William The Conqueror Page 18

  ‘Get ON ’bout Hubert Lane’s party,’ said William, who was a boy of one idea.

  ‘No, it was acid-drops,’ said Ginger, ‘an’ I said – Oo-oo.’ as William laid him low and took his seat astride on his chest. ‘All right. I keep tryin’ to tell you an’ all you keep int’ruptin’. Well, Mrs Lane came in an’ ordered thirty chairs for December the 28th in the evenin’ an’ a lot of cakes an’ stuff, so that mus’ be the day of the party.’

  William arose from Ginger’s chest and raised his discordant young voice in a yell of triumph.

  On the evening of December 28th four small boys might have been seen creeping through the Lane’s garden in the darkness at half-past six. The party would be sure to begin about seven. Parties always began about seven. The Outlaws wished to be firmly entrenched in their position by seven.

  William as usual had drawn up their plan of operations. A tree grew up the house and from its branches an open window on the first floor could easily be gained. This William knew was the box-room. Here, in the midst of the enemy’s castle, the Outlaws had decided to entrench themselves till the party had begun. Their plan of operations included, among other things, a complete failure of electric light throughout the house.

  Exactly how this was to be accomplished William was less certain than he pretended to be, but he had read up the chapter on electricity in his ‘Boys’ Book’ and was hoping for the best.

  Successfully, and with far less noise than anyone who knew them might have expected, the Outlaws climbed the tree in the darkness and took up their positions in the box-room. It was dusty and not very comfortable. William insisted on their hiding in case anyone should come into the room, and caused a certain amount of discontent among his followers by claiming as his perquisite the only comfortable hiding place – a roomy cupboard. Only the gravity of the situation and the certainty that a noise of any sort would probably bring the whole nest of Hubert Lanites about their ears prevented their putting the matter to the only test recognised by the Outlaws, that of physical strength. A diversion was caused by Douglas, who, with a little scream of joy (which was instantly ‘Sh’d!’ by the other Outlaws with a ‘Sh!’ much louder than the original scream) said that he could see a rat. Investigation, however, proved that it was an old bedroom slipper of Mr Lane’s, and at the sound of a door opening on the landing the Outlaws hastily retired to their hiding-places – William to his comfortable cupboard, Ginger, Douglas and Henry to their cramped positions behind boxes and packing cases that were several sizes too small for them.

  Someone went downstairs, and then came unmistakable sounds of the arrivals of guests – motors, greetings, the constant ringing of the front door bell. The Outlaws strained their ears to distinguish actual individual Hubert Lanites, but all they could hear was the confused murmur as each guest arrived. Gradually this was followed by silence.

  ‘They’re all doin’ somethin’,’ said Ginger.

  ‘Dancin’,’ suggested Henry.

  ‘There’s no music, silly,’ said William. ‘I bet it’s games.’

  ‘You’d hear more noise if it was games,’ said Douglas. ‘I bet it’s the conjuror.’

  ‘Well, I bet it isn’t. I bet they’re not havin’ a conjuror,’ said William. Then, ‘I’m goin’ down to see what it is.’

  This bold statement was received with a gasp of dismay.

  ‘They – they’ll get you!’ said Ginger apprehensively.

  ‘Well, I bet they won’t,’ said William, ‘any more’n if I was an Injun. I can creep down jus’ as quiet’s if I was an Injun. If an Injun wanted to know what they was doin’ he’d jus’ creep down there an’ back an’ nobody’d hear him. Well, that’s what I’m going to do.’

  With deep misgivings, watching his departure with anxious eyes from their hiding-places, the Outlaws let him go.

  William crept on to the landing. The landing was empty. Cautiously he peered over the banister. The stairs were empty. As far as he could see the hall was empty. Very cautiously he crept down the stairs. A door just inside the front door was open and from it came a buzz of conversation. William’s curiosity was aroused. Evidently the party was there and something was going on. William wanted to know what was going on. He crept along the hall and peeped through the hinge of the half-open door. Then he stood motionless, paralysed with amazement. Where was Hubert Lane’s party? This room was full of grown-ups.

