CHRONICLES
OF HALDEN, V
Les
Épatants
by
Robin
Gordon
**
Part
II
Péripéties:
Johnny
and Norah
(Conversations
at the
Swardale Arms, 1
-
Auksford, 2012 -
Chapter
5:
Odderby
house
The Swardale Arms lived up to its reputation as the best
hotel in
Halden, and even George Walker could find no fault with its rooms, its
décor, its toilet facilities, the comfort of its beds, the
quality of its food or the standards of its service.
He had no complaints about his performance in bed either, and
was
quite sure that Amanda was impressed. Poor girl, he thought,
having had to make do with those drippy young men whose love-making is
over in seconds. Fortunate girl, he thought, to have captured
the
interest of a real man like himself, comfortably moneyed, able to give
her a good time, able to give her pleasurable terror by his skilful
driving, able to drive her body to the heights of passion.
Deluded girl, he thought, if she had hopes of getting her claws on his
money.
The morning after their arrival George and Amanda drove up to
Odderby. In his youth that would have been a quiet, easy
drive up
Castle Street, along Swar Street and over the bridge. Now it
involved feeding onto the stream of traffic on what was virtually an
inner-city motorway and negotiating a colossal roundabout with five or
six different exits, and continuing along a busy main road over the
bridge until he reached Odderby Road. George got into the
wrong
lane on the roundabout and cut across the line of traffic on his left,
making two-fingered signs at the horn-blasters, while Amanda shuddered
and buried her face in her hands.
“Bloody shits!” he shouted.
“Don’t
know how to use a roundabout. Obvious I’m turning
left. Stupid bloody buggers!”
He accelerated up the steep hill of Odderby Road and slewed
his
car into Odderby Lane with a screech of tyres that set Amanda
shuddering again.
The gates of Odderby House were open, and he swung his car in
and
jammed on the brakes, stopping a couple of inches from the car already
parked on the drive.
The estate agent waiting for them was a young man in a dark
suit,
with a pale blue shirt and a bright pink tie. George looked
at it
with distaste. If the agent had had any sense he would not
have
parked right there where George, if his reactions hadn’t been
so
remarkably good for a man of his age – for a man of any age
really – might have dented his Jaguar.
He saw the smirking young bastard looking admiringly at
Amanda,
and he put his arm proprietorily around her and smiled, expressing at
the same time greeting and superiority: I’ve got the girl,
you
haven’t.
They shook hands; the agent handed over the particulars and
then
began to describe the house. George cut him short and led the
way
inside. The owners, of course, were absent. Modern
agents
insisted on that. George knew it was only to prevent their
clients doing private deals behind their backs, but still, it was
better for him not to have the owners around, not to have to suppress
his disgust at their execrable provincial taste or force himself to
express admiration for what they had done to Sebastian’s
house.
In fact it wasn’t in too bad condition.
The owners, a
family called Cowan it seemed, obviously had money and they had kept
the fabric of the building in good nick. He commented on it
to
the agent.
“Mr Cowan is a builder,” said the agent,
“or at
least, I mean, he’s the owner of the biggest building and
property development firm in Halden. He’s kept the
house in
tip-top condition.”
“Why is he moving?”
“He’s bought Geddon Hall.
It’s a big
country house between Geddonby and Geddonthwaite. There are
rumours …”
“Rumours? What rumours?”
“Oh, nothing to do with the house.”
“What rumours?” George insisted.
“Well, don’t let it go any further, but
there are
rumours that Mr Cowan may be in line for something in the next honours
list. People are saying that’s why he wants to move
to a
country residence … of course it is only a rumour and
there’s probably nothing in it. He’s
probably just
become so wealthy that he thinks he deserves the life of a country
gentleman. Anyway, as far as you are concerned, it means that
there is no chain. Mr Cowan has already secured Geddon Hall
and
can move at any time.”
“Good,” said George and started moving
round the
house. When at last he came to Sebastian’s room he
went
straight over to the octagonal bay and looked out.
“Halden!” he thought. “Can you
hear me? I
have triumphed. I have gone out into the great big world and
made
lots and lots of money, and now I am about to buy the best house in
town. I am the master of all I survey.”
He turned back to the room. There was a bed where
Sebastian’s bed used to be, and a pink carpet on the
floor.
Striped wallpaper covered the walls, and the furniture, though
expensive, was not entirely to his taste. Amanda was looking
at
it admiringly.
