and set out to cure what was wrong with the mines. Probably end up as a mining engineer, and maybe that would reconcile his old man, who had been a collier himself and learned to look upon it as something not good enough for his sons. All the more important because there was only this one son now; the elder was dead in the last push into Germany, in 1945.
“I’m taking him into hospital for a few days,” said the doctor briskly. “No great need, but I’d like him under my eye.”
“Best thing for him, I’d say. How bad was it?”
“Quite a gash—sliced wound, but the rib stopped the knife, or it might have been a bad job. The ambulance will be here for him in about ten minutes, but if you need longer—? Let him down easy, he’s had a fright.”
“That’s all right, he wouldn’t know how to start being scared of me,” said George cheerfully. “Known me all his life.” He sat on the edge of the bed, and smiled at the boy until he got a wan smile in return. “Can we have the room to ourselves until the ambulance comes? Let me know when you’re ready for him, doctor.”
Jim Fleetwood let the room empty of everyone else, but turned his head unhappily after Chad Wedderburn, and reached a hand to keep him, but drew it back with a slight flush, ashamed of hanging on to comfort. Chad said quietly: “It’s all right, Jim, I’ll come back.”
“Stay, by all means,” said George, “if he wants you. That’s all right with me. I know the feeling.” The door closed after the others, and it was quiet in the room. “That’s better! How did you get here? Just visiting?”
“Jim asked for me, and his roommate called me on the phone. I was ahead of the doctor. His family are a long way off, you see; I suppose I seemed about as solid a prop as he could think of offhand.” He looked, at that, as if he might be. The broken bruise on his cheek burned darkly; he saw George’s eyes linger on it, and said evenly: “Yes, I walked into it, too. This was a present from the same bloke. The row was barely over when I got here, everybody was arguing, down in the day-room, what happened and what didn’t happen. Schauffler happens to be a kind I know already. He didn’t much like being known. But he’d given up the knife by then, luckily for me. I was turning away from him at the time,” he explained gently, but with a certain tension in his voice which hinted at stresses underneath. “I had Jim in my arms. The Schauffler kind chooses its time.”
“I wish you’d lit into him then,” said Jim, feebly blazing. “I wish you’d killed him.”
“You’re a fine pal, to want me hanged for a Helmut Schauffler!”
The boy paled at the thought, and lost his voice for fear of saying something of equally awful implications with the next breath.
“There isn’t going to be any trouble, is there? I don’t want my people to get it wrong.” He began to flush and shake a little, and George put a hand on his shoulder to quiet him.
“The only trouble you’ve got is a few days in hospital, and the job of getting on your feet again. Just tell us all about it, and then quit worrying about anything except getting well. We’ll see that your parents don’t get it wrong. You can trust us. If I don’t make a good job of it, Wedderburn will. Now, how did this business start?”
“It’s been going on a week or more, ever since I was coming from the showers one day, and saw him just leaving some more German chaps outside. They saluted each other the Nazi way, and said: ‘Heil, Hitler!’—just as if there hadn’t been any war, and our Ted and all the other chaps gone west for nothing. I dare say I oughtn’t to have cut loose, but what can you expect a chap to do? I couldn’t stand it. I suppose I raved a bit—honestly, I can’t remember a damned word I said, but I suppose it was all wrong and idiotic. I should have hit him, only Tom Stephens and some more fellows came, and lugged me away. I didn’t put any complaint in—I couldn’t, because I was ashamed I’d made such a muck of it, and anyhow he hadn’t done anything to me, only stand there and grin. But ever since then he’s picking on me here—nothing you could get hold of, because there never was anyone else around to see and hear—but he’d slip remarks in my ear as he went by—he got to find out about Ted, somehow, I think he’s been prying here in my room. But I can’t
“I wish you’d had the sense to come to me days ago,” said Chad Wedderburn.
“Well, but I didn’t want to make trouble for you, and it was all so slippery. You can see it’s no good now. I only made you take the same sort of nastiness I’ve had.”
“What about tonight?” prompted George.
“He was down in the day-room, playing darts with three of the fellows. They didn’t often invite him in, but I suppose he was there, and they took him on. I didn’t even know. I went down there to borrow a fine screwdriver, because I’d broken the strut of Ted’s photo, and I was putting a new one on it. When I went in he was sitting by the table, and he had a clasp-knife, and was trimming the end of a dart that wouldn’t fly true. I never took any notice of him. I just put the photo on the table—as far from him as it would go, but it’s only a small table—and asked Tom Stephens for his pocket gadget, and he gave it to me, and went on with the game. And I went back to pick up my picture.” He stirred painfully on his pillow, and shut his teeth together hard to stop a rising gulp. “It’s Ted in his uniform—I went and left it down there—”
“Don’t worry, we’ll take care of that. Go on!”
“He sat there whittling away with the knife, and he looked at me over it, and then he spat—making believe he was spitting on the blade, and then stooping down to sharpen it on the sole of his shoe—but he knew what he was about, all right! He spat on Ted’s photo—spattered it all over the face— He spat on my brother, and grinned at me! A dirty little Nazi like that!”
“So you went for him,” said George equably.
“Of course I did! What would you expect me to do? I dropped the screwdriver—anyhow it was a little pocket thing, all closed up, like a lipstick—and went for him, and hit him in the face, and he started to get up and lunge at me, all in one movement. The knife went into me, and I fell on top of him, and then the other three came and pulled us apart, and I was bleeding like a pig—and—and I was scared like a kid, and started to yell for Mr. Wedderburn, and Tom went and got him—and that’s all.”
Not all, perhaps, that could be told, but all that Jim was capable of telling just then, and it was as full of holes as any sieve. He looked speculatively at Chad’s darkening cheek, and asked: “What about your little incident? If you had the kid in your arms at the time,
Chad smiled sourly. “I didn’t even call him rude names. It was all strictly schoolmaster stuff. He was sitting like a damp sack until I turned to go out of the day-room, and then he shot up like a rocket and took a hack at me. I— hadn’t been complimentary, of course. His poor English might have led him to find words there which I never used.”
