They walked on until they came to the fork of Vicarage Crescent and Battersea High Street itself. They went past Sinjen's School, and they came up to Trott Street and the empty building where Spiff lived and where Knocker had lived as chief Battersea lookout all that time ago. But before they went in, with one accord they walked past the house and on to the market proper.
The stallholders were putting out their merchandise, the shops were open and there was a bustle and a friendliness that made each Adventurer feel glad to be alive. The pie-and-eel shop was preparing for its lunch-time trade and the smell of sauce and liquor was strong. The fish and chip shop was being swabbed out by an Indian who sang as he worked, a strange spicy song, and the surplus store looked reassuringly the same, a cross between a pawnshop and a junk-yard. The Battersea costers whistled and shouted at each other across the street and man-handled their barrows into position or stacked goods on them from the vans parked sideways and awkward across the road. Even when the stallholders shouted at the Borribles and told them to clear off to school, the Borribles only smiled at each other, selfconsciously indulging their nostalgia.
"Knocker loved it down here," said Chalotte, and they came away from the stalls, bringing with them a few things for their breakfast, for they were extraordinarily hungry. They took their provisions and went to report to Spiff.
He was waiting for them. Their arrival had been noted and reported and their story was eagerly awaited. Crowds of Borribles were in the house and more crowded in by the minute. The Adventurers had to push their way in to the basement and fight their way through an excited throng to Spiff's room. He was there, just the same in his orange dressing-gown, with a cup of tea held in front of his sharp face.
He bade the Adventurers sit down and eat the food they had brought from the market. His eyes moved over them and he noted the absences, but his expression gave little away and he said nothing.
Other house-stewards arrived and sat on the floor or stood against the wall round the room. They all waited till Spiff gave the word for the story to be told. They would listen intently and, that very day, would each tell the stories to their households, and the stories would be told again and again from Borrible to Borrible, and so the stories of the Adventurers would become legend, one of the greatest legends ever. And new proverbs and sayings would be added to the Borrible Book and new ambitions would be born in the hearts of Borribles as yet unnamed and some would yearn to have such an Adventure too. But many would find the Adventure unbelievable and say that no Borrible could have done such things and the whole expedition was a fiction and a fabrication, a good story, but not true. "Had anyone ever talked to those who had undertaken the trip?" the sceptics would ask. "Who's ever spoken to Knocker and Napoleon? Has anyone ever seen Orococco and Vulge? Oh, you heard of people who knew somebody who had met someone who had seen Chalotte or Sydney or Torreycanyon, but nobody had really met them."
But in Spiff's room that day were the listeners to and the tellers of a great Adventure, and the tellers still had the marks of their Adventure on them. Their scars were still soft and their muscles still ached and the listeners could see this and they knew the story was true and they would tell it as true and they would be believed. Only in the years to come would the story grow in the telling and lose its firm outline to become a great Borrible Legend.
The Adventurers finished their breakfast, and when Spiff's room was crammed with house-stewards and the doorway was crowded and the landing and all the other rooms too, he gave the sign and Bingo started the story at the beginning, from the moment they had rowed away from Battersea Churchyard. His companions listened, and added to his story if they thought he had forgotten anything, and sometimes they went on with it themselves and the story was thrown backwards and forwards amongst them and it grew and grew. And each one told of his own part in the destruction of the Bunker under Rumbledom, and the tale of the Great Explosion and Adolf's death brought forth deferential whistles from the house-stewards and they looked at the Adventurers with respect and nodded their heads.
Then, sombrely, the Adventurers told of their imprisonment by the Wendles and of the great dilemma of Napoleon Boot and how finally his cleverness had saved them. They told of the loss of the four friends who had stayed behind so that their companions might survive to thwart Flinthead's greed, to escape with the box of Rumble treasure, and how, after all, they had been lucky to escape with their lives alone.
When the great story was ended a heavy silence came over the room and the Adventurers looked at the floor, remembering the five who had not returned. The house-stewards were deeply impressed by the Adventure and indicated to Spiff, by signs and nods of the head, that they thought he ought to mark the occasion with a few well-chosen phrases.
Spiff, who could never resist the temptation of public-speaking, pondered. He took his teapot from the paraffin stove, poured himself a cup, put the sugar in and stirred well, before he deigned to pronounce a word. At last he stood up and cleared his throat.
"A great Adventure!" he began. "The threat of the Rumbles—gone; their power destroyed. Their presumption and pride have taken a very serious knock; it will be many a year, if ever, before they come down here again. A day of great rejoicing it is, and one of sadness, also. Four of you did not return, and one German person, who joined in, only for the glory of the Adventure, has also perished. What can we do except try to remember them always, tell their stories and remember their names—good names; Torreycanyon, Napoleon Boot, Orococco, Adolf Wolfgang Amadeus Winston—and of course, our own chief lookout, Knocker. What second name is there worthy of his Adventure?"
Chalotte looked up and interrupted; there were tears in her eyes. "He went back into the hallway of the Great Door to get that box when he should have been escaping, and though it was blazing with flames and the rafters were falling in huge sparks, he picked up the box and carried it out and it was red-hot and the handle burnt into his hand—down to the bone—and he didn't care. His clothes were alight and I thought he was completely on fire. I think you could call him Knocker Burnthand. It is a good name."
There was a murmur of assent from everybody and many repeated the name to themselves to see how it sounded.
"Burnthand it shall be," said Spiff seriously, "and it shall be written in the book."
He looked at the five survivors in the chairs before him. "Your names, too, are confirmed. You have more than won them. You left here with empty words for your title but you return with names that are full of meaning, and every time they are heard now, great and generous deeds will be thought of. Great names they are, which will make every Borrible think of courage and cunning, loyalty and stealth, individualism and affection, every time they hear them." And Spiff, over-acting a little, recited the names like a litany, "Chalotte, Sydney, Vulge, Stonks and Bingo from Lavender Hill."
Spiff gave a sign and the stewards began to file past the chairs and from the room. They left the house and ran through the busy High Street, back to their own dwellings so they could begin retelling the tale straight away. At their heels followed all the Borribles of Battersea, eager to hear the details of the Great Adventure, and soon Spiff's house was quiet.
He gulped his dark brown tea and looked at the Adventurers, still slumped in their seats.
"You must all be tired," he said. "Why don't you go to the rooms upstairs and rest? I'll see that there's some grub for you when you wake up. It would be a good idea for you to have a good long kip, you know." The five of them got up listlessly and left the room. The elation they had felt at arriving home and telling their story had gone and in its place was a rotten feeling of melancholia mixed with self-pity. They felt too a yearning love for the companions they had left to perish on the River Wandle and the immensity of the loss made an awesome gap in their minds.
They climbed the stairs like old cripples. On the second landing Chalotte, who was leading, turned and stopped the others; her eyes were wet.
"Oh," she said, only just holding back her sobs, "it all seems so useless now. We've won our names but lost our friends. Isn't it all so stupid?"
"Shuddup," said Bingo, "don't make things worse."
They went on upstairs without saying another word.
When he was alone, Spiff topped up his cup of tea and mused over what he had heard and he thought about the loss of Knocker and the others.
"I hate to think of what Flinthead did to 'em when he got his hands on 'em," he said to himself. "What a swine he is." He stirred in the sugar. "Shame about the money. I was never worried about the Rumbles at all, really. Couldn't have given a monkey's. It was the money; I could have done with that. Your average Borrible don't know the value of the stuff, they don't know what it's about. I don't suppose we'll ever see any real money down here. Bloody nuisance! Ah well, there'll be another time, some time."