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<h1>20</h1>
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<p><em>August 2. 11.30am.</em></p>
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<p>"It's like the moon," Tom whispered. The breeze over the high
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ridge of the moor snatched his awe-struck words and carried them
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away. The others stood on the long edge of tussock grass looking
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down at the wide and barren basin of the heathland that seemed to
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stretch to the horizon. It was pock-marked and pitted with craters
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that really did give it a blasted lunar aspect. The black water in
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the depressions, each one ringed by a tumulus of heaved-up earth,
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made the craters seem like bottomless pits.</p>
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<p>"Christ on a bike," Billy said, his voice reduced to a
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marvelling whisper. He stood up on a thick mound of peat and
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scanned left and right. "It goes on forever."</p>
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<p>It was the eeriest, most spectacular sight any of them had ever
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seen. The basin of the moor swept down from where they stood on the
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rim. Fifty yards away, a rusted chain-link fence suspended betwen
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concrete posts that angled over, listing like wounded sentries,
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caught the wind and made it moan, adding to the sense of desolation
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and old destruction.</p>
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<p>Far across the moor, maybe a mile off, but probably more, only
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the roofs of a clutter of shacks and shanties were visible beyond a
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lower ridge.</p>
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<p>It had been further than they had thought, at least five miles
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up into the hills from the camp. They'd walked since early morning
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after a breakfast of cornflakes and slices of bread toasted black
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over the flames. Doug had woken first and had disturbed them all in
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his scramble to get out of the tent, twanging the guy ropes and
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almost collapsing the canvas on top of the others.</p>
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<p>The fire had still been smouldering and it only took a handful
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of dry bracken and twigs to get the flames flickering and in no
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time at all the pinewood was crackling hot. They huddled around the
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campfire in the cool of the morning, drawing the heat into
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themselves and watching the magic transformation as the rising sun
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began to burn a fine valley mist away.</p>
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<p>"We heard something last night," Corky said. "Sounded like
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somebody walking."</p>
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<p>"It was like the sound you get if you walk over a racine rat's
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burrow," Danny confirmed although he hadn't actually heard that.
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Billy grinned.</p>
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<p>"Oh, I'm really scared. Terrified even. You should have woke me
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up so I could have trembled all night."</p>
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<p>"You were scared enough in the dark," Doug derided.</p>
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<p>"It's true." Corky insisted. "Probably a cow, though. Just as
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long as it doesn't barge intp the tent when we're sleeping. We'd be
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flat as pancakes in the morning."</p>
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<p>"Maybe it wasn't a cow," Tom said, still shivering in the cool
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of the morning. "I told you I saw a man when we were collecting
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firewood. I think there was somebody watching us."</p>
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<p>"Bunch of pussies," Billy said. He went down to the stream with
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his mug and threw the dregs of his tea out into the stream. He
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turned and was about to come back up to the campfire when he
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stopped so suddenly that Doug and Danny noticed immediately. They
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asked him what was wrong. Billy crouched down and the others came
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sauntering over to the stream, expecting some silly joke.</p>
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<p>"Was this here last night?" Billy asked. He was hunkered on the
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gravel, inspecting a wide footprint impressed deep into the
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surface. They could see the clear zigzag of heavy duty cleats. Doug
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bent down beside him.</p>
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<p>"I don't think so. I think we would have noticed."</p>
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<p>"Somebody's playing silly baskits," Billy said. He stood up and
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then stamped his foot down beside the print. His own baseball boot
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made only a slight indentation, hardly two thirds the size of the
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original print.</p>
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<p>"Can't be us," Corky said. "You've got the biggest feet. And
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it's nowhere near that size."</p>
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<p>"Did you draw this?" Billy asked Danny. "Did you fool around
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here and make this look like a footprint?"</p>
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<p>"Don't be daft. It's the real thing." Danny came down the bank
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and got down on his knees. "But it looks old to me. Nobody's been
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up here in a long time, and it hasn't rained in a while. It's
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probably been there for weeks. Your boot hardly made a mark and
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this one's pretty deep. It must have been here before we came."</p>
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<p>Danny wasn't sure of that, but he preferred to believe it, and
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the shale was hard-packed and fairly dry. The print could have been
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there a long time, since the last time it rained, sometime back in
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July. He didn't want to think of anybody passing through their camp
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in the middle of the night. He remembered Corky poking his head out
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of the flap. There had been a sound, a hollow thud.</p>
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<p>And then a branch had snapped.</p>
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<p>If it had been somebody, they wouldn't have made so much noise,
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Danny told himself, rationalising it out. It must have been a cow
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wandering among the trees.</p>
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<p>"Yea, that's days old," he said, now near enough convinced.
