The British Lion

by Tony Schumacher

  She heard the door handle rattling and she looked up into the dull eyes she’d been staring at all afternoon. The man pulled back his arm, balling a ham of a fist, making ready to punch through her window.

  Anja closed her eyes.

  The car shot forward, wheels spinning and screaming on the smooth concrete before they gripped with a squeal, then the car shot forward toward the exit.

  The mouth-­breather shouted.

  Anja opened her eyes, already spinning in her seat to watch the mouth-­breather through the back window. He reached around behind him, then brought a heavy pistol to bear.

  The shot echoed around the warehouse.

  The back window shattered in an explosion of glass. The gun boomed again and both Jack and Anja ducked low as they heard the round hit the bodywork.

  The engine was screaming in first gear as they made their way toward the exit. Jack’s foot was hard down on the accelerator.

  Anja had slipped down into the footwell, and she looked up to see Jack crouching, barely able to see over the steering wheel as he wrestled with it in both hands.

  Another shot, then another. The car jerked left, bounced up hard into the air and then down again. There was a crash of scraping metal and then they jerked right, this time less violently. Anja braced herself with a hand under the dashboard as they hit a curb. Finally Jack remembered second gear and shifted with a crunch.

  Anja heard another shot, and then she realized they were outside the warehouse.

  Jack whooped and looked down at her.

  “Did you see that? Did you? Oh wow! Ha ha!”

  Anja smiled, then found herself laughing as Jack selected another gear and the car picked up speed. She pulled herself up and looked behind her.

  The back window was shot through; it was almost completely shattered, giving her a clear view of the road.

  The snow was thick on the road, and all around them were high, dark buildings that looked like more warehouses. She turned to look out the front window and saw there were two bullet holes in it.

  Jack fumbled with some switches and eventually the headlamps came on. There were no other vehicles around and the warehouses looked empty. Jack slowed slightly, skidded in the snow around a corner, pushing and pulling the big steering wheel, then accelerated again.

  “Where are we?” Anja shouted over the noise of the engine and the wind blowing through the broken windows, glancing at Jack and then craning to look up at the buildings as they went past.

  “We’re out east.” He looked at Anja and noted her confused face. “The East End of London. Miles from anywhere, really. I need to get you to the center, near to the ring of steel where you’ll be safe, see if we can find some Germans and hand you over.”

  “Thank you,” Anja said. Jack looked across and smiled.

  “It ain’t nothing. I couldn’t leave you, could I?”

  Anja smiled back and ran her hand through her hair. She opened the window, lifting her head to the onrushing wind.

  Enjoying the freedom and the fresh air, letting it intoxicate her.

  She closed her eyes and laughed, shaking her head, feeling the chill on her cheeks. She opened her eyes and looked at Jack, shouting over the wind, “What are you going to do?”

  “Get you to safety, like I said.”

  “No, after that. What are you going to do?”

  Jack glanced at her and then back to the road.

  “I’ll think of something. I don’t know, something will turn up.” He smiled at her again, a little less brightly than before.

  Anja frowned, turned her head to the wind again for a second, then closed the window halfway.

  “My father will help you. He’s a good man, he’ll help you.”

  Jack nodded, wanting to believe Anja.

  They drove in silence for a few minutes, slight shock setting in.

  It was Jack who noticed the wobble in the car’s steering, moments before Anja did. She looked at him and saw that the steering wheel was shaking in his hands.

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know, it’s like . . . I don’t know,” Jack replied as the shaking grew worse and he had to slow the car to compensate.

  A sudden loud rhythmic banging began. It felt as if it was coming up under Anja’s feet. The wheel was dodging right and left in Jack’s hands, at least four inches either way.

  He pulled into the curb, and as the car drew to a halt Anja saw that Jack was unable to stop the wheel turning. The whole car seemed to weave before hitting the pavement and finally bouncing up onto it.

  Jack was out of the car in a flash.

  Anja pulled the handle on her door to get out but found that it wouldn’t move. She scooted across to the driver’s side and followed Jack out onto the street, then around to the damaged side of the car.

  She didn’t have to be a mechanic to see the problem.

  The front passenger side wheel was leaning into the wheel arch drunkenly, at well over a twenty-­degree angle.

  The wheel arch and front door were gouged, a deep two-­inch-­wide scar that had exposed the silver metal underneath.

  Anja instinctively looked back to where they had just come from, then crouched down with Jack to inspect the damage more closely.

  “I’ll jack up the car and have a look,” Jack said uncertainly.

  “We haven’t time,” replied Anja, already looking back down the road for any cars that might be following.

  “I think the front spring has snapped; it must have happened when I hit the wall.”

  “What wall?” Anja looked at Jack, who pointed at the gouge in the side of the car.

  “That wall.”

  She nodded, then stood up.

  “Let’s find a telephone and call the police.”

  Jack looked up at her.

  “You met the police this morning. They are what got you into this in the first place. We can’t trust them. Anyway, there won’t be a phone round here for miles. Let’s see how far we get on this wheel. I think I know a place that will help us.”

