Street Child. Berlie Doherty

even more frightening than the wailings of the mad people. Joseph sidled over to Jim that first morning and swung his arm across the boy’s shoulder, bringing his head round to mutter down Jim’s ear. “Now, them’s the boys what tried to run away. They catch ’em and beat ’em and stick ’em in there till they’re good. Remember that.”

      After the cold wash in the yard Jim had to help to clean it out with brooms twice as tall as he was. They had to sweep it till the ground was bare and clean, even if hundreds of leaves had fallen in the night and come drifting over the high walls. At breakfast the boys queued up with their bowls in their hands for bread and tea. The bread was meant to last for every meal, but if Jim tried to save it he soon had it stolen by one of the older boys. He learnt to gulp his food down as quickly as they did; boiled meat at dinner time, cheese at night, all swallowed rapidly and in silence.

      Sometimes Mr Sissons read to them while they were eating, always Bible stories, and his whistly voice would glide round the echoing room over the clatter of knives and forks. Jim never listened to him. All he wanted to do was to think about his mother and Emily and Lizzie.

      But every now and then Mr Sissons stopped reading and lowered his book. He stared round the room, his eyes like round, glassy balls and his fingers cracking together. Jim stopped eating, afraid that he had done something wrong. He sat with his spoon held somewhere between his mouth and his bowl, until the boy next to him nudged him into action again. Mr Sissons put down his book and jumped off his dais. He came gliding down the aisles between the long tables like a thin black shadow. Jim could just see him out of the corner of his eye. He daren’t for the life of him look up.

      The master lunged out at one of the boys at random, pulling him away from his bench by the back of his collar and sending his bowl flying and the contents spattering across the faces and clothes of the other boys.

      “Misbehaving, were you?” he said, his voice as dry as a hissing swan’s. “Eating like a pig? Get to the trough, animal!” And the boy crouched on his hands and knees in front of a pig’s trough that was always there, and had to eat his food from that, without a fork or spoon. Sometimes there were half a dozen people troughing, usually just for Mr Sissons’s amusement.

      “Please don’t let it be me. Please don’t let it be me,” Jim said deep inside himself as Mr Sissons glided past, and the air turned as cold as ice around him.

      Jim had no idea how long he had been at the workhouse when he first thought of trying to escape. At first it seemed an impossible idea, as impossible as making the pump in the yard turn into a tree and blaze out with leaves and blossoms. He remembered the runaway boys locked up in the shed in the yard for everyone to see. Even so, he had to try. One day, he promised himself, he would go. He would watch out every moment, sharp as a bird, for a chance to fly. And when he did he would never be caught.

      He was almost too afraid to allow himself to think about it, in case Mr Sissons pounced inside his thoughts and strapped him to a chair and beat him as he beat other reckless boys.

      It was only at night that he let himself imagine escaping, and it was as though he was opening up a box of secret treasure in the dark. Old Marion crept and wheezed her candle-path around the room where the boys lay in their boxes pretending to sleep, and Jim let his thoughts wander then. He would escape. He would run and run through the streets of London until he was a long, long way from the workhouse. He would find a place that was safe. And he would call it home.