The Borribles: Across the Dark Metropolis (18 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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Sydney looked at Chalotte and then at Knocker. Knocker nodded and Sydney told the story of Sam the horse, the trip to Rumbledom, the escape, Inspector Sussworth and Ben the tramp. The whole saga.
The Queen Mum lit her pipe as she listened and smoked it thoughtfully. It was a long story but at the end of it she blew a smoke ring and said, ‘Well I’ll be filleted … It’s amazing what goes on behind yer back. What larks! That Ben. Many’s the boozy night I’ve spent with him down on Feather’s Wharf. He was good-looking when he was younger, he was. So was I. Used ter be a fashion model before I took to the road. Tall and willowy, I was, with eyes as big as manhole covers.’
The Queen Mum knocked the dead tobacco out of her pipe and tightened the muscles round her mouth. She straighted her back and took on a certain air. She had come to a decision. ‘It’s easy really,’ she said. ‘This afternoon, this evening, don’t nick anything for ’em but booze … no food. The strongest stuff you can get yer hands on, mind: whisky, gin, vodka. They likes vodka, throws it down so fast it don’t hit the sides of their throats. That’ll put ’em all to sleep, then you can find yer chums and get away.’
‘We thought of all that,’ said Knocker, ‘ages ago, but even if we gets ’em all drunk there’s still Madge; she might not fall for it, and she’s got the key, remember, and we’ve no idea where she keeps it. It’ll be no good if we don’t find that key.’
The Queen Mum put her pipe away and her nose twisted with pleasure like it was doing up an invisible screw. ‘You get enough booze,’
she said, ‘and them meffos will sleep for two or three days. It’s a way of life with them. As for Madge, let that be my problem. I’ve got an old score to settle with her.’ The Queen Mum stared dreamily at the station roof and dropped into a reverie, talking now to herself. ‘Like to break her spine, I would. I owes her one. She got me six months inside once, sicked the law on to me, didn’t she? Do you think I’ve ever forgotten that? No I haven’t. You leave her to me. And those poor little blighters in the cage. Teems with water down there, it does. They’ll die of gangrene if they stay there much longer. Have to put them through a mangle just to get the water out of their bones.’
Suddenly the Queen Mum broke off and came back to herself. ‘Ha,’ she said, ‘don’t take no notice of me, but I mean it, I tells yer; I ain’t letting her get away with nothing.’ She settled the clothes on her body and flapped her thick blanket of a skirt so that it fell out of its creases. ‘I’ll be off now.’
Napoleon stood and put his face close to the tramp’s, quite unabashed. ‘Do you think you could hang about between the stations with your pram?’
‘What the devil for?’ said the Queen Mum. ‘Why?’
‘Well,’ said Napoleon, ‘just so we can hide some of our bottles in it. It’ll save us a lot of time and we can nick more booze and nick it quicker.’
The old lady smiled and her chin moved up to meet her nose. ‘My boy,’ she said, ‘you remind me of me.’
 
The Borribles set to with a will. At last they had a plan. Not a detailed, thoroughgoing plan but at least they were doing something and they had an ally in the enemy camp.
That day they stole an enormous amount of strong drink, and an endless variety. Everything that could be found in shops, off licences and supermarkets they took. There was whisky from Scotland and Ireland, vodka from Russia and Poland, Bulls’ Blood from Hungary, white wine from Germany, claret from Bordeaux, advocaat from Holland, bourbon from the USA and slivovitz from Yugoslavia. In a few short hours the Borribles collected enough alcohol to sink a battleship and drown the crew as well.
Very many of these contraband bottles were stowed in the Queen Mum’s pram and were to go back with her that evening. She wanted to have some ready, she said, to distribute when she thought the time was right. A certain amount of booze was taken back to the cavern by the Borribles as and when it was stolen, so as to make sure the meffos became well intoxicated during the day, but the bulk of it all was hidden on waste ground and watched over until the Borribles were satisfied they had amassed enough to achieve their purpose.
