The two bigger boys crept up close to the small boy, who didn"t see them because he still had binoculars to his eyes.
" "Ands up!" "Ands up!" shouted Ernie, pointing the gun. shouted Ernie, pointing the gun.
Peter Watson jumped. He lowered the binoculars and stared through his spectacles at the two intruders.
"Go on!" Ernie shouted. "Stick "em up!"
"I wouldn"t point that gun if I were you," Peter Watson said.
"We"re "We"re givin" the orders round "ere!" Ernie said. givin" the orders round "ere!" Ernie said.
"So stick "em up," Raymond said, "unless you want a slug in the guts!"
Peter Watson stood quite still, holding the binoculars in front of him with both hands. He looked at Raymond. Then he looked at Ernie. He was not afraid, but he knew better than to play the fool with these two. He had suffered a good deal from their attentions over the years.
"What do you want?" he asked.
"I want you to stick "em up!" Ernie yelled at him. "Can"t you understand English?" Ernie yelled at him. "Can"t you understand English?"
Peter Watson didn"t move.
"I"ll count to five," Ernie said. "And if they"re not up by then, you get it in the guts. One. . . Two. . . Three. . ."
Peter Watson raised his arms slowly above his head. It was the only sensible thing to do. Raymond stepped forward and s.n.a.t.c.hed the binoculars from his hands. "What"s this?" he snapped. "Who you spyin" on?"
"n.o.body."
"Don"t lie, Watson. Them things is used for spyin"! I"ll bet you was spyin" on us? That"s right, ain"t it? Confess it!"
"I certainly wasn"t spying on you."
"Give "im a clip over the ear," Ernie said. "Teach "im not to lie to us."
"I"ll do that in a minute," Raymond said. "I"m just workin" meself up."
Peter Watson considered the possibility of trying to escape. All he could do would be to turn and run, and that was pointless. They"d catch him in seconds. And if he shouted for help, there was no one to hear him. All he could do, therefore, was to keep calm and try to talk his way out of the situation.
"Keep them "ands up!" Ernie barked, waving the barrel of the gun gently from side to side the way he had seen it done by gangsters on the telly. "Go on, laddie, reach!"
Peter did as he was told.
"So "oo was you spyin" on?" Raymond asked. "Out with it!"
"I was watching a green woodp.e.c.k.e.r," Peter said.
"A what?"
"A male green woodp.e.c.k.e.r. He was tapping the trunk of that old dead tree, searching for grubs."
"Where is "ee?" Ernie snapped, raising his gun. "I"ll "ave "im!"
"No, you won"t," Peter said, looking at the string of tiny birds slung over Raymond"s shoulder. "He flew off the moment you shouted. Woodp.e.c.k.e.rs are extremely timid."
"What you watchin" "im for?" Raymond asked suspiciously. "What"s the point? Don"t you "ave nothin" better to do?"
"It"s fun watching birds," Peter said. "It"s a lot more fun than shooting them."
"Why, you cheeky little bleeder!" Ernie cried. "So you don"t like us shootin" birds, eh? Is that what you"re sayin"?"
"I think it"s absolutely pointless."
"You don"t like anything we do, isn"t that right?" Raymond said.
Peter didn"t answer.
"Well, let me tell you something," Raymond went on. "We don"t like anything you do either."
Peter"s arms were beginning to ache. He decided to take a risk. Slowly, he lowered them to his sides.
"Up!" yelled Ernie. "Get "em up!"
"What if I refuse?"
"Blimey! You got a ruddy nerve, ain"t you?" Ernie said. "I"m tellin" you for the last time, if you don"t stick "em up I"ll pull the trigger!"
"That would be a criminal act," Peter said. "It would be a case for the police."
"And you"d be a case for the "ospital!" Ernie said.
"Go ahead and shoot," Peter said. "Then they"ll send you to Borstal. That"s prison."
He saw Ernie hesitate.
"You"re really askin" for it, ain"t you?" Raymond said.
"I"m simply asking to be left alone," Peter said, "I haven"t done you any harm."
"You"re a stuck-up little squirt," Ernie said. "That"s exactly what you are, a stuck-up little squirt."
Raymond leaned over and whispered something in Ernie"s ear. Ernie listened intently. Then he slapped his thigh and said, "I like it! It"s a great idea!"
Ernie placed his gun on the ground and advanced upon the small boy. He grabbed him and threw him to the ground. Raymond took the roll of string from his pocket and cut oif a length of it. Together, they forced the boy"s arms in front of him and tied his wrists together tight.
"Now the legs," Raymond said. Peter struggled and received a punch in the stomach. That winded him and he lay still. Next, they tied his ankles together with more string. He was now trussed up like a chicken and completely helpless.
Ernie picked up his gun, and then, with his other hand, he grabbed one of Peter"s arms. Raymond grabbed the other arm and together they began to drag the boy over the gra.s.s towards the railway lines.
