Still William Page 11

  CHAPTER 8

  WILLIAM THE MATCH-MAKER

  William was feeling disillusioned. He had received, as a birthday present, a book entitled Engineering Explained to Boys, and had read it in bed at midnight by the light of a lamp which he had ‘borrowed’ from his elder brother’s photographic apparatus for the purpose. The book had convinced William that it would be perfectly simple with the aid of a little machinery, to turn a wooden packing case into a motorboat. He spent two days on the work. He took all the elastic that he could find in his mother’s work drawer. He disembowelled all the clockwork toys that he possessed. To supplement this he added part of the works of the morning-room clock. He completely soaked himself and his clothes in oil. Finally the thing was finished and William, stern and scowling and tousled and oily, deposited the motorboat on the edge of the pond, stepped into it and pushed off boldly. It shot into the middle of the pond and promptly sank . . . So did William. He returned home wet and muddy and oily and embittered, to meet a father who, with a grown-up’s lack of sense of proportion, was waxing almost lyrical over the disappearance of the entrails of the morning-room clock.

  It had been for William a thoroughly unpleasant day. He was still dwelling moodily on the memory of it.

  ‘How was I to know the book was wrong?’ he muttered indignantly as he walked down the road, his hands deep in his pockets. ‘Blamin’ me because the book was wrong!’

  If William had not been in this mood of self-pity he would never have succumbed to the overtures of Violet Elizabeth. William at normal times disliked Violet Elizabeth. He disliked her curls and pink-and-white complexion and blue eyes and lisp and frills and flounces and imperiousness and tears. His ideal of little-girlhood was Joan, dark haired and dark eyed and shy. But Joan was away on her holidays and William’s sense of grievance demanded sympathy – feminine sympathy for preference.

  ‘Good morning, William,’ said Violet Elizabeth.

  ‘G’ mornin’,’ said William, without discontinuing his moody scowl at the road and his hunched-up onward march.

  Violet Elizabeth joined him and trotted by his side.

  ‘You feelin’ sad, William?’ she said sweetly.

  ‘Anyone’d feel sad,’ burst out William. ‘How was I to know a book din’ know what it was talkin’ about? You’d think a book’d know, wun’t you? Blamin’ me because a book din’ know what it was talkin’ about! ’S’nough to make anyone feel sad! Well, you’d think a book about machinery’d know jus’ a bit about machinery, wun’t you? . . . Sinkin’ me in a mucky ole pond an’ then when you’d think they’d be a bit sorry for me, goin’ on ’s if it was my fault, ’s if I’d wrote the book!’

  This somewhat involved account of his wrongs seemed to satisfy Violet Elizabeth. She slipped a hand in his and for once William, the stern unbending despiser of girls, did not repel her.

  ‘Paw William!’ said Violet Elizabeth sweetly. ‘I’m tho thorry!’

  Although William kept his stern frown still fixed on the road and gave no sign of his feelings, the dulcet sympathy of Violet Elizabeth was balm to his wounded soul.

  ‘Play gameth with me,’ went on Violet Elizabeth soothingly.

  William looked up and down the road. No one was in sight. After all, one must do something.

  ‘What sort of games?’ said William suspiciously, transferring his stern frown from the road to Violet Elizabeth and, contrary to his usual custom, forbearing to mimic her lisp.

  ‘Play houth, William,’ said Violet Elizabeth eagerly. ‘Ith suth a nith game. You an’ me be married.’

  ‘Red Indians an’ you a squaw?’ said William with a gleam of interest.

  ‘No,’ said Violet Elizabeth with distaste, ‘not Red Indianth.’

  ‘Pirates?’ suggested William.

  ‘Oh no, William,’ said Violet Elizabeth. ‘They’re tho nathty. Juth a nordinary thort of married. You go to the offith and me go thopping and to matineeth and thee to the dinner and that thort of thing.’

  William’s dignity revolved from the idea.

  ‘ ’F you think I’d play a game like that—’ he began coldly.

  ‘Pleath do, William,’ said Violet Elizabeth in a quivering voice. The blue eyes, fixed pleadingly on William, swam suddenly with tears. Violet Elizabeth exerted her sway over her immediate circle of friends and relations solely by this means. Even at that tender age she possessed the art, so indispensable to her sex, of making her blue eyes swim with tears at will. She had, on more than one occasion, found that it was the only suasion to which the stern and lordly William would yield.

