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speaker’s head, bestowing an
immediate sense of relief at his extinction. There was a long pause next door.
    ‘I do wonder he can remember all that,’
said a voice, possibly that of Williams, W.H., one of the singers of Sardis,
now runner in my platoon.
    ‘Someone writes it down for him, don’t
you see,’ said another voice that could have been Corporal Gwylt’s.
    ‘And do they give him all those
figures too?’
    ‘Of course they do.’
    ‘So that is it.’
    ‘You must know that, lad.’
    ‘What a lot he do talk.’
    ‘That’s for they pay him.’
    ‘Bloody sure he is Germany will win the
war. Why does he call it like that – Chairmany – it’s
a funny way to speak to be sure.’
    ‘Maybe that’s the way they say it
there.’
    ‘If Hider wins the war, I tell you,
lad, we’ll go down the mine for sixpence a day.’
    No one in the store attempted to deny this
conclusion. There was another pause and some coughing. It was not easy to tell
how many persons were collected there. Gittins himself appeared to have gone to
sleep, only Gwylt and Williams, W. H., unable to bring the day to a close. I thought they too must
have nodded off, when suddenly Williams’s voice sounded again.
    ‘How would you like to go up in an
aircraft, Ivor?’
    ‘I would not mind that so much.’
    ‘I hope I do not have to do that.’
    ‘We are not in the RAF, lad, what are
you thinking?’
    ‘I would not like it up there I am
sure too.’
    ‘They will not put you up there, no
worry.’
    ‘You do not know what they will do,
look at those parachutists, indeed.’
    ‘You make me think of Dai and Shoni
when they went up in a balloon.’
    ‘And what was that, I wonder.’
    ‘They took two women with them.’
    ‘Did they, then?’
    ‘When the balloon was in the sky, the
air began to leak something terrible out of it, it did, and Dai was frightened,
so frightened Dai was, and Dai said to Shoni, Look you, Shoni, this balloon is
not safe at all, and the air is leaking out of it terrible, we shall have to
jump for it, and Shoni said to Dai, But, Dai, what about the women? and Dai
said, Oh, fook the
women, and Shoni said, But have we time?’
    ‘We shall not have any time to sleep
till morning break, I am telling you, if you will jaw all through the night,’
spoke another voice, certainly Lance-Corporal Gittins, the storeman, this time.
‘How many hundred and hundred of those Dai and Shoni stories have I in all my
days had to hear, I should like to know, and most of them said by you, Ivor. Is
tarts never out of your thought.’
    ‘Why, Gareth, you talk about tarts
too,’ said Williams, W. H. ‘What was that you was telling my butty of Cath
Pendry yesterday?’
    ‘What about her?’
    Gittins sounded more truculent this
time.
    ‘Her and Evans the checkweighman.’
    ‘You was not meant to hear that, I
tell you, Williams, W. H.’
    ‘Come on, Gareth,’ said Gwylt.
    ‘Never mind you, Ivor.’
    ‘Oh, that do sound something I would
like to hear.’
    No one answered Gwylt. There was a lot
more coughing, some throat clearing, then silence. They must all have gone to
sleep. I was on the point of doing the same, had even reached a state of only
semi-consciousness, when there was a sudden exclamation from the direction of
Gwatkin’s bed. He had woken with a start and was feeling for his electric
torch. He found the torch at last and, clambering out of bed, began to put up
the blackout boards on the window frame.
    ‘What is it, Rowland?’
    ‘Turn the light on,’ he said, ‘I’ve
got this board fixed now.’
    I switched on the light, which was
nearer my bed than his.
    ‘I’ve just thought of something,’
Gwatkin said agitatedly. ‘Do you remember I said units had been issued with a
new codeword for intercommunication within the Brigade?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘What did I do with it?’
    He seemed almost to be talking in his
sleep.
    ‘You put it in the box, didn’t you?’
    Gwatkin’s usual treatment of the flow
of paper that