William the Bad Read online

  To my latest niece, Richmal, with love

  CONTENTS

  Foreword by Anne Fine

  1. The Knights of the Square Table

  2. William and the Little Girl

  3. William, Prime Minister

  4. William Gets His Own Back

  5. William and the Prize Cat

  6. William Adopts an Orphan

  7. William and the Campers

  8. The Outlaws and the Cucumber

  9. A Little Interlude

  10. The Pennymans Hand on the Torch

  FOREWORD

  I have loved William all my life. When my sister Susan was six and I was three, my parents tried for a son and had, instead, triplet girls. Possibly to save my mother’s sanity, I was sent to the local infant school well before time. The health visitor thought of it merely as the simplest form of babysitting. But no one told me, so I learned to read along with the others, and have spent most of my waking hours since with my head in a book.

  Susan was given her first set of William stories for Christmas in 1953. On its brick-red cover was the emblem of a cheery-looking William wearing his school cap awry. I don’t remember when I stole the book from her, and every other William book she ever had. But I do know that he at once became my own imaginary brother, my closest secret friend.

  Richmal Crompton’s stories are rich, inventive and oh, so very funny. She had a gift for bringing to William’s village, on one pretext after another, a host of extraordinary characters, all of whom somehow end up tangling with William and his motley gang of ‘Outlaws’. A born leader steeped in unfailing optimism, William hurls himself wholeheartedly into every mad endeavour, amusement or new ‘career’. He is outraged when things go wrong. The disasters that dog him are never his own fault. ‘I was on’y tryin’ to help him. S’not fair to blame a person fr’only tryin’ to help.’

  Ethel, his snooty elder sister, does her very best to pretend William does not exist. Or, when he manifestly does – usually coated in mud, sawdust or pond slime – that he has nothing whatsoever to do with her. His irritable brother, Robert, is infuriated by William’s well-meaning, but invariably catastrophic, attempts to help him court one after another of the neighbourhood beauties. Mr Brown clearly despairs. Only mild Mrs Brown tries to cling to a positive vision of this unruly member of her family, even mistaking his plea for stronger garters as concern for the neat appearance of his socks, rather than for their more effective use as catapults.

  In these ten stories, we meet William forging a love ‘pome’, swaggering about with pockets full of caterpillars, delivering wild ‘lekchers’ to a band of Sunday School goody-goodies, even dutifully adopting a ‘norphan’ (only to fetch up with the once angelic-looking Clarence coated head to toe with cement powder). At a moment of great personal danger concerning a cucumber, we find him writing his own will: ‘If I di I leeve everythin’ to Ginger. Pleese let him have the mouth orgun you tuke of me.’

  Adults, be prepared. Young readers will trail after you asking, who was the ‘infant Samuel’ and, what is an ‘antiphonic lament’. They’ll meet words like ‘negligible’, ‘stentorian’ and ‘unctuously’ (and know, from context, instantly, what they mean).

  Best of all, they will meet William himself. He’ll be their friend for life, as he’s been mine.

  Anne Fine

  CHAPTER 1

  THE KNIGHTS OF THE SQUARE TABLE

  It was Ginger’s aunt who gave him as a birthday present a book called ‘King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table’, and it was a spell of continuous wet weather that reduced the Outlaws to such a point of inactivity that they had been driven to read the book for want of anything else to do. They had assembled in the shelter of the old barn (whose roof leaked so badly that the actual shelter it afforded was negligible), and Ginger, stumblingly and with many mispronunciations, had read the book aloud to them. At first they had listened solely in order to exult over Ginger when he got more than usually tied up in the long words, but by degrees the story gripped them, and even William began to listen to it.

  ‘I think that’d be almost as much fun as bein’ a burglar or a detective,’ he said, as Ginger closed the book after the last story, ‘an’ I bet it would be more fun in lots of ways than bein’ an engine-driver.’

  ‘What would?’ demanded Douglas.

  ‘Bein’ knights an’ goin’ out rightin’ wrongs.’

  ‘But we haven’t got armour or horses or anythin’,’ objected Henry.

