July 2011
William Foster, known to his mates as Billy the Kid, is a bit of a bugger; but don't worry if his father ever hears you call him that, because it was he who was the first to use that word to describe his wayward son. Billy is nine years old, going on thirty; he has an opinion on everything, and expresses that opinion vociferously at every possible opportunity. He loves to watch the six o' clock news, sitting beside his father on the setee, and ask pertinent, but horribly awkward questions about current affairs, particularly the more juicy ones! He terrorises his little sister, Charlotte, mercilessly, but so subtly that she is totally unaware – mind you, she is only fifteen months old.
It was Billy who first introduced Charlotte to the taste of snails; to the fun that could be had by turning on the outdoor tap and poking your finger up the spout – while Billy retired to a safe distance, that is; in their rough and tumbles, Charlotte always comes off worst but it is never ever Billy's fault. However, it must be said that he does truly love his little sister and would defend her with his last breath if she were ever attacked by rattlesnakes, dinosaurs, or a hoard of fearsome ninja warriors.
With the benefit of hindsight, Richard Foster could see the danger of letting Billy loose on old Fred's allotment; but hindsight, while it is a wonderful thing, always comes just that little bit too late to be of any real practical use. But, wait, we are racing ahead of ourselves . . .
Fred Wainright has had the dubious pleasure of living next door to the Fosters for several years and, during the tennis season, has worked harder than any Wimbledon ball-boy in the never ending task of returning Billy's tennis balls over the thick clematis covered fence that divides their two gardens; and the mere mention of the football season still raises his blood pressure. But poor old Fred has been in bed for the past three days with bronchial problems fueled by his addiction to Old Holborn roll-ups, which he consumes with production line efficiency.
Valerie had just come back from her mercy visit next door with the news update about his condition; she reported that he would be unable to tend to his allotment at what he described as the busiest time of the year. Richard had been quite gung ho about the idea of helping out, 'What the heck, Val, we're not doing anything on Sunday and the forecast is fine – it would do us all good to get some fresh air and a bit of healthy exercise for a change . . . and besides, old Fred does keep us supplied with tomatoes throughout the summer; it's only fair.'
And so it was that at 9 o' clock on that Sunday morning, the Fosters were to be found patiently waiting for the allotment gates to be opened for them by the site manager. They wound their way through the beautifully manicured plots as far as the battered old green shed in which Fred kept his tools. Fred had hinted that in the last few weeks he had spent less and less time there as his condition worsened, but nothing could have prepared them for the scene of utter devastation that lay beyond the shed in what they could only guess was Fred's plot: the courgettes had swollen into marrows; the butternut squash were more like pumpkins and those tomatoes that had not been gorged upon by slugs were over-ripe and splitting open. Everywhere else the weeds had fought for supremacy and were clearly winning. Richard's heart sank with the prospect of hours of backbreaking work ahead.
Valerie tried to lighten the moment in her usual positive way, 'Come on, folks, there's no such thing as a free lunch – the sooner we start, the sooner we'll be done; and the Rose and Crown is on our way home . . . I hear they do a delicious carvery on a Sunday.'
Grudgingly, Richard opened up the shed and began to distribute the tools. Billy was handed a small spade and his father took him to the jungle behind the shed and showed him how to turn over the earth a spadeful at a time in a neat row and then to pull out the weeds, roots and tubers by hand. While his father was watching, Billy seemed to be doing quite a reasonable job, but as soon as his back was turned, Billy's enthusiasm waned fast and he began to play.
Charlotte toddled round to see what exciting things her brother was doing, and watched with sibling adoration as Billy hunted out worms, beetles and slugs for her to investigate, dissect and suck. He had now completely abandoned the neat row that his father had started and was randomly stabbing the spade into the masses of weeds and tossing the overgrown soil over his shoulder.
But then he threw the spade into the ground and it hit something hard just below the surface. The shock jarred up his arm and into his shoulder. Undeterred, he struck again a little to the right, then to the left . . . the thing, whatever it was, was quite large, but eventually he found the edge and teased the spade down and levered back. With a few grunts and some mumbled words he hoped his father couldn't hear, the thing gave just a little and he sank down onto his knees to get a better grip. He heaved and strained and was rewarded by a slow and inevitable upward movement until, with a sudden surge, it lifted. He found himself propping up an ancient, rusted cast iron man-hole cover and beneath was a small round opening into a secret, dank and smelly world. He pushed the inquisitive Charlotte away and leaned further in, but the cloudy day shed little light into the darkness and, apart from a few old bricks lining the narrow shaft, he couldn't see enough to work out what he had uncovered. He investigated with his hand, but the shaft just went down deeper and deeper. Stretching to his limit, his fingers slipped on the slimy metal; he overbalanced and fell headlong into the darkness. Thankfully, but somewhat painfully, the lid fell onto his ankles, suspending him, squirming wildly, in mid-air; he struggled to pull himself upright, but as he moved and twisted, his feet pulled free and he fell . . .
