Fagin's Girl Read online

  For Eddy, just because …

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  PART 1: London 1836

  1 A lucky day indeed …

  2 Joe’s secret

  3 Ettie all alone

  4 Becoming a nobody

  5 Together again

  6 Lost and found

  7 A close call

  8 A snip and a chop!

  9 Joe’s trick

  PART 2: Australia 1988

  10 Then and now

  The facts behind the story …

  Copyright

  PART 1

  London

  1836

  CHAPTER 1

  A lucky day indeed …

  I stretched out in the bed, yawning as I woke up. My two long braids of hair spread out over the white pillow. Then I remembered what day it was and sat up fast.

  There was Mother at the table, already at work with piles of fabric and scissors and thin strands of wire. The morning light streamed in the window behind her. It made her red hair glow like the embers of our tiny fire on a cold evening.

  “Good morning, Ettie!” Mother called over to me. “And birthday greetings to you, my dear! Ten years old today … what a grown girl you are!”

  Mother’s smile was as bright as the sun. No matter how bad things got, her smile made everything better.

  “You should have woken me up!” I said as I swung my legs out of the creaky metal bed I shared with Mother. I looked down to check if my brother Joe’s mattress was on the floor still, but it had already been pushed away under the bed. Joe was older than me by two years. He never called me Ettie – always Bean, because I was as small as a bean to him no matter how old I got.

  The floor was cold to my bare feet, so I jumped onto the rag rug. Then I hurried behind the curtain in the corner where our clothes hung neatly from wooden pegs on the wall.

  “Well, today you deserve to have an extra hour in bed, Ettie,” said Mother.

  I could hear the snip-snip of her scissors as she cut out the flowers and leaves from the fabric we had been given. Every week a box of cloth and wire arrived, and every week Mother and I worked twelve hours or more every day. We made sprays of purple violets, blue forget-me-nots and white honeysuckle for the bonnets of rich ladies.

  I always put the flowers together, fitting them on the strips of wire. Mother made the leaves, dusting them with a powder that gave them a vivid green shine and slipping them on last.

  “Has Joe left for work already?” I asked Mother as I changed out of my night things and pulled on my dress and petticoat. I wasn’t sure what time it was. Maybe seven o’clock? We all got up before six normally.

  We’d have our breakfast of bread and butter and milk too, if we had any. Then Joe would hurry off to the brewery. It was his job to clean out the stables there once the horses were harnessed to the carts and they’d set off to deliver barrels of beer to the pubs of London.

  “Joe is just fetching the water for us, then he’ll be away,” said Mother.

  The door banged, and Joe was back.

  I pulled the curtain to one side and grinned at my brother. But Joe looked sad. Or angry maybe. Or as if he had a secret that was bothering him.

  Joe talked to me less and less these days. If he did have a secret, I didn’t think he was going to tell me …

  CHAPTER 2

  Joe’s secret

  “There were so many people at the standpipe getting water this morning,” Joe grumbled. He set down the bucket with a clatter, spilling some of the water. Joe was clumsy. If there was a stone to trip over, he’d trip. If there was a plate to drop, he’d drop it.

  “And what do you say to your sister on this lucky day?” Mother said to Joe.

  Joe frowned as he took off his jacket.

  “I don’t know why you always call birthdays ‘lucky’, Mother!” Joe snapped at her.

  Mother kept calm. Ever since Father died, Joe found it hard to see the good in things.

  “Joe, we must always count our blessings,” Mother said. “And on birthdays, we should always remember how lucky we are to be here. Remember, there are so many little angels that never had the chance to grow up.”

  Mother was talking about the sadness that nearly every family knew. It didn’t matter if you were rich or poor, illness could come to babies and young ones that were not yet strong. In our own family, Ada and Will and Lily were born before me and Joe. But they’d all been buried before we’d even arrived in this world.

  “Well, I don’t feel lucky to be here, in this room,” said Joe, sweeping his hand around.

  When Father had been alive, we’d had two rooms and a scullery for our kitchen things. It was a very cosy home, with many comforts. Father’s job as a clerk had meant we could afford for me and Joe to go to the church school. We’d come home to wonderful smells as Mother cooked dinner on our very own stove.

  But then poor Father’s heart had given out and things changed fast. Me and Joe had to leave school and get work instead. We left behind our nice home and now lived in just one room in a house packed with other families.

  We shared a toilet in the yard that was never very clean. We had no stove to cook on, so we had to buy our food from the handcarts that went up and down the road. Most of the time we could only afford bread, but now and again Mother saved up for a meat pie or a kipper that we’d all share.

  “I know it’s hard, Joe,” Mother said in the steady way she always spoke. “But we are truly lucky to have this home when so many poor souls are in the workhouse or sleeping in the street.”

  Joe said nothing to that. But then he took something from his pocket and handed it to me.

  “For you, Bean,” Joe mumbled.

  My brother hadn’t forgotten my birthday! I opened the small paper package and found a biscuit. It was sprinkled with sugar and smelled of honey and cinnamon. It looked so delicious!

