Secret Army (5 page)

‘Oh, me feet are killing me,’ McAfferty sighed, before shouting out. ‘Anybody home?’

The shout caused a skinny-legged boy to bolt out from a conservatory at the back of the house. He wore baggy white shorts and a blue-and-white striped rugby shirt that was much too big for him.

‘Keep the noise down,’ the boy said anxiously. ‘Mrs Henderson’s asleep. She’s got one of her headaches and she’s in a mood.’

‘Oh we don’t want to upset Mrs Henderson, do we, Paul?’ McAfferty smiled.

Paul looked at the two new arrivals. ‘Mrs Henderson’s a bit moody,’ he explained, as he pointed up at the ceiling toward the bedroom directly above.

‘You seem to be running nicely,’ McAfferty noted. ‘Is your ankle better?’

Paul shifted uncomfortably. ‘It’s mostly better,’ he stuttered. ‘But I still get twinges and that.’

McAfferty aimed her hand at the two new arrivals and made a formal introduction. ‘Paul, I’d like you to meet our new potential recruit, Troy LeConte, and his younger brother, Mason. Troy, Mason, this is Paul Clarke, one of our more reluctant trainees.’

Paul smirked guiltily at McAfferty’s description, as he shook Troy and Mason’s hands. ‘Good to meet you,’ he said politely.

‘Paul, I’m going to make Troy and Mason something hot to eat. Perhaps while I’m cooking you could take them across to the school building and introduce them to the others?’

Paul pointed back towards the conservatory he’d emerged from a few moments earlier. ‘I’ve got to finish feeding for Mrs Henderson first. I’m halfway through and I don’t want to get it mixed up.’

‘Ahh,’ McAfferty smiled. ‘OK then, why don’t you introduce Troy and Mason to our eight-legged residents, then you can take them across to meet the gang after they’ve eaten?’

‘What are you making?’ Paul asked. ‘I’m pretty famished myself.’

‘I’ll look in the cupboard,’ McAfferty said. ‘I’ll do something quick. Mushrooms on toast, or bacon. Do you boys like bacon?’

Troy nodded eagerly. ‘We haven’t eaten since our dinner last night.’

‘Need feeding up then.’ McAfferty grinned. ‘And how Paul can eat so much and stay so skinny I’ll never know.’

As McAfferty headed into the kitchen Troy and Mason followed Paul down the hallway and into a ramshackle conservatory at the back of the house. A pair of paraffin heaters filled the space with a sweet smell and kept the temperature close to thirty-five centigrade.

Along the walls lay glass cages. Mason approached and got a fright as he saw a huge hairy-legged spider sitting on the sawdust floor beneath a rotting tree stump.

‘Wow!’ Mason gasped. ‘What are these things?’

‘Tarantulas mostly,’ Paul explained. ‘That’s Mavis, a cobalt blue. You see how the legs and body are bluish and reflect the light?’

‘Can you take him out?’ Troy asked.

‘Her,’ Paul corrected, as he shook his head. ‘The males are smaller and quite dull-looking. You wouldn’t want to handle Mavis. Some spiders only
look
scary, but cobalt blues are mad. She’ll go crazy for no reason. Her poison isn’t deadly but her fangs are a third of an inch long.’

‘Where’s the biggest one?’ Mason asked as he moved along the cages, closely followed by Troy.

‘The goliath at the bottom is biggest,’ Paul explained. ‘But she hides inside her piece of pipe all the time. Mrs Henderson traps dormice in the fields and gives her one every two or three days.’

‘Why are they here?’ Troy asked.

‘Mrs Henderson worked in the insect house at London Zoo,’ Paul explained. ‘When the war started they were told to kill all the dangerous animals like snakes and scorpions.’

‘Why?’ Mason asked.

‘Well, if a bomb hit the zoo the poisonous animals could escape. But Mrs Henderson didn’t want to all her spiders to die, so she smuggled some of them out. At first she kept them at her flat in London, but now they’re all up here.’

As Paul said this he opened a jam jar filled with live crickets and shook a few into a cage populated by a colony of small orange-legged spiders. After doing this he opened a notebook and logged the time, the cage number and exactly what he’d fed them.

‘You can give a worm to Maxine if you like,’ Paul told Mason. ‘She’s a baby Mexican fireleg. Not very aggressive, but she’s got special hairs on her body that’ll make your skin burn if you touch her.’

