The tramp laughed at the amazement on the faces of the Adventurers and fell into a chair at the head of the long table which occupied the centre of the room. Then he groped under his seat and began to pull bottles of Special Brew into sight, lining them up, one beside the other, until there was enough for everybody.
‘Here you are then, mates. You’d better have one of these, celebrate your arrival at Ben’s gaff, like.’ He looked round the room until he could contain his pride no longer. ‘Well,’ he asked, ‘what do you think of her, eh? I tells yer straight, even ole Queenie ain’t got nothing like this; she wouldn’t know what to do with it even if she had.’
The Borribles nodded. There was a lot in what Ben said.
They were standing in a large room which had been made by banging tarred planks into the ground and then nailing sheets of corrugated iron across them to form a roof. It was a rickety building and one that seemed liable to collapse at any moment, but it was not the shack itself which astounded the Borribles so much as its contents.
The table, at the head of which Ben now sat drinking his ale like a Viking chieftain, had elegant bulging legs and a chenille tablecloth of a deep burgundy colour. All Ben’s candles burned in graceful twirly candlesticks from which the silver plate had worn away to leave the brass gleaming through, brighter than gold.
At one end of the room was an enamelled wood-burning stove with a pot belly and three feet made like lion’s claws. Its doors must have fallen off at some time in the past but they had since been re-hung on hinges improvised from the thick wire of a coat hanger. The hut’s earthen floor was covered with several layers of carpet, warm and luxurious to the feel of the foot. There was no shortage of armchairs either, all of them threadbare, shapeless and comfortable. Against one of the longer walls leant a huge dresser overloaded with brightly glazed cups and plates; they were chipped and cracked but remained, for the most part, quite serviceable.
Ben had plenty of food too, though it looked as second-hand as the furniture and cascaded out of the front of a large kitchen cabinet: torn packets of cornflakes, broken boxes of dried milk, bags of biscuit pieces, tins of steak and kidney pudding and loaves of sliced bread, mouldy at the edges and spilling out of their waxed paper like grimy playing cards, spreading across the floor, trodden into the carpets.
But that was only a beginning. All round the room at every height were planks of rough wood, loosely bracketed to the walls and sloping precariously. These were Ben’s shelves and on them he stacked the things he called useful, the things he had discovered in the mounds of rubbish on Feather’s Wharf: old-fashioned valve radios, magazines, knives and forks, sardine cans filled with nuts and bolts and spring washers, bicycle chains, torches, spanners, screwdrivers. The Borribles gazed and gazed. There was even a beer crate under the table stuffed to the brim with dozens of pairs of old shoes and, on a worm-eaten chest of drawers, an ancient wind-up gramophone with a pile of old seventy-eights beside it. Such was Ben’s shanty.
The tramp wagged his beard in contentment, pleased at the surprise on the faces around him. He scratched an armpit and opened another bottle of beer.
‘I’ve got something of everything,’ he said. ‘It’s diabolical what people throw away; and that ain’t the half of it, just have a look at this.’ Ben pulled himself to his feet, seized an oil lamp and went to a curtain that was draped across a corner of the room.
‘You see,’ he explained, ‘this shack we’re in now was here when I came so all I had to do was furnish it, but there was so much good rubbish going to waste that I had nowhere to put it all, so I kept adding other shacks to this one. You can come and see if yer like.’
Ben drew the curtain aside, held his lamp high and stepped through a narrow doorway with the Borribles following. Once again they gasped. They were in a lean-to in which pile upon pile of second-hand clothes rose in towers to the roof. There were clothes of all kinds: trousers, coats, shirts, sweaters, cloth caps. There was hardly space enough to move.
‘I don’t know what to do with it all,’ said Ben. ‘I swaps some from time to time, just for grub and beer, but people throws their stuff away quicker than I can pick it up … There’s a damn sight more than this too.’
