The Borribles: Across the Dark Metropolis (32 page)

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Authors: Michael de Larrabeiti

Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Fantasy & Magic

BOOK: The Borribles: Across the Dark Metropolis
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She pushed her hand under her brown raincoat and pulled out a large round watch. ‘Luminous dial,’ she said. ‘Used to belong to Madge. Well she don’t need it now, by crikey she don’t. She’s got all the time in the world where she is.’ The Queen Mum laughed briefly at her joke and stowed the watch away. ‘No,’ she said, and stopped laughing abruptly. ‘You ain’t got time to get there tonight. You’ve only just got time to hide … that horse is a problem.’ She raised her bottle to her lips and the smell of spirit reached the Borribles. They shifted their feet awkwardly. The dark under the bridge was no longer so dark. They could see the Queen Mum clearly now and not because of the firelight either. They should be going, certainly. But where?
‘We’re wasting time,’ said Knocker. ‘We must hide.’
The bottle swished and disappeared into the pram. The Queen Mum wagged her finger at Knocker. ‘Don’t be so smart, chump,’ she said. ‘And where do you think you’re going, eh?’ She got to her feet and adjusted the rags and plastic she called clothes more comfortably around her body, hoisting her skirts and easing the undergarments in her crotch. ‘That’s better,’ she announced and waggled her hips. ‘Free and easy, that’s me.’
‘Come on,’ said Napoleon. ‘This is useless.’
‘Up there,’ continued the Queen Mum, ignoring the interruption and pointing above her head, ‘is a footpath, by the side of the Marylebone line, as used by the platelayers, and it follows along and takes you right to another tunnel.’
Chalotte nodded. ‘That’s what Strikalite said.’
‘Bugger Strikalite,’ said the Queen Mum. ‘Listen. That tunnel goes as far as Finchley Road station and also runs alongside the Metropolitan and Bakerloo tunnel, Swiss Cottage down to St John’s Wood …’
‘What’s the use of all this?’ said Napoloen. He jerked his thumb at
the ever-lightening sky. ‘We can’t hide in a tunnel. We’d get electrocuted or run over.’
‘Bugger me,’ said the Queen Mum. ‘Can’t you belt up, you squeaky little fart! You’d get run over if you stayed in the main tunnel, but there’s another, see, a connecting tunnel which joins one line to the other, so they can switch trains when there’s accidents and blockages. So there.’
‘So what?’ said Napoleon.
‘It ain’t ever used, that tunnel,’ said the Queen Mum, exasperated. ‘And before you asks me how I know, nitwit, I’ll tell you. It’s another one of my places. I spent the winter of ’81 in there, the whole winter. Fierce that winter was, twenty below, and no one bothered me and I never felt a pinch of cold. Like a tick in a rick.’
‘All right,’ said Knocker. It was his turn to be suspicious. ‘Why are you telling us all this? You don’t owe us any favours and you’re an adult as well.’
‘S’easy,’ said the old woman. ‘Because I don’t want you caught by the coppers, do I? You want to get to Neasden and by crikey I want you to get to Neasden, safe and sound, never to be asked a single question by them as asks questions. I mean you know enough about me to have me put away for a year or two. I don’t want to go to Holloway lock-up, now, do I? Warder, warder everywhere and never a drop to drink.’
Sydney stepped out from underneath the bridge and looked up at the sky, now a paler shade of blue. ‘We haven’t got any choice,’ she said. ‘Let her tell us.’
‘I was going to anyway,’ said the Queen Mum, and she began gathering her possessions together. ‘Go into the tunnel for about half a mile. Then you’ll see another tunnel going off to your right. That’s it. Follow that a little way and it’ll open into a double track; that’s the London Transport bit that is. You’ll see an old control cabin. They keeps a couple of standby trains there too, just in case like. Behind the control cabin is a kind of big square place in the wall, used to be a workshop or something, warm there. Big enough for you all, and the horse.’
‘What happens if you go past the cabin?’ asked Napoleon.
‘You don’t want to do that,’ said the Queen Mum, ‘or you’ll be into Swiss Cottage Underground station, spotted for sure. No, you stay behind
that control cabin, hide there during today, and come night you just follow the LMR line as far as Neasden. It’s only five mile.’
‘Only five mile,’ said Sydney, and she stroked the horse’s neck. ‘Did you hear that, Sam? We’ll be there by this time tomorrow.’
‘Well,’ said Knocker, addressing everyone, ‘what shall we do?’
‘What can we do,’ said Stonks, ‘but give it a try? Another half-hour and it’ll be broad daylight.’
‘Let alone the trains,’ said the Queen Mum, ‘they’ll soon run yer down.’ She grabbed her pram by the handle and began to drag it up a steep path that climbed by the side of the bridge up to the Marylebone line. ‘Come on, I’ll put you on the right road.’
