The Boyhood of Burglar Bill

by Allan Ahlberg

  One thing about Spencer, which you might not have guessed from his shy manner, was he liked to talk. (I was different. Conversation did not flourish in our house. I had more to say to Dinah.) When we played with Spencer’s Dinkys and soldiers, he kept up a running commentary: ‘You and your men are coming down this road. Me and my men are round this corner. You hear a horse!’ When fishing, he watched me more than his float, and talked.

  Now, in the park, by the pond, on the swings, in the hollow tree behind the boathouse – him in it, me up it – Spencer promoted a steady exchange of thought and feeling. What did I prefer, jam or lemon curd? How many sneezes might there have been around the planet in a single day, or in World History even? How should he spend his thruppence?

  At the worm bank, assisting little Albert Pye digging for his dad, Spencer contemplated the degrees of life in a man, or a cat, say – a spider – a worm. Suddenly, he fell silent, cocking his head on one side like a bird.

  ‘Listen, y’can hear ’em.’

  I assumed he was pulling my leg. Little Albert, however, paused in his work and cocked his head, though he was more or less at ground level anyway. And there it was, the tiniest sound, a dry rustling in the leaf mould: worms on the move.

  ∗

  At Lavender’s Spencer bought two iced buns for a penny. With his remaining tuppence he bought a packet of transfers from Milward’s. We returned to the park, eating the buns and sticking the transfers on our arms.

  Spencer said, ‘My cousin used to tell me, don’t be scared ’cos God’s at the end of the bed.’

  ‘Whose bed?’

  ‘Everybody’s. And that got me puzzled. I used to think, well, there must be lots of gods.’

  ‘Probably are.’

  ‘No, I think there’s just one and he gets everywhere. Sort of splits up.’

  We broke off then to pursue a butterfly with Spencer’s coat. Yes, coat; his mother wrapped him up even in that heat.

  Spencer said, ‘I argue with my cousin. I say, “Do you believe in God?” and he says, “Yes!” and I say, “Well, how did he start?” Because what puzzles me is, if God was the first person in the Universe, who made him?’

  We were lying back on the parched grass. I could still see the distant wavering butterfly.

  Spencer said, ‘What gets me is, there couldn’t have been anything in the world then. It must’ve been… just plain sky.’

  ∗

  The flow of time is slower when you’re a child. April seen from August was a lifetime off, Accles & Pollock’s the other side of the moon, and the team ancient history. As for the Coronation, well, it took place, I suppose, but I have nothing to say about it. On the day itself I went fishing with Uncle Ike. Anyway, this is not a book about queens and princes, as you may have spotted.

  After the final and the Easter holidays, we returned to school and, lo and behold, the cricket season was upon us. But though the game was different, the circumstances were the same: Mr Cork and sixty-six boys – Guest, Keen & Nettlefold’s – wickets, bats and balls, plus, if you were lucky, a pad or two – the top pitch and the bottom. Mr Cork’s imagination was limited. His chosen footballers simply became his chosen cricketers. When you were in, you were in. Down on the bottom pitch, lumpy and unmown, teams were picked, but mainly chaos ruled. Some poor beleaguered batsman would attempt to score while a multitude of fielders, half of ’em his own team, did their best to prevent him. And no umpire.

  So Malt Shovel Rovers roved no more. A few of us (fanatics) still played football through the summer, others joined Leatherland’s lot for cricket matches in the park. Edna May had no interest in cricket but could often be found cycling around the boundary edge in Joey Skidmore’s vicinity. Tommy Ice Cream… Tommy was no cricketer either, though occasionally he’d have a go. In the summer term he put in a surprise appearance on the first morning, sitting down in Mrs Belcher’s class as if he’d never been away. He would lumber over and stand near Spencer in the playground, swing a leg at a ball if it came near him. I saw his dad once, watching anxiously at the gates. But none of it lasted. Tommy stopped coming to school after barely a week. He resumed his wayward patrol of the streets, retreated again, disappearing down into that monstrous coat he ever and always wore.

  In the afternoon, after a hurried sandwich and glass of milk at Spencer’s, and accompanied now by Ronnie, we found ourselves in the cemetery. No, not ‘accompanied’ – led. Ronnie liked to go to places where he shouldn’t, or wasn’t, wanted, the railway line, for instance, or the allotments. It pleased him to exercise his rights. He had a right to go into the cemetery whatever the superintendent said. His grandma paid her taxes; his uncle, a stonemason, carved the graves.

