Five Children on the Western Front

by Kate Saunders

  ‘Charlie!’ Mother said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘How can I stop the children doing it if you keep doing it?’

  ‘All right – good old WinterBEHINDS, then.’

  The Lamb was delighted to see his best friend from school (though it was a little sickening that they were supposed to address each other as ‘Hilary’ and ‘Arthur’ out of school hours), and they all liked Winterbum’s big sister Lilian. She was a large, loud, laughing girl, who had been at school with Anthea; Father jokily called her ‘Airy-Fairy Lilian’, after a famous poem, because she was anything but airy-fairy and always beat him at tennis.

  ‘We’re very lucky to have Lilian with us,’ Winterbum’s mother said. ‘She only has forty-eight hours’ leave. I think it’s quite dreadful to make girls drive ambulances when they’re needed at home.’

  Lilian – once the local tomboy and Robert’s hoydenish partner-in-crime – had left home to work as an ambulance driver.

  ‘Stow it, Mother,’ Lilian said cheerfully. She was wearing her Red Cross uniform of dark blue coat and skirt and felt hat. ‘The wounded need me more than you do.’

  Her mother said young people didn’t listen to their parents anymore.

  ‘When did they ever?’ Father said. ‘Mine wanted me to be a vicar! Here, Lilian – I’m trusting the box of bangers to your airy-fairy yet capable hands.’

  The two mothers and Winterbum’s father didn’t want to see the bonfire, and shut themselves in the sitting room. Everyone else pulled on coats and hats and trooped out into the darkness, laughing and stumbling in the shifting, unreliable light of torches and lanterns.

  ‘Mother can’t stop moaning, but I just let it wash over me,’ Lilian was telling Jane. ‘It’s the sheerest bliss to be back at home in a soft bed – our hostel in London isn’t too bad but the mattresses are agony. Most of my life is spent shivering in railway stations, waiting for the hospital trains to bring in the wounded. And then you should see me fighting my way through the London traffic, though people are usually pretty good about making way for an ambulance.’

  ‘She’s allowed to mess about with the engine,’ Winterbum told the Lamb. ‘Before the war, she said she wanted to be a blacksmith, but now she wants to be a motor mechanic. It puts Mother in a terrible flap.’

  They walked around the corner of the stables, and saw that the magnificent bonfire already had a heart of flame, thanks to Mr Field. The dry wood caught quickly and the fire lit them all with a dramatic, deep orange light.

  Father – as excited as anyone – shouted, ‘Death to the traitor!’ and threw a handful of bangers and firecrackers at the Guy Fawkes perched on the bonfire’s summit. Robert lit the Roman candles, which shot out great fountains of red and green sparks.

  Robert and Lilian had been great friends as children, and the two of them laughed and horsed about as if they’d never grown up. The air was filled with smoke that made everyone’s eyes sting. In the darkness Edie held tight to Jane’s hand; the flashes reminded her of the trench where they had seen Cyril, and the shapeless ‘Guy’ looked disturbingly human in the flickering light of the flames.

  And then it suddenly turned into a figure made of flames, a figure with a squat body and long arms and legs.

  ‘Crikey,’ Jane said, ‘it’s the Psammead!’

  Edie was too horrified to make a sound. She stared as the fiery figure grew larger and larger, until the entire bonfire looked as if it had turned into a huge, blazing Psammead. Burning branches crashed down around it, and Jane pulled Edie out of the stinging sparks; the air was full of them, like a blizzard of angry fireflies.

  ‘Stand back there!’ Lilian shouted. ‘Bobs – start pumping!’

  Lilian and Robert had grabbed the stirrup pump from the stable yard. Robert pumped for all he was worth, while Lilian directed a jet of water at the fire.

  ‘NO!’ Edie screamed, horrified. ‘Not water! He’ll get wet – he’ll be ill!’

  ‘Shhh!’ Jane gently shook her. ‘Keep quiet – honestly, it’s all right!’

  Edie dared to look, and to her great relief the flaming sand fairy had vanished and it was just an ordinary bonfire again, partly black and smoking where it had blazed out of control.

  ‘Well played, you two,’ Father said breathlessly. ‘Lilian, you went at that like Queen Boadicea – Bobs, old boy, well done for knowing where to find the stirrup pump – which is more than I did!’

