William At War Read online

  She stood in the doorway of the morning-room and looked with dispassionate contempt at the collection of metal on the table . . . It was the first time she had seen it (she had been out when it arrived) and it was, she thought, a pretty rotten show. It wasn’t in a straight line either, whatever her mother might say. She straightened it and began to put the labels round. ‘Part of wing of Messerschmitt’ (looked more like a rusty old saucepan). ‘Piece of shell casing’ (looked more like an old kettle lid – what you could see of it for rust). ‘Part of aileron from Dornier 17’ (more like an old sardine tin). She flung the labels down, anyhow, one by one. There were too many labels for the exhibits, but she didn’t care. She wasn’t interested in the rotten old exhibition, and she didn’t care whether it was a success or not. After all, one would expect one’s own mother to appreciate one’s good points if no one else did. She had always thought that her hair, especially after a brightening shampoo, was a better colour than Ethel Brown’s any day . . .

  Mrs Beverton had changed into her mauve georgette just in time to breathlessly receive the first guest. There were so few social activities of any kind nowadays that all the invitations she sent out had been accepted even at such short notice. Mrs Monks was coming and Miss Milton and Mrs Bott and Mrs Clavis and Mrs Barton and Mrs Brown and Miss Blake and Miss Featherstone.

  Mrs Beverton hurried breathlessly down to the drawing-room just as the little maid was admitting Mrs Barton. One by one but almost immediately afterwards (for the meaningless urban convention of arriving everywhere half an hour late was rightly held in scorn here) the others arrived.

  ‘Do come in,’ said Mrs Beverton brightly as she ushered them into the drawing-room. ‘So nice of you to come to my little party. All in a good cause, isn’t it? I thought that we’d have tea first and that while we were having it you could go one by one and see the exhibition. There really isn’t room in the morning-room for all of us. I’ve put a plate on the table near the door, and if you’ll all put your sixpence in that – or however much more you like to make it, of course . . . All the exhibits are numbered and described. Will you go first, Miss Featherstone? You know where the morning-room is, don’t you? Just across the way . . .’

  Miss Featherstone went out, and the others sat down and began tea. In a short time Miss Featherstone returned. She looked pale and bewildered.

  ‘Well,’ said Mrs Beverton with a complacent and expectant smile, ‘did you find it interesting?’

  ‘Er – yes,’ said Miss Featherstone uncomfortably, avoiding her hostess’s eye. ‘Er – y-yes.’

  ‘Tragic, of course, I agree,’ said Mrs Beverton. ‘Definitely tragic, of course. I quite understand how you feel. I’m not one to gloat over it myself. However you look at it, it means tragedy in one form or another . . . Now, Miss Blake, would you like to see it? Just pop your sixpence on to the plate. Or a bit more, of course, if you really like the show . . . You know the way to the morning-room, don’t you? . . . A little more tea, Mrs Brown?’

  A few moments later Miss Blake returned to the room. She, too, looked pale and bewildered.

  ‘Well?’ said Mrs Beverton again expectantly. ‘It’s interesting, isn’t it?’

  Miss Blake avoided both her hostess’s eye and Miss Featherstone’s as she stammered ‘Er – yes,’ and returned to her seat.

  Mrs Beverton looked from her to Miss Featherstone in surprise. How odd people were nowadays! No interest in anything – not even a Spitfire Fund Exhibition. It must be the war, of course, and lack of sleep . . . She was glad it hadn’t taken her like that.

  One by one the other guests went in to see the exhibition, and all returned with that same air of bewilderment; that constrained and embarrassed manner.

  ‘What do you think of it?’ murmured Mrs Clavis to Mrs Barton under cover of the general conversation. ‘Do you think that the war’s turning her queer?’

  ‘Well, the whole thing’s most extraordinary,’ said Mrs Barton. ‘I can only put it down to lack of sleep. I hardly like to think it’s a deliberate trick.’

  ‘I’m not so sure,’ said Mrs Clavis darkly. ‘I’m really not so sure.’

  ‘Odd that no one’s said anything.’

  ‘Well, one doesn’t like to. I didn’t give any money, did you?’

