‘But that’s the point! If you think like that, then you’re playing their game. They want us to stay away, knowing we wouldn’t return to the scene of the crime. It’s like a double-bluff. Inside another double-bluff.’
‘Oh, fuck off,’ said Terry.
‘You don’t get it, do you?’ Clive was puce in the face. ‘We didn’t do it, but we may as well have done. It’s all about who decides what really happens. Or what happened. Even if something altogether different happened.’
‘Oh, fuck off.’
‘You fuck off.’
‘No, you fuck off.’
‘Why don’t you both fuck off ?’ said Sam.
‘What I want to know,’ Terry said, ‘is who gave our names to the police?’
A horse rider, smart in white jodhpurs, tweed hacking jacket and peaked riding hat, approached on a skewbald
mare. The rider advanced at a trot, passing by with her nose in the air. The boys recognized her as the girl from the gymkhana field. Sam also identified her from the day they hid in the pavilion – and from his dream. They watched her cross the road. She swung in her saddle to open a field gate and cantered across a buttercup meadow towards the woods.
‘Me too,’ said Sam.
Connie, Betty and Terry’s Aunt Dot put their heads together, as they had done over the matter of Sunday school some years ago, and came up with an idea. To be accurate, it was Moody Linda who came up with the idea when Aunt Dot privately expressed dismay over Terry’s alleged delinquency. Although the charge of smashing up the gymkhana pavilion had never been proved, the arrival at the door of the local police was incrimination enough.
‘Our Terry’s going off the rails. Off the rails.’
Moody Linda stood before her bedroom mirror, adjusting a pristine white lanyard. Her royal-blue skirt and blouse were starched and ironed to such crisp perfection that her patrol leader’s badge and stripes were hardly necessary to signal authority. ‘Scouts,’ she said, tugging her beret at an efficient angle.
Dot placed her hands together. ‘Hadn’t thought of that. Wednesdays, isn’t it? And you’d be there to keep an eye on them.’
Linda closed her eyes, shuddering at the thought of what she’d just done. Pride of the Coventry Forty-fifths, troop-leader and processional flag-bearer, Linda had made dizzying progress in her three years as a Guide. It was for her a private and perfect world, insulated from the tangles and disorders of the home front, a painstakingly regimented, well-drilled environment where neatly pressed uniforms and snow-white lanyards garnered respect, loyalty and appreciation.
There was only one minor flaw to a perfect evening spent in the sisterly company of the Forty-fifths, and that was the occasional childish behaviour of the Coventry Thirty-ninth Scout troop, who convened their meetings on the same evenings, and at the same school, and who considered it amusing to spend half the evening banging on the door or knocking on the windows before running away, so that there was never anyone there when you answered, and who, if you tried to ignore them altogether, would resort to more extreme methods of distraction, like lowering their trousers and pressing their bottoms against the glass window. It occurred to Linda, as she tugged at her beret, that she had possibly just recruited Terry, Sam and Clive into the ranks of her persecutors.
‘No,’ she said, fumbling with her silver whistle, ‘on second thoughts, I don’t think they’d like it.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Dot. ‘I think they’d get a lot out of it.’
Which is how Moody Linda, just turned sixteen and resplendent in her blue uniform, came to be walking seven paces ahead of three twelve-year-old boys mobbed up in a collection of second-hand Scout uniforms Connie had rummaged from the neighbourhood. Sam’s shorts were too long; Clive’s shorts were too short; and Terry’s shirt could once have fitted the fattest Boy Scout in Coventry. Only a little pressure had had to be applied to get them to go along. Sam’s instincts in particular had resisted, but now, as they stepped smartly to keep up with Linda’s brisk stride, they paced out like three conscripts cheerfully resigned to circumstance.
Inside the school gates Linda did a military right-wheel, airily waving them away in the opposite direction. Across the playground they could see a small knot of Scouts gathered under the gymnasium wall. As they made to present themselves, their pace reduced the closer they got to the gym wall.
What slowed them was the aggressive, contemptuous collective gaze of the six regular Scouts huddled there, older boys, all smoking cigarettes. The three pulled up at a distance of a few yards. Nothing was said. Clive scratched his sock-top. Terry pretended to tie up his shoelace. Sam folded his arms, and then quickly unfolded them.
