The number twenty-six bus goes nearest to Luke’s shop. It stops opposite a little side road and we had to run for the passage with a bush growing out of the wall where Luke has his shop. We jumped out and ran like two rats in the gutter and we didn’t stop till we got right into the shop.
I burst in first all out of breath. There was a woman buying bread rolls and she turned to glare at us. Luke made a terrible face at me when her back was turned. His eyes bulged and his mouth fell open. Luke’s got a funny face, you can always tell exactly what he’s thinking. When Sham barged in, his eyebrows nearly shot off his head. He managed to keep quiet until the woman had gone.
‘Get outta my shop,’ he hissed. ‘What d’yer mean coming in here?’
‘Please, Luke, just for an hour or so …’ I began.
‘An hour? An hour of hell with you two in my shop? One second is more than I can stand!’ He stabbed his finger at me. ‘You’re trouble! You’ve gone bad – don’t argue! The people I’ve had in here asking for Fly Pie. It’s been Fly Pie, Fly Pie, Fly Pie all week long and now here he is bringing trouble into my nice shop. Go on – scram!’
‘We have to meet my sister here … We said …’
‘Her too?’ groaned Luke. There were footsteps; someone was walking up to the shop. He put his hands to his head and grabbed hold of the two big grey tufts of hair he has growing above his ears. ‘Go on, quick, round the back …’ He reached over the counter and almost threw us behind him into the bakery. ‘You get spotted here and what’ll I do? What’ll happen to me? Trouble – scram – go on!’
We ran round the back. We heard Luke trying to put on his best shop manner but anyone who knew him could tell he was in a state. Luke was just no good at this sort of thing. When I peeped through at him he was glancing over at us all the time.
We were surrounded by pies and bread rolls and pasties and pastries and the smell was gorgeous. We were both dribbling. My stomach felt as if it was kicking me from inside, I wanted to eat so much. I saw Sham’s hand steal out to try some warm little bread sticks but I slapped it down.
‘Don’t nick off your own,’ I said.
Sham just groaned. I didn’t blame him.
Luke came round the back as soon as the customer left. ‘What have you done?’ he demanded. He waved his hand as I began to answer. ‘Don’t tell me, do you think I want to know your troubles? Some friend you are.’ He stared at me, scowling fiercely. ‘Do you still want to be a baker?’ he demanded.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Well, you can’t!’ he yelled. ‘Bakers don’t get into trouble. Bakers look after their shops and they bake bread and pastries and cakes and that’s all they do. They don’t get rich, they don’t have people looking for them who can’t find them and they don’t go looking for trouble!’
‘I didn’t look for it, Luke,’ I begged. ‘It just … found me.’
‘Trouble isn’t a lazy good-for-nothing,’ he said vehemently. ‘Trouble doesn’t sit on its backside waiting for you to come calling. Trouble’s not stupid – not like you,’ he observed. ‘Trouble goes shopping! Trouble’s no baker. Trouble’s a nosey parker. Trouble knows tricks. And you fell for it!’
Just then another customer came and he had to dash out to serve them. But he was back in a minute, still rattling on – just like Luke.
‘Trouble spotted you coming a mile off,’ he continued, as if he hadn’t even broken off. He offered us both a chicken and ham pie as he spoke, and we bit into them – creamy, crispy and full of little nuggets of sweet chicken.
‘Trouble said to itself – there’s a boy who ain’t going to end up being a baker – I’ll see to that. That’s what trouble said to itself when it saw you. And trouble was dead right!’
Then he had to dash out again to see another customer. Sham glanced at me. ‘Does he always go on like that?’ he asked through a mouthful of pie. ‘When he’s excited,’ I said. Then I thought about it and added, ‘Most of the time.’ Next time he came back Luke had some apple turnovers. ‘You don’t deserve cakes,’ he said angrily. ‘You deserve to be stuck in a hole with stale bread rolls, you do.’ He watched us stuff the turnovers into our mouths – all crunchy with sugar and full of sweet apple. Luke’s eyes bulged. ‘Don’t stuff ’em, eat ’em!’ he raged. ‘Don’t you even know how to eat?’
‘Sorry,’ I mumbled. He always hated to see people stuff his food. But I could never help it.
