The Machine Gunners

by Robert Westall

  It was just that he was so very strong; sometimes, when he got an idea wrong, he was impossible to stop. Once he had carried a great section of Anderson shelter right past the windows of Mrs. Nichol's bedroom. But somehow she hadn't heard or looked out. And the whole gang, heaving and straining, had pulled John back on course.

  But that had been the early days. Now the children could handle him firmly and precisely, as a good mahout handles a good elephant.

  Only now Fortress Caparetto was finished. There was no more work for him to do; and he did take up a lot of space.

  "Where you going now?" he said, slurping his tea noisily.

  "What are we going to do with him?" whispered Cem.

  "Just not fetch him any more," said Chas. "He's not bright enough to find his way here by himself."

  "I hope you're right," said Cem.

  So, as night fell, they took John home for what they thought was the last time.

  Nicky wakened with a start. He switched on his bedside light. His alarm clock said half past one. Why had he wakened? He slept till morning usually; sleep was a refuge.

  Was it bombers coming? He listened. The night was silent. He got up to go to the toilet.

  As he passed his mother's door he saw her light was still on, and heard her voice, low and whispering, laughing. Then that man's voice. He was in there again. Nicky stood, his fists clenched. He hated that man. He would like to rush in and kill him, but he was only Sicky Nicky, puny, puny, puny. Tears started in his eyes and he fled to the toilet. Sitting on it, he began wondering again what had wakened him.

  But he could think of nothing; only there had been the smell of the sea in the bedroom, as there was some nights when the wind was in the east. The wind carried the sound of the foghorn too.

  When his father had been alive, and at sea, Nicky had liked that smell of the sea, and the sound of the foghorn.

  It made him imagine the bridge of the Cyclades lit by the dim lights of the compass binnacle and chart table; and his father's face, keen, commanding, bringing the great ship home through the dark. He had felt close to his father.

  But now the smell of the sea and the sound of the horn were a desolation.

  He tiptoed back past the hated door and slept again. And again he wakened, to the smell of the sea.

  He tiptoed right round the house. Sailors snored behind doors. In the kitchen, mice scattered from view as the light went on. He put the light out again and lifted a corner of the blackout curtain. Stars and silence; the fog must be clearing from the harbour mouth. The horn had stopped.

  But now the fear was on him. Something terrible was going to happen. He must run. But where?

  Beneath the stars he could see the trees where the Crow's Nest was. The Fortress; that's where he must run to. Quickly now. The danger was near. He snatched up clothes, shoes, a torch and his teddy bear and ran.

  "Dead in their bed of sin they was," said Mrs. Spalding dramatically, waggling the curling pins under her headscarf. "And a Judgement I call it. Lying there without a stitch on, nor a mark on their bodies. It was the Blast what done it. Or the Hand of God. God is not mocked!"

  "Not in front of the bairn please, Mrs. Spalding," said Chas's father, putting down his knife and fork with an ominous clink. But not sufficiently ominous to stop Mrs. Spalding in full cry.

  "But that bairn, that poor little bairn who never did any harm. Why did God take him?" She raised her finger to the cracked ceiling, as if the Almighty were perched on the lampshade like a pet budgie.

  "Mrs. Spalding!" thundered Mr. McGill.

  "The bomb fell right on his little room where he was lying innocent asleep. They found not one little piece of him. He's with the angels now."

  Chas had an absurd picture of angels piecing together some unknown innocent's arms and legs, as if he were a jigsaw puzzle. Mr. McGill looked at Chas, and jerked his head.

  "Out!" Chas fled—as far as the keyhole of the kitchen door. He listened intently. Mrs. Spalding said:

  "You needn't look at me like that, Mr. McGill. I'm doing no more than speaking the truth. There's been sin and wickedness in that house ever since Captain Nichol was lost, God rest his soul."

  Chas felt sick. Nicky's house had been bombed. Nicky, his mother and that naval officer all dead. Oh, lord, the Fortress! The machine gun!

  "And all them pore sailor-boys stiff and stark," intoned Mrs. Spalding. Chas ran like the wind.

