The Machine Gunners Read Free

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