The Machine Gunners (2 page)

Chas sighed. If he reported it, they'd just come and take it away for scrap. Like when he'd taken that shiny new incendiary-bomb rack to the Warden's Post... they'd not even said thank you.

And he wouldn't get in the news. It was a perfectly normal Heinkel 111, registration letters HX-L, with typical dorsal turret mounting one machine gun...

Chas gulped. The machine gun was still there, hanging from the turret, shiny and black.

Chas reached up and tugged at the gun barrel. One leg of its swivel had snapped with the impact. He wrenched at the other, but the aluminium of the aircraft body just bent without breaking. Besides, a belt of shining cartridges went from the gun back into the aircraft. It supported the gun like a sling against Chas's downward pulls. Perhaps if he loosened the cartridge belt...

He grabbed the round barrel, put his plimsolls against the curving sides of the plane and went up like a monkey. He peered over the edge of the cockpit.

The gunner was sitting there, watching him. One hand, in a soft fur mitt, was stretched up as if to retrieve the gun; the other lay in his overalled lap. He wore the black leather flying helmet of the Luftwaffe, and goggles. His right eye, pale grey, watched through the goggle glass tolerantly and a little sadly. He looked a nice man, young.

The glass of the other goggle was gone. Its rim was thick with sticky red, and inside was a seething mass of flies, which rose and buzzed angrily at Chas's arrival, then sank back into the goggle again.

For a terrible moment, Chas thought the Nazi was alive, that the mitted hand would reach out and grab him. Then, even worse, he knew he was dead. It was like that moment in a fight when you think you're winning, and then suddenly you're lying on the ground with your mouth full of salty blood and you know you're going to lose, so you start shaking all over. Only this was ten times worse.

He wanted to let go of the fuselage, drop off and run home. But something in his mind wouldn't let him; something found the dead man fascinating. Something made him reach out and touch the gloved hand. Inside the sheepskin, the fingers were hard as iron. The arm and whole body was stiff. The gunner moved, but only as a statue or a toy soldier would move, all in one piece. The flies rose and buzzed. Inside the goggle was a deep red hole full of what looked like... Chas dropped and was violently sick against a little door marked
Nicht Anfassen.

He thought his mother would be angry at him for having wasted a good breakfast when food was hard to get. Then he heard the nine-o'clock hooter. Everyone set their watches by the factory hooters. They went at seven and eight and twelve and five. But this one, a little silly warbly one, went at nine. Chas knew it well, because it told him if he was late for school.

School! School was half past ten, and he had to get home and change into uniform. He must hurry. He scurried off through the brambles without a backward look.

But nightmares aren't so easily shaken off. On his way home he wiped the splashes of sick off his jerkin, but his mother noticed how pale he was.

"Look like you seen a ghost! What you been up to?"

"Nothing, Mum. Had to run all the way 'cos I was late and I've got a stitch."

"Where's my basket?" Chas's jaw fell open. The basket was lying by the little door marked
Nicht Anfassen.

"I forgot it. It's all right, I've hidden it in a safe place. I'll get it tonight after school."

For an awful moment he thought she was going to drag him back for the basket there and then. She did things like that when she got into a temper. But she also had a dread of him being late for school, so she just said, "See you do. You can't get a basket for love nor money these days. Your Dad bought that for me at Newcastle Market when we were courting. Now get off to school before you get the stick."

He sighed; she would never understand that you didn't
get
the stick for being late these days.

But even at school the nightmare persisted. Right through double-Math and into English, usually his favourite subject, that goggled face kept on coming back. His hands turned shiny with sweat. It ran down his forehead. He never even heard the question Mr. Liddell, the English master, asked him. Usually he was first with his hand up.

"What's the matter with you this morning, McGill? You ill?"

God, no. Being ill meant being sent home, answering questions, being sent to fetch that basket.

"Sorry, sir. Couldn't sleep in the shelter. Woman next door had kittens because she thought that bomber was diving on her personally." The class roared.

The English master regarded Chas sharply for a moment, then decided to join in the laugh. Then he stifled a yawn and ran his hands through his greying hair. Mr. Liddell doubled nights as Captain Liddell of the Gar-mouth Home Guard and found the experience wearing. Besides, McGill was a good pupil usually. But he had too vivid an imagination. A boy to like, but not a boy to trust.