  The heat of the day by now was stifling. The sky, stuffed full and stained by all the smokestacks of Oldbury, had baked itself to a golden brown.

  Ronnie poked and pried among the graves, looking for wildlife. The gravediggers had been cutting the grass, raking it into huge sweet-smelling piles, too tempting altogether not to take running leaps into. There were graves that had with time collapsed in on themselves, gone crooked, gaping open. We craned our necks and grazed our knees in search of coffins… bodies… bones. Spencer read aloud from various headstones: ‘Resting where no shadows fall… be ye also ready… safe in the arms of Jesus’. One stone in particular fascinated him. He had read it before on a previous visit: ‘In loving memory of Gordon, dear son of F. E. and F. E. Percy, died October 22 1948, aged 5 years. Dead! Nay, safe in God’s home port, he is not dead. Also his auntie, Ivy Muriel Lowe, died July 6 1950, aged 26’.

  There were heart-shaped stones and stones like open books. Stone angels of various shapes and sizes, innumerable crosses.

  We wandered up to the main gates and took a drink of water from the tap. The superintendent, I forget his name, came out of his house in time to catch a scowl from Ronnie and watch us leave.

  Back in the park we did a bit of climbing, up one tree and down the other, a favourite routine. Ronnie used his penknife to cut trapdoors in the grass and hide things: a marble, cigarette packet, bus ticket. Parents with little kids – pushchairs and ice creams – zombied by, dazed in the heat. Perspiring rowers circled the pond. We sat on the grass, panting like dogs, and watched a cricket match: Joey, Trevor, Tony Leatherland, etc. A fourth dog, an altogether cooler dog, Archie, sat with us for a while, sniffed around, moved on. Suddenly, a fight erupted, Joey and Arthur. We leapt up and moved closer. The two of them were tangled together like an octopus, rolling around, pinning each other down, throwing punches. Once again, as usual, a primitive, pitiless circle formed of fellow cricketers and other kids; spectators, witnesses, accomplices.

  It was a short fight and a brave one. But Joey was the bigger, harder boy. Arthur had a bloody nose, his face was smeared with blood and tears and snot, his shirt all grass-stained and bloody too, and torn. I might have spoken or gone off with him when he left, but it was all so fast. And there was Joey too, with a great scratch all down his arm, and bloodied likewise, his own and Arthur’s. Then Leatherland set up the stumps again and the game resumed. A mother and her little girl prepared to fly a home-made kite. We thought of heading off to the water fountain or the café even, for a drink. The brown crust of the sky darkened above us.

  24

  The Tree

  Piling on. This is done either ‘to hurt a person if he has done wrong’, after he has been forcibly thrown to the ground, or, as opportunity occurs, during rough play, when somebody accidentally falls, and one of the company jumps on top of him, yelling ‘Pile on’, a summons readily obeyed by everybody else rushing up and adding their weight on top of the fallen one.

  The Chamber. ‘One boy is put between the door and the wall, then damp leaves are thrown over him.’ – Boy, 13, Laindon, Essex.

  Iona and Peter Opie,

  The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren (1959)

  I was afraid of many things in those days, including my own mother. I was afraid of Amos in the playgroun
d, the ghost in the boathouse, the Toomeys – oranges and pomegranates notwithstanding – everywhere. I did not like the dark on the landing or the man in the mac with the livid scar down the side of his neck who sometimes walked his dog up Cemetery Road. I was afraid of the cemetery in general and the gravediggers’ hut in particular. This did not prevent me from sneaking in at times, in the half-dark, in search of nests or even for a dare. I taught myself to swim in the canal, yet still I had a fear of drowning. A boy I slightly knew caught his foot in a submerged bedstead jumping in off Tipton Bridge. They did not recover his body for three or four hours. I was afraid of horseflies, which, since I believed their sting could kill a horse, they surely could kill me.

  There was more violence towards children. Mr Reynolds with his cane, other teachers slapping the tender backs of little infants’ legs. Mothers slapped their children stingingly around the head, ‘clipped their ears’. Dads came home from work and hit them with a belt when it was called for, usually by the mothers. More violence, yes, but not necessarily less love. Things in those days were just more, what’s the word? Well, just more. Don’t judge us all too harshly; it was normal enough.