‘Well? What are they like?’ he asked anxiously.
We both nodded. Everything Luke made was delicious.
‘I’m too hot-blooded to make good pastry, I am,’ exclaimed Luke. ‘Too excitable. How someone like me manages to make pastry – or stay out of trouble – I just don’t know. Now look at you – you’ve got hands cold as two spoons you have, you’d have made pastry like anything – and here you are, up to your neck in trouble and you’ll probably never make so much as a cheese straw ever again for all I know!’ He glared at me and flapped his apron so that the flour clouded up around him. ‘If only you hadn’t got a dough-head you’d have made something of yourself!’ he snapped. ‘Trouble – and in my shop!’ He moaned, clutching his hair at the thought of it. Then he ran out again to serve someone.
The morning passed like that – with Luke rushing in and out to scold us and serve customers and then popping back in to give us another treat.
*
We were waiting again. All that waiting! The worst of it was that Luke might have known something from the radio or the newspaper. I only had to ask but I didn’t because he’d guess what was going on and that wasn’t fair. I think he might have chucked us out if he’d known just how bad it really was.
‘Shall I ask him?’ I kept saying to Sham, and Sham shook his head and chewed his nails. And then in a minute he’d say, ‘Do you think you should ask him?’ And I’d have to shake my head.
Then Luke came back and this time he had a smart-looking woman with him. I couldn’t believe he was showing us to someone. Then the woman said, ‘Davey!’ and she came to me.
Luke was saying, ‘What a girl! Look at her – you’d give her a job in a bank. Look!’
It was Jane all the time! She looked so different dressed like that I didn’t believe it till she hugged me, all dirty like I was. She had good clothes, proper clothes, and her hair was done and everything was beautiful about her – just like the people who have everything.
‘You did it!’ screamed Sham. ‘You did it!’
Jane shook her head. ‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘I didn’t dare. Sorry.’
Sham stared glumly but I didn’t care, I just squeezed her because I was so pleased to get her back. My sister. She could do anything!
‘Can you scram now?’ begged Luke.
‘We made it out, Davey, and we’re nearly there,’ Jane said. Then she turned to Sham. ‘I’m sorry about what I said that night,’ she said. ‘I don’t know if you did it or not, now.’ She shrugged and smiled ruefully. ‘That’s the best I can do.’
‘That’s all right,’ said Sham. He was blushing furiously. ‘You came back, didn’t you?’
‘I came back,’ said Jane proudly. ‘And you came back, too.’ They smiled at each other. ‘Here – there’s someone wants to see you,’ she told him. She ran out to the shop and came back with a pushchair – a posh new pushchair and Sy sitting in it, holding one of Luke’s bread rolls. She had a bad cold and she was all snotted up but she was dressed like a doll in a smart pink suit. She was so pleased to see Sham, she started struggling to get out to him. Sham carefully undid her belt and took her out and she crawled all over him.
‘Hello, baby, hello,’ said Sham. Sy rubbed her snotty face in his hair. He smiled proudly, shyly. Jane grinned.
‘Do you like my disguise?’ she asked, swirling round prettily.
‘Ain’t she perfect?’ demanded Luke. ‘A proper little lady. You’d never know she came off the street, would you? Now,’ he added, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. ‘Scram!’
Jane to
ok no notice. ‘I’ve got something for you two,’ she said. She had some carrier bags on the back of the pushchair. ‘Clothes. Disguise. See? You’re not going to be street kids when we walk out of here. You’re going to be real children.’ She grinned. ‘It’ll take me half an hour,’ she told Luke. She put down the bags and went over to the sink to run some water.
‘It’ll take days to make these two look like anything,’ muttered Luke. But he went to the front of the shop where he put his little radio on to cover up the noise, and he let her get on with it.
Jane had soap and scissors and she started by washing us and cutting our hair. The water from our hair ran black three times! We kept staring at all that murky water going down the sink and it didn’t seem possible that hair could have had all that dirt hidden away in it. That took long enough. Then she got the clothes out. Those clothes! She had shoes, real trainers, not brand new but really good. She’d got my size right but Sham’s were a bit small – somehow, he always looked smaller than he was. But he didn’t care. We had jeans, almost new, and sweat shirts and good padded jackets and even clean socks. Sham didn’t want to put his on because he said they made his toes feel funny.
