The Midnight Gang

by David Walliams

  We must find that boy now!”

  “Let’s split up. You check the deep freezer, Mr Thews. Some of the children were in there the other night.”

  “Right away, Matron.”

  “And I will check the boiler room. Do shout if you find the little worm.”

  “Oh, I will!”

  The pair turned round, and with the nurses in tow rushed off to continue their search.

  When the sound of all their footsteps was distant, the porter emerged from under the mattress.

  “What an evil pair!” said Tom, his heart racing.

  “They are as bad as each other,” replied the porter. Then he lit his candle, and the basement room flickered back into view. To Tom’s surprise, the man rushed over and scooped up the stunned bird in his hands.

  “Why did you have to do that to Professor Pigeon?” he whispered.

  “‘Professor Pigeon’?” asked Tom, a note of disbelief in his voice.

  “Yes! It’s because she’s so very clever. She’s my pet pigeon. And, look, she only has one wing.”

  Tom looked down. Indeed, the bird had a stump where one of her wings should have been.

  “How did she lose it?” asked the boy.

  “She was born that way. Her mother turfed her out of the nest just after she had hatched.”

  “That’s cruel.”

  “That’s what animals do. She was the runt of the litter, I suppose. Just like me.”

  Tom listened as the man stroked his pet pigeon, which cooed in pleasure.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I was only a few hours old when my mum left me on the steps of this hospital.”

  “I am so sorry.”

  “She left me here in the middle of the night, so no one saw her face.”

  “So you have no idea who your mother is?”

  “Or was? No. But I forgive her. And I miss her too, though I never knew her.”

  “Why did she leave you here?”

  “I suppose Mum hoped I would be looked after better here at the hospital. Maybe she thought the doctors and nurses could help me? And do something about this.”

  The porter pointed to his misshapen face and tried to smile through the pain.

  “I am so sorry,” said the boy.

  “Don’t be sorry, young Mr Thomas, sir. I still love my mother. Whoever and wherever she may be. No one wanted to adopt me, so Lord Funt, who founded this hospital, let me stay in the children’s ward. Funt was a kind man. Not like this new fellow.”

  “Amber told me the Midnight Gang began on the ward long ago, and has been passed down through all the patients.”

  “That’s right.”

  “But no one knew which child started the gang. Do you know?”

  “Yes, I do,” replied the porter. The old man smiled to himself.

  “Who was it then?” the boy asked, his eyes widening with excitement.

  “It was me,” replied the porter. “I was the child who started the Midnight Gang.”

  “You?!” asked Tom. The boy’s head was spinning at the news.

  “Yes, Mr Thomas, sir. Me!” slurred the porter.

  The pair was sitting in the man’s dark, damp home, down in the basement of LORD FUNT HOSPITAL.

  Tom smiled. “Now it all makes sense! Why you helped us!”

  “Well, I have been helping the children in the ward live out their dreams for fifty-odd years.”

  “So why did you start the Midnight Gang?”

  “Same reason as you children today. I was bored. I think Lord Funt might have suspected us kids were up to something. But I know above all else he wanted his patients to be happy. Funt turned a blind eye to our midnight adventures.”

  “So what was your dream?”

  “Well, sometimes the other children in the ward would be cruel to me. They’d call me names: Monster Man, Elephant Boy, the Creature.”

  “That must have hurt.”

  “It did. But children only bully when they themselves are unhappy. They were just taking out their unhappiness on me. Just like Matron and your headmaster, I suppose. I was made painfully aware of how I looked, and I dreamed of being a handsome prince, and rescuing a beautiful princess.”

  “So did you?” asked the boy.

  “Yes. In a way. I was only about ten years old. Me and the other children in the ward made a pantomime horse out of blankets and a broom. Two of the children hid under it, one was the front of the horse and the other was the back. I rode in on the horse to save the princess who was imprisoned in a tower. At the top of the stairwell, in fact.”

  “Who was the princess?”

  “She was called Rosie. One of the patients. Eleven years old. The most beautiful girl I had ever seen in my life.”

  “What was she being treated for?”

  “She had a weak heart. The night that Rosie played my princess was the most magical night of my life. When I rescued her, she gave me my first and last kiss.”

  “Whatever happened to Rosie?”

  The porter hesitated for a moment. “Soon after that night her heart stopped beating. The doctors and nurses did everything they could to save her. But she didn’t make it.”

  The porter bowed his head. Even though he was talking about something that happened more than fifty years ago, he felt the pain of it like it was yesterday.

  “I am sorry,” said Tom. He reached out his hand and rested it on the man’s shoulder.

  “Thank you, Mr Thomas, sir. Rosie was kind to me. She didn’t care that I looked like this. She could see past it. Her heart may have been weak, but it was big. Losing Rosie made me realise something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That life is precious. Every moment is precious. We should be kind to each other. While there is still time.”

  The pair sat in silence in the basement room for a moment, before the porter broke it.

  “Now, Mr Thomas, sir, you are going to get in big trouble if you stay down here a moment longer.”

  The man gave some crusts of bread to Professor Pigeon. The bird picked them up and hopped over to her nest, where Tom saw there was a number of tiny pigeon eggs.

