Neither of us said as much as this to each other, but I know for a fact that that was what we was thinking. What I don’t know — and as sure as I sit here I know I’ll never know — is which of us was the first bastard to latch his peepers on to that baker’s backyard. Oh yes, it’s all right me telling myself it was me, but the truth is that I’ve never known whether it was Mike or not, because I do know that I didn’t see the open window until he stabbed me in the ribs and pointed it out. ‘See it?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I told him, ‘so let’s get cracking.’
‘But what about the wall though?’ he whispered, looking a bit closer.
‘On your shoulders,’ I chipped in.
His eyes were already up there: ‘Will you be able to reach?’ It was the only time he ever showed any life.
‘Leave it to me,’ I said, ever-ready. ‘I can reach anywhere from your ham-hock shoulders.’
Mike was a nipper compared to me, but underneath the scruffy draught-board jersey he wore were muscles as hard as iron, and you wouldn’t think to see him walking down the street with glasses on and hands in pockets that he’d harm a fly, but I never liked to get on the wrong side of him in a fight because he’s the sort that don’t say a word for weeks on end — sits plugged in front of the telly, or reads a cowboy book, or just sleeps — when suddenly BIFF — half kills somebody for almost nothing at all, such as beating him in a race for the last Football Post on a Saturday night, pushing in before him at a bus stop, or bumping into him when he was day-dreaming about Dolly-on-the-Tub next door. I saw him set on a bloke once for no more than fixing him in a funny way with his eyes, and it turned out that the bloke was cock-eyed but nobody knew it because he’d just that day come to live in our street. At other times none of these things would matter a bit, and I suppose the only reason why I was pals with him was because I didn’t say much from one month’s end to another either.
He puts his hands up in the air like he was being covered with a Gatling-Gun, and moved to the wall like he was going to be mowed down, and I climbed up him like he was a stile or step-ladder, and there he stood, the palms of his upshot maulers flat and turned out so’s I could step on ’em like they was the adjustable jack-spanner under a car, not a sound of a breath nor the shiver of a flinch coming from him. I lost no time in any case, took my coat from between my teeth, chucked it up to the glass-topped wall (where the glass worn’t too sharp because the jags had been worn down by years of accidental stones) and was sitting astraddle before I knew where I was. Then down the other side, with my legs rammed up into my throat when I hit the ground, the crack coming about as hard as when you fall after a high parachute drop, that one of my mates told me was like jumping off a twelve-foot wall, which this must have been. Then I picked up my bits and pieces and opened the gate for Mike, who was still grinning and full of life because the hardest part of the job was already done. ‘I came, I broke, I entered,’ like that cleverdick Borstal song.
I didn’t think about anything at all, as usual, because I never do when I’m busy, when I’m draining pipes, looting sacks, yaling locks, lifting latches, forcing my bony hands and lanky legs into making something move, hardly feeling my lungs going in-whiff and out-whaff, not realizing whether my mouth is clamped tight or gaping, whether I’m hungry, itching from scabies, or whether my flies are open and flashing dirty words like muck and spit into the late-night final fog. And when I don’t know anything about all this then how can I honest-to-God say I think of anything at such times? When I’m wondering what’s the best way to get a window open or how to force a door, how can I be thinking or have anything on my mind? That’s what the four-eyed white-smocked bloke with the notebook couldn’t understand when he asked me questions for days and days after I got to Borstal; and I couldn’t explain it to him then like I’m writing it down now; and even if I’d been able to maybe he still wouldn’t have caught on because I don’t know whether I can understand it myself even at this moment, though I’m doing my best you can bet.
So before I knew where I was I was inside the baker’s office watching Mike picking up that cash box after he’d struck a match to see where it was, wearing a tailor-made fifty-shilling grin on his square crew-cut nut as his paws closed over the box like he’d squash it to nothing. ‘Out,’ he suddenly said, shaking it so’s it rattled. ‘Let’s scram.’
‘Maybe there’s some more,’ I said, pulling half a dozen drawers out of a rollertop desk.
‘No,’ he said, like he’d already been twenty years in the game, ‘this is the lot,’ patting his tin box, ‘this is it.’
I pulled out another few drawers, full of bills, books and letters. ‘How do you know, you loony sod?’
He barged past me like a bull at a gate. ‘Because I do.’
Right or wrong, we’d both got to stick together and do the same thing. I looked at an ever-loving babe of a brand-new typewriter, but knew it was too traceable, so blew it a kiss, and went out after him. ‘Hang on,’ I said, pulling the door to, ‘we’re in no hurry.’
‘Not much we aren’t,’ he says over his shoulder.
‘We’ve got months to splash the lolly,’ I whispered as we crossed the yard, ‘only don’t let that gate creak too much or you’ll have the narks tuning-in.’
‘You think I’m barmy?’ he said, creaking the gate so that the whole street heard.
I don’t know about Mike, but now I started to think, of how we’d get back safe through the streets with that money-box up my jumper. Because he’d clapped it into my hand as soon as we’d got to the main road, which might have meant that he’d started thinking as well, which only goes to show how you don’t know what’s in anybody else’s mind unless you think about things yourself. But as far as my thinking went at that moment it wasn’t up to much, only a bit of fright that wouldn’t budge not even with a hot blow-lamp, about what we’d say if a copper asked us where we were off to with that hump in my guts.
‘What is it?’ he’d ask, and I’d say: ‘A growth.’ ‘What do you mean, a growth, my lad?’ he’d say back, narky like. I’d cough and clutch myself like I was in the most tripe-twisting pain in the world, and screw my eyes up like I was on my way to the hospital, and Mike would take my arm like he was the best pal I’d got. ‘Cancer,’ I’d manage to say to Narker, which would make his slow punch-drunk brain suspect a thing or two. ‘A lad of your age?’ So I’d groan again, and hope to make him feel a real bully of a bastard, which would be impossible, but anyway: ‘It’s in the family, Dad died of it last month, and I’ll die of it next month by the feel of it.’ ‘What, did he have it in the guts?’ ‘No, in the throat. But it’s got me in the stomach.’ Groan and cough. ‘Well, you shouldn’t be out like this if you’ve got cancer, you should be in the hospital.’ I’d get ratty now: ‘That’s where I’m trying to go if only you’d let me and stop asking so many questions. Aren’t I, Mike?’ Grunt from Mike as he unslung his cosh. Then just in time the copper would tell us to get on our way, kind and considerate all of a sudden, saying that the outpatient department of the hospital closes at twelve, so hadn’t he better call a taxi? He would if we liked, he says, and he’d pay for it as well. But we tell him not to bother, that he’s a good bloke even if he is a copper, that we know a short cut anyway. Then just as we’re turning a corner he gets it into his big batchy head that we’re going the opposite way to the hospital, and calls us back. So we’d start to run … if you can call all that thinking.