Twenty-One Stories Read online

  There was no sign of anybody anywhere. The lav stood like a tomb in a neglected graveyard. The curtains were drawn. The house slept. Blackie lumbered nearer with the saw and the sledge-hammer. Perhaps after all nobody had turned up: the plan had been a wild invention: they had woken wiser. But when he came close to the back door he could hear a confusion of sound hardly louder than a hive in swarm: a clickety-clack, a bang bang, a scraping, a creaking, a sudden painful crack. He thought: it’s true, and whistled.

  They opened the back door to him and he came in. He had at once the impression of organization, very different from the old happy-go-lucky ways under his leadership. For a while he wandered up and down stairs looking for T. Nobody addressed him: he had a sense of great urgency, and already he could begin to see the plan. The interior of the house was being carefully demolished without touching the walls. Summers with hammer and chisel was ripping out the skirting-boards in the ground floor dining-room: he had already smashed the panels of the door. In the same room Joe was heaving up the parquet blocks, exposing the soft wood floorboards over the cellar. Coils of wire came out of the damaged skirting and Mike sat happily on the floor clipping the wires.

  On the curved stairs two of the gang were working hard with an inadequate child’s saw on the banisters – when they saw Blackie’s big saw they signalled for it wordlessly. When he next saw them a quarter of the banisters had been dropped into the hall. He found T. at last in the bathroom – he sat moodily in the least cared-for room in the house, listening to the sounds coming up from below.

  ‘You’ve really done it,’ Blackie said with awe. ‘What’s going to happen?’

  ‘We’ve only just begun,’ T. said. He looked at the sledgehammer and gave his instructions. ‘You stay here and break the bath and the wash-basin. Don’t bother about the pipes. They come later.’

  Mike appeared at the door. ‘I’ve finished the wires, T.,’ he said.

  ‘Good. You’ve just got to go wandering round now. The kitchen’s in the basement. Smash all the china and glass and bottles you can lay hold of. Don’t turn on the taps – we don’t want a flood – yet. Then go into all the rooms and turn out the drawers. If they are locked get one of the others to break them open. Tear up any papers you find and smash all the ornaments. Better take a carving knife with you from the kitchen. The bedroom’s opposite here. Open the pillows and tear up the sheets. That’s enough for the moment. And you, Blackie, when you’ve finished in here crack the plaster in the passage up with your sledge-hammer.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Blackie asked.

  ‘I’m looking for something special,’ T. said.

  It was nearly lunch-time before Blackie had finished and went in search of T. Chaos had advanced. The kitchen was a shambles of broken glass and china. The dining-room was stripped of parquet, the skirting was up, the door had been taken off its hinges, and the destroyers had moved up a floor. Streaks of light came in through the closed shutters where they worked with the seriousness of creators – and destruction after all is a form of creation. A kind of imagination had seen this house as it had now become.

  Mike said, ‘I’ve got to go home for dinner.’

  ‘Who else?’ T. asked, but all the others on one excuse or another had brought provisions with them.

  They squatted in the ruins of the room and swapped unwanted sandwiches. Half an hour for lunch and they were at work again. By the time Mike returned they were on the top floor, and by six the superficial damage was completed. The doors were all off, all the skirtings raised, the furniture pillaged and ripped and smashed – no one could have slept in the house except on a bed of broken plaster. T. gave his orders – eight o’clock next morning, and to escape notice they climbed singly over the garden wall, into the car-park. Only Blackie and T. were left: the light had nearly gone, and when they touched a switch, nothing worked – Mike had done his job thoroughly.

  ‘Did you find anything special?’ Blackie asked.

  T. nodded. ‘Come over here,’ he said, ‘and look.’ Out of both pockets he drew bundles of pound notes. ‘Old Misery’s savings,’ he said. ‘Mike ripped out the mattress, but he missed them.’

  ‘What are you going to do? Share them?’

  ‘We aren’t thieves,’ T. said. ‘Nobody’s going to steal anything from this house. I kept these for you and me – a celebration.’ He knelt down on the floor and counted them out – there were seventy in all. ‘We’ll burn them,’ he said, ‘one by one,’ and taking it in turns they held a note upwards and lit the top corner, so that the flame burnt slowly towards their fingers. The grey ash floated above them and fell on their heads like age. ‘I’d like to see Old Misery’s face when we are through,’ T. said.

