The Urchin's Song (30 page)

Vera reached for the big brown teapot in the middle of the table and poured herself a cup of lukewarm tea which she drank straight down.

Aye, she was imagining things sure enough, but all the same she wouldn’t mention Pearl being middling to Josie. There was no need for the lass to be told, and it was better Josie concentrated on her new life down south where she was safe. Duffy wouldn’t bother her down there for one thing, and this other, this . . . figment of her imagination, would die a natural death if it wasn’t fed. Pray God.

He’d get it in the neck from Jimmy when he got back. Hubert hunched his shoulders at the thought, skimming a flat pebble across the water as he did so. He had walked the six miles from the East End to Seaham Harbour earlier in the day - something he occasionally did when the urge to escape his lot became overwhelming - but hadn’t stayed long at the harbour itself, walking back up the coast past Seaham and towards Hole Rock where he’d found a quiet spot away from it all.

Normally, even on his worst days, he enjoyed the bustle and noise coming from the docks and outer harbour; the timber yards, iron and brass foundry and Bottle Works all adding to the vibrant life of the place. He usually spent some time watching the massive cranes in the dry harbour at the side of the South Dock, and walked down to the Bottle Makers Arms for a bowlful of thick mutton soup before he made his way back home. The last two years though, since the rebuilding and enlargement of the South Dock had begun, he hadn’t felt the same about the harbour, or maybe it was just that he was growing older?

These days he was aware of the chaotic, slummy development stretching from the back of North Terrace in a way he hadn’t been when he’d first walked this way with Jimmy as a little lad of five or six, and again the ropery, foundry, gasworks, chemical works and the like which hugged the coast south of the docks hadn’t really registered on him. Probably because he’d been used to the pall of thick, noxious smoke and polluted air in the East End.

He tilted his head in the dying sunlight of the cool May evening, drawing the cold fresh air redolent with the scent of grasses and faint tang of the sea deep into his lungs.

Jimmy would be back from collecting the dues by now. Who would he have taken with him when he’d realised his brother had skedaddled? Albert maybe, and perhaps Harry. Both of them were big brawny numskulls who liked nothing better than beating the living daylights out of some poor soul, or scaring women and bairns witless. By, it was a filthy job, collecting what people owed Patrick. It made a rent man’s job appear sweet in comparison. At least the worst they threatened was getting the bums in when folk couldn’t pay. And why,
why
would people be so daft as to borrow money from Patrick anyway? Everyone knew his reputation. Still, if it was a question of Patrick or the workhouse, some of them chose the little Irishman although they usually lived to regret it. Once Patrick had a foot in, you were his, body and soul.

Hubert shivered, although he wasn’t cold. Jimmy knew he hated collection days, which Patrick varied each week in order to gain the element of surprise on the debtors. There were always three of them on the job; one, himself usually, to knock on the door and ask for the dues while the two others stood in the background looking menacing. Together they would march down the streets, putting on a grim expression and looking mean. Many a time the way cleared before them like magic, bairns hightailing it to warn their das that the lickspittles, as Patrick’s hirelings were nicknamed, were coming.

Some of the streets weren’t so bad, and where a man was in work there’d invariably be something paid off; folk would pay Patrick and keep the rent man waiting any day. But round where he’d been born - Long Bank and the quays and the rabbit warren of streets stretching east from the river - it was bad. Wretched dwellings with barely any furniture; stinking, filthy bairns with faces covered in scabs and hardly a stitch of clothing. By, he hated going there and watching Jimmy and the others throwing their weight about. Last week had been one of the worst times; he’d had to get mortalious that night to blot out that room and its occupants in Blue Anchor Yard.

They’d climbed the stairs carefully, mindful of their creaking and rocking and the great holes in the skirting boards where rats lurked, and when Jimmy had struck a match to guide their way, lice had been crawling in their hundreds on the rotten walls. The family they’d been calling on had been on the top floor in a cell-like room which held eleven; the meagre amount of coal they’d had was kept in a cupboard and the rain was coming through the roof and soaking the foul-smelling flock mattress on the floor which was bedding for the whole lot of them. Pitiful it’d been, right pitiful, and still Jimmy and Albert had theatened and bullied the sick father whose body had been racked by St Vitus’s Dance, until the bairns had been screaming in fear and the mother had promised she’d have something for them the next week. And they all knew how she’d get it; she’d go and sell herself down at the dockside. It was all she could do because everything else had failed.

