The Urchin's Song (4 page)

She poured two cups of black tea and took them through to the living room, handing one to her mother who had been lying motionless with her eyes closed but who now pulled herself into a sitting position as Josie said softly, ‘Here, Mam. Have a sup tea.’

‘Thanks, lass.’ Shirley’s tired eyes looked at her precious bairn, and as always she found herself wondering, much as Mr McKenzie had earlier, how on earth she and Bart could have brought forth such a child. Twenty endless years she’d been married, and knocked from pillar to post for the first eighteen of them, until the dire outcome of the last pregnancy and the constant bleeding that had resulted since had caused her to become a semi-invalid. But it had all been worth it - aye, and she didn’t say it lightly - for the joy of having this one special bairn.

Josie sat down by her mother, taking a sip of tea before she said, ‘Gertie should be back soon.’

‘Aye.’ Shirley’s voice was low when she continued, ‘I dunno how long it can go on, lass, without him findin’ out. He’s as cute as a cartload o’ monkeys, your da. Always has bin.’

‘Vera wouldn’t say anything.’

‘Oh aye, I know that, hinny. She’s a grand lass, Vera.’

The two of them stared at each other for a moment, and when Josie rose jerkily and walked over to stand in front of the fire there was an aggressive quality to her words as she said, ‘There’s no way he’s sending her out to beg in this weather, Mam, whatever happens. She’s not strong like the lads, you know she’s not. It’d be the death of her. If he’s so desperate for the bit she brings in he can go out and get work himself.’

Shirley didn’t reply to this and Josie didn’t expect her to. Her father had never done a real day’s work in his life and he’d see them all in the workhouse before he lifted a finger. Anything he came by as a result of his criminal activities never saw its way into the house. But he wasn’t going to kill Gertie with his laziness.

‘How much did you slip her to bring back this time?’ Shirley asked after a minute or two, with a sidelong glance at her daughter.

‘A few pennies, all in farthings and ha’pennies. He couldn’t expect more. And one thruppenny bit. I told her to tell him a tale about a toff coming out of the Villiers and giving her that. And Vera was going to leave Gertie’s coat out in her back yard for a bit before she sent her home. He noticed last time that she wasn’t very wet, and it was only Gertie thinking quick and saying she’d been standing under an awning most of the night on Mackie’s corner that saved us.’ Josie’s eyes met her mother’s.

‘Oh, lass, lass.’ Shirley knew what would happen if her husband discovered his youngest daughter was sitting in Vera’s kitchen on the nights he sent her out begging. There’d be hell to pay. From the very first night Vera and her husband had brought the two bairns home five years ago, Vera had made it plain exactly what she thought of Bart and he, in his turn, fully reciprocated the feeling. Not that it bothered Vera. By, she was a lass if ever there was one. Shirley allowed her mind to dwell on her garrulous old friend for a moment, and in spite of her anxiety, her spirits lifted fractionally. She thanked God most days that Vera had come back into her life again, and this bairn had been the means by which that had happened, along with everything else that was good.

And as though to emphasise that thought she now became aware of a small brown-paper bag being thrust into her hands. ‘Here, Mam,’ Josie said. ‘Eat ’em now before
he
gets home.’

Shirley again said, ‘Oh, lass,’ but this time with a little catch in her voice as she gazed at the quarter of marzipan tea cakes. Every week her lass bought her something, like the pot of hyacinths that had lit up the room with their beauty the last few days. She hadn’t been a good mother; God Himself knew how weak and wicked - aye, wicked she’d been in never standing up to Bart, not even when he’d made Ada and then Dora . . . She shut her eyes tight and then opened them again as Josie, now in the kitchen, called, ‘I’m just going to soak the oats and them stale crusts for a boiley tomorrow, Mam, and then I’ll get you another sup. All right?’

‘Aye, all reet, pet.’

Josie was humming to herself as she mixed equal parts of milk and water with the oats and bread, ready for the currants and sugar to be added the next morning before the whole was browned off in the oven. It was lovely being able to give her mam the odd little present; no one had ever really been kind to her mam. According to Vera, her mam’s da - who had died along with his wife of the fever the year Ada was born - had been as bad as her own da for using his fists on his family. Mind, Vera had said, Josie’s grandfather
had
been respectable. Josie wrinkled her nose against this. Vera had said it as though it excused her mother’s da somehow, but a good hiding hurt as much either way, didn’t it?

