The Grace Stories Page 2

The old woman spat at the men’s feet and turned away.

  The horse at the front of the rank was white with kind dark eyes. There was a foam of sweat under his leather straps, stained pink with blood from where the straps cut into him. His back was bowed and his ribs jutted out down the length of his stomach like sticks under his skin. Grace stretched out her hand so he could smell her. She stroked his face – soft gentle strokes, down over his eyes and his forehead to his grey nose.

  ‘You’re lovely,’ she said to him, whispering into his whiskery muzzle and leaning into his shoulder. ‘If I were ever lucky enough to ride you, I would take off those traces and straps. I would ride bareback, and I would never use a whip, but you would always know just which way I wanted to go.’

  She breathed in his warm skin, and all of the hard things in her life disappeared. There was no more mud, no Uncle Ord and no gangs or hunger or cold. In a voice only the old white horse could hear, Grace sang:

  Lavender’s green, diddle diddle

  Lavender’s blue,

  You must love me, diddle diddle

  Because I love you.

  ‘That’s a Pegasus, that one is.’ The gypsy woman came up behind Grace, startling her. Grace turned.

  ‘That’s your horse, that is,’ the woman continued. ‘Pegasus. Like the one in the old stories, the one with wings that could fly over the world to where thunder is made.’ The woman grabbed Grace’s hand and looked into her eyes. ‘That’s your Pegasus!’ Then she turned and walked away, laughing and muttering to herself.

  Grace turned back to the white horse. ‘Did you hear what the gypsy lady said?’ She put her arms around his chest. ‘You are my Pegasus . . . with wings.’

  ‘Oi! Get away from there, you dirty mumper! Don’t be putting your muddy paws all over my horse!’

  The cab driver walked towards Grace, his face angry, but a lady, dressed all in black with a black lace parasol to match, stepped between them.

  ‘How much for a ride to Holborn Hill?’ she asked, in a voice as smooth as honey.

  The cab driver told the lady his price and she nodded in agreement. That money could feed us and pay our rent for a week, Grace thought, amazed.

  She stepped back from Pegasus as the cab driver helped the lady into the carriage. She watched him climb on to the driver’s seat up in front.

  He cracked the whip across the horse’s back. ‘Get up there, boy!’

  Pegasus flinched and tossed his head in the air, but stayed where he was. He looked tired.

  The cab driver brought down the whip again, harder this time. ‘Get along there, boy, move!’

  Pegasus moved slowly away from the rails. Down came the whip again. ‘Get up there!’

  Grace watched as her horse trotted away, pulling the heavy carriage behind him until he was swallowed up by the fog and traffic.

  ‘My horse, my Pegasus . . .’ she said to herself. ‘I hope I see you tomorrow. I hope they feed you well tonight – hay for your dinner and a long drink of cool clean water.’

  The thought of food reminded Grace how hungry she was – she tore herself away from the horses and, weaving her way through the busy traffic, headed back home to Water Lane.

  Night was falling and she had to be careful; she could easily be run over by one of the bigger carriages thundering along whose drivers couldn’t see her properly or were going too fast to be able to stop all their horses.

  She walked back down New Bridge Street where costermongers sold fried fish and bread. A mother walked by with her three children – all eating fried fish, their cheeks greasy with oil.

  I hope Uncle Ord will get enough money for the hammer to buy me a piece of fish, she thought. Or perhaps a potato with butter, and then breakfast tomorrow too. Maybe even a sweet roll with red jam washed down with honey tea . . .

  She walked up to their lodgings and pushed open the door. Uncle Ord wasn’t there. She lit a candle and checked to see if he had left anything for her to eat, but there was only water in the bucket in the corner. She took a drink and then checked the hearth to see if Uncle Ord had left any coal to make a fire. The hearth was empty.

  Grace knew where her uncle was – drinking at his favourite alehouse, The Pig and Whistle, with his friends from his sailor days. They would be telling stories about their adventures on the high seas.

