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Authors: Michael de Larrabeiti

Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Fantasy & Magic

The Borribles: Across the Dark Metropolis (31 page)

BOOK: The Borribles: Across the Dark Metropolis

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Knocker shook his head, pale. ‘I dunno,’ he said. ‘I dunno.’

Scooter’s eyes opened again. He looked round the windows of the car at the Adventurers, a yellow frieze of austere faces lit from underneath by their own torches. ‘How are my ears, eh?’ he said, and a pallid
smile touched his mouth. A drop of rain fell from the roof and splashed on his face and Chalotte leant her body forward to take the drops on her back. She touched his ears gently.

‘They’re fine,’ she said. ‘You have two of the finest ears I have ever seen … better than Knocker’s, better than Napoleon’s even.’ She wanted so much to cry but she held back.

Now Scooter’s face shone with a bright smile. ‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘That’s really good.’ His breath rattled in his throat. ‘I never would have gone in with Ninch, you know, at the beginning, if I’d known about Borribles.’

Suddenly Scooter let out a cry of pain and sat bolt upright, his eyes wide open but seeing nothing. ‘I’m glad I’m a Borrible,’ he cried with a voice that came from a hundred miles away. ‘I’ll never grow old now, never!’ Then a ball of blood burst at his lips and coloured his teeth bright crimson and he fell into Chalotte’s arms like an old limp sack, half full of sand.

Chalotte cradled the head in her arms and wiped the blood from the face. ‘Turn out the torches,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to see.’ She began to cry then, properly; not with a lot of noise but with a lot of tears.

One by one the torches were extinguished and the Adventurers stood unmoving, their hands by their sides. They said nothing until at last Knocker could bear the sound of weeping no longer, and it was not Chalotte alone who was weeping. Knocker could feel the tears on his own face; Stonks shook his head and his face was wet and not with rain alone. Napoleon, Orococco, Twilight, Bingo, Vulge and Torreycanyon, a great grief had seized them all. A brand new Borrible had died.

Knocker took a deep breath and tried to make his voice firm. ‘That Ninch,’ he said. ‘That Ninch. I promise you by every Borrible oath that ever was, by every adventure we’ve ever been through, I’ll live to see that Ninch dead.’

‘And me,’ said Napoleon.

‘And me,’ said Stonks.

‘I’m next,’ said Twilight.

Chalotte groaned and lifted her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Can’t you understand? It’s what I said. It’s this fighting makes us do things which aren’t Borrible. If there hadn’t been a Rumble hunt we wouldn’t be here now. I want to go home. We all want to go home.’

Knocker ducked into the car and eased Scooter’s body from Chalotte’s grasp and Stonks leant inside and helped him pass it through the window. Then the Adventurers joined hands in pairs and Stonks laid the body along their arms and they bore it away. Knocker remained in the car with Chalotte, next to her on the seat. He touched her shoulder.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let us leave this bloody place. We’ll soon be home. Try to remember the good things. Scooter became a Borrible. He showed us something we couldn’t have believed if we hadn’t seen it with our own eyes … That’s important, very important. Who knows what it may mean?’

Chalotte shook her head. ‘This needn’t have happened,’ she said. ‘It was my fault. If I’d been sensible Scooter would never have got out of the bus. I mean after you left, to look for the dwarfs. You see, he came round, wasn’t delirious any more. I told him what had happened and he got up; he seemed all right. He put on a raincoat and said he could talk to Ninch; tell him what was right, tell him what was wrong. How being a Borrible was better than working for Sussworth, or working for anybody.’

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ said Knocker. ‘There’s no such thing as fault between friends. You couldn’t know what was going to happen.’

Chalotte shook her head again; her eyes were swollen but dry now. ‘I knew he wasn’t well enough to go out. It was just that I believed that if he could stop the fighting, if we could make Ninch change his mind, turn him into a Borrible even, well, I thought it was worth a try … Anything to put a stop to this nonsense.’

‘It was worth a try,’ said Knocker. ‘Scooter obviously thought so.’

‘And when he heard the shouts, “A Borrible, a Borrible,” there was no holding him, “I’m a Borrible now,” he said. “I’m a Borrible and no Borrible should ignore the call from another Borrible.” He wanted to save us all, you see.’

Chalotte’s voice faltered and stopped there; she could not go on. At the same time Napoleon Boot returned and thrust his head through a window space.

‘We’ve buried him,’ he said, the harshness of his tones belied by the moisture in his eyes. He ducked his head, meaning to go, but stopped and looked at Chalotte.

