Borribles Go For Broke, The (4 page)

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Authors: Michael de Larrabeiti

BOOK: Borribles Go For Broke, The
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Ten minutes went by. Chalotte could see that Vulge was thinking intently, resting his top teeth on the edge of his jam jar of tea. At last he got to his feet, limped over to an orange box, took out some apples and handed them round.
‘This is my idea,’ he began. ‘It’s the school holidays now, safer for us to travel. I’m not in favour of doing anything dangerous, but what we could do is get the other survivors together, there’s only Stonksie in Peckham and Bingo in Battersea, then we could all talk about it. We’ll find someone who’s going Peckham way and send a note to Stonks and get him to meet us at Bingo’s house. On our way to Battersea we’ll ask any Borrible we see if they’ve come across any messages about Sam. If they haven’t then the message is likely to be genuine, if they’ve seen a few then it’s probably a trap. That way we don’t make any decisions about going
to Fulham until we’ve heard what everyone has to say. How’s that strike yer, Sydney, is that better?’
Sydney looked up and smiled, her eyes brightened. ‘Oh Vulge,’ she said, ‘that’s marvellous, bloody marvellous.’
 
The four Borribles meant to waste no time and decided to set out the following morning. A message was despatched to Peckham via the Borrible network and Twilight volunteered to make himself responsible for gathering the supplies they would need on the long walk to Battersea. He left Vulge’s house that afternoon and promised to return by nightfall.
Vulge checked over his catapult. He also gave Chalotte a spare to replace the one she had lost when captured by the policeman. Later on that day he disappeared for an hour or so, ‘To get some good stones,’ he said.
That night all four of them slept in Vulge’s house and at first light they rose and made a good breakfast.
‘We’ll get on the streets as soon as it’s rush hour,’ said Vulge. ‘That way we won’t be so noticeable. Remember, the slightest sign of trouble and we run. If we get separated we all meet at Bingo’s house.’
‘This is great,’ said Twilight. ‘Do you know I’ve never been out of the East End, let alone across the river.’
‘Well,’ said Chalotte, ‘let’s hope it turns out to be just a walk we’re going on and nothing more.’
As it happened the walk was a good one. The route lay all along the side of the River Thames and the water glinted and gleamed in the July sunshine. Tugs and barges steamed by on the tide; seagulls swooped down the winding currents of warm air and their long wailing cries made the Embankment sound as exotic as a treasure island. Buses and cars shone and stewed in the heat and the blue smoke of their exhausts floated in a pale stream a yard or so above the bubbling tar of the road surface.
This was central London in summer, and so content were the four Borribles to be a part of their city that they began to sing quietly to themselves as they advanced along the hot pavements,
singing a song that told of their way of life and the joy they had in it; one of the most famous Borrible songs ever written:
‘Who’d be a hurrying, scurrying slave,
Off to an office, or bound for a bank;
Who’d be a servant from cradle to grave,
Counting his wages and trying to save;
Who’d be a manager, full of his rank,
Or the head of the board at a big corporation?
Ask us the question, we’ll tell you to stuff it;
Good steady jobs would make all of us snuff it
—
Freedom’s a Borrible’s one occupation!
 
