Put Out the Light

by Terry Deary

  I asked what she was saying and had to explain, ‘That’s not free food – it’s waste food. That’s a pig-bin.’

  She shook her head. ‘In Dachau camp, that is good food. There are no waste-food bins in Dachau camp.’

  We walked on through streets as moon-bright, bomb-lit, fire-coloured, rose-skied as daylight.

  The shelter was jammed. Even though it was freezing outside, inside it was steaming hot as there were so many people. Some of the Women’s Voluntary Service were serving tea and sandwiches.

  At last, Irena began to show some feeling. She gazed on the sandwich pile – fish paste, a few cheese and some made with slices of Spam.

  ‘All that food,’ she breathed and spoke in English. ‘Look, Manfred, you think you Germans are starving the British to death, but they have more food than a king in a palace!’

  ‘I thought Manfred was Polish,’ Sally said quickly.

  Irena screwed up her face, cross with herself for her slip. ‘He is Polish now,’ she said and explained no more. When we reached the front of the queue, she took a plate and a sandwich. Manfred said something sharply as she placed it to her lips.

  ‘What is he saying?’ I asked.

  ‘He said I must not eat too fast. I will be sick. I have not had so much food for many months.’

  ‘One sandwich?’ Sally asked.

  Irena shrugged. ‘A little turnip soup twice a day. A small piece of bread. Just enough to keep me alive – not enough to give me the strength to escape.’

  ‘But you did,’ I said as I chewed on a disgusting fish-paste sandwich and pulled a bone out of my teeth.

  She looked at me and shook her head in wonder. ‘I did,’ she said. ‘I really did.’ And her eyes filled with tears.

  Manfred ate silently and his eyes darted around the room, afraid.

  I pointed a finger at my chest. ‘Me, Billy.’ I pointed at him. ‘Manfred?’

  He nodded. He was going to be hard work to talk to, but just then our mum came along and smothered us in hugs. ‘I thought you were at one of the other shelters!’ she cried.

  ‘We were,’ Sally lied. ‘But we were worried about you so we came here.’ Then she explained how we’d met Irena and Manfred on the common and seen Dad.

  Mum looked at the foreign children. ‘Things must be bad in Germany if you took such a risk to escape,’ she said. ‘But you’re safe now. There are a lot of Polish pilots at Firbeck air base. They’ll be happy to look after you. We’ll get you there as soon as this raid is over and we’re all cleared up.’

  The rest of that night passed like a bad dream. It is jumbled in my memory because we kept falling asleep in the warm fug. We found a corner and sat on blankets. Irena rested her head on Manfred’s shoulder and fell asleep first. He looked at her with a strange mixture of pain and tenderness before he, too, fell asleep. Sally was snoring soon after and I couldn’t keep my eyes open, either.

  At around two in the morning, there was a lot of noise and I rubbed my eyes to see Mum sitting next to me on the floor, supping tea from a white enamel mug.

  ‘What’s happening?’ I asked.

  ‘Another attack. One of the wardens from the post next door says a bomb landed on the Marple Hotel near the centre of town. It’s Thursday night – there will have been a lot of people there dancing. Poor, poor people … and their families. Your dad’s in that part of –’ She tailed off.

  ‘Part of what?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing, Billy. Go back to sleep,’ she said. And I did.

  We were woken by the last raid around three in the morning. This time, the bombs seemed further away but still they shook the shelter. Manfred began to mutter in his sleep. ‘Eins …’ and then as the second bomb exploded, ‘zwei …’ then, ‘drei …’ then, ‘vier …’ and finally, ‘fünf …’

  Irena had tried to place a hand over his mouth. ‘Hush, Manfred!’

  ‘What’s he doing?’ I asked.

  ‘Counting – the bombs come in racks of five. They are released, one rack at a time, and the bombs fall in fives. When you hear number five, you know you’re safe for a while.’

  ‘And if you don’t hear five?’

  ‘You probably don’t hear it because you are dead,’ Irena shrugged, turned over and went back to sleep.

  I fell asleep counting bombs instead of sheep that nightmare night.

  Chapter 40

  Sheffield, England 13 December 1940

  We stepped out of the shelter the next morning. The air was filled with a dusty haze of smashed bricks and cement and the sharp scent of burning wood. Somehow it was better than the scent of the toilet buckets and the tobacco smoke inside the shelter.

