The Machine Gunners

by Robert Westall

  But it wasn't her face that Stan remembered as he walked home for tea; it was the two boys' faces. McGill as pale as death, but oddly triumphant; Brown cowering and hopeless. It was easy to guess who'd won the fight. But there was more to it than that, something that Stan couldn't put his finger on.

  Both boys, of course, shut up like clams when he mentioned their injuries. Ah, well, thought Stan, at least I know they haven't killed each other. Then he went back to worrying about German paratroopers.

  14

  Nicky was as stubborn as a mule.

  "I never went sailing with my father before the War!"

  "Yes you did," said Cem. "You used to boast about it at school. And I saw you out with him once. It was a boat with a red sail!"

  "He hired that from a fisherman."

  "No he didn't. You told me he had his own boathouse on the river."

  "It got bombed," said Nicky stubbornly.

  "Where was it, then?" Everyone stared at Nicky in silence; he fidgeted a long time.

  "All right, it's still there. At Prior's Haven. But the key to the boathouse got lost when our house was bombed."

  "Where was it kept?" asked Clogger. "We'll find it!"

  They searched the ruined kitchen half the day. At last, Clogger straightened his back, groaned wearily and said, "It is lost, Ah reckon. We'll have tey force the lock on the boathouse door."

  "It's all right," muttered Nicky. "I've got the key here." He reached down into his shirt and pulled up a key on a string.

  "For hell's sake, what's the matter with ye?" roared Clogger. "Are ye part of this gang or no?"

  "It's my boat," said Nicky. "It's my father's boat." He began to snivel. Clogger stared at him.

  "Aye, well, in that case I'll be away home to Glasgow the morrow. Ah can't afford to hang round here all ma life. Ye can have the Fortress, Nicky, all of it. That's yours as well. And you can sort out Rudi as you think fit. Ah'll be packing ma things." Nicky looked round the others for support. They all stared at the floor. Nicky suddenly felt alone, and very frightened.

  "Sorry, Nicky," said Chas, "but we've got to give Rudi that boat, 'cos otherwise he won't mend that gun. And the Germans are coming soon, and we'll need it."

  "Who says the Germans are coming?"

  "My dad. He says if they don't come soon, they won't be able to come, and then they'll have to admit they've lost the War." There was a murmur of assent.

  "Everyone knows they're coming."

  "The soldiers dug pits on our soccer field to make their gliders crash."

  "The BBC said vicars had to ring the church bells when they came."

  "Oh, all right," said Nicky, hopelessly. "What do you want me to do?"

  "Take us and show us where the boat is," said Chas, embarrassed.

  "But I can't go out. People will recognise me!"

  "Not in a balaclava helmet they won't. You'll pass for a slum kid. You're mucky enough."

  The boathouse lock was rusty, but Clogger had brought an oil can and it yielded at last. They passed into a gloom that smelled of tar, rope and stale water. They pulled the door shut behind them, and there was only light from a little window high up.

  Half the place was filled with the licking smacking waters of the river; the other half was full of white boat, yellow masts and red sails.

  There was a packet of Capstan cigarettes on the side bench, falling apart and brown with damp. Nicky could remember his father putting it there. Halfway home in the car, his father had remembered that packet of Capstans, left behind on the bench. But he'd said, "Never mind, we'll pick them up the next time we sail." There never had been a next time.

  "My mother never came here," said Nicky, staring at the cigarettes. "She said sailing was a man's thing." The other two boys shuffled awkwardly.

  "Ah see the boat's outa the water." Clogger hefted the boat's weight.

  "Yes, that stops her rotting in winter."

  "Ah reckon we can manage her. Gies a hand, lads." Slowly they edged the boat in. Chas was clumsy, and the stone of the jetty scraped the dinghy's white paint. Nicky felt it was his own heart that was being scraped. But in it went.

  "Och, it's filling up wi' water!" said Clogger in disgust. "It's no good. It's rotted."

  "No, no," cried Nicky, "it's just that the planks have shrunk apart, from getting so dry. Leave her sunk a day and the seams will close and she'll be fine. She always does that." The next moment, he could have bitten his tongue out. He'd had a chance to save his boat, but now it was too late.