“This,” thought George, “will
be my private
room. I shall furnish it as it was in Sebastian’s
day, and
I shall sit at my desk in the window and look down on the town, but
when Amanda visits it will be the master bedroom we use.
Silly
cow doesn’t realise yet that she’s not living here
with
me. Our love-nest she called it. Well,
there’ll be
plenty of love-making, but she’ll actually be living in a
flat
somewhere in town. Her hands on my money she ain’t
getting.”
“I’ll meet the asking price,”
he said to the
agent. “I know it’s rather high, but I
have taken a
bit of a fancy to this house, so you can tell Mr Cowan that I
won’t haggle. I’ll meet his price, and I
want a quick
acceptance or I’ll look elsewhere. I’m
staying on in
Halden for a few more days, at the Swardale Arms.”
For the next few days George strolled about Halden with
Amanda,
or drove out into the country. Nightly he proved his sexual
prowess. But as the days and nights passed he began to get
impatient. He visited the estate agency. The young
man with
the lurid tie was never there, but a middle-aged woman who seemed to be
in charge, assured him that Mr and Mrs Cowan were considering his offer
carefully.
“What is there to consider?” he
demanded.
“I met their price. If they want to sell all they
have to
do is say yes and I’ll arrange a survey.”
“I really don’t know why
there’s a delay, Mr
Walker,” the woman said. “I’ll
try and find out
and let you know as soon as possible.”
But the next day there was still no answer from the Cowans.
“What the hell are they up to?” growled
George.
“They can’t possibly hope to get more for that
place.
I’ve looked into property prices and they’re
already asking
more than it’s worth.
That evening he and Amanda went into the bar at the Swardale
Arms, as they did every night – he liked to have people
wondering
how a man of his age could have such a glamorous, sexy trophy
girlfriend – but this time he had a particular aim in view:
to
find out what he could about Mr and Mrs J.M. Cowan of Odderby House,
Odderby, Halden.
“I knew him,” said a man at the
bar. “I
were at school with him and we were mates for a bit
afterwards. I
can tell you how he got started, anyway. When he left school
he
joined his father’s firm. Cowan’s was
just an
ordinary little building firm in them days, but doing quite
nicely. Anyway, they had a couple of houses that needed doing
up,
and so he asked his dad if he could take one of them over. So
evenings and weekends the whole gang of us would be there, working away
under his instruction. It was fun at first, and we got paid
for
it too.
“Well that first house sold, and his dad let him
have
another one, and we all worked on it every evening and every weekend,
and it sold too, and we all got money in our pockets. Then
another house came up, and another, and it wasn’t for a
couple of
years that we realised while we’d
been getting just pocket money,
he was raking in a thousand or so each time. He was buying
the
houses cheap himself by then, completely independent of his dad,
getting us to do the work for peanuts, and keeping all the profit for
himself.
“We dropped out then, but he didn’t
care. He
had enough money then to employ proper builders at proper wages, and
his private business just kept on expanding till he was as rich as his
dad. Then, when his dad retired, he took over the main
business
too.”
“His biggest coup,” said another man,
“was the football ground.”
“What do you mean?” George asked.
“Well, Halden United used to play at the Geddonby
Road
ground, but it didn’t belong to them. Seems it had
been
left in perpetuity to the citizens of Halden as open recreational
space, but it somehow got carved up among various sporting sorts of
interests, and nobody really knew who owned what. Well, Cowan
got
himself elected chairman of the club, with promises to put money in and
buy in new players. Then he came up with the idea of building
them a completely new stadium just outside the ring road, so, as
chairman, he persuaded the other directors to sell him the lease of the
Geddonby Road ground dirt cheap in return for a special deal on
building the new stadium. Now, what no-one knew was that
he’d discovered that, for some reason of bureaucratic
convenience, the City council had vested the freehold in the bowling
club that occupied a corner of the site. He offered the
bowlers
£30,000 for the freehold, and the silly chumps sold it
without
even considering that it wasn’t even theirs to
sell. So
Cowan had the whole site at a fraction of its value, and he soon had
planning permission to cover it with flats. He must have made
millions.
“As for the new stadium, when it was built,
complete with
cinemas, restaurants and shops, it turned out that it was Cowan that
owned it, so the football club, swindled out of their own ground, is
now paying him rent to have somewhere to play, and he’s
raking in
rents from all the shops and restaurants as well.