  ‘You hate him a lot?’ Blackie asked.

  ‘Of course I don’t hate him,’ T. said. ‘There’d be no fun if I hated him.’ The last burning note illuminated his brooding face. ‘All this hate and love,’ he said, ‘it’s soft, it’s hooey. There’s only things, Blackie,’ and he looked round the room crowded with the unfamiliar shadows of half things, broken things, former things. ‘I’ll race you home, Blackie,’ he said.

  3

  Next morning the serious destruction started. Two were missing – Mike and another boy whose parents were off to Southend and Brighton in spite of the slow warm drops that had begun to fall and the rumble of thunder in the estuary like the first guns of the old blitz. ‘We’ve got to hurry,’ T. said.

  Summers was restive. ‘Haven’t we done enough?’ he asked. ‘I’ve been given a bob for slot machines. This is like work.’

  ‘We’ve hardly started,’ T. said. ‘Why, there’s all the floors left, and the stairs. We haven’t taken out a single window. You voted like the others. We are going to destroy this house. There won’t be anything left when we’ve finished.’

  They began again on the first floor picking up the top floorboards next the outer wall, leaving the joists exposed. Then they sawed through the joists and retreated into the hall, as what was left of the floor heeled and sank. They had learnt with practice, and the second floor collapsed more easily. By the evening an odd exhilaration seized them as they looked down the great hollow of the house. They ran risks and made mistakes: when they thought of the windows it was too late to reach them. ‘Cor,’ Joe said, and dropped a penny down into the dry rubble-filled well. It cracked and span amongst the broken glass.

  ‘Why did we start this?’ Summers asked with astonishment; T. was already on the ground, digging at the rubble, clearing a space along the outer wall. ‘Turn on the taps,’ he said. ‘It’s too dark for anyone to see now, and in the morning it won’t matter.’ The water overtook them on the stairs and fell through the floorless rooms.

  It was then they heard Mike’s whistle at the back. ‘Something’s wrong,’ Blackie said. They could hear his urgent breathing as they unlocked the door.

  ‘The bogies?’ Summers asked.

  ‘Old Misery,’ Mike said. ‘He’s on his way,’ he said with pride.

  ‘But why?’ T. said. ‘He told me . . .’ He protested with the fury of the child he had never been, ‘It isn’t fair.’

  ‘He was down at Southend,’ Mike said, ‘and he was on the train coming back. Said it was too cold and wet.’ He paused and gazed at the water. ‘My, you’ve had a storm here. Is the roof leaking?’

  ‘How long will he be?’

  ‘Five minutes. I gave Ma the slip and ran.’

  ‘We better clear,’ Summers said. ‘We’ve done enough, anyway.’

  ‘Oh no, we haven’t. Anybody could do this –’ ‘this’ was the shattered hollowed house with nothing left but the walls. Yet walls could be preserved. Façades were valuable. They could build inside again more beautifully than before. This could again be a home. He said angrily, ‘We’ve got to finish. Don’t move. Let me think.’

  ‘There’s no time,’ a boy said.

  ‘There’s got to be a way,’ T. said. ‘We couldn’t have got this far . . .’
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  ‘We’ve done a lot,’ Blackie said.

  ‘No. No, we haven’t. Somebody watch the front.’

  ‘We can’t do any more.’

  ‘He may come in at the back.’

  ‘Watch the back too.’ T. began to plead. ‘Just give me a minute and I’ll fix it. I swear I’ll fix it.’ But his authority had gone with his ambiguity. He was only one of the gang. ‘Please,’ he said.

  ‘Please,’ Summers mimicked him, and then suddenly struck home with the fatal name. ‘Run along home, Trevor.’

  T. stood with his back to the rubble like a boxer knocked groggy against the ropes. He had no words as his dreams shook and slid. Then Blackie acted before the gang had time to laugh, pushing Summers backward. ‘I’ll watch the front, T.,’ he said, and cautiously he opened the shutters of the hall. The grey wet common stretched ahead, and the lamps gleamed in the puddles. ‘Someone’s coming, T. No, it’s not him. What’s your plan, T.?’

