The Kingdom by the Sea Read online

  “Bread an’ scrape this morning. She’s gone to Amble for the week’s rations.” Even Harry marvelled at what a liar he had become.

  “Hard for growing boys,” said the man, lighting his fag. “Try our dustbins.” He nodded towards the brick building. “Go on, don’t look at me like that. It’s wicked what they throw away, after a quiet night. When you get a Jerry raid coming over, they get as hungry as hunters, and scoff the lot. But on a quiet night, they sleep right through, and it’s all wasted.”

  “Won’t they stop me, over there?”

  “All gone down to the airfield for a shower. That’s a soldier’s dream, that is - a shave, a shower and a shit.” He went back to whirling round and round on his gun.

  Harry walked across, and opened the dustbin lid, and saw a mountain of white sandwiches, cut thick as doorsteps, but full of corned beef. There was a bit of dirt on the top ones, from the dustbin lid, and somebody had emptied tea-slops on to the ones on the right, but by careful picking, he got a dozen good as new, just a little dry and curling at the edges. He stuffed most of them into his pocket, and bit into the best one.

  “There’s a better lad,” said the soldier kindly, stopping his whirling again. From the faded stripes, almost invisible on his oily sleeve, Harry saw he was a corporal. “Tell you what, son, if you’re ever pushed for grub, this is the place to come. They get so many bloody sandwiches here they even look like sandwiches. You get sandwich fights in the barrack room some nights, after they’ve been boozing in the NAAFI.”

  “Aren’t they scared the Germans might come?”

  “Jerry doesn’t show his face by daylight any more up here. He knows what’s good for him. You know what they’ve got at Acklington airfield - Spitfires. Jerry wouldn’t get half-way across the North Sea before the RDF picked him up.”

  “What’s RDF?”

  “None of your business - I never said a word.” He looked down on the ground. “Hand me up that five-eight spanner, son, will you?”

  “What you doing?”

  “Easing the tracking-gears. I told the bloody armourer they were stiff, and he had a go at them, but he’s bloody useless. You can’t hit Jerry if the tracking-gears’ stiff as glue. So I’m having a go meself. I used to be a fitter in civvy street. This is my gun. Like to have a try on her?”

  “How?” Harry’s mouth fell open in amazement and wonder.

  “Hop on the seat the other side of her. That’s right. Now, you see the handles in front of you? You turn them, the barrel goes up and down. I make the gun go round and round, and you make it go up and down. So we can aim at things. Let’s try and get that flock of geese that’s flying over.” He pointed, and the gun barrel began to turn towards them. But it was too high. Harry twiddled his own pair of handles, and the barrel sadly went even higher.

  “Other way, son. You’ll soon get the hang of it. Aim through the gun-sight in front of you.”

  Harry peered through the ring-sight with its crossed wires. Twiddled the handles first one way, then the other, and finally got the rapidly vanishing geese right in the sight.

  “Well done,” said the corporal. “Only you got to aim well in front of them, to allow the shells you fire time to get to where they are. And you’d have to be a bit sharper than that - the Jerries can fly a bit faster than Canada Geese, and they don’t hang about waiting for you.”

  “Where’s the trigger?” asked Harry.

  “There, son. But don’t touch it, or it might go off. And then the army would dock five quid out of my pay, for wasting a shell.”

  Harry stared; at the gun’s long, long barrel, with its widening tip; at the gleaming racks of brass shells. He had never seen anything so thrillingly evil in his life. He squirmed on the hard metal seat with sheer glee.

  “Has it - got a name?”

  “I call her Biffie - Biffie the Bofors. She’s a good lass; she’s knocked bits off a couple of Jerries that won’t come back in a hurry.” He lit another fag, squinting as the smoke hit his eyes. “I’ve got a lad just about your age, at home. Twelve are you?”

  “Thirteen next birthday.”

  “Never get to see my lad - he’s evacuated to Cornwall. Takes me all me time to get a forty-eight to see me missus. My lad’s growing up, an’ I never see him. I was teaching him cricket - used to take him to the Oval, to see Wally Hammond play. He’ll be a grown man, by the time I get out of this lot. Still, at least I know he’s safe. Not like 1940 - he nearly got killed when the Germans burnt the London Docks. In hospital for a month, poor little bleeder.”

