"Wait!" said the woman, holding up her hand. She vanished back into her yard. Rudi wondered whether to run, but he couldn't. His ankle was too painful and the back lane was too long. He waited what seemed a lifetime, until the woman reappeared with half a loaf and a large wizened apple. Now there was a man behind her, her husband doubtless. He had a bald head, a thrusting chin, a collarless shirt and red braces, into which he stuck his thumbs aggressively.
"What you hanging round here for, pestering women?"
"Meerp, meerp, ugama," said Rudi, earnestly.
"Hush, Jack," said the woman, "can't you see he's a dumbie?"
"Riffraff," said her husband. "I'd shoot the likes of those. No use to the War Effort at all."
"How much use are you, always on the Sick with your back?" asked the woman, a spark kindling in her eye. "Leave the poor bugger alone. He's not doing you any harm." She thrust loaf and apple into Rudi's hands. "Here yar, love, and the best of luck."
"Ug, ug, meerp," said Rudi, and shambled away. He could hear the man and woman start to quarrel as they entered the house.
Rudi wandered on till he found a bombed house in a huge wooded garden. The gates were wired together, but he got over them somehow. The house was abandoned. But it had water trickling from a burst pipe in what had been the kitchen; and one room still had a roof, and glass in the windows. There were old pink mattresses thrown about, and torn curtains for bedding. Even plenty of broken wood for a fire, if he had only had matches. Why, he could live here for weeks.
He settled down and ate the apple, and half of the bread. He made himself leave the rest till later. He'd been luckier than he deserved; the tramp disguise was working. It wouldn't have worked in Germany. There were no tramps there now. Hitler had put them into the hospitals and they were never seen again.
He started. Footsteps sounded on the gravel drive. He peeped around the filthy curtain. A man in a blue uniform was staring at the house. Gestapo? Did the British have Gestapo? He wore no gun, carried no truncheon, but wore a tall pointed hat. Polizei? The man limped and looked very tired. Even in his own present state, Rudi felt sorry for him. It would be a pity to shoot him.
Was this the moment to surrender? It would be so easy, that walk to the Polizei barracks. What could seem more harmless to hostile civilians than a Polizei walking with an old tramp? And once in a cell, he would be safe from ropes and pitchforks.
But Rudi was a gambler at heart: on horses, at cards, even on racing two cockroaches. And at the moment his luck was holding.
He heard the sergeant enter the house; heard his heavy boots echoing from room to room, coming nearer. All Rudi could do was get behind the door, Luger in one hand, loaf of bread in the other.
The door opened; the sergeant's helmeted head appeared. It seemed to Rudi he was looking for something on the floor, not for a person. Rudi held his breath, finger on trigger.
The door closed. Rudi waited till the footsteps receded, and then took several great panting breaths. The sergeant left the house, and went around in back. Rudi crept from room to room, watching him. The back garden was wild and huge, with old statues and urns overthrown by the bomb's blast. The sergeant began to walk among them, down toward the back fence where a mound of tumbled rubble lay under the trees.
The sergeant paused, then began to pick his way gingerly. Suddenly, his shiny boot vanished up to the ankle.
"Damn and Hell!" The sergeant slipped and nearly fell, hanging onto a sundial for support. His boots were covered in thick yellow mud. He shrugged, and turned back toward the house, rubbing his boots on the long grass as he came. He passed, and his footsteps faded.
Immediately, Rudi felt the call of nature. Quick; the last thing he wanted was wet trousers. But not in the house. He might be there for days, and he couldn't stand the smell of a place where someone had urinated.
He'd go down the garden, under the trees. He grinned; the mud wouldn't put him off; his flying boots couldn't get any muddier. With difficulty, he reached the trees. He looked back, to make sure nobody was watching. Funny, that house looked familiar... where had he seen it before? He couldn't have seen it before. He'd been once on holiday in England before the War, but that was Brighton, hundreds of miles south. You're getting delirious, Kamerad, he thought to himself.
