‘Is that everybody?’ the girl asked. ‘Do you need owt else? Salt? Pepper?’
‘No, that’s everything, thanks,’ Peggy answered for them all. ‘Let’s tuck in,’ she said pointedly, because Susan had already started hers, not waiting for the others to be served. Peggy was annoyed; she had taught her own son and daughter good table manners when they were young.
She looked again towards the end of the table and wondered who the boy was. He was wiping his mouth on a serviette, listening to Louisa and nodding his head with a grown-up air, which amused Peggy. Who had invited him to eat with them? Not that it mattered, there was plenty, but she was surprised that she didn’t recognize him. But children grow so fast, she thought, and he might have changed since I last saw him; perhaps he was one of theirs after all, belonging to one of her sisters. His colouring was certainly similar to her own and theirs, although a darker shade of auburn. That’ll be it, she decided. I bet he’s our Janet’s grandson. He looks like a bright lad; he’ll be like his father, who’s doing so well for himself. And she turned to the matter in hand: enjoying someone else’s cooking for a pleasant change, instead of her own.
The boy glanced over his shoulder from time to time and eventually he murmured something to Louisa, who pointed to the doorway and then sharp left to indicate the yard. He murmured an excuse and went in search of the privy, where his mother had said she was going. Outside in the yard, a rich aroma of hay and straw rose from the stabling at the bottom of the paved area, and he heard the jingle of harness and men talking. He visited the privy and then wandered down to ask the stable lads if they’d seen his mother. They didn’t seem to understand him, nor could he make out what they said when they answered, so he murmured his thanks and went back inside. He picked up his hat and scarf from the table by the door and went again to sit beside Louisa, who had ordered a dish of steamed treacle pudding and custard for him.
‘I hope you like it,’ she said anxiously. ‘It was that or apple pie.’
‘Oh, I like both,’ he said exuberantly. ‘Thank you.’ As he spooned it into his mouth, he contemplated his situation. Sometimes his mother did disappear; she would perhaps go off to an unexpected rehearsal, or see someone she knew and shoot off to gather information on who was looking for performers, or whom to avoid at all costs. Then she would turn up again at the place where she had left him.
Theatre and music hall people were a peripatetic kind, she had once told him. He liked the word; it sounded more important than roaming or travelling, which was what his mother said it meant, and he liked the way it rolled off his tongue. He separated it out into peri-pat-etic so that he would always remember it. That’s what she’s done, he thought, she’s gone peri-pat-eticking and will come back eventually.
But what should I do now, he wondered as he scraped the dish clean. Should I just wait? Will the landlord let me stay or will he turn me out at closing time if she hasn’t come back? Mrs Andrews wouldn’t have allowed me to wait in her house; she didn’t like children. He looked around the table. The adults were still eating but one of the girls had asked if they might leave the table and go outside and now they were putting on their scarves and bonnets. The children at the next table were doing the same; they all seemed to know each other, so he too got up and put on his scarf and cap. Maybe, he thought, his mother would be waiting outside the inn, or perhaps she had been watching him having a good dinner and didn’t want to disturb him or, he thought with a sudden flash of concern, be asked to pay for it.
They played hopscotch because he happened to have a piece of chalk in his pocket and no one asked where he had come from or who he was. He was preparing for that, for when someone did ask his name. Which they were sure to do. That was for certain. He knew all of theirs because they’d shouted out to each other, and Louisa had told him hers and pointed out her father Jack and her grandparents Peggy and Aaron.
Then they played tig, and just as they were deciding what to play next Louisa’s father came outside and whistled to them and beckoned. ‘Come on, you lot,’ he shouted. ‘Look sharp, we’re ready for off.’
Louisa tugged at Jack’s arm. ‘Are you coming with us?’
He hesitated for a second, then: ‘Yes, all right, I can do.’
Some of the boys and girls from the other table ran off, but once out in the Market Place at the front of the inn the rest separated and climbed into various wagons and drays and an old brougham. He followed Louisa and her sisters and climbed into one of the bigger wagons. Two of the other girls climbed out of their drays and called to their mothers that they were going with Louisa and would be dropped off, and then another, older boy did so too and sat on a sack of straw next to the little girl called Molly, putting his arm round her and shuffling up close, making her giggle.
Before they set off out of the Market Place he looked back towards the inn, but there was no sign of his mother. They took a wider road out of Hedon than the one he and she had taken yesterday towards the Hedon Arms,
