“Yes,” Peter said. “I know.” And he, too, left it at that.
“Peter Hutchins,” said a familiar, clear voice. “Derek Brand.”
They turned and saw Mrs. Wilson stepping out of a knot of teachers close to the school gate. “Morning, ma’am,” they said.
“That crater, ma’am,” Peter said. “Did you know old Mrs. Jenkins got killed? Did they hit the school as well?”
“It was very sudden, and we must be glad poor Mrs. Jenkins didn’t know what was happening,” Mrs. Wilson said gently. “And no, the school wasn’t hit, but it was damaged by the blast, and we shan’t be having lessons until Wednesday. Are your mothers at home?”
“Mine is,” Derek said.
“My mum’s at work,” Peter said.
“Well, you’d better both go back to Derek’s house. I’m sure Mrs. Brand won’t mind looking after you, too, Peter.”
“She’d be very pleased, ma’am,” Derek said.
Mrs. Wilson’s mouth twitched, and she patted him on the shoulder. They liked Mrs. Wilson. She was quite old, even older than their mothers, and she yelled at you and sometimes threw chalk if you made a noise in class, but she was all right, Mrs. Wilson was. They liked her. Neither of them could have explained why.
Mrs. Wilson said, “Is Geoffrey Young with you?”
Peter looked at the crowd. “He’s in there somewhere.”
“His mum’s at home,” Derek said.
“All right. I’ll see him if you don’t. But you have a look for him now, and all three of you go along home. There’s nothing to see here now. And remember school starts again as usual the day after tomorrow. You don’t get any more extra holiday than that, even if Jerry tried to get you one.”
They laughed, said “Thank you, ma’am; good-bye, ma’am,” found Geoffrey, and ran home. They talked about the stick of bombs all the way. To have a bomb just miss the school, now that was something. “Just suppose it had been in the daytime,” they said to one another with relish. “Just suppose we’d all been there.” And at no point did Derek link the possibility with the events and emotions and memories of the night before. They were hardly even memories now, or would not be until the dark came down again and the air-raid warning came howling out.
THE CAMP was developing quickly. They carved out a hole in one side and fitted one of Peter’s packing cases in to act as a cupboard; they opened the second box out to lie flat, or flattish, for a roof, banged all the protruding nails flat with a stone, dug out a deep slit in the orange clay, and fitted it in. This took a long time, not least because only two of them were ever working at once. They took turns keeping watch on the other side of the fence, safe in the back field, just in case someone—anyone—might pass and see what they were doing and tell them they shouldn’t be doing it.
When the roof, or part roof, was on, they stood back and surveyed the camp. It was a V-shaped room now, with two bare earth walls formed by the side and end of the Ditch. Peter and Derek packed a thin layer of earth carefully over the roof, stuffing handfuls of grass into any slits where it dribbled through, and made complicated and not very effective attempts to plant tufts of growing grass on top of it. “Camouflage,” Peter said. “Like those pictures of soldiers with branches stuck onto their tin hats.”
“Like the way they paint everything brown and green—aircraft hangers and the factory chimneys on the estate.”
“What about the edge of the roof?” demanded Geoffrey, arriving with a critical eye from his tour on watch.
“You can’t cover that. The earth just drops off.”
“Well it sticks out like anything. It’s all white. You can see it miles away.”
“We can dirty it.” Peter rubbed a damp handful of clay along the bright edge. “And we can dig up some little bushes or something and plant them in front here, and they’ll grow up and hide the whole thing. And we’ll have a wall sticking out half the way across, so the entrance’ll be between that and the other side of the Ditch.”
“With gaps on the top of it to fire over,” Derek said. “Like a castle.”
“Battlements,” said Geoffrey.
“Battlements,” Peter said thoughtfully. But nobody said anything about a battle.
They all went home to dinner. Peter’s mother was at home after all; they had called in at his house on the way, to collect their packing cases, and found her. The factory where she worked had been bombed in the raid the night before. They had asked whether anyone had been killed, and she had told them abruptly to go away and play.
Geoffrey came knocking at the back door in the afternoon. “Can Derry come out, Mrs. Brand?”
