Street Child Read Free Page B

said. ‘There’s nothing we can do for her.’
    ‘I’m not taking them there,’ another voice said. ‘Prison would be better than there. Tell them we caught the boy stealing, and let them put them both in prison.’
    ‘Someone stole my horse,’ Jim heard himself saying. He couldn’t keep his voice steady. ‘I didn’t steal anything.’
    ‘Give him his horse back,’ someone else said. ‘It’s all he’s got, ain’t it? A pair of boots what’s too big for him, and a wooden horse. Give it back.’ There was a burst of laughter and some children broke away from the group and ran off.
    The next minute there was a shouting from the far end of the street, and the people who had been crouching round Jim and his mother stood up and moved away. He heard other voices and looked up to see two policemen. ‘Get up!’ one of the policeman ordered. Jim struggled to his feet. ‘And you! Get up!’ the other one said to Jim’s mother. She lay quite still.
    The first policeman waved his hand and a boywith a cart ran up. Between them they lifted Jim’s mother onto it. Jim watched, afraid.
    ‘Take ’em to the workhouse,’ the policeman said. ‘Let them die in there, if they have to.’ The boy begun to run then, head down, skidding on the snowy road, weaving the cart in and out of the carriages, and Jim ran anxiously behind. They came at last to a massive stone building with iron railings round it. Weary people slouched there, begging for food. The boy stopped the cart outside the huge iron gates and pulled the bell. Jim could hear it clanging in the distance. At last the gates were pulled open by a porter who glared out at them, his lantern held up high.
    ‘Two more for you,’ said the boy. ‘One for the infirmary, one for school.’ The porter led them into a yard. There on the steps on each side of the main door stood a man and woman, as straight and thin and waxy-faced as a pair of church candles, staring down at them. The boy held out his hand and was given a small coin, and the master and matron bent down and lifted Jim’s mother off the cart and carried her into the house. The boy pushed his cart out and the porter clanged the gates shut.
    The matron poked her head sharply round the door.
    ‘Get in!’ she told Jim, and pulled him through. ‘You come and get scrubbed and cropped.’
    The doors groaned to. They were in a long corridor, gloomy with candle shadow. In front of them a man trudged with Jim’s mother across his shoulder.
    ‘Where’s Ma going?’ Jim asked, his voice echoingagainst the tiles like the whimpering of a tiny, scared animal.
    ‘Where’s she going? Infirmary, that’s where she’s going. Wants feeding and medicine, no doubt, and nothing to buy it with neither.’
    ‘Can I go with her?’
    ‘Go with her? A big strong boy like you? You can not! If you’re good, Mr Sissons might let you see her tomorrow. Good, mind! Know what good means?’ The matron closed her ice-cold hand over his and bent down towards him, her black bonnet crinkling. Her teeth were as black and twisted as the railings in the yard.
    She pulled Jim along the corridor and into a huge green room, where boys sat in silence, staring at each other and at the bare walls. They all watched Jim as he was led through the room and out into another yard.
    ‘Joseph!’ the matron called, and a bent man shuffled after her. His head hung below his shoulders like a stumpy bird’s. He helped her to strip off Jim’s clothes and to sluice him down with icy water from the pump. Then Jim was pulled into rough, itchy clothes, and his hair was tugged and jagged at with a blunt pair of scissors until his scalp felt as if it had been torn into pieces. He let it all happen to him. He was too frightened to resist. All he wanted was to be with his mother.
    He was led back into a huge hall and told to join the queue of silent boys there. They stood with their heads bowed and with bowls in their hands. There were hundreds and hundreds of