Benny hesitated, looked away. "You wouldn"t believe it."
There was a long pause. Mrs Sutton thought about it, thought about Madame Segovie"s frightened face, Benny slapping it, Benny asking the questions.
"It"s real, isn"t it?" she asked after a while. "That is, it"s not - supernatural." Unexpectedly, Benny grinned. "Well," she said, "sometimes I wonder about that myself." And then she told her.
The police constable had brought with him into the sitting room a whiff of the outside, of wet leaves and coal smoke.
His face, his cape and his helmet were plastered with moisture: Mrs Sutton supposed it must be drizzling again.
"And you"re quite sure you don"t want us to charge this - um - this lady?" The constable glanced at Madame Segovie, who looked down at her lap, her face flushing with embarra.s.sment.
Mrs Sutton managed a composed smile. "No, not at all.
In fact Madame Segovie offered to pay for a new table, and I refused her offer. I cannot see how she can be held responsible for the more -" she glanced at Benny, who gave her the shadow of a wink "- the more unexpected aspects of the spirit world."
"Well - um -" the constable gave Madame Segovie a venomous glance. "You understand that if there are any further incidents of this kind, we will most definitely be investigating them."
"I should think so too!" said Carrie from the back of the room. "Really, Mummy, I don"t see why we can"t -"
"It was not Madame Segovie"s fault, Carrie," said Mrs Sutton quickly. "What she does is in itself quite harmless.
Miss Summerfield has explained to me what happened to us tonight; it was not under Madame Segovie"s control at at all."
"Well, Benny, you might have told me about it as well,"
sulked Carrie.
The policeman glared at Benny, who returned his gaze evenly.
"That will be all, Constable," said Mrs Sutton firmly. "I"m sorry that we have taken up so much of your time."
The constable looked around the room, clearly annoyed.
"I"d better be getting on, then," he muttered. Mrs Sutton knew what he was thinking: a nice, well-off family, being taken in by a patent trickster. She would have thought it herself, not more than an hour ago. Until Benny had explained.
Even now she wasn"t sure that she could believe it.
Thought-transference. Beings that looked like animals, yet had the intelligence and motivation of men. Travelling to other worlds, and other times. Wars on other worlds, like enough to the wars of Earth that the "psychic resonance"
between them could have physical effects. It all sounded as improbable as magic, something out of a scientific romance; a nonsense. But if it were true then Charles was alive. Really alive. Not on the Other Side, not in h.e.l.l, nor even in Heaven, but just on a battlefield, a place where he had no business being, and from which he could possibly, just possibly, be brought back. So Mrs Sutton had decided to believe it, for the time being.
She stood up and followed the policeman into the hall.
As she"d expected, as soon as the door to the sitting-room was closed he leaned towards her and said quietly, "Are you quite sure you don"t want to press charges, Mrs Sutton? It could be done very discreetly, y"know."
Mrs Sutton shook her head, thanked him, let him go. She heard the sitting-room door open, turned to find Benny standing in the hall, taking her coat from the rack.
"You could stay the night here, if you wish," she told the younger woman. "You could have Charles"s room."
But Benny shook her head. "I have to report to my friend.
He"ll worry about me if I don"t turn up. But I promise I"ll be back, as soon as I can. Tomorrow, I hope." She was pulling her coat on as she spoke.
Before she could leave, Mrs Sutton went up to her and took her hands. "It is true, isn"t it? Charles is still alive?"
Benny glanced at the partly open door of the sitting-room, nodded, squeezed both Mrs Sutton"s hands. Then she let go and left, closing the front door behind her.
Mrs Sutton turned, was about to go back into the sitting-room when she saw that there was someone standing at the top of the stairs: Manda. She was still wearing her red dress, still clutching Frederick.
"I heard that," said Manda, then before Mrs Sutton could reply she turned her face to the teddy bear"s. "Why is Mummy so gullible, Frederick? Why doesn"t she realize that Charles is dead, that Daddy is dead, that nothing, nothing, nothing nothing"s going to bring them back. Not ever ever."
"Manda!" called Mrs Sutton, but her daughter ignored her and ran out of sight, along the landing. Mrs Sutton heard the familiar creaking of the boards as she went into her bedroom, heard the door slam. She stood still for a moment, thinking about Mr Upton"s rat of doubt, and why she believed Benny, and whether she should go to comfort her daughter and if so how she should go about it. But before she could sort out her thoughts, the sitting-room door opened wide and Carrie, Roger and Madame Segovie stepped out. Carrie was carrying a brown paper package in her arms.