  The Nichol house looked almost normal. The bomb had hit at the back, and the front retained its roof, and even some windows. Police, wardens, heavy rescue and ambulance had departed. Someone had closed the front gates and wired them together.

  The garden wall was high, with spikes on top. Chas looked round furtively and climbed over the wired gate. He skirted the house and went into the back garden. The overgrown lawn was strewn with bricks and tiles; where Nicky's bedroom had once been there was a brick-red gash. Chas couldn't see any blood splashes.

  Further on, statues and garden urns lay toppled. The goldfish pond had cracked and was empty. One dead goldfish lay on the frozen weed at the bottom. The tiny stream that had fed the pool was spreading across the whole garden, turning it into a swamp and then freezing.

  The Crow's Nest was still there, though thrown askew by the blast. Well, that could be rebuilt. The Fortress... they had built well. There was not a sandbag out of place.

  Chas pulled back the old quilt and went in.

  His skin crept; there was something alive with him in the dark. An odd voice said:

  "Chas?"

  "Nicky! How did you escape?"

  "My father came in a dream and warned me."

  "Oh."

  "They're all dead. Even the ratings."

  "Oh."

  "I went back and found them."

  "Oh. What'll you do now?"

  There was a long pause. "I don't know. There's no one else in our family. I suppose they'll put me in a Home."

  "Hard luck. I wish you could stay with us but... my Nana and Granda are staying with us till the end of the War."

  "1 don't want to leave this place. I mean ... all this is mine now. And I'd rather be with you than strangers." He held out his hand. Chas felt very strange. He had prickles up and down his spine. He felt bigger and stronger than ever before, and yet more frightened at the same time. He clasped the proffered hand in both of his.

  "We'll have a meeting. We'll see you through."

  Nicky showed the pale ghost of a smile. "I know where there's a lot of food... that Petty Officer that got killed was in the Black Market. The old stables are full of stuff."

  "O.K. Let's get it before somebody else does. It'll mean enlarging the Fortress, though." More work for funny old John.

  Everyone listened as Nicky told his story. Audrey sat picking at the scabs on her knees. Cem didn't laugh for once.

  When Nicky had finished, they looked at each other in a long silence.

  "We must tell some grownup," said Carrot-juice. "They all think he's dead. It'll be in the records at the Town Hall and things. People will be worrying."

  "Who?" asked Clogger. "Who is there who cares?" There was silence. Carrot-juice set his face stubbornly.

  "Grownups know what's best!"

  "They dae what's best for grownups," said Clogger. "They'll tidy him awa' into a Home and forget him, like they did wi' me when Ma died. They gie ye porridge wi'out sugar and belt ye if ye leave your shoes lying aboot."

  "He could stay with one of us," said Audrey.

  "Would your ma hae him?"

  Audrey hung her head. She knew what her mother would say. They all knew what their mothers would say.

  "But where can he live?"

  "He could manage here," said Clogger. "We've got grub for a year. I've known folks put up wi' worse in Glasgow."

  "Suppose he gets ill?"

  "Tek him tey the doctor. Plenty kids gan on their own, noo."

  "But won't he get lonely?"

  Then quite an awful thing happened:
Nicky began to cry and he couldn't stop. It was nothing like the way kids cry when they fall and hurt themselves. Words came bubbling out of his mouth about his father and his mother and that man and hate and death. Everyone was rooted to the spot. Then all the boys looked at Audrey.

  She took a timid step forward and stroked his hair gingerly. It didn't make him any worse. She began to say his name gently, over and over.

  "Everyone do it!" So they knelt and stroked his hair, his back, his arms, his knees.

  "Nicky... Nicky... Nicky."

  In the end he stopped crying, sniffled and said, "M'all right now. Sorry." Audrey gave him her hanky and he wiped his face.

  "He'd better not live here alone," said Clogger. "Ah'll come and live wi' him."

  "But what'll your auntie say?"

  "Ah'll mek her think Ah've gone home tey Glasgow."

  "But she'll be worried sick!"

  "Not her. She's not really ma auntie—just ma ma's cousin. She wasn't sae keen tey have me in the first place, and we're sleeping three in a bed. She'll miss the money ma dad sends, that's all."

