Part 12 (2/2)

'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 vanis.h.i.+ng 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. 'Gos.h.!.+ 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.'

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