The Machine Gunners

by Robert Westall

"Where d'you live?"

  "Simon Street."

  "But Simon Street's down there." Fatty Hardy jerked his thumb toward the silent road beyond the barrier. Rudi felt Nicky catch his breath.

  "No, it's me gran lives in Simon Street."

  Fatty Hardy glared at Rudi hard. "I never heard of no dumbie down Simon Street, and I only live three streets away. Hey, there's something fishy here. What you two up to?" The two soldiers, hearing the urgency in the policeman's voice, closed up with their bayonets. Rudi closed his eyes.

  And then there was a faint shout of "Help." Everyone turned. A huge figure was approaching, running with flailing arms and wide open mouth. A little woman ran close behind.

  "It's John," gasped Nicky. The flailing figure ran straight through the queue, scattering people like ninepins. It crashed into the car's hood with a whoosh of breath.

  "Grab him!" shouted Fatty Hardy. Two special constables leaped in and grabbed John's arms. He bellowed like a bull and threw them off. Then he threw over the table at which Fatty Hardy was sitting. Hardy grabbed at him, men ran to help, and the table collapsed under a scrum of struggling bodies.

  One man leaped out with a bleeding ear.

  "He bit me, the Nazi sod!" Mrs. Brownlee stood wringing her hands.

  "Oh, please don't hurt him. He's gentle as a lamb— don't frighten him."

  At last, they hauled John to his feet, and Fatty Hardy slipped a pair of handcuffs on him.

  "Oh, please, he's not a Nazi," wailed Mrs. Brownlee, "he's just our John." Fatty Hardy looked at the heaving gibbering figure.

  "Where you going now?" said John. "Where you going now?"

  "By God, it is that idiot from the Square. He's gone nuts. Loony Bin for him, missus. Straight away. Get him in the car."

  "Oh, no, please. I can handle him. He's quiet as a lamb usually."

  "Tell that to the doctor at Morpeth, missus."

  Rudi felt a tug at his hand.

  "C'mon," muttered Nicky. Nobody noticed them go.

  Nicky swung back the river door of the boathouse.

  "Use your oars till you get clear of the Castle Cliff," he said, "and then pull on this rope to raise the big sail. The little one's more complicated, but it's not so important."

  "Right," said Rudi, clambering down into the dinghy. It rocked alarmingly to his landlubber's feet. He settled down and unshipped the oars.

  "Thanks a lot, Nicky. A clever trick it was, telling the Polizei I was your deaf and dumb dad. I thought I a dead man was."

  "Rudi?"

  "Ja?"

  "I wish you were my dad. Can't I come with you?" Rudi could hear the tears in his voice.

  "Nein. Where I go, no place for you is."

  "I could sail the boat for you. I'm an expert, honest. Only... the boat's going, and you're going... and there's nothing left."

  "Nein, Liebling. There is much left; your Kamerads, your gun, your country."

  "But I like you better. Better even than my father."

  "And I you. But we both our duties have. Perhaps I see you after the War. Then we all Kamerads be, hein?" The boy began to cry uncontrollably. There was nothing to do but push off into the night, leaving the sobs to dwindle.

  The moon was very bright, the oarlocks noisy, and the guard ship on the boom very near. Rudi found the oars hard to manage; the boat kept on turning toward the guard ship.

  They must see me soon, Rudi thought.

  But overhead a fresh wave of bombers roared in. The AA guns roared, and every eye on the guard ship turned skyward. Rudi looked up at the black planes with their tiny wing-crosses, twisting and bouncing in the searchlight beams.

  "Poor bastards!"

  Then he looked at the burning docks and repeated, "Poor bastards!" War seemed very stupid, but he rowed on, trying to be a hero. There was nothing else to do.

  As soon as he rounded Castle Cliff, he felt the wind. He raised the sail and headed northeast. If there was an invasion, that was where the German fleet would be lying. The night breeze filled the sail, and the water chuckled under the bow and stern.

  At the Mill, the General Prince graciously took a chair, neatly crossing his tiny riding boots, while Stan got put through to Northern Command HQ at York.

  "Northern Command. General Wilberforce's staff," said a voice in lazy Oxford English.

  "Garmouth Home Guard here. Blue Flash."

  "Yes, O.K., Blue Flash. Fire away." Stan explained his problem. The languid voice on the far end groaned.