  The corporal suddenly looked quite desperate. So Harry held out his hand and said, “My name’s Harry - Harry Baguley. I live down the coast a bit. We got bombed out too.”

  “Put it here, pard!” The grin came back on the corporal’s face. “My name’s Arthur Blenkinsop - but you can call me Uncle Artie. All the young un’s in the battery do. Here’s another flock of geese - d’you fancy another go?”

  They whirled round and twiddled the handles and laughed. Harry suddenly felt at home, and terribly happy. Then Artie got down stiffly, putting his hands to his back and saying, “I’m not as young as I was. I like your dog. What’s his name?”

  “Don.” Artie and Don made friends. Artie seemed to know the right place to tickle a dog, behind the ears.

  “Had a dog before the Blitz - ran away an’ never came back.”

  “You can borrow Don, any time you like. He likes the beach an’ swimming for sticks.” It seemed a ridiculous thing to say, and dangerous. But he liked Artie so much.

  Artie suddenly patted his pockets, and said, “You wouldn’t do me a favour, Harry, would you? I’m clean out of fags, and I’ve got a lot to do here yet. You wouldn’t like to run down to the NAAFI for me - at the airfield? You can borrow my bike, and I’ll give you a chit for the NAAFI-wallah.”

  “With the greatest of pleasure,” said Harry, and then blushed because he sounded so pompous.

  “Right. I’ll lower the saddle for you.”

  Five minutes later, he was cycling down the road, with Don in joyous pursuit.

  He came back even fuller of wonder. The NAAFI was outside the airfield barbed wire, but only just. He’d seen the windsock blowing yellow in the breeze, and the control tower in the distance, and the shapes of sharklike Spitfires in their sandbagged dispersals, with men crawling all over them, and starting up their engines. And there’d been no trouble at the NAAFI, though people had stared as he went in. But the man behind the counter knew Artie. When he read the chitty, he just said, “Bloody Artie. The war would stop if he didn’t get his fags.”

  But when Harry got back to the guns, there was no sign of Artie; and what was much worse, the long brick barrack was full of men. He could see them leaning out of the windows, smoking, and behind, others hitting each other with towels.

  He nearly turned and ran on the spot.

  But Artie was his friend, and he needed his fags.

  It took him all his courage to walk through the door. When he got inside, the noise was deafening. One man was dancing on the end of his bed in only a shirt, and that was waving up round his neck. Harry flicked his eyes away, and was knocked flat by two men having a wrestling-match, swearing at each other with such a flood of language as he’d never heard before. Don leapt to the rescue, barking.

  Somebody yelled, “Mind the kid, ye daft buggers.”

  And then there was a great silence in the hut, and everyone was staring at him.

  “Please,” said Harry, “I’ve brought Uncle Artie’s fags.”

  There was a great roar of laughter. Somebody said, “Trust bloody Artie. He’s got his own civvy batman now. I wish I had somebody to run errands for me.”

  “That bloody Artie. If he fell in the river, he’d come up wi’ a fish in both hands.”

  Then a door opened at the far end, and Artie came out with a thickset man, with three stripes on his arm.

  “Shake hands wi’ the sergeant, Harry,” said Artie.

  H
arry held out his hand, and tried hard to look the sergeant in the eye. The sergeant had close-cropped ginger hair, a ginger moustache, and terrible, piercing blue eyes that seemed to look right through Harry’s soul.

  “An’ what are you on, lad?” said the sergeant, in a very booming voice.

  “Please, sir, Artie’s fags.”

  “You don’t call me sir. You call me sarge.”

  The whole barrack fell about laughing, as if that was a very funny joke.

  “There’s only one man you call sir,” said the sergeant. “And he doesn’t look much bigger than you, or much older, an’ he’s got a little pip on his shoulder, and a little stick in his hand, that he keeps on dropping. But you needn’t worry about him, cos he never comes down here except when he has to, cos he might get his lily-white hands dirty if he did.”

  The whole barrack fell about laughing again.

  “So you run errands, boy?”