  He looked at her in dismay.

  ‘All right,’ he said hastily. ‘All right. Come on!’

  After all there was nothing else to do and one might as well do this as nothing.

  Together they went into the field where was the old barn.

  ‘Thith muth be the houth,’ said Violet Elizabeth, her tears gone, her pink-and-white face wreathed in smiles. ‘An’ now you go to the offith, darlin’ William, an’ I’ll thee to thingth at home. Goodbye an’ work hard an’ make a lot of money ’cauth I want a lot of new cloth. I’ve thimply nothing fit to wear. The offith ith the corner of the field. You thtay there an’ count a hundred and then come back to your dinner an’ bring me a box of chocolath an’ a large bunch of flowerth.’

  ‘ ’F you think—’ began William, hoarse with indignant surprise.

  ‘I don’ mean real oneth, William,’ said Violet Elizabeth meekly. ‘I mean pretend oneth. Thtickth or grath or anything’ll do.’

  ‘Or won’t!’ said William sternly. ‘ ’F you think I’m goin’ even to pretend to give presents to an ole girl—!’

  ‘But I’m your wife, William,’ said Violet Elizabeth. There was the first stage – a suspicion of moisture – of the swimming tears in the blue eyes and William hastily retreated.

  ‘All right, I’ll see,’ he capitulated. ‘G’bye.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to kith me?’ said Violet Elizabeth plaintively.

  ‘No,’ said William, ‘I won’t kiss you. I’m ’fraid of givin’ you some sort of germ. I don’t think I’d better. G’bye.’

  He departed hastily for the corner of the field before the tears had time to swim. He was already regretting the rash impulse that had made him stoop to this unmanly game. He waited in the corner of the field and counted fifty. He could see Violet Elizabeth cleaning the window of the barn with a small black handkerchief, then sallying forth with languid dignified gait to interview imaginary tradespeople.

  Then William suddenly espied a frog in the field beyond the hedge. He scrambled through in pursuit and captured it and spent a pleasant quarter of an hour teaching it tricks. He taught it, as he fondly imagined, to know and love him and to jump over his hands. It showed more aptitude at jumping over his hands than at knowing and loving him. It responded so well to his teaching in jumping that it finally managed to reach the ditch where it remained in discreet hiding from its late discoverer and trainer.

  William then caught sight of an old nest in the hedge and went to investigate it. He decided that it must have been a robin’s nest and took it to pieces to see how it was made. He came to the conclusion that he could make as good a one himself and considered the possibilities of making nests for birds during the winter and putting them ready for them in the hedges in the spring. Then he noticed that the ditch at the further end of the field was full and went there to see if he could find any water creatures. He soaked his boots and stockings, caught a newt, but, having no receptacle in which to keep it (other than his cap which seemed to hold water quite well but only for a short time) he reluctantly returned it to its native element.

  Then he remembered his wife and returned slowly and not very eagerly to the barn.

  Violet Elizabeth was seated in the corner of an old box in a state of majestic sulks.

  ‘You’ve been at the offith for more’n a day. You’ve been there for monthth and yearth an’ I hate you!’

  ‘Well,
I forgot all about you,’ William excused himself. ‘An’ anyway I’d a lot of work to do at the office—’

  ‘An’ I kept waiting an’ waiting and thinking you’d come back every minute and you didn’t!’

  ‘Well, how could I?’ said William. ‘How could I come back every minute? How could anyone come back every minute? And anyway,’ as he saw Violet Elizabeth working up her all-powerful tears, ‘it’s lunchtime and I’m going home.’

  William’s mother was out to lunch and Ethel was her most objectionable and objecting. She objected to William’s hair and to William’s hands and to William’s face.

  ‘Well, I’ve washed ’em and I’ve brushed it,’ said William firmly. ‘I don’ see what you can do more with faces an’ hair than wash ’em an’ brush it. ’F you don’ like the colour they wash an’ brush to I can’t help that. It’s the colour they was born with. It’s their nat’ral colour. I can’t do more than wash ’em an’ brush it.’

  ‘Yes, you can,’ said Ethel unfeelingly. ‘You can go and wash them and brush it again.’

  Under the stern eye of his father who had lowered his paper for the express purpose of displaying his stern eye William had no alternative but to obey.