  ‘Indeed, I did not,’ said Mrs Barton. ‘The thing’s a deliberate fraud. At least it’s a fraud, whether deliberate or not, it’s not for me to decide.’

  ‘I should think that Mrs Monks would say something,’ said Miss Blake hopefully. ‘I mean, it’s supposed to be the duty of the church to speak out.’

  Mrs Monks was at that moment entering the room, and it was quite clear that she was going to ‘speak out’. She stood just inside the drawing-room door, fixing her eyes on Mrs Beverton in dramatic denunciation.

  ‘Mrs Beverton,’ she said in the voice that she generally kept for unruly choir boys. ‘Mrs Beverton, I cannot allow you to continue this gross deception.’

  Mrs Beverton gaped at her.

  ‘Th-t-t-t-this what?’ she said.

  ‘This gross deception,’ repeated Mrs Monks. ‘This obtaining of money under false pretences for whatever purpose.’

  ‘I – I don’t understand you,’ stammered Mrs Beverton. ‘Really Mrs Monks, I know that we’re all suffering from lack of sleep, but—’

  ‘Your exhibition is nothing but a collection of scrap iron of a particularly valueless description.’

  ‘How dare you?’ said Mrs Beverton. ‘This collection was lent me by my cousin. She made two pounds, six shillings and tenpence halfpenny by it for her local Spitfire Fund, and you have the impertinence to say—’

  Miss Milton now appeared in the doorway. She, too, had been in to see the ‘Exhibition’. Her small precise figure quivered with indignation.

  ‘This is an outrage, Mrs Beverton,’ she said.

  Mrs Beverton gazed helplessly from one to the other. Two of them suffering from delusions as a result of lack of sleep . . . ‘What on earth do you mean, Miss Milton?’ she said. ‘I know that we’ve had to spend most of the nights in our shelter lately, and I know that— ‘

  ‘You must be aware,’ said Miss Milton, ‘that your so-called exhibition is merely a collection of scrap iron purloined by means I do not understand from the back of my tool shed?’

  ‘You’re mad,’ said Mrs Beverton. ‘You must be mad.’

  ‘I recognise every single piece,’ said Miss Milton grimly. ‘There’s the old fish slice that I threw away because it was too small, and that you have the impertinence to label as part of a Dornier wing. There’s that old saucepan that leaks and I had soldered twice, and that you’ve labelled as a German incendiary bomb. The whole thing is beneath contempt and an insult to our intelligence. It—’

  Dazedly Mrs Beverton appealed to the others, but to her amazement they supported her accusers. They hadn’t liked to say anything, but – well, Miss Milton and Mrs Monks were quite right. It was just a collection of scrap iron. They didn’t know how Mrs Beverton had the face to play such a trick on them.

  ‘This is a conspiracy,’ said Mrs Beverton dramatically. ‘Nothing other than a conspiracy.’

  She swept into the morning-room, followed by her bewildered guests. At the door she stopped and stared at the line of rusty battered metal on the table.

  ‘It’s a German plot,’ she gasped. ‘It’s the work of someone who wants to stop the money going to the Spitfire Fund.’ Her eyes roved accusingly over her guests. ‘One of you must be responsible. It was a genuine exhibition before you came, wasn’t it, Bella?’

  ‘Oh no, Mother,’ said Bella calmly, ‘it wasn’t. It was just like this.’

  ‘What?’ said Mrs Beverton, clutching her head with both hands. ‘Am I mad or are you?’

  ‘Well, I’m not,’ said Bella calmly.

  At this point the little maid entered.

  ‘It’s that there William Brown, ’m,’ she said. ‘He says, thank you very much for the scrap iron an’ he’s come back for the lo
t he left here.’

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!’ groaned Mrs Brown. ‘I had a feeling all along that William was at the bottom of it.’

  ‘How simply marvellous!’ squeaked Bella.

  Mr Brown assumed his sternest expression when Mrs Brown laid the story before him that evening.

  ‘I quite agree with you, my dear,’ he said. ‘The boy’s getting hopelessly out of hand. Just because there’s a war on he thinks he can be allowed to go about making a nuisance of himself to everyone. He needs a lesson, and I’ll see that he gets it.’