‘Our kind of liberty’s fit for a king;
London’s our palace, we reign there supreme.
Broad way and narrow way, what shall we sing—
Alleys as tangled as knotted-up string,
River that winds through the smoke like a dream—
What shall we sing in our own celebration?
Ragged-arsed renegades, never respectable,
Under your noses, but rarely detectable—
Freedom’s a Borrible’s one occupation!’
And so they marched along the north bank until they reached Albert Bridge; there they crossed. Once over the water they turned right and went past the bus garages, then into Church Road where a great change awaited them. The high black walls of Morgan’s Crucible Works, the tall chimneys that had always stood against the clouds, the acres of sooty windows, had all gone. The factory had been demolished.
‘Well, look at that,’ said Chalotte, ‘ain’t it strange?’
They went on, halting for a second by St Mary’s church and the Old Swan pub.
‘This is where we landed after our escape from the Wendles,’ said Sydney, ‘and we went into some Borrible houses opposite. They’ve knocked them down too, everything’s going.’
At last they came to their destination, turning into the bottom of Battersea High Street and heading towards the market … But they did not go unobserved. As they passed the corner of Gran-field Street a Borrible, wearing an old Sinjen’s School blazer and tattered grey trousers, stepped in front of them and said, ‘What are you lot doing here?’
It was Lightfinger, Knocker’s friend, and Chalotte recognized him.
‘We’re Borrible, you know,’ she said. ‘Three of us were on the Rumble Hunt.’
Lightfinger was not impressed. ‘So what?’ he said. ‘I still want to know what you are doing here; this ain’t your manor.’
‘Don’t give us any bother,’ said Vulge. ‘We’ve come to see Bingo, not you. Why don’t you get out of our way?’
Lightfinger took a step towards Vulge. ‘Long as you haven’t come to start some dopey adventure like the last one. Where’s Knocker now eh, where’s my friend? Dead, ain’t he?’ Lightfinger clenched his fists and squared his shoulders, ready to take them all on, one against four.
‘Oh, don’t be daft,’ said Chalotte. ‘We’ve come for a chat with Bingo, that’s all.’
‘I’ll tell him,’ said Lightfinger. ‘As for you lot, you’d better go and see Spiff.’ With that he spun on his heel and ran off. The four travellers watched him go.
‘Friendly little feller, ain’t he?’ said Twilight. ‘Hides it well.’
‘He liked Knocker,’ said Chalotte, ‘so he can’t be too bad. Perhaps he hates us because we came back and Knocker didn’t.’
‘What about Spiff?’ Sydney wanted to know. ‘It’s funny but not one of us had thought about going to see him, had we?’
‘What’s he got to do with it?’ asked Twilight.
‘He has the Borrible house where Knocker used to live,’ explained Chalotte. ‘It was him really who talked everyone into going on the Rumble Hunt. It was him who gave Knocker the secret job of getting the Rumble treasure and bringing it back. If you ask me the money was all he was interested in.’
‘We don’t know that,’ said Vulge, wagging his head.
‘No, we don’t,’ agreed Chalotte, ‘but I reckon that Spiff’s so
crooked you could use him to unblock a sink. Still, if we don’t want trouble I suppose we’d better tell him we’re here.’
Spiff’s house stood halfway up the High Street. It was tall, wide and derelict, all its windows boarded and a heavy sheet of corrugated iron over the main doorway. The front of the building was painted in grimy grey and in black letters along the front was written, ‘Bunham’s Patent Locks Ltd. Locksmiths to the trade.’
The four Borribles loitered outside for a while and waited until their stretch of street was empty of pedestrians; no Borrible likes to be seen entering an abandoned house. When the coast was clear they went down steep steps into a basement area where they found an open door through which they entered a room that was damp and green and devoid of furniture. Plaster in large quantities had fallen from the ceiling and lay everywhere in lumps.
Vulge looked at the walls and sniffed. ‘We left from here,’ he said to Twilight, ‘this very room, eight of us; Spiff lives upstairs, come on.’
On the first landing Vulge stopped at a paintless door and gave the Borrible knock: one long, two short, one long. The door opened immediately and Lightfinger appeared. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder as he pushed past.
‘He knows you’re ’ere,’ he said, ‘I told him.’ Levering his shoulders backwards and forwards as he walked he went down the stairs.
‘He’s not so bad as he seems,’ said a voice. Spiff stood in the doorway.
Chalotte regarded him closely. The little bugger hasn’t changed a bit, she said to herself, not a bit. It was his face she remembered: clear and bright like a twelve-year-old’s, with eyes that always shone, dark with a fire of deep cunning, a craftiness that might have been ages old. He wore the same orange dressing gown and the same red hat of knitted wool.
