The Machine Gunners (15 page)

"Give us a song, Rudi," they chorused.
"Ich halt einen Kameraden."

Rudi obliged. He had a creaky voice, but the confined metal space of the shelter helped, like singing in the bath. How long since he'd had a bath?

The children took up the words of the sad old soldiers' song. They sang so sweetly that Rudi was close to tears. What was happening to him? He grew less like a soldier every day; more like a
Lehrer
in some kindergarten.

"Hey, belt up, you lot," shouted Clogger. "Someone might hear us." They hushed, exchanging furtive glances. Rudi felt part of the plot. Who was on whose side? Had the children no loyalty to the British? Had he any loyalty left to the Germans? If he hadn't been shot down, he'd probably be dead by now. Blown apart in midair, or fried, or as full of holes as a colander and every one leaking blood, like some he'd dragged from wreckage.

It was good in the shelter, playing cards, learning English, plenty to eat, if you didn't mind endless corned-beef stew. If only he could have a bath.

Now the children were arguing again. He turned to listen.

"I tell you we
can
make him work. It's in the Geneva Convention."

"Yah, bollocks. You can't make a prisoner of war help you against his own people."

"You can if it's not war work. I know a farmer's got two Italians—they were captured in Abyssinia. They mend walls and milk cows and things."

"Yaah, nuts."

"Anyway, enlarging the Fortress
is
war work."

"Not building a bog and a storeroom."

"'Tis!"

"'Tisn't!"

"I quite prepared to build a bog am," announced Rudi. "It convenient for me will be too. I do not like going out into the bushes on wet nights. Bogs is not war work." It was the longest speech he had ever made in English. They looked startled.

"Wot kind of bog?"

"Oh, the very best kind, I you assure. As they had on farms when I a boy was. Mit a seat and bucket, and holder for the paper."

"We'd have to keep you fastened up by one ankle!"

"That will be in order." And so the bog was built. The only underground bombproof bog in the country, they informed each other, except for the King's and Winston Churchill's. The children produced heavy oak doors from the Nichol house, and a bucket and sandbags; and Rudi enjoyed getting his shirt off and sweating in the early April sun.

When it was finished, and joined to everything else by a covered trench, even Audrey agreed it was all right. She said her granny who lived in the country had one, and said they were All Right if Properly Aired and Seen To Regularly.

"A ventilator, so," said Rudi proudly, patting the sandbagged opening on top, "and to it I will see every morning. But not with this great drainpipe tied to my ankle, no!"

"Sorry, Rudi," they said, and untied him. They still carried round the pistol, uncocked; but they often left it lying carelessly on one side these days. Rudi fancied he could have reached it, twice, but somehow ... it would have spoiled the building of the bog. And it was a good well-made bog.

"What other thing can I make that not War Effort is?" asked Rudi. And building, as the April days lengthened and no enemies, either British or German, came, was all their joy. The Fortress became an intricate network of trenches, tunnels and underground bunkers that threatened to rival the Maginot Line. The children, Rudi could only assume, became better and better thieves. Daily they dumped bricks, doors, windows and even coils of barbed wire at Rudi's feet. Rudi did his best with the wire, but he was no infantryman. He stretched it (tangled into the briers and bushes) all round the Fortress.

"Ah, well," said Chas, "it will keep Boddser Brown out." Chas spent his days carefully lettering two signs to hang on the wire. One for the back, to keep out the British, read war department, no admittance. And one for the front (just behind the concealing fence) which had a skull and crossbones and read achtung minen! Everyone, including Rudi, pronounced them very effective. "It scare me silly would, if I a poor soldier were!" The little dark boy laughed, and thrust his arm through Rudi's. "That's good, Dad!"

"Hey, Rudi, were you
really
a fighter pilot?"

"Ja!"

"And shot down two Spitfires?" Rudi groaned; they didn't want
that
story again, did they?

"Well, how come you got out of your plane alive; the guns were still firing when it blew up."

"I tell you a secret. That day I was having a joy ride with a friend. I observer was."

"Rear gunner," said Chas starkly. "Messerschmitt 110s don't carry an observer; they carry a rear gunner."