  "But doesn't she... love you?" Chas blushed as he said it.

  "Love me? You kids don't know you're born. All she and ma uncle love is their beer and fags. Ah've thought of running away many a time..." Everyone stared at him aghast, so that even Clogger became uncomfortable. "Ah'll be away, then. Ah'll have to hurry if Ah'm tey get back afore dark."

  "Before you go..." said Chas.

  "Aye?"

  "Everyone swear ... on the gun." So they brought the gun out of its wrapping, and laid Granda's Union Jack on it, and everyone put their hands on the gun and swore to look after Nicky. In the swearing, Fortress Caparetto became more than a game; it became a nation. And the Germans ceased to be the only enemies. All the adults were a kind of enemy now, except John.

  Clogger returned long after nightfall, his old bike laden with gear. He came by the back way—the loose boards in the fence.

  "Easy! Ah left a note for ma auntie whilst they were snoozin' off their dinner. Ah biked tey Otterburn an' posted a postcard there. They'll think Ah'm away ower the Scottish border by noo."

  Nicky really smiled.

  "I'm glad you're back. I'll get your supper."

  The police sergeant went round the homes of all Clogger's mates and questioned them. But it was easy to be stony-faced and lie when you pretended you were a French Resistance fighter, and he was a Gestapo swine.

  At each house the sergeant sensed something in the boy he talked to: not guilt, but hostility and cunning.

  At McGills', the last house, he turned to Chas's father on the doorstep.

  "This war's doing bad things to kids. They're running wild. You don't know where you are with them any more. These are decent kids from decent homes; but they go on more like slum kids with a dad in the nick. You know, against the police on principle."

  "Mevve that says more about the police than the kids." Mr. McGill spat on the doorstep, and turned away to shut the door in the sergeant's face.

  "Look," said the sergeant desperately, jamming his foot in the door, "they're up to something..."

  "Take your foot out of my house," said Mr. McGill dangerously.

  The sergeant left. But Mr. McGill was worried about Chas for all his fighting words. He beckoned Chas to come into the cold front room, with its big chiming clock. Chas trembled; he knew what was coming.

  He couldn't even pretend his father was some kind of Gestapo swine, like the police sergeant, or the Head flexing his cane. His father understood how kids really felt about things; more than most. Ever since he was little, Dad had meant safety: large, solid, bristly-faced, smelling of tobacco. His thumb always grew in three segments, where he had hit it with a hammer while he was an apprentice.

  But could any grownup keep you safe now? They couldn't stop the German bombers. They hadn't saved Poland, or Norway or France. Or the battleship the German submarine torpedoed in Scapa Flow itself.

  Their own air-raid shelter at home—it wasn't as safe as the Fortress. It was only covered with a foot of soil. Couldn't Dad have done better than that?

  He looked at his father, and saw a weary, helpless middle-aged man. Dad wasn't any kind of God any more. Chas screwed himself up to lie.

  And for some reason Dad made it easy; maybe because he was just so tired. He never looked at Chas. He took the big family Bible off the sideboard and made Chas swear on it that he knew nothing about machine guns or Clogger. And Dad didn't even believe in God.

  Chas swore with his eyes on the Bible. He could never have done it looking at his dad.

  It all worked like a charm. With John's help they dug up the second Anderson shelter—the small one intended for the Nichol family. They made it entirely underground; buried deep, it could only be reached by a tunnel from the big one. They filled it with food and useful things from the bombed house—enamel jugs and bowls and mirrors.

  Nothing from the bomb damage was wasted. Another foot of rubble was piled over the Fortress. The gun emplacement was roofed in with old doors and soil. Only the three loopholes for the gun showed from the outside, and that was the way you got in.

  They worked on the garden, too, directing the waters of the tiny stream with dams, so that the whole area became an ankle-deep swamp through which no one could pass.

  At the other side, they fixed a whole section of fence so it would fall outward when someone pulled a rope from inside the Fortress. That gave what Lieutenant Andrew Morgan had called a good field of fire.

  Audrey uprooted plants and privet bushes and planted them on top for camouflage.

  All was ready, just in time.

  But not all the Fortress's defences were made by hands; some were made with mouths.

