Tuppence To Spend (33 page)

‘No!’ Sammy shrieked, turning wildly this way and that to find a way out of the circle. But there was no escape. The boys pressed closer upon him, their chanting louder, the yells ringing in his ears, the words hammering at his brain. ‘Thief, thief, thief! Cry-baby, cry-baby! Jail! Dead, dead,
dead
!’

‘No! No, she’s not dead, she’s not, she’s not! She’s coming for me, she’s coming today! Let me out – let me out!’ He beat frantically with his fists, blows landing at random on the nearest boys who yelled loudly and punched him back. Within seconds the taunting had become real violence, a scrambling mêlée of boys pummelling each other, but with Sammy at the bottom of the pile and receiving the most blows.

‘Oy, what’re you doing?’ Tim Budd, who wasn’t averse to a fight himself, had arrived on the edge of the group. He’d seen the boys gather round Sammy and approached a little warily. Brian Collins was his own arch enemy but he was a lot bigger than Tim. Still, you couldn’t let him bash up a little kid like Sammy Hodges. He grabbed the collar of the nearest boy and pulled him over. ‘What are you doing? Why are you all getting on to Sam Hodges?’

Nobody took any notice. The boy Tim had dragged away shook himself free and aimed a punch at Tim. It hit him glancingly on the shoulder, which gave Tim the right to join in, and he threw himself into the fray, yelling at the top of his voice.

‘Leave the kid alone! He hasn’t done nothing to you. Leave him alone!’

‘You mind your own beeswax, Tim Budd!’ Brian Collins panted. He stood up, forgetting Sammy for a
moment, and glowered at Tim. ‘Nobody asked you to come butting in.’

‘Well, I come without being asked, then. Fight someone your own size.’ Tim stood pugnaciously, his fists clenched. ‘Or else fight me. Unless you’re scared,’ he added with a sneer.

Brian Collins laughed contemptuously. ‘Scared? Scared of you? You couldn’t fight a blooming flea!’

‘Try me, then.’ Tim squared up as his father had taught him. Frank Budd had done a bit of boxing himself when he was in the Army, and had taught both the boys to defend themselves. He’d always impressed on them that they weren’t to start fights, but if they were hit first then it was all right to retaliate. Remembering this, Tim lifted his head and stared Brian Collins challengingly in the eye.

‘All right then you asked for it!’ He threw a punch and hit Brian squarely on the nose. Brian yelped and backed off, his hand to his face, and Tim saw blood run from between his fingers. Surprised, impressed and a little shocked, he looked down at the hand that had dealt the blow and staggered back as Brian flew at him, flailing punches around his head and almost knocking him to the ground.

Caught off balance, Tim stumbled for a moment, but recovered and ducked his head to rush in under Brian’s guard. He caught the bigger boy a hard blow just under his ribs and Brian yelled again and doubled over. Tim followed swiftly with another punch that winded the bigger boy and a quick jab to the jaw. Brian’s fists were windmilling wildly and Tim, who had now got into his stride, danced around him, ducking and weaving, just out of Brian’s reach, then dived in and struck one more hard blow to the jaw, which sent him spinning. He felt quite disappointed when Brian fell to the ground and lay there, panting and glaring, but making no attempt to get up.

‘Come on!’ he shouted, hopping from foot to foot and
jiggling his fists in front of him as he’d seen boxers do at the pictures. ‘Come on! I haven’t finished yet!’

‘Oh yes, you have,’ a grim voice announced and the boys all looked up, startled, to see Mr Wain, the headmaster, standing over them. How long he’d been there none of them knew, but his face was like thunder as he gripped Tim’s collar to yank him away and bent to jerk Brian Collins to his feet. ‘I don’t know what that was all about, but I’ll have no fighting in my school. You’d better both go home now and get yourselves cleaned up. Then you can come and see me in the morning. I’ll have a few words to say to you. And as for the rest of you –’ he cast a stern eye over the circle of children who were watching, subdued, as he shook the two combatants by the scruff of their necks ‘– you’d better not start this again. I mean it – any more fighting or bullying and there’ll be severe punishment for all of you.
Very
severe punishment.’

Nobody spoke. They knew what Mr Wain meant by severe punishment. They knew, too, what would happen to both Brian and Tim next morning. A caning for the pair of them, never mind who had started it. One or two of them turned and looked at Sammy, who had got up and brushed himself down, and a faint mutter went round them as to whose fault it really was.

