William the Good Read online

  ‘List,’ said the heroine, ‘how the thunder rages in the valley.’

  The thunder raged and continued to rage. For some minutes the cast remained silent and motionless – except for facial contortions expressive of horror and despair – waiting for the thunder to abate, but as it showed no signs of stopping they tried to proceed. It was, however, raging so violently that no one could hear a word, so they had to stop again.

  At last even its maker tired of it and it died away. The play proceeded. Behind the scenes William smiled again to himself. That had been a jolly good bit of thunder. He’d really enjoyed that. And it would jolly well let them all know he was there even if he wasn’t dressed up and on the stage like the others. His next cue was the horses’ hooves, and William was feeling a little nervous about that. The sound of horses’ hooves is made with a coconut, and though William had managed to take his coconut (purchased for him by Mrs Bruce Monkton-Bruce) about with him all the time the play was in rehearsal, he had as recently as last night succumbed to temptation and eaten it. He didn’t quite know what to do about the horses’ hooves. He hadn’t dared to tell anyone about it. But still he thought he’d be able to manage it. Here it was coming now.

  ‘Listen,’ Miss Gwladwyn was saying. ‘I hear the sound of horses’ hooves.’

  Then in the silence came the sound of a tin tray being hit slowly, loudly, regularly. The audience gave a yell of laughter. William felt annoyed. He hadn’t meant it to sound like that. It wasn’t anything to laugh at, anyway. He showed his annoyance by another deafening and protracted thunderstorm.

  When this had died away the play proceeded. William’s part in that scene was officially over. But William did not wish to withdraw from the public eye. It occurred to him that in all probability the wind and the thunder still continued. Yes, somebody mentioned again that it was a wild night to be out in. Come to that, the war must be going on all the time. There were probably battles going on all over the place. He’d better throw a few squibs about and make a bit more wind and thunder. He set to work with commendable thoroughness.

  At last the end of the scene came. Mr Fleuster drew the curtains and chaos reigned. Most of the cast attacked William, but some of them were attacking each other, and quite a lot of them were attacking the prompter. They had on several occasions forgotten their words and not once had the prompter come to their rescue. On one occasion they had wandered on to Act II and stayed there a considerable time. The prompter’s plea that she’d lost her place right at the very beginning and hadn’t been able to find it again was not accepted as an excuse. Then Miss Hemmersley was annoyed with Miss Featherstone for giving her the wrong cues all the way through, and Miss Gwladwyn was annoyed with Miss Greene-Joanes for cutting into her monologue, and Miss Greene-Joanes was annoyed with Mrs Bruce Monkton-Bruce for standing just where she prevented the audience having a good view of her (Miss Greene-Joanes), and when they couldn’t find anyone else to be annoyed with they turned on William. Fortunately for William, however, there was little time for recrimination, as already the audience was clamouring for the second scene. This was the snow-storm scene. Miss Gwladwyn had installed her beautifully mannered nephew in the loft early in the evening with a box of chocolate creams to keep him quiet. Miss Gwladwyn went on to the stage. The other actors retired to the improvised green-room, there to continue their acrimonious disputes and mutual reproaches. The curtain was slightly drawn. Miss Gwladwyn went into the aperture and leapt into her pathetic monologue, and William behind the scenes relapsed into boredom. He was roused by Miss Gwladwyn’s nephew who came down the steps of the loft carrying an empty chocolate box and looking green.

  ‘William,’ he said, ‘will you do my thing for me? I’m going to be sick.’

  ‘All right,’ said William distantly. ‘What do you do?’

  William, not having been chosen as the snow-storm, had never taken the slightest interest in the snow-storm scene.

  ‘You just get the bucket in the corridor and take it up to the loft and empty it over her slowly when she turns up her face.’

  ‘A’ right,’ said William with an air of graciousness, secretly not sorry to add the snow-storm to his repertoire. ‘A’ right. I’ll carry on. Don’ you worry. You go home an’ be sick.’