And there was. Ben had added at least six or seven sheds on to the original one and each construction leant weakly back upon its neighbour for support, looking ready, so it seemed, to fall over at the first puff of wind. It was all dangerously ramshackle but Ben had been obliged to make his house out of the materials that had come to hand: splintered doors, squares of asbestos, bits of broken window, sheets of enamelled iron bearing advertisements, the timber from shattered packing cases, everything nailed and wired together to form a warren of rooms and corridors, and not one of them at right angles to another but sprawled about all higgledy-piggledy, making haphazard corners inside and triangular yards outside, shapes that were ideal for storing the thousands of things that Ben had collected over the years.
In the third room were countless bottles of all colours, stacked row upon row, smelling of stale alcohol and covered in dust and thick black cobwebs: wine bottles, beer bottles, cider bottles and lemonade bottles.
The next lean-to was where Ben kept bits and pieces of hundreds of oil lamps, antique and modern, and between the slanting shelves there were brass hooks and from each one hung a coloured mug or flowered chamber pot. The fifth room had its walls concealed by thousands of tin cans, cleaned and flattened with a hammer and then nailed in position, making the place glitter like a pub at Christmas. Here too were beds and sofas with coverlets, blankets and eiderdowns, enough to sleep an army.
‘This is where I snoozes,’ said Ben, and he held his lamp up to show a huge brass bedstead adorned with five or six interior-sprung mattresses, making the bed so tall that the tramp needed a stepladder to get into it.
The sixth room was stacked to the height of a man with bundles of newspapers, magazines and books. The seventh was a kind of workshop where Ben stored tools and kept a few deckchairs and sun loungers.
‘I like to watch the barges and tugs going by in the summer,’ he said, ‘and the people rushing over the bridge in their cars on the way to work. It makes you think, that do, all that galloping about so they can throw this stuff away so as I can sit ’ere and watch ‘em.’ And he shook his hairy head and fell silent, puzzled by this great mystery of life.
When the tour was ended Ben shepherded the Borribles back to the main shanty, sat them down, poured them a mug of beer each and set about making a meal. He began by lighting his stove from a pile of kindling that he kept near the door, and as soon as his fire was burning well he unhooked an iron frying pan, encrusted with grease, and filled it with the ingredients that came to hand.
There was dried milk, dried egg, tinned tomatoes, cornflakes and some cans of beans, all of which the tramp mixed together in a kind of swill and cooked piping hot. When it was ready he laid white soup plates on the table, put out some spoons, and while everyone gathered round he rummaged in the food cabinet and found a couple of sliced loaves that were not too green at the edges.
‘You’d better tuck in,’ he advised the Borribles. ‘In this world you cannot tell what’s going to happen tomorrow and you never know where your next meal’s coming from.’
The Adventurers did not need to be persuaded of this philosophy and they attacked the food with an appetite. Ben leant his chair against the wall, propped his feet on the table, and watched his guests with pleasure, tipping a bottle of beer into his mouth every time he felt the need. ‘Bloody marvellous,’ he kept saying, ‘bloody marvellous! I ain’t never ’ad anyone visit me before.’
In next to no time the plates were empty and the Borribles began to stretch their limbs and relax, forgetting for a moment the dangers that surrounded them. All of them that is except Spiff. He wiped his plate with a slice of bread, licked his fingers clean, left his seat and without a word to anyone went outside.
‘Where’s he gone?’ asked Ben.
&nb
sp; Chalotte closed one eye. ‘Always on the lookout is our Spiff. Don’t trust no one and never leaves anything to chance.’
‘Well, he’s right, isn’t he?’ said Vulge. ‘If Borribles don’t look alive, they’re very soon dead.’
Twilight grinned and folded his arms. ‘I could live here for ever,’ he said. ‘This is the best house I’ve been in … All we need now is about twenty-four hours’ sleep and we’ll be as right as rain.’
‘There’s enough beds here for yer,’ began Ben. ‘If you like to go in the other room you can—’ but he was interrupted by Spiff who suddenly reappeared, slamming the shack door behind him.
‘There’ll be no sleeping now,’ he said urgently, ‘we’ve got to get out of here, as quick as we can, if we can.’
