'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 sn.o.bbery 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 att.i.tude.

'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 pa.s.sed Lilac Cottage and saw through the window Joan and her mother making decorations for the party out of some 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, pa.s.sing 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.'

Miss Milton paled.

'A party!' she gasped. 'She must not, of course, expect anything of that sort in my house. I was going to make it a condition that no other child entered the house at all. I have a horror of children, and I shall expect Joan to conform to the rules I laid down for my other evacuees . . . You will be coming at once, I suppose?'

Mrs Parfitt sighed.

'Yes . . . Thank you so much. I hope we shan't trouble you for long.'

But days pa.s.sed and still the bomb failed to explode. The spirits of the Hubert Laneites rose.

'Yah!' they jeered. 'Who's not goin' to have a birthday party?'

They taunted Joan and the Outlaws with the dainties they were preparing for their own feast, following them through the village and shouting: 'Trifle . . . jellies . . . choc'late cake . . . An' who's not goin' to have any of 'em? Yah! Who's not goin' to have a party at all? Yah!'

It seemed, indeed, very unlikely that Joan's party would take place now. Mr Leicester would go at frequent intervals to lean over the barrier and gaze with fond but modest pride at his unexploded bomb.

'No,' he would say, 'I don't know when it will go off. It might go off any minute or it might not go off for weeks. I am taking every precaution.'

Meantime Joan was not finding life easy at Miss Milton's. Miss Milton had drawn up an elaborate code of rules. Joan was not to use the front door. She was to take off outdoor shoes immediately on entering the house. She was not to speak at meals. If inadvertently she touched any article of furniture, Miss Milton would leap at it with a duster, lips tightly compressed, in order to rub off any possible finger marks. Miss Milton rested upstairs in her bedroom from lunch time till tea time. She was, she said, a 'light sleeper', so Joan had to creep about the house during that time on tiptoe and not raise her voice above a whisper.

After a week of this both Joan and her mother began to look pale and worn, but it was not till the afternoon before the date of what was to have been her birthday party that Joan finally gave up hope. William found her sobbing at the bottom of Miss Milton's garden.

'I've been trying not to cry so as not to worry Mummy,' she sobbed, 'but I can't help it. Oh, William, it's horrible. I was looking forward to the party so much and it would have been tomorrow and I can't bear it . . . It's so hateful here and Miss Milton's always cross and Hubert Lane shouts out after me about the party whenever I go out and . . . Oh, I'm so miserable I don't know what to do.'

William considered the situation. He, too, had been pursued down the road from a safe distance by the jeers of the Hubert Laneites. Things seemed pretty hopeless . . .

'And they'll be worse still afterwards,' said Joan. 'They'll never let us forget it. I did so want to have the party tomorrow. Oh, William,' she fixed br.i.m.m.i.n.g eyes on him beseechingly, 'can't you do something about it?'

The appeal went to William's head. He could not meet those tear-filled eyes and admit that he was powerless to help. He was not in any case a boy who liked to own himself at a loss . . .

He a.s.sumed an expression of dare-devil recklessness and set his cap at a gangster-like angle.

'You leave it to me,' he said between his teeth. 'I'll fix it . . .'

'YOU LEAVE IT TO ME,' SAID WILLIAM BETWEEN HIS TEETH. 'I'LL FIX IT . . . '

The tear-filled eyes widened. Hope shone through despair.

'Oh, William, can you?'

He gave a short laugh.

'Can I?' he repeated. 'Huh! Can I? There's not many things I can't do, let me tell you!'

'Oh, William, but . . .' Her face clouded again. 'Tomorrow? . . . It's so near.'

'Huh!' he snorted contemptuously. 'Tomorrow's nothin' to me, tomorrow isn't.'

Her small expressive face shone once more with hope and admiration.

'Oh William, you are wonderful!'

''Course I'll fix it up by tomorrow,' he said. 'Now jus' don't you worry about it any more. You jus' leave it all to me. I'll get it all fixed up for you by tomorrow easy. You'll have your party an' an' ' he lost his head still further 'Mr Leicester'll bring his cinema thing an' it'll all be all right.'