  It was not William’s fault that someone had put the stage fireplace in the passage in such a position that it completely hid the bucket of torn-up paper and that the only bucket visible in the passage was the bucket of water thoughtfully placed there by Mrs Bruce Monkton-Bruce in case of fire. William looked about him, saw what was apparently the only bucket in the passage, took it up and went to the stairs leading into the loft. It was jolly heavy. Water! Crumbs! He hadn’t realised it was water. He’d had an idea that it was torn-up paper for snow, but probably they’d changed their minds at the last minute and thought they’d have rain instead. Or perhaps they’d only had paper for the rehearsals, and had meant to have water for the real performance all along. Well, certainly it was a bit more exciting than paper. He took it very carefully up the stairs, then knelt over the little opening where he could see Miss Gwladwyn down below. He was only just in time. She was already saying:

  ‘How cold it is! Heaven, wilt thou show me no pity?’

  Then slowly and with a beautiful gesture of despair she raised her face towards the ceiling to receive full and square the entire contents of a bucket of water. William tried conscientiously to do it slowly, but it was a heavy bucket and he had to empty it all at once. He considered that he was rather clever in hitting her face so exactly. For a moment the audience enjoyed the spectacle of Miss Gwladwyn sitting on the floor, dripping wet and gasping and spluttering. Then Mr Fleuster had the presence of mind to draw the curtain. After which he deliberately walked across to the dripping, spluttering, gasping Miss Gwladwyn and asked her to marry him. For five years he’d been trying to propose to a dignified and very correctly dressed and mannered Miss Gwladwyn, and he’d never had the courage, but as soon as he saw her gasping, spluttering, dripping on the floor like that he knew that now was the moment or never. And Miss Gwladwyn, still gasping, spluttering, dripping, said, ‘Yes.’

  Then the entire cast began to look for William. Somehow it never occurred to them to blame Miss Gwladwyn’s guileless nephew. They knew by instinct who was responsible for the calamity. William, realising also by instinct that he had made a mistake, slipped out into the darkness.

  SLOWLY, WITH A BEAUTIFUL GESTURE OF DESPAIR, MISS GWLADWYN LOOKED UPWARD AT THE CEILING – TO RECEIVE FULL AND SQUARE IN HER FACE, THE CONTENTS OF WILLIAM’S BUCKET OF WATER.

  He was stopped by a tall form that blocked his way.

  ‘Ha!’ said the tall man. ‘Going already? I realised, of course, the last scene must be the grande finale. I had meant to present this to you at the end, but pray accept it now.’

  He went away chuckling, and William found himself clasping the most magnificent football he had ever seen in his life.

  And that was not all.

  For the next day there arrived a magnificent cinematograph for the Literary Society, sent by Sir Giles Hampton with a little note telling them that their little play had completely cured his nervous breakdown, that it would be a precious memory to him all the rest of his life, and that he was going back to London cheered and invigorated.

  And that was not all.

  There arrived for William some weeks later a ticket for a box at a London theatre.

  William went, accompanied by his mother.

  He came back and told his friends about it.

  He said he’d seen a play called Macbeth, but he didn’t think much of it, and he could have made a better storm himself.

  CHAPTER 3

  WILLIAM AND THE ARCHERS

  WILLIAM and Ginger and Douglas (Henry was staying with an aunt) were engaged on their usual Monday morning pastime. A stream ran through the centre of the village, and flowed under the road at a point where the village worthies used to collect on fine Sunday afternoons
and evenings to discuss local affairs, or to stand leaning against the railings gazing silently in front of them, deep, presumably, in thought, till bedtime. This little space by the railings was on Monday morning thickly covered with the matches with which the village worthies had lit their pipes or cigarettes. Ginger and William and Douglas carefully collected the matches. Then Ginger stood at one side of the road and put the matches into the stream, where it entered the large pipe which guided it beneath the road, and William stood at the other side with a little heap of stones and tried to hit the matches as they came out. Douglas stood by and acted as umpire. ‘Got it!’ ‘Missed it!’ he sang out blithely at intervals. Occasionally the game was held up by a dispute between William and Douglas as to whether some particular throw had been a hit or a miss. After a short time William changed roles with Ginger, and Ginger tried to hit the matches as they came out. Spirited recrimination, insult and counter-insult, were hurled over the road.

  ‘Fancy not hittin’ that one!’ said William. ‘Well, I c’n hardly believe you din’t hit that one. It’s the biggest match I’ve ever seen in all my life. I don’t see how you could help hittin’ that one. Almost as big as a rollin’ pin.’

  ‘Well!’ said Ginger. ‘Well, I like that. I’ve hit hundreds more’n you hit. Thousands. An’ that – why, it was the teeniest, teeniest match I’ve ever seen. Not much bigger’n a pin.’