  We stood outside our house. Windows were cracked and a chimney pot leaned at a crazy angle, but we were the lucky ones.

  In the next street, houses lay shattered and smoking. Home Guard and ARP men crawled over the rubble like beetles.

  Manfred’s face was filled with pain and he said something to Irena. She turned to us.

  ‘Manfred’s grandpa had a house damaged by bombs. He says we have to search quickly. If you leave it too long, the people inside will die.’

  I looked at Sally. ‘I don’t suppose there will be any school today. Let’s do what we can.’

  Dad was walking down the street towards us. His cuts had not been patched and his hands were torn and bleeding. ‘You’re all safe, thank God,’ he said. ‘I’ve been to the Marple Hotel. It took a direct hit.’

  ‘Anyone inside?’ Mum asked.

  ‘Just before eleven, a bomb flattened the C&A Modes store across the road from the Marple. Some people were hurt, so they all took shelter in the cellars of the Marple. An hour later, a bomb went clean through the hotel roof, through seven stories of rooms and bars, and brought the whole lot down on the poor souls in the cellars. It’ll take a week to get them out.’

  ‘Alive?’ I asked.

  Dad just shook his head. ‘One or two, if they’re lucky. But there must have been a hundred poor beggars inside. We started digging, but it was hopeless. Angel Street and King Street are just blown away.’ He looked up at the sky. ‘I thought they were supposed to be aiming for the factories, not people out having a dance. How come so many bombs hit the town centre, everyone’s asking. What a bloody war.’

  Mum wrapped an arm around his shoulder and led him back home to tend to his wounds. We four children stood and looked at a stream of people walking up the road with shovels and saws, buckets and crowbars. We followed as they headed towards Jubilee Terrace. The rescuers were milling around the end of Mrs Grimley’s street.

  ‘The street was clear, Mrs Grimley,’ Sergeant Proctor of the Home Guard was saying wearily. ‘We checked the names of everyone in this street and they were all in the shelter. There’s nobody to dig out here.’

  ‘I tell you, I came back at first light and I heard a voice,’ she said and jabbed him with a bony finger. ‘I’m not deaf and I’m not daft, Mr Proctor.’

  We looked up at the house. The end wall had collapsed into the roadway. The roof had sunk down on its thick beams and through the broken slates we could see the flowered wallpaper of her bedroom and one corner of an iron bed.

  Sally leaned towards me. ‘If it’s not someone from the street then you know who it must be.’

  ‘The Blackout Burglar!’ I said. ‘We didn’t catch him, but it looks like the Luftwaffe did.’

  Beneath the ruined wall of Mrs Grimley’s house, I could make out the crushed remains of a car. The badge on the front was covered in dust. I brushed it away and saw that it was a Lanchester.

  I could have loved that car. Once, in the school yard, I sneaked the door open and looked inside the ice-black, shiny-leather-scented, walnut-chrome, smooth-dialled, polished work of art made from Sheffield steel. When you’re young, the death of a car matters as much as the death of a man. When you grow older, you learn that a car can be replaced but a person never can.

  ‘The Blackout Burglar,’ I said. ‘It was Mr Cutter, ou
r history teacher. He parked here to go inside the house but the wall fell on the car and crushed him,’ I explained.

  ‘If he’s in there, then there’s no point wasting time digging him out,’ Sergeant Proctor said. ‘He’ll be flat as a hedgehog on the road. We have to find the living ones that we can save.’

  The men with shovels and spades nodded and moved on to the next street.

  ‘Mrs Grimley heard him moan,’ I said. ‘We have to try.’

  ‘You’re right, lad,’ the old woman said.

  Manfred and Irena seemed eager to help and they began to pull away the broken bricks from the roof of the car. Manfred passed them to Irena and she threw them aside with more strength than those pipe-cleaner arms should have had.

  ‘You don’t want to see this,’ I said to Sally. ‘Go home.’

  ‘Listen, Dr Watson, I have been tracking the Blackout Burglar for months. I want to see him.’ She stood beside Irena. The Polish girl was older than my sister but no bigger. They could have been sisters and worked side by side like two friends playing with dolls.

  At last, Manfred pulled a few bricks from the smashed windscreen and made a hole. The dusty light streamed in. He looked at us with a puzzled face. He shook his head.