After he had been among the trees, he felt much better, and stared about. There was a little doorway in that mound of rubble, not much bigger than a rabbit hole; in fact there were three doorways, all in a row. What was it, a bomb shelter? A coal cellar? Rudi couldn't resist his curiosity; he had a feeling he was being foolish, but he had to know what was inside. Down the hole he went.
He straightened up, and looked straight down the barrel of a machine gun. By the light of a candle, he could see four helmeted figures crouching over the gun.
His luck had ended with a vengeance. He put up his hands, as high in the air as he could push them. As he did so, the sacks fell from his waist and head.
10
Clogger had done a wonderful job with the concrete floor. He'd even got the holes in the right place, so that the tripod fitted in neatly. They brought out the gun and screwed it into the tripod. It swung easily and precisely, covering land and sky. It would certainly never jump about again, a menace to life and limb. Now it would fire where it was pointed.
"Might as well change the magazines," said Cem. After a lot of fiddling, the empty magazine was removed.
"I'll just test the gun while it's empty," said Chas. He pulled the trigger and there was a satisfying sharp click. But when Cem insisted on trying it, there was no click; the trigger felt slack, dead.
"Try pulling all the little levers," suggested Cem. They pushed and pulled everything for ten minutes, but the trigger remained dead. Even (amidst Audrey's protests) putting a full magazine on made no difference.
"You've bloody broken it," said Chas in disgust.
"It was broken 'fore I touched it," said Cem. "Was you."
"Wasn't, so."
"Was, so."
"Och, gie us a go at sorting it then," said Clogger. "Ma dad could aye mend watches."
What else was there to do? What good is a gun that won't fire?
"All right, but be careful."
They watched hopefully. His fingers seemed so sure and clever. He loosened one nut, then another. Then there was a ping, and a shower of shiny pieces fell all over the new concrete floor.
"Crikey!"
"Don't worry; Ah can mend it."
"You and whose army?"
Clogger got on his hands and knees and began frantically picking up the pieces. "Gie out o' ma light," he grunted angrily.
But somebody was scrambling down the loophole to get in. Somebody... they froze with horror. The somebody was big, an adult. And it wasn't John. It was a stranger; an adult stranger.
Chas felt his stomach pull together in a tight knot, the way a spider does when you touch it.
This wasn't real; this was a nightmare. The dead German air gunner had come back for his gun, helmet and all! It was like his Granda's nightmare, when the Austrian soldier came back for his hat badge! Chas grabbed the machine gun; even a dead air gunner wasn't going to take his treasure.
But the German had his hands up!
"Quick, it's a Jerry. Get his gun." The phrase sprang to his lips from so many war films.
Clogger reacted, too, like someone in the movies, getting behind the German, patting around his waist for a weapon. He flipped open the holster, pulled out the Luger and backed away to the wall of the shelter.
"Dumkopf!" said Rudi to himself bitterly. These were children, playing at soldiers. But the gun was real; it was the kind he used himself. He stared around, as his eyes got used to the candlelight; at the neatly piled sandbags. Were these children or soldiers? Was the British Army as short of men, after Dunkirk, as the Fuehrer had said? Or was every Britisher armed, even children? Was England one vast armed camp, just waiting to massacre any poor German who landed? Were these the awful English,
who would fight on the beaches, as Churchill said? It was very confusing.
For a long time they all stared at each other, then Rudi said, "Please, hands down? Mein arms tired are."
"Hande hoch!" screamed Clogger, pulling back the round handle on top of the Luger. That, too, was what they did in the movies.
Steady, thought Rudi. I must be calm or I'll get my head blown off. He said, carefully and slowly, "Please may I down sit? I tired am."
"Let him, Clogger. It's safer." Clogger nodded, and gestured down at the concrete floor with the pistol barrel. Rudi sat down very slowly, and put his hands on the back of his neck. Only his eyes moved, here and there. Who were these kids? The British version of the Hitler Youth? Another was pointing a long black air rifle at him.
He glanced at the machine gun. It was on a good solid mounting, but it was stripped down. It couldn't have been fired anyway. He'd been fooled. Now they were holding him prisoner with his own verdammt pistol, which was dangerously cocked. They were passing it gingerly from one to the other. Oh, Rudi, Rudi, he thought, lifting his eyes to the ceiling, if only your mother could see you now! Perhaps they would fetch soldiers soon, and the soldiers would take him away to a nice safe prison camp.