“Not a pleasant man, our Mr Cowan, so if
you’ve got
business dealings with him, you’d better keep a sharp
watch.”
“Always been the same,” put in a third
man.
“I was at school with him and I know. He used to
run a
protection racket.”
“They say he’s expecting a
peerage,” said
another. “That’s why he’s
bought Geddon
Hall. Going to set himself up as a landed
gentleman.”
“I don’t suppose he paid a fair price for
Geddon Hall,” someone remarked.
“He didn’t,” said the man who
knew all about
the football ground. “Poor old Sir Lionel went
looking for
a builder to redo his roofs and he had the misfortune to hit on Johnny
Cowan. Cowan promised to do everything cheaply, gave him
fair-sounding quotes, then found all sorts of extras. The
Robsons
had been hit over and over again with death duties, and now
there’s old Sir Lionel, late seventies, not quite with it any
more, just the sort of victim Cowan likes. The bills keep on
mounting and Sir Lionel realises he has no way of paying them, so he
agrees when Cowan offers to take the estate off his hands in exchange
for a smallish detached house in Swenby. I often see him
wandering round the streets looking pretty glum, and you can meet Lady
Robson in Tesco’s most days, looking for reduced goods on
their
sell-by date.
“As for a peerage, you’d have to have a
pretty
twisted sort of Prime Minister to offer anything to a con-man like
Cowan.”
“A Prime Minister like Tony Blair,”
someone remarked.
“True. Perhaps there is something in it
after all.”
Having bought their drinks the men moved away from the bar,
leaving only George and the man who had mentioned Cowan’s
schoolboy protection racket. George asked him for more
details. Anything he could find out about Cowan might come in
useful.
“He was in the same year as me,” said the
man,
“at Halden Grammar, as it then was, though it was joined to
the
girls’ school in our third year. Johnny Cowan made
quite a
name for himself from the start. They throw first formers
over a
sort of wall, as an initiation rite.”
“I know about that,” said
George. I went to
Halden Grammar – before it was merged.”
“Ay, well, Johnny Cowan put a stop to that right
away. His gang charged the wall, grabbed the leader of the
second-formers, hauled him down onto the grass, and took the trousers
off him. How we laughed. There he was, trying to
hold his
shirt down and begging for his pants. Cowan and his gang
threw
them around, making him chase them, with everybody laughing at
him. Then, when the bell went, Cowan threw his pants up into
one
of the trees, and we left him there trying to get them down while we
all went into class. After that the Cowan gang started
throwing
second-formers over the wall. We thought he was a proper hero.
“Anyway, it was in the third form that he started
his
protection racket. We had girls in the school by then, and he
took up with Norah Blackburn. She really hated boys, and she
thought she could use Johnny Cowan to bully and humiliate other
lads. He was already pretty well-known as a bully, you
see.
Anyway, she had something against some lad once, and she got the Cowan
gang to ambush him – and she was just about to debag him,
when he
offered Cowan money to let him go. That’s how the
racket
started. Cowan realised that lads would pay him not to bully
them
– especially if they thought Norah had her eye on their
trousers. He got younger bullies to threaten boys in their
own
year, and then charged them for protection. It ended up with
collectors in all the younger forms bringing Cowan his fees every week,
and he even had a prefect working for him, keeping him out of trouble.
“It didn’t affect our year till the fifth
form, then
Cowan thought he had a chance to complete his empire by making all of
us pay protection, even Spike Thompson’s gang – I
was in
that.
“Spike was the only lad in the school that Cowan
was scared
of, the only one people reckoned could beat him in a fight, and he was
determined that Cowan wasn’t going to make our class
pay.
So it was stand-off for a bit, then things started going wrong for us
when Simone came.”
“Simone?” queried George.
“Simon,” said the man.
“New boy, good at
French. French master pronounced his name Seemong in the
French
way. We hated him, so we called him Simone. If you
want to
hear the full story, come over and meet my wife. She was in
Norah
Higgit’s gang, and they idolised Simone.”
Chapter
6:
Simone
George went over. The man’s name was
Peter Johnson,
and his wife was called Margaret. Peter explained briefly
that
George wanted to buy Johnny Cowan’s house, couldn’t
understand why Cowan hadn’t accepted his offer, and was
interested in any information about Cowan that he could get.
“I was telling him about Cowan’s
protection racket at
school,” he said, “and how he started trying to
force Spike
Thompson’s gang to pay up when Simone arrived.”