Derek came out. It was a gray day, but no raid had arrived yet; the air and the breeze were still dry. “Where’s Pete?” he said.
“I don’t know. He wasn’t there. Nobody was. I suppose his mum took him shopping.” Geoffrey brought out the idea with distaste and some scorn. To each of them a shopping trip was a shameful occupation, but he was the only one who could afford to say so. The one advantage of having two elder sisters was their endless willingness to trot off, even with no clothing coupons in their pockets, to inspect shop windows in the town to which the buses went.
“Swizz,” Derek said. In silence, they made for the camp. He never felt quite at his ease when he was alone with Geoffrey; somehow it was difficult to know what to talk about. Pete and he could be alone for hours and neither really consciously notice that the other was there; their talking was a thinking aloud. But Geoffrey was peculiar. You were always aware, in some way, that you didn’t know what was going on inside his head, and sometimes he would suddenly come out with some remark that made it clear he thought there was something sinister or discreditable going on inside yours. And it was always at a time when you were just thinking about the weather or the shape of a tree or nothing at all.
He dug away at the side and bottom of the Ditch, building up the new wall; pausing now and then to puff and to scrape off chunks of clinging earth from the small, stubby, impractical spade. Geoff worked fussily at the end of the wooden roof, coating small precise areas so that eventually they darkened to the color of the Ditch itself. It was, Derek had to admit to himself, far more effective than Peter’s sweeping attempt of the morning. The day was still cool and gray, but the two of them were warm with work, saying little, except when one would stop, stand critically back, and demand the other’s approval of what he had done.
Then there was a whoop and a sudden rustling in the grass, and Derek dropped the spade and Geoff stumbled and bumped his nose on the roof, and Peter rose out of nowhere and jumped over the humped end of the Ditch to come bouncing down between them.
“Caught you! I’m a scout party from the gun camp. What do you kids think you’re up to, eh?”
“Aren’t you clever,” said Geoffrey resentfully, rubbing his nose.
Derek grinned. “Where’ve you been?”
“You’re lousy lookouts,” Peter said. “I mean I was right on top of you, I could see everything you were doing, and you didn’t even notice I was there. I might have been anybody.” He looked at the wall and the dark-edged roof. “Hey, that’s good. That looks super.”
Derek said, pleased, “Well, you weren’t anybody, were you?”
“You made enough row to bring everybody after you,” Geoff said. He stood up, dabbing at his nose for signs of blood but finding none; and then he crouched suddenly, and his voice dropped to a hiss. “There is someone—get down—there’s somebody on the allotments over the other side of the fence. You daft thing, Pete, he must have heard you.”
Peter remained where he was. “That’s all right,” he said cheerfully. “I brought him with me.”
“But the camp’s secret,” Derek said.
“That’s Tom Hicks,” Peter said. “You know Tommy Hicks. From the top of the road.”
Derek peered suspiciously at the back of the tall figure standing a few yards away in the allotment field. “Yuh, that big boy, I remember him. Haven??
?t seen him for ages, though.”
“He’s at home for a bit. I saw him at his house after dinner; I had to go up with my mum to deliver something or other, and she wanted me to see his mum. He’s been working away from home somewhere, in a factory I think.” Peter took breath for his announcement. “He’s going into the Merchant Navy next month.”
“Coo,” they said. There were few soldiers, sailors, or airmen on Everett Avenue, and fewer contacts with them; mostly there were only parents who were too old for the war and children who were too young. One or two husbands and elder sons had disappeared, like Commander Hansen and the Jones boy from the house opposite Geoffrey’s, but they were simply absences. Nobody had seen them yet since they went; they had never been home on leave. Tommy Hicks was going to join them, Tommy Hicks was visible, so Tommy Hicks had glamour and all the aura of mysterious bravery that went with the endless war.
“Hey, Tom,” Peter called confidently. “Come over and see our camp.”
Derek and Geoffrey watched shyly as the bigger boy, big as an adult, pushed down on the top strand of the barbed wire and cocked first one leg and then the other over it, neat as could be, without much effort at all.” That fence wouldn’t keep many Jerries out,” Derek thought with something like shame. “It wouldn’t keep anyone out much except little kids. After all, it doesn’t even keep us out, even if we can’t get over it as easily as him.”
