The Midnight Gang Page 12
Sally smiled.
“Well …” The little girl was growing in confidence now. “I want to live a big, beautiful life!”
“What do you mean?” asked Tom.
“I’ve spent so much of my life in hospital and missed so much already. Sometimes I think I’ll never get out of this place. I may never have my first kiss. Get married. Have children.”
All the others had tears welling in their eyes.
“Don’t feel sad for me,” said Sally. “But please, please, please can the Midnight Gang have one last adventure – the adventure of a lifetime?”
“WHAT ARE YOU WICKED CHILDREN ALL DOING OUT OF YOUR BEDS?” bellowed Matron.
She had appeared from nowhere, as she had a habit of doing. “I have been far too soft on you all. This children’s ward is going to be run very differently from now on. Back to your beds THIS INSTANT!”
The children did as they were told and retreated to their beds, the boys helping Amber into hers first.
“Now! No one is to leave their beds unless I say so. Do you understand?”
There were reluctant mutters of, “Yes, Matron.”
“I said,
‘DO
YOU
UNDERSTAND?’”
The children answered louder this time. “Yes, Matron.”
“GOOD!”
Just as Tom was sliding back into his bed, Matron called out to him, “Not you, boy.”
Tom wondered what he had done.
“All your test results came in this morning,” announced Matron.
“Yes?” the boy gulped. He knew what was coming.
“Yes. Surprise, surprise! It turns out there is absolutely nothing wrong with you. You were faking it all along, you deceitful little snake.”
“But—” protested Tom.
“SHUT UP!” bellowed Matron. “You are to leave the hospital at once. Your headmaster is here to collect you right now!”
Tom had all but forgotten about St Willet’s. Even though the boy had only been at the hospital for a couple of days, the place already seemed like his home, and the other children his family.
“Charper!” called out the headmaster from across the ward. At his posh boarding school, the teachers never used your first name.
“Yes, sir?” replied Tom. It was as if he was already back at school.
“Time to leave, boy.” The headmaster was a portly gentleman with long sideburns and little round glasses. The man always wore a heavy tweed suit, a cardigan and a bow tie. A waft of pipe smoke followed him everywhere he went. It was as if the headmaster had travelled through time from at least a hundred years ago to the present day. The school prided itself on not having changed in hundreds of years, so the old-fashioned headmaster, Mr Thews, suited it perfectly.
Matron stood next to him at the end of the ward.
“Chop chop!” he ordered.
“What about my mum and dad, sir?” asked Tom.
“What about them, boy?” replied Thews.
“I thought they might be coming to pick me up?”
“Oh no no no, they are miles away!” scoffed the headmaster.
Tom looked downcast.
“It was only a little cricket ball on the head, boy!” continued Thews. “It might have knocked some sense into you! Let’s not forget the St Willet’s school motto – ‘Nec quererer, si etiam in tormentis’. Translate that from the Latin, boy!”
“‘Never complain, even if you are in great pain.’”
“Excellent!”
The motto was written underneath the school’s coat of arms, and emblazoned on every blazer.
As the other children in the ward looked on with sadness, Tom pulled the curtain round his bed to get changed back into his cricket whites. The boy took as long as he could. He didn’t want to leave his friends.
“For goodness’ sake, get a move on, boy!” ordered Mr Thews. “Stop dilly-dallying.”
Tom pulled the grass-stained cricket jumper over his head and stepped out from behind the curtain.
“Have you heard from my mum and dad at all?” asked Tom hopefully.
The headmaster shook his head, and smirked.
“Not a whisper! They never call. They never write. It’s almost as if they have forgotten all about you.”
Tom bowed his head.
“Come on, Charper, what are you waiting for?” demanded the headmaster.
“I just need to say goodbye to my new friends.”
“There isn’t time for that, boy! Come on! Quick smart. You have a great deal of schoolwork to catch up on since you have been in here.”
“You heard what your headmaster said, child!” snapped Matron. “Get a move on!”
As Tom made his way along the shiny floor of the ward, he glanced either side to take one last look at his new friends.
Sally, Amber, George and Robin all lifted their hands in a silent wave.
“The matron has told me all about your appalling behaviour since you have been here at the hospital,” announced Mr Thews.
Tom said nothing.
“A ‘gang’ indeed? Getting out of your beds in the middle of the night? You have soiled the good name of St Willet’s school.”
“Sorry, sir.”
“Sorry isn’t good enough, boy!” snapped the headmaster. “You will be punished severely as soon as we are back at school.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Goodbye, boy,” said Matron. “I hope I never see your nasty little face again.”
Tom turned his head and took one last look at his friends. Sally smiled back, but Thews yanked Tom’s arm and the tall doors swung open and shut. The headmaster frogmarched Tom along the corridor, his hand placed firmly on his shoulder. Tom felt like an escaped prisoner who had been captured and was being returned to prison.
