Shadows of the Workhouse

boats.
    “No middlemen here. Best prices,” hisses Tip out of the corner of his mouth.
    Each boat has its blackboard and the master, in his white apron, walks up and down calling his prices. The holds are filled with oysters and sand, which a man turns over with a spade, rattling the masses of shells.
    Tip discusses price with the master, shakes his head and walks away, saying loudly to Frank, “I knows of better oysters dahn ve sewers.”
    The oyster merchant shouts after him. Tip ignores the shouts, and clambers over shrimp nets and weights to reach a fisherwoman, with huge muscular arms, shouting the price of shrimps. The master of the vessel is behind her, filling a jug with shrimps and letting them fall back like a shower of confectionery. Tip breaks the head off one, and sniffs it.
    “I wouldn’t give that to my dog,” he says and hands it to Frank, who doesn’t know what to do with it.
    Clambering over ropes, rigging, sails, cans of engine oil, netting, lobster pots, gangplanks, ladders, baskets, trays – all littered over the quayside in a seeming mass of confusion, Tip and Frank scramble the whole length of Oyster Street. Nothing is bought.
    Six o’clock is approaching. Tip snaps into action, his nonchalance leaving him as fast as he had assumed it. He returns to the fisherwoman, and buys shrimps at half her asking price, oysters for a third. Brill and dab he buys, which he had earlier disdained as “poison”, with a bucket of eels added, “to clear ’em”.
    Buying is over and the excitement has passed.

    Tip hired a porter – a starved-looking man of sixty – and refused to pay the sixpence the man asked.
    “Three pence, then,” said the man, humbly.
    “I’ll gi’ yer tuppence, take it or leave it. I can soon find another, stronger’n you, you miserable ol’ skele’on.”
    The man took it, and staggered out of the gate to where Tip and Frank had left the barrow.
    “An’ now for breakfuss,” said Tip.

A COSTER LAD

    The woods are lovely and dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
    Robert Frost

    “Betty, my dear, I say, Betty, why you look charming’ this mornin’. I’ll draw up my chair here an’ get close in by this nice, invitin’ fire. An’ you, Betty my love, can ’ave the infinite pleasure of supplyin’ me with some good ’am an’ heggs an’, if you got some nice ’ot muffins an’ butter, I’ll ’ave ’em an’ all, an’ some of yer best Rosie Lee, good an’ strong. Betty, my love – why you do look ravishin’ this fine morning – you can look after vis young lad, like wot he was your own son. Bring him the same, cause ’e’s new, an’ there’s a hard day’s work ahead, an’ likewise a man can’t go to work on an empty stomick, no more can a boy.”
    Tip leaned back in his chair, put his feet on the table, and placed his order, with an expansive wave of the hand. Frank sat down to the best breakfast he had ever had in his life. After years of workhouse bread and margarine it tasted like nectar. The muffins oozed butter down his chin as he sank his teeth into them; the yellow yolk of the egg ran over the pink ham and he dipped his bread into it. He ate with concentrated enjoyment. Men and boys came in and sat down. Betty rushed around serving. The fire crackled and tobacco smoke filled the air. Voices merged into a quiet hum, and Frank fell asleep, his head on the table.
    A heavy hand hit his shoulder. “Right now. It’s eight o’ clock, an’ we gotter get a-goin’ on the round.”
    Tip walked swiftly out into the yard and Frank staggered after him, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. They arranged the cart together, Tip instructing every move, securing the sides, the shafts, the step, placing the trays, the weights and measures, the knives, bags and torn newspapers. At each move, he would say: “Now don’t forget this one.”
    They started the round. If Frank thought that life in the workhouse was hard, that was because he had not experienced life as a coster. From that day on he never stopped working and he never stopped loving every minute of it.
    He hollered his way down the streets, bawling out the day’s catch. Shrimps, mackerel, herrings, whelks – his high-pitched voice carried from one end of a street to the other. He learned quickly, and within a month he could gut a fish so fast you wouldn’t see him do it. He charmed the ladies with his appealing eyes, so that they bought things they didn’t