The cover dropped into place above him with a dull thud as he landed a few feet down in a shallow flow of foul smelling water. Billy reached upwards, but his hands groped at empty air. He screamed out and leapt upwards, thrashing about with his hands, but he couldn't reach the cover - just that little bit too high above him. Dejected, he sank down against the cold, damp bricks and whimpered.
Don't worry, he reassured himself, it was lucky that Charlotte was there when it happened, she would tell them what had happened – any moment now the cover would be pulled back and his father's face would be silhouetted against the sky and he would be scolded for his stupidity – thank God Charlotte was there!
Charlotte toddled back to her mother, bored with the weeds now that her brother was no longer there to provide her with interesting invertebrates, and soon settled in the strawberry bed, where she rammed the fat red flesh into her mouth, around her mouth, down her chin and up her nose, all thoughts of Billy having evaporated.
It was only when Valerie stopped for a well earned drink that she looked over to where Billy had been working. Oh, Billy! she thought, where have you got to now? She wandered around the shed and saw the small row of turned earth where Billy had been working enthusiastically, and then the mess of holes where he hadn't. But the cover was invisible, the weeds having settled back across it, morphing seamlessly into the surrounding wilderness.
She shared her concern with Richard and, scooping up a sticky red-faced Charlotte under her arm, they set off around the allotment in a fruitless search.
After five minutes in which the cover had not been lifted, Billy started hollering as loud as he could, but his desperate cries echoed cruelly back at him from the dank walls, the heavy metal shrouding any sound from the world above. Billy wasn't used to crying – crying was for sissies – but he could feel his shoulders convulsing as waves of hopeless sobs shook his thin body. He was cold and wet; the tunnel stank and the darkness was absolute. When something fat and wriggly scampered over his hand he screamed out in terror and simply ran, hunched over, through the blackness. Had he taken the time to consider his surroundings, he would have realised that he was running upstream, but this fact was totally oblivious to him in his misery.
Once the initial horror of the mystery creature had subsided, Billy slowed his charge along the tunnel, but kept himself alert for any more slimy or furry things that might be lurking in the darkness. The huge spider's web that wrapped itself around his face elicited a strangled cry of revulsion as he clawed the evil, sticky mess from his face, hoping against hope that its creator was not nestling hungrily amongst it.
Even when he had insisted to his mother that he was too big to have a night light, the darkness in his bedroom had never been as totally black as this dreadful place. He trudged on for what seemed like hours, completely unaware that the police were now in the streets around the allotments assisting in the search. His bowed head struck something hard and for the first time in what seemed like hours he actually saw something – he saw stars. Sinking to his haunches, he cradled his head in his hands until the pain subsided, then he carefully searched with his fingers and discovered that the way ahead was barred by a heavy metal grille that filled the tunnel. Panic swept over him – he was trapped – there was nowhere to go, only back again the way he had come. Dejected, he turned around . . . and saw a faint glow; he reached out and found that at this point the tunnel forked and the light was coming from the other fork. Screaming out his relief he set off at a hunched run; with every echoing step the darkness was melting away and he fixed his tired eyes on the salvation that glimmering ray promised.
But when he reached it, his heart sank once again. Above him a round pipe, identical to that he had originally fallen down, stretched upwards to a metal grating, just that little bit too far above him to reach. 'Help! . . . Help!' he screamed out until his lungs stung with the effort, until, finally, exhausted and hopeless he sank to his knees and wept.
The sound of a dog barking dragged him from his desolation and when he looked up a huge black face almost filled the grating. Above the face a black tail wagged happily back and forth. Then the dog was pushed unceremoniously aside by a large man dressed as a penguin, who peered down over half-moon spectacles into the gloom.
It took half an hour for Giles to force the grating with a huge crowbar borrowed from the Head Gardener's shed and Billy was lifted up through the narrow opening to a welcoming committee which consisted of Lord and Lady Fanning, the majority of the house staff, two police officers and his very own anxious family. As Richard clasped his grimy, smelly, but precious son to his chest, the only words he could manage were, 'Oh, Billy . . . you little bugger!'