‘Yoo-hoo, my dewy rose. Stiffasaboard. Great Scott. Aflame with desire and so on. With passion undiminished, etcetera, etcetera. Dabney, the vagabond lover.’
This dewy rose stuff finished me. I felt quite unable to withstand any more of that. I crawled into Herbert’s bed by the
window. Herbert was always late and we had an understanding. Herbert only had one ambition and that was to prove correct once and for all that a good billiard player really was the outcome of a mis-spent youth. I heard the cop say, ‘I’ll see Miss Potroz home,’ and I heard Charlie Dabney yoo-hooing away and saying, ‘Great Scott, the lights won’t go out all night.’ But my lights went out. A guy I have a lot of regard for switched them off at the main.
The next day was more to be noted in the minds of my buddy, Les Wilson, and myself for a visit from Constable Ramsbottom than because it was Prudence’s birthday. After school we were sitting down on boxes by the empty hen-coop (something we were very good at) when the shadow of the Law fell across us.
He joined us cosily, sitting down on the coop itself, and proceeded, forthwith, to ask whether we were or were not going to prefer charges against one described as Athol C. Cudby, for appropriating our joint property, to wit the missing Black Orpingtons.
When my heart stopped free-wheeling I said, no I wasn’t. We looked at Les and he said, no, he wasn’t, either.
‘On the ‘ole,’ said Len Ramsbottom, ‘Oi think you’re woize, very woize. In the hadministration of joostis, occasions aroise
when more ’arm than good can be done by prosecuting the mally-factor.’
While not getting the full drift of this, I had a feeling I was on his side.
‘More ‘arm than good,’ he continued, heavily contemplative. ‘In this hinstance, the noime of the family must be considered. I ‘ave no doubt that yeruncle, in fact he has avowed his intention of so doing to me, will reimburse you for the loss of the purloined poultry.’
Just because our mouths fell open he must have thought we were going to say something for he stayed us with a large palm.
‘As an officer of the law it is my duty to apprehend and bring to joostis thuh criminals in our midst. I want it understood that should any further hevidence come to light implicating Cudby, Mr Cudby, in other and more serious crimes a prosecution will himmediately fah-hollow.’
‘Officer,’ I said boldly, ‘have there been other fowls stolen beside mine and Les’s?’
‘On Saturday, the noight uv the ther-rud, a large-scale robbery was perpetrated at the ’omestead uv Mr Alfred Lynch. A considerable number of pedigree birds, broody resistant, were appropriated and so far there has been no trace uv them.’
‘Birds?’ said Les. ‘What sorta birds? Budgies?’
‘Poultry,’ came the stern reply. ‘A number of valuable one-year fowls in full lay, broody resistant. No heffort will be spared to trace the miscreants. Suspicion fell on Cudby, Mr Cudby, because for some weekends past it has come to our knowledge he has been raffling killed and dressed poultry in the bars of local hotels. He avows that, with the exception of your own fowls, he poichased all the birds at Klynham Traders and
there is hevidence to support this. In haddition, the hevidence of Mr Lynch seems to point to this particular robbery being perpetrated by younger and more active men.’
‘How do you mean evidence?’ said Les and I.
‘The culprits escaped at great speed. Mr Lynch avers that there were possibly two or even three thieves involved. Mr Lynch is sure in his own mah-hind that they were young men and very active and fast on their feet. One of them scaled a six-foot fence and the other members of the gang thought nothing of jumping row after row of goo-hoosberry bushes.’
‘There must be clues, surely?’ I pressed. ‘Footprints, fingerprints. Didn’t anything get dropped or something?’
‘Hunfortunately, nearly the entire neighbourhood turned out and conducted a search uv the garden; and all hevidence, such as footprints, was hobliterated.’
‘Thank God,’ said Les. ‘I mean, good God!’
‘What fools!’ I contributed hotly. ‘Why not leave police work to the spechlists? Always some blundering asses around to make it more difficult for the spechlists.’
Les was blowing his nose and had his entire countenance covered by his handkerchief, but his ears stuck out like bolshevist flags.
‘Never fear,’ said Len Ramsbottom, rising from the coop. ‘No heffort will be spared to trace the miscreants.’
He cleared his throat and I thought he was going to ask something, but to our relief he moved off. Just as he reached the street, Prudence came galloping around the section of iron fence still standing and banged right into him. He was stooping over putting on a bicycle clip and she staggered him.
I looked at Les, who seemed ill, and I nodded in the
direction of the rhubarb. Les nodded back and we folded our tents like a couple of shaky Arabs.
