It was as Marjorie was forcing her unruly literary fancies back into their cage that tall John cried out suddenly.
“I can see one of the blighters! Look! He’s peeping from behind the tower!”
Marjorie turned in time to see a tiny fair-haired head bob back behind one corner of the edifice’s base. You could tell that it was that of a ghost-kid by how it left a grey stream of little heads evaporating in its wake. So, she’d been right. There was a rival gang of spectral ruffians who’d beaten them to the mad apples. There were poachers on their land! Surprised by her own sense of angry indignation, Marjorie joined with the other children as they stormed towards the tower, their half-a-dozen swelled into a shrieking Mongol horde by all the trailing doppelgangers.
Rounding the dark brickwork of the corner they stopped dead and Marjorie once more found herself piling into Reggie Bowler’s back. Recovering, she peered between the taller gang-members in front of her, taking her glasses off to polish them upon one sleeve before replacing them, as if unable to believe what she and her confederates were seeing. It was actually a gesture she’d seen someone do once in a film — possibly Harold Lloyd — rather than natural behaviour. As if whatever startling vista you were seeing was a smear of grime to be wiped from the lens. It would, she thought, have to be quite an oddly-shaped and convoluted smear, especially in this current instance.
Some way off, a time-hole had been opened in the air quite near ground level, being almost three feet in diameter by Marjorie’s own estimate and bordered by the flickering static bands of alternating black and white that usually attended such phenomena. There were two tough and grubby-looking ghost-boys, one tall and the other short, holding between them what looked like some sort of lettered banner that was sagging under what must have been hundreds of ripe Puck’s Hats, all the moist and interlocking fairy figures in their starfish clusters, hints of colour in their glisten, fugitive and delicate, piled up like so many prismatic turnips on the strange flag being used to carry them. Now that she looked more closely through her dead-eyes and her polished spectacles, Marjorie could see the tops of some embroidered letters on the banner that appeared to spell out the word ‘union’ or ‘upiop’, most probably the former. Had somebody formed a Union in Heaven, bargaining for better outfits and a shorter working ever-after? Focussing upon the two unlikely union representatives who were about to make off through their warp-window with all the stolen wraith-food, Marjorie could not help noticing that the loftier interloper wore a hat like Reggie Bowler’s …
On a head like Reggie Bowler’s. And a body.
It was Reggie Bowler, several yards away from her and from the other Reggie who was standing just in front of Marjorie and moaning in bewilderment as he surveyed his evil Puck’s Hat-thieving twin. The Reggie look-alike was holding one end of the heavy-laden banner while the other end was gripped by a precise and vivid reproduction of Phyll Painter’s nipper, rowdy little Bill. The real Bill, meanwhile, was stood swearing fluently beside his elder sister, who for once did not admonish him. Marjorie took her glasses off and polished them again, being unable to come up with any more appropriate reaction. This she left to Phyllis, who was after all the gang’s titular leader.
“William! What the B— ’Ell d’yer think yer playin’ at, you effin’ little C?”
Marjorie gasped. She’d never thought that Phyllis Painter would be one to use such coarse and vulgar letters of the alphabet. It was then that big John pitched in, sounding almost as angry.
“That’s a British Union of Fascists banner that you’re holding! If you’ve joined the Moseleyites as well as taking all our Bedlam Jennies then I’ll knock your heads together!”
By this point the surplus Bill and Reggie towards whom these hostile comments were addressed had managed to manoeuvre their apparently Blackshirt-affiliated makeshift stretcher full of Puck’s Hats through the time-hole. They were on the gap’s far side, weaving the interference-coloured edges back across the centre as they sealed the aperture behind them. Just before the opening disappeared completely, Reggie and Bill’s doubles gazed back through it at their dumbstruck counterparts.
“There’s a good explanation for all this, so don’t go blamin’ me.”
“Shut up, Reg. Listen, everybody, just remember that the devil’s in the driver’s seat. That way it won’t be a surprise when — ”
It was at this juncture that the final shimmering filaments were drawn across the breach in space, cutting off Bill’s twin in mid-sentence. There remained only the fractured view of the conjoined asylums, where a hundred or so years of inmates wandered aimlessly across a differently-toned patchwork of amalgamated lawns, and there was nothing to suggest that the time-hole had ever been there. It had vanished without trace.
Speechless with rage, Phyllis smacked Bill around the ear.
“Ow! Fuckin’ ’ell, you mad old bat! What are yer ’ittin’ me for?”
“Well, what are you stealin’ all ayr Puck’s ’Ats for, yer rotten little bugger? And what was that business abayt devils in the drivin’ seat?”
“Well, I don’t know! Are you completely fucking mental? I wiz standin’ over ’ere the ’ole time. That weren’t me and Reggie. It just looked like us.”
“Looked like! I’ll gi’ you looked like in a minute! That wiz you! D’yer think as I don’t know me own flesh and blood? That wiz just you from somewhere up the linger, from a moment we ent got to yet! You’re gunna dig back ’ere and pinch ayr mad apples before we ’ave a chance to ’arvest ’em, you and this silly bastard stood beside yer.” Phyllis glared at Reggie here. Disastrously, Bill tried to reason with her.
“Well, ’ow am I supposed to know what it all meant if we ain’t got there yet? I’m only fuckin’ dead, I’m not clairvoyant. John, mate, can’t you reason with her? When she’s off ’er HRT like this I might as well not bother.”
The good-looking older boy gave both the errant duo a refrigerated look of withering contempt.
“Don’t try to creep round me, you pair of bloody Nazis. Come on, Phyll. Let’s you and me and Michael go and gather up whatever pickings these two bandits have seen fit to leave us with.”
So saying, John and Phyllis each took one of Michael’s hands and walked off with the toddler in the direction of a spinney, swinging him between them in the ghost-seam’s feeble gravity. Marjorie felt a little disappointed at the way that she’d been casually left with the renegades, but thought that the apparent snub was in all likelihood a thinly-veiled excuse for John and Phyllis to sneak off together, rather than a personal affront. Besides, she’d always got on slightly better with Reggie and Bill than she had with Phyll Painter and big John. Phyllis could be ever so bossy, while John sometimes played upon his war-hero good looks too much. Bill, on the other hand, once you’d got past the lewd remarks about your knockers or your knickers, was surprisingly well-read and well informed, while Marjorie had always had a soft spot for poor Reggie. Reggie bordered on good-looking in a certain light, although she had to privately agree with Phyllis’s appraisal of his intellectual faculties: he was a silly bastard.