Napoleon Boot had never been known to apologize to anyone, but
he did that night, the first and only time. ‘That Scooter,’ he said, ‘I was wrong about him. He was a true Borrible, one of the best.’ And then Napoleon went red in the face and pulled his head from the car.

Knocker scratched his chin. ‘I never thought I’d see the day when I’d hear Nap say something like that,’ he said. ‘It proves you were right, about Scooter changing things I mean.’

This sentiment touched Chalotte and made her smile. ‘Yes, Knocker, we’ve all changed. You have, certainly,’ she said. ‘We can’t stay here, can we? We’d better get a move on.’ She half stood and began to edge her way into the open.

Napoleon was waiting for them outside. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. ‘The others have gone to get our stuff together. The Scrappers are making sure that Ninch and his mob have left, but one thing’s for sure: Ninch will go for the SBG now. The sooner we’re on the road the better I’ll like it.’

Chalotte shone her torch and looked around her at the wrecked cars, the trampled mud, the sifting rain. ‘I’ll never forget this place,’ she said. ‘It feels like all the roads of London conspired to bring us here.’ She shut off her torch and looked at Napoleon. ‘Where did you bury him?’

Napoleon blinked. He looked tired, like he hadn’t slept for a week. ‘We just dug a hole in the ground behind the bus; we put a long bus seat in the bottom to lay him out on, then covered him with an old tarpaulin we found and then we shovelled in the mud. There wasn’t anything else we could do.

Chalotte took a deep breath. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I know.’

The others were waiting at the most westerly of the exits. This was not the main gateway as used by the scrap men; that was more to the south and under a railway line; it was a Borrible exit and only just big enough to lead Sam through.

The Adventurers stood in a huddle by the fence, the horse with them. The encounter with the dwarfs and the killing of Scooter had made them nervous and dispirited. Just when they had been looking forward to a long night of rest they had been called out in the wind and rain to do battle and see death. Now, once again, they were no longer safe; they had to march on, through the night, they knew not where. They glanced up as Knocker, Napoleon and Chalotte approached. Every noise made them jump, every gust of wind made them look over their shoulders.

Strikalite was crouching in the shelter of a car with Sunroof and Chevvy. He whistled at Knocker and the other two and they went over to him.

‘I’ve got your haversacks,’ he said, holding them up. ‘All your stuff’s ready.’

‘What are you going to do?’ asked Knocker. ‘Supposing the SBG come after yer; they’re bound to, you know.’

Strikalite shrugged. ‘It’s very difficult to search a scrapyard,’ he said. ‘I mean we could hide you easy if it weren’t for the horse. We’ve got emergency shelters underground. If that don’t work we’ll just take off somewhere for a few days. We can always come back after.’

‘Where are all the others?’ asked Chalotte. ‘I don’t see anyone.’

‘They’re all on lookout,’ said Strikalite, ‘just in case Old Bill tries to creep up on us. If they comes within two mile of here I’ll know it in a second.’

‘We’re not worried about us,’ interrupted Sunroof. ‘It’s you and the horse that’s the problem.’

‘Yeah,’ said Knocker, glancing to where his friends waited with Sam, ‘and once we get off this railway property it starts being posh going westwards; not many empty houses or schools. I don’t know what to do.’

‘I’ve got a bit of a plan,’ said Strikalite. ‘When you get out of this yard you’ll find the railway line from Liverpool Street over on your right. Follow that through Primrose Hill station …’ He glanced at his watch. ‘There’ll be no one there at four in the morning. After another half-mile the line goes into a tunnel, and when it comes out the other end it goes under another line, northbound, coming up from Marylebone.
Follow that and after a while that goes into a tunnel too, then it bears due west, alongside the Metropolitan and Bakerloo lines … and guess where it goes?’

‘Wandsworth Bridge,’ said Napoleon.

‘Leave off. No. It goes through West Hampstead, Kilburn, Willesden Green, Dollis Hill and then …’

‘Yes?’ said Knocker.

‘Neasden,’ said Strikalite. ‘It’s a pushover. You could probably make Kilburn by morning and find somewhere to hide; it’s not posh there.’

Chalotte looked at Knocker. ‘I don’t see what other chance we’ve got,’ she said. ‘Sussworth can’t watch all the railways as well as all the roads. Especially if he’s still chasing the Conkers and all them horses up on Hampstead Heath.’

‘I think you’ll do it,’ said Strikalite, and he stood up and came out of the car. Sunroof and Chevvy followed him. Once outside Strikalite removed his yellow sou‘wester and handed it to Chalotte. ‘It’s not much,’ he said. ‘It’s just to remind you to come back this way … But if I don’t see you again, well, have a good life.’

