The Machine Gunners (19 page)

General Prince Nowicki, standing in the pale moonlight, was like a figure out of a musical comedy: with a four-cornered peaked cap, riding cape and pale aristocratic profile. The man stood only five feet tall, and must be seventy if he was a day.

"My dear Captain... Liddell. And you are of the British Home Guard, I see. And you hold this bridge most stubbornly, even against your allies." Stan felt ashamed. The Germans could
never
have invented
him.

"How can we settle our differences, Captain? Let us go to your HQ, and leave our stout fellows here to guard each other. I shall make sure mine do not open fire first..." He called out orders in a foreign language, not loud but silvery, so they carried over the noise of that night.

"Let us drive to your HQ in comfort, in my car, Captain."

"Stand fast, Mr. Whiteload," muttered Stan, as he was led away. He felt outwitted, somehow.

Fatty Hardy had the situation well in hand. The main problem was to stop German parachutists and saboteurs getting down Saville Street. After all, it was the main street of Garmouth. It hardly occurred to him that saboteurs might prefer to sneak down back lanes. Anyway, he couldn't be responsible for
everything.

So it was there he made his stand. He requisitioned three passing special constables to help him, and luckily one had a car. With the car, they blocked Saville Street, leaving only a three-foot space to get past. In this space, Fatty set a table and chair from a bombed house, and on the chair he placed his own ample bottom. The light from a nearby burning house gave enough light to read people's identity cards. Then two soldiers home on leave turned up with their rifles. Really, thought Fatty, it was the perfect setup.

It was. A queue of refugees rapidly formed. Three fire engines on their way to fires were unable to get past because their crews couldn't produce identity cards. They departed with such streams of language as German saboteurs could never have achieved.

It was just after this that Rudi and Nicky ran round the corner, and slap into the queue. In fact, they tried to hurry past before they realised it was a queue.

"Ey, get in line there. Who do you think you are?" growled a big man carrying a clothes basket full of blankets and tinned food. Everyone turned and stared at them. They retired to the end of the queue.

"Let's run," whispered Nicky. Rudi took the child's hand. It was cold as ice and shaking violently.

"Let's walk," said Rudi. He managed to keep calm for the boy's sake.

But when they turned away, a soldier with a fixed bayonet turned them back.

"Get in the queue, you! If you've got nowt to hide, you've got nowt to fear." He waved his bayonet in their faces; he was wild with fright like everyone else.

Fatty Hardy made a fuss about everybody, as they came up to his table. Identity cards were not enough. They had to turn out their bundles, say where they were going. People swore at them, and he swore back. It got tenser and tenser. And the queue in front of Rudi and Nicky got shorter and shorter.

"What shall we do?" whispered Nicky.

"There nothing is we can do. Those soldiers they will shoot us if we run. Only thing to do is for you to leave go of my hand. On your own, you are safe. Be sensible,
hein?"

But Nicky clung to Rudi's hand all the tighter.

Then it was their turn at the table.

"Identity cards?" Rudi's tongue clove to his mouth.

"Hurry up. Identity cards." Fatty Hardy squinted up at them. He was sweating. Rudi felt Nicky take a huge breath.

"We ain't got none," said Nicky. He spoke like a ragamuffin. In his tattered balaclava helmet, even his own schoolmates wouldn't have recognised him.

"Shut up, kid. I'm talking to your dad."

"Me dad's deaf and dumb." Nicky clutched Rudi's hand tighter still. "We're going to see if me gran's all right."

"What's your name?"

"Webster."

"Where d'you live?"

"Simon Street."

"But Simon Street's down there." Fatty Hardy jerked his thumb toward the silent road beyond the barrier. Rudi felt Nicky catch his breath.

"No, it's me gran lives in Simon Street."

Fatty Hardy glared at Rudi hard. "I never heard of no dumbie down Simon Street, and I only live three streets away. Hey, there's something fishy here. What you two up to?" The two soldiers, hearing the urgency in the policeman's voice, closed up with their bayonets. Rudi closed his eyes.

And then there was a faint shout of "Help." Everyone turned. A huge figure was approaching, running with flailing arms and wide open mouth. A little woman ran close behind.

"It's John," gasped Nicky. The flailing figure ran straight through the queue, scattering people like ninepins. It crashed into the car's hood with a whoosh of breath.