He had to do something.
Anything.
Sally deserved her dream to come true more than any of the children, and time was running out.
The lifts were ahead. Tom knew if he was going to escape he had to think fast. Within moments, he would be in the headmaster’s car making the long journey back to his boarding school in the country.
Up along the corridor, Tom spotted the replacement porter with a large trolley of laundry. The man was standing by a hatch in the wall, stuffing bags of laundry into a chute. Tom knew the chute led all the way down to the basement of the hospital. A child could fit in there, but not a grown-up.
The new porter moved off and Tom realised this was his only chance.
The boy wrestled himself out of his headmaster’s grasp and ran off ahead.
“COME BACK HERE BOY!” bellowed Thews.
“Goodbye, sir!” said Tom as he took a running leap headfirst down the chute.
“AAAAAAAAAHHHHH!” cried the boy as he slid at speed down the laundry chute. Tom had leaped in on the top floor, and it was an awfully long way down to the bottom. Forty-four floors, in fact. It was pitch black, and as he slid he realised he was gathering speed at an alarming rate.
At the bottom of the chute a small square of light became visible in the darkness.
This became bigger and bigger until Tom realised he was travelling through it and falling through the air.
“NOOOO!” he cried.
T
H
U
D!
The boy landed in the huge basket of laundry bags in the basement. He breathed a sigh of relief to still be alive. Then with some difficulty Tom scrambled out of the basket and disappeared off into the darkness of the basement.
Right now he desperately needed somewhere to hide.
His headmaster might still be on the top floor, but very soon half the hospital would be looking for him.
Tom dashed past the laundry room.
Too noisy.
Then he passed the freezer room.
Too cold.
Then he passed the storeroom.
Too spooky.
Tom stopped dead still for a moment. I
n the distance, the boy could hear the sound of footsteps. The sound was becoming louder and louder. Whoever was down there with him was moving closer and closer. It sounded like an army.
Light from torches bounced off the walls.
Tom could make out the shadows of dozens of nurses coming towards him.
In desperation, Tom tried to open a door.
Locked.
And another.
Locked.
And another.
Locked.
As the shadows grew closer, a wave of panic washed over the boy.
“Thomas?” It was Matron, who was leading her army of nurses through the basement. “We know you must be down here!”
“That nasty little boy is in a great deal of trouble,” said the headmaster, who Tom could just make out in the darkness running alongside Matron. “CHARPER? CHARPER?”
Shadows bounced off the walls of the basement at all angles, making it seem as if this army was coming at Tom from all sides.
Tom tried turning the handle of one last door.
CLICK!
It opened.
Inside it was pitch black, and Tom felt scared. He took a deep breath and stepped in, closing the door behind him.
A wall of black.
All the boy could hear now was his own breathing.
Yet he sensed that he wasn’t alone.
“Hello?” Tom whispered. “Is anybody there?”
In the shadows, the boy saw a pair of eyes staring back at him.
“AAARRRGGGHHH!” screamed the boy.
“Shush!” came a voice out of the gloom.
A match was struck and the unmistakable outline of the porter’s face was lit up by a burst of light. Tom breathed a sigh of relief at seeing it was his friend.
The porter lit a candle and the room flickered into view.
“What are you doing down here?” demanded the boy.
“This is where I live,” slurred the man. “It’s my home.”
“But I thought you were sacked!”
“I was. But I had nowhere else to go. Now what are YOU doing down here?”
“I’m hiding,” replied the boy.
“Who from?”
“My headmaster. Matron. An army of nurses. Everyone really. My headmaster came to take me back to my boarding school. But I didn’t want to go.”
“Well, you can’t stay down here forever,” said the porter.
“No,” replied the boy. He had run away without a plan and was beginning to realise he was in even deeper trouble for fleeing than he had been before. “So this is really your home?”
“Yes, Mr Thomas, sir,” replied the porter. “Look!” The man moved the candle around the room so the boy could see. “I have everything I need right here.”
The porter indicated a filthy-looking mattress lying on the floor in the corner. “My bed. There is the cooker.”
There was a tiny gas stove with a stack of tinned food next to it.
“Wardrobe.”
The porter pointed to a large cardboard box that had some crumpled clothes hanging in it.
“But why haven’t you got a proper home?” asked the boy.
The man sighed deeply. “This hospital is my home. I’ve been here since I was a baby. Back then, the doctors tried operation after operation on me.”
“What for?”
“To try and make me look ‘presentable’. But none of them worked. I was a patient here for years and years. Then when I was getting too old for the children’s ward a job came up at the hospital and I took it. Just a simple job. Moving things and people around. I was sixteen then and I have been here ever since.”
“But if you had a job then why didn’t you find a place to live?”
