The Machine Gunners

by Robert Westall

  He'd just finished when his father came down. "You pulling Cem's Guy to bits?"

  Chas controlled a guilty start, and said casually, "Just mending the leg."

  "You leave that to Cem. It's his Guy. I sometimes think you're a bit too free with other people's property. Got no sense of mine and thine, that's your trouble."

  Chas said humbly, "Yes Dad." Mr. McGill cocked an eyebrow at such humble obedience, but he soon wandered off to poke at his chrysanthemums.

  For some reason, Fatty Hardy did not go back and find the bomber. Others did.

  Two days later, Cem whispered to Chas in school assembly, "Y'know those round things full of bullets? Got four more. They were clipped to the fuselage round the gunner's feet."

  "Where you got them?"

  "Under some plant pots in the shed. It's all right. Dad never goes there since the War—they're all cobwebs and chrysalises. Look at this one, it's live."

  Chas jumped an inch in the air. But it wasn't a brass bullet Cem held out inside his hymn book. Only a black and yellow chrysalis. "You can hear it tapping to get out."

  "Is the gunner still there?"

  "Yeah. Phew, he don't half niff."

  "I don't know how you can stand it," said Chas savagely. "Ain't you got no feelings?"

  "You get used to it. It's in the family. When my father went on an embalming course he saw one fellah eating his sandwiches, reading a book propped against a body."

  "Eeurk," said Chas loudly.

  "If you insist on talking in assembly, boy," boomed the Head, "you can have a little talk with my cane afterwards. Yes, you with the freckles in 3A. Yes, you, the one who's turning round to look behind him so innocently. Three of the best for you. Now, school, Hymn 235: New every morning is the Love."

  But getting the cane was not the worst. Two days later, Chas saw a crowd standing round Boddser Brown in the playground. They were all looking at something and laughing.

  Chas hated Boddser; he had round spectacles and cropped hair like a German, and a great gangling grownup body. He was stupid and a bully; an arm-twister who made his pleasure last a long time. One day last term he and his gang had held a kid's head down the toilet and flushed it three times. The kid nearly drowned and was off school for a week. Boddser got caned, but you might as well cane a rhinoceros. Chas sometimes dreamed of beating in his skull with an iron bar.

  But he could never leave Boddser alone; he was so easy to take the mickey out of. And when he started to get rough you could always shout, "Quick fists, slow wits," or, "Don't get worked up, you'll give yourself a heart attack." Then everyone would laugh, because no one liked Boddser really. And Boddser was nearly as afraid of laughter as Chas was of Boddser's fists. Taking the mickey out of Boddser was like bullfighting; deadly but fun.

  Chas walked across to the laughing group.

  "Hey, what's up?"

  "Hah, McGill," said Boddser, "King of the Incendiary Bombs."

  "Why don't you wear your nose cone permanently—it would go with your spectacles." There was a titter. Boddser flushed.

  "Got something better than a nose cone to wear. Look!"

  He dangled a black leather flying helmet under Chas's nose.

  Chas didn't have to guess it belonged to the German gunner. His nose told him. But he said calmly, "Where'd you get that? Woolworth's?"

  "Never you mind. That's genuine Nazi. And so's this money." He showed a fistful of notes marked with Hitler's face and swastikas. "And what about this? Mein Liebling, she's called." He thrust out a photo of a blonde girl with pigtails. "She won't be getting any more you-know-what for a bit." There was a brown trickle down one corner of the photograph. Chas broke out in a sweat and felt sick. Boddser had been through the dead man's pockets. Chas turned away abruptly and walked toward the cloakrooms.

  "That's better than your rotten shrapnel!" shouted Boddser in triumph after him.

  4

  "Mr. Lidded!"

  Stan Liddell turned back toward the Headmaster's door, wondering what he had done to bring that waspish tone into the Head's voice.

  "Mr. Liddell!" Henry Montgomery turned up his nose distastefully. "We have a policeman in school, apparently wanting to see you. He hasn't seen fit to tell me his business. Top secret, apparently. Anyway, he has asked permission to use my study to interview you. Please see it's empty by the time I get back from break. I have parents coming." He stalked away, black gown quivering with indignation.

