Sunday morning was always taken at a slow pace in the George household. Jack and Timmo
sat on the bench drawn against the breakfast table and waited impatiently for one of their
parents to rise and serve food. The very thought of helping themselves to cereals was totally
abhorrent to the pair of them. Jack was showing his younger brother a few of the fight moves
he had learned at school before the summer holidays. Timmo the dimmo hadn’t quite worked
out why Jack did the moves and he suffered each time because Timmo, being a dimmo,
hadn’t asked to try the same moves on his elder brother.
‘Do you get it yet?’ Jack had Timmo’s head tucked under his left arm in a vice-like grip and
was proceeding to bang his head on the hard pine top.
‘Ummmm....umm noo...’ came a muffled reply.
‘I said do you get it?’ He let Timmo go free.
‘That was a good move bro. It really hurt!’ Jack ruffled his brother’s hair. He didn’t hate him,
it was just that he got in the way sometimes. Timmo continued as he straightened his clothes.
‘Did you learn anything else from your mates at school?’ Jack smiled with glee at his
brother’s innocence and grasped Timmo’s bare wrist with both his hands.
‘We call this the Chinese burn.’ Twisting opposite ways the skin was stretched to breaking
point. A scream rent the air, causing dad to rush into the kitchen from the bathroom upstairs.
He had half a face covered in shaving cream. ‘What is it? Who’s died?’ He relaxed
immediately as he saw the Chinese torture occurring on the breakfast table. At least there was
no blood to clean up, this time.
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He said, ‘boys will be boys’ and turned to leave them to it, as his wife followed him into the
kitchen and spun her husband around to join in her recrimination.
‘Brainless boys and clever girls. Sometimes I wish I had had a daughter, a nice charming girl
like Kate.’ Her boys both put their tongues out and pretended to gag at the thought, whilst
nudging each other in the ribs. Timmo nudged a little harder than Jack expected and then a
little lower than expected, which winded Jack for a good two minutes. Dad was placing
Shreddies and Coco Pops on the table with full fat milk.
Timmo asked in his nicest, creeping voice. ‘Dad...can’t we have croissants out of the freezer
today? Please dad?’
By this time, Jack had recovered and joined in. ‘No, you need to eat healthily, especially after
the F and C last night.’
Jennifer put her arms around her two boys. ‘Are you going to promise your mum you will
behave all day? I can’t think what you might find to do with all this holiday? Let me try –
what about cricket?’ They both shook their heads negatively. ‘Fishing in the pond then? I
know, you want to clean your dad’s and my car?’
It was Jack who remonstrated first. ‘Mum... we have only just broken up for the holidays,
chores are definitely out.’
‘Even for £5 a car?’
He thought for a moment. ‘It’s a deal, £10 for two but no chamois leathering.’
She wagged her finger at him. ‘No, £10 with chamois leathering and including hoovering out
the insides.’
Jack hesitated too long as Timmo offered his services. ‘I’ll do it mum. And yours dad.’
His dad was apologetic. ‘You can’t do it Timmo, you know you always leave marks on the
paintwork or get distracted spraying the hosepipe everywhere.’
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Jack closed the deal. ‘£10 for two, right? Leathering and hoovering but cash in advance.’
His mum stepped back and looked down at her beloved boys. She had her hands on the hips
of her pink fluffy dressing gown. ‘It’s a deal but you have to let Timmo help and pay him
£3.’ Jack sulked and didn’t reply. ‘And also, I will bake you both some croissants’.
‘Deal mum!’ came in unison.
The boys were hyper, making dad turn away in despair. ‘Why do I bother? All my discipline
through the week and then your mum blows it away.’ But he was joking, he too wanted to
spoil his boys.
* * *
Roger and Kate called at The George’s house to collect Jack and set off towards their secrethideout – The Place. Licko the dog, ran in front of them and sniffed each post and rock in
strict sequence, whereas Timmo lagged 20 metres behind the group, pretending not to follow
them, although he knew exactly where they were going. 20 metres behind Timmo lurked
Wispy the cat, happy to tag along in the background and always hoping the children would
share any food.
