Under a fire red sky, p.13
Under a Fire-Red Sky, page 13
“Yeah. Not Captain Kidd after all. Marlowe, that’s me. Stabbed in the ear with a sharp weapon. A bomb exploded next to me – close as a parrot exploding on Long John Silver’s shoulder. Burst an eardrum. Sorry if I don’t catch every word. Had to get new glasses yet again, but the dead are doing a good service keeping me in spectacles.”
“Dear God,” said Lawrence. “You’re killing yourself, man!”
“Nah. I’ll leave Hitler to do that – though, come to think of it, I’m going nowhere till he’s dead and done for.”
Gemmy put an arm round his waist and walked for a while, trying to match her strides to his. “You must really hate fire,” she said, “now you’re fighting it all the time. ’S like it’s the enemy.”
But Franklin didn’t so much as stop to think. “No. Fire’s beautiful. Dad says flames are the Devil’s tongues, but that’s drivel. Fire’s been around for ever – long before us – mankind, I mean, not us. It grabs its chances. Doesn’t go after people. Not like jackals and wolves do – or the enemy. It’s after the wood or the grass or burning away the dark. You can put all the logs you like in the grate: it won’t keep you warm without fire – and then everybody likes it. Bombs? They just kill things. Smash things. But fire – that rolls around inside the planet, then it leaps out and dances and lights up things. The cavemen could never have made it all the way through history to us – not without fire. We’ll always need it.”
It was the most Franklin had ever said in one go. He suddenly looked like a full-grown man.
“I’ll fight it. I’ll drown it with a hosepipe or beat it to death with a flail. But I’ll always respect it. It’s us’ve wrecked the system, with our wars. I don’t understand why people go to all that trouble to kill other people they’ve never met. What’s to be got? Dead pilots, sunk ships – lovely churches smashed to bits… If they win the war, the Germans, and invade the place, what are they going to find? Heaps of bricks and burst pipes and bodies rotting in the streets.”
“’S alright,” said Gemmy. “They’ll just step on their own unexploded bombs and blow themselves back to Germany.” And she dropped back and linked arms with Olive to hide her friend’s trembling hands and the panic in her face.
Lawrence saw her do it and asked: “Who’d like another trip to the most beautiful place on Earth?” And they headed off again to the Royal Naval College, where infuriated attendants found them lying on the floor staring up at the painted ceiling. They were thrown out, of course, but the “un-damage” was done. They had stared up into the clouds – seen royalty and demigods and scientists and saints still thriving. They had behaved like naughty schoolchildren again. Lawrence had also lain down within touching distance of Olive’s hand and let her – despite the pain from her fierce, trembling grip – hold on to his own. Gradually the grip relaxed. Lawrence had never thought to learn anything about kindness from “the Gremlin”. But she was right: Olive needed her friends – the more the better if she was not to relive the burning of her house over and over, and if she was ever going to sidestep the demons chasing her through the streets and alleyways of her imagination.
“We should go to the Heath now – like after we got off the train,” Gemmy suggested. “Say hello to the Doctor?”
She had her reasons for suggesting it, but it took them an age to walk it. Acre after acre rolled out like green carpet. They tried imagining Saxons, Romans, smugglers, jousters… Here and there, bombs had made big craters, as if looking fruitlessly for buried treasure. As they walked, Lawrence told them what was under their feet: the caves, the dene-holes, the upwellings of water…
Gemmy’s aim was very different. She brought them to the compound where dozens of foreign pilots were exercising – willing or not. They had either been forced to land their planes out of necessity, or had parachuted out of the sky and into the grip of British hatred. The Sergeant inside the compound was yelling at everyone. A clutch of locals were swearing and jeering at the German prisoners, from outside the wire. Olive stood back from the others, unnerved by the hatred and shouting.
In a tent – an adjunct to the compound – the Doctor was tending to a pilot’s broken arm. He looked weary to his bones and could barely pretend to delight in seeing the Meridians. But when he had finished the pilot’s sling, he hauled himself out of his canvas seat and came over.
“I congratulate you, Susan, on being able to go back to your farm.”
