William At War Read online

  ‘That is a motor cycle on the main road,’ put in Mr Brown quietly, without looking up from his paper.

  ‘Oh, yes . . . well, they do sound jolly alike.’

  ‘Have you ever heard a Dornier?’ asked his father.

  ‘Well, I don’t know. I may’ve done . . . This aeroplane’s goin’ to have six engines . . . Can I have somethin’ else to eat, Mother? I’m jolly hungry.’

  ‘There’s the biscuit tin.’

  ‘Can’t I have some chocolate?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘I think you might let me have a bit of chocolate. I might be blown up any minute, an’ you’d be jolly sorry afterwards that you’d not let me have a bit of chocolate.’

  Mr Brown glanced up from his paper.

  ‘Your nuisance value, William,’ he said, ‘is so inestimably high that I’m sure you’re the last person in England Hitler would wish to bomb.’

  ‘I bet it’s me he’s tryin’ to get all the time,’ said William. ‘I bet he’s heard about this aeroplane I’m makin’.’

  ‘I’m going to go on knitting that blue jumper,’ said Ethel. ‘I still think it’s the wrong blue, but the war’s simply played havoc with shades.’

  ‘Will there be enough of that cold lamb for tomorrow, Emma?’ said Mrs Brown.

  She and Emma were together supplying the place of Cook, and each treated the other with pitying contempt as an amateur.

  ‘Oh yes, m’m. Lots,’ said Emma through the cork.

  ‘I’ll make a pie for the sweet,’ went on Mrs Brown, ‘and we’ll use up some of those pulped gooseberries.’

  ‘No need for you to do that, m’m,’ said Emma, removing the cork, her eyes gleaming with the light of battle. ‘I’ll have ample time to run up a suet pudden. The master always likes my suet puddens.’

  ‘Very well, Emma,’ said Mrs Brown, retreating, ‘but those pulped gooseberries aren’t keeping any too well.’

  ‘One of them war-time recipes,’ said Emma with a grimace expressing fastidious disgust. ‘I’ve never trusted ’em. I warned both you an’ Cook at the time, m’m, if you remember.’

  With that she replaced her cork in a manner to preclude all further argument.

  ‘Can I have the air-cushion, Mother?’ said William.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘To – to rest on,’ said William. ‘My back aches.’

  ‘Well, you know you broke the last one with playing with it. You can have it on condition you don’t play with it.’

  ‘All right, I don’t want it, then,’ said William.

  ‘And what have you got in your dressing-gown pocket?’ Mrs Brown leant forward and drew out a length of string, a penknife, a lump of putty, a handful of marbles, some screws, a match-box containing a live beetle, and a tube of glue, most of whose contents had already escaped.

  ‘Don’t let the beetle out,’ said William anxiously. ‘It’s one of the best I’ve ever had. I’m jus’ goin’ to give it a bit of biscuit.’

  ‘If anyone lets it out, I’ll die,’ threatened Ethel.

  ‘The glue’s simply soaked through your dressing-gown,’ said Mrs Brown . . . ‘Oh well,’ resignedly, ‘I can’t do anything about it now . . . Do stop eating biscuits, William. You’ve had quite enough.’

  ‘I bet that was a screaming bomb,’ said William.

  ‘It was the twelve-thirty letting off steam,’ said Mr Brown.

  ‘Was it?’ said William despondently. ‘It’s been a rotten raid so far.’

  ‘I wonder if the Bevertons are coming,’ said Ethel.

  ‘The who?’ said Mr Brown, looking up from his paper.

  Ethel and Mrs Brown exchanged nervous glances.

  ‘Yes, didn’t we tell you, dear?’ said Mrs Brown. ‘The Bevertons asked if they could share our shelter and we didn’t like to say “no”.’

  ‘Good heavens! They’ve got one of their own.’

  ‘I know, but they say it’s so much jollier to be together. They were sharing the Mertons’ last week, but Bella quarrelled with Dorita so they asked if they could share ours.’

  ‘Bella?’ demanded Mr Brown.

  ‘Bella Beverton, dear,’ explained his wife. ‘One of Ethel’s friends. Don’t you remember her?’

  ‘Ethel’s friends are indistinguishable,’ said Mr Brown. ‘Their vocabulary is limited to the word “marvellous”, but they can say it in twenty different tones of voice. Why intensify the horrors of war by having them in the air-raid shelter?’