  Anja looked at the car uncertainly and then nodded.

  She didn’t have much choice.

  THEY BARELY MANAGED to extract another mile out of the car before the wheel gave up the ghost. It slammed up into the arch with a crash and a lurch and they skidded to a halt on a deserted street just south of Stratford.

  There was no point in inspecting the car when they got out. They abandoned it in the middle of the road and took off holding hands, running along a side street that was silent and lit by dirty yellow streetlamps.

  “Do you know where we are?” Anja said as they slowed to a walk. She was looking at the darkened houses that sat squat and orange bricked on either side of the narrow street. All drawn curtains and smoking chimneys.

  Jack didn’t answer but kept walking, a half step in front of Anja, leading her forward by her hand.

  “Maybe we should knock at a house and ask for help?” Anja tried again.

  “Just keep walking.”

  “Where are we going?

  Jack stopped. “It don’t matter where we are going, all right? We’re just putting distance between us and them.”

  “But they don’t have a car. We took their keys.”

  “How long do you think it would take for my boss to get that other car going? He’s been a mechanic all his bleedin’ life; he could start that old thing with a spoon. He’ll try to take his time, but sooner or later they’ll be after us.”

  Anja turned and looked down the street they had walked along. She saw tracks in the snow, dark shadows, a record of every step.

  Their tracks.

  The only tracks in the street.

  She looked at the far end of the road and saw the car abandoned with its headlamps still shining, like a stranded black lighthouse.


  “They can follow our footprints from the car,” she said softly. Jack followed her gaze and then looked back at her, gently pulling her hand toward him.

  “We need to get going.”

  Anja glanced at the houses all around as they started to move again. The houses seemed warm, safe, inviting, full of happy families and hot food.

  “We can knock on a front door; someone will take us in.”

  “Which one do you fancy?” Jack lifted a finger and pointed at one of the houses with welcoming lights behind thick curtains. “That one?”

  Anja followed his finger and then nodded.

  “Yes.”

  “Problem is, that one might have a mum and dad who lost a son when the Germans invaded France. What about that one?” He pointed at another house but didn’t wait for an answer. “Then again, that one might have a dad who had his leg blown off in the Great War. What about that one? Oh, hang on, that one might have two boys who have been sent to work in Europe on one of the grain farms. What about that one, where their son has been conscripted and sent out to fight in the east? Or that one, or that one, or that one?”

  Jack stopped suddenly and looked at Anja. “We can’t knock at any of these houses, or any house anywhere, because they all bleedin’ hate you. So keep moving until we can figure out where we are.”

  Jack turned and stalked off. Anja realized he had let go of her hand. Her head dropped and she felt the weight of the tears she’d been holding back.

  She had to hold on.

  She looked back at the car, shook her head, and followed Jack.

  She caught up quickly as he marched, hands buried in his pockets, silently ignoring her. Their breath misted the air between them and the streetlamps. They didn’t speak for at least five minutes as street after street of the same tiny terraced houses went by.

  The air smelled of smoke, and a few restless flakes of snow started to drift down out of the blackness, causing both Anja and Jack to look up into the night sky as they walked.

  “The snow would be good, it’ll cover our tracks,” Anja said, and although Jack didn’t reply, he did take her hand again.

  They reached a main road with darkened shops and a set of traffic lights that changed every few seconds, even though there wasn’t a car in sight.

  Jack looked up at the building behind him.

  Anja followed his gaze and read the sign out loud.

  “Romford Road. Do you know it?”

  “I think so; my old man is from round here.”

  “Your old man?”

  “My dad.”

  “Can we go there?”

  “He’s dead . . . the war.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Anja stared at the dirty streetlamps and the sooty houses. The smoke coming from their chimneys made the falling snow look dirty. She looked at Jack with his oily hands, greasy hair, and dirty neck, and realized that he could only have come from a place like this.

  Jack ran his hand through his thick hair and stared off down the road.

  “I think . . .” He looked left and right again, hand still on head. “We go this way.” The hand on his head suddenly shifted position and pointed.

  “You think or you know?”

  “Do you know?” Jack asked.

  “No.”

  “Well then, this way.” Jack set off, tugging Anja behind him.

  They walked for fifteen minutes before Jack saw the pub he was looking for. The Rising Sun stood on the corner of a row of shops and a side street. It looked rough, tough, and decidedly uninviting.

  “That’s it.”

  “That?” Anja didn’t sound convinced.

  “Yeah, I know ­people there. They’ll help us. We’re going to be all right.” Jack turned and smiled at Anja for the first time in what seemed like an age.

  Anja forgot the cold, forgot the hunger, forgot the day she had suffered, and found herself smiling back. Maybe she was going home after all.

  “You have to wait here by these shops. Stand in the doorway of this one and wait for me, I’ll not be long.”

  Anja looked at the darkened shop and then back at Jack, the smile fading.

  “Can’t I come with you?”

  “No. You’ll stand out a mile. ­People don’t know you. You stay here. I promise, I’ll not be long.”

  Anja nodded uncertainly.

