Hopping. Melanie McGrath

shook his head and gave his usual answer. He’d had an accident, he said. He preferred to remain vague about the details.

       Rickets too?

      Mr Spicer leaned back slightly and rubbed his chin.

      Can you ride a bicycle? I wonder. For deliveries, I mean.

      Oh yes, Harold said, though he’d never been on a bicycle and had in fact only ever seen one at close quarters when the air-raid policeman had left his lying in the street while giving chase to a boy who had popped him with his catapult.

      Well, said Spicer, sucking his teeth and waving Harold closer, come round the back and we’ll see what your learning’s like.

      Harold followed him through a hessian curtain at the back of the shop, then down a damp, dark corridor into a small, draughty room filled with a large oak table at which sat a gaunt woman with a lavender scarf tied around her neck. Beside her, on a stand, a sleek mynah bird swung in a small wire cage. For a moment, everyone looked at one another.

      He’s come about the position, Mrs Spicer, Mr Spicer said to his wife.

      Oh, he has, has he? Mrs Spicer said, though not unkindly.

      Give him something to read, Mrs Spicer. Mrs Spicer rummaged for a moment then drew out a single broadsheet. It was an invitation to attend a meeting on votes for women in Limehouse, tea and biscuits served. Harold read without a stumble. As he finished, Mr Spicer coughed and raised his eyes to heaven.

      Here, then, Mrs Spicer, he said. Give this boy one of them accounts books. Spicer waited until Harold had taken the leather-bound book. Well, open it then, said Mr Spicer, and add up all them numbers in the right-hand column and give me an answer quick!

      Twenty-seven shillings and tenpence ha’penny. Mr Spicer took the book and began to scan the column, mouthing the numbers to himself. After a short while he passed the book to his wife and said:

      Here, you check this.

      While Mrs Spicer made her way down the column, Harold fixed his gaze on the mynah.

      They’ll speak, you know, if you train ’em, said Mr Spicer. Which is just as well since they ain’t much to look at.

      Yes, Harold said. He explained that the Baker family had a similar bird and that it, too, wasn’t much to look at.

      Mrs Spicer confirmed Harold’s figure. For a moment Spicer stood fiddling with his moustache, thinking, then he said:

       Got family what served, sonny?

      Harold explained that his father had been invalided out and that his older brother had worked in the docks for most of the war. Spicer listened with apparent concentration, then tapped the bars of the cage and began to sing ‘Laddie Boy’:

      Goodbye and luck be with you, Laddie Boy, Laddie Boy.

      After a little while, the bird began to join in with the chorus and even managed a bit of one of the verses.

      Ha ha ha, see? Spicer shook with laughter and wiped his eyes with a mucky sleeve. Mrs Spicer sighed and began very quietly drumming her fingers on the table.

      Your father not badly injured, I hope? said Spicer, taking another tack. Employed?

      Harold replied that his father worked in the docks. He didn’t know the nature of the injury because his father didn’t talk about it.

       What do your bird say, sonny?

      Peg leg, sir, Harold said.

      Spicer pulled himself upright and coughed a little.

       Peg leg? Not nothing else?

      Spicer gazed at Harold wide-eyed for a moment, then, striding forward, clapped him on the back and said:

      Come back tomorrow morning, eight sharp, and, so long as you can ride the bicycle, you can have the job.

      When Harold got home and told his mother the news, May said:

      So what’s the wages? and biffed him round the head when he said he didn’t know.

      Fishlips! Always ask about the wages.

      But when Harold turned up at Spicer’s early the following day, Mr Spicer met him at the door and with a grim look on his face said he was very sorry but he’d reconsidered his position and decided that, when there were war heroes without jobs, he couldn’t in all honesty offer the post to a boy. Even to a boy like Harold. Especially to a boy like Harold.

      And so Harold went home, feeling puzzled about the world and the dilemmas it offered up. It was true that it didn’t seem right to take a job from a war hero, one of those men with a single eye or two missing feet that you saw staggering around the streets looking dazed and ragged. But what was he to do? He had to make his way in the world in some fashion or other. He understood that he was a cripple and with rickets, but did that make him so incapable? Had he not proved himself able to make calculations that even Mr Spicer couldn’t manage?

      By the time he reached his front door he had decided not to tell his mother about Spicer’s rejection. He hated lying to her, but he couldn’t bear to tell her the truth. He’d have to tell her that Spicer had asked him to start the following morning and think up some strategy meantime. Never knowing him to have lied, May accepted what her younger son said without a blink, but guilt gnawed away at him so badly that, lying top to toe in the bed he shared with Jack that night, he finally confessed the awful truth to Jack’s feet. His older brother sat up and swore a great deal.

      War heroes my arse. Ain’t our dad a war hero? Don’t he deserve his crippled son start bringing in a bit of a wage?

      Harold hadn’t considered this argument but, considering it now, a flush of pride blossomed on his face.

      Don’t you worry, Crip, Jack said. Ever since the accident he had called his younger brother Crip, though never in public. We’ll soon sort it out. Jack turned away and moments later his snores were rattling the mattress.

      The following morning, on Jack’s instructions, Harold limped to the door of a friend of Jack’s, Tommy Bluston, and asked to borrow his bicycle. The wheels wobbled and the bicycle swung wildly about but he managed to remain on the saddle. For an hour or so he practised, pedalling faster and faster up and down the quiet terraces. Pretty soon he had gathered his confidence sufficiently to venture out into traffic and was bowling along the granite sets as though he’d been born to it. It was exhilarating. The rough air of Poplar whipped his face and he had the sensation of being pulled, but the best part of it all was that, on the seat of the bicycle, Harold ceased to be a cripple. On the contrary, he suddenly became someone people admired or even envied. He had only to ring his bell and women would hurry out of the way, dogs would bark, children would point and sometimes even run behind him. So wrapped up was he in his new-found freedom that he lost all awareness of time. Suddenly, becoming conscious of the twelve o’clock chimes, he pedalled as fast as his legs would take him along the East India Dock Road towards the docks. As he pulled up, Jack was standing beside the police sentry box at the entrance to the West India with a cigarette in his mouth.

      You’re late.

      Harold followed his brother, pushing Tommy’s bicycle past the workhouse and into an alleyway beside The Resolute pub. Jack tapped on the pub window and nodded to someone inside, then the two brothers went around the back to a latched gate. A dog chained up beside a shed started barking, then, seeing Jack, it quietened down, slapping its tail against the dim concrete of the yard. From the inside pocket of his jacket, Jack produced a key with which he unlocked the padlock to the shed. Immediately inside the door stood a few wooden crates, their outlines dissolving gradually into the gloom.

      Now this Spicer cove, Jack said, finally. He sell black treacle? Coconut mats?

      Harold