  Stan went in. There was a police sergeant standing by the fireplace, staring at Henry Montgomery's imitation-marble bust of Shakespeare. As he turned, Stan saw he had a bad limp.

  "Hello, sir!" It wasn't the way policemen say "sir," it was the way a schoolboy says "sir." Familiar eyes stared out at Stan from an unfamiliar face: a face twisted by a scar that ran from chin to hairline, and tight lines of pain round eyes and mouth.

  "It's... it's... Green, isn't it?"

  "Yessir!" The schoolboy grin was still there, though the man looked forty.

  "But I thought you had a commission in the army?" Stan could have bitten his tongue off the next minute, remembering the limp and scar.

  "I copped it at Dunkirk. They got me in the foot, the face and the nerves. So I was shovelled out as an invalid. Still, I'm trying to make myself useful. Stops me remembering."

  "Sit down, won't you?" said Stan awkwardly.

  "I'd like your advice, sir. We've found something... it's not pretty. The inspector's left it to me... we're short-handed. It's not really important and yet ... it niggles me. Lying awake last night thinking about it, I remembered you, sir, and the way you always knew what to do when I was at school..."

  "Anything I can do..." said Stan. He felt embarrassed.

  "I'd like you to come and look at it, sir. As I said, it's not pretty, but I'd be grateful. I mean, well, you're in the Home Guard, so you'd know about weapons... and I think it's the work of boys. No one knows boys like you do..."

  They drove from school in a police car. Stan hadn't bothered to consult Henry Montgomery; if he didn't like it, he could lump it.

  A way had been beaten into Chirton Wood at last, by the heavy boots of constables. One still remained on guard, looking queasy.

  "We haven't touched anything yet, sir, though it'll have to be cleared up by tonight. And this is confidential... we don't want rumours spreading..."

  The bomber's tail section was still there, but changed. Every piece that could be twisted off for a souvenir had been. Bricks had smashed the last of the perspex, and caved in the aluminium sides. Someone had tried to set the whole thing on fire, and various obscenities had been scrawled on the black sides in chalk.

  "Nasty, isn't it. And I don't think that's dog dirt either."

  "That's not the smell of dog dirt!"

  "No, it was neighbours complaining about the smell that put us onto it. There's a dead man inside. I wouldn't look if I was you, sir. Everything that's been done to the plane's been done to him as well, poor devil. I know they're the enemy, but really..." Sergeant Green was at a loss for words.

  "Why I brought you here, sir... look at this." He pointed to an aluminium spar still sticking out of the wreckage.

  "Sawn through with a hacksaw," said "Stan.

  "Now what would have been attached to that, sir?"

  "Machine gun, I suppose."

  "And there's ammunition missing, too. These planes carry 2000 spare rounds in the rear gun position. I checked with RAF Acklington."

  "But who could have pinched them?"

  "We thought it might be the I.R.A. at first. They've been pinching the odd rifle recently. But whoever heard of the I.R.A. this far north? Lancashire, yes, but... and look at that hacksaw cut. Can you imagine a grownup being that cack-handed? I reckon it's kids, sir."

  "Oh, surely..."

  "What about that then, sir?" Green pointed to the bullet holes in the rudder hanging overhead.

  "Made by the fighter that shot him down."

  "Wrong calibre. They're 7.62 mil
limetre. The RAF use .303."

  "Then the gunner shot through his own tail in a panic!"

  "The angle's impossible. Those holes were made when the machine gun was already detached from the plane. One of my beat-bobbies actually heard it happen, the night after the plane was shot down."

  "Why didn't he investigate?"

  "He didn't know what it was, and then the siren went. He thought it was part of the raid. I'm afraid he's not very bright."

  "You mean..."

  "Some bright kid's got a gun and 2000 rounds of live ammo. And that gun's no peashooter. It'll go through a brick wall at quarter of a mile."

  "Strewth!"

  "And it's some really well-organized kid, too. Finding it, going home for the saw, getting the gun home through the streets and hiding it where his parents can't find it. That takes some planning. That's not a primary kid, sir, that's a grammar-school boy."

  "You can't mean one of our boys..."

  Green gave a wry grin. "I know them, sir, and you know them. Primary-school kids can be tough and louts. But for real devilment give me a grammar-school boy gone wrong every time."

