The Boyhood of Burglar Bill

by Allan Ahlberg

  And it got darker still. And Malcolm headed (or got his head in the way of) a fierce shot from Rutter. The ball rebounded for a throw-in! Malcolm ended up in the back of the net stunned, concussed. He was carried off and tended to by his frantic mother and auntie; got a face-licking later on from Rufus – the dog, that is, not Toomey. Down to ten men but it hardly mattered. The pitch was shrinking as the crowd snuck in; time was trickling if not water-falling away. Tick, tick. And now the sky was seeping into the earth, the horizon gone, no colour whatsoever in the grass. A flurry of starlings swooped and wheeled above us. Things became mysterious.

  With a minute to go, the ball arrived in Tommy Ice Cream’s hands. He held on to it for a moment. ‘Belt it, Tommy!’ yelled Spencer from behind the goal. Then, more softly, ‘Belt it.’

  Tommy belted it, whereupon it rose high into the night and disappeared. Players ran here and there, peering anxiously upwards like Chicken-Licken, colliding, some of ’em. And down it came – that ball, that lovely ball! – bounced once over Tommy Gray and once again over the advancing Ackerman, and… where was it?

  It was like the SPOT THE BALL competition in the Sports Argus, though by now it was so dark you could’ve played spot the players, spot the pitch. Where was it? And then we spotted it.

  ‘It’s in the net.’ (Wonder.)

  ‘Ref, ref!’

  ‘It’s in the net!’

  The referee approached the near-invisible goal, bent low, squinted and blew his whistle.

  It was in the net.

  18

  The Boy Who Went Berserk

  The most common torture is to ‘do a barley-sugar’, also expressed verbally in the threat ‘I’ll barley-sugar you’, which is to twist a person’s arm round until it hurts, usually behind his back, so that the sufferer has – according to which way his arm is being twisted – to lean backwards or bend forwards excessively to alleviate the pain, and is thus utterly at his tormentor’s mercy. The hold is also known as ‘Red hot poker’, ‘Fireman’s torture’, and ‘Nelson’s grip’.

  Iona and Peter Opie,

  The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren (1959)

  I will tell you now the best, most memorable part of this whole business, this boyhood of mine. It was the Friday, the day following our famous victory. I was in Tugg Street on my way back from running an errand for Mrs Moore. Six o’clock or so. Soot in the air from a chimney on fire. A light drizzle falling. In Tugg Street, yes, with a sack of firewood, separate bundles, that is, bound with wire. Not so heavy, but lumpy and awkward to carry. I had paused to adjust my load while gazing into Starkey’s window. And somebody passed me in the street. And spoke.

  The day had begun, in my case, at six in the morning. There was no way I could sleep. I was up and, rarest of events, having breakfast with my dad. He was a fitter’s mate at Crosby’s, a labourer really; his hourly rate so pitifully low he had to put in all the hours God sent – a million a year! – to make a living wage. Even then we needed Mum’s living wage to get by.

  My Dad. A labourer, yes, but the possessor of delicate skills nonetheless. His hobby was fretwork. Late evening and into the night he would cut out the most intricate designs in wood with his treadle-operated fretsaw, glasses on the end of his nose, peering like a professor. (I still have a sewing basket that he made for Mum.) He made lead soldiers too, horsemen and such, pouring the molten metal into moulds, painting their uniforms and features with the steadiest hand and the finest brush. He made them for me.

  It was a dazzling morning. I took Dinah up the park and we were so early the gates were still locked. We had to burrow our way in through a gap in the hedge. The park looked altogether unused, still in its cellophane wrapping of dew. Ducks, heads under their wings, dreamed away at the edge of the untouched and slightly steaming pond, till Dinah’s lumbering attentions sent them quacking and splashing away. I sat in the sheds eating a lukewarm sausage, gift from Dad. Dinah looked hopeful but didn’t get any. I climbed a tree or two; the season for climbing trees was fast approaching. Climbed the tree, probably, walking up it a little way, at least, for the view.

