William - the Dictator 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 – The Dictator

  Richmal Crompton

  Illustrated by Thomas Henry

  MACMILLAN CHILDREN’S BOOKS

  Copyright

  To David (aged four)

  First published 1938

  This edition first published 1984 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 42618 5

  Text copyright © Richmal C. Ashbee 1938

  Illustrations copyright © Thomas Henry Fisher Estate

  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 4

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from

  the British Library.

  Phototypeset by Wyvern Typesetting Ltd, Bristol

  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 – He Who Fights

  Chapter 2 – What’s in a Name?

  Chapter 3 – Agnes Matilda Comes to Stay

  Chapter 4 – A Question of Exchange

  Chapter 5 – Aunt Florence and the Green Woodpecker

  Chapter 6 – William and the Ebony Hair-Brush

  Chapter 7 – Aunt Louie’s Birthday Present

  Chapter 8 – William and the Dentist

  Chapter 9 – The Holewood Bequest

  Chapter 1 – He Who Fights

  It was the summer holidays, and William was feeling a little bored. Ginger, Henry and Douglas, and indeed most of the junior population of the village, had gone away with their families to sea-side resorts, leaving neither friend nor foe worthy of William’s mettle.

  There were, however, two chief points of interest left. One was a group of new houses that was being built at the farther end of the village, and the other the field of Farmer Jenks’s that was always let to campers in the summer. New houses meant new people, and William was always interested in new people. And Farmer Jenks’s summer campers had afforded the Outlaws much entertainment in past years. There had been the League of Perfect Health—a miscellaneous assortment of weedy individuals who wore strange garments and indulged in strange antics and ran through the village with skipping-ropes or Indian clubs.

  William hoped that the League of Perfect Health was coming again this year. Certainly, campers of some sort were coming, for a man had been round the field measuring out the ground, and a vanload of tents and equipment had been dumped in the middle. William divided his time between the field and the new houses. The houses, too, were ready for occupation, and families were beginning to arrive. They had so far proved disappointing, consisting solely of grown-ups of a particularly uninteresting brand. William, for want of anything better to do, hung over their gates and made conversational overtures to them, but was ignominiously repulsed on each occasion. Though two houses were still unoccupied, he had given up all hope of entertainment from that quarter and was now concentrating his whole attention upon the expected campers, when suddenly he saw two removing vans at the two unoccupied houses. Belongings were being taken out. He watched idly at first, then his eyes widened as he saw from one cricket bats, a hutch of rabbits and a football, and from the other a dolls’ house and a scooter being unloaded. He didn’t expect much from the dolls’ house and scooter, of course, for girls were never any good, but he was at such a loose end that he couldn’t help taking an interest even in the owner of a dolls’ house and scooter. With regard to the owner of the cricket bats, rabbits and football he felt an overwhelming interest. Here, at any rate, was a boy, a contemporary, someone who, as friend or foe, would instil into life that spice of excitement that just now was so conspicuously lacking. He hung about till tea-time, but still the owners of the dolls’ house and cricket bats had not arrived.

  When he returned after tea, he found that they had arrived in his absence. He couldn’t see the little girl, but he caught a glimpse of the boy through the window. He had red hair. He looked bigger and older than William, but not so much bigger and older as to be inaccessible. William’s spirits rose. He’d come down first thing next morning and make friends with him. He’d show him all over the woods. He’d show him the owl’s nest and the dead fox. He’d show him how to get into the empty house at the other end of the village. He’d show him the camping-field and tell him what fun the League of Perfect Health had been. If the League of Perfect Health came again he and the boy could bait them together. It wasn’t any fun baiting people alone . . .

  He set off to the new houses directly after breakfast, and hung about in the road just outside. There was no sign of the boy with red hair, but after some minutes a little girl came round from the back of the other house, sucking a lollipop on a stick. She stood and looked at William over the gate.

  “H
ello,” she said.

  “Hello,” said William.

  “What’s your name?”

  “William. What’s yours?”

  “Lucinda.”

  William, with difficulty—for it was a friend he was looking for and not an enemy—refrained from adverse comment. She drew her lollipop out of her mouth and handed the stick to him. “You can finish it if you like,” she said. “I’ve had enough. I had a whole box of them.”