"Where"s Manda?" she asked.
"In her room," said Mrs Sutton, thankful to be relieved of the task of comforting her daughter, and aware that Carrie, for all her silliness - or perhaps because of her silliness - would probably be able to do it better.
Carrie pounded up the stairs, shouting, "Manda! Manda!"
A m.u.f.fled voice responded.
"I"ve got another teddy for your collection, dear - I got him at Maples this morning. I forgot all about him with Benny and Madame Segovie and all the excitement. He"s ever so cute, he"s got such lovely green eyes, you"re sure to love him to bits!"
Chapter 4.
Josef woke up feeling cold. He usually felt cold in the mornings, because the engine shed wasn"t heated any more than it needed to be. There was only so much fuel in the world, and there were more important things to do with it than keeping people warm in their sleep. At least, that was what Sergeant Gebauer told them.
Footsteps echoing on stone told him that the sergeant was on his way round the floor. Josef hastily pulled back the blanket and struggled out of his bunk on to the metal ladder that led to the ground. As he made his way down past the middle bunk he tapped Ingrid on the shoulder. Wide blue eyes opened and stared at him, fuzzy with sleep.
"Wake-up time!" said Josef. Ingrid nodded, brushed her hair back from her forehead, scratched at one of the red training scars there. Josef heard her getting out of her bunk as .he jumped to the ground.
The bottom bunk was empty. Julius wasn"t there to be woken up any more. Josef supposed he was dead, though no one actually told you when that happened. Sergeant Gebauer would only say that Julius had been "rea.s.signed".
Josef stretched, looked around. He couldn"t see the sergeant, but figures were climbing or jumping down from their bunks along the length of the wall, pulling on clothes, making their way between piles of rusting spare parts and wooden ammunition cases towards the dim light of the engine pit. Josef could already see steam billowing under the roof of the pit, could hear the hiss of the engines below. The non-humans, the Ajeesks and Kreetas who lived on the other side of the shed and had their own sergeants, must already be stoking up. Josef decided he"d better get moving. The sergeant wouldn"t like it if the humans were last out again.
He padded to the cupboard at the end of the trio of bunks, pulled open the door and began putting on his clothes. He would have liked to wash first but there was no time, and anyway no water. There was only washing water in the evenings, and then only a bucketful for each trio.
By the time Sergeant Gebauer reached him he had his trousers and boots on, and was fastening his jacket. Ingrid, still in her night shirt and barely awake, pulled her blanket around herself. Gebauer was tall and blond; he had a fast, nervous walk that was in itself frightening. Without stopping he nodded to Josef, glanced at Ingrid in her blanket and snapped, "Hurry up!" Then he was gone.
Ingrid let out a breath. "That was lucky. I could have been on report."
"Gebauer isn"t so bad," said Josef. "Reeder is worse."
Ingrid had arrived a few weeks after Josef, and he often spoke like that to her, advising her, though she was a year older than him and, after three months" service, knew as well as he did what went on in the barracks.
He remembered Ingrid"s predecessor in the middle bunk, the Turkish boy with the strange name and the mobile, inquisitive face. He, like Julius, had been "rea.s.signed". Josef tried to work out how many of the engine drivers and stokers had been rea.s.signed since he had arrived, but quickly lost count. It was better not to think about it, he decided. He fastened the top b.u.t.ton on his jacket, ran a finger round his collar to make sure it was straight, then set off across the stone floor towards the engine pit.
By the time he reached the top of the ladder, most of the non-humans" engines were away, blue-and-brown metal boxes jostling for position in a cloud of steam by the east door. Josef quickly scrambled down to the muddy floor of the pit and the engines a.s.signed to the humans.
The machines were the life and purpose of the sheds. As far as Josef was concerned, they were the purpose of his existence. There were twenty of them, each about five metres high and ten long. Inside the shed, they rested on their wheels; their legs were folded up against their sides, ready for use in crossing the trenches. Josef walked up to the machine with the ident.i.ty number TY-3. He"d had this machine ever since he"d come out of training; he was used to it, liked it, sometimes thought of it as his friend.