  Suddenly the door opened and someone came out.

  ‘Yes, it’s in here,’ she said to William. ‘Go straight in.’

  Before William could resist or think of any excuse or explanation he found that he was being piloted into the room. The room was full of chairs in rows, and the chairs full of people.

  ‘There’s lots of room in the front row,’ said somebody, and William found himself being led up to the lots of room in the front row. He was too astonished to do anything but sit on the chair to which they had led him. He looked around him wildly. In front of him was a table which contained a glass of water and behind which stood a learned-looking, spectacled man, holding a sheaf of papers in his hand. Behind William sat rows of grown-up people. Some he knew and some he didn’t, but all looked earnest and intelligent. A very fat lady and a very fat gentleman had now taken the two seats next to him, hemming him in and cutting off his retreat. The fat lady leaned towards him with a fat smile.

  ‘It’s so nice to see a boy like you taking an interest in this subject,’ she said kindly. ‘You may find some of it a bit above your head, but I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.’

  Upstairs the other Outlaws awaited their leader in breathless suspense. And their leader did not return.

  ‘They’ve got him,’ said Douglas gloomily, ‘I said they would.’

  ‘Well,’ said Ginger, ‘then we’ve gotter go down an’ rescue him, that’s all.’

  At the thought of this long-deferred pitched battle with the Hubert Lanites their spirits rose. They crept on to the landing. The landing was empty. They looked over the banisters. The stairs were empty. They crept down the stairs. The hall was empty. Then suddenly a woman came out of a door near the front door. They turned to flee, but it was too late.

  ‘In here,’ she said pleasantly. ‘Are you with the other little boy? He’s in the front row.’

  Apprehensive, aghast, bewildered, they allowed themselves to be ushered into the room and up to the front row. They sat down on the other side of the fat lady and gentleman. The lecturer was just beginning to lecture.

  Ginger leant across.

  ‘William,’ he said.

  ‘Sh!’ said everyone.

  He ‘Sh’d.’

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen—’ began the lecturer.

  BEHIND THE TABLE STOOD A LEARNED-LOOKING MAN HOLDING A SHEAF OF PAPERS IN HIS HAND.

  It was an interesting lecture – interesting, that is, to a certain type of mind. It did not interest the Outlaws. It abounded in such strange words as ‘ethics’ and ‘utilitarianism’ and ‘Spinoza’ and ‘Cartesians’ and ‘empiricism’ and ‘Nietzsche’ and ‘evolution’. It would not in the most favourable circumstances have interested the Outlaws and these were not the most favourable circumstances.

  ‘IT’S SO NICE TO SEE A BOY LIKE YOU TAKING AN INTEREST IN THIS SUBJECT,’ SAID THE FAT OLD LADY KINDLY. ‘I’M SURE YOU’LL ENJOY IT.’

  William’s paralysis of bewilderment was gradually disappearing and the truth of the matter was gradually dawning on him. This was not Hubert Lane’s party at all. This was a drawing-room meeting given by Mrs Lane, and it was for this that Ginger had heard her ordering chairs and refreshments.

  Moreover, it had been easier to get in than it would be to get out. He doubted whether he could push past the fat lady and gentleman. He doubted whether he dare stir in this densely packed, breathlessly silent room. He was sure they’d turn him back at the door, even if he got as far as that.

  But he decided to have a jolly good try. He remembered a device that had occasionally secured him a temporary retreat
from a tight corner in school. He clapped his handkerchief to his nose as though that organ had suddenly begun to bleed, rose hastily, walked over the fat lady’s toes, fell over the fat gentleman’s umbrella, scrambled up and fled down the room. To his surprise and relief, no one barred his way or questioned the sanguinity of his nose.

  The lecturer was slightly put out by the incident, but quickly recovered himself and continued his discourse. He was discoursing now on Kant. Ginger looked at William’s empty seat. What William had done he could do. As the lecturer was raising his right hand to emphasise the fact that Kant often offends against his own principles, Ginger clapped his handkerchief to his nose and followed his leader’s example, even to the lady’s toes and the gentleman’s umbrella. Hardly had the door closed on him when Douglas, his handkerchief to his nose, made his hasty and noisy exit.