"What we going to do?" screamed Cem. "He's a Nazi!"
"He's no sae like a proper Nazi," said Clogger dubiously. And indeed the tattered wretch before them was not much like those black shiny-booted storm troopers who goose-stepped nightly through their dreams.
"He ain't got no swastikas!"
"He's not a blond beast!"
"He looks hungry," said Audrey. "Can I give him a mug of tea?"
"S'pose so," said Chas, grudgingly. The German slowly removed his flying helmet, and sucked at the tea noisily. His hair was long, black and greasy, and going a bit grey at the sides, like Mr. McGill's. He really looked like somebody's dad—a bit fed up and tired.
"What are we going to do with him?"
"Take him to the Warden's Post."
"What, with a loaded Luger stuck in his back? That'll cause a few questions. Besides, he'd tell them about us."
"But he can't speak English."
"He can, a bit. Besides, they'll interrogate him in German. Errol Flynn did, in that film. Then he'll split about the Fortress and the machine gun, and then we've had it."
"But they're only supposed to give their name, rank and number. That's in the Geneva Convention."
"The what?"
"The Geneva Convention."
"What do you know about the Geneva Convention?"
"My dad told me."
"Och, tripe."
"Besides, that only means he mustn't tell the interrogators anything about Germany—it doesn't mean he won't split on us."
Rudi watched their worried faces woozily. It was warm in here, with the smell of paraffin. He hadn't been warm for a week. He was so tired... the place was going dark...
"Hey, he's falling asleep!"
"Better get him inside. Hey, raus, raus." Rudi sat up with a bewildered jerk.
"Poor sod, he's knackered." Clogger pointed toward the interior of the Anderson with his pistol barrel. Rudi went like a sleep walker. He had a blessed vision of a real bunk, a patchwork quilt, and then he knew no more. The children looked at his snoring shape.
"Blimey!"
11
"It's getting near the spring tides," opined Mr. McGill, looking up from the Daily Express. "That's when They'll come, mark my words."
"But it's not spring yet," said Mrs. McGill, "it's only February."
"I don't mean that kind of spring, woman. A spring tide's when the sea's higher than usual. It'll carry their flat-bottomed barges up over the beach defences."
"What's flat-bottomed barges, Dad?"
Mr. McGill laid down his paper. "They're boats wi' flat bottoms, so they can get close ashore. Hitler's gathering all he can find in Holland and Belgium, and when he's ready, he'll tow them across full of soldiers, using tugs."
"But they won't come this far north," said Mrs. McGill. "They'll land on the Thames, or Liverpool or something." Her grasp of geography was never great. Chas could never convince her that Edinburgh was not near London.
"Har," said Mr. McGill, "mevve that's what them buggers wants us to think. They'll get aal our soldiers down south, and then they'll attack up here and cut the country in half."
"Don't talk like that," said his wife, "or I shan't sleep safe in my bed."
"That Hiker's liable to do anything," said Nana. "The crafty gyet. I reckon they don't watch the beach close enough. Hilter could nip ashore off one of them U-boats, and we'd never know he was here till he walked in the front door. And then I'd tell him a thing or two. I haven't forgotten Granda's best topcoat, and them two china dogs they done for. The buggers."
"Mother," said Mr. McGill patiently, "Hitler wouldn't come on his own. He'd bring his whole army."
"Aye, mevve. Ah only wish Granda was twenty years younger. He'd see him off."
"Do you really think they'll come, Dad?" said Chas, thinking of his own, personal, sleeping German.
"Well," said Mr. McGill in a businesslike way, "Hitler can't afford to hang about forever. We're getting stronger all the time; there's all those Canadian soldiers arriving on the newsreels, and we're churning out more and more Spitfires. By, I saw twenty-five all together, from the top of the gasholder yesterday, and a grand sight they looked."
"Spitfires is too fond of flying about aal day like paper kites. What aboot at nights?" said Nana. "They can't stop the Jarmans then."
"Mother. The Spitfires cannot see them at nights."
