The Machine Gunners

by Robert Westall

  "Ronnie Boyce lives there..." said Chas. He had given Ronnie Boyce a bloody nose two days ago.

  "Did live there," said his father. "It was over quick. They can never have known what hit them..." Fat Ronnie Boyce, with his shiny boots and mum with asthma... where was he, now? Up in Heaven? With a harp and a halo to go with his shiny boots? He hoped God wasn't too rough on him. He was a terrible thief, but probably being blown to bits was enough punishment for being a thief...

  "Chas, lad," said his father, very quiet, "I'm going to see if Nana and Granda are all right. Most of the stuff that was dropped fell by the river last night. I want you to come with me..."

  Chas felt his stomach go heavy, as if he'd swallowed a cannon ball. Not Nana and Granda too! He saw in his mind their neat house in Henry Street, with the white wheel for a gate, and the big white seashells in the garden, and the freshly painted white flagstaff where his granda ran up the Union Jack every morning and saluted it.

  "Don't take the bairn, Jack," said his mother, fingering her apron.

  "He's going," said his father grimly. "He's fourteen now, and there might be errands to run, and clearing up to do."

  "He'd better wear his best suit, then..."

  "Don't be daft, woman. It's not a funeral yet. He might get it ruined for nowt. Come on, son."

  They walked side by side down the road. Chas felt proud that his father needed him. It was a solemn occasion, a family occasion, an adult occasion. But his hands wouldn't stop shaking. He wondered how it would be. There might be Nana putting on the kettle, and Granda getting his morning coughing over. Everyone would tell bomb stories.

  Or there might only be a hole in the ground, like Ronnie Boyce's house. The whole world seemed broken in half. Nearly, the same old streets, women gossipping at doors, kids peering over walls. But above the familiar rooftops billowed more smoke than he had ever seen: oily black smoke rolling over itself, trailing east to cover the rising run, so that they walked from sunshine to shadow every minute. It looked like a photo Chas had seen of Dunkirk. In a way he liked the smoke clouds; they were exciting. But Nana's house making that smoke?

  They turned into Church Lane. Blocked. Big red notices saying Access Prohibited and Danger. Policemen controlling traffic. Men pulling crowbars off the backs of lorries. A wriggling mass of white hosepipes, connected to hydrants that peed streams of water into the gutters like naughty boys.

  At the far end of the street the red brick spire of Holy Savior's was burning. Flames licked from every window from top to bottom, joining into a smoke column that blew away easy. Even the Germans across the North Sea would be smelling the burning this morning. And laughing.

  His father was asking a policeman which streets to the lower town were open. The policeman was shaking his head. Chas watched the church. God lived there. If even God wasn't safe from Hitler, who was? Why didn't God get Hitler for what he was doing? Why didn't he send a thunderbolt on Berchtesgarten? Wasn't Hitler afraid to do such things to God? Chas had once spat on a church pew for a laugh, and walked in fear and trembling for a week afterward. Where was God?

  As he watched, the spire seemed to shimmer in the heat. It was shimmering more and more. It was twisting, like an outlaw shot in a Western—all that great brick height. It made Chas feel dizzy. Even a hundred yards away, he wanted to run. Great chunks of brickwork fell inward into the church spire, like a jigsaw breaking up. The gilded weathercock on top tilted. Firemen were running in all directions. And then slowly, ever so slowly,

  the spire pounced downward at the firemen, like a leaping red lion. It landed in the street and leaped forward again, with a mane of red brick-dust, grasping for those running legs.

  One man fell as it touched him. Two of his comrades picked him up and ran dragging him, without stopping, while the red lion still pursued.

  And then it stopped, and Chas became aware of the rumbling and roaring and shouting. A group gathered round the fallen fireman, lifting him so his blackened face stared at the heavens. They forced some stuff from a little brown bottle down his throat. He began to walk about, doubled up, coughing.

  "He's all right," said Mr. McGill. "By God, he was lucky. He'll never be luckier. C'mon." They walked to the next street.

  "I watched Holy Savior's being built, as a kid," said Mr. McGill.

  "Will they build it again?"

  "God knows." But did God know?