Chalotte dragged her own woollen hat from her head and gave it to Strikalite in return. ‘And you take mine,’ she said. ‘That’ll remind you of us and what happened here. We’ll be seein’ yer.’

Then it was time to go. Hands were shaken, promises made and wishes that no one would ever get caught were exchanged. Sooner than they had wanted the Adventurers found themselves alone and back on the road, a road it seemed they had been tramping for ever. They were weary in their hearts of running away from Sussworth and doubted if they could go much further. Fear of the SBG and loyalty to Sam were the only things that kept them steadfast.

Beyond the scrapyard it was murky and the ground was uneven, but at least the rain had stopped for a while. The line of march was decided on and Stonks and Torreycanyon scouted ahead while Napoleon and Bingo brought up the rear. Out on the flanks were Orococco and Twilight, and Sydney led the horse, leaving the rest of the party to walk alongside her.

As they advanced, two main railway lines came from either side and converged to form a single permanent way. The Borribles grouped themselves closer together and followed the track right up to Primrose Hill station.

The station, when they got there, just as Strikalite had said, was utterly deserted. The signals were still, the waiting rooms closed and not a lamp shone anywhere. The Borribles stole by, the platforms higher than their heads, Sam treading delicately between the wooden sleepers.

A little further on, maybe a hundred yards or so, the railway line entered a cutting, dug deep into the ground behind the blind backs of two parallel rows of tall and distinguished houses. Windows loomed high over the Borribles but no lights came on, no one shouted down from the garden walls and not a car moved on the tarmac of the roads nearby.

Now the darkness was strong and terrible, like something malignant that had been growing for a hundred years, undisturbed. It grew stronger too as the Adventurers approached the tunnel which drove into the earth here below Primrose Hill, and it flooded their eyes and brains as if it wanted to make them blind for ever. ‘We’re not going in there, are we?’ asked Twilight, and he removed his hat and ran a nervous hand through his ragged hair. ‘Look, even Sam don’t like it.’

It was true. Sam’s legs had gone stiff and he was tugging back against the rein that Sydney held in her hand. He blew through his nostrils and whinnied with fear and the Adventurers became rooted to the spot.

Fortunately Napoleon Boot suffered from no such apprehensions about dark tunnels and he soon got his friends on the move again, pushing his way through from the rearguard. ‘Blimey,’ he sneered, ‘what’s up wi’ yer? Are you the same lot who went across the Wandle with me? Come on, you bunch of fairies.’ And with this insult the Wendle spat into the air and, without waiting to see if he was being followed, marched into the tunnel and was instantly engulfed in blackness.

Knocker hitched his rucksack higher up on his shoulders. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘we have no option now.’ And with a word of encouragement to Sam he advanced in Napoleon’s footsteps and the remainder of the
Adventurers went after him, Sydney last of all, pulling the reluctant horse behind her.

It was a long march and the Adventurers advanced at a snail’s pace. Now that they felt protected from any immediate danger the tension within them lessened, and they began to realize just how weary they were; how scratched and cut they had been by the sharp metal edges on the cars in the scrapyard, how stiff and sore from the battle with Ninch’s dwarfs. They rested frequently, the rucksacks became heavier. They stumbled on the rails, they tripped over the sleepers.

This progress was not good enough for Knocker and he tried to hurry everyone along. He became more and more anxious and looked at his watch every few minutes.

‘We must hurry,’ he kept repeating. ‘If we can get to Kilburn before daylight we might find some Borribles to hide us. All the rest of it round here is more Rumble than anything else.’

His bullying and cajoling achieved little. Only Napoleon seemed to have any energy left—forging ahead and returning every now and then to tell his companions that the way was clear—but on one of these occasions his message was different. ‘Turn out your torches,’ he said. ‘There’s something odd in the distance and I don’t know what it is. Better walk as quietly as you can.’

With the torches extinguished it was possible to see what Napoleon had seen. Far, far in the distance a light was twinkling, a golden light. Not an electric lamp by the look of it, but more like the light of a burning fire.

‘I don’t reckon this,’ the Wendle continued. ‘What’s a fire doing inside a tunnel, eh? Answer me that.’

Stealthily the Borribles crept forward and the fire grew larger and brighter as they approached it. There was no doubt, finally, that it was a fire, but in the other respect Napoleon had been mistaken. The fire was not in the tunnel at all; it was further on.

