The Big Six: A Novel

  It was very dark in the loft. By the light of Tom’s torch Joe and Bill made one end of the fishing line fast to the brick. At the other end of the line Tom made a small slip-noose.

  “Come along, Pete,” said Joe, and Pete came, wondering why he didn’t bolt for it.

  “You hold the torch, Bill,” said Tom, and Bill lit up Pete’s mouth and that dangling upper tooth while Tom carefully fitted the noose round it and pulled it tight, with a finger against the tooth so as not to jerk it.

  Pete squeaked.

  “That didn’t hurt, did it?” said Tom. “I’m awfully sorry.”

  “No, not bad,” said Pete.

  “Come along now and lean out of the window and look down.”

  Pete knelt by the low window and put his head out.

  THE DENTISTS

  “Can’t hardly see the ground,” he said. “It’s too dark.”

  “Have another look,” said Tom. “And mind you keep your mouth open. Just as wide as you can…. Wider….” And then he just reached over Pete’s head and dropped the brick out of the window.

  “Oo,” squeaked Pete. “You’re hurting my tooth.”

  “What tooth?” said Tom. “It’s gone.”

  “Why that’s a rum ’un,” said Pete. “It’s outed.”

  “Hullo! What’s that down below?” said Tom suddenly.

  The next second there was a crash of breaking glass. Something heavy fell on the floor of the loft and Tom put his hand to his cheek where a splinter of glass had hit it. He felt wet blood on a finger.

  Bill switched the torch about.

  “It’s that brick,” he said, and there it was, with the line still fast to it, and Pete’s tooth still at the end of the line.

  “Gosh!” said Tom. “There must have been someone down there on the slip. Hi! Hullo!”

  There was no answer.

  “There’s nobody there,” said Joe. “They all gone home long since.”

  “Well, that brick didn’t bounce,” said Tom. “Somebody threw it back. Luckily I didn’t kill him, dropping it on his head.”

  “He cut your cheek proper,” said Bill, throwing the light on Tom’s face. “And don’t you spit blood on Jonnatt’s sails, young Pete.”

  “Come on down and see who’s about,” said Tom. “And we ought to put that brick back.”

  “Keep the bit of line,” said Joe. “That’s a good line.”

  “Let’s have my tooth,” said Pete, and put it in his pocket.

  They went carefully down the ladder into the shed and threw the light into every corner of it. Nobody was lurking there among the stored boats.

  “Whoever it was must have cleared out when he heard the glass smash,” said Tom. “Well, it’s my fault. I’ll have to pay for it anyway. It can’t be helped.”

  “Your face is still bleeding,” said Bill.

  “Bother it,” said Tom. “I hope to goodness we haven’t got any blood on those sails.”

  “It’s outed,” said Pete joyfully. “That’s worth threepence in the morning when I see my Mum. If I’d have known it were as easy as that.”

  They walked along to the end of the staithe where that cruiser was moored ready to be taken into the boatshed for the winter. No. There was nobody about. They went back to the Death and Glory. They told Pete that even if his tooth had left a gap he needn’t keep his tongue in it. They sat there, wondering who it could have been who had so nearly had a brick on his head. At last Tom went home to look for iodine, and the crew of the Death and Glory settled down for the night.

  1Bearded tits and bitterns.

  CHAPTER II

  FIRST SIGN OF TROUBLE

  “SOMEBODY’S been up early,” said Bill, sputtering and blowing after dipping his head in a bucket of water. “Never heard ’em shift that cruiser.”

  Joe and Pete crawled out into the cockpit, and rubbed the sleep from their eyes. The Death and Glory was alone at the staithe. The motor cruiser, their neighbour of the night before, that had been tied up ready to be dismantled and taken into Jonnatt’s shed, was gone.

  “Quiet about it, they was,” said Joe. “Getting her into the shed too. Why, that old capstan squeak like billyo. Somebody must have give her a drop of oil, or we’d have heard her. Come on, Bill. You done with that bucket?”

  “Can I light the stove?” said Pete.

