William - the Dictator Read online

  “William. How old are you?”

  It turned out that Ralph was thirteen, and, further, that his tastes and William’s were identical. They spent the afternoon ranging the countryside together, William blissfully happy in the new friendship.

  “Come and see my rabbits,” said Ralph finally. “They’re prize ones.”

  William hesitated.

  “There—there isn’t any other boy but you in those new houses, is there?” he said carelessly.

  “No,” said Ralph. “Worse luck! They’re all grownup but one awful soppy kid. You’ll come and see my rabbits, won’t you?”

  The temptation was irresistible. Probably the little girl wouldn’t see him pass the house, and anyway, even if she did, the mysterious Montague probably wouldn’t be there. Perhaps he was just someone she’d imagined. Girls did silly things like that. His courage restored, he accompanied Ralph down the lane. To his dismay Lucinda stood at the gate. He was passing her with a muttered shamefaced greeting (for it was clear that Ralph was magnificently ignoring her existence), when she suddenly cried out: “There he is! Why don’t you fight him?”

  “Where?” said William, looking round.

  “There!” she cried excitedly, pointing at Ralph.

  “He’s not called Montague,” said William.

  “He is. He is,” said Lucinda, in a high-pitched squeak of excitement.

  “You’re not, are you?” said William to Ralph.

  “Well, I am in a way,” admitted Ralph, looking puzzled, “but I don’t see . . .”

  Lucinda stamped her foot, angry eyes fixed on William.

  “You promised to fight him and now you won’t. You said you weren’t afraid of him and you are. You’re a coward, that’s what you are. You’re afraid of him.”

  “I’m not afraid of him,” said William with spirit.

  “Well, go on. Fight him, then. You said you would. You’re a coward and a story-teller.”

  “I’m not,” said William.

  “Well, fight him, then. You’re afraid of him.” She pointed a finger and began to jeer. “Cowardy cowardy custard!”

  “I’m not afraid,” said William hotly. He squared up to Ralph.

  “Come on,” he said.

  “All right,” said Ralph.

  He didn’t know what the fight was about, but one could always ask that afterwards.

  William’s fist shot out. Ralph parried it and got one in on William’s eye that sent him rolling on to the ground. He got up and returned to the attack. Again his fist went wild and Ralph’s got him neatly—this time on the nose—and felled him. After the third time Ralph said, “Want any more?” William gasped, “No, thanks,” and the two of them shook hands. Then William turned a fast-closing eye apprehensively on to Lucinda. She was sobbing with rage and chagrin.

  “You said you’d b-b-bash him up,” she sobbed, “an’ it’s you that’s g-g-got b-b-bashed up. You’re a horrid boy and a story-teller and I’ll never speak to you again.”

  She turned and ran, still sobbing, into the house.

  “What’s it all about?” said the mystified Ralph.

  “I don’t know,” said William. “She told me to fight you an’ I said I would. I didn’t know it was you.”

  “She’s batty,” said Ralph with careless conviction. “All girls are. Come on and see the rabbits.”

  As far as Ralph was concerned, that was the end of the incident. Girls didn’t exist for him, and he continued to ignore Lucinda, thereby increasing daily the attraction he had for her and the hatred she bore him. William and he got on excellently. Together they ran wild over the countryside, ranged the woods and navigated (with only partial success) all the neighbouring ponds. Together they watched the arrival of the campers—the South London Boys’ Guild, a band of young toughs who marched in procession, two and two, from the station, lustily singing camp songs.

  After that it was their daily practice to go down to the field and watch the campers. Relations, of course, were soon established, relations which were—naturally, perhaps, in the circumstances—of a hostile character. William and Ralph jeered at the campers through the bars of the gates, pretending to offer them nuts and buns, and were pursued by furious bands of South London toughs, who, however, could not compete with them in fleetness of foot. They climbed a tree that overhung the camping-ground and hurled insults at the “cooks” who were preparing the midday meal just below. Isolated conflicts took place in which William and Ralph managed either to come off victors or escape altogether.

  All William’s boredom had vanished. He didn’t even miss the Outlaws. Ralph’s two-year seniority made his friendship a very flattering one, and he was as daring and regardless of consequences as William himself. But William couldn’t quite forget Lucinda. He liked her. She’d been kind to him. He’d promised to bash Ralph all up for her, and he hadn’t been able to. Quite obviously his name was now mud in Lucinda’s eyes. When they met in the neighbourhood of Ralph’s home she turned her head aside with an expression of supreme disgust, wrinkling up her small nose as though some rank smell had assailed it. Ralph did not notice this because Ralph did not notice her at all. To Ralph, Lucinda didn’t exist.

