by C. Day Lewis
Contents
1. The Ambush in Abbey Lane
2. Hell to Pay
3. How We Signed the Peace of Otterbury
4. Operation Glazier
5. Black Sunday
6. The Detectives Get to Work
7. The Clue of the Bitten Half-crown
8. Shadows and Shocks
9. The Secrets of Skinner’s Yard
10. Grand Assault
11. General Salute
Read On
C. DAY-LEWIS was born in Ireland in 1904, and grew up in England. He was educated at Sherborne School and Wadham College, Oxford. On leaving Oxford in 1927 he taught at various schools in England and Scotland until 1935 when he became a full-time writer and poet. From 1951–6 he was Professor of Poetry at Oxford and two years later he became Vice-President of the Royal Society of Literature. He was also Poet Laureate from 1968, until he died in 1972. Throughout his career C. Day-Lewis published numerous volumes of poetry as well as many adult detective stories written under the pseudonym of Nicholas Blake. He wrote two novels for children – Dick Willoughby (1933) and The Otterbury Incident, first published in 1948.
The battle in Abbey Lane
To
Jonathan Fenby
and
Richard Osborne
1. The Ambush in Abbey Lane
Begin at the beginning, go to the end, and there stop – that’s what Rickie, our English master, told me when it was settled I should write the story. It sounds simple enough. But what was the beginning? Haven’t you ever wondered about where things start? I mean, take my story. Suppose I say it all began when Nick broke the classroom window with his football. Well, OK, but he wouldn’t have kicked the ball through the window if we hadn’t just got super-heated by winning the battle against Toppy’s company. And that wouldn’t have happened if Toppy and Ted hadn’t invented their war game, a month before. And I suppose they’d not have invented their war game, with tanks and tommy guns and ambushes, if there hadn’t been a real war and a stray bomb hadn’t fallen in the middle of Otterbury and made just the right sort of place – a mass of rubble, pipes, rafters, old junk, etc. – for playing this particular game. The place is called ‘The Incident’, by the way. But then you could go back further still and say there wouldn’t have been a real war if Hitler hadn’t come to power. And so on and so on, back into the mists of time. So where does any story begin?
I asked Rickie about this, and he said, ‘Jump right into the deep end of the story, don’t hang about on the edge’ – which incidentally was contradicting what he’d said first. ‘Start with the morning you kids had the battle and Nick broke the window,’ he said. When Mr Richards calls us ‘kids’, nobody objects: he’s a decent chap, as schoolmasters go; and it’s quite true we’re young – even Ted and Toppy aren’t fourteen yet. But when Johnny Sharp and the Wart strolled past our ambush on the Incident that morning, and Johnny Sharp said in his sneering way, ‘You kids up to your games again? Flipping heroes, ain’t we all?’ our blood fairly boiled, as you can imagine. We may be kids. But it was us kids who raised more than £5 for the broken window, and us kids who tracked down a gang of crooks and incidentally were thanked in public by Inspector Brook. So there’s the start of my novel. You’ve got to have a title before you can start, I mean, and personally I think THE OTTERBURY INCIDENT is a smashing title.
‘Zero hour in exactly five minutes, thirty-four, three, two, one, thirty seconds. Synchronize your watches,’ ordered Ted, consulting his chronometer. It was one of those super Swiss jobs, with a stopwatch hand and two smaller dials, as well as the ordinary hands and numerals. Ted’s elder brother, who was in the Airborne, had brought it back from Germany as a present for his last birthday.
At zero hour Toppy’s company, with its tank, would start down Abbey Lane. Our job was to intercept them, scupper the tank and prevent it reaching the school gates, a few hundred yards to our right. In order to reach the school, it had to pass the Incident. Ted’s plan, which he’d just explained, was pretty crafty, I must say. There was to be a fake ambush and a real one, on opposite flanks of the enemy’s route. ‘Toppy’s bound to expect an ambush at the Incident,’ Ted had said. ‘All right. We’ll give him one. Eight of us, under my command, will be hidden among the rubble heaps. When I give the word, this party will attack the tank with automatic-weapon fire. Their objective will be to divert the attention of the tank-crew and the escorting troops from the main attack. George will take three men, and –’
Ted Marshall puts us in the picture
‘How can it be the main attack if he only takes three men?’ asked Nick. Nick’s always putting his foot in it. He’s not been awfully bright since the bomb fell. It killed his parents, and he was dug out of the ruins himself. So can you wonder? Still, we liked him all right. After all, it took guts to come and play on the very spot where it had happened.