  Henry was left alone. He had not acted quickly enough. He felt certain that no one in the room would believe that his nose was bleeding if he put his handkerchief to that organ and followed his friends now. But – he brightened. There were other bodily afflictions. Puffing out one cheek to its fullest extent, clapping his hand to it and assuming what he fondly imagined to be an expression of extreme agony, he started from his seat and rushed from the room.

  He did not stop till he had reached the garden. There among the bushes crouched William, Ginger and Douglas. They hailed him with joy.

  ‘Look what I’ve got,’ said William gleefully, ‘found it on the hatstand.’

  In the light from the hall he proudly displayed his trophy. It was Hubert Lane’s school cap. Every schoolboy knows that the filching of his cap is the deadliest insult that can be offered him.

  ‘Let’s go home quick,’ said Douglas.

  ‘Jus’ a minute,’ said William.

  A light came from an open window on the other side of the house. William crept round to this noiselessly, followed by the others.

  From the lighted window came a boy’s voice.

  ‘I am looking forward to your party next Thursday, Hubert,’ and Hubert’s answer:

  ‘Well, don’t you tell anyone it’s next Thursday anyway.’

  The Outlaws went home. And as they went they lifted up their strong young voices and chanted:

  ‘Thursday! It’s going to be next Thursday! It’s goin’ to be next Thursday.’

  But next Thursday is another story.

  CHAPTER 12

  WILLIAM STARTS THE HOLIDAYS

  THE Christmas holidays had arrived and William and the other Outlaws whooped their way home from school at the unusual hour of 11 a.m., to the unaffected dismay of their families. They had listened to a stirring address from their form master (who felt as little regret at parting from the Outlaws as the Outlaws felt at parting from him), but they had been more intent upon the unauthorised distribution and mastication of a bag of nuts they had bought on the way to school than upon the high ideals which their form master was holding up for them, and so missed many words of counsel and inspiration which might (or might not) have made a difference to their whole lives.

  Anyway, having finished the nuts (and deposited the shells in the satchel of their enemy, Hubert Lane), the Outlaws leapt out of the school buildings and whooped and scuffled and shouted their way home.

  ‘We’ve broke up!’ yelled William, as he entered the hall, and flung his satchel with a clatter upon the floor.

  Mrs Brown came out of the morning-room, rather pale at this invasion of her usual morning quiet.

  ‘I – I’d forgotten you were breaking up today, William,’ she said. Her tone betrayed no ecstatic joy at the realisation of the fact.

  William turned a somersault, and came into violent collision with a small table which held a vase of flowers.

  ‘Sorry,’ said William, still cheerfully, as he repaired the damage as best he could. (That is to say, he picked up the table, replaced the vase on it, picked up the flowers, put them in the vase – mostly wrong way up – and rubbed the spilt water into the carpet with his foot.)

  ‘Oh, don’t, William!’ moaned his mother. ‘I’ll ring for Emma – your boots are so dirty.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said William again, slightly hurt, ‘I was only tryin’ to help.’

  ‘Haven’t – haven’t you come home rather early?’ said Mrs Brown.

  ‘No,’ said William heartily, ‘we always come out this time breaking-up mornings. We’ve broke up.’ He chanted on a note that made Mrs Brown draw her brows together, and raise her hands to her ears.

  ‘William darling,’ she said plaintively. Then, ‘What are you going to do, dear – just till lunch-time, I mean?’

  There was a note of resigned hopelessness in her voice. Mrs Brown was a woman without any political ambition whatever, but if Mrs Brown had been put in charge of the Education Department of the Government for a month, she would have made several drastic changes without any hesitation. She would have made a law that no holidays should last longer than a week, and if they did, free treatment for nervous breakdown was to be provided for all mothers of families, and that on ‘break-up days’ school should continue until late in the evening. Mrs Brown considered it adding insult to injury to send children home at eleven o’clock in the morning on the last day of term.

  ‘Er – what are you going to do till lunch, dear?’ said Mrs Brown again.

  William considered the possibilities of the universe.