“Yes,” said Margaret, “that was
when things began hotting up.”
“You girls all fancied Simone something
rotten,” said
Peter, “especially Moira Higgit – and she was
Spike’s
girlfriend up to then.”
“Thing was,” said Margaret,
“Moira and Spike
had had a row the day before Simon appeared at school, so she took up
with him just to show Spike she wasn’t just always going to
be
available whenever he snapped his fingers – and then, when we
really got to know Simon, he was really lovely. He spoke so
nicely, you know, like the people on the BBC.”
“We all thought he had a poncy southern
accent. It
made him sound a bit of a sissy,” put in Peter,
“and then
he was so good at things like French that we all thought he was a
crawler.”
He had a lovely French accent,” said Margaret,
“just
like a real Frenchman. Mr Watkyns said it was a joy to listen
to.”
“Yeah,” said Peter, “it was
because of old
Watkyns that we called him Simone. We all had to have French
names in class and old Watkyns wanted us to talk in French. I
was
Pierre, which was all right, and Maggie here was Mar-gar-et, but when
old Watkyns started calling Simon Seemong
we all decided to call him
Simone
and treat him like a girl.”
“Did you lot really think boys were better than
girls?” Margaret asked.
“I suppose we did – back then,”
said
Peter. “I wouldn’t dare say so
now.”
“Not if you want any dinner tomorrow,”
said Margaret.
“Anyway,” said Peter, “the
girls went crazy for
Simon, and the more we objected the more they idolised him”
“It was mainly because you lot made such a fuss
that we
were all over him,” said Margaret. “I
mean, he was
lovely and so polite and gentle that we really did like him.
He
made you lot look like a lot of bumptious oafs, really, but Moira was
really enjoying how jealous Spike was, so she made sure to really look
like she adored Simon whenever Spike was anywhere near.”
“Like that time,” said Peter,
“when we came out
on to the school field and all you girls were sitting round in a little
group and Simone was just lying there with his head on
Moira’s
lap, and she was stroking his face and treating him like she loved him
more than anyone in the world.”
“Oh, yeah, sort of like the dream of dreams
– and
didn’t you all wish it was you lying in some girl’s
lap
being stroked and caressed?”
“Course we did. Spike was
furious. He grabbed
Simon’s ankles and pulled as hard as he could so
Simon’s
head went bouncing down on the hard ground.”
“Yeah and then that little beast – that
one that was your best friend …”
“Budge Hargreaves.”
“… yeah, Budge Hargreaves flung himself
on Simon, and you know what he tried to do?”
“He tried to debag him!” said Peter
jubilantly.
“Yeah, he flung himself on poor Simon and started
undoing
his trousers! Then we all grabbed him, and pushed him away
…”
“… and started yelling at us as if we’d
done something.”
Anyway, by the time we’d got you all hustled away
Simon had
got his trousers fastened up again and none of the other girls saw
except me – and they wouldn’t believe it when I
told
them. They said no-one would dare do anything like that to
Simon,
and they didn’t see why boys thought trousers were so
important
anyway.”
“But Simon knew what Budge intended,”
said Peter,
“and it must have given him summat to think about.
Yeah,
trousers were important to boys. The thing is: to be debagged
means you’re not considered fit to be one of the
lads. I
suppose in them days when hardly any women wore trousers they were
considered a symbol of manhood. After all when you were
little
boys you had to wear short pants, and getting your longs was an
important step towards becoming a man. So if the other lads
really wanted to humiliate you, they wrestled you down and pulled off
your trousers. It wasn’t just nudity, at was a sort
of
symbolic emasculation. So when Simone realised the lads
thought
he was the kind of boy who deserved a debagging, well he knew he had to
do something about it.”
“I don’t see what this has to do with
Cowan,”
George interrupted. “I’m sure these
memories of your
schooldays must be fascinating, but I really want to know about
Cowan.”
“He comes into this story – in a big
way,” said
Peter. “The tale of Simon Parr leads to a major
confrontation between Spike’s gang and Cowan’s mob
and it
all ends with …”
“Don’t spoil it, Peter,”
Margaret said.
“It’s a good story, so tell it properly, everything
in
order.”
“OK,” said Peter, “well, we got
to where Simon
realises that his pants are in peril, so he looks for an opportunity to
catch one of us by ourselves, and he manages to catch Mike Armstrong
– whatever happened to Mike Armstrong?”
“I think he’s in Birmingham or
somewhere.”
