A SONG IN THE MORNING by Gerald Seymour Read Free Book Online Page B

inconvenience."
    Jack said, "And unless you get out of this gentleman's way and let him get on with the job that he's damn good at then you'll be running even later."
    The young man's moustache trembled on his lip. Jack thought it was shaved so thin that it might be touched up with eyeshadow.
    "What I meant was . . . "
    "Just make yourself scarce, and quickly."
    The young man backed away. He'd seen the bloody-minded crack on Jack's face. He decided this wasn't a man to fight with.
    The pillbox was part of a line that had been built along the Surrey uplands during the summer of 1940. If the Germans had landed on any of the beaches around the resort towns of Eastbourne or Brighton and if they had broken out of the beachhead then the high ground thirty miles to the north would have been the last defensive barrier before the southern outskirts of London. They might have been chaotic times, but they had known how to build pillboxes. It was squat, hexagonal, walls two feet thick with three machine-gun slits giving a wide view down towards the Surrey and Sussex county border. No one wanted the pillbox as a memento of the war. The farmer was selling his field, the developers were buying it for twelve houses to the acre, and anyway it was a hangout for the local teenagers and their plastic bags and solvent sniffing.
    The last sandbag was filled, the top knotted.
    "Do I have to carry 'em all myself?"

    There was a titter of laughter. He had them all lifting his sandbags, right down to the developers in their shined footwear and styled raincoats.
    Jack carried a sandbag beside George who carried two.
    "You're running bloody late."
    "It's been there close on fifty years, another fifteen minutes won't hurt."
    They reached the pillbox. George stopped his helpers a dozen yards short.
    "What are you going to use?"
    "Got time for a lesson, have we?"
    "Only asking."
    "Get that shower back and I'll talk you through."
    Jack waved the drivers and the farmer and the developers away.
    He watched George work. All the time he worked he talked. A thin nasal voice describing the skills that he loved.
    "I've drilled shot holes right through to the reinforcing net of wire, got me? Reinforced concrete, right, so there's wire in the middle. Each wall, I've got six shot holes a foot apart, and I've six more in the roof drilled vertically. For each hole there's three cartridges of P.A.G., that's Polar Ammon Gelignite to you. All in it's close to 20 pounds that's going to blow. Don't ever force the cartridges, see, don't mistreat the little fellows, just slide them in, like it's a bloody good woman you're with . . . "
    Jack enjoyed working with the old man. For more than two years he'd been with George once a week, once every two weeks, and he was always made to feel it was his first time out. There hadn't been anything of a friendship between them until George had one day cried off a job, and Jack had been in his area and called by. He had found him alone with a twisted ankle and an empty larder and gone down the local shops and stocked the cupboard, and ignored all the moaning about not accepting charity. He'd called in a few more times till the old man was mended, but though they marked the binding of an unlikely friendship his visits were never referred to again.
    ' Bastard stuff this reinforced concrete. Takes double what you need to knock over brickwork . . ."
    lack knew that. He'd known that from the first time he'd worked with the old man. He just nodded, like he'd been given a jewel of new information.
    The detonators went in on the end of white Cordtex, linked with safety fuse. Detonator ends crimped to the Cordtex, safety fuse tied to the Cordtex. Every shot hole had its own detonator, and in minutes the pillbox was covered with a web of wire.
    "Always run the Cordtex and the safety fuse out carefully.
    Bastard if you get a kink in the stuff. You get a bloody misfire. What does a misfire mean? Means it's bloody dangerous when you get to dismantling