"So... ?" Rudi knew what was coming.

"So you could mend our machine gun if you wanted to."

"Ha," said Rudi. He'd have been scared of them once, but not now. "What will you do to me if I do not mend it?"

"We could shoot you," said Chas.

"I the Geneva Convention plead. Prisoners of war are never shot."

"That's right!" shouted everyone indignantly, turning on Chas.

"Well ... we could hand you over to the Army!"

Rudi laughed.

"So many questions they would ask. Interrogate me with rubber hoses and bright lights, like in the American movies. I spill the beans might." Everybody laughed.

Then Clogger said, "We do want the gun mended though. It's important." Everyone looked at Rudi solemnly. He wriggled uncomfortably. It would be wrong to give children back a gun like that. Because they
were
still children. But somehow, he couldn't insult them by
saying
that. Because, in another way, they were no longer children.

"We wouldn't fire it, promise. Except at..." Chas paused and blushed; he had almost forgotten that Rudi was a German. "Anyway, we wouldn't fire it, just... have it. It's our... mascot."

What could Rudi say, to save their face? He thought long.

"I do you a deal. I need a boat. You a sailing boat get— I the gun will mend." It was, he thought, the right thing to say, adult to adult. They couldn't possibly
get
a boat.

"Damn this for a game of soldiers," thought Stan Liddell. He couldn't feel his feet, they were so cold. He couldn't stop the great binoculars shaking. A fortnight, off and on, he'd watched the house in the Square, the one with the green door. Often he'd seen young McGill come out, always with that wary glance round as he left the garden gate. For a fortnight no policeman had tried to shadow the boy; but he was wary by instinct now, like a wild animal.

The binoculars had been a disappointment. Things got in their way: houses, hedges, factory chimneys. Sometimes, when the boy vanished behind them, Stan could guess which way he was going; but sooner or later, when he vanished for the third or fourth time, he vanished for good. And Stan had to hand it to him; in all the time he'd watched, he'd never seen the boy go the same way twice.

This morning, there was a difference; there
was
someone following. Stan swore. Could these policemen never let well alone?

Then he saw it wasn't a policeman, but someone quite different. Stan knew two things straight away. McGill had immediately become aware of being followed, though he didn't look round. And the someone different was up to no good. Stan suddenly felt colder than ever, and afraid. Should he rush down and interfere? But how could he hope to catch them? They were a quarter of a mile away already. Hopelessly, Stan continued to watch through his binoculars.

Frigging fool! thought Chas. Does he think I don't know he's there. He walked extra quiet, listening to the footsteps behind. They were too light for Fatty Hardy, and that sergeant limped. But the feet wore boots with heelplates; some eager young copper perhaps.

Chas grinned with glee. Let's see how good this one is! Let's see if he can get through a hawthorn hedge without snagging his nice serge trousers. Let's see if he can cross a glass-topped wall without tearing his backside out!

Chas dawdled along to the hawthorn hedge. There were only two gaps in it, hidden by dead nettles. Chas walked past the first, and suddenly wriggled through the second. Once through, he ran back silently to the first. He peered through it; a pair of large black boots was just vanishing through the second. Chas scrambled back into the road, and streaked off the way he had come. By the time the copper found the second hole, he'd be a mile away.

But a half minute later, the boots were behind him again. Chas slowed to a walk, saying good morning with great innocence to a friend of his mother's who was pushing her pram. So he was a
smart
copper, this one!

Chas tried him on the glass-topped wall; but the copper was equally good at walls. So Chas gave him the water pipe that spanned the Red Burn. The Red Burn was only a foot deep, but full of a peculiar (and staining) red mud. And the water pipe was stickily tarred and only six inches wide. Chas always ran over it (you kept your balance if you ran fast enough) but coppers always lost their nerve, and tried sitting astride. Joy of joys, they often got stuck in the middle.

But this copper crossed the pipe on his feet.

