The Criminal Escapades of Geoffrey Larkin

by R. W. Hughes

  As he started to doze he recalled when he was that lad’s age, circumstances were certainly different for him. The horse-drawn carriage! The servants! Molly his old nanny and Miss. Broadhurst his live-in teacher. He remembered the fireplace in the Great Hall with the large, stone surround that was twice his height and the large coat of arms positioned over the tall mantle. The logs spitting, burning and crackling in the deep wide opening where, on rare occasions with his nanny, he would toast crumpets and watch the liberal coating of butter melt into the hot surface. All that he had left to remember of those happy days was the silver spoon, which had the same coat of arms on its handle as above the fireplace. Unfortunately, he could not go back to those happy carefree times. He was condemned to sharing the life he now lived, with the thousands of other homeless wanderers of the country’s towns and cities, spending their nights in dark alleyways, derelict buildings or cold damp railway viaducts, with the authorities having no records of these lost forgotten souls. He finished the remains of cheap spirits in the bottle. His cough was getting worse with the damp weather and the pains in his chest were more frequent. He definitely would have to cut down his consumption of alcohol and the number of cigarettes he was smoking, but that was tomorrow’s problem.

  In the dying light from the smouldering fire and the flame from the spluttering candle he looked around what at one time had been the kitchen of the cottage. The old iron rusting and holed hopper used for washing clothes which was situated at the side of a shallow sided sink balancing precariously on two brick pillars. It had been forced away from the wall by looters scavenging for lead or copper and who had removed the lead water pipe and brass tap from behind the sink. The ground floor windows were boarded up which was a good thing as it stopped any light showing from the outside. The stairs were missing so there was no access to the floor above. The kitchen door had been forced open at some point but fortunately it was still on its hinges. Still, what more could a body want he had a full stomach, the night was dry and he was reasonably warm.

  Another of the unusual places that Geoff found most interesting was a small scrap yard, which was several streets from where his mother lived. On occasions, when he was playing truant from school, he would sit on a low brick wall outside this establishment and watch the people, not dissimilar in dress to his friend Sir Reginald, pushing various forms of transport through the open gates. They comprised of old prams full of bags of unwanted metal items, which the owner of the yard would weigh and then pay them a few coins. If he was very busy the proprietor would let Geoff help.

  On occasions a two-wheeled cart would arrive pulled by a small pony with the driver sitting on the front holding the reins, his feet swinging just above the surface of the road. Geoff was amazed at the collection of junk that was stacked on the cart, broken cast iron baths, gutters and downspouts, old iron gas cookers, bits of lead and copper pipes, flattened and dinted copper jugs, pans and kettles. He was quick to spot that these were paid for in notes and not just a few coins. It registered with him even at that early age that easy money could be made from what other people threw away as junk. He mentally noted all this while he was stroking and scratching the pony’s neck as the cart owner fitted the feed bag to the animal’s head. All the cart owners seemed to do this as it settled the pony down while they unloaded the cart. One of them even showed Geoff how to feed the pony an apple core in the flat palm of his hand so as not to have his fingers nipped by the animal’s large yellow teeth.

  The first Sunday morning in each month the proprietor would open his yard to the public to sell any items that he considered too good to break up for scrap metal. Geoff would go to the yard and help people place the objects they had purchased in their car, for this he usually received a few coins as a tip. This amounted to a good sum by the end of the morning.

  This was his ‘cash job’, as his old friend Sir Reginald would say. When he was at school, which was not very often, he would slip into the cloakroom along with another lad named Duncan whose lifestyle seemed to be very similar to that of his own, and who he had started to pal out with.

  While the other children were having their school dinner, Duncan showed Geoff how to steal. Geoff never had school dinners. His mother could never find the amount that was needed each week and she never completed any of the forms that were sent to her to apply for free meals on his behalf.

  While Geoff kept watch, Duncan would carefully search satchels and the pockets of all the jackets that were hung neatly on their hangers. He never took all the sweats he found. If there were three he would take one, if there were only two he would leave them alone, the same applied with any sandwiches or cake in the satchels. ‘Share and share alike’ Geoff would say, repeating the saying of his old friend, as the pair divided their spoils in the shelter of the school bicycle shed.

  He liked that saying; it was also one of the old man’s favourites. He arrived at school one morning after being off for several days with a bad cold to find his mate Duncan wasn’t there. In Geoff’s absence he’d been caught by the teacher going through the coats in the cloakroom. From his enquiries of the other pupils he heard that Duncan had been sent to a special school, the reason given was that his parents couldn’t cope with looking after him along with four other younger brothers and sisters. He never saw Duncan, his first partner in petty crime, again.

  Geoff did not have many friends; the parents of the other children did not encourage them to associate with him. He always looked untidy; his clothes were never a good fit, too large or too tight, ripped or badly patched and darned. His knees were always dirty and his hands grubby but he found it hard to keep clean with just cold water and little or no soap at his home.

