Spiff looked down the line of prisoners. ‘Do you know what he’s talking about?’ he asked. ‘Because I don’t.’
Sussworth made a gesture and the policeman standing immediately behind Spiff cuffed the Borrible across the top of the head. Spiff staggered but rode the blow philosophically.
‘I’ve never been to Southfields,’ he went on, ‘don’t even know where it is.’
‘I tell you something,’ said Sussworth, ‘I could clip your ears right now if I wanted to, but I’ll give you all a chance. Whosoever gives me the information I want will walk out of here a free Borrible with his, or her, ears unclipped. I can’t say fairer than that.’
Vulge stepped forward on the instant. ‘I’ve got something to tell you then,’ he cried.
‘Yes,’ said Sussworth, leaning eagerly over his desk, ‘what is it?’
‘It’s this,’ said Vulge, ‘I don’t know where Southfields is either.’
Inspector Sussworth was not amused. He narrowed his eyes and lengthened his lips. ‘A funny man, eh?’ he said. ‘Well, you won’t be laughing long. I’ll have your ears done tonight and we’ll see how brave you are then.’
Sergeant Hanks propped his belly on the desk and leant into it. ‘Perhaps,’ he suggested, ‘it might be a good idea, sir, if we gave them until tomorrow morning to think it over. They’re all a bit full of themselves at the moment but a day and a night in the cells without anything to eat or drink, well, that might help them to see things a bit differently.’
Sussworth’s face flared with pleasure. ‘Splendid idea, sergeant,’ he said. ‘You will arrange for the police surgeon to be round here first thing tomorrow morning. We’ll soon have these snotty buggers singing a different song.’ His eyes moved along the row of Borribles, studying each face, searching for weakness. His scrutiny stopped at Twilight.
‘Well, sonny,’ said the inspector, ‘have you got something you want to tell me? You’d like to save your ears, wouldn’t you?’
‘Oh, yes,’ answered Twilight, ‘I would. I wish to announce, categorically, that I am not knowing the whereabouts of Southfields either.’
There was a terrible silence in the room and the tension rose. Under the kneehole desk the Borribles could see the inspector’s legs contorting with fury. He drew a breath and held it in his lungs as if to cool his temper. His nose turned in the air like a corkscrew.
‘Take ’em down and lock ‘em up,’ he screamed, ‘before I goes berserk. I won’t be responsible for my actions if they stays here. I’ll see ’em tomorrow; and then, one by one, I’ll take their ears off. I’ll look forward to that all night.’
The policemen grabbed the Borribles from behind, manhandled them out of the room, and they were taken down a flight of stairs to a corridor along which the cells were situated. A policeman chose one at random and, still handcuffed one to the other, the prisoners were flung inside and the huge steel door clanged shut. A key clattered three times and the SBG men stamped away, their morning’s work at last complete.
Left to themselves the Borribles stretched out as best they might on the concrete floor and, for want of pillow or blanket, rested their heads on their nearest friend.
‘Well,’ said Bingo, ‘this is nice. No grub, no hope and after tomorrow, no ears.’
‘It stinks of pee down here,’ said Vulge.
‘Cats?’ suggested Twilight.
‘No,’ said Chalotte, trying to make her head comfortable on Stonks’s stomach, ‘humans.’
4
The stink came from the prison cubicle next door. Old Ben was in there and Ben was the dirtiest man alive. A retired tramp who no longer tramped, he lived on Feather’s Wharf, a huge rubbish dump on the south side of Wandsworth Bridge. He was night-watchman, rubbish sorter and layabout, and he lived in a ramshackle lean-to in the middle of a wild mountain range of trash. He had only one friend in his life, the stableman at Young’s Brewery, and only two occupations, collecting things that other people had thrown away, and drinking beer.