  “Yes, sir… sarge.”

  “Will you run one for me?”

  “Yes… sir… sarge.”

  “Well. You can run down to Amble - Huxtable’s shop -and tell the lady behind the counter that I shall be a little late for tea, because my commanding officer has just given me a lot of silly little forms to fill in, about how many German planes we haven’t shot down, and how many of this idle lot have got a dose of the crabs.”

  Everybody fell about laughing a third time, banging plates on tables, cheering and booing.

  “An’ here’s sixpence for going.” A huge red hand pressed into Harry’s.

  He was in.

  He went back to the pillbox late that night. It was getting dark, and it felt silent and lonely after the barrack room. But he was full to bursting with beef stew and dumplings, and huge chunks of chocolate sponge pudding, drowned in thin watery custard. And so was Don.

  And his head was bursting with all the new friends he’d made, and all the things he’d learnt. He’d learnt how to bianco a belt, and how to polish boot toe-caps by spitting on them, and how to polish the buckles on a soldier’s belt without getting Brasso on the webbing. He’d even done some spelling for a man writing home to his wife. And he’d played football with a ball that sagged like a squashed melon, and been tossed up among the rafters of the barrack by a Scotsman, not a word of whose sayings he had understood.

  Artie had seen him as far as the barbed wire.

  “Enjoyed yerself?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They’re not a bad lot. They’ve nearly all got kids at home your age. They get bored. You’re a new face, a bit of interest. You want to come an’ see us again?”

  “Yeah!”

  “Come any time. Out o’ working hours. There’s just one feller you’ll have to watch out for. Our snidey friend Corporal Merman… spiteful bugger, nobody likes him.”

  “Which one was he?” Harry couldn’t think of anybody he hadn’t liked, even the Scotsman.

  ‘“Saright. He’s on leave at the moment. For a fortnight, thank God. That’s why everybody was so happy.”

  “What’s the matter with him?”

  “Oh… he’s very regimental… wants another stripe… carries little tales to the officers… Oh, I don’t know, all sorts of things. Whey-faced thin bugger, wi’ spectacles. You’ll soon spot him, when you see him.”

  “Goodnight, Uncle Artie.”

  “Goodnight, Harry. Mind how you go. Hope your mum’s not worried…”

  “She doesn’t mind what I get up to.”

  “She should. I would if you were mine…”

  “Tara, Uncle Artie.” Harry had stumbled away, suddenly hardly able to look where he was going, for tears. He kept his head turned away, so Artie couldn’t see them.

  Now there was just the empty pillbox, and old memories. How could he be so miserable, after such a happy day?

  But he cleaned out the grate, and broke up driftwood, and got a fire going, and piled on some of his hard-won sea-coal. As the fire roared up, and Don came to lie beside him and enjoy it, and the wind sighed outside, he suddenly felt better. Snug. This was nice, too, the sound of the wind and the sea, the soft patches of fur behind the dog’s ears.

  How could life be so good and yet so bad? You just thought things were great, and then life smashed them up. You’d just made up your mind things were bad, and then something good like this happened… it was just too hard to understand.

  After a while, he slept.

  He became a great favourite, and so did Don. They stuffed him so full of bread and jam, great hunks of cheese and soldiers’ biscuits that his belt began to get tight. They gave him a forage-cap with a badge, so he felt a real soldier. They gave him the smallest pair of old boots they could find, because the salt water of the beach was ruining his shoes. They showed him how to darn his socks, when they got holes in. They gave him spare socks, and the thing he valued most, a large pack with straps, that he could carry on his shoulders.

  During the day, while they thought he should be at school, he still combed the beach. He didn’t worry about food now, but he collected a vast amount of wood and sea-coal, so he could have a roaring fire every night. He found two old pans, to heat water in, and a battered enamel basin. He found a fresh stream running down the cliffs to the south, and filled a lot of bottles with drinking water. And he kept himself scrupulously clean, washing his shirt and vest and pants. Nobody wanted a dirty kid.

  The worst thing he had to do was lie. They asked about his mam and his dad and his sister, and in an eerie way, his whole family came back to life. Only now they were in the cottage down the coast, and doing new things. He spent the walk to the camp making up new things that they did.