  "The Head's not going to like this."

  "He'll have to lump it. That's where you could help, sir."

  "Oh, thanks."

  "I wouldn't have asked, sir. But if they cut loose with that thing... they could kill twenty people without even knowing they'd done it."

  5

  "Ey," said Cem, looking up from his potato irrigation scheme, "there was a police sergeant in to see the Head this morning. He saw Liddell, too."

  "Trouble for some," said Chas.

  "Perhaps Liddell's pawned the Alderman Bewick Chromium-Plated Cup for Effort!"

  "No such luck. Hey, do you think they're on to you-know-what?"

  "The way Boddser's shooting off his mouth, it'll be any moment now. What about you going down to Chirton Wood and having a check?"

  "Aw, it'll be all right for today."

  "That's what Julius Caesar thought on the Ides of March."

  "D'you think I ought to go and have a look, honestly?"

  "Yeah! Hey, Carrot-juice, can we borrow your bike this lunchtime?" He addressed a high-pitched scream to a very small first-year with ginger hair, across a dismal landscape of spilled water and melting, discarded peas.

  "Cost ya," said Carrot-juice, without stopping spooning in disgusting custard, his third helping.

  "Two empty cartridge cases, from a Spitfire?"

  "Betcha picked them up on the Home Guard Rifle Range."

  "No I didn't. My cousin's an RAF gun repairer. Cobber Kane gave them to him personally."

  "Cobber Kane's dead. He got shot down. Anybody knows that."

  "He gave them to my cousin the day he died."

  "Tripe, but I'll take them anyway, even if they are Home Guard."

  "Right."

  Cem pedalled off steadily on Carrot-juice's ancient Sunbeam Roadster. The saddle was so low that his knees seemed up round his ears. It felt a long, long way to Chirton Wood. When he got there he left the bike in a patch of stinging nettles, so that no one without gloves could pinch it. The wood looked deserted, but a great path had been carved in by rozzers' beetle-crushers. Cem knew he'd seen enough; knew he should go straight back to school, but he couldn't resist a peep.

  "Gotcher!" Two large hands grabbed him from behind.

  "Help, police, murder," screamed Cem, and kicked and struggled, even though he knew the voice was Fatty Hardy's. He went on screaming until two passing housewives stopped to stare, and Hardy's face grew red with embarrassment.

  "Sorry, constable, I thought you were the murderer." Fatty Hardy hated being called constable.

  "What murderer?"

  "The one who did the girl in, in these woods. The Polish fellah."

  Fatty Hardy's face betrayed a trace of doubt. "What Polish fellah?"

  "The soldier from the camp at Monkseaton, who strangled the WAAF here, Saturday night."

  "Who told you that?"

  "Woman in the chip-shop. That's why I came here, to look for clues. He done her in with her own silk stocking, didn't he? She was all blue in the face with her tongue sticking out."

  "Rubbish! Someone's been having you on."

  "What, no murder?"

  "No, and bugger off before I run you in."

  "Yes, sir," said Cem respectfully, and turned to the nettlebed to retrieve the bike.

  As he rode off, the look of triumph faded from Fatty Hardy's face. He'd forgotten to ask the one question he'd been specially told to ask.

  "Hey, lad, come back. What's your name? Where d'you live? I have to have your name!" But Cem seemed to have turned stone deaf. Perhaps it was the effort of pedalling so hard.

  Cem dropped into a neighbouring desk, puffing.

  "They've found it."

  "Thought so. Watch it, here's Liddell."

  Stan Liddell swept in with his usual gusto, gown flowing and a too-short pullover displaying the bottoms of his braces. This suited Stan well, as he liked hooking his thumbs into his braces while he talked. He usually had something interesting to say, and today was no exception.

  "Found this, this morning," he announced, holding up the tailfin of an incendiary bomb. The class craned and muttered.

  "That's nowt, sir. Boddser Brown's got fifteen, and McGill's got ten."

  "Not like this one. See it's painted black instead of green, and has a yellow stripe? It's a new type the Jerries have just started to use. Twice as powerful."