  "Can we fit the mast and ropes and things?" asked Chas, curious. "Best do it now—we mightn't have another chance before Rudi goes."

  So, with heavy-hearted skill, Nicky showed them how; while all the while, just over his shoulder, his father seemed to watch disapprovingly.

  They went back the next day, and the next, And, dashing Nicky's last hope, the seams of the dinghy did close and it became watertight. They loaded everything useful in; Audrey added a gallon can of water and some tins of food. Chas brought his old compass. Everything was as ready as it ever could be.

  15

  It was not yet midnight, and already it was the worst raid of the war. The door-curtain of the Anderson was framed a ghastly orange-pink, and even a mile from the river they could smell the burning oil.

  "They've got the Docks this time," announced Mrs. Spalding with mournful satisfaction.

  Antiaircraft guns barked on and on, like a pack of cheated hounds. There were more of them than there used to be, but they weren't making much difference. Chas watched fragments of cork dropping off the shelter wall. He counted them as they lay on the floor. Anything to keep his mind off things. His mother was knitting with great calmness; that was always a bad sign. Mrs. Spalding had her ear perilously close to the door-curtain, ready to retail the latest piece of bad news as it was shouted from shelter to shelter.

  "Ashington's been hit; there's fifty men trapped by a bomb down the Rising Sun Colliery.

  "South Shields gas holder's been hit; it's burning." Then, with a sudden squeak of real fear in her voice, she said, "What's that?" They all listened; nothing but bombs and guns. Silly stupid bitch, thought Chas. Haven't we got enough trouble, without inventing more?

  "What did you think you heard, Mrs. Spalding?" asked Mrs. McGill icily. She didn't hold with such hysterical goings-on.

  "I thought I heard the church bells ringing."

  "Perhaps someone's getting married," giggled Chas. Then his heart froze. For, in a lull of the guns, they suddenly all heard the bells, sweet with overtones of Sunday morning and Christmas. But that was long ago. Now bells meant...

  Invasion. In Chas's mind's eye they came: the hard-faced hordes in their coal-scuttle helmets; the crawling irresistible Panzers; the lines of Stukas like straight bars across the sky. All his childhood they had stormed through the cinema newsreels, jackbooting triumphantly through Vienna, Prague, Warsaw, Paris. Now they would jackboot through Garmouth. Followed by the Gestapo. Knocks on your door, people dragged away in the middle of the night, firing squads.

  A traitorous voice awakened in Chas's mind. If you behaved yourself, if you didn't resist, if you made friends with them ... a hand clutched his stomach tighter and tighter as the adults sat silent and the shelter filled with the queer smell of fear.

  "It must be some mistake," said Mrs. McGill, tight-lipped. Nobody answered.

  "It came from up Blyth way," said Mrs. Spalding. "There's plenty of the army up there to deal with them." Again, nobody answered.

  The clutching hand was spreading from Chas's stomach. It was groping between his legs now. You couldn't make friends with the Gestapo, any more than you could with diphtheria or scarlet-fever germs; they were not human. And he wouldn't sit here with the adults, shaking, waiting to be slaughtered like cattle.

  He wanted to fight and die ... it suddenly seemed good and clean to fight and be dead; the Gestapo couldn't get hold of you once you were dead... there was the gun... the gun... the gun. He swal
lowed and controlled his breath; he must seem calm.

  "Mum, I want to go to the lav."

  "Not now." His mother opened and shut her mouth like a rattrap.

  "But Mum, I'll wet myself. And it's a lull, Mum. No bombers. The Germans aren't here yet ... I'd better go while I can... Mum, I'm bursting."

  "All right, go," screamed his mother. Chas climbed out of the shelter carefully, because his knees were shaking; he walked calmly down the garden path toward the lav. He even remembered to open the lav door and close it with a bang, like he always did. Then he was streaking down the back garden, past his dad's greenhouse. There was a half-moon and he could see the rabbits in their hutches, peacefully eating the dandelion leaves he had gathered that morning, a million years ago.