Sometimes Ben drank too much and staggered out of Feather’s Wharf and into the streets, weaving along the pavements, rebounding off lamp posts, singing old songs and wagging his finger at everyone who passed. When this happened Ben was arrested and kept in the police cells until he became sober, and that was where he was the day the Borribles were brought in, although he didn’t notice their arrival because he was fast asleep, flat on his back on the floor and snoring. The door to his cell was open but then it was always open because no one took Ben seriously enough to lock it. As a general rule the policemen of south London just laughed at Ben and as soon as he had recovered from his bout of drinking they would simply push him on to the streets and tell him to go back to his rubbish dump. ‘Keep out of sight,’ the coppers told him, ‘and you’ll keep out of trouble.’
Ben certainly smelt and it was a very special smell: a concotion brewed of body odours, decayed rubbish, dried pee, wood smoke and stagnant Thames water. Ben never washed and the back of his neck was criss-crossed with deep crevices of dirt and pitted with the scars of ancient blackhead volcanoes. Every pore in his body had been clogged with the soot of the smoke that rose from the eternal fires of litter and lumber that he kept burning by the threshold of his shack.
His hair was black and long and gleamed with grease where he had wiped his hands; it had not been cut for years and it grew wild at the ends, tangling into the edges of a huge beard which flourished, abandoned, from one side of his face to the other. Through this hedge stuck an enormous nose, and below, though well hidden, was a large mouth holding prominent brown teeth which had been eroded into wicked shapes by beer and nicotine, saliva and time. Ben’s fingernails were jagged too and as broad as shovels, loaded with grime enough, each one, to cultivate potatoes in.
He was tall and gaunt, when he could stand, with hollow shoulders, knobbly hands and eyes tired with wisdom. On his head he always wore a floppy black hat with a wide brim, but he did not wear clothes like other people wore clothes, he inhabited them, layers of them. When his garments became so old or stained that other tramps would have thrown them away, Ben just found another layer and climbed in, discarding nothing. He was like an archaeological dig and somewhere, deep down near his skin, his clothes must have been welded together in an age-old flux of sweat and dust. On top of all his shirts and jackets and trousers Ben wore two or three ancient overcoats, each one of them a labyrinth of tattered linings, poacher’s pockets and hidden compartments. In them Ben carried everything he needed: beer, tobacco, bread and matches.
All his belongings came from the rubbish dump where he lived and he wanted for nothing. Ben didn’t give a monkey’s about the world. He didn’t care for work, he didn’t care for authority and he didn’t care for soap and water. He didn’t even care very much for himself.
He had been found the previous night on Wandsworth Bridge, singing ‘Shenandoah’, his favourite song, and trying to walk along the parapet high above the river. Passers-by had prevented him and had telephoned the police and they had taken him in. Ben didn’t mind, he didn’t mind anything. ‘Might as well do one thing as another,’ he used to say. ‘All be the same in a hundred years, won’t it?’
In his cell Ben groaned, opened his eyes, stopped snoring and sat up. He felt sober and he felt terrible. It was time to go home. He was sure that he had a few bottles of Young’s Special Brew hidden away in his shack; just what he needed to put him right.
He attempted to focus his eyes on the door and though at first they dived and swooped, eventually they steadied. The door was open and he knew that if he went quietly along the corridor and up the stairs he would come to the ground floor of the police station. There might be someone in the front office, there might not. It would make no difference, they always let him go.
Ben struggled to his feet and felt in his pockets. All his possessions were there. One advantage of being dirty was that no one wanted to search you, not even coppers. Someone in a Salvation Army hostel had tried to give him
a bath once but they’d abandoned the experiment after the first pair of sticky trousers.
Ben went into the corridor and shuffled towards the steps. It felt a little cooler though the air was still heavy and oppressive.
‘Must be the middle of the night,’ he said. ‘Cor, I’ve been asleep all day; it’s a wonder I didn’t die of thirst.’
He came to the door of the next cell, grabbed at the grille and looked in. He always liked to see who had been arrested when he was put inside but this time he could hardly believe his eyes. In the light of a single electric bulb he saw seven children lying on the concrete floor, huddled together, not for warmth, but for comfort
‘That’s not right,’ said Ben, adjusting his hat with meticulous care, ‘kids in here, wonder what they’ve done, still … none of my business is it? None of my business.’
