The Borribles: Across the Dark Metropolis (17 page)

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Authors: Michael de Larrabeiti

Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Fantasy & Magic

BOOK: The Borribles: Across the Dark Metropolis
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‘Couldn’t we go home, please, missus?’ said Bingo. ‘We didn’t mean to come in here but the law was chasing us. Didn’t you hear the sirens? We didn’t mean no harm.’
‘The best thing we can do,’ said MacMungall, ‘is get shot of ’em. If the cops are looking for ’em they might trace ’em ’ere. We can do without trouble. That little Paki, though, he’d be lovely toasted.’
‘Bangladeshi,’ said Twilight.
MacMungall threw back his head in a laugh and showed his red mouth again. ‘I don’t care,’ he said. ‘I’m not prejudiced. I don’t care who I eat, pal.’
‘You fool,’ said Madge, and she pointed at the rucksacks and catapults which lay scattered on the floor. ‘What’s that there, eh? That’s catapults that is and catapults mean only one thing in this world … It means Borribles and Borribles means thievin’. Look under them hats, look at their ears, you fool. We’re on easy street, that’s what … we’ve got twelve of the little buggers, twelve.’
MacMungall pushed himself to his feet, and seizing the nearest of the captives—it happened to be Torreycanyon—tore his hat from his head and inspected the ears. ‘Aha,’ he crowed and threw Torreycanyon’s hat into the air. ‘You’re a genius, Madge. You’re right. Borribles. A round dozen of Borribles … they can thieve for us for the rest of our born naturals. Hooray. Amazin’ Grace. Scotland the brave.’
A stream of spittle ran from MacMungall’s mouth as his taste buds worked overtime. He stared, dreaming of the future, feeling more booze than he had ever imagined pouring down his throat, warming
his stomach. He had never knowingly seen a Borrible but he knew the stories; knew that they were the best thieves and burglars on earth. If you could force a Borrible into stealing for you then you were indeed on easy street.
‘Oh no,’ said Scooter, his voice shaking with fear. ‘I didn’t reckon on this. I’m frightened, really frightened.’ He moved closer to Chalotte.
Chalotte was frightened herself but she put her arm round Scooter’s shoulders and said, ‘Don’t worry, they ain’t real Borrible-snatchers, only amateurs.’
‘Amateurs, eh?’ said Ninch. ‘Well that old cow ain’t doing too badly for an amateur.’
Madge crouched and, immensely strong, grabbed Ninch by the hair and bent him backwards over the table; a knife appeared at his throat like magic. ‘Keep still, all of yer,’ she snarled, ‘otherwise his blood’ll be all over the floor.’
MacMungall leant closer and looked carefully into Ninch’s face. ‘What a sly wee devil he looks,’ he said, ‘don’t he?’
‘Yes,’ said Madge, pressing the knife tighter into Ninch’s neck. ‘They all are. You can’t trust Borribles. They moves fast, runs fast and is as slippery as eels. See the way they looks at yer, Hughie my love, their eyes steady, taking in everything, adding it all up, waiting their chance. Been alive hundreds of years, some of ’em, they say. Wise as mountains, tough as old boots and crafty as curates.’
Stonks raised his arm and pointed at Madge.
‘You harm him,’ he said, ‘you harm that Borrible and I warn you that whatever you do to him, we will do the same to you. We have seen worse than this and survived worse than this. Take care or a message will go out.’
Madge shook her hair and crouched an inch or two lower but did not remove her knife from Ninch’s throat. ‘You short-arsed little ’ap’orth,’ she said. ‘You don’t frighten me. Do you see how many of us there are in this archway? More than you can handle. You just do as you’re told and you might survive. Give me trouble and you’ll die, very unpleasant.’
‘Borribles, eh,’ said MacMungall. ‘Why don’t we turn them in? There’s bound to be a reward posted.’
Madge laughed. ‘You’ve spent your whole life busily avoiding your brains, ain’t you? And a first-rate job you’ve made of it. We might hand ’em over when we’re ready, but not before. We’ve got to get some work out of ’em first.’
