The Borribles Go for Broke Read online

  Back in the hustle of the market the Borribles slowed the pace of their escape, walking at first and then loitering to see if the Woollie was still in pursuit.

  ‘We’d better split up for a while,’ said Twilight to his gang. ‘I’ll take Chalotte back to Spitalfields while you others keep your eyes open for that copper; he may have gone back for help.’

  Chalotte thanked the Bangladeshis and walked away from them, following Twilight. She found it hard to believe that she was safe and she smiled, taking pleasure in the business of the market and the feel of human bodies as they pushed past her. The sun, high in the sky, warmed the whole street, and the smells of strange spices drifted on the air. Sandalled Indian women went softly by, enveloped in saris that sparkled with gold. The costers still shouted at the passers-by, their voices vulgar and outrageous and cracking under the strain of many hours of bawling. Chalotte touched Twilight on the arm. The shirt he wore was gaudy, orange, sickly and luminous. His trousers were blue and too big for him, torn in several places; stolen trousers. His feet were bare but in the hot summer that was how he preferred to be. After all, the pavements were warm and cushioned in dust.

  ‘Yes?’ he said.

  ‘Thanks for rescuing me,’ said Chalotte. ‘I was just looking at all this and wondering where I would be now if it hadn’t been for you.’

  Twilight tried to appear unconcerned. ‘Well I heard you call out, didn’t I? No Borribles can resist that. Besides, I was sent to look for you.’

  ‘Look for me?’ said Chalotte in surprise. ‘I never saw you before. I don’t even know your name, even if you’ve got one.’

  ‘Course I have,’ said the brown Borrible.

  ‘What is it then?’

  ‘Twilight,’ said Twilight.

  ‘Twilight,’ said Chalotte. ‘That is a good’n and I bet a good adventure lies behind a name like that. You must tell me how you won it some day.’

  It was quite normal for Chalotte to speak to Twilight in this manner. Names and how they are won are important to Borribles because for them a name is not given but earned; it is the only way. An adventure of some sort must be completed and out of that deed will grow a name. An adventure of any kind will do. It doesn’t have to be stealing or burglary, though it often is because that’s what Borribles prefer.

  Chalotte studied her companion. ‘And while we’re on the subject, how come you know my name?’

  ‘I know your name,’ said Twilight, ‘for the simple reason that everyone knows your name and how you won it. It is one of the greatest Borrible stories ever told but I have never met anyone before who was on the Great Rumble Hunt. When we get home I’d like you to tell me about it. I have heard things that are hard to believe.’

  Chalotte’s face became stern. ‘They were probably true,’ she said. ‘It all got a bit nasty. Borribles should not have been involved in such things. Five Borribles were killed, five good Borribles. It was a waste. I don’t mind telling you the story in return for you rescuing me, but it is not a happy story.’

  Twilight smiled and his teeth were bright against his dark skin. Like all Borribles he loved stories, both the telling and the listening, but for the present there was no time and he led Chalotte away from the market into less crowded streets. He took her past rows of shattered houses and dingy blocks of buildings where Bangladeshi families, half-hidden among the bright colours of the week’s wash, stood on balconies to keep an eye on their children as they played in the glass-strewn streets. But the Borribles walked on across a derelict stretch of ground that had been bombed flat in the war and not built on since. Here people dumped their rubbish and here the weak sprouts of pale grass fought against the sun and died for lack of water.

  On the far side of the bomb-site stood a straggle of terraced houses, leaning one against another as if tired of life and desiring demolition. They were gaunt and reared up against the semicircle of blue sky like an eroded cliff. They had boards nailed over their windows and sheets of corrugated iron over the doors. Their areas were half full of rubbish, their cellars smelt of cats, both alive and dead. The steps of the houses were covered with broken bricks and lumps of plaster; dangerous shards of shattered milk bottles glittered in the sun like silver. The place was a desert of dust and it smelt of excrement and trouble.

  It was typical of a Borrible hideout. Borribles are obliged to live where they can and they prefer these abandoned and decaying buildings which are rarely, if ever, in short supply. If a house is already occupied they will sometimes use its cellar; they also camp overnight in schools, especially during the holidays when the buildings are left empty and unused for long periods.