‘Please, sir—’ Sammy began, but Mr Wain turned and frowned at him. ‘Please, sir – it wasn’t—’

‘That’s enough! I don’t want to hear any more about it. I’ve told you, there’s to be no more fighting, d’you understand?’ He looked again at Brian and Tim. ‘I’ll see you both in the morning.’

He stalked away and the children watched him silently. They glanced at each other and shifted their feet. Then Tim shrugged and said loudly, ‘Well, I don’t care anyway. I was winning. And you’re a bully, Brian Collins, a rotten bully. You leave this kid alone in future, all right? Or you’ll have me to answer to.’

He took Sammy by the shoulder and marched him away to join Keith, who was standing on the fringe of the circle. With the eyes of the others following them, they walked out of the playground and went down the lane.

Brian Collins wiped some more blood from his nose and felt it tenderly. It seemed to have swollen to at least twice its usual size and he was pretty sure he’d have a black eye as well. He could feel it throbbing. He wouldn’t be surprised if that Tim Budd hadn’t nearly knocked out some of his teeth.

‘I’ll get my own back,’ he said viciously. ‘You see if I don’t.’

But the others had begun to drift away. Tim’s performance had impressed them. He’d been like a real boxer, dancing about and punching properly, while Brian had just flailed about with his fists, hitting at random and relying on his size to win the fight. Just as he’d always relied on his size to be boss of the playground.

Brian found himself standing alone. His face hurt all over and there was still blood trickling down his chin. He sniffed and turned away quickly before anyone could see the tears in his eyes. He stamped out of the playground and turned in the opposite direction from Tim. ‘I’ll get my own back,’ he muttered to himself. ‘You see if I don’t.’

What with the excitement of the snow and with Ruth working afternoons, there didn’t seem to have been time for Sammy to bring Tim and Keith home to see Silver, but Ruth had changed shifts that week and could be home after school, so while they were having tea that evening he asked if he could bring them next day. He knew that if it hadn’t been for Tim he could have been really ‘bashed up’ by Brian Collins, and it was the only way he could think of to thank his rescuer.

‘Of course you can bring them home. I’ll make some
rock cakes and cocoa. Just the two, mind,’ she added. ‘I don’t want the house full of boys.’

Sammy did as she’d suggested and brought Tim and Keith home the following afternoon. The visit was a great success, making up for the caning Tim had received for fighting, and next day Sammy Hodges’ parrot was the talk of the playground. Boys crowded round him, asking questions, or pretending not to believe that there was a parrot at all, every one of them desperately anxious to be invited. Sammy found himself the hero of the school.

‘I can take two a day,’ he said. ‘Auntie Ruth says she can’t have no more.’ He glanced sideways at Brian Collins, hanging around the fringe of the group, pretending to be indifferent, and chose two of his biggest rivals. ‘Freddy Shaw and Dick Powell, that’s who I’ll take today.’

Ruth saw them coming down the lane and hurried to put the kettle on. She watched them with some surprise. They were big, rough-looking boys, not at all like Tim and Keith who had come yesterday and been polite and well-behaved, and thanked her for having them when they went. She asked them in, nevertheless, making them wipe their feet on the mat, and then gave them the rock cakes and cocoa. While they were consuming these she delivered her lecture about Silver.

‘He’s an African grey parrot. They all have this nice red breast –’ the boys sniggered and she fixed them with an eye of ice ‘– and a big beak. Don’t touch him, because he can bite very hard with that beak and he doesn’t like to be touched by anyone he doesn’t know well. He came home on a ship with my husband, who was a sailor, and my husband and the other sailors taught him a lot of words. Swear words, some of them.’ She gave them a stern look. ‘I don’t want you going home and repeating any of these words and saying you learnt them at my house, you understand?’

‘Really
bad
swear words?’ Freddy Shaw asked, in a tone that suggested nothing could be too bad for him to repeat.

‘Really bad words.’ Ruth nodded. ‘Doesn’t he, Sammy? In fact,
we’re
not allowed to use the words Silver can say.’

The boys looked scornful. Ruth thought they probably knew all the words Silver could teach them. She wondered if Sammy had chosen the roughest boys in the class because they were the ones he most wanted to impress. She hoped it wasn’t because they were the ones he liked best. She knew Freddy Shaw. He came from one of the poorer Portsmouth streets. He had arrived with the second lot of evacuees and was billeted at the other end of the village with Dotty Dewar, who seemed to live in a permanent state of chaos and had really wanted a nice strong girl to help her with her own brood.