“I tried. The council helped me find a tiny one-bedroom flat in a block not far from here. But the problem is that sometimes folk think you are frightening because you look frightening. I couldn’t get any peace there. Locals would paint horrible words on my front door. Put nasty letters through my postbox telling me to go. They said I was frightening the children. I was shouted at. Spat on. Had a vicious dog set on me.
One night when I was asleep a brick smashed through my window. So I came back here and hid. Nobody ever knew I was living down here. This is my home.”
Tom’s eyes glistened with tears. He felt sad but guilty too. Just like so many other people, Tom had thought the worst of the porter just for the way he looked. The boy stared around the porter’s damp, dank room. It wasn’t much, but it was a home. It was more than Tom had. With his parents living abroad and him being bundled off to a boarding school, the boy never had anywhere he could call home.
“It’s not the Ritz Hotel, I know, but at least it was convenient for work!” The man chuckled to himself. “But, now I have lost my job, I don’t know where to go.”
“If I had a home, I’d invite you to stay.”
“That’s very kind of you.”
“But I am sad to say that I don’t.”
“They say ‘home is where the heart is’. Where is your heart, Tom?”
The boy thought for a moment, before replying, “I suppose with the children on the ward. And with Sally the most.”
“Poor little lamb.”
“She never got to have her dream come true.”
“No. What about your mum and dad?”
“What about them?”
“Is your heart not with them?”
“No,” replied the boy quickly. “They don’t care about me.”
“I am sure they both love you very much.”
“I am sure they don’t. They never call. They never write. I hardly ever see them.”
“I am sure they are thinking about you.”
Tom said nothing.
“Look at the two of us!” remarked the porter. “A couple of lost souls, aren’t we?”
“I am so sorry that you lost your job here at the hospital,” said Tom. “All of us on the children’s ward were sorry. In fact, we had an argument over who was most sorry.”
“Did you, now? Well, don’t you worry yourselves about little old me. I knew what a risk I was taking helping the Midnight Gang. It was worth getting sacked for.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes! I’d do it all again. Just to see the smiles on all you children’s faces over the years.”
“But can’t we just try and beg Strillers to give you your—?”
Before the boy could say another word, the porter whispered, “Shush!”
The man pointed to the door.
Tom listened. There were footsteps outside, and the sound of metal doors being rattled.
“It must be the search party! They have found me! Is there another way out?”
“No!”
“Oh no!”
“We’ll have to hide!”
“Where?”
“You conceal yourself in the cupboard, and I’ll hide under the bed.”
Tom climbed into the cardboard box, while the porter pulled the mattress over himself.
“The candle!” hissed Tom.
The porter blew it out just as the large metal door swung open.
The torchlights shone inside, moving slowly around the room.
Tom didn’t dare breathe as Matron and the headmaster stepped inside, an army of angry-looking nurses behind them.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are …” hissed Matron.
“Something or someone’s in here. I know it,” whispered Matron as her torch threw light on the darkest corners of the room in the hospital basement.
“It looks like a load of old junk to me,” replied Mr Thews. “Let’s move on.”
“No,” Matron replied. “That smell.” The woman sniffed the stale air. “It’s strangely familiar.”
As he crouched in the porter’s cardboard wardrobe, Tom had the strangest sensation. It felt as if his little finger was being nibbled. When he looked down, he saw that indeed it was. His little finger was being nibbled by a pigeon.
“SQUAWK!” squawked the bird.
“Aaarrrggghhh!” screamed Matron.
“It’s just a pigeon!” said Mr Thews.
“I hate the dirty beasts. They are like rats with wings! Nearly as bad as children.”
“Now can we please move on?” asked the headmaster.
“Yes,” she replied. “I must inform the maintenance department to shoot that blasted creature at once. I would love to come down myself with a bucket and drown it, but sadly I just don’t have time.”
“That is a shame,” mused the headmaster. “That would have been a pleasure.”
“I am so pleased you feel the same way as me, Mr Thews. I do love a touch of cruelty.”
“There is nothing more enjoyable. I like to be cruel to my pupils at St Willet’s. That keeps them under my complete control. Any letters sent from family members, I burn before they reach the boys. Tom’s parents wrote every week, but I put their letters straight on the fire! Ha! Ha!”
Tom couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“Ooh! That must give you so much pleasure.”
“It does, Matron, it does. There is nothing better than the feeling of absolute power!”
“Tom’s stupid parents have been calling the hospital. Desperate for news of their son. But I put the phone straight down on them!”
“Ha! Ha! That nasty little insect deserves everything he gets. I can’t wait until I get my hands on him. The punishment will be severe!”
“Make him eat cold cabbage every meal for a year?”
“Mmm. The food at St Willet’s is worse than that.”
“Make him wash in bog water?”
“The boys have to do that already.”
“Make him do a cross-country run in his pants?”
“Mmm. When it’s snowing!”
“What a wonderfully wicked idea, Mr Thews!”
“Thank you, Matron.
There’s no time to lose.