Peter kept absolutely quiet. Whatever it was they were up to, talking to them wasn"t going to help matters.
They dragged their victim down the embankment and on to the railway lines themselves. Then one took the arms and the other the feet and they lifted him up and laid him down again lengthwise right between two lines.
"You"re mad!" Peter said. "You can"t do this!"
" "Oo says we can"t? This is just a little lesson we"re teachin" you not to be cheeky."
"More string," Ernie said.
Raymond produced the ball of string and the two larger boys now proceeded to tie the victim down in such a way that he couldn"t wriggle away from between the rails. They did this by looping string around each of his arms and then threading the string under the rails on either side. They did the same with his middle body and his ankles. When they had finished, Peter Watson was strung down helpless and virtually immobile between the rails. The only parts of his body he could move to any extent were his head and feet.
Ernie and Raymond stepped back to survey their handiwork. "We done a nice job," Ernie said.
"There"s trains every "alf "our on this line," Raymond said. "We ain"t gonna "ave long to wait."
"This is murder!" cried the small boy lying between the rails.
"No it ain"t." Raymond told him. "It ain"t anything of the sort."
"Let me go! Please let me go! I"ll be killed if a train comes along!"
"If you are are killed, sonny boy," Ernie said, "it"ll be your own ruddy fault and I"ll tell you why. Because if you lift your "ead up like you"re doin" now, then you"ve "ad it, chum! You keep down flat and you might just possibly get away with it. On the other "and, you might not because I ain"t exactly sure "ow much clearance them trains"ve got underneath. You "appen to know. Raymond, "ow much clearance them trains got underneath?" killed, sonny boy," Ernie said, "it"ll be your own ruddy fault and I"ll tell you why. Because if you lift your "ead up like you"re doin" now, then you"ve "ad it, chum! You keep down flat and you might just possibly get away with it. On the other "and, you might not because I ain"t exactly sure "ow much clearance them trains"ve got underneath. You "appen to know. Raymond, "ow much clearance them trains got underneath?"
"Very little," Raymond said. "They"re built ever so close to the ground."
"Might be enough and it might not," Ernie said.
"Let"s put it this way," Raymond said. "It"d probably just about be enough for an ordinary ordinary person like me or you, Ernie. But Mister Watson "ere I"m not so sure about and I"ll tell you why." person like me or you, Ernie. But Mister Watson "ere I"m not so sure about and I"ll tell you why."
"Tell me," Ernie said, egging him on.
"Mister Watson "ere"s got an extra big "ead, that"s why. "Ee"s so flippin" big-"eaded I personally think the bottom bit of the train"s goin" to sc.r.a.pe "im whatever "appens. I"m not saying it"s goin" to take "is "ead off, mind you. In fact, I"m pretty sure it ain"t goin" to do that. But it"s goin" to give "is face a good old sc.r.a.pin" over. You can be quite sure of that."
"I think you"re right," Ernie said.
"It don"t do," Raymond said, "to "ave a great big swollen "ead full of brains if you"re lyin" on the railway line with a train comin" towards you. That"s right, ain"t it. Ernie?"
"That"s right," Ernie said.
The two bigger boys climbed back up the embankment and sat on the gra.s.s behind some bushes. Ernie produced a pack of cigarettes and they both lit up.
Peter Watson, lying helpless between the rails, realized now that they were not going to release him. These were dangerous, crazy boys. They lived for the moment and never considered the consequences. I must try to keep calm and think, Peter told himself. He lay there, quite still, weighing his chances. His chances were good. The highest part of his head was his nose. He estimated the end of his nose was sticking up about four inches above the rails. Was that too much? He wasn"t quite sure what clearance these modern diesels had above the ground. It certainly wasn"t very much. The back of his head was resting upon loose gravel in between two sleepers. He must try to burrow down a little into the gravel. So he began to wriggle his head from side to side, pushing the gravel away and gradually making for himself a small indentation, a hole in the gravel. In the end, he reckoned he had lowered his head an extra two inches. That would do for the head. But what about the feet? They were sticking up, too. He took care of that by swinging the two tied-together feet over to one side so they lay almost flat.
He waited for the train to come.
Would the driver see him? It was very unlikely, for this was the main line, London, Doncaster, York, Newcastle and Scotland, and they used huge long engines in which the driver sat in a cab way back and kept an eye open only for the signals. Along this stretch of the track trains travelled around eighty miles an hour. Peter knew that. He had sat on the bank many times watching them. When he was younger, he used to keep a record of their numbers in a little book, and sometimes the engines had names written on their sides in gold letters.
Either way, he told himself, it was going to be a terrifying business. The noise would be deafening, and the swish of the eighty-mile-an-hour wind wouldn"t be much fun either. He wondered for a moment whether there would be any kind of vacuum created underneath the train as it rushed over him, sucking him upward. There might well be. So whatever happened, he must concentrate everything upon pressing his entire body against the ground. Don"t go limp. Keep stiff and tense and press down into the ground.
