Read Online The Urchin's Song by Rita Bradshaw - Free Book Online Page A

and where she could hear the birds sing. She loved birds. One of the best compliments she’d ever been given was when a woman in one of the pubs had said she thought she sang as sweetly as a bird.
    ‘Ee, lass! You’re up bright an’ early, an’ I see you’ve got the kettle on for a brew. I could do with keepin’ you on; always fancied meself with a parlour maid.’
    Vera’s voice was overbright and Josie knew why. Vera was worried her da was going to arrive on the doorstep before they could get away, or that he’d got the lads watching the house. And he might, he might. But something strange had happened when she had brought that poker down on the arm of the man she had hated and feared all her life. It hadn’t just broken the bones in his arm; it had broken something in her, something that had been afraid and cowed under the threat of the physical pain he inflicted with so little conscience. She meant what she had said to Jimmy the night before: she would use the poker again if she had to. Not on her brother, not that, but if her da tried to stop Gertie leaving . . . The poker was going to accompany them to Newcastle anyway. She glanced at it, propped against the range. It was better than a big burly docker for protection, her poker.
    ‘What?’ She must have smiled because Vera’s voice was surprised and curious, and when she told the older woman the nature of her thoughts, Vera laughed out loud. ‘Well, it don’t eat so much, that’s for sure, an’ I dare say it’s cleaner in its habits an’ all, lass.’
     
    Once Horace and Ruby had departed for work, Josie and Vera took stock. The fact that the two girls had escaped the house the night before with just the clothes they stood up in presented an immediate problem, and one which Vera was determined to assist with, despite Josie’s protestations that they would manage until she could get work and buy more. It was only when Vera put her hand on Josie’s arm and said, her voice soft, ‘Please, lass. Please let me help you in this,’ that the girl became silent. ‘We’ll call in the Old Market an’ pick up a few things. Stamp’s stall is a good one, he don’t have so much rubbish as some, an’ once you’ve washed ’em through at our Bett’s they’ll come up as good as new.’
    Josie glanced at Gertie, whose eyes were bright with anticipation at the thought of new clothes. Never mind they were second- even probably third-hand; they weren’t her big sister’s outgrown things and were therefore possessed of their own magic. ‘Thank you, Vera.’ She spoke with deep gratitude as she pressed the hand on her arm, knowing she would miss Vera’s solid presence in her life more than any other apart from her mam.
    Josie always thought the Old Market had a smell unlike anything else. It came from the second-hand clothes stalls, the bacon and meat stalls, the fruit, confectionery, fish, tripe, grocery, and numerous other stalls jostling together under the high roof. There was no one particular odour which was predominant, but as she stepped through the entrance in Coronation Street the smell assailed her nostrils - neither pleasant nor unpleasant, just the unmistakable aura of the market.
    The building was a beacon to many folk looking to make a subsistence income stretch a little further, and it wasn’t unusual to see harassed pitmen’s wives wheeling pillow cases or sacks containing two or three stones of flour from the market, along with bundles of second-hand clothes and all manner of goods. These would be transported to the station, or to a horse and cart waiting in a side street, and taken back to the pit villages. It was safe to say that there was nothing you couldn’t buy from some stall or other within the Aladdin’s cave that was the Old Market.
    Vera now made her way to Stamp’s stall down the aisle left clear in the middle of the stone-flagged floor, nodding to Joe the Bacon Man - as he was generally known - who had the reputation of