  In the middle of the bomb-site Twilight halted. ‘I was out looking for you,’ he said, ‘because we found somebody who said she’d come to see you.’

  ‘See me?’

  ‘Yeah, we came across this girl wandering about on the other side of Spitalfields. White girl, come all the way across London, so she reckons. We checked her ears; she’s Borrible all right. We brought her home and then went out to look for you.’

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Something funny,’ said Twilight, ‘but I’ve forgotten it, something like Harry or Charlie.’

  Chalotte drew a breath. ‘Was it Sydney?’

  ‘That’s it, rings a bell that does, ding-dong.’

  ‘The Great Rumble Hunt,’ said Chalotte, ‘she was on it too, the Adventure to end all adventures.’

  Twilight put a hand on Chalotte’s shoulder. ‘Let’s go and see her then,’ he said, and he led the way up the broken and littered stairs of his house.

  The front door clanged open, swinging on a loose wooden frame. Inside, half submerged in a litter of bottles, sacks and tattered packages bound with hairy string, lay an old man. His face was unshaven and his shapeless mouth snored. Twilight stepped carefully round the unconscious form and guided Chalotte past a jagged hole in the floorboards.

  ‘I can never understand how he don’t fall into the cellar,’ said the Bangladeshi, ‘but he don’t.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘Some meffo,’ said Twilight. ‘He’s harmless, apart from the smell that is.’

  The bare wooden stairs were splintered and weak, slippery too with chunks of fallen plaster and slivers of broken windowpanes. At the very top of the house was a small landing with three doors leading from it. Twilight opened one and showed Chalotte into a boxroom which had a sack over the window. On the floor were three old mattresses, darkly stained. A few torn blankets had been thrown across them as well as some newspapers for undersheets and insulation. In a corner, sitting on one of the mattresses, her back against the wall, head in hands, elbows on knees, dressed in worn trousers and a green T-shirt with holes in it, sat Sydney, her eyes closed.

  Chalotte crossed the room and crouched to the floor. ‘Sydney,’ she said. ‘Sydney.’

  Sydney’s eyes flickered once or twice as she tried to come awake. She stared through a heavy glaze of weariness. Chalotte spoke again.

  ‘You haven’t walked all the way from Neasden, ’ave yer?’

  Sydney yawned and rubbed her face. It was a kind face and Chalotte had always liked it. ‘What’s up, Sid?’ she asked. ‘You haven’t hiked across London just to say hello, I’ll be bound. What’s up?’

  Sydney looked at Twilight who leant against the door, listening. She hesitated.

  ‘He’s all right,’ said Chalotte, ‘you can speak free.’

  ‘I had a strange message,’ said Sydney, ‘a Borrible message, passed from hand to hand, you know. I’d never seen the bloke who gave it me, ain’t seen him since neither. He said it had come clear across London, but he didn’t know where from. Then he ran off.’ Sydney reached into a pocket and pulled out a ragged scrap of lined notepaper. She gave it to Chalotte who smoothed it out on her knee and read aloud.

  ‘“Sam is still alive. Last seen in Fulham. Needs help. Signed, A Borrible.”’ She whistled. ‘Well that’s good news …’ She glanced into Sydney
’s face. ‘Well, isn’t it?’

  ‘I dunno, it seems a bit mysterious to me. I’m not sure what to make of it.’

  ‘Who’s Sam?’ said Twilight.

  ‘Sam’s a horse,’ said Chalotte. ‘He saved all our lives when we were in Rumbledom.’

  Sydney shifted on the mattress and hoisted herself upright. ‘The horse belonged to a Borrible-snatcher,’ she explained. ‘We had to kill the man before we could get away. I mean Knocker did.’

  ‘Knocker and Adolf,’ said Chalotte.

  ‘We had to leave Sam when we went underground on our way home,’ continued Sydney. ‘I hated doing that, seeing how much we owed him, and I made a promise that if I ever got out of that Adventure alive I would go back to get him … And I meant it, but I’ve never known where he went or what happened to him. This is the first news I’ve had.’

  ‘So?’ said Chalotte.

  ‘Well,’ said the Neasden girl, ‘I got this message about two weeks ago and I didn’t know what to think … The best thing seemed to be to come and see you, so we could talk it over. I mean we owe it to Sam to see him all right if we can. Somebody might be working him to death.’