‘How d’yer mean?’ asked Stonks.
‘The Woollies,’ said Spiff. ‘It’s light outside and I saw them, through the mist, looking over the wall. I had a look the other way too; there’s a couple of police cars near the unloading wharf, lights flashing. We’re outnumbered and we’re surrounded.’
The Borribles stared at each other; the food congealed in their stomachs and went hard like golf balls. Ben hiccuped, took his feet from the table and lowered the front legs of his chair to the floor.
‘Let’s take a look,’ said Vulge. ‘There’s got to be some way out.’
The Borribles hastened to the door, dropped to their hands and knees and crawled outside to crouch behind the nearest pile of rubbish. It was a silent landscape they saw; not a car could be heard on the streets and no tug hooted on the river. The night had risen halfway into the sky and, though the air was still black on its highest edge, the ground was clearly visible save where the mist formed large pools in the hollows and where white shreds of it twirled upwards like will-o’-the-wisps eager to evaporate.
Spiff pointed to the barrier that divided Feather’s Wharf from the Ship Inn. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘along the top of the wall, they must be standing on the roofs of their cars; you can see the heads of about twenty Woollies, just watching.’
‘Do you reckon they know we’re here?’ asked Twilight.
‘Could do, easy,’ said Bingo. ‘They might have been near us in the mist, heard us talking when we came over the bridge.’
‘Come round the other side of the shack,’ said Spiff, ‘it’s worse.’
Slowly, so as to make no noise and to attract no notice, the Borribles crept to the other side of Ben’s shanty and peered cautiously across no man’s land. There was no mistaking the line of sombre figures waiting for the dawn to establish itself along the banks of the Wandle. The police officers stood like shadows, magnified in the last drifts of the early morning haze; behind them were three or four police cars, their whirling blue lights casting a cold and unlovely hue over the whole landscape; it was a colour that drained the life from every living thing. There would be no escape in that direction.
‘Let’s get under cover,’ said Spiff, ‘before it gets any lighter.’
Inside the shack there was desperation.
‘There’s only one way,’ said Spiff, ‘and that’s a run to the river, and the chances are that Sussworth’s got boats on it. We might be able to get up the Wandle …’
‘That bloody Sussworth,’ said Chalotte.
‘Who’s Sussworth?’ said Ben, opening another bottle of Special Brew. ‘What’s he got against yer?’
The Borribles explained.
‘Oh,’ said Ben, waving his drink in the air. ‘SBG eh, don’t worry about them. Any friend of mine is a friend of mine.’ Ben was getting drunk and once he was on the way he went very quickly.
Bingo called from the door where he had been keeping watch. ‘They’re coming over the wall. I can see Sergeant Hanks, now Sussworth and … blimey, they’re handing a bleedin’ great Alsatian dog over.’
Ben swayed upwards out of his chair. He blew into his beard and banged his bottle on the table like a declaration of war. ‘That does it,’ he snarled. ‘I don’t often do anything but when I do I do. Dogs, is it? I’ll shove so many dogs up this Sussworth’s nostril he won’t know if he’s a Pekinese or a poodle.’
With that the old man fell forward on to his hands and knees and began to pull at the edge of his carpets.
Sydney rushed to him anxiously, thinking that he was overcome by emotion and perhaps dying of a heart attack. ‘Are you all right, Ben?’ she asked.
Ben turned his head to the light; his red-veined eyes shone with anger. ‘Course I’m all right, sunshine, and so will you be in a jiffo. Give a hand here, roll back these carpets.’
When Sydney heard this she bent to the floor and peeled back several layers of carpet to reveal the studded metal cover of a manhole. It was rusty but the words embossed on the edge of it were quite legible: Wandsworth Borough Council.
Spiff chuckled and tapped the cover with his foot. ‘The sewers,’ he said. ‘Well, the Woollies won’t follow us down there, that’s for sure.’ He looked at Bingo. ‘What are they doing now?’
