Children of the Archbishop (15 page)

When they reached the boiler-sheds, Ginger went flat on his face and began reaching under the steps for his treasure. It was there all right—the curtain rod and the pointed strip of wood. Ginger was relieved. Underneath the steps of the boiler-house was his private hiding-place.

Before Ginger attempted to string the bow, however, he stationed Spud as a look-out.

“An' wotever you do,” he told him, in an unnecessary whisper, “don't 'oller. If you see old Dawly coming, stamp with yer foot. Free times.”

“Don't forget I'm 'aving second turn,” Spud warned him.

“I never said nothing about second turns,” Ginger answered. “Wot I said was
a
turn.”

“You said ‘turns.'”

“I never.”

“You did.”

“If you don't do wot I say we shan't neither of us 'ave a turn.”

“Oh, orl right.”

“An' don't forget. Stamp with yer feet. Free times.”

It was the fact that the genius of Ginger had devised a code that finally persuaded Spud to do what he was told. Simply to have been a look-out would have been unworthy, humiliating. But a code promoted the occasion. It was deeply gratifying to Spud to be able to look round the crowded playground and reflect that he spoke a language that no one else knew. There was a kind of magic in the fact that he could talk to Ginger simply by raising up his foot.

All the same, after a bit it was tedious just standing there. He couldn't even lean against the wall. Dr. Trump was very hot on lounging. And if Mr. Dawlish spotted it he would be sure to come all the way down the playground to jaw him.

“‘Ow you gettin' on?” he asked.

“You shut up,” came the answer.

“Nearly finished?”

“Shut up, I said.”

“Want any help?”

“Not from you.”

This time Spud was offended.

“What's wrong wiv me?” he asked angrily.

“You talk too much.”

“Wot about you?”

“Don' innerup. I'm working.”

The last was, as a matter of fact, untrue. Ginger had stopped working five minutes ago. His weapon was finished and he was just squatting there on his haunches, gloating over it. After all, it was
his
bow-and-arrow, and he wanted to have the first shot
without Spud bothering him. But at the last moment vanity overcame him.

“Come an' 'ave a look if you like,” he said casually. “Then get back like I told you.”

The bamboo curtain rod was certainly elegant. It was bent into a firm crescent and the blind cord was taut and twangy. Ginger began to point out the several beauties of his craftsmanship.

“See them knots,” he said. “They're nortikul.”

“Wot's nortikul?”

“Same as wot Scouts use,” Ginger replied contemptuously.

“You going to fire it?” Spud asked.

“‘Course I am,” Ginger replied. “Wot you fink I made it for?”

“Wot you going to aim at?”

Ginger looked round the playground with a marksman's eye. There was the door of the boiler-house immediately in front of him. Freshly-painted in a deep chocolate brown, it looked inviting enough. But too large. It would be no real test of his skill; at that distance he could scarcely miss it. He looked farther. On the other side of the door stood two dust-bins. They were just about right, except that he feared that he might make a noise if he hit them. Mr. Dawlish would be sure to come nosing if he heard anyone playing around the dust-bins. Admittedly, there was a tree to the left of the dust-bins. It was a large plane tree, simply standing there to be shot at. And Ginger eyed it critically. Already he could see the arrow sticking in it, buried up to the feathering in the living wood—or at least, quivering there. But even though he could see it in his mind's eye he wasn't sure that he could hit it, in actual fact. And in front of Spud he could not afford to miss.

It was while he was pondering that Mr. Dawlish took up his place in front of the school door and blew his whistle. It was a wheezy sort of blow because Mr. Dawlish always carried his whistle loose in his pocket with his pipe, and the whistle was all bunged up with fluff and fragments of tobacco. But the thin shriek reached Ginger's ears all right.

He turned angrily to Spud.

“There, you see?” he said. “That's wot comes of talking.”

Spud wrinkled up his nose.

“Garn,” he answered. “You're 'fraid.”

“I'm not.”

“Then shoot wiv it.”

“Wot at?”

“That tree.”

The tree looked farther off than ever. Ginger turned his back on it.

“Don't be soppy,” he said. “A kid could hit a tree.”

