The Urchin's Song

by Rita Bradshaw

  ‘Aye, well mebbe she didn’t think of that.’

  ‘Well, she should have.’ Barney glared round the table before taking a swallow of the tea Vera had handed him some minutes before. He always had Sunday dinner with Betty and her bairns but this week, the Sunday after the Monday Josie had been to Sunderland, he had only been in his stepmother’s house for a few mintues before Betty had imparted the news of Josie’s flying visit. The upshot of her announcement had been Barney picking up his cap and marching straight over to Vera’s. ‘Aye, she should have,’ he repeated when no one said anything. ‘She’s been in the business long enough now to know how things work. Her appearing at the Palace and the Royal’ll take away business from the Avenue.’

  ‘Perhaps she wasn’t thinking about the Avenue’s numbers at the box office.’ Prudence went on eating steadily after making this enigmatic statement, seemingly oblivious to her brother’s furious countenance.

  ‘What does that mean?’ Barney banged the pint mug of tea down on the table with enough force to cause it to slop over the side.

  Prudence raised her eyes, regarding him steadily for a few moments before she said, ‘She’s a married woman, Barney.’

  ‘So?’ His voice was harsh and grating. ‘Half the music-hall performers are married, mostly to the other half.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘And if I say I don’t?’ But he pushed his chair back from the table, the sound rasping on the stone flags, and stood abruptly to his feet, his jaw pugnacious. ‘Where was her husband when she was gallivanting about the country then? Why wasn’t he with her?’

  Vera shrugged. ‘I didn’t think it was my business to ask.’

  ‘Look, lad, come and sit down and have a bite. There’s plenty. Vera always cooks for the five thousand.’ Horace was aiming to pour oil on troubled waters, but Barney shook his head, continuing to stand and glare until he said, ‘When is she starting up here?’

  ‘A week tomorrow as I understand it,’ Vera said quietly.

  ‘Huh.’

  What this was meant to express, none of the three sitting at the table asked until Prudence, in true sister fashion and being unable to stand any more, said sharply, ‘For goodness’ sake stop acting like a whingeing bairn, Barney,’ pushing her plate to the side of her. ‘Where Josie works is her own business, surely.’

  ‘I never said it wasn’t.’

  ‘It didn’t sound like that from where I’m standing.’

  ‘Then you’re standing in the wrong place. Anyway, I’ve got to get back to Betty’s, she’ll be dishing up shortly.’

  ‘Goodbye then.’

  Again Prudence made it quite clear what she thought of Barney bursting in on them all, and after a look directed at his sister which spoke volumes all by itself, Barney said tightly, ‘Aye, so long, I’ll see myself out,’ to Vera and Horace.

  It wasn’t until he was in the street again that the consuming rage which had gripped him on hearing of Josie’s visit suddenly drained away. He stood for a moment in the hot sunshine, blinking owl fashion as though he had come out of darkness into bright light. He’d made the mother and father of a fool of himself in there, and in front of Prudence too. Oh, she might have mellowed in the last few years, especially since she’d met Georgie, but there was still enough of the old Prudence left to guarantee she wouldn’t let him forget this day, by means of the odd sisterly barbed taunt.

  A small group of snotty-nosed bairns were skipping at the top end of the street, and the words of their song met him as he passed them. ‘When I was going to Strawberry Fair, singing, singing buttercups and daisies, I met a lady taking the air, tra-la-la. Her eyes were blue and golden her hair, and she was going to Strawberry Fair, singing, singing buttercups and daisies . . .’

  One little mite, more enterprising or hungry than the rest looked up at him, her huge brown eyes with their thick lashes entreating as she said, ‘Spare a penny, mister?’

  He had looked at the children without really seeing them, but now, as his gaze focused on the child he saw that in spite of her hair running with lice and the filth and dirt which seemed caked on her small thin body, the face looking up at him was strikingly lovely. Josie had lived round these streets and begged round them like this little ’un. His eyes moved over the rest of the big-eyed faces, two of the little lassies having legs bowed with the rickets, and his voice was gruff when he said, ‘I’ve no pennies but you can all come with me to the pie shop on the next corner if you want. If you’re not full after your Sunday dinner, that is.’

