The Machine Gunners by Robert Westall Read Free Book Online Page B

houses in the Square. And the next row, beyond the long jack gardens, quite untouched... except two were simply gone. The ones on either side were windowless, had slates missing. But two were simply gone.
    "Ronnie Boyce lives there..." said Chas. He had given Ronnie Boyce a bloody nose two days ago.
    "Did live there," said his father. "It was over quick. They can never have known what hit them..." Fat Ronnie Boyce, with his shiny boots and mum with asthma... where was he, now? Up in Heaven? With a harp and a halo to go with his shiny boots? He hoped God wasn't too rough on him. He was a terrible thief, but probably being blown to bits was enough punishment for being a thief...
    "Chas, lad," said his father, very quiet, "I'm going to see if Nana and Granda are all right. Most of the stuff that was dropped fell by the river last night. I want you to come with me..."
    Chas felt his stomach go heavy, as if he'd swallowed a cannon ball. Not Nana and Granda too! He saw in his mind their neat house in Henry Street, with the white wheel for a gate, and the big white seashells in the garden, and the freshly painted white flagstaff where his granda ran up the Union Jack every morning and saluted it.
    "Don't take the bairn, Jack," said his mother, fingering her apron.
    "He's going," said his father grimly. "He's fourteen now, and there might be errands to run, and clearing up to do."
    "He'd better wear his best suit, then..."
    "Don't be daft, woman. It's not a funeral yet. He might get it ruined for nowt. Come on, son."
    They walked side by side down the road. Chas felt proud that his father needed him. It was a solemn occasion, a family occasion, an adult occasion. But his hands wouldn't stop shaking. He wondered how it would be. There might be Nana putting on the kettle, and Granda getting his morning coughing over. Everyone would tell bomb stories.
    Or there might only be a hole in the ground, like Ronnie Boyce's house. The whole world seemed broken in half. Nearly, the same old streets, women gossipping at doors, kids peering over walls. But above the familiar rooftops billowed more smoke than he had ever seen: oily black smoke rolling over itself, trailing east to cover the rising run, so that they walked from sunshine to shadow every minute. It looked like a photo Chas had seen of Dunkirk. In a way he liked the smoke clouds; they were exciting. But Nana's house making that smoke?
    They turned into Church Lane. Blocked. Big red notices saying Access Prohibited and Danger. Policemen controlling traffic. Men pulling crowbars off the backs of lorries. A wriggling mass of white hosepipes, connected to hydrants that peed streams of water into the gutters like naughty boys.
    At the far end of the street the red brick spire of Holy Savior's was burning. Flames licked from every window from top to bottom, joining into a smoke column that blew away easy. Even the Germans across the North Sea would be smelling the burning this morning. And laughing.
    His father was asking a policeman which streets to the lower town were open. The policeman was shaking his head. Chas watched the church. God lived there. If even God wasn't safe from Hitler, who was? Why didn't God get Hitler for what he was doing? Why didn't he send a thunderbolt on Berchtesgarten? Wasn't Hitler afraid to do such things to God? Chas had once spat on a church pew for a laugh, and walked in fear and trembling for a week afterward. Where was God?
    As he watched, the spire seemed to shimmer in the heat. It was shimmering more and more. It was twisting, like an outlaw shot in a Western—all that great brick height. It made Chas feel dizzy. Even a hundred yards away, he wanted to run. Great chunks of brickwork fell inward into the church spire, like a jigsaw breaking up. The gilded weathercock on top tilted. Firemen were running in all directions. And then slowly, ever so slowly,
    the spire pounced downward at the firemen, like a leaping red lion. It landed in the street and leaped