Jamrach's Menagerie - Carol Birch [18]
“He did.”
He started to cry.
“Tim,” said Jamrach sternly.
“Please don’t sack me, Mr. Jamrach,” Tim said wretchedly. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“Are you telling me,” said Jamrach, “that you locked this boy overnight in the shop?”
“It was a joke,” said Tim.
And that was the only time I ever saw Jamrach lose his temper.
His thin lips went hard and quivered. He roared. He cried that Tim was a wicked boy, a vile, cruel boy who’d end up on the gallows and serve him right! He could get out now! And never come back! “Always have to be top dog, don’t you, Tim?” he said. “Well, I’m finished with you!” and lifted me up onto his knee.
And now I was sorry for Tim. He begged. He sobbed. His face was a wreck. He said he was sorry, he didn’t realise, he’d never ever do such a terrible thing again, never, never.
“Go away, Tim.” Jamrach touched the great lump on my forehead. “Where did this come from?”
“I fell over in the dark,” I said.
Tim stood by the door, hands hanging helpless, tears pouring down his face. “I’ll give you my telescope,” he said in a watery way.
“Don’t sack him, sir,” I said.
Jamrach heaved a great sigh. “Why?” he asked. “Why should I keep him after this?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
The soft snuffling of Tim crying was the only sound for a moment. Jamrach’s eyes were sad.
Bulter put his head round the door. “Mr. Fledge’s man’s here,” he said.
They come from all over. Russia, Vienna, Paris. Clever men. Jamrach cursed in German. “What’s he want this time?” he said. “A unicorn? A hippogriff?”
Bulter sniggered.
“Where is he?”
“In the yard. Looking at the elephants.”
“Tell him to wait,” said Jamrach, and sighed again.
When Bulter had gone, Mr. Jamrach put me down and stood up. He brushed his knees. “Tim,” he said, “wipe your nose and stop whining. Make yourself presentable and go straight over to the Spoony Sailor and tell them there exactly what you did, tell them Master Jaffy is in no way to blame, and he will be back at work this evening. Tell them I sent you and that I vouch for Jaffy. Then you can get yourself back here as quickly as possible and get back to work.”
Tim ran.
Jamrach took me by the hand and led me out through the yard. “A moment!” he called to a tall thin man standing by the elephants. There was a door at the side which he unlocked, and through this we passed into a narrow alleyway with high brick walls and weeds growing out of the cobbles. I had never walked like this, hand in hand with a man as I had seen others walk with fathers, and it made me feel peculiar. My own father’s name I didn’t know for sure. Sometimes Andre, sometimes Theo, you never could tell with Ma. A dark sailor with a glass to his eye. At the turn of the alley was a little house with an open brown door moulting paint. Jamrach rapped with his knuckles.
“Mrs. Linver!” he called. “Patient for you!”
There appeared, wiping her steamed-up eye glasses on her apron, the wild-faced woman who had stood at the front of the crowd when Jamrach rescued me from the tiger. Her bulbous, unseeing eyes wavered over me with a look of startled and overdone emotion, then she put her glasses back on and focused. “The little tiger boy!” she exclaimed, dropping to one knee in front of me and taking me by the shoulders. Mr. Jamrach told her all that had happened and said she should give me a good feed and send me home to bed.
“I’ll skin that boy!” she cried when she heard of Tim’s crimes.
Mr. Jamrach took himself briskly away down the forlorn alley, and she took me by the hand and led me into a room full of drying laundry that was draped all over everything, chair backs, a table, a massive rack which hung from the ceiling above a blazing fire. A round, pale, hairless man sat in a saggy armchair by the fire, smiling vaguely and whittling away at a stick of wood, and the little girl who’d smiled at me from the crowd was there, standing by the range, turning with a dripping spoon in one hand. She smiled again.
It was not love at first sight, but love at second sight. Her hair was straight and fair, her face bright