‘They’re waiting for everyone to get over,’ answered Bingo. ‘There’s about ten of them on this side of the wall now, the others are coming. It won’t be long before they’re in here with us.’
Spiff took a sharp poker from the fireplace and handed it to Stonks. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘let’s get it open.’
Stonks forced the point of the poker into the slight crack which ran round the lip of the cover. Spiff knelt by his side and levered upwards with a table knife. They shoved and twisted with all their strength until Spiff made a gap and managed to ram the knife in as far as it would go; then Stonks prodded with the poker and pushed the handle downwards and the great cast iron disc gaped away from the floor. Spiff, with a ready courage, dropped the knife and grabbed at the manhole with his fingers, taking the whole weight of it while Stonks altered his grip and came to Spiff’s assistance. Twilight and Vulge took a hand too and on Spiff’s word of command the four Borribles heaved together and the lid pivoted upright on two stiff hinges to disclose a large and dangerous-looking hole.
‘The Woollies are coming this way,’ said Bingo, ‘and searching every bit of ground. They’re spread out, torches, truncheons, dogs sniffing. Hurry up for Pete’s sake.’
Stonks surveyed the steaming blackness at his feet. He wrinkled his nose and then raised a worried face to his companions. ‘I recognize that smell, don’t you?’
‘Not half,’ said Vulge. ‘It’s the stink of Wendles and mud and blood.’ As he spoke the smell became noticeably stronger, rising from the depths on a visible curl of green air. The Borribles stared at it, mesmerized with fear until Spiff broke the silence.
‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘and out here it smells of coppers and ear-clippin’. I’m going down. I ain’t scared of a few Wendles.’
‘You know what Flinthead will do if he catches us,’ said Chalotte.
‘Then he mustn’t catch us,’ retorted Spiff. ‘Wendle country’s big enough, we’ll have to hide down there and keep out of the way.’
Ben laughed and his head rolled loosely on his shoulders. He had drunk a lot of beer now. ‘You’ll be all right, just go down the hole, only don’t go far. As soon as the coppers have been and gone I’ll let you out again, easy, see.’
‘Ben’s right,’ said Spiff. ‘We may only have to stay there half an hour.’ He went towards the door and looked over Bingo’s shoulder so that he could see what was happening.
Everything had changed outside. The dawn had struggled to the top of the sky and was brightening from grey to blue. The mist had lifted and the line of policemen was plainly to be seen as they walked steadily across the dump, poking at the ground with rods and shining their torches into the dark places. A dog barked, then another. Spiff recognized the small figure of Inspector Sussworth with his long overcoat flapping at his heels; next to him was Sergeant Hanks.
‘We’ll have to go anyway,’ he said between clenched teeth, ‘the Woollies will find us in a minute.’
Ben waved his
bottle. ‘You’d better bugger off, all right; what’s the good of me telling this Sussworth feller I don’t know you if he walks right in and sees you standing there? Won’t look reasonable, will it?’
Spiff elbowed his way past his companions and went to the edge of the black pit. ‘Thanks, Ben,’ was all he said and then he stepped on to the broad rung of the iron ladder that was built into the side of the manhole and, without sparing a glance for anyone, he climbed rapidly down into the rising steam. In a moment he was gone.
‘When I got home from the Rumble hunt,’ said Vulge, ‘I swore I’d never go within ten miles of a Wendle again … Well here we are. I’ll be lucky if I’m limping on both legs after this.’ And with a sideways jerk of the head he too went down into the stinking vapour.
Just then a police whistle shrilled outside and shouts were heard, the loudest coming from Sergeant Hanks. ‘We know you’re in there; you’d better come out with your hands on your heads.’
The remaining Borribles waited no longer. Twilight flung himself down the ladder; Sydney followed, so did Bingo and Stonks. Chalotte went last, easing her feet on to the second or third rung so that her head was level with the ground. She looked at Ben. He was sinking lower and lower in his chair. In a few moments he would fall asleep but if he didn’t close the manhole behind her it would be obvious to the police where the runaways had gone.
Borribles Go For Broke, The Page 11
