William Read online

  ‘You just sit down on the little footstool that’s at my feet, darling,’ she said, and added, afraid lest the smile should lose its freshness, ‘quickly.’

  The child sat down obediently on the footstool at her feet.

  The young man with the harassed expression was gaping at the child, his eyes and mouth wide open. His harassed expression became almost wild.

  ‘This isn’t – isn’t—?’ he stammered to Miss Perkins.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ said Miss Perkins stonily.

  He too blinked, blenched and swallowed. The child, now seated on the footstool, fixed him with a stern gaze.

  ‘Do be quick,’ said the actress, still smiling dreamily into the distance.

  ‘Y-yes,’ stammered the young man, diving beneath his black cloth. He’d have dived anywhere to escape from the sight of the child.

  There came a sound of a little click.

  ‘Finished?’ said the actress, still without moving.

  ‘Y-yes.’

  ‘Well, I want you to take another of me just like this, but alone. I’m keeping this pose exactly as it is because I think it’s such a good one. You run away now, darling.’

  The child arose and ran away. The second photograph was taken. Three more were taken. Then the actress relaxed and looked about her.

  ‘My little Rosemary’s gone to change, I suppose?’

  Miss Perkins supposed so.

  ‘Isn’t she a beautiful child?’ said the actress.

  ‘Exquisite,’ said Miss Perkins, rising nobly to the occasion.

  ‘People say,’ said the actress, ‘that she’s exactly like what I was at her age.’

  Miss Perkins made no comment.

  William scrambled through the hedge and ran across the field to the old barn.

  A small stream of children was issuing from the old barn. A queue was lined up outside.

  ‘It reelly is like what it says on the notice,’ said a small child just emerging; ‘it reelly is a mos’ beautiful actor lady, what we’ve never seen before got special for the show.’

  ‘It isn’t any of them – William or Douglas or Ginger or Henry?’ said the queue anxiously.

  ‘No.’

  ‘YOU JUST SIT DOWN ON THE LITTLE FOOTSTOOL AT MY FEET, DARLING,’ SAID MISS VERNEY. WILLIAM SAT DOWN OBEDIENTLY.

  THE YOUNG MAN WAS GAPING AT WILLIAM. ‘THIS ISN’T – ISN’T—’ HE STAMMERED. ‘YES, IT IS,’ SAID MISS PERKINS STONILY.

  ‘Worth a halfpenny?’ asked the queue still more anxiously.

  ‘Yes. Reelly worth a halfpenny,’ said the small child earnestly.

  William and the Outlaws were coming home from a happy day spent in Mr Peters’ shrubbery. Mr Peters had watched them anxiously from an upstairs window. He would have liked to have sent them away but lacked the courage. William had arrived the week before with a handsome contribution for his ‘society’, and so Mr Peters knew that at any rate for the next few weeks he would have to allow them to riot unchecked in his shrubbery. He watched them in an agony as they made fires and climbed his favourite trees, longing for the time when the few weeks should be up during which the moral effect of their contribution might be supposed to last.

  ‘It’s a jolly good place to play, isn’t it?’ said William happily, ‘an’ he can’t stop us for a bit yet, seein’ we gave him three an’ elevenpence three farthin’s—’

  ‘Let’s see the letter she wrote you again,’ said Ginger.

  William drew from his pocket a grimy piece of paper already worn to shreds from its sojourn in his pocket.

  Dere William,

  I did so enjoy being a waxwork in your sho and its luvly that they’ve sent me to a bording scule. Mother had a nurvus brakedown when she saw the foto, to late to stop it in the papers, an is stil having it. I luv being at bording scule.

  Luv from,

  Rosemary.

  ‘She did it jolly well,’ said Ginger.

  ‘An’ I did her thing jolly well too,’ said William complacently, ‘talkin’ to that woman an’ havin’ my photo taken an’ lookin’ soppy.’

  ‘Huh!’ said Ginger. ‘I’d like to’ve seen you. I bet you looked jolly funny.’

  ‘I looked all right,’ said William coldly.

  He went indoors to the drawing-room, where his mother sat with Ethel idly turning over the pages of an illustrated paper.

