Dawn of Fear by Susan Cooper Page B

orchard made the most obvious place for them to go—and to get to and from those trees, they should have to cross the open land.
    â€œSuppose they decide to come and spend the day in here?” Geoffrey said.
    Tom nodded casually. “They do sometimes. That’s why it’s all trodden down inside. We just have to make sure that we’re in here first. Then if they do come in this direction, that’s all the better; we’ll have them on a plate.”
    â€œWe’ll be here first all right,” Derek said.

8
Tuesday
    T HEY WERE there first. They were there very shortly after breakfast, knocking self-consciously at the back door of Tom’s house, each arguing with the others in violent whispers over the best way to apologize to Mrs. Hicks if they had waked her up. But there was no need. When Tom came to the door, pushing his fingers sleepily through his short curly hair as if it were a hearthrug, he said that his mother was working an early shift at one of the factories and that she had already been gone for an hour.
    â€œCome on in for a minute,” he said.
    They stood in an awkward group in the small kitchen, waiting while he rinsed a plate and a cup at the sink. There was a coal stove in one corner, of the kind that all their own houses had, serving both to warm the kitchen and to heat the water supply. Tom bent down and shut its draft door when he had finished at the sink; his most casual actions seemed odd to them, like those not of a boy
but of a grown man, the kind of things that their fathers would naturally do. Derek looked curiously around the kitchen and saw on one wall a picture frame that held not a picture but a printed notice. It said:
We are not interested in the possibilities of defeat. They do not exist.
    â€œThat means the war, of course,” Tom said, watching him.
    The others looked. “Did Churchill say that?” said Peter.
    â€œI don’t think so,” Tom said. “I think it was someone a long time ago. Mr. Churchill says some pretty good things, though. Like the Dunkirk speech.”
    He looked at them expectantly.
    â€œUm,” said Derek.
    Geoffrey nodded, but prudently said nothing. Peter, more courageous, said, “What Dunkirk speech?”
    Tom frowned. “You ought to know it by heart,” he said, and he seemed even more like somebody’s father. He went back to the sink and washed his hands, and stood there with one hand on the faucet, looking out of the window. He said: “
We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills.
” He paused. “
We shall
never
surrender
” he said.
    There was a short silence.
    â€œI do remember it now,” Derek said slowly. “I remember my father reading it to us.”
    â€œI heard Mr. Churchill saying it, on the radio,” Geoffrey said at once. Then he saw Tom’s eyebrows go up and added hastily, “At least I think I did.”
    â€œYou couldn’t have heard Churchill,” said Tom. “He said that in the House of Commons.”
    Derek was trying to think backward; he could remember John Brand standing proud and serious in the living room reading to them from the newspaper, but it seemed a long time ago. He said, “Wasn’t there more of it than that?”
    â€œLots more before it. But only one other bit at the end.”
    Clearly Tom had the bit at the end in his head, too. It was Peter again who said, “What was that?”
    â€œ
We shall never surrender,
” Tom said again, “
and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the