THE YOUNG THEOLOGIAN
By EVELYN SIMPSON
MRS. CLAPP raised her head from the depths of the bath. "I can hear you're a Londoner like myself," she began. "They don't like us down here, do they? Well, I don't like them, so we're quits. But I'm going to stop till this lot's over : not going to let my Freddy go through all that again. Not that he cared, mind you : all he said afterwards was 'Coo, Mum, didn't the guns kick up a row?' He misses his Dad, of course. . . . Oh, yes, he was killed. A pillar fell on top of him in the shelter:. good job he wasn't blown to bits like a lot of them or I shouldn't have got any compensation : as it was, when I came to in the hospital I found my purse gone, and three pounds four and six inside it, and though I wrote to the warden, I never got a reply. . . . And, of course, the Government had to bury him, and I didn't like that : I'd far rather our own man, Smith, had done it, private. But I found out it was done proper. If it hadn't been, I'd have had him up and done again, if it cost me every penny I'd got. . . . No, I don't think much of our billets: me and my muvver and Freddy all in one room, and only two little single beds for the lot of us. I expect I could get something better now that such a lot of people have gone back, but where we are now it doesn't matter if Freddy kicks up a bit of a row of an evening, and some people wouldn't like it. Last night he drawed our photos on the floor with a bit of chalk, and when She came up, he looked up at her and said, 'Shall I draw yours, too?' and She just laughed. But it doesn't seem right, does it, all in one room, with the bread in the wash-basin, when you've been used to your own place, with the wireless and a piano and everything? . . . Well, I suppose it'll all be over sometime. . . . Freddy's just started school, and the teacher told me be was very clever ; she said he was a dear little soul, too. I thought to myself : 'Dear little soul! My Gawd! You ought to have him to look after at home for a bit.' Came home the other day and said to me, 'Halo, Mum! I've been fighting. Some of the boys took me round the corner and showed me how to. You do this—and this —and when they aren't looking you hits 'em in the stomach!' But he's ever so sharp. The week before he started school he asked me: 'How much wages shall I get for going to school?' And I said 'None, of course. Why should you?' and he says, 'Well, they pays you for your work, don't they? Why shouldn't they pay me? ' . . . Of course, I never wanted him at the beginning, I had such an awful time with the first, that died, and when they told me Freddy was on the way, I was so angry I took me broom and swiped it at his Dad when he was putting on his collar to go out : but he clucked just in time, and all I did was to crack me nice wardrobe mirror. Oh, I was cross. . . . I remember one morning, he was going on an outing with his firm, down the river to Southend, and of course I couldn't go with him, and I lost me temper and said: May the boat go down, and you wiv it!' He stared at me, and he said : Em, you wicked woman!' But I didn't care, I was that mad, him dressing himself up to enjoy himself and me having to stay at home all the time. . . . But Freddy keeps us alive now. He's just started to learn religion at school, and just before Easter he says to me: "Ere, Mum, do you know what we have a Good Friday for? ' So I says, `No, I don't,' because I wanted to see what he'd say. He says: 'Well, it was on a Good Friday they crucified our Jesus.' 'Go on!' I says, not letting on I knew all about it. 'Yes,' he says. They took and 'ung 'im on a cross, and nobody stood by him except two feeves—you know, chaps what go round pinching fings."0o,' I says, 'what had they been pinching, then?' He got a bit cross then, with me interrupting him. 'Oh, I dunno,' he says. 'I expect they'd broken into some woman's house or other. Anyway, they knocke41 up a couple of crosses for them, and they all died. And then they took Jesus and put 'im in a hole in a wall wiv a big stone in front, and in three days 'is muvver and 'is farver and 'is sisters and bruvvers came to put flowers on the grave—like we used to do for Daddy in London. And there was a man outside, and he said to them "Go 'cane! 'E's gorn! " "Where's 'e gorn? " they says. "'E's ris! " 'e said.' Then Freddy says to me : "Ere, Mum! When we used to put flowers on Daddy's grave, !e 'adn't ris, 'ad 'e?' So I says to `No, I don't fink so,' and he says: 'Why not?' and I says: ' we don't." Oh,' he says. ''Tain't fair.' Thinks out eve himself, Freddy does. You can't put anything across him."
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