William in Trouble Read online

  CONTENTS

  Foreword by Richard Madeley

  1. William and the Early Romans

  2. William and the Fairy Daffodil

  3. William and the Chinese God

  4. All the News

  5. William’s Mammoth Circus

  6. The Magic Monkey

  7. William Among the Poets

  8. William at the Garden Party

  9. William Joins the Waits

  10. William to the Rescue

  FOREWORD

  If William Brown had been able to break free from fiction’s unbreakable time lock and allowed to age along with the rest of us, not only would he have long ago qualified for his state pension, he would certainly have been the star turn on television’s Grumpy Old Men.

  Rereading Richmal Crompton’s wonderfully crafted short stories, one realizes just how grumpy her William was. His world-weary cynicism; his profound distrust of almost all aspects of the social order; his impatience and impotent fury with authority in all its forms . . . yes, William was the prototype Grumpy Old Man all right, long before he even became a teenager. He stalks through his rural, middle-class world with a near-permanent cloud of irritability and exasperation floating just above his head.

  And yet, and yet . . . William is ever the optimist. William Brown may often be down: he is never out. If he now seems to us a putative grumpy old man, he is also surely a model for Blackadder’s Baldrick; William always has a cunning plan.

  Fate and grown-ups may conspire against him: William unfailingly meets the challenge. He refuses to kowtow to authority, and his is a very British kind of resistance: polite, almost regretful, insouciant, but deadly. Pity the figurehead who William decides must be challenged, whether it be headmaster, priest or parent.

  Perhaps the real mark of Crompton’s achievement is that so many of us enjoy her William stories as much as adults as we did as children, and we often find ourselves nodding in recognition at some scenes that could have been drawn from our own childhood. That is an extraordinary thing for any writer to pull off. There is nothing twee, or patronizing, or knowing, or dated (apart from fascinating and factual period detail) in these pages. Crompton has an instinctive grasp of humour too. Her timing, as she moves from paragraph to paragraph, is beautifully judged. In another life I’d bet Richmal Crompton would have made a terrific stand-up comedian.

  Well, enjoy what follows. Remember that what you are reading was written in another age: forgive some of the inevitable hostages to history. But relish the timelessness of William’s baffling, frustrating and hilarious wrestling-bouts with what each day throws at him. Enjoy the deceptive simplicity of Crompton’s storytelling.

  But most of all, forgive William his trespasses. Whatever the stern, exasperated Mr Brown may think, it is Mrs Brown who is in the right of it. She knows her son is, fundamentally, a ‘good sort’.

  And so do we.

  Richard Madeley

  CHAPTER 1

  WILLIAM AND THE EARLY ROMANS

  WILLIAM and Douglas and Henry and Ginger, commonly known as the Outlaws, were coming home from school together. There was violent excitement in the village. A real, true Archaeological Society was excavating down in the valley and had discovered real true traces of a real true Roman villa. The Outlaws had decided to watch operations. Douglas and Henry were thrilled by the stories they had heard. William and Ginger were incredulous and rather contemptuous.

  ‘An’ they’re findin’ bits of broken pots an’ things,’ said Henry.

  ‘Not much use if they’re broken,’ said William.

  ‘Yes, but they stick ’em together with glue, I bet.’

  ‘Pots don’ hold water stuck together with glue,’ said William scathingly. ‘I’ve tried ’em. I don’ see what use findin’ bits of broken pots is anyway. I could give ’em lots of broken pots out of our dustbin if that’s all they want. Our housemaid, she’s always breakin’ pots. She’d’ve made a fine ancient Roman, she would. Seems to me these ancient Romans wasn’t much use spite o’ bein’ cracked up so – spendin’ all their time breakin’ pots.’

  ‘They didn’t,’ said Henry, exasperated. ‘The pots only got broken with bein’ buried.’