"Don't see why not. The Jarmans could see to bomb wor house. And split Granda's coat."
"They can't see either. They were aiming for the ships in the river."
"Why, they're blinder than a drunken sailor, then."
"Mother, that's what I said..."
Were the Germans really coming, wondered Chas. If so, there'd be use for the machine gun yet. But the gun was broken. Perhaps their prisoner could mend it? He wondered how Clogger and Nicky were getting on.
Rudi wakened as from a black pit. Someone had taken off his boots while he slept. He was deliciously warm, and there was a smell of frying.
"Here's ya breakfast." He saw a determined face with freckles and a shock of ginger hair. The boy held a plate of fried bread and bacon in one hand, and the still-cocked pistol in the other.
Rudi took the plate, eyeing the gun nervously, and wolfed the food, and then felt again the call of nature. He made appropriate signals, embarrassed because one of the children was a girl.
They led him to a clump of bushes, well away from the camp, and watched him solemnly. He was glad to get back into his bunk. He was sweating, his legs were wobbly, and he had a racking cough. It was as if, having reached a place of safety, his body was exacting payment for what it had suffered. He fell asleep again, almost immediately.
"He's poorly."
"Aye, he's got the bronchitis, Ah'm thinking."
"Do you think he'll die?" asked Audrey. "Should we fetch a doctor?"
"No," they all chorused.
"We've got some cough mixture at home. I'll go and fetch it."
Day and night ceased to exist for Rudi. Awake, he alternately shivered and sweated, scratching himself where his rucked-up trousers chafed his body. Asleep, he fended off endless Spitfeaers attacking from the blind-spot under the tail.
The only comfort was an endless succession of tea, cocoa, medicine and soup; and the worried face of the girl-child who spooned them into his mouth. Often, all the children would sit and watch him with that same worried look, until he was certain he was dying.
The children baffled him. They weren't ordinary children, like those he had played with at the Oberschule before Hitler came. They were too solemn, too adult; except that even adults sometimes laughed.
But they were not solemn like those little pigs of Hitler Youth, who swaggered everywhere in their swastika armbands, and would report
you for getting drunk in uniform, or even walking down the street with a tunic button undone. If you criticised the bosses in Germany these days, the last place you did it was in a children's playground.
No, these children were strange in that they neither laughed nor quarrelled. Oh, they argued, argued a lot. But they never fell out, or walked off in a huff. It was as if they depended on each other like... the crew of a bomber. Sink or swim together.
Of course, they weren't always there. Only two never left. The one with red hair and freckles and a chin like a rock; nothing would ever shake that one. He was already a man. The other was nervous, with dark wistful eyes. He jumped at every noise. He was the weak point; the one who, if Rudi was ever to escape, must be tricked, frightened, exploited.
But the dark one was a danger too. For the two boys guarded him alternately, sitting at the far end of the opposite bunk with the still-cocked Luger in their lap. Night and day, whenever he awakened, one or the other was there.
They held the pistol so differently. The redhead held it calmly, pointing out of the door, finger clear of the trigger; as quietly as a carpenter holds a hammer. But the dark one's fingers played constantly over the whole gun, worrying at it. Lugers had delicate triggers; even with the safety catch on they could go off if you dropped them. In this metal box the bullet would ricochet round like a demented bee, till it found somebody's flesh.
That gun had to be uncocked for everyone's sake. The times the dark boy held it were no good; he was too jumpy. Rudi must wait till the redhead held it.
Stan Liddell had almost forgotten what it was like to be a schoolteacher. Every day as he walked past the school he looked up at the roof; every day the tail of the bomber mocked him. Workmen had tried stretching tarpaulins across the hole to make the roof watertight. But the wind first waved them like huge flags, and then blew them away. Rain dripped from floor to floor, ceaselessly.
The first week, Stan and the other teachers had salvaged books and globes and wall charts. They organised classes for the school certificate forms in the games pavilions and groundsman's hut, and then they stuck. There were no church halls or cinemas or even churches available to teach in; they were being used as rest centres and soup kitchens for bombed-out families.
The Machine Gunners Page 10