  On the way to school with Spencer and Joey we gradually accumulated a gang of ‘supporters’, mainly infants, all frothing over at any excuse for wildness. I experienced again that curious mixture of feelings: pride, exhilaration, shyness. After the match, Mr Cork, with a face like a brick wall, had come charging into our changing room. We flinched, half expecting a cricket stump to come crashing down. Whereupon, with what might have been a smile and looking distinctly embarrassed himself, he mumbled something, shook hands with Wyatt and patted Tommy Pye on the head. Mr Reynolds was behind him in the doorway. ‘Yes, well done, lads!’ he called out. ‘And lasses!’ added Mrs Prosser, behind him.

  Friday morning, then, and so much to talk about (all of it already talked about) and talk about again. We needed to hear it, this story of ours, from each other, from ourselves. Hold it in our minds, shore it up against the never-ending onslaught of events, the wear and tear of time.

  ‘That goal of Tommy’s!’

  ‘Which Tommy?’

  ‘Which goal?’

  ‘A bomb from the skies, my uncle called it.’

  ‘Spencer told ’im to do it.’

  ‘That header of Malky’s!’

  ‘Knocked ’im flyin’!’

  ‘Knocked ’im out.’

  ‘Knocked them out… sort of.’

  We were running the film in our heads, comparing the versions, and backwards, so it seemed, from Tommy Ice Cream’s already mythical kick, the edited highlights in reverse.

  There were no assemblies on Fridays. Classes had prayers in their own rooms with their own teachers. In Miss Palmer’s we sat at our desks with hands together and eyes closed. A semi-religious thought somehow smuggled its way into my head. I had spent my Sunday School collection money on a sherbet dip from Milward’s. Money from my mother’s purse, Dennis Johnson’s marbles, God’s collection. (Sorry, God.)

  Miss Palmer’s room was special: it had a slope, a rake like a lecture room or theatre. Leaving your place and standing next to the teacher’s desk was like going on stage or entering a bullring. The desks were the usual type, worn and polished wood, black metal, integrated inkwells. There were rows of doubles down the middle and singles down the sides.

  Miss Palmer, to be fair, was not a bad teacher. She had a habit, though, of mobilizing the other children against you when work or behaviour was not to her liking.

  ‘What do you think of this, 4A? Hm? Shameful.’

  4A. Yes, we were the clever class, supposedly, 11+ candidates: Spencer, Trevor, me; not Joey surprisingly, or Monica more’s the pity.

  My memories of classroom life, the actual lessons and such, have faded. The playground and the park are much more vivid. However, I still possess, found in that box of my mother’s things, a slim green folder. It has my best eleven-year-old’s writing on the front. School Reports, it says, and my name. And here it all is: number of times absent, number of times late. Subjects – marks obtained – position in class. General remarks, ‘Inattentive and dreamy at times’. My mother’s clumsy signature at the bottom.

  The subjects we were taught in those days included the usual: Arithmetic, Spelling, Reading, Composition. Miss Palmer, I see, placed me 39th in the class for Composition: marks obtained, 7 out of 20. Oh dear, and here I am now writing, composing a whole book. And she’s in it.

  One unusual subject was Recitation. For Recitation you had to learn a poem, stand beside the teacher’s desk and recite it to her. Spencer, I remember, despite his shyness, was brilliant at this:

  My room’s a square and candle-lighted boat,

  In the surrounding depths of night afloat.

  My windows are the portholes, and the seas

  The sound of rain on the dark apple-trees.

  Frances Cornford

  I wasn’t bad myself, it seems: position in class 11th; marks obtained, 15 out of 20. Of course, all my best subjects were
missing from these reports. Alibis: marks obtained, 20 out of 20. Climbing Trees: position in class, top.

  Playtime came and we returned to more important matters.

  ‘If y’picked a team…’ Spencer was developing a line of thought.

  ‘That penalty!’ So was I.

  ‘The best players…’

  ‘It’s called a double bluff!’

  ‘From their team and our team…’

  ‘See, I really fooled ’im.’

  ‘You’d be in it.’

  Spencer had my attention. The combined best team, it was an interesting idea.

  ‘Joey’d be in it,’ I said.

  ‘Him too.’

  ‘Tommy Pye!’

  ‘Tommy Ice Cream.’

  ‘Wyatt!’

  How peculiar. There was I thinking how could we have won, when all the while the bigger, better question was, how could we have lost? Five of us, and Tommy Pye was the best of the best, and Tommy Ice Cream the biggest of the best. They had Vincent the Invincible, Amos, a whirlwind of fearless muscle, Tommy Gray, Rutter, Higgsy. And we had…

  ‘It was the team,’ said Spencer.