  ‘I don’t think they’re a bit necess’ry,’ said William. ‘I bet I can fight jus’ as well without armour as with it. I should think it’d only get in your way. I once tried wearin’ it—trays and saucepans an’ such-like—an’ I found it jolly hard to fight in them.’

  ‘There aren’t any wrongs to right either nowadays,’ said Henry.

  ‘I bet there are. You jus’ don’t hear of ’em, that’s all. I bet if we set up rightin’ wrongs, people’d begin to come to us from all over the place.’

  ‘My father’s got a lot of wrongs to start with,’ said Ginger. ‘Rates an’ income-tax an’ that sort of thing.’

  ‘We’re not going to start rightin’ those,’ said William firmly, ‘it’d take us months to right those. They’re not really wrongs, either. They’re only things grown-ups go on about at breakfast. They’d go on about somethin’ else if we got those righted. They aren’t what I call wrongs. Not like bein’ put in dungeons an’ havin’ your lands ravidged by giants and your castle stole off you by false knights.’

  ‘Those things don’t happen to anyone now,’ said Henry.

  ‘How do you know they don’t jus’ ’cause you’ve never heard of ’em?’ challenged William. ‘I bet there’s a good many things in the world what you’ve never heard of. It’s no proof that there isn’t a thing just ’cause you’ve never heard of it. Nachurally, if people are shut up in dungeons right underneath the earth you don’t hear of ’em ’cause they never get out to tell anyone.’

  Henry was about to dispute this view when Ginger interposed pacifically:

  ‘Well, the best thing to do would be to set up as knights an’ then see what sort of wrongs people come to us with.’

  So this they decided to do.

  The next morning was fine and seemed a good omen for the beginning of their knightly careers. There was in the barn an old packing-case that figured in most of their activities, and had done duty at various times as a stage, a horse, a ship, a desert island and a besieged castle. Today it was to be the round table.

  ‘We’d better call it the square table,’ said Henry. (Henry possessed a literal mind.) ‘It seems sort of silly to call it round when it isn’t. ’Sides, it’s best to give things a little different name from the old ones then people won’t muddle us up with them.’

  ‘All right,’ said William, ‘The Knights of the Square Table, then. An’,’ hastily, ‘I’ll be the most important one same as King Arthur. I’ll be King William. An’ the rest of you can just be knights.’

  ‘Weren’t there any other important ones?’ said Ginger, who had been so wholly occupied in trying to pronounce the words that he hadn’t taken in much of the story.

  ‘There was that magician one—the one they called Merl something.’

  ‘Bags, me be him, then,’ said Ginger hastily. ‘Bags, me be Merl.’

  ‘All right,’ said William, ‘and we’d better have a treasurer an’ secret’ry,’ he went on, with vague memories of a meeting of the village football club which he had attended with his elder brother the week before. ‘Douglas’d better be the sec’ry ’cause he spells best and Henry the treas’rer.’

  ‘All right,’ said Henry, and added, ‘How much did they get paid for rightin’ wrongs?’

&nb
sp; ‘It din’t say in the book,’ said William.

  ‘I should say sixpence for a little one an’ a shilling for a big one,’ said Ginger.

  ‘No one’ll pay more’n’ a penny an’ I bet most of them won’t pay that,’ said Douglas gloomily. ‘There aren’t many people—not that I know of, anyway—with more than fourpence.’

  ‘Well, we’ll say sixpence, and a shilling on the notice,’ said William, ‘but if they won’t give it we’ll take less.’

  ‘What does the sec’ry do?’ said Douglas.

  ‘Write out the notice to put on the barn door, an’ then write down about all the wrongs we right so’s people can read about ’em in books in days to come same as they do about the old ones.’

  ‘All right,’ said Douglas importantly, ‘I’ll go’n’ get my Arithmetic exercise-book. I’ve jus’ got a new one. It’ll do nicely.’

  Douglas’s reputation for superior spelling was based on the simple fact that, whereas the other Outlaws spelt all words exactly as they were pronounced, Douglas didn’t. He realised that some words are not spelt as they are pronounced and, though he had little knowledge of any rules governing these mysterious aberrations, he varied his spelling so effectively that the Outlaws were always intensely proud of any composition from his hand. The notice which he produced to hang up on the barn door pleased them especially.