Ruth didn’t know the other boy’s name, but she knew he came from the same area and lived in Milly Minns’ cottage, next door to Dotty. Both boys looked scruffy, with holes in their clothes, and didn’t look as if they’d shown their faces a flannel or their hair a comb for a week. But then, all Dotty Dewar’s children looked like that. Milly Minns didn’t have any children, but Ruth thought that if she had they wouldn’t have been much different.

‘Silver doesn’t talk all the time,’ she went on, just in case he decided to have one of his rare silent days. ‘But if I give him something nice like a sunflower seed, he’ll probably say something. He imitates noises too, like the kettle whistling –’ if she’d known that when he first came, she wouldn’t have had a whistling kettle ‘– and birds singing outside. And when he learns new words he says them in the voice of the person talking to him.’

‘Like a ventriloquist,’ Freddy said. He was a big boy, looking at least two years older than Sammy, the sort of boy who would crook his arms to show off his muscles. ‘I heard one on the wireless.’

‘Ventriloquists
throw
their voices, stupid,’ the other boy said. ‘It’s depressionists that imitate people.’

‘
Im
pressionists,’ Ruth said. ‘But Silver can throw his voice too. When he does a kettle, it sounds just as if it was out in the scullery.’

‘Well, he hasn’t done nothing yet,’ Freddy said scornfully and turned to Sammy. ‘You said he could say all sorts of things.’

‘He can,’ Ruth said, not liking the threatening tone in his voice. ‘I’ve told you that, and I’ve also told you he doesn’t talk
all
the time.’ Just whenever you don’t want him to, she thought with a bitter look at the silent parrot, and never when you do want him to. She took a sunflower seed from the bowl and held it out to him. ‘Come on, Silver, come on boy, it’s teatime. What do you say at teatime, then? I’m a little teapot? Come on, Silver, clever boy, clever bird.’

The parrot eyed her suspiciously. He cocked his head and looked sideways at the sunflower seed. Then he shuffled along his perch, closer to Sammy. The boys waited sceptically. Ruth gave the sunflower seed to Sammy and he held it out.

Silver reached out his neck and took the seed in his beak. He cracked it, tilted his head sideways and whistled loudly.

‘Sammy, Sammy, shine a light,’ he said in Sammy’s voice. ‘Ain’t you playin’ out tonight?’

The boys’ mouths fell open.

Ruth stared at Sammy in amazement. ‘Did
you
teach him that?’

‘I just said it to him a few times,’ Sammy said proudly. ‘I didn’t know it was enough for him to copy, though.’

‘He picks things up easy as winking from people he likes,’ Ruth said. ‘He likes you, Sammy, that’s obvious.’

The two boys stared at Sammy and back at the parrot. ‘What else can he say?’

‘Well, I’ve sung to him a bit,’ Sammy said, reddening when the boys laughed.

‘Sung? What’ve you sung – love songs?’ They burst into giggles, their hands over their mouths.

‘Course not. Proper songs – “Run, Rabbit, Run”, and “I’ve Got Sixpence, Jolly Little Sixpence”.’

‘I’ve got sixpence,’ Freddy continued, ‘to last me all my life. I’ve got tuppence to spend –’ they were all singing now ‘– tuppence to lend, and tuppence to take home to my wife!’

Ruth clapped, laughing as they finished. The boys gazed at Silver again.

‘What else have you taught him?’

‘Nothing else,’ Sammy said. ‘I didn’t even know he could say all that.’ He looked flushed and pleased, and Ruth gave him an approving smile.

‘You’ll be able to teach him all sorts of things now he’s started,’ she said. ‘He’s got your voice off to a T.’

‘Sammy, Sammy,’ Silver said again, ‘shine a light, ain’t you playin’ out tonight?’

The boys looked at each other and giggled.

‘I ain’t heard it swear yet,’ Freddy said, with an accusing look at Sammy. ‘You told Dick and me it could swear.’

‘Bugger me,’ Silver said obligingly. ‘Sod the little buggers. I’m a little teapot, short and stout.’

‘There, you see,’ Sammy said, but Silver was now in full spate and they flapped their hands at Sammy to shut him up and listened in awe.

‘Splice the mainbrace. Sippers and gulpers. Here’s my handle, here’s my spout, when you fill me up you’ll hear me shout, lift me up and
pour me out
.’ He shuffled back along his perch and stretched his neck out towards Ruth. ‘Give us a bite to eat then, Ruthie. Give us a kiss. I love you, Ruthie. Bugger
me
.’

There was a moment’s silence.

‘Cor,’ Freddy said, ‘he’s
smashing
.’