Alan Garner - Where Shall We Run To? - A Memoir

What must we do? There was no teacher to tell. It was holidays. It had to be a policeman. The notice said.

We ran back to the station. We looked at the notice again. There it was: on the left, third from the top. Should we tell our mothers first? It said: tell teacher or a policeman. We went in.

The sergeant was sitting at his desk, and he asked what he could do for us. We told him about the cress and the caddis and the thing in the brook, and we took him out and showed him the poster. He said we had sharp eyes, and we went back inside.

The sergeant opened a big book and began to write. Then PC Pessle came in. He was the policeman that saw us across the main road to and from school, and he had given me a broken police watch when I was two because I could tell the time. That’s why my cousins called me Ticker.

The sergeant told PC Pessle what had happened, and asked him to go and check what we’d found. PC Pessle set off with us to investigate. It was raining hard.

We led him over the field at Pott Brook to where the thing was still bobbing in the alder roots. He got down into the water and broke off a dead branch from the tree. We shouted he mustn’t touch it EVEN WITH A STICK. He told us to go back to the bridge and wait.

From the bridge we could see him bending down and poking. Then he climbed onto the bank, holding the grey thing with a neck and a black mark or letters or numbers on the side, just like the poster. John and I ducked below the parapet of the bridge, but PC Pessle told us not to be scared and showed us what he’d got.

It was a grey pot bottle, with words in black on the side:

VITAMIN BEVERAGES LIMITED

BREWED FROM HOPS, GINGER, ROOTS, SUGAR

WHICH ARE GOOD FOR YOU. ASK YOUR DOCTOR.

KEEP COOL.

PC Pessle went back with us to the police station and reported to the sergeant. They both said what good lads we were, and the sergeant wrote in the big book. John and I kept the bottle and we tossed for it. I won.

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