My interview with Mrs Lake, concluded.
Thanks luv, don’t mind if I do.
I have to change the Dictaphone tape and the old woman scrutinizes me as I do so, her gaze is a bit un-nerving.
Got yer piqued in’ I?
Well, as I said, we’re all very interested.
Hah hah! Look at him - like the cat on the proverbial! Hah hah!
It’s ready, I say.
Oh, okay. Truth to tell, the visit didn't start off very interesting. We sort of forced a smile as Uncle C sang away like a loon and then suddenly he pulls the truck around and we’re there, idling in through some gate or other and letting the boiler take a breather as we hop off the leather seats and onto terra firma.
God what a pong! You never smelt the like! I looks at Mary and the poor gal’s turned yellow as custard, didn’t blame her neither. “Crikey!” I yells, “It’s the bleedin’ sewers!”
Charlie, he just laughs, “Welcome ladies to the Fields of Filtration!” It seems to tickle him, waving his cap grandly at the site of the stench, something like - oh what are those things called again…?
Septic tank?
Septic… yeah that’d be right… but big I mean, bloody enormous. Reeking so your eyes just burn and we were both holding our breaths.
Anyway, Charlie hustles us to this little shed thing and inside there’s all these boxes and bits of God knows what with wires and aerials and springs sticking out. And he hands me a box and he grabs a gadget of some sort for himself. And by now he’s whistling and singing again, “Picnic time for teddy bears, the little teddy bears are having a lovely time today. Watch them, catch them unawares, and see them picnic on their holiday.”
And he opens the shed again and it’s back to the pong.
So he shows us round the place, which is pretty empty don’t see hardly a person, just the odd bloke lurking here and there waving at a distance and Charlie waves a slow arm back - you know, how fellas do. “Hullo!” he calls out.
Every now and again he looks at a clipboard, goes over to the edge of a big vat of stinking mud and pulls this rusty lever and draws up some sort of… I dunno, barometer type thing. He does this a few times and catches my eyes when it does it, “Oh yes,” says he, “always plenty to check on, got to keep conditions just right, just so."
Well, I suppose we’d just about got used to the stench when it was time to be off, back we scampers to the truck - cor, a coal fire and engine oil never smelt so sweet! And we get that chimney going and off we potter with them great tracks rolling slowly through the muddy bog, didn’t take a road or nuthin’.
And it was the same…?
That’s right. I guess we went to two or three more places, they all looked the same and Charlie does much the same sort of thing. It would’ve been nicer if we could have maybe talked to somebody but you know how it is - how it was, I mean men and women, back then we didn’t mix, right?
End of the day and we’re tired now though we aint done sweet F.A. ‘cept tag along with Charlie and put up with the smell - oh and one other thing; That gadget of his - it was a radio and like I say, couldn’t get the radio to work properly there but old Charlie he don’t seem to care, so we get the blasted static, or whatever, just whooshing away as he whistles. We found out why a bit later, but I’ll get to that in me own good time and don’t you be tryin’ to rush me!
Right so there we are, end of the day and my hands aching from holding me box all bloomin’ day and that’s when Charlie says, "right let’s have a butcher’s” and peers inside the thing. It weren’t a big box, like a cake box maybe but wooden and wrapped in cloth. And he lifts the lid and stone me if there aint a budgie in there!! Honest to goodness a little mite of a budgie bird cheeping sleepy like the rest of us.
“Like miners y’see,” Charlie explains, “these little beggars don’t like gas - make for very reliable helpers!” and he laughed.
“Oy, don’t start no caterwauling!” I had to shout at Mary for she had gone all fluttery lip and teary, and I can’t abide that sort of business.
“Get that box stowed and we’ll be off,” Charlie says, grabbing his radio again, and me and him walks over to the nearest shed, unlock it and I put the thing back on a shelf. The old Uncle gives the little bleeder some seeds and pips and whistles to it. So then I say, “Right then Charlie what is all this nonsense then, aint sewage and we aint seen no-one hardly and you got a look…”
“What sort of look’s that then?”