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"Weeks even. There's nobody around here. Nobody daft enough to come
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all this way up the hill."</p>
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<p>But Tom and Doug seemed less convinced. They were looking round
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warily, scanning the trees. Nothing moved. Far off in the distance,
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way down the valley where they knew Blackwood Farm was, a cockerel
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welcomed the day. Danny flapped his elbows and did a little strut,
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coaxing a grin from Doug and they all sat down again. They waited
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by the fire, toasting more bread on the ends of their sticks while
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they finished their tea, and then they started off on the trek.
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They followed the Blackwood Stream ever upwards, over narrow falls
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and through narrower gorges, up onto the high moor where the water
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cut its way through deep peat deposits and sometimes disappeared
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altogether under the thick cover of purple heather. Up at this
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height, the air was colder and a wind blew in from the west so that
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when they stopped walking, it dried their sweat on their backs and
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despite the power of the sun in a clear blue sky, it made them
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shiver.</p>
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<p>The stream had become a rivulet, dwindled to a trickle and then
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they were beyond it, right at the source, into the damp bog
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draining the high moor where the clumps of sphagnum moss sank under
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their feet in soft sponges of marsh. Clusters of papery reed-moths
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flew up with every step and marshy gas bubbles gurgled and burst in
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stenchy little explosions. It had been slow going here, crossing
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the boggy land, sometimes sinking up to their knees and sometimes
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further than that in the stagnant pools where the mud was oozing
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and liquid. Corky told them he'd read in National Geographic, of a
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man's body found in a bog, preserved by the peat for thousands of
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years, still with the hair on his head and the leather tunic on his
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back.</p>
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<p>"That's what the smell is," Billy said. "It would make you
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puke."</p>
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<p>"You think there's bodies here?" Doug asked. Corky nodded.</p>
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<p>"Sure. Dozens of them. They used to have battles up here.
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William Wallace and Rob Roy McGregor. All the clans in their kilts
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and claymores.</p>
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<p>"Isn't that a land mine?" Billy wanted to know. "A
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claymore?"</p>
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<p>"No, it's a sword," Corky explained patiently. "Used to hack
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each other to pieces. We're probably walking over the skeletons
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right now. They'll be lying down there all rotted and grunged up
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like something out of the Twilight Zone." He twisted his face into
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an approximation of a skeleton and curled his fingers into hooks.
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It looked not unlike Dougie's imitation of the creature from the
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Black Lagoon on the day they'd first thought of the expedition to
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find the Dummy Village.</p>
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<p>Tom hauled himself out of a sinking hole and clambered onto a
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grassy mound that could take his weight. He had taken off his
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canvas shoes and had them hanging by the laces round his neck.
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"That's horrible," he said. "What if we stand on one?"</p>
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<p>"It'll probably bite your toe off." Corky said matter of factly.
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Tom stayed up on the tussock, wobbling for balance, arms
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outstretched.</p>
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<p>"Then spit it out again when it finds out its your stinky ol'
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foot," Doug chipped in, grinning his big-toothed smile, but careful
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to avoid placing his own feet in the muddy holes. They seemed to go
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down forever and up at this height, they probably sank for thirty
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feet.</p>
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<p>Tom leapt from the mound to another, nimbly landing and swaying
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for balance as it shuddered under his feet. He jumped to the next,
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lost his footing and fell to the third one, landing on his belly.