"Must be Scotland Yard," muttered Chas, getting flustered. They would be expecting him at the Fortress; he was already half an hour late. "Right, I'll give him the Mud Flats, then." Chas had kept the Mud Flats in reserve until now; they were a vast swamp by the river below the town, covered at this season with dead white reeds four feet high, and crossed by black oozing streams that sported the unhealthy rainbows of oil patches. What paths there were, crossed the streams by sodden rotten planks. They were only used by anglers and small boys, and you had to know them well, for they were the terror of all local mothers; children had drowned there in the past.

The Flats were only two hundred yards from the Nichol house. I'll be drinking my tea in ten minutes, thought Chas. He ran across the first bridge, ducked and sped sharp left. Crouching low, he changed direction six more times and then crouched on a dry patch under the skeleton of a wrecked fishing boat. He then realised uneasily that he'd put himself in a cul-de-sac. There was no way out from the wrecked boat except the way he'd come. Still, he
must
have lost the policeman pretty thoroughly by this time.

He started to giggle, and then stifled it. Footsteps were squelching toward him, searching carefully. In another second they'd be on him. Was it a policeman at all? He realised what a lonely place he had chosen. Only fishermen ever came here, and they only came on Sundays in summer.

Rudi wakened and looked at his watch. They had all slept in this morning. Last night the boys had been overexcited, whispering. Rudi had heard the town clock chime one, through the blackout, before he'd dropped off.

Clogger was snoring in the top bunk, loud enough to keep the flies away. Rudi glanced at the bottom bunk, where his guard always sat, and gasped. His moment had come: the moment of weakness he had predicted; and, also as he'd predicted, it had come via the little dark boy.

Nicky lay full length on the bottom bunk, right arm outstretched, fingers closed loosely round the Luger. The pistol lay on the rough tartan rug not two feet from Rudi's nose. Rudi slipped his wrist out of the cycle chain that should have fastened him to the bunk; he'd perfected that trick weeks ago. He leaned over and took hold of the Luger barrel with two fingers, and began to draw it gently toward him. Nicky's finger was just sliding off the trigger when he moaned and tightened his grip.

Rudi waited; for he saw, with a slight shudder, that the foolish nervous one had the gun cocked again, and the safety catch off.

The footsteps squelched nearer. What was it that was following him? A convict, a murderer? One of the Undead that Cem said lived in graveyards? Or one of those awful strange men his mother was constantly warning him never to speak to? Why mustn't one speak to them, or take the sweets they always offered you? His mother would never say. If he asked his father, Mr. McGill always just shuffled his
Daily Express
angrily and told him to shut his bloody yap.

A head was emerging over the reeds. The sun was behind it, and he could see no more than two protruding ears. The being stopped and looked at Chas.

In a second, all his wild imaginings flew away, and a much worse fear took their place. The being was Boddser Brown.

Gently, Rudi tried again. This time the child didn't even moan. The German uncocked the gun, put on the safety catch and returned it to its rightful place in his holster. Both boys slept on.

What now? Should he simply walk out? But that would mean no more food, no more tramp-disguise (for his sacks had long since been put to other use). Besides, the moment they awakened, the children would warn the
Polizei
and the army. They'd comb the whole area; he wouldn't get a mile.

Silence the children? He couldn't bear to harm them, and tying them up would do no good. In an hour the others would arrive and release them. Wait till they were all here, and tie them all up? He doubted his ability to tie up six in a way that would last half an hour.

Use the gun to take charge of the Fortress? Hold all six permanent prisoners? Water would soon run out, and besides four of them would have to return home by dark. Missing children would start a bigger hue and cry than any German airman on the run.

The more he racked his brains, the more impossible it seemed. Besides, he realised sadly, he just didn't want to escape. His patriotism toward the Fatherland was dead. He tried to coax it back to life; thought of the Fuehrer; thought of his old father and mother and how ashamed they'd be of his cowardice. What would the neighbours back home say? I'd be shot as a deserter if the Fuehrer knew, he mused.

But his parents, and the neighbours and the Fuehrer would never know. At home, by now, he would be a dead hero; his photograph in uniform, draped in black, would be on his mother's mantelpiece, a source of pride.

Meanwhile, it was drizzling steadily outside, and he wanted his breakfast. Better a live jackal than a dead lion.

But he had the advantage of being both at once! He couldn't help laughing.