“Oh, yeah. Well Mike was always a
cheereful, friendly
sort of lad. Some of us would probably just have punched
Simon in
the face, but Mike listened to him, and Simon convinced him that he
wasn’t just a stuck-up sissy and it wasn’t his
fault that
the girls were all over him, so Mike agreed to bring him along to meet
the rest of us and talk it out.
“Well, the trouble was, after the – what
did you call
it, the dream of dreams? – After that little episode, Budge
said
to the rest of the gang, “If you’d all been ready
and
jumped in to help me, we could have got Simone’s knickers off
– debagged him in front of the girls, ’cos
that’s
what he deserves!”
“Of course none of us had thought of debagging
Simone
– Budge had a thing about trousers, you remember? –
but
when he said all this, we all agreed that debagging was exactly what
Simone deserved. Well just then Mike came round the corner
bringing Simone with him, so before either of them could say a word we
had Simone flat on his back on the ground and Budge was busy undoing
his kegs.”
“Yes,” said Margaret, and you’d
have had them
right off him if we hadn’t come on the scene.”
“How did you happen to come round there just
then?”
What-is-name told us, you know that little sneak that we all
hated …”
“Aitken Sneath!” cried Peter.
“Well that explains a lot.”
“Anyway,” said Margaret, “we
came rushing round
to the corner of the field, and we grabbed Mike Armstrong and pulled
him off Simon. He managed to get Simon’s trousers
down
almost to his knees, but we shoved him away and surrounded Simon so he
could pull ’em up again without you lot seeing
…”
“Actually,” said Peter, “Mike
was trying to
stop us pulling Simon’s pants off. He pushed Budge
out of
the way and he was pulling Simon’s pants up and trying to
protect
them from us when you lot grabbed him, so in fact it was you girls
that
pulled Simon’s pants down.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Knowing Sneath he probably timed
it so
you’d arrive just after we got Simon’s trousers
right off
– too late to stop us but in time to have a blazing
row. It
was Mike that stopped us, and after you’d gone he told us
what
Simon had said and how he was bringing him to meet us for a
reconciliation – and that led to the next
confrontation.”
“I still don’t see what this has to do
with Cowan, George objected.
“You’ll see in a bit.
We’re coming to Cowan right after the next episode.”
“All right. What happened next?”
“Well, after Mike explained what Simon had said we
thought
we should give him a chance, so Mike went off to find him
…”
“… and Aitken Sneath came and told us
you were
planning to lure him on to the field and attack him again, so we rushed
over and found Mike and Simon talking and it looked as if Aitken was
right, ’cos Mike started leading Simon back out onto the
field,
so we grabbed him, and Moira and them were spinning him round by the
arms like a maypole, and somebody shouted: Get his trousers
off! So they
started pulling at his trouser-legs but they
weren’t getting anywhere because they were too ladylike to
get
anywhere near any sensitive areas – but I had seen how Budge
unfastened Simon’s trousers, so I grabbed for
Mike’s
waistband and ripped it open, and his zip ripped open too, and his
pants started coming down, but then Simon pushed me out of the way and
yelled, No!
Not his
trousers!”
“That,” said Peter, “is when we
arrived –
and guess who told us what was happening.”
“Aitken Sneath?”
“Yeah, Aitken Sneath! Anyway,
we came on the
scene just in time to hear Simon yell, …t his
trousers! Then we
saw him dive at Mike and pull his kegs
right down to his ankles and all the girls gave a great shriek of
mocking derision.”
“Though actually,” said Margaret,
“Simon was
trying to stop Mike’s trousers going down. He just
fell
over when we swung Mike round, and he pulled them down by
accident.”
“But we thought, he’d said Get his
trousers, so it looked to us
as if Simon had deliberately led
Mike into an ambush and helped the girls to debag him. So,
after
a certain amount of yelling at each other, the girls and Simon went off
one way, and we went off the other with Mike, but we all knew that
Simone had gone too far this time and there was only one possible
punishment – he’d have to be taken to the
cockpit.
It’s a sort of wooded area down the hill below the school
field,
where …”
“I know about the cockpit,” said
George.
“Lads used to say if a boy really pissed off the other boys,
they’d take him to the cockpit and debag him in front of the
whole school. Did they still do that even after the girls
came.”
“We
never heard of it,” said Peter.
“And we
certainly didn’t,” said Margaret.
