‘I don’t care what they say,’ said Les. ‘That’s our shed.’
‘Don’t be a mad fool,’ I told him. ‘I tell yuh they were all in the shed this morning. They know all about it. For Chrissake don’t go near the shed. I know how yuh feel. I feel the same way, but we’ll beat this bunch, somehow.’
‘Aren’t yuh goin’ to the pitchers this afternoon?’ said Les. ‘What about “The King of Diamonds”?’
He could not have said anything to make me feel worse. But I knew now I had to get going to catch Prudence in case she was going to the cinema. The funny way Les was taking it did not make me feel any happier about what I was going to have to say to Prudence. Come to face it, what was I going to say? All the way to our place I tried out different approaches. I decided on something along these lines.
‘Pru, you’ve got to help me. We’ve always been pals, Pru. They’re real wild about those fowls and it wouldn’t surprise me if they go to the police and then I’ll go to Borstal. That’ll really knock old Ma. All they want is for you to join the gang, Pru. They’ve got an idea a pretty girl is just what they want in the gang. They reckon you’re the prettiest girl in Klynham. They all reckon that, the prettiest by far. They’re not bad guys really,
there’s D’Arcy Anderson and the Lowe boys and all, they only want you to join up and they’ll forget all about us pinching the chooks.’
This is just about what I did say too.
‘What about Les?’ said Prudence, rubbing some butter on my lump.
‘Les is out of it for now, ouch,’ I said. ‘All they want is me’n you. They’re the most pow’ful gang around, Pru. It’s not going to do any harm giving it a go and I’m gunna be in for a lot of trouble if yuh don’t come along this afternoon. Be a sport, Pru. It’ll be a lot of fun, I reck’n. Ouch.’
‘Who said I was the prettiest girl in town?’ Prudence asked. ‘Sounds like a lotta bull to me.’
‘No, fair dinkum. They all said yuh were. That’s why they reckon yuh ought to belong to the most pow’ful gang in the town.’
‘But I’m older’n them. They’re just a bunch of kids.’
‘Hey, come off it. You’re only a year older’n me.’
‘Nearer two years, boy.’
‘Well, awright, but half these guys are older’n me. Aw c’mon, Pru, I tell you they’re gunna give me the works over those chooks if we don’t join up.’
‘That’s your funeral,’ she said, putting the butter away. ‘OK. What am I s’posed to wear, and if I don’t like their style I’ll tell yuh something, Neddy, if they start fooling around any, my name’s Goff and I’m off.’
Now Prudence had agreed, my worries should have been on the way out, but I felt miserable and a heel. I had smelt a big rat all along about their wanting Prudence to join the gang, but I had just shut it out of my mind. When she spoke of them
fooling around, as she put it, I thought about Peachy Blair and the looks the Lynchites had exchanged among themselves when I agreed, to save my own skin, to talk my sister into coming along down to the shed. They were going to fool around that was for sure. I was forced to admit it to myself at last and I felt pretty sick.
Saturday mornings were always bright and noisy and I never hear sausages sizzling without remembering them, but once the last plate had clattered in the rack over the sink, it was afternoon and peaceful. Pop and Uncle Athol had taken off in the Dennis. Herbert was in town with his 18 oz. sweetheart, looking on the cloth while it was green. The tap was running in the washhouse where Ma was. Dolly and Monica were around somewhere playing with their rag doll.
The autumn sunshine had no zip in it, but it was warm in the kitchen. The door was open, admitting a pathway of yellow light, and when the loose board on the verandah went ker-lunk a big shadow fell right across the room. Prudence stepped sideways to see who it was, manifested great surprise, and said ‘Good-dayee, come on in.’
In came Len Ramsbottom with a silly smirk and his portable typewriter. He looked even more embarrassed than Les had when I caught him feeding the baby. I felt as sick as a pig myself at the sight of the big cop. He started in talking about how he was just on his way past and suddenly remembered promising Prudence some typewriting lessons. It did not seem possible that a big fellow like him had actually become infatuated with my sister, but what were you supposed to think when he blushed like that? Come to think of it he only looked like an overgrown boy, dressed as he was in open-necked shirt and sports clothes.