The Borribles needed no more urging and followed the old tramp at once, hurrying under the threat of daylight, pushing the pram from behind. At the top of the path the Queen Mum took a series of deep breaths, wheezing and coughing, making a sound like two bricks being rubbed together. ‘It’s me lungs,’ she explained between gasps. ‘I ain’t got the puff I used to ’ave.’ She placed one hand on her chest while with the other she pointed, and the Borribles looked.
Not more than a hundred yards away they saw a new tunnel; above it rose the tall buildings of a housing estate and there were lights in the windows now. All the rest was in darkness.
‘That’s it,’ said the Queen Mum, ‘and count yourselves lucky I told yer. Nobody will find yer there.’ She turned and began to push her pram along the path in the direction opposite to the one the Borribles were about to take.
‘’Ere,’ said Napoleon, ‘I’d feel safer if you were coming with us.’
The Queen Mum halted and smirked over her shoulder. ‘I wouldn’t,’ she said. ‘I want to be as far from you lot as possible. I’ve no idea how much the coppers know but if they do catch up with yer it won’t take them long to get to the truth. On the other hand if they find me on my own I’m in the clear. I’m just a drunk old tramp making for Yorkshire … and that’s ’ow I want it.’ She winked and continued on her way.
The Borribles watched her until she disappeared and then they turned and walked towards the tunnel entrance. They had not slept all night, they were desperately tired and their heads throbbed. Time was
running out. They must find the side tunnel that the Queen Mum had described before the first trains came and ran them down, smashing their bodies, and Sam’s, to pieces.
Into the darkness they went but with no hesitation this time. Every Adventurer knew that their lives depended on the next few minutes. They marched on as fast as they could go, their ears cocked for the sound of the approaching train that would mean their doom.
The sound never came and things were just as the tramp had said. They found the disused tunnel leading off to their right and once in it they felt out of danger, but it was a dismal place and cast their spirits down. No one but the Queen Mum had passed that way for years.
Their torch beams showed long festoons of black dirt hanging from the arched roof. Their feet trod in six inches of dust, a dust as soft as soot and as fine as graphite. It covered the rusty railway lines making them invisible; it rose in the air as the Borribles marched by and made them sneeze and cough.
Before long the tunnel widened and the Borribles came to the control cabin as promised. Behind it was a wide square area—also thick in dust—that had once been used for a workshop. Nothing had been taken away; there were workbenches, lots of rusty tools, abandoned where they had fallen, piles of brick and sacks of cement, lights and light switches with no current running through them, but best of all there was a water tap that worked.
The control cabin was a solid rectangular hut constructed in the same dirty brick as the surface of the tunnel, and beyond it the cavern was less dilapidated and wider. It was this section that London Transport used, and standing there now, side by side on twin tracks, were two old Underground trains, pensioned off, each one six coaches long. And from beyond them, echoing in the distance, came the deep rumblings of the early morning commuter expresses as they passed through Swiss Cottage on their way to central London on the Stanmore line.
In the old days this emergency link section in which the Borribles had taken refuge had been busy, very busy. The control cabin itself had been a central command post for this part of the railway. Even now its walls were lined with bank upon bank of huge double-handed
switches. There was a diagram of the track system of the Bakerloo line and there were telephones and emergency buttons, a table and a dozen chairs. Here too the thick black dust choked everything and made it sinister.
The Borribles peeled off their rucksacks and raincoats and set about making themselves as comfortable as they could behind the cabin, out of sight in the unlikely event of a party of workmen coming by. Most of the Adventurers were so exhausted that they could do no more than throw themselves on to the filthy ground and close their eyes, but there were others who found the chairs and placed them by the workbenches so that they would have somewhere to sit and eat the last of their provisions.
Knocker himself, exhausted, his feet and legs aching, collapsed on to his rucksack and sat with his back against a wall, elbows on knees and face cupped in his hands. He stared at the floor, thinking his own thoughts, nearly fainting with fright when he felt a hand on his shoulder, so taut were his nerves. He looked up to find Chalotte gazing down at him.
‘What’s the matter, Knocker?’ she said.
‘Hard to say,’ he answered. ‘I have this feeling that there’s something out there, in the tunnels, something near, doing its best to see that we’re caught and turned into catsmeat; and somehow I feel I can’t do anything about it. It’s a nightmare … It must be Scooter dying like that, it’s made us all feel rotten.’
Chalotte shivered and looked around but could see nothing. She moved her hand from Knocker’s shoulder and touched his hair. ‘I hope you’re wrong,’ she said. ‘After all we’ve been through I really hope you’re wrong.’
 