  ‘Some people,’ he remarked bitterly to the stair carpet as he went upstairs, ‘don’ care how often they make other people go up an’ downstairs, tirin’ themselves out. I shun’t be surprised ’f I die a good lot sooner than I would have done with all this walkin’ up an’ downstairs tirin’ myself out – an’ all because my face an’ hands an’ hair’s nat’rally a colour she doesn’t like!’

  Ethel was one of William’s permanent grievances against Life.

  But after lunch he felt cheered. He went down to the road and there was Joan – Joan, dark eyed and dark haired and adorable – back from her holidays.

  ‘Hello, William!’ she said.

  William’s stern freckled countenance relaxed almost to a smile.

  ‘Hello, Joan,’ he replied.

  ‘What you doing this afternoon, William?’

  ‘Nothing particular,’ replied William graciously.

  ‘Let’s go to the old barn and see if Ginger or any of the others are there. I’m so glad to be back, William. I hated being away. I kept thinking about you and the others and wondering what you were doing . . . you especially.’

  William felt cheered and comforted. Joan generally had a soothing effect upon William.

  As they neared the stile that led to the field, however, William’s spirits dropped, for there, looking her most curled and cleaned and possessive, was Violet Elizabeth.

  ‘Come on, William, and play houth again,’ she called imperiously.

  ‘Well, an’ I’m not goin’ to,’ said William bluntly. ‘An’ I’m not goin’ to be married to you any more an’ ’f I play house I’m goin’ to have Joan.’

  ‘You can’t do that,’ said Violet Elizabeth calmly.

  ‘Can’t do what?’

  ‘Can’t change your wife. Ith divorth if you do an’ you get hung for it.’

  This nonplussed William for a moment. Then he said: ‘I don’ believe it. You don’ know. You’ve never been married so you don’ know anything about it.’

  ‘I do know. Hereth Ginger and Douglath and Hubert Lane. You athk them.’

  Ginger and Douglas and Hubert Lane, all loudly and redolently sucking Bulls’ Eyes, were coming down the road. Hubert Lane was a large fat boy with protruding eyes, a superhuman appetite and a morbid love of mathematics who was only tolerated as a companion by Ginger and Douglas on account of the bag of Bulls’ Eyes he carried in his pocket. He had lately much annoyed the Outlaws by haunting the field they considered theirs and, in spite of active and passive discouragement, thrusting his unwelcome comradeship upon them.

  ‘Hi!’ William hailed them loudly from the top of the stile. ‘Is it divorce if you change your wife an’ do you get hung for it? She says it is! ’S all she knows!’

  The second trio gathered round the first to discuss the matter.

  ‘ ’S called bigamy not divorce,’ said Ginger authoritatively. ‘I know ’cause our cousin’s gardener did it an’ you get put in prison.’

  ‘ ’Th not big— what you said,’ said Violet Elizabeth firmly. ‘Ith divorth. I know ’cauth a friend of mine’th uncle did it. Tho there!’

  The rival champions of divorce and bigamy glared at each other, and the others watched with interest.

  ‘D’you think,’ said Ginger, ‘that I don’ know what my own cousin’s gardener did?’

  ‘An’ d’you think,’ said Violet Elizabeth, ‘that I don’t know what my own friendth uncle did?’

  ‘Here’s Mr March comin’,’ said Douglas. ‘Let’s ask him.’

  Mr March was a short stumpy young man with a very bald head and short sight. He lived in a large house at the other end of the village and rather fancied himself as a wit. He was extraordinarily conceited and not overburdened by any superfluity of intellect.

  ‘I say, Mr March,’ yelled William as he approached. ‘Is it divorce or bigamy if you change your wife?’

  ‘An’ do you get hung for it or put in prison?’ added Ginger.

  Mr March threw back his head and roared.

  ‘Ha, ha!’ he bellowed. ‘Which of you wants to change his wife? Which of you is not satisfied with his spouse? Excellent! Ha, ha!’

  He went on down the road chuckling to himself.

  ‘He’s a bit cracked,’ commented Ginger in a tone of kind impartiality.

  ‘But my mother says he’s awful rich,’ said Douglas.

  ‘An’ he’s gone on your sister,’ said Ginger to William.

  ‘Then he mus’ be cracked!’ said William bitterly.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Violet Elizabeth. ‘It ith divorth an’ I don’ care if it ithn’t. ’F you don’ play houth with me, I’ll thcream ’n’ thcream till I’m thick. I can,’ she added with pride.

