Put Out the Light

by Terry Deary

  Manfred waved it at the officer and called his thanks before he turned and ran up the road to the factory outside the camp. He used to play football in the surrounding fields before the war so he knew the layout. The church clock was chiming ten as he raced over the grass towards a gate in the high wire fence that had a sign saying ‘C’ over it.

  The girl was already there, talking to a guard who sat on the ground rolling a cigarette. She said something to the man. He nodded and she stepped out to meet Manfred.

  ‘What do you want with me, Manfred, sir?’ Irena asked.

  They began to walk away from the gate and into the moonlit field.

  ‘I want you to get me inside the factory.’

  The ghost of a smile twitched at the girl’s thin lips. ‘Most of the workers want to get out of the factory,’ she said.

  Manfred explained his plan to write a name on a bomb with chalk. The girl looked him in the eye. ‘And me? Why should I do this for you?’

  ‘I saved you from those girls. They could have killed you.’

  ‘Maybe it would have been better if they did,’ she said quietly.

  ‘No!’ Manfred cried. ‘Life is hard now. But the war will soon be over. We are winning.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Germany.’

  ‘I am a Pole – an under-human, you call us,’ Irena reminded him.

  ‘But you can be proud to work for the greatest nation the Earth has ever seen,’ Manfred said.

  ‘Work, sir? You mean slave?’

  ‘We Germans will treat you well after the war.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘You’ll see. Look at the sign on the main gate. It says: “Work and you shall be set free”. Help us to make bombs to win the war. When the war is over –’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘You can go back to Poland with your family and work just as you did before the war,’ Manfred said.

  The girl looked at him curiously, the moon lighting her large eyes and making deep shadows in her hollow cheeks. ‘No, Manfred, sir, it won’t be the same. I have no family. My family fought back when you Germans invaded.’ Her voice was flat. ‘You shot my mother because she spat on a German soldier. My father took a bullet in the chest when his gang of partisans attacked a German convoy in the woods. I nursed him till he was fit to walk, but a German patrol found us and shipped us here to work in the munitions factory.’

  ‘But there are doctors at Dachau camp. We Germans wouldn’t harm a good worker.’

  Irena gave a small frown. ‘You are right. It was not the Germans who killed him. It was the kapos.’

  ‘What are they?’

  ‘The Germans are too busy fighting the war to run the camp. They leave it to the prisoners to run themselves. The Germans picked the most cruel criminals to be kapos – to order us around, feed us, pick work parties and punish us when we don’t work hard enough. The German guards are bad – but the kapos are much worse.’

  ‘They killed your father?’

  ‘He was weak – he only had one lung. They sent him to the gravel pits to shovel gravel twelve hours a day. I saw him every night after work.’

  She stopped, closed her eyes and raised her face to the half-moon. Manfred saw one silver tear slide out through the closed lids. She sniffed and went on. ‘One evening, he wasn’t there. One of the Poles told me what had happened. When father fell over, too weak to work, a kapo marched him into the pond in the middle of the pit and made him stand in the water up to his chest. It was last December. When he fell forward, he was dragged out and put in a wheelbarrow. He was dead before they got him back to the camp.’

  Manfred’s voice was hoarse. ‘The kapos … yes. Germans wouldn’t treat a man like that, even an under-human.’

  ‘Of course not,’ Irena said quietly. ‘Of course not.’

  ‘So now you work in the factory?’

  She nodded. ‘But one day I will –’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I can’t tell you. You will tell the guards and I’ll be executed.’

  ‘I’d never do that!’

  She shrugged. ‘What does it matter? I dream that one day I will escape. I will go to England. I’ll be free.’

  Manfred said eagerly, ‘Then if you help me get into the factory, I will help you escape.’

  ‘You can’t.’

  ‘I’ll do my best. I promise.’

  Irena looked at him. ‘Perhaps,’ she said. ‘Perhaps.’

  Cambrai Luftwaffe aerodrome, France 27 August 1940

  The Luftwaffe pilots gathered in the main hall at the airfield. The commander spoke softly. ‘Our air raids are smashing Britain thanks to the X-Gerat radiobeam system that’s guiding our bombers to the targets. The British don’t know a thing about the radio beam. If they did, they’d find a way to block it or bend it. If your plane is forced to crash-land in England, make sure you destroy the beam-tracking machine.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ the pilots said as one.

