Read Online Street Child by Berlie Doherty - Free Book Online Page A

with his hands. He stayed hunched up just as the woman had left him. Jim stood up and clicked his fingers to make the boy look at him. Then he started to dance, just a few skipping steps. ‘Laugh,’ he wanted to say, but daren’t. ‘It’s all right. Laugh.’
    It was then that the boy seemed to make up his mind about him. He jumped up and joined Jim, kicking up his legs in imitation of Jim’s dance, holding his arms high above his head so his laces fluttered round like maypole ribbons. His pink shrimpy toes wriggled above the flaps of his boot soles, and with each step he took he slapped his foot down again so firmly on the road that the muck spattered round him like flies round a cow. He danced with his eyes closed and his mouth wide open, in a kind of trance, and the more the watchers clapped, the wilder his dance became. Jim could hardly keep up with him for laughing, and even Rosie had to smile. She sold off most of her trayload to one family.
    ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Shrimps, or whatever your name is. And you, Skipping Jim. You can finish off thesefor me – I’m going back to get some more. I’ve never sold two whole trayfuls like that in one day, never. You should go on the shows, you two! You should join a travelling circus!’
    The two boys sat side by side near a night watchman’s fire, peeling the shrimps with their teeth and spitting off the shells.
    ‘I love shrimps, I do,’ said the boy. ‘But I’ve never pinched none off Rosie’s stall, never.’
    ‘You wouldn’t dare,’ said Jim. ‘She’d pickle you if you did.’
    ‘I dare do anyfink, I do,’ the boy said. ‘But Rosie, she’s like me. She ain’t got no more money than me, she ain’t.’
    ‘Are you really called Shrimps?’ Jim asked him.
    The boy shrugged. ‘Shrimps is what they call me, and Shrimps’ll do.’
    ‘Sounds like a funny name to me,’ Jim said. ‘Who was that woman?’
    The boy narrowed his eyes. ‘My ma,’ he said. ‘Only she kicked me out years ago, didn’t she? She only comes looking for me when she wants money for gin. Not much of a ma, she ain’t.’
    ‘Where d’you live, then?’
    ‘Depends, don’t it? See, if I makes a copper or two selling laces, I spends it on a lodging house for the night.’
    ‘Cor. On your own?’
    ‘On me own and wiv about fifty other geezers wot snore their heads off all night! It’s like a funder-storm sometimes! And if I don’t have no money,’ he shrugged, ‘I sleeps where I can, don’t I? Where thebobbies won’t find me, that’s where I live.’ He jerked his thumb at Jim’s jacket, where the sacking shawl had slipped away. ‘I spent a week in that place. Worse’n anyfink I ever knowed, that workhouse was. Worse’n sleeping in a barn full of rats, and I done that a time or two.’
    ‘Worse than that,’ Jim agreed. ‘Worse than sleeping in a sack full of eels.’
    The boys both giggled.
    ‘Eels!’ snorted Shrimps. ‘Eels is charming company. I ate an eel once, when it were still alive. It wriggled all down my throat and round my belly and up again and out through my mouth! “Bellies!” said the eel. “Boy’s bellies is nearly as bad as the workhouse!” And it wriggled off home. It was all right, that eel.’ He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and looked at Jim sideways. ‘You got a bruvver, Skippin’ Jim?’
    ‘No,’ said Jim. ‘Have you?’
    ‘Used to have. But I ain’t got one now.’ Shrimps dug the flaps of his bootsoles into the mud. ‘I’d like a bruvver to go round wiv.’
    ‘So would I,’ said Jim.
    The two boys stared straight ahead, saying nothing. The watchman poked his fire so the flames hissed. He got slowly to his feet. ‘Five of the clock,’ he shouted, and trudged off to light up the lamps between the houses. ‘Five o’clock, my lovelies!’
    ‘Got to go,’ Shrimps said. ‘I got a queue to see to. People often breaks their boot-laces when they’re standing in queues. Just snaps off, they do, if I crawls