  ‘Well,’ said William triumphantly, ‘think of that – buryin’ pots! ’S almost as silly as breakin’ ’em. Think of a race of men like what the ancient Romans is supposed to have been, spendin’ all their time buryin’ pots. . . . I always knew there was something fishy about those Romans. Their langwidge is enough to put you off to start with – hic haec hoc an’ stuff like that – fancy talkin’ it – an’ then we’re s’posed to think ’em great an’ all they did was to bury broken bits of pot . . . I’ve never liked ’em. I’d rather have pirates or Red Injuns any day.’

  Henry felt that William’s eloquence was taking him, as usual, rather far from the matter in hand.

  ‘Well, they’re findin’ money, too,’ he said, stoutly defending the reputation of the departed race.

  ‘Real money?’ said William with interest. ‘Money you can spend?’

  ‘No,’ said Henry irritably. ‘Roman money, of course – they’re findin’ it all over the place.’

  ‘Breakin’ pots an’ throwin’ money about what other people can’t spend,’ said William with disgust.

  But he went with the others to watch the excavations. They were not allowed near, but from their position behind the rope that partitioned off the site of the excavations they had a good view of operations. Some workmen were digging in a trench where they kept stooping down and throwing pieces of pottery or coins on to a little heap by the side. A little old man with a beard and spectacles wandered up and down, occasionally inspecting the piles of coins and broken pottery and giving instructions to the workmen.

  The Outlaws watched for a time in silence, then boredom settled upon them. The Outlaws did not suffer boredom gladly.

  ‘I bet,’ said William, slowly taking his catapult from his pocket, ‘I bet I could make every one of those coins in that heap jump into the air with just one knock.’

  He took a small stone from the ground and aimed. He missed the coins, but got the little old man in the small of the back. The little old man threw up his arms with a yell and fell head first into the trench. The Outlaws fled precipitately from the scene of the crime, not stopping to draw breath till they were in the old barn.

  ‘I s’pect you killed him,’ said Douglas the pessimist. ‘Now we shall all get hung an’ all your fault.’

  ‘No – I saw him movin’ afterwards,’ said Ginger the optimist.

  ‘Well, he’ll write to our fathers an’ there’ll be no end of a fuss,’ grumbled Douglas.

  ‘It’s all those beastly ancient Romans,’ said William gloomily. ‘I never did like ’em. Well, who else in the world’d have a langwidge like “hic haec hoc”?’

  The nest day was a half-holiday, and most of the school was evidently going to watch the excavations.

  Benson minor had great hopes of seeing the Roman soldier who figured in the illustration that formed the frontispiece to Cæsar IV. dug up whole and entire, and Smith minor thought that with luck they might come upon a Roman eagle. Smith minimus accompanied them under a vague impression that the ghost of Julius Cæsar was going to arise from the earth at a given signal. The Outlaws would have liked to watch the excavations too. It was a hot day and there is a great fascination in standing in the shade and watching strong men digging in the heat.

  But the Outlaws dared not again approach the scene of the excavations. Douglas was gloomily certain that the little, white-haired old man was dead, in spite of Ginger’s assertion that he had ‘seen him movin”. He had decided that all the Outlaws must sportingly share the murderer’s fate and was already comp
osing touching last messages to his family. But whether the old gentleman were dead or not, it was certain that his underlings must have seen and marked the perpetrators of the crime, and that a second visit would be unwise.

  Yet so full was the air of Roman villas and excavations that pirates and Red Indians seemed tame and old-fashioned in comparison.

  Then William had one of his great ideas.

  ‘Let’s find a Roman villa ’f our own,’ he said. ‘I bet we can find one as good as that ole place, anyway.’

  Their gloom lifted. The Outlaws had a pathetic trust in William’s leadership which no amount of misfortunes seemed able to destroy.

  They assembled as many gardening tools as could be filched from their various families’ gardening sheds without attracting the attention of their rightful owners. William had a real gardening spade. He had had an unfair advantage, because he knew that the gardener had gone home and that his family was out, so he had boldly fetched the largest tool he could find. The cook certainly had seen and objected. She had come to the door and hurled vituperations at William. But William wasn’t afraid of the cook. He had marched off, his spade over his shoulder, returning the vituperation with energy and interest as he went.