  “You are going to have babies!” said the boy.

  “Well, they aren’t my babies!” laughed the man. “But, yes, Professor Pigeon is about to become a mother herself. I am so looking forward to them hatching.”

  The porter studied the boy for a moment before remarking, “That bump on your head has gone down completely.”

  “It still hurts,” lied Tom.

  “I’m not stupid. I know you fooled that poor Doctor Luppers so you could stay in the hospital longer.”

  “But—!”

  “You might fool him, but you can’t fool me! Now come on, let’s get you upstairs to find your headmaster. You need to go back to your school right away.”

  “No!” replied Tom defiantly.

  The porter was taken aback by this. “What do you mean ‘no’?”

  “I mean ‘no’, not until the Midnight Gang can get back together for one last mission.”

  The porter shook his head wearily. “There is no way, Mr Thomas, sir. The whole hospital is on to you kids now. There can be no more missions for the Midnight Gang.”

  Tom wasn’t giving up. “But you said yourself that life was precious! Every moment is precious!”

  “I know but …”

  “Then we have to make Sally’s dream come true. Let’s be kind, while there is still time.”

  “But not tonight, Mr Thomas, sir. It’s impossible!” replied the porter.

  “Nothing is impossible! There has to be a way,” said the boy. With a sense of drama, he stood up and marched over to the door. “If you won’t help us, then that’s fine! We’ll do it ourselves!”

  Tom opened the door. Just as he was about to walk out, the porter stopped him.

  “Wait!” he said.

  With his back to the man, Tom smiled to himself. He knew he had hooked him; now he just had to r
eel him in. The boy turned round to face the porter.

  “Just out of interest,” began the man, “what is young Miss Sally’s dream?”

  Tom hesitated for a moment. He knew what he was about to say was far beyond anything the Midnight Gang had ever attempted before. “Sally wants to live a big, beautiful life … in just one night.”

  “Let me get this straight, Mr Thomas, sir,” slurred the porter. “Young Miss Sally wants to live a lifetime, seventy, eighty years perhaps, over just one night?”

  “Exactly! She desperately wants to experience everything life has to offer!” said Tom with a gulp. The boy knew this was going to be the hardest dream of all for the Midnight Gang to pull off.

  “Everything?”

  “Everything. Listen, I know it sounds crazy, but—”

  “It sounds beautiful,” interrupted the porter. The man stroked his one-winged pigeon one last time before setting it down gently on the ground. “We’ll need a plan,” he said.

  “I’ve already got one!” replied the boy.

  “What?”

  “We put together a little show. Make Sally the star.”

  “What will the show be about?”

  “It will be snapshots, little scenes of what happens in life. First kiss …”

  “First job?”

  “Having a baby, even!”

  “That’s a brilliant idea!” exclaimed the porter.

  Tom could feel his cheeks glowing red with embarrassment. He had never been told he had thought of anything brilliant before.

  “Thank you,” replied the boy.

  “This is a big dream. Bigger than big. Gigantic! We’ll need props and costumes and all sorts.”

  “Yes! There is so much stuff to find. Me and the other children will need to get straight on to it.”

  “And we’ll need to make a list of what all those special moments for Sally might be.”

  “Yes.”

  “What an incredible final mission for the Midnight Gang! Come on, Professor Pigeon,” said the porter, scooping up the bird in his hand and placing it in his pocket. “We are going to have an awfully big adventure.”

  Now that Tom was officially “on the run”, not only from the hospital but also his school, it was going to be very difficult for him to get back up to the children’s ward from the basement. Forty-four floors and hundreds of patients and doctors and nurses separated the boy from his destination.

  “If I am spotted, it’s all over,” he said.

  “I know,” replied the porter. “We’ll need to disguise you.”

  Tom spied a rusty old hospital trolley in the corner of the porter’s den.

  “Could I pretend to be a very ill patient?” he asked. “You could cover me with a sheet and then push me back up to the children’s ward. No one will know it’s me.”

  “An excellent plan, young Mr Thomas, sir …” said the porter.

  Tom was just about to dive on to the trolley when the man said, “But you are forgetting something. Something big.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Sir Quentin Strillers fired me on the spot for what going forward we shall call ‘the-flying-old-lady incident’. So we are both going to need a disguise.”

  “Sorry, I forgot,” replied the boy, downcast. “Maybe it would work better if we reversed the roles?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I can be the doctor and you be the patient! We could cover you in a sheet.”

  “I have one right here!” replied the porter.

  The man picked up a white sheet so old it had gone grey. He shook it out and clouds of dust filled the basement room. The blizzard of dust made the pair cough and splutter.

  “Sorry!” said the porter. “But, Mr Thomas, sir, how is anyone going to believe that you are a grown-up?”

  The boy was unusually short for his age.

  “There must be something we can do. I just need to be taller. If only we had some stilts!”

  “I have the next best thing!”

  The porter scrabbled around in a corner of his den. He discarded all sorts of items that must have been thrown out by the hospital. Rubber gloves, stethoscopes, sample jars, metal dishes, tongs … all flew past Tom until the porter finally found what he was looking for.

