A Childs War Read Online Free PDF Page B

her arm round her and kiss her cheek.
    When he had seen his father sit down again, Alex climbed on his lap and asked him to read him a story. So, for the next half an hour, George read to everyone from the book of bedtime stories he had brought up from the still intact house on the Friday of last week. Each time George finished one of the yarns as he called them in the manner of seafarers, Alex called out for another one. George read well and everyone was attentive.
    â€œJust one more, then that’s it,” George said at last.
    The final tale he turned to was The Three Little Pigs. No one else remembered what was coming, but they all understood why Edna got up and left as George could not find a way of avoiding the words “I’ll huff and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your house down.” For the sake of the youngest listener George persevered to the end of the story, thinking it was sad that Edna had not waited for the reassurance offered in the rest of it. When it was over, Graham and Joyce and John looked away as Alex put his arms round his father’s neck, and was hugged back by him as he also gave way to his grief. Then he handed over his son to Joyce and went to find his wife who was sobbing in the scullery.
III
    George had come a day early, and they had until Sunday evening to work out the implications of what had been decided upon. The suggestion to put the divan bed Alex slept on in the sitting room was gratefully accepted, and Graham and George carried it down on Friday afternoon before it was next needed. Alex was also provided with a little cupboard to keep his things in and a promise was exacted from him that it would be kept tidy. He liked going to bed there because the fire was still warm from earlier in the day and there was usually a warm glow reassuring enough to hold the dreams off. In fact the dreams became normal in a very short time and were not memorable at all. His recovery after the shock of the split chin was also aided by the fact that no one woke him until about half past nine when either Joyce or his mother pulled the curtains and told him his breakfast was ready in the kitchen.
    This had happened only twice when his father had to go again, so as to be at work on Monday morning with the shift that began at eight. He had to be there at half past seven, whatever holes in the road Goering’s airmen might have put in his way. After he had gone, Alex did not ask for stories to be read, but leafed through his books on his own. George had made sure he was generously provided with well-illustrated books and he spent a lot of time during the day trying, with some success, to copy things from them with a 2B lead pencil given him by John, which he used in preference to all the wax crayons he had received from other people. He soon understood the value of shading to achieve the effect of motion and on the occasions when he decided not to copy a picture but draw something of his own instead, using no more than component images at second hand, he found that the composition of the whole drawing was something that came naturally.
    He was grieved by Edna not being particularly interested in these creations, and he carefully put them in his cupboard to show to George when he came home on Friday night, although he would not see him until Saturday. Alex knew what his father would do. He would look at the drawing, then turn it over to see if there was anything on the other side, look at it again, and say what had always been said to him when he was a boy and had achieved something of real worth: “Not bad, boy . . . Not bad at all!”
    An appointment had been made to see the Pattersons’ doctor about the stitches in Alex’s chin. Every time Alex stood on a chair in the bathroom to clean his teeth, he noticed with relief that the bruising was less and the new plaster that Edna put on each day was becoming smaller. He was glad of this because, having been a nurse, she never