Then there’d been Maling’s Rigg. The gloomy dank passage they’d entered had led to a room even worse than the other one but there they had drawn a blank. The father had committed suicide two days before and his widow and their six children had been taken to the workhouse just an hour before they’d got there.

He’d go stark staring mad, he would, if he had to continue with the dues. He couldn’t do it any more, and he didn’t understand Jimmy over this. How could he act the way he did with folk who could’ve been them not so many years back, before Josie lifted them out of the pit they had been in? He sometimes even thought Jimmy
enjoyed
what he was doing; swaggering about as though he was Lord Muck.

Hubert wiped the back of his hand across his brow which was damp with perspiration. It was getting these days so he didn’t know where Patrick Duffy left off and his brother began, and certainly Jimmy relished being known as Patrick’s favoured protégé. It made Hubert feel physically sick every time he heard Patrick refer to Jimmy as ‘son’, and it was happening more and more in the last couple of years. He sometimes thought Jimmy had forgotten he
wasn’t
Patrick’s own flesh and blood. By, to be connected by blood with Duffy . . . Hubert’s upper lip rose as though he was smelling something unclean.

How long could he go on like this, playing along with it all? But then he didn’t really have an option, did he, not unless he was prepared to be six foot under. Even Jimmy wouldn’t be able to protect him if Patrick decided he was for the jump. Would his brother stand up for him if it meant going against the man who had taken them in all those years ago when their da had gone missing? Hubert frowned to himself; a lone gull circling overhead in the clear blue sky causing his eyes to raise as it cried its lonely call. A couple of years ago he would have known the answer to that but now he wasn’t so sure. Jimmy had changed, hardened, or perhaps his brother had always been as callous as he was now, and Hubert hadn’t appreciated the fact until he’d met Josie again. Certainly since that night when he had been reunited with his sisters, he had begun to question everything more.

Hubert let his eyes roam the vast expanse of blue water in front of him for a moment, before walking away from the tiny frothy waves lapping the beach and throwing himself down at a point where wiry coarse grass dotted with hundreds of tiny resilient wild flowers met the sand.

He had listened to their Jimmy and Patrick jaw about Josie until he’d begun to believe she was this cold, brazen hussy they’d portrayed. This had been one of the reasons he had gone to see her that night. He’d needed to see for himself whether the memory he had of his elder sister - as a slight, fiercely protective little figure with melting brown eyes and a smiling mouth - was right or wrong. In spite of what Patrick had said, he’d found it nigh on impossible to believe that the Josie he remembered would have betrayed her brothers to the law. Not their da, oh no, he could have expected that all right, but him and Jimmy? She’d mopped their tears and wiped their backsides from when they were little babbies, and once she’d started the singing she’d fought their da all the way to clean up their home and make sure there was always food on the table and a fire in the range. They hadn’t had much, but the little they’d had had come from Josie sure enough.

And she’d looked the same. Hubert rolled over on to his stomach, watching a large black ant as it struggled through the grass with some prize or other held above its head. Aye, she had. Older and more beautiful maybe, she was a woman now and there was no mistaking that, but the old Josie had been shining out of her eyes when she’d realised it was him. She’d been right pleased to see him. A small smile touched the corner of his mouth. And he’d known then, even before he’d asked her, that she was incapable of doing what Patrick had said. Now if Patrick had lied about Josie, it was fair guns he’d done the same about their mam selling them down the river. Which meant . . . The ant reached the tiny opening to its nest and disappeared underground, and Hubert sat up suddenly, taking off his cap and raking back his floppy brown hair before replacing the cap on his head. It meant Patrick could well be lying when he said their da had skedaddled on a ship. Josie seemed sure about it anyway.

He continued sitting until the twilight turned the blue sky pearly grey and he knew he couldn’t delay his return any more. He rose slowly to his feet and began walking reluctantly along the coastal path which led to Marstack and then Salterfen Rocks, and the ragged outskirts of Bishopwearmouth.

