Jamrach's Menagerie - Carol Birch [19]
“Ishbel,” her mother ordered, “get him some porridge. Your brother’s a nasty, horrible boy,” scrubbing my face and hands and knees with a hot cloth as she talked, her voice thin and quavery. “Well, you can see why the old man’s taken a shine to this one,” she said, rinsing out the cloth, “just like poor Anton, he is. Bless!”
I saw the gnawed-down nails and bleeding fingers of the fair-haired girl as she cleared a space at the table for me. She pushed a bowl of porridge under my nose. Her skirt was dark red. I thanked her and she dipped a sarcastic curtsy. “Welcome,” she said, twirling away and sitting down by the man’s feet. He had a look of Tim and of the girl, how it might be if you shaved them and puffed them up like balloons and took away their wits.
“Don’t make yourself too comfortable, young lady,” her mother said, but Ishbel leaned back against his legs, put her arms round her knees and her head on one side and stared at me with open curiosity.
Tim appeared in the open doorway. His mother ran over and screamed in his face. “He’ll give you the boot! You hateful boy! You! You! He’ll give you the boot and no doubt! You’ll ruin everything!”
He blinked hard, walked over to where I was scooping porridge into my mouth and put out his hand.
“I’m very sorry, Jaffy,” he said, steadily holding my eyes. “I really am. Truly. It was a mean thing I did. You’ve still got your job. I’ve been to Spoony’s and I’ve told them.”
I stood up and we shook solemnly.
“ ’S all right,” I said.
Midday. Ma was asleep when I got home. Mari-Lou and Silky slept too, long dreamy sighs behind the curtain. I got into bed next to Ma, hugging my telescope. Dan Rymer’s telescope that had travelled the whole world round. She did not wake, but gathered me into the crook of her arm, and a tall ship bore me away through painted waves into a long, sweet sleep.
r. Jamrach liked children. Tim and Ishbel had been running in and out of his yard to see the animals since they were little. They were twins and made him laugh, and he gave them pennies for odd jobs. When Tim came to work he’d made him go to school two days a week, and now he did the same with me. By the time I was eleven I could read and write. Mr. Jamrach said he needed his boys to be able to write things down and read off lists. I was quick. Ma was impressed. “You clever boy, Jaf,” she said when I read the posters plastered outside the seamen’s bethel.
“Grand Fair, Thames Tunnel,” I read smugly, “Madame Zan-Zan Fortune-teller. Crinelli’s Puppets. The Marvellous Marioletti Brothers. Snake-Charming. Fire-Walking. Swingboats. Entrance 1d.”
He let us finish early the day of the fair and slipped me and Tim a coin or two each as we pulled off our working boots outside the shed. We spruced up at the pump and changed our clothes, pushing each other about and shaking water from our hair, poking our ears as we strode down the alley. Ishbel had worked the afternoon at the Malt Shovel and drunk some gin. Maybe that’s why she was so sharp. At any rate she started screaming at Tim as soon as we walked in, which wasn’t unusual.
“You were supposed to fetch the coals before you went out!” She was ladling soup and had a face full of steam. “You lazy pig!”
“Shut your trap, woman,” Tim said loftily. “Who are you calling a lazy pig? I’ve been shovelling shit since five o’clock.”
There was a slightly deranged look about Mrs. Linver. Her eyes bulged and her hair was dripping wet against her forehead. “Shut up!” she screamed, tucking a bib into her fat husband’s collar. “I’m sick to death with the pair of you! Sick to death!” She plucked a half-finished mermaid from Mr. Linver’s pudgy hand and dropped it into a basket on top of a dozen finished ones. Apart from when he was eating, that’s what Mr. Linver did all day with uncanny consistency, as if he’d been wound up: turned out wooden mermaids for his wife to flog in the streets, blobby-faced women with huge, bulby breasts and curled fishtails upon which they could sit. He’d been a sailor, and a handsome