  The best thing he did was the walks with Uncle Artie. Artie had been born in the country. Though he’d lived in London since he was fifteen, he was still a country boy at heart. He liked to set snares for rabbits, which made a nice change from the army grub, cooked with potatoes over the barrack stove at night. He gave Harry the odd rabbit “for his mam”. Harry cooked it over his own nightly fire. He learnt to set snares as well. He knew in his heart that Artie and the barracks were not forever. Some time he would be on his own again. He must be ready for it, though he came to dread it. It would happen, some day. Nothing good ever lasted.

  But at least nobody came near the pillbox. Until one night, when he was lying by the fire on his blankets, giving the rabbit in the pan an occasional stir. When he felt safest, it happened.

  Voices in the windy dark. He heard the woman’s voice first, because it was shriller. The woman’s voice was sharp, angry.

  Then the rumble of a man’s voice. They were quarrelling. He tensed up, waiting for them to pass. But they didn’t. They stood quarrelling outside the pillbox.

  “I’m not having any more of it,” said the woman. “It’s not fair to me, and it’s not fair to your wife. I thought it was over, when you went away. I hated that, but I got used to it. And now you’ve come back, and you want to start all over again.” It was very much a posh voice, a lady’s voice.

  The man rumbled something inaudible.

  “Look,” said the woman. “I know where you’ve been. You’ve been over France. On those ‘offensive fighter sweeps’. Every time I heard that our fighters had made an offensive sweep, and that only two of our aircraft failed to return, I thought one of them was you. I wrote you off; I made up my mind you were dead. Because you didn’t write.”

  “You asked me not to write. You said it was over.”

  “Don’t you understand how I felt?”

  Rumble.

  “All I had left were those poems you wrote me… what good are poems? Poems don’t keep you warm.”

  “Look, let’s get in here, out of the wind. I know you don’t want to do anything, but we might as well get out of the wind.”

  And the next second, they were through the door, standing in the light of his fire, watching him. A tall man in RAF blue, and a slim beautiful girl with long dark hair.

  Don gave a warning grow
l. Harry grabbed Don’s collar. And still there was silence. Then the man said, quite gently, to Harry, “Who are you?” His voice was posh as well.

  “Harry Baguley. I live here.” He said it angrily, bitterly. All his safety was gone.

  The pair of them looked about the pillbox; at the fire, the candle burning in its bottle, the blankets, the attachè case and large pack, the heap of sea-coal and the ragged rusty shovel he used to put it on the fire with. His home.

  “You… live… here?” said the man. He sounded dumbfounded. “Where are your parents?”

  “Killed. In the bombing.”

  “Where?”

  “North Shields.”

  “When was that?”

  ‘“Bout a month ago.”

  “And you’re all alone?”

  “I got the dog.”

  As if he understood, the dog growled softly, under his breath.

  The man looked about. Then he said, “Do you mind if we sit down?”

  They sat, the girl’s beautiful silk-stockinged legs folded gracefully under her, the man’s arm round her slim shoulders.

  “Don’t you mind, being on your own?” asked the girl.

  “If they catch me, they’ll…”

  “Put you in a home?” The girl finished the sentence. Then she said, “But you want to be free?”

  Harry nodded. It summed up his feelings as much as anything could.

  “You poor little beggar,” said the man kindly. But Harry flared up.

  “I’m not a beggar. I got me dog. I got me friends. I got me home.” He glared round the pillbox angrily. “Now I suppose you’re going to tell the police about me?”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it, old lad,” said the man. “But what will you do when winter comes?”

  “What does that matter?” said Harry. “It’s summer now. I might be dead afore winter. So might you. I like it here now.”

  “Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings,” said the girl. Then she added, “I think I like it here now too.” She looked at the man with a new expression on her face. “We might all be dead tomorrow.” She took his hand. His face strangely lit up.

  “Look, old lad,” said the man. “We couldn’t borrow this… your place… for half an hour, could we? I’d take it as a great favour. You couldn’t take your dog for a last walk along the beach? I always took my dog for a walk, last thing, when I was a boy.”