John Diamond (Vintage Childrens Classics) by Leon Garfield

Author:Leon Garfield [Garfield, Leon]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781448182466
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2014-03-06T00:00:00+00:00

12

THIS WAS A great blow. I stared at the trade card, biting my lip and, I’ve no doubt, pushing back my hair as if to let a little air into my brain.

John Diamond had been sitting there all the time, and I’d missed him! I felt angry and guilty and humiliated and very provincial over the whole affair. If only I hadn’t been so sure that John Diamond was a boy, because I was a boy, and jumped to the conclusion that he was Shot-in-the-Head, then I might have looked round at the grown men and not got into that fight.

I say, I might; but I couldn’t get rid of a feeling that, somehow, I’d been tricked and that the boys had deliberately prevented me from meeting John Diamond.

My fury against them, and myself, rose considerably, and wasn’t in the least helped by Mr Jenkins remarking that I should have kept my eyes open and not indulged myself in the boyish pleasure of fighting with other boys like a pack of dogs.

By the way he said it, it was plain that he thought I was nothing more than a stupid country oaf who hadn’t been able to take a little teasing from a few poor London boys without flying into a rage.

I’m sure he thought that everybody in the country, when they weren’t chewing straw, went about sticking pitchforks into each other and setting fire to hayricks.

I informed him, as calmly as I could, exactly what I thought of London and its boys, and the filthy place I’d been brought to, which, as a country person, I wouldn’t even have kept pigs in.

Here the landlord came up rather threateningly and said I was a troublemaker and he knew my sort and I’d better get out if I knew what was good for me.

Hastily Mr Robinson and Mr Jenkins bundled me up the steps and outside, as if they were frightened that I would commit some fresh act of country outrage and they’d have to pay.

For a moment, I thought they were going to wash their hands of me, and leave me in Coalman’s Alley. I thought of the poor London boys, waiting in dark corners, to come out and tease me … with knives and that great iron hook.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, looking hopefully at Mr Robinson. ‘I’m truly sorry to—to have caused you any inconvenience, sir.’

Mr Robinson leaned back against the wall and stuck his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets. He sighed.

‘Ah well! We were all young once!’

‘Speak for yourself,’ said Mr Jenkins solemnly. ‘I was never young! Born with a quill be’ind me ear, like a little goslin’, I was!’

At once this had the effect of lightening everybody’s mood; and I couldn’t help laughing at Mr Jenkins’s mournful face as he lamented his premature entry into manhood.

‘Ah youth!’ he sighed. ‘I got an action for damages against the loss of it; with costs awarded in favour of my ’eart.’

‘Ah youth!’ echoed Mr Robinson. ‘The season of hope and

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