  He stopped... the rabbits... they deserved their chance too. When the Germans came they would wring their necks and eat them for sure... He turned back. He opened the greenhouse door and then the hutch doors one by one. The rabbits leaped down and onto the moonlit lawn, sniffing curiously at their new-found freedom.

  And then Chas was gone through the bushes, running for the Fortress.

  "What can we do?" cried Mrs. Jones, wringing her hands ineffectually.

  "Oh, those storm troopers, they rape young girls," said Miss Jones breathlessly, hugging her small and neat bosom protectively, as if the SS were already on the doorstep.

  But old Cemetery Jones stood as firm as a rock.

  "I've been getting ready for this day a long time," he said heavily. "It's taken thought, but I've done it, and no one the wiser. Come on, missus, fetch your valuables; come on, you kids, fetch those blankets."

  "Where are you going, Cecil, are you mad?"

  "We're going to t' graveyard, woman." Mrs. Jones shrieked, but Cemetery Senior took her hand firmly and led her out of the Anderson, round the Cemetery Lodge and out among the tombstones. The guns were silent, the bells still chimed, the moon rode high, and the angels on the graves flickered white as they passed. Cem and his sister followed with the blankets, mesmerised.

  A larger bulk loomed up; a marble block as big as a garage, with white Ionic columns and marble urns on top. It had a huge bronze double door.

  "The Irving Tomb," announced old Cemetery, in his best undertaker's tones. "Those doors is best bronze and three inches thick, and the marble's best quality and two foot thick. Stop a howitzer, that would." He fished in his pocket and produced an elaborate bronze key which he thrust into the double door.

  "But," screamed Mrs. Jones, "what about them dead Irvings?"

  "Moved them in with the Ibbotsons three months ago. People must learn to accept smaller accommodation in an emergency. I've got it very nice in there, missus. Just as you like it. Bit of carpet on the floor; mattresses on the slabs instead of coffins... plenty of tinned food, even a picture on the wall."

  "God love us," said Mrs. Jones, and let herself be guided in by the light of his torch. "I suppose it's better than the Germans."

  An old damp smell came out of the tomb, and tickled the end of Cem's nose. He didn't like it, didn't like it at all. Fastened up in the dark, not knowing what was happening outside... and that smell ... in the end he didn't make any decision. His legs started working of their own accord. Suddenly he was running for the cemetery wall, hurdling gravestones and flowerpots like some Olympic sprinter. Heading for the Fortress.

  "Come back, you young fool!" shouted Cem Senior, waving his torch around in increasingly wide arcs. But he was no sprinter, and his son had vanished. He still had two to care for, and two was more important than one. He went back to his wife, muttering. "Young fool, just when I had everything so nice and comfortable."

  "Daddy, where are we going?" asked Audrey.

  "Shut up and get those garage doors open." Mr. Parton was panting, even before he began pulling the starting handle of the big black car.

  "But where are we going, Daddy?" Mr. Parton swore a string of oaths previously unheard by his family.

  "Stop that language in front of the children, Bertie," said his wife, already comfortably settled in the back of the car. In her best fur coat she almost filled the back seat. Her arms were full of hatboxes. Young Bertie peeped from under her elbow, white-faced and open-mouthed but wearing his school cap.

  "Shut up, you stupid cow," roared Mr. Parton, swinging on the starting handle like a dervish. The car jerked into backfiring life.

  "Right, in." Mr. Parton flung Audrey roughly into the front passenger seat and slammed the car door shut. He got behind the wheel and fumbled for the car-lights button in the dark; the windshield wipers started working.

  "Daddy, where are we going?"

  "To your Aunt Emily's in Westmorland."

  "But why?"

  "Because the sodding Germans are coming, that's why."

  "You mean the Invasion?"

  "Well, I don't mean bloody Guy Fawkes' Night." The car jolted out of the garage and turned left too sharply, scraping the offside wing on the gatepost.

  "But Winston Churchill said we were to stay put if the Germans invaded. Otherwise we'd block the roads for the Army, like the French refugees did."

  "Sod Winston Churchill. He's safe enough. He'll be flying to Canada now, with the Royal Family. He doesn't care about us, so why should we care about him?"

  "But nobody else is leaving!"