"How"re you doin", rat-face!" one of them called out to him from the bushes above. "What"s it like waitin" for the execution?"
He decided not to answer. He watched the blue sky above his head where a single c.u.mulus cloud was drifting slowly from left to right. And to keep his mind off the thing that was going to happen soon, he played a game that his father had taught him long ago on a hot summer"s day when they were lying on their backs in the gra.s.s above the cliffs at Beachy Head. The game was to look for strange faces in the folds and shadows and billows of a c.u.mulus cloud. If you looked hard enough, his father had said, you would always find a face of some sort up there. Peter let his eyes travel slowly over the cloud. In one place, he found a one-eyed man with a beard. In another, there was a long-chinned laughing witch. An aeroplane came across the cloud travelling from east to west. It was a small high-winged monoplane with a red fuselage. An old Piper Cub, he thought it was. He watched it until it disappeared.
And then, quite suddenly, he heard a curious little vibrating sound coming from the rails on either side of him. It was very soft, this sound, scarcely audible, a tiny little humming, thrumming whisper that seemed to be coming along the rails from far away.
That"s a train, he told himself.
The vibrating along the rails grew louder, then louder still. He raised his head and looked down the long and absolutely straight railway line that stretched away for a mile or more into the distance. It was then that he saw the train. At first it was only a speck, a faraway black dot, but in those few seconds that he kept his head raised, the dot grew bigger and bigger, and it began to take shape, and soon it was no longer a dot but the big, square, blunt front-end of a diesel express. Peter dropped his head and pressed it down hard into the small hole he had dug for it in the gravel. He swung his feet over to one side. He shut his eyes tight and tried to sink his body into the ground.
The train came over him like an explosion. It was as though a gun had gone off in his head. And with the explosion came a tearing, screaming wind that was like a hurricane blowing down his nostrils and into his lungs. The noise was shattering. The wind choked him. He felt as if he were being eaten alive and swallowed up in the belly of a screaming murderous monster.
And then it was over. The train had gone. Peter opened his eyes and saw the blue sky and the big white cloud still drifting overhead. It was all over now and he had done it. He had survived.
"It missed "im," said a voice.
"What a pity," said another voice.
He glanced sideways and saw the two large louts standing over him.
"Cut "im loose," Ernie said.
Raymond cut the strings binding him to the rails on either side.
"Undo "is feet so "ee can walk, but keep "is "ands tied," Ernie said.
Raymond cut the strings around his ankles.
"Get up," Ernie said.
Peter got to his feet.
"You"re still a prisoner, matey," Ernie said.
"What about them rabbits?" Raymond asked. "I thought we was goin" to try for a few rabbits?"
"Plenty of time for that," Ernie answered. "I just thought we"d push the little bleeder into the lake on the way."
"Good," Raymond said. "Cool "im down."
"You"ve had your fun," Peter Watson said. "Why don"t you let me go now?"
"Because you"re a prisoner," Ernie said. "And you ain"t just no ordinary prisoner neither. You"re a spy. And you know what "appens to spies when they get caught, don"t you? They get put up against the wall and shot."
Peter didn"t say any more after that. There was no point at all in provoking those two. The less he said to them and the less he resisted them, the more chance he would have of escaping injury. He had no doubt whatsoever that in their present mood they were capable of doing him quite serious bodily harm. He knew for a fact that Ernie had once broken little Wally Simpson"s arm after school and Wally"s parents had gone to the police. He had also heard Raymond boasting about what he called "putting the boot in" at the football matches they went to. This, he understood, meant kicking someone in the face or body when he was lying on the ground. They were hooligans, these two, and from what Peter read in his father"s newspaper nearly every day, they were not by any means on their own. It seemed the whole country was full of hooligans. They wrecked the interiors of trains, they fought pitched battles in the streets with knives and bicycle chains and metal clubs, they attacked pedestrians, especially other young boys walking alone, and they smashed up roadside cafes. Ernie and Raymond, though perhaps not quite yet fully qualified hooligans, were most definitely on their way.
Therefore, Peter told himself, he must continue to be pa.s.sive. Do not insult them. Do not aggravate them in any way. And above all, do not try to take them on physically. Then, hopefully, in the end, they might become bored with this nasty little game and go off to shoot rabbits.
The two larger boys had each taken hold of one of Peter"s arms and they were marching him across the next field towards the lake. The prisoner"s wrists were still tied together in front of him. Ernie carried the gun in his spare hand. Raymond carried the binoculars he had taken from Peter. They came to the lake.
The lake was beautiful on this golden May morning. It was a long and fairly narrow lake with tall willow trees growing here and there along its banks. In the middle, the water was clear and clean, but nearer to the land there was a forest of reeds and bulrushes.