After the great slaughterhouse battle Sussworth’s caravan had been moved to a new location in Hampstead—the car park of the GPO sorting office on Rosslyn Hill.
The effect of the stampede on the inspector and his sergeant had been profound. Not only had their bodies been bruised and cut but their self-esteem had also taken a severe battering. Because of what they had undergone both men had become more determined than ever to make the Borribles pay for their audacity.
When dragged from beneath his patrol car, Inspector Sussworth had
been insane with anger. At no one time in the whole of his life had so much dirt been so near him. He had trembled with wrath; his hands shaking uncontrollably and his feet banging the cobbles like two pneumatic drills. His men had stood with lowered heads as he berated them. He was unrecognizable; his twisted face twisted itself into straightness so demented was he. He screamed, he danced, he tried to tear the soiled clothes from his body, like a man possessed by devils. His whole being had been taken over by an extravagant fit of infernal ill temper. He frothed with disgust.
It was true that he’d had a great deal to froth about. His clothes had been torn by the sharp edges of the underneath of his car. He had lost his cap in the scrimmage and his hair, hands and face had been befouled with the mess, both solid and liquid, which the fleeing animals had sprayed everywhere. Sussworth had been scratched, buffeted and scared out of his wits.
But worse than all that he had suffered a total defeat. He had been made to look stupid, he was a laughing stock. At least four or five patrol cars had been smashed, their sides dented, their windows and windscreens shattered. The leather seats of his own car, where Hanks had taken refuge, had been torn into filthy rags by the sharp hooves of sheep and pigs. The stench of the dung heap was over everything—on his tunic, up his sleeves, in his trousers. It was more than he could stand, and he knew too that when news of this debacle reached the DAC he would be relieved of his command and Superintendent Birdlime would command the SBG.
With this thought of Birdlime the inspector had raised his voice in anguish, bellowing at his men, ‘Get me out of here, you fools; take me away. I must get these clothes off. You idiots. I’ll have you all back on push-bikes, every one of you, demoted, sacked, waiting at the job centre. I can’t stand it any more. I must have a bath, a shower. Water.’
Hanks, in no better condition than his master, had crawled from his hiding place shaking as if he were in the terminal stages of a lethal nervous disease. He could hardly stand upright so pummelled had he been; he ached in every square inch of his vast body, he was a continent of pain.
Sussworth had swayed and almost swooned when he’d caught a whiff of his second in command, for Hanks had lain directly in the
path of scores of terrorized animals for some long period. The sergeant looked like the well trodden and soggy corner of a dirty pasture which had been forever inhabited by flatulent cattle. He smelt like the last shovelful of decayed manure at the bottom of an ancient and fruity compost heap.
Sussworth had staggered under the onslaught of this smell but had been saved from falling by his men and led straight to an ambulance. Once inside he had removed his clothes and then been driven to his caravan. There he had taken a bath, resting in it for hours and changing the water at least three times. Fresh underwear had been brought to him and now, thirty-six hours later, crisply dressed in a brand new uniform and, apart from a bruise on his right cheekbone, bearing no trace of the battle, Sussworth sat at his desk, phone in hand, issuing orders to his new police cars as they patrolled all of north London. By the side of the desk, as admiring as ever and almost as clean as his chief for once—he had been to a police station for his own bath—stood Sergeant Hanks.

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