Suddenly I wished I was as big as that. With those shoulders I could wade into the Lynchites and skittle them right, left and centre. If only I could say, ‘Look, Mr Ramsbottom, would you help me?’ But that was out. Overgrown boy or not he was still a cop. Lynch had me over a barrel.
‘Harpas’ two,’ I said meaningly, and gave Pru one of those looks, but she ignored me and sat up behind the typewriter at the table, too excited to heed her brother in his plight.
‘Oi have some foolscap ’ere, which we insert into the machine thus,’ said the young cop. Insert into the machine thus!
I went into the bedroom and sat on Herbert’s bed. Save for one amber shaft of autumn sunlight in which dust shimmered and danced, it was dark in here, particularly after sitting in the kitchen. I recalled a saying of Ma’s which went, ‘Oh, well, I s’pose it’ll all be the same in fifty years’ time.’ Anyone who has ever had occasion to say something like this to himself will appreciate how low I was feeling and what a great spiritual boost the afore-mentioned saying can be. In a pig’s eye it can be.
But after a while Prudence called out to me: ‘Neddy, it’s getting on for three. You better scoot down to Connie’s place and tell her I’ll be there’n ‘bout half ’n hour.’
What a sister in a million! And yours truly was leading her by the hand into a gang of thugs that took turnabout at Peachy Blair. I knew it was Prudence’s way of telling me she would come on down to the shed as soon as she could to meet the gang, but I was in such a stew, I was half-way to Connie’s place before I woke up and altered the tiller. I think I hinted at this before, but Connie is our married sister who got in the family way to that railroad man, Jim Coleman.
By four o’clock it was one of those silent, dark afternoons when people burn leaves.
‘Quite sure she’s coming OK, Poindexter?’ D’Arcy said, pitching away his fag end. ‘I wouldn’t like to think of you making a mistake, y’know. You bin telling us for over an hour how your sister is coming, but no sign, no sign. How come?’
I smiled toughly. ‘She’s coming, Ander—’ I hoped he thought I had said Andy. I had wanted to call him Anderson, but choked on it.
‘Let’s get back up to the gang,’ said D’Arcy. He gestured debonairly for me to precede him. I sauntered up over the path. It was odd how my jealousy of D’Arcy’s good looks gave me a certain aplomb.
When we re-entered the shed Don Butcher and Peachy were standing close together in the middle of the floor. Don Butcher jerked his head around, but when he saw it was D’Arcy and me he put his hand back down Peachy’s trousers. My sitting-in-the-hay feeling gave a violent kick and then expired altogether.
‘No sign of Prudence?’
‘He guarantees she’ll be along,’ D’Arcy told Lynch. Lynch nodded. He seemed interested in what Don Butcher was doing to Peachy. I had trouble knowing where to look. I was unable to shut Peachy’s giggling out of my ears.
‘Don’t be rough, Don,’ I heard the giggling voice. ‘Thas nice. Oo you’re making me all silly. Stop it now, you’ll puckeroo me for Prudence.’
‘Shut up.’ A kind of roar went around the shed. But it was too late. I had heard. Now I could not fool myself any longer.
‘Wanta feel, Neddy?’ said Lynch.
‘Go on. Give old Peachy a feel up.’
Peachy was jumping up and down. He started to run off around the shed and then he stopped dead, buckled up and sank down on his knees.
‘Quick, quick,’ he yelled. ‘Ask me sumpin’. Gimme a sum.’
‘Twenty-five and twenty-five?’ Don Butcher shouted.
‘Fifty,’ yelled Peachy.
‘A hundred and a hundred.’
‘Tunhred.’
‘Six ‘n eighteen,’ screamed Harold Lowe. They were all mad with excitement.
‘Shut up. Shut up,’ said Peachy, in a happy, sing-song voice. ‘I’m OK now. It’s gone back. I’m OK now for Prudence.’ He sank over on his rump with his arms stretched out behind him and his hands on the floor and looked stupidly at his plump, smooth legs.
‘Neddy wantsta feel yuh up,’ sneered Lynch.