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Billy dipped, quick as a cat, snatched a wet handful of moss and
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mud in his hand, then grabbed Tom's ankle. The small boy felt the
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cold, clammy grip and let out a howl of fright. He kicked
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backwards, landing his foot in the pit of Billy's belly. Billy
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gasped and stumbled backwards, stepped into a dip and his foot went
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right through the mossy covering into a slick swampy hole. His foot
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snagged on a buried root and for a moment he imagined bony fingers
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clawing on to <em>his</em> ankle. Without any hesitation at all, he
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heaved himself right out again before he fell on his face.</p>
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<p>"I'll get you for that," he bawled hoarsely at Tom who had
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rolled over the mound and reached a thin strip of firmer
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ground.</p>
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<p>"You and whose army?" Tom called back. Billy lumbered after him
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but for once the small boy had the weight advantage. Billy's feet
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kept sinking below the surface matting and all around him the
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floating marsh wobbled and shivered in his wake. The legs of his
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jeans were black with peaty mud.</p>
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<p>"The creature from the black lagoon," Doug jeered. "Except
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uglier. And fatter."</p>
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<p>"Piss off Nicol," Billy rasped. He clambered awkwardly over a
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mound of moss. "I'll get that little shit." He reached under his
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tee-shirt and pulled the pistol from his waist band.</p>
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<p>Tom had made it to the solid ground and was fifty yards away
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while Billy was still floundering. The rest of them laughed at the
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blundering pursuit, and that only made Billy angrier. He struggled
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out of the marsh, breathing heavily and stopped to get his wind.
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Tom was half-way up the slope towards the ridge jumping up and
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down, taunting. His high voice carried down the hill. Billy raised
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the airgun and cocked the spring. He took aim.</p>
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<p>"Christ Billy, don't..." Doug started to protest. Billy fired
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but Tom was too far away and the pellet travelled only forty yards
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before hitting the ground. Tom jumped up and down, jeering, and the
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others laughed raucously. By the time they reached the top of the
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ridge, Billy's quick anger had evaporated and his jeans were almost
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dry, though now caked with the black mud.</p>
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<p>They stopped there, and below them the heathery lip of the wide
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depression, the pocked moonscape stretched out towards the low
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horizon in a swathe of broken landscape.</p>
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<p>"We found it," Corky said. He pointed across the wide basin.
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"The Dummy Village." The way he said it gave the words capitals. "I
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never really believed it was there. I thought it was just a story
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somebody made up."</p>
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<p>"I <em>always</em> knew," Billy said.</p>
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<p>"You always <em>would</em>," Doug observed drily.</p>
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<p>The craters dotted the whole of the plain, some of them solitary
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and isolated and others so closely packed that their embankments
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merged and gave them different shapes. The larger ones were deep
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and dark while those on the slope nearest them seemed shallower, as
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if the earth itself hadn't been deep enough. These were fringed in
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dark green reeds and choked with duckweed and algae. They stretched
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northward as far as the eye could see.</p>
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<p>"The plan must have worked," Billy said. "Look at all those bomb
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holes. Must have dropped thousands of them up here. Millions. Bet
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the old Jerries were sick as pigs when they heard they'd all missed
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their targets." He put two fingers across his lip and made a mock
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nazi salute. "<em>Shweinhund dirty Brittischers</em>" he screeched
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in a commando comic German accent, making them all laugh.</p>
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<p>He held his stick up like a rifle and aimed it at the sky,
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making hawking sounds at the back of his throat as if he was firing
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a machine gun. "They should have had anti-aircraft guns up here to
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blast them when came. That would have been great fun. You couldn't
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have missed from up here."</p>
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<p>"I wouldn't like to have been here when they were dropping all
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that," Doug said. "You'd have been blown to pieces."</p>
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<p>"I didn't think it really existed," Corky said, wonderingly.
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"Honestly I didn't. Not <em>really</em>. I thought it was just a
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story." Danny nodded in agreement and wonderment. He hadn't truly
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believed in the Dummy Village, but he'd <em>wanted</em> to believe.