  “We don’t want that,” said Bill, who was sitting on the top of the cabin rubbing his head with a towel. “Keep the chimney cool for painting. We’ll use the primus. You slip across and fill the kettle at the pump…. And keep your tongue out of where that tooth was.”

  Pete ran across the staithe and filled the kettle, passed it below to Bill who was lighting the primus and took his turn at the bucket when Joe had done with it and gone into the cabin to make sandwiches of bread and dripping. Then, when he had tied the towel in the rigging to dry, he went ashore once more but came running back to the ship when Joe shouted that breakfast was ready.

  For some minutes they were too busy to talk. Pete found that the gap left by his tooth could be used for blowing on his tea to make it cool enough to drink. He was the first to speak.

  “Wonder where they’ve shifted that cruiser,” he said. “She’s not in the shed. I just see.”

  “You haven’t looked,” said Bill with a full mouth. “They’ll have haul her up inside.”

  “There’s nothing in the shed more than was there last night,” said Pete.

  “Put that tooth away or you’ll lose it,” said Joe.

  Pete hurriedly put his tooth back in his pocket.

  “Worth threepence, that tooth,” he said.

  “Don’t you lose it,” said Bill.

  “I’ll take it home as soon as we done washing up,” said Pete.

  But the mugs and spoons were still being joggled overboard in a bucket when the Death and Glory was hailed by Tom Dudgeon.

  “Letter from the D’s this morning,” he called. “I’ll be back in a minute, as soon as I’ve been into Jonnatt’s to tell them about that pane of glass.”

  Tom had scarcely gone into the shed before Pete sighted a motor cruiser coming slowly up the river.

  “There you are,” he said. “I tell you she weren’t in the shed. Trying her engines, likely.”

  The others turned to look at her.

  “We was sleeping hard not to hear ’em start up,” said Bill.

  The cruiser came up the river, stopped just below the Death and Glory and turned in towards the boatshed to come to rest on a wooden cradle that was waiting for her on the slip. Two of Mr. Jonnatt’s boatmen were aboard her and a rowing dinghy was towing astern. One of the men shook his fist at the Death and Glories.

  “Don’t you boys know enough to leave boats alone?” he shouted.

  “We haven’t touched her,” said Bill.

  “Fiddling about with other boats’ ropes,” shouted the man. “Nice time we’ve had looking for her. Right down by the Ferry she bring up. Might have done herself a power of damage. Not your fault she haven’t. And I know she were moored proper. I tie her up myself.”

  “She was here last night,” said Joe.

  “I know that,” said the man. “What I want to know is why did you cast her off?”

  The next moment he had jumped ashore from her foredeck and he and his mate were busy, making ready to haul her up into the shed.

  The crew of the Death and Glory looked at each other and then at the empty space beside the staithe where the cruiser had lain the night before. The same thought was in all their minds.

  “Tom’d never cast her off for nothing,” said Joe.

  “With them Hullabaloos there was a reason,” said Bill. “Mooring on the top of No. 7 nest.”

  “But there’s no nests on the staithe,” said Pete.

  “Nor likely this time of year,” said Bill. “Birds don’t nest in September.”

  They waited for Tom to come back from seeing Mr. Jonnatt. Tom would explain. Whatever Tom did was right. But when it came
to casting off moored boats Bill, Joe and Pete, all sons of boatbuilders, felt that whatever the reason might be it must be a very good one.

  They waited, minute after minute. It seemed as if Tom was never coming back.

  He came at last, not on the run, but slowly, with a serious face.

  “I say,” he said, as he stood beside the Death and Glory, “what on earth made you do it? I couldn’t help doing it to the Margoletta when there was no other way of saving our coot’s chicks. But that boat wasn’t doing anybody any harm.”

  “Well, we never touch her,” said Joe. “We was thinking it must have been you.”

