Shadows of the Workhouse

couldn’t find work, except odd jobs, to help her. Well, there was one job I got that was good fun for a lad who’s looking for adventure.
    “I was down the Blackwall Steps, waiting for the tide to go out, so that I could go scavenging. A man came along and said to me: ‘Here, boy, can you cook a stew?’
    “‘Yes, sir,’ I said (I would have said ‘yes’ to anything).
    “‘ Can you skin a rabbit?’
    “‘Yes, sir.’
    “‘Bone a fish?’
    “‘Yessir.’
    “‘Make tea and cocoa?’
    “‘Yessir.
    “‘Clean a wick and fill a lamp?’
    “‘Yessir.’
    “‘You’re the boy I want. My cabin boy’s done a bunk. Can you sail today?’
    “‘Anywhere, sir.’
    “‘Be here at high tide. The British Lion ’s the barge you want. A florin a week all found.’
    “It was all so quick I hadn’t time to draw breath. I raced back to Alberta Buildings, round to the washhouse where my mother was toiling away, and told her I had been hired as cabin boy on a Thames barge. My mother didn’t look as thrilled as I had expected. In fact, she was dead against it. We had words, and I shouted at her: ‘Look, I’m off, whatever you say, and I’ll come back a rich man. You’ll see.’
    “So I ran back to the Steps, no extra clothes, nothing like that. Sure enough, at high tide, the British Lion came along, and I jumped aboard. It was the most wonderful time I had in my life, and I reckon every boy’s dream. I was on the river for six months. The barge carried flints, coal, wood, bricks, sand, slates – anything. We would take a load of coal down to Kent, and pick up a cargo of bricks to bring back to Limehouse. In those days hundreds of trading vessels plied the river, huge ocean-going cargo boats down to one-man skiffs. You could always tell a barge by the red sail, and often the sail and the cabin were all that could be seen. The barges were so low that, with a full load, the whole deck would be under water. It’s true.”
    He heard my incredulous gasp and roared with laughter, and sucked his pipe.
    “People would stare from the banks, because honestly, all they could see was a red sail, and men paddling about knee-deep in water, with apparently nothing beneath them.
    “I was as happy as a boy could be,” he continued with another laugh. “I made the stews, trimmed the lamps, learned boat-handling, and didn’t mind I wasn’t paid. The skipper always said he would pay me after the next trip. After a bit, the mate whispered to me, ‘That bloody monkey’s not goin’ ’a pay you. He never does. All the cabin boys do a bunk in the end.’
    “That was a shock to me, that was. I had been counting up the florins in my mind, and had reckoned on one pound after working ten weeks, and two pounds after twenty weeks. I thought I was rich – except that I hadn’t got the money. So I asked the skipper and he said, ‘After the next trip, lad. When I’m in funds.’
    “Well, the next trip came and went, and no money. Three or four more trips – no money. I got cross and resentful and told him if he didn’t pay me, I’d do a bunk. He just smiled pleasantly, and said, ‘After the next trip, Joe, the next trip, trust me.’
    “Well, of course, I knew he wouldn’t pay me, and the next time we reached Limehouse, I left the barge and didn’t go back.”
    He paused, and sucked on his pipe, but it had gone out, so he scratched around in the bowl with a sharp implement that he pulled from his penknife, and lit another spill from the fire. The flame leaped upwards again, narrowly missing his eyebrows. I thought with alarm that he might one day set himself, and the whole building, on fire. His eyesight was not good, and his hands shook. I wondered how many old men in a similar state of infirmity were playing with fire in Alberta Buildings.
    “If I had known what I was doing, I don’t think I would have left the barge, pay or no pay. You see, I was happy and busy, which is what a boy needs. The skipper and his mate were nice men. We got on all right. I had enough food to eat, and a bunk to sleep on. What more can you ask in life? What does money matter? The trouble was, the skipper had hired me for a florin a week, so I was expecting it. If he’d asked me in the first place to join him to learn boatmanship and navigation, with no pay while I was learning, I would have accepted, and my mother would have been pleased. But he lied to me, and that was his mistake, and my misfortune.”
    Joe had left, fully