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It was part of the schoolyard legends, like old Miss Dorrian who'd
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died of a stroke in Castlebank Primary school and now walked the
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empty corridors at night. It was like the tales of Cairn House, the
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oldest building in town, where a girl had once seen a white and
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bloodless face floating outside the window twenty feet above the
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ground, and where Mole Hopkirk had been found with the nails still
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growing on his dead fingers. The Dummy Village had as much
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substance as the three little girls who'd been playing skipping
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ropes and were killed down on Crossburn Street before the war when
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a cart horse had bolted and the overturned flatbed had crushed them
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against the wall. People said that when the mist came off the
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swampy lowland of the Rough Drain on Halloween night, you could
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hear them chanting their schoolyard rhymes as they skipped on
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through the night.</p>
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<p>The Dummy Village, the decoy target for the wartime bombers had
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not been truly real, though it <em>should</em> have been. Now it
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was indeed real. They had trudged up the length of the Blackwood
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Stream, right up to its marshy source and clambered through the
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swamp of the bog and in the heat of the sun they'd slogged up the
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hill to a ridge miles from the town where the air was clear and
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there was no sound but the mewling of lapwings and the warbling
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song of lark rising into the blue.</p>
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<p>It was here. A dilapidated <em>Shangri-la</em> on the far side
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of the low ridge in a wild moonscape.</p>
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<p>"And we're the first," Danny said. " Nobody's ever been here
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before. Maybe not since the war."</p>
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<p>Far overhead, a buzzard wheeled on broad wings, circling on the
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clear air. Its plaintive cry came down from the height.</p>
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<p>And the boys started walking down the hill, towards the craters
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and the clutter of buildings.</p>
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<p>Before the first of the pot-holes, the chain-link fence, red
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with rust at the places where the concrete stanchions stood upright
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caught the wind and moaned muted protest. At other places, the
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poles had sunk or listed into the peat and the wire was ripped and
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jagged, some of it flat on the ground with thick grass stalks
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growing through. On the periphery, tangles of stinging nettles
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swayed in the breeze. A square metal signpost with its sign
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obliterated by rust hung from a pillar, pock-marked with bullet
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holes that Billy claimed was from a soldier's Lee Enfield but which
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looked just like straight .22 shot to the others. Further along,
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once they had clambered through the defunct barrier, Tom found
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another sign, this one angled into the ground. Wind and rain had
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peeled back the paint on the side which had braved the elements,
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while a triangle of dirty red corrosion showed where it had been
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angled under the turf. The red mark eliminated the first letter of
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the warning.</p>
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<p><em>ANGER!</em></p>
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<p>the rest of the word warned. For some reason it seemed apt up
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here in this forgotten monument to the fury. Danny felt that shiver
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of foreboding again, although they could all fill in the missing
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letter.</p>
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<p>"What do you think the danger is?" Tom asked.</p>
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<p>"It's been up here since the war," Billy said. "It was the bombs
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coming down. It was to let everybody to know that if they stayed
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here they'd get bombed to pieces. Simple."</p>
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<p>"I think it's the craters, telling people to stay away from
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them," Doug said. "Some of them must be pretty deep. If you fell in
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there they'd never find you again."</p>
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<p>Tom let the ragged sheet of metal drop. It stuck back in the
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peaty turf again. They went on down, past the first of two shallow
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craters where dragonflies helicoptered out from the choking reeds.
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Beyond that, a large single hole, almost perfectly round, was bare
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of weeds. The water inside was black and there was a shimmering
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dirty iridescence of oil on the surface close to where the boys
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passed, giving it a poisonous, somehow evil aspect. They couldn't
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tell how deep it was.</p>
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<p>At the next one, an oval pool caused by the close detonation of
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two wartime bombs, Doug spotted a boot lying upside down in a patch
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of reeds, its sole peeled away from the upper like an opening jaw.