He walked around the machine, checking the folded metal legs, the pivot-wheels, the pistons, the valves, and the sides of the boiler for any signs of rust or cracking. There was a little mud caked around the lower joints of the legs and the bottom of the boiler, but that was all right. Even the sergeants admitted that there were limits to how clean you could expect anything to be, given the conditions of the war. "As long as it works," Gebauer would say. "As long as you can fight with it, that"s all that matters."
Ingrid arrived with the breakfast things just as he was climbing into the cab. She put the food on top of the firebox, hanging on to the open door so that there was light for Josef to see whilst he lit the fire. He took an igniter from the rack, pulled the pin, dropped it into the firebox and slammed the door. After a moment, there was a m.u.f.fled thud; the whole engine shook. He opened the grille on the firebox, felt the welcome warmth seep out as the liquid fuel blazed up. He moved aside so that Ingrid could get into the cab and close the door.
With the door shut, the only light in the tiny cab came from the firebox grille. But Josef didn"t need to see to find the familiar driving controls. He pulled down the damping lever on the boiler, clicked open the periscope lens. Immediately, several gauges lit up dimly in front of him. The most important at the moment was the boiler pressure gauge. He watched it climb whilst listening to the sizzling of his breakfast on the top of the firebox. After a while, he heard Ingrid turning the chops over, and cracking the sh.e.l.ls of the eggs.
"Ow!"
Josef didn"t glance up from the pressure gauge. "Cut your finger on the sh.e.l.l again?" he asked, teasingly.
"No. Burned it on the hot top." Ingrid always called the firebox lid the hot top; Josef didn"t know why. It was something from her previous life, she said. But, when Josef asked, she admitted that she wasn"t too sure what her previous life had been, and looked uncomfortable.
Perhaps, thought Josef, she had been a footsoldier. That would be enough to make anyone ashamed. But then, of course, he might have been a footsoldier. There was no way of being sure, not when they took away your memory every time to make room for the new training. It was best to concentrate on the present. You were less likely to get killed that way.
The needle of the pressure gauge was almost on the line now. Through the thick armour-plating, Josef could hear the rumble as the other engines began to move off. He pressed his left eye to the periscope, saw the strange, curved view of the shed roof and floor, and the engines crawling across it like steam-wreathed insects. TY-1, Julius"s old engine, was already up on its legs: the driver must be testing them for some reason. Josef decided not to wait and steered around the other engine, letting off just enough pressure to keep the boiler gauge on the line. As he rolled through the door the light changed, brightened. Below a grey, cloud-heavy sky he saw the familiar white curve of the dispatch road, the start of the five-kilometre journey to the front line. He pushed the steering lever across to follow the curve, then opened the throttle a little further, watched the pressure gauge drop back and the speedometer rise. The cab began to tremble and sway.
Ingrid touched his hand; automatically, he turned it palm up. A piece of folded bread was pressed into it, containing a hot, greasy chop. Keeping one hand on the steering lever, he ate with the other. When he was finished, he wiped the grease off his chin with his sleeve and said, "Eggs."
"One egg only," said Ingrid with mock severity. "You know the ration"s been cut." The ration had been cut months ago, from four eggs per engine to two, but Josef and Ingrid went through the same routine every morning.
It made Josef feel better, to think that the ration had once been higher, and might once be higher again. He a.s.sumed that Ingrid felt the same way.
"I should get one and a half," said Josef. "I do all the hard work."
"And I have to stoke the fire!" Ingrid sounded genuinely annoyed.
"Oh, do as you like then," said Josef. But he knew he would get the largest egg, or a bit of the second one; something extra. Ingrid looked after him. Stokers were supposed to look after their drivers, but with Ingrid there was something else. Julius, for instance, would never have given Josef the larger share of breakfast. Perhaps she was just paying him back for all the advice he"d given her about life in the sheds. But no. It was more than that, too. It was almost as if she were his mother.
Josef frowned at the thought. "Mother" was a concept he didn"t quite understand any more. It didn"t seem right for Ingrid, somehow. She wasn"t old enough. Only adults could be mothers. But apart from that he wasn"t sure what a mother was. It just sounded like a good thing, that was all.
"Ugh!" said Ingrid suddenly, spitting something shiny on to the floor. "There"s a bit of metal in this chop!"
"You haven"t swallowed any of it?" asked Josef.
"No. I spat it out."
"You should have put it in your pocket," he said. "All metal is valuable. We might lose it now."
"Don"t be silly!" said Ingrid indistinctly, her mouth full of meat. "It was only the size of my tooth!"