‘Work?’
‘Yeah. From now on we won’t have to go out every day, rooting around in dustbins, hanging about the stations, begging, seeing what we can steal, what we can find. From now on these nippers will do it for us.’
Madge pulled Ninch to his feet but she kept the knife at his throat. ‘Get some string, Hughie. Tie this one’s arms behind his back and then we’ll put him in the cage down below.’
‘You can’t,’ shouted Scooter, and he jumped at MacMungall and began to punch him as hard as he could. ‘You can’t. Leave him alone, he’s not even—’
MacMungall was surprised by this onslaught, but only for a second or two. He raised a heavy fist and dropped it on Scooter’s face, hard. He hit him again and Scooter fell to the floor, senseless.
‘I warned you,’ shouted MacMungall. He crouched like a prizefighter and faced the Borribles. ‘I strike with speed, pal. The blood of the clans flows in my veins; death to the Campbells.’
Once Ninch’s hands were bound behind him, Madge commanded half a dozen of the strongest meffos to take him and Scooter away. ‘Put ’em in the cage,‘she said. ‘I’ll see yer all right; booze for all soon.’
‘What’s the idea, Madge?’ asked MacMungall. ‘Why the cage?’
Madge laughed. ‘Why, Hughie my love? For hostages so the others do as they’re told, so they steals hard for us.’
‘But they’ll only run away, this lot. First chance they gets.’
‘Ha!’ cried Madge. ‘I know about Borribles. They ain’t like us. They ain’t allowed to leave their mates in the lurch, because they know that if they do I’ll hand ’em over to the law and they’d have their ears clipped and that would be the end of ’em.’
‘End of ’em?’
‘O’ course. They’d grow up, just like us, and no sensible kid would want to do that, eh? Grow up like us.’
MacMungall smiled. ‘No, they wouldna. What shall we do wi’ these others then?’
Madge tossed the end of one of her shawls around her neck and tucked her knife out of sight ‘Send ’em back on the streets,‘she said. ‘This is the beginning of the good times, Hughie, my love. If they don’t come back here with wallets and handbags and suitcases and booze, well then, we just might have to hand their chums over to the law, eh?.’
Madge laughed, and as she congratulated herself on her astuteness the half a dozen meffos who had taken Ninch and Scooter to their imprisonment returned and handed her a large key on a length of chain. ‘Aha,’ she cried, snatching it. ‘Now open the doors, I’m going to throw ’em out. They know what they’ve got to do.’
The big iron bar was swivelled from its sockets and one of the wooden gates was half opened. ‘Come on,’ said Madge and she and MacMungall began to kick and push the Borribles out of the cavern. ‘Just keep bringing stuff back here, you kids, just as soon as you’ve nicked it, and don’t let the law see you. Remember, if they find us we’ll hand you over. Go on, off wi’ yer.’ with a final kick Madge thrust the Adventurers on to the pavement and closed the door behind them.
The Borribles blinked. It was broad daylight outside; the traffic was heavy and it roared by in a solid stream, unceasing.
‘Last time we were caught like this,’ said Knocker, kicking the ground, ‘it was Dewdrop the Borrible-snatcher and we had to kill him to get away.’
‘I’d do it again,’ said Napoleon, ‘if I had to.’
‘I’d do it to save Sam,’ said Sydney. ‘And we may have to if we want to get away in time. It’ll be Madge’s life against Sam’s if she keeps us here too long.’
‘Well, what’s to stop us going anyway?’ said Napoleon. ‘Ninch and Scooter are nothing to me. I’ve always thought there was something fishy about them. Here we are out in the fresh air, halfway to Camden Town. Let’s go.’
‘We can’t, Nap,’ said Chalotte. ‘We just can’t. We’ve got to think of a way of getting them free.’
‘What are we going to do then?’ asked Torreycanyon, ‘because we’ve got to think of something.’
Orococco shrugged. ‘What can we do?’ he said. ‘For the time being
all we can do is what they say: thieving in the railway stations. Meanwhile we have to think up a plan, a really good plan.’