  ‘Perhaps they won’t come, dear,’ said Mrs Brown soothingly. ‘After all, it’s some time since the siren went.’

  ‘They always take a long time getting ready,’ said Ethel.

  ‘Ready? What for?’ said Mr Brown.

  ‘For air-raid shelters,’ said Ethel.

  ‘Gosh,’ said William excitedly. ‘I can hear bombs.’

  But it was only the Bevertons arriving.

  Mrs Beverton was inordinately stout and her daughter was inordinately thin. They were both dressed in the latest in siren suits, and had obviously taken great pains with their make-up and coiffeurs. Mrs Beverton wore a three-stringed pearl necklace, large jade earrings and four bracelets. She had, moreover, used a new exotic perfume that made William cry out in genuine alarm, ‘Gas! Where’s my gas mask?’

  ‘GOSH!’ SAID WILLIAM EXCITEDLY. ‘I CAN HEAR BOMBS.’ BUT IT WAS ONLY THE BEVERTONS ARRIVING.

  ‘So sorry we’re late,’ she said gaily as she entered. ‘We just had to finish off our new siren suits. We’ve been working on them all day but they just needed the finishing touches, as it were. I had to get out my jewellery, too. I always like to feel I’ve got it with me, as it were. Room for a little one?’

  She plunged down on to a small camp mattress next to Mr Brown, almost blocking him from view.

  ‘Not squashing you, I hope?’ she inquired politely.

  ‘Not at all,’ came the muffled voice of Mr Brown from between her and the wall of the shelter.

  Bella sat down by Ethel and took out her knitting.

  ‘I’m making a green jumper like that one of yours,’ she said. ‘Did you get your perm?’

  ‘Yes. Yesterday.’

  ‘I shall have to have another soon if the raids keep on.’

  ‘Now you’d all like something to eat and drink, wouldn’t you?’ said Mrs Brown happily, setting to work on her tea equipage and adding almost mechanically. ‘I do hope Robert’s all right.’

  ‘SO SORRY WE’RE LATE,’ SAID MRS BEVERTON GAILY AS SHE ENTERED.

  ‘Do you like this colour?’ said Ethel, holding up the jumper she was working on.

  ‘Marvellous!’ said Bella in a deep voice.

  ‘I want to get it finished by tomorrow. I like the yoke effect, don’t you?’

  ‘Marvellous!’ said Bella on a higher key.

  ‘Did you see the cardigan Dolly Clavis knitted, with a hood? She’s going to lend me the pattern. It’ll be useful for cold mornings.’

  ‘Marvellous!’ squeaked Bella ecstatically.

  ‘You’ll have a cup of tea, won’t you, dear?’ said Mrs Brown to her husband.

  But Mr Brown wasn’t there. At Bella’s third ‘Marvellous!’ he had crept quietly out of the emergency exit.

  ‘Isn’t he tiresome!’ sighed Mrs Brown. ‘Now, William, you can have one more biscuit and then you must lie down and try to sleep.’

  ‘Sleep!’ echoed William indignantly, but his eyelids were heavy and it was all he could do to keep them open.

  Mrs Beverton had embarked upon a sea of prattle.

  ‘This scrap-iron business is simply disgraceful,’ she said. ‘It’s the same everywhere. They made a terrific effort just at the beginning and then let things slide. There must be lots more scrap iron about by now, that no one’s troubled to collect.’

  William gradually surrendered to the tide of sleep that was engulfing him. Through it he heard an occasional ‘Marvellous!’ from Bella, or a ‘I do hope that Robert and your father are all right,’ from his mother
.

  He slept through the All Clear but was roused by Mrs Brown. He gathered his scattered pieces of aeroplane sleepily together.

  Mrs Beverton was still in full sail on her sea of prattle.

  ‘This cousin of mine,’ she was saying, ‘made quite a little sum for the Spitfire Fund by this exhibition – just bits of shrapnel and a piece of a Dornier, and part of a shell-casing and a German incendiary bomb and a few things like that. People paid a shilling admission and she’s promised to lend it to me and—’

  Mrs Brown smothered a yawn.

  ‘That was the “All Clear”,’ she said. ‘Shall we go back to bed?’

  ‘What a shame!’ said Mrs Beverton. ‘I always hate leaving a party.’

  Ethel sat up and rubbed her eyes.

  ‘We had quite a nice little nap,’ she said to Bella, ‘didn’t we?’

  ‘Marvellous,’ yawned Bella.

