Street Child Read Online Free PDF Page B

asked
    ‘How should I know?’ Tip hugged his arms round himself. ‘Keep moving, Jim. It’s cold.’
    It was impossible to tell one day from the next. They were all the same. School, sack-making, bed. The only thing that changed was the sky. Jim had seen the grey of snow clouds turning into the soft rain clouds of spring. He’d felt summmer scorching him in his heavy, itchy clothes. And now the sky was steely grey again. The pump had long beards of ice on its handle.
    ‘I’ve been here a year,’ Jim said.
    It was then that the little secret promise that had nestled inside him began to flutter into life like a wild thing.
    ‘I’ve got to skip off,’ he let the mad thought rise up in him. ‘If I don’t, I’ll be like Joseph. One day I won’t remember whether I was born here or not. I won’t know anywhere but here.’
    During lessons that day the old schoolmaster’s voice droned on in the dim schoolroom. The boys coughed and shuffled in their benches, hunchingthemselves against the cold. Jim’s wild thoughts drummed inside him, so loud that he imagined everyone would hear them. He leaned over to Tip and whispered in his ear, ‘Tip, I’m going to run away today. Come with me?’
    Tip sheered round, and put his hand to his mouth. Mr Barrack sprang down from his chair, his eyes alight with anger and joy.
    ‘You spoke!’ he said to Jim, triumphant. ‘It was you.’
    Tip closed his eyes and held out his hand, but Jim stood up. He didn’t mind. He didn’t mind anything any more. The teacher hauled him off his stool and swung his rope round. It hummed as it sliced through the air.
    ‘I don’t mind,’ Jim tried to explain, but this made Mr Barrack angrier than ever. At last he had caught Jim out, and he was beating him now for every time he had tried and failed. He pulled a greasy handkerchief out of his pocket and wound it round Jim’s head, tying it tight under his chin.
    ‘Just in case you feels like hollering,’ he said. All the other boys stared in front of them. The rope stung Jim again and again, and the beating inside him was like a wild bird now, throbbing in his limbs and in his stomach, in his chest and in his head, so wild and loud that he felt it would lift him up and carry him away.
    When the schoolmaster had finished with him he flung him like a bundle of rags across the desk. Jim lay in a shimmer of pain and thrumming wings. He wanted to sleep. The bell rang and the boys shuffledout. Jim felt Tip’s hand on his shoulder. He flinched away.
    ‘That’s what they do to the boys who skip off, Jim,’ Tip whispered. ‘They thrash ’em like that every day until they’re good.’
    Jim felt the wild thing fluttering again. ‘Only if they catch them.’
    ‘They always catch ’em. Bobbies catch ’em and bring ’em in, and they get thrashed and thrashed.’
    Jim struggled to sit up. The stinging rolled down his body. ‘Won’t you come with me?’
    ‘I daresn’t. Honest, I daresn’t. Don’t go, Jim.’
    Jim looked up at the great archways of the schoolroom. He knew the words off by heart. God is good. God is holy. God is just. God is love.
    ‘I’ve got to,’ he said. ‘And I’m going tonight, Tip.’

8
The Carpet Beaters
    Jim knew that he would have to make his break before old Marion did her rounds for the night. He had no idea how he was going to do it. At suppertime he stuffed his cheese in his pocket, and Tip passed his own share along to him.
    At the end of the meal Mr Sissons stood up on his dais. All the shuffling and whispering stopped. He moved his body slowly round, which was his way of fixing his eyes on everyone, freezing them like statues.
    ‘I’m looking for some big boys,’ he said. ‘To help the carpet-beaters.’ He waited in the silence, but nobody moved.
    ‘Just as I would expect. A rush to help, when there is sickess in the wards.’ A cold sigh seemed to ripple through the room. Mr Sissons laughed into it in his dry, hissing way. ‘It might be cholera, my