‘Lovely games … yes,’ mused Mrs Moore. ‘Children nowadays are lucky. We never had such lovely games. It was always French cricket, or organized Rounders. Well it will be for them, or worse, when their father gets back.’
The lovely games that Mrs Abinger and Nanny and Mrs Moore visualized so serenely did not take place in the Park at all, but in a derelict Army hut at the southern edge of the wastes of Wormwood Scrubs.
Sneaking about behind the prison, in hope of seeing their father’s face languishing at a barred window, Norman and Arthur had discovered this hut, half collapsed against the high yard wall. Breaking into it, and finding not only a soft earth floor, but a few rusty old gardening tools, the relics of some soldier’s attempt to make the Scrubs camp like home, they had only to look at each other, and their plan was formed.
Words were never squandered between them. A jerk of Norman’s head towards the bottom of the prison wall; a grunt from Arthur. Arthur had selected a spade with half a handle, which suited his natural crouch, and had begun to dig, slowly and steadily as an old farm labourer with timeless acres before him. Norman had seized a dirt shovel and set to work feverishly, flinging earth all round him, as if he expected to break surface in his father’s cell at any moment.
They had been digging for about a week when the Moores followed them out that Sunday to the North Pole public house, and tracked them across Wormwood Scrubs to the hut. The hole was nearly two feet deep, and the Goldners were in it digging, with Jo scraping out the earth for them like the hind legs of a terrier, when the Moores, with whoops of triumph, burst in through the crazy, splintered door.
‘Hullo, hullo, hullo!’ cried Billy, who read The Gem and The Magnet. ‘What are you up to, chaps?’
Norman, recovering from the shock of thinking it was the Coppers, leaped out of the hole, brandishing his shovel, backed up by growls from Arthur.
Josephine clutched his leg. She did not want him to hit Billy. ‘No good hitting ’em Norm,’ she said sensibly. ‘They’ve seen now. They’ll only go and sneak to the Coppers.’
‘They won’t get a chance,’ said Norman menacingly, but he lowered the shovel. ‘What shall we do wiv ’em, Art?’ He jerked his head at the Moores, who had recoiled from their first surge and were watching the spade, ready to advance or flee. ‘Carve ’em up?’
‘Dror and quar’er ’em,’ gloated Arthur, stepping out of the hole as if to make a start.
This was the sort of exaggerated boasting that Billy understood. He laughed, somewhat reassured. ‘You are asses,’ he said. ‘What are you doing? Why can’t we play too?’
‘It ain’t a game.’ Norman spat scornfully on the ground. ‘You don’t play at it. We’re on a big job, see, and we don’t want your sort hangin’ around.’
‘You’ve killed someone,’ suggested Billy, ‘and you’re burying the body.’
‘Oh dear,’ said his sister. ‘Ought we to tell the police? I’d rather help dig. Is it hidden treasure?’
‘Of course not,’ put in Wilfred. ‘They’re digging a tunnel to get their father out of prison, aren’t they, Jo?’
‘Did you tell ’em?’ Norman whipped round and jumped into the hole again, almost on top of her.
She squealed like a rabbit. ‘I never! Honest –!’
‘You might just as well let us help,’ said Wilfred going calmly over to the wall, picking up a fork and running a profossional eye over the prongs. ‘It’ll get done much quicker.’
The end of that September of 1925 was the happiest, most exciting time of Josephine’s young life. Every evening, if the Moores had not called for her after tea, she would go up to their house and ring the bell, with her query of: ‘Is Billy and those coming out to play?’
All through the futile, handicraft days at Mrs Mortimer’s Josephine longed for the evenings. She hated it when it was time for the Moores to go back to their enviable house, and the Goldners to their mysterious hovel, while she had to go back to the flat, which was neither enviable nor mysterious, and where there was no one to talk to about the tunnel in the hut.
In the hut, she had everything for happiness. The Moores and their world fascinated her, and the Goldners fascinated her. Now she had them together, free of their own alien environments in which she had no place, united in the no-man’s-land of the hut by the adventure of which she was a part.
She belonged. They had a use for her because she brought food and candles and matches. She scarcely ever passed through the back store-room now without helping herself to something she thought the others would like. She developed cunning enough to filch, almost under her parents’ noses in the shop, toffees, or the Garibaldi biscuits which Norman’s soul craved.