  ‘It was dreadful,’ moaned Mrs Brown, ‘and then when Mrs Beverton said in front of everyone that she wouldn’t dream of using our air-raid shelter any more, I felt—’

  ‘Said what?’ demanded Mr Brown.

  ‘That she wouldn’t dream of using our air-raid shelter any more.’

  ‘She – actually – said – that?’ asked Mr Brown slowly.

  ‘Yes. In fact she made arrangements then and there to join the Bartons.’

  The look of severity faded from Mr Brown’s face. As far as a face of his particular cast of grimness could be said to shine, it shone.

  ‘So – she won’t be coming if there’s a raid tonight?’

  ‘No, dear. But about William—’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Mr Brown impatiently. ‘The boy obviously meant no harm. I can’t see what you’re making all this fuss about. Actually, when you come to think of it, he was trying to help. I can’t understand why you’re so hard on the child.’

  ‘But—’ began Mrs Brown.

  ‘You’re quite sure that the Bevertons aren’t coming again?’

  ‘Quite, dear.’

  An almost seraphic smile spread over Mr Brown’s countenance.

  ‘How marvellous!’ he quoted.

  CHAPTER 6

  WILLIAM AND THE BOMB

  IT caused quite a sensation among the Outlaws when they heard that the Parfitts were coming back from London to live in the village again because of the war. Joan Parfitt was the only girl of whom the Outlaws had ever really approved. She was small and dark and shy and eager and considered the Outlaws the embodiments of every manly virtue. They were afraid that her sojourn in London might have spoilt her, but to their relief they found that she had not altered at all. She was still small and dark and shy and eager, and she still considered the Outlaws the embodiments of every manly virtue. She was not even infected by the bomb snobbery that the inhabitants of the village found so exasperating in most of its London visitors. She did not describe her methods of dealing with ‘incendiaries’, her reactions to ‘screamers’, her shelter life, the acrobatics she performed when taking cover at various sinister sounds.

  The village was sick of such descriptions from evacuees. It was perhaps unduly sensitive on the subject, suffering from what might be called a bomb inferiority complex. For, though enemy aeroplanes frequently roared overhead during the night watches, and a neighbouring A.A. gun occasionally made answer, providing the youthful population with the shrapnel necessary for their ‘collections’, no bombs had as yet fallen on the village.

  Mrs Parfitt had taken Lilac Cottage, recently vacated by Miss Cliff, and there the Outlaws went to call for Joan the morning after her arrival.

  ‘It’s lovely to be back,’ she greeted them. ‘I can hardly believe it’s true.’

  The Outlaws were flattered by this attitude.

  ‘I expect London’s a bit more excitin’ really,’ said William modestly.

  ‘London’s horrible,’ said Joan with a shudder. ‘All streets and houses. I can’t tell you how horrible it is.’

  ‘Well, come on,’ said William happily. ‘Let’s go to the woods an’ play Red Indians.’

  For in the old days Joan had always been their squaw, and no one else had ever been found to fill the role satisfactorily.

  In the course of the morning, during which Joan showed no falling off in her squaw performance, it turned out that she would celebrate her birthday while she was staying in the village.

  ‘And Mummy says I can have a birthday party,’ she said. ‘It would have been terribly dull in London, but it will be lovely to be able to have you all to a birthday party.’

  Further investigation revealed that Joan’s birthday was on the same day as Hubert Lane’s. And then the Outlaws became really excited. For Hubert Lane – the inveterate enemy of the Outlaws – was having a birthday of (as far as possible) pre-war magnificence and he was inviting to it all his own supporters. He had, indeed, arranged the party chiefly in order to exclude from it the Outlaws and their friends and to jeer at them as the Boys who were not Going to a Birthday Party. He was aghast when he heard about Joan’s. He continued to jeer, but a note of anxiety crept into his jeering.

  ‘We’re goin’ to have jellies,’ he shouted to the Outlaws, when he met them in the village.

  ‘So’re we,’ the Outlaws shouted back.

  ‘We’re goin’ to have a trifle.’

  ‘So’re we.’

  ‘We’re goin’ to have crackers.’

  ‘So’re we.’

  Joan’s mother appreciated the importance of the occasion. Without aspiring to put Hubert’s in the shade, the Outlaws’ party (for so they looked on it) was to be every bit as good.