‘Not ye-et,’ said Peachy. He looked up at me coyly. ‘Soon, Neddy.’
‘I can wait,’ I said to D’Arcy.
‘He can wait,’ sneered Don Butcher and gave me a quick, playful punch in the stomach. They all laughed and jumped around.
‘Look at the sissy, he’s howling.’
‘Leave him alone,’ snapped Lynch. ‘Haven’t any you guys got any brains? You OK, Ned?’
‘I’m OK,’ I gulped. ‘That joker doesn’t know his own strength.’
They made a lot of this and went on repeating it as if it was the funniest thing they had ever heard.
‘Doesn’t know his own strength.’
‘You don’t know yuh own strength, Don. Huh, huh.’
‘Good ole Samson.’
‘He’s not Sampson,’ Peachy suddenly yelled, getting up off the floor. ‘He’s SIMPSON.’
He went leaping all over the shed smacking himself on the backside.
‘SIMPSON, SIMPSON, SIMPSON.’
He tripped over one of the scuttling miscreants. He saved himself from falling and managed to grab the poor confused bird between his ankles. He squatted down over it. ‘I’m a rooster,’ he yelled, going through the motions. ‘I’m a bloody great randy rooster.’
Everyone was having hysterics at Peachy’s antics on the squawking fowl and I was grinning away with murder in my heart when a hand grabbed me by the throat and rammed me back against the wall.
‘Where’s yuh sister?’
‘I dunno,’ I said. All I could see was Lynch’s eyes and the rafters. What a lot of cobwebs!
In my daydreams I had always been able to beat the daylights out of Lynch. I had not realised, just because he was shorter, how much more solidly built he was. Now I knew my daydreams were letting me down with a bump again. And I knew why Lynch was the boss. He hit me and my head hit the wall. He must have hit me a couple more times on the way down, but it was no fist that broke my rib. A boot did that. By my black-and-blue condition, nearly all over my body, they must have all had a turn at putting in the boot.
I put on a great act of being dead and I really thought it had
gone across because the Lynchites were so deadly quiet. Without knowing it, I must have been right out the Joe a long time because the silent feet I thought surrounded me were not feet at all, but the miscreants in a very subdued frame of mind. We had Fitzherbert’s shed to ourselves. It was cold and beginning to get dark.
Sunday, as just related, makes a grim and depressing memory, but I look back on the subsequent fortnight wistfully. It was the first time in my life I had ever stayed away from school for more than an a.w.o.l. afternoon and I suppose that is what lends the reminiscence its sweetness. Retrospect seems to have a tendency to gloss over the miserable aspects. The first week I was in real pain. Dr Mahoney wrapped a bandage around my ribs so tightly it was as bad as a lorry wheel on my chest.
The worst part of it was I had caught a snorter of a cold. Sneezing was bad enough, but when the phlegm moved down on my chest it was murder. I tried lying on my face, getting on my knees beside the bed, standing up with my hands pressing my side, but every cough was still torture. Half-way through the week Dr Mahoney came again and wrote out a prescription for a concoction to break up the congestion. He did not come again
and we were secretly relieved at this because there was no Social Security in those days and every time Ma and I heard the quack’s car door slam and those squeaky tan shoes approaching, it only meant one thing, ten and sixpence. Oh, and of course, was the room tidy? Dr Mahoney was very bluff and nice to Ma and me and he did not seem to hold against us one little bit that mortifying time when he had been called out in the middle of the night to attend Uncle Athol whose mysterious ailment turned out to be ye olde fashioned dingbats.
The way Uncle Athol had performed that night was something awful and by his bubbling moans we had all expected him to pass over, but Dr Mahoney had really read him the riot act.
‘Get back into bed, you old fool,’ I can hear Doc saying. ‘You’re not going to die, more’s the pity. You’re silly with the plonk, that’s your trouble, Cudby.’