Tom Hicks stood smiling down at them. “Hallo there,” he said. “You’re Derry Brand and Geoff Young, aren’t you? I remember you. You’ve grown up a bit though, I must say.” He was tall, broad-shouldered, wearing a rollneck sweater, with patched gray trousers tucked into rubber boots that would each have held both Derek’s feet put end to end. He looked as if he were a sailor already.
“Are you really going in the Merchant Navy?” Derek said.
“Three weeks yesterday,” Tom Hicks said. “Report for training the third of May.”
“Gosh,” Derek said.
Geoffrey said, “My uncle’s on a destroyer.”
“Which one?” Tommy squatted down companionably on his heels.
“HMS Hood.”
He nodded gravely. “That’s a good ship.”
Geoffrey glanced triumphantly at the others and appeared to swell.
Derek said, “What’s the difference between the Merchant Navy and the Navy?”
“The Royal Navy,” Geoffrey said reprovingly.
“Easier to get sunk in the merchant ships,” Tommy Hicks said, hugely cool and casual. “Fewer guns. But you can join up younger.” He added, pulling at a blade of grass, “My cousin was torpedoed in one last month. Went down in the North Atlantic. They didn’t save anybody.”
“Gosh,” Peter said. “I didn’t know that. That’s awful.”
“There’s a war on,” Tom said lightly. He eased himself up to his feet again and looked around. “That’s a good camp you’ve got here.”
“We’ve only just started it really.”
“We put a bit of a roof on here, see, and camouflaged it.” Derek looked at him calculatingly. “I expect you’re a bit too big to go inside.”
“I expect I am.”
“There’s going to be a wall over here.”
“And a special entrance.”
“And we’re going to plant a bush or a tree or something to grow over and hide it.”
“Use a bit of the bramble bush,” Tom said. “That transplants easy. And it’d be just like barbed wire.”
They looked at him with respect. “That’s a super idea.”
“Don’t mention it,” Tom said. “I can see you’ve really been working hard. Stick at it. You never know when it’ll come in handy.”
“You won’t tell anyone about it, will you?” Geoff said.
Peter said indignantly, “Course he won’t.”
“Course I won’t,” Tom said.
“How old do you have to be to join the Merchant Navy?” Derek said.
“Sixteen,” said Tom. “You’ll have to wait a bit.”
“Yes. I was planning on flying a Spitfire, actually, but you have to be seventeen to get in the RAF.”
“I must go,” Tom said. “Tell your mum I was careful climbing over your back fence, Derek.”
“Did you see her?”
“She said she didn’t mind,” Peter said. “We went calling for you first.”
“I think your camp’s jolly good,” Tom said. “Can I come and see it when it’s finished?”
“Course you can.”
They leaped behind and around him up the end of the Ditch along to the fence. “Hey, stop,” said Geoffrey. “Look at that.”
They paused and saw a glint of metal in the long grass beside the fence; it was a square closed can, a toffee can, with a pattern of flowers around its printed label. They never saw that sort of can in the shops now. Derek’s mother had one from before the war; she kept buttons in it, and its flowered sides were dented and the colors dulled. This one looked brand-new. Peter bent down to part the grass.
“Don’t touch it!” Geoff yelped. “It might be a bomb. My dad says Jerry drops things like that so that kids will pick them up and get blown to bits.”
Instinctively they all moved back—all except Tom. He stood where he was, looking down at the can, frowning a little.
“Funny we haven’t noticed it before,” Peter said. He stepped forward again.
“You stay there,” Tom said.
“We didn’t notice it because it wasn’t there,” Geoff said. “I bet they dropped it in the raid last night.”
It was a trigger: For a dreadfully vivid, unexpected moment, Derek was back at the mouth of the shelter, in the crashing, flashing darkness; seeing his father’s twisted, shouting face, feeling himself flung backward down the steps, hearing the roar of the low-swooping plane and the rattle of the guns. Sleep had pushed the memory so comfortably deep in his mind that for a moment he could not cope with its engulfing reappearance. He looked at the can and flinched, and knew nothing in the world would have induced him to pick it up.