‘It’s a disguise, it’s supposed to feel funny, stupid,’ she said, and he did as he was told.
‘I rang Mr Tallus up again, to tell him I couldn’t make it,’ Jane told us as she worked. ‘I spoke to her this time. She’s a nice lady.’ Jane smiled. She was brushing Sham’s hair and he was standing all tensed up, wincing every time she brushed. I was laughing because he looked as if he was being tortured. ‘She loves her baby so much,’ said Jane wistfully. ‘She was crying on the phone. She kept asking me to give Sy to the police but I told her we wanted to prove to her that we could do things right. It’s important, you see?’
Sham nodded desperately. ‘Yes, please, yes please,’ he moaned.
‘We’re nearly there,’ said Jane. ‘We’re nearly there!’ She kept saying that. ‘When Mrs Tallus sees us all dressed up proper and nice she’ll know we’ve looked after little Sy really well.’
Sham wiped his nose on his cuff and Jane nearly knocked his block off with the hairbrush.
‘Don’t do that!’ she screamed. ‘What’s Mrs Tallus going to say when she sees you all snotty on your sleeve?’
‘Sorry,’ cried Sham, hiding behind his arm.
I was laughing but it was my turn next. The worst bit was having my face cleaned. I’d got something on it that was so tough she had to scrub and scrub to get it off. It left a red mark for days.
‘I’ve done it right this time,’ she went on. ‘I didn’t do it last night ’cause it wasn’t right. I’ve got a room – a proper rented room. I paid the rent for two weeks! Mrs Tallus is waiting for my next phone call, and we’ll tell her to meet us outside on the pavement – so we can look out of our window and make sure everything’s okay. See? Like you said, Davey, right?’
‘Please don’t hurt me,’ I begged.
‘And when it’s all clear we just walk out of our front door and give her back her baby! And she’ll be so thankful because we did it right and we kept her baby from all the crooks who just wanted to make money out of her. Maybe she’ll even come into our room and have a cup of tea or something with us. I expect she’ll want to know what’s happened, won’t she?’
It took ages to get us ready. Jane was really fussy. But in the end, when she’d brushed our hair and wiped our noses we looked in the mirror and Fly Pie and Sham had gone.
‘Wow,’ said Sham. Even with his fat lip he looked like someone on TV. He touched his face as if he didn’t believe it. ‘Wow,’ he said again. ‘It really is me – isn’t it?’
I goggled.
‘How about that?’ smiled Jane. ‘How about that? Now you’re worth something. Now you’re worth whatever anyone cares to give you!’
Before we went Luke gave us a bag full of cheese rolls and doughnuts. I ran to him and flung my arms around him and squeezed him. I’d never done that before. I was happy. I believed that Jane could keep all her promises and that it was going to work. I was nearly crying because he was my friend and I was so proud that there had been someone to turn to when I wanted help.
He hugged me back, but he looked at me sorrowfully. ‘You’d have made a good baker,’ he scolded.
‘I still will, Luke.’
But he shook his head. ‘Not now. You’re in big trouble.’
‘It’ll work out.’
‘You know me,’ he said. ‘I’ve stayed in my little shop and I’ve not had no trouble. Now I’ve done something for you, you do something for me, right?’
‘Okay,’ I said, although I knew I wouldn’t like it.
‘When you go through that door, I don’t want to see you come through it again, ever – do you understand me?’
‘Not for ever, Luke,’ I pleaded. ‘Just until the trouble’s gone.’
‘It’s the same thing, Davey!’ he insisted. ‘Trouble like this never goes away. It won’t stop now. No more favours. Okay?’
I nodded.
‘That’s how I’ve stayed here. You know that. You’ve no business bringing trouble to me.’
‘I promise, Luke.’ So I did it. I went away and I never saw him again.
I thought I knew Jane, but she just kept on surprising me. Now she’d turned us into different people. People treated us differently just because we were dressed like that. Jane arranged to meet us at a bus stop in Peckham so we didn’t have to travel together and Sham and I walked along to catch the bus like a pair of school kids. I even had a kid try to beg money off me. I gave him tenpence and he made an ugly face at it because it wasn’t enough.