  Grace was glad her uncle wasn’t home; she only wished he had left her some food. Maybe when he got home he would bring a pie – a surprise fish pie, steaming and hot – a reward for her work. The fish would be salty and there would be cheese in the pie too, so that it was creamy and its crust buttery and golden. And then there might be a Chelsea bun – her favourite. She imagined slowly unrolling the bun, sticky with brown sugar, and eating the currants hidden inside. Grace’s stomach grumbled.

  Grace went to her corner in the other room where she slept on a pile of sacks and rags, and pulled her blanket right over her head so that her breath made a warm cave for her to sleep in. It was getting harder to do now that she was almost eleven. There was more of her to feel the cold and the blanket didn’t cover her.

  She imagined that she was as rich as the lady with the lace parasol and could buy Pegasus from the cabbie. She could buy her own cart too, and they could sell yellow daisies at the Sunday markets on Clare Street. There would be enough money for raspberry biscuits and hay and apples. She would make a daisy chain and hang it around Pegasus’s neck and all the rich people would say, ‘How pretty, how lovely, how much for your daisies?’

  Grace curled up as small as she could under the blanket and sang a song to Pegasus:

  Lavender’s green, diddle diddle

  Lavender’s blue,

  You must love me, diddle diddle

  Because I love you.

  SOME time in the middle of the night, Grace, kept awake by her hunger, heard her uncle stumble through the door. He was drunk and singing to himself – a song about being free on the waves, sailing across the ocean on a ship as strong as oak.

  Grace imagined him when his leg was still strong, working with the rest of the crew – pulling the ropes, climbing the mast and sitting in the crow’s nest on the lookout for whales and pirates.

  Soon he went quiet and Grace heard him settle into his chair. She wished she could let him sleep, but if she didn’t ask for food now she would be without anything to eat until the end of tomorrow.

  Grace wrapped her blanket around her and felt her way through the darkness into the kitchen. Her uncle was staring into the hearth with his back to her. On the table burned a small gas lamp, casting a dim light over him. The room smelled of sweat, and alcohol.

  ‘Hello, Uncle Ord,’ Grace said, softly.

  He didn’t answer her. She shivered with cold and fear.

  ‘Uncle Ord? Uncle Ord? Did you sell the hammer?’

  Grace knew he had sold it and that was why he had been out so late – he’d had money to spend at The Pig and Whistle, but surely he couldn’t have spent all the money on drink?

  She took a deep breath. ‘It was a fine hammer, wasn’t it, Uncle? It must’ve fallen from one of the barges. Do you think that’s what happened?’

  Her uncle remained quiet. Grace pulled her blanket tighter around her.

  ‘Uncle Ord, did you . . . did you . . . ’

  At last he turned around; Grace could only see half his face, the other half was hidden in the shadows.

  ‘Did you . . . bring me anything to eat?’ she stammered.

  Uncle Ord’s eyes were red and his face pale. He didn’t speak; just stared at her long and hard as if she had done something terrible, as if he hated her. Grace was terrified.

  Finally, he spoke, slurring his words. ‘Anything to eat? Anything to eat? What do you think I am? Your servant? I never asked to have you, you little good-for-nothing! I did it for my sister. And what thanks do I get? You’re off all day stealing things and leading the runners to me door!’

  He picked up the kettle that Grace had left on the kitchen table and threw it at
her feet. The iron handle struck Grace’s bare toes and she cried out.

  ‘Get out of me sight!’ Uncle Ord shouted. ‘Or you’ll get the beating you deserve!’

  Grace went back to her pile of sacks and rags and pulled the blanket over her head. She squeezed her eyes shut as tightly as she could to hold back the tears. Even after she could hear her uncle snoring, his words ran through her head and kept her awake.

  At first light, Grace crawled out of bed. The cut in her heel was sore and her toes ached. She was cold and hungry. She crept into the kitchen. Her uncle slept in his chair, his head thrown back, mouth half-open, still snoring.

  Grace wanted to get away before her uncle woke. He was always angry in the morning when he’d been drinking the night before. Grace picked up her kettle where it lay on the floor, limped past her uncle and out the door.

