A Test to Destruction Read Free Page B

was unthinkable.
    So, upon reflection, or rather in reaction, was his letter. He tore it up, and wrote another, putting aside his feelings.
    Dear Mother,
    Please ask Father not to do anything until he has seen me. I may have to go out again to France very shortly; also I may be home tomorrow, Saturday, for a brief week-end. Meanwhile please tell Father that his work on the allotment is helping the country enormously, for if the submarines go on as they have been, sinking ships, we may be beaten on the Home Front. Food is everything. I’ll try to bring some butter, I know how hard it is to buy anything nowadays. We in the mess are eating horseflesh for beef, and potatoes are not much in evidence. In great haste, and love to all,
    Phillip.            
    He had pretended, on the whim of the moment, that he might be sent out to France again: the great thing was to stop poor old Father from doing something which he would soon wish he hadn’t. Scores of poor old codgers had been hit in the night-long German machine-gun barrages. No, Father must not do such a thing. What would Mother do if he were killed?
    And it was on the cards that he himself might be sent out again! He wasn’t C3, but only B2, and might easily be directed to some base, or lines-of-communication, job in France. Also, he would be passed ‘A’ at his next board, in less than a month’stime. Indeed he was perfectly fit now, so why bother about a Board? He had only to add his own name to the ‘A’ list, by typewriter, and no-one would know the difference.
    It was 8.45 a.m. There was a quarter of an hour before Captain Henniker-Sudley, the adjutant, left his furnished apartments in Manor Terrace, where he lived with his wife. Phillip hurried to the orderly room, and taking down the files, removed his last medical history sheet, classifying him B2, and put it in the stove. After this, he typed his name on the ‘A’ list. Later in the morning, casually he gave the roll to the sergeant to be re-typed.
    When the fair copy was brought in, he checked it with the sergeant, found it correct, and put the old copy in the stove. Then after initialling the new copy he took it to be signed by the adjutant. That evening it was included, the weekly Nominal Roll of Officers Available for Active Service, in the dispatch bag to Eastern Command.
    *
    When she came to the shops past the hoardings Hetty saw a line of women outside Hern the grocer’s; she went on to the butcher’s, her smile a little anxious. Mr. Chamberlain, fat, bald, with pink shiny head, raised his cleaver in salute. Mrs. Maddison was much liked in Randiswell, for she had a smile for everyone. “Nothing left fit for you, ma’m!” he announced. “Only tripes and offal. Sorry, my customers all come early now!”
    She should not have stayed so long with Papa, or called in at No. 134 to see Dorrie; but Dome’s youngest boy Gerry was badly wounded, and her sister wanted to try to get to him at Etretat, where Gerry was in hospital. How could she help? Perhaps she might see the authorities at the War Office, instead of Papa, who had said he would go there himself. No; Papa must not be allowed to go out, not yet awhile at any rate. She must pray for help to Saint Anthony.
    Hurrying down to the High Street, she had crossed the bridge over railway and Randiswell brook, and was between the Public Baths and the Police Station when flakes of snow began drifting out of the sky, to melt at once, she saw with relief, upon the paving stones. Then, as she was walking under the high-walled garden of St. Mary’s vicarage, it seemed that her prayer was answered. She would call upon Canon Hough on the way back! Perhaps he would be able to help.
    Going on down past the new row of shops—they had been built in Edward the Seventh’s reign, but to Hetty they were ‘the new shops’—she heard a bird singing, somewhere high above the discoloured High Street. It must be in one of the trees in the garden of the last