  ‘I’m not full.’ This was from the small girl who had first spoken to him, and now there was a chorus of, ‘I’m not full!’ ‘I’m not full, mister.’ ‘Nor me.’

  Some Salvation Army officers were standing outside a pub opposite the pie shop, and after he’d purchased pies for each of the children and sent them on their way, one of the men spoke to him, saying, ‘Suffer the little children, brother. Suffer the little children. The Good Book says what you do for the least of them will be done unto you. You’ll get your reward sure enough.’

  Barney nodded and walked on, his cheeks fiery now. There was only one thing he wanted but if he’d told that good soul back there what it was, amid the man’s colleagues openly proclaiming their allegiance to a holy God, he doubted it would go down very well.

  He didn’t return to Betty’s, knowing his stepmother wouldn’t expect him back, the state he had been in when he’d left. He would pop in later, round tea-time, and take a few bits for the bairns, he told himself as a sop to his conscience. He was renting the downstairs of a house in Eden Street West which was close to the public baths and the Avenue Theatre, but once home he stayed in the house for no more than a few minutes before his state of mind drove him out to walk the streets. The urge to be outside in the fresh air was always on him, but it was more compelling when he was troubled about something, like now.

  He walked down Long Row and on to the Durham Road, and there he continued walking, past the clay pit and Mill Farm and out towards Humbledon Hill. He had to get his head sorted about Josie once and for all. Prudence had said she was a married woman and when you looked at it, that was the final word. If she didn’t want anything to do with him when she was playing in these parts, as her conduct had indicated, then he’d make sure he stayed right out of her way. No backstage visits or nipping round to Vera’s when he thought she might be there, and definitely no calls at the Grand. He wouldn’t go cap in hand to anyone.

  Mind, with the amount of folk who would undoubtedly flock to the theatres to see one of the latest sensations of the halls, he could easily lose himself in the crowds there if he so chose. But why torture himself like that? Still, it was a thought, he told himself as he strode on in the hot summer afternoon. Aye, it was a thought.

  A week later the same thought was burning in Hubert’s mind. There were posters everywhere announcing Josie was playing at the Palace starting this week, and he’d nearly had a fit when the first few went up. He knew Jimmy and Patrick had seen them, not that they’d said anything to him - but then they wouldn’t, would they? Jimmy wasn’t daft. Oh Jimmy man, Jimmy. Hubert ran his hand across his mouth, glancing round the large room in which he was standing which smelt of oil and burning metal and fire.

  It was down to Jimmy that he was learning a trade at this locksmith’s rather than having been found in a back alley somewhere with a knife between his ribs. Patrick had gone fair barmy when he’d announced he wanted out that day soon after Josie had gone down south. He hadn’t meant to say it then, he’d been of a mind to wait at least a couple of years, but when he’d been told he was going on the collecting regular he’d known he’d rather take what was coming from Patrick - even if it was a blade across his throat - than continue to sell his soul to the devil.

  He couldn’t stomach it another day, he’d yelled at them all, and when one of Patrick’s henchmen had gone for him and Jimmy had cut him up and then said he’d take on anyone else who laid a finger on his bro
ther, Jimmy had made it clear where he stood. And because of that he was still in the land of the living, Hubert thought. Oh aye, he had no doubt about that. No one had ever been allowed to leave Patrick’s employ before, but because he was Jimmy’s brother he’d got away with it. Jimmy had taken him to one side and asked him what he wanted to do, and when he’d mentioned this place he’d been working here within the week. It was amazing, the doors that opened through fear. ’Course, the first few weeks Mr Foster and the two other lads had been wary of him, but when he’d shown he wanted to learn and didn’t mind what he did, they’d accepted him for his own sake and not through intimidation of what would happen to their wives and families if they didn’t. He hadn’t known that was how Jimmy had got him in here until a couple of years after, when Mr Foster had let something slip.

  But he loved it here. The leather bellows blowing oil into the fire in the massive hearth at the back of the room; the wooden benches with the keys, arbor press, files, hammers, punches, dollies and the like; the small lathe and the wooden racks for storage - it was like food and drink to him. And he liked Mr Foster and Paul and Charlie, they were nice folk, decent folk.