  ‘You built the fire too tall and narrow, that’s all,’ Robert said, equally breathless.

  ‘Yes, and you stopped it falling right on top of Jane and Baby – are you all right, girlies? Not burned to crisps?’

  ‘We’re fine.’ Jane nudged Edie, who was still trembling.

  ‘And where are the boys?’

  ‘Here!’ The Lamb and his friend stepped out of the shadows. Their faces in the flickering light of the bonfire were striped with soot.

  ‘Look here, Bobs,’ Father said, ‘someone sent me a pair of excellent tickets for The Mikado at the Savoy Theatre tomorrow. I’m giving them to you, on the condition that you take Lilian, as a thank-you.’

  ‘Thanks, Dad.’ Robert grinned at Lilian. ‘What about it, old bean?’

  ‘You know, I’d love to,’ Lilian said. ‘It’s the last night of my leave and Mother won’t like me going out – but Mother doesn’t like anything I do at the moment.’

  ‘That’s settled then.’

  ‘I say, it’ll be a lark to wear a frock again – it’s ages since I dressed up as a girl!’

  *

  The moment everyone had gone Edie dashed upstairs to the attic to make sure the Psammead was safe; she was very worried that the water had hurt him. It was a great relief to find him dry and sleepy in his sand bath.

  ‘What is it? Why are you digging me out in the middle of the night?’

  ‘You appeared again – you were made of fire, and you grew into a huge burning Psammead.’ She picked him up carefully, scrubbed her lips with her sleeve to make sure they were perfectly dry, and dropped a kiss on the top of his head. ‘Are you really all right?’

  ‘I was – until you woke me up!’ He was grumbling, but didn’t object when Edie carried him out of the chilly attic and downstairs to the old nursery, where Robert had revived the dying fire. ‘Couldn’t this have waited till morning?’

  ‘No,’ Jane said. ‘I can’t go to bed until I know you’re not going to burst into flames again.’

  ‘I’m sorry I missed that,’ the Lamb said. ‘All me and Winterbum saw was a normal bonfire. I bet it happened because of another of your crimes – you’d better make a list of everybody you burned, so you can repent properly.’

  ‘I didn’t burn anyone! As I have said before, I was a thrifty tyrant, and burning people takes a lot of fuel.’

  Robert was laughing. ‘It doesn’t sound as if your repentance has got very far – you’re still as vain as a peacock.’

  ‘But he truly has got kinder,’ Edie said eagerly. ‘And he admits he was wrong sometimes.’

  ‘I can’t tell you the meaning of the fire,’ the Psammead said. ‘I am undergoing certain uncomfortable feelings – it feels quite a lot like trapped wind, but Edie says it’s remorse.’ He sighed heavily. ‘If you must know, while you were all outside, I had a troubling dream about a young scholar in my court. His name was Mapeth.’

  ‘And I expect you did something bad to him.’ Edie was sad but resigned.

  The Psammead winced. ‘Let me go back to my sand bath now. Tomorrow I must dictate a full confession to your professor. I’m sure he’ll be able to fill in the gaps.’

  Letter from the Psammead to Professor J. Knight and

  Mr E. Haywood (dictated to Jane)

  Dear scribes,

  Greetings from the Powerful One. I seek enlightenment.

  Last night Jane and Edie saw a fire change into a giant burning sand fairy. But I can’t remember anything to do with fire. I was having quite a different sort of memory – a dream about a young man na
med Mapeth.

  Frankly, I don’t come out of this well.

  Mapeth was a brilliant young scholar in my desert kingdom. He did my accounts and also wrote very good worship songs all about me. When the High Priestess brought out her book of poems I was extremely jealous and longed to produce some poems of my own. Of course, I couldn’t write them myself – so I made Mapeth write them and I passed them off as mine. They were lovely poems and they were very popular – and then it was HER turn to be jealous of me!

  But I didn’t want anyone to know the real author, so I made Mapeth join the army. He was weedy and skinny and very short-sighted, and I was sure he’d be killed almost at once – I sent him to the place my soldiers called the Valley of No Return, the point being that nobody did. Mapeth was horribly wounded but he did not die. One of the warrior maidens from the temple was in love with him; she followed him into the dreadful valley, plucked him out of the jaws of death and nursed him back to health. Edie thinks this is highly romantic. Human girls are so sentimental.