That evening, when the shops had closed, the Borribles trudged back to the cavern heavily laden, most of them being obliged to make several journeys before their rich haul was delivered. As they entered the archway with the last of their booty, tension rose high; much fine alcohol had already been consumed and appetites were keen. The meffos wanted more and more; they desired only to drink until oblivion relieved them of the strain of living, anything to escape from the heaviness of time. They groaned and stretched out their hands and the Borribles gave them their bottles as fast as they could and the meffos gibbered with happiness and greed; their mouths slavered and their broken red eyelids were brilliant and wet. Never had these down-and-outs seen so much high-quality liquor.
MacMungall and Madge were just as greedy as the others and of course they took the pick of the booty; they always did. The table that stood by the armchairs and just in front of the alcove was stacked with containers of all kinds standing shoulder to shoulder. MacMungall’s bloated face burnt like a flare with the heat of gin and whisky indiscriminately mixed. The small smashed veins in his fleshy nose were all bursting afresh, exploding like fireworks in a dark purple sky. His eyes glinted with new blood; the ecstasy of nothingness was approaching.
Madge was suspicious, but she did drink. Even she could not resist an empty bean can full of port and Drambuie; nevertheless she grabbed Knocker by the scruff of his neck and shook him hard.
‘There’s gallons of it,’ she said, ‘gallons. What are you up to, eh? Trying to get us drunk. Well it won’t work, Sunbeam. You’ll never find the key, never.’ And Madge fell backwards across her armchair, her khaki trousers showing under her taffeta dress.
MacMungall, meanwhile, sat bolt upright and snatched a fresh bottle
from the table before him. His head rolled loosely on his shoulders as if his neck had been broken; he was halfway drunk already. ‘Remember,’ he shouted, ‘work is the screw of time,’ and he undid the top of his bottle and poured a third of its contents into his throat at one go.
Madge swore at him, leant over from her chair to his and clouted him round the head with a fist as hard as a rock. ‘Tie them kids up, you drunk,’ she screamed. ‘Tie ’em up, you hear. I don’t trust them.’
‘Aw, Madge,’ said MacMungall, ‘they’ll be all right.’
Madge leant over again and swept the bottle from the man’s hand with such violence that it hit the wall and smashed. ‘You do as I say,’ she whispered, her voice trembling with temper, ‘or I’ll slit yer throat while yer asleep, you beetle-brain, you.’
The Borribles themselves, sitting on the ground within earshot, were not worried in the slightest by this exchange. They heard it, or something like it, every night. At that moment they were much more interested in watching the results of their handiwork, their mouths falling open in disbelief.
There were drunken meffos rolling about the floor everywhere, shouting and screaming with pleasure. Others, a good many of them, were on their feet, kicking their heels up and singing, moving in strange stumbling circles of delight, their cracked voices chanting out in a wild celebration of booze:
‘Drink it and sink it and clink
it again,
Swill it and kill it and fill it again,
Booze it and lose it and choose
it again.
The world is a bad house,
A prison a madhouse,
To hell with all sober respectable men.
 
‘Here we go beer we go blear we go down,
Wine we go fine we go blind we go down,
Flesh we go meths we go death we go down.
This life is a farce,
Of the gods and the arse,
Of the universe wearing the face of a clown.
 
‘Steal the stuff feel the stuff deal the stuff more,
Quaff the stuff laugh the stuff splash the stuff more,
Curse the stuff worse the stuff nurse the stuff more.
There’s no good in thinking,
Oblivion’s in drinking,
So pickle your brains till you drop to the floor.’
It was an unearthly scene, frightening, a dance of death in the sulphurous glow of a single electric light bulb, a bulb that was made to sway and dance itself as each train passed by overhead; a bulb that made grotesque shadows move over the fungus-covered bricks of that rumbling cavern. It was a graveyard giving up its dead.
