The Machine Gunners

by Robert Westall

  Chas went back to his vision of the machine gunner. For there was something else in the vision: the machine gun, black, new, glistening. Even in his terror, because of his terror, he wanted that gun. He wanted to beat Boddser Brown. But how?

  First, cut it free. His father's hacksaw should see to that. All his father's tools were wonderful, powerful, could cope with anything. But then he would need some way of moving the gun. From the way it had swung on its mount he knew it would be heavy.

  Cemetery Jones's bogie. That could do it. He had a vision of the bogie: a heavy two-inch plank with big pram-wheels at each end, and a soapbox for a body.

  And Cemetery Jones was just the one who would go with him into Chirton Wood at dusk. Cemetery Jones was called after his father, who was also called Cemetery Jones. He was the keeper of Garmouth graveyard, and marched ahead of funerals in black gaiters and a top hat wrapped in black muslin, looking like the Devil leading sinners at a brisk pace to the Gates of Hell.

  Off duty he was very cheerful, with straw-coloured hair, pale blue eyes, some very grisly jokes and a laugh like a horse. He had gleaming wide-spaced teeth like marble tombstones, which he was said to clean six times every day.

  Cemetery Junior had the same laugh, hair, eyes and teeth, though he didn't clean his at all, so they were very yellow. He said a dentist had once told him they were so widely-spaced they would never rot, and he was testing the theory out.

  Chas caught Cem in school dinner. School dinner was a kind of self-discipline: the potatoes and the thin translucent custard tasted so queer that they required an effort of will to eat. But Chas had an uncle who was Chief Engineer on an oil tanker in the Persian Gulf. Every so often, Uncle William was invited to a feast by the local sheikh, who with grease-dripping fingers would suddenly hand him a whole sheep's eye. If Uncle William could swallow it in one gulp without gagging, the oil would continue to flow. If not ... on such small things hung the fate of the Free World. Chas was training himself to be like Uncle William. He was even training himself to like the smell of burning rubber. "It's an acquired taste," he'd say to his friends airily.

  Cemetery's approach to school dinner was different. He treated his plate as an artist treats his palette, whirling gravy, dried potato, dried peas and dried egg into cosmic whirls and brushwork, occasionally flipping a choice piece of impasto into his mouth. By the time all had collapsed into a grey soggy amorphous mass from which no further reaction could be derived, it was three-quarters eaten. This procedure he called the "potato irrigation scheme."

  "I've found something," announced Chas mysteriously, over the ginger stodge. "It's Big. I need your bogie to shift it."

  "Can't. Got my Guy on the bogie."

  "What you want a Guy for? No bonfires allowed this year. No fireworks in the shops. Nothing. You're potty."

  "I use the money I collect to buy sweets."

  "Look, it's just one night. This is Big—Bigger than anything you've ever seen."

  "Go on, you always say that."

  "Come and see for yourself, then."

  "When?"

  "Tonight."

  "Got to do me homework before the raid starts. We've only got one candle in our shelter and Mum says it ruins your eyes."

  "Look, I'll give you an incendiary bomb fin, a real smasher, not a dent..."

  "I'll come for the fin, then. But I don't believe the other."

  Chas's eyes suddenly glinted. He'd had one of his Famous Ideas.

  "And bring your bogie with the Guy still on it."

  They were going down to West Chirton. Chas was on the bogie and Cem was pulling it, snorting and grunting like a horse. He always insisted on pulling the bogie, so he never got a ride. When asked why, he always said he was "getting his muscles up," but everyone knew he was really scared of letting go the towing rope in case someone ran off with the bogie. People didn't grumble; they enjoyed the ride.

  Suddenly there was the wild ringing of a bicycle bell behind.

  "Oh hell," said Chas and Cemetery together.

  "Where are you kids going?" asked a bossy female voice. "And why have you got two Guys on your bogie this year, Cemetery?"

  "Oh, ha, ha," said Chas in disgust. "Frigg off, Audrey Parton, we're busy."

  "Busy!" The scorn was finely done. "Little things please little minds."

  "While bigger fools look on," retorted Chas.

  "In disgust."