The more she took to the hut, the better she thought the others would like her. There was less chance that they would suddenly turn round and say they did hot want her any more. She grew daring enough to take jars of treacle and condensed milk, and once she took a whole Dundee cake in its tin. Mr Abinger never knew exactly what stock he had, and if Mrs Abinger noticed anything missing, she suspected Sidney, and kept it to herself. George would not have understood about Sidney’s mother’s chest, and her five children and her unemployable husband.
She did, however, tackle Sidney about the disappearance of the little brass shovel from the sugar sack.
‘So that’s gone, has it?’ said Sidney, looking everywhere but at her. ‘Well, isn’t that rum, I don’t think.’ He glanced at Josephine, who was listening.
‘Have a hunt round for it, there’s a good boy.’ Mrs Abinger gave him the chance to return it if it were not already sold.
‘Ain’t she seen it then?’ he asked, looking at Jo from under his lowered forehead.
Josephine skipped away to the door. ‘I’ve looked everywhere. I don’t know where the silly old shovel is,’ she said airily. ‘’Bye, Mum, I’m going up to the Villas now.’ She ran off, untroubled by conscience. The tunnel was all that mattered. It justified anything.
The tunnel was not getting on very fast. They had reached the base of the wall and started to scrape inwards beneath it, but the wall was thick and digging sideways was difficult. What they were going to do if they ever did emerge on the other side was a mystery which Norman could not explain. He did not know himself. The main thing was to get inside. They would sneak through at night, and then decide what to do.
Billy was tired. He had been lying on his stomach for half an hour, scraping at the stony earth with the blade of an old hoe. If they did not finish the tunnel soon, he thought he was going to be bored with it. They had been digging for more than a week now, and he had never stuck to any enthusiasm as long as that. Even the attraction of street boys was palling, new that he knew two of them so intimately. He still strove after their accent, and forgot himself sometimes at home, to Nanny’s horror. But apart from their speech and their enviable contempt of all restraint and law, the Goldners were not so different from other boys he knew. They could be just as silly as some of the boys at school.
He sat on the edge of the hole, his legs dangling over the behinds of Norman and Tess, who were digging. Her grey shorts were almost as dirty as Norman’s, and her knees were Nanny’s despair, although hers was surface dirt, while his was ingrained. Billy thought they looked ridiculous, scraping away there like two moles.
‘I don’t think we’ll ever get through, Norm,’ he said. ‘What say we chuck it up? We could still use the hut to play gipsies or Indians or something in.’
Norman turned his face sideways and upwards. ‘Playing!’ he jeered. ‘You kids are always talking about playing. This ain’t a game, it’s dead earnest. You’d ought to be too old for playing. Art and I ain’t played at nothing since – oh, Gawd, I can’t remember, can you, Artie?’
‘I ’ad a bat an’ ball wunst,’ said Arthur, who was squatting nearby, sharpening a spade with a stone, ‘but I sell it to old Ma Trumble.’
‘A bramble?’ asked Tess, wriggling backwards to look at him. ‘What on earth did she want a
bramble for?’
‘A bat and ball, silly,’ said Norman irritably. ‘Same like what your old man plays with in the Square. Soppy thing,’ he muttered, turning back to his digging. ‘No wonder his kids are such drips.’
Billy jumped into the hole on top of him, squashing his face into the earth, and they started one of their fights. They had so many that no one took any notice. Wilfred and Jo, who were busy at the other end of the hut did not even look up. Arthur went on sharpening his spade, rendering, in a horrible, bubbling whistle, a hymn he had picked up from the open air Salvationists. Tess went on digging, pushing aside their locked, writhing forms when they got in her way.
Norman sat on top of Billy, pinning him into the bottom of the hole, where Tess, unnoticing, scrabbled earth into his hair.
‘Gimme best?’ panted Norman. A suffocated mumble came from underneath him. Norman got up, and Billy climbed out of the hole, spitting out earth and drawing a grimy hand across his crusted nose.
‘Anyway,’ he said – he could never bear to let an argument drop – ‘my father doesn’t let himself get caught doing Robbery With, so’s we have to go all the fag of digging him out.’
‘We never asked you to,’ said Arthur. ‘Norm and I can do it on our Iones.’
‘You’ll never,’ said Billy. ‘You don’t even know what’s on the other side. It might be a room full of policemen.’
