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I make a cautious tour of the aisles, cap pulled down to my chin. I’ve sprouted an inch and I bet I could take Reg on and trounce him good and proper. However, only a fool wastes his vigour on fisticuffs and I’m relieved to find neither hide nor hair of that particular gentleman. I take an invigorating breath and shove my cap to the back of my head.
This is where I should be: at the centre of things, where my ears din with clatter and clank. To my right, a raggle-taggle band blow trumpets, bang drums, scrape fiddles. To my left, an organ-grinder grinds. Straight ahead, the lads and lasses of the monkey-rank shout and laugh and waltz into taverns arm in arm. I am tugged this way and that, tempted by the barking of tripe-shop owners, fried-fish vendors and oyster-sellers. It’s the bustling, clanging symphony of this city and I love it: the rub of tweed on wool, of silk on serge, and all of it scented with coal dust and horse-shit and pepper and sweat and oil and electricity.
I need no penny paper when I have this. Murder, highwaymen and horrors come a poor second to these wonders. I am on the brink of manhood, with a taste for the salty, the savoury, the spicy. I appreciate things my childish self could neither understand nor appreciate.
Now that I have established the coast is clear, it is time to find some folk to fall in with. I spy a knot of likely fellows at a fried-potato stand, all of them smaller than yours truly. I can read boys faster than my A, my B and my C and this lot are floundering at the periphery of the action, clearly in need of a commanding officer. I saunter to their rescue.
‘Hey now!’ I cry. ‘You scrawny little shitwipes. I’ve not seen you in a donkey’s age.’
Before they have a chance to scratch their verminous noggins and ask who I am, I dead-arm one of the shortest with a sly blow. We share a laugh at his expense, watching him pirouette, piping ow ow over and over and threatening all kinds of punishment he is unlikely to deliver.
‘Coo,’ declares one. ‘That’s a jolly jape.’
‘You got Cyril good and proper,’ chirps another.
Cyril rubs his funny bone and shoots me a murderous glance.
‘That’s just for starters,’ I say. ‘Plenty more where that came from.’
I glance about and my eye falls on an effete youth who looks like he’s stepped off the wall of an art gallery. I imagine the picture: Narcissus Clothed, reclining on his elbow and regarding his fat face in the water. On his arm is a girl with skin as pale as that on a tapioca pudding.
‘Look at him,’ I jeer, jerking my thumb over my shoulder. ‘Those trousers. So baggy he may as well be wearing a skirt.’
I wink at my new pals, sneak behind the milksop and punch his elbow. It is so easy that it hardly counts as sport.
‘I say!’ he quacks, inspecting the numb limb.
‘Pansy!’ I yell. ‘Flapping about like a big girl’s blouse!’
I wait for his face to fold, the tears to fall. He raises his uninjured hand to shoulder height and for the space of a breath I think he is going to slap me. But he sweeps his fingers under the flowing curtain of his hair, flips it back and stares at me down his long nose. His lips tweak in a half-smile and I hear his thoughts, clear as the cry of a coal-heaver.
You piece of dirt. When you leave here, you’ll tramp to your broken home on your broken street in your broken boots to eat supper with your broken teeth. I shall hop into a brougham and be whisked away to a grand place you’ll never know.
I hold my smile steady, but it is the greatest weight I’ve ever lifted and near breaks my chin to keep it there. I poke out my tongue and blow a raspberry. His lass sticks her nose in the air.
‘What a low class of person frequents this place,’ she declares.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ drawls the aesthete. ‘Vulgar folk are so fascinating.’
She clings to her limp companion, devouring him with eyes so ravenous you’d think them organs of digestion.
‘No point casting your hook at him, love,’ I shout as they flounce off. ‘Looks like he couldn’t raise a smile.’
‘I can never understand how these chaps have always got a pretty girl in tow,’ grumbles one of my crew.
‘Pretty?’ I sneer. ‘Peaky, more like,’ I say. ‘A skinny ghost in need of a plate of pie and peas.’ They snigger, much cheered by my observation. I shall not let that flaccid flower-boy spoil the evening. ‘As for him, what a wet herring!’
‘Nah,’ interrupts Cyril. ‘Sprat, more like.’
Their attention swings away, towards him.
‘Tiddler,’ I respond, and have them back again.
‘Stickleback,’ he says firmly. ‘Nothing smaller than a stickleback.’
I rack my brains and, in the time it takes, I lose them. Cyril rattles off a list of fishy insults and they laugh like hyenas at his feeble efforts.
‘Oh, stop it, Cyril,’ wheezes one. ‘I’ll piss myself at this rate.’
‘Too late. Already have done,’ guffaws Cyril.