Chas went back to his vision of the machine gunner. For there was something else in the vision: the machine gun, black, new, glistening. Even in his terror,
because
of his terror, he wanted that gun. He wanted to beat Boddser Brown. But how?

First, cut it free. His father's hacksaw should see to that. All his father's tools were wonderful, powerful, could cope with anything. But then he would need some way of moving the gun. From the way it had swung on its mount he knew it would be heavy.

Cemetery Jones's bogie. That could do it. He had a vision of the bogie: a heavy two-inch plank with big pram-wheels at each end, and a soapbox for a body.

And Cemetery Jones was just the one who would go with him into Chirton Wood at dusk. Cemetery Jones was called after his father, who was also called Cemetery Jones. He was the keeper of Garmouth graveyard, and marched ahead of funerals in black gaiters and a top hat wrapped in black muslin, looking like the Devil leading sinners at a brisk pace to the Gates of Hell.

Off duty he was very cheerful, with straw-coloured hair, pale blue eyes, some very grisly jokes and a laugh like a horse. He had gleaming wide-spaced teeth like marble tombstones, which he was said to clean six times every day.

Cemetery Junior had the same laugh, hair, eyes and teeth, though he didn't clean his at all, so they were very yellow. He said a dentist had once told him they were so widely-spaced they would never rot, and he was testing the theory out.

Chas caught Cem in school dinner. School dinner was a kind of self-discipline: the potatoes and the thin translucent custard tasted so queer that they required an effort of will to eat. But Chas had an uncle who was Chief Engineer on an oil tanker in the Persian Gulf. Every so often, Uncle William was invited to a feast by the local sheikh, who with grease-dripping fingers would suddenly hand him a whole sheep's eye. If Uncle William could swallow it in one gulp without gagging, the oil would continue to flow. If not ... on such small things hung the fate of the Free World. Chas was training himself to be like Uncle William. He was even training himself to like the smell of burning rubber. "It's an acquired taste," he'd say to his friends airily.

Cemetery's approach to school dinner was different. He treated his plate as an artist treats his palette, whirling gravy, dried potato, dried peas and dried egg into cosmic whirls and brushwork, occasionally flipping a choice piece of impasto into his mouth. By the time all had collapsed into a grey soggy amorphous mass from which no further reaction could be derived, it was three-quarters eaten. This procedure he called the "potato irrigation scheme."

"I've found something," announced Chas mysteriously, over the ginger stodge. "It's
Big.
I need your bogie to shift it."

"Can't. Got my Guy on the bogie."

"What you want a Guy for? No bonfires allowed this year. No fireworks in the shops. Nothing. You're potty."

"I use the money I collect to buy sweets."

"Look, it's just one night. This is Big—Bigger than anything you've ever seen."

"Go on, you always say that."

"Come and see for yourself, then."

"When?"

"Tonight."

"Got to do me homework before the raid starts. We've only got one candle in our shelter and Mum says it ruins your eyes."

"Look, I'll give you an incendiary bomb fin, a real smasher, not a dent..."

"I'll come for the fin, then. But I don't believe the other."

Chas's eyes suddenly glinted. He'd had one of his Famous Ideas.

"And bring your bogie with the Guy still on it."

They were going down to West Chirton. Chas was on the bogie and Cem was pulling it, snorting and grunting like a horse. He always insisted on pulling the bogie, so he never got a ride. When asked why, he always said he was "getting his muscles up," but everyone knew he was really scared of letting go the towing rope in case someone ran off with the bogie. People didn't grumble; they enjoyed the ride.

Suddenly there was the wild ringing of a bicycle bell behind.

"Oh hell," said Chas and Cemetery together.

"Where are you kids going?" asked a bossy female voice. "And why have you got two Guys on your bogie this year, Cemetery?"

"Oh, ha, ha," said Chas in disgust. "Frigg off, Audrey Parton, we're busy."

"Busy!"
The scorn was finely done. "Little things please little minds."

"While bigger fools look on," retorted Chas.

"In disgust."