  “Thanks awfully,” said William gratefully.

  He put the stick into his mouth, detached what was left of the lollipop, crunched it up, and swallowed it.

  “You ought to have made it last longer than that,” said Lucinda reproachfully.

  “I don’t like making things last,” said William, and added: “What’s your garden like at the back?”

  “Same as this,” said Lucinda, looking round at the trodden waste that formed the front garden. “We’re going to have it done up properly when we’ve settled in.’’

  “I like ’em like this,” said William. “I don’t know why people spoil ’em with grass an’ flowers an’ stuff. If I had a garden I’d have it all like this. You can’t have any fun with flowers an’ grass an’ stuff.’’

  “Would you like to come round an’ see the back garden?” said Lucinda.

  “Thanks,” said William, and followed her round to the back of the house.

  Here was a paradise of packing-cases, old tin cans, flotsam and jetsam of builder’s materials, and the bare trodden earth that was William’s ideal of a “garden”.

  “Gosh!” he ejaculated. “I wish ours was like this.”

  “You can play in it whenever you like,” said Lucinda graciously.

  Lucinda’s graciousness was indeed a little overpowering. William wasn’t used to graciousness in girls. They were generally aggressive and domineering, refusing to allow him to touch their things, and enlisting the aid of Authority against him on the slightest provocation.

  William did not know, of course, that he had, as it were, caught Lucinda on the rebound, that Lucinda had that very morning made overtures of friendship to the red-haired boy and that her overtures had been curtly rejected. Lucinda wanted to show the red-haired boy, and the best way to do it seemed to be to enrol another boy in her service. She didn’t really want William’s admiration and friendship. She didn’t want anyone’s but the red-haired boy’s. His rejection of her advances had raised him to a dizzy pinnacle in her estimation, though she told herself that she hated and despised him. He had gone out that morning, and when he came back it was essential that he should see that she had a friend and admirer who was, in every way, his superior. William didn’t seem to be in any way his superior, but Lucinda was trying hard to imagine that he was. Anyway, he mustn’t find her alone and neglected in the garden. He mustn’t think that she still wanted to be friends with him. He mustn’t think that she’d be friends with him now even if he begged her to be. (She had a pleasant mental picture of the red-haired boy’s humbly begging her to come into his garden to play with him and of her turning away on her heel with her nose in the air.)

  William, of course, knew nothing of all this. He took her friendliness at its face value. He lorded it in her domain without let or hindrance. He made a boat out of the packing-cases. He found some cement, mixed it with water, and got it all over his face and hair. He climbed the only tree the garden offered and fell out of it on to his head. He picked himself up, arranged the packing-cases as stands for imaginary circus lions and put them through imaginary paces with much shouting and cracking of an imaginary whip, while Lucinda sat on an empty paint tin and formed the audience. Her meekness, her acquiescence in all his arrangements, went to his head, and he began to throw his weight about, boasting of his prowess in every field of valour.

  “I’m not afraid of anyone,” he shouted, swaggering about among the packing-cases and tin cans. “Not of anyone. An’ I bet everyone’s afraid of me. They’ve jolly well gotter be.”

  A gleam of interest came into Lucinda’s eyes.

  “Can you fight?” she said.

  William laughed.

  “Fight?” he said. “Me? I could be a prize-fighter if I wanted to be. I can fight people twice as big as me. Bash ’em all up so’s”—he remembered the threat an irate lorry driver had used last winter when caught neatly by a snowball—“so’s their own mothers won’t know ’em.”

  “Do you often fight?” went on Lucinda eagerly.

  “Often?” said William. “Me? I fight every day. Often two people. An’ I jolly well beat ’em, too. All of ’em. Bash ’em all up.”

  “Would you fight someone for me?” said Lucinda cunningly.

  “’Course I would,” said William. “Anyone you like.”

  “Will you fight a boy called Montague for me?” said Lucinda.

  Though the red-haired boy had refused to speak to her, she had heard his mother call him Montague.

  William was slightly taken aback by this abrupt transition from the realms of dream to the realms of reality.