  "At themselves." It was an old boring routine, but Cem laughed like a horse. Audrey Parton rode past, and slued round her bike to block the road.

  "Tell me where you're going or I won't let you past." There was something in the threat. She was bigger than either Cem or Chas: what Mrs. McGill called a fine strapping lass. She had bulging hockey muscles and grey ankle-socks, and red hair in pigtails and freckles. She fought boys and, alas, sometimes won.

  On the other hand there were some good things about her, which made her the only girl Cem and Chas ever talked to. Her chest was quite flat, and she didn't giggle and whisper to other girls as you went past. She never told on you to her mother, and she was as good climbing trees and drainpipes as any boy. For a long time she'd led her own girl's gang, but now they'd all deserted her for sheer lisle stockings, ringlets and mother's powder puff. She'd become a misfit. She said she'd always wanted to be a boy. She was the only girl who always had sticking plasters on her knees.

  Mrs. McGill treated Audrey with respect, because her family were posh and owned a car. But Mr. McGill said her father was skulking in a Reserved Occupation, making his fortune while better men went to fight for their country. When Mr. McGill spoke in that sort of voice, nobody argued.

  "Where are you going?" asked Audrey. "Can I come?" Chas muttered under his breath a phrase he'd heard sailors use.

  "Going to me auntie's at West Chirton," said Cem.

  "You haven't got an auntie at West Chirton."

  "Have, so!"

  "Haven't, so!"

  This went on for some time. Chas eyed her bulging muscles speculatively. That machine gun was heavy. She might come in useful. Besides, the dead German would scare the little cow silly. She wouldn't interfere with men's business again.

  "All right, you can come with us."

  "Lead on, Macduff," said Audrey, patting him on the head as the bogie rolled past. Chas felt his hair all suddenly prickle, as if it was full of nits.

  They hid Audrey's bike on the edge of the Wood and pushed in. They had to lay the Guy down to get the bogie through the briers. Chas thought that in the dusk he looked like a dead man.

  He had to keep shushing Cem and Audrey. They both had fits of the giggles as they felt the tension.

  "It's all just one of your stupid jokes," said Cem, "but it'll cost you that bomb fin."

  "I'm not going to do any dirty things with you two in this wood, so you needn't think I am," said Audrey, caught between fear and desire. "I don't mind kissing, but no more."

  "Eeurk!" said Cem. "Who'd want to with you?"

  Chas's chest was getting tighter and tighter. He was glad he wasn't alone. At least he'd get Mum's basket back.

  When Cem saw the bomber, he laughed as if it was a joke.

  "Shut up," said Chas. "There's a dead German inside. You can look if you want, but Audrey can't."

  Cem climbed up, dropped down again and whistled. "That's one for me dad."

  "No it's not. They don't bury them here."

  "Yes they do. Dad had a coffin full of... bits, from this bomber at lunchtime. Well screwed down it was, I can tell you."

  "Go on, they send them all..."

  "Yeah?"

  "To the War Office, to count them," said Chas stoutly through chattering teeth.

  "Is there really... ?" said Audrey, all eyes and woman for once.

  Chas was not displeased with the effect he was having on her, but he said severely, "Girls aren't allowed to look. They can't stand it."

  "Poor man," said Audrey. "He's a long way from home."

  "Look," said Chas,
"we came for this." He waggled the gun.

  "Cor, you're not... How can we get it off?"

  "Got me dad's saw." He pulled it out from under his jerkin. "Hold the gun steady."

  He began to saw. It was hard work. He kept catching his knuckles on the rivets of the fuselage, and soon blisters came. When he handed over to Cem he'd cut a quarter of the way through the aluminium strut.

  "Can't see where I've got to saw," said Cem.

  "I've got a torch." The fuselage lit up, and the trees around. Chas couldn't resist a peep upward, to see if the dead German was looking down, watching them.

  When he took over the saw from Cem, they were halfway through.

  "There's a funny smell," said Audrey. "What's that funny smell?"

  "That's him," said Cem, nodding toward the shadowy fuselage with a professional air. "It gets worse as it goes along."

  "I want to go home," said Audrey, beginning to sniff.

  "Go then. There's probably other dead 'uns in the Wood, waiting to get you." Audrey gave a little scream.