That night we sneaked away from Prudence’s party, which was a tame, sissy affair, down to Fitzherbert’s shed to give some scraps to the miscreants. Lest this give rise to confusion, I had better explain that it was by this name, since our conversation with the Law, that Les and I thought of the stolen Lynch fowls. In our ignorance and trepidation we had got hold of the wrong end of the stick again.
We made a detour on the way to the shed and got a pack of twenty cigarettes out of the slot machine in the doorway of Thompson’s store. Money had suddenly become the least of our worries. Miss Fitzherbert, the tall, mad woman up at the great house, which had pumps, not taps, over the tubs, had told us she would buy all our eggs. It had been Les’s idea to approach her and it was a honey. She asked no questions, but she bolted the door when she went for the money; and, the time it took, our guess was it was buried somewhere.
There was no power laid on at the mansion and Les and I could always get a cheap dose of the creeps by sneaking up close at night, through the ancient camellias and magnolias, and glimpsing, through a lofty window, the bent, paralysed figure of the legendary Channing Fitzherbert himself, corpse-like in an honest-to-God four-poster. The lamplight beside the shrivelled dome of a head cast an enormous, vulture-like shadow on the wall. Man, it was horrible. We often did it. One night, through divers landing windows, we saw
her
slowly descending the stairs holding a lamp aloft, and we did not stop running until we made the shed. It was different in the sunlight, standing on the ramp at the back door with the birds twittering in all the old
trees and under the eaves, but when night fell the whole lay-out would have tickled Count Dracula pink.
‘Miscreants,’ said Les, surveying by candlelight the fowls roosting on the old gig. ‘Trust us to pinch something valyoobel.’
‘I thought they were funny looking,’ I remarked. ‘What with those bits of black in the wings and that fluff on their legs.’
‘Broody resistant,’ said Les. ‘But can’t the buggers lay!’
The miscreants had settled down to a steady eleven or twelve eggs a day and we were sure of getting two-and-six a dozen. Miss Fitzherbert was buying them all. She must have been preserving them, or something. The old firm of Wilson and Poindexter were on the pig’s back, but they shared an uneasy presentiment of their mount turning into a killer mustang without warning. It may have been imagination, but both Les and I had sensed members of the Victor Lynch gang watching us closely at school. We were more apprehensive of trouble from that quarter than from the police, mainly, I think, because Constable Ramsbottom, for all his great bulk, seemed an absolute goof. He made us feel like those master criminals who entertain bowler-hatted yahoos from Scotland Yard and offer them Corona cigars in an inlaid box, in the false bottom of which is the stolen ruby of the Sultan of Yamarramah.
The autumn still of the nights was yielding to a bough-creaking, raindrop-spotted darkness. For all its age, the shed was pretty snug.
‘Just who does know about this hideout?’ Les asked.
‘As far as I know, no one,’ I said.
‘There must be someone.’
‘Well, I don’t count “Madame Drac”,’ I said; meaning, by this, Miss Fitzherbert.
‘There must be someone, I’m sure.’
‘Well,’ I said. ‘Of course there is. There’s Prudence, but shucks, she’s OK.’
‘Oh yes, Prudence,’ said Les. ‘Dang it. Fancy me forgetting Pru.’
‘As long as no one finds out—’ I began.
‘You really think Pru’s OK, Ned?’
‘Who, Pru? Of course she’s OK. She’s just a sheila of course, but she’s a good type, old Pru. Once Pop really lammed into her, gave her one helluva hiding, but she never said a word. She came home real late one night, but do yuh think she’d split where she’d been? Not ole Pru.’
‘Where had she been?’
‘How do I know, I never asted her.’
After a while Les said, ‘Well, Ned, this has got me worried a little.’
‘How come worried? You mean those chooks?’
‘No. Pru,’ said Les. ‘Being out late like that. Maybe she might have a y’know, a boyfriend. She might have told some boyfriend about the shed.’
‘Yuh, yuh, yuh,’ I chortled scornfully. ‘This was years ago. Pru’s got no boyfriend.’
‘Are you sure, Ned? I meantersay brothers don’t know everything.’
‘Well now that’s something I am sure of, Les,’ I said firmly. ‘Yuh can get that foolish notion rightouta yuh head. Right clean outa yuh head. We got anuff problems on our hands without you starting to imagine things. Wazzat?’
‘Put out the candle,’ Les mouthed, pointing. I held up a tense finger. The sound came again, but it was only the door straining slightly in a sudden gust.
‘Let’s fix that window a bit better,’ Les whispered. ‘You slip outside and see if yuh can see any light showing and I’ll pull the sack over a bit.’