  As William, back in his own bed, yielded once more to sleep, his thoughts went over what Mrs Beverton had been saying just before he went to sleep in the shelter. No one was collecting scrap iron . . . people ought to be collecting scrap iron . . . people ought to be . . . people ought to . . . people ought . . . He fell asleep and dreamed that Hitler, wearing Mrs Beverton’s siren suit, and Emma (still with the cork in her mouth) were wheeling a handcart of scrap iron, which turned into a gigantic aeroplane in the shape of a beetle which turned into Farmer Smith’s Daisy.

  He awoke with the firm conviction that he must do something about scrap iron.

  Most of his previous war efforts had been unsuccessful but, he decided, they had, perhaps, been too ambitious. He had tried to capture spies and parachutists, and this had turned out to be more difficult than he had thought it would. He couldn’t go wrong collecting scrap iron. Nobody could go wrong collecting scrap iron . . . You just – well you just collected scrap iron, and then took it to the depot in Hadley.

  He remembered that the organisers of the original appeal for scrap iron had had notices printed and dropped through letter-boxes, asking people to collect their scrap iron and advising them that it would be called for on a certain day. That, then, obviously, was the way to set about it . . .

  He assembled his Outlaws that morning and expounded his scheme to them.

  ‘We’ll write notices,’ he said, ‘and put them into people’s letter-boxes, an’ then, when they’ve had time to get the scrap iron together, we’ll go round an’ collect it. We can use my wooden cart or a wheelbarrow or somethin’. An’ I bet they’ll be jolly grateful to us.’

  The composition of his ‘appeal’ took some time, as none of them could remember exactly how the original one had been worded. The final effort was chiefly William’s.

  SKRAPPION

  Pleese collect your skrappion and we will call for it tomorro.

  By order, William Brown.

  They spent several hours copying it out and took it round the village in the evening.

  There was another air-raid alarm that night, and again Mrs Beverton and Bella joined the Browns in their shelter. Again Mrs Beverton prattled merrily all night. This time she knitted as well, taking up, as it seemed, almost the entire shelter with elbow acrobatics and running a knitting needle into Mr Brown’s eye three or four times before he finally took to flight. Again Bella said ‘Marvellous!’ fifty times in fifty different tones of voice. Again Emma wore her cork, taking it out only to snub Mrs Brown when she suggested making a milk pudding for lunch the next day. Again the only recognisable sounds outside the shelter were the distant lowing of Daisy and an occasional motorist.

  William busied himself with his aeroplane and his plans for collecting scrap iron. He was vaguely aware that Mrs Beverton was prattling about a Spitfire Fund exhibition, and asking his mother to tea the next day, but was too much occupied with his own affairs to listen to her.

  The next afternoon the Outlaws set off to collect the scrap iron. The result was at first disappointing. People were either amused or annoyed but in neither case did they produce any scrap iron. Mrs Monks they found specially irritating.

  ‘No, children,’ she said firmly, ‘we can’t be bothered to play games with you now. We have work to do for the country even if you haven’t,’ and vanished before they could explain that they had come on a matter of urgent national importance.

  By the time they reached Miss Milton’s they were definitely discouraged. Miss Milton was discouraging at the best of times, and in view of their treatment by normally quite pleasant people they felt that it would be worse than useless to present themselves at the front door and demand scrap iron. They were, however, reluctant to leave the house without making some effort towards the attainment of their object.

  ‘Let’s go round to the back,’ suggested William, ‘I believe I remember seein’ a lot of rubbish behind her tool shed. Her gardener found ’em in that bit of waste ground he was clearin’ for the potatoes.’

  They went round to the back and peeped over the hedge. Yes, there was the little heap of scrap iron that William remembered having seen – battered saucepans, rusty tin cans, old kettles . . .

  ‘Crumbs!’ said William. ‘That’s just what we want. An’ she can’t want it.’ He glanced at the house. ‘We won’t bother her goin’ to ask her. We’ll jus’ take it through the hedge. I bet that’s the best thing to do. I bet she’d rather we did that than come to the house an’ bother her . . . I’ll get through and hand it out to you.’

  He scrambled through the hedge and handed the pieces of scrap iron one by one to the others. They almost – not quite – filled the handcart.

  ‘That’s jolly good,’ said William as they set off again. ‘I bet she’ll be jolly grateful to us when she finds out. Let’s try Mrs Beverton next,’ he suggested. ‘She comes to our air-raid shelter, an’ my father says she’s worse than the air raid, but I bet she’ll have a bit of scrap iron. I put one of the notices through her letter-box, anyway.’

