Still William Page 19

  Oh, surely he deserved a bit of food after all he’d been through. His eyes shone eagerly and hungrily through his horn-rimmed spectacles. If he just undid his muffler enough to eat a bit of fruit salad – and that chocolate cake – and the one with green icing – oh, and that one with nuts on the top – surely eating just a little like that wouldn’t give him away. He couldn’t starve for ever.

  And what was going to happen to him, anyway? He couldn’t stay all his life in a bath-chair in that garden starving and growling at people – he was jolly sick of it already, but he didn’t know what to do – they’d have to find out sometime – and he didn’t know what they’d do when they did find out – and he was sick of the whole thing – and it was all Ginger’s fault going off and leaving him and— He looked across the lawn at them. His gaze through the horn-rimmed spectacles was wistful.

  To his horror he saw Emmeline being launched across the lawn to him by Frederica. Emmeline wore a super-sweet expression and carried in her hand a bunch of roses. She laid them on the bath-chair with an artless and confiding smile.

  ‘Dear, great great-Uncle George,’ she said in her squeaky little voice. ‘We’re all so glad to see you and love you so much an’—’

  The elders were watching the tableau with proud smiles, and William was summoning his breath for a really ferocious growl when suddenly everyone turned round. A little old man, purple with anger, had appeared running up the drive.

  ‘Where is he?’ screamed the little old man in fury. ‘They said he came in here – my bath-chair – where is he? – The thief – the blackguard – how dare he? – I’ll teach him – where is he?’

  William did not wait to be taught. With admirable presence of mind he tore off his wrappings, flung away his horn-rimmed spectacles, and dashed with all his might through the opening in the hedge and across the back lawn. The little old man caught up a trowel that the gardener had left near a bed and flung it after William. It caught him neatly on the ankle and changed his swift flight to a limp.

  ‘Dear Uncle George,’ cooed Frederica to the old man, ‘I don’t know what’s happened, but I always said you could walk quite well if you liked.’

  With a howl of fury the old man turned on her, snatched up the bowl of fruit salad and emptied it over her.

  Meanwhile the muscular young medical student had overtaken William just as he was disappearing through the gate and in spite of William’s struggles was administering fairly adequate physical correction . . . Occasionally Nemesis did overtake William.

  The next day William met Ginger on the way to school.

  ‘Well, you’re brave, aren’t you?’ he said sarcastically. ‘Goin’ off an’ leavin’ me an’ not rescuin’ me nor nothin’.’

  ‘I like that,’ said Ginger indignantly. ‘What could I do, I’d like to know? You would ride an’ me push. ’F you’d bin unselfish an’ pushed an’ me rode you’d ’ve got off.’

  This was unanswerable, but while William was trying to think out an answer Ginger said scornfully:

  ‘You still practisin’ havin’ a false leg? I stopped clickin’ ever so long ago. I should think you was tired of that old game.’

  ‘Well, I’m not!’ said William with great self-possession. ‘I’m goin’ to go on some time yet jus’ to show I can.’

  Just then Emmeline appeared on the road, wearing the horn-rimmed spectacles.

  ‘I say, those is ours!’ said Ginger.

  ‘Oh, no!’ said Emmeline with a shrill triumphant laugh. ‘I found them on our front lawn. They’re mine now. You ask William Brown how I found them on our front lawn. But they’re mine now. So there!’

  For a moment William was nonplussed. Then a beatific smile overspread his freckled face.

  ‘Dear great great-Uncle George!’ he mimicked in a shrill falsetto. ‘We’re all so glad to see you – we love you so much.’

  Emmeline gave a howl of anger and ran down the road holding her horn-rimmed spectacles on as she ran.

  ‘Boo-hoo!’ she sobbed. ‘Nasty William Brown! Comin’ into our garden an’ breathin’ our air an’ runnin’ over our beds an’ makin’ Uncle George cross an’ wastin’ our fruit salad an’ bein’ nasty to me – Nasty William Brown – they’re my spectacles, they is – Boo-hoo!’

  ‘I say, what happened yesterday?’ said Ginger when she had disappeared.