‘Sure, sure, Les. What say I fix the sack and you go outside and have a looksee?’
‘Let’s both fix the sack,’ said Les. ‘And let’s both go outside and have a looksee.’
‘Yuh oughta have a bit more sense than that. How’m I to know who’s in there if they haven’t even got enough sense to shut the door? It looks to me like yuh haven’t even got enough sense to yell out when yuh hear somebody coming along the verandah. Anybody can hear somebody coming along this verandah, on account of all these rotten boards, we just not gunna have a verandah on this house for that long if it gets any rottener, so it’s silly letting me walk in on yuh like that when all anybody has to do is yell out.’
I could not see any occasion for Prudence to be getting so high-hat just because she had surprised somebody in the washhouse, but having a birthday certainly makes a big difference to some people.
‘Hi, Neddy,’ she said to me and went inside the house looking flushed and dusky. She was wearing a torn old frock she had
grown out of, and her gleaming mop of hair was tousled. Before she left the verandah she stepped, with one bare foot, on the loose board really hard, going out of her road to do it, and I had to grin because it did not respond nearly as loudly as it did when it got trodden on accidentally. All the boards were sick, but that one had a fever.
Uncle Athol came out of the washhouse and he looked as if he had a fever too. There were two big bright spots on his cheeks like geraniums and his Adam’s apple was shooting up and down as if someone were playing tricks with the elevator button. He was not looking like that just because young Prudence was throwing her weight around and growling at him. I had it figured he was crook with the booze as usual. He and I were not on the best of terms, naturally, but I was not going to leave the verandah just because he was there, and it looked as if he intended standing his ground too. He stood staring down the yard at the shed for a while. He kept on fidgeting and he looked very excited about something or other. His shoulders were hunched up and his hands were thrust deep in his trouser pockets. The movement of his fingers as he twiddled them in the lining was plain to see. It began to look as if he were not going to speak at all and the situation was getting more awkward all the time; and then he came around close to me, swallowing hard, and said, ‘Guess Prudence is right about this verandah being in pretty poor shape.’
‘Sure is,’ I said awkwardly.
‘I think I’ll go across to Sorenson’s and borrow a hammer and a few nails. It’s beginning to look as if I don’t fix that really bad board there, no one’s gunna ever do it and someone’s gunna break their fool neck on it one uv these fine days. One uv these
days a man’ll be stepping along without a care in the world and next thing he’ll know, he’ll be half on the verandah and half under the house. Beats me how that board has stood up as long as it has to the pounding it gets right there, where yuh more or less gotta step on it. If those Sorensons aren’t over there at their own house this morning I don’t know what I’ll do. Number of times I’ve been over to that place to get a hammer and a few nails and find them out! Beats me where they get to. If they’re not over there this morning I’ll say to Jim next time I see him, “Why the hell don’t yuh just leave the district and get it over and done with?” Surely I’ll catch them there at home this morning. I’ll go across right away and if I can get Jim Sorenson’s hammer and a few nails we’ll fix that dam’ board for good and all. It wouldn’t matter if an ole buffer like me, that’s had his day, broke his neck, but it worries me to think of one of you youngsters with yuh life in front of yuh, coming a gutzer, and that’s what’ll happen as sure as Moses hid in the bulrushes.’
Having got this off his chest, Uncle Athol went off down our dirt path using the peculiar, spry shuffle which was his characteristic mode of locomotion. I wondered for the hundredth time how a person could answer to the description ‘spindle shanked and herring gutted’ yet still run to a brewer’s goitre.
This was Saturday morning and two minutes later I knew I was a marked man. I sauntered out to the street whistling ‘Roll Along Covered Wagon, Roll Along’ and the first thing I saw was the front wheel of a bicycle drawing back out of sight. Someone was sitting on that grid leaning up against the concrete wall of the Temple of the Brethren of the Lamb, which was right opposite our shack across Smythe Street and facing Winchester Street. I went back into the house and up to a front room and peered
over the street. I could still see only the front wheel, one handle-bar and a hand, but in a moment or two the stationary rider lost balance and put out a steadying leg on the footpath. It was Skin Hughson, Lynch’s right hand man. No doubt about it, he was on the watch. No hood squinting out of a black Cadillac ever struck more fear, no tommygun ever looked more sinister than the propeller on the front mudguard of Hughson’s bicycle.