  "Keep that torch straight. I knew a girl wouldn't be any good."

  "Oh, shut up." But the torch beam straightened and held steady.

  "Put that light out!" The yell came from the edge of the Wood. Audrey screamed and dropped the torch. There was the sound of breaking glass and it went out.

  "Oh God," said Cem. "That's Fatty Hardy. Shush." But Chas went on sawing like a mad thing. He was nearly through that aluminium strut and he wasn't going to be cheated now.

  He felt the strut give, and the gun fell agonisingly on his foot. He grabbed it up, and immediately it shook and leaped in his arms. A golden-red light filled the clearing, and a noise like Guy Fawkes gone mad. He let go of the gun, and the noise stopped. But he could see, where the aircraft tail bulked large against the sky, a great ragged hole had been torn in it.

  A police whistle shrilled on the edge of the Wood.

  "God, that's done it," said Cem. "Shall we run?"

  But Chas sat hunched in a dream of power, remembering the vibration against his foot, the red sparks shooting up and, beyond them, flights of dark bullets winging through the dark enemy sky.

  "What we going to do?" whispered Cem frantically.

  Abruptly, Chas returned to the present. Even shaking from head to foot, he was still the one who thought up the plan.

  "What's your Guy's legs made of?"

  "Sticks."

  "Get one out."

  "Whaffor?"

  "We're putting the gun up it."

  The gun went, though it split the Guy's trousers.

  3

  Chas despaired. And then suddenly the night turned white, black, white, black, white. A great hammer banged on the dark tin tray of the sky, crushing their eardrums again and again. Anti-aircraft guns. Then, in the following silence, came the noise of an aircraft engine.

  Chug-chug-chug-chug.

  "One of theirs," whispered Cem. The dog whined and fled. Fatty Hardy shouted, and the whole group of bystanders were streaking away to the nearest shelter. Then that hammer was beating the sky again. Echoes of its blows rippled away, like someone slamming doors further and further off down a corridor.

  Chas stared at the sky, trying to guess where the next white flashes would come from. They came in a scattered pattern moving west. Five at a time. That was the guns at the Castle. Then a group of three together. That was the guns at Willington Quay.

  "What shall we do?" whispered Audrey.

  "Take your bike and get to a shelter. We can manage without you."

  "But I shouldn't be out in the open during an air raid."

  "You don't think these trees will shelter you from anything?" said Chas brutally. She went, wobbling wildly across the waste ground.

  "What about us?" said Cem.

  "I'm getting this gun home while the streets are empty. This air raid's the best chance we got."

  "The wardens will stop us."

  "Not if we go by Bogie Lane." Bogie Lane was a little-used cinder track that led through the allotments to near home. "No one'll think of looking there."

  "Right, come on then."

  The blackness of night was back. As they dragged and bounced through the dark, the warning note of the air raid siren sounded.

  "Dozy sods. Caught asleep as usual," said Cem in disgust.

  "It's a sneak raider. They glide in without engines."

  "And he's hit something." Cem nodded to the west, where a rapidly growing yellow glare was lighting up the rooftops.

  "Or else they got him. Must be Howdon way."

  "Only the one. All-clear will sound in a minute."

  But it didn't. They were halfway up Bogie Lane when they heard the chug-chug-chug of enemy engines again.

  "More than one."

  "Six or seven."

  Ahead, the night lit up as if great blue floodlights had been switched on. Blue points of light hung motionless in the sky, brighter than stars.

  "They're dropping parachute flares."

  The chug-chug-chug grew nearer. They felt like two small flies crawling across a white tablecloth. Up there, thought Chas, Nazi bomb-aimers were staring down through black goggles, teeth clenched, hands tight on bomb-release toggles, waiting for the cross hairs of their bombsights to meet on Bogie Lane and the two flies who crawled there.

  They dived for cover into a patch of winter broccoli. It smelled safe, because they had some in the vegetable rack at home. Chas envied the broccoli; because whatever happened, it would still be growing here tomorrow in the sane world of daylight, just ordinary. As ordinary as the Fry's Chocolate sign that the allotment owner had used, upside down, to mend a hole in his fence...