  He continued looking for the file Mr Foster wanted which had gone missing, but his heart wasn’t in it this morning. He was scared to death, he didn’t mind admitting, but not for himself. For Josie, for what might happen, and for Jimmy an’ all. He loved his brother, he couldn’t help it, even though he didn’t like him, but whatever Jimmy and Patrick had in mind it wasn’t like dealing with the ne’er-do-wells they usually mixed with. No one bothered about one of them floating face down in the docks - the police least of all - but Josie was somebody now. If Jimmy did anything and he got caught, he’d go down the line for it. And Josie; he couldn’t stand by and see the lass hurt, but what could he do? Since he’d opted out he knew nothing of what went on any more, and Jimmy had made it plain that in spite of his protection, Hubert wouldn’t live long if he talked about anything he had seen or heard in the past.

  But he could go and see her perform, couldn’t he? Jimmy couldn’t object to that, and somehow he’d get word to her that she had to watch herself. He’d done it once before and got away with it; he could do it again. When all was said and done, he didn’t know for sure Patrick was going to do anything . . .

  This comforting thought was hit on the head when Hubert found his brother waiting for him in the street at the end of the day.

  ‘Wotcher, man.’ Jimmy grinned at him, his handsome face with its vivid blue eyes at odds with the man Hubert knew his brother really was. ‘Fancy a jar or two afore you go back to that hole you live in?’

  The day he had left Patrick’s employ the little Irishman had made it plain he could lodge elsewhere, something which suited Hubert down to the ground. Jimmy had found him a place with a very nice elderly couple and their widowed daughter in a two-up two-down house in Maritime Terrace, opposite the Almshouses and just a stone’s throw from Brougham Street where he worked. The house was small but it wasn’t a hole at all - Mrs Turner kept it spic and span as Jimmy very well knew - but it suited his brother to refer to it as that and Hubert never argued. He also knew that although Jimmy’s words might have been couched in the form of an invitation they were, in fact, an order, and so Hubert nodded.

  ‘Aye, man, if you’re buying. Reckon I’ve sweated a couple of pints in there the day.’

  ‘Aye, well, whose fault is that then? You could’ve bin in clover with Patrick, man.’

  ‘I’m not complaining, merely stating.’

  ‘Aye, well I’ve spent the day overseein’ a bit of business an’ takin’ me ease in the sun for most of it. I know which I prefer.’

  ‘Everyone to their own, Jimmy.’

  It was the same sort of conversation they had every time they met but it didn’t rile Hubert. He knew Jimmy missed him and wanted him back at his side, and he supposed he missed Jimmy in a way, but he’d rather jump in Jarrow Slake than go back to his old life.

  ‘So?’ Once they were sitting in the pub with a pint of foaming ale in front of each of them, it was Jimmy who brought up the subject on both their minds. ‘You’ve seen the posters then?’

  ‘Aye.’ Hubert didn’t prevaricate. ‘What of ’em?’

  ‘What of ’em?’ Jimmy’s face screwed up at him and the faint white lines radiating from the tanned skin around his eyes formed deeper furrows. ‘She’s back, man, bold as brass.’

  ‘She’s here for a couple of weeks working. Singing is what she does.’

  ‘I know what she does. I know what she did, an’ all, more to the point.’

  ‘You’ve only Patrick’s word for that and I don’t believe him - I never have. Josie wouldn’t have sold us down the river and Mam wouldn’t have shopped us neither, and Da would never have left without you. And on a boat. Man, he was scared of the water. He’d have gone up to Glasgow or down south, but not on a boat.’

  ‘You seem to know a lot about it considerin’ you were barely old enough to wipe your own backside.’

  ‘Huh.’ He had to be careful here. If Jimmy cottoned on he’d ever talked to Josie . . . ‘We were wiping our own backsides from the day we were born in our house, and there’s some things stay with you. Da was a big man, afraid of nothing and no one, so I suppose when I knew he was scared of the water it stayed with me. In the subconscious, like.’

