or I’ll cut you off from El altogether.’
He made them make the sign of the El at every meeting and rang the bell three times before they filed forward for their weekly allowance. Inspired by his position as their guide, philosopher and friend he made up a hymn for them to the tune of The Ash Grove, careful to work in his own name as an essential item in what he called the ‘relevation’ of El.
Down, down in our cellar, where rubbish concealed him,
When daylight is fading, we bow unto El,
And promise to follow the one who revealed him.
So sing Percy’s praises and ring out the bell.
After that they chanted with gusto to the tune of ‘Boney Was a Warrior’, ‘El is our salva-ti-on, rah, rah, rah!’ They particularly enjoyed the ‘rah, rah, rah’ bit, and Percy was thrilled to have a choir of his own even if it wasn’t just as good as the Vienna Boys’.
For nearly a month he lived more delighted with the success of converting the gang into a reverent congregation than with his lordship over the money. He was proving himself a poet at last. He was a sacred bard whose job it was to create and maintain the religious secrets of his tribe. All he bought for himself was a plush-covered copy of Shelley’s poems, and a portable typewriter to type his own poems for publication once he got them written down. Later on he could get whatever else he wanted, there was always tomorrow. Meanwhile he kept the Brotherhood in order, he accepted only reasonable demands for money, and he advised them how to spend what they asked for. Still excited with the miracle performed for them, the boys didn’t think of asking for much. Like Percy they found their satisfaction in dreaming of the future, when they could have whatever they wanted. Like him, they enjoyed the secrecy and the mystery of it, they loved the hymn-singing and the bell-ringing in candlelight, the sense of belonging to a chosen people when they made the sign of the El. It was better than going to church. They could understand it. They could see what they were asked to adore and they felt it concerned them and the real world they lived in. The Clavigers stopped murmuring and bided their time.
‘Ach he’s out of this world altogether,’ Specky said pityingly. ‘He’s round the bend. He’s carrying on like a real Holy Willie.’
‘Aye, he’s round the bend all right,’ Skinny agreed sadly. ‘Do you know I don’t think he’s touched a penny of it for himself.’
‘No, just a few fivers,’ said Savage. ‘There are nae pennies in it. Nothing so common. I bet he’s been shifting it in wads every night in the week when we’re no’ there.’
‘Oh, I don’t believe that,’ Specky said reproachfully.
‘How would we know if he wasn’t?’ Savage demanded. ‘Tell me that and tell me no more. Don’t forget it was never counted. To this day it hasna been counted. He could dae what he likes wi’ it. He could tell us in another month it was all done, and we couldn’t argue. Ye know, he had a bloody cheek making us give him back our keys. Clavigers! He likes big words. I bet ye he likes big money too.’
‘Well, after all it was him that gave them to us,’ Skinny said. ‘They were his to start with. It was him got them cut from the key his old man had.’
‘You know, I could apply my boot to my posterior,’ said Specky. ‘I should have got one cut before I gave him mine back. I should have anticipated some such manoeuvre on his behalf.’
‘You mean you didn’t expect him to do that?’ Savage asked, and grinned, his animal teeth on a victory parade.
Unable to resist showing off he thrust his hand into the back pocket of his tight studded jeans and showed them a new key.
‘I thought of it all right,’ he boasted. ‘I used the loaf. It’s time you brushed up your IQ, Specky.’
‘You can’t brush up an IQ,’ Specky tutted at him. ‘An IQ is the result of the primitive formation of your inherited characteristics from your paw and your maw. You can’t do a thing about it.’
‘Well, you could dust your brains then, couldn’t you?’ Savage retorted, shoving the key away in his back pocket again. He was content to wait. He had a key. He had the whip hand.
CHAPTER FIVE
The silver was done. There wasn’t a half-crown or a florin left. They had all been squandered on sweeties, cigarettes, lemonade, playing cards, slot-machines, comics and the pictures. Percy burned the pokes and faced at last the problem of what to do about the folding money. He thought of changing handfuls of notes into silver and keeping the gang going a little longer on a diet of half-crowns, but he was nervous about going into a bank with the notes in case he was asked questions, and to go round the local shops, changing singles and fivers here and there, would only cause talk. Anyway, he saw he couldn’t keep them much longer from real spending. They were all getting peevish with him. He made up his mind to start them off on pound notes. He thought he could trust them, but he warned them just the same.
‘Yous don’t want to look too affluential,’ he addressed them from the chair in the candlelight. ‘And you shouldn’t buy anything conspicious. You have got to be very careful from now on.’
‘A fine thing if we’ve got the money and canny spend it,’ Savage commented at the foot of the throne.
‘Of course you can spend it,’ Percy scolded him, resenting the comment. ‘There’s nothing to prevent you from spending it if you want to spend it. All I’m saying is you’ve got to be careful and don’t spend it on things that would get you asked awkward questions. Yous want to detract attention from yourselves.’
‘And just buy sweeties like?’ Specky asked. ‘Boy-oh- boy! Twenty shillings’ worth of lollipops! Nobody would ever dream of asking what you were doing with all those lollipops, not much.’
It was beginning to dawn on him, as on some of the others, that there wasn’t much they could do with so much money. They would be better off with less. It would be easier to spend.
‘Don’t be funny,’ Percy snapped at him. ‘It takes brains to be funny. And you fellows should be helping me, you’re the Clavigers, not niggling and nattering and trying to be sarky. I don’t like folk that are sarky, and I don’t like folk that nag.’
He gave out the pound notes grudgingly and hoped for the best. In a little while he found they weren’t spending them, they were accumulating them and little groups were pooling their resources for purposes they kept secret from him. They began to demand a twice-weekly ration, and he gave in to them for the sake of peace. He was in the cellar every night to satisfy himself everything was all right. Then various members of the Brotherhood began to turn up every night too and tap at the side-door till he had to let them in. Once they were in he had to let them have something before they would go away. He felt he had lost the place somewhere, but he didn’t see what he could do about it.
He gave up his job without telling his mother and spent his days at the Mitchell Library pursuing an elusive something he thought of as his studies. He looked particularly for books in one volume that would tell him what he wanted to know. He read Wells’ Outline of History in a hop, skip, and jump, and from Russell’s History of Western Philosophy he wrote out the names of the philosophers. He made notes on what he tried to read, haphazard notes, not always coherent or legible, but still notes. It made him feel more like a real student when he sat in the Mitchell Library and took notes. Odd items of information stuck to him, items as dead and separate as