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Billy stretched with his stick to haul it out of the thick
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growth.</p>
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<p>"What if there's a foot in it?" Doug asked, with a snort of
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laughter. "Like the one in the quarry?"</p>
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<p>Billy ignored him and brought the old boot to the edge. He
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up-ended it and they watched a sludge of water and algae gurgle
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out. Something black and many-legged wriggled in the flow and made
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it to the pool before Billy could hit it with his stave.</p>
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<p>"If there was a foot in it, you'd have filled your pants," Doug
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said. Billy didn't bother to deny it. If there had been a foot in
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it, they'd all have run, yelling in fear, down the hill and back to
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camp.</p>
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<p>Corky and Danny had moved on together, in a hurry to get to the
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huddle of buildings. They were half-way down the basin, though for
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some reason, the shanty town seemed no nearer. The others caught up
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with them and they trudged over the ridges and heaped earth where
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the old explosions had thrown up peat and boulders. Billy kept up a
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running commentary about the kind of planes that would have flown
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overhead and the bombs that would have rained down and the noise
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and the thunder and the excitement of it all.</p>
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<p>They skirted another crater where Doug probed with his ash
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sapling and got a foetid and oily bubble of marsh gas for his
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pains. Here, another boot, identical to the first, was jammed
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against a plank of wood.</p>
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<p>"Maybe somebody fell in," Tom suggested.</p>
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<p>"Maybe it was somebody got bombed," Corky said. "Like a poacher.
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Or a shepherd up here all alone at night just minding his own
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business. Stuck here on his own in bad weather and he sees the
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Dummy Village and thinks 'there's a good place to shelter'. Maybe
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he sneaked inside and thought he was safe out of the rain and the
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snow. Probably a thunderstorm, with lightning all over the place
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and thunder. He was probably glad of the shelter and he's sitting
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there trying to stay warm and then <em>WHUMP....</em> before he
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knows it he's been blown right out of his boots."</p>
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<p>"You really think that's what happened?" Billy asked, his face
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alight. "You reckon it blew him right out of them."</p>
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<p>"No," Corky said. "Look at it. The sole's got a big hole in it.
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Somebody just threw them away."</p>
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<p>Billy's excited expression collapsed into disappointment.</p>
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<p>"But it was a good story," Corky said, and they all laughed. But
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as they moved away, Tom looked nervously over his shoulder just in
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case it <em>hadn't</em> been an old boot.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>They got over the next small ridge and into the wide depression.
|
|
There was another perimeter fence here, most of it rusted to pieces
|
|
and there were sections where rolls of barbed wire, the kind Billy
|
|
insisted had been used to snag prisoners of war, had been laid in
|
|
long tangled cylinders. They followed it for fifty yards to find an
|
|
opening, testing the rolls for breaks. In one of the tangles, a
|
|
dead fox, its fur and most of the flesh rotted away, had been
|
|
snared by the coils. Its frozen snarl of clenched teeth was still
|
|
ferocious. Further on they came across the whitened skull of a ram
|
|
which had suffered the same fate. The rest of the carcass was long
|
|
gone, picked cleaned scattered by scavengers. The skull was pure
|
|
bone and it bore a massive ridged pair of curled horns. Billy
|
|
hooked it out of the wire and tried to set it up on his stick like
|
|
a trophy. When they found a way through the fence he led them like
|
|
a standard bearer with the skull held aloft as they finally strode
|
|
in to the Dummy Village.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>A flock of rooks watched them, huddled together like black
|
|
vultures on a roof down the centre way. The five boys walked warily
|
|
between the first of the buildings and the birds sat silent, all
|
|
their heads turned to watch the approach. There was more than a
|
|
dozen of them, squat and shiny black and somehow dangerous. Doug
|
|
raised his stick and made <em>ack-ack</em> noises and the birds
|
|
flew off in a clatter of wings and a protest of cawing. They
|
|
swooped low, close to the tangled moor-grass and then rose over the
|
|
nearby roof, gaining height until they reached a thick wire that
|
|
bellied in a curve between two canted poles. They alighted on the
|
|
wire in a flutter and settled down to observe the intrusion like
|
|
wary guards in black uniforms.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>"That's really creepy," Doug muttered, keeping his voice low.
|
|
They had wandered through the gap between two buildings and could
|
|
see down the centre way. For some reason the dereliction and
|
|
isolation of the place hushed them to near silence. "Just like
|
|
<em>The Birds</em>."</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>"You're too young to get in to see that," Billy argued.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>"Me and Danny sneaked in at the intermission, didn't we Dan?</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>Danny nodded agreement. He was looking at the line of crows,
|
|
black in colour, but now even blacker, silhouetted against the sky.
