Late, Late in the Evening

'We shall have to watch out,' I said. 'Always a crowd of hangers-on when they know we've got anything to spend.' This sounds a mean kind of remark, but we had learned the hard way and had grown cagey about sharing our sweets with anybody but one another. There were some rapacious characters in the village.

'Bloody cormorants!' said Kenneth. 'Heard a man say it when Uncle Arthur took us to the covered market,' he added, seeing my look of horrified admiration. 'Shan't say it again, I promise you, but some of the big ones are.'

I stored up the phrase for use in our London school playground and we crossed the road and approached the decrepit cottage. Away on The Marsh we could hear the village children at play. Inside the cottage another sound was being made. We halted and listened. It was plain enough what was happening there. Nobody could mistake the sound of a pickaxe.

'We've been out-smarted,' muttered Kenneth. 'Let's sneak up and see who it is.'

The cottage had no front door. That, like the floor-boards, had disappeared long since and, from previous peering through the iron railings which shut off the back garden of the cottage from grandfather's land, we knew that all the other doors-the kitchen, the woodshed and the earth-closet-had gone the same way. We also knew that the cottage was 'two up and two down'. The stairs, however, were now completely unsafe, although Our Ern, a foxy, freckled little boy as thin as a skinned rabbit and as active as a squirrel, had once climbed up them as a 'dare' and had endured a punishing punch-up with Our Sarah afterwards for risking his neck, because part of the staircase had come down with him when he descended.

All the cottages on that side of the street had narrow back gardens which abutted on to grandfather's land and, as he owned all of them, grandfather had seen to it that they had no back entrances, so that the tenants could not trespass on his small-holding. The hermit's cottage was no exception. I once heard Aunt Lally ask grandfather why he had not turned the hermit out, repaired the cottage and let it, but all he said was, 'Live and let live, my lass. Remember what happened to Dives, who also had a beggar at his gate.'

'They're in the front room,' said Kenneth, 'whoever it is. Let's go round the back.'

'We can't,' I said. 'Not to sneak in, I mean. We can't get over that iron fence, and, if we did get over, we might not be able to get back.'

'Oh, that's all right. There's a ladder in the cartshed. We could use that.'

'To get over? Well, perhaps, but we still couldn't get back without lifting the ladder across, and I don't believe we could manage it. The ladder's too long and heavy.'

'We'll worry about that later on.'

'We could get in over the side wall,' I said, eyeing the only part of the property which grandfather kept in repair to mark the boundary of his jurisdiction, for the cottage was the last one in the road, 'if it wasn't for all that broken glass on top.'

'Yes, that's no good. Well, come on. Let's get that ladder. We'd better go in through grandfather's big gates again, not the side entrance. We don't want anybody to see us. There might be questions asked.'

The big gates were those through which we had passed to get to the chicken run and through which, at one time, when he and Polly the horse were younger, our grandfather had driven the wagon to market. They were always wide open nowadays and nobody except ourselves used them. We trudged up the hill, darted in through the big gates to the smallholding and took the broad path to the well. Here we turned at right-angles for the cartshed and found the ladder. It was long and heavy. In the end it proved too much for us.

'Oh, blow!' said Kenneth. 'Now what do we do?'

'If it's a workman to do some repairs, he'll knock off at twelve,' I said. 'Let's go and spend our money and wait for him to go.'

'It's hours before twelve. I vote we snake in by the front door and see who's there. If it's a workman he'll only tell us to hop it.'

'But I don't believe it is a workman,' I said. 'I heard Uncle Arthur tell Aunt Kirstie that all the place was fit for was to come down and that he was sorry for the chaps who had to do the job because the bugs would be worse than a London slum. Anyway, it's Saturday. They wouldn't start a job like that on a Saturday.'

'Then it's Mr Ward. He might get waxy if we spied on him.'

'All right, then, let's spend. Brandy balls or Old Mother Honour?'

'We've got enough for both.' We stopped at Miss Summers' shop. It was not a real shop, as Old Mother Honour's was. By that I mean it had been built as an ordinary house, but Miss Summers' father, who had had it before her, had altered the front window and made it into a big, square bay with a broad shelf behind on which were loaves and buns and a couple of jars of sweets to show that she sold those as well.

As we were looking in at the window, Our Ern came up behind us.

'Hullo! Spenden?' he asked covetously. 'Me, Oi be saven up for the fair.'

'Oh, so are we,' said Kenneth. 'How much have you got?'

'Two shellen and tuppence. Oi ben sellen buckets o' dung. Our Sarah, her got near enough foive bob. Her ben taken lettle babies out. Sometoimes her gets gev as much as a sexpence for that.'

'Where does she get the babies from?' (Kenneth knew that nobody in the village would give twopence, let alone sixpence, for pushing a baby out in its perambulator.)

'En the town of a Saturday afternoon when her's done out our bedrooms.'

'And where do you get the manure?'

'At the stables where the College gents keeps their 'orses. Oi reckons to 'ave foive bob, too, come the fair.'

'You could take babies out, couldn't you?' said Kenneth, when Our Ern had gone.

'No, I couldn't. I hate babies,' I said. 'And you wouldn't be allowed to collect buckets of manure, so you needn't think any more about it.'

'I could get it from old Polly's stable, but I wouldn't know where to sell it.'

'Old Polly bites and kicks. Look, the coast's clear. Let's buy the brandy balls.'

We did this, and bought four ounces between us instead of two ounces each.

'That way,' said Kenneth, when we left the shop, 'she can only cheat us out of one brandy ball, not two.' I did not need this explanation, as the manoeuvre was one we had used before. The only snag was that sometimes, when it came to the divvying up, there was an odd instead of an even number of brandy balls. However, we were accustomed to solve this problem by taking turns at sucking the extra sweet. On arrival at Mother Honour's we saw a couple of the village children coming towards us, so we did not stop, but strolled on as though we were going on to The Marsh.

'Ent you got nothen to spend, then?' asked one child, with a sneer. 'Thought you was rech!'

'Saving up for the fair,' said Kenneth promptly. 'What about you?'

'Oh,' said the other, 'us too an' all. Bet you ent got as much as Oi 'ave.'

'Six shillings,' said Kenneth, lying, of course.

'Garn! Oi don't believe et! Let's see et, then.'

'You'll see it when the time comes.'

'Foight you for et!'

'You don't think I carry it about with me, do you? My uncle is minding it for me. You can fight him for it, if you like.' We strolled on. As we turned the corner I glanced back.

'O.K. They've gone into their house,' I said. As we came out of Mother Honour's we saw Mr Ward come out of the hermit's cottage. Kenneth pulled me back inside the shop, so Mr Ward did not see us. As we watched from the doorway, he took the road which led to the pub.

'So that's who it was in there,' I said. 'I thought as much. Good thing we didn't go in.'