The Boyhood of Burglar Bill (11 page)

‘It was the team,’ said Spencer.

In the afternoon we had craft as usual with Mr Cork. I was useless at craft: 6 out of 20, position in class 44th. Dad’s dexterity had gone south in my case, down into my feet. The boys in Mr Cork’s class (4B) had warned us what to expect. The days of shaking Wyatt’s hand were dead and buried.

‘Ahlberg, penalty king – c’mere.’

Later on, in the warmth of the classroom, the sun shining in through high church-like windows, Mr Cork, with a practised wriggling action, removed his coat. The shirt sleeve of his missing arm was pinned up. The thought of that never-to-be-seen stump fascinated us. And the gone-forever arm. There was a rumour once he had a finger of it still, a souvenir complete with signet ring, pickled in a jar. And how did he tie his shoelaces, we wondered, or carve the Sunday roast?

During afternoon play something happened: the first onslaught of events. Amos had a fight with Phippy. It was a theatrical scene even by our standards. Maurice Phipps, son of the park-keeper, was a mild-mannered, skinny-looking, essentially timid boy who for some reason brought out the
worst in Amos. Amos was no bully, he’d fight anybody, but something about Maurice maddened him. Anyway, Amos must’ve been teasing or torturing Maurice, winding him up one way or another, and suddenly he went berserk. His eyes rolled up into his head and, howling like an animal, he hurled himself at his tormentor. Amos struggled to comprehend this attack, swatting at Maurice and throwing punches. But Maurice, in the place he was now in, felt no pain and showed no fear. He was an engine of fists and elbows, knees, feet and, eventually, teeth. He took a lump out of Amos’s ear. In an instant there was blood everywhere, as though that earlobe was some kind of cork in Amos which, when removed, let out just about every drop of blood he had. The encircling crowd of kids, another larger animal, howled too. How awful! How savage! We might’ve stood there unflinching and seen Amos murdered. Only then the teachers arrived, barging their way in, pouring cold water on the crime, dousing the passions. A little kid, from the sight of all that blood, fainted, fell down and cracked
his
skull, or flattened his nose or something. More blood! Eventually, the pair of them were driven off in Mrs Harris’s car to the hospital. Amos received four stitches and a tetanus injection.

∗

And so to Tugg Street at six o’clock, me with my load of firewood standing outside Starkey’s and
Vincent Loveridge
approaching. Vincent had been to the hospital too, had the day off from school, stitches for him as well in that cut above his eyebrow. And he came on with his little sister beside him, legs whizzing to keep up. Vincent, the Lord of the School, who never before had even – even slightly – noticed my existence. Came on, drew level, nodded and spoke.

‘How y’doin’?’

I think I made a wry face, indicating my heavy, cumbersome sack, and nodded in return, but said nothing, a mumble maybe. And he went on then, and so did I. And it was the best part.

19
The Worm Bank

Four days to the final.

On Saturday morning I escaped Mum’s timetable of jobs – bed-making, chamberpot-emptying – and disappeared up the park with Spencer. I’d pay for it later, but it was worth it. We set up a goal against the high hedge at the back of the bowling green and practised penalties, free kicks and so on. Spencer was a hopeless goalie, but willing. We did a bit of dribbling, acting out the pages of
The Stanley Matthews Football Book
, complete with commentary.

There was an uncertainty about Spencer’s movements – I can picture him now – an awkwardness, as I perfected my matadorial sidestep: moving left, moving left, inside of the foot, outside of the foot – darting right! It was a mystical business, almost zen-like: add your
opponent’s speed to yours, steal it from him, so to speak, and you become… a blur.
^∗

On the way out, circling the pond, we encountered Mr Skidmore. He was sitting on a folding stool, fishing. Mr Skidmore had all the gear – rods, nets, basket. We peered into his keep net to admire a couple of gudgeon swimming around. He hired us to get him a few worms.

The worm bank was a kind of ancient compost heap, added to from time to time by the park gardeners. A secret, humid place, a tropical bubble, surrounded by rhododendron bushes. It was beloved by boys and fishermen, and home to a particular breed of thin red worm perfect for catching anything from sticklebacks to pike. I’m exaggerating again.

Spencer and I took Mr Skidmore’s worm tin and
went digging. Spencer was in a speculative mood.

‘These worms could’ve dug through from the cemetery, y’know.’

The boundary fence was right behind us.

‘Worms don’t dig.’

‘Burrowed, then. It’s not far.’

