The Machine Gunners Read online

  "Right!" said Cem, like a bulldog getting its teeth into a Nazi's shin.

  Chas barged straight in, bold as brass.

  "Hey, Dad, Cem and I made three bob with Penny for the Guy!"

  His dad was standing by the fire looking pretty mad. Not with him, but with the police sergeant sitting on the settee. He had a funny sort of scar on his face. Mr. Liddell was there as well, looking rather alarming in a captain's uniform.

  Chas's dad didn't like policemen. He said they were officious buggers who would take the world off you if you let them; and half of them were crooks anyway. Besides, the police car at the door would set the neighbours talking, and that had upset Mrs. McGill, who stood in a corner compulsively wiping her hands on her apron. Anything that upset his wife made Mr. McGill mad.

  The police sergeant now made things worse for himself.

  "Penny for the Guy? That's Begging and Vagrancy. I could have you up in court for that!"

  "Aye, you can take me to court as well, for that," said Mr. McGill. "I had many a penny for the Guy when I was a lad. Didn't you, Sergeant?"

  "Let's get to business," said Stan Liddell, uncomfortably. You could tell he knew the sergeant was playing it all wrong.

  "You are Charles Harold McGill?" said the sergeant, in an ominous voice.

  "No, he's Charlie Peace the Burglar," said Dad, rudely. "Cut the cackle and stop asking daft questions."

  "Please don't tell me how to run my business," said the sergeant. Mr. McGill turned and spat in the fire. The spittle hissed and danced on the black shiny grate. Heavens, his dad must be really mad to do that!

  "Charles McGill, have you found any... war souvenirs the last few days?" Chas pretended to rack his brains.

  "Only a tailfin. Gave it to Cem, here. You got it, Cem?"

  "Yeah." Cem fumbled in his pocket and produced it, putting it on the table with a loud clink. The sergeant picked it up and looked at it a long time, then put it down again. He's doing that to try and scare us, thought Chas.

  "Are you sure that's all?"

  "Yeah."

  "Quite sure?"

  "Yeah."

  "You were down West Chirton, the morning after that bomber crashed?"

  "Yeah."

  "Why you looking so guilty, lad?" Chas hung his head.

  "Weeell... ?"

  "I tried to pinch a nose cone off an engine. Fatty... Constable Hardy chased me."

  "That's all?"

  "Yeah."

  "Where do you keep your souvenirs?"

  "Down greenhouse."

  "Let's go and see, shall we?" They all went down the garden, with shaded torches. The rabbits blinked and bolted through their straw, in the sudden light. Chas remembered the bullet magazine in Chinny's hutch, and closed his eyes in horror. He was glad it was dark.

  "Let's see them!" They all came tumbling out of their roll of sacking.

  "Hmm," said the sergeant. "I think these better come along with us." It was a silly thing to say. Chas suddenly let himself go.

  "But they're mine! I've been collecting them a year. All the kids have got them."

  "The nation needs scrap metal." The sergeant went all pompous.

  "But they're the second-best collection in Garmouth!"

  "Let the bairn keep them, Sergeant," said Mr. McGill, a real edge coming into his voice. Chas could tell Mr. Liddell was turning against the sergeant, too. But the sergeant blundered on. His crippled foot was giving him hell.

  "All such things are the property of the Crown."

  "Tripe!" said Chas's dad.

  "I think you'd better get this young man to bed, sir. He's getting quite hysterical."

  "Just like a bobby. Pinch all a kid's treasures and then blame him for crying."

  "Take him away, please. I'm afraid we're going to have to search your house and the whole garden, if need be."

  "Take the bairn to bed, Maggie," said his father. "I'm staying here. You can't trust bobbies."

  So Chas went to bed, while his father stood like an outraged colossus, watching the police dig up every part of his precious garden, dismantle his greenhouse heating system and break three more panes of glass.

  "Pity you haven't got anything better to do than ruining good plants and frightening rabbits." The police went at last, frustrated and in a blazing temper.

  "Be sure to let us know if anything turns up, sir."

  "Get lost!" said Mr. McGill viciously. "I'm going to the lawyers about you in the morning."

