THE LIFE OF RILEY
BY FRANK RILEY ©

BOOK ONE - SPIKE ISLAND

Chapter Twelve: Entrance Exams

There were two families I came to know during my time on the island: the Whitleys, and the Masons. 1 Canal Cottages, our house, was a semi-detached cottage built by the same construction company who did the pyramids and, if I'm not mistaken, laid the foundations for the Great Wall of China. It was an old house, but it was not alone. Semi-attached on the left side, facing front, was 2 Canal Cottages. Now, wasn't that convenient?

These magnificent edifices were the property of the railways and had remained standing long after Hitler and his Luftwaffe had been committed to ignominious history. Since Dad was the lock-keeper and, as far as I could see, had nothing at all to do with trains, it did not make a great deal of sense to me why we were there. Next door, however, was for the exclusive use of the chief railway-shunter, whose staff numbered one, including himself. By the good graces of the railway company, he was permitted to have his wife and children share the house with him too.

The first family who became our neighbours were the Whitleys. In the time of which I write I was too young to come to know them very well; I suppose that was because I was born at a very early age. Nevertheless, I do remember hearing from either Dad, or Mike, that they had descended from a horde of wild tribesmen notorious for eating babies and naughty children. Considering the way they looked, that is, whenever I was allowed out of the house to ogle at them, I had no reason to doubt the truth of this statement.

There seemed to be hundreds of them, but since I couldn't count at the time, there were probably more than that. Some of them lived in the chimney, others in the bomb-shelter at the back of the house, some in the cupboards, and still others in the dustbins. Mr. Whitley had an evil array of horrible weapons hidden behind his front door and if you listened carefully you could hear him sharpening them at night time. Mrs. Whitley was a deranged witch who cooked some of her babies to make Sunday dinner and used their bones as knitting-needles.

One of the children, a girl, took it into her head one day to drink a bottle of hypochlorous acid, otherwise known as "Hypo" and almost died. I vaguely remember Mrs. Whitley flying into our house to ask Dad for help. I remember the commotion; it was a great to-do. Whatever Dad did seemed to have worked for the silly young girl survived, although she spent a fair amount of time in hospital recovering.

But the greatest drama of all, the one which caused me terrible consternation, was the "Poison Pen" affair. At the time of this historic incident we had lodging with us the Conway family, five in all, and in turn they had brought their own lodger, a Welshman named Cled. For some unknown reason, the witch-mother, Mrs. Whitley, took a dislike to Mrs. Conway, or Auntie Kate, as we called her, bless her heart. Now, Mrs. Conway was the sweetest, most gentle woman ever to grace the earth and this enmity coming from Mrs. Whitley distressed her enormously. She would wring her worried hands and fret all day about this horrible woman who at every opportunity spewed out her bile.

The campaign of hatred deteriorated to such an extent that Auntie Kate began to receive "poison pen" letters. The name on the envelope, however, was spelled, "Mrs. Convoy", a rather obvious mistake, at least to grown-ups; I was not consulted on this technical matter.

The letters continued to come. Auntie Kate spent a great deal of time crying and fretting. Dad decided to call in the police. It seemed everyone knew who had been the author of these highly toxic letters, (everyone, that is, except me), and now the police were appraised of this information. They went next door, accompanied by Dad, and confronted Mrs. Whitley with the letters. The witch, of course, hotly denied any knowledge of the evidence now before her and began to scream abuse at the policemen and Dad. The conclusion to this disgusting affair came swiftly, according to Dad when he later told us the story.

It seemed that the witch had many talents, many skills which normal people lack, but spelling was not to be found among these. One of the policemen asked her if she would be kind enough to write down Mrs. Conway's name on a piece of paper. Amazingly, she complied! Of course, the name she wrote was "Mrs. Convoy". The policemen took her away and, I'm told, burnt her at the stake. Which, for a witch, is only fitting and just.

Shortly after this unfortunate episode the Whitleys climbed aboard their camels and resumed their nomadic wanderings, never to be seen again. I have no idea what became of the poison pen; perhaps the police burned it too at the stake to avoid the danger of any innocent bystander becoming infected.

The second family, the Masons, arrived five minutes later; it could have been a few days, I suppose, but not a minute more. Mr. and Mrs. Mason had, I think, three children tucked under their arms when they arrived and soon they settled down to peaceful co-existence on the island. That soon changed, of course, as Mrs. Mason kept taking baby tablets and had one a week from then on. She had so many of them it was astounding. As fast as I was learning to draw a new number she'd up and have another one. How could a little fellow keep up?

John Mason was the eldest child, then came Margaret, and after her, Peter. Over the next few years this list grew until every known Christian name in the English-speaking world had been used up. However, it is with the first three that the next part of this narrative is concerned.

First of all, Mike and I were not allowed to have our school chums visit us on the island - the reason for this embargo is still a mystery to me - and as a result we were obliged to keep each other company for most of the time. With the arrival of the Masons' we envisaged a timely relief of this enforced fraternal comity. Alas, it was not to be: Dad, in his wisdom, forbade us any contact with our new neighbours.

It always seemed to me that there was some snob value attached to Dad's aloofness; perhaps he thought that we were above these people. I suppose that that was a reasonable standpoint considering the fact that we had an abundance of nothing, while they were extremely poor. A moot point, perhaps, but in the social scheme of things it was nonetheless valid.

It must be said at this point that Mike and I were model children. We never once transgressed the boundaries Dad set for us. No fibs or tall tales ever passed our cherubic lips, nor did thoughts of rebellion contaminate our saintly minds. And that is why Mike turned out to be a nuclear physicist and I became an astronaut.