Jack turned back and shouted at his brother. ‘Get lost dimmo, you are too young to come with
us.’ Timmo politely imitated Jack by loudly shouting back.
‘I’m only four years younger and remember that last time when I made you all a cup of tea.’
Kate looked knowingly at Roger before addressing Jack. ‘It’s no trouble at all if he hangs
around with us Jack, really no trouble.’ Jack picked up a stone and turned to throw it at his
brother. It landed close to Wispy, making her leap to one side and stop her pursuit. She
thought it was meant for her personally and so she slunk off home.
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‘Get lost I said.’ Roger tried to appease his mate as he turned back around.
‘Really, it is really no trouble at all Jack. He did make a rather spiffing cup of tea last time we
were at The Place.’
Jack shrugged his shoulders as he spoke. ‘You two don’t understand what a pain younger
brothers can be. I love him dearly but...’
Kate clasped Jack’s arm making him immediately pull away. She said plaintively. ‘Don’t
ignore him Jack. The love within a family is everything in life, nothing else really matters
apart from your health.’ She was of course making him feel part of her pain, as her words
reflected the sadness when she lost her mum.
He sighed and shouted over his shoulder. ‘Okay Timmo, you can make the tea again and for
goodness sake, don’t come too close to us until we reach the house. Somebody maybe
watching!’ They were two poor excuses to welcome him and reject him at the same time but
Timmo was delighted to be considered old enough to join in with Jack’s gang.
‘The Place’, was an old Georgian House with beautiful columns either side of its huge
panelled door. It had been built in 1786 and was set slightly outside of the village with five
acres of formal gardens, which were now Christleton’s playing fields.
The red brick walls were still very much the same as when it was built, but many of the
windows had been broken with stones thrown by the children of the village and all the blue
paintwork had nearly peeled off the window frames and doors. No one in the village knew
who owned it, They knew it was built for the Jones’s who had controlled the canal basin and
locks under Chester’s city walls. The Jones’s fortune had been built on the trade up the Dee
estuary, from larger ports like Ellesmere and Liverpool. Moving products by barge on the
inland waterways, but as the river silted up, and the first railways were built, the family’s
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fortunes had gone into decline. Some distant relative who lived in Spain, now owned the old
house but they never visited it. They considered it as “money in the bank”, an asset to be sold
as a nursing home someday after the debt crisis had come out of its treble dip recession.
The children glanced up and down the road to make sure no one was watching them and then
in a single line, they clambered through the hole in the beech hedge facing the morning sun.
Scrambling up the overgrown and steep lawn, they approached the side of the house and
surreptitiously lowered themselves one by one down the open hatchway that led to the
cellars. Licko was told to ‘stay’, by Roger and the dog crept under the nearest stand of privet
to relax in the shade with his tongue out as he panted from his exertions up the road.
Timmo was always scared at this point. ‘I dunno if them bats are still here? What do you
think bro?’
‘I told you not come!’ His brother was harsh.
‘But I really hate bats Jack. I don’t mind snakes and spiders but bats remind me of vampires
and I’m too young to die.’
Jack softened his tone. ‘Stop worrying dimmo, bats don’t move in the daylight and if they
did, they would miss us as they fly around using radar or something.’
‘Sonic radar, that’s what they have. An amazing piece of genetic engineering.’ Roger would
have continued if encouraged but the darkness of the cellar kept them all quiet now. Creeping
across the floor on tiptoe, the children placed their left hands on the damp slimy wall and
edged to where they knew the stairs were hidden. A sudden scream ripped through the dank
air.
It was Kit Kat who shouted shrilly. ‘Jackkkkkkkkkkkk...a rat just ran up my leg! Oh my god,
a flipping rat.’ Kate never swore and flipping was the worse word she ever used. Roger stifled
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a laugh. ‘Roger! Was that your hand and not a real rat?’ She was mortified as all three boys
laughed out loud. ‘I promise you Ponsonby-Smythe, that one day I will get my revenge.’ The
boys laughed louder at the girlie girl. ‘Be scared Roger, no matter how long, I promise you.’
Now her panic was over, she was more worried by the fact a boy had run his hand up her leg
to her bum. Kate had been more aware of boys since the biology lessons at school.
