Sid Lovegrove
Leader of the Black Hand, the Lower Binfield boys' gang: the saddler's younger son, about thirteen, with a secret password, an ordeal involving an earthworm, and firm views on where babies come from.
To be believed. He runs the gang, sets the ordeal, and settles arguments with claims nobody in the gang can check: a chaffinch he hit with a catapult, the facts of life.
The book
At a glance
- Leader of the Black Hand, the boys' gang in Lower Binfield
- About thirteen when Joe Bowling joined the gang at eight, so about fifteen when George Bowling was eight
- Younger son of Lovegrove the saddler
- On the Somme; reported to Bowling when he came home for his mother's funeral
- Part II, chapters 3 and 4; his death reported in chapter 8
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freeThe Black Hand was six or seven boys — two shopkeepers' sons besides Sid, an errand boy from the brewery, and two farm lads who were looked down on but tolerated because they knew twice as much about animals as anyone else. Sid Lovegrove was the leader and about thirteen when Joe Bowling joined at eight. The gang had a password and an ordeal in which you cut your finger and ate an earthworm, and gave themselves out to be frightful desperadoes.
What they actually did was break windows, chase cows, tear knockers off doors, steal fruit by the hundredweight, borrow ferrets to go ratting when the farmers would let them, and fish. They all had catapults and squailers and were forever saving up for a five-shilling saloon pistol, and the savings never got past about threepence.
Sid is the presiding voice of the day Bowling first went fishing, at eight years old: it was Sid who told Joe to clip his brother's ear, Sid who yelled "Rats!" the moment the boy called out that he had a bite, and Sid, later that afternoon in a chalk hollow in the beech woods, who explained how babies are born. He was killed on the Somme.
How the book draws them
- The ordealYou had to cut your finger and eat an earthworm, and the gang were very strict about insisting that you bite the worm before you swallowed it. Bowling had to go through with it the day after his first fishing trip, because they decided he wasn't really a member yet.
- "Rats!"His instant answer when the eight-year-old yelled that he had a bite. A moment later the float went under and everyone flung their rods down and ran.
- The chaffinchIn the beech woods he swore he had hit one with his catapult and that it had stuck in a fork of the tree. Joe said he was lying, and they argued and nearly fought.
- The chalk hollowThe same afternoon he told the others he knew how babies were born, and that it was just the same as rabbits except that the baby came out of the woman's navel.
- How it endedBowling came home for his mother's funeral in 1916 and found nearly all the boys he had known gone. Sid Lovegrove was dead, killed on the Somme. Sid's young cousin Wally had drowned in the Thames at Burford Weir in 1906, tangled in the weeds, and his face was jet black when the drag-hooks brought him up.