  In the afternoon we had craft as usual with Mr Cork. I was useless at craft: 6 out of 20, position in class 44th. Dad’s dexterity had gone south in my case, down into my feet. The boys in Mr Cork’s class (4B) had warned us what to expect. The days of shaking Wyatt’s hand were dead and buried.

  ‘Ahlberg, penalty king – c’mere.’

  Later on, in the warmth of the classroom, the sun shining in through high church-like windows, Mr Cork, with a practised wriggling action, removed his coat. The shirt sleeve of his missing arm was pinned up. The thought of that never-to-be-seen stump fascinated us. And the gone-forever arm. There was a rumour once he had a finger of it still, a souvenir complete with signet ring, pickled in a jar. And how did he tie his shoelaces, we wondered, or carve the Sunday roast?

  During afternoon play something happened: the first onslaught of events. Amos had a fight with Phippy. It was a theatrical scene even by our standards. Maurice Phipps, son of the park-keeper, was a mild-mannered, skinny-looking, essentially timid boy who for some reason brought out the worst in Amos. Amos was no bully, he’d fight anybody, but something about Maurice maddened him. Anyway, Amos must’ve been teasing or torturing Maurice, winding him up one way or another, and suddenly he went berserk. His eyes rolled up into his head and, howling like an animal, he hurled himself at his tormentor. Amos struggled to comprehend this attack, swatting at Maurice and throwing punches. But Maurice, in the place he was now in, felt no pain and showed no fear. He was an engine of fists and elbows, knees, feet and, eventually, teeth. He took a lump out of Amos’s ear. In an instant there was blood everywhere, as though that earlobe was some kind of cork in Amos which, when removed, let out just about every drop of blood he had. The encircling crowd of kids, another larger animal, howled too. How awful! How savage! We might’ve stood there unflinching and seen Amos murdered. Only then the teachers arrived, barging their way in, pouring cold water on the crime, dousing the passions. A little kid, from the sight of all that blood, fainted, fell down and cracked his skull, or flattened his nose or something. More blood! Eventually, the pair of them were driven off in Mrs Harris’s car to the hospital. Amos received four stitches and a tetanus injection.

  ∗

  And so to Tugg Street at six o’clock, me with my load of firewood standing outside Starkey’s and Vincent Loveridge approaching. Vincent had been to the hospital too, had the day off from school, stitches for him as well in that cut above his eyebrow. And he came on with his little sister beside him, legs whizzing to keep up. Vincent, the Lord of the School, who never before had even – even slightly – noticed my existence. Came on, drew level, nodded and spoke.

  ‘How y’doin’?’

  I think I made a wry face, indicating my heavy, cumbersome sack, and nodded in return, but said nothing, a mumble maybe. And he went on then, and so did I. And it was the best part.

  19

  The Worm Bank

  Four days to the final.

  On Saturday morning I escaped Mum’s timetable of jobs – bed-making, chamberpot-emptying – and disappeared up the park with Spencer. I’d pay for it later, but it was worth it. We set up a goal against the high hedge at the back of the bowling green and practised penalties, free kicks and so on. Spencer was a hopeless goalie, but willing. We did a bit of dribbling, acting out the pages of The Stanley Matthews Football Book, complete with commentary.

  There was an uncertainty about Spencer’s movements – I can picture him now – an awkwardness, as I perfected my matadorial sidestep: moving left, moving left, inside of the foot, outside of the foot – darting right! It was a mystical business, almost zen-like: add your opponent’s speed to yours, steal it from him, so to speak, and you become… a blur.∗

  On the way out, circling the pond, we encountered Mr Skidmore. He was sitting on a folding stool, fishing. Mr Skidmore had all the gear – rods, nets, basket. We peered into his keep net to admire a couple of gudgeon swimming around. He hired us to get him a few worms.

  The worm bank was a kind of ancient compost heap, added to from time to time by the park gardeners. A secret, humid place, a tropical bubble, surrounded by rhododendron bushes. It was beloved by boys and fishermen, and home to a particular breed of thin red worm perfect for catching anything from sticklebacks to pike. I’m exaggerating again.

  Spencer and I took Mr Skidmore’s worm tin and went digging. Spencer was in a speculative mood.

