A Start in Life Read Free

between its whitewashed walls. Once, Billy came out totally black and bruised, saying that a coalman had taken off the grating that morning by mistake and dropped a full hundredweight down the sloping chute on to the children’s bed below, and if it hadn’t been that they were curled together under the clothes in one snug ball then their heads might have suffered from that thoughtless avalanche.
    The winter was the worst in living memory, and in an igloo built around my grandad’s tree, Billy and I ate cakes and chocolate that we’d stolen from shops, looking out through a window-hole towards the gate in case anyone should come in after us. Our knees were wet on the floor of snow and soil, but it was our hideout that no one would imagine man or beast to be in, and we sat for hours in silence like two vagabonds waiting to be led off and hanged. The true and dreadful world was beyond the ice, and in our tomb of refuge we were untouchable because no grown man could crawl down that inlet of a hole – though at night in bed I dreamed of a pickaxe splitting through the ice-dome roof and barely missing Billy and me.
    When spring came our house melted into the soil, till only a patch of black earth was left around the tree. Billy and I climbed over a wall off the High Street and found a fruiterer’s cart inside that was loaded for his next day’s outing. We threw as many tins as we could over the wall and packed them into Billy’s barrow, pushing it away in the dark. We stopped by Billy’s cellar to lift off the grating and roll down his part of the loot, which fell softly on to the children’s bed. His underworld parents thought it food from heaven, and stowed it in the sideboard. Grandma was glad of my share, and opened two tins of chunks that night to have with our bread and butter.
    I saw a policeman and the man who owned the fruit barrow come into the gate, and for the first time shot up Grandad’s tree, to the topmost branches, without any effort at all. They begged me to come down, but I hung on like a cat, eyes paralysed at that half-circle waiting to drag me to the darkest prison as soon as my feet touched earth. But a bigger voice than mine had a say in what I did, for the branch snapped, and as it splintered somewhere behind my feet I felt that this was my plain death, that at lucky seven years I was bound for hell, and shouted in terror as I felt myself flying down.
    Arms spread wide like a bird’s wings, as if to clutch at the horizon and hold myself safe, I hit the ground before the branch, and felt it bounce by my side a half-second later. I was stunned and scratched, and some of my teeth were loose, but otherwise I was sound enough when Grandmother carried me into the house and sat me down; screaming all the while at the policeman: ‘Murderers! Murderers! You’d kill a child for a few tins of fruit!’ My grandfather went into the parlour with the policeman and the fruitseller, and settled everything with ten shillings recompense, and a few glasses of best Irish whiskey.
    The next day I skulked around the garden before he got up. Grandmother had gone shopping, and I suddenly saw him at the back door beckoning me. ‘What for?’ I said.
    â€˜Come here, my boy.’
    When I got close he gave me a ferocious slap across the face that bundled me against the shed. He picked me up and threw me half across the garden: ‘Next time, don’t get caught, d’you hear me? Never get caught.’ He slammed the door and went in to eat his breakfast.
    It was all right for him, but how was it possible to separate getting caught from stealing? If anybody could tell me, I’d listen eagerly. I was forbidden to leave the garden for a week, but got out before then by a bit of skilful climbing and ran off to find Billy King. Putting my face to the cellar grate I softly called his name, then louder when he didn’t answer, and louder still. Neither he nor