Just William: William At War Part 12

William straightened himself and looked from the bomb to Mr Leicester . . . from Mr Leicester to the bomb . . .

'Come back!' said Mr Leicester again. His voice was little more than a whisper, but it held even more fury than when it had been a shout.

'COME BACK!' MR LEICESTER SHOUTED HOa.r.s.eLY. 'COME BACK! YOU YOU YOU-' WORDS FAILED HIM.

William wiped his hands down his trousers.

'I'm all right,' he said carelessly. 'I'll fetch my tray thing if it starts explodin' . . . But, I say it's a jolly funny bomb. Come down an' have a look at it.'

Mr Leicester's eyes, bulging and bloodshot with emotion, went from William to the bomb . . . and remained fixed on it. William had cleared all the earth and debris away from it, and it lay there large, round, of a greyish hue . . .

Suddenly William gave a shout.

'Gosh! I know what it is,' he said.

In the same moment Mr Leicester knew what it was, too.

It was the stone ball from the top of one of the brick piers that had formed the entrance gates of the Hall.

Pale now, but with his eyes still bulging, Mr Leicester dived under the barrier and came down to join William in the crater. He stared at the bomb, stroked it, prodded it . . . His face was a mask of incredulous horror.

'It is, isn't it?' said William.

Slowly Mr Leicester turned to him. With an almost superhuman effort he had recovered something of his self-possession, something even of his normal manner. He looked shaken but master of himself.

'No need to er go about talking of this, my boy,' he said. 'No need to mention it at all. It would, in fact, be very wrong to go about upsetting people's morale by er spreading rumours. There are very severe penalties for spreading rumours. I hope that you will remember that.'

William looked at him in silence for a few moments. He was an intelligent boy and knew all about the process of face-saving. He was quite willing to help Mr Leicester save his face, but he didn't see why he should do it for nothing.

'Then Joan an' her mother can go home tomorrow?' he said.

'Certainly,' said Mr Leicester graciously.

His eyes kept returning, as if drawn against his will, to the round smooth object at his feet.

'An' you'll come an' give your cinema show at her party, won't you?' said William with elaborate carelessness.

Mr Leicester fixed a stern eye on him.

'You know quite well that I am not giving any such entertainments during the war,' he said.

William gazed dreamily into the distance.

'I thought that if we had the cinema at the party,' he said dreamily, 'it'd be easier for me not to spread rumours.'

Mr Leicester gulped and swallowed. He looked long and hard at William. William continued to gaze dreamily into the distance. There was a silence . . . then Mr Leicester yielded to the inevitable.

'Well, well, my boy,' he said with a fairly good imitation of his pre-war geniality. 'I er like to see young people enjoying themselves. If my duties permit, I will make an exception to my rule for this one occasion.'

'An' if they don't,' said William suavely, 'we'll come an' fetch it, shall we? Joan's mother can manage it all right.'

Again Mr Leicester gulped and swallowed. Again he yielded to the inevitable.

'Just this once, then, my boy,' he said graciously. 'Just this once. It must never happen again, of course. And I will take for granted that you will not er spread rumours.'

'No,' promised William. 'I won't spread rumours.'

William had barely reached Miss Milton's house next morning when Mr Leicester appeared, complete with all his District Warden's regalia. He looked stern and grim and aloof, as befitted one who has an important part to play in his country's destiny.

'I have come to inform you, Mrs Parfitt,' he said portentously, 'that the unexploded bomb has been er disposed of, and that you are at liberty to return to your home at your convenience.'

He avoided William's eye as he spoke.

'Oh how lovely!' said Joan. 'Just in time for the party! It is in time for the party, isn't it, Mummy?'

'Yes, dear,' said Mrs Parfitt joyfully. 'It only gives us a day, but we can manage a grand party in a day.'