  In the street, beggars and dogs and cats and maids, and drunk men sleeping in doorways, and orphans sleeping in piles were all rising to meet the morning. Grace knew there were thousands of children in London just like her. It had been that way for as long as she could remember.

  Uncle Ord talked about a time when London was a much quieter place, before machines began to take all the work away, leaving everybody in the country without jobs so that they had to come to the city to try to make a living. Pushing her way past mothers holding crying newborns, and toddlers with their hands outstretched begging for breakfast, Grace found it difficult to imagine it any other way.

  Grace knew she would have to wait at least until the end of the day before there was a chance of anything to eat.

  ‘At least I have somewhere to sleep,’ she said to herself, as she passed the children sleeping on the street. And Uncle Ord had never made her go for more than a day without food – surely he would buy her something this evening. As she walked past the street vendors selling plum duff and beef pies, her stomach ached.

  Down at the river the first mudlarks were already in the water. New barges had come in overnight and the boys from the Blackfriar’s gang were wading around them, ready to climb up the sides and knock off iron and coal for themselves.

  Grace’s toes were swollen. Didn’t Uncle Ord remember how important her toes were for finding things for him to sell?

  Grace watched Old Martha, her skirts hitched around her, back hunched, basket on top of her head, moving through the mud like an ancient bent bird. Old Martha couldn’t talk. Or maybe she was too tired to talk from being in the mud so long. Grace, toes not yet wet, watched the old woman dipping into the water with her bony arms. Will that be me when I grow up? she wondered.

  ‘Oi! Grace!’ Joe Bean waved at her from the water.

  Two boys from the Blackfriar’s gang waded in to shore with him, both of them bigger than Grace.

  ‘I want a word with you,’ he said. Although it was freezing, Grace flushed hot with fear. ‘What you get for that nice hammer you found yesterday?’

  Grace folded her arms across her chest and felt her heart pounding. ‘I haven’t got anything, Joe. Leave me alone.’

  ‘Where’re your manners gone, chavy?’ He tugged on her hair, half-playing, half-bullying. ‘Pay up! This is my bit of mud and you need to give me some money.’

  Grace stepped back. ‘It isn’t your mud. It isn’t anybody’s mud.’

  Why can’t they leave me alone? Grace thought. Yesterday was the first time I found anything as good as a hammer – why can’t I be allowed to have it?

  ‘If the hammer’s gone then you must have sold it, so you must have a deaner for Joe Bean,’ he said. ‘See what she’s got, lads.’

  Joe’s boys shoved her and grabbed her and tugged at her clothes to see if she had money hiding underneath. They yanked her hair and tried to pull the kettle from her hands.

  ‘Leave me alone,’ Grace shouted. ‘I told you I don’t have any money. And even if I did, I wouldn’t give it to you! I don’t owe you nothing!’

  Joe stuck his hand under his shirt and pulled out a short sharpened stick. He waved it in front of her. ‘See my chiv, girly. Don’t be messing with it.’

  Grace wrenched herself away from the boys, and ran out of the mud and away from the river.

  Joe Bean shouted after her. ‘We’ll be waiting for you, Gracie! You pay up just like everybody else! You’re no different! No different at all!’

  Grace ran into Chatham Square, crowded with people crossing the bridge to and from the south bank. She stopped and crouched against a wall, breathing so hard she thought she would faint. She dragged the air into her shaking body. Her mind was spinning.

  She would have to find a new bit of mud far away from Joe Bean and his boys, and start her day’s work, but she felt sick. And her uncle’s words rang in her ears: I never asked to have you . . . little good-for-nothing! They were mixed with Joe Bean’s words: You’re no different! No different at all!

  Grace had been scavenging in the mud every day since she was six years old – it was the only way she knew how to live – but suddenly she knew that she couldn’t go back in the mud. Whatever came next didn’t matter; it was over between Grace and the river.

  She turned away and went into the streets.

  GRACE made her way up to the cab rank on Fleet Street where she had first seen Pegasus. A carriage rolled by and the coach driver on top shouted down at her, ‘Out of the road!’ A gang of toshers, scavenging the sewers on the street for coins, pushed Grace when she got in their way. One of the boys in the gang grabbed at the empty kettle. If I lose my kettle, I’ll have nothing at all, she thought. When she yanked it back, the tosher cursed at her.