  ‘Tell Mike to go out to the lav and hide close beside it. When he hears me whistle he’s got to count ten and start to shout.’

  ‘Shout what?’

  ‘Oh, “Help”, anything.’

  ‘You hear, Mike,’ Blackie said. He was the leader again. He took a quick look between the shutters. ‘He’s coming, T.’

  ‘Quick, Mike. The lav. Stay here, Blackie, all of you, till I yell.’

  ‘Where are you going, T.?’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll see to this. I said I would, didn’t I?’

  Old Misery came limping off the common. He had mud on his shoes and he stopped to scrape them on the pavement’s edge. He didn’t want to soil his house, which stood jagged and dark between the bomb-sites, saved so narrowly, as he believed, from destruction. Even the fan-light had been left unbroken by the bomb’s blast. Somewhere somebody whistled. Old Misery looked sharply round. He didn’t trust whistles. A child was shouting: it seemed to come from his own garden. Then a boy ran into the road from the car-park. ‘Mr Thomas,’ he called, ‘Mr Thomas.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I’m terribly sorry, Mr Thomas. One of us got taken short, and we thought you wouldn’t mind, and now he can’t get out.’

  ‘What do you mean, boy?’

  ‘He’s got stuck in your lav.’

  ‘He’d no business . . . Haven’t I seen you before?’

  ‘You showed me your house.’

  ‘So I did. So I did. That doesn’t give you the right to . . .’

  ‘Do hurry, Mr Thomas. He’ll suffocate.’

  ‘Nonsense. He can’t suffocate. Wait till I put my bag in.’

  ‘I’ll carry your bag.’

  ‘Oh no, you don’t. I carry my own.’

  ‘This way, Mr Thomas.’

  ‘I can’t get in the garden that way. I’ve got to go through the house.’

  ‘But you can get in the garden this way, Mr Thomas. We often do.’

  ‘You often do?’ He followed the boy with a scandalized fascination. ‘When? What right . . .?’

  ‘Do you see . . .? the wall’s low.’

  ‘I’m not going to climb walls into my own garden. It’s absurd.’

  ‘This is how we do it. One foot here, one foot there, and over.’ The boy’s face peered down, an arm shot out, and Mr Thomas found his bag taken and deposited on the other side of the wall.

  ‘Give me back my bag,’ Mr Thomas said. From the loo a boy yelled and yelled. ‘I’ll call the police.’

  ‘Your bag’s all right, Mr Thomas. Look. One foot there. On your right. Now just above. To your left.’ Mr Thomas climbed over his own garden wall. ‘Here’s your bag, Mr Thomas.’

  ‘I’ll have the wall built up,’ Mr Thomas said, ‘I’ll not have you boys coming over here, using my loo.’ He stumbled on the path, but the boy caught his elbow and supported him. ‘Thank you, thank you, my boy,’ he murmured automatically. Somebody shouted again through the dark. ‘I’m coming, I’m coming,’ Mr Thomas called. He said to the boy beside him, ‘I’m not unreasonable. Been a boy myself. As long as things are done regular. I don’t mind you playing round the place Saturday mornings. Sometimes I like company. Only it’s got to be regular. One of you asks leave and I say Yes. Sometimes I’ll say No. Won’t feel like it. And you come in at the front door and out at the back. No garden walls.’

  ‘Do get him out, Mr Thomas.’

  ‘He won’t come to any harm in my loo,’ Mr Thomas said, stumbling slowly down the garden. ‘Oh, my rheumatics,’ he said. ‘Always get ’em on Bank Holiday. I’ve got to be careful. There’s loose stones here. Give me your hand. Do you know what my horoscope said yesterday? “Abstain from any dealings in first half of week. Danger of serious crash.” That might be on this path,’ Mr Thomas said. ‘They speak in parables and double meanings.’ He paused at the door of the loo. ‘What’s the matter in there?’ he called. There was no reply.

  ‘Perhaps he’s fainted,’ the boy said.