I crawled through a tunnel in the bamboo clump and cut through Grindly’s orchard. Between their woodshed and the hedge was a narrow track along which it was possible to squeeze sideways. This brought me out in another backyard, and, once through these people’s garage, I would be on the street I was heading for. If I had been one second sooner my little ruse would have been discovered because, just as I slipped through the back door of the garage (the car was out) Peachy Blair went past and only had to look around to have seen me. I could have bashed up Peachy—or Cupid, as some called him—with one arm in a sling, but Peachy was a Lynchite, and this sissy had never copped a thumping at school yet. The plump form was the body of Peachy, but the shadow he cast was the shadow of Victor Lynch and Skin Hughson and Clem Walker and D’Arcy Anderson and Viv Rolands and Don Butcher and Dan and Harold Lowe—in fact the shadow of the gang. His actual function as a member of such a tough bunch was the topic of fascinated whispering. The boys were practising on him, it was said, for the great day when they could procure the genuine article—girls. When that day came the Lynch boys had no intention of showing up as raw beginners. It was all very vague and disturbing but I knew that, to me, Peachy Blair represented the
depths of depravity. And because I was puzzled I felt inferior and even more scared. These guys were bad. But
bad
.
I was puffing pretty hard when I slowed down to a walk in Camden Street where Les Wilson lived and maybe that is why I failed to hear the whirr of speeding wheels on the footpath behind me. I let out a staccato yelp of terror when the bicycle skidded to a halt right alongside, so close that one pedal gouged my bare calf. The collision barged me backwards into the hedge. Clem Walker’s eyes were gleaming. He was big and powerful, horrible looking, with cropped hair and an abundance of warts and pimples. Another grid came wheeling in off the road ahead of us. A smiling D’Arcy Anderson propped it in the kerb and dismounted. I was a bit jealous of D’Arcy Anderson’s good looks and in some twisted way his arrival helped me to put on a better show. If Skin Hughson, say, had been Clem Walker’s companion, I do not think I could have stopped my knees shaking.
‘We wanna have a little talk with you, Poindexter,’ said D’Arcy smiling and standing with his thumbs hooked into his belt.
‘Well, can I get outa this hedge, first, please?’ I said as angrily as I could.
‘Let ‘im out, Clem,’ grinned D’Arcy. It began to look as if D’Arcy ranked higher in the gang than Clem Walker. I suppose that meant he got more turns with Peachy. It made me sick.
My leg was pretty sore and tears were not far away.
‘By crummy, that hurt,’ I said. The blood was running down my leg. ‘What’s the idea, anyway?’
‘Hop on the bar of my grid,’ said D’Arcy. ‘I’ll double you round to meet some pals of ours.’
‘That’ll be the day,’ I said. ‘We kin talk here, can’t we?’
‘We could,’ said Walker. ‘But we ain’t gunna, see?’
Quick as a flash he grabbed my ear and twisted it. It doubled me over and forced me to my knees. With my eyes swimming with tears, I saw the big, hairy legs and the bicycle tyres and I felt as sick as a pig with life in general.
As I limped over to the grid propped in the gutter, Anderson lashed with his shoe at my rump and I fell on top of the machine, which toppled over. I heard them laughing, and one of them said, ‘Pick it up.’ Now both of my hands were skinned as well. I gritted my teeth.
As soon as I realised we were cycling in the direction of Fitzherbert’s shed, I knew the game was up.
They dropped the grids in the grass and D’Arcy called out, ‘We’ve got Poindexter.’
To me he said, ‘In yuh get.’
Lynch himself was in the shed, and the Lowe twins, Dan and Harold.
‘Nice work,’ said Lynch. ‘Cut down and call off the boys, D’Arcy. Tell ‘em to get up here as quick as they can.’
Victor Lynch got off the benzine box he was sitting on. He kicked one of the miscreants, which was picking away at the ground by his feet.
‘Well, yuv got yourself real trouble this time, Poindexter,’ he said.
‘What’s the idea? I haven’t done anything.’
‘Don’t waste yuh breath,’ said Lynch. ‘We’ve been watching you and Wilson come backwards and forwards to this shed ever since these fowls were stolen from my Pater. There isn’t much goes on in this town we don’t know about. Yuh can go to jail
for this, Poindexter.’
I decided the best thing was to say nothing at all. I was right in the cart.
‘Instead of going to the police, we’re gunna handle this ourselves. Have yuh got an idea what that means?’
‘Shall I tickle’m up a bit and make’m talk, Vic?’
‘Just a little, maybe.’
