The Orchard

It was one of those balmy sort of days where the summer was running out and bang goes another year of mucking about down at the beach and in the old quarry. Might as well make the best of it. Bit of a thin chilly breeze though. That would make the breakers choppy. Not so good for body surfing, though. Might give that a miss today. The others agreed.

"Ow!" Terry gave a gasp of surprise as the wheel of his bike nearly got caught in the tramline. You have to watch out for that.

"Ha, 'bout time ya got tossed," said Rick. Rick was always going on about how strong he was. And he was strong. Nearly 15, he had hair everywhere, was sort of built square and had developed a swagger.

Terry's bike was a Rudge. It had 3 speed gears that always seemed to jam halfway between one gear and another. We had Raleighs, which were regarded as better bikes, of course. We had parents who could afford them. Only Werner had a Victor Nelson. They were the cheapest. Werner didn't come along with us often. He often got roughed up by the other kids a bit because his mum and dad were Germans, and they were still pretty unpopular, even these days.

"Who's got the silver paper?" said Barry, who was a pretty thin kid, but tough. He was always on the lookout for some mischief. His dad owned a factory which made wax matches. We'd cut their red heads off and wrap a dozen or so of them in silver paper. Then we'd put the little package on the tramline. We'd wait for the tram to come from behind the hedge just off Fortune Road, in Brown Avenue. It would rumble along, clanking and groaning, and we'd lean forward expectantly.

"Bang!" loudly, and the tram would grind to a halt, the conductor stepping gingerly out to check on the source of the noise. More often than not, one of us would let out a chortle and the conductor would look in our direction.

"You little sods," and we would hastily remount our bikes and scarper. "I know who you are, I'm going to report you".

We knew he didn't know who we were, because we never did get reported. Funny, they never seemed to learn to just carry on after hearing bangs like that; knowing all the time what it was. I guess if they had, we'd get a bit bored with the whole thing and go on to something else more exciting.

Well, with the surf not being right for us and with the day far from done, we decided to go and check out Henry's orchard. Henry Nicolic's orchard was just near the quarry. It was unusual to have an orchard right in the middle of a lot of houses, but you could never tell what these foreigners would do next. Henry came from Czechoslovakia and crikey, he was hard to understand. That is, until he caught you stealing his apples, then a string of funny words would come pouring out of his mouth.

"Hey I vont cut your heads - till dey fall orf," he would scream as we leapt the old wooden fence tangled up with suplejack and bush-lawyer. The latter was nasty because you got scratched to bits on that. And there'd be some blackberry in there too. That tore the skin like nothing on earth!

We headed for the salt-water pool first. The pool was halfway inside the building, and was heated. Sometimes the waves on a bad day would come screaming up over the concrete wall and jet-like icy arrows come straight at your warmed-up skin. It was like dying a hundred deaths, but kind of exciting, too. We would jump up to see who could wrap their fingers round the beam in the rafters, first.

We didn't spend too much time at the pool. We got dressed and generally jostled around a bit, having a bit of fun. Rick was the show-off as usual. I did say he was older than us, didn't I? Well, he had this big cock. It stuck out like a pinus radiata log. All red and big. It looked really funny. He got hold of a towel.

"Bet you guys can't do this," he triumphed. There was the towel, draped over his cock, like as if it was on a hanger of some sort.

"Bloody show-off," we countered. "Bet you can't keep it there for ten minutes".

"Youse can't even hang it," he told us triumphantly, and he was right. That is, now he was right, but just wait.

We decided to go and have a look at the surf anyway. We ambled along the track in the sandhills. It was a bit chilly. Rick urged us to stick together, and although we thought he was playing the dramatics again, we agreed.

"Yah - there's no old guys along here today, anyway," said Terry. And there weren't any we could see. We had been told to be careful because of some dirty old men who hid in the sandhills to track down and get hold of kids like us. We were promised a thrashing by our parents if one of them, and some were nearly thirty and had grubby clothes, ever caught us because we were careless to be caught.

"It's bloody unfair," I said. "Why should we cop it just because there's these old mental maniacs about looking for us."

"Roger got caught by one of them a few weeks ago," Werner said, screwing up his face. "He told me about it..."

"Never mind about that, let's get to Henry's."

Rick, having organised us once again, led the way to the old quarry. If this wind kept up we'd get our trolleys out. That was always fun. Sail trolleys weren't hard to make, just a couple of axles, some wheels, plenty of 3-in-one oil to make them run, a flat board narrow at one end, where you could get your feet down on to the axles to steer, and an apple box for a seat. The mast was usually a long broom handle. An old sheet and some ropes completed the rig. It was fun racing along beside the trams and having the driver shaking his fist out at you. All the mum's and kids in the tram sitting primly; off to town to do whatever they did in town. We had some accidents of course. But our parents never seemed to bother much. Cuts, grazes and scratches seemed to be a part of our lives. There weren't many cars either. Not many people could buy new cars. They were rationed, like most other things still, these days. There never seemed to be enough of anything, but we knew there would be one day. We'd sort of grow into it, so to speak, and it would be all ours.

We loved the new Studebakers. Real modern-looking, with no mudguards and looking as if the back was the front, with curved windows. Everybody thought they looked silly, but I knew one day I wanted to have one of those.

Nobody was to be seen around Henry's orchard. We went up to the old corrugated shed, where we always went to plan things. We never knew what the shed was there for. It seemed to have no particular use. Just an old clanky pine door that squealed as you pulled it shut.