"Grab him!" shouted Fatty Hardy. Two special constables leaped in and grabbed John's arms. He bellowed like a bull and threw them off. Then he threw over the table at which Fatty Hardy was sitting. Hardy grabbed at him, men ran to help, and the table collapsed under a scrum of struggling bodies.

One man leaped out with a bleeding ear.

"He bit me, the Nazi sod!" Mrs. Brownlee stood wringing her hands.

"Oh, please don't hurt him. He's gentle as a lamb— don't frighten him."

At last, they hauled John to his feet, and Fatty Hardy slipped a pair of handcuffs on him.

"Oh, please, he's not a Nazi," wailed Mrs. Brownlee, "he's just our John." Fatty Hardy looked at the heaving gibbering figure.

"Where you going now?" said John. "Where you going now?"

"By God, it
is
that idiot from the Square. He's gone nuts. Loony Bin for him, missus. Straight away. Get him in the car."

"Oh, no, please. I can handle him. He's quiet as a lamb usually."

"Tell that to the doctor at Morpeth, missus."

Rudi felt a tug at his hand.

"C'mon,"
muttered Nicky. Nobody noticed them go.

Nicky swung back the river door of the boathouse.

"Use your oars till you get clear of the Castle Cliff," he said, "and then pull on this rope to raise the big sail. The little one's more complicated, but it's not so important."

"Right," said Rudi, clambering down into the dinghy. It rocked alarmingly to his landlubber's feet. He settled down and unshipped the oars.

"Thanks a lot, Nicky. A clever trick it was, telling the
Polizei
I was your deaf and dumb dad. I thought I a dead man was."

"Rudi?"

"Ja?"

"I wish you were my dad. Can't I come with you?" Rudi could hear the tears in his voice.

"Nein.
Where I go, no place for you is."

"I could sail the boat for you. I'm an expert, honest. Only... the boat's going, and you're going... and there's nothing left."

"Nein, Liebling.
There is much left; your
Kamerads,
your gun, your country."

"But I like you better. Better even than my father."

"And I you. But we both our duties have. Perhaps I see you after the War. Then we all
Kamerads
be,
hein?"
The boy began to cry uncontrollably. There was nothing to do but push off into the night, leaving the sobs to dwindle.

The moon was very bright, the oarlocks noisy, and the guard ship on the boom very near. Rudi found the oars hard to manage; the boat kept on turning toward the guard ship.

They must see me soon, Rudi thought.

But overhead a fresh wave of bombers roared in. The AA guns roared, and every eye on the guard ship turned skyward. Rudi looked up at the black planes with their tiny wing-crosses, twisting and bouncing in the searchlight beams.

"Poor bastards!"

Then he looked at the burning docks and repeated, "Poor bastards!" War seemed very stupid, but he rowed on, trying to be a hero. There was nothing else to do.

As soon as he rounded Castle Cliff, he felt the wind. He raised the sail and headed northeast. If there was an invasion, that was where the German fleet would be lying. The night breeze filled the sail, and the water chuckled under the bow and stern.

At the Mill, the General Prince graciously took a chair, neatly crossing his tiny riding boots, while Stan got put through to Northern Command HQ at York.

"Northern Command. General Wilberforce's staff," said a voice in lazy Oxford English.

"Garmouth Home Guard here. Blue Flash."

"Yes, O.K., Blue Flash. Fire away." Stan explained his problem. The languid voice on the far end groaned.

"Oh, God, not Nowicki's lot
again!
A little fellow with a comic-opera fancy dress? Oh, yes, they're Polish Army all right, and don't I know it; what have they been up to
now?"

Stan told him.

"But there isn't any German invasion. Every radar screen's been clear all night. Some short circuit in a police telephone box at Blyth started the bell ringing and it's all snowballed from there. God, what a bloody fuss about nothing. Tell Nowicki to pack up and go home; he's wasting petrol."

"You
tell him," said Stan. Now it was all over he felt unbearably weary.

"Put him on then." General Nowicki listened, head cocked like a bird.

"Ah so! But I was just go and look for myself round Blyth. Better is safe than sorry."

"That's the last of your month's petrol ration," quacked the voice on the phone piercingly.