The playground had half emptied already, and with every moment the conversation was becoming more urgent. Both boys were desperate.

“Shoot at the wall.”

“An' break my arrer?”

But Spud did not reply. He was gazing intently up into the sky at a fat-breasted Putney pigeon that was coming towards them, travelling flat out towards Wimbledon on its own peculiar business.

“Bet you couldn't kill that pigeon.”

“Bet I could.”

“Bet you couldn't.”

“Gotter go in now.”

“Told yer yer couldn't,” Spud replied exultantly. “It's a rotten bowanarrer.”

It was this last remark that goaded Ginger. He was so furious he narrowed up his eyes and stuck his bottom lip out. Then, just as the pigeon passed over him, he braced himself and released the shaft.

The pigeon was safe enough. It did not even know that it had been a living target. But if Spud was right about Ginger's aim, he was wrong about the weapon. It was an excellent bow-and-arrow. The almost surgically pointed shaft rose higher and higher in the sunlight, then turned in the air and, spinning like a bullet, passed out of sight over the row of broken bottles into the girls' side.

The two boys stood there aghast, looking after it.

“Now you've done it,” said Spud.

“
I've lost my arrer. I shan't never get annuver arrer as straight as that one. It was the best arrer in the world. My bow isn't any good now. Not wivout my arrer, it isn't. It didn't half fly lovely, that arrer. Bet it's sticking into somefink. Bet I could find it if I got over. Bet I could climb that wall
…”

It was the voice of Mr. Dawlish that interrupted him. From the far end of the dormitory it came, tired and drooping, drifting like a pall of smoke across the pattern of Ginger's thoughts.

“Goo'night, boys. Goersleep. No talking.”

As Mr. Dawlish turned away, Ginger's head came up from the pillow. He had been waiting for this moment. And he had never known Mr. Dawlish to be slower. For some inscrutable reason it was to-night of all nights that Mr. Dawlish had chosen for inspecting the lockers. The stale smell of tobacco from his clothes still hung about the bedside shelves where he had been on his knees, prodding, prying, probing. But he was going now. Really going. With a last look round to see that everything was quiet—Ginger's head was flat again on the pillow as he turned—Mr. Dawlish closed the door behind him. For a moment his shadow was framed flickeringly on the glass panel of the dormitory door. Then the shadow dwindled and moved off. There came the sound of Mr. Dawlish's footsteps,
slouch, slouch, slouch
, as he shuffled off down the worn oil-cloth of the corridor.

Ginger listened carefully. The
slouch-slouches
grew fainter. Mr. Dawlish must very nearly have reached the stairs by now. The third step was faulty. It had a squeak in it as though there were a mouse trapped underneath the board. And, as Ginger listened, he heard it.
Plomp, plomp, eeyk
it came. That meant that Mr. Dawlish was practically down on the lower landing. The inmates of Colet Dormitory were now left on their honour for the night.

This suited Ginger perfectly. Rapidly, but still cautiously, stealthily, he thrust one foot out of the bedclothes. The sock was already on it. Then the other foot followed, similarly socked. It was Ginger's private good fortune that he possessed this extra pair of socks that neither Mrs. Gurnett, nor Mr. Dawlish knew anything about. And, in their way, they were a very special pair of socks: they had once belonged to a little boy who had
died
. But he needed more than socks for his purpose. And everything else had to be removed from the locker. This meant causing a disturbance—which was what he most wanted to avoid. That was why he slid out of the bedclothes through the gap that his feet had made and then crouched on the floor beside the bed, peeling off his pyjamas. He had managed to open the locker cupboard and was drawing on the blue jersey that Mr. Dawlish had checked so carefully less than five minutes earlier when Spud's head came up from the pillow of the next bed.

“You going like you said?” he asked.

“Shut up,” Ginger answered.

“You'll get copped,” Spud warned him.

“If you don't shut up, I'll bash you,” Ginger replied.

Satisfied that he had silenced Spud, Ginger went back down on all fours and proceeded to crawl under Spud's bed. Spud was all right really. It was simply that he talked too much. Ginger hadn't got any quarrel with him. At least, not now that Spud had promised to lend him his gym shoes, he hadn't. And Spud's gym shoes were important. They were a brown pair whereas Ginger's were white. And white was altogether too conspicuous a colour for where Ginger was going.

