William At War

by Richmal Crompton

  Henry had a sudden inspiration.

  ‘Flower pots!’ he yelled excitedly. ‘Flower pots! We’ve got some big ’uns. Come on!’

  Whooping, shouting, leaping, they ran across the field, down the road, to Henry’s home.

  ‘Come in at the back garden,’ said Henry. ‘They’re by the greenhouse. An’ this is the day the ole gard’ner doesn’t come. Don’t make a noise.’

  They entered the garden gate in single file and looked warily around them. The garden was empty. No one was in sight. By the greenhouse stood piles of large red flower pots, in which the gardener meant to pot his chrysanthemums the next morning. Henry tried one on. It completely enveloped his face.

  His voice came muffled, but joyous, from behind it. ‘Come on. Put ’em on. They make jolly fine gas masks.’

  Hilariously the band put the flower pots over their heads and began to leap about in wild excitement. They did not intend to do anything beyond leaping about, but the spirit of the bandage fight still lingered with them, and they were soon charging each other with re-echoing war whoops, putting on new flower pots as the old ones were shattered. They went on till no new flower pots were left, and the place was littered with fragments of pottery. Then they stopped and looked at each other in growing dismay.

  Henry glanced apprehensively towards the house.

  ‘Gosh!’ he said. ‘It’s a good thing my mother’s out, an’ Cook puts on the wireless loud ’cause she’s deaf. Let’s get away quick.’

  They hurried from the scene of the crime as fast as they could.

  ‘P’raps they’ll think it was an aeroplane accident or somethin’,’ said Ginger hopefully.

  ‘An’ p’raps they won’t,’ said Henry. ‘More like they’ll start on me straight away without even givin’ me a chance to explain, same as they always do.’

  ‘Tell ’em we were only havin’ gas-mask drill,’ said William. ‘Tell ’em it was their fault for keepin’ our gas masks locked up.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Henry sarcastically. ‘Yes, that’ll do a lot of good, won’t it?’

  A few of the more fearful spirits at this point decided that they had had enough A.R.P. practice for one day and set off homewards (by a miracle the casualties of the flower-pot fight consisted of nothing more than a few scratches), but the Outlaws, with Ronald Bell and Victor Jameson and a few other brave spirits, felt this to be a tame ending. The exhilaration of the two fights had produced a spirit of dare-devil recklessness. They were all going to get into trouble, anyway, over Henry’s flower pots, and they might as well, they felt, be killed for the proverbial sheep.

  ‘Come on,’ said Ginger. ‘Let’s do somethin’ else. What else do they do?’

  William considered.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘there was somethin’ else. I saw it in Robert’s book. It was called a jolly long name – somethin’ beginnin’ with De. Detramination, or somethin’. It was takin’ all your clothes off an’ havin’ a hose pipe turned on you.’

  ‘Come on!’ they shouted with whoops of joy. ‘Come on!’

  ‘Come to my house,’ yelled Ginger. ‘It’s nearest. An’ my mother’s out, too, an’ the hose pipe’s right at the bottom of the garden. I bet no one sees us . . .’

  It was, however, Ginger’s mother, who, returning about a quarter of an hour later, came upon the disgraceful scene – a wild medley of naked boys on the lawn, wrestling and leaping about in the full play of the garden hose, manipulated by Ginger. Their clothes, which they had flung carelessly on the grass beside them, were soaked through . . .

  That, of course, and its painful sequel, should have been the end of the A.R.P. as far as William was concerned. He fully intended that it should be. He meant to have no more dealings with it of any kind. He even abandoned a secretly cherished project of turning the spare bedroom into a gas-proof chamber, as a pleasant surprise for his family (‘Jolly well serve ’em right now not to have one,’ he said bitterly to himself). He glared ferociously at a heading in his father’s newspaper, ‘A.R.P. Muddle’, thinking at first that it must be making fun of his short-lived, but eventful, leadership of the A.R.P. Junior Branch. (‘Muddle!’ he muttered. ‘We didn’t do a thing that wasn’t in the book. They can go on doin’ it for weeks an’ weeks an’ no one stops ’em, but the minute we start they set on us. Well, they’ll jolly well be sorry when the war comes, that’s all, an’ it’ll be their own faults.’)