  The fire still puzzles me; perhaps you can find out what it means. I really can’t remember anything else. But I MUST remember or I can’t move on to the green fields all covered with white blossoms that I have glimpsed in my dreams.

  These green fields are not in my past – might they be my final refuge?

  You’ll be glad to hear I’m pretty well, despite the shockingly damp weather.

  Yours graciously

  HE WHO MUST BE WORSHIPPED AND OBEYED

  The Last Psammead

  Sixteen

  BARTIMEUS

  ON CHRISTMAS EVE MOTHER SAID, ‘Last year I was missing only one of my children. This year it’s three of them – Cyril and Robert in France and Anthea at her wretched hospital.’ There were tears in her eyes. ‘I feel as if I’m giving them up one after the other, like the mother of the Maccabees in the poem.’

  ‘It can’t go on much longer,’ Father said.

  ‘But that’s exactly what he said last year,’ the Lamb said later, when he and Edie had gone up to the attic to escape the unChristmassy gloom; nobody was in the mood for festivity. Jane, though her term had ended, was shut in her bedroom revising for an exam coming up in January. The Winterbottoms were being visited by grandparents, which meant that Winterbum wasn’t available for cycling with the Lamb. ‘I don’t think the war’s EVER going to stop. I think it’ll go on until I’m old enough to be called up. In which case, what’s the point of me learning Latin?’

  ‘It’s going to be horrid without Panther and the boys,’ Edie said sadly. ‘I’m not even looking forward to hanging up my stocking this year.’

  ‘Another very strange custom,’ the Psammead said. ‘I’ve been on this earth for thousands of years and I’ll never understand you humans – putting gifts inside old socks!’

  He had come out of his sand bath to sit in Edie’s lap while she brushed his fur.

  ‘Father says his socks aren’t big enough,’ she told him. ‘He ties strings around the legs of his long underpants and hangs those up instead. And Mother says don’t be vulgar, but she laughs as much as anyone. I don’t know if he’ll do it this year.’ She stroked the Psammead’s head. ‘If you weren’t here, I don’t know what we’d do.’

  ‘You’re very kind, Edie, but I must remind you that I’m not actually supposed to be here. I thought I’d be gone in a matter of days! I do WISH the universe would hurry up with my next lesson in repentance.’

  A silence hung in the air for a few seconds. The Lamb and Edie had learned to recognise the breathless feeling they got when they were about to be whisked away by one of the Psammead’s mad wishes.

  ‘This is more like it!’ the Lamb said, brightening. ‘You haven’t scored a single wish for weeks!’

  ‘Where are we going? I’m not ready – ow!’ Edie flung her arms around the Psammead.

  He had wished for another lesson from the universe, and the universe chose to drop them in a narrow room, lit by a single gaslight. There were two beds with iron frames, one table, two hard chairs, and a tiny fireplace. The window was high up in the wall and it had bars on the outside.

  ‘We seem to be in some kind of penal institution,’ the Psammead said. ‘Possibly a prison.’

  ‘No, it’s not a prison.’ The Lamb’s eyes had got used to the sudden light and he’d taken a proper look. ‘Prison cells don’t have cushions, or photographs in silver frames – crikey!’ He pointed at a photograph beside one of the beds. ‘Edie, it’s us! It’s the picture Jane took of you and me with the Psammead – only he didn’t come out.’

  On the surface it was an ordinary photograph of the Lamb and Edie on a sofa, but if you looked hard, the cushion between them was slightly dented; this was the only sign that the Psammead had been posing with them.

  ‘I simply refuse to have anything to do with those ghastly photo things,’ the Psammead sniffed. ‘It’s forbidden to make such lifelike images of a god.’

  ‘And the other picture’s Mother,’ Edie said. ‘We must be in Anthea’s hospital!’

  At that moment the door opened and two young nurses burst into the room in fits of excited giggles. They were both carrying large cardboard boxes. It took Edie a few seconds to realise that one of them was Anthea; she was so unfamiliar in her blue dress and starched white cap and apron.

  ‘This is more like it – a sight of good old Panther!’ The Lamb was beaming. ‘And that’s the box we sent off to her yesterday!’

  ‘I just wish she knew we were here,’ Edie said. ‘Psammead, can’t I hug her?’