  ‘Look at this,’ she was saying: ‘“Miss Clarice Verney, the actress, with her beautiful little daughter Rosemary, who is wearing the Mary Queen of Scots costume she wore in the children’s tableaux in London.” They were at The Hall for a short time, you know, but I never saw them. Now,’ handing the paper to Ethel, ‘would you call her a pretty child? Of course these newspaper photographs don’t do anyone justice, but to my mind she’s downright plain.’

  Ethel took the paper and studied it.

  ‘Awful,’ she commented at last, ‘and what a queer erection on her head. It isn’t at all the sort of head-dress I’d have thought suited the costume at all.’

  ‘The costume’s rather like that Mary Queen of Scots costume you had once, isn’t it, Ethel?’ said Mrs Brown.

  ‘Yes, I’ve got it somewhere still.’

  ‘It shows it was a very good one because of course this child’s sure to have had the best. I always thought that that costume was a very good one. Don’t you think that the child has just a look of William?’

  ‘Oh, not quite as bad as that, surely?’ said Ethel.

  But William, rather to her surprise, refused to rise to this. He stared out of the window as if he had not heard, wearing his most enigmatic expression.

  CHAPTER 6

  THE OUTLAWS DELIVER THE GOODS

  William and the Outlaws sat on the back row of the School Hall, carelessly cracking nuts and surreptitiously scattering the shells under the bench on which they sat. Cramps, the school caretaker, hated the Outlaws with a deadly hatred because he knew that the nut-shells and ink-soaked blotting-paper bullets that made his life a perpetual burden to him could usually be traced to them. However, he was a morose, gloomy type of man in general who’d have been miserable without his grievances, and anyway he doesn’t come into this story. The headmaster was on the platform and had been speaking quite a long time, but the Outlaws had not been listening to him. The Outlaws never listened to the headmaster when he was making a speech. His speeches were generally exhortations to lead a better life, and the Outlaws considered that this did not concern them because they’d often tried leading better lives and had found them even more fruitful of complications than their normal lives of evil-doing. So instead of listening they engaged in various quiet diversions among themselves. William and Ginger had each brought a mouse which, in the intervals of eating nuts, they tried to put down each other’s necks, and Henry and Douglas were dipping bits of paper into an inkpot and flicking them at each other with rulers. And so, despite the headmaster’s speech, the afternoon was passing quite pleasantly till a more forcible inflection than usual in the headmaster’s voice suddenly riveted their attention on him.

  ‘I think,’ he was saying, ‘that you would all like to help with the new wing and therefore I suggest that in the next fortnight you all do what you can to raise funds for it. I propose that you split yourselves up into groups of, say, four or five boys, and work hard this next fortnight to bring in the funds. Solicit subscriptions from your friends and relatives and do little services for them for cash – helping in the garden and in the house. They will, I am sure, when they know the object, be ready to pay you by the hour or piecework. In their interests I suggest the latter. Ha, ha . . .’

  Then he continued after the fashion of his kind to enlarge upon all these points and the Outlaws returned to their nuts and mouse and blotting-paper battle. It never even occurred to them to identify themselves with the great money-raising campaign thus initiated by the headmaster. They knew nothing and cared less about the new wing and they had no money and no chance of getting any. They had solicited subscriptions fro
m friends and relatives for purposes of their own so frequently that their friends and relatives became abrupt and disagreeable before they had even broached the object of the solicited subscriptions and, as they had frequently discovered, their families were the sort of families that expect you to do little services for them without payment. So convinced were the Outlaws of this that they would never have given the headmaster’s suggestion another thought had it not been for Hubert Lane and his followers.

  The headmaster had drawn his speech to its long delayed conclusion and the school trooped out into the road. The Outlaws’ thoughts were wholly concerned with a mouse fight that they were organising in the old barn. The two combatants were William’s mouse and Ginger’s mouse. The first round had already taken place and the only drawback to it as a fight was that the combatants persisted in fraternising and refused, despite all the efforts of the organisers, to display any signs of hostility.

  ‘I’m goin’ to try wavin’ a red handkerchief at ’em as they do in bull fights,’ said Ginger.