‘It’s the main attack,’ Ted explained patiently, ‘because it’s the attack that’s going to wipe out the tank. Our attack from the other flank will be just a diversion in force, see?’
‘Diversion in force, Persian horse, nasturtium sauce,’ Charlie began to chant.
‘Shut up, Private Muswell!’ Ted isn’t a big chap. I mean he’s not a tough like Toppy. But when he says ‘shut up’, you shut up j. quick. Most of us do, anyway. Ted turned to me.
‘George,’ he said (I’m his second-in-command), ‘George, you’ll take three men and the sticky bombs, and hide in Skinner’s yard.’
Well, my blood froze. Skinner’s yard is directly opposite the Incident, on the other side of the road down which the enemy tank would pass. It has high double doors, and there’s a sort of warehouse or workshop inside. Skinner is in the building trade – or was. It was a wizard place for an ambush, of course. We’d be absolutely concealed behind the doors, and be able to keep watch through a crack in them. The trouble was Skinner himself. He’s a whacking great bad-tempered thug of a man, with an unshaven chin and little blue eyes. Once two boys at our school tried to get into his workshop place, for a bet. He heard them and chased them out with a rope. He didn’t just chase them out of the yard, he chased them right up the lane, slashing at them. That’s the sort of man Skinner is.
‘But look here, Ted,’ I began to say.
‘You needn’t worry: he’s out for the day. I – my Intelligence Service saw him going off in a lorry after breakfast, and heard him tell a chap he wouldn’t be back till this evening. And I’ve discovered the double doors aren’t locked. You can climb over and unbolt them from inside.’
Nobody can say Ted isn’t thorough …
Well, he gave us some more instructions, and that was when he told us to synchronize our watches. Which most of us did by looking up over the roofs at the Abbey clock, because we haven’t got watches. It was just at this moment that Johnny Sharp and the Wart came lounging along and made the opprobrious remark about kids.
I’d better try to describe this pair of blisters. Personally, speaking for myself, I always skip the bits in novels where they describe people: you know – ‘He had a strong, sensitive face and finely-chiselled nostrils’, or ‘her eyes were like pools of dewy radiance, her lips were redder than pomegranates’ – that sort of thing doesn’t get one anywhere; I mean it doesn’t help you to see the person, does it? But descriptions of Johnny Sharp and the Wart are important, as I shall relate in due course. I’ll start at the top and work downwards.
Johnny Sharp wore a grey homburg hat, rather on the back of his head and cocked sideways, with the brim turned down in front. He had a foxy sort of face – narrow eyes, long thin nose, long thin lips; he grinned a lot, showing his bad teeth and a gold-stopped one on the left of his upper jaw. He had a loud check suit with pad
ded shoulders, and a perfectly ghastly tie with large patterns on it like drawing-room curtains. He had two flashy rings on his right hand, and a habit of flopping this hand at you while he was talking. He was a narrow, wriggling sort of chap, from top to bottom, like a dressed-up eel. Or a snake. He always behaved in a cocksure way.
The Wart wasn’t a bit cocksure. He had a round, pasty face, and eyes that slithered about when he spoke to people. He never wore a hat. His hair was Brylcreemed, bunchy at the back. He generally wore a bluish tweed sports coat, with two slits behind, and dirty, fawn-coloured flannel trousers very broad at the bottom and trailing over his down-at-heel shoes. Everything about him looked rather scruffy. His real name was Joseph Seeds, but everyone called him the Wart because he had a huge wart on his right cheek with whiskers growing out of it. And because he was a wart.
He and Johnny Sharp were always about together. The Wart had lived in Otterbury all his life; but Johnny Sharp only turned up there towards the end of the war. They’d evaded war service because of weak hearts or something. Neither of them ever seemed to do any work: at any rate, they were always mooching about together and cropping up where they weren’t wanted. As e.g. this morning at the Incident.
‘You kids up to your games again? Flipping heroes, ain’t we all?’ said Johnny Sharp.