  But the knowledge of Lucinda’s scorn was a nagging discomfort at William’s heart, a perpetual pinprick in his self-esteem. He’d enjoyed basking in the sunshine of her favour. The knowledge of her contempt was a very bitter one. Meantime, however, there was the countryside to be explored and hostilities against the South London toughs to be carried on with the exciting Ralph.

  The last entertainment soon overreached itself, for a large man in spectacles and shorts had called on the parents of both Ralph and William to complain of the persistent annoyance that they were causing his campers. Both sets of parents were duly horrified and enraged.

  “How any son of mine can behave so like a vulgar guttersnipe,” said Mr. Brown, “is a mystery to me.” And Ralph’s father said pretty much the same to him, just as, thirty-odd years ago, their fathers had said pretty much the same to them.

  The two were finally forbidden even to approach the camping field or to address any one of the campers.

  “Remember, you are not to go into the lane that skirts the field on any excuse whatsoever, and you are never to speak to any of those boys again.”

  “Oh, well,” said Ralph, meeting William next day, “there’s plenty else to do.”

  But somehow the “plenty else” had lost its savour. They tried tracking each other through the woods and riding Farmer Jenks’s prize pigs and getting on to the roof of the empty house, but there was no zest in these things. The camping-field drew them as by a magnet.

  “We can’t go into the lane,” said William, “but I bet we can see them all right from the field the other side of the lane. That won’t be in the lane.”

  They made their way to the field and tried to see through the two hedges, but it wasn’t easy, and the glimpses of their foes were tantalisingly inadequate.

  “There’s Fatty carryin’ that pail,” said William. (They had endowed all their foes with opprobrious nicknames.) “Must be his turn to help with breakfast. Who’s with him?”

  “Can’t see,” said Ralph. ‘‘Let’s get just a bit nearer . . . I say! We needn’t go in the lane exactly, but we could stand on the grass at the edge of it. It’s practically in the hedge and the hedge isn’t the lane.” This reasoning appealed to William, and they scraped their way through the hedge to the lane and stood on the grass by the roadside, trying to watch the campers. Maddeningly indistinct figures passed to and fro. “Come on,” said William. “We might as well go the other side of the lane. It’ll be on the grass by the hedge, same as this, and the grass isn’t the lane, same as you said. They only said we’d not to go in the lane.”

  “All right,” said Ralph. “An’ we can almost jump over the lane so we won’t have gone in it at all.”

  They jumped to the grass at the other side, and now they were in their old position, with only a hedg
e between them and the South Londoners.

  “It’s all right,” said Ralph. “We won’t say anything to them. We won’t even let ’em know we’re here, an’ that’s just the same as not being here.”

  This again was the sort of reasoning that appealed to William.

  “’Course it is,” he said. “They jus’ meant that we’d not got to call out at ’em. Well, we’re not goin’ to, so it’s all right. Let’s go along to the gate. We’ll see better there. We’ll keep behind the hedge, so they won’t see us, but we’ll be able to see ’em better.”

  Having thus satisfied those hardy organs that did duty as their consciences, they crept along behind the hedge to the gate and, crouching down, watched under cover of the hedge, whispering excitedly as the better known of their foes appeared and disappeared among the crowd of boys near the gate.

  “There’s ole Fatty again . . . Look! There’s ole Scarecrow. He’s getting up a game of cricket . . . There’s Goggles . . . What’s he doin’? . . . Oh, I say! Look, there’s ole Bandy Legs . . . Got his arm in a sling . . . ’Spect a ball hit his bat by mistake when he was playin’ cricket, an’ it gave him such a shock it sprained his arm . . . There’s ole Flat-face . . . He’s limping . . . Must have sprained his ankle running away from a moth . . . He’s scared stiff of moths . . . There’s ole Nosey . . . Looks sick, don’t he? . . . ’Spect he couldn’t manage to pinch someone else’s breakfast as well as his own to-day . . . Look at ole Beefy . . .”

  Gradually the two had come out of the cover of the hedge and were standing on the bottom rung of the gate, leaning over the top. Gradually the comments, from being furtive whispers, became insults hurled at the tops of their voices.

  “This way to Whipsnade,” shouted William.