  “It’ll be all right, I promise. Just wait in the shadows.”

  Jack was off before she could reply. He pulled open the door of the pub and Anja watched as the light from inside shone on him. He looked every inch a fifteen-­year-­old boy entering a man’s world. The noise of the bar leaked out with the light, then faded as the door swung back into place.

  She heard the sound of a piano but couldn’t recognize the music it was playing. It sounded rough, bouncy, a little out of tune, messy, too fast for her liking.

  A lot like London itself.

  She leaned forward out of the doorway, looked at the pub, and then turned her head the other way to look down the main road.

  In the distance she could see headlamps coming toward her slowly, very slowly. Flecked with falling snow, they bobbed and weaved, as the car slithered from rut to rut.

  She looked back at the pub, a quiver of panic in her chest, then back at the car, the first she’d seen since they’d left their own crippled vehicle earlier.

  She stepped back into the shadows of the doorway as far as she could go, her back against the cold wooden door. It seemed an age before she could make out the sound of the engine, coming closer, traveling slowly, taking its time.

  She tried to breathe shallow breaths, in case the steam from her mouth gave her away.

  The car drew nearer; it seemed slower. Anja couldn’t breathe.

  Not now, not when she was so close.

  The car went past.

  It was a tiny little saloon, with a toad of an old man franticly rubbing at his misted windscreen with the back of his hand.

  Anja breathed again. She almost laughed at her own nerves until Jack suddenly appeared in front of her, causing her to jump with fright.

  “You okay?”

  “You scared me!” she cried, feeling an urge to throw her arms around him.

  He flashed his bright smile at her and flicked his fringe.

  “Come with me, we’re sorted.” He held out his hand and pointed at the pub.

  Anja took Jack’s hand, feeling its warmth. She followed him to the pub where, at a side door, a girl, maybe two or three years younger than Anja, was waiting for them. She pulled open the door, having to lean back to get the leverage, and then went inside followed by Jack and Anja. As they walked down a corridor Anja could hear the piano and voices singing along to a song she couldn’t understand.

  “Why are they singing?” she whispered to Jack.

  “Because they’re drunk, it’s what they do,” he replied over his shoulder as the little girl opened another door that led to a flight of stairs. They thumped up the wooden staircase, which took them to a warm kitchen where a large man in an apron was waiting, hands on hips.

  “This is Mr. Edwards. He’s the manager, and he’s going to help us.”

  Edwards gestured that they should sit at the kitchen table.

  “You hungry?”

  Anja nodded, scared to speak in case her accent should embarrass them all.

  “Yes,” replied Jack for her. “We’ve not eaten all day. I’m starving.”

  Edwards placed two bowls in front of them, into which he ladled a thick steaming stew from a pot that was burned black up the sides.

  He placed the pot back on the stove, then put some rough-­cut bread onto the table, along with two spoons and two white enamel mugs full of water.

  “Eat.” He pointed at Anja’s bowl.

  “Thank
you,” she replied softly, picking up the spoon and looking at Jack for confirmation that she was doing the right thing.

  She was.

  Jack was already tucking into the soup and ripping a chunk of bread with his oily hands. He paused, smiled at Anja, and offered her the bread.

  She looked at his hands with their grime-­filled lines, smiled back, and took the bread.

  “I’ll make a call, get someone we can trust down with a car,” Edwards said as he wiped his hands on the apron.

  “Could we use your telephone to call my father, sir?” said Anja.

  “No offense, but I don’t want it getting out I’m helping you. I can’t risk having Germans turn up here; it wouldn’t be good for me. Do you understand?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry. Thank you.”

  Edwards nodded and then spoke to Jack. “I’ll make the call, then go back in the bar. If I don’t they’ll start wondering where I’ve gone.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Edwards,” Jack replied with a full mouth.

  Edwards nodded and then looked at the young girl.

  “Get them anything they want and stay with them.”

  The child nodded and took a seat opposite Anja, staring at her as she ate.

  Anja smiled at the girl.

  The girl didn’t smile back.

  CHAPTER 30

  ROSSETT WAS HALF frozen as he made his way along an old stone wall to the south of Coton. He was about two hundred yards from the village boundary when he stopped to get his bearings. Behind him, across five hundred yards of open ground, was his car, parked in a small copse of trees well out of sight of the road. To his right was the village, which lay slightly below him in a shallow valley, barely sheltered from the wind, which was gusting in hard from the cold north, making his cheeks ache and his throat dry.

  The late afternoon sun had long since sunk tiredly over to his right. He had moved across the fields, occasionally lying flat, at other times at a half crouch, taking his time, careful to see all and not be seen in return. When he finally had to cross a shallow stream, then fight his way through the two feet of soft snow that had drifted up against the boundary wall, he was frozen to the bone and soaking wet.

  He lifted his head and did a quick 360-­degree scan of the surrounding countryside. Everything was covered in snow, shading down to a soft pink in the dusk, the only contrasts some scattered trees, the stone wall he was hiding behind, and the village itself. Where two machine gun emplacements guarded the entrances of the lane that ran through its center.