Street Child. Berlie Doherty
master’s dog. The book is full of vivid characters, some of whom could be plucked from a horror novel: Grimy Nick and his dog Snipe, Shrimps, the boy named for the toes showing through the end of his boots, the glittering but treacherous Juglini circus troupe. Acts of kindness – a hug from a woman in the workhouse, Rosie’s care for Jim, Josh on the Newcastle collier ship, the boys tending to a dying friend – these are rare moments that shine out from the darkness like diamonds in a shovel of coal.
But what really works is that you can’t help but fall in behind Jim, rooting for him to find a way out of the traps continually sprung on him. He’s not sweet – don’t expect an angelic Oliver Twist waiting for rescue. He’s a child of the streets with all the savvy that goes with that hard life. But you’ll feel for his overwhelming loneliness and when finally – thankfully – someone listens to his story, you’ll want to cheer.
Jim’s story makes you want to go out and change things so others don’t have to go through the same experience, therefore it comes as a shock to realise that he did exist. Maybe not this exact version of Jim, as Berlie Doherty admits, but it is true that Dr Barnado listened to a street child who sketched out a similar tale and then went on to set up the Barnado’s homes that offered such children a refuge.
Over a hundred years later, the homes still exist. But so does Jim. Maybe close to where you live in the stairwell of a housing estate, or further off in a slum in a developing country, there are millions of Jims and his sisters living today. I felt it was important to listen to Jim’s tale, but it did also make me wonder how many untold stories there are out there and what we can do about it. What do you think?
Julia Golding
Julia Golding is the author of over 13 novels for young people, including The Diamond of Drury Lane, a historical novel about a feisty orphan called Cat Royal, living in an Eighteenth century London theatre, which won the Waterstone’s Children’s Book Prize and the Nestlé Smarties Gold Medal in 2006. Before becoming a writer, she worked as a diplomat in Poland and later became a policy adviser for Oxfam, somehow fitting in a doctorate at Oxford and three children along the way.
Jim Jarvis. Want to know who that is? It’s me! That’s my name. Only thing I’ve got, is my name. And I’ve give it away to this man. Barnie, his name is, or something like that. He told me once, only I forgot it, see, and I don’t like to ask him again. “Mister”, I call him, to his face, that is. But there’s a little space in my head where his name is Barnie.
He keeps asking me things. He wants to know my story, that’s what he tells me. My story, mister? What d’you want to know that for? Ain’t much of a story, mine ain’t. And he looks at me, all quiet.
“It is, Jim,” he says. “It’s a very special story. It changed my life, child, meeting you.”
Funny that, ain’t it? Because he changed my life, Barnie did.
I can’t believe my luck, and that’s a fact. Here I am with food in my belly, and good hot food at that, and plenty more where that came from, he says. I’m wearing clothes that smell nice and that don’t have no holes in, neither. And I’m in this room where there’s a great big fire burning, and plenty more logs to put on it so it won’t just die off. There’s just me and him. The other boys are upstairs in their hammocks, all cosy in the big room we sleep in. And downstairs there’s just me and him, special.
I want to laugh. I’m so full of something that I want to laugh out loud, and I stuff my fist in my mouth to stop myself.
Barnie gives me that look, all quiet. “Just tell me your story.”
My story! Well. I creep back to the fire for this. I hug my knees. I close my eyes, to shut out the way the flames dance about and the way his shadow and mine climb up and down the walls. I shut out the sound of the fire sniffing like a dog at a rat-hole. And I think I can hear someone talking, very softly. It’s a woman’s voice, talking to a child. I think she’s talking to me.
“Mister,” I says, just whispering so’s I don’t chase the voice away. “Can I tell you about my ma?”
Jim Jarvis hopped about on the edge of the road, his feet blue with cold. Passing carriages flung muddy snow up into his face and his eyes, and the swaying horses slithered and skidded as they were whipped on by their drivers. At last Jim saw his chance and made a dash for it through the traffic. The little shops in the dark street all glowed yellow with their hanging lamps, and Jim dodged from one light to the next until he came to the shop he was looking for. It was the meat pudding shop. Hungry boys and skinny dogs hovered round the doorway, watching for scraps. Jim pushed past them, his coin as hot as a piece of coal in his fist. He could hear his stomach gurgling as the rich smell of hot gravy met him.
Mrs Hodder was trying to sweep the soggy floor and sprinkle new straw down when Jim ran in.
“You can run right out again,” she shouted to him. “If I’m not sick of little boys today!”
“But I’ve come to buy a pudding!” Jim told her. He danced up and down, opening and closing his fist so his coin winked at her like an eye.
She prised it out of his hand and bit it. “Where did you find this, little shrimp?” she asked him. “And stop your dancing! You’re making me rock like a ship at sea!”
Jim hopped on to a dry patch of straw. “Ma’s purse. And she said there won’t be no more, because that’s the last shilling we got, and I know that’s true because I emptied it for her. So make it a good one, Mrs Hodder. Make it big, and lots of gravy!”
He ran home with the pie clutched to his chest, warming him through its cloth wrapping. Some of the boys outside the shop tried to chase him, but he soon lost them in the dark alleys, his heart thudding in case they caught him and stole the pie.
At last he came to his home, in a house so full of families that he sometimes wondered how the floors and walls didn’t come tumbling down with the weight and the noise of them all. He ran up the stairs and burst into the room his own family lived in. He was panting with triumph and excitement.
“I’ve got the pie! I’ve got the pie!” he sang out.
“Ssssh!” His sister Emily was kneeling on the floor, and she turned round to him sharply. “Ma’s asleep, Jim.”
Lizzie jumped up and ran to him, pulling him over towards the fire so they could spread out the pudding cloth on the hearth. They broke off chunks of pastry and dipped them into the brimming gravy.
“What about Ma?” asked Lizzie.
“She won’t want it,” Emily said. “She never eats.”
Lizzie pulled Jim’s hand back as he was reaching out for another chunk. “But the gravy might do her good,” she suggested. “Just a little taste. Stop shovelling it down so fast, Jim. Let Ma have a bit.”
She turned round to her mother’s pile of bedding and pulled back the ragged cover.
“Ma,” she whispered. “Try a bit. It’s lovely!”
She held a piece of gravy-soaked piecrust to her lips, but her mother shook her head and turned over, huddling her rug round her.
“I’ll have it!” said Jim, but Lizzie put it on the corner of her mother’s bed-rags.
“She might feel like it later,” she said. “The smell might tempt her.”
“I