“We put the word around among the boys,”
Peter
continued, “and I was sent to tell Simone that Spike
challenged
him to a fight in the cockpit and that fighting Spike was the only way
he’d ever be accepted in the school. Only, of
course, when
Simone got to the cockpit, we told him it wasn’t a
fight.
We said, You’re
going to be debagged!
And that’s
where Johnny Cowan comes into the picture.”
Chapter
7:
The
Cockpit
After four-o’clock the girls all went home as usual
without
suspecting anything, but the boys all congregated in the cockpit, and
Simon arrived ready to defend his honour by fighting Spike, only to be
grabbed and told that he was to be debagged in front of all the male
half of the school as a punishment for his behaviour.
Naturally he protested that this was unfair and offered to
fight
Spike or anyone else his angry schoolmates cared to nominate as their
champion. They laughed at him. They
sneered. They
jeered and jostled him. They told him his luring of Mike into
an
ambush by the girls deserved far worse than a mere debagging.
They said he was lucky they hadn’t decided to disentrouser
him
completely, for that was what his treachery deserved. A
conniving, cheating, stuck-up traitor shouldn’t be allowed
trousers at all, and this debagging might just be the first of
many. In fact, whenever and wherever they saw him wearing
trousers they might rip them off him.
That was when Johnny Cowan stepped forward. His
protection
racket had gradually expanded from milking smaller boys for their
pocket money towards exploiting the upper forms. Only a few
weeks
earlier he had undermined and defeated resistance in the fourth form,
and now he saw his chance to conquer the fifth – for Johnny
knew
that Spike Thompson, probably the only boy in the school who could take
him on in single combat, had hurt his hand in the last confrontation
and could scarcely touch anything without wincing with pain.
“Nobody touches Simon,” Cowan said, and
there was a
groan of disappointment from the spectators. Most of them had
nothing against Simon, but the prospect of a good debagging meant
entertainment, a laugh at someone else’s expense.
“No-one touches anyone
unless I say so,” Cowan
announced. “If he’s paid his dues
he’s under my
protection.”
“Skunk! Traitor! Treacherous
little
stinker!” Spike’s gang’s insult
were aimed at
Simon.
“I haven’t paid anybody
anything,” Simon said.
“You will, though,” said Cowan.
“You
don’t want to be debagged by this lot? You
don’t
deserve that, do you? So you join my insurance scheme and
nobody’ll touch you – or they’ll have me
to contend
with. Orright, Spike, you want his pants, so I’ll
fight you
for them. Better than that, winner wins the loser’s
trousers.”
“That’s fair, innit lads?” he
shouted to the
spectators. You wanted to see someone lose his pants
–
well, you will!”
There was a cheer.
“Come on then, Spike!” Cowan
jeered.
“You’re not scared are you? Get your
fists up –
unless you want just to hand over your pants!”
Mike and Jonno tried to protest. It
wasn’t
fair. Spike could beat Cowan, everybody knew it, but he had
hurt
his hand.
“One of you
fight me then,” said Cowan.
Mike was tough and wiry, but Cowan was bigger and
heavier.
Jonno was obviously no match for the bully, nor was Budge.
“Come on!” shouted Cowan.
“They’re
all waiting! Who’s gonna fight me?
Who’s brave
enough to risk his trousers? Come on!”
“I’ll fight you!” It
was Simon.
“You?!”
“Yes, me. I came here to fight, and
I’ll fight you.”
“Orright,” grinned Cowan.
“”You lot happy with that?”
Spikes gang nodded and retreated. If Simone lost
his
trousers to Cowan, their object would have been achieved just as much
as if they had debagged him themselves.
“Good!” shouted Cowan.
“Well let’s
have some real entertainment. “He’ll
fight for
Spike’s gang, and I’ll fight for mine.
Loser and all
his gang get debagged! Right!”
There was a slightly puzzled cheer. No-one quite
knew what
was going on, but it looked as if Simon was going to be debagged after
all and a whole lot more trousers might fall.
Aitken Sneath hugged himself with glee.
He’d wondered
how to cope with the cockpitting of Simon. He’d
been very
successful up to that point. He’d brought the girls
to
rescue Simon just a bit too soon, hoping they’d arrive while
the
boys were throwing Simon’s trousers around and taunting him
as he
tried to catch them. Mike’s attempt to prevent the
debagging had spoiled that, but when the girls had hauled Mike away
Simon’s trousers had come down to his knees and it had looked
as
if Mike had pulled them.