  ‘But we also need to check that the X-Gerat beam is really working. We need to send in a spy. We’ll drop him soon after an air raid and get him to report back on how much damage we’ve really done. Luftwaffe command have asked for one of you to take the spy in. It will be a secret flight, so you’ll have no cover from the Messerschmitt fighters. You’ll be flying low to avoid their radar. It will be dangerous. Does anyone want the job?’

  ‘I do,’ Ernst Weiss said cheerfully. ‘It sounds like fun!’

  ‘You will leave some time in the next week, Weiss.’

  Ernst gave a grim smile. ‘I want a real adventure before we win this war.’

  The commander nodded. ‘If all our airmen were as brave as you, Weiss, we’d win it tomorrow.’

  September

  Chapter 10

  Sheffield, England 1 September 1940

  Sundays were always bad. The shops were closed, and I had to go to Sunday school with our Sally. Real school was starting again on Monday, so at least that meant football in the yard to look forward to, and games of marbles and swapping cigarette cards with the other lads – the ones who hadn’t been evacuated. But Sunday school was no fun at all.

  The streets were empty as we trudged along to the church hall. ‘Is Jesus up in the sky?’ Sally asked.

  I peered into the clouds and saw twenty or so of the huge, grey balloons on steel cables swaying in the wind. ‘Yes,’ I told her. ‘He’s sitting on top of that barrage balloon watching you. Make sure you behave.’

  My sister punched me on the arm. ‘Stop being silly, Billy. I want to know. Is Jesus up in the sky?’

  ‘That’s what the vicar said last week,’ I reminded her.

  ‘So why doesn’t he just stop Mr Hitler’s bombers? Why doesn’t he reach down, pick them up and drop them in the sea?’ she asked.

  ‘Ask him,’ I muttered.

  Sally walked on, her heels clacking on the pavement. ‘He’s scary,’ she said. ‘Have you seen the hairs in his nose? I don’t know how he breathes through them all.’

  ‘And his ears!’ I nodded. ‘He says Jesus called him to be a vicar. I’m surprised he heard through that forest of hair!’

  I laughed and ran to the church gate. The tumbledown tombstones were green and yellow with moss. A few flowers brightened the place and the wild spikes of willowherb glowed pink between the grey stones.

  Sally stopped and gasped. ‘Here, Billy! What would happen if a bomb fell in the graveyard?’

  I shrugged. ‘All the bodies would be blown to bits and scattered around.’

  ‘And splattered around! There’d be legs on the roof and eyeballs stuck to the windows,’ Sally cried, getting excited. ‘It would be raining fingers and toes. Gruesome!’

  The vicar, Mr Treadwell, was waiting at the door to the church hall like one of the gargoyles carved on the church roof. He wore a black coat that reached to his ankles, buttoned down the front, and had a black hood like a monk’s – a cowl – over his shoulders. He was a hairy-nosed, dragon-breathed, greasy-haire
d, food-stained-shirt, scuffed-shoe, grey-faced man.

  ‘What’s gruesome?’ the vicar asked.

  ‘A bomb dropping in your graveyard,’ Sally said.

  ‘The dead won’t mind. They are at rest with God,’ he said with a sad smile and looked up. He smelled of the mouldering prayer books that sat in a pile by the church door. I wondered if he could smell himself.

  ‘Our Billy says Jesus is sitting on one of them barrage balloons, watching us,’ Sally said. ‘Is that right, vicar?’

  The man frowned and his heavenly look turned to thunder. ‘Get inside,’ he snapped. ‘Sit down and be quiet.’

  We followed him into the church hall. Sally whispered, ‘I’m going to ask him why Jesus makes people with loads of hair inside their noses.’

  ‘Don’t you dare!’ I squeaked in panic. ‘You show me up again and I’ll kill you.’

  Sally sniffed. ‘Our dad’s a policeman. If you kill me, he’ll catch you and they’ll hang you like that Doctor Crippen who murdered his wife.’