  They trundled the cart along to Mrs Beverton’s house, opened her small front gate and wheeled it up the path towards the front door. And then William suddenly stopped. For the French windows of the morning-room were open and inside the morning-room, on a long trestle table, was what could be nothing other than a collection of scrap iron kindly left there for them by Mrs Beverton.

  ‘Corks!’ gasped William. ‘That’s jolly decent of her. She’s jus’ left ’em there ready for us so’s we could get ’em without botherin’ her. It’s jolly decent of her.’

  ‘CORKS!’ GASPED WILLIAM. ‘IT’S JOLLY DECENT OF HER.’ THE COLLECTION OF SCRAP IRON WAS CERTAINLY IMPRESSIVE.

  He wheeled the cart across the lawn, put it down beside the French window, and entered the morning room.

  The collection of scrap iron was certainly impressive – heavy pieces of metal, jagged pieces of metal, dull pieces of metal of all textures, shapes and sizes.

  ‘There’s not room for it all in the cart,’ said Ginger.

  ‘No, but it’s a jolly sight better than that stuff of ole Miss Milton’s,’ said William. ‘It’s jolly good scrap iron, an’ it’s jolly decent of her to put it out ready for us like this. I’d like to take it to Hadley first, before Miss Milton’s. They’ll be jolly pleased with it down at Hadley. I bet it’ll be the best they ever had . . . I say! We could leave Miss Milton’s ole stuff here, an’ take this down to Hadley an’ then come back for Miss Milton’s, couldn’t we? I bet that’s a jolly good idea . . . Come on, let’s take Miss Milton’s out an’ put this in. This’ll just fill the cart nicely, an’ then we can get a bit more to put with ole Miss Milton’s an’ make up the second cartful. Come on . . .’

  In a few minutes they had emptied the cart, put its contents on the trestle table, and put the contents of the trestle table into the cart.

  Then, with the pleased feeling of a patriotic duty satisfactorily accomplished, they set off to Hadley.

  Mrs Beverton’s preparations for the Spitfire Exhibition tea party were somewhat behindhand. She had taken her afte
rnoon nap, as usual, and overslept, so that she was still harassing her little maid over the arrangements for tea when the guests were due to arrive.

  Moreover, Bella, who was supposed to have copied out the labels for the exhibits, so kindly lent by Mrs Beverton’s cousin, had forgotten all about it, and was now hastily scribbling them upstairs in her bedroom. Bella was feeling rather disgruntled, firstly because she had not heard from her latest boy friend for over a week and secondly because she was beginning to have a horrible suspicion that the green jumper didn’t suit her. So, though everything was still ‘Marvellous’, it was marvellous in a minor key.

  ‘Bella, do hurry up with those labels,’ called Mrs Beverton from downstairs. ‘I thought you’d have got them done this morning.’

  ‘I was busy,’ said Bella petulantly. ‘I was finishing that wretched jumper. I think it’s a frightful colour.’

  ‘Well, you would have it,’ said Mrs Beverton unsympathetically.

  ‘I know. It looked all right on Ethel.’

  ‘Oh, well, any colour suits Ethel,’ said Mrs Beverton. ‘She’s so pretty.’

  ‘Marvellous,’ said Bella tartly.

  ‘Now do hurry up with those labels, dear. I can’t think why you’ve been so long.’

  Bella muttered something under her breath that certainly wasn’t ‘Marvellous’, and scrawled the remaining half-dozen labels.

  ‘I’ve finished them now, Mother.’

  ‘Well, I wish you’d go and put them on the exhibits in the morning-room, dear. It’s after four, and I’ve still got to change.’

  ‘But I don’t know which to put on which,’ objected Bella.

  ‘You can’t go wrong, dear. I’ve put them in a straight line in order all along the table and the labels are numbered. Just put label number one on the one nearest the door and so on to the window. You can’t go wrong, and I’m sure it’s nice for you to feel that you’re helping mother.’

  ‘Marvellous!’ said Bella in what she imagined to be a tone of cutting irony.

  She took the labels down to the morning-room. She was still feeling aggrieved by her mother’s reference to Ethel Brown. She never had been able to understand what people saw in Ethel Brown. Personally she thought that Ethel looked a perfect sight in the green jumper. She never had liked her hair. Or her voice. Or her eyes . . .