We opened it and went inside. Somebody had dumped an old mattress in there. Maybe old Henry had been put out here by his cranky wife, to sleep. Heh heh. That would serve him right. But, time to go and see what apples there were around. We crept through the rows of trees - there weren't that many, in jungle formation. Ah, here were some nice fat Sturmers. They were sweet enough and pretty juicy as well. Terry had the flour bag. As usual he'd forgotten to shake the remains of the flour out of it. We had white streaks down our blue serge school shorts and it showed. It was hard to brush out. Who cared? We were immersed in our task. A couple of other varieties, and the bag was full and heavy. We took turns carrying it back up to where the corrugated iron shed was.

"Shhhh," said Rick suddenly. He was leading the way. We hid behind a tree and looked. There was somebody out there in the open, but it wasn't Henry. It was his poker-faced son, Eric. Eric was a lot older than us - must have been about twenty five! We looked again, peering.

"Hey, he's got a girl with him," Werner turned his head urgently to the rest of us, and we crouched, rooted to the spot. We didn't know the girl. She looked a bit fat and wore some sort of white dress which was all crumpled. She must have been all of eighteen!! But she looked pretty strong and would probably belt one of more of us if she knew we were there, watching. Eric looked fairly strong too. He was wearing thick courduroy trousers and we could see that his braces were unhooked. This looked exciting. The pair moved into the shed. We had a conference.

"There's a crack at the back of the shed where it isn't nailed up," said Barry, trying to be helpful.

"What are you suggesting," said Rick, with a snigger.

"Well, I'm going to have a look, anyway," I said boldly, surprising myself.

Werner tagged along. "Dunno..." he said in his high-pitched voice, almost like a squeal.

The tin wasn't nailed up, and two of us at a time could look through into the inside of the shed. We knew we'd get a belting, from our parents at least, if they found out we'd been peering at these two. But we knew we'd have to find out what was going on.

"Hey, look at that!" Barry's mouth hung open and Rick pushed Terry out of the way, to have a look. "Look at the size of his cock".

Rick blushed. He knew he was beaten. You could hang two towels over that one. What was he doing with her? "I didn't know you could do it that way." Rick looked away, a bit embarrassed.

Eric was down to his black singlet. Yes, and the girl was turned around, and they were grunting. Meanwhile, the back of the shed, it became a jostling match. I gave Werner a sharp poke in the ribs, because he wouldn't move. He hissed, "Don't be greedy."

"I reckon Eric in there is being greedy," I sniggered. We all sniggered. Eric looked up. He'd heard something - or us. "Shhh..." I hissed loudly. Too loudly. The girl shrieked. Eric was struggling with his trousers, which were halfway down his legs. We were stuck, absolutely rooted to the spot. It was like one of those flickery pictures at the Mayfair on a Saturday morning, with Laurel and Hardy. Sort of slow motion, your jaw dropping and just staying fixed, there. We soon got the message however.

When we all tried to move at once, we started tripping over one another. Eric had roared out from the shed door and was racing around towards us. "You nosy little shits - you'll pay for this!"

Rick fell flat on his face, the rest of us got to the fence and were struggling to get through the barbed vegetation. On the grass outside the shed door, Eric had Rick in some sort of arm-hold. We wondered what to do. We didn't have to decide. Eric had frog-marched Rick back into the shed. We waited to see if we could hear anything. Sure enough, we did.

First there was a high-pitched squeal. Not sure if it was Rick or the girl. Then the girl started laughing a sort of grainy cackle that sounded totally evil. We could hear Eric say, "Ah - aha!" and "Try that" and Rick sort of moaned a bit. Then a few muffled sort of thumps, nothing heavy.. They weren't beating him up or anything. Maybe it was time to go home. It was an idea we acted on fairly quickly.

We didn't see Rick for a few days. He was off school. I called over to his place but his Mum growled at me and told me to go away. It was weird. After nearly a week, I heard the fire engines screaming along Fortune Road, where the trams ran. I got on my Raleigh to chase them, like I always did. There was usually a good fire of some sort every few weeks. Most were chimney fires though, which were boring. The fire was in the orchard. Sure enough it was the mad Czechoslovakian's corrugated tin shed. You wouldn't think a tin shed like that could make such a rousing good blaze.

I left the scene when it was lying charred and at a crazy angle, and went home. I saw Rick the very next day. He seemed pale, but was back at school.

"It went on fire," he said quietly to me during mid-morning break.

Barry's matches?" I ventured. Rick grinned, a little strangely I thought. Certainly the fire was a bit of a better spectacle than the trams bumping along the track and banging into our bombs, I thought. "Why did you burn it?" I asked.

"My old man belted me," he said. "It was bad enough being in the shed with those two. I was as sore as hell."

"You told your dad what they did to you," I said, speculating as to what I thought might have happened. Rick looked pretty distraught. I didn't push it. Yes, he knew his dad would be angry. He knew he'd get the belt.

"It's a funny way to, sort of, learn about it," Rick said. I got the picture. Oooooo, I hope that never happened to me, I thought. Rick looked somehow different, as if suddenly being thrust into this role was something he was really ready for. But no. He began crying. I'd never seen Rick cry. I saw him cry often, after that. He sort of grew away from the rest of us.

Every time I heard the sound of fire engines, I thought of Rick. Strangely, there were a lot more fires in our part of town after that. They weren't just chimney fires, either.

- Trevor Reeves
treeves@es.co.nz