  A dustman drove by, and the coal dust rising from his cart made her cough and splutter. It seemed to Grace as though the whole world was bullying her.

  The cab rank was empty. Grace had been so looking forward to seeing her horse that she had never imagined that he wouldn’t be there. She was going to whisper to him about the flower cart. She was going to tell him about the daisy chain for his neck . . .

  Grace waited and waited for most of the day, but Pegasus didn’t come. Soon it would be time to go home. She had nothing to give her uncle from the river so there would be nothing to eat. Uncle Ord would be angry. Maybe he would beat her, just as he had threatened.

  If she couldn’t go back to the mud, then she couldn’t go back to Uncle Ord’s rooms on Water Lane. She would rather sleep on the street or under Blackfriar’s Bridge with the other orphans than starve to death while being cursed at by her drunk and angry uncle. It was a relief to know she wasn’t going back, but she was so hungry . . .

  Across the road, a man was selling apples from a barrow. If I ate one of those, she thought, then all of its red glowing magic would be inside me and I wouldn’t be hungry anymore.

  Grace crossed the street and hid behind a rubbish cart. She looked at the red fruit to see if just the sight of it would feed her. The apples shone, as if there was a light in every one.

  Her stomach felt as if it was turned inside out. The barrow of apples was so close. The fruit seller had turned his back. Surely he wouldn’t notice if I took a single apple? she thought.

  Grace knew the dangers. If you were caught stealing they took you to the front of Newgate Prison, tied a rope around your neck and everyone came to watch as they made you step off the platform. Her uncle had told her all about it.

  But if I touched one of those apples, she thought, it would warm my hands – it would warm my whole body. How wonderful it would be to eat one . . .

  Grace couldn’t resist a minute longer. She darted out from behind the cart and grabbed an apple. Then she ran.

  She felt no pain in her feet as she pushed past people and carriages; all she could feel was the glowing apple in her hands.

  She turned into the darkest alleyway she could find and squatted in the corner, waiting to see if anyone had followed her. But she was alone.

  She bit into the apple. At first she couldn’t taste anything, as if her tongue had forgotten how. But after a few more
bites, when she knew the apple was hers and nobody was taking it from her, she could taste it, and nothing else existed but its sweetness. Grace ate right down to the core and then she ate the core and the seeds and finally the small stem at the top. And she did feel better.

  She found a pile of old newspapers and some damp sacking filled with potato peelings. She tipped out the peelings, then she spread the sacking across an empty doorway. Pulling the newspaper over her, she leaned back against the doorframe and fell asleep. The apple had worked its magic and she was warm all over.

  ‘UP you get, move along!’ Grace woke the next morning when a woman holding a broom pushed open the door behind her. The woman tapped Grace with the broom, as if she would like to sweep her into the gutter with the rest of the dust and the dirt. ‘Go on, get up and be on your way!’

  It took Grace a minute to remember who and where she was. She was Grace, an orphan, and she didn’t go into the mud yesterday or go back to Uncle Ord’s lodgings. The last thing she remembered about herself was that Pegasus was her horse. Remembering this made her feel better.

  Grace walked in the direction of the Fleet Street cab rank, keeping a look out for Pegasus. Her foot throbbed; the bandage she had made for it had long since fallen away and the dirt had got in the cut and made it sore.

  The night before, she had run all the way here, to where the buildings were bigger and there were no poor folk. She looked around at the gentlemen in shining carriages, and the ladies carrying pink flower-patterned fans, and little girls in white dresses with buttons and lace stockings. Grace was the muddiest, hungriest, most ragged thing on the street, with only an empty kettle to her name and the memory of last night’s apple. She thought of Pegasus’s soft face and his dark eyes. Her Pegasus. That’s what the gypsy had said. Her horse. She didn’t need to feel so poor and ragged when she had a horse all of her own.

  When Grace reached the cab rank, she was careful not to let the fruit seller see her. She crouched against a stone pillar, waiting once again for Pegasus.