It always embarrassed me dreadfully the way Pop seemed to lack the sense and pride just to say ‘Good day’ to Doc, instead of trying every time to bail him up and talk importantly. Dr Mahoney used to just brush Pop aside, ignore him, but every time the two men met Pop would have another go. He never did get further than clearing his throat and commencing, ‘Speaking of course purely as a layman—’
Hanging around the house most of the time, cooped up in my room, and getting spoilt that fortnight, my speedometer clocked over. ‘Come on, Neddy,’ nature whispered. ‘You’re a big boy now, don’t let the team down.’
This doll, Josephine McClinton, I have mentioned earlier, had the real honour of setting the ball rolling. Now the weather was getting wintry she had started wearing long stockings, sometimes black, sometimes brown (I knew every pair) but her
frocks were not any longer and when she rode her bicycle down Smythe Street to her music lessons (she must have learned from the sisters at the Convent, I think, not the alcoholic and doomed Mabel Collinson) four o’clock on Tuesdays and five o’clock on Fridays, returning three-quarters of an hour later, I never even saw her supercilious expression, but only the exciting short stretch of leg between her pants and her garters. Conditions for this spectacle on Fridays were not ideal, because the days were drawing in and it was too dark to get a good eyeful of her on her way back. Not only that but it was tea-time and the family were all in and out of my room, curse them. One Tuesday I had a real orgy. Josephine stopped to yarn to another girl on the street, directly outside my window. The subject of their respective stockings must have cropped up, because I have never seen such a leg show since. Well, I have, I guess, but not with such shuddering impact. I was crouched down by the window in the bedroom, but if I had been out behind the old stove in the yard it would not have surprised me to see smoke coming out of it. My blood was simmering like an Irish stew. To make things worse a pile of old magazines about film stars and such had been dumped on me to read and they were loaded with pictures of absolute honeys with practically nothing on. If I could have gone for a run around the block, or something, I might have weathered the storm (for storm it was), but cooped up like that I was a gone coon.
‘Herbert,’ I croaked, in the small hours of one morning. I had lain awake waiting for him to come home, but had lacked the courage to speak until the light was out.
‘Go sleep,’ mumbled Herbert.
‘Herbert,’ I repeated. He must have twigged the crack in my
voice because there was a sound as if he had propped himself up on one elbow.
‘Herbert,’ I said. The crack in my voice was a crevasse by this time. He came over and sat on my bed or his bed, have it any way you like, and put his hands on my shoulder with the tips of his fingers spread out as if he were hard up against the cush.
‘Wassa trouble, kid?’
I told him all about what I was up to and how, no matter how hard I tried, I could not help myself. ‘I’ll go blind. I’ll die,’ I concluded.
‘Stop crying,’ said Herbert.
He went back to his bed to get a handkerchief from under his pillow. He blew his nose and lit a cigarette.
‘Stoppit, willyuh?’ he said. ‘Cut it out and listen to yeruncle ’Erb.’
I listened and I was a lucky boy to have asked a pimply-faced character like Herbert whose only God was a hundred break. One kid I heard of was so stricken with grief and worry he asked a minister and a week later he hung himself in the washhouse. The kid, I mean.
I held on to Herbert’s hand in the dark, but in the end we broke it up and got some shuteye.
I think Prudence felt pretty bad about me getting beaten up on account of her not turning up at the shed that Sunday, but I refrained from rubbing it in and, what with her starting work for the Quins and me with my new problems, nothing much was said. Incidentally Ma thought my rib got broken wrestling.
Les came around to see me one night in the first week I was sick and I had a feeling he was ashamed of himself for having thought of me as a traitor. He could see now, or thought he
could, that I had taken the knock for both of us. I explained to him about Prudence and how I had bluffed the Lynch gang that she was coming when all the time she knew nothing about it. I just about had myself bluffed by this time.
‘The dirty sods,’ Les said, horrified. ‘What were they gunna do to her, Ned?’
‘You-know,’ I told him, thinking about Josephine McClinton.
‘The dirty sods,’ said Les. ‘You mean they were gunna, you-know?’
‘Thas right,’ I nodded. ‘But hang on, listen, until I tell you about Peachy Blair.’
He listened and commented as follows.
‘The dirty sods.’
‘If yuh ask me thas not all they do, either.’
‘You mean—they you-know?’
‘Thas right.’