I had always rated myself as strong for my age, but Clem Walker was way out of my class. He whipped his arms up under my armpits and whacked my chin down on my chest. My knees buckled and next thing I was getting a worm’s eye view of what the miscreants were doing in their spare time. I don’t know what they hit me on the temple with, but I have always thought of it as a big knot on the end of a rope. There had been a weapon of this nature kicking around the shed for a long time. I never saw it after this. Walker eased off the full-Nelson and I rolled over on the dirt floor. It seemed like pain was the express and hatred was a little puffing billy and they met full on. Me, I was sitting on a jigger between them. Voices. Someone hooked an arm under my neck and I sat up. A lot of feet. I thought I was going to vomit. The pain in my head made me feel really ill. I stared at the ground. Our old shed.
‘Want another belt, Poindexter?’ said Lynch.
‘No,’ I said.
‘Then get up—get the crybaby up on his feet, Clem.’
When they forced me up on my feet I rocked to and fro rubbing my temple.
Lynch said softly, ‘Come over and sit here on this box, Ned.’
The box was like a feather bed.
After a while Lynch said, ‘We’re only just starting to work
on you, ole boy. We’re going to beatcha up and beatcha up— every day. There isn’t anything you can do. Every day we’re going to get yuh and bash yuh up, old boy. Really bash yuh up.’
Silence and a lot of feet. Some more of the gang barged into the shed, but got signalled to shut the door quietly.
‘Unless,’ said Lynch, and I heard a sort of sigh go around, ‘unless you’re prepared to corporate with us, ole boy.’
I heard the sigh go around the shed again. I think all the Lynchites must have been there by this time.
‘We bin thinking,’ said Lynch. ‘We’re got the idea you’d make a pretty good member of this gang. How’d yuh like to join the gang, Ned?’
‘Gee,’ I said.
‘There’s only one condition and it’s one that might just surprise you. We need a girl in this gang, to give us a bit of class. We’re the most pow’ful gang in the town, but it seems to us we need a real pretty girl like your sister Prudence to give us a bit of class. Now how about that, Ned? You and Prudence join up with us and we’ll have the town beat. We’ll have everything.’
‘Oh boy,’ said Peachy. ‘Oh boy, oh boyoboyoboy—’
‘
Shut up
. Now that’s the condition I want to put to you, Ned. You ask Prudence to join us. You bring her along here about three o’clock this afternoon and we’ll join yuh both up with the most pow’ful gang in town. We’ll forget all about bashing you up, if yuh think yuh kin bring yuh sister Prudence along to this shed this afternoon. Now that seems to me to be a pretty fair offer, Ned. More’n fair.’
‘Sure. Sure. I reckon if I ask Prudence to come along, it’ll be OK.’
Someone whistled softly. The Lynchites started slapping each
other’s backs and punching arms. Peachy started jumping around all over the shed.
‘We’ll leave Wilson outa this,’ Lynch grinned. ‘Do him and yuhself a good turn, Neddy, and leave him on the out. Yuh understand. I don’t want us to find out yuh been even talking to him. For both yuh sakes.’
D’Arcy Anderson walked a couple of blocks with me not saying much and just waving casually when he mounted his grid and rode off. My thoughts, now I was alone, were muddled and miserable as I walked. What a long street! Without any dinner and a throbbing lump on my temple, it certainly looked a long street.
When I went past Les Wilson’s place I took a quick look up and down the street and made a dive for it. Les was feeding his little sister on the back steps when he saw me come pelting around and he looked embarrassed. He could see it was an emergency so he dumped the kid and we went into the woodshed.
‘I’m a member of the Victor Lynch gang,’ I said, playing it tough and straight. I told him how they had hailed me that morning. I showed him my lump. ‘Now look, Les,’ I said, ‘yuh got to pretend me’n you’re enemies now. Unless I do what this crowd say I’m in for it good and proper. I told them OK, I’d join on condition they left you alone and of course me too. They said if I joined no one was gunna hurtcha. All the same I’d keep outa their road, if I wuz you. Now, look, Les, yuh know I’m no traitor. I’ve gotta do this, just gotta do it, and all the time I’ll be spying on ‘em. Soon we’ll know all their secrets and then look out.’
‘But whadda they want yuh for?’ said Les. ‘Whadda hell they want
you
in the gang for?’
It was pretty insulting, but it was too good a point to just shrug off. Les did not look very happy. He kept looking at my stomach, instead of my face.
‘I dunno, Les,’ I said helplessly. ‘They must want me to do something, I s’pose. Don’t ask me what it is, ‘cause I don’t know. Look, Les, we’ll have to work out a system of seeing each other at night, somehow. Yuh can’t come around to our place ‘cause I’m a cert to be watched. I’ll have to sneak around here when I’ve got some news.’