  ‘We’re goin’ to get Mr Leicester to come an’ bring his kinematograph,’ said Hubert.

  ‘He won’t,’ said William. ‘He’s a warden an’ he says he’s not got time. We’ve tried him.’

  ‘Then we’ll borrow it off him. My mother can work it.’

  ‘So can Joan’s mother, but he won’t lend it. We’ve tried.’

  ‘Huh!’ said Hubert. ‘I bet he’ll lend it us.’

  But he was wrong. Mr Leicester most emphatically refused either to bring his kinematograph to the party or to lend it.

  In pre-war days the crowning glory of every children’s party for miles round had been Mr Leicester’s kinematograph. It was his greatest pride and joy, and he loved to take it about with him and show it off. No children’s party indeed was complete without Mr Leicester, his kinematograph and his collection of Mickey Mouse films. No date was ever fixed for a party without first making sure that Mr Leicester would be free . . .

  Since the war, however, Mr Leicester had become a District Warden and was taking life very seriously. He had no time for such childish things as kinematographs and had, in fact, locked it up in the big cupboard in his dressing-room, announcing that it would not reappear till after the war. He refused indignantly all suggestions that he should lend it. No one but he, he said, understood its delicate mechanism.

  Approached by the organisers of both parties, Mr Leicester remained firm. Did they realise, he asked sternly, that there was a war on and that such things as kinematographs were wholly out of place? He would neither bring it nor lend it. It should not, in fact, see the light of day till Victory should have crowned the wardens’ efforts (for Mr Leicester considered the war to be waged entirely by wardens, magnificently ignoring army, navy and air force). Then, and not till then, he would take it out, and it would accompany him on the usual round of local festivities . . .

  Both the Outlaws and the Hubert Laneites finally resigned themselves to the absence of this central attraction, but rivalry between them still ran high.

  ‘We’re goin’ to have some jolly excitin’ games.’

  ‘We’re goin’ to have some you’ve never heard of.’

  ‘An’ we’re goin’ to have some you’ve never heard of.’

  ‘Anyway, you’re not goin’ to have Mr Leicester’s cinema thing.’

  ‘Neither are you.’

  Hubert was afraid that the Outlaws, being admittedly more enterprising than his own followers, would evolve a more exciting programme for Joan’s party than he and his followers could evolve for theirs.

  ‘Wish somethin’d happen to them,’ he muttered darkly as he passed Lilac Cottage and saw through the window Joan and her mother making decorations for the party out of s
ome coloured paper left over from Christmas.

  And – as if his wishes had the power of a magician’s wand – something did happen.

  The bomb fell that night.

  It was literally a bomb.

  For the first time since the outbreak of war a German bomber, passing over the village, chose, for no conceivable reason, to release part of its load there.

  Fortunately, most of it fell in open country and there were no casualties, but one bomb fell in the roadway just outside the Hall, blew up the entrance gates and made a deep crater in the road.

  Mr Leicester, complete with overalls and tin hat, was on the spot immediately. It was he who descried, at the bottom of the crater, the smooth rounded surface of a half-buried ‘unexploded bomb’.

  All through the months of inactivity he had longed for an Occasion to which he could rise, and he rose to this one superbly. The road must be roped off. Traffic must be diverted. All houses in the immediate neighbourhood must be evacuated. Fortunately the Botts were away, so the many complications that Mrs Bott would inevitably have introduced into the situation were absent. But Lilac Cottage was among the houses that Mr Leicester ordered to be evacuated, and at first Mrs Parfitt did not know where to go. Then Miss Milton came to the rescue. Miss Milton was prim and elderly and very very house-proud. She had had several evacuees billeted on her, but none of them had been able to stay the course and all had departed after a few weeks. So now she had a spare bedroom to offer Mrs Parfitt and Joan.

  ‘I shall look on it as my war work,’ she said to Mrs Parfitt. ‘It will mean a good deal of inconvenience for me – I quite realise that – but one must put up with inconvenience these days.’

  Mrs Parfitt hesitated.

  ‘It’s very kind of you,’ she said at last. ‘I hope, of course, that it won’t be for long. Poor Joan! We were going to have her birthday party at the end of the month.’