  If it hadn’t been for the local ‘black-out’, William would not have given the thing another thought except as a faint memory of a glorious day followed by much ill-merited suffering. But the local ‘black-out’ thrilled and impressed him, and made him long again to take his part in the great national movement. The dark roads, the shuttered windows, the blazing search-lights, the sound of the aeroplanes roaring overhead, stirred his blood, and he wanted to be up and doing – shooting down aeroplanes, or fighting with them in the search-lit sky. He took his air-gun and pointed it upwards between the drawn curtains.

  ‘Bang, bang! That’s got ’em,’ he muttered with satisfaction. ‘That’s got ’em all right! Listen to ’em comin’ down. That’s got another. An’ another.’

  As he dressed the next morning he decided that the failure of his previous attempts at A.R.P. work lay in the large number of its participants.

  ‘When there’s a lot of ’em they always start gettin’ rough,’ he said sternly, scowling at his reflection in the mirror and brushing his hair with almost vindictive energy. ‘Always start gettin’ rough when there’s a lot of ’em. I bet if I’d done somethin’ alone it’d’ve been all right . . . I bet it would . . .’

  After breakfast he happened to see the National Service Handbook lying on his mother’s writing desk. It had only arrived a few days before, and he had not had an opportunity of examining it yet. He took it up and turned over the pages with interest. Police . . . Fire Service . . . First Aid . . . Not much he could do . . . Then he began to read with interest the section headed: ‘Evacuation of Children from Dangerous Areas’. ‘Removing children from the dangers of air attack on crowded cities to districts of greater safety.’ Well, he could help with that, all right. Anyone could help with that. An’ he’d do it himself, too, not get in a lot of other people. It was that that had messed things up before . . . Hadley would come under the heading of a crowded city, surely . . . It had shops and streets and rows of houses, and it was jolly crowded, especially on market day. And – William threw a glance out of the window – this must be a district of greater safety, all fields and hedges and that sort of thing. Well – he could easily fetch children in here from Hadley. He wouldn’t mind doing that. In fact, his spirits rose as he saw himself bringing in a swarm of Hadley children, rather in the manner of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, and establishing them in his home, and those of his friends. He couldn’t do it till there was a war, of course, but he’d do it then, all right. He’d start off as soon as the war broke out. People’d be jolly grateful to him . . .

  That afternoon, having nothing much else to do, he set out for Hadley in order to study it in its new light of danger zone. Yes, there were quite a lot of people in the High Street and in the Market Square. It certainly came under the heading of ‘crowded city’. He’d collect as many of the children as he could as soon as the war broke out, and escort them at once to the safer surroundings of his home. No one could object to his doing something that he was told to do in a book sent out by the Government . . .

  Dismissing the subject for a time, he gave his whole attention to examining the windows of Hadley’s leading toyshop. He spent several minutes in comparing the different merits of a 6d. pistol and a 6d. trumpet – a purely academic process, as he possessed no money at all. Having, after deep thought, decided in favour of the pistol, he was just about to move on to the sweetshop next door in order to make a theoretical choice between the wares in that window, too, when he banged into two children who were standing watching him. They were stolid, four-square children and exactly alike – with
red hair and placid, amiable expressions.

  ‘Well, what’re you starin’ at?’ demanded William truculently.

  ‘You,’ they said simultaneously.

  ‘Anythin’ funny about me?’ he said threateningly.

  ‘Yes,’ they said.

  This took the wind out of his sails, and he said rather flatly:

  ‘Well, you’re jolly funny yourselves, come to that. What’ve you done to your hair?’

  ‘What’ve you done to yours?’

  ‘Funny colour for hair, yours.’

  ‘Well, yours is all stickin’ up.’

  ‘You look like a couple of Guy Fawkes.’

  ‘So do you. You look like two couples.’

  Friendly relations having been thus established, William continued:

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Seven.’

  ‘Both of you?’

  ‘Yes, we’re twins. How old are you?’

  ‘Eleven. What’s your names?’

