Harkness – MacGillivray Stories

Headquarters

Our gang’s headquarters was in Little London prefab town. Alistair decided that the chief (him) needed a heavy office desk to sit behind. So under the threat of ‘finger torture’, we had to carry a heavy oak desk from one of the other prefabs and put it in our prefab. 

Luckily, we found some old framed photos with cracked glass panes – one of the ‘German’ queen, our queen, Elizabeth, and another of Winston Churchill, the British ‘fascist’ that fought against the German fascists. We managed to hang them on the wall behind the desk. 

As children, we were often confused – at least historically speaking. Although Billy Cockfoster belonged to another gang (just him and his brother actually), he was also my friend. One of his heroes was Douglas Bader, the ‘legless’ ace fighter pilot of the Second World War. Billy had a teddy bear that had lost its legs – so he called him Douglas Bader. 

The point here is that Alistair said we should prepare for a German invasion led by German ace fighter pilots such as Willie Batz. He explained that the Germans were upset that they had ‘lost’ the ‘Battle of Britain’ between the Spitfires and Messerschmitts, as they claimed their planes were far superior to ours. He told us that the Germans wanted to marry our mothers, and make us and our fathers into slaves! This was intolerable! Despite all my arguments with my mother, I still needed her! I certainly would rather be dead than be a German slave!

Alistair’s Leadership

Alistair needed the old oak desk to sit behind, so he could plan a ‘counter-offensive’. We also had to fetch filing cabinets – which we filled with old photographic plates we had found, and other undecipherable documents – these formed our ‘constitution’.

After much struggle, we also managed to carry an old worn out and torn leather sofa. I was lucky because I was allowed to sit on the sofa, as I was amongst the ‘hierarchy’, as my brother was the ‘President’. Some of the other ‘little kids’ had to sit on ‘broken’ stools. Thus, we would lay back on the sofa, as Alistair sitting behind his big oaken desk would propose various plans to establish our ‘right of rule’ in Little London.  

British drink for a British crisis

Before Alistair led his leadership séance, we made some tea with an old kettle we had found and a jar of tea leaves we had also found. Surprisingly the deserted town still had a water and electricity supply. Of course, we had to serve Alistair with tea, as he sat behind his chief’s desk. We had even found some old powdered milk in one of the other prefabs – so it was ‘real’ English tea.

Of course, we would have preferred to drink some ‘Tizer’, but the formality of the situation required that we drank the British beverage that the British drink in times of crisis – tea! However, this is not what Winston Churchill drank in times of ‘crisis’, as he preferred whisky, champagne and brandy.

“The Frog was here”

In other words, we furnished our headquarters (our ‘den’) and felt quite comfortable there. But this relaxing feeling didn’t last long because one day something terrible happened! In other words, we were quite happy living in our centre of power – our headquarters – our ‘den’ that was until a crime happened.

One day, we went to our den and found that the place had been wrecked, chairs were broken, windows smashed, and threatening Nazi graffiti daubed on the walls. Using red paint, the perpetuator wrote, “The Frog Was Here.”

Swastikas

As children we would practice drawing swastikas. This, of course, was not because we were little Nazi boys, but because we realised it was ‘forbidden’; and we loved to do anything that was ‘forbidden’ by the adults – as they were our ‘enemies’. However, engraving your school desk lid was no easy task, because you had to get it the ‘right way around’ – this was quite confusing.

The more skilled boys would point out to the ‘stupid’ boys how they had drawn the swastika ‘wrong’. I point this out here because the ‘evil’ person(s) that had ‘attacked’ our headquarters had drawn the swastika the wrong way around.  Besides it was also a poorly executed drawing of a supposedly scary frog, but just looked like arbitrary blotches.

The Investigation

This was pretty scary to us at the time. Alistair, our only senior gang member present, said we had to have a meeting to find out who the culprits of the vandalism were. He suggested it might be the Cockfoster gang, which was not so much a gang but just two brothers, our next-door neighbours Roger and Tom Cockfoster. The other suspect that we thought of was the rival girl gang called ‘The Toads’.

Girls seldom had gangs, but this gang of girls lived nearby, and one of their fathers had done up one of the prefabs, so they could ‘play house’. One possible motive was revenge against Alistair for ruining the Toads’ den by daubing the windows with red paint. He had explained to us that he had to do this because they were encroaching upon our ‘territory’.

The obliteration of our gang headquarters made us worried. Our leader, Alistair, led the investigation to find out who were the perpetrators of the crime. We all got busy trying to be detectives, figuring out the possibilities, and discussing the idea of capturing the culprits.

We discussed tying up the Cockfosters and torturing them with nettles and sharp sticks, or ducking them in the stream to drive a confession from them. However, this came to nothing because Roger Cockfoster was older and bigger than most of us. It would be too difficult to capture him.

Other Suspects

On the other hand, the girls’ gang was rarely out and about because girls were not allowed out as much as we were. Not only that, but we had a ‘gentleman’s code’; we were not allowed to attack ‘civilians’, especially ‘female’ civilians. Despite whatever we might do, we had to keep the high moral ground; the ‘means’ to an ‘end’ were more important than the ‘end’. After all, how could we defeat the barbarians if we became barbarians! Then we would have to exterminate ourselves – that didn’t make any sense!

I may have been a little kid at the time, but I was also old enough to start  thinking ‘outside the box’. After looking at the situation from different perspectives, I started to ‘smell a rat’. The rat, or rather the ‘frog’, in question was actually my brother Alistair!

So many clues led me to that. One of his favourite television kids’ programmes at the time centred on a mysterious villain; he never actually showed his face but committed various atrocities. This villain usually left a signature behind – a Zorro kind of thing (although Zorro was a good guy). Then there was ‘Toad of Toad Hall’ that was on the TV at the time. Thus, this Irish stew of various TV characters had metamorphosed in my brother’s mind to the ‘evil Frog’.  

The Real Culprit

One day, Alistair finally admitted to me that he was ’The Frog’. He said the idea was to start a war against the rival gangs, ‘The Toads’ and the ‘Cockfosters’. Alistair thought our gang was just a bunch of softies so he needed to agitate us into action by using a so-called ‘false flag’ action.

He wanted our gang to be the most feared in our kids’ world. Besides, we needed an excuse to torture members of the other gangs. He was right; we liked torturing others – it was good fun! He was the big wheel, and I was just a small cog in his ‘Empire’. I just had to tag along. I was still not sure it was right, but it all came to nothing in the end anyway. We soon forgot the ‘gang warfare’ in Little London, and moved on to greener pastures. Or more specifically, Captain Blood’s Culcheth Hall!