  "Oh, God, not Nowicki's lot again! A little fellow with a comic-opera fancy dress? Oh, yes, they're Polish Army all right, and don't I know it; what have they been up to now?"

  Stan told him.

  "But there isn't any German invasion. Every radar screen's been clear all night. Some short circuit in a police telephone box at Blyth started the bell ringing and it's all snowballed from there. God, what a bloody fuss about nothing. Tell Nowicki to pack up and go home; he's wasting petrol."

  "You tell him," said Stan. Now it was all over he felt unbearably weary.

  "Put him on then." General Nowicki listened, head cocked like a bird.

  "Ah so! But I was just go and look for myself round Blyth. Better is safe than sorry."

  "That's the last of your month's petrol ration," quacked the voice on the phone piercingly.

  "If German come we find more, no?" Nowicki put the phone down with a cherubic smile. "In Blyth we for Germans will look. But a drink to you and your brave chaps before we go, Captain Siddall."

  "Liddell," said Stan. The General Prince produced a flask and two glasses. The drink burned Stan's mouth like flame. He was vaguely aware that the Prince smashed his glass into the fireplace and was gone. With a throat like a nutmeg-grater, Stan picked up Number One phone and told Sergeant Mullins the convoy could go through.

  Rudi came awake with a start, and he was still in the dark in his little boat. He must have dozed off. It had got so peaceful; peaceful and cold.

  He looked back toward the shore; the guns had stopped, the bombing had stopped. The pink fires over the Gar were dying down. In the other direction, where the German invasion fleet should be lying off Blyth, there was simply darkness.

  Suddenly Rudi knew there was no invasion. His nearest fellow-German was three hundred miles away. It had all been British hysteria. He was more alone that he had ever been. He held on toward Germany for half an hour, while his feet and hands turned slowly numb.

  Finally, he swore, swung over the tiller and reversed course back to Garmouth. Cold heroism was not in him. He was going home to the Fortress.

  17

  In Garmouth, the hysteria died as the bombing died. The truth of no invasion spread as quickly as the false rumour had done.

  It was suddenly a working Monday morning, and raining.

  Fatty Hardy puffed indignantly to himself as he pedalled his bike up the Blyth Road. As if false invasions weren't enough, four bloody kids had to go missing. Four sets of panicking parents were raising hell at the police station. Fatty had been told the kids' names over the phone, but he hadn't really listened. What he had grasped was that he had been given the Heath to search, right down to the sea; a square mile of dense grass, all on his own. After being up all night. He'd not get home till teatime.

  Hello, what was this? Soldiers? Lots of soldiers in lorries. Ahah! If he could persuade them into helping, he could be home for breakfast in an hour. He held up the authoritative arm of the law.

  The convoy ground to a halt. A heavily moustached face peered out of the leading car.

  "Constable—the best of good mornings. How am 1 bloody able to help you?"

  Foreign soldiers? Fatty glanced at the man's shoulder flash. Ah, the Polish Corps—the Polskis. Well, better than nothing. They had two eyes each, anyway. He explained.

  "Ah yes, helping we most certainly will. We form a line down to the beach, huh, and sweeps toward that bombed house, huh? Yes, my men could doings with a walk. They are cooped up all night. We find no Jerri
es nowhere. I tell General Prince Nowicki and we are starting."

  The Poles fanned out rapidly. They carried their weapons from habit. They started. Far off, across the Heath, the Nichol house rose from its necklace of winter trees.

  Chas came to with a gasp, his chin resting on the rough weave of the sandbags. At first he was ashamed at having fallen asleep, but then he saw all the others had fallen asleep too. He was as stiff as an old horse; his tummy rumbled loudly. Like the others, he had spent half the night eating anything he could lay his hands on. Eating and swallowing stopped you feeling sick all the time.

  What had they talked about? What it was like to be hurt; what it was like to be dead. There had been a stupid argument about God, which had ended in Nicky attacking Cem, and the usually calm Cem fighting back viciously. Audrey had declaimed the Agincourt speech from Henry V which she had learned by heart, and everyone had yelled it was stupid rubbish, and then she had burst into tears. What a bloody awful stupid night.

  He looked out of the firing slit. Everything was still, silent. The world felt totally empty.