  That caught their attention, and he held it for the next half-hour. Because he talked inside gen on weapons. He held up Home Guard training posters, diagrams of grenades and rifles. Then the talk turned to machine guns, and alarm bells began ringing in Chas's head.

  You cunning sod, Liddell, he thought, and waited, unscrewing the top of his ink bottle. There was one big poster lying still rolled up on the desk, and Chas knew what it was: a diagram of the machine gun. Stan would hold it up, and throw his quick glance round the class, looking for the guilty face. Cem's. There was no time to warn him.

  As Stan held up the rolled poster with a flourish, Chas knocked over his bottle of ink.

  "Oh, bugger!" It went all over Cem's trousers. Everyone turned to look, including Cem. Stan's moment of truth was completely ruined. Chas mopped wildly with a hanky at Cem's trousers.

  "That's a picture of our gun he's got. Watch your face."

  "For heaven's sake, McGill, will you pay attention! And you, Jones. This is a picture of a German aircraft machine gun, the MG 15, calibre 7.62 mm, firing 1000 rounds a minute, effective range one mile."

  The class looked at him, but now they looked—not exactly all innocent, but at least all equally disorganised. Stan knew he was beaten.

  "Right, boys. Open your English exercise books. I want an essay on War Souvenirs."

  Silence fell, but for the scratch of pens. Chas knew how he could gain one hour, and no more. And that hour would be his last chance to save the gun. He stuck his tongue out of the corner of his mouth and wrote.

  I used to have the best collection of war souvenirs in this town. I have eleven incendiary-bomb fins, twenty-six spent bullets, eighteen pieces of shrapnel, including one piece a foot long, and fifty empty cartridge cases including ten in clips that my Dad's friend who is in the Armed Trawlers gave me.

  But now my collection is second-best, because Boddser Brown in 3B has beaten me. He has a 3.7 inch nose cone, and a pongy German flier's helmet, and lots of German money with Hitler's face on it, and a picture of a German girl in pigtails, called Mein Liebling. I wish I knew how he got these things, because he's beating me hollow, and if I can't beat him soon, I shall give up and start collecting cigarette cards instead.

  The bell went for the end of the lesson.

  "Close your books and pass them up," said Mr. Liddell. There was a storm of protest.

  "But sir, we haven't finished. Can't we finish it for homework?"

  "No, pass them up." You could tell M
r. Liddell couldn't wait to get his hands on those books. Chas grinned to himself. He owed Boddser Brown that one.

  By four o'clock, Boddser was outside the Head's door, sweating. By five, he had been given six of the best. By half past five, the police were at his mother's door with a search warrant.

  But long before half past five, two dogged figures were trundling a Guy on a bogie through the foggy night, shouting "Penny for the Guy!"

  "God, we're making a fortune!" said Cem. "But where are we going?"

  "Quick, down Bogie Lane" They angled the bogie into the narrow entry, and vanished from adult ken.

  "But where can we hide it?" asked Cem.

  "Bunty's Yard." Bunty was a builder, but Bunty was now in the army, concreting pillboxes and stringing wire on the South Downs for the duration. Bunty's old dad came up some days to take care of the yard, but all he ever did was to sit in the cabin and get the stove going and brew tea. He liked talking to kids, because there was no one else to talk to. He let Chas and Cem poke round the yard, sometimes, providing they didn't break anything.

  Bunty's Yard had a ten-foot brick wall, with jagged glass set in concrete on top; on three sides, that was. The side next to the railway line was just a rotten fence with two loose planks. It was these planks that Chas now pulled but. The bogie and its burden slid through.

  "Where?"

  "Into those old sewage pipes. Bottom one, in the middle."

  "Won't it get rusty?"

  "What you think I brought these oily rags for?"

  "Where'd you get 'em?"

  "Me dad brings them home from work. Me mum uses them to light the fire." The gun slid into its hiding place. Rags were stuffed up each end, and sand gently tossed against them.

  Within ten minutes, plaintive voices could again be heard on the main street shouting.

  "Penny for the Guy?"

  As they approached Chas's house, they saw a black police car standing outside.

  "Ow!" said Cem. "Scarper!"

  "No," said Chas, "let's get it over with. Just remember, if you keep your mouth shut, and I do, no one will ever find that gun till Bunty comes back from the War."