The Urchin's Song Read Online Free

alleys and short cuts; the painted dock dollies regularly used them for their furtive business.
    Once in High Street East, she walked as quickly as the heavy bag allowed. She passed one of the entrances to the market, the others being in Coronation Street and James Williams Street, but most of the stalls had packed up, it being after ten by now. Her da wouldn’t like it that she hadn’t gone to work tonight, he’d have her performing every night if he had his way, but the last couple of years she had determined that every Monday she’d clean their two rooms from top to bottom and then go shopping once it was late and bargains could be had. She could make a penny stretch to thruppence that way.
    By the time Josie reached Long Bank she was puffing fit to burst and - despite the raw night - sweating profusely. Long Bank joined High Street and Low Street, and the pungent smell of fish was always heavy in the air from the kipper-curing house, but Josie didn’t mind this. There were worse smells than fish.
    A flat cart trundled by her, its presence made visible by a swinging lamp near the driver behind the plodding horse, and when a voice said, ‘What now, Josie lass. How y’doin’?’ she recognised it as Archibald Clark’s, the lad who delivered the wet fish to various shops and some of the big houses in the better part of town.
    ‘I’m all right, Archie, but it’s a cold one.’
    ‘Aye, you’re right there, lass.’
    Josie stood for a moment watching the glow of the swinging lantern grow fainter before she opened the door of the house and lugged the bag inside. The hall was in total darkness but she knew the narrow steep stairs were straight in front of her. These led to the two rooms at the top of the house which were occupied by Maud and Enoch Tollett, an elderly couple whose eleven children had all long since flown the cramped nest.
    Josie liked the two tough old northerners. She could remember times before she had started her singing when, once the pair upstairs were sure her father was out, they had appeared with a pot of broth and a loaf of bread, or a plate of chitterlings and pig’s pudding for her mam. They had all known they had to eat the food quick and get the pots back to Maud before Bart returned. Enoch had still been working at the Sunderland Brewery on Wylam Wharf then, but since he had seized up with arthritis his children had managed to pay the old couple’s rent of one and ninepence a week between their eleven families, and provide the basic essentials to keep their parents alive. Essentials, in their book, however, didn’t run to baccy for Enoch or half a bottle of gin for their mam, and no one but Josie and the old couple knew how often she secreted little packages up the narrow stairs.
    By memory rather than sight, Josie now moved along the passageway and fumbled for the door handle on her left. Her fingers having found their objective she opened the door quickly, heaving the bag half across the threshold as the door swung open, and then she stood for a moment surveying the room immediately in front of her. As always, a faint glow of pleasure flushed her checks as she contemplated the changes she’d been able to make. Hard-won changes they were, too, because she had had to fight her father every inch of the way to keep back some of the money she earned.
    The floor in front of her, like the one in the kitchen which was just visible through the interconnecting door - left open during the daytime - was covered in large flagstones Josie had scoured with soda that very day. Two raised wooden platforms which acted as settees during the day and beds at night - one housing her parents and the other her brothers - stood either side of the small iron grate in which a good fire was burning, a bright clippy mat in front of it and another lying lengthways in front of each of the platforms. In the far corner of the room next to the interconnecting door, a table and four hardbacked chairs were squeezed