  ‘Oh, I almost forget,’ said William evasively. ‘I growled at ’em an’ scared ’em no end an’ I didn’t get any tea an’ he threw somethin’ at me’ – Oh, a lot of things like that – I almost forget – But,’ with sudden interest, ‘how much did she give you?’

  ‘Sixpence,’ said Ginger proudly, taking it out of his pocket.

  ‘Come on!’ said William joyfully, giving a cheerful little limp forward. ‘Come on an’ let’s spend it.’

  CHAPTER 14

  WILLIAM AND SAINT VALENTINE

  William was, as not infrequently, under a cloud. His mother had gone to put some socks into one of his bedroom drawers and had found that most of the drawer space was occupied by insects of various kinds, including a large stag beetle, and that along the side of the drawer was their larder, consisting of crumby bits of bread and a little pool of marmalade.

  ‘But it eats marmalade,’ pleaded William. ‘The stag beetle does. I know it does. The marmalade gets a little less every day.’

  ‘Because it’s soaking into the wood,’ said Mrs Brown sternly. ‘That’s why. I don’t know why you do such things, William!’

  ‘But they’re doing no harm,’ said William. ‘They’re friends of mine. They know me. The stag beetle does anyway and the others will soon. I’m teaching the stag beetle tricks . . . Honest, it knows me and it knows its name. Call ‘Albert’ to it and see if it moves.’

  ‘I shall do nothing of the sort, William. Take the creatures out at once. I shall have to scrub the drawers and have everything washed. You’ve got marmalade and crumbs all over your socks and handkerchiefs.’

  ‘Well, I moved ’em right away when I put them in. They’ve sort of spread back.’

  ‘Why ever didn’t you keep the things outside?’

  ‘I wanted to have ’em and play with ’em at nights an’ mornin’s.’

  ‘And here’s one of them dead!’

  ‘I hope it didn’t die of anythin’ catchin’,’ said William anxiously. ‘I shun’t like Albert to get anythin’. There’s no reason for ’em to die. They’ve got plenty of food an’ plenty of room to play about in an’ air gets in through the keyhole.’

  ‘Take them away!’

  William lovingly gathered up his stag beetle and woodlice and centipedes and earwigs and took them downstairs, leaving his mother groaning over the crumby marmalady drawer . . .

  He put them into cardboard boxes and punched holes in the tops. He put Albert, the gem of the collection, in a small box in his pocket.

  Then it began to rain and he came back to the house.

  There was nothing to do . . .

  He wandered from room to room. No one was in. The only sounds were the sounds of the rain and of his mother furiously scrubbing at the drawer upstairs. He wandered into the kitchen. It was empty. On the table by the window was a row of jam jars freshly filled and covered. His mother had made jam that morning. William stood by the table, half sprawling over it, resting his head on his hands and watched the rain disconsolately. There was a small knife on the table. William took it up and, still watching the rain, absent-mindedly ‘nicked’ in all the taut parchment covers one by one. He was thinking of Albert. As he nicked in the parchment, he was vaguely conscious of a pleasant sensation like walking through heaped-up fallen leaves or popping fuchsia buds or breaking ice or treading on nice fat acorns . . . He was vaguely sorry when the last one was ‘nicked’.

  Then his mother came in.

  ‘William!’ she screamed as she saw the jam jars.

  ‘What’ve I done now?’ said William innocently. ‘Oh . . . those! I jus’ wasn’t thinking what I was doin’. Sor
ry!’

  Mrs Brown sat down weakly on a kitchen chair.

  ‘I don’t think anyone ever had a boy like you ever before, William,’ she said with deep emotion. ‘The work of hours . . . And it’s after time for you to get ready for Miss Lomas’s class. Do go, and then perhaps I’ll get a little peace!’

  Miss Lomas lived at the other end of the village. She held a Bible class for the Sons and Daughters of Gentlefolk every Saturday afternoon. She did it entirely out of the goodness of her heart, and she had more than once regretted the goodness of her heart since that Son of Gentlefolk known to the world as William Brown had joined her class. She had worked hard to persuade Mrs Brown to send him. She thought that she could influence William for good. She realised when William became a regular attendant of her class that she had considerably overestimated her powers. William could only be persuaded to join the class because most of his friends, not without much exertion of maternal authority, went there every Saturday. But something seemed to have happened to the class since William joined it. The beautiful atmosphere was destroyed. No beautiful atmosphere was proof against William. Every Saturday Miss Lomas hoped that something would have happened to William so that he could not come, and every Saturday William hoped equally fervently that something would have happened to Miss Lomas so that she could not take the class. There was something dispirited and hopeless in their greeting of each other . . .