He makes a show of walking in bow-legged circles, kicking make-believe droplets off his clogs. He wears such a pained expression that the whole lot of them lean against each other, cackling. I don’t know why everyone is paying him such mind. He’s not that funny. Besides, Cyril is minced mutton of a name, in my opinion.
I point out an ice-cream cart and stand everyone a twist of hokey-pokey, with much flourishing of my largesse. It’s a race to gobble the stuff before it soaks through the paper, and some of us are more proficient than others. Me, I like the sensation of ice trickling down my fingers. I draw out the eating of it to such a marvellous degree that I make a mess of my shirt from collar to cuffs. Cyril nods at me.
‘You’re going to cop it off your ma,’ he observes.
‘Take the broom to you, she will,’ says another. ‘That stuff’s murder to get out.’
‘You’ll not sit down for a week.’
I shrug and wipe my lips on my sleeve for good measure. ‘My mam does exactly what I tell her,’ I reply with a haughty air. ‘Mam! Scrub my cuffs! That’s what I say.’
‘As heck as like,’ scoffs Cyril.
‘You don’t know my mam. I shall stride in and declare, Mother! I have a job for you! Wash my shirt!’ I hitch my thumbs behind my lapels and puff out my chest.
‘What a windbag you are,’ says Cyril.
‘That’s not the half of it,’ I continue, rather wishing he’d button his lip. ‘Be quick about it! Chop chop!’ I make a pantomime of an old dame, one hand pressed to my back and tugging my forelock. ‘Yes, Gnome!’ I squawk. ‘As fast as ever I can, Gnome!’
They giggle, as much out of nervousness as awe. I do not care if they take me for an empty-headed boy, all hot air and nothing else. I’ll not be outdone by a midget like Cyril. There’s room for only one Caesar and I wear those laurels.
We plough on, avoiding the slip and slide around the cow-heel stall. Drawn like wasps to jam, our promenade carries us past a confectionery stand. I eye the jars of wine gums, slab toffee, liquorice, Pontefract cakes and coltsfoot rock. The ground crunches with sugar. The girl weighing out the sweets has a starved look: chewed-down nails, hair draggled in sticky ringlets.
‘How about a lollipop, miss?’ says Cyril, poking his tongue against the inside of his cheek in a suggestive fashion.
I groan and roll my eyes. That’s not how to get a handful of mint balls without paying. Her cheeks flush and she fiddles with the bun on the back of her head, where some tendrils of hair have worked loose.
‘You look sweet,’ I say. That’s the way to do it.
Cyril throws me a pitying look. ‘I’ve got a stick of rock if you fancy a gobble,’ he adds, louder.
‘Ooh,’ says one of the younger boys.
‘Now there’s a thing,’ says another.
‘Hur, hur,’ a third.
‘You buying, or wasting my time?’ the girl trills pertly. ‘No money, no service.’
She serves half an ounce of coloured sugar to an urchin who looks too young to be out, and a quarter-pound of cough candy to a fellow in a leather apron who calls her Maggie.
Cyril makes a snorting noise. ‘Name as plain as her face.’
‘You’ll get nothing if you talk to her like that,’ I say.
‘Who says I want to get my hands on her pear drops?’ He shakes his head. ‘You young ’uns don’t know the first thing—’
‘Young! I’m twice your age.’
‘Nah,’ he says with an appraising glance. ‘You’ll understand when your balls have dropped.’
‘Better than being a short-arse.’
He yawns and stretches his arms. ‘You lot can stay here and spoon with ugly lasses if you want. I’m getting bored.’
He saunters off, shooting a wily grin over his shoulder. His sheep follow, one by one. Maggie watches his cock-of-the-walk strut with something approaching wistfulness. The last lad to desert me tugs my arm.
‘You coming?’
‘I’ll follow when I’m ready,’ I declare.
I’ll be damned if I’ll be a rat trundling after that particular piper. I’ll show him. I’ll get half a pound of humbugs out of Maggie, so I will, and share it with them all, except ruddy Cyril. Then we’ll see what’s what and who’s who. Maggie weighs out an ounce of monkey nuts for a pair of lovebirds. I take off my cap and, hugging it to my chest, furnish her with my nicest smile.
‘What a rude boy,’ I chirp with a virtuous expression that’d shame the angel Gabriel. ‘I wouldn’t address a young lady so.’
‘You still here?’ she says with a glare that could curdle milk.
It’s Cyril she ought to be angry with, not me. Female thinking. It’s got me stumped. I gear up to give her a piece of my mind when my eye is drawn to a lady hovering over the table.
It may have been months and months ago, but I recognise Jessie, the woman who tipped the scales in my favour over that nasty business with Reg. She’s dressed in fusty taffeta and on her feet are velvet slippers trimmed with beads around the toe. They’ll last a couple of weeks, I muse; if she steps into a puddle, a lot less.
I buck up considerably. I draw closer, full to bursting with tales of my new cronies, when I notice how queerly she is behaving. She points at a dish of treacle toffee, yet as soon as Maggie prepares to weigh a portion, she interrupts.
‘No, not that!’ she says. ‘Here now!’
She indicates the sugared almonds, as if they’re what she meant all along. When the jar is lifted for approval she shakes her head.
‘Dear me, no,’ she says. ‘Not the almonds.’
She waggles her fingers in the direction of a canister of humbugs. As she does so, the long tippets of her muff dangle across the table and obscure what she’s doing with her other hand. Calm as you like, she is plucking chocolates from the shelf and sliding them into the side of her skirt, secreting them in what must be a hidden pocket. With a grunt, Maggie hefts the humbugs.
‘No, no!’ pouts Jessie, tossing her head. The flowers on her hat tremble with indignation.
Now she wants the barley sugar. What a pretty glove she wears on her right hand: crimson leather with emerald stitching, bright as a banner. Only a philistine would pay attention to her light-fingered left hand when distracted by the display of the right.
Maggie scowls at this tiresome female who can’t make up her mind. She remains polite, for the customer is always right, even if they spend an age choosing between an ounce of Everton mints and an ounce of liquorice. Jar after jar is proffered, to pretty shakes of the head. All the while, Jessie fills her pocket with steady grace, stealing the sweets as if she has a claim to them.
Finally, she decides upon the treacle toffee, the very thing she started with. While Maggie weighs out two ounces, Jessie extracts pennies from the embroidered purse hanging on her arm. She accepts the twist of paper and inclines her head in thanks before gliding away. She cocks her elbow and turns out her toes, kicking them to each side so that passers-by may glance down and remark on the trimness of her ankles. I follow her along the line of tables and draw up alongside.
‘Give us a toffee, missus,’ I say, just loud enough for her to hear.
She looks down her nose. ‘In your dreams. Hop it, you little twerp.’
‘Give us one of those chocolates, then.’
‘What chocolates?’ she says with a dangerous tilt of her eyebrow.
I slide closer and pat her skirt, which crackles with something very like brown paper. She must’ve lined the pocket.
‘That’s clever,’ I say. ‘So they don’t melt.’
‘Shut up,’ she hisses.
‘You must have quarter of a pound in there,’ I continue. ‘You won’t miss one.’ I jerk my chin in the direction of the confectionery stand. ‘Maggie will, though. Sooner or later. Specially if I tell her.’
She looks me up and down, swinging her purse on its chain. ‘You’re a cheeky toad. I’ll give you one and no more. Not here, though.’
‘Course not,’ I say with a grin. ‘I’ll stand you a cup of tea. Fair exchange is no robbery.’
She brays laughter. ‘Charmed, sir. Quite charmed.’
I crook my elbow. She laughs again, gently this time, and places her scarlet glove upon my arm. As we proceed through the market hall I have the odd sensation of being a tugboat pulled up alongside a freighter. I spot Cyril and the lads, treat them to a roguish wink and am gratified to see their silly mouths flop open as they get an eyeful. I may only come to her shoulder, but I’m in the company of the finest lass in Shudehill and that trumps anything that Cyril can muster. No one’s ever going to get the jump on me again. Never. And certainly not a worm like him.
At the tea-stand I order two cups and slap down sixpence, chest puffed up with pride. The tea-man leans across the counter and fills up our mugs.
‘Got yourself a new bully, Jessie?’ he says with a chuckle.
She barks a quick, businesslike laugh. ‘Him? He’s my bonny lad.’
She puts her arm around me and squeezes. I don’t push her away; not this time. It’s over as fast as a sneeze, so it’s not like anyone notices. She shovels spoonful after spoonful of sugar into her cup.
‘You’ll suffocate that tea,’ I say.
She takes an enthusiastic slurp. ‘The cup that cheers,’ she declares. ‘Well, now. A gently brought-up lady such as myself ought to be formally introduced to a gentleman before she takes tea with him, don’t you think?’
‘Indubitably,’ I reply, warming to the theme. ‘Yet I see no appropriate soul upon whom I may call to accomplish such a task. Should I go? Must we part so soon?’
‘That would be a pity,’ she sighs.
With her index finger she taps her chest, as though sounding out the heart beneath the bodice. There’s a light in her eye that suggests she’s used to playing games, but rarely of this sort. I raise my cap.
‘You have forgotten. We are already acquainted, fair damsel.’
‘We are?’ She looks me up and down, appraising me as keenly as she would a fur coat for moth-holes.
‘You came to my aid, many moons ago, when I was sore affrighted and in need of succour.’