  Gnites of the square tabel,

  Rongs Wrighted 6d and 1/-.

  Pleese gnock.

  They hung it up, closed the door and took their seats in silence around the packing-case.

  It was quite four minutes before anyone knocked—so long, in fact, that King William was just ordering Merlin to go and see if anyone was coming and to hurry them up when the knock came. There was a whispered consultation as to whose duty it was to open it—a consultation so prolonged that the applicant finally opened the door himself. His appearance nipped in the bud a promising scuffle between the treasurer and secretary, both of whom were claiming the privilege of opening the door. The newcomer was a tall youth, bare-headed, and with a blunt-featured, humorous face. He stood for a minute in the doorway looking at them, then he grinned and said:

  ‘Good afternoon.’

  ‘Good afternoon,’ said William in a stern tone. ‘Have you any wrongs?’

  ‘Any what?’

  ‘I said have you got any wrongs?’ said William again irritably. William always disliked having to repeat himself.

  ‘Oh,’ said the young man in a surprised tone, ‘I thought it was the headquarters of the Spelling Reform League.’

  ‘No,’ said William vaguely, ‘I don’ know anythin’ about that. No, we’re The Knights of the Square Table.’

  ‘The Knights—?’

  ‘The Knights of the Square Table. We right wrongs. Big ones a shilling. Little ones sixpence.’

  The young man went out and studied the notice again.

  ‘I see,’ he said, ‘splendid! And which of you is which?’

  ‘I’m King William,’ said William. ‘Same as King Arthur but a different name. And he,’ pointing to Ginger, ‘he’s Merl.’

  ‘Merl?’

  ‘Yes. Merl the magician. And he,’ pointing to Henry, ‘he’s the treasurer. He collects the money from the ones we’ve righted the wrongs of, and he,’ pointing with pride to Douglas, ‘he wrote the notice. He’s the sec’ry.’

  ‘I should like to shake hands with him,’ said the young man respectfully.

  Douglas, much gratified, shook hands with him.

  ‘It may not be spelt quite right, of course,’ he said modestly, ‘but I bet it mostly is.’

  ‘I think it’s great,’ said the young man enthusiastically.

  ‘Well, d’you want to be made a knight?’ said William, assuming his most businesslike expression, ‘or have you got a wrong?’

  The young man’s smile faded.

  ‘I didn’t come in to talk about it, but I have got a wrong. I came in because I wanted to meet the author of the notice, but when you begin to talk about wrongs—well, I’ve got one that’d make your hearts bleed if you’ve got hearts to bleed.’

  ‘AND YOU WANT US,’ SAID WILLIAM, ‘TO RIGHT THE WRONG FOR YOU?’

  ‘We’re not goin’ to do anything about rates or the income-tax,’ said William very firmly. ‘It’d take too long, and we’re not going in for that sort of thing at all.’

  ‘Quite,’ said the young man, ‘I think you’re wise on the whole. They’re soul-destroying things. You can’t touch pitch and not be defiled.’

  ‘I don’t know that we can do anything about pitch, either,’ said William doubtfully. ‘I’ve never found anything to make it come off myself. Water only seems to stick it on harder.’

  ‘WELL, IF YOU’D BE GOOD ENOUGH TO UNDERTAKE IT,’ SAID THE YOUNG MAN, ‘I’D BE VERY GRATEFUL.’

  ‘No, it isn’t pitch,’ said the young man.

  ‘What is it, then?’

  ‘It’s a lady.’

  ‘A damosel?’ said William in a superior manner.

  ‘Yes, a damosel,’ said the young man. ‘It’s this way,’ he went on, sitting on the packing-case. ‘This damosel—’

  William interrupted him.

  ‘They don’t sit on it,’ he said coldly.

  The young man jumped off.

  ‘I suppose not,’ he said, ‘where—where did they sit?’

  ‘On the ground same as the knights,’ said William.

  The young man took his seat with them on the ground and began again.

