The Borribles

by Michael de Larrabeiti

  ‘They haven’t got them yet,’ said Knocker, ‘but I can tell you what they will be when this adventure is over.’ And he explained the reason for the Rumble names and what they were, but the conversation was cut short by the arrival of Napoleon, pushing his body between them. ‘Less of this nattering,’ he ordered. ‘This ain’t a holiday, you know.’

  The rowers went to their seats and Napoleon slipped the moorings and The Silver Belle Flower drifted from its hiding place. Once more they crossed the Thames rapidly and, still heading westwards, they skirted the southern shore on the last leg of their river journey. At dawn, if Napoleon’s navigation was correct, they would land at the mouth of the Wandle, the muddy stream where only Napoleon Boot’s people knew a way through the treacherous swamps which stretched for miles under the hard streets of Wandsworth.

  5

  The wide curve of the river was empty and still, and the ripples of its heavy green water were frozen and dirty. On the Fulham shore squatted the oil depots, faceless places waiting on faceless roads that led nowhere and where nobody lived. Just before dawn Wandsworth Bridge passed over the Battersea boat, casting a darker shadow than the night, and all that the rowers saw were the powerful and unmoving waves that stood and gnawed at the stone piers on which the bridge was built.

  They were now into Wandsworth Reach. Along the southern side of the Thames stretched a great wasteland, and although the Adventurers saw nothing, they could sense the existence of a wild space from the shapeless whistling of the wind. On the northern bank stood a cement factory and beside it the great bulk of the Trinidad Asphalt Company, but the Borribles could not see where the buildings touched the sky because the sky was as black as roof-slate.

  It was so murky that Napoleon was convinced he would never find the mouth of the Wandle and his companions began to despair. After several fruitless attempts he went to the front of the boat and knelt down to peer into the blackness. There were dozens of barges here, deeply laden with the old lumber of all Wandsworth, for the land around the estuary was a vast rubbish dump and somewhere amongst the hillocks of refuse meandered the slimy river.

  An overpowering stench was brewing by the bank, a mixture compounded of rancid sewage, mouldering waste paper and the rotting flesh of dead seabirds. The water dripping from the raised and expectant oars of the rowers made no sound, so thick and oily was it. The Borribles coughed and retched, drooping on their benches, only just able to obey Napoleon’s commands as he made the boat nose this way and that, his torch stabbing at the night.

  At last he turned and in a whispered shout, sharp with a weary excitement, said, ‘I’ve got it.’

  The boat faltered. The rowers twisted on their seats to look and their hearts shrank to the size of peanuts. In the flat wall of the Thames embankment, hidden behind a flotilla of barges, a gap had appeared.

  ‘This must be Wandle Creek,’ said Napoleon. ‘Anyway, there’s only one way to find out, and that’s go up the thing.’ It was obvious to the others that he was tense, that he didn’t really know.

  The boat swung slowly until it was knocking against the solid current of the Wandle, and as soon as he was on course Napoleon ordered his crew to paddle upstream. He ran quickly down the middle of the boat, freed Adolf’s hands and told him to lift out the rudder. ‘If you try to escape I’ll catapult you right up the back of the bonce.’

  Adolf looked surprised. ‘Escape? This is what I came for, I’m not leaving you now.’

  Napoleon ran back to the bow to direct the progress of the boat and the Borribles pulled steadily, only too glad they couldn’t see where they were in the foetid gloom.

  They had gone only a short distance when the creek forked and after a moment’s hesitation Napoleon steered them to the left and they rowed on, levering their oars with difficulty out of water that seemed as tenacious as treacle. After ten minutes they heard Napoleon swear loudly and then call out urgently for them to stop. He struck the gunwale of the boat in anger.

  ‘Dammit! I forgot the weirs.’

  The boatload of Borribles was utterly dismayed. Across the quiet of the night came a sound from beyond their experience, a rushing and a roaring of the elements. Swivelling again in their seats they saw a foaming slope of water slanting towards them in the torch light; racing yellow suds forced themselves up through a black and shiny surface which slid, unstoppable, towards them, like the most precipitous moving staircase in the London Underground. Polythene containers, empty paint cans and plastic bottles surged and danced around the boat, buffeting against its sides, like evil spirits on the river to hell.

  ‘W-what is it?’ asked Bingo, trying to keep his lips steady.