But even if Spud wasn't giving any further trouble, there were ten other boys in the dormitory. They were something to be reckoned with. And from the moment Ginger had slid on to the floor it was as though an electric current had passed from bedstead to bedstead. There were creakings, stirrings, murmurs. Eventually all ten heads came up from their pillows.

Then the whisperings began. At first they were just vague silly stuff, these whisperings. Not one piece of hard foundation among the whole lot: Spud was the only one who knew Ginger's secret. But, even so, it was obvious that the whole dormitory knew that something irregular and illicit was afoot.

“What's going on, chaps?”

The question came from a pale, thin boy over by the door. During the daytime he always wore thick glasses. And, without them, he suffered from a prematurely senile anxiety that he was somehow being kept out of things.

“Ginger's wet his bed.”

There was a general giggle at this, a ripple that ran up and down the whole length of the room. Ginger stood there tingling. He knew the boy who had spoken. It was a very small boy called Midge. And Ginger knew that, in ordinary circumstances, Midge wouldn't have dared to say such a thing. It was only because Mr. Dawlish was in his sitting-room on the floor below with one ear cocked up listening for any sounds of scuffling that it had been safe for Midge to speak at all.

Ginger bent over and spoke to Spud. He brought his face up so close to Spud's and spoke so fiercely that Spud did not attempt to argue.

“If anyone else speaks, tell 'im Ginger says he'll come and bash him. Pass it on.”

He waited long enough for Spud to repeat it, just to make sure
there was no mistake about the message. And, as a brilliant afterthought, he added: “Everyone's got to say it over to the chap he got it from. Pass that on, too.”

Then, secure in this manifestation of his own authority, Ginger sat down again and began lacing up Spud's gym shoes. The unpleasant memory of Midge's insult was gradually evaporating. In its place, there came a suffusing satisfaction as he heard his message, his orders, being passed on from bed to bed.

All the same, now that the moment had come, Ginger did not any longer feel himself quite the breed of hero who had planned the expedition. He went over to the window and looked out. The night was black and impenetrable. A kind of chill unfriendliness hung over everything. And there was a wind blowing, too, with just enough rain in it to make the slates wet and slippery.

But he had boasted too much to Spud about what he was going to do for there to be any turning back now. He had even humped up the pillow to look as though he were still in bed. His whole reputation depended on going through with the plan.

“S'long, Spud,” he said in as casual-sounding a kind of whisper as he could manage. “When I get back I'll tap free times on the window.”

Spud sat up on one elbow and looked admiringly at Ginger.

“Goo' luck,” he said.

Ginger was enjoying this moment, wanted to taste the full glory of it.

“An' better be quick about openin' the window,” he said. “I'll be in a hurry. Don't you go to sleep while I'm gone.”

As Ginger lowered himself from the sill he gave a little shiver. It wasn't that it was really cold, or that his blue jersey wasn't thick enough. Simply, that after the shut-up closeness of the dormitory, the night out here on the leads seemed suddenly hostile and noisy. The wind was swooping over the Colet Block with the sound of waves breaking. As it came purling over the roof it set one of the cowls on the chimney screaming. And Spud's gym shoes slid about on the wet tiles like skates. Ginger had to hold on to a drainpipe to keep himself upright. This was surprising because he'd been out
as far as this often enough before to recover things like shoes and vests and toothbrushes that had somehow got themselves slung out of windows. But then he hadn't been wearing rubber soles. He had been barefoot. And barefoot is always safer.

The first part of the journey was the easiest. It lay along a four-inch catwalk with the steep roof of the wash-house rising up on the far side. There was nothing to worry about here. Except Mr. Dawlish. His room looked straight out on to the catwalk. And Ginger could tell from the slanting square of light on the wet roof that he hadn't got the curtains drawn. If he should happen to be looking out now the whole game would be up. Up before it had even started. That was why Ginger had to go down on all fours and crawl. Then even the top of his back wouldn't be showing. And, even if Mr. Dawlish had his nose pressed up against the window-pane, he would never know, never even suspect, what was creeping past him in the darkness.