On either side as they walked were huge yellow doors, divided in half, and the top half of each stall was open and the great shire horses that pulled the drays stood there as solid and heavy as mammoths.
‘Swipe me,’ said Vulge, ‘look at the size of ’em; imagine having one of them step on your toe.’
‘And look at their teeth,’ added Twilight. ‘One mouthful and you’d be gone.’ But the horses showed no sign of hostility, they were not interested in a band of insignificant children. They simply shook their heads, snorted, stamped their feet and waited for their early morning feed.
When the Adventurers were standing before Knibbs he leant his broom against the wall and crossed his arms. He looked at Ben and then at the children. ‘Borribles, eh? Well I’ve heard of ’em; never thought I’d see any, knowingly like.’
The Borribles tensed. Knibbs, after all, was an adult.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘Ben’s told me all about it. All I want to do is get you out of sight before anyone else gets here. I don’t mind helping, but I don’t want the sack on account of it, eh, Ben. What would we do for beer then?’
‘What indeed?’ said Ben sagely. ‘What indeed?’
‘Wait a minute,’ said Sydney, ‘don’t you remember me? I met you before, that night in the fog. I brought you a horse … What’s happened to Sam?’
Knibbs looked down at Sydney. ‘Sam,’ he said, ‘why Sam’s lovely. You never seen such a horse, not in all your natural you ain’t.’ He went to a nearby stable door and unbolted the lower section. ‘I ’as to open the bottom bit,’ he explained. ‘Sam isn’t big enough to look over it, not like the others.’ With that the stableman opened the hatch and there stood Sam. But such a Sam. He was so sleek and well fed. His hooves glittered like anthracite and his coat was so polished that Sydney could see her face in it. No longer the dingy downhearted nag that had once pulled Dewdrop’s cart, Sam had been transformed into an aristocrat of a horse, small but distinguished.
The Borribles cried aloud with surprise and pushed forward to stroke and pat the animal and Sam neighed gently and nuzzled them all one by one, recognizing them.
Sydney turned to look at the stableman. ‘It’s Sam all right,’ she said, ‘and he looks lovely. But he used to be brown, now he’s black.’
‘So he is,’ said Chalotte. ‘I hadn’t noticed.’
‘Ah,’ said Knibbs, ‘that’s a disguise, that is. We’ve got to get him past Sussworth today and that’s how we’re going to do it. If Sussworth recognizes that horse he’ll know that you ain’t far away; that’s it and all about it. Now all of yer, outside and out of sight.’
Back in the yard Knibbs took them to one of the huge drays that stood near the stable office. ‘This one’s already loaded,’ he said, ‘and me and Ben are taking it out today because they’re short-handed. Now see that ladder, well you lot get up it. Lively!’
The Borribles did as they were told and found themselves on the very top of a mountainous load of wooden barrels that had been piled one on another across the length and breadth of the cart, except that in the middle Knibbs had left a space big enough for the Adventurers to jump down into and hide.
‘Don’t make a sound,’ Ben shouted. ‘Don’t come out again till I tell yer it’s safe.’ He threw a square of canvas up to them. ‘And cover yourselves with this so yer ain’t seen from a buildin’ or a bus.’
‘Where’s this cart going,’ said Orococco, ‘not Tooting by any chance?’
‘No,’ said Knibbs. ‘Battersea High Street, that’s why we’re taking you. We’re delivering to a pub called the Ancient Woodman. No more noise now.’
The Borribles grinned at each other and scrambled into the centre of the cart and found that they were hidden on all sides by the towering beer barrels. They sat and pulled the tarpaulin over their heads.
‘Just think,’ whispered Twilight, ‘we’re on our way home.’
‘You ain’t home yet,’ said Stonks. ‘There’s still Sussworth and Hanks to get past.’
‘Yeah,’ said Vulge, ‘and just think what they’ll do to Ben and Knibbs if they finds ’em smuggling Borribles … They’ll send ‘em to prison for years and years.’
