Gypsy - Lesley Pearse [88]
In Jack’s immediate view he could count five grog shops, three saloons, two second-hand clothes shops and two pawnshops. He thought that gave a fairly accurate picture of the needs of the community.
The one greengrocer’s had a display of fruit and vegetables that even from a distance were clearly well past their best, and the dried goods store was only marginally better. People were peddling things all along the kerbside. Two bent old crones were selling stale bread, and he watched as their dirty hands delved into even dirtier bags made from old mattress ticking to bring out another misshapen loaf. Another man was butchering a goat on a piece of wood balanced on one of the street’s ash tins. But even worse were the two Italian men selling stale beer, the leftover dregs from a saloon, passing it out in old tin cans.
‘The Bend’, as it was generally known, because the road was shaped like a dog’s leg, was at least swept from time to time by the council. But just a few steps away in the rabbit warren of narrow, dark alleys running from it, places where neither council brooms nor sunshine ever ventured, the rubbish lay rotting on the ground, mingling with the stink of human effluent. Thousands of people lived in the ramshackle houses, tenements, cellars and even sheds, a pile of rags passing for a bed, a beer crate for a stool.
Jack had no doubt that most of the ragged, half-starved children he could see hanging around today had no home, for living on the streets was often preferable to ‘home’. At least that way they didn’t have to hand over their meagre earnings from begging or thieving or risk being beaten by drunken parents.
Jack knew exactly how that was, for he had taken to the streets of Whitechapel at a very early age for just the same reasons. School was a place he only went to when the truancy man caught him; all his knowledge and skills, which were mainly those of survival, were learned on the streets.
Meeting Beth on the ship had been like a miracle. The only friends he’d ever had were those from the slime at the bottom of the barrel like him. He’d looked at girls like Beth from afar, wishing he could reach out and touch their silky hair, or just be close enough to smell their clean skin and clothes. He never dreamed he would ever have someone like that for a friend, much less hold her hand or kiss her.
But Beth talked to him as if he was the same as her. She laughed with him, she shared her sadness and her hopes with him. She made him think he could achieve anything he wanted. When she said goodbye on the ship, promising she would meet him in exactly one month’s time on Castle Green, he didn’t expect for one moment that she would be there. But the strength and belief in himself that she’d given him stayed with him.
He spent his first night here in the Bend, for it was the only place he’d been told about by acquaintances back in Liverpool. But for Beth’s influence, he wouldn’t even have noticed how appalling it was, he would’ve numbed his mind with drink and followed the lead of those he met that night. But she had changed his viewpoint, and by the following morning he knew he must get out immediately or find himself sucked in.
Working in the slaughterhouse was hideous. The terror of the cattle as he helped drive them from the ship towards their death, the casual attitude of the men who killed them and the stink of blood and guts made him feel sick to his stomach. But it was work, better paid than most jobs, and even though sleeping on the floor with five other men in one tiny room didn’t seem as if he’d taken a step upwards, he knew he had.
He almost didn’t go to Castle Green a month later. He’d caught Sam’s parting glance at him, and it was cold