  ‘I might go into the garden an’ practise with my bow and arrow,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, no, dear,’ said Mrs Brown, closing her eyes, ‘please don’t do that! It does annoy your father so when the windows get broken.’

  ‘Oh!’ said William indignantly. ‘I keep explainin’ about that. I wasn’t aimin’ at that window. It was just that my hand slipped jus’ when I was shootin’ it off. I was aimin’ at somethin’ quite diff’rent.’

  ‘Yes, dear,’ said Mrs Brown, ‘but your hand might slip again.’

  ‘No, I don’t think it will,’ said William hopefully. ‘I’ll try an’ keep it steady – and it doesn’t always break windows, you know, even when it slips.’

  ‘No,’ said Mrs Brown. ‘Not the bow and arrows, William,’ and added with consummate tact, ‘You don’t want to risk breaking things so near Christmas, you know, William.’

  There was certainly some sense in that. It was an argument that appealed to William.

  ‘Well,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘there’s the airgun. It’s quite different from the bow and arrows,’ he put in hastily. ‘I think p’raps I oughter keep on practisin’ with the airgun, in case there’s another war.’

  ‘No, William,’ said Mrs Brown. ‘Not the airgun.’ Then tentatively and without much hope, ‘You – you wouldn’t like to do a little quiet school work, would you, William dear, so as to keep your hand in for next term?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ said William quite firmly.

  ‘I think it would be rather a good idea,’ said Mrs Brown, still clinging to the vision of peace that the proposal summoned up to her eyes.

  William considered for a moment in gloomy silence the vision of unadulterated boredom that the proposal summoned up to his eyes. Then he brightened.

  ‘I don’t think so, mother,’ he said at last. ‘I don’t think it fair on the other boys to go workin’ in the holidays.’

  While Mrs Brown was slowly recovering from this startling vision of William conscientiously refraining from holiday work for the sake of his class-mates, William had yet another idea.

  ‘S’pose I try to mend that clock that’s gone wrong – the one in the dining-room,’ he said brightly.

  Mrs Brown groaned again. William had hoped that she’d forgotten the last occasion he’d tried to mend a clock, but she hadn’t.

  William had certainly succeeded in reducing it into its component parts, but having done that had not been able to resist the temptation of trying to make a motor-boat of the component parts, and when finally they were taken to the clock-maker, it was discovered that three or four
important component parts were missing.

  William suspected a duck who had been on the pond when William had launched his motor-boat and the pond had taken the motor-boat to its bosom. William insisted that he had salvaged all the parts that the muddy bosom of the pond could be induced to yield, and that if there were any missing that duck must have eaten them.

  William watched the duck with morbid interest for some days and imagined several times that it looked pale and unhappy. Anyway, the upshot of it all was that William’s father had to buy a new clock, and that William went without pocket-money for several months. But all this had been more than a year ago. William wished that the memories of grown-ups were not so inordinately long. He’d have liked to try his hand at a clock again.

  ‘No, William,’ said Mrs Brown, ‘most certainly not.’

  ‘Well, what shall I do?’ said William, slightly aggrieved.

  Mrs Brown had an idea.

  ‘Well, William, it’s so near Christmas time – wouldn’t you like to be thinking out some little presents for people?’

  ‘I’ve hardly any money,’ said William, and added enigmatically, ‘what with windows and things.’

  ‘Well,’ said Mrs Brown encouragingly, ‘it isn’t the money you spend on them that people value. It’s the thought behind it. I’m sure that with a little thought you could make some very nice presents for your relations and friends.’

  William considered the idea in silence for some minutes. Then he brightened. It seemed to appeal to him.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll go an’ think upstairs, shall I?’

  Mrs Brown drew a breath of relief.

  ‘Yes, William,’ she said, ‘I think that will be very nice.’

  The plan seemed to succeed beyond Mrs Brown’s fondest dreams. She did not see or hear of William for the rest of the morning. It was almost as if he were still at school. He appeared at lunch, but was silent and thoughtful. A sense of peace stole over Mrs Brown.

  After lunch, Ethel and Robert came to her in the morning-room.