A Slip in Time by Maggie Pearson Page A

dusted himself down.Life, eh? He was going to lose his eldest son. ‘Poor Fadge!’
    â€˜Fadge, yes. That’s what they called him. I don’t know why. Something to do with him being so small.’
    â€˜A fadge was a farthing.’
    â€˜Was it? I didn’t know that.’
    â€˜That’s a small brown coin…’
    â€˜I know what a farthing is! Kept all Young Jack’s badges he did. And the Bible he gave him.’ Grandad was chewing again, on nothing. ‘There was a great trade in Bibles in those days. Small enough to fit in a breast pocket, just over your heart. Thick enough to stop a bullet. They must be in here somewhere.’ He was rummaging through the stuff at the bottom of the trunk.
    â€˜There’s three or four trunks more up in the attic,’ said Jack, starting towards the door. Was it possible he’d met his own great-great-grandad? He wanted proof; proof that he hadn’t just dreamed it all. Made it up out of names and scraps and maybe – yes – even a photograph seen once and then forgotten.
    He caught a brief glimpse of Mum’s back, retreating to the kitchen again, which wasmaybe just as well, because she didn’t see what happened next. Behind him he heard Grandad still muttering to himself, ‘They’ve got to be here somewhere. Huh? What’s this?’
    Turning, he saw the old man, like a conjuror producing the flags of all nations, pulling something from under the debris at the bottom of the trunk. A knitted scarf. The stripes had faded to greyish-white and bluey-grey, during a hundred years or more. But Jack recognised it, from where Mum had counted the stitches wrong and turned the final ‘L’ to an ‘I’.
    â€˜His lucky scarf!’ said Grandad. ‘That’s what he always called it. Odd, though, because he was never a Millwall supporter. He told me once it was something to do with his first acting job.’ He sighed and shook his head. ‘I suppose it’s just one of those things we’ll never know.’

Glossary
    Barrel organ A small instrument, played by turning a handle.
    Cleaver A tool for chopping meat.
    Concertina A small musical instrument.
    Dripping Melted fat from roasting meat.
    Eiderdown A quilt filled with down.
    Farthing A coin; a quarter of a penny.
    Guinea A coin; one pound.
    Home Guard The British Citizen Army, organised to defend the UK against invasion. Founded in 1940.
    Lummox A clumsy, stupid person.
    Sheltered Housing Semi-independent accommodation for the elderly, with some shared facilities and a warden.
    Shilling A coin; twelve pence.
    Siren song The call of something appealing but potentially dangerous.
    Snakesman A boy skilled at entering houses through small spaces, for criminal purposes.
    Wipers (Ypres) The location of many battles during the First World War.

Historical Note
    At any time during Queen Victoria’s reign there were around 30,000 children sleeping rough in London. That’s not counting those fending for themselves who had somewhere to go at night – which might be just a few square metres of someone else’s one-room flat, screened off by a blanket. Some of them cared for younger brothers and sisters, too.
    If they didn’t work, they starved. So they sold things like flowers, flypapers, peg-dolls, cigars, matches or bundles of firewood; they sang songs or they danced; they scavenged in the gutters and among the rubbish for anything they could sell on for a penny or two: rags, bones, cigar ends, even dog turds (which were used to soften the leather for making gloves).
    The alternative was the workhouse, where conditions were made deliberately harsh, to put off scroungers. Even prison was more comfortable, according to one boy who was sent to jail for a month for begging.The nicest place he’d ever been, he said; next time he’d make sure he was put inside for theft, so they’d keep him a bit longer.
    The London fogs