"If German come we find more, no?" Nowicki put the phone down with a cherubic smile. "In Blyth we for Germans will look. But a drink to you and your brave chaps before we go, Captain Siddall."

"Liddell," said Stan. The General Prince produced a flask and two glasses. The drink burned Stan's mouth like flame. He was vaguely aware that the Prince smashed his glass into the fireplace and was gone. With a throat like a nutmeg-grater, Stan picked up Number One phone and told Sergeant Mullins the convoy could go through.

Rudi came awake with a start, and he was still in the dark in his little boat. He must have dozed off. It had got so peaceful; peaceful and cold.

He looked back toward the shore; the guns had stopped, the bombing had stopped. The pink fires over the Gar were dying down. In the other direction, where the German invasion fleet should be lying off Blyth, there was simply darkness.

Suddenly Rudi
knew
there was no invasion. His nearest fellow-German was three hundred miles away. It had all been British hysteria. He was more alone that he had ever been. He held on toward Germany for half an hour, while his feet and hands turned slowly numb.

Finally, he swore, swung over the tiller and reversed course back to Garmouth. Cold heroism was not in him. He was going home to the Fortress.

In Garmouth, the hysteria died as the bombing died. The truth of no invasion spread as quickly as the false rumour had done.

It was suddenly a working Monday morning, and raining.

Fatty Hardy puffed indignantly to himself as he pedalled his bike up the Blyth Road. As if false invasions weren't enough, four bloody kids had to go missing. Four sets of panicking parents were raising hell at the police station. Fatty had been told the kids' names over the phone, but he hadn't really listened. What he had grasped was that he had been given the Heath to search, right down to the sea; a square mile of dense grass, all on his own. After being up all night. He'd not get home till teatime.

Hello, what was this? Soldiers? Lots of soldiers in lorries. Ahah! If he could persuade them into helping, he could be home for breakfast in an hour. He held up the authoritative arm of the law.

The convoy ground to a halt. A heavily moustached face peered out of the leading car.

"Constable—the best of good mornings. How am 1 bloody able to help you?"

Foreign soldiers? Fatty glanced at the man's shoulder flash. Ah, the Polish Corps—the Polskis. Well, better than nothing. They had two eyes each, anyway. He explained.

"Ah yes, helping we most certainly will. We form a line down to the beach, huh, and sweeps toward that bombed house, huh? Yes, my men could doings with a walk. They are cooped up all night. We find no Jerries nowhere. I tell General Prince Nowicki and we are starting."

The Poles fanned out rapidly. They carried their weapons from habit. They started. Far off, across the Heath, the Nichol house rose from its necklace of winter trees.

Chas came to with a gasp, his chin resting on the rough weave of the sandbags. At first he was ashamed at having fallen asleep, but then he saw all the others had fallen asleep too. He was as stiff as an old horse; his tummy rumbled loudly. Like the others, he had spent half the night eating anything he could lay his hands on. Eating and swallowing stopped you feeling sick all the time.

What had they talked about? What it was like to be hurt; what it was like to be dead. There had been a stupid argument about God, which had ended in Nicky attacking Cem, and the usually calm Cem fighting back viciously. Audrey had declaimed the Agincourt speech from
Henry V
which she had learned by heart, and everyone had yelled it was stupid rubbish, and then
she
had burst into tears. What a bloody awful stupid night.

He looked out of the firing slit. Everything was still, silent. The world felt totally empty.

Where are the Germans? he thought. God, has everyone run away and left us?

It was the dawn of a new day, though not a bright one. Mist lay thick on the grass of the Heath, all the way down to the sea.

And then Chas moaned. Out of the mist lines of soldiers were walking. Their uniforms looked grey, and they called to each other in a harsh foreign tongue. Hundreds and hundreds of them!

"Clogger! Carrots! Cem! Wake up, they've come. Jerry's here."

They leaped into life, hearts thumping like engines. Clogger grabbed the Luger, and leaped out into the trench, Cem grabbed the air rifle, and leaped the other way. Nicky grabbed the magazine for the gun.

"Load!" yelled Chas. "Cock. Range?"

"They're aye up tey the white fence," shouted Clogger.

"That's three-fifty yards."

"Three hundred."

"Go on," said Chas. "I've paced it a dozen times."