  William took his seat in the dining-room where Miss Lomas always held her class. He glanced round at his fellow students, greeting his friends Ginger and Henry and Douglas with a hideous contortion of his face . . .

  Then he took a large nut out of his pocket and cracked it with his teeth.

  ‘Not in here, William,’ said Miss Lomas faintly.

  ‘I was goin’ to put the bits of shell into my pocket,’ said William. ‘I wasn’t goin’ to put ’em on your carpet or anything, but ’f you don’t want me to’s all right,’ he said obligingly, putting nut and dismembered shell into his pocket.

  ‘Now we’ll say our verses,’ said Miss Lomas brightly but keeping a fascinated apprehensive eye on William. ‘William, you begin.’

  ‘ ’Fraid I din’t learn ’em,’ said William very politely. ‘I was goin’ to last night an’ I got out my Bible an’ I got readin’ ’bout Jonah in the whale’s belly an’ I thought maybe it’d do me more good than St Stephen’s speech an’ it was ever so much more int’restin’.’

  ‘That will do, William,’ said Miss Lomas. ‘We’ll – er – all take our verses for granted this afternoon, I think. Now, I want to give you a little talk on Brotherly Love.’

  ‘Who’s Saint Valentine?’ said William who was burrowing in his prayer book.

  ‘Why, William?’ said Miss Lomas patiently.

  ‘Well, his day seems to be comin’ this month,’ said William.

  Miss Lomas, with a good deal of confusion, launched into a not very clear account of the institution of Saint Valentine’s Day.

  ‘Well, I don’t think much of him’s a saint,’ was William’s verdict, as he took out another nut and absent-mindedly cracked it, ‘writin’ soppy letters to girls instead of gettin’ martyred prop’ly like Peter an’ the others.’

  Miss Lomas put her hand to her head.

  ‘You misunderstand me, William,’ she said. ‘What I meant to say was— Well, suppose we leave Saint Valentine till later, and have our little talk on Brotherly Love first . . . Ow-w-w!’

  Albert’s box had been accidentally opened in William’s pocket, and Albert was now discovered taking a voyage of discovery up Miss Lomas’s jumper. Miss Lomas’s spectacles fell off. She tore Albert off and rushed from the room.

  William gathered up Albert and carefully examined him. ‘She might have hurt him, throwing him about like that,’ he said sternly. ‘She oughter be more careful.’

  Then he replaced Albert tenderly in his box.

  ‘Give us a nut,’ said Ginger.

  Soon all the Sons and Daughters of Gentlefolk were cracking nuts, and William was regaling them with a racy account of Jonah in the whale’s belly, and trying to entice Albert to show off his tricks . . .

  ‘Seems to me,’ said William at last thoughtfully, looking round the room, ‘we might get up a good game in this room . . . something sort of quiet, I mean, jus’ till she comes back.’

  But the room was mercifully spared one of William’s ‘quiet’ games by the entrance of Miss Dobson, Miss Lomas’s cousin, who was staying with her. Miss Dobson was very young and very pretty. She had short golden curls and blue eyes and small white teeth and an attractive smile.

  ‘My cousin’s not well enough to finish the lesson,’ she said. ‘So I’m going to read to you till it’s time to go home. Now, let’s be comfortable. Come and sit on the hearthrug. That’s right. I’m going to read to you Scalped by the Reds.’

  William drew a breath of delight.

  At the end of the first chapter he had decided that he wouldn’t mind coming to this sort of Bible class every day.

  At the end of the second he had decided to marry Miss Dobson as soon as he grew up . . .

