William and the Witch (Just William Book 34) Read online

  Other Books In The Series

  Just - William

  More William

  William Again

  William - The Fourth

  Still - William

  William - The Conqueror

  William - The Outlaw

  William - In Trouble

  William - The Good

  William

  William - The Bad

  William’s Happy Days

  William’s Crowded Hours

  William - The Pirate

  William - The Rebel

  William - The Gangster

  William - The Detective

  Sweet William

  William - The Showman

  William - The Dictator

  William and Air Raid Precautions

  William and the Evacuees

  William Does His Bit

  William Carries On

  William and the Brains Trust

  Just William’s Luck

  William - The Bold

  William and the Tramp

  William and the Moon Rocket

  William and the Space Animal

  William’s Television Show

  William - The Explorer

  William’s Treasure Trove

  William and the Witch

  William and the Pop Singers

  William and the Masked Ranger

  William the Superman

  William the Lawless

  Just - William a facsimile of the first (1922) edition

  Just William - As Seen on TV

  William at War

  Just William at Christmas

  Just William on Holiday

  Just William at School

  Just William - and Other Animals

  William and the Witch

  Richmal Crompton

  Illustrated by Thomas Henry and Henry Ford

  MACMILLAN CHILDREN’S BOOKS

  Copyright

  First published 1964

  This edition first published 1992 by

  Macmillan Children’s Books

  Reprinted 2001 by Macmillan Children’s Books

  A division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

  25 Eccleston Place, London SW1W 9NF

  Basingstoke and Oxford

  www.macmillan.com

  Associated companies throughout the world

  ISBN 0 333 57382 X

  Text copyright © Richmal C. Ashbee

  Illustrations by Thomas Henry copyright © Thomas Henry Fisher Estate 1964

  Illustrations by Henry Ford copyright © Pan Macmilan Children’s Books Ltd

  The right of Richmal Crompton to be identified as the

  author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance

  with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

  reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or

  transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical,

  photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written

  permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized

  act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal

  prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  5 7 9 8 6

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from

  the British Library.

  Phototypeset by Intype London Ltd

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by

  Mackays of Chatham pic, Kent

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1 – William the Psychiatrist

  Chapter 2 – Violet Elizabeth’s Party

  Chapter 3 – William and the Hoop-la Stall

  Chapter 4 – William and the Witch

  Chapter 5 – Mrs Bott and the Portrait

  Chapter 1 – William the Psychiatrist

  William walked slowly and dejectedly down the road. It was not often that William felt dejected, but occasionally a sense of the futility of his life swept over him.

  “Here I am,” he muttered, “gettin’ older an’ older every year an’ done nothin yet to make the world ring with my name. Gosh! I haven’t even started. I bet Christopher Columbus was thinkin’ out how to discover America when he was my age. I bet that Watt man that invented steam had started boilin’ kettles. There’s not much time left. I’ve got to start soon.”

  His mind ran over the careers that he had at various times decided to embrace—engine driver, explorer, spy, detective, prime minister, space traveller, sweet shop proprietor, speed-track racer, lion tamer, postman, diver. Somehow the magic was gone from all of them. He had, in imagination, faced such desperate hazards, secured such resounding glory in each that their possibilities seemed to have been exhausted. He had recently found his career as a diver particularly engrossing. Encased in his diver’s suit, with mask and breathing tube, he had rifled sunken ships, carried on desperate fights with sharks whales and sea serpents, and even met and routed, single-handed, a hitherto undiscovered tribe of savages that lived in caves on the floor of the ocean bed. But he had become bored even with these exploits.

  “I’m goin’ to try somethin’ new,” he said, his scowling gaze fixed on his shoes as he kicked a stone from one side of the road to the other. “Somethin’ I’ve never tried before. An’ I bet I get famous at it.”

  It was lunch-time when he reached home, and still no idea had occurred to him. Sunk in gloomy contemplation, he demolished a large helping of shepherd’s pie and was half way through a large helping of rice pudding when his attention was arrested by something that Robert was saying.

  “He’s taken a house in Green Lane in Marleigh. He’s a famous Harley Street psychiatrist, you know. Arnold Summers. Anyone who knows anything about psychiatry knows the name.”

  “About what?” said William.

  “Psychiatry,” said Robert shortly, “and don’t talk with your mouth full.”

  “I’ve never understood quite what they do,” said Mrs Brown.

  “They cure mental trouble,” said Robert. “I once met a man who’d been to one and he was completely cured.”

  “But what do they do?” said Mrs Brown.

  “Well, as far as I can make out,’’ said Robert, “the patient lies on a couch and talks and the psychiatrist writes down what he says and—well, that seems to cure the whole trouble.”

  “How very odd!” said Mrs Brown.