‘We’ll fix ’em.’ Arthur made a garotting noise.
‘What with?’
‘Coshes,’ said Norman. ‘Socks filled with earth and stones. We got some made.’
‘Gosh,’ said Billy, his interest in the scheme reviving, ‘bags I one of those. I’ll lead the charge.’ He pranced up and down the hut, brandishing imaginary weapons.
‘Oh shut up,’ said Norman. ‘D’you want every Copper in the Scrubs to hear? You’ll do what you’re bleeding well told, anyway, when we gets inside. I gives the orders ’ere.’
‘You don’t.’ Billy could not enjoy anything unless he thought he was the boss. He could not help it; it was his father coming out in him.
‘Whose old man is it anyway?’ asked Norman. ‘Get out of that now, young Tess, and let Art have a go or we’ll never get through.’
‘I can’t help it,’ she said. ‘There’s an enormous stone in the way.’ She sat back on her heels, a comical figure in her treasured, skimpy boy’s clothes inherited from Billy, with her pigtails, tied out of the way of her head with a piece of string. Arthur jumped into the hole and pushed her out. He started to burrow, grunting like a pig at the roots of a tree.
‘What’s he saying?’
‘’E says we got to get Dad out by St Leger day. ’E’s never missed Doncaster races yet, Dad hasn’t.’
‘Is he a jockey?’
‘Oh for Gawd’s sake,’ said Norman wearily. ‘’E’s a pea and thimble merchant. That and Spot the Lady.’
‘Spot what lady?’ Wilfred came up eager for information.
Norman did not answer. The ingenuousness of the Moores got on his nerves. Wilfred went back to the anthill which he and Jo had discovered and were excavating with the brass sugar scoop. The food was finished. Billy and Tess thought they would go home, but Arthur suddenly let out a strangled yelp. Everyone crowded round the hole, trying to understand what he was saying.
‘By Gawd ’e’s right, you know. Our Art’s right.’ Norman scrabbled excitedly at the earth. If he had had a tail he would have wagged it. His trowel made clonking sounds, quite different to the clink of the many stones with which they had wrestled.
‘What is it, oh, what is it?’ The others danced above in anguish, until Norman sat back on his heels and looked up at them, his dark face solemn, enjoying his audience.
‘’S the biggest thing since the Suez Canal,’ he announced. No one could say he had not learned anything at school.
‘What is?’ they squealed.
‘Shut up, you tykes,’ he whispered. ‘We got to be dead careful now, or we’ll be nabbed.’
‘Are we inside? Is it through?’ They believed it might be, although the tunnel could hardly reach beyond the thickness of the wall.
‘Shut up, I tell you,’ he hissed. ‘There’s a bloody great drainpipe, ’ere, leadin’ right through. Cor, what a smashin’ place to choose. Couldn’t be better. Trust me. Trust old Norm; ’e’s the boy.’
‘You didn’t choose it,’ began Billy. ‘It was only because of the hut – ’ but Tessa pinched him to be quiet. It would be a bore if they fought now, just when it was getting exciting.
‘How’s it comin’, Art?’ Norman turned back. ‘Got the end clear? Coo, ’s a proper whopper, ain’t it? Proper old tunnel, made to fit.’
‘Norm, are we going to crawl down a drain?’ Jo began to undo the buttons of her dress, which was miraculously clean compared to the clothes of the others. She always took it off when she was allowed to dig, crouching in the hole in her liberty bodice and knickers. She had no Nanny in the hollow of her hand like the Moores, nor, like the Goldners, a mother who would only have been surprised if they had come home clean. She had to deal with Mrs Abinger, who wanted to know the wherefore of every tear or stain or bruise.
Arthur came up for air, holding out two black and slimy fists.
“What’s he say?’ they whispered.
‘’E says it’s choked up of muck,’ said Norman. ‘But we’ll clear that lot. It’s ’uge. Look – coo!’ He thrust in his hands and scattered the audience by flinging lumps of noxious mud behind him. They watched from a safe distance, pop-eyed, sucking in their breath. The hut began to smell. It was indeed an enormous drain, large enough to take a child, and the chances were, said Norman, that it led straight into a yard.
‘How do you know?’ objected Billy. ‘You always think you know everything.’
‘’Cos there’s leaves and all,’ said Norman, throwing a sodden mass at him. ‘Probably a runaway for rainwater in the yard. Faulty grating like as not. Be easier to prise up.’ He made a mild study of drains and plumbing, as other people dabble in architecture.