  The next street was empty, normal. Except for one policeman, and a notice saying Unexploded Bomb. There was a little hole halfway down the street, surrounded by the kind of red and white barriers workmen use when they lay drainpipes. A cat was sniffing at the little hole. Chas would have been worried about the cat, if he hadn't already been worried about Nana.

  "It'll have to take its chance, that cat," said Mr. McGill.

  "I expect Saville Street will be open," said Chas. It was the most important street in the town with no less than three toyshops.

  But Saville Street no longer existed. It was just piles of bricks: the shops were piles of brick and the roadway was piles of brick. There was a green lorry at the near end, marked Heavy Rescue. A grimy man in a white tin hat marked R was sitting on the tailboard with a mug of tea. The mug was white and shiny, but it had black fingermarks all over it.

  "How do, Geordie," said his father, in a familiar sort of way. Heavens, the man was Uncle George, Cousin Gordon's father. Uncle George grimaced, showing perfect false teeth.

  "By God," he said, "I thought I'd seen it all in the trenches in the Last Lot, but I've seen nowt like this morning. There's bits of bairns under that. We'll be three days before we get the last of them out."

  "How many dead?"

  "Twenty-seven so far, and three out alive. We had to use our bare hands, brick by brick, we were that frightened the whole lot would come down on top of us." He pulled a sandwich out of a screw of greaseproof paper with those same bare hands and began to eat it. How could he be so heartless?

  "Your family all right, George?"

  "Aye, Rosie's gone to her mother's and young Gordon to his girlfriend's at Monkseaton."

  "Heard anything about Henry Street?"

  "They had it bad. Taking the young 'un down, are you?" He gave Chas a look. "Tek care!"

  He finished off his sandwich and licked his fingers. "Rudyerd Street's just about open now."

  Rudyerd Street was no worse than what Chas was used to. Slates off, ceiling down, windows gone. Every second house carried that silly notice Business as usual. The photographer from the Garmouth Evening Gazette was busy.

  The nearer they approached the corner of Henry Street, the more Chas's heart sank. Mr. McGill walked faster and faster, like a man going to have a fight. His steel heelcaps rang louder and louder. Chas found it harder and harder to breathe.

  They turned the corner. The wheel gate, the seashells, the flagpole were untouched. The Union Jack still flew. But the roof was a wooden, slateless skeleton, and sky showed through the bedroom windows.

  "We'll knock at the front door," said his dad. "Stand beside me, and if I say shut your eyes, you bloody shut them quick. Understand?" Chas gulped and nodded. Mr. McGill knocked.

  Nana opened the door in her flowered pinafore.

  "I knew you'd come. And the bairn! D'you see what Hilter and his bloody Jarmans have done!" Her blue eyes were snapping with fury, her brawny arms folded on her large bosom. She always called Hitler "Hilter" and spoke about him as if he was a personal enemy, a bloody-minded neighbour who did sneaky things like tipping refuse over your garden fence. "If I could get hold of that bloody man I'd strangle him. He should've been strangled at birth. Snotty-nosed gyet. He's really done for your granda, y'know. He was going to brew some tea when it happened. It blew him all the way down the yard and split the back of his topcoat from top to bottom. The buggers couldn't kill him at Caparetto in 1918, but they've nigh done for him this time. It's a bloody shame he's past it; twenty years ago he'd have seen the buggers off. Riffraff. What's Hilter more than a house-
painter, when all's said and done?"

  All the time she was talking, Chas had the absurd fancy that Hilter and the Jarmans were sitting down to breakfast about two streets away, and that one attack by Nana and her famous rolling pin would settle the war once and for all.

  "Come in, if you can get," said Nana.

  Granda was sitting in his armchair, warming his hands on a mug of tea. He was wearing furry brown slippers, striped pyjamas, the split overcoat and a black beret with two highly polished brass badges on it. One was his old regimental badge, a lamb carrying a flag. The other was a German army badge, with the worn figure of a charging infantryman, and lettering no one could read. Granda pointed to that badge now.

  "I knew I'd cop it last night. I dreamed he came back for his badge."

  He was an Austrian soldier whom Granda had killed in a bayonet fight at Caparetto. Granda had taken the badge as a trophy; and ever since had dreams that the dead man came back and mutely asked for his possession. Granda had lived in terror of that man for twenty-five years, yet he could never be persuaded to throw the badge away.