Even better: when he brought the boys to witness the
debagging of
Mike by the girls, Simon’s attempt to rescue Mike had brought
Mike’s trousers to his ankles, and the boys were convinced
Simon
did it deliberately.
He couldn’t play the same trick when Simon was
lured to the
cockpit. If he told the girls in advance, they’d
put a stop
to the debagging, and Sneath didn’t want that.
There was no
way he could get them to hang around so that he could bring them in
just too late to rescue Simon, so the only thing to do was to let Simon
be debagged, and then report it to the girls the next day. He
would then have the double pleasure of embarrassing Simon in front of
the girls by describing the forcible removal of his trousers and of
escalating the enmity between Spike’s gang and
Moira’s
girls.
He’d been thinking quickly during Cowan’s
intervention, wondering how he could cause maximum mayhem from whatever
happened; now it looked as if both Simon and Spike’s whole
gang
would be humiliatingly stripped of their trousers. He would
be
able to embarrass them all by reporting the scene to the girls, and to
slant it so that Spike’s gang got the blame. So he
sniggered and hugged himself and watched.
Cowan charged at Simon and swung his foot viciously at his
balls. If he had connected that would have been the end of
the
fight.
Simon sidestepped and spun round – and
Cowan’s kick
continued skywards, tipping the bully backwards onto the ground.
Cowan lumbered to his feet, charged again, and hurled himself
on
top of Simon. The smaller boy fell backwards, and Cowan
somersaulted over his head to land on his back again.
“Ju-jitsu,” someone said.
It was judo, the gentle way. Again and again
Cowan’s
own furious momentum was used to bring him crashing down, till, at
last, he was face down on the ground with Simon sitting on him and
twisting his arm behind him.
“Give up!” said Simon.
Cowan roared and struggled, but Simon’s grip grew
ever more
painful, till at last the bully howled his surrender.
The cockpit erupted into tremendous cheering.
Spike’s
gang surrounded Simon, clapping him on the back and congratulating him,
while Cowan climbed groggily to his feet.
The spectators hadn’t forgotten what
they’d been promised.
“Gettim!” they yelled, and Cowan
disappeared under a mob of eager debaggers.
His gang hesitated. Rescue their leader?
Impossible! Flee? Too late! The jubilant
boys were
upon them and every one was debagged. Then the mob turned on
Cowan’s collectors, the boys who had come round each week
taking
payment and passing it to Cowan. Squealing they fled, and
were
brought down and stripped of their nether garments. Nigel
Barber,
shot up a tree in his efforts to escape, and his trousers were hauled
off his limbs as he hung in the branches.
Someone produced matches, and a pair of trousers was set
alight. Other pairs were thrown on the blaze or lit
separately
and waved around as they burned. Then in high good humour the
debaggers and spectators made their way down to the bottom of the
slope, pushed through or climbed over the rickety fence and set off for
home, leaving the Cowan gang and their allies to wait for darkness to
fall, and to hope they could sneak home unmolested, though with little
prospect of gaining entry to their houses without having to explain to
their parents their lack of trousers.
“Surely,” said Amanda, “if all
those boys went
home trouserless there would be an investigation and all sorts of
trouble.”
“I suppose there might have been,” said
Margaret,
“but nothing much seemed to come of it.”
“Their fathers would have known,” said
Peter,
“that for a lad to be debagged in the cockpit meant
he’d
really been a bit of a stinker. They would know better than
to
make a fuss and suffer the publicity. Anyway, as far as I
ever
heard, nothing was ever done about it.
"None of the Cowan gang was
at school next day. I think some came back for their
O-levels,
but Johnny Cowan just left and joined his father’s building
firm,
and you’ve heard what happened next, how he used his friends
as
cheap labour and built up a business of his own. He still
gets
away with murder. He’s got friends on the Council,
and that
little stinker, Aitken Sneath, well he’s now chief planning
officer for Halden, and it suits him to fix things for Cowan just
because it upsets so many other people.”
“Yes”, said Margaret, “my
sister lived in a
lovely quiet close, till Johnny Cowan bought the house just behind her
and put in for planning permission to double its size and make it into
two separate dwellings. The meeting was fixed for a certain
day,
and the residents started getting their material together so they could
make a proper protest, but the meeting was brought forward with no-one
being told anything about it, so when they rolled up to the Council
offices to present their petition they were told it was already decided
and there was nothing more they could do. I bet Sneath really
enjoyed that.”