“And if it’s not a bomb and it’s got real toffees in it,” Geoff said, “then they’ll be poisoned, because they try to get kids that way, too. But I bet it is a bomb.”
“Go on,” Peter said automatically, but there was doubt in his voice.
They all looked fearfully at Tom. He stood there rubbing one boot slowly against the other, and ran a hand thoughtfully through his hair. It was unusual hair: wiry and thick, and very curly, and a dark reddish brown like a new chestnut.
He said, “Bombs go off all sort of ways. Either on impact, when they hit the ground, or when they get near water. There’s a puddle over there, so I suppose this doesn’t mind water. Or sometimes they have a timing device, and you can usually hear that ticking. Or they go off when they get near metal.”
“The spade,” Derek said nervously, and looked around; but it was yards away.
Tom bent down close to the can. “No ticking,” he said. “If it is a bomb, it’s probably booby-trapped, so it would go off when someone opened the lid.” He looked across at them. “Here,” he said, “you kids get down in the Ditch. Go on. Duck right down.”
“You’re not going to open it?” Peter said, and his voice cracked into a squeak.
“No, I’m not, I’m not daft. But we can’t just leave it lying here. And there’s no point getting a bomb disposal squad all this way just to look at a tin—anyway, they’re all just blokes like you and me. Well,” he said, “like me, anyway. Go on, duck down there.”
They slithered down over the hummock and peeped across it through the grass. Tommy Hicks bent down slowly and picked up the can, very carefully, keeping it the same way up as it had been lying; and he leaned back and brought his arm back like an outfielder throwing a cricket ball a long way to the wicket, and he hurled the can far up into the empty cabbage field. Watching through the grass, they saw it curve, spinning up against the gray sky and lazily down. Derek could feel the blood thumping
in his throat. The can landed and bounced once, and they heard a very faint distant rattle, and that was all.
Everything was very quiet. They drew breath again. Tom had crouched; he straightened and laughed. “False alarm,” he said. “No bomb.”
“Perhaps it was a dud.”
“Perhaps it was a poisoned candy thing after all. And they’ll all have spilled out, and someone might eat them.”
“No. It wasn’t heavy. It must have been an empty tin.” Tom laughed again. “Be seeing you,” he said, and he stepped straight-legged over the barbed wire, and then over the stile, and disappeared across the back field and the Brands’ fence. He turned once and waved. They stood there watching him, reverently.
“The way he chucked that thing,” Peter said. “Just picked it up and chucked it.”
“I wouldn’t have touched it for anything,” Derek said.
Geoffrey said, like an old man passing judgment, “He’s got guts.”
They went back to the building of the camp, rapidly, busily, as if it were an act of tribute.
They worked on the camp for the rest of that day, and for most of the next day, too, their extra holiday given them by the bombing of the school. Mrs. Hutchins went back to work that second day because factories were repaired more quickly than schools, and Peter had his dinner with Derek and Hugh. They ate big floury canned peas, and yesterday’s boiled potatoes fried up, and fat sausages that split open all the way down their length almost as soon as they were put in the frying pan, so that the split insides were fried as brown as the skins. Hugh ate very little except mashed-up peas, but then Hugh was only just three years old and never did eat much of anything. Derek liked his sausages that way, but Mrs. Brand sighed over them as she always did.
“Full of bread,” she said.
“But there isn’t any bread inside, Mum. Just sausage.”
“That’s not the way sausages used to be,” she said. Their parents were always saying things like this. Derek and Peter assumed it to be a natural consequence of growing up. All adults seemed to think there was something peculiar about the world, something to be apologized for. Yet everything was just the same as it had always been. They realized, vaguely, that there had been a time when the raids had not come every night, but that was very dim and a million years ago. It didn’t seem to them that the things they ate were any different from the way they had always been. Food was food, after all, and there was always plenty of it. And a great deal nicer at home than it generally was at school. The awfulness of school dinners, the gristly stew and the watery cabbage, was the only mealtime topic about which they ever felt any emotion at all.