‘Don’t be daft.’
‘David and Goliath,’ said his sister.
‘You haven’t seen him. He’s like the side of a house.’
‘You’ll have to do something.’
‘Why don’t you go out and have a chat with him. Likely he wouldn’t hit you, you being a woman.’
Hoarse, unintelligible cries were now supplementing the kicking.
Wilhelmina had a better idea. ‘ Suppose you stand behind the door with the poker and then I’ll let him in and you hit him?’
‘He’s twice my height,’ objected William.
‘You could stand On a chair. You’ll have to do something. He’ll have that door down before long and then where’ll we be?’
William looked reluctantly at the poker. ‘All right,’ he agreed, ‘but don’t blame me if I kill him.’
It took some time to get one of the kitchen chairs placed strategically behind the door and even longer to hoist William up on to it. Then it was found that he’d forgotten the poker. Mumbling something about it being just like a man Wilhelmina shuffled back across the room to get it.
‘Are you ready now?’
William grasped his poker irresolutely and nodded.
Wilhelmina pulled back the bolts, turned the key in the lock and opened the door a couple of inches.
‘And about ruddy well time!’ roared Dover, pushing the door back and striding in. There was a shriek from William who found himself knocked off his chair and flattened up against the side wall.
‘William!’ cried his sister, hurrying as fast as she could to the rescue.
‘Never mind him!’ said Dover callously. ‘Where’s your telephone?’
‘He’s dead!’ Wilhelmina screamed. ‘He’s dead! I know he’s dead.’
‘Of course he’s not dead!’ snapped Dover impatiently. He reached down and seizing William by the coat collar tugged him to his feet and shook him. ‘He’s as right as rain. Now, where’s your telephone?’
‘We haven’t got a telephone,’ said Wilhelmina, escorting her dazed brother back to his seat by the fire. ‘And if it’s money or valuables you’re looking for you’ve come to the wrong house. We …’
‘Where’s the nearest telephone then?’
‘The nearest telephone? Oh, well now, the nearest telephone? That’s asking something, that is.’
‘Hey you!’ Dover lowered his face to William’s and bellowed. ‘Where’s the nearest telephone?’
William, now trembling like a leaf, cowered further back in his chair. His mouth opened but no words came. Dover, getting exasperated, shook him again.
‘The nearest telephone, you old rag-bag!’
Wilhelmina shrieked. William groaned. Dover let fly a string of oaths. Just his luck to pick on a pair of animated fossils. And look at the time!
Eventually William found his voice. It turned out that the nearest telephone was a mile and a half away as the crow flies and three miles round by the road. Prompted further by the Chief Inspector, William admitted that in this context the crow flew over two wheat fields, a swollen brook and the meadow with Harrison’s bull in it.
Dover flopped down into Wilhelmina’s chair. ‘Give us a cup of that tea, missus! Now, how do I get there by the road?’
It was a complicated journey and neither William nor Wilhelmina possessed the gift of clear and concise explanation. Neither seemed a hundred per cent sure of the difference between right and left and both bickered fiendishly about whether it was quicker to go round by Quidgery Lane or not. Dover’s meaty paws itched to knock their heads together.
‘Is there anybody round here with a car or a motor-bike? Well, a bloody bicycle, then?’
The grey heads shook regretfully.
‘There’s my tricycle,’ said William suddenly.
Wilhelmina roused on the instant. ‘Our tricycle!’ she corrected him. ‘Don’t you go telling this gentleman it’s your tricycle.’
‘I bought it,’ said William sulkily.
‘I lent you the money.’
‘Only half of it.’
‘Which you’ve never paid me back, never to this day.’
‘That doesn’t make the tricycle yours.’
‘I didn’t say it was mine!’ crowed Wilhelmina triumphantly. ‘ I said it was partly mine.’
‘Oh well, if that’s the way you feel about it, just you let me have your account and I’ll settle it when I get my pension tomorrow.’
It says something for the pathetic state to which Dover had been reduced that he let this conversation go on so long. The last few hours had taken their toll. Dover tried to organize his life so that as little exertion as possible was involved, but the amount of physical energy he had been forced to expend since he left Wallerton was practically his entire ration for a normal year.
Wearily he separated William and Wilhelmina who were on the point of coming to blows. ‘Where’s this blooming tricycle?’
William got excitedly to his feet and shouldered Wilhelmina out of the way. This was a man’s conversation. ‘In the shed outside. Come on, I’ll show you.’
‘Don’t you go out in the yard in those slippers!’ said Wilhelmina in a last attempt to muscle in.
‘Oh, belt up!’ chirped William.
A few minutes later he proudly wheeled his tricycle out for Dover’s inspection. ‘Good as new, it is, mister. Clean as a new pin and oiled regular as clockwork.’
Dover wrinkled his nose. He looked at the tricycle and then he looked at William and then he looked at the tricycle again. ‘Do you mean you actually ride that bundle of scrap iron?’
‘Once a week when I go into the village to get the pensions and do the shopping. You’ll find it goes a real treat. You can’t fall off it, you see, not like a bike.’
Dover pondered. He weighed the pros and cons. The cons won. ‘You ride it,’ he said, ‘and I’ll stand on this bar thing at the back. Hang on a minute while I fetch my suitcase.’
‘Eh?’ said William, aghast.
‘I can’t just ride off with it,’ Dover pointed out reasonably. ‘How’m I going to get it back to you? Why, you don’t know me from Adam. I might steal it.’
William gulped. ‘I’ll trust you,’ he said hoarsely.
‘Oh no, you won’t!’ Wilhelmina, wearing a war-surplus greatcoat, joined them in the yard. ‘That tricycle belongs to me as well, and don’t you