‘Whatever girlie girl, I thought you were tough like Wonder Woman?’ She stayed silent after
Roger’s taunt. A rat or a hand, both were equally as frightening. Timmo took heart from her
fear, if she was scared it was okay for him to be scared. He still couldn’t see much as they
neared the old wooden stairs and so he clung to his brother’s T-shirt in the darkness in front
of him.
He whispered. ‘Yeah you great girlie girl, I’m four years younger than you lot and I’m not
scared because I’m a boy.’ As he finished his sentence, a squeak came from immediately
above him and a rat fell off a roof beam and landed firmly on his head. Another even louder
scream penetrated every room in the house as they all bumped into each other in a blind panic
to reach the stairs and safety. They clambered up as quickly as possible and slammed the
cellar door shut. Quaking, they stood in a group in the welcome light of the old kitchens with
their giant Victorian windows.
‘Flippin flip, and flip again’ said Timmo but one of the words was ruder.
‘Stop swearing dimmo, you know only dad is allowed to swear and then only an occasional
bad word.’
His brother calmed down as he listened to his younger brother air his fears. ‘I felt its claws on
my neck. It was horrible and its whiskers were tickling me as it crawled off.’ The group
examined the back of Timmo’s neck and finding there were no injuries, they headed for the
main staircase and the top floor where they had made their camp.
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The view out of the windows towards the playing fields and Welsh hills in the distance was
magnificent. They had discovered their secret entrance a year before and therefore had
experienced every season from Mr Jones bedroom window. The best time had been after the
big snows, when they had taken snowballs up to the top floor from outside and thrown them
at passers-by from their high vantage point. It had been a delight, listening to people
wondering how a snowball had hit them and watching them run behind the nearest hedge to
search for the young culprits. Jack’s wasn’t a bad gang but they were certainly full of
mischievous fun.
Timmo lit the Gaz stove purloined from his dad’s shed and admired the single blue flame as
he started to make the tea. He opened the cardboard packet of dried skimmed milk and
noticed the mouse droppings. Timmo flicked them out with his middle finger and placed the
packet next to the bottle of Evian taken from Kate’s house the week before. There was no
sugar but Roger always told them it was bad for their teeth. They sat perched on the old brass
bedstead, forlorn without its mattress. Four children line abreast, facing the windows and
watching the grounds man rolling the cricket square 300 metres away. Jack was still too
young for the village cricket team but he and Roger played with the juniors every Tuesday
evening during the holidays.
Roger commented on the work. ‘A nice sward mate.’
‘Yeah.’ Replied Jack and after a minute’s silence. ‘Where’s the sword, I can only see the
roller mate.’
‘Sward, you know the green, the turf, a nice English sward.’
‘Whatever. I wish I was playing today. Dad said he is going to be there.’
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‘So’s my dad. He says your dad is rubbish and never scores any runs.’ Roger was gloating.
‘My dad scored two last week,’ proclaimed Jack before realising it was a poor score.
‘Precisely.’
Jack needed some revenge. ‘Well my dad says that your dad only bowls people out because
he throws the ball and his action is totally illegal but missed by the poor umpires of the
village league.’
‘My dad doesn’t throw Jack. He has a unique action like Muttiah Muralitharan.’
‘Who is Mutt Murlitheran?’ It was an impossible name to pronounce. ‘He can’t be English
with a name like that.’
‘He plays for Sri Lanka’, pronounced Roger for everyone’s benefit.
‘There you go then, a whole team of throwers.’ Jack imitated the action and grabbed his mate
around the neck to drag him onto the bed for a mock scrap. As they wrestled, Timmo joined
in by jumping on the top and finally, unable to resist the rough and tumble, Kate jumped on
the mound of three writhing boys and started tickling all of them, a typical girlie girl. As the
pile collapsed she found her face an inch from Jack’s. Her mouth was within kissing distance,
he paused and thought about it, and then he smelt the garlic she had eaten with her pasta the
night before and he pulled away.