Ben shuffled on and left the Borribles sleeping; their predicament passed from his mind. He climbed the stairs to the corridor above and went to the back door of the police station.
‘Hmm,’ said Ben. He stared out. It was dark, the darkest part of the night, and a thick white summer mist was rolling up from the River Thames like poisonous gas and lying along the streets like long gobs of cotton waste.
‘Hmm,’ said Ben once more and leant against the door frame. ‘Can’t see much, should stay in me cell, really, bound to get lost on my way home … Still there’s no beer here, leastways not for me there ain’t.’
A steady hum of voices and machines came from the busy upper floors of the building. Something stamped in a corner of the yard and Ben tried to look through the soft shreds of mist.
‘Can’t be,’ he said. ‘I must be having illuminations.’ He looked harder and made out the fuzzy-edged shape of a horse tied to an iron-barred window. ‘Well I never, bloody spooky that is, whatever it is.’
He turned immediately and began to slop along the corridor in his broken boots. The door to the interrogation room was open and the front office was also visible. He could see the night sergeant sitting at his desk.
‘I’ll say goodnight to him,’ said the tramp, ‘maybe scrounge a couple of bob too. Always good for a touch, he is.’
As Ben advanced the policeman’s telephone rang; he picked it up, listened for an instant and then got to his feet. When Ben reached the room it was empty; only the swinging door showed that the sergeant had gone upstairs.
‘Hm,’ said Ben, ‘I’ll wait a bit.’ He went over to the desk and gazed down at it in wonder; it was not often that he saw such tidiness. Cleanliness and order never failed to bewilder him.
‘Ain’t they marvellous,’ he reflected, ‘all that writing things in books, squaring things off, adding things up, underlining things in red … Funny way to spend your time.’ His eyes wandered to the shelves behind the desk; they carried rows of files and baskets of statements. Ben shook his head. ‘And they calls me mad,’ he said.
It was then that he saw the keys, hanging on a hook screwed into the side of one of the shelves. He rolled his head on his shoulders, first left, then right; he was alone and there was no sound of alarm from upstairs. Ben’s face broke open with pleasure and a big brown smile forced a way through his beard.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘the keys, eh, all numbered and neat, cells and handcuffs, my my. ’Course, it’s nothing to do with me, but then nothing is so it won’t matter, and even if it did it wouldn’t would it? Anyway, it’s about time I did something for a lark, haven’t had a lark for years, the change will do me good.’ Ben raised his right hand and unhooked two lots of keys. ‘Don’t you jangle now,’ he said to them, ‘don’t you dare jangle.’
He shoved the keys into one of his overcoat pockets so that they would not rattle and retraced his steps as quietly as loose boots and no socks would allow. When he reached the Borribles’ cell he peered through the grille for the second time.
‘Still there look, it don’t seem right, do it? Nice little kids like that.’ Ben smacked his lips together, took the keys from his pocket, selected the one that bore the same number as the door and slipped it into the lock. Then he turned it till it would turn no more and the door clicked open, swinging silently on oiled hinges.
Ben entered the cell and began to undo the handcuffs that pinched the skin on the sleeping Borribles’ wrists. ‘Look at them red marks,’ he said when he’d finished, ‘terrible really. They’ll have to run like the clappers when they get out of here, though. John Law won’t like this a smitherin’.’
Chalotte opened her eyes and raised her head, puzzled. She couldn’t remember where she was. Slowly her nose wrinkled and her lips tightened into a figure of eight. ‘Cripes,’ she swore, ‘you don’t’ arf niff.’
Ben smiled, showed his gothic teeth and held up a fistful of handcuffs. ‘Don’t mock that smell,’ he said theatrically, like an explorer naming a new continent, ‘that smell is the smell of freedom.’
Chalotte raised her unshackled hands and stared at them. Then she noticed the open door. ‘Who are you?’ she asked.
‘I’m Ben,’ said Ben, ‘and I’m on my way home. Coming?’