Ted flushed like anything. Charlie Muswell said, ‘Better than being a couple of spivs,’ and dodged behind a rubble heap. But they didn’t try to catch him. The Wart looked a bit furious, certainly, but Johnny Sharp only grinned, showing the gums above his teeth, and cocked his hat still more to one side, and slouched off. You’d think he was actually proud of being a spiv. The Wart trailed off behind him, and they went and propped up the wall of a condemned house a hundred yards down the street.
It was awkward, their being so near, from the point of view of getting into Skinner’s yard. However, Ted sent a chap to divert their attention, and while he was talking to them, I and my party hoisted each other over the double doors. I had Charlie, Nick, and young Wakeley with me. And of course the sticky bombs, in a strong brown-paper bag. Peter Butts (he’s Toppy’s second-in-command) used to make these with his chemical set. They don’t actually blow up or catch fire, which might be a bit dangerous: but they’re terrifically adhesive. They ought to be called limpet bombs, really. The rule was that, if you stuck two on the enemy tank, it was put out of action. You weren’t allowed to throw them – that would have been too easy; you had to slap them on to the tank by hand. This used to cause arguments about whether a bomb had been placed on the tank properly, or whether it had in fact been thrown from a very short distance, say a foot away. What we needed was an umpire. In consequence of these arguments, and getting generally worked up by the battle, tempers were frayed and relations between Toppy’s company and ours had become rather strained at the time I’m writing about.
There were still three minutes to go. We’d unbolted the doors, and made sure there was no one else in the yard. The door of Skinner’s workshop was padlocked, so that was all right. I heard Ted say, ‘Stand to! Get to your positions! Keep your heads down, men, and put out those pipes and cigarettes!’ A few moments later, I peered out between the doors. For an instant I thought Ted’s party had deserted altogether. Then I began to pick them out, scattered over the bomb-site, one or two topknots showing above the rubble heaps; a wooden tommy gun sticking out round the corner of a blitzed doorway; one chap hidden behind a clump of willowherb growing in the ruins; another doubled up inside one of those concrete, roller-shaped things the Council had deposited there. They were wizardly camouflaged, believe me. I noticed that Ted had taken a couple of old derelict dustbins, which had been lying about amongst the ruins, and put them across the lane just to our left, so that the tank wouldn’t be able to pass.
My party started to eat their iron rations (it was the dinner interval at school, I should have said).
‘What’d I give for a square meal!’ said Charlie, biting into his cheese sandwich.
‘What’d you have,’ asked young Wakeley, ‘suppose we weren’t on rations – I mean, suppose we weren’t an anti-tank detachment operating in hostile territory?’
‘I’d start with a tin of sardines, spread on thick-buttered bread. I’d go on with a plate of éclairs. Then I’d have a shepherd’s pie – a whole one to myself – with roast potatoes as well, and beans. After that, a treacle tart, and then a double ice cream with chocolate sauce. And a box of Milk Tray chocolates to fill up the chinks. What about you, Nick?’
‘Oh, I dunno,’ said Nick, who was sitting on his football. ‘Same as you, I expect.’ He looked a bit miserable. The uncle and aunt he’d gone to live with after his parents were killed didn’t treat him very kindly. Some people said they half starved him; but you know the way people gossip in a small country town like Otterbury.
‘You take two of the sticky bombs, Nick,’ I said.
‘What? – Oh, thanks awfully; but I’d rather have my football. I’ve tied a length of string to it, and I can use it to bop them on the head.’
So I divided the bombs between the other two. There was only half a minute to go. My heart was pounding like mad. I wasn’t really frightened, at least not much: it was the responsibility of commanding the main attack. ‘Don’t come out too soon,’ Ted had told us: ‘Wait till they’re heavily engaged with my party. Otherwise the whole thing’ll go off at half-cock.’
Just then I heard the rumble of the enemy tank coming down Abbey Lane to our right. To be absolutely accurate, it wasn’t a rumble, but a clattering, squeaking noise, made chiefly by the old tyreless bicycle wheels on which the tank ran. It was a wizard job, that tank. We’d built it in the school workshop. The superstructure was made of wood, and we’d dazzle-painted the sides: there was a bit of camouflage netting, which Ted had got from his brother in the Airborne, over the top of it, and a broom handle sticking out through a hole in the front for a gun. It held three people easily: the driver, who pedalled it; the gunner; and the tank captain. With its high, box-like shape, it really was more like an armoured car, but we called it a tank.