|
|
He couldn't see their eyes and that made them seem as if they were
|
|
blind, but he could sense their gaze. They huddled like judges
|
|
deliberating on a sentence and he recalled the heron's fall and its
|
|
broken, graceless ending.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>"Scared the bejeesus out of me, I don't mind tellin' you," Doug
|
|
said. "They were all sitting just like that, waiting to come down
|
|
and peck people's eyes out." Danny agreed with that. The film had
|
|
been disturbing, nature inverted and distorted and out of control.
|
|
That night, as he lay in the dark he had wished he hadn't sneaked
|
|
in to the old Regal picture house.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>Corky found a rusted bolt in a pile of broken slabs. He lobbed
|
|
it at the crows and they took off again, winging to the far end of
|
|
the compound, settled on a roof and sat to wait once more.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>The place was eerie. For a moment, when the crows had settled
|
|
there was a pause of silence where nothing seemed to move and the
|
|
wind dropped to a sudden stillness. They were in a ghost town. It
|
|
was the only way to describe it. They stood there, five small
|
|
gunslingers at the end of the derelict main street where the couch
|
|
grass and rough reeds poked their way up from a gravel-bed road.
|
|
The line of wooden shacks, grey with age and sagging under the
|
|
weight of neglect angled in a straight line, dwindling in dismal
|
|
perspective for several hundred yards. The corrugated iron roofs,
|
|
intact on only a handful of them, were red with rust and peppered
|
|
with holes where blasted stones had punched through. Others leaned
|
|
into deep depressions where the ground had subsided, still others
|
|
were tumbled and crumpled as if a giant hand had smashed them
|
|
flat.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>The place was eerie, a dead and decaying village, broken and
|
|
picked clean like the ram's skull. It was creepy and shadowed. But
|
|
it was magnificent in its desolation. They stood there abreast,
|
|
Danny leaning on his stick, Doug in his string vest, his slingshot
|
|
loose in his hand, Billy hip-shot in his mud-caked jeans, Corky
|
|
with a thumb hooked on his belt, a casual arm around Tom's thin
|
|
shoulders.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>"Magic," Billy said, and for once he was right.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>Just at that moment, the wind picked up and moaned through the
|
|
wire. A metal tin clanked against a post like a tuneless bell and a
|
|
piece of twisted galvanised sheet creaked in protest. The Dummy
|
|
Village came alive again. Two swallows came darting in on
|
|
flickering wings and swooped under a mouldering lintel. The faint
|
|
twitter of squalling fledglings came from inside. A stream of gold
|
|
wasps flew busily between two spars to a massive globe of papery
|
|
nest suspended under a sagging grey eave.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>"I never thought it would be so big," Doug said. "It's like a
|
|
Dummy flaming <em>city.</em>" They started walking down the
|
|
overgrown street until they reached an intact building with a
|
|
gaping doorway. They went inside. The place smelled of oil and rust
|
|
and of age. The floorboards creaked threateningly under their
|
|
weight and the whole building seemed to shudder as the five of them
|
|
crept inside. An old cobwebbed box lay in a corner and immediately
|
|
Billy bent down to try the lid.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>"It's an ammo box. Just like in the war," he said. The lid
|
|
hauled up surprisingly easily. Inside, among a tatter of shredded
|
|
wood, a vole squeaked and darted out through a gaping hole in the
|
|
bottom. Billy tried to catch it but it disappeared under the
|
|
sagging floorboards. Tom and Danny went outside and crossed the
|
|
road to go into another shack. From the front, it looked almost
|
|
intact, but once inside they could see that the whole of the back
|
|
had fallen away into a pile of grey, rotting wood. Even the
|
|
floorboards had disintegrated. Beyond the walls another row of
|
|
buildings stood gaunt and crumpled. There was a space where a bomb
|
|
had blasted a hole in the ground and the neighbouring shacks were
|
|
smothered under the debris of turf and rocks.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>The others joined them.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>"Must have been really great," Billy said. He pulled the airgun
|
|
out and aimed it at the sky the way he had done with his stick.