  “It jolly well wasn’t,” said Tom. “Mr. Jonnatt thought it was me. He was quite beastly when I went in and told him about the broken window. He said, ‘So you were here last night. There’s other things to talk about besides broken windows.’ I said I didn’t think we’d done anything else, and we didn’t break the window really, only it got broken because we were there. Then I said there might be a drop of blood on one of the sails but I didn’t think there was, and if there was much on the floor I’d clean it up. And he looked hard at me and asked if I was telling him I didn’t do it. And I asked what. And he said, ‘If it wasn’t you it must have been those young friends of yours,’ meaning you. And then he told me you’d cast loose the cruiser that was lying at the staithe and his men had gone down the river to find her. And he said ‘This sort of thing has got to stop. I’ll have to say a word to their fathers….’”

  “But we never touch her,” said Bill.

  “We never would,” said Pete.

  “We thought it was you,” said Joe. “And we know you must have had a reason for it.”

  Tom looked at them. “Well,” he said. “I didn’t and you didn’t, but everybody’ll think we did because of what I had to do to those Hullabaloos at nesting time. Mr. Jonnatt said there was nobody else who could have done it. He said there wasn’t anybody else about here after dark.”

  “But there were,” said Pete. “There were someone who bung that brick back with my tooth.”

  “I told him about that,” said Tom, “but he only laughed. He was very decent about the pane of glass. He said he had a spare bit handy and there was no need to pay for it, and then he said there was no need for fairy stories about bricks with wings either. He said it was an accident, and let it go at that.”

  “But that were no fairy story,” said Pete. “Somebody bung back that brick.” Once more he took the tooth out of his pocket and not without pride let his tongue feel the space where it had been.

  “I told him so,” said Tom, “but he just went on talking about not being able to leave a boat alone.”

  “Pete,” said Bill. “You’ll lose that tooth.”

  “I’ll take it home now,” said Pete.

  “Whoever done it had a reason,” said Joe. “Let’s go and have a look.”

  Tom, Joe, Bill and Pete walked along the staithe to look at the place where the cruiser had been lying. There was nothing there to suggest why anybody should want to cast off her moorings and send her drifting down the stream.

  “’Tisn’t like summer with the river full of boats when somebody might shift her wanting room to tie up,” said Bill.

  “And who’d send her adrift even then unless by accident?” said Tom.

  “Middle of the night, too,” said Bill. “She were here when we go to bed.”

  “Come on,” said Joe at last. “Let’s get that chimbley painted. Where’s that Pete?”

  “Run off home with his old tooth,” said Bill. “Looking for his threepence.”

  They went back to the Death and Glory, rubbed down the old chimney pot and put on a first coat of Tom’s green paint.

  “That look a sight better,” said Joe.

  “Nobody’d guess it were a pot one,” said Bill.

  They sat about in the cockpit watching it dry, listening to the creak of the capstan in the boatshed and seeing the cruiser slowly leave the water and move inch by inch up the slip. Presently Pete came back carrying a big pie dish in both hands.

  “Look out,” he said, handing it over. “Keep it steady. Mum said not to spill…. And I got a pennorth of screws,” he added, “and two pennorth of humbugs. I tell how we outed that tooth and she say it was worth another threepence if she had ’em but she hadn’t.” He passed over the bag, and took a paper of screws from his pocket. “Somebody’s took and told my Mum we cast off that cruiser. I tell her we didn’t and she say, anything like that and we’d have to come off the river.”

  “It were a silly thing whoever done it,” said Joe. “And we don’t want it patched on us.”

  But, as the day went on, it became clear that the news was all along the waterside, and that even the best friends of the Coot Club were ready to believe them guilty. After all, everybody knew by now the whole story of the Easter holidays, when Tom had indeed cast off a motor cruiser and been chased all over the Broads by the Hullabaloos who, in the end, had been rescued by the Death and Glory after ramming a post and nearly sinking on Breydon Water. Thanks to that glorious bit of salvage, no one had thought the worse of the Coot Club at the time, but now it seemed to be in everybody’s mind that if the Coots had cast a boat off once they were the likeliest of all people to do it again.

  Yesterday, and for many days before, everybody who came to the staithe had had a kindly word for them and a friendly question to ask about how they were getting on with the work of turning their old boat into something better. Today all talk was on the same subject.

  George Owdon and his friend strolled past, smoking cigarettes. They did not talk to the Death and Glories but talked at them.