The sound of the living-room door opening cut off her thoughts and brought Josie’s head turning, but instead of the small figure of Gertie she’d hoped to see, her father walked in followed by Hubert, her youngest brother who was seven years old. Josie’s stomach tightened. It wasn’t unusual for the lads to return home any time up to midnight or even later, depending on what they had been about and whether they’d spent the evening in their father’s company, but Bart never got home before the pubs closed at the earliest. And the types of pub her father frequented took no account of normal hours.

Josie found she had to swallow deeply before she could say, her glance directed at her brother, ‘Where’s Jimmy?’

‘What’s it to you?’ It was her father who answered.

Bart Burns was a big man, tall and thickset with dark bushy brows over cold, strikingly blue eyes and a full head of springy brown hair. His ruddy complexion and permanently red, bulbous nose spoke of his addiction to the drink, but it was his weakness for the dogs and horses that was his main obsession. The fact that his dead cert had run like the ragman’s old nag and finished last, thereby proving Josie right, was galling. His eyes focused on the young girl; his temper all the more bitter for not having release.

Josie was aware of his ill-humour and she guessed immediately what had caused it. She also knew that her father would seize on the faintest excuse to vent his spleen, but that - although his anger was directed mainly at her - it would be one of the others that he punished. Therefore she kept her voice quiet and flat when she said, ‘I only wondered, that’s all. The two of them are always together.’ She didn’t look at him as she spoke.

‘Aye. Well, Jimmy’s doin’ a little job for me. All reet? A little job that should’ve bin done a while back if I’d had me wits about me.’

There was a definite threat in his tone, and out of the corner of her eye Josie saw her mother squirm anxiously. Immediately she wanted to say, ‘Don’t worry, Mam, and don’t say anything. That’s what he wants. Don’t you see?’ But as that was impossible what she did say was, and coolly despite her churning stomach, ‘There’s some tea in the pot, and a bit of brawn and cold pease pudding but I’ve no bread to go with it until I bake tomorrow.’

‘I want nowt.’

‘Can I have some bra--’ Hubert’s voice was silenced by a vicious cuff round the ear which sent the small boy reeling against the table in the corner of the room, but still Josie didn’t respond. This was a lead-up to something, she recognised the signs, and she had a horrible feeling her father had somehow been made aware of the subterfuge concerning Gertie.

Into the silence broken only by Hubert’s whimpering they all heard the front door open, and now Josie was praying soundlessly whilst pretending to concentrate on the task in hand. She placed the jug containing the remainder of the milk for morning on the tiled kitchen windowsill where it would stay cool, and turned back just as Gertie stepped into the living room.

It was obvious the small girl, who looked much younger than her ten years, sensed the charged atmosphere, for her brown eyes darted from one face to another as she remained frozen just inside the door. And then, as her father said very softly, ‘You got anythin’ for me, lass?’ Gertie fumbled in the pocket of her thin coat and brought out a handful of coins, which she held out to the big man in front of her.

‘There . . . there’s a thruppence, Da.’ Her voice was trembling.

‘Oh aye?’

‘One of the toffs in a top hat comin’ out of the Villiers give me it.’

Just then, the front door opened again, a gust of icy wind blew into the room through the open dining-room door, and when Josie saw the expression on Jimmy’s face she knew it was all over, even before her brother said, ‘I waited, Da, an’ she come out of that old bitch’s house sure enough. Smilin’ an’ wavin’ halfway down the street, she was.’ She had never fully realised it before but their Jimmy was the spitting image of how their da must have been at nine years old, in nature as well as looks. Josie cast Jimmy a glance of deep loathing and nerved herself for her father’s reaction.

In the same moment that her father’s hand came down and swiped the coins out of Gertie’s outstretched hand, Josie took several rapid steps forward, crying, ‘You leave her be, Da! I mean it! If she’s called in to see Vera for a bit warm-up before she came home, that’s no crime.’