  “Oh, thank you!” I said, going over to Joe and planting a kiss on his cheek.

  He pretended to be disgusted. But I knew he was pleased to see how happy I was.

  “How kind of you, Joe!” said Mother. “How did you afford it?”

  Joe didn’t earn much. And he gave all his money to Mother on pay-day. We couldn’t have managed the rent without it.

  “I got a bit extra from Mr Blake last week for doing a good job,” said Joe. He sounded cross with Mother for asking.

  “Oh, the stable boss is so kind!” said Mother with her sunshine smile. “Now you’d better be off, Joe. You don’t want to be late and lose your job.”

  Joe suddenly looked strange. His jaw was tight and his lips were twitching. It was as if words were trying to burst out of his mouth and he was struggling to hold them back.

  But out they tumbled.

  “Mr Blake is NOT a good man!” Joe yelled. “Would a good man do this?”

  Joe turned his back to us and pulled up his shirt.

  His skinny back was covered with blue and yellow bruises.

  “Joe!” Mother gasped. “Mr Blake did this to you?”

  “Yes – for spilling horse feed on the ground,” said Joe, turning to face us again. “He beat me, then told me to go. He said he’d find a more careful boy to do my job.”

  I thought of the colour of the bruises. They were old. Joe had not been hit just yesterday.

  “When did this happen?” I asked.

  “A week ago,” Joe said, and tucked his shirt back in.

  “But where have you been going every day?” Mother asked with alarm in her voice. “And you gave me money on Friday – where did that come from?”

  “You don’t need to know,” said Joe. He put his chin up as if daring her to ask more.

  “Are you doing something that could g
et you into trouble?” said Mother. “Please, please don’t do that, Joe! You can work with Ettie and me. We can ask to make more flowers if there’s three of us …”

  “I’m not doing the work of women and girls!” Joe shouted. “Not when I can make better money!”

  “Joe – no! I forbid it!” said Mother, banging her fist on the table.

  I jumped. I had never seen Mother lose her temper like that.

  Joe said nothing. He grabbed his jacket and shoved it on.

  “Joe! Where are you going?” Mother demanded.

  But Joe left, slamming the door behind him. Just like that, my brother was gone.

  I had no idea that I wouldn’t see him again for five long months – and that my life till then would not feel lucky at all …

  CHAPTER 3

  Ettie all alone

  It was May when Joe left.

  In June Mother and I moved to a smaller and cheaper room in a run-down house along the road. There was space for a bed and two stools and not much else. But Mother made it as nice as she could by pinning a pretty patterned shawl over the window at night and putting a posey of fake flowers in an old jam jar on the shelf.

  In July Mother’s cough started, and her hands became covered in bleeding sores.

  In August Mother took to her bed, still trying to make the bonnet flowers with me whenever she had the energy.

  In September Mother died. She was buried in a pauper’s grave, with only me and a neighbour to say goodbye.

  “How will you manage, Ettie?” Mrs Price asked as we stood by Mother’s grave. “Have you family who could take you in?” She lived in the room next door to ours. It was the same size as ours, with her, Mr Price and two young children in it.

  “I have no family that I know of,” I said. Father had a brother I’d met when I was young, but he had gone away to America to start a new life. I didn’t know where my uncle might be in that huge country.

  “You have a brother, you told me?” said Mrs Price as we set off from the churchyard.

  “I have, but I don’t know where Joe is,” I said as I dabbed at my eyes with the hem of my sleeve. I had spent the last few months looking around every corner, wondering if Joe was near or far, alive or dead.

  “But how will you manage, Ettie?” asked Mrs Price again. “A child cannot live alone. Will you see if the workhouse will take you in?”

  The workhouse! Everyone feared it. It was where families were split up, worked half to death and fed badly.

  “No!” I said fast. “I have paid the rent till Monday. And I’ll work harder on the flowers, you’ll see!”

  Mrs Price smiled at me, but her eyes were full of worry. She wondered what would become of me – a ten-year-old girl alone in the world.

  As we walked along the dusty road, I wondered and worried too.

  CHAPTER 4

  Becoming a nobody

  I was woken at dawn by the sound of birdsong – and the hedgehog snuffling round my hand, seeking out the crumbs of the bread I’d eaten before I’d fallen asleep.

  It took me a minute to think what day it was and where I was.

  And then I remembered – Mother was buried just last week and today was Monday. The day the rent man would come for his money. But I had none to give him, so I had slipped away yesterday evening.

  I’d tiptoed down the creaky stairs of the house with a sack. It was filled with some underclothes, a hairbrush, a candle and matches, my other dress, a blanket and Mother’s thick wool shawl.

  I had sold Mother’s pretty patterned shawl the day before. There were a few other things I’d sold to a man in the market: plates and spoons, a small mirror, a brooch and hairpin of Mother’s. They’d earned me a few pennies.

  As for where I was … it was the same churchyard where Mother was buried. Yesterday I’d found a corner where the bushes were thick and covered by a roof of tree branches. I’d crawled underneath and found a dry spot where I could hide away. I’d wrapped the blanket around me and used the sack of clothes as my pillow.