‘What do you fucking want?’ said the biggest of the gang, a boy with cropped hair and eyes narrowed to a porcine squint. His huge, meaty legs strained the seams of his short khaki trousers. The grey-pink skin of his thighs looked chafed and raw. Sam shifted his weight from one leg to the other.
‘Yeah, what do you fucking want?’ said a tall, thin boy with shockingly bad teeth, stubbing out a cigarette on the heel of his shoe.
‘Fuck off,’ said the first Scout.
‘Yeah, fuck off,’ said his lieutenant.
Terry, Sam and Clive did exactly as instructed. Turning uneasily, they made agonizingly slow progress back across the playground. Still feeling six pairs of eyes burning into their backs, it was a long, long walk.
They hovered nervously at the school gates for five minutes or so and were about to leave when a grown man, in full Scouting uniform, sped through the gates on a bicycle. Applying his brakes, he skidded to a halt. ‘New boys? You the three new boys?’
The question carved them an island. They swam to it, gathering round the bicycle. The man lifted a hairy leg over the cross-bar, wheeling the bicycle back across the playground. The boys followed, covering old ground to find that the smoking scouts had vanished. The man had a toothbrush moustache and a florid complexion, plus a way of smiling which involved baring his clenched teeth. He introduced himself as Skip. He chatted amiably, learning their names immediately.
Wheeling his bike through a back entrance to the school,
Skip led them down a corridor and opened a door to a classroom where almost thirty Scouts were busy unpacking boxes and unloading equipment. He pushed his bike into the classroom, leaning it against the chalk-dusted blackboard rail. Then he turned to press an industrial-sized forefinger flat against the centre of Clive’s forehead. ‘Falcon,’ he whispered, with mystical intensity. Slowly withdrawing his finger to leave a white mark on the flushed skin of Clive’s brow, he let the finger float towards Sam’s forehead. ‘Eagle.’ Terry was the last to be anointed. ‘Merlin.’
Skip bared his teeth before propelling first Sam, then Terry and finally Clive into different corners of the room, where small clusters of Scouts were still busy with a ritual of unpacking a battered suitcase, checking off the equipment therein and restoring it to its original position. Sam’s group turned from their task and looked at him with a mixture of pity and contempt. Sam found himself face to face with the brawny, cropped, fat-faced boy they’d encountered under the gym wall.
‘What do you want?’
‘Eagle,’ spluttered Sam. ‘Eagle.’
The boy’s lip curled, miraculously ammonite-like. ‘Fuck.’
Skip sauntered over. ‘Show him the ropes now, Tooley. Be a good mother.’
The boy’s sneer disappeared. With an alacrity quite alarming, he jumped up and offered his Scoutleader, and then Sam, a winning smile. ‘I’m Tooley. Eagle PL. Best patrol in the troop. Welcome aboard.’
‘That’s the stuff,’ Skip said, baring his teeth before wheeling away to facilitate similar introductions elsewhere.
After he’d gone, Sam was pushed into a chair and given a short piece of rope to hold. Then he was ignored for three quarters of an hour. When the equipment was packed back into its box, someone snatched the rope out of his hands and
stowed it. Skip came round and inspected the box that had been unpacked, checked and packed again.
‘All correct?’
‘Yes, Skip.’
The next section of the evening comprised games. Skip stood on a chair with a whistle shouting, ‘Port,’ ‘Starboard,’ ‘Freeze,’ ‘Thaw’ and one or two other commands. Scouts charged back and forth in tumult. Sam, like Clive and Terry, tried to imitate what the others were doing, but without really grasping the rules they were all eliminated early. They stood around for twenty minutes until a winner was declared; whereupon the game was repeated, all three again making an early exit.
The third slice of the evening was set aside for Badge Work. This involved free association with other patrols while Skip and his assistant leader were kept busy testing people in various arcane skills. Suddenly Sam found himself roughly bundled against the wall and lifted clean off his feet by Tooley. He was covered by his friend Lance, the boy with the appalling teeth, who stood close but with his back to them, keeping watch for Skip. ‘Those other two new boys. Friends of yours?’
‘Yes.’
Tooley let him down, pretending to dust off his shirt. ‘Eagles chin Merlins, Falcons and Owls, don’t we, Lance?’