  Any decent clothes usually came from a friendly neighbour who had a son older than Geoff. As her son outgrew his clothes she would wash and iron them and then pass them on to Geoff’s mother. When his mother was taken into hospital suffering from years of excessive alcohol abuse Geoff was placed with his first foster parents, Mr. and Mrs. Dixon, and their two children. He found it difficult to adapt. He was not used to people being kind to him, having regular meals, hot baths, sleeping between clean sheets and having decent clothes to wear. He felt uncomfortable and embarrassed. He did not know how to use a knife and fork properly and the Dixon’s children would laugh at him for his lack of table manners. Even though their parents scolded them they still giggled loud enough for him to hear.

  He stayed there for just seven days before he eventually made up his mind; he would run away. One thing he did like doing, which he was going to miss, was playing with the son who was the same age as him, and his large box of toy soldiers. He had seen the story in a comic book and he often daydreamed of being that army general. Winning great battles against insurmountable enemy odds, then returning home at the front of his men to a fanfare of trumpets and drums, and the cheers of an admiring crowd. He would occupy a large castle and could call upon a multitude of servants all available at his beck and call to do his slightest whim.

  He planned his escape carefully. He was always the first at the house after school; the woman, Mrs. Dixon, would arrive shortly after with her son Harry and let them all into the house. There was no easy way of entering the Dixon’s property, he had already checked! The door key wasn’t left under the plant pots or doormat outside the front door or fastened with string that could be pulled through the letter box. All the windows were left securely closed in the morning when his foster parents left for work.

  Outside his bedroom window there was a metal drainpipe coming from the cast iron guttering. He reckoned if he left his bedroom window closed, but off the catch, he could climb the drainpipe and enter the empty house by this open window. He knew that the people from the house opposite, who might have seen him, did not arrive home from work until after six o’clock at night. He did not attend the last lesson at the school that afternoon; instead he slipped out of the school at playtime, running to the Dixon’s home. He quickly climbed the drainpipe and,
with some difficulty, while perched with one foot on the windowsill and the other on the collar of the cast iron drainpipe, he managed to open the window to his bedroom.

  This was Geoff’s first burglary; he found it quite easy, leaving him with a mixed feeling of fear and superiority. Looking through the bedroom window there was no shouting or any sign he had been spotted.

  He started by filling a haversack with the luxuries that surrounded him, things which he had never seen before in his old home life, a black ebony hair brush, a small travelling mirror, a pair of cufflinks and a matching tie pin from his foster parents’ bedroom dressing table, some brightly painted soldiers in kilts from their son’s bedroom plus the contents of his money box, and two pairs of new woollen socks from his clothes drawer. There was little of interest to him in the girl’s bedroom, except for a wristwatch amongst some pieces of jewellery in a fancy glass jar.

  From the kitchen he took a full bottle of dandelion and burdock, for which he had recently acquired a taste, half a loaf of bread, a packet of cheese that was sliced in thin layers – the way he liked it, two apples and a banana.

  He had just learnt to read and this had opened up a whole new world to him. He had a vivid and active imagination and could visualise himself as the main character in many of the children’s adventure novels he had read. So the last two items he managed to squeeze in the top of the rucksack were books from the small, highly polished book case in the lounge of the Dixon’s three-bedroomed, semi-detached house.

  The title of the hardback book, which he had only recently started and enjoyed, was Wind in the Willows. The other was an action adventure novel called, Aurthora Celtic Prince. According to the section at the front of this book called the ‘synopsis’, it was about Britain in the fifth century and the conflict between the existing Celtic tribes and the invading Saxons. He only read the sections in the book that had very explicit details about the many battles that involved the hero, the Celtic warrior Prince: Aurthora.

  As Mrs. Dixon entered the front door of her house Geoff heard her shouting to her son to wipe his feet on the doormat, he slipped quietly out of the rear kitchen door. With his haversack slung over his shoulder he climbed over the neighbour’s dividing garden fence, through the rear garden gate and into the narrow alleyway, which led towards the busy Manchester road.

  As he walked down the passageway towards the traffic he experienced a great feeling of freedom and exultation even though he realised he was walking into the unknown. He was, as Sir Reginald would say, ‘going camping’. He had once read in a comic book about an escaped prisoner of war and he felt as if he was playing that part, on the run from the uniformed officers of the establishment who were all searching for him.

  He had decided that it would be much safer for him, and more difficult for the authorities to apprehend him and return him back in the system, if he was amongst crowds of people. Once on a school trip he had passed through Manchester’s busy train station, and remembered the name ‘Piccadilly’. The name of the station had always stayed with him, so that’s the place he would make as his first destination.

  He had been amazed at the vast number of people all scurrying about, it had reminded him of an ants’ nest he had once disturbed in the allotments, the hordes of insects in a state of panic at the sudden disorder to their well-organised lives.

  He caught a train from the small station at the bottom of the main road near the Dixons’ house. He did not buy a train ticket; he just boarded the train with all the other passengers and sat on a spare seat, the rucksack between his legs, mesmerised by all the sights, smells and sounds which were all a new experience for him.

  As the train pulled into several of the stations en route he tried to memorise the names as he watched through the train window at the waiting passengers crowding on to the platforms. After several further stops the train was quite full.