  Where are the Germans? he thought. God, has everyone run away and left us?

  It was the dawn of a new day, though not a bright one. Mist lay thick on the grass of the Heath, all the way down to the sea.

  And then Chas moaned. Out of the mist lines of soldiers were walking. Their uniforms looked grey, and they called to each other in a harsh foreign tongue. Hundreds and hundreds of them!

  "Clogger! Carrots! Cem! Wake up, they've come. Jerry's here."

  They leaped into life, hearts thumping like engines. Clogger grabbed the Luger, and leaped out into the trench, Cem grabbed the air rifle, and leaped the other way. Nicky grabbed the magazine for the gun.

  "Load!" yelled Chas. "Cock. Range?"

  "They're aye up tey the white fence," shouted Clogger.

  "That's three-fifty yards."

  "Three hundred."

  "Go on," said Chas. "I've paced it a dozen times."

  "Yer puny pace is no a yard," said Clogger firmly.

  " 'Tis so." And Chas set the sight firmly at three hundred and fifty. He never realised Germans used meters. He lay down and put his eye carefully to the sight, wriggling his shoulders to get comfortable. He watched the first man come up to the fence.

  "Hey, Fatty Hardy's with them. Pointing things out to them."

  "He's a Quisling!" shouted Clogger.

  "Perhaps he's their prisoner."

  "We can't help that. Fire before they're bloody on top of us!"

  The gun roared and slammed in Chas's hands. When the smoke cleared away, there wasn't a man to be seen. I can't have killed them all, he thought.

  And then, all along the ground where the Germans had been came little winking flashes of fire.

  Fatty Hardy felt bemused. One minute he had been walking along feeling very important; the next, he was lying face down in a muddy little stream, where someone had pushed him.

  "Ey, what's the game?" he spluttered, starting up. A brawny Polish arm knocked him down again.

  "Keepings down. Germans." Another flight of bullets sang overhead. Then the Poles were firing back, a tremendous booming din. Sand and rock splinters spouted from the area in front of the Nichol house. Under cover of the fire, groups of Poles were crawling forward at amazing speed, cradling their rifles between their flailing elbows.

  "Ey, stop that shooting," said Fatty Hardy. "You'll kill somebody!"

  "That is our work, killing Nazis," said Major Koslowski placidly.

  "But there ain't no Germans!"

  "What are these shooting at us then—boy scouts? Is paratroopers landed." The Major shouted further orders. Another flight of bullets passed overhead. "The Nazi fools are shooting too high. Soon we have them. One hand grenade and... pouf!"

  Then, abruptly, the firing stopped. Hardy looked up. A scarecrow figure, waving a dirty white flag on a twig, was walking out from between the trees right in front of where the enemy machine gun lay.

  "Ah, see, typical Nazis—cowards and improperly dressed too. I have a mind to shoot him as a spy."

  "You can't shoot a man who's carrying a white flag," spluttered Fatty Hardy. "It's not fair."

  "Ah, the English gentleman—always so bloody fair. Perhaps if your homes had been burned to the ground you would not be so concerned to be bloody fair!"

  The scarecrow figure reached the first Poles. They searched him for weapons and frogmarched him back to the major, arms twisted cruelly behind his back. From a doubled-up position he gasped.

  "Rudi Gerlath, Sergeant, Luftwaffe, 764532."

  "Spy," shouted Major. "You will be shot, and all the others with you."

  "There no others are. Back there is children."

  "Children?"

  "Ja—six schoolkids."

  Light dawned on Fatty Hardy. "Is one called McGill?"

  "Ja-Chassy McGill."

  Fatty Hardy wiped the dribbles of water off his face; he adjusted his helmet and his most fearsome expression. Suddenly, he knew where he was.

  "McGill. I might have bloody known it!"

  18

  Chas sat helpless. There wasn't a German in sight, except Rudi. Rudi was talking to Fatty Hardy. Then it all got very muddling.

  A police car turned up, disgorging the sergeant with the limp, and two more constables. Then a van turned up, and disgorged Mr. Liddell and ten Home Guard.

  "Are they all Quislings?" wailed Cem in wonder. Then all the German soldiers got up in a very relaxed sort of way, and began trailing away, smoking cigarettes. He couldn't fire at them for fear of hitting the English people. Somehow he couldn't shoot Stan Liddell, even if he was a Quisling. Then more cars arrived. His mother and father got out; and Mr. and Mrs. Parton...