‘A bit warm-up afore she came home?’ Her father’s big bulk swung back from the cowering Gertie to fully face her, and he swore, obscenely, before he hissed, ‘You think I’m half sharp, lass - is that it? I’ll flay the pair o’ you, you see if I don’t.’

‘She hasn’t done anything!’

‘Jimmy, what time did you start watchin’ the house?’

‘When you left me there, Da.’ Jimmy could neither read nor write, and telling the time would have been beyond him even if there had been a clock handy in Northumberland Place where Vera lived.

‘Which was early on, reet?’ his father ground out slowly.

‘Aye, Da. She must’ve bin there afore I got outside.’

‘So how come this bit warm-up was all night, eh? An’ where did this lot come from? Or are you after tellin’ me it was Vera who gave her the night’s takin’s out of the goodness of her heart?’

‘Bart--’

‘Not a word,
not a word
from you, mind. I’ll get round to you later.’ Bart swung to face his wife for a moment, his expression murderous, and Shirley sank back into the quilt, her hand plucking at her scrawny throat.

‘You touch her or me, or any of us, and I’m out of here, I mean it. There’s plenty’d take me in and you know it. I’ve had offers from them touts who’re on the lookout for talent to play the halls. I’d do just fine.’ Josie’s voice was low and quivering with hate, and the fact that she was speaking the absolute truth lent a weight to her words that was undeniable. It wasn’t the voice or manner of a twelve-year-old child, but there were many in Sunderland’s East End who knew that age was relative. Childhood was short in Long Bank.

Bart was dumbfounded but he recovered almost immediately, and as the meaty hands went to the belt of his trousers, Josie knew a moment of searing panic before she warned herself not to lose control. ‘If you want me money then think on,’ she said in a voice that was not shrill and high as might have been expected, but almost guttural. ‘You do all right now but if I go you’d soon feel the pinch.’

‘You wouldn’t leave her.’ He gestured with his thumb over his shoulder at his wife without taking his eyes off Josie’s white face. ‘Soft as clarts, the pair o’ you.’

Josie stiffened, her spirit rising up against the arrogant self-assurance that he had them all where he wanted them. ‘You would be surprised at what I am capable of, Father.’

Quite unconsciously she had spoken in what she termed her ‘night’ voice, a voice she had purposely cultivated to enable her to deal with any difficult or over-familiar individuals in the pubs. The words of the songs she needed for her nocturnal activities came easy to her - she only had to hear something once and it was locked in her memory - but the way they were pronounced, the right way of speaking so that the song wasn’t distorted by her broad northern accent, had taken some time to learn. However, once she had mastered the knack for her singing, she’d found that if she used what Vera called her ‘iron knickers’ voice, adopting the confident, cool manner which seemed naturally to accompany it, even the worst drunk or ruffian was put in his place. ‘Twelve goin’ on thirty’ was another of Vera’s maxims, but always said with an approving wink or nod. Josie didn’t tell Vera she didn’t feel thirty inside, that half the time she was scared out of her wits when she pretended to be this other person, this other Josie Burns. And that had never been so true as right at this minute.

Bart stared into the defiant, uplifted face of his daughter, and they could all hear his strong discoloured teeth grinding over each other. That she had surprised him for the second time in as many minutes was clear, but none of them were sure what he would do next. Bart himself wasn’t sure. What he would
like
to do was to flay her alive, and if any of the others, including that useless bit of scum behind him - here he turned and glared at his wife for a second - had said half as much, he’d have marked them for life. But Josie was different.

He couldn’t bring himself to admit that he was being held over a barrel by a mere lass; rather that this one had never responded to a leathering like the others. ‘I’ll do what I want in me own house, an’ don’t you forget it.’ But his hands had moved from his belt. ‘An’ you - you’re still sayin’ you got that afore you went to Vera’s?’ He was speaking to Gertie, and when the little girl nodded and said, ‘Aye, aye I did, Da. Honest,’ he let the pause stretch and grow as Gertie, sensing the time was right, went down on her hands and knees scrabbling about the floor collecting the coins her father had knocked from her hand. ‘I won’t go again, Da,’ she said, offering them up to him.

He took them from her, slipping them into the pocket of his old faded trousers as he said, ‘You do an’ it’ll be the last time your skin’ll cover your bones - an’ that’s a promise. You bin there afore?’