  ∗

  The Toomeys came after us about half an hour later, the brothers that is, all seven of them, including Arthur. A hunting party – their ages ranged from nine to nineteen – thirsting for revenge. They were a tribe all right. Hit one Toomey and you hit them all. You half expected Mr and Mrs to be out there, and the baby. A tough family, the toughest. And tough on each other. Arthur probably took more punishment in his own house than ever he got elsewhere. But that, of course, was not the point.∗

  Well, they tracked us down, flushed us out and beat us up. Joey, naturally, was the main target. Leatherland was heavily implicated, it being his bat and ball. The other players, spectators, but really once the Toomeys’ blood was up, anybody. They threw Trevor in the brook who had been in the toilets when the fight took place. Beat Charlie Cotterill up, out in the street, who was never even in the park. And came then after us, and what had we ever done? But, as I said, the Toomeys’ cauldron of anger, outrage, loyalty, vengeance, honour was boiling over and their blood was up.

  They came at speed in through the gates, loping like wolves, predatory, drooling (!). All the same, you’d think we could’ve escaped: that vast expanse of shrubberies and trees and grass. We had dens and hiding places all over that park. Rhododendron bushes that created perfect secluded caves of greenery; trees that hung down to the ground like wigwams. Unfortunately, if we knew them, so did the Toomeys.

  The grown-ups, incidentally, were no use at all. It never occurred to us to involve them anyway. When you left your house in those days, you were on your own. The adult world was another, parallel universe. Also, in this case, rain was threatening and the families, rowers, fishermen and so on were rapidly departing.

  We ran and scattered, split up, hid. I found a place, a narrow ditch in the bushes half filled with last year’s leaves and overhung by brambles. It cost me no end of scratches and scrapes to get in there, and torn trousers, but once in I was invisible. Then what? I could hear footsteps on the nearby path, the splash of an oar, the grizzling of an unhappy toddler. What had he got to cry about? The occasional fat spot of rain penetrated the canopy and reverberated in the brambles over my head. I was so hot, hot with the weather’s heat and my own fear. Sweat ran down into my eyes. I quivered and shook like Mrs Moore, like the three little pigs and the wolf, or Bambi and the hunters. And yet – how odd! – I was excited too. It was like the games I’d played for half my life, hiding and seeking, chasing and being caught. And anyway here I was, the invisible boy. They’d never find me.

  I listened again, ever more intently, holding my breath, hearing… incomprehensible shouts and other noises, running feet, my own blood concussing away in my ears. How long was I there? My legs had gone to sleep and were prickled now by tremendous pins and needles (and holly leaves). I urgently needed a piddle. What time was it? It was getting darker. I could not hear a thing. I came out, stepped out on to the path beside the empty rain-bombarded pond. And Ronnie was there, being punched in the stomach by Kenny Toomey. I turned to run. Rufus, like an Indian brave, stepped out of the trees and grabbed me.

  The Toomeys preferred a moving target, one they could chase after, pile on and flatten. They liked you to fight back or plead for mercy. But Ronnie was doubled up and I was dumbstruck.

  ‘Stand up!’

  ‘Yeah!’

  ‘Put y’hands on y’head!’

  ‘Yeah, yeah!’

  ‘Do it!’

  ‘Yeah!’

  (Punch.)

  They smacked me around the head a couple of times, barley-sugared both my arms and shoved me back into the brambles. Ronnie was sick then all over Kenny’s shoes, which was some consolation.

  And that was it. The Toomeys’ punitive expedition had run its course. They’d probably forgotten by now whatever it was had got them roused up in the first place. They left, righteous and weary from their hot exertions, the family’s reputation restored.

  But if the Toomeys’ fever had passed, ours was just beginning, though we scarcely knew it. My mouth was throbbing: I had bitten my own tongue. Angry red spots stood out on Ronnie’s otherwise sickly face. The pain of it, the shame of it. We stumbled around for a while unable to look each other in the eye. The infection of revenge was taking hold. Somebody had to pay.

  We found Spencer sitting alone in the sheds. He was soaking wet but otherwise unharmed. He had been hiding out in the Bandstand Café for nearly an hour with a cup of tea. They never spotted him. Spencer didn’t boast of this and showed real concern for our pain and injuries. And, after all, he’d only achieved what we ourselves had tried and failed to do. But we resented him, blamed him, all the same.

