed in the same room as him, and the scrawny girls who seemed to have forgotten how to smile.

“Can’t I see her, all the same?”

Joseph shook his head. “She was took into the dead-house in the night, and put on the paupers’ cart before light, son. Speedy despatch, paupers get. No money for bells nor nothing like that, eh?”

Jim went dumbly from room to room as he was told, from the sleeping-boxes to the yard, the refectory, the yard, and back to his box … It was like a slow dance, and the steps were always the same, repeated day after day after day.

Morning started with the six o’clock bell, when all the boys had to wash under the pump. Joseph watched them, swinging his head from side to side and bending his neck round like a hunched bird of prey. He kept flapping his arms across his bent chest to beat the cold away.

“Get yerselfs washed quick, boys,” he said. “Afore the wevver bites me bones off.”

Across the yard from the pump was the asylum. Mad people were locked up. They wailed and shrieked for hours on end. They stretched their hands out through the bars of their prison. “Give us some bread, boy!” they begged. “Let me out! Let me out!”

“Don’t take no notice of them,” a woolly-headed boy whispered to him one day. “They’re mad. They’re animals.” Jim was shocked. He stared again at the men and women and children who were all squashed up together. Their cage was too small to hold them all. Their wailings echoed round the yard all the time. “Animals, animals,” Jim said to himself, trying to drive their noises out of his head. He looked away from them, pretending they weren’t there.

“No, they’re not animals, Jim,” Joseph told him. “They’re people, they are. People, Jim. My ma’s in there.”

There was a shed at the other end of the yard. Boys gazed out at them through a small barred window. Their white faces were even more frightening than the wailings of the mad people. Joseph sidled over to Jim that first morning and swung his arm across the boy’s shoulder, bringing his head round to mutter down Jim’s ear. “Now, them’s the boys what tried to run away. They catch ’em and beat ’em and stick ’em in there till they’re good. Remember that.”

After the cold wash in the yard Jim had to help to clean it out with brooms twice as tall as he was. They had to sweep it till the ground was bare and clean, even if hundreds of leaves had fallen in the night and come drifting over the high walls. At breakfast the boys queued up with their bowls in their hands for bread and tea. The bread was meant to last for every meal, but if Jim tried to save it he soon had it stolen by one of the older boys. He learnt to gulp his food down as quickly as they did; boiled meat at dinner time, cheese at night, all swallowed rapidly and in silence.

Sometimes Mr Sissons read to them while they were eating, always Bible stories, and his whistly voice would glide round the echoing room over the clatter of knives and forks. Jim never listened to him. All he wanted to do was to think about his mother and Emily and Lizzie.

But every now and then Mr Sissons stopped reading and lowered his book. He stared round the room, his eyes like round, glassy balls and his fingers cracking together. Jim stopped eating, afraid that he had done something wrong. He sat with his spoon held somewhere between his mouth and his bowl, until the boy next to him nudged him into action again. Mr Sissons put down his book and jumped off his dais. He came gliding down the aisles between the long tables like a thin black shadow. Jim could just see him out of the corner of his eye. He daren’t for the life of him look up.

The master lunged out at one of the boys at random, pulling him away from his bench by the back of his collar and sending his bowl flying and the contents spattering across the faces and clothes of the other boys.

“Misbehaving, were you?” he said, his voice as dry as a hissing swan’s. “Eating like a pig? Get to the trough, animal!” And the boy crouched on his hands and knees in front of a pig’s trough that was always there, and had to eat his food from that, without a fork or spoon. Sometimes there were half a dozen people troughing, usually just for Mr Sissons’s amusement.

“Please don’t let it be me. Please don’t let it be me,” Jim said deep inside himself as Mr Sissons glided past, and the air turned as cold as ice around him.

Jim had no idea how long he had been at the workhouse when he first thought of trying to escape. At first it seemed an impossible idea, as impossible as making the pump in the yard turn into a tree and blaze out with leaves and blossoms. He remembered the runaway boys locked up in the shed in the yard for everyone to see. Even so, he had to try. One day, he promised himself, he would go. He would watch out every moment, sharp as a bird, for a chance to fly. And when he did he would never be caught.

He was almost too afraid to allow himself to think about it, in case Mr Sissons pounced inside his thoughts and strapped him to a chair and beat him as he beat other reckless boys.

It was only at night that he let himself imagine escaping, and it was as though he was opening up a box of secret treasure in the dark. Old Marion crept and wheezed her candle-path around the room where the boys lay in their boxes pretending to sleep, and Jim let his thoughts wander then. He would escape. He would run and run through the streets of London until he was a long, long way from the workhouse. He would find a place that was safe. And he would call it home.

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