  ‘Hector an’ Herbert. What’s yours?’

  ‘William. Where d’you live?’

  ‘There. In that street.’

  ‘WELL, WHAT’RE YOU STARIN’ AT?’ DEMANDED WILLIAM TRUCULENTLY.

  ‘YOU,’ THEY SAID SIMULTANEOUSLY.

  William’s gaze followed the direction of the pointing fingers. It was one of the narrow, crowded streets that ran off from the High Street – one of the streets, without doubt, from which William would have to rescue his child protégés when the time of emergency should come. It occurred to him that he might as well explain matters to the twjns. There wouldn’t be much time for explanation when war had actually broken out. He assumed his sternest expression and most authoritative manner.

  ‘You’ve gotter be ’vacuated when war comes,’ he said.

  ‘We’ve been it,’ said Herbert. ‘Our arms swelled up somethink awful.’

  ‘I don’t mean that sort of ’vacuation,’ said William. ‘I mean, took out. Took out of crowded cities to districts of greater safety, same as it says in the book. ’Cause of bombs an’ things.’

  Light dawned upon the twins. Their eyes gleamed. They leapt excitedly up and down on the pavement with squeals of joy. They had had staying with them recently some cousins from London who had been evacuated in the last crisis and who had told them thrilling tales of camp life – games, entertainment, unlimited food of unusual kinds, and a glorious crumbling of the whole fabric of discipline.

  ‘Coo! Lovely!’ said Hector.

  Herbert looked expectantly at William and said simply:

  ‘Come on. Let’s start now.’

  William was somewhat taken aback by their matter-of-fact acceptance of the position. He had expected to have to explain, persuade, cajole . . .

  ‘Well . . .’ he began uncertainly, but Herbert had already taken his hand.

  ‘Come on,’ he said urgently. ‘Let’s start off. Shall we have sausage an’ fried potato for breakfast, same as they had?’

  ‘Well . . .’ began William again, and then thought suddenly that he might as well take them up to the village. It would show them the way. They would be able to help him bring the other children when the war broke out. It would save time then to have two, at any rate, who knew just where to go.

  ‘All right,’ he ended. ‘We might as well jus’ go there . . .’

  They accompanied him joyously up the hill to the village, telling him excitedly all the stories that their cousins had told them.

  ‘They had a tug-of-war.’

  ‘They had sports every afternoon.’

  ‘They had picnics.’

  ‘They had treacle tart.’

  ‘They jus’ had a few lessons, but not real ’uns.’

  ‘It was jus’ like Christmas.’

  ‘They made as much noise as they liked, an’ no one stopped them.’

  They chattered so much that William could hardly get a word in till they reached the gate of his house.

  There he stopped and said a little lamely:

  ‘Well, this is it. You’ll know where to come now, won’t you?’

  ‘But we’ve come,’ said Hector simply. ‘We’re here, aren’t we?’ He opened the gate. ‘Come on.’

  William hesitated, then suddenly remembered that his mother was out, that it was Cook’s afternoon off and that the housemaid had been summoned to attend a sick aunt. ‘You’ll be out all afternoon, won’t you, William?’ his mother had said. ‘I’ll be home in time to get the tea, but it’s no good your coming back before then, because there’ll be no one in.’

  The Browns’ house contained a cellar, which was used for the purpose of storing such things as coal, potatoes and Mrs Brown’s pickled eggs. William had heard his family discussing the possibility of using this as an air-raid shelter, and had already decided to house his evacuated children in it during air raids. It wouldn’t do any harm to show it to the twins. It seemed silly to bring them all this way and then not show them their air-raid shelter . . .

  Though the front door was shut, a spare key was always kept under the edge of the mat in the porch for the use of such members of the family as happened to have forgotten their own. It wouldn’t take a minute just to unlock the door and show the twins their air-raid shelter. It couldn’t possibly do any harm. No one could object to that. In any case, no one need know . . .

  ‘I’ll jus’ show you the place,’ he said.

  He took the key from under the mat, unlocked the door, and led the twins into the hall.

  ‘What time’s tea?’ said Herbert, wiping his feet on the mat.

