joke.’
‘Sometimes I think he’s putting it on,’ Marc said, grinning. ‘But then it turns out that he really is that thick.’
‘I’m smarter than ,’ Dumont said. ‘My mum says I’m practical, rather than being good with words and numbers.’you
Paul couldn’t resist teasing, ‘And your mum’s bound to be totally unbiased …’
Dumont reared up. ‘Unless you want your head mashed into the nearest cow pat, I’d suggest you shut your weedy little mouth.’
Paul stepped back, but wasn’t too worried because he figured Marc and PT would stick up for him. The tension subsided a moment later when Marc turned to the centre of the invasion guide.
‘Phwoarr!’ he spluttered. ‘Now that’s rather nice.’
PT and Dumont zoomed in on the leaflet. Paul had already seen the image of two topless girls with , written beneath it.Something for you to look at while other men are taking care of your wives and daughters back home
‘You guys are so dirty,’ Paul complained. ‘You’ll burn in hell for sure.’
‘Some things are worth going to hell for,’ PT said, smiling. ‘You said these leaflets were scattered all over the road?’
‘Are there any different ones?’ Marc asked excitedly, before Paul could answer. ‘Like, with different pictures of girls in them?’
‘Let’s go down there and find out,’ Dumont said.
The idea of Halifax bombers dropping topless pictures didn’t fit in with Paul’s image of how the RAF was supposed to behave, but the older boys’ reactions made him realise that a leaflet with topless girls in would get ten times the exposure of one without. He thought about going back to the house but tagged along behind the others.
An hour had passed since the raid and there was no sign of Germans except a gruesome spray of blood on the chalk cliffs. Orders had been given to clear the leaflets and the only ones in open sight were soggy examples that had washed ashore after the Germans left. The trees beyond the road proved a better hunting ground and Marc ripped off a branch and used it to knock down dozens of copies stuck in the canopy.
‘So what about that house I was telling you about?’ Dumont asked, once the boys were satisfied that there was only one version of the leaflet. ‘It’s a fair way, but the people who lived there were loaded. I’m telling you, we’ll bag heaps of stuff.’
Marc sighed. ‘You said that when we walked miles to that other place three days ago.’
‘We had fun catapulting all the old gramophone records, didn’t we?’ Dumont said. ‘And what else are we gonna do?’
Most of Dumont’s schemes hinged on this point. There wasn’t much to occupy the boys’ time, and even if Dumont’s promises of loot never materialised, it wasn’t as if there were any more exciting alternatives.
Marc looked at Paul. ‘You fancy it?’
Paul screwed his face up. He suspected he wouldn’t enjoy it, but was curious to know what the trio of older boys got up to when they disappeared for half the day.
‘I guess,’ he said warily.
It took an hour to reach the house, taking things slow and stopping to skim stones off a pond along the way. Dumont laid into Paul because he was useless at it and by the time they arrived Paul wished he was sitting on his own somewhere with his pencils.
The house they’d come to rob was double the size of the pink one they’d stayed at in Bordeaux. It was surrounded by unkempt fields of wheat, but the large front garden was immaculate.
‘That’s been mowed like ,’ Marc said. ‘There’s no way it’s empty.’yesterday
‘Yes there is,’ Dumont said. ‘The old caretaker who lives here mows it. But he came staggering into our neighbour’s house last night and they put him on the back of a wagon and hauled him to the hospital in Calais after curfew. Burst appendix.’
‘We’re gonna rob a house while an old man’s sick?’ Paul asked.
‘It’s not his house, skinny,’ Dumont growled. ‘He’s the caretaker. The owners left for their poncy villa in Saint Raphael weeks before the invasion.’
PT recognised that this house was in a different league to the farm cottages Dumont had taken them to before and his appetite for thieving overruled his need to stay out of trouble.
‘OK.’ PT smiled. ‘I’m gonna show you amateurs a simple trick for checking whether the house you want to rob is occupied.’
The boys watched as PT walked up to the front door and rang the large brass bell hanging above it. He gave it a second go