  ‘Dad won’t do that,’ I hissed. ‘He knows what you’re like. He’ll probably make sure they give me a medal.’

  ‘Well then, I’ll go to heaven and I’ll get Jesus to make sure one of them German bombs drops on your head.’ Sally poked out her tongue as we sat in the second row of creaking wooden chairs that were as hard as Sheffield steel.

  ‘You won’t be seeing Jesus, because if I kill you, you’ll go straight to hell.’

  There were only a few children in the dusty hall, but they made enough noise. Once the hall had been full and the smell had been worse than fifty vicars, especially in winter when they didn’t have baths. Lots of the kids had newspapers sewn into their vests to keep out the cold. When spring came their mothers cut them off, gave the kids a bath and washed off four months’ worth of lice. But not Sally and me. Our dad was a policeman and he said we had to have a bath every week, the same as him.

  ‘Enough!’ roared the vicar, putting up his hand for quiet. ‘I have some important news.’

  The handful of children sat up and listened with open mouths as Vicar Treadwell spoke in a low voice. ‘Yesterday German bombers flew over London. They were aiming to destroy the dockyards on the river… Does anyone know what the river in London is called?’

  ‘Please, sir, the River Thames,’ Jimmy Duncan said. He liked showing off, did Jimmy Duncan.

  ‘Correct. But many bombs missed the docks and fell on houses in the East End of the city. Some were HE bombs … and that means?’

  ‘High Explosive,’ Jimmy said.

  ‘Correct – they mostly explode before they hit the ground so the roofs of houses and factories are damaged,’ the vicar nodded. ‘The bombers then drop incendiaries.’

  I put up my hand and said, ‘They’re bombs that burst into flames and burn everything they touch.’

  ‘Correct, and because the HE bombs have blown away the roofs, the incendiaries fall inside the houses and send them up in flames. Your Morrison shelters may save you from falling tiles and bricks, but they won’t save you when an incendiary burns your rooms. You will be turned to cinder before you can get to the door. Your gas masks will melt and burn. They ambulance crews won’t find enough of you to bury!’

  One of the girls gave a whimper of fear. ‘That’s awful!’ she moaned.

  Even my tough little sister had turned pale. I could see her skin go white under her freckles.

  ‘Two thousand Londoners were killed or injured yesterday. Some of the injured had bits of their bodies blown away and some were so badly burned they will die.’

  ‘Urrrrgh!’ I moaned. ‘What’s this got to do with God and Sunday school?’ I asked.

  Vicar Treadwell turned his long nose towards me and snorted through the grey forest of hair. ‘You should not be here,’ he said. ‘Last year, you were all offered the chance to go to the countryside where it is safe – Lincolnshire. A beautiful, quiet part of England. But some of your parents refused to send you there. London was struck by the curse of the Devil last night. Sheffield will be next. Leave now, leave tomorrow – before I have to bury you in my churchyard.’

  ‘Please, sir,’ Eddie Duncan interrupted. ‘I went to a farm. It was awful. They made us work picking tatties from first light till it got dark. And all we got to eat was bread and cheese. And we had to sleep in a barn with rats, so my mum brought us home!’

  The vicar narrowed his eyes and spoke softly. ‘Would you rather sleep with a rat or with an incendiary bomb turning your skin as crisp as pork crackling, Eddie?’

  ‘Well…’ Eddie blinked.

  ‘And you, Billy Thomas?’ he asked me. ‘A rat or a bomb? And you, Sally Thomas? Would you like to burn?’

  My sister shrugged. ‘Billy said I was going to burn in hell so I may as well get used to it.’

  Vicar Treadwell turned purple with rage. ‘Do not mock the word of the Lord!’ he screamed and his breath smelled worse than the dead rats I’d seen in our back yard. ‘The Lord says, “I will stretch out my hand, that I may smite thee and thy people with pestilence; and thou shalt be cut off from the Earth …”’

  Sally jumped to her feet. ‘If you smite me, my dad’ll smite you back.’

  ‘“…When I sharpen my flashing sword and my hand grasps it in judgment, I will take vengeance on my adversaries and repay those who hate me …”’ the vicar raged.