Now, since we were forbidden to associate with the Mason children, and bearing in mind that we were so angelic, Mike and I immediately sought out their company and found, to our delight, that they were quite friendly. Unfortunately, Dad soon learned of this heinous crime and held a counsel of war with himself. To be fair, he did deliberate for some considerable seconds and when he had reached his decision he brought down a verdict which was both equitable and just - he beat the hell out of both of us. At no point, it must be stated, did he discriminate. We both copped it.

But this did not deter us for one minute. The pursuit of fun by determined children cannot be quashed. No amount of threat, or actual violence, can stand up to the implacable quest for the company of one's peers. Adults were such serious things. They were forever attempting to curtail our pleasures. "Wash behind your ears" they would demand at least three times a day. "Sit still and be quiet!" was another phrase they came out with, and said it in such a way as though they thought it was actually possible. "Don't do this", "Don't do that", they would say, and not provide an alternative.

It was utterly confusing. There were times when having been bombarded with such admonitions I thought that it would be hell to grow up. Imagine living the rest of your life not only not having fun yourself, but denying it to everyone else into the bargain.

In the course of time Mike and I became adept at keeping from Dad the fact that we had been playing with the Masons'. The stories we came out with whenever he questioned us about what we had been doing that day took on Aesopian proportions.

Yet, from time to time, he still managed to outwit us. He would come home earlier from the pub and catch us with them and we would have to run the gauntlet in order to come into the house. He would stand on the doorstep, one arm resting high on the doorframe, and the other hidden behind his back. "Get in!" he would say, and we would tremble in fright.

Dad was one of the old-time tough guys, a street-fighter and champion boxer in his time and feared even by the hard-cases of our district. At the time of which I speak he was about nineteen stone and only five feet eight tall, which, if you can imagine it, did not leave a great deal of room in the doorway for us to try to get past. "Get in!" he would command again and sooner or later we would have to comply.

The difficult thing was trying to guess which fist he would hit you with. Would it be an uppercut this time? Or would it be a sledge-hammer-like blow on the top of the head. For such a fat man he was surprisingly fast and there never was a time that I remember getting past him unscathed. And once we were inside, out would come the leather belt and the howls from both of us could be heard as far away as London, and some parts of Kent.

Still this did not stop us. We sought out John and Peter, and sometimes Margaret, to come out to play. We formed the Spike Island gang; a little bit like the "Hole in the Wall" gang without the glamour, and every week we would invent new trials, or tests of courage, in order to remain in the gang.

These tests of courage ranged from leaping across from one bomb-shelter to the other to running along the tops of moving railway wagons just like Roy Rogers did every Saturday. We would rig up rope swings from the top of one of the abandoned buildings and become human flies running up and down the walls. Sometimes we would be required to walk across the exposed beams of one of the derelict buildings, or become a matador with one of the bulls on the marshlands. Mike was the boss of the gang so it fell upon him to set these exams. He was never found wanting in imagination.

But the two scariest trials we ever had to endure involved on the one hand a bridge, and on the other a train. The bridge in question, come to think about it, was not a bridge at all, it was just the tops of the lock gates, the ones at the river-end of the lock and it was across these we had to walk. It was a condition of the test that it had to be attempted at low-tide when the slimy mud was exposed on the one side and the lock was empty exposing even slimier mud on the other. The lock gates were about a foot wide and had no hand-rails and at low-tide the mud bank at the river's edge was about fifteen to twenty feet below us and approximately the same on the lock side. I only ever did the crossing once and it scared the pants off me. Thereafter, I flatly refused and each time was promptly banished from the gang for ever, or until the next week, whichever came first.

The train test was just as hair-raising for me, especially since I was a practising, card-carrying, coward. It involved lying down between the tracks and waiting for a train to pass over. To ensure maximum safety (a poor choice of word) we would only attempt it with a train which was at first stationary.

The one and only time I attempted this I lay down in the prescribed manner and waited with trepidation for the train to get under way. Very shortly the wagon under which I was lying began to move and I braced myself for the ordeal. It was considered enough of a test if we lay under just the wagons; it was far too dangerous to allow the train itself to pass over you as its under-carriage was judged to be too low to the ground. Besides, if the train didn't kill you the falling hot coals from the furnace would make a pretty mess of you anyway.

The wagons started to pass over me and I put in my bid to be the first human mole. Each wagon had a chain with links about a foot long, each of which was as thick as a man's arm, and as they passed over me they came so close they brushed my shirt. The wagons were moving quite slowly and I was able to inch my way over to one side to avoid the chains. This meant, of course, that my head was now just inches from the rumbling wheels and my composure was somewhat less than manly, or, boyly, if we are going to be exact about it.

Suddenly, the train came to a halt and I began to entertain ideas that my trial was over. Just as I started to remove myself from the scene the train started up again - but in the opposite direction! I was persuaded by this new development to remain for a while where I was. The wagons picked up speed. Oh, hell, I thought, the train's coming and I can't get out. I'll be crushed. I'll be burnt to a cinder. Me Dad'll kill me!

On it came. I could see by now the burning coals as they fell to the ground. The bottom of the train was far too low. I was close to panic. I thought for a moment of trying to roll out from underneath as each wagon passed, but they were moving too fast for me. My mind was racing. What should I do? What could I do? Then, just as I had given up all hope of being saved, the train applied the brakes and came to a squealing, screeching halt about a yard from my head. As it stopped it began to belch out great plumes of steam right at me and that was the signal to absent myself from these premises post haste.

I rolled out over the railway-lines and was running before I got to my feet. I ran right past Mike who, by now, was laughing his head off, and made a bee-line for the house where a quick change of clothing was surreptitiously made. If there is one thing in this life for which I shall be eternally grateful it is the fact that Mike never became a school-teacher. His entrance exams were far too demanding.

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