Jamrach's Menagerie - Carol Birch [10]
“Very small, isn’t he?” Tim Linver said. “You sure he’s up to it, Mr. Jamrach?”
“Well, Jaffy?” Mr. Jamrach asked jovially. “Are you up to it?”
“I am,” I said. “I work hard. You don’t know yet.”
And I could. We’d be fine now, Ma and me. She was on shifts at the sugar bakers, the place with the big chimney, and I was starting as pot boy at the Spoony Sailor that very night. With all that and this new job, we could pay our rent up front.
Tim came over and bumped me roughly with his shoulder. “Know what that means, Lascar?” he said. “Clearing up dung in the yard.”
Well, no one could be better suited for that than me, and I told them so, and that made them laugh even more. Mr. Jamrach, sitting sideways at his desk, leaned over and folded back the white paper cover from a box next to his feet. Very carefully and with the utmost respect, he lifted out a snake, one greater than all the others I’d yet seen. If it had stretched itself out straight and stood itself on the tip of its tail, I suppose it would have been taller than me. Its body was triangular, covered in dry, yellowish scales. Its long face moved towards me from his hands. I stood three feet or so away, and it stretched itself out like a bridge between me and him, straight as a stick, as if it was a hand pointing at me. A quick forked tongue, red as the devil, darted from it a foot from my nose.
“S-s-s-o,” said Jamrach in a snake voice, “you are joining us, Master Jaffy?”
I put my hand out to touch, but he drew the snake in sharply. “No touching!” he said seriously. “No touching unless I say so. You do what you’re told, yes?”
I nodded vigorously.
“Good boy,” he said, coiling the snake back into its box.
“Will I be in charge of him, Mr. Jamrach?” asked Tim anxiously. “See,” he said to me, “I know about everything. Don’t I, Mr. Jamrach?”
Jamrach laughed. “Oh, indeed you do, Tim,” he said.
“See,” said Tim, “so you have to do what I tell you.”
Jamrach told me to come back tomorrow at seven when they were expecting a consignment of Tasmanian devils and yet more marmosets. He rolled his eyes at the thought of marmosets.
That night I went to work at the Spoony Sailor. It was a good old place and they were nice to me. The landlord was a man called Bob Barry, a regular mine host, tough as nails and rumpled as year-old sheets. He played the piano, head thrown back, voice like tar banging out some dirty old ditty. Two men in clogs danced a hornpipe on a stage, and the waiter got up and did comic songs dressed as a woman. I ran about with beer all night and cleaned up the pots and mopped the tables. The ladies pinched my cheeks, a big French whore gave me bread and bacon, everything was jolly. When everyone was up on the floor dancing the polka, the pounding sound of all the feet was like a great sea crashing down.
The women in the Spoony Sailor were whorier than the ones in the Malt Shovel, but not as whory as those in Paddy’s Goose, though the Goose girls were by far the swishest and the prettiest. I knew a girl there who wouldn’t be called a whore, said she was a courtesan. Terrible women, some of them, I suppose, but they were always nice to me. I’ve seen them rob a sailor blind in less than ten minutes, then kick him out bewildered on the street. Then again, I don’t know if I ever saw a sailor who wasn’t pretty much down on his knees begging for it anyway. The women slapped them about, but the sailors kept coming. I watched them reel about like stags, and remembered how beautiful their singing could be in the night, out over the Thames, heard from my cot in Bermondsey. Sailors from every farthest reach of the world, all the strange tongues blending and throbbing, and our own English tongue which rang as good as any.
I always knew I’d be a sailor. In my cradle, playing with my toes, I knew it. What else could