He would have to tackle Jimmy about all this one day, about their da and Patrick and his sisters. The thought made him bite his bottom lip. One day - but not yet. He didn’t consciously think, I’ll have to wait until I’m a bit older and bigger, until I can make a plan of escape and get out if I have to, but merely reiterated in his mind, as the sky turned to rivers of brilliant pink and mauve and scarlet, Aye, I’ll wait a bit, that’s what I’ll do, but one day, one day I’ll put it to Jimmy and to hell with the consequences - and Patrick Duffy.

 

The two individuals who had been featuring so highly in Hubert’s troubled thoughts were at that moment making their way across the strip of town moor at the back of the orphan asylum and the Trafalgar Square almshouses. They were heading towards Prospect Row and Jimmy was saying, ‘He’s a good lad, Pat, you know that, but when all’s said an’ done he’s only twelve.’

‘He’s thirteen in a couple of weeks, besides which you were collectin’ at his age an’ makin’ a good job of it an’ all.’

‘Aye, I know, but we’re all different, man.’

Patrick eyed the big strapping youth at the side of him who looked far older than his fifteen years. ‘I let him get away with murder ’cos I know you think a bit of him, you know that, don’t you?’ he said, his voice terse. ‘But it don’t look good, Jimmy, not to the rest of ’em.’

‘The rest of ’em don’t blow their noses unless they ask permission of you, and
you
know
that
. Besides, if any of ’em have got anythin’ to say they can say it to me an’ I’ll soon put ’em straight.’

Patrick again glanced at Bart’s son, and his thin mouth twisted in a smile showing black rotting teeth. Aye, he would an’ all. He was nimble on his feet, was Jimmy, and handy with a knife, and he didn’t fight by the Queensberry rules, neither. Even a couple of years ago, before Jimmy had put on that spurt of growth and filled out, he’d seen him take down a man double his size. He could be a nasty bit of work and people knew it and were afeared of him. His da had been big but Bart had been all wind and water; Jimmy wasn’t like that. The thought carried an element of pride, as though Patrick had had something to do with the lad’s character - which, indeed, he considered he had.

When Patrick had taken Jimmy and Hubert under his wing he’d had several reasons for doing so. There had been an element of revenge; he’d liked the idea of securing what had been Bart’s after the time, money and pain the other man had cost him, but also he had recognised that Bart’s lads were good little pickpockets and with the right training could become accomplished thieves. He’d also gained some satisfaction from breaking up the Burns family further, especially when he knew having the lads working for him would net him a profit, and the story he’d told had gained credence by the law and others assuming Bart had seconded his boys and the three of them had skedaddled. But overall, and linking all the other reasons together, was the fact that he had always had a soft spot for Jimmy. He’d seen himself in the lad and he had liked that, and Jimmy had proved to be everything he had hoped for. Unlike the other one.

As they moved into Prospect Row and then, taking short cuts, made their way through the streets and narrow side lanes towards North Moor Street they walked in silence, but just before they reached the slipway near the offices and the Commissioners’ Stairs at the far end of the quays, Patrick said, ‘You’ll have to talk to him, Jimmy. He’s takin’ advantage of me good nature.’

‘Good nature?’ Jimmy grinned at the small man alongside of him, his voice holding a warm teasing note which spoke of ease and friendship. ‘Good nature, is it? Where you bin hidin’ it all these years then?’

Patrick grinned back. ‘Less of your lip, son.’

They had turned down the narrow path off North Moor Street which led directly to the slipway now, and as a shadow emerged from the side of the offices the smiles slid off both faces and two pairs of eyes narrowed into cold calculating slits.

‘Ready an’ waitin’, eh, Percy?’ Patrick said flatly. ‘I like that.’

‘Whey aye, man. You know me.’

The man who had spoken resembled nothing so much as a small gorilla. His pug face and thick, dark, spiky hair were definitely ape-like, but it was his heavily barrelled chest, long arms, short thick legs and perpetually hunched shoulders that encouraged the feeling one should offer a banana. He didn’t seem to have wrists or ankles; the arms grew straight out of his hands and his legs straight out of his feet, and he had no waist at all.