  ‘Aye.’ Jimmy glanced down at the sawdust-covered floor. ‘Well, you were still a bairn an’ you know nowt about it. Patrick an’ Da were as close as that’ - he crossed his fingers in front of Hubert’s face - ‘an’ if Patrick says Da was leavin’ on a boat, he was leavin’ on a boat.’

  It was useless. His brother had a blind spot where Duffy was concerned that nothing would shift. Hubert swallowed long and deeply of his ale before he said, ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Do?’ Jimmy looked at him and now his expression was guarded. ‘You don’t really want to know that, do you?’

  ‘Jimmy--’

  ‘Leave it, Hubert. You’ve made it plain where you stand on this, it was a mistake to talk to you today. Patrick said you’d react like this.’

  Patrick, Patrick, Patrick. Always Patrick. ‘Why did you, then?’

  ‘Because you’re me brother.’

  ‘And she’s me sister. Our sister.’

  Jimmy glared at him, and then the anger was slowly replaced by the faintly scornful, indulgent expression Hubert recognised so well. ‘You’d believe the best of the devil himself, you.’

  No, no he wouldn’t, because to him Patrick Duffy was the devil incarnate.

  Jimmy drained the tankard and stood up. ‘Be seein’ ya then.’

  ‘Jimmy, please. Please don’t do anything.’ Hubert had reached out and clutched his brother’s arm, his voice urgent, and Jimmy glanced round the pub before bending over and speaking in a low voice as he said, ‘It’s out of my hands, man. It’s not just me who wants a reckonin’, you know that.’

  ‘You could stop it, you know you could. Patrick listens to you.’

  ‘Not over this, believe me. ’Sides,’ Jimmy straightened and Hubert’s hand fell to his side, ‘I owe it to Da to get even.’

  ‘It wasn’t her.’

  ‘Aye, so you say.’ And now Jimmy thrust his face close again but this time his voice carried a grim warning when he said, ‘Don’t you poke your nose into this, Hubert. I mean it, else it won’t just be Patrick you’ll answer to. You understand me? An’ you might be workin’ for old Foster but that don’t mean Patrick don’t know where you are every minute of the night an’ day. Who you talk to, where you go; you can’t as much as blow your nose an’ he don’t see what colour it is.’

  ‘Aye, well you understand this. I don’t reckon the sun shines out of his backside like you do, and maybe I can see things a mite clearer because of it. You chew on that awhile.’

  It wasn’t often Hubert talked back and Jimmy’s face reflected his anger in the moment before he turned away and stalked out of the pub.


  Well, that had done a lot of good. Hubert sat quietly finishing his ale but he felt anything but quiet inside. After a while he stood up and walked out into the sunshine, and it was then two small thickset men appeared either side of him. ‘Hello, Hubert.’ The one who spoke had a bloated stomach due to his liking for beer and a mean little face.

  Hubert nodded but said nothing. He knew these two from old.

  ‘Been havin’ a drink with your brother then? That’s nice. I like it when brothers get on.’

  Hubert still said nothing. Whatever Patrick’s lackeys had been told to say you could bet it wasn’t sentimental observations about brotherly love.

  ‘Patrick said Jimmy might be havin’ a little word in your ear sometime tonight, but he wanted to make sure you understood what was what. He hasn’t got Jimmy’s faith in you, that’s the thing, but you can understand that, lad, can’t you? Patrick bein’ no relation of yours.’

  The man’s voice had been quiet and reasonable, and Hubert’s was quiet and reasonable in reply when he said, ‘Does my brother know you are threatening me?’

  ‘Threatenin’ you? By, lad, where’s that come from? Threatenin’ him, he says.’ The man appealed to his comrade who merely continued eying Hubert up and down. ‘No, lad, Jimmy don’t know about this friendly little talk, an’ if you’ve any sense you’ll keep it that way, all reet? See, them as open their mouths when they oughtn’t sometimes find ’em full of dock water one night, know what I mean? Might not be next week or next month or even next year, but sure as eggs are eggs they find ’emselves fish food one dark night. An’ that applies to that upstart sister of yours an’ all. You stay away from her if you know what’s good for you. Patrick don’t want no family reunions.’ The last words were ominous.