‘It is for a worm.’

‘A flea can jump fifteen times its own height.’

‘Put the tin down there.’

I added a handful of worms to the wriggling mass. Spencer took up the tin again and gazed thoughtfully into it.

‘Who’d be a worm?’ he wondered.

At the park gates going out we met Tommy Pye and brother Albert coming in. They had Tommy’s brand-new puppy with them on a lead. The four of us proceeded to play with the puppy, recently christened Ramona, encouraging it to chase us, roll around with us, muck us up with its muddy paws, lick our faces. The plump little thing grew dizzy from all this attention.

Back in the street, Spencer and I explored the phenomenon of prodigies in the Pye family. Tommy, yes, what a player! But Albert, it looked like, was promising to be even better. Moreover, Mrs Pye, we’d heard and could more or less see,
was expecting her third. What kind of player would that baby be? Probably got a good kick on him even now.

‘Yeah.’ I grabbed Spencer in a headlock. ‘Better than you and he’s not even born.’

We made our way up Rood End Road to Lavender’s Bread Shop, bought a couple of penny buns, compliments of Mr Skidmore, and sat eating them on the chapel steps. I was reluctant to go home, though I knew I had to. I was steeling myself. We contemplated the scene: people and prams, bikes, motorbikes, buses, the occasional car. Life in those days, I realize now, was the complete set, the perfect jigsaw (though a ‘puzzle’ still, as always). Walking those streets, in that weather at that time, each piece – Archie, old man Cutler, Mrs Milward (anxious face at the window) – was easily familiar to me, as were the fences, front doors, dusty hedges, gutters and drains, even the flagstones themselves, which I go back and walk on now, fifty years later. And puppies (and babies) arrived to claim their places, become familiar in their turn, grow old and die. Organic, that’s what it was, a tangle of lives, like worms in a worm tin.

We went home. As it turned out, Mum was in a reasonable mood. She was standing at the front
door with a mop in her hand, talking to Spencer’s mum. Spencer said hallo to my mum, so I said hallo to his. It was a funny thing; Spencer really admired my mum. I think he liked the fact that she could fight all the other mothers with one arm tied behind her. She was a dangerous woman, but would stick up for you when the chips were down. And I liked his. She was a terrible snob, but I noticed how often she spoke well of Spencer, praised him; his accordion playing, his cooking, his overall appearance. On the rare occasion I attempted to dress up and look smart, my mother described me as ‘a bag of shite tied up in the middle’. I sometimes think we should’ve swapped.

In the afternoon we met up with Ronnie, running an errand for his gran. We accompanied him to the butcher’s. Ronnie bought a pound of sausages and a couple of pounds of scrag-end. I stared at, could not take my eyes off, the poor little skinned rabbits – ‘Bye Baby Bunting, Daddy’s gone a-hunting’ – hanging up by their front, still-furry paws from a row of hooks on a rail in the window.

Ronnie was in no hurry to return home with his shopping. We went back to the park. Tony Leatherland and some others were kicking a ball about in the swings; a couple of rowers were out on the pond; Mr Skidmore was fishing still. Ronnie
was keen to conduct an experiment with an earwig. It was generally believed, by us kids anyway, that if an earwig got into your ear (and why else call it an earwig?), it could travel from there to your brain and send you mad. Ronnie hoped to obtain an earwig and thereafter, I suppose, an ear (not his own).

If Tommy Pye was a natural, Ronnie Horsfield was a naturalist, a great gazer into muddy puddles, grassy banks and hedgerows, a lifter-up of rotting logs and corrugated-iron sheeting. Ants’ nests and frogspawn held a fascination for him. He would climb any tree if there was a nest in it. But Ronnie was a boy with a reputation. He blew frogs up with a straw. There, I’ve said it! There was other stuff too, involving fledgling birds etc. He was reported to cut the heads off sticklebacks. But it was the frog story that got to everybody. Frogs fascinated Ronnie and I guess he fascinated us. There again, I cannot say I ever witnessed him do any of this. He never spoke or boasted of it. It was just said of him that he did these things. It was his reputation.

Ronnie found no earwigs that day, it was the wrong time of year, but he did share a bit of his gran’s scrag-end with Archie, inviting him to perform a three-legged leap for it. And he would’ve
shared one of his sausages with us. He wanted us to get a fire going in the bushes and cook it. We tried begging matches from a couple of fishermen (Mr Skidmore had departed), but had no luck. Thus Ronnie’s grandma’s sausages survived and he took them home.