One comparatively sane part of him seemed to raise its voice in protest as it heard these more than rash promises, but William turned a deaf ear to it.

'Everythin'll be all right,' he went on loudly as if to shout down the unseen opponent. 'You jus' leave it all to me.'

'An' we can go home tomorrow?' said Joan.

''Course you can,' said William.

Joan drew a deep sigh, smiling blissfully through her tears.

'Oh William!' she said. 'You are wonderful. Thank you!'

'Quite all right,' said William airily, though there was something fixed and gla.s.sy in the smile that answered hers. 'Well, I'd better be gettin' off to see about it.'

He swaggered out of the garden gate and set off down the road. As soon as he reached the bend that hid him from Joan's sight his swagger dropped from him and he began to argue fiercely as if with the still small voice of sanity . . . 'Well, why shouldn't I? . . . Well, I bet I can . . . Well, I couldn't let her go on cryin' like that . . . I bet I can find a way all right . . . I bet I can . . . I bet I can fix it up . . . Well,' impatiently, 'I've gotter think, haven't I? Gimme time to think . . . I bet I can think of a way. I-'

He stood still in the middle of the road staring in front of him, and the grim expression of his face gave place to one of rapture.

Quite suddenly he had thought of a way. It was so simple that he couldn't imagine why he hadn't thought of it before.

All he had to do was to move the unexploded bomb from the front of Joan's house to the front of Hubert Lane's house. Then Joan would be able to have her party, and Hubert Lane would not be able to have his. There was an element of poetic justice in the idea that appealed to him strongly. Joan would be able to have her party and Hubert Lane would not be able to have his . . . Even the details of the plan did not seem difficult. He must, of course, wait till no one was about . . . The bomb was not as closely guarded as it had been at the beginning. Even the policeman, whose duty it had been to stand by the barrier, was now generally away on other duties. There was very little traffic on that road in any case, and the inhabitants, once pa.s.sionately interested in the bomb, had become bored by it and looked on it merely as a nuisance. Occasionally Mr Leicester still came to gaze at it tenderly over the barrier, his eyes gleaming with the pride of possession. His bomb, his beloved unexploded bomb . . . It justified, he felt, his whole career as a warden, gave his life meaning and purpose and inspiration . . .

William realised, of course, that the thing might go off as he was removing it to Hubert Lane's house, but he considered himself quite capable of dealing with that. A saucepan on his head, a tin tray in readiness to use as a s.h.i.+eld . . . and then, he thought, the bomb might do its worst. It was too large for him to carry, so he decided to take his ancient and battered soap box on wheels, which was his ordinary means of conveyance and which served regularly the purposes of train, motor car, highwayman's horse or pirate s.h.i.+p as needed in the Outlaws' games . . . He would wait till the coast was clear, make his way down the crater, lift the unexploded bomb into the wooden cart, trundle it down the road to the Lanes' house and leave it there. The policeman or Mr Leicester would soon find it, evacuate the Lanes, bring Joan and her mother back from Miss Milton's and all would be well. Hubert would not be able to have his party and Joan would be able to have hers . . .

He waited till dusk, put saucepan, tray and spade into his wooden cart and wheeled it off down the road to the barrier outside what had been the Hall gates. The road was empty. The crater lay invitingly easy of access in front of him, with the 'unexploded bomb' in the centre. He glanced around, put the saucepan on his head, slipped under the barrier and climbed down into the crater. He dug carefully all round the bomb. It was bigger than he had thought it would be. It was different altogether from what he had thought it would be . . . He sc.r.a.ped the earth off the top and began to loosen the earth around it. So intent was he on his task that he was unaware of Mr Leicester's approach till he heard a shout and turned to see Mr Leicester hanging over the barrier, his face crimson with rage, his eyes bulging . . .

'Come back!' he shouted hoa.r.s.ely. 'Come back! You you you-' Words failed him. His mouth worked soundlessly in his purple face.