Art Pact 197 - Posse

Rounded out by the addition of the two Havershaw brothers, our posse looked quite impressive - a combination of broad chests and rugged stubbly chins with brooding eyes that radiated malign intelligence. Staring down the line I could sense an almost palpable energy rising off them, the energy of danger, of menace, of action held tightly in check but coiled like a spring and ready to explode in all directions like a bomb. A spring-bomb. Mr. Calloway had them walk forward and back a few steps, and when they were coming towards us it felt like rocks rolling. When they were stepping back it was like the tide going out, a force drawing you in, drowning you. I felt quite overcome.

"Now then, boys," said Calloway grandly. "The situation we have ourselves in is this. The interlopers, of whom I'm sure you're all painfully aware"--most of the posse wince as he said this, and I shifted awkwardly, feeling the dull ache in my ankles suddenly flare--"have holed themselves up in some sort of fortress they've built in the park. Now I don't know about you, but I personally am not willing to walk around covering the family jewels while I walk my dogs."

I almost burst into laughter, and I could see the wave of uncomfortably suppressed grins shoot along the line of men before me. Calloway didn't seem to acknowledge his potential innuendo, though, simply strutting to one side and the other like a general reviewing his troops.

"I want," he continued, "to be able to go down to that park and feed the ducks without a second thought. I want to sit on the bench dedicated to my dear mother and fall asleep with a newspaper over my face, safe from any assault on my person. I want to be able to eat a picnic in that park on a Sunday afternoon, free from the fear that some goddamn interloper is going to come up and nail me in the privates while I'm eating my cucumber sandwiches and knocking back my Pimms. Isn't that what you want as well?"

The Havershaw brothers had probably never seen a cucumber in their lives, and if they did see one I doubted that their first guess at its purpose would be that it was a foodstuff. Mr. Bronson, a noted alcoholic, would be drinking the Pimms neat if at all, and the reprobate Doolan Miller was famed for only feeding the ducks small metal pellets thrown at high velocity out of his air rifle, but I could see that they were all interpreting Calloway's picture in their own particular way. I myself, although not at quite so much risk from the interlopers by virtue of my more delicate gender, found the idea of not being able to lie in the park with a book in one hand and a pair of binoculars in the other quite distressing, and I imagined that even if I had not been so directly involved in the fight against the interlopers I should have found the otherwise intolerably pompous speech quite rousing in its call to action, even if the actual rhetoric employed in that direction was laughable.

The troops thus fired up (and they did, I had to admit, look quite energised - the prospect of receiving continuing kicks and punches to the coin purse having that effect on men of all ages, as I might well have expected), he gracelessly turned the floor to me as an expert on the subject of our enemy.

"Now, Miss Gr-"--I shot a stern look at him--"Ms. Grace Topps has been observing the Interloper stronghold, and she has a theory about how to defeat them."

That's not the only thing I've been observing, I thought pruriently, but I kept that to myself, instead punching my right fist into the flat of my left palm in a gesture I had hoped would be striking but in fact as I did it seemed as though I were trying too hard. I put my hands behind my back sheepishly.

"The Interlopers," I began, "have holed up around the area of the old bandstand. Unfortunately for us, this is quite a defensible position. The rock gardens surround it on two sides, the mill pond on the third. The only obvious way to attack is through the pathway that leads to the swings. Naturally, they will be watching this road. Their sentries are in position, and they may well be rotated every few hours to stay fresh."

"May be?" Doolan Miller queried. Calloway gave him a serious glance, obviously intending him to shut up, but I waved the objection aside.

"May be. The two go in, two more come out. To be honest, I can't really tell the differences between them. I mean, they all look the same to me." That sounded racist. "That isn't racist," I clarified, but that sounded even more racist, so I just drew a line under the whole thing and started again.

"What I mean to say," I said, "is that they all have a very similar appearance, so I'm assuming that they change guards but I can't say so for sure. They have the place very well protected, and they've built up the bandstand itself with logs and hammered-out tin-cans and the consignment of roofing tiles they hijacked on the way to the Havershaw's depot."

"Sounds like we're screwed," said Doolan.

"Possibly," I said. "But there is one point of weakness. I happen to know something about the band-stand that I'm not sure they do. There's a room underneath it, below ground level."

"Eh?"

"Don't ask me how I know," I said, and I genuinely hoped that they wouldn't, "but a tunnel leads from a grate in the groundskeepers hut to a room below. I think it must have been a storage room in the old days. If the Interlopers don't know about it, then we have a big advantage. We can attack from within."

"And if they do know about it," said Doolan, "we're double screwed."

"Well, yes," I admitted. "Someone will have to go in first and scout it out. I'll need a volunteer."

The posse looked at me, but none of them moved. It was only after a few seconds that I understood what they were getting at.

"Oh," I said. "Right."