‘You’d better come in, all of yer,’ he said, beckoning them across his threshold.
Inside the room Spiff lowered himself into his old armchair. In spite of the summer’s heat his paraffin stove was burning low, and bubbling on top was a large brown enamel teapot. Spiff set four
cups on an orange box and poured out a liquid that tasted like gunpowder and needed spoonfuls of sugar to make it drinkable.
‘Well, well,’ he said after the first sip, ‘it really is nice of you to come all this way to say hello. Sydney, Vulge and Chalotte, isn’t it? Must be six or seven months since I saw you. Who’s this black lad? Don’t know him, do I?’
‘My name’s Twilight,’ said the Bangladeshi with some pride.
‘That is an unusual name,’ said Spiff. ‘I hope that while you are here you will find time to tell me your story.’
Spiff then suggested that the four Borribles should take their cups and sit on the barrels arranged along one wall of his room. They did as they were asked and relaxed and drank and perspired in the overheated atmosphere, though they said nothing. This silence was embarrassing and Chalotte wondered if Spiff had been nudged off balance by their arrival. It was always difficult to assess his reactions exactly. There were great echoing corridors of artfulness in that small hard skull.
‘Lightfinger said you’d come to see Bingo,’ he said eventually across the top of his teacup. The steam strayed upwards over his face and dimmed the light of his eyes. He waited and smiled as if suspecting his guests of knowing something he didn’t want them to know and yet wishing, without giving anything away himself, to discover the full extent of their knowledge.
Sydney looked at her three companions, wiped some sweat from her eyebrows, coughed and said, ‘We … that is me … I went to see Chalotte because I was worried about Sam.’
‘Sam?’ said Spiff, and his brow furrowed as if he didn’t know the name. Chalotte tightened her mouth in scorn. She was certain that Spiff remembered every detail of the Rumble expedition and, what was more, spent a great deal of his time thinking about the Rumble Hunt, what had happened on it and what might still happen because of it.
‘Sam,’ she said, allowing the sarcasm to show, ‘was the horse.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Spiff, ‘the horse, of course.’ He smiled at the rhyme.
‘Well,’ continued Sydney, ‘I made him a promise that I’d go back for him … then the other day I received this.’ Sydney
handed the message to Spiff, who read it very carefully, examining the piece of paper on both sides.
‘Mmm,’ he said when his perusal was concluded. ‘Fulham; are you going to go?’
Vulge leant forward and settled his elbows on his knees, holding his cup between clasped hands. ‘The point is, Spiff, I think the message is a come-on, I think it might be something set up by the SBG.’
Spiff looked at the note again. ‘That’s a thought,’ he said. ‘Those Woollies of Sussworth’s have become a real pain. I’ve had this house searched twice, only just got away the second time. We’ve got Borribles watching each end of the street now. As soon as one of those blue vans arrives, matey, we’re off.’
Vulge nodded. ‘It would have been dead easy, you know, for the SBG to send that note … though I must admit we spoke to a lot of Borribles on the way down here and none of them had seen a message about Sam, so I daresay it’s straight. On the other hand, if we do decide it’s a trap then we ought to forget about the horse altogether.’
‘I should cocoa,’ said Spiff. If he had been nervous earlier he was now visibly relaxing. ‘What do you think, Chalotte?’
‘I don’t think anything. I came along for the walk and to see Bingo and Stonks. Sydney made a promise but I didn’t.’ She shrugged her shoulders.
Twilight interrupted. ‘I would go to Fulham like a shot.’
Spiff laughed. ‘He’s like Knocker, he is.’
‘Yeah,’ said Chalotte, ‘and Knocker’s dead and that was your fault. You’re so crafty you don’t know whether you’ve been or gone. I say that to your face.’
Spiff’s expression darkened. ‘I only wanted to share the money out.’
‘Borribles should stay away from money,’ said Vulge.
Spiff grimaced. ‘Well, money certainly stays away from Borribles.’ He looked straight into Chalotte’s eyes. ‘You never liked me, Chalotte, even before Knocker died, but you can’t deny that we haven’t had a peep out of the Rumbles since we attacked them, not a peep.’
‘That’s right,’ said Chalotte, ‘now we’ve got the SBG instead.’
‘The world don’t do us no favours,’ said Spiff, and then he quoted from the
Borrible Book of Proverbs
. ‘“The only gift given to a Borrible is the one he takes.”’ He studied his visitors for a moment. ‘What are you going to do?’

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