‘Eww,’ Mason said, shuddering as Paul plucked a bright-pink earthworm out of a compost drum by the back door and dropped it into the younger boy’s palm.

‘She’s quick, so I’ll take the lid off the cage and you drop it straight in,’ Paul explained, as the worm curled up in Mason’s palm. ‘Ready?’

To everyone’s disappointment, Maxine moved towards the worm but only tapped it disinterestedly before retreating back to the other side of the cage.

‘We’re worried about her,’ Paul explained. ‘Mrs Henderson says the fireleg is a desert spider. The humidity in here is too high for her.’

‘Will she die?’ Troy asked.

‘We’re trying to set up another room that’s hot and dry, maybe in one of the empty cottages,’ Paul explained. ‘The trouble is, the rooms have to be kept warm all the time so you need a fireplace, but you also need sunshine, and Mr Henderson is cross about having
one
room with spiders in, let alone setting up another one.’

But Troy and Mason had lost interest. They’d caught the smell of bacon and eggs wafting from the kitchen and McAfferty was calling out for someone to come and butter some bread.

Marc retired to the top bunk after his wash, but he found it hard to relax. He was worried about Henderson, and the blood seeping from his wounded mouth into the back of his throat meant he had to sit up and spit every couple of minutes. After ruling out sleep, Marc squatted by the small window with the light out, peeking behind the blackout curtain.

German bombs were hitting the City of London and the docks several miles to the east, but his window looked north, so although he could hear explosions all he could see were the occasional fire engines rattling through St James’s Square and the vague silhouettes of two elderly men stationed as lookouts on the roof of an office building across the square.

A knock on the door startled Marc and he stubbed his toe painfully on the bedside chest as he crossed the small room in darkness. A slim girl stood at the doorway. No older than seventeen, she wore a black dress with a frilled apron and held a wooden tray on which were placed a steaming bowl of tomato soup and a side plate with slices of cheese and bread with the crusts removed.

‘Commander Henderson thought you might be hungry,’ the girl explained, as Marc flicked the light switch by the door. ‘Shall I put it on the bunk for you?’

Marc hadn’t given food much thought, but his stomach growled when his nose caught the steam rising off the soup.

‘On the bed, yes,’ he said, feeling awkward as he became conscious that he was wearing only socks and underpants. ‘Did you speak with Mr Henderson? I mean, did he seem OK?’

The girl smiled. ‘Your father gave me some money and told me to bring you something decent that was easy to eat.’

‘He’s not actually my dad,’ Marc said. ‘I’m an orphan and he sort of looks after me.’

‘Ahh,’ the girl smiled. ‘That’s sweet. He seemed like a nice man, though I got the impression that he’s had rather a lot to drink.’

‘He’s had a rough day,’ Marc said, as he sampled the soup. ‘Hot!’ he yelped, as he sucked the first mouthful off the spoon. ‘But it tastes nice.’

‘Good,’ the girl said. ‘Leave your tray outside the room when you’ve finished and I’ll come back and pick it up. And I hope your mouth feels better tomorrow.’

‘My mouth will feel better than Mr Henderson’s head, I bet,’ Marc said, and the girl laughed as she closed the door.

The soup was tasty and as Marc sat on the lower bunk he broke off tiny pieces of bread and cheese, chewing them slowly and avoiding the front of his mouth.

He’d been suffering with the fragment of broken tooth for four months and it was a relief to have the painful operation to remove it behind him. The combination of the warm room and piping soup gave him some comfort and he made a long warbling yawn before raising the bowl and extending his tongue to lick it clean.

As Marc did this he heard a roar of, ‘Call it in,’ coming from the rooftop lookout post across the square. Marc flicked off the light and rushed towards the window. He couldn’t see anything, but there were aircraft near enough to cause gentle vibrations in the glass.

Moments later came a thud, louder and sharper than any he’d heard before. The floor trembled, the wooden bunks flexed and the copper pipe that ran up behind the sink shuddered. Down in the square a warden began turning a handle, working a hand-cranked air-raid siren into a wavering drone.

Out in the hallway guests emerged from their rooms and began making their way downstairs while the doorman shouted up from the ground floor. ‘Make for the shelter,’ he ordered, as he rang a large hand bell.

Marc hurriedly pulled on his trousers. He’d taken his vest, shirt and jumper off in one go and after untangling the arms managed to pull them back on in the same fashion. As Marc’s head popped through the neck hole of his pullover the building shook from two explosions. The third explosion was so loud that he feared the next bomb would come crashing through the roof over his head.