Jane told us to take care and behave like proper children and not a pair of noisy kids. We didn’t do too badly, but Sham being Sham, he had to try it on. He stole an apple from a barrow on the street.
‘This disguise business is worth remembering,’ he remarked, biting into it.
‘You’ve got the wrong idea,’ I scolded. But he was right. You could do anything if you looked right. Who would ever think a smart boy like that would bother nicking apples?
Jane was there in Peckham like she’d promised. She hugged us as if she hadn’t seen us for a week. Then she led us off to see the room.
‘I’ll have to smuggle you in, because it’s only me and the baby supposed to be there,’ she told us. ‘And once you’re in you’ll have to stay in and keep your traps shut. We don’t want to get caught now. We’re nearly there!’ She turned and grinned excitedly at us. ‘Nearly there,’ she repeated, and she hurried us along, clip-clopping in her smart black shoes, like a little mother with her family.
Sy went to sleep in the pram. She had two thick green lines of snot running down her face and Jane kept stopping and wiping it, but it came back almost at once.
‘It’s a lovely room, you wait.’ Jane tossed her hair – her smart, hair-do hair. She was bright and happy and certain everything would be all right. Sham and me felt the same way. She’d done it, just like she said.
The rented room looked out on a road with trees scattered down it – a proper little road with shops and lampposts. We were above a grocery shop. It was a real place to live. She had the key to the front door and everything. We could have all gone in there and no one would have stopped us but she wanted to be sure that the people in the other rooms didn’t know there were two boys with her so she went up first and we had to follow after – first Sham, then me.
I was frightened going in. I’d seen so many front doors but they weren’t for me to open. I walked up the stairs, along a corridor smelling of cigars and disinfectant. There was an old door thick with dark paint; number six. I turned the handle and there it was.
I’d been in shops and other places but I don’t think I’d been in a real room that was a place to live. Rooms belong to real people. This one belonged to us.
There was a bed in one corner. In another, a cooker and a little table with a couple of wooden chairs. There was a sink wit
h a plate drying on the draining board. There was an electric kettle. There was an armchair and a wardrobe and a chest of drawers and little ornaments – a vase, a picture of a field with horses. Everything you needed to be a proper person.
Sham was lying on the bed grinning at me.
‘Cuppa tea?’ said Jane.
We all started giggling. It was like a joke – us in a real place! Sy was sitting in the pushchair whining, not like she used to do when she saw us having fun.
‘Ssssh – someone’ll hear,’ hissed Jane. She put Sy on her hip and started bustling about – emptying the teapot, putting milk from the fridge in the cups. Sy watched from her viewpoint on her hip, and Sham and me watched too. It was like seeing someone do things in a film. Jane did it all perfectly. She kept turning round and grinning at us.
‘We’ll have a nice cuppa tea and some biscuits, and then I’ll nip down and make that phone call,’ she said.
I wished she hadn’t said that.
I was looking at the armchair. I’d seen armchairs on the dump and I thought this one looked out of place sitting on the worn carpet with a little grubby lace thing over the back. I sat down in it, feeling the rough fabric with my fingers. I crossed my legs and tried to look as if I was used to armchairs. I looked around at all the things – the things we’d paid for. The lamp-shade, the curtains, the crockery in the half-open cupboard. The carpet was old. I’ve seen better carpets on the dump. There was a fireplace with a gas fire. Sham turned it on; it worked perfectly. So did all the lights and the cooker. I found a lamp in a corner with a ship on its shade and I kept turning it on and off to see the ship jump to life on the dull plastic.
Jane nodded at the window. ‘Look out there,’ she said.
We could see right down the road opposite. There was a café on the corner. Down our road there was a greengrocer and a butcher and a couple of other shops. People were walking up and down shopping, cars going past.
‘See that lamppost on the corner?’ asked Jane. ‘That’s where I’ll get her to wait. She’ll do like I tell her.’ She nodded to us. It was a fact; the rich woman would do like Jane said. ‘We can watch out and see – make sure she’s on her own, see she hasn’t got the police or anything. See?’