  ‘It’s an effin’ weir, that’s what, too high to get round. We’ll have to take the other fork. There’s another weir but it’s not so steep.’ Napoleon’s voice was dispirited and exhausted. He felt at the end of his tether, worn out by the responsibilities of the river trip and now this at the end of it. ‘If we’re caught out here in the daylight, we’ll be sussed by the rubbish men and caught by the Woollies for sure.’ He thought for an instant and the others waited, the boat still staggering under the onslaught of the swirling water.‘Ship yer oars,’ he said at length, and as soon as the oars were on board he took one of them and began to punt the boat back the way they had come, while his crew sat uselessly on the benches of The Silver Belle Flower, squinting hard to right and left but seeing little. It was all too silent and ugly.

  ‘Keep your eyes peeled for that fork in the creek,’ growled Napoleon, ‘otherwise I’ll miss it and we’ll be out on the Thames again. We must be hidden by dawn. This place is lousy with adults in daytime.’

  His fear was shared by the others. Already the high banks of the Wandle, held in place by slimy green sleepers and sheets of pitted iron, were taking on a shape and the black sky was not so black as it had been.

  Then suddenly, ‘The fork, the fork!’ It was Adolf’s voice.

  Napoleon let the boat drift round into the other branch of the Wandle.

  ‘Get those oars going quick,’ he commanded, wrenching his own from a mudbank that was reluctant to let it go. There was a nasty squelch as the oar came away and large dollops of sludge rolled down the wood and slunk back into the river.

  Napoleon urged his crew on. The flow of the tide was less strong here and they soon went under a railway bridge, the boat bashing through floating atolls of muck like a trawler in pack ice. Another fork came up before them but Napoleon did not hesitate this time.

  ‘Bow side paddle,’ he called, ‘stroke side rest. One, three, paddle.’ And the boat veered to the left.

  ‘We went left last time and it was wrong,’ said Torreycanyon, loudly, with some edge to his voice.

  ‘Yeah,’ said someone else.

  Napoleon’s face became so white with anger that it glowed phosphorescent in the dark dawn. ‘Well, we’re going left this time and it’s right.’

  At that moment there was a clang and a boom and Napoleon was knocked forward and thrown down in the scuppers. The boat stopped moving with a jolt and a scraping was heard as the bow slid against metal. Napoleon jumped to his feet rubbing his head.

  ‘Damn you, don’t talk to me when I’m navigating,’ he shouted. ‘We’ve gone and run into a conduit; could have drowned us.’

  Slung low over the water a huge pipeline spanned the Wandle near a footbridge and it was this that had flung Napoleon to the deck.

  ‘You at the stern, row hard,’ he cried. ‘This pipe’s so low over the water that we’ll have to force the boat under it. Don’t fall in any of yer, there’s eels in here will have yer leg off.’

  Those at the rear of the boat leant on their oars while those at the front got down on their backs and tugged and shoved The Silver Belle Flower under the pipeline. When they emerged on the far side it was easy enough for them to push the boat through, while those in the stern ducked under in their turn.

  ‘It’s not finished yet,’ said Napoleon. ‘There’s a real w
aterfall here, ten foot high, right under The Causeway. To get round it we’ve got to beach the boat and pull it overland.’

  Above their heads was a high fence that had been made by the rubbish men, using old bed frames, bedsteads and strips of metal. Napoleon took a pair of wire cutters from his pocket and got Bingo to give him a leg-up. He clung to the bankside and cut all the springs out of one of the bed frames, making a gap large enough to get himself and the boat through.

  ‘Throw up the painter,’ he ordered next, and when he had the rope in his hands he told the crew to jam their belongings firmly under the seats and then scramble up to join him.

  ‘We’ve got to get this bleeder up here,’ explained Napoleon, whose weariness had momentarily dropped from him under the excitement of leadership. ‘Then drag it across this island we’re on, then we’ll be above both weirs, but we’ve got to hurry.’

  The Adventurers gathered around the painter and hauled with every ounce of strength they possessed. Slowly The Silver Belle Flower came up from the water to hang vertically above the Wandle. Napoleon looped a turn of the rope around a notice board while the others seized the bow of the boat and manhandled her on to The Causeway until she rested flat on the ground.

  ‘Right, four each side,’ said Napoleon. ‘I’ll pull, the Jerry can push.’