  William looked at her helplessly.

  ‘Will you play house with me, Joan?’ said Hubert, who had been fixing admiring eyes upon Joan.

  ‘All right,’ said Joan pacifically, ‘and we’ll live next door to you, William.’

  Violet Elizabeth had gone to prepare the barn and Joan and Hubert now followed her. William glared after them fiercely.

  ‘That ole Hubert,’ he said indignantly, ‘comin’ messin’ about in our field! I votes we chuck him out . . . jus’ sim’ly chuck him out.’

  ‘Yes,’ objected Ginger, ‘an’ he’ll tell his mother an’ she’ll come fussin’ like what she did last time an’ tellin’ our fathers an’ ’zaggeratin’ all over the place.’

  ‘Well, let’s think of a plan, then,’ said William.

  Five minutes later William approached Hubert with an unnatural expression of friendliness on his face. Hubert was politely asking Violet Elizabeth to ‘have a Bulls’ Eye’ and Violet Elizabeth was obligingly taking three.

  ‘I SAY, MR MARCH,’ YELLED WILLIAM, ‘IS IT DIVORCE OR BIGAMY IF YOU CHANGE YOUR WIFE?’

  ‘I say, Hubert,’ whispered William to Hubert. ‘We’ve gotter secret. You come over here ’n we’ll tell you.’

  Hubert put a Bulls’ Eye into his mouth, pocketed the packet and accompanied William to where Ginger and Douglas were, his goggle eyes still more a-goggle with excitement. Joan and Violet Elizabeth were busying themselves in transforming the interior of the barn into two semi-detached villas with great exercise of handkerchief-dusters and imagination.

  ‘HA, HA!’ LAUGHED MR MARCH. ‘EXCELLENT! WHICH OF YOU IS NOT SATISFIED WITH HIS SPOUSE?’

  ‘Douglas,’ whispered William confidentially, ‘ ’s found out a secret about this field. He got it off a witch.’ Hubert was so surprised that his spectacles fell off. He replaced them and listened open-mouthed.

  ‘There’s a grass in this field that if you tread on it makes you invisible. Now we’re just goin’ to tread about a bit to see ’f we can find it an’ we don’ want to leave you out of it so you can come and tread abou
t a bit with us case we find it.’

  Hubert was thrilled and flattered.

  ‘I bet I find it first,’ he squeaked excitedly.

  They tramped about in silence for a few minutes. Suddenly William said in a voice of great concern:

  ‘I say, where’s Hubert gone?’

  ‘I’m here,’ said Hubert, a shade of anxiety in his voice.

  William looked at him and through him.

  ‘Where’s Hubert gone?’ he said again. ‘He was here a minute ago.’

  ‘I’m here!’ said Hubert again plaintively.

  Ginger and Douglas looked first at and through Hubert and then all around the field.

  ‘Yes, he seems to have gone,’ said Ginger sadly. ‘I’m ’fraid he mus’ have found the grass!’

  ‘I-I’m here!’ squeaked Hubert desperately, looking rather pale.

  ‘I’ll jus’ see if he’s hidin’ over there,’ said William and proceeded literally to walk through Hubert. Hubert got the worst of the impact and sat down suddenly and heavily.

  ‘Boo-hoo!’ he wailed rising to his feet. He was promptly walked into by Ginger and sat down again with another yell.

  ‘ ’S mos’ mysterious where he’s got to,’ said William. ‘Let’s call him!’

  They yelled ‘Hubert!’ about the field, callously disregarding that youth’s sobbing replies. Whenever he rose to his feet one of them walked through him and he sat down again with a bump and a yell.

  ‘Did the witch say anything about makin’ them visible again?’ said William anxiously.

  ‘No,’ said Douglas sadly. ‘I’m ’fraid he’ll always be invisible now and he’ll die slow of starvation ’cause no one’ll ever see him to give him anything to eat.’

  Hubert began to bellow unrestrainedly. He rose to his feet, dodged both Ginger and Douglas who made a dart in his direction, and ran howling towards the stile.

  ‘Boo-hoo! I’m going home. Boo-hoo! I don’ wanter die!’

  As soon as he reached the stile, Ginger and Douglas and William gave a shout.

  ‘Why, there’s Hubert at the stile.’