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Now read the beginning of the story.
CHAPTER ONE
It was that time of year when the lamplighter was on the streets by four o’clock, walking up and down, lighting the lamps so that the soft light flooded out into the darkening afternoon.
Bonny Starr opened the front door to watch as the lamp that stood outside their house was lit.
‘The lamp’s been lit, Mam,’ she shouted over her shoulder, as the gas flared into life. ‘Can I go?’
Her mother hurried through from the kitchen, wiping her hands on the rough sacking tied around her waist.
‘Did you ought to go yet?’ she asked anxiously. ‘It seems a bit early.’
‘They’ve got a matinee,’ Bonny cried. ‘It’s cheaper and I don’t want to miss any of it.’
Mrs. Starr glanced out into the dark street. It was strange how once the lamps were lit, the daylight vanished, as if night walked on the lamplighter’s heels. ‘Where are the others?’ she asked. ‘Shouldn’t they be here by now?’
Bonny shrugged.
‘Oh, they’ll catch me up,’ she said impatiently.
She could almost hear the circus in her head. The brassy music, the instruments in the band catching the light, flicking gold from one end of the tent to the other, the roars of the animals, the little tapping feet of the ponies, the trumpeting of the elephants.
Oh, she could almost taste it.
She hugged herself with delight. The circus! The circus!
The circus had come to town!
‘I’m off,’ she said. ‘Honest, they’ll catch me up before I get to the bottom of the street.’ And her mother, looking
at Bonny’s wild excited face, said smiling, ‘Go on, then.
But mind when you cross the roads and don’t walk back on your own. Wait for Alan or your pals.’
Bonny nodded and with a last quick hug, was gone.
Walking down the street, turning the corner, she jingled the coins in her coat pocket, hardly able to believe she’d actually raised the money after all.
It had taken her four days. Four days of collecting jam
jars and taking them to the rag and bone man to exchange for pennies. Four days of running errands, asking for rags.
‘You don’t happen to have any woollen rags, do you, Missis?’ ‘If I had woollen rags, my lass, I’d be wearing them.’ and then sorting out woollens from cottons, cottons into whites and coloureds, and finally taking them to the rag shop.
‘Two and a half parnd ‘ere,’ Banker, the rag and bone man, said meanly.
‘My Mam said they weighed four pounds.’
‘Well, your Mam’s wrong!’ he shouted and flung the rags onto the floor. ‘Get out of here. Go on. I don’t need you telling me what they weigh.’
Bonny had picked the bundles up.
Swallowing hard, she whispered, ‘I daresay my Mam made a mistake, Mister.’
‘Yes, and you nearly made a mistake as well,’ Banker sneered, hurling the bundles into a corner. ‘’Ere’s your money,’ he went on, bouncing the coins off the end of his old table.
Scrabbling about the floor on her hands and knees, searching for the precious money, Bonny felt such a wave of hatred for the man that she felt faint.
When she got to her feet, her hands touched his old brass scales.
‘Well, go on then,’ he’d snarled. ‘What you waiting for? Get out.’
Her fingers had curled round the heavy iron weights lying at the side of the scales and Baker had stared at her, a hateful little smile playing around his lips.
‘If only you dared,’ he spat, lurching at her.
Bonny turned and ran, racing out into the cold street with her heart thumping. Behind her, she could hear the rag and bone man’s scornful laughter.
‘I hate him. I hate him!’ she’d sobbed, clattering along the pavement in her heavy shoes.
Once home, she’d boiled a kettle of water and scrubbed his touch off the coins. Then she’d scrubbed her hands to rid herself of the coldness of the iron weights.
‘I nearly hit him with them,’ she told Alan.
Her brother shrugged.
‘You wouldn’t have got close enough,’ he said. ‘He’s always like that. I don’t know why you mind so much. You shouldn’t go if you’re going to be like this about him.’
Bonny shivered, the glowing kitchen fire doing nothing to make her warm.
‘He’s….’ she stumbled, looking for the right word.
‘He’s ….odd. Strange.’
‘No odder than the rest of them,’ Alan retorted and started counting his money. ‘I’ve got enough,’ he said triumphantly. ‘Have you?’
Bonny put all her coins together, the rag and bone man’s coins shining brighter than the others, then counted up her money.
‘Yes,’ she said, looking at her brother, her face alight with happiness, ‘I’ve got enough as well.’
‘Then it was worth it,’ Alan said and Bonny, her smile fading, nodded.
Striding down the street now, Bonny shuddered at the memory of Banker. She had to pass his yard and she went carefully, quietly, trying not to make a sound.
The double gates were open and beyond them Bonny could see Banker and his black dog roaming up and down the alleys of rubbish and junk.
The rag and bone man glanced up and his glittering eyes pinned themselves on Bonny.
‘You back again,’ his hard voice came sailing through the air. ‘Told you to get off, didn’t I?’ and he started towards her, the huge dog padding by his side, its eyes red and mean.
Bonny hurried on.
Take no notice of him, she thought. You don’t have to go back there for a bit and you don’t have to go back at all if you don’t want to.
She tried to put the rag and bone man out of her mind but, just before she turned the corner, she looked back along the dark road.
The last thing she saw was Banker staring after her, his dog pulling on its leash.
And then, in the excitement of thinking about the circus, she forgot Banker and the rags and everything else.
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