  ‘Well, it’s this way,’ he said, ‘this damosel and I were getting on very nicely, very nicely indeed. We’d clicked on sight and got on like hounds in full cry ever since. Till yester e’en. And yester e’en we had a row. Heaven knows what it was about, I don’t. But we each said words of high disdain and that sort of thing, you know. She in particular. She fairly wiped the floor with me.’

  ‘You mean she did you much despite?’ said William, interested.

  ‘Yes. By Jove. That’s the word all right. Despite . . . well, I thought that she’d have slept it off this morning. I had. But had she? Oh, no. Walked past me with her head in the air as if she didn’t see me. And where is she now? She’s gone off with a fat-headed chump of the name of Montmorency Perrivale, and they’re sitting on the river bank together now, and are going to have tea there. He’s such a chump that I remember when they took him to the Zoo in his tender boyhood he wouldn’t go into the Reptile House because he was afraid of the snakes. And that—that is the thing this damosel is preferring to me.’

  ‘And you want us,’ said William still in his most businesslike manner, ‘to right the wrong for you?’

  ‘Well, if you’ll be good enough to undertake it,’ said the young man, ‘I’d be very grateful. Is it at all in your line?’

  ‘Well, we’d rather have someone in dungeons or with giants ravidging their land,’ admitted William, ‘but till something like that turns up, we don’t mind.’

  ‘Thank you a thousand times,’ said the young man. ‘Somehow the very sight of your notice cheered me and I felt that fate had led me to it. After all, I said to myself when I saw it, it’s a jolly sort of world in spite of all the damosels in it . . . Still—if you can get this damosel from the—’

  ‘From the false knight?’ said William, again with the modest air of one who speaks fluently some difficult foreign language.

  ‘I was going to say from the fat-headed chump,’ said the young man, ‘but yours sounds better. Yes, save yon damosel from yon false knight and I will e’en richly reward ye.’

  ‘All right,’ said William, ‘it’ll depend on how hard it turns out to be whether we charge you sixpence or a shilling. Me an’ Merl will go. The treas’rer an’ sec’ry ’d better stay case someone else comes with a wrong.’

  The young man, with Ginger on one side of him and William on the other, walked briskly along the road till they reached a spot from which a wooded slope led down to the river. And there, upon a fallen tree trunk beneath a
n oak tree, sat the damosel with the false knight.

  ‘There they are,’ whispered the young man, ‘now would you think that a peach like her would fall for a fatheaded chump like that?’

  But William did not wish to waste time moralising over the situation. ‘You go down the road and wait,’ he said shortly, ‘an’ me an’ Merl’ll think out a plan an’ we’ll call you when we want you.’

  ‘All right,’ said the young man. He sauntered slowly down the road and William and Ginger conferred in quick business-like whispers beneath a bush.

  The couple on the bank were unaware of onlookers. Montmorency, dazzled by the sudden kindness of one who had hitherto treated him with lofty scorn, was wasting no time in pressing his suit, his only trouble being the suspicion that it must be rather damp on the log under the tree, for Montmorency was passionately thoughtful for his health.

  ‘I simply can’t tell you what you’ve meant to me,’ he was saying, ‘but I never seemed to get a chance to get near you because that other chap was always knocking around.’

  ‘Oh, him!’ said the vision with the utmost scorn.

  ‘Whenever I saw you I used to think how—how beautiful you were. You—you reminded me of—’

  Just then a small boy ambled up, his hands in his pockets, his eyes on the ground, and stood just near them. The young man pursed his lips, waiting for this unwelcome visitor to depart. But he didn’t. He continued gazing about the grass as if he hadn’t seen them.

  ‘Looking for something?’ said Montmorency pointedly.

  The boy looked up as if surprised to see them there, and answered simply:

  ‘Yes, I’m looking for a snake.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said the damosel severely, ‘there aren’t any snakes about nowadays.’

  ‘No, I don’t think there are really,’ agreed the boy, ‘but they’re sayin’ further up the bank that they saw one.’

  ‘Where?’ gasped Montmorency.

  ‘On the bank. Goin’ along this way. Then they said they lost sight of it. I said I’d come an’ look to see if I could see it anywhere. They said it was one of those big snakes like what you see in the reptile house in the Zoo.’