Outside, beyond the barrels, the brewery went about its business and the noises they heard told the Borribles what was happening. First, one of the stable doors was opened and Knibbs and Ben emerged with two shire horses and buckled them into the shafts of the great cart. Then came the light step of Sam as he was brought out too and tied behind. A little later there was more noise as other drivers and draymen arrived to groom their horses and back them into the carts ready for the day’s work. Then the foreman came and checked the loads and told the teams which part of London they were to go to, and where they were meant to deliver their barrels. He called out the names of the pubs from his order book: the Fallen Tree, the Old Goat, the Jolly Sailor, the Apple of My Eye, the Garden of Eden, the Charcoal Burner, and many more.
When the foreman had reached the end of his list he rolled out a firkin of beer, lifted it up on to a wooden trestle, broached it and then handed every man present a pint mug of ale so that they could drink to the new day. As soon as their glasses were empty the draymen smacked their lips, shouted goodbye to each other, climbed to the pinnacle of their high carts, cracked their whips in the air and at last allowed the giant horses to move forward.
Now Knibbs cracked his whip and spoke to his horses. ‘Come on up, Donner, my beauty; come on up, Blitzen, my girl,’ he called, and Ben wrapped his legs in a huge leather apron and the great dray rumbled over the cobbles.
‘We’re off,’ cried Ben, and there was a clashing of horse-brasses as well as a racket of horseshoes and the cart charged down the yard and out through the brewery gates like an engine of war on its way to do battle.
‘It’s now or never, all right,’ said Bingo, jolted so much that his voice shook. ‘If we get caught this time there’ll be no getting away from in here. It’ll be ears clipped for sure.’
Knocker smiled. ‘As the proverb says, “There’s a time for fingers crossed and mouths shut.” This is it.’
It was eight thirty in the morning now and the rush hour traffic in Wandsworth High Street was heavy, not that traffic made any difference to Knibbs. The law of the land gives horse-drawn vehicles right of way over motor cars, and so they were all made to stop and wait as the drays clattered from the brewery to head in different directions, out over London. Knibbs touched on his reins and the great horses strode proudly on, and behind the cart trotted Sam as dainty as a thoroughbred. Into Wandsworth Plain they went, round the one-way system, back into Armoury Way, past the traffic lights and on to the great modern roundabout where Sydney had walked in the mist with Ben, and finally into York Road, towards the line where Wandsworth meets Battersea, where Inspector Sussworth waited in ambush with Sergeant Hanks and the men of the SBG.
And along each road the traffic yielded before the steady progress of the magnificent horses, car drivers leant on their steering wheels and peered up through their windscreens to savour a moment of beauty to take to work with them, and passengers in the hot smoky upstairs of the buses gazed stupidly across at Knibbs and Ben and wondered why they looked so free and piratical, never guessing for a moment that within a secret space, deep among the barrels, lay the Adventurers, escaping across a frontier.
Halfway along York Road the stream of cars and buses slowed to a halt and the horses stopped too. Ben stood on his seat and tried to make out what was happening in the distance. A second later his voice drifted back to the Borribles.
‘Steady, mates, I can see a blue van up front … It’s them all right. They’re searching all the cars, they’ve got a barricade across the road. Keep yer ’eads down.’
Pace by pace the dray advanced and the Borribles bit their lips and waited. They couldn’t see and they daren’t look but Ben told them that there was a dark blue Transit van parked halfway across the road and two or three policemen were filtering the traffic
past it in the direction of the city. Slowly the horses stepped, responding patiently to the commands of Knibbs, until at last they came level with the policemen and there was Inspector Sussworth, standing on the pavement, watching everything with his bright dark eyes. His long coat swept the ground, his buttons shone and the two sides of his square moustache twitched up and down like the wings of a dying moth. Beside him, forever faithful, stood Sergeant Hanks, forever fat, his tunic stained with months of food, greasy layers of it. Sussworth gestured and one of his constables stepped to the side of the cart and gazed up into Knibbs’s face.
‘Pull that cart over here, out of the way,’ said the policeman roughly. ‘You’re causing an obstruction.’
‘Wouldn’t be if you didn’t have that stupid van of yours halfway across the road,’ said Knibbs. ‘Broken down, have yer?’
‘Watch yer tongue, chummy,’ said the policeman, and he made Knibbs bring the cart to the kerb where Sussworth stood, his hands clasped behind his back.