  The tree grew out at an angle from a grassy bank. Some kind of willow, I suppose, enormous. Its bark was a greyish green. A network of grooves and ridges, like screwed-up paper, provided excellent grip for climbers. Because of the angle and the bank, for the first few feet you could almost walk up it. Higher up it branched out and up, and up again, way out even beyond the boundary of the park itself, hanging up and over the allotments.

  ‘Let’s have a climb,’ said Ronnie.

  Ronnie was the cruel one, but I can’t offload this on to him. There’s no alibi there, it was both of us. Yes, cajoling, teasing, insulting – ‘C’mon, c’mon, y’sissie!’ – we got Spencer up the tree. He was sad and silent, but he climbed; Ronnie before him, me after. Ronnie was a clever climber, agile and fearless. We were a pair, could climb up almost anything. More to the point, we could climb down it as the need arose, another skill entirely.

  Normally, from up in that tree you could see for miles. But today – what time was it? – it was like night, a brown and flooded night. Even as we entered the leafier spaces of the tree, a torrent of water was surging down the trunk. The rain like liquid rust, the sky washed clean, transferring its stains to our shirts and skins.

  It was a joke at first, we told ourselves, Ha, ha! Getting down and out of the tree, urging Spencer to follow suit, seeing him stuck there. There was so much rain, like a beaded curtain before our eyes. Spencer up high in the branches was invisible almost; a patch of jacket, a smudge of face. We took a step or two along the path, calling to him. And a step or two more. And there was no sign of him now. (Oh, Spencer, my best true friend, what did I do?)

  And we left him.

  That night there was a knock at the back door. Dad opened it and presently came up and got me out of bed and brought me down to the kitchen. I was rubbing my eyes, bemused with sleep, half wondering where I was. Mr Sorrell, soaking wet, his dripping hat held in his hand, was hovering in the doorway. He was looking for Spencer. Had I seen Spencer? They could not find him. I said something. We had been playing in the park. I had come home. I could not believe he was still up in the tree. Well, he wasn’t; around that time he was four or five miles away in the Dudley Guest Hospi
tal. Later on, the story came out. How old man Cutler, madly working his swamp of an allotment, or smoking in his shed more like, had heard a sound, seen something.

  Spencer had fallen from the tree down on to the spiked railings that separated the park from the allotments. (Spiked railings, between a park and a vegetable patch! What in hell were they protecting? Lettuces? Carrots?) Spencer’s arm, his left arm, was pierced by one of the spikes. He must have hung there for a while, like one of those rabbits on hooks in the butcher’s window. Mr Cutler had got him down and driven him off in his motorbike and sidecar to the hospital. Saved his life, by all accounts, having previously applied a tourniquet, his leather belt, to Spencer’s horribly torn and bleeding arm. (There was blood, they said, all down his leg, collecting in his shoe, overflowing it.) Yes, saved his life with that tight tourniquet – hooray for old man Cutler! But lost his arm.

  25

  Cheltenham

  ‘I’ve been a bad man.’

  Burglar Bill (1977)

  The best and the worst of times, and the worst of the worst. A week later I visited Spencer in hospital. Mum came with me on a couple of buses. We took a home-made bread pudding, Spencer loved Mum’s bread pudding, and a Dinky toy, my most treasured possession at that time, an American army jeep complete with removable driver.

  Spencer sat up in bed in his brand-new Dan Dare pyjamas, one sleeve pinned up. His face was pale, his expression mild, hesitant. Mum said hallo and started crying. She handed over the slab of pudding in its greaseproof-paper wrapping and went outside. I wished she’d stayed. It had not been my idea to come. I was scared and ashamed, embarrassed and almost choked up with guilt. Then Spencer leant towards me and whispered. The boys in the beds on either side of his were both named Spittle! It was a common topic of conversation between us, the troublesome business of names. Any name with ‘bottom’ in it, for instance – Rowbottom, Sidebottom – was asking for trouble, not to mention Belcher. At the other extreme, the Smiths had named their baby Gerald. He’d suffer for it, in our opinion. Nudge was a name we were amused by, and Tickler. Ahlberg was a dodgy one at times, and, well, Spencer…