  ‘Not in my loo. Here, you, come out,’ Mr Thòmas said, and giving a great jerk at the door he nearly fell on his back when it swung easily open. A hand first supported him and then pushed him hard. His head hit the opposite wall and he sat heavily down. His bag hit his feet. A hand whipped the key out of the lock and the door slammed. ‘Let me out,’ he called, and heard the key turn in the lock. ‘A serious crash,’ he thought, and felt dithery and confused and old.

  A voice spoke to him softly through the star-shaped hole in the door. ‘Don’t worry, Mr Thomas,’ it said, ‘we won’t hurt you, not if you stay quiet.’

  Mr Thomas put his head between his hands and pondered. He had noticed that there was only one lorry in the car-park, and he felt certain that the driver would not come for it before the morning. Nobody could hear him from the road in front, and the lane at the back was seldom used. Anyone who passed there would be hurrying home and would not pause for what they would certainly take to be drunken cries. And if he did call ’Help’, who, on a lonely Bank Holiday evening, would have the courage to investigate? Mr Thomas sat on the loo and pondered with the wisdom of age.

  After a while it seemed to him that there were sounds in the silence – they were faint and came from the direction of his house. He stood up and peered through the ventilation-hole – between the cracks in one of the shutters he saw a light, not the light of a lamp, but the wavering light that a candle might give. Then he thought he heard the sound of hammering and scraping and chipping. He thought of burglars – perhaps they had employed the boy as a scout, but why should burglars engage in what sounded more and more like a stealthy form of carpentry? Mr Thomas let out an experimental yell, but nobody answered. The noise could not even have reached his enemies.

  4

  Mike had gone home to bed, but the rest stayed. The question of leadership no longer concerned the gang. With nails, chisels, screwdrivers, anything that was sharp and penetrating, they moved around the inner walls worrying at the mortar between the bricks. They started too high, and it was Blackie who hit on the damp course and realized the work could be halved if they weakened the joints immediately above. It was a long, tiring, unamusing job, but at last it was finished. The gutted house stood there balanced on a few inches of mortar between the damp course and the bricks.

  There remained the most dangerous task of all, out in the open at the edge of the bomb-site. Summers was sent to watch the road for passers-by, and Mr Thomas, sitting on the loo, heard clearly now the sound of sawing. It no longer came from the house, and that a little reassured him. He felt less concerned. Perhaps the other noises too had no significance.

  A voice spoke to him through the hole. ‘Mr Thomas.’

  ‘Let me out,’ Mr Thomas said sternly.

  ‘Here’s a blanket,’ the voice said, and a long grey sausage was worked through the hole and fell in swathes over Mr Thomas’s head.

  ‘There’s nothing personal,’ the voice said. ‘We want you to be comfortable tonight.’

  ‘Tonight,’ Mr Thomas repeated incredulously. />
  ‘Catch,’ the voice said. ‘Penny buns – we’ve buttered them, and sausage-rolls. We don’t want you to starve, Mr Thomas.’

  Mr Thomas pleaded desperately. ‘A joke’s a joke, boy. Let me out and I won’t say a thing. I’ve got rheumatics. I got to sleep comfortable.’

  ‘You wouldn’t be comfortable, not in your house, you wouldn’t. Not now.’

  ‘What do you mean, boy?’ But the footsteps receded. There was only the silence of night: no sound of sawing. Mr Thomas tried one more yell, but he was daunted and rebuked by the silence – a long way off an owl hooted and made away again on its muffled flight through the soundless world.

  At seven next morning the driver came to fetch his lorry. He climbed into the seat and tried to start the engine. He was vaguely aware of a voice shouting, but it didn’t concern him. At last the engine responded and he backed the lorry until it touched the great wooden shore that supported Mr Thomas’s house. That way he could drive right out and down the street without reversing. The lorry moved forward, was momentarily checked as though something were pulling it from behind, and then went on to the sound of a long rumbling crash. The driver was astonished to see bricks bouncing ahead of him, while stones hit the roof of his cab. He put on his brakes. When he climbed out the whole landscape had suddenly altered. There was no house beside the car-park, only a hill of rubble. He went round and examined the back of his lorry for damage, and found a rope tied there that was still twisted at the other end round part of a wooden strut.