‘Ugggggghhhhh,’ retched Eb, hands on his knees, ‘Yuuuuuukkkkk’, he gasped, before retching again.
J, feeling that he had to somehow mitigate a potential disaster, had gone first, once the clear plastic tubing had been pushed well down into the tank.
‘You’ve got to get the other end lower than the bottom of the tank,’ Jan had explained. ‘Then you suck on that end until the water comes up over the top and down to below its bottom.’
‘Don’t forget to take it out of your mouth at the last moment.’
It was harder than J had expected. The first couple of sucks had barely brought the water level in the tube to the top of the tank.’
‘Suck harder,’ encouraged Bum, in his usual position astride the tank.
J did his best, but his best was still short of the top bend of the tubing.
‘Put your thumb on it when you need to stop.’
J shook his head, breathless, ‘Someone else have a go,’ he wheezed.
‘Let me.’ Eb took a number of deep breaths and then gave himself to the task with a commitment that surprised nobody.’
‘It’s nearly …. It’s over …’
‘Don’t forget to …..’
Eb had wheeled away coughing and spluttering while the others gazed in awe as the vile noxious green fluid that they had been needlessly carting around poured out onto the ground and out of their lives.
Mo took her flask of tea over to a clearly suffering Eb and tried to get him to wash his mouth out.
‘Urgggggggggh ….. Ah …….. thank y ……Urgggggggh …..’
Gradually he retched less and spat more. ‘I’m Ok,’ he said at last straightening up and grinning, ‘I don’t think I swallowed any.’
Then they set to work, Dob and J, with the aid of the scaffolding pole inching the bowser over the roadway that had been constructed the afternoon before and positioning it at the bottom of the first incline. Mo, Jan and Bum had busied themselves constructing a pulley system. Mo’s thick mooring line was threaded through the double block from her parents’ old yacht and the large pulley from the scaffolding. The wire was used to anchor the system to a large metal trough at the top of the first incline. They were worried whether it would hold the weight of the bowser, so Bum undertook to fill it with water from a square iron tank not far from the bowser using a discarded bucket that had a slit down one side. The lower end of the pulley system was attached to the tow cup at the front of the bowser.
After a short break, by which point Eb had regained his composure, and during which they agreed their MO, they took to the task. They all knew this was the crunch point, the make-or-break moment, but they carried with them the confidence that had built slowly over the previous few days, through success and adversity. They were a team with a purpose, a team with something to prove.
It took some trial and error, but they eventually deployed themselves with Dob and Eb levering up and forward the rear axle with the scaffolding bar, Mo and Jan tailing on the free end of the rope from the pulleys and J and Bum, squelching in his sodden shoes, heaving concrete kerb stones behind the front wheels each time momentum stopped. It was slow work. Sometimes they made good progress, but mostly it was slow work.
‘This pulley system would be great if we had to move the bowser down the slope,’ commented Bum.
‘Why on earth would we want to do that?’
‘Just saying.’
At the top of the first incline they used their newly acquired steering system to turn the bowser round the bend and then reattached the top of the pulley system to an old, conveniently situated tree stump. This was the hardest bit. The slope was slightly steeper and running water had gouged out deeper furrows in the track. At points they thought it might be beyond them and when, accompanied by yells from J, ‘Get out of the way,’ the bowser, despite its chocks of kerbstone, had slid back a couple of yards, it all felt a bit much. They were, after all just children, they were supposed to be playing in their Summer holidays.
But they gathered themselves together. They told each other they could do it – and they did!
The last incline was comparatively easy, the top wire tied to the gate post at the entrance to the site and the track reasonably smooth.
‘Huzzah!’ shouted Mo.
‘Fantastic!’
‘We’ve sodding done it.’
There was a lot of backslapping and even some more formal handshaking. This was a momentous occasion and one they all felt deserved to be properly recognised. Then more pressing matters took their attention – it was well into the afternoon and they hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. They were rummaging in knapsacks for packets of sandwiches when he was suddenly among them.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing!’ shouted a man with a bright red face whose arms seemed to flap and rotate uncontrollably. ‘You’re trespassing! This is a building site! This is private property! How’s that bowser got over here?’
Instinctively they all moved away from him.
‘Bloody kids! Vandals that’s what you are! You should all be locked up! You’ll all be in trouble for this, wait till your parents get to know!’
He looked round the now frightened and very cowed group before him. J sidled behind Dob, out of the man’s gaze – but he was spotted.
‘Hey not so fast you ….. I know you.’ He stepped forward and grabbed J by the collar, giving him a vicious shaking. ‘You’re Jeremy Brown aren’t you from The Steppings over by the valley estate.’
J struggled to get free, but the man’s grip was resolute, despite the collar on his shirt tearing.
‘Let him go!’ shouted Mo, ‘He aint done no harm, we’re just children …. You can’t go around grabbing children.’
The man seemed to reconsider the situation and then let go of J’s arm. ‘No matter, I know where you live. I’ve got to be away in Kettlesham this afternoon, I’ll just call by to see your father again, around eight tomorrow morning I fancy.’
He then glanced back at the bowser, checked it was in a safe position and then herded them out of the gate, relocking the padlock behind him.
‘Don’t know how you got in,’ he muttered to himself as he got into his van and drove off.
The group stood in silence for a while, then Eb said, ‘Sorry J I forgot.’
‘Me too,’ confessed Dob.
‘How does he know you J?’
J was lost in the misery of one who knows that past miss deeds are catching up with him, that retribution is coming and one that will involve being grounded to the end of the holidays and, he realises, missing the trials for the Town FC.
Eb stepped in, ‘We were playing with the bowser last year when he caught us – although he only actually caught J ‘cos me an Dob ran away in time. You never grassed us J, you’re a good un.’
J took up the thread, ‘He took me home and told my Dad. Dad pretended to be outraged by my behaviour and agreed that I wouldn’t trespass on the site again. He was fine with me afterwards, saying he didn’t much like the foreman’s demeanour, but he did have a job to do and part of that was keeping children off the building site. He’s going to go bananas with me this time – if only because he’s got to deal with the man again.’
‘Well, he’s a nasty, shouty man and he’s not going to get away with it!’
‘He was horrid.’
‘But what can we do?’
There was a long silence, eventually broken by Mo, ‘We can make him look foolish!’
— x —
They were late for their teas, but they had re entered the site through the culvert and managed to manoeuvre the bowser back down the three inclines and across the foundation trenches. They had even worked out the places to anchor the top of the pulley system for the three pulls it would take to get back up the other side.
Then they had agreed to meet at the culvert at midnight (by which point they hoped they could slip out of their relative houses unnoticed) with torches.
Eleri
😃