‘Yep. Chin ’em hard.’
‘You’re going to start with your pals.’
‘What?’
Tooley put his ugly face very close. Sam could smell tobacco on his breath. ‘Never ‘‘what’’ me, right? Never ‘‘what’’ me. Yes, Tooley. No, Tooley. But never ‘‘what’’. Right?’
‘Yes, Tooley.’
‘What’s his name? Your mate with the stick-out ears.’
‘Clive.’
‘Right. You chin him before the evening is out, right?’
‘No!’
‘Please yourself. If you don’t, we’re going to pull your shorts down, and my friend Lance is gonna fuck you up your arse, right, Lance?’
‘Right.’
‘Remember: before the evening is out.’ Tooley turned from his ministrations, and both he and Lance blended effortlessly back into Badge Work. Sam looked at Terry, who was seated on a chair looking slightly pale, and at Clive who, in being taught how to tie a knot, seemed happy enough. Lance looked up and gave Sam a gorgeous flash of green-and-black dentures.
Sam felt faint. Skip came by. ‘Everything all right?’
‘Yes,’ Sam said weakly. ‘Yes.’
‘That’s the stuff. All seems strange at first, but you’ll get used to it.’
The appointed hour was approaching fast. Sam felt increasingly dizzy, what with Tooley squeezing past him every few minutes to tap his wristwatch and Lance intermittently beaming him beautiful mouthfuls of rotting teeth. When Skip stepped out of the classroom for a moment, Sam recognized all the signs of an engineered diversion. He stepped across the room towards Clive, fists clenched. Terry meanwhile beckoned him over, but he was not to be distracted. Clive had his back turned. He tapped Clive on the shoulder, but before he could do anything, a small fist hit him stingingly hard in the side of the mouth. Terry stood back, his fist still raised. Clive instantly looked up and punched Terry hard, and not in revenge for the blow inflicted on Sam, at the exact moment Sam landed a sharp blow to the side of Clive’s nose.
Skip came back into the room to see all Scouts busy but for three new Tenderfoots dazed and confused in the middle of the room. ‘All right, lads? That’s the stuff, back to your patrols. Time for the flag.’
Sam, Terry and Clive lined up at the rear of their
respective patrols, each nursing a sore, bruised face as the Union Jack was unfurled. They saluted along with everyone else. All Scouts enthusiastically chanted the Scout Law. ‘I promise on my honour to do my best to do my duty to serve God, Queen and country and at all times to obey the Scout Law.’
Then it was all over, and Moody Linda was waiting for them outside, resplendent in her blue uniform, slightly flushed with the small pleasures that a successful evening of Guiding can bring to a girl.
‘See you next week, lads,’ shouted Skip, switching off the classroom lights with an extravagant sweep of his arm. ‘See you next week.’
They did return to Scouts the following week but only because Wide Games were promised ‘to take advantage of the Indian summer’. As for the intimidation from the likes of Tooley and his cohorts, everyone assured them they’d simply been initiated.
‘They’re just seeing what you’re made of,’ Eric told Clive.
‘They’re simply teasing you all,’ Nev assured Sam.
‘It’s a kind of test, which you’ve passed,’ said Terry’s Uncle Charlie.
So they went to the Wide Games, which were organized at Wistman’s Woods. The stipulation had been that they should gather at the end of the track leading to the wood rather than at the school where meetings were usually held. Terry, Clive and Sam donned their ill-fitting uniforms and took the road which passed the pond and the gymkhana field. It was a warm September evening, and the bronze disc of the sun was already low in the sky. Clouds of gnats flared in the yellow light, a thousand winged creatures individually aflame. As they approached the woods, a horse rider came trotting out between the trees. It was the girl from the gymkhana. Drawing abreast of them, she reined her mare and stopped. The horse seemed to want to walk on the spot. They too stopped.
Her eyes were shadowed by the peak of her riding hat. She looked down at them with an expression of haughty amusement. ‘Boy Scouts,’ she said, landing a cynical emphasis on
the ‘boy’. There was both irony and contempt in her voice. ‘
Boy
Scouts.’ Without warning she urged her horse and cantered clear, leaving the three to gaze stupidly after her. None of them could think of anything to say.