  It really was all very lucky. The police never dared open Chinny's hutch; besides, it was too small to hold a machine gun. What was even luckier was that Mr. McGill never questioned Chas about the gun himself; he was the only one Chas could never have deceived. And if anyone ever again mentioned war souvenirs to Chas he only stormed on and on about dirty policemen, and who could blame him?

  As for Stan Liddell, he walked off to the Home Guard HQ feeling an utter failure. The Home Guard HQ was in Billing's Mill.

  Four hundred years ago, Mr. Billing had built his windmill on the highest hill in Garmouth, to catch the best of the wind. By 1940, though, the sails, great wooden drive shaft and cogs had rotted to nothing. All that was left was a blackened shell of stone shaped like a milk bottle, containing only a half-buried millstone, the buzz of flies and the occasional corpse of a cat.

  Now, thanks to one Sandy Sanderson, it had a corrugated iron roof, new floor, and sandbags everywhere it should have sandbags. There was a lookout post on top, with a telephone and a huge pair of binoculars salvaged from a wrecked Polish destroyer.

  Whenever Stan Liddell felt miserable or a failure, he went for a talk to Sandy. Sandy was more solid even than Billing's Mill. He had appeared at the Drill Hall the day the appeal went out for Home Guard volunteers. Among the blazered schoolboys and pin-striped bank managers he stood out like the Rock of Gibraltar. He was six-foot four, broad as a house, immaculate in the blue uniform of a sergeant of the Coldstream Guards which smelt strongly of mothballs.

  Sandy had the air of coming out of mothballs himself. Invalided out of the Guards in 1933 after "some nonsense with a machine gun," he had spent the last seven years moving from uniform to uniform. He had been a hotel porter, an A.A. patrolman, a cinema commissionaire; but none of them for long. His voice was too loud, his stare too fierce, his division of the world into gentleman-officers and barrackroom scrimshankers too simple. In civvy street, all too often, it was the scrimshankers who had the money and power.

  That first day in the Drill Hall, Sandy walked in, glared around, and everyone fell silent. His eye fell on Stan and detected, beneath twenty years of schoolmaster shabbiness, the bright young subaltern of 1918. He singled Stan out and drove him down to the far end of the hall, like a sheepdog picking out the ram from his flock.

  Then Sandy's mouth gaped wide.

  "Com-pan-eee 'shun!" Schoolboys and bank managers leaped a foot in the air and stood transfixed. Sandy counted them and strode up to Stan, every step of his hobnailed boots as certain as a chime of Big Ben.

  "Eighty-four men correct and accounted for, sar!"

  All Stan could think of to say was:

  "Carry on, Sergeant major."

  Sandy did. Stan watched aghast as coal miners, accountants and errand boys were arranged in size, numbered from the left, divided into platoons and sections. Sandy had an unerring eye for men. The local doctor was extracted, appointed M.O. and despatched to join Stan in the invisible Officers' Mess. First-World-War corporals were sniffed out, told to get haircuts and pull their socks up, and promoted sergeant.

  When, half an hour later, the local army commander showed up, it was all over. The senior bank manager, now a lance-corporal clerk, was writing down the names, religions and next-of-kin of C Platoon.

  The army commander's face changed from worry to relief.

  "See you've got things under control!"

  "Erm, yes," said Stan.

  "I envy you your sarnt-major. Wish I had him. Can't beat the Guards."


  "Erm, no," said Stan.

  "Well, I'll leave you to it. Cheeroh!"

  And so the Garmouth Home Guard was born. Since then, all Stan had done was to make two promotions (at Sandy's suggestion). And Sandy had "won" a lot of stuff.

  "Winning" was Sandy's word. Things the Home Guard needed simply appeared: sandbags, telephone, binoculars, mugs of white china, wood and an army van to carry them in. Stan never dared ask where anything came from.

  When Billing's Mill was reroofed, Sandy moved in. Stan never saw where he slept; but he was always there, and always busy: oiling rifles or whitewashing everything with layer upon layer of whitewash. In the middle of all 1940's gloom and despondency, Sandy was simply and profoundly happy. If Hitler came, he would die, as he had lived, in uniform.

  He listened now while Stan poured out his troubles. Then he thought for a long time.