  Chalotte stretched out on a mattress and was silent. What Sydney had said had brought the whole terrifying expedition back to her. What had started as a great Adventure to win names had turned sour and five Borribles had died. Borribles weren’t supposed to die, but those five had. Knocker, whom Chalotte had especially liked; Orococco, the black boy from Tooting; Torreycanyon, the square-faced Borrible from Hoxton, and most dangerous of all, the twice-turned traitor and Wendle warrior, Napoleon Boot. And there had been Adolf too, a four-named Borrible from Hamburg, burnt alive in the halls of Rumbledom. All of them dead. Chalotte sighed. The Great Rumble Hunt had been madness. Never again would she take part in such an expedition.

  ‘I’m sorry about Sam,’ she said at length, ‘really sorry, but I tell you straight, I’m not marching all the way to Fulham and back on the strength of a dodgy note that’s come out of the dark, not a chance.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sydney, ‘but I made a promise, a definite promise to Sam.’

  Chalotte shrugged her shoulders and quoted from the Borrible Book of Proverbs. ‘“To keep a bad promise does not make it good”,’ she said.

  Sydney turned her head and stared at the floor. There was silence.

  Twilight waited but the girls did not continue the conversation. He unfolded his arms and pushed himself away from the wall. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘Sydney must be very tired, she ought to rest this afternoon, really, and while she’s asleep I’ll go back to the market with some of my mates. When she wakes up there’ll be a feast ready for her.’

  ‘And me too?’ asked Chalotte.

  ‘Of course,’ said Twilight. ‘I’m very good at stealing specialities.’ He went to the window and raised the sacking to look out over a jumble of collapsing houses and sloping slate roofs. The whole vista trembled in a heat haze. ‘I tell you one thing, Sydney,’ he said. ‘Chalotte may have had enough adventures, but I haven’t. If you ever decide to go looking for your horse, I’ll come with you.’

  Sydney looked at Chalotte and smiled. ‘Thank you, Twilight,’ she said, and rolling a blanket to make a pillow she curled her body on the mattress and in a few seconds was fast asleep.

  ‘And so,’ said Chalotte, ‘eight Borribles were chosen, the best runners and fighters and catapult artists in all London.’

  Twilight ladled some curry into Chalotte’s soup plate and she leant back against the wall. She and Sydney were sitting side by side on two metal milk crates. Twilight and six of his Bangladeshi friends squatted round a large black saucepan. They had come to eat and to hear the story of the Great Rumble Hunt.

  Twilight had been as good as his word. While Sydney had slept and Chalotte had waited he had revisited the market. In less than an hour he’d returned with everything he needed to prepare a rich and highly flavoured curry. Cooking it had been no problem; most Borribles are good electrical engineers and Twilight was no exception. In the damp basement of his house was an old electric stove and the Bangladeshis had long ago mended it and tapped into the nearest supply to provide themselves with power. They had all the electricity they wanted.

  ‘Where did they come from,’ said Twilight, his mouth crammed, ‘these eight Borribles?’

  ‘From all over,’ Chalotte went on. She talked slowly, between spoonfuls. The curry was hot; her eyebrows perspired, her forehead shone. Sydney was so busy eating that she hardly bothered to join in the story telling, but she nodded vigorously every now and then.

  ‘There was a Humper from Hoxton, a Totter from Tooting; Sydney is a Nudger from Neasden, there was me and there was a Wendle from Wandsworth. They live underground they do, vicious and sly Wendles are.’

  ‘I’ve heard about them,’ said Twilight, ‘never seen one.’

  ‘You ain’t missed much,’ said Chalotte. ‘Anyway, we all met up in Battersea and Knocker trained us. He came along in the end although he shouldn’t have done because he had already earned his name, which we hadn’t. Spiff wangled that … he’s double crafty is Spiff.’

  Sydney moved her head up and down as fast as she could.