Four days to the final – well, three and a half now. A practice match had been arranged by Spencer, with Leatherland’s lot again, for Monday after school. Tuesday too, probably. As for Wednesday, that depended on the unpredictable Mr Cork. Would he be marching us down to GKN’s ground as usual, have us running around for an hour and a half
before
the final? You wouldn’t put it past him.

One other worry we had, looking ahead to the final itself, was: the shirts. Spencer had received a letter giving details of various presentations, speeches and so on. The teams would get to shake hands with the Mayor and Mayoress of Oldbury, Alderman and Mrs Haywood of Haywood’s Outfitters fame. How well did they know their own stock, we wondered? Were they liable to recognize it, if it shook hands with them? We’d find out soon enough.

20
Lucky and Unlucky Omens

Accles & Pollock made weldless steel tubes of every kind and for every purpose, right the way down in size to hypodermic needles. There was a story told, and popularly believed in Oldbury, that in the 1930s an American steel-tube manufacturer sent Accles & Pollock a sample of their finest-diameter tube, claiming it as ‘the smallest in the world’. The grimed and sweaty men of Oldbury had a good look at it and, eventually, sent it back with one of their own inside it.

Accles’s sports ground was up on the Wolverhampton Road. We needed a bus to get there. There were fourteen of us, all told: the team, plus Spencer, Brenda and Patrick Prosser with his well-autographed if grubby plaster cast. We charged upstairs to the smoke-filled upper deck. Normally, the conductor would have put a stop to this, but
we had him outnumbered. Tommy Pye instantly went into a panic, claiming he had lost his fare. He found it almost immediately, in his hand. Ronnie had to be dissuaded from hiding under a seat to avoid paying his. There was a scramble to occupy the front seats, a constant barrage of yelling. You’d think we were mountaineers communicating across a valley. Only Tommy Ice Cream was quiet and, temporarily, Wyatt, consuming a pork pie.

‘Read it again!’ yelled Joey.

Spencer, looking smart in a jacket and tie, took out the letter from the Parks and Cemeteries department.

‘Which bit?’

‘Read about the presentations!’

‘The medals!’

‘Ray Barlow!’

‘Right,’ said Spencer, a little wearily. ‘It says here, “On the conclusion of the contest –” ’

‘Contest?’

‘
Contest
?’

‘“Of the contest, players and officials alike –”’

‘Hey, look – an ambulance!’

In those days an ambulance (and a million other things) was considered an unlucky omen unless responded to with the appropriate ritual.

‘Touch y’collar!’

‘Touch y’collar!’

‘Don’t swallow till y’see a dog!’

‘“Players and officials –”’

‘Aren’t you ’ot in that?’

Ronnie in his balaclava makes no reply.

‘“Will assemble in two parallel lines on the –”’

‘A dog.’

‘A dog!’

‘Another dog!’

‘If we win –’

‘
When
we win.’ Ronnie (naturally).

‘When we win.’ This was Edna May, looking, I have to report, rather fetching in a Fair Isle bobble hat and with a gap-toothed smile. She had lost a tooth from a smack in the face from the ball in the semi-final. ‘Will Spencer make a speech?’

‘No,’ said Spencer.

‘Yes!’ yelled half a dozen others.

‘
Spotty
dog!’ cried Tommy Pye.

A spotty dog was considered to be a lucky omen, needing only to be observed for the luck to stick.

‘I could make a speech!’ Edna May again.

‘Me too!’ Brenda.

‘Well… don’t.’ This in a menacingly sepulchral voice, suddenly and startlingly from the back of the bus. A large, untidy-looking man with a
greyhound between his knees and a cigarette in his mouth was scowling at us. He said no more but we got the message and whispered from then on.

‘Trev.’

‘What?’

‘Trev.’

‘What?’

‘Show ’em y’leg.’

Cheerfully, proudly, Trevor rolled down his left sock to reveal a lumpy bruise on his shin. Earlier in the day he had collided with, been mown down by is nearer the truth, Nellie Shipman. Nellie Shipman was a cantankerous blind woman who, like Tommy Ice Cream, roamed the streets, though in her case at surprising speed and laying about her with a white stick, connecting in this instance with Trevor’s shin. The protests and cries of pain she regularly provoked guided her steps. None of this ‘tap, tap’ business. A blind man was another lucky omen, but not, it seems, a blind woman. Not Nellie Shipman. Not for Trevor.