24
Looking for a Doctor
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.
25
The Ragged School
Next morning, early, he waited for the coffee woman to bring her cart. When he saw her dragging it up through the mud he ran to meet her.
‘He’s worse,’ he panted. ‘Can you come to him?’
‘I can’t leave my stall,’ she told him. ‘If I don’t give breakfast to the early workers I’ve lost my best trade.’
‘If you tell me where that school is, I’ll go there.’
‘It’s round about. Over there somewhere. Somewhere round Ernest Street.’ The woman waved her arm vaguely. She was sorry enough for the boy, but there were plenty more where he came from. Skinny, helpless sparrows. The streets were full of them. If she helped one, they’d all be round for help, and she had her own children to feed. If she didn’t earn enough to keep her rent paid, they’d all be out in the streets. All in the same state as Jim. It didn’t bear thinking about. She had to keep going.
Jim ran off. Some of the street boys shouted after him, ‘How’s Shrimps?’ but Jim didn’t even bother to tell them. No child could help Shrimps now.
‘Know where the Ragged School is?’ he
asked one of them, a crippled boy called Davey, who was older than most of them. Davey shook his head.
‘I’ve heard of it,’ he said. ‘There was a man with a donkey used to come round wanting boys to go to his school. We used to chuck tomatoes at him, though. School!’ He spat out of the corner of his mouth. ‘Don’t trust them places, I don’t.’
Jim managed to coax some milk from a dairy woman and he ran back to Shrimps with it, moistening the boy’s lips. His hair was dark with sweat, but he was cold.
‘Please let them take you to the hospital, Shrimps,’ he said, but Shrimps shook his head.
‘I’m all right here. Proper little palace, this crate.’
Davey and some of the younger boys came to see Shrimps, and Jim left him to them and went off again. At last, when it was nearly dark, he came across a group of children, brothers and sisters they must have been, they were so alike. They were coming up a back alleyway together, and some of them were clutching slates. They were dressed in rags but they obviously had a home to go to.
‘Have you been to the Ragged School?’ Jim asked them.
One of them nodded.
‘Is there a doctor there?’
The children looked at each other. ‘That Barnie bloke said he was a doctor, didn’t he?’
‘That’s right. Only ’e don’t give us medicine, ’e gives us hymns!’
One of the children started singing and the others giggled.
‘Where is it?’
The older child ran back with Jim and pointed out a long, shed-like building. ‘There it is,’ he said. ‘And there’s that Barnie bloke, just coming out now.’
Jim raced down the street. The man locked the door of the shed and began to move quickly in the other direction.
‘Doctor Barnie!’ Jim shouted out, but his voice was drowned out by the rumble of carriage wheels. He pressed himself against the wall to let the carriage pass. The doctor raised his hand as the carriage approached and the driver reined in his horse. Jim started running again. ‘Doctor!’ he shouted.
But the man hadn’t heard him. He climbed up into the carriage and was away before Jim reached it. Mud spattered up into Jim’s face.
When he got back to the crates behind the market the other boys had gone. Someone had placed a small candle in a bowl, and its soft light was some kind of comfort in the dark. Jim crawled in beside Shrimps.
‘It’s going to be all right now,’ he whispered. ‘I’ve found a doctor, and he’s coming to see you tomorrow.’
But even as he spoke, the words were like stones in his throat. He reached out and felt for the boy’s hand. It was cold.
26
Goodbye, Bruvver
Old Samuel, the night-watchman, took Shrimps’ body into his hut. He set candles round it, and as the street boys heard of his death they came to have a look at him. They came in groups and stood in a huddle in the doorway, not daring to come in, and soon ran off again.
Jim sat with his head in his hands all day. Samuel shook him by his shoulder.
‘Reckon you’ll have to go, Skippin’ Jim,’ he told him. ‘They’ll be bringing the pauper’s cart for Shrimps here soon, an’ if they sees you here you knows where they’ll take you.’
Jim didn’t care. He almost felt it would be good to be back in the workhouse. He would see Joseph again, and Tip. His life would be ordered and regular, there’d be food at mealtimes and sleep at bedtimes. He wouldn’t have to run away from anyone, or hide, or steal food. But then he thought of the mad people wailing, and the runaway boys in their cage, and the children crying in the night, the long, echoing, dark corridors, and the sound of keys turning in locks. Shrimps had died rather than go back there. Well. So would he.
Samuel went out to call six o’clock at the street corners. Jim took a last look round the quiet hut with its dim candles, and at the figure wrapped in a sack. He took his boots out of his pockets. They were in shreds.
‘’Bye, bruvver,’ he said. He put the boots next to the sack, and slipped away.
He had no idea where to go now. He knew he couldn’t live in the crates again, not without Shrimps. He shivered in a shop doorway until he saw policemen coming, then darted across the road. It was easy to hide in the darkness between the lamps, but he couldn’t stay there all night. It was too cold to stand still, and too muddy to sit down. For the first time he wondered where all the other street boys slept. He remembered what one of the boys had said:
‘He ain’t got the strength to climb up with us, so we brought him here.’