  ‘Spiff?’ said Twilight.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Chalotte, ‘Spiff. A Battersea Borrible and sharp enough to cut yer nails with. I don’t like him. Anyway, we nicked a boat and went up the River Thames in it … Then we went underground with the Wendles, they’re greeny-faced and not a bit friendly. The one we had with us, Napoleon Boot, well we didn’t know if we could trust him or not, so we didn’t. Later on, when we came out on the other side of Wendle territory we were captured by a Borrible-snatcher and his son. Diabolical that was, he starved us and made us steal for money. We only escaped by killing him. We we left we took Dewdrop’s horse and cart, that’s how we took Sam to Rumbledom and lucky we did too. There was a terrific battle at the end and we were surrounded by hundreds of Rumbles and we would have died for certain but Sam saved us. Rumbles can’t stand horses, you see, horses eat Rumbles, find ’em tasty, reminds ‘em of hay and that. But Adolf was killed there; it was a mess all right with Rumbles shouting and waving their spears. We were all wounded and this big entrance came crashing down and Adolf couldn’t get out of the way. Great bloke he was … We never saw him again, dead, incinerated. Orococco was on fire and Knocker had deep burns across the palms of his hands.’

  ‘That’s his second name,’ added Sydney, ‘Burnthand.’

  Chalotte went on. ‘We got away and you might have thought that was the end of it, but it wasn’t. We were in bad shape and Sam took us down to Wandsworth but Napoleon and Knocker quarrelled and we were betrayed by Napoleon and the Wendles locked us up. They have a leader, not like ordinary Borribles, called Flinthead, greedy and hard. He’s the worst Wendle of all the Wendles, and that’s saying something. He would have killed us for sure if Napoleon hadn’t changed his mind and helped us escape. But we didn’t get off lightly, I can tell you. Four of us didn’t come back—Knocker, Napoleon Boot, Orococco and Torreycanyon. They stayed behind to guard a tunnel so that we could have time to get away. We never saw them again either, slaughtered by Flinthead they were. You know, I’ve never wanted to kill anyone but I would him. So only five of us survived to tell the tale: Sydney and me, Bingo from Battersea, Stonks from Peckham and Vulge from just down the road here in Stepney. Afterwards, Borribles called it the Adventure to end all Adventures but I call it madness. We lost five good friends, if you count Napoleon, and nothing’s worth that, not the greatest Adventure in the world, not even the best name you could ever earn.’

  ‘I like your story,’ said Twilight. ‘I have never heard the truth of it before but the rumours say something else, something about a great treasure, a box of Rumble money.’

  Chalotte spooned some more curry into her plate and put the lid back on the black saucepan, then she looked at Twilight and her eyes narrowed to a thin line of hardness.

  ‘That was t
he cause of all the trouble,’ she said. ‘If it hadn’t been for the treasure Adolf wouldn’t have been killed, Napoleon wouldn’t have betrayed us and Flinthead would have let us pass through the underground citadel of the Wendles without bothering us one bit. Without the money no one would have died, except Rumbles.’

  ‘So Flinthead got the treasure,’ said Twilight.

  ‘No, he didn’t,’ said Sydney. She finished eating and put the empty dish down beside the saucepan.

  Chalotte allowed herself an ironic smile. ‘We were taking it out in the boat. How we agreed to take the money I don’t know; we wanted to get our own back on Flinthead, I suppose. We were crossing the great mudflats of the River Wandle, just after it goes underground. Hundreds of Wendle warriors came at us, frightening they are, carrying Rumble-sticks, catapults, dressed in rubber waders and little orange jackets they nick off the roadmen; they got the treasure away from us. Stonks, the strongest Borrible I’ve ever seen, he got it back, but in the struggle the box slipped overboard and the money went down into the mud, a quarter of a mile deep it is there, so they say; not even Flinthead can get it out now. The mud is the best place for it, too. Borribles shouldn’t have money, they never have had.’ Chalotte looked up and quoted her favourite proverb, ‘“Fruit of the barrow is enough for a Borrible.”’

  Twilight wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘This Vulge,’ he said, ‘he’s a survivor, according to you, and he lives in Stepney. Well, that’s not far. Why don’t we go and see him tomorrow? You could ask him what he thinks about the horse, about the message.’

  Chalotte was silent but Sydney looked her straight in the eye. ‘I’d be willing to do that, and anyway it’d be nice to see him again. He was badly wounded in the leg, limps now.’