Free Street Child by Berlie Doherty Page A

shouted.
    Jim panted, trying to slide his shovel under the lumps of coal again, and Nick threw his down and swore at him. He banged his hand across the back of Jim’s head and came to stand behind him, reaching round Jim so his hands were gripping the haft just above Jim’s own, forcing Jim to swing into his own level rhythm of shovelling and lifting, shovelling and lifting. When he let go Jim’s hands were burning. Jim did his best to keep up, lifting just two or three coals at a time to Nick’s shovelful, bending and lifting, bending and lifting as if this was all there was to do in the world. At last the basket was full. Nick yelled up to White-face and the bucket creaked away from them as it was winched upon its rope to the top storey of the building.
    Nick swung himself up on to the hatch boards, and somehow Jim pulled himself up after him, rolling well away from the dog. Day had come, grey as pigeons.
    The man picked up a pail and emptied water out of it into a cooking pot on a small iron stove. ‘Get some more,’ he said to Jim. ‘There’s a pump in the yard.’
    As Jim jumped across to the planks of the landing stage he heard Nick say to the dog, ‘Watch him, Snipe.’ The dog loped after him, skulking round his legs as he ran, nipping his ankles. From the back of the warehouse he could hear the rumble of the coals as they slid down a chute onto the waiting cart. The empty basket creaked down again towards the Lily.
    Jim pumped water into the pail and ran as steadily as he could back to the lighter, the water slopping out against his legs as Snipe nosed against him. Nick had lit a fire in the stove and he poured some of the water onto a mess of gruel in the cooking pot.
    ‘Stir that,’ he said to Jim. ‘And don’t take all day.’
    Jim watched over the gruel until it was beginning to thicken, then lowered himself down into the hold again and swung painfully back into Nick’s rhythm. His stomach was beginning to growl with hunger. When the next basket was full they went back up and Nick ladled the gruel into two bowls. They ate it fast, squatting on their haunches by the heat of the stove, and when the basket was lowered down again they left their bowls and set back to work.
    They spent the entire day shovelling coal in this way. There were tons and tons of it. From time totime the white face would appear at the window and shout down to them that the cart was full and that they would have to wait for another. At these times they both stretched themselves full length on the hatch boards of the Lily , cold though they were. Jim would fall asleep immediately and would be kicked awake by Nick, or roused by a shout from White-face that the basket was coming down again. His bones seemed to set while he slept. He could hardly kneel or stand, but he was so afraid of Nick and of the yellow-eyed dog that he lumbered up like an old man and hobbled to his job.
    A long time after dark, White-face shouted down that he was going home and they could finish for the day. Jim could hardly crawl by then. His shoulders felt as if they had knots of pain in them that would never undo. Nick put some potatoes in the pot and passed Jim some water to drink. He gurgled it down, his throat dry and parched with coal-dust, and dozed off again until the potato was ready. He ate it clutched in his palm, burning his skin, peeling it with his teeth the way Nick did. He was glad of it, and of the heat from the fire. He saw that Nick ate meat with his potato and that he tossed what he didn’t want of it to Snipe. During the entire day he had only spoken about a dozen words to Jim.
    When he had finished his meal Nick belched loudly and climbed off the lighter onto the plankway. Jim could hear him trudging past the warehouse and up the alley, and guessed he would be making for one of the alehouses behind the wharf. He was glad. All he wanted now was to go to sleep. There was a woodenlocker with two benches, and he guessed that these were to