  There was a fire in the hearth, and the huge black kettle on it as usual. It began to boil now, and the lid began to rattle. Granda's teeth began to chatter and Nana took the kettle off quickly.

  "That lid always reminds him of the machine guns."

  But it was too late. Granda was lost in his old nightmare. His hands did strange things, pulled invisible levers, settled together in front of his chest as if he grasped the handles of some weapon. The index finger of his right hand tightened slowly on an invisible trigger, as his left eye closed, and his right squinted tight.

  "Range? Three-seven-five. Gun cocked. Two hundred rounds expended. Three boxes of ammo in reserve. Barrel cold, topped up with water. Spare barrel in reserve, half worn-out. Sir."

  The family watched. Suddenly he braced himself, shuffling his feet as if groping for a hold. His body tensed, like a dog when it sees a rabbit, and then he began to shake all over, as if the invisible gun was leaping almost beyond control.

  "He's badly," said Nana. "He hasn't done that for ten years. He thinks they're coming for him."

  "Bleeding Christ!" screamed Granda. "Sodding thing's jammed. Recock, discharge, recock." His hands moved frantically.

  "I'll mix one of his powders," said Nana. "Come and give me a hand, Chas."

  They were kept busy at Nana's for the rest of the day. There was no hope for the house; the walls were cracked; even if the roof could have been put back on, the walls would have collapsed under the weight.

  The most they could do was rescue all the bits and pieces—the glass paperweight with the view of Boulogne in 1898; the great black Bible with the tarnished clasp; the bamboo table—and pack them up for storage. Granda dozed in his chair, the Battle of Caparetto fought and lost, his Kitchener moustache trailing over his open mouth. It was terribly black inside Granda's mouth. Chas was fascinated by it, kept staring at it, trying to see something in the blackness.

  Had Granda fought his last battle? Would he die there and then among his bits and pieces? Sometimes his breathing went funny, but it always recovered. Sometimes he moved in his sleep. Chas was glad to go down to the corner shop for some more cardboard boxes. The corner shop was untouched; just fuller than usual.

  Only once did he allow himself to slip away and look at Granda's special treasure. In the coal shed—open to the sky now—on a nail in the wall behind the heaped coal, hung a helmet. It was thick with rust, and the twisted leather chin strap was as hard as iron. But on top was a little bobble of candlegrease. In the dugout at Caparetto, Granda had used the helmet as a candlestick. That was the original candlegrease—he had never removed it.

  At three o'clock, men came with a van for the furniture. It was going, Dad said, to the Repository. Chas thought the word had a sinister sound, like Mortuary or Infirmary, but he didn't say so.

  At ten past three, a taxi for Nana and Granda arrived at the end of the road. Nana and Granda were coming to live at the Square. Chas had lost his bedroom. He would sleep on the settee in the Front Room, with the mysteries of chiming clock, wedding photographs and mothballs. He didn't mind. He was much more interested in that helmet. If no one remembered it...

  Nana took a last look round her home.

  "Pity about the coal in the coalhouse," she said. "Some trash will steal it. Ghouls."

  "You can't put coal into a Repository, hinny," said Mr. McGill crossly. He was tired, and had night shift to look forward to. "C'mon, that taxi's costing money. Come on, Chas."

  "Can I walk home? I want to see what's happened at the church." His dad glanced at his watch. Two full hours to bomber time. He nodded.

  "See you don't go near that unexploded bomb. And be home by five."

  "Yes, Dad." The taxi drew away, leaving the house to looters and to Chas. The Union Jack still flew. He took it down, took it to the coalhouse and wrapped his new treasure in it. Then he bounced along to Bunty's Yard skipping and mouthing Granda's remembered words.

  Range three-seven-five. Cocked. Two hundred rounds expended... The Germans were about to face a new McGill, with a new machine gun.

  "You're mad," said Cem.

  "No I'm not. We got Clogger now," said Chas.

  "Even with Clogger you're mad. There's usually ten of them."

  "Och, tripe!" said Clogger. He never said much of anything except "Aye" or "No" or "Och, tripe," even to masters. He was very silent and very hard. He was the junior team scrum-half and had once played a whole match after losing two front teeth: spitting blood thoughtfully before putting the ball in the scrum, and scoring two tries.

