had his cap already in her hands, and was holding it out to him with a comical resignation.
“Who mentioned knives?” said George accusingly, ducking his head into it wrathfully, ducking a little lower still to kiss her as he hooked open the door. “From now on, woman, keep off that line of talk, you’ve got me a real casualty this time.”
“Where?” cried Bunty. “Not the camp?”
“The Lodge—young miner at the hostel copped it from a P.O.W.”
“He’s not badly hurt?” she shrieked after him, leaning forward in the doorway as he flung a leg across his bike and pushed off hard along the empty evening road.
“Be O.K., I think—I hope!” He was gone, and the rest of the story with him. Bunty went back dispiritedly into the kitchen and turned up the radio, but it was not much company. One might almost as well not have a husband; D.P.s, labor rows, neighbors swapping punches over a shared front path or a drying-ground, Road Safety Committee meetings, lectures, drunks, accidents, there was no end to it. And now some poor kid in trouble—maybe two poor kids, since most of the ex-P.O.W. recruits at the miners’ hostel were no more. Say goodbye to that cosy evening with George, he won’t be back until all hours.
“Maybe I should get me a dog,” said Bunty grimly, “or take up fancy-work.”
Four
« ^ »
The Lodge had cost the Coal Board more than it was worth, and more than they need have paid for it if they had had the courage of their convictions; but it was house-room for thirty men. The warden was a decent, orthodox, middle-aged man who expected his troublous family of Welshmen, local boys, Poles, Germans and Czechs to behave in as orderly a manner as children in a preparatory school, and was out of his depth when they did not. The whole setup was too new for him; he preferred an arrangement tried and hardened by use, where the right procedure for every eventuality was already safely laid down in black and white for a simple man to follow. Improvisation was not in his nature. He opened the studded imitation Tudor door to George, and perceptibly heaved all his responsibilities into those welcome navy- blue arms at sight. His wife would be less than useless; she had political convictions but no human ones. If the boy was really hurt they’d better get him out of there, thought George, before she gave him a chill.
“Doctor here?” he asked, halfway up the stairs with the warden babbling in his ear.
“Just ten minutes ahead of you, Sergeant. He’s with the lad now.” There is a certain type of man who persists in using the word lad though it does not come naturally to him; the thing has a semi-clerical ring about it, a certain condescension. You get the feeling that a young male creature of one’s own class would have been a boy, while this person is subtly different.
“Good! No verdict from him yet?”
“There’s scarcely been time, Sergeant. This has been a terrible business, it might so easily have ended in a tragedy. This collier’s lad—” A shade more of definition, and one step down; we’re getting on, thought George.
“Which? You didn’t say who the victim was. Local boy?”
“Young Fleetwood. He’s been here only a month, and really—”
“I know him,” said George. “What about the other party?”
“A young man named Schauffler, Helmut Schauffler. I must say he’s never given me any trouble before. A good type, I would have said. And, to be quite fair, I can’t say he has been altogether to blame—certainly not the only one to blame—”
“Where is he now?”
“Down in my office. My assistant is there with him.”
“You weren’t there when the thing happened?—wherever it did happen? Was anyone?”
“It was in the day-room. Three other men were present. They were playing darts. I don’t know if you—”
“That’s all right,” said George, marching across the landing, which betrayed its period by being lit with a large stained-glass window in improbable armorial bearings, notably of a violent blue. “Let’s see what the damage is, first. Which room?” But the murmur of voices had drawn him before the warden could reply, and he walked in upon the end of the doctor’s ministrations without waiting to be led. There were more people round the bed. The warden’s wife, holding with an expression of reserve and distaste an enamel bowl of water stained darkly red. A scared-looking eighteen-year-old backed up against his bed in the far corner; the rest of him trying to be invisible, but his ears sticking out on stalks. And somebody long and lean, or appearing long by reason of his leanness, standing with his back to the door and talking down to the boy on the bed across the doctor’s bowed shoulder. A quiet, reasonable voice cheerfully advising the kid not to be an ass, because everything would be taken care of, including letting his mother know. The speaker looked round at the small sound the door made in opening, and showed the unexpected face of Chad Wedderburn, the slanting light magnifying his scar. Tonight he had another mark, too, a small punctured bruise upon the same cheek, of which at the moment he seemed completely unaware.
The doctor was a little, grimly gay, middle-aged man with brilliant eyes, and false teeth which slipped at the most awkward moments, and which he plugged testily back into position with a sudden thumb whenever they tripped him. He looked over his shoulder at George, and with a welcoming grin, as who should say: “Ah, trouble!” pulled him directly into consultation. Trouble was the breath of life to him, not because he enjoyed seeing people tormented, but because his energy was tumultuous, and demanded an exhausting variety of interests to employ it through the day.
“There you are, Sergeant!” he said, as if George had been there from the beginning. “What did I tell you? Only a perfectly clean wound, touched a rib, no damage, not the ghost of a complication of any kind. Thinks he’s going to die because he bleeds freely. Thinks I’m going to forbid you to badger him, I dare say. Your mistake, my boy! Put you through it as much as he likes, I’ve no objection. Eat you if he likes! He’d find you tough enough if he tried it!” He was all this time busily finishing a bandage, and buttoning a stained shirt over it again with fingers which flew as fast as his tongue, but more steadily. The boy on the bed looked a little bewildered at the spate of words, but a little reassured, too, and stirred docilely from side to side as the hands directed him. “Good boy! You’re all right, I promise you. Nothing in the world to worry about, so take that scared look off your face, and relax. All you’ve got to do is exactly as you’re told for a few days. Something new for you, eh? Eh?”
Apprehensive but faintly soothed gray eyes flickered from the doctor’s face to George’s, and back again. Young Fleetwood was seventeen, sturdy but small for his age; on his own here now, George remembered, the family had moved south. Clever, idealistic kid, out to save the country and the world, so he bypassed the chance of teaching,