“That’s what I came about, sir! To say thank you for writing to the paper – making Dad run away. You got me my house back!”
“You are most welcome.”
“…and-and-and – to say that you and your wife and the baby are welcome to have it, if you want, until your house is ready. James says they’ll be ages yet, because of everywhere else getting bombed and needing builders and plumbers. But you’re much too crowded in James’s little bungalow. I’ll try to make Pig Farm tidy and get some new mattresses and clear up the sick – Dad was a filthy drunk – but you could maybe see patients there and tell them it’s not your fault it’s such a pigsty. And if James lets me wash in his bungalow, I’m happy to go on sleeping in the car ’cos it’s luscious furry. Oh, and James says to tell you I saw a German parachute come down a couple of days ago.”
Tears of simple weariness were making it difficult for the Doctor to absorb much of what she said. But at the mention of the parachute, he grabbed her by both wrists and asked if she had roughly any idea where it had come down.
“Sorry. No,” said Gemmy, alarmed.
“I do,” said Olive. “I know exactly where.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
REHOUSING KLAUS
“It comes of being a pacifist,” the Doctor explained. “Also from seeing what angry Englishmen and -women will do to German parachutists. I know – they’re just taking their rage out on the men who’ve tried to destroy their lives and towns and children. It’s probably happening the same in Germany. Perfectly understandable.”
He reached out a hand and took hold of Olive’s wrist. “I can understand you wanting to take vengeance on someone who might just be the one who destroyed your house. James told me what happened. But…”
“No!” said Olive, snatching her hands away. “I don’t want revenge! I want you to help –” the Doctor blinked the soreness out of his red-rimmed eyes and tried to focus – “I want you to get Johnny out of the shed and mend his hurts. I know you’re busy, but I can’t mend men who don’t speak English and I don’t speak German and he’s hiding in a shed and he won’t get far on a marmalade sandwich, will he?”
The Doctor got up, swayed on his feet with weariness – then turned his back on them all and…walked away.
They couldn’t understand it, but he just walked off. In fact, he set off to walk the entire perimeter of the compound. The Meridians were uncertain whether to stay or creep away and pretend they had never come in the first place. The boys didn’t question Olive. Gemmy took hold of her hand in a vice-like grip of solidarity…whatever Olive had got herself into. Franklin pointed out that he had to get back to his station before dark.
When the Doctor arrived back, having completed his circuit of the compound, he appeared to be someone else altogether.
“Well, my friends? Let us decamp! James picks me up at the roadside at five. I am grateful past all hope of expressing it. Such generosity! Such kindness! James has told me about the comradeship between you four – but now this! Use my house! says one. Rescue a German, says another! Well, I say, Brave new world, that has such people in it!”
As they piled into the Daimler, Franklin hung back – shy – a stranger to the Doctor. But James had described each of the Meridians to his employer and the Doctor had remembered every word. “Get in, sir. Get in. Franklin, isn’t it? We need all the hands we can get!”
“We have acquired builders, sir,” said James. “They started work this afternoon.”
The Doctor drummed his hands against the car’s roof. “Oh, God is good, James! Haven’t I always said? Now find me a spiv selling decent food!”
It was all slightly alarming but, on the whole, enjoyable, concocting a rescue plan with a doctor who had not slept for forty-eight hours. They stopped to buy stolen food for an exorbitant sum of money – cleaned the spiv out of his stolen goodies, his under-the-counter meat and cheese and fruit. James would not be party to it – said it was illegal – but it delighted Gemmy. Then they drove to Moggie’s house carrying gifts of plenty, but parked down the lane from the cottage.
The plan was that James, Franklin, Lawrence and Gemmy would go to the door and, when the door had closed behind them, Olive was to take the Doctor through the hedge to the shed next door, along with bread, cheese and bandages. From there, they would smuggle “Johnny” back through the hedge and into the car, if he was well enough to travel to the Farm.
Franklin, in getting out of the car, woke the Doctor (who, during the journey, had passed from euphoria to deep sleep). James confirmed the plan: “See to the patient, sir. We’ve got everything else in hand.”