“I dare say he gets a bit of a back-hander from
Cowan to
keep him sweet,” said Peter. “Cowan used
to have a
prefect at school on his payroll – we all knew about it
’cos things used to happen when he was on yard duty and
somehow
he was always occupied somewhere on the other side of the
school.”
“And what about Mrs
Cowan?” George asked. “Is anything known
about her?”
“Plenty!” said Peter.
“He married Norah Blackburn.”
“She stayed on at school,” said Margaret,
“and got her A-levels.”
“I heard,” said Peter, “that
the day after the
cockpit she was throwing her weight around as usual and some lad told
her he didn’t have to pay any attention to her now that Cowan
was
finished. Way I heard it, he’d hardly finished
speaking
when he found himself flat on the floor with Norah’s gang
sitting
on him and Norah pulling his trousers off. He started yelling
that he’d pay up just like before, but she told him things
were
different now: she wasn’t going to let him pay to keep his
pants,
she was going to have her fun and then make him pay to get them
back.”
“I don’t know if that’s true or
not,”
said Margaret, “but, like I said, she stayed on at school and
got
her A-levels. After that she got an office job at Collerfords
– started the same time as me.”
“I bet she enjoyed the intitiation of the
apprentices,” said Peter.
“She did!”
said Margaret. “We girls in
the office didn’t get involved in any of that sort of
thing. That was the packing department lassies and they were very
common. We
didn’t even talk to them – we had a
separate canteen for office staff, and we came in by the front door so
we hardly ever saw them – but Norah made a point of making
friends with them and got them to let her know when there was going to
be an initiation, and then she went down to watch. She asked
us
if we’d like to go down too, but we certainly
didn’t want
to see things like that going on.”
“Or coming off,” said Peter.
“I suppose the new lads got debagged?”
“Debagged, measured, prodded and manipulated, and
then
covered with grease,” said Margaret, “with all of
them
common little sluts looking on and screeching with laughter.
It’s a wonder any of those poor lads ever wanted anything to
do
with women again after that – but I suppose their hormones
took
over.
“Anyway, this went on for a few years, and Norah
married
Johnny, but she still wanted to watch the initiations. The
packing girls used to tell her when it was time, but gradually they
began to think it was a bit funny, a married woman who was a bit older
than them, taking such an interest. So they stopped telling
her
and she eventually realised that she wasn’t going to have any
more fun at Collerfords. Well, by this time she had qualified
as
an accountant, so she left Collerfords and joined Cowan’s
firm as
company secretary and that’s where she’s been ever
since.”
“Yeah,” said Peter, “and you
can bet
there’s a lot more money passes through Cowan’s
hands than
ever gets recorded on the balance sheets.”
“And yet you say he’s in line for a
peerage?” said George.
“Well,” said Peter, “you know
as well as I do
that with a Prime Minister like Blair any rich bastard can buy a
peerage just by giving money to the Labour Party.”
“Oh surely not,” Amanda
squeaked. “Not in England, not these
days.”
“Don’t be stupid,” growled
George.
“That’s exactly how it’s done.
Blair’s
got only one policy and that’s to make sure he stays in power
as
long as possible. That’s why he set up separate
parliaments
in Scotland and Wales, because he thought he’d have a
permanent
Labour majority there.”
“As it is,” said Peter,
“he’s just opened
the way for Alex Salmond. You know, there have been so many
Scottish ministers and even Prime Ministers since the Union, and
English wealth and Scottish brains made the UK number one in the world
for a couple of centuries. Now you get a self-seeking shit
like
Blair destroying the country for his own gain, and a fifth rate
politician like Salmond, who knows he’d be out of his depth
in
London, trying to create his own little pool where he can be the
fattest frog. Don’t get me started on
Blair! Anyway,
all Cowan had to do was slip a few thousand to Blair’s mob
and
it’s all hail Lord Cowan, Duke of the Muck Heap.”
“Come on Peter,” said Margaret.
“You’ll be awake all night with indigestion if
you’re
not careful. It’s getting late. Time we
went
home. Nice to meet you, George, and I hope you get your
house.”
Please
remember that this story is copyright. See Copyright
and concessions
for permitted uses.
Chapter
5: Odderby House
-- Chapter
6: Simone -- Chapter
7: The cockpit
Les:
Épatants: Index
-- Les
Épatants: Part
I -- Les Épatants:
Part
III
Robin
Gordon's works: Index
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