  It was queer how rumours got around about the Nichol house. It became even more notorious in death than in life. Some people said there was another bomb there, tin-exploded, never found. Others reckoned there were ghosts; ghostly scrawlings of sailor obscenities on walls; laughter in a lighted bedroom which no longer had a floor.

  Perhaps it was the fact that it looked so undamaged, though so many had died there. People pointed out its gables above the trees to visiting strangers. But no one went there, except the children.

  8

  Frost lay on the branches, and froze Clogger's breath on the eyepiece of the telescope. He wiped it angrily with his glove. But it was impossible to be really unhappy on such an evening. The sky was a dimming blue from horizon to horizon. The January evenings were beginning to draw out. Clogger consulted the gold watch-and-chain that the lookouts always carried in their top pockets. Five o'clock. Fifteen minutes more in the Crow's Nest. He scanned the horizon with the telescope again. He was shivering so much that the horizon jumped around like a kangaroo.

  Then he sucked in his breath. There was a dot, low over the waves. He lost it, and couldn't find it again. A stream of frightful Glaswegian words escaped his lips. When he finally spotted it again, it was nearer. He could see it had two engines.

  "Captain, sir?" Chas's head emerged from a loophole.

  "Plane, sir. Twin-engined, flying low."

  "Scarper!" shouted Chas. "Gun out!" They whipped the silver fabric off the gun, and pushed the muzzle past Clogger as he scrambled in.

  "Ey, watch it. I don't want a hole where ma dinner is!"

  Chas gripped the gun and peered down the gun sight.

  "Lower the fence!" Cem undid a knotted rope and the section of fence fell away, revealing the view over the bay. There was nothing in sight.

  "Oh, no! Another false alarm! Clogger, you been at your uncle's whisky again?"

  "There was something. Ah tell ye. It's too far off to see wi'out the telescope yet. Wait."

  And soon, there it was: a British plane, a Blenheim? Chas's eyes watered with the strain of looking. It was very low for a British plane. But perhaps it was damaged?

  No. The propellers had that same queer windmill look. It was gliding in, with its engines shut of
f. It was black. It was him. And, as before, it would pass right overhead.

  He lined up the sights on it. It grew bigger and bigger. Wait, wait. Finger on the curving trigger.

  "Go on!" said Cem, and nudged him.

  There was a flash and a roar. Something hit Chas in the chest, much harder than Boddser Brown's fist. He fell over backward, pulling the gun with him. He lay on the ground with the thing still punching away at his chest. Wood splinters and soil rained down. He stared aghast at a gaping hole in the roof; through which he saw the German plane, crosses and all, pass as in a dream. It looked completely unharmed.

  The tremendous banging of the gun ceased. Cem stared at the enormous hole in the roof.

  "Cor blimey."

  The stream of bullets from the machine gun missed the German fighter by miles. But it startled the pilot so much he put the plane into a near-vertical climb, and nearly stalled. While he was battling to regain control, he was spotted by a lone pompom gunner on the Bank Top, who had been seeing to his gun sight. Long lines of red stitching followed the fighter up the sky.

  More pompoms opened up. One blew off the fighter's wing-tip and that seemed to drive the pilot mad. Far from trying to escape, he started a personal vendetta against the pompoms. Once he came so low, he curved around the lighthouse on the Bank Top at zero feet, causing a fat woman with a pram to faint at the entrance to Chapel Street.

  The end to such mad behavior was inevitable. Three Spitfires from Acklington got between him and the sea. But the pilot seemed beyond caring. He headed straight for the Spitfires, guns blazing. They were still blazing when he blew up over the harbour mouth. You could hear people cheering on both sides of the river.

  What with the explosion and the cheering, nobody had noticed a small dark mass that had detached itself from the Messerschmitt at the last possible moment. It fell nearly to the ground before a parachute opened, and it still hit the ground rather hard.

  Sergeant Rudi Gerlath, of the victorious Luftwaffe, tried to stand up, but his ankle was agony. So he crawled instead, gathering the telltale folds of parachute as he went, into a clumsy bundle. He was in some sort of garden. Apart from the forest of brussels sprouts around him, the only cover was some little wooden sheds.