Shanghai Sparrow Read Online Free PDF

vermin, sickness – could hardly compete, though they tried. The only occasional relief, a banner of clean air, came when the wind blew up from the harbour. Even that was as likely to smell of fish as of the open ocean. Eveline noticed the stench, because she was a noticing girl, but it hardly bothered her. She had spent her last seven years here. It was home.
    Only when she passed the transport moored near the bridge did she put her handkerchief in front of her face, and hurry past. The ship, restrained by a great black dripping chain, loomed above her like some terrible ancient half-dead thing, dragged up from the depths, its sails hanging like dying seaweed rotting on the rocks. A miserable ragged line of convicts shuffled up the gangplank, their chains clinking. As the wind shifted, she could hear the roaring and moaning of those already below decks and, clear as gunshot, the cracking of whips.
    The streets churned with people. Some were decently covered, others ragged to near nakedness; almost all were dirty, thin, and tired. Sailors, dockworkers, men and women and children from the mills and the tanneries.
    Docky Sal was sitting on the steps of the Duke of Windsor, taking advantage of the last of the sunlight. Sal smiled at Evvie, shifting her latest baby from one breast to the other. She had a dramatic bruise around one eye and bundle of crumpled linen draped over her lap.
    “Awrite, Sparrow?”
    “What’s that, Sal?”
    “Fancy shirt. See?” Sal held it up. A needle marked the end of a row of fine, tiny stitches. “Lucky we got the sun today. I’ll get it done by tomorrow, then that’s me off me back for a few days. If that cheapskate in the shop pays me what I’m owed.”
    Eveline leaned down and stroked the baby’s fluff of bright red hair. “Look at him, proper little copper-top.”
    “Ah. Reckon it was that Irish stoker fella. Lovely head of hair he had. Ha’n’t seen him for a long time. Shame, really, he was all right. Not like the last one.” She made a face.
    “He give you the shiner?”
    “Some of ’em are more for hitting than wapping, love. You’re better off with Ma.”
    “Don’t I know it. Here.” She tossed a guinea in Sal’s lap. “Buy him something, eh?”
    “Oh, Evvie.”
    “Shut it. Just don’t tell Ma, all right? You know what she’s like.” She’d want to know where Evvie’d got the guinea for starters, and why she’d given it to Docky Sal instead of Ma herself for seconds. “You take care, Sal.”
    “You too.”
    Evvie continued through the weary wandering crowd. Those who had no room for the night were already starting the evening’s desperate search for somewhere to sleep for a few hours. The soot-blackened scraggle of buildings often held three or four families to a room, and even when there was space to spare, it cost. If you had no money, you’d like as not end up sleeping on the docks or under a bridge, until the peelers came and moved you on. She’d spent plenty of nights that way herself, before Ma took her in. There were already dozens of children settling on the roofs or jamming themselves into tiny crannies. She’d done that, too – if you found a place too small for an adult you were less likely to get hauled out of it by someone bigger and stronger.
    They called it a rookery , but the people, especially the children, always reminded Eveline more of sparrows. Small and scruffy and dirt-brown and noisy, ignored by almost everyone. Like her.
    She jumped over the swollen, gut-burst corpse of a dog, raising a roar of flies. Clean, small, and respectably dressed, she could have been a less colourful version of Little-Red-Riding-Hood, striding innocently through the forest.
    And here came a would-be-wolf, perhaps fourteen or fifteen, nearly as small as Eveline herself, and skinnier, his thin legs so bandy he looked as though he had an invisible gas-balloon between his knees.
    When he reached for her pocket Eveline spun around, grabbed both his arms and