Pat Kelleher - The Alleyman

Above the rustle of the leaves and the faint rush of water, a distant purr caught her attention and held it, as no other sound could.

Wally cocked his head and listened.

He sniffed. “An engine,” he said.

“Two,” corrected Nellie. “Aeroplanes.”

“Two?” said Jack. “Are you sure? But we’ve only got the one.”

“Well, there are two now,” said Nellie, her mood defiant.

“Friend or foe?” asked Reggie.

“I don’t know,” she said thoughtfully. She looked up at the sky, shielding her eyes and squinting against the glare.

Ablaze and drifting down over the crater, the kite balloon was hard to miss.

She soon spotted another smaller balloon, higher and partially hidden by the smoke from the first, drifting in the same direction.

Above them, she saw what she was looking for, the small shapes spiralling higher and higher. She could just make out Tulliver’s Strutter, but the other – was that a Hun? Her eyes widened with surprise before her forehead scrunched with doubt. But how?

By now, the others had gathered around her and the air filled with theories and observations.

“There’s men up there,” said Reggie, pointing at the balloon.

“It’s a Hun observation balloon,” said Wally. The bantam cockney driver clenched his fists, and his lips contorted into a snarl.

It was spiralling down rapidly into the crater. It was going to come down not a quarter of a mile away. She felt a surge of pity for the men trapped on it. The smaller, higher balloon was sinking too, but that would come down further away.

“Where the hell have they come from?” wondered Jack.

“Perhaps it’s a way home!” suggested Norman.

Nobody spoke out in agreement, but nobody would gainsay it.

Nellie felt a blossoming of hope in her breast at the words. Home. Could it be?

There was only one way to find out.

A PALL OF smoke stained the air above the trees. Expecting Germans, the crew of the Ivanhoe approached the crash site cautiously.

“Stay by me,” Jack told Cecil in a low voice, as he drew his Webley.

The young lad stepped closer, his eyes darting about as if he expected picklehaubed Fritzs to leap from every bush.

Norman and Reggie watched their flanks and Wally. Wally wasn’t to be trusted around Germans. It was frightening that such a little man could have such a fury bottled up within him. They didn’t want him killing them before they got whatever information they needed.

Nellie wasn’t happy about bringing up the rear.

“I can kill if I have to,” she told Jack, petulantly.

He studied her face.

“I don’t doubt it,” he said. “But we’re soldiers. It’s what we have to do.” He bent his head and spoke quietly. “You shouldn’t kill unless you have to. Knowing you’ve killed a man changes you.” He tapped his chest. “Inside. It breaks something in you. Something that can’t be mended. Bad enough it has to happen to lads like Cecil; I wouldn’t want that to happen to you. I don’t want that on my conscience,” he said. He straightened up and added firmly, “You’ll stay in the rear.”

Nellie had no answer and relented. This was one area where she was relieved to forego responsibility. The weight of the revolver in her hand began to feel like a poisoned chalice, but she gripped it firmly nevertheless.

Ahead, somewhere through the undergrowth, there was a sound like a groan. Jack held his hand up and the rest of the party crouched down. He signalled the crew to spread out in a skirmish line, then stood and, looking right and left, waved them on with his revolver.

LIEUTENANT EVERSON LAY dazed against the bole of a tree, a large lump forming on his forehead, waiting for the world to stop spinning and his body to stop hurting.

The last thing he expected to see was Nellie Abbott walking out of the undergrowth with a look of shock on her face.

“Lieutenant Everson! What happened? How did you get here?”

He looked up and saw the coverall-clad tankers beside her. “The crew of the Ivanhoe , I presume,” he groaned. “Don’t you salute a senior officer?”

Jack shrugged. “Generally not, sir. Mr Mathers said it usually gets ’em shot.”

“And where is Lieutenant Mathers?”

“Gone west, sir.”

While not a shock, it was unwelcome news. There were precious few surviving officers as it was without losing another.

“Then who’s in command here?” he asked. The men looked sheepish.

“I guess that would be me,” said Nellie, stepping forward in her coveralls.

Now it was Everson’s turned to look shocked. “You?” he said. He looked to the awkward tank crew. “You’re taking orders from a woman now?”

Nellie’s eyebrow arched.

Reggie intervened. “Begging your pardon, sir. We were in a bit of a state for a while, the fumes from the tank engine and all that. Some sort of neuralgia. We weren’t quite ourselves. Miss Abbott saw us right. Showed us how we’d let Alfie down. We owed it to him, to find him, sir. We only did what was right. Orders or no orders, right is right. We were on his trail when we came across you.”

“We saw you come down. How on earth did you end up in that thing, Lieutenant?” asked Nellie.

Everson’s tone hardened. “We arrived at the crater. You weren’t there,” he said. “We were captured by Zohtakarrii and escaped in a captured observation balloon.”

“So there are no Huns?” said Wally, disappointed.

“No,” said Everson. “Well, one. I expect Tulliver’s on his tail this minute.”

Now fully aware of his surroundings, he looked around. “Where are the rest, Atkins and the others? They were in the kite balloon. Are they all right?”

Jack waved his arm. “Spread out, find them.”

THE TANK CREW came back in ones and twos, with bruised and battered Tommies and scattered haversacks, gasbags, battle bowlers and rifles.

Corporal Riley and Tonkins had found themselves stuck in adjacent trees, having slid down a succession of broad flat leaves as though they were slides. Their electric lance kitbags were found nearby, their fall broken by the undergrowth.

Gazette had twisted his ankle and ended up entangled in a thicket, as if he’d been left hanging out on the old barbed wire.

They came across Pot Shot groaning in shrubbery.

“Bloody hell, I haven’t taken a beating like that since the police set about us during the general strike!” he moaned as they hauled him out.

Gutsy had got away relatively unscathed, having had the benefit of the unfortunate Mercy as a soft landing as they came hobbling in together.

“Well, if it isn’t Wendy and the Lost Boys,” Gutsy said in clipped, bitter tones when he saw the tank crew.

Nellie threw him the kind of haughty look she usually reserved for her brothers. Gutsy, who had contended with Mrs Blood’s occasional wrath for over a decade, baulked nevertheless.

All were maps of contusions, scratches, bruises and livid welts from whip-thin branches, and all had run their gamut of swear words until there was nothing left but a weary acceptance of the discomfort and pain.

They found Padre Rand kneeling over Jenkins, the signals gear hung from various branches around them. The livid, raw acid burns on Jenkins’ face were the least of his worries now. He screwed up his eyes in pain as he snatched short ragged breaths. Padre Rand barely had time to read him the Last Rites before Jenkins’ breathing became softer and then, with one last gasp, stopped altogether.

ATKINS CAME ROUND, his head hurting, every limb throbbing and aching. He eased himself into a sitting position against a tree trunk, resting uncomfortably against the jumble of gear in his knapsack.

He was amazed to find himself still alive. His first thought now was of Flora, just as his last thought had been. He was still alive. He could still get back to her. But to do that, he would have to move.