The Urchin's Song by Rita Bradshaw Read Free Book Online Page B

straightened. Gertie was such a tiny little scrap of a thing, and her own father had been going to give her to people who would make her do that . Until the conversation with Vera concerning the shadow over her name, Josie hadn’t fully understood what that entailed, in spite of having slept in the same room as her parents until she had bought the desk-bed for herself and Gertie. Vera’s brief but explicit explanation as to what her older sisters’ occupation actually meant had led on to an equally frank exposition of the facts of life, for which Josie had been thankful. She knew her mother would never have talked of such things but she hadn’t felt embarrassed with Vera; you just couldn’t somehow, Vera wasn’t like that. Perhaps it was because Vera had never had any children of her own, but Josie had always felt that the woman was part second mother, part sister, part best friend . . . oh, a whole host of things. Josie made a decision there and then. Vera would help them; she had never been afraid of their da like most folk.
    ‘Come on.’ Josie opened the door leading into the hall and, after ascertaining that the living-room door was still closed, she led Gertie into the darkness where, surprisingly, a candle was flickering.
    ‘Josie, lass? Is that you?’ Maud and Enoch were sitting on the top tread of the stairs, Enoch clutching a tin candlestick holder. ‘What’s bin happenin’, lass?’ Maud enquired in a stage whisper. ‘Sounded like someone’d bin murdered.’
    ‘You wait there.’ Josie pushed Gertie to the front door before giving the old couple a rapid explanation.
    ‘Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bloke.’ This was from Enoch, who had never had any time for Bart. ‘Good on you, lass, he’s had that comin’ for a long time to my way of thinkin’. An’ don’t you worry about your mam neither; me an’ Maud’ll look out for her right enough an’ spit in his eye in the bargain.’
    ‘Thank you, Mr Tollett.’ The kindness was weakening, and now Josie turned to Gertie again, her voice thick and verging on harshness as she said, ‘Stay there, mind,’ before she walked from the stairs to the living-room door, thrusting it open and standing in the aperture as she surveyed the scene within.
    Her father was sitting slumped on one of the hardbacked chairs and he was cradling the arm she had struck with the poker; it was all bloody. Jimmy and Hubert were standing either side of Bart, and one of Hubert’s hands was resting on his father’s knee.
    It struck Josie that their pose was that of a picture she had seen in a storybook one of her old schoolfriends had brought in one day. In the book, the father was about to kiss his sons good night before their pretty mother took them up to bed. Bart had clearly been speaking before she had opened the door but now he was silent, his eyes like two chips of blue glass as they fastened on her white face.
    It was her mother, still sitting where Josie had left her, who broke the silence, saying, ‘Lass. Oh, lass.’
    ‘We’re going, Mam.’
    ‘The hell you are.’ Her father had jerked in the chair as he’d spoken, the movement taking all the colour out of his face and causing the spate of cursing that followed.
    ‘We are and you can’t stop us.’ Josie now looked straight at Jimmy and she made her voice sound like it needed to sound. ‘And if he’s told you to try and follow us, you or Hubert, I’ll use this poker again, I swear it.’
    She saw Hubert’s eyes widen, and Jimmy turn to their father, saying, ‘Da?’ and knew instantly that her hunch had been right.
    ‘I’ll see me day with you, girl. You’ll live to regret this night.’
    Josie held her father’s malevolent gaze as she replied, her voice shaking slightly in spite of all her efforts to control it, ‘I won’t regret it, not ever. You’re bad - evil, you are. I know what you made Ada and Dora do, and you’re not making Gertie do that. I’ll . . . I’ll tell the constable