'Yes, please,' said William promptly.

She gave him a gla.s.s of lemonade and a couple of biscuits.

'Wouldn't anyone else like something?' she asked. 'Tea or coffee or something?'

'Good heavens, Mother!' said Ethel, 'we can't go on eating all night.'

Mr Brown glanced at his watch.

'We've only just had dinner, my dear,' he said. 'The process of digestion can hardly be completed yet.'

Emma, appealed to next, shook her head grimly and pointed to her cork. Regretfully Mrs Brown put her equipment away.

Ethel had taken a small mirror from her bag and was patting her erection of red-gold curls.

'Thank heaven I had a perm last week,' she said. 'I simply couldn't have gone through another raid if I hadn't.'

'I don't quite see how you could have avoided it,' said Mr Brown, turning over a sheet of his evening paper.

'I do hope Robert's all right,' sighed Mrs Brown.

'Why shouldn't he be?' said Mr Brown. 'He couldn't very well have got anything more than a chill up to the present.'

'Yes, dear,' said Mrs Brown reproachfully, 'but, after all, it is a raid.'

Mr Brown gave an unfeeling grunt and turned over another sheet of his newspaper.

'Industrials seem to be keeping up pretty well,' he commented.

'That's a Dornier,' said William suddenly. 'Right over us, too,' he added in a tone of deep satisfaction.

'That is a motor cycle on the main road,' put in Mr Brown quietly, without looking up from his paper.

'Oh, yes . . . well, they do sound jolly alike.'

'Have you ever heard a Dornier?' asked his father.

'Well, I don't know. I may've done . . . This aeroplane's goin' to have six engines . . . Can I have somethin' else to eat, Mother? I'm jolly hungry.'

'There's the biscuit tin.'

'Can't I have some chocolate?'

'Not yet.'

'I think you might let me have a bit of chocolate. I might be blown up any minute, an' you'd be jolly sorry afterwards that you'd not let me have a bit of chocolate.'

Mr Brown glanced up from his paper.

'Your nuisance value, William,' he said, 'is so inestimably high that I'm sure you're the last person in England Hitler would wish to bomb.'

'I bet it's me he's tryin' to get all the time,' said William. 'I bet he's heard about this aeroplane I'm makin'.'

'I'm going to go on knitting that blue jumper,' said Ethel. 'I still think it's the wrong blue, but the war's simply played havoc with shades.'

'Will there be enough of that cold lamb for tomorrow, Emma?' said Mrs Brown.

She and Emma were together supplying the place of Cook, and each treated the other with pitying contempt as an amateur.

'Oh yes, m'm. Lots,' said Emma through the cork.

'I'll make a pie for the sweet,' went on Mrs Brown, 'and we'll use up some of those pulped gooseberries.'

'No need for you to do that, m'm,' said Emma, removing the cork, her eyes gleaming with the light of battle. 'I'll have ample time to run up a suet pudden. The master always likes my suet puddens.'

'Very well, Emma,' said Mrs Brown, retreating, 'but those pulped gooseberries aren't keeping any too well.'

'One of them war-time recipes,' said Emma with a grimace expressing fastidious disgust. 'I've never trusted 'em. I warned both you an' Cook at the time, m'm, if you remember.'

With that she replaced her cork in a manner to preclude all further argument.

'Can I have the air-cus.h.i.+on, Mother?' said William.

'What for?'

'To to rest on,' said William. 'My back aches.'

'Well, you know you broke the last one with playing with it. You can have it on condition you don't play with it.'

'All right, I don't want it, then,' said William.

'And what have you got in your dressing-gown pocket?' Mrs Brown leant forward and drew out a length of string, a penknife, a lump of putty, a handful of marbles, some screws, a match-box containing a live beetle, and a tube of glue, most of whose contents had already escaped.

'Don't let the beetle out,' said William anxiously. 'It's one of the best I've ever had. I'm jus' goin' to give it a bit of biscuit.'

'If anyone lets it out, I'll die,' threatened Ethel.

'The glue's simply soaked through your dressing-gown,' said Mrs Brown . . . 'Oh well,' resignedly, 'I can't do anything about it now . . . Do stop eating biscuits, William. You've had quite enough.'

'I bet that was a screaming bomb,' said William.

'It was the twelve-thirty letting off steam,' said Mr Brown.

'Was it?' said William despondently. 'It's been a rotten raid so far.'

'I wonder if the Bevertons are coming,' said Ethel.

'The who?' said Mr Brown, looking up from his paper.

Ethel and Mrs Brown exchanged nervous glances.

'Yes, didn't we tell you, dear?' said Mrs Brown. 'The Bevertons asked if they could share our shelter and we didn't like to say "no".'

'Good heavens! They've got one of their own.'

'I know, but they say it's so much jollier to be together. They were sharing the Mertons' last week, but Bella quarrelled with Dorita so they asked if they could share ours.'

'Bella?' demanded Mr Brown.

'Bella Beverton, dear,' explained his wife. 'One of Ethel's friends. Don't you remember her?'

'Ethel's friends are indistinguishable,' said Mr Brown. 'Their vocabulary is limited to the word "marvellous", but they can say it in twenty different tones of voice. Why intensify the horrors of war by having them in the air-raid shelter?'

