The Buried Circle - Jenni Mills [111]
‘Don’t blame me if you break a leg.’
I opened the car door and got out. It was a warm spring night, hardly a breeze, half a moon. ‘Where is it? Can’t see any lights.’
‘They won’t be lit unless there’s a raid on the way. This way.’ He set off, a faint stocky moon shadow trailing his back. We climbed the path; I kept my eyes on the ground, watching where I placed my feet, pretending I was a hind picking her delicate way across tussocked ground.
A shadow loomed out of the darkness: a Nissen hut.
‘Are we there?’
‘Sssh. That’s where the crew will be.’
‘There are people up here? In’t that dangerous? Don’t they get bombed?’
‘Course they get bombed. But somebody has to be here to start the fires. There’s an underground bunker beneath; protects them from anything other than a direct hit. But you’re right, it in’t the most popular duty.’
‘Did you ever have to do it?’
‘Still do, some nights.’ No wonder he wasn’t scared to be a navigator.
The ground had levelled out. Davey put a finger to his lips. We came round the end of a bank of earth, and there it was.
It was the bones of a city, in the moonlight, stretching half a mile or more across the Downs. No buildings, apart from the Nissen hut we’d passed; only spindly frames of pipework, a giant Meccano set. Every so often, a taller scaffolding tower rose twenty feet into the air, supporting pairs of square tanks. The place was utterly silent.
‘Welcome to the Starfish.’
‘Starfish?’
‘No idea. That’s what they call the decoy towns. Maybe starfish glow in the dark.’
‘I don’t understand how the Germans don’t know it’s here. They must fly over it in the day sometimes.’
‘If you saw it from above, it’d look like chicken sheds or farm buildings.’
And from down here? Set me in mind of Mr Cromley’s soul traps.
‘Mind where you’re putting your feet,’ said Davey. ‘Don’t want to trip over they feed troughs.’
They did look like feed troughs–long shallow iron baskets filled with something dark.
‘What’s in them?’
‘Coke and coal. Wood chippings, sawdust, brushwood underneath, soaked in oil’
‘What are the tanks for?’
‘That’s the clever bit. One’s full of oil, the other of water. When the fire baskets are alight, the men in the bunker can trigger the tanks to flush–a bit like a WC cistern. The flames go up to thirty foot.’ He sounded so proud you’d have thought he’d designed it himself.
‘And the water puts them out again?’
‘No, no. The opposite. It explodes. You seen a fire in a chip pan? Try putting that out with water. Whoomph. Steam, flames shooting to high heaven everywhere. Makes Jerry think one of his pals has just dropped a bomb, so in he comes for his own bombing run. With luck the blokes on the anti-aircraft battery pick him off, but doesn’t matter anyway, see, ‘cause he’s dumping his bombs on a bit of nowhere.’
Everything was so quiet; hard to imagine this silent place lit by fire and explosions. In the distance, a ewe called to its lamb. I stepped cautiously over one of the long troughs.
‘Hey, hang on, Fran,’ said Davey. That’d warm your knickers. I shouldn’t–’
‘I want to explore.’
‘It isn’t a good idea. You don’t know what might be over the horizon.’
‘Come on. It’s late, only a bit of old moon. There won’t be a raid.’
‘I don’t know. These days, bombers don’t need a full moon to find their way. And if they come, remember, it’s all remote control. There’s electric detonators in those troughs, wired back to the bunker. The blokes in the hut can’t see us–and, anyway, they wouldn’t hold off if they could.’
I felt reckless. On Monday Davey would be gone, my protection against the world; all I’d have left would be the airmen without faces. ‘Come on,’ I repeated. He shook his head.
‘‘Tisn’ safe, Fran’.
‘Thought you was going to be a bold brave airman.’
‘I mean not safe for you. Look at those daft shoes you’re wearing.’
‘Not so daft I can’t run in them.’ I jumped over the next fire basket, off like one of the racehorses Davey used to ride out on when he worked at the stables.
‘Fran