  "Cor, there's me dad," said Carrot-juice.

  "And mine," said Cem Jones. "Hey, do you think the Germans are using them as hostages?"

  "Dunno," said Chas abruptly, as if he was brushing off a fly. For the Germans were retreating all the way to the skyline, and getting into trucks. The mist was clearing from the landscape now; but Chas felt it was settling into his mind instead. The Germans drove away.

  Then all the police and parents began advancing on the Fortress. They didn't look scared, as hostages should. They just looked very angry. Chas saw his father's fists were clenched.

  "Oh, God, what have we done?" wailed Cem.

  The world had two faces. Which was the true one? The world of the long night of waiting, of Stukas and Panzers, storm troopers and death? Or the world of day, of punishments, hidings and the magistrate's court? They couldn't decide. And the advancing horde gave them no time to decide.

  Something broke inside the children. The Luger cracked once, and the bullet whined wildly into the sky. As one, police, parents and Home Guard flung themselves onto their faces. They looked pathetic, ridiculous and hateful lying there.

  "Go back, sod off. Leave us alone," screamed Chas. "Sod off or we'll shoot." Suddenly, he hated them all. He went on and on shouting. "Go away! Go away! Sod off, you bastards. Leave us alone!" The parents did not move.

  Then Rudi, alone, got to his feet and began walking toward them.

  "Get back, Rudi, get back."

  Rudi went on advancing, blocking off the field of fire of the gun. The children could no longer see what was happening behind him, and they had to know.

  "Oh, God!" said Clogger, and fired the Luger. Rudi smiled stupidly, raised one hand toward them and fell to the ground.

  "Oh, Rudi!" cried Audrey, and ran out to him. In a second, all the children were gathered round him. He was lying on his back, pale and trying to speak, with a red stain spreading and spreading across his grey flying jacket.

  The ambulance had gone. The children stood in one huddled group, the adults in another. Shock still froze every face, but on the faces of the adults it was beginning to melt into righteous anger. The police sergeant fingered his notebook impatiently; Mr. McGill fingered the buckle of his belt; Mr. Parton
's voice was raised in a querulous demand to know what things were coming to. All the adults were already busy, tidying up things in their minds, making them into more comfortable shapes.

  "I don't know what's got into him!"

  "Wait till I get her home!"

  "Hooliganism!"

  Stan Liddell made his mind up. If being Home Guard Commander had its responsibilities, it also had its privileges.

  "Clear the area," he said to his men. Then he said it sharper. "Clear the area. This is a military matter." The Home Guard began to push the parents away apologetically, with their rifles. Sandy finished off the job with a look.

  "That means you, Constable, and you too, Sergeant. You put this matter in my hands and I'm keeping it there for the moment. Your time will come." The lame police sergeant flinched. Stan felt a pang of regret, but the children would never tell the truth with that peevish face around. Both policemen walked away, backs stiff with rage.

  "Now how about showing us... all this, McGill, will you?"

  The children led him and Sandy inside. They answered every question with monosyllables, and shut faces. Only when Sandy boomed, "This is a good 'ole. A very good 'ole indeed! Well made to last. I could 'ave done with this 'ole in the Somme in 1917," did their faces break into peaked grins that vanished as soon as they appeared. Stan left it to Sandy. The kids were obviously warming to him.

  "I'd like to take this whole thing over, sar, for the 'Ome Guard. We 'aven't got nothing as good as this."

  What was the sarnt-major talking about? The dugout was well made enough, but totally in the wrong place. It defended nothing. Then he looked at the children's faces and understood. That brief smile was back again.

  "And will you hand over your weapons please, lady and gentlemen? We 'aven't got nothing as good as that machine gun."

  Chas nodded. He picked up the Luger and put it into Sandy's giant fist.

  "I dare say they can come up to the Mill sometimes, sar, and see the guns?" Stan nodded.

  "Cem and I will come," said Chas, "if we're not sent away to a school. These two can't." He indicated Clogger and Nicky. "They'll have to go into a Home."

  Stan wanted to say he'd see it didn't happen. But he couldn't see it didn't happen. He couldn't even promise that Chas and Cem wouldn't be sent to an approved school. He looked at Chas.