‘And where are you going with this lot?’ he asked, his manner argumentative and superior, his head pivoting dangerously on his neck.
‘We’re going to a bottle party,’ offered Ben, ‘and we don’t want to look mean.’
‘Don’t be smart,’ said Sussworth, then he looked again. His expression hardened. ‘Well, well,’ he said, ‘that’s old Ben, the tramp. I’ve had trouble with you before. Didn’t think you worked, Ben. I had you down for one of them welfare scroungers. You know, half the year on the dole and the other half in an alcoholic haze.’
‘I’m a part-time drayman,’ said Ben haughtily, feeling quite safe on his lofty perch. ‘It’s my trade.’
‘Drinks more than you sell, I’ll be bound,’ said Hanks, and he took a boiled sweet from his pocket, unwrapped it with his teeth and sucked it into his mouth. He licked the paper then let it flutter to the ground, wet with his saliva.
‘I asked you where you were going,’ persisted Sussworth, ‘and if I don’t get a proper answer you’ll bloody well stay here till your beer goes flat’
Knibbs said, ‘We’re delivering in Battersea High Street, the Ancient Woodman, down Church Road to the Swan and then back up Battersea Bridge Road.’
‘Hmm,’ said Sussworth, not convinced, and the Borribles heard his little dancing steps come nearer to the cart. Behind him thudded Sergeant Hanks, cheeks slobbering noisily at his sweet. It sounded like someone with a bad cold sniffing loose snot.
Suddenly Sussworth took a truncheon from one of his constables and began tapping all the barrels he could reach, one after the other. Fear grasped the Borribles by the heart and they held their breath. Slowly Sussworth worked along the dray, down one side, across the rear, then up to the front. When he’d finished he stood in the roadway, dwarfed by the horses, so small that he could have walked under their bellies without removing his hat.
‘What’s that horse doing at the back? Stolen is it? Looks familiar to me.’
‘Well,’ said Knibbs, ‘one horse does look very much like another.’
‘That’s the trouble,’ said Ben, looking astute, ‘seen one horse, seen ’em all.’ And he nodded his head as if he’d been grappling with the problem all his life.
‘And why is it so small, then?’ asked the inspector. ‘Couldn’t pull a cart this size, could it? So what’s it doing with you?’
‘Cor,’ said Ben, blowing his cheeks out with indignation, ‘give an ’orse a chance. He’s little, certainly, but he’s learning to be big, ain’t he? Still growing, still training. I mean you went to night school, didn’t yer?’
‘Don’t you get uppity with me,’ said Sussworth angrily and a dark cloud passed over his face. ‘If that horse weren’t so black I’d swear it was the little brown job those Borribles nicked.’ As he spoke an idea came into his head and he went to the back of the cart again and studied Sam very closely, wiping his hands down the animal’s legs. Sam trembled with fear and distaste. He needn’t have worried though; the dye that Knibbs had used did not come off on the policeman’s hand in spite of the fact that he rubbed as hard as he could. The stableman was a wily old horse-trader and had lived with the gypsies for many years in his younger days. He knew all about disguising horses.
Disappointed and still suspicious Sussworth returned to the front of the cart and stood by the tail of the offside shire horse, the one Knibbs called Blitzen.
‘Now listen here, you layabout,’ he said to Ben, ‘have you seen anything of them kids since I asked you last? There’s a reward out for ’em you know, five hundred pounds. Just think what you’d be able to drink with that.’
‘Oh,’ said Ben, clasping his hands together and lifting his eyes to heaven, ‘five hundred pounds, such money. You know I dreams of money, every night, in banknotes mostly. I sees myself stuffing me mattresses with it, and me pillows. I’ve got my eyes peeled like spuds for them kids, Inspector, sir, honest I have. I’ll find ’em out for yer, bet yer boots I will.’
Sussworth thought for a moment and Sergeant Hanks stuck a fingernail into his nose. There was silence as everyone waited for the inspector to come to a decision. The rest of the morning traffic moved slowly past the barrier.
At that moment Blitzen arched her massive tail with an elegant slow grace and a soft wide cable of freshly plaited manure appeared, rolling out of the great body in a heavy lump of steaming brown flecked with straw. It flopped moistly to the ground and exploded over Inspector Sussworth’s shoes and trousers.
