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stifle the sound.
    “Take your time. Can you get down some more?”
    He shook his head. “No, it’s awful.”
    The floorboards overhead creaked and both of them waited, looking upwards.
    “It’s only Granddad,” said Eileen. “He usually goes straight back to sleep.”
    The creaks retreated and were still.
    Jack looked over at her, his face full of misery. “Thanks, Auntie Eileen.”
    “Are you going to tell me what’s going on or not?”
    “It’s our Brian …” he choked.
    “What about Brian? Has something happened? Did you get a telegram?”
    “No, nothing like that.” The boy rubbed hard at his eyes as if he could erase the memory. “I found him in a bombed-out house.”
    “What do you mean you
found
him?”
    It was on the tip of Eileen’s tongue to ask what he himself had been doing in a bombed-out house in the middle of the night, but she thought it would be wiser to leave that for now.
    “He was hiding. He’s gone AWOL , Auntie. He’s deserted.”
    Eileen sat down on the edge of the bed. “My God, Jack. I can’t believe it.”
    “It’s true, Auntie. He’s been there since Friday.”
    “Is he going to turn himself in?”
    Jack shook his head emphatically. “He said he won’t. He won’t go back to the front and he won’t go to prison.” He bit his lip. “Auntie, I think he’s gone off his rocker and I think he might do something really bad.”
    “Does he know you’ve come here?”
    “Yes. He said Granddad and Gran and you were the only ones he could trust. He wants you to come to talk to him.”
    “Where the dickens is he?”
    “In your shelter in the backyard –”
    “What!”
    “Please, Auntie. I had to do what I was told. He don’t seem like our Brian at all. He said if I turned him in, he’d get me, brother or no brother.”
    Jack’s lips were quivering. Eileen tried to make sense of what he was telling her. Brian was her nephew, her godchild, her family. How could he have deserted?
    “I’d better go right now and talk to him.”
    “Be careful, Auntie. He’s not himself, honest.”
    “Well,
I
am myself, so maybe that will bring him to his senses. Stay here.” She pointed to his knee. “I’ll take care of that when I come back. Let’s sort this out first.”
    She took her overcoat and wellies out of the wardrobe and went through the kitchen to the back door, moving as quietly as she could. She knew what a light sleeper her father was.
    She snapped on her torch, waved it in a low circle, then began to walk slowly forward. It helped that Joe had painted the stones that lined the path white. Near the entrance to the shelter, she could make out a dark shape that moved slightly as she approached.
    “Brian, is that you? It’s Auntie Eileen.”
    “Come inside.” His voice was so hoarse she might not haveknown it was him, except she risked flashing the light up to his face. A dark stubble covered most of his face, and his eyes were hollow. It was less than six months since she had last seen him, but any soft boyishness had gone. Brian was twenty-one years old and he looked forty.
    Brian held back the entrance blackout curtain for her to step through. In the close space she could smell the acrid stench of his unwashed body. She went ahead into what her father jokingly referred to as the lounge. Brian had lit the oil lamp but kept the wick low. There were deep shadows in every corner.
    “So, Brian, what’s going on?”
    “Just what it looks like, Aunt Eileen. I’ve left the army. A personally justifiable but nevertheless dishonourable discharge.” He stopped. “You don’t have a fag on you, do you?”
    “I thought you didn’t smoke.”
    “I do now. I told Jack to tell you to bring me some fags. What did you do with him, by the way?”
    “He’s waiting in my room.”
    “He’d better not bugger off to the police.”
    “Of course he won’t. Don’t be silly.”
    It was then that Eileen understood what Jack had meant when he said Brian was off his rocker. A