So, Olive and the Doctor scrambled through the bushes and over the fence of the next-door yard, and crept their way to the shed.
As for the others…things didn’t go entirely to plan. Walking towards the house, they could hear loud voices: out-of-doors voices. Moggie, her father, Olive’s mother and father – even Bossy Bantum – were out in the garden. The Boy-in-the-lane (who had been first to see the German-in-the-shed) had come into the garden to show off a “find”. He was giggling hysterically, tossing something into the air and catching it again – a child out of control.
“Put it down and come away, there’s a good boy,” said Olive’s father.
“Wicked boy! Do as you’re told!” shouted Olive’s mother.
“It’s not a toy!” shouted Bantum.
“For heaven’s sake, don’t make him drop it,” whispered Moggie.
Whatever was in the Boy’s arms did not stop him running up and down, up and down, wanting them to chase him but not to win.
They talked in undertones to keep him from getting still more excited.
“We have to get it off him,” said Bantum.
“I’ll try, sir, but if he runs off, I’ll have trouble keeping up,” said James.
“Ah yes. I see your worry. I’ve picked up one of those myself, in a foolish moment,” said Franklin. “Leave it to me.”
“Oh no! Frank’s already lost one eardrum,” said Lawrence. “I’ll get it.”
Gemmy ran into the house to fetch the scooter that the boy so delighted in. (She had given Moggie the money to buy it as payment for his dog walking.) But when she scooted back aboard it, the child was still too drunk on naughtiness to take any notice – even of his favourite toy.
“Alright, my darling. I give in,” said Moggie, gently. “I’ll play one game with you, and then it really is time for you to go home. You throw it to me, and I throw it back, yes? ‘Catch’. First person to drop it has to go to bed without any supper. Yes?”
“I can win you!” said the Boy, and threw the live incendiary device as clumsily as only a child can. Moggie threw herself along the gravel to keep it from hitting the ground…but had no way of standing up again while holding an incendiary device an inch off the ground.
So, Lawrence took it out of her hands and ran with it – up the lane as far as he could, before he reached the slurry pit and began gagging for breath, because the water stank so vilely, while the bomb conspired with the stink, and caught fire of its own accord.
Lawrence threw the thing into the slurry pit.
As he walked away – for lack of the breath to run – he slipped in the mud and fell flat on his back, skidding for several yards.
“I don’t want you in the car, sir,” said James. “But may I shake you by the hand…once you’ve had a bath.”
The Boy-in-the-lane walked round the scooter often, but still didn’t try to mount it. Gemmy was cutting up the cheese for dinner.
“This cheese, Boy, is what you will look like if you ever pick up another one of those things,” Gemmy said. “You will be chopped up into little pieces, and very dead. Okay?”
He came over and poked the cheese with grubby fingers. “Cut it up bigger, then,” he said.
In the shed, the Doctor was talking softly in German. The pilot had tried to hide when he heard voices, but couldn’t gather the strength. He had glowered at Olive for betraying him, but now that he was hearing friendly German, he smiled at her: “Danke. Danke. Danke.”
At the sound of shrieking and shouting in the garden, he had curled up on the floor, but the Doctor kept on talking, in a low, sing-song voice, seizing his moments to apply a bandage, a stethoscope, a sling. He plucked gravel from the wounds to the man’s bony knees. Meanwhile, Olive fed him saveloy sausages and slices of apple – though she was desperate to know what the shouting in the garden had been about.
“Time to go,” said the Doctor, in that same, peaceful undertone. “An einem sicheren Ort. Somewhere safe.”
“Where? Where will you take him?” Olive asked.
“To the place with pigs – or possibly without pigs, I’m not entirely sure where it is. Miss Gemmy will have to navigate. You had best go and join your family and relations.”
Inside the house, Olive’s mother had indeed begun baying at the guests, baying at her sister: “Where is Olive? Why isn’t she here? Is she out with that boy again? Is she dead?” When Olive arrived late her mother clung to her daughter, shouted at her, shook her and lectured her on the dangers of young men and dark nights. (Fortunately, Lawrence wasn’t recognizable to her as he was wearing a borrowed bathrobe while James cleaned the mud from his jacket.)