  Sally scrambled over the bonnet and looked inside. ‘No way!’ she cried.

  ‘Is it really horrible, Sal?’ I asked.

  ‘No – it’s really empty!’

  ‘My car!’ came a voice from behind me. We swung around to see Mr Cutter, Hitler-moustache bristling, looking at the Lanchester with a pained expression on his face. Mrs Haddock stood next to him.

  ‘You shouldn’t have been out last night,’ she said.

  ‘You told me to meet you!’ he argued fiercely. It was the voice he used when he was cross with us boys. ‘As soon as I heard the siren, I parked up and headed for the shelter up the road.’

  ‘And where are my chocolates?’ the old woman squawked. ‘I stayed in my shop through all the bombing, waiting for you.’

  The old policeman, Constable Anderson, who’d visited our house the month before was suddenly by our side. He listened with interest as my history teacher said, ‘The chocolates are in the boot of the car, of course. You didn’t expect me to deliver them in the middle of an air raid, did you?’

  ‘Get them out,’ the old woman said.

  ‘No, leave them,’ the policeman said. ‘It’s evidence.’

  The teacher turned sharply and almost fell on his backside. ‘Evidence?’

  ‘Is this your car, sir?’

  ‘Well, it was …’

  ‘So, if we find black-market goods in the boot, you’ll have a bit of explaining to do.’

  ‘Ah … no … I can explain.’

  ‘And your name is?’

  ‘Cutter!’ I cried. ‘Mr Cutter. He’s a history teacher at our school.’

  The policeman made a note and took down the miserable man’s address. ‘Once we have all the people out of this mess, we’ll take a look at the car. Then I’ll be paying you a little visit, Mr Cutter. And what is your name, madam?’ he asked, turning to the owner of the sweet shop.

  ‘My name? What you want my name for? I’ve done nowt. I’ve never even seen this feller in me life, have I?’ she asked.

  ‘No, Mrs Haddock, never,’ the teacher said savagely and walked off down the dusty street.

  ‘Haddock – fish seller, are you?’ Constable Anderson joked. ‘Let’s go and have a look at your stock, shall we? See if everything’s properly paid for. Check your ration books.’

  ‘She is a dark horse,’ said the vicar, Mr Treadwell, who had suddenly appeared.

  ‘Morning, sir,’ the policeman said and tapped the front of his helmet in salute.

  ‘Good morning, officer. I heard there were injured and dying in this street and I’ve come to offer them the comfort of God’s word.’

  ‘Or he’s come to look for the comfort of Mrs Grimley’s money,’ I said to Sally. ‘Treadwell’s the Blackout Burglar – I always said it!’

  ‘Did you?’ Sally asked. She turned to her new friend, Irena. ‘My brother and I are detectives, you know. I am the top ‘tec – Sherlock Holmes – and he is my assistant. I’m never wrong and he’s never right.’

  Irena gave the first smile I’d ever seen on her pinched face. ‘Boys are usually wrong. Manfred was wrong. But he is learning.’

  Mrs Grimley was arguing with the constable. ‘So if it wasn’t the teacher in his car, who did I hear groaning?’

  ‘There are no dead or wounded in this street. The Home Guard just told me,’ Constable Anderson said.

  ‘If he wasn’t in the car, he must be in the ruin of my house,’ the old woman said and stamped her clog on the cobbles.

  The broken bricks made a rough ramp up to Mrs Grimley’s bedroom. Vicar Treadwell looked up eagerly. ‘I could go up and see,’ he offered.

  ‘No point taking that sort of risk, sir,’ the policeman told him. ‘That roof could collapse.’

  ‘He wants the money!’ I whispered to Sally, and explained quickly to Irena how we’d been hunting the Blackout Burglar.

  ‘Your priest? A thief?’ Irena asked.

  ‘Looks like it,’ I said.

  And then I heard the soft groan. It came from the open bedroom. A piece of broken brick moved.

  ‘There is someone up there!’ I cried.

  ‘I told you, I told you,’ Mrs Grimley crowed.

  ‘We’ll get a team here as soon as possible,’ Constable Anderson said. ‘I’ll go to the police box and put a call through. There’s so many lost in the ruins this morning, it could take a while.’

  ‘We have to help him now!’ I argued.