  “Penny each to feed the monkeys,” shouted Ralph.

  “Watch the monkeys tryin’ to play cricket.”

  The cricket game was in progress just near the gate, and each failure of fielder or batsman was greeted with derisive cheers and ironical comments by William and Ralph.

  Suddenly, as at a preconcerted signal, the players left the game and rushed towards the gate. A young stalwart thrust his fist into William’s face, but overbalanced with the effort and fell down. William turned to flee, followed by Ralph, and did not stop till he had put several fields between himself and the camping-ground. Then he realised that Ralph was no longer with him. There was in fact no sign of him, Cautiously he retraced his steps.

  It wasn’t till he’d almost reached the camping-ground that he met him, and stood gazing at him in silent horror. His nose was bleeding, his lip was out, both eyes were rapidly blackening and closing. There was a large bruise on his forehead and he limped painfully as he walked.

  “Gosh!” gasped William at last.

  “Yes,” agreed Ralph bitterly. “The whole lot of ’em set on me and I hadn’t a chance. An’ it’s nothin’ to what my father’ll do to me when he finds I’ve been there again.”

  This aspect of the affair struck William for the first time.

  “You’ve got a jolly black eye yourself,” went on Ralph with a certain satisfaction. “I bet you’ll get in as big a row as me.”

  “We needn’t say they did it,” said William. “They won’t say anythin’ about it ’cause they aren’t supposed to fight. It’s one of their rules.”

  “But what can we say?”

  “Let’s say we got tossed by a bull.”

  “No, we can’t. Farmer Jenks’s bull’s locked up an’ there aren’t any more round here.”

  “Let’s say a train ran into us.”

  “No, these don’t look like train marks. Besides, that would be just as bad, ’cause we’ve been told not to go on the embankment.”

  “Tell you what!”

  “What?”

  “Let’s say we fought each other!”

  Ralph considered the suggestion without enthusiasm. “But you’ve only got a black eye,” he objected, “and I’m in an awful mess. I bet if we’d fought each other I’d have had nothing at all and you’d have been all messed up.”

  “Yes,” agreed William, “but it’s better than gettin’ in a row for goin’ there again.”

  “It is for you,” said Ralph morosely. It was humiliating enough to have been so completely beaten even against overwhelming odds, but to have to attribute his injuries to a boy several inches shorter and two years his junior . . .

  “Very well,” he said at last, reluctantly. “It’s better than getting in another row, I s’pose. I wouldn’t go near their beastly field again, not if they paid me to, would you?”

  “No,” said William, “anyway, they aren’t likely to.” William’s spirits were rising. For a glorious possibility had suddenly occurred to him. At last he could win back Lucinda’s good graces, the loss of which had caused him so much secret chagrin. At last he would seem to have done her bidding. Ostensibly he and Ralph had engaged in mortal combat, and there was no doubt at all who had come off victor. He saw Lucinda again smiling at him sweetly, gazing up at him admiringly. He’d go and play in her back garden again on the afternoons when Ralph went out with his mother, as he sometimes had to . . .

  He accompanied Ralph home. To his intense gratification Lucinda was standing at her front window. She watched them, open-mouthed with interest and amazement. Certainly neither of them was a sightly object, but Ralph was horrible. William put on the swagger of the victor as he passed the window.

  He took his leave of Ralph at his gate.

  “You’d better not come in,” said Ralph. “They’ll only make a worse fuss if they see you, too.”

  Ralph walked up the garden path, turned at the door to wave farewell, and disappeared.

  Lucinda was already hastening down the garden path. William approached her with a swagger.

  “Well, you told me to, didn’t you?” he said. “I didn’t know why you wanted me to, but when I say I’ll do a thing I jolly well do it.”

  “Did you do that to him?” gasped Lucinda.

  William shrugged with the air of one who modestly accepts a sign of distinction.

  “An’ anyone else you want all bashed up you’ve only gotter ask me,” he said. “I wasn’t tryin’ that time you saw me. I wanted to do it prop’ly sometime when you weren’t there. He’s bigger’n me, but I never think of that when I want to bash someone all up. I—”

  He realised at this point that there was something strange in Lucinda’s expression. It was not the complacent expression of one whose champion has just avenged her on her enemy. The light in her eye was not one of admiration. He tried to dodge but it was too late.

  “You horrid boy!” she screamed. “You beastly bully! You wicked, cruel boy! I hate you—I hate you. I’ll never forgive you as long as I live . . .”

