Free Street Child by Berlie Doherty Page B

lie on. He rolled himself up in his sacking. He was so tired that he fell asleep at once. Somehow through his sleep he heard Nick coming back, full of ale and good cheer, saw him tousling Snipe’s head and slipping him more meat from his pocket. He didn’t take the bench next to Jim but lowered himself down into the hold of the lighter, and Jim was glad of that too.
    Far out on the river tug-boats hooted. Beside Jim, the yellow dog snuffled into its paws and groaned.
    When Jim fell asleep again he dreamt of his first home, the cottage. Only it was made of coal, its walls and floors and ceilings were black and gleaming, reflecting the orange glow of the brazier. Each side of it his mother and father sat with their hands stretched over the fire for warmth. His mother was just as he remembered her, pale and quiet, her dark hair smoothed back. But his father, whose face he never saw in his dreams, looked just like Grimy Nick. He had a gap between his teeth and a frothy beard and grey thatchy hair, and his face was black with coal-dust, his eyes white rings like lights. Jim didn’t mind, in his dream, because it looked like a proper home, even though it was made of coal. And it had a name, he was sure of that. It was called the Lily.

14
The Waterman’s Arms
    Jim woke up before Grimy Nick. The river was overflowing with mist and seemed to be breathing with secrets, with dark looming shapes. When the mist began to lift they bloomed into life, like a city, street upon street of boats. He could see downriver to the long silver gleam of water, under the dark arches of a bridge, and he knew that far away from there it flowed out to the sea. He imagined slipping the knot of the Lily and drifting downstream with her past all the floating castles of tall sailing ships and out to the huge ocean.
    When Grimy Nick lumbered up from his dark hole he swore at Jim for letting the fire in the brazier go out. ‘You’d think we didn’t have any coal on board, you fool.’ He laughed at his own joke, a great startling whoop of laughter that set Snipe leaping up out of his sleep. Jim tried to laugh with him.
    ‘Get water from the yard,’ Nick snarled. ‘Start the day off right.’
    When Jim came back with his slopping pail he found Nick toasting fish by the fire. He threw a piece in one direction for Jim and some heads inanother direction for the dog. Then he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and belched.
    ‘Work!’ he told Jim. ‘When we clears this lot, we goes out for more, off one of them big boats. So don’t think yer work’s done. Yer work’s never done. Not while there’s coal in the ground.’
    It took them the whole of that day to clear the hold of coal. Jim thought every bone in his body must break before he’d finished, but Nick kept grimly on, shovelling and lifting and tipping, shovelling and lifting and tipping, his body a grunting shadow swinging across the glow of the lantern. ‘Work!’ Nick shouted at him, whenever he paused to rest, swinging his shovel round to crack across the boy’s back. Jim struggled to keep up. Sweat poured down him like rain, soaking into him, and when he rubbed his eyes the grit of coal-dust smarted and stung him. By the end of the day he couldn’t see what he was lifting or where he was tipping, and no sooner was the basket winched up than he was shovelling coals into empty space, and being shouted at by Nick for his stupidity.
    But at last the hold was empty. Nick went up to the desk in the warehouse to get his payment, then came back on board, jingling the coins in his pocket.
    ‘You’re only a bundle of sticks,’ he said to Jim, ‘but you’ve worked. If yer wants a bowl of mutton stew come with me to the alehouse, and I’ll see you’re set up.’
    Jim was so tired he would rather have slept, but he reckoned that Nick’s invitation was meant to be some kind of compliment. He didn’t dare turn it down. He stumbled after Nick, and the dog lopedbetween them, turning its