  “At their old tricks again,” said George loudly. “Casting off boats.”

  “Is that the sort they are?” asked his friend, and stared at them as if they were some ugly sort of animals behind bars in a zoo.

  “You’ve heard of Yarmouth sharks?” said George. “They wreck boats and then get the credit for salving them. No better than common thieves.”

  Tom got hot about the collar. Joe clenched his fists. Pete was on the point of saying “We didn’t,” but caught Bill’s eye in time. The four members of the Coot Club said not a word and pretended they had not heard. But, out of the corners of their eyes, they saw George and his friend stroll up the staithe, look at the mooring rings to which the cruiser had been tied and look back at the Death and Glory.

  “Talking about us,” said Joe between his teeth.

  It was bad enough to be suspected by their enemies, but it was much worse to find that even their best friends were ready to think they had had a hand in that kind of mischief.

  Mrs. Barrable, taking William for his morning walk, stopped by the Death and Glory. Pete offered her a humbug and she took it and thanked him. He offered one to William, but she said that William did not really care for humbugs but could do with a lump of sugar if they had one to spare. Then she asked if she might come aboard and Tom sat on the cabin roof to make room for her in the cockpit. And then, sitting in the cockpit in the friendliest way, she said, “What’s this I hear?”

  “It’s all lies,” said Joe.

  She looked at him. “Well I’m glad to hear that,” she said. “You people must remember Dick and Dorothea are coming and I don’t want them mixed up in any trouble. I don’t want them to be turned into outlaws and hunted all over the Broads. Not that I don’t think you were right that time, Tom. Those Hullabaloos were most unpleasant people. William thought so too.”

  “I didn’t cast this boat off,” said Tom. “And the Death and Glories didn’t either.”

  “Good,” said Mrs. Barrable. “I was a bit afraid you might have done. Your ship’s nearly finished, isn’t she?”

  “Cupboard doors to do,” said Joe.

  “We’ll be going a voyage in a day or two,” said Pete.

  “What are you looking at, Tom?” said Mrs. Barrable.

  “Watching for the eelman,” said Tom. “I’ve got leave to
go and see him lift the nets.”

  “Think he’ll let us come too?” said Pete.

  And for a few moments, talking of eels, they forgot what people were thinking of them.

  But Mrs. Barrable had hardly been gone ten minutes before Mr. Tedder, the policeman, came along and stood beside the boat, looking severely at her crew.

  “Casting off boats again?” he said.

  “No,” said Tom. “And they didn’t cast the Margoletta off either.”

  “I know that,” said Mr. Tedder. “Weeding in my garden they was when you put her adrift. But weeding that time’s no sort of evidence now.”

  “We didn’t do it,” said Bill.

  ‘Your Dad won’t be too pleased if it was you,” said Mr. Tedder, looking at Tom.

  “But it wasn’t,” said Tom.

  “Well, don’t you go casting off no more,” said Mr. Tedder and walked away.

  “They all think we done it,” said Joe angrily.

  Not all, however. Twelve o’clock came, and the three boatbuilders, fathers of Joe, Bill and Pete, walked by the staithe as usual with a group of their friends, on the way to have their midday pints at the inn. They too stopped by the Death and Glory.

  “You cast off that boat?” said Bill’s father to his son.

  “No,” said Bill. “We didn’t. None of us.”

  “You hear that,” said Bill’s father, turning to his friends. “Bill never tell me a lie in his life.”

  “What about young Tom Dudgeon?” said one of the other men.

  “I didn’t,” said Tom.

  “You was here last night.”

  “I went home as soon as we’d got Pete’s tooth out,” said Tom.

  “Pete’s tooth?” said Pete’s father.

  Pete told the story of how his tooth had been pulled out by dropping a brick out of the window of the sail loft. The men laughed.

  “Mum say it was worth an extra threepence but she hadn’t the money,” said Pete.

  “Up to you, Peter,” laughed one of the men.

  “I’ll be going short of beer,” said Pete’s father, digging in his trouser pocket. “But here you are. He’s a good plucked lad is my Pete and know too much to cast a boat adrift. Didn’t I tell you?”