  Biting, scratching, tugging at his hair, she drove him down the road . . .

  Chapter 2 – What’s in a Name?

  The idea of a Boy Sanctuary, which had occurred to William on the day when he had set out on his (never completed) tour of the world, continued to simmer idly at the back of his mind. It was the sight of a Bird Sanctuary, complete with coconuts, nuts, pieces of cake, bird tables, and bird baths, that had suggested the idea. Why should birds be thus petted and pampered, he had thought, and boys neglected? It wasn’t fair. His mind’s eye saw a pleasant strip of woodland, with sweets and cakes and biscuits neatly ranged on “boy tables”, doughnuts hanging from the trees, cream buns concealed among the moss, “boy baths” full of lemonade or ginger pop. It was an attractive picture, and he couldn’t think why it had never occurred to any of the grim-faced old ladies who took such care to lay out crumbs and nuts for birds, to lay out a few dainties for passing boys, on the same principle. He even suggested it to one or two of them, but the suggestion was so coldly received that he did not repeat it.

  “Birds!” he said to himself indignantly. “Can’t do enough for birds, but boys can starve, for all they care! Birds what haven’t anythin’ to do but play about an
’ enjoy themselves all day long, singin’ an’ such like, an’ we’ve gotter go to school an’ work till we’re wore out, an’ no one ever gives us anythin’.”

  One old lady even took in a magazine about them, called Our Feathered Friends. William had had serious thoughts of starting a rival called, Our Suited Friends, dealing entirely with boys and their interests, but had judged from the general attitude that it would not have a large circulation, and had reluctantly dropped the idea. Still, though he realised that there was little hope of his Boy Sanctuary’s being taken up as a philanthropic scheme, he was loath to abandon it altogether. It might have possibilities as a commercial proposition. A small piece of one of the neighbouring woods hung with dainties . . . a penny admission charged . . . But the idea bristled with difficulties. Clients would be sure to enter without paying their penny, or, if they did pay their penny, to eat more than their pennyworth.

  It was while he was wandering over the countryside, cogitating this problem, that he came upon the empty house and garden down the lane off the Jenks’s farm. It was called Gorse View, and seemed to have been empty for some time, for the To Be Sold notice was faded and weather-beaten. There were no neighbours to object to his going into the garden, so he went into it and spent a very pleasant afternoon there. It was not a large garden, but it was what William considered a very sensible one. It consisted of a lawn in front of the house, with a thick spinney running down one side of it. A small gate led into the spinney from the lane, and an overgrown path wound through it among tall trees and rampant brambles. An ideal place for the Boy Sanctuary. The gate would regulate the stream of clients and ensure the payment of the entrance fee; the dainties could be half concealed among the moss and brambles and hung from the branches of the trees. Some trees had been cut down, and their stumps would afford convenient “boy tables”.

  There was even a battered bird bath on the lawn, which William lugged into the spinney and set by the side of the path. That, of course, would be filled with lemonade, and the penny entrance fee would include two laps each. But still the difficulties were enormous. How was he to prevent the clients from eating each more than his due share, and, most difficult of all, how was he to provide the necessary capital for floating the scheme? Though in imagination William saw the woodland path set out with buns and sweets and cakes, and a neat procession of clients entering the little gate and duly paying their pennies to William as they entered, the vision had that hazy unreality that belongs to visions difficult, if not impossible, of attainment. However, William thought it quite worth discussing with his Outlaws, and he would have discussed it that very evening if everything else had not been driven out of their minds by the sight of a man in a black shirt standing on a wooden box in the middle of the village, just outside the Blue Lion, shouting hoarsely at a small and somewhat bewildered audience. The Outlaws promptly joined the audience. They couldn’t make out much of what the speaker was saying, but he looked very noble and magnificent, perched up aloft on his wooden box, in his black shirt, shouting and throwing his arms about. It made William and the Outlaws long to be up there, too, shouting and throwing their arms about. Then two other men in black shirts joined him, and they all saluted each other in a fiercely military fashion, after which they distributed leaflets, marched to a small sports car that was waiting for them, and drove off at a dizzy speed.William and the Outlaws watched wistfully. The salutes, the shouting, the final departure in the very noisy sports car, had all been most impressive. They made ordinary life seem dull and uneventful. They even made William’s Boy Sanctuary seem childish and absurd. No, he wouldn’t waste his time over things like Boy Sanctuaries. He’d stand on a box and shout and wave his arms about and salute people.