  ‘Not half,’ said Adolf.

  They dragged and pushed the boat across a littered roadway where splintered glass and the debris from long abandoned houses made a crunching sound under the keel. Fifty yards they had to go; it was hard work and they slipped and stumbled and cursed, but at last they came to the main branch of the Wandle, well beyond the two dangerous weirs.

  It was pale daylight now and the danger of being spotted in this open and desolate country was increasing every minute. Hurriedly they balanced their boat on the river bank and Napoleon grouped them together.

  ‘When I give the word, push like hell. She has to land flat on the water. If she don’t, she’ll sink.’

  On his command they all heaved together, and The Silver Belle Flower flew out into the air and bellyflopped on to the water, making a sound that reverberated like a gunshot across the no-man’s land of the empty estuary. Before she could float away Napoleon dived down into the boat, sprawling between the benches. He rolled over, grasped the painter and threw it up into the hands of Torreycanyon.

  ‘All back in,’ yelled the Wendle, ‘quick as yer like.’

  As the others embarked, Knocker looked back the way they had come, and now in the weak light he could see.

  Two black steam cranes guarded the mouth of the Wandle, square and ugly, covered in sheets of flimsy metal, and they had iron wheels which ran on iron rails. These machines it was that loaded the barges with rubbish, scratching patiently every day into mountains of garbage that were always replenished, never diminishing. Scattered lorries waited to go scouring across Wandsworth in search of more waste; huge tipper trucks and skip carriers stood idle between piles of discarded stoves and gutted refrigerators. Far off, between the Wandle and Wandsworth Bridge, was a mile of undulating mud-coloured barrenness, relieved only by the blobs of white that were seagulls, big as swans, tearing at offal with beaks like baling hooks.

  Knocker shivered at the awesome beauty of it.

  ‘Strike a light,’ he said. ‘What a place.’

  ‘It’s home to me!’ Napoleon’s voice was harsh. ‘Get a move on.’

  Knocker jumped down into the boat and took up his oar.

  ‘Row on,’ called Napoleon. ‘This ’ere Wandle’s the steepest river in London, like rowing up Lavender Hill it is, with the traffic against yer.’

  The adventurers bent forward. Their hands were sore, their backs ached and the tensions of the night had exhausted them. With their eyes closing and their muscles burning they rowed on and on, across a windswept landscape with no trees or buildings, until, after Armoury Way, they came by the backyards of factories to Young’s Brewery and at last they heard Napoleon’s soft command: ‘Hold it steady now, ship yer oars.’

  They relaxed and the boat came to rest. In the distance dawn was lying along the streets of Wandsworth like a dead dog, and the straight sides of the buildings, raised up in smoky yellow bricks, towered into a dusty sky. And very high, one bright window of light showed where an early morning bus driver grumbled his way from a warm bed into a cold kitchen.

  Napoleon did not allow the crew to rest for long.

  ‘Right, you lot, we’re here!’ he said, a certain amount of satisfaction in his voice, and the Borribles turned and not one of them didn’t gasp in horror. In a cliff-like factory wall a deep hole was visible: a brick culvert, barely large enough to allow the passage of the boat, hardly high enough to clear the heads of the rowers. It dripped with green slime and Napoleon’s voice echoed feebly around it, fading, sucked into nothing. The stench was disgusting and solid, rolling out on to the river in misty clouds, like the foul breath of a dying dragon.

  ‘Swipe me, man,’ said Orococco, his eyes and teeth all green in the queer light that floated up from the water, ‘we ain’t going in there.’

  Napoleon stood up in the prow, his legs spread, his hands on his hips like a ruffian pirate captain. ‘This is the River Wandle,’ he said, ‘an ordinary little river that flows under houses.’

  ‘It stinks,’ said Bingo.

  ‘You’ve had it too easy,’ retorted Napoleon. ‘This is Wandsworth where the best Borribles come from.’

  Knocker grinned to himself in spite of the trepidation he felt in common with his companions. Whatever else he thought about Napoleon Boot he had to admit that the Wendle had guts and style.

  ‘Now we’re taking this boat in,’ said the navigator, ‘and anyone who don’t like it can swim home in this.’ He bent and scooped up a handful of the river water and cast it into the bottom of the boat. The eyes of the Borribles were mesmerized by the evil-looking liquid while their bodies were repelled by it. The water hardly disintegrated as it hit the deck, but green globules of it rolled into the crevices of the woodwork to lie there glowing.