  He was down from Scotland to stay with his auntie for the Duration, because his mum was dead and his father in the Navy. If he'd wanted to throw his weight about he could have been the boss, a terror. But he was content to trail around after Chas because he liked his stupid jokes (and had actually been seen to smile at them twice). He had ginger hair and freckles, and always spat on his hands before he started any job, even a Math exercise.

  He knew about the gun, but he was safe. He never told anybody anything, even the time from his watch.

  "Look," said Chas, "Sicky Nicky has something we need. We've got to make it worth his while."

  "Why do we have to build our camp in his garden?"

  "Because it's in the right place. And because nobody ever goes there any more. Where else do you know that's private?"

  Cem shrugged. He was beaten there.

  "Right! So what do we offer Nicky? What does he need?"

  "All right, so we walk home with him. And Boddser will kick your head in."

  "We'll see." They were packing their schoolbags to go home. Across the classroom, alone as always, Nicky was packing his neat books, expensive drawing instruments into an expensive bag, nearly new. But all scuffed, mauled.

  Nicky's time of ordeal had come. He looked pale, was already starting to pant. Outside, the wolf pack was gathering: waiting to pull his bag from his hand, strew his books over the pavement, kick him when he bent down to pick them up, pour gravel down his shirt, pull his shoes off and throw them over walls. Not till Nicky was reduced to screaming blind hysterics would he be allowed to creep home weeping.

  Every night it happened, regular as clockwork. The wolf pack never tired of it. Mornings, they didn't bother. They were sleepy or had homework worries, or were late. But the end of the day was always rounded off by an hour of torture.

  Chas looked at Nicky. The face was good-looking, with a pale girl's good looks. The hair was curly and kept long. He had an operation scar on the side of his neck. But did that explain the constant bullying? Every kid had some peculiarity—was fat or thin or had big ears. Chas got twitted because he had thick lips and a funny fold of skin on the back of his neck. So why was Nicky singled out?

  Chas wondered how he himself felt about Nicky. He'd never touched him, but constantly teased him. Why? Chas shrugged. That wasn't the job in hand. The job was to see that, f
or once, Nicky got home unscathed. But not too painlessly. That would look suspicious.

  Nicky sighed, closed his desk and walked to the classroom door. Chas, Cem and Clogger closed in round him.

  "Good evening, Knickers, my dear chap," started Chas. "How seems the world to you today?" Nicky looked frightened and hopeful at the same time. Anything was better than the wolf pack. They walked downstairs and into the yard, making remarks about Nicky's puny muscles; asking him how many times a day he went to the toilet, and whether he wiped his bottom with his left hand or his right. Nicky blushed, but it wasn't as bad as being hit with school bags.

  The wolf gang was waiting just beyond the school gate; nine of them, including pack leader Boddser Brown. Chas kept up his flow of rudeness, but watched Boddser out of the corner of his eye. Boddser was looking worried; he didn't like anything unusual.

  "Gerraway, McGill; he's ours," said Boddser.

  "I beg your pardon, O Mighty One, O Star of the East, O Moon of my Delight. Your beauty is dazzling, especially your haircut, Four-eyes!" There was a titter even among the wolf pack.

  Boddser reddened. He looked uneasily at Clogger. He didn't like the new confidence in Chas's voice.

  "Gerraway, McGill. I'm warning you! I've got no quarrel with you, for now."

  "Oh thank you, thank you, worshipful lord," said Chas, making low salaams. "May Allah bless your luscious toenails." The smaller group moved past the larger one. So far, so good. They went on down Hawkey's Lane, not hurrying. Hurrying would be fatal. The wolf gang looked at Boddser. Already their victim was past any previous torture-place, getting nearer the main road where adults might interfere.

  "Pull him out," said Boddser to two of his minions.

  The minions dived for Nicky, who was between Chas and Cem.

  Clogger moved like greased lightning. His steel toecap caught the first minion on the knee, leaving him writhing in the gutter. His fist caught the second full on the nose, drawing a satisfying stream of blood. The wolf gang drew back, and looked pointedly at Boddser. It was up to him, now, and the main road, full of people who might telephone the school, was only forty yards away.