  ‘Well, jus’ fancy not hittin’ that great big, enormous match. Butter-fingers!’

  They met joyfully in the middle of the road and were only separated by a motor car, which took the corner at a terrific speed and narrowly missed putting an end to all further exploits of the Outlaws. They picked themselves up from the road, their original quarrel forgotten in a joint fury against the driver of the car.

  ‘Serve him right if he’d killed us,’ said Ginger, ‘an’ got hung for it.’

  ‘No,’ said William. ‘I bet it’d be more fun for him not to get hung – but for us to haunt him. I bet if he’d killed us an’ we’d turned into ghosts, we could have had awful fun haunting him – I say’ – warming to his theme – ‘I bet it would be as much fun as anythin’ we’ve ever done, hauntin’ someone, groanin’ an’ rattlin’ chains an’ scarin’ ’em an’ jumpin’ out at ’em an’ such like.’

  ‘Wouldn’t he be mad?’ chuckled Ginger. ‘An’ he cun’t do anything to us ’cause you can’t to a ghost. When you hit ’em, the hit sort of goes through ’em, an’ if they run after you, an’ catch you, the catch sort of goes through you, an’ anyway they’re all scared stiff of jus’ lookin’ at you. Won’t it be fun to have everyone scared stiff of jus’ lookin’ at you. I can think,’ he went on meditatively, ‘of quite a lot of people I’d like to haunt when I’m dead – Ole Markie an’ Farmer Jenks an’ people like that. I bet it’d be more fun bein’ a ghost than anythin’ – even a pirate.’

  ‘I dunno,’ said Douglas, ‘they can’t eat. Jus’ think of not bein’ able to eat. Jus’ think of seein’ sweet shop windows full of sweets an’ being able to get through doors an’ things so’s you could go into sweet shops at night when there was no one there lookin’ after ’em and yet not be able to eat.’

  ‘Are you sure you can’t eat?’ said Ginger anxiously.

  ‘Yes,’ said Douglas with great solemnity, ‘I know you can’t. You put out your hand to take up a sweet an’ your hand sort of keeps goin’ through ’em and can’t pick ’em up.’

  The Outlaws shuddered at this horrible prospect.

  ‘If you’re a pirate or a robber chief or even a Red Injun,’ went on Douglas, ‘it’s jus’ as excitin’ an’ you can eat.’

  The Outlaws agreed that on the whole it would be better to be pirates or robber chiefs or Red Indians than ghosts and returned to the pastime in which the passage of the motor car had disturbed them.

  ‘Now go on,’ William admonished Ginger, ‘see if you c’n hit a match what’s almost as big as – a – as a – as a – telegraph pole,’ he said with a burst of inspiration; ‘see if—’

  Douglas interrupted.

  ‘I’m gettin’ a bit sick of umpirin’,’ he said.

  ‘All right,’ said William generously. ‘All right. You can change places with Ginger an’ Ginger umpire for a bit an’ you hit – I bet you c’n hit better’n him.’

  Ginger showed proper spirit in resenting this insult till the passage of another motor – at a more leisurely pace – again separated them. The driver leant over his seat, cursed them soundly and shook his fist at them. The Outlaws sitting in the dust by the roadside whither they had roiled on the approach of the car sat and gazed after it in horror and indignation. William found his voice first.

  ‘Well!’ he said. ‘Well! Fancy nearly killin’ folks an’ then talkin’ like that to ’em. Coo – I’d like to haunt him.’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ said Douglas. ‘Gimme the stones and start puttin’ the matches in an’ I bet I hit every one.’

  But it was suddenly discovered that there were only two matches left and that Ginger and William were tired of the game. Despite Douglas’s passionate protests they walked away from the stream, Douglas remarking bitterly:

  ‘That’s always the way. Always. Always with everythin’! The minute my turn for anythin’ comes it stops.’

  ‘What shall we do?’ said Ginger when they had walked aimlessly to the end of the road.

  ‘Let’s get out the bows and arrers an’ practise,’ said William. ‘We’ve not done that for quite a long time.’

  So they got out their bows and arrows, fixed up a target on a tree in William’s back garden and for some time practised happily enough. Only Douglas was still gloomy.

  ‘Always the way,’ he muttered bitterly as he listlessly strung his bow. ‘Umpire for hours an’ hours an’ hours an’ when my time comes only two matches left.’