  “Well—er—why?” he countered. “What’s he done?”

  Lucinda found this hard to explain, so took refuge in an attitude of amazed indignation.

  “So that’s what you’re like!” she said. “First you say you’ll fight someone for me an’ then you say you won’t. I don’t believe you can fight anyone.”

  “I can,” persisted William. “Honest I can. I can fight anyone. I—I will fight him for you. Er—how big is he?”

  “He’d be nothing to you," said Lucinda. “He’s not twice as big as you, and, anyway, you said you could fight people twice as big as you.”

  “Yes, I can,” said William hastily. “I can fight people twice as big as me all right. Three times as big as me. But—er—I don’t know this boy Montague, so I don’t see how I can fight him.”

  “I’ll show you him,” said Lucinda ruthlessly. “And he’s not much bigger than you. Not very much.”

  “Oh . . .’’ said William, gazing blankly in front of him. “Oh . . . well, I can fight people all right, but—well, I’m very busy jus’ now, so I don’t know when I’ll have the time to come round here again for you to show him to me.”

  Luanda’s eyes were bright with tears of anger.

  “You said you would and now you won’t and—”

  “Yes, I will,” said William, moved by the sight of the tears. “I promise I will.”

  “You’ll do him same as you do the others?”

  “Yes,” agreed William.

  “Bash him all up?”

  “Yes,” promised William.

  “So his mother won’t know him?”

  “Er—yes,” agreed William somewhat faintly. “How much bigger than me did you say he was?”

  “Not very much bigger,” said Lucinda. “Only a few years older, I should think. He’s not twice as big, anyway, an’ you said—”

  “Yes, I know I did,” said William rather irritably. “I know I did. Well, I will, too soon as I know who he is, but I can’t do anythin’ without knowin’ who he is.”

  “I’ve told you what he’s like,” said Lucinda. “He’s a horrid boy. You can tell he’s a horrid boy just by looking at him.”

  “All right,” said William. “Well, I’d better be goin’ back home now.”

  For suddenly the little back garden, so thrilling a playground a few moments ago, had lost its glamour. Even Lucinda looked less attractive, her hair less golden, her eyes less blue. It had been a jolly morning, but the whole affair was now at an end. He couldn’t come here again and risk being introduced to the mysterious Montague, “not much bigger and only a few years older,” whose annihilation he had so rashly undertaken.

  Lucinda continued to be sweetly gracious to him as he took his departure, even running indoors to fetch him the rest of the box of lollipops. He thanked her in a preoccupied fashion, keeping an anxious eye on the horizon, prepared to bolt at the appearance of any large unknown boy.

 
“You can come back and play with me this afternoon, too, if you like,” called Lucinda, who had been much disappointed that Montague had not arrived in time to see the little charade that had been so carefully staged for his benefit and to receive fitting punishment at the hands of her new champion.

  William walked briskly along the road homeward. It was the best back garden he’d ever played in, and it was a pity that he couldn’t ever play there again, but he couldn’t. It would be haunted for him in future by the spectre of the unknown Montague—a spectre that had already assumed colossal proportions in his imagination. William, when angered, could put up a fairly good fight even against odds, but to attack someone larger than himself on no provocation at all was quite another matter.

  After lunch he went down to the field to see if the campers had yet arrived. Evidently they hadn’t, but more equipment had come and already there was an air of activity about the place. Some men in shorts were putting up tents, and others were unpacking saucepans, tin cups and plates. So engrossed was William in watching these preparations through the hedge, that at first he did not notice that the red-haired boy of the new house was stationed at another convenient spot farther down the hedge, also watching. They turned and saw each other simultaneously. William approached the newcomer.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “Hello,” said the red-haired boy.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Ralph. What’s yours?”

  William was conscious of a feeling of relief on hearing the name Ralph, for the red-haired boy was certainly bigger than William and looked pretty tough. He could not know, of course, that the red-haired boy’s name was Ralph Montague, and that his name was a perennial source of contention between him and his mother, for his mother persisted in calling him Montague, while the red-haired boy, who disliked the name, always called himself Ralph. (His father compromised by calling him Ronty.)