Street Child Read Online Free PDF Page A

shaking with silent laughter, and Tip, taken by surprise, laughed out loud. Mr Barrack shook him by the back of his jacket, half lifting him off the floor.
    ‘There’s nothing to laugh at here,’ he shouted.
    ‘No sir, there ain’t,’ agreed Tip, and was given another shaking. The women loved this.
    For most of the rest of the morning Mr Barrack read out loud to the boys, pacing up and down the room as he did so, so the candle flames fluttered in his wake and his black shadow danced on the walls. Curled in his hand was the end of a knotted rope, which he swung as he walked, striking it across a desk from time to time to make the boys jumpawake. Every now and then he stopped and pointed at a boy, who had to stand up and recite the sentence he’d just heard. If he got it wrong Mr Barrack swung the knotted end of the rope across the boy’s hand.
    As a change from reading out loud, Mr Barrack would shout at one of the boys to fetch him his shabby old copy of Dr Mavor’s Spelling Primer. He would pounce on any boy. ‘Spell “chimbley”!’ he would shout, swinging his rope in readiness.
    One morning the boys were given chalks and slates to use. A visitor had brought them in as a present. They sat on the desks through the morning, and the boys all watched them lovingly, longing to have a go.
    ‘Now you can write!’ Mr Barrack told them at last, easing himself onto the high stool of his desk and grunting with the effort. Tip put up his hand.
    ‘Please, sir. What should we write?’
    ‘Speak up!’
    ‘What should we write?’ Tip roared.
    Mr Barrack roared back. ‘What should you write? The Lord’s Prayer, if you please!’
    Jim risked a look round at the boys as they bent to their task, their breath smoking from them into the cold air. He put his elbows on the desk and his head in his hands. He was bleak inside himself, lonely and bewildered and afraid. Beside him Tip squeaked his chalk across his slate, scratching out scrawly shapes. His tongue poked out between his lips as he worked. He glanced sideways at Jim.
    ‘Why aincha writing?’ he whispered.
    ‘’Cos I can’t,’ Jim whispered back. ‘I never knew how to write.’
    ‘Cor, it’s easy!’ Tip’s eyebrows shot up and disappeared into the tangle of his hair. ‘Just wiggle your chalk across the slate like this.’ His chalk scraped and laboured. ‘There!’ He leaned back in triumph and blew chalk dust off his slate. He showed it to Jim.
    ‘That’s good,’ Jim agreed. ‘What does it say, though?’
    Tip’s amazed eyebrows shot up into his hair again. ‘I don’t know! I can’t read!’
    Jim spluttered into his hands, and Mr Barrack jerked awake. He hobbled down the aisle towards Jim.
    ‘Did you laugh then?’
    Jim felt as if he had frozen into his seat. His lips stuck together as if ice had formed between them.
    ‘No, he didn’t. It was me.’ Tip jumped up as the schoolmaster swung his rope in readiness and swished it down across the boy’s outstretched hand. The women folding up the sheets by the fire cackled. The other boys sat in total silence while this was happening, staring straight in front of them, their arms folded.
    Mr Barrack towered over Jim. ‘What did he say to you?’
    Jim forced himself to stand up, his legs trembling like reeds in the wind.
    ‘He said he can’t read, sir,’ he whispered, and had to shout it out a few times more until Mr Barrack could hear him.
    ‘Can’t read!’ the teacher bellowed. ‘Can’t read! I’ll say he can’t read. What’s the use of teaching boyslike him to read? What do any of you want with reading or writing, miserable sinners that you are?’ He pulled Tip’s hand towards him again and lashed the rope across it.
    Jim glanced at Tip, afraid to speak. He could see that the boy’s eyes were wet, and that he was nursing his hand under his armpit.
    ‘Write!’ Mr Barrack barked, and Jim picked up his chalk and scribbled furiously with it, just as Tip had done.
    At the end of that