  ‘These worms could’ve dug through from the cemetery, y’know.’

  The boundary fence was right behind us.

  ‘Worms don’t dig.’

  ‘Burrowed, then. It’s not far.’

  ‘It is for a worm.’

  ‘A flea can jump fifteen times its own height.’

  ‘Put the tin down there.’

  I added a handful of worms to the wriggling mass. Spencer took up the tin again and gazed thoughtfully into it.

  ‘Who’d be a worm?’ he wondered.

  At the park gates going out we met Tommy Pye and brother Albert coming in. They had Tommy’s brand-new puppy with them on a lead. The four of us proceeded to play with the puppy, recently christened Ramona, encouraging it to chase us, roll around with us, muck us up with its muddy paws, lick our faces. The plump little thing grew dizzy from all this attention.

  Back in the street, Spencer and I explored the phenomenon of prodigies in the Pye family. Tommy, yes, what a player! But Albert, it looked like, was promising to be even better. Moreover, Mrs Pye, we’d heard and could more or less see, was expecting her third. What kind of player would that baby be? Probably got a good kick on him even now.

  ‘Yeah.’ I grabbed Spencer in a headlock. ‘Better than you and he’s not even born.’

  We made our way up Rood End Road to Lavender’s Bread Shop, bought a couple of penny buns, compliments of Mr Skidmore, and sat eating them on the chapel steps. I was reluctant to go home, though I knew I had to. I was steeling myself. We contemplated the scene: people and prams, bikes, motorbikes, buses, the occasional car. Life in those days, I realize now, was the complete set, the perfect jigsaw (though a ‘puzzle’ still, as always). Walking those streets, in that weather at that time, each piece – Archie, old man Cutler, Mrs Milward (anxious face at the window) – was easily familiar to me, as were the fences, front doors, dusty hedges, gutters and drains, even the flagstones themselves, which I go back and walk on now, fifty years later. And puppies (and babies) arrived to claim their places, become familiar in their turn, grow old and die. Organic, that’s what it was, a tangle of lives, like worms in a worm tin.

  We went home. As it turned out, Mum was in a reasonable mood. She was standing at the front door with a mop in her hand, talking to Spencer’s mum. Spencer said hallo to my mum, so I said hallo to his. It was a funny thing; Spencer really admired my mum. I think he liked the fact that she could fight all the other m
others with one arm tied behind her. She was a dangerous woman, but would stick up for you when the chips were down. And I liked his. She was a terrible snob, but I noticed how often she spoke well of Spencer, praised him; his accordion playing, his cooking, his overall appearance. On the rare occasion I attempted to dress up and look smart, my mother described me as ‘a bag of shite tied up in the middle’. I sometimes think we should’ve swapped.

  In the afternoon we met up with Ronnie, running an errand for his gran. We accompanied him to the butcher’s. Ronnie bought a pound of sausages and a couple of pounds of scrag-end. I stared at, could not take my eyes off, the poor little skinned rabbits – ‘Bye Baby Bunting, Daddy’s gone a-hunting’ – hanging up by their front, still-furry paws from a row of hooks on a rail in the window.

  Ronnie was in no hurry to return home with his shopping. We went back to the park. Tony Leatherland and some others were kicking a ball about in the swings; a couple of rowers were out on the pond; Mr Skidmore was fishing still. Ronnie was keen to conduct an experiment with an earwig. It was generally believed, by us kids anyway, that if an earwig got into your ear (and why else call it an earwig?), it could travel from there to your brain and send you mad. Ronnie hoped to obtain an earwig and thereafter, I suppose, an ear (not his own).

  If Tommy Pye was a natural, Ronnie Horsfield was a naturalist, a great gazer into muddy puddles, grassy banks and hedgerows, a lifter-up of rotting logs and corrugated-iron sheeting. Ants’ nests and frogspawn held a fascination for him. He would climb any tree if there was a nest in it. But Ronnie was a boy with a reputation. He blew frogs up with a straw. There, I’ve said it! There was other stuff too, involving fledgling birds etc. He was reported to cut the heads off sticklebacks. But it was the frog story that got to everybody. Frogs fascinated Ronnie and I guess he fascinated us. There again, I cannot say I ever witnessed him do any of this. He never spoke or boasted of it. It was just said of him that he did these things. It was his reputation.