Five Children on the Western Front

by Kate Saunders

  One or two of the regular nurses seem quite friendly but most are horrid to us as a matter of principle. There was Mother fretting about me with all those young soldiers, but I haven’t seen any soldiers yet – my first patients are some very sweet old ladies.

  Please keep reminding Mother about the food. I didn’t tell her the half of it – I’m STARVING all the time!!! I MUST HAVE FRUITCAKE! (In an airtight tin.) Chocolate would be lovely and a little jar of salmon paste to liven up the measly triangles of bread and butter they give us for tea. Olive says her people are sending damson jam and cinder toffee – just writing about all this heavenly grub makes my mouth water.

  How is the P’s repentance progressing? Have there been more sudden appearances? I send you a kiss, dear old furry rascal, along with hugs and kisses for all of you (Ernie says I can’t send him anything, but I send him a kiss regardless – Edie, you can give it to him when you see him).

  Your loving

  Smallest cog in vast machine,

  ‘Lowest of the Low’

  Panther

  *

  The front door of Old Nurse’s house stood open; a man was putting boxes into a motor van at the kerb. The hall was crowded with more boxes and piles of books – and an untidy heap of bones that Jane, the Lamb and Edie recognised as Maud the skeleton.

  ‘Funny, she’s not frightening when she’s jumbled up like that,’ Edie said.

  Old Nurse and Ivy were dabbing their eyes as they watched the boxes and bones being taken away. They were Mr Muldoon’s things – the young medical student had been killed in France, when the casualty clearing station where he was working was hit by a shell.

  ‘Such a nice young man, and so brave,’ Old Nurse said. ‘He was right in the front line, taking care of the wounded without a thought for his own safety. I shan’t know my second-floor landing without that blooming skeleton.’

  Jane, Edie and the Lamb were very sorry, and their sorrow had a sharp edge of anxiety for Cyril, as all this sort of news did.

  The three of them had come to London because the Professor had requested another meeting with the Psammead. They heard Jimmy’s agitated voice while they were climbing upstairs.

  ‘The facts are all laid out clear as day, and I don’t see why it can’t be published exactly as it is! Once you read the symbol correctly the entire legend falls into place. It’s not mere speculation – we have it from the mouth of the god himself!’

  ‘But the way you’ve written it down makes you sound barmy!’ Ernie’s voice seemed tired. ‘No respectable institution is going to believe you heard it from a sand fairy.’

  In the Professor’s room they found Ernie at the desk, bent over his notebook. Jimmy was on the hearthrug, in front of the ashy grate, fretfully rubbing his grey hair.

  ‘Kindly let me out, Jane,’ the Psammead said from inside Jane’s coat. ‘It’s too warm in here, even by my standards.’

  ‘This coat isn’t meant for summer.’ Jane took the Psammead out of his carrier and shrugged off her coat with a gasp of relief; it was a dull and rather damp day but she was boiling.

  ‘Well, look who it is.’ Ernie’s face brightened and he threw down his pencil. ‘The perfect excuse to stop for a cup of tea.’

  ‘Good afternoon, warrior,’ the Psammead said graciously.

  ‘Good afternoon, your worship.’

  ‘I see that your leg has grown back.’

  ‘Not quite, chum – this is my new false leg,’ Ernie said. ‘I’m slowly getting used to it, and it’s good to have two feet again.’

  They all looked down at his feet; the false one wore a very stiff black shoe.

  ‘Does it hurt?’ Edie asked.

  ‘Not worth mentioning.’

  ‘When I write to Anthea, can I say about your new leg?’

  ‘Course you can, it’s hardly a state secret. Tell her I’m walking without a stick.’

  ‘My dears!’ Jimmy finally pulled them into focus. ‘No Anthea? But of course, she’s gone away too. Only three children today.’

  Ernie set the blackened kettle on the gas ring. He gave the Psammead’s little head a pat. ‘You’ve turned up at the ideal moment – we were just talking about another story from your shady past. There’s a symbol in early Akkadian for “beast of burden”, and it can mean either a slave or a donkey. This particular story just about makes sense if you read the word as “slave”, but the Prof wants to use the word “donkey” – and that makes the whole thing look absolutely cockeyed!’