I flicked the safety catch of my tommy gun and peered out into the lane, expecting to see the tank come nosing round the corner. What was my consternation to see a couple of enemy cyclists instead! Toppy had sent them in advance to clear any obstacles there might be in the lane. Crikey, I thought, they’ll shift the dustbins and the tank will have a clear run through! Heads down, the cyclists went charging past, straight for the dustbins. They were going to ram them. A tornado of fire broke out from the ambush at the Incident, but the cyclists went on through it, seeming to bear charmed lives. Then, just when I thought all was lost, the lids of the dustbins flew off, two heads popped up from them like jack-in-the-boxes, and two walking-sticks were pointed straight at the charging cyclists. Ted had manned the dustbins! The cyclists, frightened of getting a stick between their spokes or in the belly, swerved aside. One of them – his brakes must have been bad – went tearing on past the bins and didn’t pull up till he was fifty yards down the lane. The other swerved to his right, skidded, bumped away over the Incident, and fell off into a heap of rubble, where he was pounced on by one of our chaps. The first wave of the enemy had definitely had it.
But Toppy wasn’t beaten yet. The tank now appeared, with a file of three men walking bent down on its left side, where they were sheltered from the fire of Ted’s ambush – and, of course, between my party and the tank itself. The tank stopped, about ten yards down the road. Its gunner was blazing away at the ambush: the protecting file, taking cover behind it, began to blaze away too. Then I noticed Toppy himself, with three men, creeping into the bomb-site on Ted’s left flank. Ted’s party were so taken up with the tank that they didn’t notice this threat. Toppy and his men were wriggling along behind the rubble heaps, trying to get in Ted’s rear. The situation was definitely deteriorating. If Toppy succeeded, he would catch Ted’s party in a pincer movement between his tank men in front and his own infantry attac
k from the rear. I didn’t dare yell out to Ted about the enemy creeping up behind him, for that would have given my position away, and the element of surprise would have been lost.
I now had to make a difficult decision. Should I go for the tank at once, before Toppy’s party was ready to attack? Or should I hold back for another minute, in the hope that the three enemy men protecting the tank, who were at present lying on the ground between it and my ambush, would be drawn out of position? We could tackle the three men in the tank; but we couldn’t tackle all six. I decided to hold back my force a little longer – though it was a hell of a job, with Charlie breathing down my neck and young Wakeley trying to wriggle through my legs to see how the battle was going.
I’d just made my decision, when the Prune buzzed a half-brick at Ted. I should have said we’d made a strict rule against throwing stones during our battles, except at the tank, which could take it of course. It would be the Prune who broke the laws of civilized warfare. He’s a stinking specimen, take my word for it. Anyway, he was one of Toppy’s party, and I happened to be watching them just when the Prune picked up this half-brick from the rubble heap he was crawling over, and bunged it. It caught Ted, from behind, on the funny bone.
Ted is a peaceable sort of chap normally. But now and then he fairly goes berserk: like he did in the last round of the School Junior Boxing Championship, against Toppy, after being miles behind on points in the first two. He went berserk again now. He stood up, and blew his whistle. There was a sudden silence in the battle. He yelled to the two men nearest him to help him attack Toppy and his three. Then he gave the three short blasts on the whistle which were the signal for the rest of his ambush to close in on the tank. Then he turned round and went for the Prune like a runaway fire-engine.
I saw my opportunity had come at last. As our chaps charged out of the Incident, the three enemy soldiers lying behind the tank moved round to its other side, to intercept them, and the tank men started tumbling out too. I slid through Skinner’s doors and raced for the tank, my men close behind me. It was too easy. We had no opposition, except from the enemy cyclist – the one with the bad brakes who’d shot past the dustbins. He’s a small kid, and he’d been sort of spectating the battle from afar off, dancing up and down and yelling his head off in excitement, like kids do. However, when he saw my party bearing down on the tank, he leapt on his bike and pedalled at us top speed. Quite plucky, I’ll admit. But he hadn’t a hope. When he came up, we dodged; then I gave him a push from behind, just to help him on his meteoric career, and he went whizzing by, up the lane, round the corner and out of sight, still hauling like mad on his brakes.