Low men in yellow coats by Stephen King

Standing in front of it, looking extremely busty in the chest and extremely wide in the hip, was Anita Gerber’s friend Rionda. Summer clothes were never going to be her friends (even at eleven Bobby understood this), but at that moment she looked like a goddess in pedal pushers.

‘Rionda!’ Carol yelled — not crying, but almost. She pushed past Willie and the boy in the motorcycle belt. Neither made any effort to stop her. All three of the St Gabe’s boys were staring at Rionda. Bobby found himself looking at Willie’s cocked fist. Sometimes Bobby woke up in the morning with his peter just as hard as a rock, standing straight up like a moon rocket or something. As he went into the bathroom to pee, it would soften and wilt. Willie’s cocked arm was wilting like that now, the fist at the end of it relaxing back into fingers, and the comparison made Bobby want to smile. He resisted the urge. If they saw him smiling now, they could do nothing. Later, however . . . on another day . . .

Rionda put her arms around Carol and hugged the girl to her large bosom. She surveyed the boys in the orange shirts and she was smiling. Smiling and making no effort to hide it.

‘Willie Shearman, isn’t it?’

The formerly cocked-back arm dropped to Willie’s side. Muttering, he bent to pick up his bike.

‘Richie O’Meara?’

The boy in the motorcycle belt looked at the toes of his dusty Snap-Jacks and also muttered something. His cheeks burned with color.

‘ One of the O’Meara boys, anyway, there’s so damned many of you now I can’t keep track.’

Her eyes shifted to Robin Hood. ‘And who are you, big boy? Are you a Dedham? You look a little bit like a Dedham.’

Robin Hood looked at his hands. He wore a class ring on one of his fingers and now he began to twist it.

Rionda still had an arm around Carol’s shoulders. Carol had one of her own arms as far around Rionda’s waist as she could manage. She walked with Rionda, not looking at the boys, as Rionda stepped up from the street onto the little strip of grass between the curb and the sidewalk. She was still looking at Robin Hood. ‘You better answer me when I talk to you, sonny. Won’t be hard to find your mother if I want to try. All I have to do is ask Father Fitzgerald.’

‘Harry Doolin, that’s me,’ the boy said at last. He was twirling his class ring faster than ever.

‘Well, but I was close, wasn’t I?’ Rionda asked pleasantly, taking another two or three steps forward. They put her on the sidewalk. Carol, afraid to be so close to the boys, tried to hold her back, but Rionda would have none of it. ‘Dedhams and Doolins, all married together.

Right back to County Cork, tra-la-tra-lee.’

Not Robin Hood but a kid named Harry Doolin with a stupid homemade bat-sling strapped to his back. Not Marion Brando from The Wild One but a kid named Richie O’Meara, who wouldn’t have a Harley to go with his motorcycle belt for another five years . . . if ever. And Willie Shearman, who didn’t dare to be nice to a girl when he was with his friends. All it took to shrink them back to their proper size was one overweight woman in pedal pushers and a shell top, who had ridden to the rescue not on a white stallion but in a 1954 Studebaker. The thought should have comforted Bobby but it didn’t. He found himself thinking of what William Golding had said, that the boys on the island were rescued by the crew of a battle-cruiser and good for them . . . but who would rescue the crew?

That was stupid, no one ever looked less in need of rescuing than Rionda Hewson did at that moment, but the words still haunted Bobby. What if there were no grownups? Suppose the whole idea of grownups was an illusion? What if their money was really just playground marbles, their business deals no more than baseball-card trades, their wars only games of guns in the park? What if they were all still snotty-nosed kids inside their suits and dresses?