  A pair of prosthetic legs. These were made of plastic and meant for people who had lost a leg through an accident or illness.

  “This pair of legs should work a treat!” said the porter as he passed them to the boy.

  Except they weren’t really a pair.

  Tom examined them.

  “There are two left feet,” said the boy.

  “Who is going to check?!” replied the porter confidently. “You can borrow a pair of my trousers to cover the legs.”

  “OK, let’s try it!” replied Tom.

  After a few moments, the pair checked the coast was clear and emerged from the porter’s room in the basement of the hospital. The porter had lent Tom his cleanest pair of trousers, which were of course still covered in a thick layer of grime. He had also found two left shoes to slip the prosthetic feet into. The shoes weren’t matching, of course. One was a black brogue, and the other a white plimsoll.

  Tom had put on a long white coat, and to complete the look the porter had drawn a moustache on the boy with soot. Unsteady on his new legs, Tom wobbled out along the corridor, pushing the old rusty trolley. Underneath the dusty sheet on the trolley lay the porter, rather enjoying being pushed for a change.

  “To the children’s ward! And quick!” ordered the man.

  “I’ll go as fast as my legs can carry me!” replied the boy.

  “Deeper voice, please!”

  “What?”

  “If people are to believe you are a grown-up, you are going to have to talk in a deeper voice.”

  Tom tried again, this time in a much deeper voice. “I’ll go as fast as my legs can carry me.”

  “Too

  deep

  now!”

  The boy sighed and tried again.

  “I’ll go as fast as my legs can carry me.”

  “Perfect!” said the porter.

  Tom set off, immediately tripped over and sent the trolley careering into a wall. The porter banged his head on it. Hard.

  “Ow!”

  “Sorry!” said Tom.

  “At least now I have a real injury!” said the porter.

  The pair chuckled, and set off as quickly as they could for the lifts.

  “There’s no way Matron is going to fall for the snoozy-pellets-in-the-chocolates trick again,” said Tom as the pair travelled up in the lift.

  “I know,” slurred the porter, lying on the trolley. “That’s why we are going to make an unscheduled stop.”

  The man reached out his hand from underneath the sheet and pressed 36.

  “What’s on that floor?” asked Tom.

  “That’s the pharmacy.”

  PING!

  The doors opened on to the thirty-sixth floor.

  On his “stilts”, Tom felt like a gazelle taking its first steps. He struggled to keep upright, and held on to the trolley for dear life. It was late and the corridor was empty of people. Under the sheet, the porter called out instructions to the boy.

  “Turn left …”

  CRASH!

  “Mind the bench.”

  BANG!

  “And the counter!”

  BOOM!

  “Best to slow down when going through the doors!”

  “Sorry!” said Tom. The boy couldn’t help it. Balancing on these prosthetic legs was going to take a great deal of getting used to.

  “Now, when we reach the pharmacy, you need to ask for a syringe and fifty millilitres of sleep serum.”

  “What are we going to do with it?”

  “That will put Matron to sleep until morning.”

  “But up close they are never going to believe I am a doctor!” protested Tom.

  “Don’t worry. The old gentleman who works nights
at the pharmacy is deaf as a post and blind as a bat.”

  “Let’s hope so!” replied Tom.

  “Now we need to get a move on! It’s just up ahead on the left.”

  At that moment, a patient in his pyjamas with all his fingers bandaged up trundled round the corner and the trolley bashed right into his belly.

  “OW!” screamed Raj.

  “I am so sorry!” replied Tom, in something of a panic.

  “Deeper!” whispered the porter from under the sheet.

  “Who said that?” demanded Raj.

  “Oh, just my patient under here!” replied Tom in a deeper voice. “He is saying the pain in his bottom … is ‘deeper’ than it was.”

  “Mmm. Well, Doctor …”

  “Who is the doctor?” asked Tom.

  “You are,” replied Raj, looking very puzzled.

  “Oh yes, sorry. I forgot.”

  Raj stared at this strange person for a moment. Tom started to feel sweat run down his face.

  “Well, Doctor, I was looking for the children’s ward. A young customer, one of my top hundred favourites, actually, from my newsagent’s shop, is a patient here.”

  “George!” exclaimed Tom.

  “That’s his name! He took my takeaway order last night and I still haven’t got my food. It was a very small order. Just poppadoms, onion bhaji, samosa, chicken jalfrezi, aloo chaat, tandoori king prawn masala, vegetable balti, peshwari naan, chapati, aloo gobi, matar paneer, tarka dhal, poppadoms…”

  “You said poppadoms already …”

  “Yes, I know, Doctor. I want two portions. One is never enough. Mango chutney, paneer masala, pilau rice, bharta, lamb rogan josh.”

  “Is that everything?”

  “Yes. I think so. Did I say poppadoms?”

  “Yes. Twice!”

  “I need three portions of poppadoms. You can never have enough poppadoms.”

  “Clearly not!”

  “So can you direct me to the children’s ward?”

  “Don’t let him go up there!” whispered the porter from under the sheet.

  “Up where?” demanded Raj.

  “His bottom!” replied Tom. “It is very painful.”