‘Yes,’ said Knocker, ‘you’re right, Coco. But I tell you, this plan will have to be something special, because we’ll only get one crack at these meffos, only one crack, and if we get it wrong they’ll have our bums for bookends, mark my words.’
The days of captivity at King’s Cross were very strange. Not that the Borribles were particularly frightened of the meffos, they weren’t. It would have been easy for them to have run away at any time, simply leaving Ninch and Scooter to their fate. But they could not; they knew it wasn’t right and although discussed as an option it was not seriously considered. Borrible did not leave Borrible in the lurch.
The work of stealing was straightforward and not at all dangerous. There were three stations to choose from: King’s Cross, St Pancras and Euston, and each one was crowded from early morning until late at night. Picking pockets was a simple matter and there were unattended suitcases everywhere, providing an endless supply of goods for the meffos to sell or barter in exchange for drink. Food itself was to be had literally for the taking, and during this period the Borribles lived well and put on weight.
To make their job safer, they made themselves look as much like travellers as they could, with suitcases of their own bearing properly addressed labels. When they were questioned by station staff, they always answered that they were waiting for their parents, catching a train to so and so and on their way to such and such. That side of it was all very successful.
In spite of these advantages they were, of course, profoundly unhappy. This was not the way they wanted to live. They were stealing for someone else and stealing for money too. Worse, they were being delayed in their task of rescuing Sam and every day that went by made
them more anxious. Sussworth might have disobeyed the DAC’s orders and slaughtered Sam out of hand. They had to find out.
But the Borribles did not let the grass grow under their feet. They discovered that the cage where Ninch and Scooter were imprisoned was in an old cellar at the very back of the arch. It was a small brick-lined room dug out of the ground and an iron-barred trapdoor gave access to it. Many years previously it had been used for storing valuable wines and spirits and it was impregnable.
Madge had discovered the key to the trapdoor soon after taking possession of the cavern and she used the cage to lock up any of the meffos who got on the wrong side of her. It had come in just right for the two hostages, and the only way to free them was to steal the key from Madge. That would not be easy. Madge had a secret hiding place somewhere for all her precious things and no one, not even MacMungall, seemed to know where it was. The Borribles watched her closely, day after day, but Madge was too canny to make a mistake.
During most of this time of captivity the Adventurers did not feel like prisoners. They were not beaten as long as they brought home enough stolen goods to keep their hosts intoxicated, and they were free, more or less, to come and go as they pleased. It was only in the evening, when their booty had been delivered and inspected, that the sadness really engulfed them.
Every night they were pushed inside the little alcove which belonged to MacMungall and Madge and bound hand and foot. But even that was no problem. On the very first day the Borribles had stolen new knives and made new catapults; they could free themselves whenever they wanted. That certainly made them feel better but it wasn’t enough. They still had to release the hostages and journey on to Camden Town to find the slaughterhouse. They needed a plan and a good plan was not easy to come by. At the very last of all, when they had been forced to conclude that the killing of MacMungall and Madge was the only way for them to get on and rescue the horse, they were saved from murder by the chance arrival of the Queen Mum.
 
One evening, when MacMungall and Madge were inspecting the day’s loot and the Borribles themselves were resting and eating by the opening to the alcove, there came a great commotion at the wooden gates
of the archway. There was a banging of fists and the sound of someone swearing loudly. The usual noises of the cavern—snoring, coughing, hawking and spitting—suddenly stopped, a wave of movement swept across the bodies lying on the floor and most of the meffos raised their heads.
MacMungall closed the lid of a suitcase and slipped a wallet into his pocket. ‘What’s this?’ he queried, looking wildly about him. ‘Is that the law? We don’t want to be caught with this little lot of gear. It’s them kids, it’s theirs. I fought for this country, I did, and in a Highland regiment.’ He threw the suitcase towards the Borribles.
‘Imbecile,’ said Madge. ‘Open that door someone before all the coppers in London hears the row. That’s the Queen Mum, blast her.’
