to you.’ He watched coils of smoke stalk and twine in the still air and sang ‘Tobacco’s but an Indian weed’, a song Dan Rymer taught us once when we were roaming about and met him on the Wapping Steps.
Grows green in the morn, cut down at eve …
Ishbel kicked him. ‘Miserable,’ she said.
He laughed and continued and I joined in. We’d sat on the Wapping Steps with Dan. Dan smoked a long white pipe, it stayed in the corner of his mouth while he sang:
The pipe that is so lily white,
Wherein so many take delight;
It’s broken with a touch,
Man’s life is such …
And we’d all joined in the chorus:
Think of this when you smoke tobacco.
We sang it round the yard sometimes with Cobbe, and laughed. But we could never remember all the words, nor could we now, so we gave it up and lay for a long time in comfortable silence, till Ishbel said in a small, sad voice, ‘I’ll have to go back now, I suppose.’
Tim opened his eyes and stroked her foot. They were not identical, but not far off. His chin was longer, her hair a shade darker. She had dimples on both sides, large, flickering, nervous things that flashed on and off. He had none. It must be funny to look at another face and know it’s just like your own. Like looking in a mirror. Sometimes they stared into one another’s faces as if fascinated, and once I’d seen them close their eyes and explore each other’s features with their fingers, hers bloody from biting, his long and graceful, like blind people do. It made them laugh.
We sighed, tossed the empty bottle overboard, slung our shoes round our necks and went in turn along the wall.
Mrs Linver made us have a wash, then gave us some broth, thin and delicious. The old man whittled, the fire crackled. There we were, the three of us sitting at the table messing about and niggling at one another, when their mother came bustling over and offered Ishbel a nip of gin. ‘A drop, lovey,’ she said, ‘takes the edge off.’
‘I’m not going,’ said Ishbel, not looking at her but taking the gin anyway.
‘Now, don’t play stupid.’ Mrs Linver scowled at the rat’s tail hair straggling over Ishbel’s shoulders. ‘Have you taken a comb to this all day?’
‘No.’
‘I can see that. You’d better start getting ready.’
‘Can’t make me. No one can make me.’ Ishbel glanced at me with mischief in her eye and suddenly smiled. You understand, her look said.
Her mother had turned away but swung round. ‘I haven’t got time,’ she snapped. ‘Up. Now.’
‘I’m not going.’ Ishbel knocked back the gin in one and slapped her lips.
‘Don’t be soft,’ said Tim. ‘It’s only work. We all got to work.’
‘I’ll work when I want to,’ she said.
‘If you don’t go down there tonight, they’ll not have you back.’ Her mother took hold of her arm and tried to yank her off the chair, but she just laughed and held onto the table. Only when it began to tilt and wobble, me and Tim hanging onto it, everything falling over and splattering about, only then did she let go and allow her mother to drag her to her feet.
‘I’m not going, you stupid woman!’ she shouted right in her mother’s ear.
Mrs Linver winced and rubbed the side of her head.
‘I’m tired!’ Ishbel screamed. ‘I don’t feel like dancing, can’t you get that into your stupid head?’
‘That’s dangerous!’ her mother screamed back. ‘You can make somebody go deaf doing that!’
‘I don’t care!’
That’s when her mother slapped her. I’d seen scores of these scenes, but this one was different. This time Ishbel slapped back. It was quick – a second – and there were her mother’s glasses askew, and her mother’s eyes exposed. We all gasped. Ishbel began to cry and fell on the floor by the old man’s knees. He shifted his benign glance towards the top of her head vaguely, scraping gently away at the scales on the tail of his latest mermaid.
Mrs Linver took off her spectacles. Her mouth was trembling, her eyes pouched and meekly narrowed. She wiped the glasses on her apron with shaky hands, glancing up at us, mournfully blind.
‘Oh, Ma!’ cried Tim, jumping up and running over to give her a hug.
‘You’ll find out one day, you selfish girl,’ Mrs Linver quavered.
Ishbel jumped up, face streaked with tears. ‘I know, I know, I know,’ she said harshly.
‘It’s all right, Ma,’ Tim said. ‘Don’t upset her any more, Ish. It’s all right now, Ma.’
‘Yes yes yes, of course of course of course.’ Ish smiled extravagantly and leapt to her feet. ‘Time for work! Time for bloody work.’ And off she flounced into the inner room.
She was sullen as we walked her to work twenty minutes later. She’d put on too much powder to hide the slap mark on her cheek, and her lips were too red. ‘You never stick up for me,’ she said to Tim.
‘That’s not true.’
‘You always take her side.’
‘What am I supposed to do? I have to go to work. I’m up four in the morning sometimes. So’s Jaf. Everyone has to work.’
‘I’m sick of it,’ she said and kicked a stone. When she looked up again her eyes were shiny.
I put my arms round her. ‘I’ll wait for you and take you home when you’ve finished,’ I said.
‘No need for that.’ Tim pushed against us.
She gave me a hug. ‘Thank you, Jaffy.’ The white grains of her powder got up my nose and made me want to sneeze. She looked like a doll. ‘You’re very noble.’
‘Noble?’ snorted Tim.
I wanted to hold onto her. But I let her go.
He came round her other side and placed himself in front of her, saying nothing. For a long time he just looked into her eyes, his own rough and tender. Something was passing between them, some brother–sister thing I could have no part in. His shoulders were hunched, his lower lip pendant. There was something old in his face. Where it was coming from I couldn’t tell. She softened visibly.
We walked on, the three of us separate. At the Malt Shovel door, she turned to me and said, ‘You might as well run along home now, Jaffy. Thanks ever so.’
‘She’s got to get ready now,’ Tim said.
Ma was out when I got home. I remember I took down Dan Rymer’s telescope