  ‘We’re going to have some games first, aren’t we?’ said Hector anxiously.

  ‘Well . . .’ said William, beginning to feel somewhat overwhelmed by his responsibilities. ‘I bet I can find you somethin’ to eat, an’ p’raps we can have a game of some sort . . . Anyway, I’ve gotter show you the way to the cellar first. It’s down here.’

  He opened a door under the stairs, revealing a flight of stone steps.

  ‘Coo!’ said Herbert, with obvious approval. ‘That’s jolly fine!’

  He was a boy of an adventurous turn of mind, and found this, to him, novel subterranean world preferable even to the open-air camp-life described by his cousins.

  ‘I bet I find some hidden treasure,’ he added.

  ‘Bags me find some, too,’ said Hector.

  They went down the steps to the cellar. The light which came from a small window, lit by a grating above, was dim and ghostlike. There was a heap of coal in one corner, a sack of potatoes in another, and a sack of carrots in another. (Mr Brown had lately read an article on the nutritive value of carrots and had bought a sack from a friend at Covent Garden.) In another stood two pails containing Mrs Brown’s pickled eggs. A broken step-ladder, a bottomless bucket, and a broken clothes-basket completed the furniture.

  ‘You see, you’ll be here while there’s an air-raid goin’ on,’ explained William.

  The twins continued to survey their surroundings with approval.

  ‘It looks a jolly int’restin’ place,’ said Herbert. ‘Where do we sleep?’

  ‘Well – upstairs, I suppose,’ said William, who hadn’t considered that question yet.

  ‘We’d better go back for our night things now, hadn’t we?’ said Hector. ‘We didn’t bring anythin’ with us.’

  It dawned on William for the first time that the twins considered themselves permanently evacuated, that they were contemplating forming part of the Brown ménage for an indefinite period. Just as he opened his mouth to correct this misapprehension, the front-door bell sounded through the house. He froze and waited in silence. It sounded again. Quickly he considered the situation. If he didn’t answer it, it would probably continue to ring for some time. Moreover, the visitor, whoever it was, might, if left there too long, notice through the grating mysterious signs of life in the cellar below. Better perhaps go and answer the door, and say that his mother was not at home. Then the visitor would go away and he would be left i
n peace to deal with his evacuated twins.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ he whispered, and went quickly up the short flight of stairs to the hall. There he carefully closed the door leading to the cellar and opened the front door. His expression was stern and forbidding.

  ‘My mother—’ he began with a fierce scowl, and stopped.

  Miss Milton stood on the doorstep, holding a small paper bag in her hand.

  ‘Oh, good afternoon, William,’ she said.

  ‘’Afternoon,’ responded William, scowling yet more ferociously. ‘My mother’s out. Everyone’s out but me.’

  ‘Oh, that’s all right, dear,’ said Miss Milton. ‘I’ve just brought something for her Pound Day. She asked us to send them round in the morning, I know, but I’ve not had a second till now.’

  William remembered vaguely that streams of groceries had been arriving all morning for the Pound Day of a Girls’ Hostel in Hadley, for which Mrs Brown collected local subscriptions. William hadn’t been interested then, and he wasn’t interested now. He held out his hand for the parcel.

  ‘A’ right,’ he said shortly. ‘I’ll give it her.’

  ‘I’d like to write her a note about it, if I may,’ said Miss Milton, stepping past William’s solidly obstructive form into the hall, and making her way to the drawing-room. William followed, his expression one vast silent protest.

  She sat down at the writing table, took a piece of Mrs Brown’s writing paper, and began the note.

  ‘You see, dear,’ she explained to William, as she wrote, ‘I’ve brought rice because I thought that probably no one else would think of it, but I wanted to tell her that if she’d rather have the unpolished kind – they say it’s more nourishing, unpolished, you know, though I could never fancy it myself, it looks so dirty – but if she’d rather have the unpolished kind the grocer will change it . . .’

  ‘I’ll tell her that,’ said William gruffly. ‘You needn’t write it all down.’

  His ears were strained anxiously for suspicious sounds from below. Miss Milton was a notorious busybody. She never left anything alone till she’d got to the bottom of it.