‘The Queen Mum,’ said MacMungall He retrieved the suitcase. ‘Trust her to turn up when we’ve got something bonny organized. Who could have told her?’
Madge sneered. ‘Who knows where’ll she turn up next? But least-ways she don’t stop long in one place.’
Intrigued by this conversation the Borribles moved from the shadows and nearer to the light so they could see the arrival of this new personage.
‘The Queen Mum,’ said Bingo, ‘who on earth can they mean?’
Bingo’s companions shook their heads, mystified, but they were soon to be enlightened. One of the meffos near the door shambled to his feet and, in obedience to Madge’s command, eased open the wooden gates. Out of the darkness and rain, pushing a battered old pram, its wheels squeaking, came the strangest figure.
There was not much to be seen of the Queen Mum to begin with. Her head was wrapped in a large piece of transparent polythene, spotted with raindrops. Her body, which looked as if it might be square and stocky, was made shapeless by a large brown raincoat which reached right down to her black Wellington boots. An old potato sack was pinned around her shoulders for added warmth and protection.
The pram, the hood of which had long since been ripped away, was piled high with her possessions; they too were covered with a large sheet of polythene. The Queen Mum was well prepared for the rigours of the road and the cavern was just one of many stops on a never-ending journey that took in all of London, from north to south, from
east to west and back again. There wasn’t a street, alley or hideout in the whole of the metropolis that the Queen Mum did not know and treat as her own property.
At any rate she pushed straight into the cavern as if she lived there every day of the week and shunted her pram into the bodies that lay in her path. Groans of protest rose from the floor but the Queen Mum took little notice, only yelling at her victims with a rough, toneless bell of a voice the sound of which resounded across the brick archway and clanged from wall to wall.
‘Come on, you sods,’ she shouted. ‘Clear a space for a poor old lady. Clear a space.’
She continued to thrust her way into the centre of the cavern and once she had reached it began to make a clear circle for herself by kicking backwards with her feet and bashing forwards with her pram. When she was convinced she had enough room she removed the sack from her shoulders and then the sheet of plastic from her head. She shook them both free of water.
‘Oi, Queenie, give over with that rain,’ said a voice from the floor.
‘You give over,’ retorted the Queen Mum. ‘You’d better learn a bit of Christian charity before I boots yer face in. I needs a drink I do, to dissipate the damp.’
During the performance Madge remained slumped low in her armchair, but MacMungall, feeling brave, got to his feet and shook a fist. ‘You’ll get no drink from us,’ he roared. ‘We has enough trouble keeping body and soul together for ourselves without you coming round here scrounging.’
The Queen Mum gazed at MacMungall like she had wind in her stomach; she saw Madge and her grin spread even wider. The Borribles saw her face for the first time.
‘Man,’ said Orococco. ‘I knows haunted houses that would get up and run a mile if they saw that.’
The Queen Mum had a nose that was thin and square-tipped like a screwdriver, a suspicious nose that could sniff out any treachery. Her eyes were close together, like the eyes of a ferret and just as sharp; they had been blue once but the colour had faded, worn out with looking on the ground for money and searching for things of value in dustbins. The dark brown hair was dirty, shiny with grease, drawn back
into a straggling bun behind her neck and held in place by a thick elastic band. Her chin was pointed and did its best to rise up to meet her nose while her skin was corrugated all over like the stone of a peach, and there was a shaggy green mould growing deep-rooted in every furrow.
As for her clothes, she wore the jacket of a man’s suit and a wide skirt that was made from a double thickness of grey blanket with holes in it. On her hands she wore woollen mittens which showed knobbly fingers with black, bruised nails at the end of them. The Borribles stared.
The Queen Mum took a pipe from her pocket and lit it. Not until she’d puffed out two or three mouthfuls of smoke to join the darkness above her head did she deign to answer MacMungall. She showed no fear.
‘Why, Hughie, you ol’ fraud,’ she began, ‘you can take your drink and you can ram it right up your Khyber, and I hope it brings a smile to yer face because there’s precious little else I knows of as will. If it wasn’t for your old mother, sitting next to yer there, you’d starve. You don’t even know which way is up.’