  ‘You can have first go hittin’ next Monday,’ said William generously.

  ‘Yes,’ said Douglas, still bitter, ‘an’ it’ll be wet Sunday night an’ they’ll all stay indoors an’ there won’t be any matches. Oh, I know!’

  He was further annoyed by the fact that he failed to score a bull.

  ‘Always the same!’ he said. ‘Somethin’ wrong with my arrers now. ’S’enough for me to get hold of a thing for everything to go wrong –an’ anyway it’s a silly sort of thing to do – shootin’ with bows and arrers. Bow and arrer shootin’ isn’t any use to anyone but Normans an’ Red Indians an’ such like.’

  William who had scored several bulls spiritedly opposed this view.

  ‘I bet it is,’ he said. ‘I bet it’s more use than any other sort of shootin’!’

  Douglas gave vent to his general sense of bitterness and disappointment by a derisive laugh. ‘Huh!’ he said, ‘Huh! D’you mean to say that bow an’ arrer shootin’s more use than gun shootin’ an’ pistol shootin’? What about the war? Was there any bow an’ arrer shootin’ in the war? No. They only did gun shootin’ an’ pistol shootin’ ’cause those is the only kinds of shootin’ what’s any good. D’you think that they’d have had only gun shootin’ if bow an’ arrer shootin’ was any good?’

  William, having taken up any position, was seldom at a loss in defending it.

  ‘Huh!’ he said repeating Douglas’ derisive laugh, ‘Huh! Well, jus’ at first gun shootin’s better, of course. Anyone knows that. Jus’ at first. Because they shoot with gunpowder and nat’rally gunpowder shoots further than string. Yes, but you listen . . . what about when all the gunpowder’s used up? What about a war what goes on so long that all the gunpowder’s used up? What’ll they do then? They’ll have to start shootin’ with bows an’ arrers then. Yes, an’ they’ll be in a nice mess too ’cause none of ’em’ll know how to shoot ’em an’ it’s not as easy as it looks. Yes, they’ll be jolly glad of us to teach ’em then. It’s jolly lucky for them we know how to do it. I bet we’ll all be made generals an’ commander-in-chiefs then. I bet if there’s another war they’ll soon use up all the gunpowder ’cause with al
l the lot they used up in the last war there can’t be much left an’ then we’ll come in with our bows an’ arrers.’

  ‘Well, there’s not many of us to fight against a whole foreign army,’ said Douglas gloomily. ‘Jus’ you an’ me an’ Ginger an’ Henry against a whole foreign army.’

  ‘Y-yes,’ admitted William reluctantly. Then he brightened. ‘But we could train some more. We could start trainin’ ’em now so as to be ready.’

  It was not in William’s nature, however, to spend much time preparing for remote contingencies. He added hastily, ‘’S not as if we’d have to wait till we were grown up. I think that we ought to have a bow an’ arrer army all ready an’ it doesn’t matter not bein’ grown up for bows an’ arrers. You can shoot ’em jus’ as hard not grown up. Look at me,’ he swaggered, ‘two bulls’ eyes straight after each other. Well, wot I think is this, that we oughter start right away makin’ a bow an’ arrer army. Wot I think is’ – William was unconsciously lapsing into his platform manner– ‘that people aren’t as careful as what they ought to be about foreign armies landin’. There’s nothin’ to stop ’em. They can jus’ get into a ship an’ sail over to England an’ land same as anyone else an’ here’ll they be right in the middle of us before we know anythin’ about it. Wot I say is that we oughter do somethin’ now ’stead of waitin’ an’ waitin’ an’ waitin’ till it’s too late. Wot I say is that we might wake up tomorrow an’ find the fields here full of foreign enemies what have sailed over in the night an’ think what a long time it’d take to get our soldiers together an’ to get gunpowder for their guns. Before they’d have time to do that the foreign enemy’d have conquered ’em. Well, wot I say is that if we’re here with an army of bow and arrer shooters it’ll be all right. Bows an’ arrers don’t need a lot of gettin’ ready like guns – If they break you can easy make another, an’ we can go on usin’ ’em long after they’ve used up all their gunpowder an’ got nothin’ left to shoot with. Well, wot I say is’ – William, worked up for an oratorial climax, sought about in his mind for some striking and original remark and finding none repeated – ‘Wot I say is we’ve gotta get a bow an’ arrer army.’