This explosion never came, but the lights flickered on and off before going out for good. Marc found his battered pigskin bag in the darkness, before heading into a blackened hallway where he walked straight into the path of the half-deaf army officer who’d berated him over the towel.

‘Careful, son,’ he said, his voice much warmer than before. ‘Why are you still up here? You’d better get down to the shelter.’

‘Had to get dressed,’ Marc explained, as he felt his way along the dark corridor towards the top of the stairs.

Marc jumped as a cluster of small metallic objects hit the roof, smashing some of the slates before clattering down the tiles towards the gutters. One of these objects hit a window ledge on the landing between the third and fourth floors. It burned with a brilliant white light that pierced through the blackout curtain and cast long shadows up the wall.

‘Damned incendiaries,’ the officer yelled as he used the light to hurry into the bathroom and grab a shaggy-headed mop. ‘You get out of here, boy. I’ll take a stab at them.’

German bombing raids had become more sophisticated as the Blitz progressed. The latest tactic was to equip the first nightly sorties with incendiary bombs. Each incendiary released dozens of fist-sized bomblets which burst into flames as they hit the ground. The resulting fires were not just destructive, but made enough light for later sorties carrying high-explosive bombs to identify targets more easily.

Marc had seen a warning film about incendiaries at the cinema, which had explained that the best way to deal with them was to flick them away into a road or garden before things caught light and then to smother them with sand from a sandbag or fire bucket.

As Marc vaulted past the first landing, the officer flung open the adjacent window and used the end of the mop to flick the incendiary off the window ledge. He then slammed the window shut and started running up the stairs to try and gain access to the roof.

Marc had almost reached the second floor when he saw a brilliant orange flash at the top of the staircase and heard the officer yell out. He looked around, hoping that there was an adult who could go up and investigate, but he’d been one of the slowest to evacuate and the only signs of life were the noises of people going out the main entrance two floors down.

Marc shouted up anxiously. ‘Are you OK up there?’

There was no reply. He looked down, then up as dense smoke formed at the top of the stairs.

‘Hello?’ Marc yelled again.

Again there was no answer. Marc pulled his sweater up over his mouth and nose and raced two steps at a time to the third floor. Bursts of flame penetrated the smoke, creating an eerie orange light, but the smoke also stung Marc’s eyes and the heat made it tough going.

When he reached the next landing the smoke became unbearable. The skin on his forehead felt so hot that he thought it was about to crack. The elderly officer couldn’t be far away, but there was no way he could go any higher.

Marc was turning around when he heard a rasping sound in the smoke by his feet. He plunged blindly on to all fours and crawled up two steps before touching the dome of the officer’s bald head. The smoke was engulfing Marc from all sides and he hadn’t breathed for more than twenty seconds, but with a superhuman effort he grabbed the officer’s jacket and tugged with all his strength.

Marc got the man down to the third floor, but he needed air. He let go and lost his footing as he hurried down to the second floor where the smoke was much thinner. He took four quick breaths and rubbed his stinging eyes before plunging back into the thick smoke.

It took several anxious moments to locate the officer again, but Marc got a good grip. The officer’s body thumped on every step, but Marc became aware that he was still conscious and doing what he could to help by pushing against the steps with his arms.

Marc again grew desperate for clear air, but it was now unbearable on the second floor, where he’d been able to take clear breaths barely a minute earlier. The skin on Marc’s face was starting to blister and the lack of oxygen made it hard for his brain to focus.

‘You right boy?’ a heavily muffled voice asked from behind.

Marc collapsed backwards into the thick arms of a fireman, then gestured frantically to make it clear that he was dragging someone.

‘It’s General Hammer,’ another man shouted.

Marc was close to unconsciousness as the fireman threw him over his shoulder and carried him down to the ground floor and out of a back entrance. Once outdoors, the fireman carried Marc between two fire engines and threw him down on the grass in St James’ Square.

‘Stay there, my son,’ the fireman said. ‘Someone will be over to fix you up.’

Marc lay on his back, looking at treetops and black sky overhead. There were small fires on the roofs of several buildings and a pair of incendiaries trapped in the forks of trees, illuminating the ground. Smoke billowed from the roof of the Empire and India club as a nurse rushed towards Marc and squeezed out a watery sponge over his head.