‘Oh my god, dog’s breath, how disgusting. Didn’t you clean your teeth this morning?’ He
could be very rude at times. She blushed bright red, rejected by her adventurer and rushed out
of the room and downstairs to escape to the safety of home and grandma. In her
embarrassment, she even forgot about the rats as she raced through the cellar and out onto the
road.
‘You should be less hard on her Jack. You know she fancies you.’ Roger stated the obvious
but Jack’s reply was meant to cover his own hard embarrassment.
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‘Whatever.’ As he muttered his reply, there was a woosh of flame as it leapt up the curtains at
the rear of the room. Kate’s hasty departure had rocked the old floorboards and unseen by the
children the gaz flame had ignited the old cotton curtains. Now they were burning fiercely.
Jack leaped into action. He dragged a cushion off an old chair and started to hit the flames
with it, but the harder he tried to extinguish them, the higher they reached. Within half a
minute the curtain pelmets were also on fire and the old lime plaster on the ceiling started to
glow and then crumble, allowing the flames to ignite the slatted timber beneath.
Jack turned to the two immobile boys. ‘Don’t just stand there. Shout out of the window for
help.’ He valiantly turned back to the fire and realised their escape was now cut off. He
joined the other two, who were yelling out of a window facing the road.
Licko was one of the first to hear their call. He had accompanied Kate as she stomped off,
homeward bound but she had slowed to a walk and then stopped to sit on the bench under the
ancient Chestnut tree. Whilst wondering how good the conkers would be this year, she had
decided she would go back to be with the brainless boys, after all they didn’t know any better.
Licko growled and pricked up his ears at the distant cries. Then the dog stood and faced back
up the road and lifting his large head he loudly howled. The hair on the nape of his head
stood to attention as he howled again, a demented, deep howl that reverberated through her
heart. Licko turned to Kate and barked ‘let’s go.’ She understood immediately as she heard
the faint cries.
‘Help! Fire!’ She heard Roger first and then Jack. Immediately, she jumped to her feet and
started to run as fast as possible back to The Place. As she approached, she could see three
heads hanging out of the upstairs window, through which smoke poured into the clear
summer air. Immediately beneath them was the grounds man who was already talking to the
emergency services on his mobile phone.
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She called upwards. ‘Get out you three, get out now!’
Jack shouted back, the other two were too terrified to speak as the heat built behind them and
the smoke made them choke. ‘We’re trapped Kate! The doorway at the back is blocked by the
flames.’ A billow of smoke enveloped him and the other boys making them choke again. The
grounds man leaned towards her. ‘I don’t know what we can do miss. I telephoned the fire
brigade but it will take 15 minutes to get here from Chester. I think they are doomed by god.’
She hit him across the chest with her right arm. ‘You snivelling coward, we have to save
them!’ Immediately she jumped down the hatchway and entered the cellar. It was writhing
with rats, hundreds of rats disturbed by the fire that they smelt and feared. ‘Oh god no.’ She
lurched upwards, screwed up her eyes and took all the courage she had into her heart and
stepped back down into the wriggling darkness. The rats crawled across her feet as she
walked across the rat filled floor. Two or three scampered up her bare legs and she wacked
them away, but more came and reached her pants, nestling under the safety of her short dress.
‘Get off, get off get off!’ She screamed at them but couldn’t move any faster, as no way did
she want to trip and fall in the dark. After what seemed an eternity, she reached the stairs and
quickly climbed up. By the time she reached the floor below the bedroom, the smoke was so
thick, the boys couldn’t shout anymore. They were suffocating. They coughed on the floor
above her and she knew she had to act quickly or it was the end for them. The fear spurred
her on as she searched around the room. Near the window and immediately beneath the boys
was a tall set of steps which were sat on rollers. It was obvious! The Jones’s library had
moveable steps that reached right up to the floor above. She searched around for anything
that she could use to prise open a hole in the ceiling and then she spotted an old wooden box
in the corner. On the outside was a faded advert, it said “Croquet set – fit for The Queen.”
Wrenching open the box she grabbed a mallet with a long handle and started up the steps.
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They creaked as she went up, they were full of woodworm and each step bowed downwards
as they were so weak. On reaching the summit, she started to hammer at the plaster above
and immediately exposed the floorboards of the bedroom.