  An old woman wearing a head scarf and a large coat with a rip in the elbow, and struggling with two heavy bags of groceries, was standing in front of him, crammed between all the other standing passengers. The man who was sitting next to Geoff got up from his seat and offered it to her, she gracefully accepted. Geoff smiled at the woman, took one of her bags and placed it on his knees while she sat down beside him placing the other bag on her own knees. The man did not get off at the stop but continued standing with the rest of the passengers, Geoff did not understand why he had given up his comfortable seat to be jostled and bumped with them by the movement of the train.

  When they reached Piccadilly station Geoff offered to carry the heavy bag of groceries off the train for the woman. She gratefully accepted, while departing the train amongst the mass of bodies he managed to slip two pears from the top of the woman’s bag into his pockets.

  ‘Thank you, young man,’ she said as he handed her the bag of groceries. He smiled, turned and followed the departing throng leaving the platform, disappointed that he had only managed to take two pears from the bag of groceries.

  He sat on a low wall that formed a flower bed just outside the station entrance eating one of the pears. There had been flowers planted there at one time, now there were just empty cardboard cartons and glass beer and wine bottles, with the odd flower pushing through here and there struggling to survive among all the weeds, the paper and plastic rubbish trapped, and blowing about in the wind between the low parapet walls.

  As he sat there, swinging his feet and watching all the people rushing to catch their individual trains, he couldn’t help but notice that they were all different. Some were tall, some short, some quite tubby and some were thin. Others were very smart and well-dressed; they obviously had good jobs in the city. He bided the time by playing a game, guessing the jobs of the individual people who passed by.

  One he reckoned was big in the banking or legal profession. He had a bowler hat, striped trousers, a navy three-quarter length coat, an umbrella and highly polished black shoes. He was being followed by a man carrying a rucksack and wearing brown overalls. He looked like a building worker, probably a bricklayer or stonemason employed on the nearby construction sites.

  *

  It was now getting dark and as Geoff sat eating the second pear the only places where he knew he could find shelter and be safe for the night was the burnt out house at the end of his mother’s street. The same one where the old tramp sometimes stayed. Better still was the shed in the allotments, where he had been before. He also had a key to his mother’s old council house; but he felt frustrated and trapped as he didn’t know which train to catch to take him to the outskirts of that part of the city. His sense of survival was telling him he needed somewhere dry and warm for the night. In the morning he would sort everything out when, hopefully, he would not be feeling so tired and weary.

  He spent that first night of his escape in the station. The first three hours being in the station toilet cubicle. As the lock was broken he ended up sitting on his haversack with his back to the toilet door and his feet up against the base of the WC.

  That was until, in the early hours, someone tried to get in and banged and thumped on the closed door. They continued until in the deepest voice he could muster he shouted for them to. ‘Fuck Off!’ The magic words seemed to work, the person on the other side of the door muttered something that he could not make out, and then decided to move on.

  He felt quite pleased with himself. He had heard the older lads at school use this language before and one of them had been suspended for using these very same words to one of the teachers. They were obviously words that older people used, so the person on the other side of the toilet door would think he was older and bigger than he really was. He had heard the old man say occasionally, ‘Fortune favours the brave’, and now he thought he knew what he meant.

  He waited until it was all quiet in the toilets again, then slowly opened the cubicle door, ready to slam it closed again if anyone was there waiting for him. Even though it was a cold night he was sweating as he slipped out of the toilet blo
ck and quickly mingled amongst the crowds in the station, whose numbers never seemed to dwindle no matter what time of night or day it was.

  He sat on his rucksack in a dark corner near a stall that sold newspapers and magazines, the collar of his jacket turned up and his hands tucked deep in his trouser pockets. It was there that he dozed fitfully until the early hours of the morning. It was the cold that awakened him.

  He rose stiff and sore after the most uncomfortable first night in his young life on the run from his foster home and the relevant authorities who would by now be searching for him. As much as he disliked the foster home, he now had to admit to himself that he missed the warm bed and clean sheets, and he had enjoyed the regular hot meals at the Dixons’ family home.

  Chapter Two

  At the station, he noticed that people stood in front of a massive board then went to look at a screen that hung from the ceiling that gave instructions on various trains from different numbered platforms. He strolled over to join the group inspecting the board. At first he struggled to understand the workings of this timetable, until he realised, using his novice reading capabilities, he was looking at the arrivals side of the board. On the other side was the departures section, here he found a listing for Stockport. The train left from platform three at 5.35am. He smiled to himself, feeling quite pleased with the way he had on his own without any adult assistance solved this, what to him had been a massive problem.

  He looked at the girl’s watch on his wrist. Just one hour to wait.

  He had little difficulty getting past the ticket inspector; he slipped on to the platform when they opened some gates to allow an electric driven tractor to pass through, pulling several trailers piled high with stacks of newspapers. He was trying not to hurry but at the same time keep the trucks between himself and the inspector at the entrance. When he was a good distance along the platform he casually joined the people already there. This gate served platforms three and four, unsure which train he needed to catch he approached a woman standing on her own.