As soon as he reached the open air Napoleon stopped and waited for the rest of the Adventurers to come up with him. While he waited he looked into the sky and saw that the solid darkness was fading. What had been black before was now only dark blue. It was not dawn yet,
but a new day was rolling in from the far side of the earth and would not be long in coming to Swiss Cottage.

One by one the Borribles gathered together. Just in front of them, above their heads almost, was a huge bridge carrying the northbound track from Marylebone. That was the line that Strikalite had told them to follow next. The lines that issued from the Borribles’ tunnel ran directly underneath this bridge and, passing through the brightness of the fire, were swallowed up in the deep shadow that lay in the direction of South Hampstead station. The fire itself was not large, a small campfire only, burning energetically underneath the bridge and to one side, at the mouth of a small alcove. Someone was sitting in that alcove, warming their hands.

‘Something nasty there,’ said Napoleon, loading his catapult, ‘just behind the fire, in the dark.’

‘I can’t see ’em,’ said Twilight.

‘Wendle eyes,’ said Sydney. ‘Is it a trap?’

A harsh cackle broke across the night and clanged about the tunnel entrance. Then a voice the Borribles recognized rose from the gloom in song:

‘The fancy and fat-arsed businessmen
Oo thinks they own this town,
’Ave never a clue wot’s owning them,
They don’t know up from down.
I’ll give ’em their office blocks, and stocks,
And all they love the best,
’Cos that isn’t London—that’s a pox,
It’s Queenie owns the rest!’

At the end of the singing the cackle came once more, longer. ‘There,’ said the voice, ‘I told you we’d meet again and ain’t I right? Stripe me pink but ain’t you the travellers? Real little ’splorers you are. Nearly as good as me, ain’t yer? Tunnels and railways lines, learning all the tricks. Too smart for Old Bill you lot, far too smart by half, you are.’

Chalotte gasped. ‘It’s the Queen Mum,’ she said. ‘I’d recognize her anywhere.’

Reassured a little by this knowledge the Borribles went towards the
light and stood in a half circle around the fire. On the other side of it, cheerfully drunk, reclining on the ground with all the regal aplomb of her namesake, her back against an upright girder and her pram within reach of her right hand, lay the dreadful tramp, the Queen Mum, her eyes reflecting the gold of the flames with an evil amusement.

‘Well shiver me knickers,’ she said. ‘I thought you might turn up again. There ain’t many ways across London when you don’t want to be seen, is there?’ She waved the bottle she held in her right hand and then tipped some of its contents into her throat. ‘Ah,’ she said, ‘good for the bones that is.’ She sniffed and then waved the bottle again.

‘Well, I’ll be paroled,’ she went on. ‘Is that an orse I see before me, or is it the dt’s? You won’t get far with that, will yer? I mean, the first copper who sees you walking along the street with an ’orse behind yer is likely to get slightly suspicious, ain’t he, however daft he is. Unless you pretend it’s an Irish Wolfhound or some’at, That ’orse can’t bark by any chance, can he? That would be useful.’

The Borribles ignored these remarks, and sitting down near the warmth of the fire they began to eat some of the provisions they carried with them.

‘What are you doing here, Queenie?’ asked Napoleon, squinting in mistrust at the old woman as she swigged again at her bottle.

‘Me?’ said the Queen Mum looking down her nose. ‘Me? Why shouldn’t I be here? It’s one of my places this is. Can’t be seen from the road, protected from the rain. Been here ages already. Have to hide in this hole in the wall during the day though, seen by the trains else.’ Suddenly her quick eyes went suspicious. ‘Wait a minute, you can’t stay here, nor that horse. No room in this alcove … Hang about, there’s two of you missing, ain’t there? Had their ears clipped ’ave they?’

‘One’s gone for ever,’ said Chalotte.

‘And the other’s gone for a nark,’ said Stonks.

‘Swipe me,’ said the Queen Mum. ‘If that’s the way of it I’ll be off myself, today. They can’t ask you questions if you ain’t there, can they? That what I always say. This’ ll be a good time to nip off to Yorkshire, see me relatives, get me pram loaded with grub and booze … And you lot … what are you up to?’

‘We have to go to Neasden,’ answered Knocker. ‘We only need to
hide one more day; tomorrow night we’ll make it, along the railway line.’

‘That’s right,’ said the Queen Mum, scratching her curving chin and chewing with her toothless gums. ‘About five or six miles from here, that’s all.’

‘It could be five hundred,’ said Orococco, ‘when Old Bill’s after you.’

‘Ain’t that always the same?’ said the Queen Mum. ‘Someone ought to find them coppers a good hobby, keep them off the streets.’

BOOK: The Borribles: Across the Dark Metropolis

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