  And just then they passed Hubert Lane’s house. The Hubert Laneites never attempted verbal hostilities except when within easy reach of the parental roof, because the Outlaws were fleet of foot and sure of hand and in open warfare they had no chance against them.

  ‘Yah!’ jeered Hubert Lane from half-way up the drive, his plump body already poised for flight. ‘Yah! A lot o’ money you’ll get for the new wing! You with your twopence a week!’

  It was well known that Hubert Lane received five shillings a week.

  William foolishly stopped to reply to this challenge despite the efforts of the other Outlaws to drag him on. William always hated to leave a challenge unanswered. He answered it with a scornful laugh.

  ‘We’ll jolly well get more’n’ you,’ he said contemptuously.

  ‘Oh, will you?’ said Hubert Lane with a snigger, ‘p’raps you don’t know that we’re goin’ to get five pounds for it.’

  William’s laugh was yet more scornful.

  ‘Only five?’ he said. ‘What a bit. We’re goin’ to get ten.’

  And he walked on with a swagger, leaving the Hubert Laneites gaping.

  The Outlaws didn’t recover the power of speech till they’d reached the end of the road. Then Ginger said faintly:

  ‘Crumbs, William, what’d you say that for?’

  ‘I dunno,’ said William, who was also feeling rather aghast at his temerity; then with the ghost of his old spirit added: ‘Well, I wasn’t goin’ to have ’em going on like that.’

  ‘Well,’ said Ginger, ‘they’ll jolly well go on like that at the end of the fortnight when they find out that we’ve got nothin’ an’ they’ve got their five pounds. They’ll tell everyone, too.’

  ‘Well,’ said William, trying to carry off the situation but without much conviction in his voice, ‘we – we’ve jus’ got to get ten pounds then.’

  ‘’S easy to talk,’ said Ginger, and added darkly, ‘Talkin’s what’s wrong with you. You talk too much.’

  ‘Well, what would you’ve done?’ said William indignantly, ‘jus’ lettem go on an’ not said anythin’?’

  ‘Jus’ punched his face,’ suggested Ginger.

  ‘Yes,’ said William scathingly, ‘an’ him standin’ jus’ outside his front door. He’d’ve been in before we’d opened the gate an’ sent the gardener round to us same as he did last time.’

  ‘Well, we’ve jus’ gotter make the best of it, I s’pose,’ said Douglas with a deep sigh, ‘jus’ try ’n’ keep out of their way at the end of the fortnight when they find that they’ve got five pounds an’ we’ve got nothin’. That’s all we can do.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Henry gloomily, ‘an’ it won’t be so easy to keep out of their way. They’ll be carryin’ on at us all the time an’ they’ll tell everyone.’

  ‘Well,’ said William aggressively but still without conviction, ‘we’ve jus’ gotter get ten pounds. There mus’ be ways of gettin’ ten pounds. If there isn’t, how do people that do get it get it?’

  The logic of this was of course unassailable.

  ‘Well,’ said Ginger with heavy sarcasm, ‘if you c’n find a way, find it.’

  ‘And I can,’ said William airily. ‘Lots of people get ten pounds. Well, that shows there mus’ be ways of gettin’ it, doesn’t it?’

  ‘All right, go on an’ find a way,’ encouraged Ginger coldly. ‘It was you what said you could. Not us.’

  ‘All right,’ said William aggressively, ‘I jolly well will, then. Ten pounds isn’t much. I mean’ – in answer to their gasp of incredulity – ‘it isn’t much when you think of a hundred pounds or a thousand pounds or a million pounds. Why, when you think of a million pounds, ten pounds is hardly anythin’.’

  ‘An’ when you think of twopence, which is all we get for pocket money,’ said Douglas gloomily, ‘it’s a jolly lot.’

  This reflection brought William down to earth.

  ‘All right,’ he said irritably, ‘it’s nothin’ for you to get fussed up over. It was me who said I’d do it.’

  But they weren’t going to leave William in the lurch. With William they would stand or fall as they’d always done. In this particular case they’d probably fall. After all, it was generally more exciting falling with William than standing alone.