"Perhaps it was your tooth!" laughed Josef. Ingrid dug him in the ribs and laughed too.
It was probably only shrapnel, thought Josef. Enemy bodies were often contaminated with it. They were supposed to get it all out in the kitchens, but some mistakes were inevitable.
They were on the straight part of the road now. Josef opened the throttle all the way, watched the speedometer climb. It was important to get past this part of the road quickly: it was an easy target for sh.e.l.ls. Josef kept his eye firmly against the periscope lens, checking the way ahead in the dim light. The footsoldiers tried to fill in the sh.e.l.l holes as soon as they were made, but it was possible that some recent ones would remain. He could see the flicker of sh.e.l.lfire ahead against the low blanket of cloud, and that only made him more cautious.
Ingrid touched his hand again, pressed another piece of folded bread into it. Josef glanced away from the periscope, inspected the makeshift sandwich, and grinned. As he"d expected, there was an extra strip of the leathery substance that Ingrid had torn off her own ration.
"Thank you," he said, because he thought he ought to say thank you. Then he began stuffing the egg into his mouth quickly because there wasn"t that far to go before they reached the trenches, and he would need both hands then.
He watched the road ahead carefully, but it was clear apart from a couple of footsoldiers. They waved; Josef waved back, though he knew that they couldn"t see him. He wished he could blow a whistle - it seemed to him that engines ought to have whistles - but this engine didn"t have one, and none of the others did as far as he knew. Whistles must, he decided, be something to do with his previous life, like Ingrid"s "hot top".
The road finished sooner than it should have done. Josef saw a work party ahead, the regular rise and fall of shovels, the movement of wheelbarrows. The workers were Biune, the heavy, brown-furred species who made up most of the footsoldiers. A sergeant flagged Josef down, signalled him to leave the road. Secretly pleased, Josef nudged Ingrid. "Time to do some work."
The girl responded at once, prising open the c.o.kebox door behind her, picking up the shovel, then opening the firebox again and shovelling in the coal. The fire flared and the pressure on the boiler began to rise. Josef, who had brought the engine to a halt in front of the work party, waited until the gauge needle was well above the line before he spun open the leg valves. Back legs first, otherwise the fire would spill out into the cabin. Middle legs as the rear started to rise. Finally front legs. Metal creaked, clicked and squealed as the complicated series of ratchets, levers and locks engaged and disengaged. The cabin canted forward and then levelled again.
"Ready to walk?" asked Josef. Ingrid was watching the fire, making sure there was enough fuel in there to keep them moving for as long as possible before she had to open the door again. They couldn"t leave the door open whilst they were walking: there was too much danger of spillage.
Ingrid didn"t reply for a moment, but he felt the machine quiver with each shovel load of coal she put in the firebox.
Josef waited, a little worried that the Biune sergeant would be angry if they didn"t move quickly. But he had vanished from the periscope field; Josef could only see a private footsoldier with a pickaxe.
"Ready," said the girl"s voice at last, and Josef pulled the walk release. With a clatter of ratchets, the engine started to stride forward towards the low embankment at the edge of the road. Josef heard a rattle of coal as Ingrid slammed a last shovelful into the fire, then, just in time, just before Josef had to tilt the engine back to take the slope, the firebox door slammed shut. Josef wondered how she"d known she could get away with it without being able to see out.
He didn"t wonder for long, though. Over the top of the slope was chaos. What should have been a dummy trench, well to the rear of the front line, was crawling with soldiers - Biune, Ajeesks and a couple of the ape-like Ogrons. The trench was wider than it had been, too: Josef could barely get the engine across it. On the far side, beyond a thicket of barbed wire, more figures moved in a mist of smoke.
With a sudden shock Josef realized that they were wearing red-and-yellow enemy uniforms. Before he could think about it, there was the loud clang of rifle fire against the armour of the engine. Josef heard Ingrid"s sudden intake of breath.
"The front line"s moved," he said.
"But that"s impossible!"
"It"s happened. The enemy are right in front of me."
He was sighting up even as he spoke, moving the fine-etched cross-hair across the periscope field. They were in range now. With his left hand Josef pulled the drive lever out to stop the lurching forward motion of the engine, with his right he flipped the smaller lever that exchanged the periscope eyepieces. Now he had a close view of the enemy troops.
"They"re running away," he told Ingrid. "They obviously weren"t expecting the engines this early."