pretend I forgot and thank her for remembering. That do, Hollis?’
He grinned and carried on snipping.
Half an hour later, he was pushing his bike back down the road, the pockets of Laurie Egerton-Smythe’s large sports jacket bulging with new identical looking padlocks.
He was about to take a detour so that he could avoid the part of the High Street where the butcher’s was when he saw Queenie coming round the corner and heading in his direction. Swiftly he crossed over the road. Ahead of him was the stage door of the theatre. He flung his bike on to the pavement and dived in between the doors. Wilfred was talking to a tall man with white hair and a flushed complexion. He spotted Ralph as soon as he walked in. Ralph walked boldly over to him and said very firmly, ‘It’s me again. I thought I’d just pop in to see if there was any chance of me seeing Mr Johnson before the strike tonight.’
‘You’re in luck. Mr Johnson, the lad I was telling you about.’
Ralph looked upwards and found Mr Johnson staring down at him from a great height.
‘I’m Isla’s friend,’ he gulped. ‘I expect she’s mentioned me.’
The man continued to stare at him. ‘Young Isla thinks you can do things back to front, lad. You shouldn’t have been anywhere near the strike last week.’
‘Oh,’ he said feebly.
‘But,’ he went on, ‘the master carpenter told me you made yourself useful.’ He frowned at Ralph and then eventually gave a weary sigh. ‘You toe the line. Whatever Jack Walker says, jump to it. Understand?’
‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.’
Ralph was so exhilarated by this stroke of luck that he quite forgot that he was hiding from Queenie until he leapt out into the street and spotted her at a public phone box. Luckily she had her back to him. He wheeled his bike swiftly round the corner and hopped on to it, cycling down an alley past the second-hand clothes shop he had discovered actors from the rep frequented.
As soon as he hit the High Street he pedalled as fast as he could.
With relief he saw there was no car outside Mrs Egerton-Smythe’s house. He leapt off his bike, ran with it up the side of the house, rang the bell and dumped his bike by the wall.
Mrs Egerton-Smythe flung open the kitchen door. He pulled the padlocks out, sweat pouring down his face. ‘Have you emptied them?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Buckets!’ he panted. ‘Buckets! Earth!’
‘Hollis, what are you talking about?’
‘Fill the trunks,’ he gasped. ‘Queenie telephoning from the box.’
For the next quarter of an hour she and Ralph shovelled earth into buckets which they carried upstairs. They filled the large trunk and suitcase and re-padlocked them. Then, between them, they pulled the stepladder from the loft down and hauled them back up. Ralph slid them across the floor. ‘Two up and two to go,’ she declared. They filled the suitcase which had been in the car boot and returned it to the loft. They were shovelling earth into the one in the shed, when Ralph suddenly said, ‘Queenie will have told him about this.’
‘Oh lord,’ said Mrs Egerton-Smythe.
‘Got any similar tin trunks?’
‘There’s one in the garage. It’s filled with tools.’
They dashed conspiratorially across the grass, smothering their laughter like a couple of schoolchildren. They had just swapped the trunks and carried her son’s one through the garden room into the hall when the bell at the front door rang. Through the coloured glass was a silhouette of a man. Horrified, the two of them gaped at one another. Ralph nodded his head upwards, frantically. With incredible speed they ran swiftly up to the top of the house with the trunk. The doorbell rang again. ‘He’ll use his key if I don’t answer it,’ she said.
‘I can do this on my own,’ said Ralph.
As she ran down the stairs, he heard her calling out loudly, ‘Just coming.’
Ralph swung the trunk on to his shoulder and staggered up the tiny steps. To his alarm he heard heavy footsteps coming up the stairs. ‘Really, Charles, this is too much! I told you yesterday I merely brought down a few books. I think you’re overstepping the bounds of duty. Charles!’
As quietly as he could, Ralph pushed the trunk gently into the loft, pulled up the ladder and slid the door shut, just as the footsteps reached the landing.
‘I merely want to look at the roof, Mother. We’ve had a lot of heavy rainfall and I want to check that there are no leaks.’
‘There aren’t.’
‘That’s convenient,’ he heard Charles say. ‘The chair’s still there.’
‘Yes, I forgot to put it back in the bedroom.’
‘Fortuitous.’
To Ralph’s horror he heard him step on to it. Quickly he turned around looking for somewhere to hide. And then he saw a figure looming in the shadows. The bear! Praying he wouldn’t cause any creaks he moved stealthily towards it, pulled it forward and squeezed in behind it. He heard the trapdoor being flung aside and was aware of a spill of light casting shadows along the roof. A beam of torchlight went scurrying along the walls like a small ack-ack light. He listened to the sound of the padlocks being handled.
‘Found any leaks?’ said a voice from below.
‘Not yet.’
‘What are you doing up there?’
‘I bumped into some trunks. Really, Mother, his things ought to be cleared out. Let me deal with it.’
‘They don’t belong to you, Charles. Neither did they belong to your father. So I shall keep them for as long as I like.’
‘Why? It’ll only upset you. It’s just too sentimental for words, keeping all this rubbish. I mean, look at that bear. Completely useless.’
Ralph shrunk down, willing him not to come over and check it for moths.
‘Have you finished looking for leaks, Charles?’ There was a slight pause.
‘Yes,’ he said at last.
‘Good.’
‘But I think I’ll stay for a while and see what’s been done to the garden.’
The loft was plunged into darkness again. Ralph slipped out from behind the bear and crept back towards the trapdoor.
He was ashamed of his feeblemindedness at not opening it and climbing down. It was only a little jump from the ladder to the floor. If he had moved immediately after Charles Egerton-Smythe had gone downstairs, he