‘Jack! Help me! Can you hear me? I am hitting the floor below you!’ There was no reply. She
hit harder and aimed for the end of a floorboard. Immediately, she saw two nails appear as the
board lifted higher. Suddenly, the floorboard opened further and a smudged face appeared
behind the grimy hands that clasped it. It was Jack, her lovely Jack. ‘I’ll hit the one next door,
make the boys help lift the boards.’
He choked as he answered and spat dirty saliva to one side. ‘Can’t. Not moving.’ He
struggled manfully to help as she thrashed each board into submission. His strength of will
was overcoming the physical danger as the adrenaline surged through his young body. Within
twenty seconds there was an opening big enough for an escape. The fire wooshed behind her,
it was spreading down the stairs and within a few minutes, she too would be trapped.
‘Quick Jack, it’s now or never.’ A pair of legs appeared through the hole. They were Timmo’s.
Carefully she placed them on the rungs and supporting him as he climbed down she left him
gasping at the foot of the steps. Roger came next, but after a few steps he fell, nearly taking
Kate with him and collapsed unconscious on the floor. Timmo crept close and started
slapping Roer’s face to wake him up. Finally, Jack’s legs appeared and he moved next to her
on the steps. He smiled, a white, brilliant smile through the black grime on his face.
‘Thought you’d come back,’ he kissed her on her cheek and together they dismounted and
grabbed the others. Dragging and pushing each other, the four friends went down the stairs to
the kitchen as the roof collapsed into the library. Ten seconds earlier and they would all have
been fried.
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The four friends sat on a bench adjacent to the cricket pavilion and stared in silence at the
inferno in front of them. Old houses certainly burned well. Licko had run off home, flames
were the scariest thing in his doggy life. Even an autumn bonfire made of a few handfuls of
leaves scared him when lit by Roger’s dad in the garden at the mansion. Chester Fire Brigade
had sent two normal fire engines and also ‘a snorkel’, much to Timmo’s delight but even
Timmo felt too guilty to talk about the fascinating machines. The Fire Chief had given up on
the house, it was too far gone. A column of smoke rose a kilometre into the perfectly blue sky
and then dissipated to the south, making a large grey cloud that drifted over Beeston Castle.
Jack took another swig of the water provided by the firemen before he spoke. ‘You saved our
lives Kit Kat. We can never forget that. You are so cool.’
She squirmed in her seat. ‘I would always save my friends’ lives’ she said modestly. In her
heart she wanted to say ‘and especially yours Jack,’ but it was an unrequited teenage crush
that he hadn’t recognised yet.
Jennifer and Jonathan stood talking to Maria and Rupert behind the ambulances. The
paramedics were assuring them that their children were fine. It gave time for grandma to
wander over to the bench. She stopped in front of the children and looked down her glasses
with her piercing eyes.
She spoke gently with her arms crossed over her chest. ‘We had a comedian in my day. He
always said “that’s another fine mess you have got me into”. Hardy was his name, part of
Laurel and Hardy if you have ever heard of them?’ They kept their heads down. They knew
the duo as they had seen some of the old movies at Roger’s house. ‘But in each film, he
always forgave his friend Laurel because it was never really Laurel’s fault.’ She leaned
forward and pulled all four children into a massive hug. ‘Come on, let’s go and face your
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parents.’ They sheepishly moved towards their mums and dads, more scared by the
retributions than by the fire.
The cause was obvious. Rickety floorboards meant a gaz stove would easily topple over,
whether it was Kate’s fault or whether it would have been one of the boys. The Fire Chief
said they were lucky to be alive. The local newspaper shots showed a mournful set of
children and parents with a smouldering house behind. The headline was a trifle unfair.
“School holidays encourage arson attacks by bored school kids.” It was an accident. They
never meant it to happen, but boy did they get the biggest roasting of their lives off their
parents. Kate got off lightly with grandma, nothing more was said, but Kate was extra good
for the next two weeks. All the boys were punished. No seeing their friends for a week. No
PC’s, TV or music and they were all made to read books for six hours a day – unbelievable,
they were in total shock...after all, six f...flippin hours each and every day!
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