The inspector cried aloud and jumped backwards immediately, prodding his sergeant in the stomach with a sharp elbow.
‘Ouch,’ yelled Hanks. His boiled sweet slipped into his throat and stuck there and his fingernail scraped the inside of his nostril and drew blood. Unable to speak a word he staggered to the nearest policeman and, going redder and redder in the face, begged, with gestures, to be thumped hard on the shoulders before he died of a seizure.
Sussworth went frantic; he could not abide dirt. He stamped and scraped his feet on the edge of the kerb, he shook his trouser legs, he shouted and screamed.
‘Get those horses away from here, get my car, take me home. I must get changed, I must have a new uniform, I must have a bath. Take those animals away, have them shot. They’re disgusting, unhygienic, there ought to be a law against them. I’ll have ’em turned into catsmeat, take ‘em away.’
Knibbs winked at Ben and shook the reins. Blitzen turned her huge head and gazed with disdain at the prancing figure of Inspector Sussworth and, as the horse moved out into the stream of traffic, she twitched her tail once more and farted loudly, like a cannon.
Sussworth’s legs shook in temper, he felt weak with the vulgarity of it all and he covered his face with his hands. ‘Hanks,’ he moaned. ‘Hanks get my car, take me away. I’ll kill that horse if you don’t; I won’t be responsible for my actions.’
Knibbs held up his whip, the slow traffic stopped and the dray pulled round the SBG van and into the open road beyond. The barrier had been passed, the frontier had been cleared. Down among the beer barrels the Borribles clasped each other in jubilation.
‘We’ve done it,’ said Chalotte.
‘And with Sam too,’ said Sydney. ‘We escaped with Sam.’
Knocker grinned and grinned. ‘I never felt better in my life,’ he said. ‘Home, sweet home.’ And he threw his head high and sang a song of triumph, not loudly, for he did not want to be heard outside the barrels, but with feeling and gratitude warm in his voice. And his friends closed their eyes, both to concentrate on the words and to keep back the tears of joy. This was Knocker’s song.
‘Hip hip hooray—we’ve won the day!
We ride victorious from the fray!
Three cheers for Knibbsie! Three cheers for Ben!
And Donner and Blitzen, three cheers for them!
Defying the odds they’ve brought us free
Of Sussworth, Hanks and the SBG.
Toast them in beer for all they’ve done—
Honorary Bor
ribles, every one!’
Donner and Blitzen rattled their brasses as if in answer and trotted on at a fair clip. Past the lights at the end of Plough Road they went, past Price’s candle factory and finally into Vicarage Crescent and to the bottom of Battersea High Street. Only then did Knibbs and Ben stop the cart and, to the astonishment of passers-by, they stood on their seat, doffed their hats to each other and gave three cheers.
‘You’re a gentleman, Ben,’ said Knibbs.
‘And you’re a scholar, my dear Knibbsie,’ said Ben.
While the two adults were exchanging these compliments the Borribles climbed out of their hiding place and sat on top of the barrels in order to contemplate their freedom.
‘And Ben,’ said Sydney, ‘you’re a real Borrible.’
‘And you too, Knibbsie,’ said Chalotte, ‘a real, real Borrible.’
‘Thank you,’ said Knibbs. ‘I must say I’ve always felt like one.’
Ben wagged his beard. ‘Don’t you lot get careless now.’ He looked down the street. ‘You’d better scarper before you’re spotted.’
‘But will we ever see you again?’ asked Chalotte, her face creased with worry.
Knibbs smiled. ‘I should think so. I’ll give a whistle every time I come down here with a load, and bring Ben sometimes, when he’s sober, that is!’
‘Fair enough,’ said Napoleon, screwing his face up like a conspirator’s. ‘And if you two ever need help, no matter what, Napoleon’s yer man.’
‘And us too,’ said the others, and they climbed down the great cartwheels and gathered together on the pavement while Sydney went to Sam the horse, untied him and stroked his neck. The Adventurers looked at one another, suddenly concerned.
‘That’s a point,’ said Vulge. ‘What are we going to do with him? We haven’t thought of that, have we?’
The Borribles Go for Broke Page 24