  ‘No,’ the Psammead said. ‘And if you start crying again I won’t let you carry me. Now, let’s watch.’

  The other girl was short and plump, with dark hair and a pretty, rosy, dimpled face.

  ‘That’s Olive, the dentist’s daughter,’ Edie said, cheering up. ‘Doesn’t she look nice?’

  Both the boxes were full of Christmas presents. The two girls took out the packages one by one and piled them on their hard white beds.

  ‘What a lovely, glorious heap of loot!’ Olive sighed.

  ‘My presents smell of home – it does feel awful not being at home on Christmas Eve,’ Anthea said. She was smiling but her voice wobbled.

  ‘Chin up, old thing,’ Olive said. ‘Look here, I know we agreed not to open anything until we come off night shift, but let’s each have one present now.’

  ‘Should we? It’s not Christmas yet.’

  ‘I don’t care. I need something to get me into the right spirit.’

  ‘Just one, then.’

  ‘If she’s got any sense she’ll open my stuffed dates,’ the Lamb said. ‘I know she likes them.’

  Olive picked up one of her holly-sprigged parcels and shook it. ‘Oh, joy – the rattle of mint humbugs!’ She tore the paper off a tin with a picture on the lid of Ripon Cathedral, stuffed one of the striped mints into her mouth, and handed one to Anthea. ‘Good old Auntie Flo!’

  They giggled again at each other’s bulging cheeks.

  ‘I’ll have to finish this quickly,’ Anthea said. ‘I can’t face the Ponting if I’m reeking of humbugs – she’s such a joyless old harridan.’

  ‘That’s the ward sister she doesn’t like,’ Edie told the Psammead.

  ‘Thank you, Edie, I remember her from Anthea’s letters.’

  ‘Now it’s your turn – quick, we’ve not got long,’ Olive said.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know!’ Anthea picked up a light, flat parcel. ‘This one – it’s from my little sister Edie.’

  Edie beamed with pride. ‘I do hope she likes it. It took me nearly half a term of needlework classes.’ She had made Anthea a lavender sachet to put in her handkerchief drawer.

  Anthea carefully took off the paper. ‘How lovely!’

  ‘The little darling,’ Olive said. ‘She’s embroidered something in cross stitch – is that a monkey?’

  Anthea had been on the verge of crying again, but now she was laughing; the ‘monkey’ was Edie’s attempt to embroide
r a picture of the Psammead.

  ‘Monkey, indeed!’ the Psammead huffed crossly.

  ‘She’s never seen a sand fairy,’ the Lamb pointed out.

  ‘I suppose not – it’s a shame she can’t appreciate the beauty of Edie’s priceless tapestry.’

  ‘I don’t care what it is – as far as I’m concerned this is a priceless tapestry!’ Anthea said.

  ‘She heard!’ gasped Edie.

  ‘Perhaps,’ the Psammead said, ‘in some dark corner of her mind. I’m delighted to see her, though I don’t understand what I’m supposed to be looking at. Why haven’t we gone home yet?’

  Olive glanced at the nurse’s watch she wore on the front of her stiff white apron. ‘We’d better get going, you know we’re not meant to be here.’ She turned off the gas and they hurried out of the room.

  The Lamb and Edie walked through the wall after them.

  ‘I like doing this,’ the Lamb said. ‘It feels like cold water running down the middle of my bones.’

  ‘Yes – that’s exactly why I DON’T like it.’ Edie held the Psammead tighter.

  They followed Anthea and Olive down a dark stone staircase and along a corridor to a room full of numbered pegs. The two young nurses grabbed their blue cloaks and flung them on. They ran through a pair of doors and out into the freezing night air.

  ‘Oh!’ moaned the Psammead. ‘Why am I still here? Oh, universe – or whatever you are – can’t we at least wait in the warm till they come back?’

  ‘Don’t be so wet,’ the Lamb said scornfully. ‘This is all part of your repentance. You’re just like Scrooge in the story – you have to pay attention to what the spirits are telling you.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Never mind – we’re losing them.’

  Anthea and Olive were trotting briskly down the path between the nurses’ home and the main hospital building. They went into the hospital through a door at the side, and slowed down in the empty corridor.

  Olive checked her watch. ‘Good-oh – we made it with five minutes to spare.’

  They hung up their cloaks and, because the corridor was empty, Olive did a few jaunty dance steps.