‘The dirty sods.’
Les began to come around nearly every night to have one of our increasingly ignorant and filthy (but delightful) bedside chats about ‘you-know’ and one night I woke up to the fact that he was carrying a torch for my big sister. It seemed incredible, but there it was. Prudence came home from the Quins’ about eight o’clock each night and as soon as we heard her voice and her laugh out in the kitchen, Les’s end of the conversation went haywire and his ears got pink. She was Les’s Josephine McClinton! Well how about that? My big sister! That is what she had become as soon as she started work. My big sister! It might have just been the effect of wearing shoes, but she seemed to have sprouted, her legs seemed longer. Prudence was very slender—willowy might be a better adjective—but she had the
meat in the right places and it seemed to quiver when she strutted about.
Les made a bit of an ass of himself one night by coming to light and asking me if I thought he ought to keep an eye on Prudence in case the Lynchites were still after her.
‘Don’t make me laugh,’ I said. ‘What could
you
do? Pru can look after herself.’
‘Well, I just thought—’
‘Besides,’ I added, nastily, ‘if yuh ask me she’s got a policeman for a boyfriend now.’
‘How d’yuh mean?’ asked Les, looking so confused I felt sorry for him.
‘Oh, I dunno, really, but this cop that came around about Uncle Athol is always hanging around giving her typewriting lessons. Came last night after you’d gone home. Ask me, he only types with one finger himself.’
‘But he’s a grown-up man,’ protested Les. ‘And a cop too. It can’t be right.’
It was the way I felt too, but I stuck to my guns.
‘He looks like a bull,’ mumbled Les.
‘Maybe that’s what these sheilas like,’ I said, feeling nearly as sick and confused as Les looked to be.
‘A prize bull,’ said Les viciously.
‘A prize prick, anyway,’ I amended vulgarly.
It was Prudence herself who routed our speculations. She came into the bedroom one night. Les sprang off his chair and offered it to her, but she flopped down on one of my feet.
‘Hey,’ I yelled. ‘That’s my foot in case you don’t know. Watch out where you stick your bum on my bed.’
I only spoke in this crude fashion to show off in front of Les.
I wanted to make it quite clear to Les that, as far as I was concerned, Prudence was still only the kid I had once tipped up and forced to eat boot polish.
‘You’re late home, tonight,’ I sneered. ‘Been stepping out with ole—’ I employed the pet name we had for Len Ramsbottom.
‘To whom do you refer by that vulgar remark?’ said Prudence haughtily.
To whom do you refer? What next!
‘My dear little brother,’ said Prudence, who knew damn’ well to whom I did refer. ‘My deah, deah, little brother.’ She addressed the air and Les. One half of her audience, anyway, had the sense not to snigger away like an idiot.
‘Don’t hand me that stuff,’ I went on. ‘Don’t try and kid me he only just about lives here to give yuh lessons on that old typewriter. If yuh could type with two fingers yud be twice as good as him, huh, huh. If yuh could type with three fingers yud be three times as good, huh, huh, huh.’
I glared at Les, expecting to get some appreciative mirth out of him, but he just sat on the edge of his chair, simpering.
‘Ask me,’ I said darkly, ‘he’s out to teach yuh more than just typewriting.’
‘Just what,’ said Prudence, ‘d’yuh mean by that remark, Neddy Poindexter?’
‘You know,’ I said, and Les’s ears pricked up. This was sailing pretty close to the wind.
Prudence, lock of dark, wavy hair over one eye, was leaning back with her hands stretched behind her, palms down as support, and she was showing a lot of leg, so it is my guess Les was only pretending to look at the floor, but I was in no state
to censure him for that, not the way things were.
‘Constable Ramsbottom is being very kind to give me lessons on his typewriter,’ Prudence said firmly. ‘And that is all there is to it, I’ll have you know. However, I will say he has very nice wavy hair.’
‘Yuh, yuh,’ I jeered.
‘But not as nice,’ said Pru, blushing, ‘as someone else I know.’
This shut me up and I guess it registered with Les too. That authentic note is quite unmistakable. Prudence shook the bang of hair out of her eye and looked all dreamy.
