Late, Late in the Evening

childhood, but in London it was usually celebrated on Fridays and the bigger girls were kept away from school regularly on Friday in term-time so that they could help with the chores. In Our Sarah's home, however, bedroom day was on Saturday and she carried out the whole operation on her own, while her mother shopped at the Co-op and her father spent money at the pub.

'Hoy, you young Oi say,' she called out as we approached. 'Where be you a-goen?'

'To the sheepwash,' Kenneth replied.

'You don't warnt to be a-goen there today. You stop along of us and see the band and the percession,' said Our Sarah authoritatively.

'What band?'

'This be 'Orspital Sat'day. They always has it on Saint Swithin's.'

'Are you playing hookey?' asked Kenneth, always bolder at putting direct questions than I was.

'How jer mean?'

'I thought your mother made you work on Saturdays.'

'Us be letten the bedrooms go for thes once. Me dad's en the band.'

'Oh, isn't it the Salvation Army band?'

'No, t'ent, then. 'Tes the town band. They always leads the percession on 'Orspital Sat'day. They haves people dressed up and en masks and they haves boxes what they comes up and rattles at ee, and you puts en an a'penny ef you got one. You got an a'penny, you young Oi say?'

'Yes, but I want it for the fair,' said Kenneth. 'Besides, collections are for grown-ups. They won't expect children to pay.'

So we perched ourselves on the coping of the little bridge which carried the culvert and prepared to watch the procession go by.

'Where ded you get to Wednesday?' asked Our Ern.

'Tea at the manor house.'

'Garn! You never!'

'All right, then. Ask Lionel.'

'What you have for tea?'

'Ordinary bread and butter, currant bread and butter, bloater paste, jam, chocolate biscuits, little jammy buns, plum cake and cups of tea.'

'Garn! Bet ee daren't walk under the bredge,' said Ern, changing the subject. (The culvert under the bridge was no higher than a big drain.)

'I will, if you will,' said Kenneth.

'Garn! Oi done et before. Oi done et a dozen toimes.'

'Oh, yes? You and who else?'

At this moment we heard the sound of the approaching band and I hoped this would deter Kenneth, but it did not. He slid down the bank and waded into the brook. I went to the end of the bridge where he would emerge and waited anxiously. It did not take him long, but I thought he looked very pale when he climbed out and his shorts were soaked to the top of his thighs.

'There you are, then,' he said, walking up to Ern. 'And now you can have this.' With this remark he uppercut Ern and knocked him backwards into the brook. I prepared to take Kenneth's side if Our Sarah decided to intervene, but when Ern crawled out and began to blubber, all she said was:

'Serve ee glad for tellen loies. You never walked under there in your loife. He be twoice the man what you be. Hold yer howlen. Here 'em comes.'

We did not know Sarah's father, so could not pick him out from among the other bandsmen, but we yelled and clapped and Sarah and Ern (who was wet and muddy, but had taken his sister's advice and stopped howling) fell in behind the band, which already had a following of children.

'Come on,' said Kenneth; but I hung back and even retreated on to The Marsh. Not many things frightened me, but people wearing masks always did and still do. There was not much in the way of a procession except for a set of Morris dancers whose caperings did not fit in with the tune the band was playing. There were, however, a dozen or more creatures in the most terrifying get-up I had ever seen except in pictures. They were prehistoric animals, dinosaurs, I suppose, and they looked like demented crocodiles or the sort of giant lizards you might see in a nightmare.

Attached to their claws were collecting-boxes made of tin which they rattled as they pranced along behind the Morris dancers and the band. Although they were nightmarish, they were horribly realistic, too; nothing like the things which can be made nowadays for such films as the Argonauts and Sinbad the Sailor, of course, but dreadfully frightening, all the same. When they came up close and shook their collecting boxes, some people, I am sure, hastily dropped coppers into the rattling tins just to get rid of them.

Personally, I let them go by before I followed on and then I walked very slowly, so that by the time I reached Aunt Kirstie's gate the band, the dancers and the masked importunists were away up the hill and the music was almost inaudible.

They're going up to the manor house,' said Kenneth, 'but Aunt Kirstie says they may be coming back this way. The collectors are medical students. Aren't they grand? They're prehistoric animals, you know. I wish I had a costume like that. Why didn't you come along? One of them picked me up and pretended to bite my head off. It was grand. Some of the women screamed. It was terrific'

'I want my dinner,' I said, 'so I shan't bother to go to the front gate if they do come back this way.' Nothing, I felt, would induce me to encounter those fearsome beings again, and that was before we heard about