crossly. Then he leered forward. ‘Anyway, how can it be urgent if we’ve got to wait for Percy? And you should be in the dock, so you should, but I move that Probationer Garson’s expelled. Come on, get him in the dock!’
Garson was pushed and pulled by four of Savage’s faction and forced to stand behind a dual desk on the left of the chair.
‘What’s the charge?’ he screamed.
‘You broke the first commandment,’ said Judge Savage. ‘All for one and one for all, united we stand but divided we fall. That’s Percy. Percy’s a poet, ye know.’
‘That’s our motto,’ Garson objected hotly. ‘It’s not a commandment.’
‘Doesn’t matter, you still broke it,’ the judge answered swiftly. ‘You wanted to keep it all for yersel’. If Specky hadn’t have been with you we wouldn’t have knew a thing about it.’
‘That’s not true,’ Garson shouted, wriggling in the dock between his jailers. ‘Specky wouldn’t have knew a thing about it if I hadn’t told him.’
‘That’s right,’ Specky admitted, standing up to address the judge. ‘I said it was a matter for the Brotherhood and he said we ought to tell the cops but he never said he wanted it all for himself.’
‘No, of course, he wouldn’t say it,’ Savage complained. ‘But that’s what he meant to do all right. Get the bell and expel him!’
‘You can’t do it like that,’ Specky whispered, horrified.
‘That’s wrong,’ Skinny called out, indignant.
The campanologist, so named and appointed by Percy to perform the rituals of admission, expulsion, summoning and dispersal, grabbed the bell from the piano and Garson darted at once from the clutch of his warders and struggled with him. The bell rang irregularly as they wrestled for it.
‘A barley, a barley!’ Skinny yelled in distress, and the contestants stood frozen. The assembly murmured against the brawl, condemning the decision that had provoked it. Savage saw he hadn’t the support for an expulsion and tried again quickly.
‘I propose an equal division then. Right here and now. Elect two tellers and share it out without Percy.’
‘Twenty tellers couldn’t count it,’ Garson protested vehemently. ‘And if they could you couldn’t spend it. I said the cops because I saw it was too much for us but when Specky said report it I agreed because he’s a Claviger and I’m not, but I meant report it to Percy, I never meant you, you big ape!’
‘Who’s an ape? You’re an ape,’ said Savage. He had a talent for repartee.
‘I still say you can’t decide without Percy,’ Garson argued. ‘Not on an urgent matter, not without Percy.’
‘Yes, we can,’ Savage overruled him. ‘It’s an urgent matter. You’re just after admitting it. Percy said we had to decide urgent matters for ourselves, it’s important matters we’re supposed to tell him.’
‘But this is important,’ Garson said. ‘That’s what I’m saying.’
‘You’re just after saying it was urgent. Is it urgent or is it important? Make up your mind, you can’t have it both ways.’
Savage grinned in the anticipation of victory and called out to the assembly, confusing them by the phrasing of his command.
‘Hands up those who agree it’s urgent.’
But before he could seize the victory he felt was within his grasp the troops were suddenly paralysed with fear. Someone was coming down the chute from the door in Tulip Place.
‘It’s Percy, it’s Percy!’ Frank Garson yelled in relief as a tall round-shouldered youth slouched into the range of the candlelight.
‘What’s going on here?’ a mournful voice asked, a voice that had only recently been broken and sounded as if it was still being mended. ‘I just thought yous was in here when I couldn’t see a soul anywhere outside.’
Frank Garson rushed at him and clung to him.
‘Help me, Percy! Save me! They’re going to put me out of the Brotherhood. We were all out looking for you. We need you, Percy! We need you! Sheuch’s trying to confuse me because I said it was urgent so he said we could decide it for ourselves but I said it was too important to decide without you, and he said I couldn’t have it both ways, but if it’s urgent it’s important too, isn’t it?’
Percy rocked on his toes and heels at the question and decided not to answer it.
‘What were you putting him out for?’ he asked, scowling round the meeting to remind them he had the seeing eye and they had better tell him the truth.
‘Where’d ye get to?’ Savage asked, boldly facing the seeing eye. ‘We’ve been looking for you all night, so we have.’
‘I was at a concert listening to a choir singing,’ Percy answered in his faraway voice, his sad eyes dreamily focused on the furthest wall where the rats lived. ‘It was rare, so it was. If we could get that piano there tuned I could start a choir with you lads if we could get somebody to play it.’
‘That’s just what I’ve been saying for years,’ Savage agreed insolently.
‘Scottish education, ach!’ Percy snorted in bitterness.
‘Percy, please!’ Frank appealed to him, shaking his arm. But Percy was beyond his reach, mounted on his high horse again.
‘They’re supposed to learn you culture and how to live and they don’t give you anything about philosophy or music. They never learn you how to write music for example. All they hammer into you is sums and spelling. If I could just read music I could form yous into a world- famous choir so I could. See the Vienna Boys’ Choir?’
‘No, where are they?’ Savage asked eagerly, looking round the cellar with dramatic jerks of his head. ‘Are they here the night?’
‘They’re only boys like you except that they speak German,’ Percy explained, snubbing the Chief Claviger. For some time he had regretted ever appointing him. Savage seemed too coarse a type to do his job properly. ‘But they’ve had a chance yous have never had because the Germans have always had a great love for music. The world’s greatest composers are Germans like Batch and Baith-hoven.’
He rocked, toe to heel, heel to toe, dreaming how he would love to be the salvation of these poor neglected urchins by introducing them to the good things of life.
‘Oh, Percy, listen!’ Frank pleaded, clutching him, shaking him.
They were all clamouring at him, everybody shouting at once, demanding attention, trying to explain. He came sadly out of his dream. He gathered there was something worrying them. He submitted wearily to the duty of helping them and dismissed Savage from Miss Elginbrod’s chair with a peremptory gesture and sat there himself. Nobody would ever say he shirked his duty. And he liked to sit where Miss Elginbrod used to sit. It was a kind of mild revenge. He put himself in the pose of Rodin’s ‘Thinker’ as he had seen it on the cover of a book he got for sixpence on the barrows in Ren field Street, and waited patiently