Mrs Parfitt would have liked to give a dozen parties to celebrate her release from Miss Milton. Only that morning Miss Milton had reproved her for drawing her bedroom curtains an inch further back on one side than on the other and had asked her to see that Joan did not put her hand on the bal.u.s.ter rail going up and down stairs, as she had found several finger marks on it.

'I HAVE COME TO INFORM YOU, MRS PARFITT,' HE SAID PORTENTOUSLY, 'THAT THE UNEXPLODED BOMB HAS BEEN ER DISPOSED OF.'

'Ah, yes, the party,' said Mr Leicester with an expansive but somewhat mirthless smile. 'This young man said that you wanted me to bring my kinematograph to it.'

'Oh please, Mr Leicester!' said Joan, clasping her hands and looking up at him beseechingly. 'Oh please!'

Mr Leicester gave a good imitation of a strong man melted by a child's pleading.

'Well, well,' he said at last. 'Well, well, well . . . I don't know . . .'

'Oh, please!' said Joan again.

'Well,' said Mr Leicester. 'Perhaps . . . just this once . . . Mind, I'll never do it for you again and I'll never do it for anyone else at all till after the war.'

'That is kind of you, Mr Leicester,' said Mrs Parfitt.

Joan was dancing about with joy.

'Oh, won't it be lovely!' she said. 'Oh, thank you, Mr Leicester.'

'Isn't it kind of him, William?' said Mrs Parfitt.

'Yes,' agreed William. 'Jolly kind.'

'Er not at all,' murmured Mr Leicester, fixing his eyes on the air just above William's head. 'Not at all. Don't mention it. An exception, of course . . . Not to be repeated.'

'The bomb didn't explode, then?' said Mrs Parfitt. 'I suppose we'd have heard it here if it had done.'

'Oh no,' said Mr Leicester, repeating the mirthless smile. 'It didn't explode. It was er disposed of. The process,' he went on hastily, 'needs specialised knowledge, and the details, I am afraid, are too technical for you to understand.'

Mrs Parfitt looked at him, deeply impressed.

'How fortunate we are to have you for our warden!' she said.

Joan and William walked jauntily down the road, past the Lanes' house. At once Hubert Lane and a few friends, who were in the garden with him, popped their heads over the hedge.

'Yah!' they jeered. 'Who's not havin' a party?'

'Well, who isn't?' said William innocently. 'Joan is, an' we're all goin' to it an' we're goin' to have a jolly good time.'

Hubert's mouth dropped open.

'What!' he said. 'B-b-b-but what about the bomb?'

'Oh, that!' said William airily. 'Goodness! Fancy you not havin' heard about that! It's been disposed of. There isn't a bomb there any longer. Joan an' her mother's goin' back home at once.'

Hubert's mouth remained open while he slowly digested this news.

'Well, anyway,' he said, making a not very successful effort to recover himself. 'Anyway, I bet yours won't be such a nice party as ours. I jolly well bet it won't.'

'Don't you think so?' said William. He stopped to savour his piece of news before he brought it out. 'Mr Leicester's comin' to ours an' bringin' his cinema thing an' his films.'

Hubert's eyes goggled. His face paled.

'N-n-n-not Mr Leicester?' he said, as if pleading for mercy. 'N-n-n-not his Mickey Mouse films?'

''Course,' said William cheerfully. 'But he's not goin' to do it for anyone else. Only for Joan . . . Come on, Joan.'

They walked on, leaving a crestfallen silence behind them. Even the Hubert Laneites, pastmasters in the art of jeering, could think of no answering taunt.

As Joan and William walked on down the road, Joan looked suddenly at her companion. He was smiling to himself as at some private joke.

'William,' she said, 'you had something to do with it, hadn't you?'

'With what?' said William innocently.

'The bomb and the Mickey Mouse films and everything.'

'Well, just a bit,' he admitted.

'Oh, William, do tell me.'

He turned to her with a wink.

'I'll tell you after the war,' he promised.

CHAPTER 7.

RELUCTANT HEROES.

