He turned and grinned to the gang that had followed him in pursuit of Garson, amused at his use of Percy’s language and wanting them to be amused too. They watched with dull faces.
‘I go to them because I want to,’ Garson said boldly. ‘I don’t have to defend myself to you. I’ve a right to go. It was I who found the money.’
‘I tellt ye, I tellt ye!’ Savage crowed triumphantly to the gang. ‘Oh boy, oh boy! It was Ai who! Oh brush my shoes, Cherlie! My maw’s a duchess!’
He flicked a finger tip against the tip of Garson’s nose and asked abruptly, ‘How is yer maw noo? Dyever see her?’
The flick in the nose angered Garson. It was surprisingly painful. It made his eyes water. In an instinctive response he hit out at Savage and missed him. Savage cackled and danced round him.
‘Haw, haw! Ye couldna hit a coo on the erse wi’ a banjo!’
Garson lunged again and missed again.
‘Haw, haw, ye hivna got a maw!’ Savage chanted the rude rhyme, and sang on malevolently, ‘Yer maw ran awa’ wi’ a darkie.’
‘She didn’t!’ Garson screamed in a frenzy. Yet it was all he had ever heard said, and his denial was an act of faith in the ultimate goodness of the universe. If he accepted common gossip as the truth then the world was bad, but the world couldn’t be bad. It was good, Percy was good. His father was good. School was good. The stories he read were good. He tried to grapple with Savage, to catch him and choke him, but he was far too slow, and he was blinded with tears of anguish. Then as he blundered and lurched this way and that way, Savage stood stock still and faced up to him.
‘Come on and I’ll fight you then,’ he said, suddenly grim and blood-thirsty.
The Brotherhood formed a ring with a rapid manoeuvre worthy of well-trained troopers, and the surplus members climbed on to the top of the pre-nuclear-age air-raid shelters to watch the fight from there and cheer the winner from a ringside seat.
Garson blinked, trying to see his enemy clearly through tears that reflected a cruel world. He had a brief intuition that the people were evil after all, and if that was how it was there was no use fighting. He was beaten before he started. He was no fighter anyway. He was smaller, sligh- ter, far less of a brawler by build and temperament than Savage. But he had to fight even though it was useless. He would die honourably. He shaped up clumsily, nervously, and while he was still making up his mind whether to lead with the left hand or the right Savage punched him right on the nose with one hand and then bang on the eye with the other.
Garson yelped and wept, and Savage hit him in the stomach. He put his hands there to console the shock and Savage smacked him on the ear. In a few seconds he was a quivering helpless morsel of inadequate boyhood. Blood came down his nose over his lips and he was squeamish at the salty taste of it, the water brimming over his eyes kept him from seeing right, and the bells ringing in his ear made him lose all sense of balance and direction. He stumbled and flailed. Still he wouldn’t give in. He wouldn’t turn and run. He didn’t know where to run to. He kept on trying to fight, but he had no idea of fighting. Savage was radiant with the lust of punishment. He had no mercy. He was a wily battering ram, and Garson was the young lamb bleating at the slaughter.
Skinny filtered silently through the rowdy mob as soon as he saw it was a case of murder, and ran for Percy. He found him with his big feet in Tulip Place and his head in the clouds. He was thinking about the stranger. He was always thinking about the stranger. But now he was beginning to feel safe again, it was so long since he had seen him. He was rather proud of his plan for making sure nobody entered or left the cellar if there was anyone odd hanging about the corner: one of the Brotherhood stayed outside at every service and if he saw any stranger he was to play in Tulip Place and keep kicking a ball against the cellar door as if he was practising shooting and collecting rebounds. That was the warning. A simple signal that no stranger could recognize for what it was, Percy was sure. So far there had been no need for the sentry to kick a ball against the door. Perhaps the stranger had gone away for good. Perhaps he was in jail. He looked a real jail-type. Whatever he was he didn’t seem to be a danger any longer.
Last to leave the cellar, the dreaming lord of uncounted wealth, Percy paid off the sentry and ambled down Tulip Place in grim meditation, welcoming the headache it gave him as the price he had to pay for being a thinker. It was all very well looking after a crowd of ungrateful schoolboys, but it was time he did something for himself too. He had his career to think of. All this time gone and he hadn’t even got around to finishing that Ode to Speed he had started.
‘Savage is killing Garson!’ Skinny yelled, grabbing the Regent by one gaunt wrist and shaking it madly.
‘Whit are ye talking aboot noo?’ Percy grumbled crossly. He left the island in the Mediterranean where he had a patio or hacienda or something like that, he wasn’t sure which, but he had in mind a big house with a verandah, and came unwillingly back to Tulip Place.
‘He’s fighting him and Garson canny fight,’ Skinny explained in a hurry. ‘It’s blue murder so it is. Come on and stop it, Percy! Please! Afore he kills him. Ye ought to see the state he’s in, it’s terrible!’
‘Whit way could you no’ stop it?’ Percy demanded, forced to trot as Skinny, still clutching his wrist, turned and raced across the street, through a close, across the back-court, and over to the waste land beside the Steamie. ‘Or Specky? Fat lot o’ use there was making yous somebody. You never use the authority I gave you. How would it be if I just let yous all do whit ye like? Tell me that.’
He grumbled all the way, but Skinny said nothing. He let Percy grumble. He saw no point answering such daft questions. How could he ever stop Savage hitting anybody he wanted to hit? There were things you just had to give in to and put up with, like the brute force of Savage. He had taken a big enough risk running away to fetch Percy. He could only hope that in the excitement nobody would notice it was he who brought Percy along and that he would be safe from the later vengeance of Savage for spoiling him of his prey.
The Brotherhood opened to let Percy get into the ring and he splay-footed indignantly over to Savage, who was kicking Garson in the ribs as the boy cowered on the ground with his head in his arms and his shoulders shaking with sobs. Percy hit Savage an open-handed smack across the face, so hard that the sound was clearly heard by the spectators on top of the air-raid shelters, and they gasped an ‘Oo-oo-oo!’ of mingled delight and alarm at the violence of the blow.
‘You chuck that!’ Percy shouted angrily. ‘Or I’ll give you a kicking, so I will. You’re nothing but a big bully. You think you can settle everything by force. Whatever you’re fighting about fighting proves nothing. I’ve tellt ye that before. Can ye no’ take a telling?’
He glared down at Savage, heaving with temper, and Savage rubbed his cheek and grinned up at him amiably. He wasn’t bothered. His lust was satisfied. A smack on the face was a small price to pay for leaving Garson a bloody weeping humiliated victim on the ground. His father had hit him harder often for nothing.
Percy shook him at the throat, almost lifting him off the ground, and Savage wriggled and wrenched himself away.
‘It was nothing,’ he said innocently. ‘Keep the heid, Percy. The wee fella wanted to have a square go so I gave him wan and he couldny take it, that was a’. You don’t need to start shouting the odds aboot it.’
Garson got on his knees, then on his feet, and brushed himself with trembling hands, little soft white hands that couldn’t have punched a bus-ticket. His