  William had stopped eating and was fixing an earnest gaze on Robert.

  “What did you say they were called?” he said.

  “Psychiatrists,” said Robert.

  “An’ is that all they do?”

  “Yes.”

  “An’—an’ they get famous jus’ doin’ that?”

  “Yes,” snapped Robert. “Stop asking idiotic questions.”

  “And get on with your lunch, dear,” said Mrs Brown.

  William finished his rice pudding hurriedly and in silence, and went out to find Ginger. He found Ginger in his back garden. He had placed an apple on the top of the fence and was aiming at it with his bow and arrow.

  “I want to get as good as that William Tell man,” he explained. “I thought I’d better practise on the fence before I started on yumans.”

  “I bet you wouldn’t find any yuma
ns to let you start on ’em,” said William. “How many times have you hit it, anyway?”

  “I haven’t counted,” said Ginger evasively.

  “Well, come along to the ole barn,” said William. “I’ve got somethin’ a jolly sight more int’restin’ than that for us to do.”

  “All right,” agreed Ginger, who was getting tired of missing his apple.

  They set off down the road towards the old barn.

  “I’ve thought of a diff’rent thing I’m goin’ to be,” said William. “It’s goin’ to be easier to be famous at than the others.”

  “What is it?” said Ginger.

  “It’s—” began William, then stopped short. “Gosh! I’ve forgotten the word. Anyway, it’s curin’ mental troubles.”

  “Oh,” said Ginger.

  “An’ I’m goin’ to cure yours, to start with, then you can cure mine. It’ll give us a bit of practice.”

  “How d’you do it?” said Ginger.

  “Easy as easy,” said William. “You jus’ lie down an’ talk an’ I write it down in a note-book—I’ve forgot to bring the note-book, but I don’t expect it matters. Then I lie down an’ talk an’—an’—well, it cures us of mental troubles.”

  “Oh,” said Ginger. “Sounds a bit queer.”

  “Yes, but it’s all right,” William assured him earnestly. “Robert told me about it an’ he knows someone that’s had it done, so it mus’ be all right. An’ this man that’s come to live at Marleigh, he does it an’ he’s got famous doin’ it. Anyway, you can’t get into a mess with it same as you can with the other things—spies an’ space travellers an’ detectives an’ things.”

  “Yes,” said Ginger, his mind going over the disasters that had resulted from some of William’s former careers. “You got in a mess over those all right.”

  “Well, I can’t over this,” said William. “You couldn’t get in a mess jus’ listenin’ to people talkin’, nobody could. I wish I’d known about it before. I wouldn’t have wasted all that time over detectin’ an’ space-explorin’ an’ all the rest of ’em.” They entered the doorway of the old barn. “Now come on. You lie down . . . Here’s a place for you to lie down.”

  Ginger inspected it without enthusiasm.

  “Why’ve I got to lie down?”

  “’Cause they do,” said William impatiently. “You can’t get cured of mental troubles standin’ up. Gosh! You ought to know that.”

  “All right,” said Ginger, lowering himself on to the floor and watching William suspiciously. “You’re not goin’ to start ticklin’ me, are you?”

  Ginger was the only one of the four Outlaws who was ticklish.

  “’Course not,” said William. “I’m jus’ goin’ to listen to you talkin’. Go on. Talk.”

  “What about?” said Ginger.

  “Anythin’,” said William. “Go on. Start talkin’.” Ginger gave a sudden chuckle.

  “That time you started off explorin’ in a boat—d’you remember?—an’ you thought you’d got to a desert island an’ it turned out to be the same place you’d started from!”

  “Well, anyone’d have thought it was a desert island. It looked like one.”

  “It couldn’t have.”

  “It did.”

  “It didn’t.”

  “It did.”

  “It didn’t.”

  “Shut up!”

  “Shut up yourself! ” said Ginger, rising pugnaciously from his recumbent position.

  William pushed him down again.

  “They don’t do that,” he said. “You’ve got to stay there an’ go on talkin’.”

  “All right,” said Ginger. “An’ that time you were bein’ a detective an’ thought that old man had murdered the other old man ’cause you saw him diggin’ a hole in the garden an then it turned out the other old man had only gone away for a holiday. You got in a jolly big mess over that.”

  “I did not,” said William heatedly. “An’ I bet anyone out of Scotland Yard would have thought he was a murderer. It was jolly clever of me. An’ I didn’t get in a mess over it.”

  “You did!”

  “I didn’t!”

  “You did.”

  “Oh, shut up an’ go on talkin’.”

  “I am talkin’ aren’t I?”

  “Well, talk a bit of sense . . . Listen! What about that time I caught that smuggler? I didn’t get in a mess over that.”