  "Well they ain't got cars, have they? They ain't got petrol. Eight quid for eight gallons that cost me on the Black Market. That's a week's wages."

  "But Daddy, we're running away."

  "Shut up, will you?" The car took a corner dangerously, on two wheels. Audrey looked out miserably. She liked doing what was right; and this wasn't. It wasn't patriotic either. How would she face her friends at school when it was all over? The Partons the only family who ran away? Her friends... the Fortress!

  "Stop, Daddy, look, look!" There was a squeal of brakes, and the car stopped with a suddenness that shot Mrs. Parton and her hatboxes painfully forward.

  "What the hell..." shouted Parton. But the door on Audrey's side was swinging open, and she was gone.

  She ran and ran, not looking where she was going, but not running away from the enemy. She ran till she tripped and fell, then lay low. In the distance, she could hear her father shouting and swearing at her; it sounded as if now he really hated her. She kept silent, tears in her eyes that were not from her fall.

  Her father called and called. But finally she heard the car doors slam and the car move away.

  She got up, and realised where she was. Limping and sobbing, she headed for the Fortress.

  In the Brownlee shelter, Mrs. Ridley sat keeping an eye on Mrs. Brownlee, and Mrs. Brownlee sat keeping an eye on her son John.

  "He's badly, tonight," said Mrs. Brownlee. John's green eyes roved round and round the shelter, never stopping for a minute. His great hands wrestled with each other, over and over. Every so often he would start to his feet, and it took all the women's efforts to make him sit down.

  They had tried all the usual ways to pacify him; cups of tea, sandwiches. But even his favourite penny lollipops had little effect. Two lay half-sucked on the floor. It was like being fastened up with a terrified elephant.

  Mrs. Ridley was afraid of the Germans. Mrs. Brownlee was afraid of what the Germans would do to her son when they caught him. She knew very well what had happened to mental defectives in Germany; one lethal injection solved the problem.

  John was simply afraid. He could smell the fear in the air, his mother's fear. But he could never understand where the fear was coming from. He could no more understand about tanks and storm troopers and bombers than he could have understood a math problem. To him, the whole world had become terrifying. Like an animal, he wanted to run and bury himself in a black hole. But he didn't have a black hole to run to.

  Another bomb dropped, very close. It did no harm to the shelter, but it burst the sandbags that protected the shelter door like paper bags. The earth from them trickled through the door, under the blacko
ut curtain, and formed a little pile on the floor.

  John reached forward and began to shovel it out again with his hands. As he did so, it triggered off a memory.

  There was another shelter where he had shovelled earth with his hands—but that shelter had been full of laughter and fun and children who were kind. That was the safe place he must run to now.

  He reared up to his great height and put a foot out of the door. Outside, the guns took up their furious song, and clouds of shrapnel whistled down.

  "No, John, no!"

  "Where you going; come back!" The two small women flung themselves onto him. But he roared and flung them off.

  "Where you going now?" he roared in triumph, and was gone. Mrs. Brownlee picked herself up.

  "Don't go out there, love," gasped Mrs. Ridley.

  "I've got to. He'll hurt himself."

  At the end of the Square, John paused. He didn't know where the marvellous happy shelter was. And then he saw something shining on a doorstep ahead. Somebody had put out their milk bottles for the morning. John knew he had to pick up the bottles; that was the way to the happy place. Pick up the milk bottles and follow the boy round to the right, and then turn left. John thundered on.

  And after him, terrified but faithful, Mrs. Brownlee followed at a distance.

  "Chas! Chassy!" Mrs. McGill wandered from room to room of her darkened house. An answering call came from the front upstairs bedroom. She opened the door. Two figures sat by the open window, in silhouette against the circling searchlights.

  "Chassy?" The figures turned.

  "No, it's me and Granda, love." It was Nana.

  "What you doing? Why aren't you down the shelter?" Mrs. McGill nearly lost control of her voice, and regained it with an effort.

  "Granda and me's waiting for the Jarmans, hinny. Ah've got the bread knife and he's got the carving knife. And I've got me bottles handy." She pointed to a row of pop bottles on the window sill.