  The policeman shook his head. He climbed a few steps up the ramp of rubble towards the bedroom but it crumbled under his feet. ‘I could bring the lot down. Finish him off. No, I’m just too heavy.’

  ‘I’m not,’ Irena said and she was halfway up before the constable could turn round. He called for her to come back down, but he might as well have asked a Nazi bomb to stop falling. ‘Where’s that girl’s gas mask?’ he grumbled.

  ‘Lost it in the bombing,’ Sally said quickly.

  Irena began to gently lift bricks and throw them down into the street. ‘There is a man here,’ she said.

  ‘You need help,’ Sally called and followed Irena up to the bedroom. Mum would kill me if she knew I’d let my sister climb into danger.

  ‘Ohhhh!’ I groaned. ‘I’ll have to help her,’ I said to Manfred.

  He didn’t speak English but he seemed to understand. We joined hands and helped one another up through the slope of broken bricks.

  We could make out the navy uniform and the black helmet with ARP on the front. The helmet had saved him. But a beam from the roof lay across his legs and was weighed down with so much rubble the four of us couldn’t move it.

  The man’s face was white with plaster dust, like a statue. He moaned again and opened his eyes. Irena gently brushed away the dust and we could see the long hair curling out from under the helmet.

  Sally almost fell backwards and knocked me over. ‘Mr Crane? Warden Crane?’ she cried.

  ‘Hello, Sally love,’ he croaked. ‘I don’t suppose you have a drink of water?’

  ‘I’ll get it!’ said Irena, and scrambled down light as a spider to ask the policeman.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked.

  His pale eyes looked into mine. ‘I am the “snapper-up of unconsidered trifles”,’ he whispered. ‘Shakespeare’s words for a thief. I came for Mrs Grimley’s money.’

  ‘The Blackout Burglar?’

  ‘And a very good burglar,’ he chuckled and the laugh brought a bubble of blood to the corner of his mouth. ‘Now I have a thousand pounds, I can retire,’ he smiled.

  ‘A thousand pounds?’

  ‘Yes, I have it in my hands.’

  His arm was stretched out under the bed. I lifted slates and splinters of wood out of the way and looked under the bed. There was a
box. I tugged it out.

  ‘Open it,’ the warden said.

  The cash box was not locked. I lifted the lid. It was full of one-pound notes. Hundreds of them.

  ‘Show me?’ Warden Crane said.

  He couldn’t raise his head with that heavy black helmet.

  ‘“Death, the one appointment we all must keep”,’ he sighed.

  ‘Shakespeare?’

  ‘No,’ Sally said as Irena appeared with a cracked cup filled from the yard tap. ‘Not Shakespeare – the great detective, Charlie Chan.’

  ‘I bet he wouldn’t have caught the Blackout Burglar – Charlie Chan’s not as great as Sally Thomas.’

  My sister unfastened the strap and slipped off the warden’s helmet. The morning sun streamed onto his face, and the man blinked. He opened his eyes briefly, but now they were looking at something far away. Something we couldn’t see.

  ‘Put out the light!’ he cried and the blood sprayed up and over the money he had been dying to find. ‘“Put out the light, and then put out the light.”’ And the light went out in his eyes.

  I looked at Irena, who shook her head. Then only she had the courage to place her fingertips on the warden’s eyelids and close them.

  We climbed slowly back down to the cobbles, where Constable Anderson stood next to Mrs Grimley. I handed the blood-spattered money to her.

  ‘I’m an old fool,’ she muttered. ‘Hoarding my money like some old miser. If I’d put it in the bank, Mr Crane would still be alive. I feel like I killed him!’ she sobbed.

  ‘How is he?’ the policeman asked me. ‘The warden?’

  ‘Dead.’

  The policeman nodded. ‘It’s as well – I’d only have had to arrest him. He’d never have lived with the disgrace. In a lot of ways he was a nice bloke – kind, funny, good company. I’ll miss old Tommy.’

  ‘What?’ Irena said sharply.

  ‘Old Tommy Crane, the warden.’

  ‘So he was the “Tommy” the bomb was for,’ she said.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked her.

  She looked up at Mrs Grimley’s weeping face. ‘No, you and your money didn’t kill him,’ the girl said gently. ‘He died because it was his time. There was a bomb with his name on it. And when that happens, all the money in the world won’t save you.’