"At themselves." It was an old boring routine, but Cem laughed like a horse. Audrey Parton rode past, and slued round her bike to block the road.

"Tell me where you're going or I won't let you past." There was something in the threat. She was bigger than either Cem or Chas: what Mrs. McGill called a fine strapping lass. She had bulging hockey muscles and grey ankle-socks, and red hair in pigtails and freckles. She fought boys and, alas, sometimes won.

On the other hand there were some good things about her, which made her the only girl Cem and Chas ever talked to. Her chest was quite flat, and she didn't giggle and whisper to other girls as you went past. She never told on you to her mother, and she was as good climbing trees and drainpipes as any boy. For a long time she'd led her own girl's gang, but now they'd all deserted her for sheer lisle stockings, ringlets and mother's powder puff. She'd become a misfit. She said she'd always wanted to be a boy. She was the only girl who always had sticking plasters on her knees.

Mrs. McGill treated Audrey with respect, because her family were posh and owned a car. But Mr. McGill said her father was skulking in a Reserved Occupation, making his fortune while better men went to fight for their country. When Mr. McGill spoke in that sort of voice, nobody argued.

"Where are you going?" asked Audrey. "Can I come?" Chas muttered under his breath a phrase he'd heard sailors use.

"Going to me auntie's at West Chirton," said Cem.

"You haven't got an auntie at West Chirton."

"Have, so!"

"Haven't, so!"

This went on for some time. Chas eyed her bulging muscles speculatively. That machine gun was heavy. She might come in useful. Besides, the dead German would scare the little cow silly. She wouldn't interfere with men's business again.

"All right, you can come with us."

"Lead on, Macduff," said Audrey, patting him on the head as the bogie rolled past. Chas felt his hair all suddenly prickle, as if it was full of nits.

They hid Audrey's bike on the edge of the Wood and pushed in. They had to lay the Guy down to get the bogie through the briers. Chas thought that in the dusk he looked like a dead man.

He had to keep shushing Cem and Audrey. They both had fits of the giggles as they felt the tension.

"It's all just one of your stupid jokes," said Cem, "but it'll cost you that bomb fin."

"I'm not going to do any
dirty
things with you two in this wood, so you needn't think I am," said Audrey, caught between fear and desire. "I don't mind kissing, but no more."

"Eeurk!" said Cem. "Who'd want to with
you?"

Chas's chest was getting tighter and tighter. He was glad he wasn't alone. At least he'd get Mum's basket back.

When Cem saw the bomber, he laughed as if it was a joke.

"Shut up," said Chas. "There's a dead German inside. You can look if you want, but Audrey can't."

Cem climbed up, dropped down again and whistled. "That's one for me dad."

"No it's not. They don't bury them here."

"Yes they do. Dad had a coffin full of... bits, from this bomber at lunchtime. Well screwed down it was, I can tell you."

"Go on, they send them all..."

"Yeah?"

"To the War Office, to count them," said Chas stoutly through chattering teeth.

"Is there really... ?" said Audrey, all eyes and woman for once.

Chas was not displeased with the effect he was having on her, but he said severely, "Girls aren't allowed to look. They can't stand it."

"Poor man," said Audrey. "He's a long way from home."

"Look,"
said Chas, "we came for
this."
He waggled the gun.

"Cor, you're not... How can we get it off?"

"Got me dad's saw." He pulled it out from under his jerkin. "Hold the gun steady."

He began to saw. It was hard work. He kept catching his knuckles on the rivets of the fuselage, and soon blisters came. When he handed over to Cem he'd cut a quarter of the way through the aluminium strut.

"Can't see where I've got to saw," said Cem.

"I've got a torch." The fuselage lit up, and the trees around. Chas couldn't resist a peep upward, to see if the dead German was looking down, watching them.

When he took over the saw from Cem, they were halfway through.

"There's a funny smell," said Audrey. "What's that funny smell?"

"That's
him,"
said Cem, nodding toward the shadowy fuselage with a professional air. "It gets worse as it goes along."

"I want to go home," said Audrey, beginning to sniff.

"Go then. There's probably other dead 'uns in the Wood, waiting to get you." Audrey gave a little scream.