  “You didn’t know he was a smuggler. It was an accident, you catchin’ him.”

  “Gosh! It was my cunnin’, pretendin’ I didn’t know he was a smuggler.”

  “It wasn’t. You were gettin’ up a rebellion an’ you caught him by mistake.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. You’re crackers.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You are.”

  This time Ginger rose to his feet and the two had a spirited wrestling match, then sat down side by side to recover their breath.

  “D’you feel any mental trouble?” said William at last.

  “No,” said Ginger after a moment’s consideration. “I’ve cured you, then,” said William triumphantly. “I knew I’d make a jolly good—I wish I could remember the word. I’ll find out when I get home an’ we’ll start it tomorrow. We’ll charge threepence each.”

  “They won’t pay that much,” said Ginger.

  “They might,” said William. “I bet it’s less than that man in Harley Street charges. If we could get enough of them we could buy that helicopter.”

  The helicopter had appeared yesterday in the window of the village shop.

  “It was smashing, wasn’t it?” went on William. “You jus’ fixed that little handle in an’ pulled the string an’ off it went right up into the air jus’ like a real one.”

  “It was five shillings,” said Ginger. “We’d need a jolly lot of them to get five shillings.”

  “How many?” said William.

  It took them several minutes and a series of heated arguments to arrive at the sum.

  “Twenty . . .” said William. He looked a little thoughtful for a moment, then recovered his usual optimism. “Well—gosh! There ought to be twenty people about with mental troubles. Twenty’s not all that much. I’ll find out the word and bring the notice along tomorrow morning.”

  William brought the notice along the next morning.

  “I asked my mother what that word was an’ wrote it down soon as she told me,” said William. “It’s a jolly good notice. We ought to get a lot of people.”

  He took a drawing pin from his pocket, removed his shoe to act as a hammer and fixed the notice to the door of the old barn.

  WILLIAM BROWN SEKKITRIST

  MENTAL TRUBBLES KURED.

  THREEPENCE EECH

  “There!” he said proudly. “I bet that’s as good as the one in Harley Street any day. I’ll sit on the packin’ case. I’m the one that does it an’ you’re the receptionist same as at the dentist’s. Look out an’ see if anyone’s comin’.”

  Ginger went to the door and looked out.

  “There’s a man comin’ along, takin’ the short cut to the station,” he said.

  William joined him at the door. A small thin man with a thin harassed-looking face was making his way across the field.

  “Come back into the barn,” said William. “I bet the ones in Harley Street don’t stand at the door lookin’ out for them.”

  They retired to the inner recesses of the barn.

  “He’s goin’ past,” said Ginger.

  The man had almost passed the barn when he saw the notice. He stopped to read it, went on a few yards, hesitated, then returned to read it again. Again he went on a few yards, stopped, hesitated, then turned back and entered the barn.

  “Which of you is the psychiatrist?” he said, looking from Ginger to William.

  “Me,” said William. “It’s me that cures mental troubles. Have you got any?”

  “Yes,” said the man. “How do you cure them?”
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  “You lie down an talk an’ I listen,”said William. “There’s a dry place over there. ’Least, it was dry yesterday, but it’s rained a bit in the night.”

  “Do you mind if I sit?” said the man, taking his seat on the packing-case. “My name’s Peaslake.”

  “Oh . . .” said William. “Well, I’m William an’ he’s Ginger. I’ve not got a note-book ’cause I don’t write as quick as people talk. I don’t see any sense in a note-book anyway.”

  “No,” said Mr Peaslake. His face creased into a tight smile that looked even more worried than his frown. “It’s utterly ridiculous, of course, my coming in here like this, but I had a letter this morning that’s driven me nearly mad. I haven’t any intimate friends to confide in and, when I saw your notice, I thought that if I could talk about it to anyone at all it might help.”

  “All right,” said William. “Go on. Talk. Who was this letter from?”

  “Amanda. My fiancee,” said Mr Peaslake’, fixing his eyes gloomily in front of him. “At least, she was my fiancee, but in this letter I’ve just received she breaks off the engagement. She’s coming this evening to return my presents. She has to come in person with her car because one of them’s a spin dryer and she can’t very well post it. I thought she’d be pleased with the spin dryer, but she said it showed a lack of imagination. She said that all my presents showed a lack of imagination. I knew, of course, that she found me—disappointing in many ways. She says I lack the vital spark. But this letter—well, it’s shattered my world to its foundations. I realise that I’m not worthy of her—she’s so vibrant and alive—but I simply can’t face life without her.”

  “Well, I think you’re jolly lucky gettin’ rid of her,” said William. “They’re all bossy. Gosh! Even when they seem all right at first, they always turn out bossy before they’ve finished an’ they get bossier an’ bossier an’ bossier. I once knew a girl that—”