'Perhaps they won't come, dear,' said Mrs Brown soothingly. 'After all, it's some time since the siren went.'

'They always take a long time getting ready,' said Ethel.

'Ready? What for?' said Mr Brown.

'For air-raid shelters,' said Ethel.

'Gosh,' said William excitedly. 'I can hear bombs.'

But it was only the Bevertons arriving.

Mrs Beverton was inordinately stout and her daughter was inordinately thin. They were both dressed in the latest in siren suits, and had obviously taken great pains with their make-up and coiffeurs. Mrs Beverton wore a three-stringed pearl necklace, large jade earrings and four bracelets. She had, moreover, used a new exotic perfume that made William cry out in genuine alarm, 'Gas! Where's my gas mask?'

'GOs.h.!.+' SAID WILLIAM EXCITEDLY. 'I CAN HEAR BOMBS.' BUT IT WAS ONLY THE BEVERTONS ARRIVING.

'So sorry we're late,' she said gaily as she entered. 'We just had to finish off our new siren suits. We've been working on them all day but they just needed the finis.h.i.+ng touches, as it were. I had to get out my jewellery, too. I always like to feel I've got it with me, as it were. Room for a little one?'

She plunged down on to a small camp mattress next to Mr Brown, almost blocking him from view.

'Not squas.h.i.+ng you, I hope?' she inquired politely.

'Not at all,' came the m.u.f.fled voice of Mr Brown from between her and the wall of the shelter.

Bella sat down by Ethel and took out her knitting.

'I'm making a green jumper like that one of yours,' she said. 'Did you get your perm?'

'Yes. Yesterday.'

'I shall have to have another soon if the raids keep on.'

'Now you'd all like something to eat and drink, wouldn't you?' said Mrs Brown happily, setting to work on her tea equipage and adding almost mechanically. 'I do hope Robert's all right.'

'SO SORRY WE'RE LATE,' SAID MRS BEVERTON GAILY AS SHE ENTERED.

'Do you like this colour?' said Ethel, holding up the jumper she was working on.

'Marvellous!' said Bella in a deep voice.

'I want to get it finished by tomorrow. I like the yoke effect, don't you?'

'Marvellous!' said Bella on a higher key.

'Did you see the cardigan Dolly Clavis knitted, with a hood? She's going to lend me the pattern. It'll be useful for cold mornings.'

'Marvellous!' squeaked Bella ecstatically.

'You'll have a cup of tea, won't you, dear?' said Mrs Brown to her husband.

But Mr Brown wasn't there. At Bella's third 'Marvellous!' he had crept quietly out of the emergency exit.

'Isn't he tiresome!' sighed Mrs Brown. 'Now, William, you can have one more biscuit and then you must lie down and try to sleep.'

'Sleep!' echoed William indignantly, but his eyelids were heavy and it was all he could do to keep them open.

Mrs Beverton had embarked upon a sea of prattle.

'This sc.r.a.p-iron business is simply disgraceful,' she said. 'It's the same everywhere. They made a terrific effort just at the beginning and then let things slide. There must be lots more sc.r.a.p iron about by now, that no one's troubled to collect.'

William gradually surrendered to the tide of sleep that was engulfing him. Through it he heard an occasional 'Marvellous!' from Bella, or a 'I do hope that Robert and your father are all right,' from his mother.

He slept through the All Clear but was roused by Mrs Brown. He gathered his scattered pieces of aeroplane sleepily together.

Mrs Beverton was still in full sail on her sea of prattle.

'This cousin of mine,' she was saying, 'made quite a little sum for the Spitfire Fund by this exhibition just bits of shrapnel and a piece of a Dornier, and part of a sh.e.l.l-casing and a German incendiary bomb and a few things like that. People paid a s.h.i.+lling admission and she's promised to lend it to me and-'

Mrs Brown smothered a yawn.

'That was the "All Clear",' she said. 'Shall we go back to bed?'

'What a shame!' said Mrs Beverton. 'I always hate leaving a party.'

Ethel sat up and rubbed her eyes.

'We had quite a nice little nap,' she said to Bella, 'didn't we?'

'Marvellous,' yawned Bella.

As William, back in his own bed, yielded once more to sleep, his thoughts went over what Mrs Beverton had been saying just before he went to sleep in the shelter. No one was collecting sc.r.a.p iron . . . people ought to be collecting sc.r.a.p iron . . . people ought to be . . . people ought to . . . people ought . . . He fell asleep and dreamed that Hitler, wearing Mrs Beverton's siren suit, and Emma (still with the cork in her mouth) were wheeling a handcart of sc.r.a.p iron, which turned into a gigantic aeroplane in the shape of a beetle which turned into Farmer Smith's Daisy.

He awoke with the firm conviction that he must do something about sc.r.a.p iron.

Most of his previous war efforts had been unsuccessful but, he decided, they had, perhaps, been too ambitious. He had tried to capture spies and parachutists, and this had turned out to be more difficult than he had thought it would. He couldn't go wrong collecting sc.r.a.p iron. n.o.body could go wrong collecting sc.r.a.p iron . . . You just well you just collected sc.r.a.p iron, and then took it to the depot in Hadley.