  When William woke up the next morning his determination to marry Miss Dobson was unchanged. He had previously agreed quite informally to marry Joan Crewe, his friend and playmate and adorer, but Joan was small and dark haired and rather silent. She was not gloriously grown-up and tall and fair and vivacious. William was aware that marriage must be preceded by courtship, and that courtship was an arduous business. It was not for nothing that William had a sister who was acknowledged to be the beauty of the neighbourhood, and a brother who was generally involved in a passionate if short-lived affaire d’amour. William had ample opportunities of learning how it was done. So far he had wasted these opportunities or only used them in a spirit of mockery and ridicule, but now he determined to use them seriously and to the full.

  He went to the garden shed directly after breakfast and discovered that he had made the holes in his cardboard boxes rather too large and the inmates had all escaped during the night. It was a blow, but William had more serious business on hand than collecting insects. And he still had Albert. He put his face down to where he imagined Albert’s ear to be and yelled ‘Albert’ with all the force of his lungs. Albert moved – in fact scuttled wildly up the side of his box.

  ‘Well, he cert’n’ly knows his name now,’ said William with a sigh of satisfaction. ‘It’s took enough trouble to teach him that. I’ll go on with tricks now.’

  He went to school after that. Albert accompanied him, but was confiscated by the French master just as William and Ginger were teaching him a trick. The trick was to climb over a pencil, and Albert, who was labouring under a delusion that freedom lay beyond the pencil, was picking it up surprisingly well. William handed him to the French master shut up in his box, and was slightly comforted for his loss by seeing the master on opening it get his fingers covered with Albert’s marmalade ration for the day, which was enclosed in the box with Albert. The master emptied Albert out of the window and William spent ‘break’ in fruitless search for him, calling ‘Albert!’ in his most persuasive tones . . . in vain, for Albert had presumably returned to his mourning family for a much needed ‘rest cure’.

  ‘Well, I call it stealin’,’ said William sternly, ‘takin’ beetles that belong to other people . . . It’d serve ’em right if I turned a Bolshevist.’

  ‘I don’t suppose they’d mind what you turned,’ said Ginger unfeelingly but with perfect truth.

  It was a half-holiday that afternoon, and to the consternation of his family William announced his intention of staying home instead of, as usual, joining his friends the Outlaws in their lawless pursuits.

  ‘But, William, some people are coming to tea,’ said Mrs Brown helplessly.

  ‘I know,’ said William. ‘I thought p’raps you’d like me to be in to help with ’em.’

  The thought of this desire for William’s social help, attributed to her by William, left Mrs Brown speec
hless. But Ethel was not speechless.

  ‘Well, of course,’ she remarked to the air in front of her, ‘that means that the whole afternoon is spoilt.’

  William could think of no better retort to this than: ‘Oh, yes, it does, does it? Well I never!’

  Though he uttered these words in a tone of biting sarcasm and with what he fondly imagined to be a sarcastic smile, even William felt them to be rather feeble and added hastily in his normal manner:

  ‘ ’Fraid I’ll eat up all the cakes, I s’pose? Well, I will if I get the chance.’

  ‘William, dear,’ said Mrs Brown, roused to effort by the horror of the vision thus called up, ‘do you think it’s quite fair to your friends to desert them like this? It’s the only half-holiday in the week, you know.’

  ‘Oh, ’s all right,’ said William. ‘I’ve told ’em I’m not comin’. They’ll get on all right.’

  ‘Oh, yes, they’ll be all right,’ said Ethel in a meaningful voice and William could think of no adequate reply.

  But William was determined to be at home that afternoon. He knew that Laurence Hinlock, Ethel’s latest admirer, was expected and William wished to study at near quarters the delicate art of courtship. He realised that he could not marry Miss Dobson for many years to come, but he did not see why his courtship of her should not begin at once . . . He was going to learn how it was done from Laurence Hinlock and Ethel . . .

  He spent the earlier part of the afternoon collecting a few more insects for his empty boxes. He was still mourning bitterly the loss of Albert. He deliberately did not catch a stag beetle that crossed his path because he was sure that it was not Albert. He found an earwig that showed distinct signs of intelligence and put it in a large, airy box with a spider for company and some leaves and crumbs and a bit of raspberry jam for nourishment. He did not give it marmalade because marmalade reminded him so poignantly of Albert . . .