The Borribles were not allowed to watch this mournful spectacle for long. Under the constant promptings of Madge, MacMungall eventually lurched out of his armchair, fell round it and began to urge his prisoners to their feet with good strong kicks, but when he spoke there was a note of entreaty in his voice. He was anxious to get back to his drinking. ‘Come on you kids, in yer go,’ he said. ‘Don’t give me trouble, you know what us Highlanders are like when we’re roused. Highland blood is explosive, you know, like nitroglycerine.’
The Borribles did as they were ordered; they had no intention of doing anything that might interfere with the Queen Mum’s plan at this stage. Meekly they allowed themselves to be shepherded into the alcove and remained quiet while MacMungall knelt to bind their arms and legs with rope left there for the purpose, though he made but a pitiful job of it.
‘Aw, yer not bad, you kids,’ he kept saying, his breath smelling like a drain. ‘Salt of the earth, us Scots, rough diamonds. All be the same in a hundred years, so we might as well have a little drink to help us on our road, eh!’ And with this said he got to his feet and, staggering, he made his way back to his armchair, falling heavily into it and grabbing a new bottle from the table as he fell. ‘Hoots!’ he yelled. ‘This is the life!’
The moment MacMungall had left them the Borribles freed themselves and crept to the entrance of the alcove. From here they could keep an eye on Madge and also see the Queen Mum sitting by her pram in the middle of the cavern. Now it was just a question of waiting.
There were far fewer meffos on their feet now. Most of them were lying spark out on the ground, rendered legless by the power of alcohol. To those that were still awake the Queen Mum gave bottles from her own secret store. Soon they would all sleep the sleep of overfed swine, only calling out in their dreams now and then as they tried to escape the monsters that pursued and tortured them.
Gradually, as the hours went by, the cavern became still. The trains ceased to pass overhead as the timetable worked its way through to nothing, and the silence deepened. The night dripped away drop by drop, right down to the last empty second, and it was then, and only then, that the Queen Mum decided to move. She rose from her seat, massive like a gasometer.
MacMungall snored. The eyelids of Madge flickered and she lifted her bottle to her lips and swore in a half-sleep. The Queen Mum pulled her shawl of sacking tightly round her shoulders and began to pick her way gently among the unconsciouos meffos, making no sound, but Madge, sensing someone moving, sat bolt upright, her hair stiff in its halo, her head jerking out on its neck.
‘What do you want, you old bitch?’ she asked when the Queen Mum reached her.
The Queen Mum looked at the bottles on the table, most empty, some full.
‘I’m just going to take a bottle,’ she said. ‘Everyone’s had a bottle tonight, save me. That gin’ll do. I likes a drop of gin.’
‘Listen to her,’ said Madge, jeering as if to the assembled company, though there was no one awake to hear her save the Borribles. ‘Jus’ look at yer,’ continued Madge. ‘I wouldn’t give yer nothin’ ’cept a mask. You leave my booze alone, you unnerstan’? If I catch you stealing I’ll ’ave you put away again—another six months in Holloway.’
The Queen Mum’s face became angry as she was reminded of her shame. She placed her hands on her hips and rolled the top half of her body round in a circle and stuck her curving chin forward as if offering Madge a free swipe at it. ‘That’s about all you’re fit for, grassing and selling one of your own kind down the river.’
‘One of my own kind,’ retorted Madge scornfully. She crossed her ankles, leant back in her armchair and took another pull at her drink. ‘Why, you’re hardly human. For two pins I’d snap yer back like a rotten carrot.’
‘Oh yeah?’ said the Queen Mum and she clenched her fists and took half a step forward. Her brow furrowed as she searched her mind for more insults. It was clear to the watching Borribles that she was trying to goad Madge into a fight. ‘You watch yer lip, you tuppenny-ha’penny tart. Your fancy man can’t help you now, he’s too drunk even to run away.’
Madge looked at MacMungall. He lay deep in his chair, his mouth open, his red eyes spongy and his nose a blazing amethyst. She turned her head again and stared down the cavern. All she saw was an uneven carpet of human bodies stirring only slightly, close, warm and murmuring like fat flies on dead meat.
‘I don’t need help,’ said Madge at length, ‘not with the likes of you I don’t. Piss off.’

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