  ‘We’d’ve prob’ly said it, if you hadn’t,’ said Ginger carelessly. ‘We’ll all try ’n’ get it anyway. An’ if we don’t we can fight the ones that start talkin’ about it. It won’t be so bad, anyway. How’ll we start?’

  ‘We’ll start with easy ways,’ said William, secretly touched and cheered by their loyalty, ‘we’ll start with the ways he said. S’lic’ting subscriptions an’ doin’ services an’ such-like. We’ll start with s’lic’tin’ subscriptions. That’s his way of sayin’ askin’ for money, of course.’

  ‘Why can’t he say askin’ for money?’ said Henry rather irritably. The magnitude of their undertaking was weighing heavily upon his spirit.

  ‘They never do,’ said William indulgently. ‘They’ve gotter say things in a way that’s harder to understand than the ornery way or else they’d never get to be headmasters. It’s a speshal sort of langwidge that gets ’em to be headmasters . . . Well, let’s start goin’ round our relations askin’ for money an’ we’ll meet tomorrow night an’ see how we’ve got on.’

  So they spent the next day going round their relations asking for money and they didn’t get on very far. They met in fact with a coldness and a lack of response that would have made their opinions of their relatives even lower than it was, had that been possible.

  ‘I went round to them all,’ said Ginger mournfully, ‘an’ my Aunt Emma she said “Certainly not, after your ball comin’ in through my landin’ window like it did last week”; an’ my Uncle John said “Cert’nly not after you goin’ over my lawn with your scooter the way you did yesterday.” An’ my Aunt Jane said “Cert’nly not after you chasin’ my dear Pussy as I saw you last week,” an’ my Uncle George said “Cert’nly not after you throwin’ stones up at my walnut tree like I saw you doin’ yesterday,” an’ my Uncle John said “Cert’nly not after you climbin’ my rose pole an’ breakin’ it”; an’ all the others said things like that.’ . . .

  ‘So did all mine,’ said William sadly.

  ‘An’ so did all mine,’ said Henry and Douglas, and Douglas added:

  ‘Seems sort of extr’ordin’y to me the sort of mem’ries they’ve got. If ever they say, p’raps they’ll take you to the pantomine nex’ Christmas, you’ll jolly well never find ’em rememberin’, but if you do jus’ a little thing like breakin’ a window quite by accident, well, you’ll jolly well never find ’em forgettin’.’

  ‘Well,’ said William with a sigh of disappointment, ‘we’ll try doin’ little services for them for cash next, then, like what he said.’

  Again the expectations of the Outlaws were low, nor did events prove them wrong.

  They tried at first to persuade their parent
s and relations to engage them in some capacity at a definite salary, and were so far successful that William’s elder brother promised him twopence if he would clean his bicycle, but subsequently not only refused to pay him but committed violent physical assault upon him because William, who considered it his duty in the interests of science to dismember it before cleaning (William loved taking anything to pieces), misplaced several vital parts in reassembling it.

  The experiences of the others were similar.

  ‘Said he’d give me sixpence for weedin’ his garden,’ said Ginger indignantly, ‘an’ then said all the things I’d pulled up was all plants an’ all the things I’d left in was weeds. Well, how was I to know? They looked like plants. They were quite pretty, too, some of ’em with little flowers on ’em. I don’t call ’em weeds when they’ve got little flowers on ’em. He ought to’ve labelled ’em if he’s so particular. I wouldn’t be a gardener not for anything. They mus’ have a rotten time tellin’ which is plants an’ which is weeds.’

  Douglas had been engaged by an aunt to saw some logs, but he had put the saw out of action on the first log.

  ‘It mus’ have been a jolly weak sort of saw,’ grumbled Douglas. ‘Well, it mus’ have been. All those little tin spiky things went crooked almost as soon as I started, an’ it kept sort of stickin’ in the wood. Well, that can’t’ve been my fault, can it? She said I’d ruined her saw an’ it would cost her a lot of money to get it put right. I said that it mus’ have been a jolly weak sort if it went wrong the minute anyone started sawin’ with it, but she seemed so mad that I didn’t stay to argue with her.’