  Ginger had a small trowel. He had secreted it in his overcoat pocket under the gardener’s very eyes.

  Douglas had a large and useful-looking fork and Henry had his little sister’s wooden spade.

  Henry had found the gardener working in the potting shed among all his tools, and Henry’s family’s gardener was a large and muscular man with whom one dealt carefully. Henry had hung round for a long time hoping that the gardener would be called away on urgent business. He had mentioned to the gardener casually that he had seen his wife that morning and that she looked very ill indeed. The gardener did not, as Henry had hoped, hasten home at once. On the contrary, he seemed quite unmoved by the news, and after a humble request for the loan of the big spade ‘jus’ for a few minutes’, which was brusquely refused, Henry wandered indoors.

  He had chosen and already taken the most murderous-looking of the morning-room fire-irons, when his mother met him going out with it and ordered him to put it back. He did so murmuring pacifically that he was ‘only jus’ lookin’ at it’. He then went up to his small sister’s nursery and finding her unattended, seized her wooden spade and ran downstairs with it before her yells of fury could summon assistance. He was proud of having achieved his object but aware that, compared with the others, it savoured of the unmanly. He anticipated any mockery of it, however, by stating at once that he’d fight anyone who laughed at it, and so the excavators, who did not wish to waste their time fighting Henry (a thing they could do any time), abstained from looking at it more often than necessary.

  They set off, proudly carrying their tools over their shoulders – except Henry, who carried his very unostentatiously down by his side.

  It was William who chose the site for the Roman villa, down in the valley not far from the white-haired gentleman’s preserves. There was a ploughed field by the roadside and here the Outlaws began operations.

  Ginger and Henry and Douglas set to work with energy upon the soft soil. William walked to and fro beside them in the manner of the white-haired gentleman, examining with a stern frown and an air of knowledge, the stone and chips they threw up as ‘finds.’ William had brought with him six halfpennies which, having been previously buried, were discovered by the diggers at intervals. He had also brought some broken pots, to obtain which he had deliberately broken two flower-pots. These, previously deposited in the soil, made excellent ‘finds’.

  This performance could be seen distinctly from the real site of excavation. Things were rather dull, there. Spectators were roped off to an inconvenient distance from the scene of action, and no coins had been found since yesterday and very few pieces of crockery.

  The audience – consisting chiefly of school children – was growing bored. They began to turn interested eyes to where William in the distance strode to and fro issuing orders to his perspiring trio of workers. A group of three detached itself and went slowly over to William’s preserves. William saw them coming and hastily buried all the halfpennies and bits of broken pottery again. William’s spirits rose. He loved an audience.

  ‘That’s right, my men!’ he called lustily and cheerily. ‘Dig away there. Ahoy there! Tally ho! Dig away there.’

  Ginger threw up a piece of pot. William seized on it and examined it closely.

  ‘This, ladies and gen’l’men,’ he said in his best showroom manner, ‘is part of an ole Roman teapot, prob’ly the very one what King Julius Cæsar drank out of when he was in England.’

  ‘He wasn’t a king,’ objected one of his audience.

  William looked at him crushingly.

  ‘’Scuse me,’ he said with withering politeness, ‘Julius Cæsar was one of the seven hills – I mean seven kings – of Rome, an’ if you think he wasn’t – you can jus’ come an’ fight me for it.’

  The objector looked at William. He’d fought William before.

  ‘All right,’ he said pacifically. ‘He was, if you like.’

  Ginger had thrown up a halfpenny now. William took it up and rubbed the earth away with his handkerchief (it did not make any appreciable difference to the colour of his handkerchief) and made a pretence of examining it with great interest.

  ‘Ladies an’ gen’l’men,’ he said. ‘This – why – I really believe it is!’

  There was a gasp of interest and suspense.

  ‘Yes, I b’lieve it is,’ he repeated. William knew how to hold his audience’s interest.

  ‘Yes, it certainly is.’