|
|
"They must have come in low, over the top of the hills. You could
|
|
have picked them off one by one. My old man was a gunner during the
|
|
war." He cocked the gun, fired it and they watched the pellet climb
|
|
into the air, hardly faster than a thrown rock. He re-loaded.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>"Your old man must have been John flippin' Wayne," Doug snorted.
|
|
"He was in everything except the town's brass band."</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>"What't that supposed to mean?" Billy demanded, rounding on
|
|
Doug. "And what did your Dad do? Eh? Tell me that
|
|
<em>Bugs</em>!"</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>"Jeez, would you grow up?" Doug said. "All we ever get is your
|
|
old man and how he won the flippin' war." He turned away.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>"Just what does that mean? " Billy bawled at Doug's back. "Come
|
|
on! Buck-toothed <em>baskit</em>."</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>Doug spun round. He jabbed his hand up to his temple and tapped
|
|
hard. "Think about it."</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>"Come on Doug. Leave it." Corky tried to defuse them.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>"Leave what?" Billy wanted to know. Danny looked at Tom who
|
|
looked back, trying to keep his face non committal. "What's Bugs
|
|
bloody Bunny talking about?"</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>"Nothing," Doug said. He turned away again, feigning disinterest
|
|
though the others could see the stiffness in his bony
|
|
shoulders.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>"No. It's not <em>nothing</em>. You're having a go at me, taking
|
|
the mick." Billy's face was reddening. Corky tried again.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>"Give it a break you guys," he said, cajoling. "We never came up
|
|
here to fight. Come on." He looked from one to the other. "How
|
|
about it?"</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>Doug shrugged. "Well tell him not to call me Bugs."</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>"Don't call him Bugs," Corky said to Billy, putting a laugh into
|
|
his voice. Danny caught it and giggled.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>"Or <em>Lugs</em>," Dougie insisted.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>"Or Lugs then," Billy said. The tension drained away.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>"Or Bugsylugs."</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>"That as well," Billy conceded. He grinned and the tension
|
|
evaporated. Billy stuck his hand out and Doug shook it, both of
|
|
them looking sheepish, simple as that, and it was over. Tom and
|
|
Danny ambled away. They went down the street. Tom went through one
|
|
of the decrepit shacks and out to the far side where the peat was
|
|
ridges and grooved in gaping black slashes where the land had
|
|
subsided. Danny found another swallow's nest, just a little cup of
|
|
hard mud set against a beam. He got up onto an old oil drum to peer
|
|
in and saw the gaping yellow beaks of the baby birds as they
|
|
demanded food. Corky was in the hut opposite. He came out with an
|
|
old beer-bottle. He set it up on a piece of angled iron and
|
|
searched about for stones to pitch at it. Doug leaned in through
|
|
the window of the next shack down, his skinny backside poking out.
|
|
Corky couldn't resist it. He drew back the elastic and let fly. The
|
|
small pebble spanged off Doug's buttock. He jerked, let out a yell,
|
|
and toppled inside with a crash of splintering wood.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>They heard him yell some more, while Corky and Billy rolled
|
|
about, unable to control their laughter, and when he came out he
|
|
was grey with dust.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>"Who did that?" he demanded truculently. "Put me through the
|
|
flamin' floor."</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>Corky tried to stand up, failed and sank to his knees in
|
|
uncontrollable laughter.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>"Was that you, Harrison?" Doug wanted to know.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>Billy shook his head. "Honest, I never did a thing. Swear
|
|
to...." his eyes opened wide. Danny and Tom were coming round the
|
|
side of the building with something big and heavy weighed in their
|
|
hands. "<em>Jeeesus kee-flamin'-rist</em> where did you get
|
|
that?"</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>The two boys grunted as they lifted up the long brown, rusted
|
|
thing, straining to get it to waist height. The four metal flight
|
|
flanges stuck up like black fins where the end narrowed. A hex nut
|
|
protruded from the blunt front end.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>"It's a bomb," Tom said proudly. "We found it. And there's more
|
|
of them."</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>Doug forgot the sting in his backside. Danny and Tom laid the
|
|