  ‘Donkey?’ The Psammead’s whiskers bristled. ‘I don’t know any donkeys.’

  ‘Then kindly set us right, O Wise One!’ Jimmy bowed his head. ‘Tell us the true story of NIRPIL THE NEWSGIVER.’

  ‘No – because whatever the legend says is a LIE. I call him NIRPIL THE BETRAYER!’

  The Lamb chortled unkindly. ‘Looks like another crime’s catching up with you!’

  ‘I will tell the version that appears on the stone at Stuttgart,’ Jimmy said. ‘Nirpil was a handsome young prince of a desert tribe, and in his youth he “hung out”, as the saying goes, with a certain minor desert god.’

  ‘Minor!’ snapped the Psammead. ‘How dare you? My power was absolute!’

  ‘Nirpil grew older and wiser,’ Jimmy went on, ‘and took notice of the desert god’s wicked behaviour. Nirpil was the person who reported him to the high priestess, whereupon the angry desert god said, “You supped with kings, now you shall be the lowest of the low,” and turned him into a donkey.’

  Everyone looked at the Psammead, sulkily hunched on the desk.

  ‘That was horrid of you,’ Edie said sadly. ‘But I’m getting used to your wicked past.’

  ‘To cut a long story short, the desert god was deposed by his own people, and that’s why he lost most of his powers – everyone stopped worshipping him, and that’s all it takes. The high priestess wanted to put him in prison for his many crimes, so he went into hiding in a deep cave and ordered the donkey Nirpil to bring him news and supplies. Unknown to him, however, the donkey had kept all his human intelligence. Every day, using his nose or his hooves, he was painstakingly spelling out a message on a flat hillside, in dozens of small stones – HE’S OVER THERE, with an arrow pointing to the Psammead’s cave.’

  This was met with silence.

  ‘Well?’ the Lamb asked. ‘Aren’t you going to defend yourself?’

  ‘Pooh! Why should I? Nirpil was a TELLTALE and a SNEAK! It was none of his business what I did with my own slaves!’

  ‘Never mind the rights and wrongs of the case,’ Jimmy said. ‘Was Nirpil truly a donkey? It’ll make all the difference to our book.’ Another silence.

  ‘Yes,’ the Psammead finally said, in a small, tight voice.

  ‘There you are, Haywood – I knew it!’ Jimmy’s face was alight with excitement. ‘An actual donkey, with hooves and a tail!’

  ‘Blimey,’ Ernie said. ‘This puts a new slant on chapter five!’ He was chuckling. ‘Just don’t blame me if they lock both of us in a loony bin when you publish it.’

  ‘Did Nirpil ever get changed back into a human?’ Edie asked the Psammead.

  ‘Yes, of course. The spell wore off after a couple of months, though he always had the ears. There’s no need to make a fuss about it.’

  ‘I think the general idea is that you’re supposed to be feeling sorry,’ Jane said. ‘I mean, wasn’t your heart – both your hearts – ever moved by pity?’

  The telescope eyes swivelled towards her. ‘I never wasted my pity on the lowest of the low.’

  ‘Well, you should have,’ the Lamb said. ‘They have exactly the same feelings as the highest of the high. And if you don’t learn that, I don’t see how you’re ever going to get home.’

  Fourteen

  BONFIRE

  Letter from Lt C. J. Pemberton,

  9th Loamshires,

  October 1915

  Dear All,

  This is just a quick note to say I’m alive and in one piece and finally in rest-b
illets well behind the lines. I’m staying in a farmhouse on the very edge of a village, and it does my soul good to hear hens instead of guns. The weather is golden and sometimes I can ignore the eternal background noise of the heavy howitzers and imagine I’m back at the White House.

  Poor old Harper was killed last week. He caught a bullet while out in No Man’s Land with a wire-cutting party.

  They had to leave him out there, but a couple of us went out to fetch him when things were a bit quieter. He was still alive then, but he died before we could get him to the clearing station. I’ve written all this to his family. I wanted them to know that he died like the A1 brick he was – his last words were ‘don’t worry’. He knew that I was with him right up to the end and I was holding his hand (I particularly thought his mother might like to know this).