“It isn’t dark yet, Mother. I just went for a walk,” said Olive.
Her father announced that he had a night shift to go to. (He had volunteered for all or any night shifts, in the hope of a night’s undisturbed sleep rather than being woken by his wife’s night terrors.)
And a few old friends, who worked at a variety of Stations, had suggested they all apply for one particular, new-build Fire Station. It was a comfort to work alongside familiar faces each man knew and trusted.
The presence of Bossy Bantum in the house worried the Meridians. He was sure to ask where the spiv’s food had been got, wasn’t he? Anyway, why was he not out on the beat, maintaining law and order; disapproving of someone else for a change? They flinched when Bantum suddenly stood up.
“I have an announcement,” he said with a frown, holding a handful of cake, nervously toying with it while it fell into crumbs. “Moggie and I are getting wed. Not the best of times, I know, but can’t be helped. Each loves t’other, so there can’t be owt wrong. We’ve spoken with the parson and he can’t find fault… So, there we are. All welcome. If you’re able. Morning time looks favourite. Fewer burials.” He absent-mindedly bit into the remaining cake and had to wait till he had stopped coughing. “All welcome. Who’s for a glass of—”
Aunt Moggie whispered in his ear. It was bad news, but Bossy Bantum took it bravely: “—a glass of something non-alcoholic, to celebrate our happy day.”
For a moment, the only sound in the room was the Boyin-the-lane smashing his scooter into the furniture. Then Lawrence raised an empty glass to bride and groom and wished them lifelong happiness – and apologized that he and Franklin must be getting home before the blackout. Olive’s mother, in her weariness, still did not recognize Lawrence.
“Don’t get up, everyone. I’ll wave them goodbye,” said Olive.
Her mother was on her way to bed – so was Grandpa, and soon the happy couple of Moggie and Bossy were too. Her dad gave her a kiss as he hurried to his motorbike.
The house fell quiet.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
THE OVERNIGHT
Olive had to get out of the house – had to join her friends – see the German settled in at Pig Farm, too. If she came back really early in the morning, surely no one would miss her.
James was standing beside the door, his back against the house, almost asleep. Over his arm was Lawrence’s jacket – no longer covered in mud.
“We got the ‘gentleman’ into the car’s boot. If we’re to get him to the farm and still get young Officer Franklin back to his station, we need to go now, sir.”
“Don’t you worry, James: I’ll walk there,” said Franklin. “There’s not room for me in the car. And I am only acting sub-officer – as yet. Just get the gent to the farmhouse.” They shook hands, James more fiercely than Franklin.
“May I ask you something, Acting Sub-Officer Franklin, sir? Do you approve of helping a Jerry? You seem to have come off worst among us. You have plenty of reason to hate them. That’s why I’m asking.”
“You’ve lost more than I have, mate. Yes, I hate Hitler. Hate Goering. Kill ’em soon as look at them, I would. Mussolini, too. They’re the ones sending their own boys to die – for no good reason. We fight back, but we didn’t start all this. Can I take a look at The Enemy?”
The pilot in the car boot was shuddering, weeping; terrified, but silent, as he had learned to be in the garden shed.
“Nope. Can’t find it in me to hate this one,” said Franklin. “Look at him. Did he want to jump out of a plane? Did he want to drop bombs on a bunch of strangers? Somewhere in Germany, there’s a mother on her knees to God begging for the telegram not to be true – We regret to inform you… She did nothing to deserve losing her son, did she?”
“Thank you, Officer Franklin, sir. I admire the Doctor very much, but I’ve been wrestling with it rather: his kindness to The Enemy.” James knocked at his metal shin. “I think I’ve grasped it better now.”
At Pig Farm the roofline of the farmhouse seemed to have sagged – either with relief or despair. The shed where Gemmy had been forced to live for several weeks (rather like the German, now she thought of it) had been demolished – perhaps out of drunken rage or a need for more firewood or the ground being shaken by bombing.
