The Tartan Ringers by Jonathan Gash

where streets began. There were three exits for vehicles, but for an enterprising slum-trained coward spiked railings were hardly an obstacle.
    Suddenly the lights in the Bissolotti camp vanished.
    In ours, there arose a subdued murmur, then somebody called a nervous order and the glims dowsed here and there until Sidoli’s pitch was black. I heard Sidoli yell. A hubble of voices responded, one panicky shout stilled by a threat. We’d been caught napping. Only a sort of air-pallor from the nearby street let you see a damned thing. I went clammy, cursing myself for not having escaped sooner. If it hadn’t been for Joan’s loving farewell I’d be miles away by now. Bloody women. No wonder I’m always in a mess.
    Somebody shouted, ‘Fan out, lads,’ and somebody else shouted, ‘No. Two lots. Over there . . .’ Then a third, ‘Bunch up. Get in line . . .’ So much for Sidoli’s confidence. His men were a shambles. I began to move instinctively to my right. I’d once been in a real army and recognized only too well the authentic hallmarks of disorder. Time Lovejoy was gone.
    I froze in mid-slink. Nearby there was a steady touch of movement. The night air somehow pressed on my face. A hoary old sergeant – a survivor – once told me, ‘Never effing mind what you frigging see,’ he’d said. ‘Survivors feel.’ So I felt, lay down with my head towards the Bissolotti camp, and stayed still.
    A line of men crept past and over me. One boot squelched an inch from my hand. I swear it. The guilty thought came that a true friend would behave like a Roman goose and cackle the alarm. Not me. As soon as the silent line of assaulters had passed I rose and moved tangentially right. No more than forty slunk paces and I came against a giant wagon. I felt my way along its flank. My heart was throbbing. I’d not breathed for a week.
    The wagon’s side seemed to go on forever and I cursed Sidoli for a lying swine. He’d represented Bissolotti’s as a small vulgar outfit. If they could afford massive new transformer-generators like this supersize it was no cardboard cut-out job. And the chug of new Bissolotti arrivals in the next street showed that enemy reinforcements were at hand.
    Smoke. Cigarette smoke. And nearby. Somebody was probably cupping the fag into his palm the way convicts and soldiers do. I’d nearly eeled into them in my fright. I edged beneath the enormous generator wagon and crawled out under the other side. Even then I nearly brained myself by standing up. My shoulder caught on the cab’s open door.
    ‘How much longer?’ a man’s voice muttered.
    ‘Five minutes. Then we shout the rest up.’
    Hell fire, I thought. There must have been thirty or so in that assault line. Plus those vehicles I’d heard nearby. Sidoli’s fair – not to mention me – was caught between two aggressive mobs. A classic pincer movement. I almost moaned in terror. As soon as the rumble started Bissolotti’s would switch on every light they possessed. I’d be spotlighted like a prisoner against a wall. That explained the Bissolotti tactic, of lining his wagons facing down the slope towards our pitch.
    This wasn’t for me. I lay down and wriggled under the vehicle’s vast bulk. The next wagon was smaller, probably a slab carrier, to transport the wooden façades. I heard two more men muttering by the tailboards, found the driver’s cab of the slabber, and lifted myself up. Somebody said, ‘What’s that?’ as I slipped the gear lever into neutral and the hand brake off. I dropped and crept behind my transformer wagon’s quadrupled rear wheels and wormed towards the front. The slab lorry creaked. Its bulk drifted past.
    ‘Christ. It’s moving.’ Somebody ran past, grunting with exertion as he tried to swing into the cab. A man shouted for a torch. Two men cursed. ‘Over here! Over here!’
    I was up and into the transformer’s cabin. A flashlight jumped the gloom. The slab lorry was trundling slowly down the slope,