  It’s funny that none of you ever met Harper, when he was such a great pal of mine. You’ll have to take my word that he was one of the grandest old fellows who ever drew breath. I’m absolutely lost without him and still can’t quite believe I’ll never see his cheery face again.

  As for me, I’m in rude health – don’t ever imagine you can send me too much home food.

  Toodle-oo

  Cyril

  THE SORROWFUL NEWS about Harper caused the first serious quarrel between Edie and the Psammead. She couldn’t help crying, and one of her tears had splashed down on the cushion where he was sitting.

  ‘It didn’t even fall ON him,’ she said afterwards. ‘Just NEAR him – but he started screaming till I was scared someone would hear. He was horrid about poor Harper and said he couldn’t see why I was crying over someone I’ve never met. I said it’s perfectly possible to be sorry about a person you’ve never met – and we did sort of meet Harper. He was nice, that’s all, and I’ll jolly well cry for him if I want to.’

  It was autumn again and the damp, chilly, gusty weather was making everyone gloomy. Jane had caught two colds one after the other from cycling to school through the swirling brown leaves. The Lamb was spending several unpleasant afternoons a week getting plastered with cold mud on his school’s football pitch. The war had been going on for more than a year, and there was no sign of it stopping. Every day the newspapers carried long lists of casualties. At almost every school assembly, the Lamb’s headmaster read out the names of old boys who had been killed in action. There were shortages of everything; Father had to struggle to get enough paper to print his magazine, and Mother said she dreamed about finding half decent cuts of meat.

  ‘Look here, you’ll have to make it up with the Psammead,’ the Lamb said, on the fifth of November. ‘You’re his favourite. He’s cutting me and Jane – whenever I try to dig him out of his sand bath he just burrows in deeper. And Bobs will want to see him.’

  Robert had finished his exams and joined the army; he was now 2nd Lieutenant R. Pemberton, and had a week’s leave before his regiment went to France. Mother was upset, and said she’d worry about Robert far more than she did about Cyril. Father didn’t like it either, but he knew Robert felt he was doing the right thing, and was determined to put a good face on it. They all wanted his leave to be as nice as possible; it would be an awful shame if he missed out on seeing the Psammead.

  ‘Oh, all right, I’ll talk to him again.’ Edie hadn’t been on speakers with him for nearly two weeks, and had secretly been longing for an excuse to make it up; she loved the vain little tyrant with all her heart and had missed him horribly. ‘Bring him downstairs.’

  There was a fire in the shabby, comfortable old nursery, and their parents were out, so it was quite safe. While the Lamb went up to the attic to fetch the Psammead, Edie put more coals on the fire and stoked it to a blaze – though she was strictly not allowed to do this – to make it specially warm and welcoming.

  The Lamb returned, red-faced and empty-handed. ‘I can’t budge him! He’s making himself as heavy as a cannonball!’

  ‘He’s still cross,’ Edie said.

  ‘Come up and say sorry to him.’

  ‘Me? He’s the one who should say sorry!’

  ‘Look here, we both know he’s wrong and you’re right, but couldn’t you just humour him?’

  In the end, it was the only thing to do. Edie went up to the attic, bent over the sand bath, and begged the Psammead to come out like a gentleman. ‘Please, Psammead! Bobs is coming back today and I know he’ll want to see you!’

  The mound of sand heaved and shifted, and the Psammead’s little head poked up. ‘Very well, for Robert’s sake I shall forget about the disgraceful things you said about my character.’

  Edie picked him up and he was his usual weight again, warm and dry in her arms.

  ‘Time has passed,’ the Psammead said. ‘I thought the war would be over by now – but it must be getting worse. So Robert has had to leave his parchment and his goose quill and take up a musket.’

  ‘You’re ridiculously out of date,’ the Lamb said. ‘Bobs is the modern sort of scholar, with paper and a fountain pen – and he’s taking up a Lee-Enfield rifle, not a musket.’

  The Psammead ignored him. ‘When I was a desert god, I only turned my scholars into warriors as a last resort – they were far too weedy for any serious fighting.’

