We were still loaded down on reaching the police station, except Donnie and Paddy, the pickers.

Sure enough, immediately on our arrival at the station, they weighed all the fruit we'd pinched. The worst was yet to come. Our parents were contacted, and nervously we waited. The first arrival came into the police station as if the door leading into the report room wasn't there. She swung open the swing doors and bowled in, all in one motion.  An enormous woman.

"Where-is-it!"  she bawled, the doors still swinging on their hinges. She bounded across the bare wooden floor to her son. He cringed, and with a blow to the head that carried all the strength and power of a man, was sent sprawling.

After that episode, I was petrified. It seemed like hours, but my ol' man finally arrived. He was still in his working clothes. Slowly he came across to where we were all standing in line, looking down at the floor as he walked. But the moment I expected to be felled, he instead opened up room for himself in our line and stood next to me, inserting himself in as if he belonged there. He paused, and then whispered across my face, with all eyes and ears attending his every move. His voice pierced the silence that his manner had created:

"Which one, son?  Which one pinched you?"

I'm dreaming, I thought. Am I dreaming?  He waited, deliberately pretending not to notice the uniformed officers present, and thought for some moments. You could have heard a pin drop. Everyone knew the gravity of my father's anger. His violent temper and past antics were well known throughout our street. I think the officers were expecting another commotion. I gulped, and nodded in the direction of the officer wearing the brazen face.

"Him!?"  my ol' man shouted, "he was the biggest thief in Caerphilly when we were boys!"

"Now, now, Alf," the brazen one replied, "your boy was caught with the others    all of them     stealing from the magistrate's own garden, and he..."

Dad interrupted.

"Didn't you ever steal? We used to go out thieving together, you bloody hypocrite!  Now you're a copper, its different is it?"  Dad shouted, neck outstretched.

- 18 -