Read The Urchin's Song for Free Online Page B

sidling up to the table and securing a piece before they returned to their seat quickly, mindful of the fact their father had been in a foul temper that morning.
    Gertie brought her mother’s plate next and then one each for her brothers, Josie carrying her sister’s and her own. All this was accomplished without a word, although the two rooms had been merry before Bart had arrived home. Josie had been teaching Gertie the first verse and chorus of Lottie Collins’s song, ‘Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay!’, purposely hamming it up in order to make her mother laugh. She loved it if she could make her mam smile. And the lads, entering into the spirit of the thing for once despite their earlier sulkiness at being dragged to school, had chimed in too.
    Starting on a demure note for:
    ‘A smart and stylish girl you see,
The Belle of good society.
Fond of fun as fond could be,
When it’s on the strict QT . . .’
    Josie had then struck a pose for her mother’s benefit, her hand on her hip and wiggling her bottom as the lads and Gertie had joined in the singing amid shrieks of laughter:
    ‘I’m not too young, not too old,
Not too timid, not too bold,
But just the very thing I’m told,
That in your arms you’d like to hold.
Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay, ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay . . .’
    They had carried on like this until tears of laughter had run down their mother’s thin cheeks, but there was no jollity when Bart Burns was around. Josie sat down at the table, her thoughts making her face straight. She couldn’t ever remember their da smiling or even talking softly to them. Why had her mam married him? The only good thing was that no sooner was he home than he was off out again.
    And as though her thoughts had prompted him, Bart now raised his head, looking at Gertie as he said, ‘You, you’re comin’ with me tonight,’ before turning to Jimmy and Hubert and adding, ‘An’ you two are stayin’ put.’
    As her father reached for another shive of bread and dunked it into the rich gravy on his plate, Josie and Gertie looked at each other in surprise. Of them all, her father had the least time for Gertie, his only communication with his youngest daughter usually consisting of a clip round the ear. Gertie felt herself beginning to tremble; she didn’t want to go anywhere with her da. Whatever he’d got in mind for her to do, it would only end with a beating because she hadn’t been quick enough or bright enough.
    But it was Shirley who brought Josie’s eyes opening wide as she said, her voice a whimper, ‘No, Bart, no. Not again.’
    ‘Shut your mouth, woman, or I’ll shut it for you.’
    ‘You . . . you’re not goin’ to make her--’
    ‘I said shut your mouth!’
    As her father’s hand rose, Josie cried shrilly, ‘Leave her be, Da! She hasn’t done anything!’ There was an edge of bewilderment to her words. Her mam never talked back to their da or questioned him about anything. There had been times - lots of times - when her da had taken every last penny they had and left them without coal or oil and not a bite to eat, and their mam hadn’t said a word. Not a word.
    ‘You can’t, Bart, not now. Not with Gertie. We don’t need the money like we did with Ada an’ Dora--’
    As the flat of her father’s big hand across his wife’s face sent the sick woman rocking backwards on her chair, Josie jumped to her feet, her chair skidding into the wall behind her. Without pausing to think she threw her plate of stew straight into her father’s angry face. Bart was stunned into immobility for a moment, more by the shock of one of his own daring to commit such a crime than by the liquid running down his face in rivulets. In those couple of seconds’ grace, Josie had sprung round the table to her mother’s side.
    The stew had been hot but not scalding, but by the torrent of abuse which now began to pour out of Bart’s mouth, one could have been forgiven for thinking he had been branded.
    In the same moment that Bart lunged