  ‘Right,’ went on Napoleon, crouching in the prow. ‘Gently does it … . Keep your heads down and I’ll fend off with my hands.’

  Under the cautious power of the rowers the boat shoved its nose into the steaming dankness of the sewer and Napoleon shone his torch this way and that, but it did little good, for the rolling clouds of fog swallowed and digested the tiny beam before it could travel a yard.

  The rowers leant back in their seats, digging their oars through the surface of the water. Adolf sat in the stern, shining his torch over the way they had come, and in its light the Adventurers could see the dripping roof of the cavern and sometimes the gaping holes of side tunnels where thick water slid slowly out to fasten itself to the main stream. The German hummed gently to keep up their spirits: ‘Ho, ho, heave ho. Ho, ho, heave ho. Come, my brothers, ho, ho, heave ho.’

  Napoleon’s commands came regularly in a quiet voice. ‘Slowly bow side, two strokes. Easy stroke side.’ And so they groped forward, hesitating at times before tunnels that forked to right and left, Napoleon sometimes knowing where he was going, sometimes guessing.

  After what seemed hours of paddling, the oars began to strike against the tunnel walls. ‘Bring ‘em in,’ said Napoleon. ‘It’s too narrow for rowing now, someone will have to get into the water and pull the boat along.’

  There was silence among the Borrible crew. Napoleon bent under a seat and pulled out a pair of rubber waders. He was laughing to himself, as the others could see in the light of his torch.

  ‘I knew I’d have to do it,’ he said. ‘The best Borribles come from Wandsworth all right.’

  Adolf chuckled. ‘Ho, I don’t know about that; we’ve got a lot of dirty water in Hamburg, my friend. Give me the waders; I will pull you. I haven’t done any of the rowing.’ The German bustled down the boat. He took the waders from Napoleon, slipped them on and jumped into the stream with no hesitation. The rowers swivelled in
their seats, amazed.

  Bingo knelt and shone his torch ahead so the German could see where he was going, but Adolf had his own torch hooked on to a button of his jacket. He grabbed the painter in both hands and with a ‘Ho, ho, heave ho’ he pulled the boat smartly along as if it weighed nothing.

  ‘Well I never,’ said Sydney.

  Napoleon shook his head. ‘There’ll be a kind of path by the side of the sewer a little further on,’ he called. ‘You’ll be able to walk on that.’

  This information turned out to be true and soon Adolf was striding along a brick walkway that had been built originally for the sewer men of Wandsworth. ‘This is more like it,’ he yelled, and began to sing his song even louder than before.

  Suddenly the singing stopped. The rope went slack and The Silver Belle Flower bumped into the bank. Those in the boat looked up to discover what had stopped the German and saw, crouching aggressively against the curving wall of the sewer, an armed Wendle.

  He was a wiry figure and was wearing the same kind of rubber waders that Napoleon had lent to Adolf. Instead of the normal woollen Borrible cap this Wendle, like other warriors of his tribe, wore a metal helmet made from an old beer can; it covered his ears and guarded his head, and in the light of the torches it glowed a coppery green. To keep himself warm he wore a chunky jacket of wool covered with plastic to keep out the water, and the plastic shone orange and luminous like the coats worn by the men who work on motorways. The Wendle’s face was hard and tough, much tougher than Napoleon’s even, and his eyes moved quickly. He was not afraid even though he was one against ten. With a shout he thrust forward with the Rumble-stick he bore in his hands.

  It was then that Adolf showed what a redoubtable fighter he was. Although unarmed, he was not one to avoid a good fight; as he had said, he liked fighting. The spear jabbed towards him and he slid gracefully to one side, his body folding into the water. The Adventurers, all excepting Napoleon, had come to admire the German, and they sprang to their feet in dismay. But Adolf was down not out, for as he fell he stooped under the vicious weapon and caught hold of the Wendle’s right foot. As soon as Adolf’s feet touched the river bottom he yanked as hard as he could and the Wendle lost balance and landed flat on his back on the edge of the pathway, the spear shaken from his grasp. In that same moment the German grabbed his opponent’s head and pulled it brusquely into the water, shoving it under the filthy surface.