Climb? Jim thought. Climb where?
He wandered round the back of the crates, round behind the market stalls. Nothing. Nothing to see. Yet he thought he could hear a slight burst of chattering, like the whistlings of starlings. He stood still. The sound was coming from over his head. Then he heard a slight scuffing. He glanced round. No one in sight. He ran to the support wall of the market and heaved himself up, hand over fist, and at last hauled himself on to the roof. He stood up slowly, gazing across at the looped tarpaulin. Everywhere he looked there were black bundles, like little heaps of rags, but as he stood still and let his eyes grow used to the new darkness he could see that those bundles were boys, huddled up for the night on their rooftop home.
27
Barnie
There was no comfort there. At night the wind seemed to crack round the boys like a whip. When it rained they would wake up soaked to the skin. It would be days before they dried off, sometimes. Jim used to lie huddled up, looking at the stars and listening to the boys’ breathing. ‘This ain’t home,’ he said to himself.
When morning came with its sooty mist the boys would roll down the wall to be on the alert before the police were about, trying to earn a few pennies to buy themselves a night in a lodging house. They ate what they could, grabbing a bit of cheese here or a crust of pie there, and if they were caught they were hauled off before a magistrate and sent to the workhouse. Jim wasn’t as fast as the other boys because of his bad leg, and the only job he could think of doing was skipping for the theatre queues, which made a few people smile, anyway. The other boys worked in gangs when they were stealing, passing the scarf or purse from one to the other so rapidly that it was impossible to tell what was happening. To Jim they were like a big family helping each other. But he wasn’t one of them. They tended to leave him on his own.
One day, when he woke up drenched to the skin again, coughing and shaking with cold, he knew he’d had enough.
‘If you go on like this, Jim, you’ll be where Shrimps is,’ he told himself. ‘There must be summat else, bruvver.’
It was then that he remembered the Ragged School. He thought of the long shed that the school was held in.
‘Somewhere to keep warm,’ he thought. ‘And that Barnie bloke looked all right. He won’t hit you, he won’t.’
He decided to give it a try, just for a day. He wandered round until he found the shed again. Children were crowding round the door when he arrived, waiting to be let in. The shed was a big room with boards laid on top of soil for a floor. The walls and rafters had been painted a dingy white, and there were bars across the windows. There was a good fire burning in a grate. Jim sidled up to it. There must have been over a hundred children there. They sat in rows, but there were so many of them that some of them were on the floor.
Jim gazed round him, listening to their chatter, and to the way it faded down when the teacher stood up to talk to them in his gentle, lilting voice. He was a tall, slim man with straight brown hair and fluffy side whiskers and spectacles. Jim recognized him straight away as the man Lame Betsy had taken him to listen to in the back alley. He remembered shouting out at him, and how some of the boys had chucked mud balls at him. And he remembered the man’s sad eyes. He ducked his head down, worried now in case he would be recognized and thrown out into the cold.
Yet he could see that the children weren’t afraid of the man. They didn’t flinch away from him as if they expected him to hit them at any minut
e. They called him ‘Teacher’, and they seemed to be happy to do whatever he told them, though they murmured and giggled among themselves as if they couldn’t concentrate for very long. The teacher man didn’t seem to mind. Occasionally he looked at Jim, but always Jim put his head down or glanced quickly away.
At the end of the day the man asked all the children to stand up and pray with him, and again Jim looked away. He was the only child still sitting, but the man didn’t seem to mind. They finished off the day with a hymn, which all the children yelled out cheerfully before they were sent off home.
Still Jim sat by the fire, hoping not to be noticed. The Barnie man finished straightening up the benches and wiping the board, and at last he came over to Jim. Jim clenched his hands together, staring down at them, ready to run if the man hit him. But he didn’t. Instead, he sat down next to Jim and warmed his hands by the fire.
‘It’s time for me to blow the lights out,’ he said, in his soft voice.
Jim didn’t move.
‘Come on, my lad,’ the Barnie man said. ‘It’s time to go home now.’
Jim clenched and unclenched his fists. The gentleness in the man’s voice made his throat ache.
The man stood up. ‘Come on now. You’d better go home at once.’
Jim tried to make his voice come. ‘Please, sir. Let me stay.’
‘Stay?’ The man stared down at him. ‘What for? I’m going to put the lights out and lock the door. It’s quite time for a young boy like you to go home and get to bed. What do you want to stop for?’
‘Please, sir,’ said Jim, not looking at the man but at the flames in the fire, which made his eyes smart and blurry.
‘You ought to go home at once,’ Barnie insisted. ‘Your mother will know the other boys have gone. She’ll wonder what kept you so late.’
‘I ain’t got no mother.’
‘Your father, then.’
‘I ain’t got no father.’
Street Child Page 10