  ‘Please yourself,’ Sally said, ‘but you’re not getting me to Lincoln with cheese and rats and dirty farmers.’

  ‘“… Let death seize upon you, and may you go down quick into hell …”’ he spat.

  Sally walked over to the door. ‘I’ll probably see you there,’ she said.

  I stumbled after her, muttered, ‘Sorry,’ to the vicar and ran down the path after my sister.

  Chapter 11

  ‘You’ve done it now, Sal!’ I cried.

  ‘Done what? Nobody says we have to go to Sunday school.’

  ‘Our ma says we have to,’ I reminded her.

  She sniffed. ‘I’m not scared of Ma.’

  ‘Yes, you are. When you get home early, she’ll want to know why.’

  ‘Well … well, I won’t go home,’ she said and turned to walk down the back alley behind Jubilee Terrace.

  Mrs Grimley was in her yard. She had a mat hanging over the washing-line and was beating it till dust clouds drifted down.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Grimley,’ Sally called happily.

  ‘Hello, pet,’ the old woman said. ‘Not in Sunday school?’

  ‘Walked out,’ Sally said proudly. ‘That vicar was trying to boss us around. Telling us we had to get evacuated.’

  ‘He always was a bossy one,’ the woman nodded. ‘Our Paul walked out just the same when he was a lad.’ She shook her head and looked at the carpet beater. ‘Makes a habit of it.’

  ‘Sorry?’ I said.

  ‘He’s just walked out of the bomber squadron.’

  ‘He’s left the RAF?’ I gasped.

  ‘No, no, no!’ she cried. ‘Mrs Meldrum came round this morning. She has a telephone in her house. She said our Paul wanted to speak to me. He had some good news – said he was moving to Firbeck air base. Why, that’s not twenty miles away. I’ll get to see him more often.’

  ‘But Firbeck is for fighter planes. Your Paul flies bombers. There aren’t any bombers at Firbeck,’ I told her. ‘Our dad gave up his job with the Sheffield police to join the military police at Firbeck. He guards the fighters.’

  ‘I know – it’s all on account of that raid on London last night. Mr Churchill’s been on the radio. He said it was wrong of them Germans to bomb British people in their homes. He said our Royal Air Force has to go across to Germany tonight and bomb their people. Well, our Paul said that’s not right. He said he’d resign rather than kill women and children. Now the RAF doesn’t want to lose a good pilot, so they asked if he’d train as a fighter pilot, shooting down Mr Hitler’s bombers. So he’s coming up on the train tomorrow. I’ll be glad to see him. There’s things I
want to have a word with him about.’

  ‘What things?’ Sally asked.

  ‘Wicked things,’ the old woman sighed. ‘You remember on Monday how the siren sounded and we all went down to the shelter on Stanhope Street?’

  ‘Yes,’ Sally and I nodded.

  ‘When I got back, I thought my old teapot had moved – the one I keep me money in. Nobody knows I keep ten pounds in that.’

  ‘We knew that,’ Sally said.

  ‘We heard you tell Warden Crane,’ I reminded her.

  ‘Did you now? Well, in that case you might know what happened to me money. When I counted it, there were just nine pounds in the pot.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Maybe you know where my pound note went!’

  ‘Are you saying we’re thieves?’ Sally shouted. ‘Our dad’s a policeman. We’ve never stolen a biscuit off a dog.’

  Mrs Grimley spread her hands. ‘You knew where the money was – it must have been you. I forgot I told you where it was.’

  ‘We were in the shelter with you!’ Sally raged. Her face was turning red. Curtains on the houses were moving as people looked out to see what the noise was.

  ‘Let’s go home, Sally,’ I said and tugged at the sleeve of her cotton dress.

  ‘I’m going nowhere till that witch says she’s sorry,’ Sally cried.

  ‘Home, Sally … now!’ I said and pulled harder.

  ‘That’s right – flee the scene of the crime,’ the woman said and swished at us with her carpet beater. ‘Come here and I’ll give you the hiding of your lives, you little villains. I’m not the only one who’s lost money when the sirens have gone off … I bet you did all the robberies.’