A Mudlark Like me Mum and Dad
Searching for treasure along the Thames
Me mum was the age that I am now, the day she stood on the banks of the river Thames, shivering and holding her baby brother James in her arms. The bodies of their parents lay beside her on the ground.
“There was a flurry of rescuers, onlookers, and scavengers after the ferry went down. A lady in a white hat took James and told me sternly to wait right there until the warden from the orphan asylum could come for me.”
Me mum told me the story when I was old enough to understand the day her life changed forever.
“But a man with eyes as black as coal came out of nowhere, snatched me up, and took me to his hideout by the river. And that is how you came to be.”
The one-handed man from Africa who is my father was born with the name Adebowale, but Mother called him Bo. He had left his happy home for a seaman’s life, hoping one day to “return like a king,” the meaning of his Yoruba name. But while he yearned for adventure, instead he got only cruelty. Meager wages, a cramped and dirty crawlspace unfit for human habitation, near starvation, and months of loneliness on the endless sea were bad enough, and then the quartermaster accused him of taking more than his share of ale and cut off his good hand with a whack of the blade. My…