  *

  ‘Cambridge is more like an army camp than ever these days,’ Robert said. ‘All the colleges are packed full of chaps in khaki. The minute the exams were over, two chaps from the Engineers moved into my room. And then I was in the army – staying in an identical room in another college. I can’t say I’m all that keen on soldiering – I’m not like old Squirrel, who loved messing about with the OTC at school. But it’s somehow the only thing to do.’

  Robert had arrived home in his splendid new officer’s uniform. He immediately changed into one of his baggy, old tweed suits, and was now lounging comfortably on the rug beside the nursery fire as if he’d never been away.

  ‘Mother hoped they wouldn’t take you because you wear glasses,’ Jane said.

  ‘That might have been true a year ago but they’re not so fussy now – and my eyesight isn’t that bad.’

  ‘Well, it’s very nice to see you,’ the Psammead said from his perch on the coal bucket. ‘You’re just in time to help with burning the traitor – if you can believe it, this frightful fellow was caught trying to blow up Parliament!’

  Robert chuckled. ‘If you mean Guy Fawkes, that happened several hundred years ago. We’re only burning an effigy of him.’

  ‘We made him out of my old school clothes,’ the Lamb said. ‘And his head’s a ball of old papers, so he burns nicely. We wanted to take him to the station and shout “penny for the guy”, only Mother says it’s common.’

  ‘That’s exactly what she said when Lilian Winterbottom and I wanted to do it,’ Robert said.

  The Psammead sighed impatiently. ‘What odd customs you have! Why not just burn a fresh traitor? They always make a lovely blaze – though if you want a really sweet smell, it’s best to burn a saint. The scent is delicious, like charred roses.’

  Robert burst out laughing. ‘Psammead, you’re the utter limit – how many saints have you burned?’

  ‘I didn’t say I burned saints,’ the Psammead said coldly. ‘If you must know, I was taking shelter in a hole in Rome when the emperor suddenly built the Colosseum on top of me. And he was constantly burning Christians – it was a big crowd-puller.’

  ‘We don’t burn anyone nowadays,’ Robert said. ‘We’re a lot more civilised than ancient Romans.’

  ‘Ha! That’s what you think! The Romans would never have had a stupid war like this, where everybody gets killed and nobody wins anything worth having. During my days as a god—’

  ‘Oh, here we go!’ the Lamb groaned.

  ‘I’m giving you the benefit of my vast experience! When I was a god, the biggest mistake I made was trying to start a war that none of my people wanted to fight. After the first doomed attack they simply lost heart.’ His mouth scrunched up painfully. ‘But something in thi
s memory is as prickly and uncomfortable as a sand bath full of bees! No! Stop it!’ The agitated sand fairy folded himself into a tight, hard ball.

  ‘Crikey,’ Robert said. ‘What’s he doing?’

  ‘He’s probably remembered another of his old crimes,’ Edie said, picking up the Psammead. ‘That always upsets him.’

  A motor horn tooted at the end of the lane.

  ‘Good egg – that’ll be the Winterbottoms.’ Robert jumped up. ‘Time to light that beauteous bonfire.’

  The Lamb, Edie and Jane, with some help from Father and Field, had built a magnificent ten-foot bonfire on a scrubby patch of land beyond the stables, where the smoke couldn’t get into the curtains and make Mother complain that the house reeked of kippers. Father still enjoyed Guy Fawkes Night, and this year he’d made a special trip to a Chinese shop in Limehouse to buy firecrackers and Roman candles. To make the occasion yet more special he had invited the Winterbottoms.

  Edie bundled the Psammead in her skirt and ran up to the attic. He sank into the sand bath until only his eyes and mouth stuck out.

  ‘I sent that scribe into danger, but a warrior maiden walked into the jaws of death to save him,’ he said, in a small, quiet voice.

  ‘Whatever you’re talking about, I can tell you’re sorry now.’ Edie smoothed the sand as if tucking in a sheet. ‘I’m sure that’s what’s making you so uncomfortable.’

  ‘Being sorry is very BOTHERSOME!’ the Psammead hissed, and sank into invisibility.

  Fifteen

  A CONFESSION

  THE PARENTS HAD COME OUT into the hall, to open the front door and spill out welcoming light for their guests.

  ‘Good old Winterbums!’ Father said.