Madge was furious at being called Hughie’s mother. She climbed to her feet, burning with a slow rage. ‘You old cow,’ she said. ‘We ’ad enough of you last time, drinkin’ all our stuff, shoutin’ and fightin’, gettin’ the police sent for. This ain’t the Sally you know.’
The Queen Mum jeered and gave Madge the two-fingered salute. Then she fumbled in her pram and pulled out a bottle of methylated spirits. ‘I’ve got more booze than I need,’ she said, lifting the bottle to her lips and swigging down a couple of good mouthfuls. ‘I don’t need no charity, least of all from you.’ And so saying she lowered herself regally to the ground.
For the time being the quarrel seemed over and the cavern settled again after this burst of action, but the blood in the veins of the Borribles raced a little faster. They looked at each other and an idea began to take shape among them. There was an obvious rivalry between these two women, a rivalry that had been going on for many years based, by the look of things, on the disdain that the Queen Mum bore the sedentary Madge and the dread that Madge felt for the itinerant Queen Mum. Whatever might be the cause of the hatred, it occurred to the prisoners that in the new arrival they might have found an alley.
 
 
An offer of help came to the Adventurers much sooner than they expected, in fact it came the following day. The prisoners had all met together to eat their midday meal on a bench hidden away behind packing cases in a quiet part of Euston station. They were morose and unsmiling. As always they were preoccupied with planning their escape and the rescue of the two hostages who were still locked in the wine cage at the back of the cavern.
‘Well all I can say,’ said Napoleon, biting into a stolen cheese sandwich, ‘is if we haven’t thought of something in a few days I’m going to do a Dewdrop and Erbie on Madge and Hughie. Them other meffos won’t give us any trouble … their brains is all picked.’
‘I dunno,’ said Vulge. ‘They give me the creeps.’
‘Watch out,’ said Twilight who was keeping an eye open for trouble, ‘here comes someone we know.’
Sure enough, with the squeak of the pram wheels announcing her presence, the Queen Mum was approaching, once more dressed in her plastic and sacking, shuffling noisily along in her old wellington boots, her eyes fixed on the ground, searching for coins.
Slowly she advanced on the Borribles and they watched, mesmerized. At last the Queen Mum stopped before them, her eyes rising from her scrutiny of the floor. She said nothing. In the distance, trains whistled and passengers scurried along; an announcement came crackling over the loudspeakers. At last the woman spoke. ‘Move up,’ she said with that metal voice of hers. ‘I want to sit down. I’ve got some’at to say to you, I have, yes, some’at to say.’
Still silent the Borribles squeezed up tight to each other and made room for the Queen Mum to sit. She held her pram near so that it was close enough for her to reach into, which she did, pulling out her bottle. She swigged at it between sentences.
‘I found out about you poor little ard-done-by children today, I did,’ she said. ‘Yes, I did, except you ain’t poor little ard-done-by children, are you? You’re ’orrible little Borribles.’
‘So what?’ said Napoleon. ‘You going to tell Old Bill?’
‘Old Bill!’ hooted the Queen Mum. ‘I wouldn’t pee in a copper’s ear if ’is ’elmet was on fire. Nah, what I want to know is how come you’re hand in glove with that ragbag, Madge, and ol’ Face-ache, her fancy
man. I don’t know much about Borribles but from what I ‘eard I thought they wouldn’t have anything to do with the likes of her.’
‘We ain’t in with them,’ said Knocker. ‘We ran into that place the other morning because the law was breathing down our necks. Madge caught us.’
‘I see,’ said the Queen Mum. She spat between Bingo’s feet with great accuracy. ‘Well, why don’t you shove off?’
‘Because,’ said Stonks, ‘they’ve got two of our mates locked up round the back and we can’t go without them.’
The Queen Mum nodded. ‘Hmm,’ she said, ‘you haven’t told me the half of it, ’ave yer? I may be an old tramp, you know, but I ain’t stupid. What are you doing on the road? This ain’t your manor; I can see that, no one knows London like I do.’

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