  ‘What?’ said a boy.

  ‘Kin’ly don’ interrupt,’ said William sternly. ‘Ladies an’ gen’l’men, this coin is actually the one what Balbus used to buy stuff to build his wall with.’

  ‘How d’you know?’

  ‘You wun’t know,’ said William condescendingly, ‘you wun’t know if you looked at it all day, but I know because I know about that sort of thing. Why d’you think I’m doin’ diggin’ here if I don’ know about that sort of thing? That man over there he thinks he’s got where the ole Romans were – but he’s not. It’s here where the old Romans were, where I am.’

  Gradually the other spectators had left the scene of the Roman villa and wandered over to where William was holding forth. The fifth halfpenny had just been discovered, and William was holding it up still covered with mud for the admiration of his audience.

  ‘This coin, ladies an’ gen’l’men,’ he said, ‘is a very valu’ble one. It’s far more valu’ble than any he’s found,’ he jerked his head in the direction of the other now deserted excavator. ‘He’s only findin’ very ord’nery things. This coin is the mos’ valu’ble old Roman coin what it’s possible to find. It’s part of what the Roman parliament useter give to the Roman king for pocket money, like what the parliament gives the king pocket money today, like what Mr Bunker said they did in the history lesson.

  ‘This, ladies an’ gen’l’men,’ he went on impressively, ‘is off the top of the wall what Balbus built.’

  This information was lustily cheered by members of the class that was engaged in turning the account of Balbus’ solitary exploit into Balbus’ native tongue.

  But William felt that the imminent approach of tea-time and the paucity of his material made a temporary suspension of proceedings necessary.

  ‘Ladies an’ gen’l’men,’ he said, ‘this show will now close down for tea. These,’ he paused while he mentally chased the errant word ‘excavations.’ ‘These execrations,’ he finally brought out, ‘will begin again at 6 p.m. prompt.’

  The crowd melted away. The little old man, Professor Porson, who was in charge of the excavations, was watching curiously. When William and his friends had finally departed, he came over to William’s hole and looked about it but, finding nothing of interest, he returned to his own.

  William did not spend the ti
me before the opening of his ‘show’ in idleness. He and the other Outlaws might have been seen in the interval carrying down baskets full of various objects, which they concealed in the soil of their hole. There was little time, and the presence of a suspicious family at home gave little opportunity for the collection of very numerous or very interesting ‘finds,’ but they did what they could. William found time in the interval for a hasty glance at his Latin book.

  At six o’clock a large audience had assembled round William’s hole and William began operations.

  Ginger first of all unearthed an old sardine tin which he handed up to William. William wiped away the mud with his long-suffering handkerchief, then made a pretence of careful examination. This pretence had gained greatly in dramatic force since before tea. He placed upon his nose a pair of blue glasses which the doctor had once ordered Ginger’s mother to wear, and which Ginger had long ago appropriated to his own use, and approached the tin closely to them, making exclamations of interest and surprise as he examined it. The audience watched breathlessly.

  ‘Why,’ he said at last, ‘this is the very tin what the Roman wolf drank out of.’

  ‘What wolf?’ demanded a small boy at the back.

  William looked at him in horror through his blue spectacles.

  ‘You meanter to say,’ he said, ‘that you’ve never heard of the Roman wolf – the one what sucked Romus an’ Remus?’

  It may here be remarked that all William’s knowledge of the animal in question had been gleaned hastily from his illustrated Latin book before tea.

  ‘Who was they?’ piped the stubbornly illiterate small boy.

  ‘Well!’ said William in a tone that expressed horror and surprise at the revelation of such depths of ignorance. ‘Fancy not knowing ’bout Romus an’ Remus. Romus an’ Remus was – they was – they was two Romans an’ they went out walkin’ in a wood an’ they met a wolf an’ – an’ it sucked ’em.’

  ‘Why’d it stick ’em?’ said the small boy.

  ‘Wolfs don’t suck folk,’ said a boy in front, ‘you’re thinkin’ of bears huggin’ folks.’