  Chug-chug-chug. Overhead now. They were safe, because bombs always dropped in a curve in front of bombers. He had watched them fall in newsreels of the Polish Champaign, out of black Stukas...

  Bang, bang, bang. The hammer was at it again, right overhead. That meant a new danger: falling shell-shrapnel. Chas could hear it, whispering and pattering down like steel rain all around.

  "Go on!" screamed Chas. "Get the bastards, kill the bastards!" Then silence, blackness, nothing. The parachute flares had gone out.

  "Come on," shouted Chas, dragging Cem to his feet. "They'll be coming back in a minute."

  The bogie wheels crunched along the cinders, and they could hear the hard knock, knock of the machine gun on the bogie's plank. They got back to the Square before trouble started again. A rough hand grabbed Chas's shoulder.

  "Where the hell you been?" It was his father, wearing a tin hat. "Your mother's worried sick."

  "She knew I was going down Chirton," squawked Chas.

  "Get down the shelter. Who's that with you?"

  "Cem."

  "Get him down as well. I'll go and tell his mother he's safe."

  "What about the Guy?"

  Mr. McGill dragged the bogie roughly against the garden hedge. "It'll have to take its chance."

  "Eeh, you had me worried sick," said Mrs. McGill, "and Mrs. Spalding here, too." Mrs. Spalding nodded and sniffed. Her son Colin, in the bottom bunk, looked self-righteous. "Her Colin never leaves her back garden at nights. He's a good lad. And I was cooking fish and chips when the siren went, and I had to turn the gas off and now they're ruined and I don't know what else we're going to have for supper because there's only dry bread in the house, and your father's supposed to be on night shift and he can't get to work for the raid so we'll have no money, and I wonder that they don't pay him for being a warden, after all he works hard enough at it..."

  Chas lay back on his bunk and let her words drift over his head. He was thinking about the machine gun out there in the dark.

  "... and leading Cyril off straying with you." Cemetery's real name was Cyril, which was why he preferred being called Cemetery. "I mean, leading Cyril astray like that ... if anything had happened to him I could never have looked Mrs. Jones in the face again."

  "Bairns shouldn't be let wander in the dark these
days. Real wickedness, I call it," said Mrs. Spalding. Chas shot her a look of hate from the shadow of his bunk. She had fat knees in ginger stockings, which kept straying apart so he could see she was wearing apricot knickers. Her legs were mottled through sitting too close to the fire. His mother's legs, dangling over his head, had pinker stockings, and thank God she always kept her knees together.

  They sat round, bleary-eyed in the dawn light. No more windows had been broken in the kitchen. The paraffin heater and the stove were on again.

  "I put Cem's bogie in the greenhouse," said Mr. McGill. "By God it's a rare weight. What'd he make his Guy of, drainpipes?"

  "Dunno," said Chas, cutting his fried bread into careful cubes. "I'll take it back tonight."

  "You can take it back this morning. No school today. The all-clear's still not gone."

  "Do you think it's safe?" asked Mrs. McGill. Her husband looked out at the cloudless November sky.

  "They'll not come again. Or the RAF lads at Acklington'll have something to say about it."

  "Is there much damage in the town?"

  "Nothing. It was Howdon that copped it. They hit a gas main and it's still burning."

  After breakfast, Chas crept down to the greenhouse with his father's wrench. The greenhouse had had a boiler and hot-water pipes for heating before the War, when coke was off the ration. Now it was drained dry, and Chas had found he could take the ends off the big fat hot-water pipes. The machine gun could be slid down inside, if he could get those sticking-out drums off it. He fiddled with them carefully. He didn't want to blow the end out of his father's greenhouse.

  He got them off in the end. One was full of live bullets and the other full of spent cartridge cases. Chas hesitated. He'd have liked to have taken one or two bullets to school to show around. But... once Fatty Hardy found that bomber's tail, he'd be round all the schools making inquiries, and there was always some kid who blabbed... Better safe than sorry.

  He wrapped the gun in cloth and slid it into the water pipe without looking at it further. He screwed the end of the water pipe back on. He hid the drums of bullets in the thick straw of Chinny's hutch.