'D'YOU know,' said William thoughtfully at breakfast, 'I don't seem to remember the time there wasn't a war.'

'Don't be ridiculous, William,' said his mother. 'It's hardly lasted two years and you're eleven years old, so you must remember the time when there wasn't a war. All the same,' she added with a sigh, 'I know what you mean.'

Certainly the war seemed to have altered life considerably for William. Sometimes he thought that the advantages and disadvantages cancelled each other out and sometimes he wasn't sure . . . Gamekeepers had been called up and he could trespa.s.s in woods and fields with comparative impunity, but, on the other hand, sweets were scarce and cream buns unprocurable. Discipline was relaxed at school as the result of a gradual infiltration of women teachers, and at home because his father worked overtime at the office and his mother was 'managing' without a cook but these advantages were offset by a lack of entertainment in general. There were no parties, summer holidays were out of the question because of something called the Income Tax, and for the same reason pocket money, inadequate at the best of times, had faded almost to vanishing point.

Now that Ethel was a V.A.D. and Robert a second lieutenant in one of the less famous regiments, home life had lost much of its friction, but it had also lost something of its zest. William had looked on Ethel and Robert as cruel and vindictive tyrants, but he found, somewhat to his surprise, that he missed both the tyranny and his own plans to circ.u.mvent and avenge it.

Even the feud with Hubert Lane lacked its old excitement. There didn't seem to be so many things to quarrel about as there had been before the war. Moreover, William needed a credulous audience for his tales of Robert's prowess and Hubert supplied it. For Robert, in his second lieutenant's uniform, was to William no longer an irascible dictatorial elder brother, hidebound by convention and deaf to the voice of reason. He was a n.o.ble and heroic figure, solely responsible for every success the British army had achieved since the war began. It was Robert who had conquered the Italians in Africa, raided the Lofoten Islands, crushed Raschid Ali's revolt . . . Hubert was so credulous that William's stories grew more and more fantastic. It was Robert who, according to William, was solely responsible for the sinking of the Bismarck. It was Robert who had captured Rudolf Hess . . . But there even the worm of credulity that was Hubert turned.

'But Robert wasn't in Scotland when Rudolf Hess came over,' he objected.

'How do you know he wasn't?' said William mysteriously. 'Gosh! If I told you the places Robert had been in you wouldn't believe me.'

'Well, there was nothing about him in the papers.'

'No, they kept it out of the papers,' said William. 'Robert's very high up an' everythin' about him's gotter be kept very secret.'

The worm of credulity turned still further.

'Thought he was only a second lieutenant.'

William gave a short laugh.

'They keep him a second lieutenant just to put the Germans off the scent,' he explained, 'so they won't know who it is that's doing all these things.'

'But I bet he didn't capture Rudolf Hess,' persisted Hubert.

'Huh, didn't he!' said William, who was as usual now completely convinced by his own eloquence. 'Well, I can't tell you about it 'cause it's a secret an' I'd get shot if I told people, but it was Robert got him over from Germany to start with.'

'Crumbs!' gasped Hubert.

Hubert, however, though still, in the main, believing William's stories (as I have said, he was an exceptionally credulous boy), was growing a little tired of them. He'd listened to them for weeks on end and the one-sidedness of the situation was beginning to pall. If he'd had a few tales of his own to swap in exchange, he wouldn't have minded so much, but he hadn't. He was an only child and had no elder brother or even near relation to glorify . . . Resentment had been slowly growing in his breast for some time, and the Rudolf Hess story seemed the last straw. He was not a boy to be content to yield the limelight to another indefinitely without becoming restive, and he was now becoming restive. He'd swallowed all Robert's exploits as recounted by William the African victory, the defeat of Raschid Ali, the sinking of the Bismarck . . . He had even swallowed Rudolf Hess, but he'd reached saturation point.

'What's the matter, Hubert dear?' said his mother solicitously to him at lunch, looking at his plump, sulky face. 'I hope you're not feeling ill, darling.'