The Borribles - Larrabeiti Michael - Страница 51

"A great Adventure!" he began. "The threat of the Rumbles—gone; their power destroyed. Their presumption and pride have taken a very serious knock; it will be many a year, if ever, before they come down here again. A day of great rejoicing it is, and one of sadness, also. Four of you did not return, and one German person, who joined in, only for the glory of the Adventure, has also perished. What can we do except try to remember them always, tell their stories and remember their names—good names; Torreycanyon, Napoleon Boot, Orococco, Adolf Wolfgang Amadeus Winston—and of course, our own chief lookout, Knocker. What second name is there worthy of his Adventure?"

Chalotte looked up and interrupted; there were tears in her eyes. "He went back into the hallway of the Great Door to get that box when he should have been escaping, and though it was blazing with flames and the rafters were falling in huge sparks, he picked up the box and carried it out and it was red-hot and the handle burnt into his hand—down to the bone—and he didn't care. His clothes were alight and I thought he was completely on fire. I think you could call him Knocker Burnthand. It is a good name."

There was a murmur of assent from everybody and many repeated the name to themselves to see how it sounded.

"Burnthand it shall be," said Spiff seriously, "and it shall be written in the book."

He looked at the five survivors in the chairs before him. "Your names, too, are confirmed. You have more than won them. You left here with empty words for your title but you return with names that are full of meaning, and every time they are heard now, great and generous deeds will be thought of. Great names they are, which will make every Borrible think of courage and cunning, loyalty and stealth, individualism and affection, every time they hear them." And Spiff, over-acting a little, recited the names like a litany, "Chalotte, Sydney, Vulge, Stonks and Bingo from Lavender Hill."

Spiff gave a sign and the stewards began to file past the chairs and from the room. They left the house and ran through the busy High Street, back to their own dwellings so they could begin retelling the tale straight away. At their heels followed all the Borribles of Battersea, eager to hear the details of the Great Adventure, and soon Spiff's house was quiet.

He gulped his dark brown tea and looked at the Adventurers, still slumped in their seats.

"You must all be tired," he said. "Why don't you go to the rooms upstairs and rest? I'll see that there's some grub for you when you wake up. It would be a good idea for you to have a good long kip, you know." The five of them got up listlessly and left the room. The elation they had felt at arriving home and telling their story had gone and in its place was a rotten feeling of melancholia mixed with self-pity. They felt too a yearning love for the companions they had left to perish on the River Wandle and the immensity of the loss made an awesome gap in their minds.

They climbed the stairs like old cripples. On the second landing Chalotte, who was leading, turned and stopped the others; her eyes were wet.

"Oh," she said, only just holding back her sobs, "it all seems so useless now. We've won our names but lost our friends. Isn't it all so stupid?"

"Shuddup," said Bingo, "don't make things worse."

They went on upstairs without saying another word.

When he was alone, Spiff topped up his cup of tea and mused over what he had heard and he thought about the loss of Knocker and the others.

"I hate to think of what Flinthead did to 'em when he got his hands on 'em," he said to himself. "What a swine he is." He stirred in the sugar. "Shame about the money. I was never worried about the Rumbles at all, really. Couldn't have given a monkey's. It was the money; I could have done with that. Your average Borrible don't know the value of the stuff, they don't know what it's about. I don't suppose we'll ever see any real money down here. Bloody nuisance! Ah well, there'll be another time, some time."