bomb down gently on the turf. There was no mistake. It really
|
|
<em>was</em> a bomb. It was more than two feet long and heavy
|
|
enough to indent the ground. The flight blades at the tail were
|
|
pitted with rust but there was a dark, wet patch close to the nose
|
|
that still had a skin of paint on it. Some light-coloured letters
|
|
in stencil form were barely visible.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>"Is it a Jerry bomb? Or a Jap?" Billy asked, a-jitter with
|
|
sudden excitement. War and the tools of war were a constant
|
|
fascination to him. Proximity to a bomb from the war was just about
|
|
the biggest thing that had happened to him so far. "Will it still
|
|
work?"</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>They all stood around the thing. It was old and rusted at the
|
|
back but it still looked somehow deadly, like a drowsy adder in the
|
|
grass that should best be left undisturbed.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>"It's probably worth a fortune," Doug said. "Maybe we could sell
|
|
it."</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>"There's more of them," Tom said again. "They're stuck into the
|
|
ground out there." He gestured with his arm. "The peat must have
|
|
fallen away." Corky nudged the thing with his foot, trying to turn
|
|
it over. It rolled slowly.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>"Imagine that. Must have been a dud," Billy said.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>"Might not be," Doug countered. "Remember that one up in the
|
|
reservoir? Broke all the windows at the top end of Corrieside? That
|
|
just hadn't gone off. It was still <em>alive</em>. Blew a rock
|
|
right through McFarlane's barn roof, so it did."</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>"Maybe this one could go off," Billy said. He kicked the side of
|
|
the thing and gave a loud yell like an explosion. Everybody jumped
|
|
as if they'd been stung.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>"Hells bells Billy," Corky said. "You scared the life out of
|
|
me."</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>"Smell it? He's standing in it," Billy said knuckling Corky on
|
|
the shoulder. "You're losing your nerve pal." Corky just grinned,
|
|
not taking offence.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>They followed Tom and Danny round the side of the building to
|
|
where the land sloped away in a profusion of trenches and craters.
|
|
All of the ground here seemed to be fissured and turned over. A
|
|
jagged crack a hundred yards long in the peat showed where the
|
|
summer's lack of rainfall had made it shrink and split, ten feet
|
|
deep in places and just as wide. It was here that the bombs showed,
|
|
sticking out from the soft earth of the sides of the small chasm.
|
|
There were three of them, each maybe forty feet apart, all at the
|
|
same angle. They had obviously gone into the ground, punching
|
|
through the soft deposit when the surface had been wet and boggy.
|
|
Further along, all that remained of another two bombs were their
|
|
tail-flights. Doug hooked them out of the pit with his stick and
|
|
tied them to the wood like a trophy. The others hauled the
|
|
remaining bombs out.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>"Can we take them back?" Billy asked. "A couple of them?"</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>"Sure. It's a long way," Danny said, "but we can strap them to a
|
|
plank and take shots each at carrying them."</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>"Let's do it," Billy said. "We can make them work. We could blow
|
|
half the valley to smithereens."</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>They spent the whole afternoon exploring the ruins. Tom found
|
|
another sign with some lettering that was indecipherable but might
|
|
have said that the land was a target area and that led to another
|
|
discussion which led to another argument over whether it was a
|
|
decoy site or merely a bombing range. They all preferred the decoy
|
|
version and Tom slung the sign away, ending the argument with
|
|
stunning logic. They searched every shack for more bombs or
|
|
bullets. Billy was convinced there might be a gun left behind under
|
|
floorboards, but all he managed to find was a brass buckle from an
|
|
old Sam Browne web belt and an ancient zippo lighter that was
|
|
clogged with muck and rust.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>The sun was beginning to sink towards the west when they decided
|
|
to head back to the camp. Danny got some wire and managed to secure
|
|
three of the bombs to a long piece of wooden planking which he and
|
|
Corky slung on their shoulders. Billy got his stick with the
|
|
sheep's skull pinioned on its end and led the way out of the dummy
|
|
village and up to the ridge. Behind them, the crows watched and
|
|
waited and when the boys were far enough away, they flew down one
|
|
by one to whatever dead thing they had been pecking at in the
|
|
shallow depression dug out by a wartime bomb.</p>
|
|
</div>
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