LITMIR.BIZ

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      I need no penny paper when I have this. Murder, highwaymen and horrors come a poor second to these wonders. I am on the brink of manhood, with a taste for the salty, the savoury, the spicy. I appreciate things my childish self could neither understand nor appreciate.

      Now that I have established the coast is clear, it is time to find some folk to fall in with. I spy a knot of likely fellows at a fried-potato stand, all of them smaller than yours truly. I can read boys faster than my A, my B and my C and this lot are floundering at the periphery of the action, clearly in need of a commanding officer. I saunter to their rescue.

      ‘Hey now!’ I cry. ‘You scrawny little shitwipes. I’ve not seen you in a donkey’s age.’

      Before they have a chance to scratch their verminous noggins and ask who I am, I dead-arm one of the shortest with a sly blow. We share a laugh at his expense, watching him pirouette, piping ow ow over and over and threatening all kinds of punishment he is unlikely to deliver.

      ‘Coo,’ declares one. ‘That’s a jolly jape.’

      ‘You got Cyril good and proper,’ chirps another.

      Cyril rubs his funny bone and shoots me a murderous glance.

      ‘That’s just for starters,’ I say. ‘Plenty more where that came from.’

      I glance about and my eye falls on an effete youth who looks like he’s stepped off the wall of an art gallery. I imagine the picture: Narcissus Clothed, reclining on his elbow and regarding his fat face in the water. On his arm is a girl with skin as pale as that on a tapioca pudding.

      ‘Look at him,’ I jeer, jerking my thumb over my shoulder. ‘Those trousers. So baggy he may as well be wearing a skirt.’

      I wink at my new pals, sneak behind the milksop and punch his elbow. It is so easy that it hardly counts as sport.

      ‘I say!’ he quacks, inspecting the numb limb.

      ‘Pansy!’ I yell. ‘Flapping about like a big girl’s blouse!’

      I wait for his face to fold, the tears to fall. He raises his uninjured hand to shoulder height and for the space of a breath I think he is going to slap me. But he sweeps his fingers under the flowing curtain of his hair, flips it back and stares at me down his long nose. His lips tweak in a half-smile and I hear his thoughts, clear as the cry of a coal-heaver.

      You piece of dirt. When you leave here, you’ll tramp to your broken home on your broken street in your broken boots to eat supper with your broken teeth. I shall hop into a brougham and be whisked away to a grand place you’ll never know.

      I hold my smile steady, but it is the greatest weight I’ve ever lifted and near breaks my chin to keep it there. I poke out my tongue and blow a raspberry. His lass sticks her nose in the air.

      ‘What a low class of person frequents this place,’ she declares.

      ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ drawls the aesthete. ‘Vulgar folk are so fascinating.’

      She clings to her limp companion, devouring him with eyes so ravenous you’d think them organs of digestion.

      ‘No point casting your hook at him, love,’ I shout as they flounce off. ‘Looks like he couldn’t raise a smile.’

      ‘I can never understand how these chaps have always got a pretty girl in tow,’ grumbles one of my crew.

      ‘Pretty?’ I sneer. ‘Peaky, more like,’ I say. ‘A skinny ghost in need of a plate of pie and peas.’ They snigger, much cheered by my observation. I shall not let that flaccid flower-boy spoil the evening. ‘As for him, what a wet herring!’

      ‘Nah,’ interrupts Cyril. ‘Sprat, more like.’

      Their attention swings away, towards him.

      ‘Tiddler,’ I respond, and have them back again.

      ‘Stickleback,’ he says firmly. ‘Nothing smaller than a stickleback.’

      I rack my brains and, in the time it takes, I lose them. Cyril rattles off a list of fishy insults and they laugh like hyenas at his feeble efforts.

      ‘Oh, stop it, Cyril,’ wheezes one. ‘I’ll piss myself at this rate.’

      ‘Too late. Already have done,’ guffaws Cyril.

      He makes a show of walking in bow-legged circles, kicking make-believe droplets off his clogs. He wears such a pained expression that the whole lot of them lean against each other, cackling. I don’t know why everyone is paying him such mind. He’s not that funny. Besides, Cyril is minced mutton of a name, in my opinion.

      I point out an ice-cream cart and stand everyone a twist of hokey-pokey, with much flourishing of my largesse. It’s a race to gobble the stuff before it soaks through the paper, and some of us are more proficient than others. Me, I like the sensation of ice trickling down my fingers. I draw out the eating of it to such a marvellous degree that I make a mess of my shirt from collar to cuffs. Cyril nods at me.

      ‘You’re going to cop it off your ma,’ he observes.

      ‘Take the broom to you, she will,’ says another. ‘That stuff’s murder to get out.’

      ‘You’ll not sit down for a week.’

      I shrug and wipe my lips on my sleeve for good measure. ‘My mam does exactly what I tell her,’ I reply with a haughty air. ‘Mam! Scrub my cuffs! That’s what I say.’

      ‘As heck as like,’ scoffs Cyril.

      ‘You don’t know my mam. I shall stride in and declare, Mother! I have a job for you! Wash my shirt!’ I hitch my thumbs behind my lapels and puff out my chest.

      ‘What a windbag you are,’ says Cyril.

      ‘That’s not the half of it,’ I continue, rather wishing he’d button his lip. ‘Be quick about it! Chop chop!’ I make a pantomime of an old dame, one hand pressed to my back and tugging my forelock. ‘Yes, Gnome!’ I squawk. ‘As fast as ever I can, Gnome!’

      They giggle, as much out of nervousness as awe. I do not care if they take me for an empty-headed boy, all hot air and nothing else. I’ll not be outdone by a midget like Cyril. There’s room for only one Caesar and I wear those laurels.

      We plough on, avoiding the slip and slide around the cow-heel stall. Drawn like wasps to jam, our promenade carries us past a confectionery stand. I eye the jars of wine gums, slab toffee, liquorice, Pontefract cakes and coltsfoot rock. The ground crunches with sugar. The girl weighing out the sweets has a starved look: chewed-down nails, hair draggled in sticky ringlets.

      ‘How about a lollipop, miss?’ says Cyril, poking his tongue against the inside of his cheek in a suggestive fashion.

      I groan and roll my eyes. That’s not how to get a handful of mint balls without paying. Her cheeks flush and she fiddles with the bun on the back of her head, where some tendrils of hair have worked loose.

      ‘You look sweet,’ I say. That’s the way to do it.

      Cyril throws me a pitying look. ‘I’ve got a stick of rock if you fancy a gobble,’ he adds, louder.

      ‘Ooh,’ says one of the younger boys.

      ‘Now there’s a thing,’ says another.

      ‘Hur, hur,’ a third.

      ‘You buying, or wasting my time?’ the girl trills pertly. ‘No money, no service.’

      She serves half an ounce of coloured sugar to an urchin who looks too young to be out, and a quarter-pound of cough candy to a fellow in a leather apron who calls her Maggie.

      Cyril makes a snorting noise. ‘Name as plain as her face.’

      ‘You’ll get nothing if you talk to her like that,’ I say.

      ‘Who

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