Chalotte jumped to her feet and shook her friends awake. ‘We’re getting out,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t ask me how it happened but it has.’
‘Who’s this bundle of rags?’ said Spiff, rubbing his eyes.
‘It’s Ben,’ said Ben again. ‘Follow me.’
The old tramp led the Borribles out of the cell and along the corridor. ‘Wait here,’ he said, ‘there may be a copper up above.’ Ben climbed the stairs until his eyes were level with the ground floor, then he poked his head round the banister and saw that the office was still empty. He waved a hand behind his back. ‘Come on up,’ he said.
One by one the runaways crept towards the back door while Ben kept watch for the sergeant.
‘What about you?’ said Chalotte, who was the last to appear from below. ‘Will you be all right?’
‘Don’t worry about me,’ said Ben, ‘Those coppers think I’m half drunk all the time; what they don’t realize is that I’m only all drunk half the time.’
‘Thanks for getting us out, Ben,’ said Chalotte. ‘I’ve never known a grown-up do anything like that for a Borrible before.’
‘Borribles, eh,’ said the tramp, raising his bushy eyebrows, ‘I met a few when I lived on the streets, always treated me right they did … Why don’t you come down to Feather’s Wharf, I’ve got a lovely place down there, plenty of room.’
Chalotte’s blood ran cold. She’d been through Feather’s Wharf on the Great Rumble Hunt and for her it was just a square mile of desolation where the River Wandle meandered through a moonscape of rubbish before vanishing underground into the sewers—down into the mud of Wendle territory.
‘Yes, Ben,’ she said, ‘we might, one of these days. Right now we’d better run like hell. Goodbye, and thanks.’ She left the tramp and went to join her companions in the yard behind the police station.
Outside, but only for a second or two, the Borribles were rooted to the spot in astonishment. There was mist everywhere, damp and warm and clinging to everything it touched, filling the whole world with the smell of the decaying river. Here was a mist that curled and swirled, climbing up into sinister cliffs of dirty white cloud which, as they slowly altered shape, created great canyons of deep darkness below them.
‘This’ll help us get away from the Woollies,’ whispered Chalotte, ‘won’t it?’
‘It won’t if we can’t find our way home,’ said Spiff.
Suddenly Sydney saw the horse on the far side of the yard. ‘Look,’ she said in great excitement, ‘it’s Sam; they must have caught him and brought him here.’
‘We haven’t got the time for that now,’ Spiff said. ‘We’ve got to get as far away from Fulham as we can, and you can’t do that with a horse.’
‘You do what you like,’ said Sydney. ‘I’m not going to miss a chance like this. I’m not asking any of you to help me. I’d rather you didn’t, come to that, then if anything
goes wrong you won’t be able to blame me if you get caught.’ And Sydney tossed her hair, walked over to Sam and began to undo the rope that tied him to the window.
‘Let’s run while we’ve got the chance,’ said Vulge. ‘We’ll have to get the horse some other time …’
Vulge’s comments were cut short by the appearance of Ben, a silhouette in the oblong of light that shone from the back door of the police station.
‘You kids ought to buzz off,’ he called, ‘don’t want them coppers running you in twice in a day … Shove off home.’
Then things began to happen. It was at this moment that the duty sergeant, returning from his errand, entered the front office. He heard Ben talking and, intrigued by the tramp’s behaviour, directed his steps towards the back door to find out what was going on. As he neared the tramp the sergeant heard a horse being led across the yard, then the sound of scampering feet and whispering, and finally Ben’s voice chanting, ‘Watch out, watch out, there’s a Woollie about.’
With a roar of rage the sergeant sprang at Ben and heaved him from the doorway with all his strength. The old man spun on one heel, lost a boot and teetered at high speed along the corridor until he crashed against the iron railing of the banister and slipped slowly to the floor. Ben stared at his bare foot and waggled his grimy toes. ‘Me bleedin’ boot’s come off,’ he said.
Borribles Go For Broke, The Page 8