‘Hey,’ I said. ‘Yuh got a ladder in the new stockings that Angela gave yuh.’
That jolted her.
‘Where? Oh!’
She leaned forward and pulled back her skirt an inch or so with the tips of her fingers and stood up quickly.
‘I’ll put some soap on it,’ she announced. Les looked up at her like a spaniel pup. It made me sick.
Just before she went out the door she stopped and looked at Les.
‘Who’s the young man atcha pa’s store?’ she asked.
‘Who?’ said Les with a start. ‘Clarrie Homes.’
‘No, the new boy. The tall one with the, ahem, curly, fair hair?’
‘Oh him,’ said Les. ‘He’s just started. The fat guy?’
‘He’s not so fat,’ said Prudence indignantly.
‘If Les says he’s fat—’ I began.
‘Chester Montgomery,’ said Les.
‘He’s fat,’ I concluded.
Prudence repeated the name.
‘What a name!’ I said. ‘Is that a name?’
Prudence screwed her nose up at me as she went out. Then she poked her head back into the room for a minute and said, ‘Well, I think he’s rather nice.’
‘Who is he?’ I asked Les, hoarsely.
‘The new chap Dad’s taken on at the store. Honestly Neddy, he’s fat. Y’oughta see him riding the store bike. He’s really fat, Ned. And he’s a drip. He’s got a squeaky voice. Y’oughta see the way he dances around and kids up to the customers when he’s behind the counter. He’s like a big, fat, bumblebee in a bottle. I heard Dad tell Mum he overdoes being polite. It’s ness’ry to be polite, Dad says, but he said to Mum that this new guy lays it on a bit thick. According to my father it’s ness’ry to be polite in a store, but yuh don’t want to overdo it, neither. According to my father this Chester bloke is the most polite guy he’s ever seen. Just wait till you go into the store, Neddy. I wouldn’t be surprised if this Chester Montgomery is the politest guy in the world.’
‘How old is he?’
‘Hard to tell, eighteen or nineteen, I s’pose. He’s not as old as the copper bloke, that’s one thing, but boy, he’s twice as polite, that’s fuh sure.’
‘You’re a bit keen on Prudence aren’t you, Les,’ I said, so suddenly it even surprised me.
‘Well, Neddy,’ said Les awkwardly, ‘since you must know, I s’pose I am just a bit. Just a little bit.’
‘Well, don’t look so ashamed,’ I said. ‘I’m on your side, Leslie. Looks like we don’t have to worry about this cop any more. Now our problem is this Montgomery character. According to what yuh say I just can’t understand Pru going
overboard for a clown like that. From what yuh tell me he’s a real booby.’
‘He is, Neddy,’ Les avowed. ‘He is, dinkum.’
‘Then maybe he’s not our problem at
tall
,’ I said, the shadow of the sick-bed lending me mystical insight.
‘How d’yuh mean?’ worried Les.
‘Maybe Prudence is,’ I told him.
Ma kicked Les out early these nights and gave me a cup of warm milk. Then I was supposed to go to sleep. Instead of that, I nearly developed astral powers. I nearly learned the secret of projecting my spirit through the night to have ‘you-know’ with Josephine McClinton, the while relaying the seventh heaven of its sensations back to me, the master, snug and relaxed in my own bed. This is something I am sure Herbert, wise as he was, had never thought of. This remote-control invention of mine involved falling asleep and yet not falling asleep. It involved thinking of precisely nothing except some specific conception of ‘you-know’ until my spirit went wheeling away on its lecherous travels. It took a lot of concentration, believe me, and it never worked. It never worked because of the karaka tree. For years the karaka tree had scraped and banged in the wind against the bit of our iron fence that still stood; and, with every bang, the fence leaned further over the narrow sidewalk along Smythe Street. I had become so used to this sound that it was just a part of the night. It was not a sound which could have ever kept me awake; and yet, just when I had nearly mastered this new, mysterious power and the darkness was beginning to go ecstatically up and down, up and down, the movement lost its identity and became a sound instead—the sound of that confounded scraping and banging karaka tree.