  "Cheer up, sar. Your plan of attack was first-rate. Quite obvious that copper mistimed his offensive. Didn't read the enemy's mind correctly, sar. Kids is cunning little sods; just like new recruits. Can't turn your back a minute with them. But we'll outmanoeuvre them yet, sar. And if we got that gun ... I know just the place we could best use it..."

  "But it's not ours, Sarnt-major!"

  "We could win it, sir, we could win it..."

  6

  The next Wednesday evening started quite well. Mr. McGill was on the two-till-ten shift, so there were only Chas and his mum for tea. But Cousin Gordon called, on leave again, bright in brass and airforce blue. He was carrying his rifle, because he had to be ready to Defend Britain Against Invasion at any time, and because Aunt Rose said she wouldn't have the great greasy murderous thing around her house while he was out.

  He was just letting Chas play with it (with clips of dummy bullets) when the siren went.

  "Get down the shelter, you two, while I put this sausage and chips onto plates. This is one meal Hitler's not spoiling."

  It was nearly as good as a picnic, scrambling down into the Anderson with knives and forks, teapot and plate of fried bread. Chas sat by the shelter door to eat his tea, staring at the garden path.

  "If I was that beetle out there, I might be wiped out at any moment by a piece of shrapnel. But in here, I'm safe." It had all the pleasure of standing dry in a doorway, watching the rain make everything else wet. He thought of the steel and earth above him, and felt deliciously safe eating his chips. He nodded at Cousin Gordon's rifle.

  "Pity you didn't bring home something bigger. Then you and me could have had a go at the bombers when they come."

  "No need," said Cousin Gordon, who liked playing the expert. "You can shoot down a bomber with a rifle. We're trained for it. You have to aim a hand's breadth in front of them, to allow for their speed."

  "But bombers fly too high!"

  "Don't you believe it. Most bombers fly at five thousand feet, which is a mile. This thing can kill at a mile." He stroked his rifle.

  "Can the... German guns fire that far?"

  "Yeah, far further. Their Schmeissers can go right through the trunk of a tree."

  "What's a Schmeisser?"

  "Machine gun."

  Chas finished his chips thoughtfully, impaling five on his fork at once and then ramming the lot into his mouth.

  "How often have I got to tell you?" said Mrs. McGill. "Cut them before you put them in your mouth."

  Around ten, the all-clear went. Nothing had happened but two showers of rain, and long before the end, you could hear people standing chatting by their shelter doors.

  "What a waste of time," said Mrs. McGill. "I could have done the ironing. Good night, Gordon. Tell your mother I'll call on Friday."

  "Good night. I'd better get back while it's quiet."

  They heard his boots clink away, and sat waiting for another clink of boots up the path, and the clicking of a pushed bicycle. Dad.

  "Hello, love." Mrs. McGill kissed her grimy husband on the cheek. Chas had never seen his father come through the back door without his mother kissing him on the check. It must taste awfully sooty and oily. How much soot and oil must she have swallowed since she married him!

  "Here's your supper, nice and hot."

  Mr. McGill washed his hands but not his face. That came after eating. First things first. He didn't take his grimy boots off, either. Mrs. McGill always put a copy of the Daily Express under his chair to save the carpet.

  "Nice having the raid over early for once. I could do with a good night's sleep in me own bed."

  "Don't count your chickens. There's still a yellow alert on."

  "But the all-clear went!"

  "That's the end of the red alert. The buggers are still hanging about somewhere. I think I'd better get me uniform on." Mr. McGill, foreman at the gasworks, knew such things.

  "But your tea will be spoiled."

  "Put it back in the oven."

  Mrs. McGill sniffed and picked the Daily Express off the floor. Work boots might never be cleaned, but ARP boots were always spotless and shining. Mr. McGill, immaculate now, beret under shoulder strap, sat down again to eat.

  Next moment, the lights went out. Then the cracks round the drawn blackout curtains lit up with successive streaks of light. Mr. McGill's plate went crash on the floor.

  "Oh those lovely sausages!" screamed his wife.

  "Get down, hinny. Turn your face from the window. It's one of those sneak raiders."

  But it wasn't. Chas, lying face down under the sofa, heard the sound of many engines.

  "Run for it!" They ran down the front passage and pulled open the front door. It was like day outside, there were so many parachute flares falling. You could have seen a pin on the crazy-paving path to the shelter.