“Keen.”
And he laughs. “True enough, true enough… well y’see all this is important work and this place’ll be looking lively and soon. Gonna be harvest on these farm in a couple of weeks - and it don’t be no corn as’ll need picking neither. Something special it is - little flowers you can crush up and make petroleum with. Special gasses too”
“Ah yer ‘aving me on!”
“No it’s the truth. And it’ll win the war for Albert and get you home again! See all this is his. Crafty devil’s been tucking these away for some pretty time… and that upstart Plantagenet - well he’ll be for the high jump soon as these flowers bloom. Gonna need a lot of willing workers getting them harvested too.”
He whistled then in a jokey sort of way. Then he winks. “Still, I do believe there’s a few good train loads of kiddies just set to fit the bill heh, heh, just like you eh?! Top secret work? I bet you do us proud” and he grins.
I just looks at him - and right there and then we hear a scream, loud enough to singe the hair off your head never mind it standing up! I felt sort of… stuck, couldn’t move my feet no matter the trying and I aint no coward nor wallflower - as you might have gathered! Charlie looks shaken too but he swipes his radio back from the shelf and bundles me through the door.
Oh it were the girl - we’d left her in the truck and she must have got out again to stretch her legs or, well, God knows why she would’ve wanted to get out but she had - and they was on her then.
She was sort of circled by these creatures - like trolls they were sort of growling and all of ‘em pawing the air and reaching for her like she was meat, but slow like they’d come out from the earth and weren’t used to daylight. And that was Mary’s only hope far as I could tell. “Get the girl!” yells Charlie dashing past me and waving and shouting to distract the… things.
I remember thinking ‘I’m a girl!’ and then trying to get my feet to move - and finding that I could. There’s nuthin as motivating as being royally pissed off I suppose.
So in I goes - not looking at them things just straight at Mary, and shoving her up into the truck.
I caught a glimpse of eyes staring at me, saw ‘em in the mirror on the truck saw them staring eyes… all sightless and white. Blind they were, couldn’t see for toffee - and growling was all they had in the way of speaking. But they were coming and there was enough of ‘em. And Mary was quiet as the grave now, lying on the seat beside me. I was shoving the scoop into the little scuttle thinking of chucking hot coals at the monsters, when suddenly they all start growling together and clutching their ears coz Uncle Charlie’s got the radio up full and that noise - Christ! it were nasty enough in my ears but those poor fiends couldn't hack it at all - start mewling and backing off - and Charlie jumps in, gets the truck moving, and we’re gone.
For a long time we don’t say a word just shivering away to ourselves and I think I sort of stroked Mary’s hair or something. Eventually though I turn me seat and says to Charlie, “They were children - them things, they were kids - like me.”
He don’t have no hasty answer to that neither - but when he's ready he comes back with, “Yeah... Yeah they were kids right enough - careless kids that didn’t listen, didn’t look in the box, picked flowers with their bare hands or ate things they shouldn’t or whatever else stupid children do. Careless - careless all round.”
I remember the way he was hunched forward in his seat and scanning the moors through the window, like he could see through the dusk and the mist rolling in. “Well,” he said, all final, “they were just the rehearsal, just practising really - and only a few that went to the bad...This time around we’re gonna have a whole different scale of operation and no chance for idiots!
It’s gonna be industrial scale and there’ll be older kids, like you, to make sure the others stay right… and guards maybe, and if they muck about then we’ll just shoot the buggers and no messing, not this time, there’s a war on after all. Nation’s gonna need a workforce - and it’s gonna need fuel.”
...Just like an old woman does, she says, looking into her empty glass. My journalistic instincts tell me she’s reached the end of her tale… but frankly - I find it too incredible to believe… the idea that all those trains of evacuees were just to… well it’s just not plausible, it’s just a tale to keep the drinks and the cakes coming across the table at her. She must have spun it better when she phoned the Tymes and spoke to my boss.
So I switch my Dictaphone off.
The last thing she says is, “Well you don't have to believe me - just be grateful who won the war.”
