The True Story of Spit MacPhee by James Aldridge

I’m not allowed to, but I don’t know, Sadie. Does your mother know you’re here?’
    ‘Yes, but my father’s gone to Nooah.’
    ‘If I can’t get down here will you look after everything for me?’ Spit asked her.
    ‘I’ll come down every day,’ Sadie said.
    Together they packed Spit’s cart with the box of Fyfe’s tools and what Sadie had found and saved – a silver picture frame, pots, knives and forks, enamel mugs and basins, and a little silver parrot that old Fyfe had kept on his workbench.
    ‘And this too,’ Sadie said. ‘Look.’ Sadie took from her pinafore pocket a little enamelled and lined box with scissors, a nail file, needle and a thimble in it.
    Spit looked at it for a while, never having seen it before. He gave it back to Sadie and said, ‘It must have been my mother’s.’
    ‘What’ll I do with it?’
    ‘You’d better keep it for me,’ Spit said.
    ‘I might lose it.’
    ‘No you won’t,’ Spit said, and he told Ben to go ahead with the cart. When Ben was on the way up the hill Spit told Sadie about the hiding place under the boiler where he kept his own money.
    ‘All you have to do is push the side of this piece of metal under the boiler and it drops down,’ he said, demonstrating it for her. It was obviously part of a system that had once had some use in the boiler’s original purpose, but now it was a rare hiding place which the fire had spared. Spit took a little cocoa tin out of the hole and showed Sadie his money, all in coins. ‘Two pounds four and six,’ he said. ‘I was going to buy tyres and a seat with some of it for the bike, but I’ll leave it here now because I don’t know where I can hide it in Ben’s place. But don’t tell anyone … I mean your father.’
    ‘Don’t worry,’ she said as Ben called out to him: ‘Come on, Spit, or we’ll get into trouble.’
    ‘See you later, Sadie,’ Spit said as he slammed the little door shut and raced up the slope to help Ben with the cart.
    They were more than an hour late for dinner which surprised them both. Frank Arbuckle was at the gate; he had been working in the garden, watching the street. He took out his pocket-watch and said, ‘Where have you been, Ben, and what’s all that?’ He ignored Spit as if he still didn’t know how to deal with him. ‘You’re not bringing that stuff in here,’ he said to Ben.
    ‘It’s my grandfather’s things,’ Spit said boldly. ‘Somebody would have pinched them if I’d left them down there.’
    ‘All right. But get inside, both of you,’ Frank Arbuckle said. ‘You’re in trouble. You were told not to go down to the river and you took Ben.’
    ‘He had to help me,’ Spit said.
    ‘We didn’t do anything wrong,’ Ben said to his father.
    ‘Your mother will decide that,’ Frank said sadly. ‘But you’re both in trouble.’
    They went inside to the back verandah where the Arbuckles ate their meals, and Ben stood wide-eyed and expectant before his mother while Spit, an alien here, didn’t know what to anticipate.
    ‘So you went down to the river,’ Mrs Arbuckle said, upset for their wrongdoing rather than their lateness for dinner.
    ‘I had to get my grandfather’s things,’ Spit said again.
    ‘And you of all people went with him,’ she said unhappily to Ben.
    Ben said nothing, and Spit knew that Ben was almost in tears, though not quite.
    ‘You’re wicked, both of you. You’ve been tempted. Disobedience is like telling a lie, which is a sin in the eyes of the Lord and you know that, Ben, even if Spit doesn’t.’
    Ben said nothing, his wickedness inescapable, his joy in a rare and surprising friendship gone to ruin.
    ‘And you’re dirty, Ben. Look at you.’
    Ben was smeared with black ash, his smock stained, his boots blotted; whereas Spit, used to handling dirt, was clean.
    ‘You have to be punished, the pair of you, so you can either do without your dinner now, or Frank will give you both a good hiding. Take your pick please.’
    Spit had