  And now I sat up, shaking my aching bones.

  Life in the city started early, and I needed to be ready for it. I had taken one more thing from our room before I left, and it would earn me my living: a wooden broom. I took hold of it from beside the sack. Today I would seek out the busiest roads nearby and become a street-sweeper!

  I had seen other boys and girls do it. They’d stand on a busy road where horses and carriages rattled and clopped by. A fine lady or gent would look this way and that, ready to cross. That was when a street-sweeper would leap in front of them, swooshing their broom from side to side to sweep away the dust, mud and horse muck. Then the ladies could step on the cobblestones without dirtying their long dresses, and the rich men’s shiny shoes could stay shiny.

  The grateful men and women would have a coin in their gloved hands, ready to give to the street-sweeper once safe on the other side. I was fast; I was polite. Surely I could earn plenty of money in a day? Maybe more than I ever did twisting cloth into flowers?

  That was what I hoped. But by noon I was tired and hungry and had earned nothing. The life of a street-sweeper was much harder than I had thought it to be.

  “Please, madam, can I clear your path?” I asked yet another woman who was walking with her maid-servant.

  So far I had been ignored or told to go away by everyone I had spoken to. For the first time, this woman looked at me and nodded.

  My heart leapt. Perhaps it was the start of my luck changing. The lady was well-off – it was clear from the good dress she wore. Her bonnet was decorated with silk ribbons and roses. Her maid’s basket was full of packages. Might she give me a farthing? That was only a quarter of a penny. Might she give me more? A halfpenny? A whole penny?

  I smiled and did a curtsey, then stepped out into the road as soon as the traffic calmed down. Swish, swish went my broom, as fast as I could swing it. Behind me I heard the rustle of the lady’s wide skirts and the clip-clip of her heeled shoes on the cobbles.

  I got to the other side and turned, holding my hand out.

  But the lady just walked by me, like a great sailing ship passing a little rowing boat.

  “Please, madam! Can’t you spare anything at all?” I begged.

  The lady strode on, her maid trailing after her. They were both deaf to my pleading.

  I held tight to the broom and cried where I stood. No one seemed to notice. I had become a nobody. Like a ghost child.

  I had always tried to count my blessings as Mother did. But I could see no blessings and no luck about me today.

  Till I heard my name spoken.

  “Bean – is it you?” said my brother Joe.

  CHAPTER 5

  Together again

  Joe and I sat together on the steps of the church.

  I felt full of joy at finding my brother again. And at eating the hot piece of pie he shared with me!

  And Joe was very glad to have found me. But he was heartbroken to learn that Mother was gone and I had been left all alone.

  “I am so sorry that I went away,” said Joe as he wrapped his arm around me. “I thought Mother was angry with me. I decided I’d earn lots of money and come back and surprise her with it.”

  “And have you earned lots of money?” I asked.

  “I haven’t got as much money as I’d like yet,” Joe said with a shrug. “But Mr Fagin says I’m a good boy and will do well if I work hard.”

  “Who is Mr Fagin?” I asked. “And what work do you do for him?”

  Joe didn’t answer at first. But after a moment he said, “Mr Fagin deals in second-hand things. Me and some other boys find items for him and he sells them on. He gives us a place to stay too.”

  I thought of the man in the market who bought Mother’s bits and pieces from me. There were plenty of shops and stalls selling goods that had been owned and used by many people before. Only rich people bought brand-new things.

  So it seemed Joe had a good job. I was about to ask more ab
out his work when he spoke.

  “I don’t know what to do, Bean,” said Joe. “I can’t leave you here …”

  “Maybe I can work for Mr Fagin as well?” I asked. “I’m quick to learn. I could find things like you. Or I’m good at sewing and mending and making – I could do that. Couldn’t I, Joe?”

  “Yes, Bean,” said Joe. “But I don’t know if Mr Fagin wants another worker. And if he does … well, you’re a girl. He only has boys working for him.”

  Joe scratched at his head and stared down at his scuffed boots.

  I had an idea.

  “Look, Joe!” I said, and rolled up my skirt. “I took these with me to keep warm.”

  Under my skirt and petticoat I was wearing a pair of patched breeches that Joe had left behind.

  Joe laughed at the sight of a girl in boy’s clothing. Next I stole the hat off his head, as quick as a wink. I bundled my two long braids up into the hat and grinned at him.

  “Well?” I said. “I look like you now, don’t I? I can pass as your little brother!”

  “Never!” said Joe.

  But then he looked at me. Properly looked.

  “Wait here, Bean,” Joe called out as he stood up and hurried off down the steps. “Don’t go anywhere!”

  Of course I’d wait for him. I had nowhere else to go …

  CHAPTER 6

  Lost and found

  Joe was gone an hour. It was an hour that felt like for ever. I worried he’d vanished on me again.

  “Here, Bean!” Joe called out as he threw a bundle of things at me.

  “Where did you get them?” I asked.