  "The insurance policies!" screamed his mother, trying to turn back. His father stopped her bodily, and for a moment his parents wrestled like drunks in the front passage.

  "Run, for God's sake," panted his father.

  The moment Chas set foot on the path outside, the bombs began to scream down. Chas thought his legs had stopped working for good; the black hole of the shelter door seemed to get further away instead of nearer. They said you never heard the bomb that hit you, but how could they know? Only the dead knew that, like the girl who had worked in the greengrocer's. Chas saw the top half of her body, still obscenely weighing out potatoes...

  Then he threw himself through the shelter door. He caught his knee on a corner of the bunk, and it was agony. Then his mother landed on top of him, knocking him flat, and he heard Dad's boots running, as he had never heard them before. Then a crack like thunder, and another and another and another and another. Great thunder-boots walking steadily toward them. The next would certainly crush them.

  But the next never came; only the sound of bricks falling, like coalmen tipping coal into the cellar and glass breaking and breaking...

  His father drew down the heavy tarpaulin over the shelter door, and his mother lit the little oil lamp with her third trembling match. Then she lit the candle under a plant pot that kept the shelter warm.

  "Did you shut the front door, love?" she said to his father. "I'm frightened someone'll nip in and steal those insurance policies. And where's Mrs. Spalding and Colin?"

  Chug, chug, chug, chug:

  "The buggers is coming again!" shouted Mr. McGill.

  "Where's the bloody guns, where's the bloody fighters?"

  Above the chugging came a kind of rhythmic panting-screeching; and a kind of dragging-hopping, like a kangaroo in its death-throes. It was even more frightening than the chugging, and it came right up to the shelter door. A body fell through. It was Mrs. Spalding.

  "Is she dead?" said Mrs. McGill.

  "No, but she's got her knickers round her ankles," said Mr. McGill.

  "Aah had tey hop aal the way," gasped Mrs. Spalding. "I was on the outside lav and I couldn't finish. The buggers blew the lav door off, and they've hit the Rex Cinema as well. Is there a spot of brandy?"

  "Aah pulled the chain, Mam. It flushed all
right." It was Colin, with a self-satisfied smirk on his face.

  "You'll get the Victoria Cross for that," said Chas with a wild giggle.

  "Shut up, Charles. Have you got no feeling?" Mum turned to Mrs. Spalding, who had crawled onto her bunk and was busy pulling up her knickers. "I'm sorry, love. We got down the shelter so quick I left the brandy and the case behind. I'm worried about the insurance, too. Jack didn't shut the front door. Go back and get them, Jack!"

  But the bombs had begun whining down again. Every time he heard one, Chas stared hard at the shelter wall. Mr. McGill had painted it white, and set tiny bits of cork in the wet paint to absorb condensation. Chas would start to count inside his head. When the counting reached twenty, he would either be dead, or he would see little bits of cork fall off the shelter wall with the shock wave, and know he had survived... till the next whistling started. It was a silly pointless game, with no real magic in it, but it stopped you wanting to scream...

  His grandpa always said one only hit you if it had your name on it... he'd seen photographs of RAF blokes chalking names on their bombs... did the Germans do that too?... How would they know his name... did they have lists of everyone who lived in England... ? Perhaps the Gestapo had ... he must stop thinking like that, or he would scream... make a fool of himself like Mrs. Spalding... play another game, quick.

  Yes, there was another game. He was lying in a trench with Cem and Carrot-juice. The black machine gun was in his hands, leaping, vibrating, spraying out orange fire at the black bombers. And he was hitting them every time. They were blowing up, it was their crews who were screaming now, being blown in half... one, two, three, four, five, six, seven... oh, this was a good game... try as they might, the bombers could not reach him. He got them first, swept them away on the blast of the big black gun, sent them down into Hell to burn...

  "Hey, cheer up, son. It might never happen." It was his father's voice, and he was staring at the white, rocky wall again, and for the moment, the bombs had stopped.

  At dawn, they climbed out stiffly. They were surprised to see their house still standing; and the rest of the houses in the Square. And the next row, beyond the long jack gardens, quite untouched... except two were simply gone. The ones on either side were windowless, had slates missing. But two were simply gone.