‘Oh Norman,’ said Tess. ‘You are.’
‘Ain’t I? Told you we’d get in, didn’t I? ’Ere – ’ He looked from one to the other of them excitedly, the whites of his eyes shining like a nigger’s in his dirty face. ‘What say we has a crack at her to-night? It’ll be dark pretty soon.’
‘But I don’t see,’ said Wilfred, ‘how we’re going to get your father out through there, unless he’s a dwarf.’
Norman chuckled. ‘Hear that, Artie? That’s a good un, that is. A dwarf! Wait till you see him. ‘E’s big as a ox. You’d ought to feel the way ’e can give the strap – buckle end. ’E ain’t comin’ out this way. ’E’ll go out like a Lord, by the front gates. I’ll sneak the keys, or cosh the warder. I’ll think of something, soon as we gets inside and see what’s what.’
‘I’ll think out a plan of campaign.’ Billy, Napoleonic, clutched his brow.
‘You’ll hell as like,’ said Norman. ‘You’ll do what you’re muckin’ well told, or I don’t take you in. I wouldn’t take any of you, but I might need you all if we got to rush ’em. Now listen, you kids – are you game for to-night? Or,’ his eager voice dropped to scorn, ‘will it be your bedtime?’
They clamoured this down. Home and bed were in another world, unthinkable. But Tess looked at the excited Jo, a wriggling grub in her white underclothes, and demurred: ‘What about her? Her mother might not like her to stay out so late. You know what she is.’
‘She ain’t!’ cried Jo, blindly denying whatever Tess might mean. ‘My Mum don’t mind what time I gets back. I can stay out all night if I want. Often I do.’
‘Oh Jo – ’ began Tess, who worried a lot about Josephine’s lying. It seemed wrong that she could get away with it as she did, since lying was known to be a sin.
Norman silenced them, flapping a hand as he crouched with an ear to the drain. ‘I can hear feet or somefink right down at the end,’ he whispered. ‘Might be exercise time. I’m g
oing on up to have a looksee through the grating.’ He sniggered. ‘What d’you bet I don’t spot me Dad by the nails in his boots? I’ve ’ad ’em on me backside often enough.’ He stuck his head right into the opening of the drain, but Arthur, suddenly gurgling, his wide nostrils dilated half across his face with rage, sprang on him, hurled him back against the side of the hole and plunged into the drain himself.
‘What’s the matter with him?’ asked Billy.
‘’E says ‘e found the drain, and he’s bleeding well going up it first,’ said Norman, without resentment.
‘If it comes to that,’ said Tess, ‘I really found it, only I thought it was a stone. It was your fault. If you’d let me go on a bit longer – ’
‘All right, all right, you found it,’ said Norman. ‘Now shut up. Make me sick, you kids do, always keepin’ on.’ The Moores, like all children of their class and upbringing, cavilled and bickered far more than the Goldners, who were so used to the unfairness of life that they were not for ever crying: ‘Unfair!’ or ‘Cheating’, or ‘It’s not my fault’. When you had to fight for such fundamentals as getting enough to eat or keeping warm, you did not need to invent the trivial disputes of children to whom meals and coal were a matter of course.
Arthur’s short, bandy legs jerked convulsively as he squeezed himself farther and farther into the drain. It was growing dark in the hut, so the children lit candles and stood round the hole whispering, like body-snatchers.
A muffled cry, hollow as a voice raised in the South Kensington Subway, came from the drain.
‘Want a push, chum?’ Norman took his brother by the waist and tried to force him into the drain as if he were a cork in a bottle neck.
Arthur’s boots lashed, and drummed on the trodden earth of the hole. ‘Uck!’ came a strangled, subterranean echo.
‘What’s he expect to find in a drain but muck?’ Billy dropped into the hole, and seized a flailing leg. ‘Come on, let’s push him up, so I can go in after him.’
‘’E says ‘e’s stuck,’ panted Norman, who was alternately pushing and pulling now, as if he were doing artificial respiration. ‘’E is too. Can’t move the bleeder either way. Pull on that leg, Bill, while I takes the other. Come on you lot!’ He had forgotten to keep his voice low. ‘Pull, you bastards! Don’t stand gawpin’ there.’
Joy and Josephine Page 11