He wasn’t; his face was much less flushed and his breathing normal.

I’ll stay in bed till he wakes up, his father thought. He may have something to say to me.

At length the boy began to stir; consciousness returned to him by slow stages, and deliciously, as it does in youth, down gladsome glades of physical well-being. Sighs, grunts and other inarticulate sounds escaped from him, and then he flung his arm out and hit his father full across the mouth.

‘Hi, there, I’m not a punching-bag!’

Laurie woke up and gave his father a rueful, sheepish smile.

‘Well, say good morning to me.’

‘Good morning, Daddy.’

‘Now I’ve got to get up. You, lazybones, can stay in bed if you like.’

‘Why, Daddy?’

‘Because you weren’t too well last night. Your mother gave a poor report of you.’ He paused, regretting the word, and added hastily, ‘That’s why you’re here.’

Laurie’s face changed, and all the happiness went out of it.

‘Because I had a bad report?’

‘No, silly, because you weren’t well. You were sick, don’t you remember? In other words, you vomited.’

Laurie’s face lay rigid on the pillow: the shadow of fear appeared behind his eyes.

‘Yes, I do remember. I had a dream, oh, such a nasty dream. I dreamed the pylon had . . . had come back again. It couldn’t, Daddy, could it?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘Will you have a look, to make quite sure?’

‘All right,’ his father said. ‘Anything for a quiet life.’

There followed a convulsion in the bedclothes, gusts of cool air rushed in. The room grew darker. Standing in front of the low casement window, Roger’s tall figure blotted out the daylight. The outline of his arms down to his elbows, his shield-shaped back and straddled legs showed through the thin stuff of his pyjamas; his head, that looked small on his broad shoulders, seemed to overtop the window—but this was an optical illusion, as Laurie knew. Pulling the bedclothes round him he breathed hard, waiting for the verdict.

His father didn’t speak at once. It’ll do the boy good to get a bit worked up, he thought; strengthen the reaction when it comes. At length he said:

‘Seems to be a lot going on over there.’

‘A lot going on, Daddy?’

‘Yes, men working, and so on.’

‘What are they working at?’

‘Can’t you hear something?’ his father asked, still without turning round.

Laurie strained his ears. Now he could hear it quite distinctly borne in through the open window—the thudding and clanging of the workmen’s hammers.

‘What are they doing, Daddy?’

‘Well, what do you think?’

Laurie’s mind went blank. Often it happened that when his father asked him something, a shadow seemed to fall across his mind.

‘Is it anything to do with the pylon?’

‘You’re getting warm now.’

‘Are they—are they——?’

‘Yes, they are. They’re working on the concrete platform where the pylon used to stand.’

‘They’re not building it up again, are they, Daddy?’

‘I couldn’t tell you, old chap, but I wouldn’t put it past them.’

Laurie’s face fell. If only his father would turn round! His imploring glances made no impression on that broad straight back.

‘But if they are, Daddy, I couldn’t go on living here.’

‘I’m afraid you’ll have to, son, it’s our home, you see. You’ll get used to the new pylon, just as you got used to the old one.

‘I shan’t, I shan’t!’ wailed Laurie, hungering more and more for the sight of his father’s face. ‘Can’t you tell them not to do it, Daddy? Can’t you order them?’

‘I’m afraid not. They wouldn’t pay any attention to me, Laurie.’

At the sound of his Christian name, which his father only used for grave occasions, and at the idea that there existed people for whom his father’s word was not law, the bottom seemed to drop out of Laurie’s world, and he began to whimper.

Then his father did turn round and looked down at his hapless offspring, from whom all stiffening of pride and self-control had melted, huddled in the bedclothes. He stifled his distaste and said what all along he had been meaning to say but had put off saying until the last of his son’s defences should be down.

‘Don’t worry. I was only having you on. They’re not building a new pylon. They’re just breaking up the old one’s concrete base. And high time, too. I can’t think why they didn’t do it before.’

As he turned away from the window the sunshine which his body had displaced followed him back, filling the room with light. He sat down at the foot of the bed.

The effect of his long-delayed announcement had been magical: it surpassed his wildest hopes. Laurie was radiant, on top of his world, another creature from the abject object of a moment since. He tried to put his relief and gratitude into words, but could only smile and smile, in a defenceless almost idiotic way. To break the silence his father asked:

‘What made you frightened of the pylon? Had it done you any harm?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Laurie, recollection contracting his smile into a frown, ‘it had.’

‘What kind of harm?’

Laurie considered. How could he make the pylon’s mischief plain to his father?

‘Well, it made me sick for one thing.’

‘Oh, that was just something you ate,’ said Roger, well remembering it was not. ‘We all eat things that disagree with us.’

‘It wasn’t only that. It . . . it hurt me.’

‘How do you mean, hurt you?’

‘In my dream it did.’

‘In your dream? You’ll have to tell me about your dream. But make it snappy—I’ve only got five minutes.’

‘Yes . . . perhaps, sometime . . . You see, in my dream it was much stronger than I was, and I couldn’t get to the top.’

‘Why did you want to get to the top?’

‘Well, I had to, because of the report, and to see what sort of report they would give me if I did get to the top.’

‘I know what,’ his father said. ‘When you’re a big chap, bigger than me, perhaps, you’d better be a pylon-builder. Do you know how much they earn?’

Pure numbers had an attraction for Laurie, though he wasn’t good at maths.

‘No, tell me.’

‘Ten shillings an hour when they’re on the ground, and a pound an hour when they’re in the air . . . You’d soon be a rich man, much richer than me. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’

‘I don’t want to be rich!’ moaned Laurie. ‘I want——’ he stopped.

‘Well, what do you want?’

‘I want to be safe, and I shouldn’t be if the pylon was there.’

‘What nonsense!’ said his father, at last losing patience. ‘It’s nothing to be afraid of.’ He remembered his wife’s words. ‘It’s only something men have made, and men can unmake. You could make one yourself with your Meccano—I’ll show you how. It’s only a few bits of metal—that’s all it is.’

‘But that’s all the atom bomb is,’ cried Laurie, just a few bits of metal, and everyone’s afraid of it, even you are, Daddy!’

Roger felt the tables had been turned.

‘You’re right,’ he said, ‘I am afraid of it. But——’ he tried to think of a way out—’I never dream about it.’

As always, his father’s presence gave Laurie a feeling of helplessness; it was as if his thoughts could get no further than the figure turned towards him on the bed, whose pyjama-jacket, open to the morning airs, disclosed a hairy, muscular chest.

‘But I can’t help what I dream, can I?’ he said.

His father agreed, and added, ‘But you can help being frightened—frightened afterwards, I mean. You’ve only to think——’

‘But I do think, Daddy. That’s the worst of it.’

‘I mean, think how absurd it is. If you were to dream about me——’

‘Oh, but I have, ever so often.’

His father was taken aback, and tugged at his moustache.

‘And were you frightened?’

It took Laurie some time to answer this. He sat up, wriggled his toes, on which his father’s hand was resting, and said: