William_the Dictator Page 8

  “Well, never mind that now,” said William hastily. “It’s television we’re talkin’ about now.”

  “Wath televithun?” demanded Violet Elizabeth again.

  “It’s—it’s heads actin’ in a sort of hole,” said William.

  “A thort of what?”

  “A sort of hole. They jus’ sort of make up a tale an’—an’ act it in a sort of hole.”

  “It thounth thilly,” said Violet Elizabeth judicially.

  “That’s ’cause you’re silly,” retorted William. “It sounds all right to people what’ve got a bit of sense. They pay money for it. Lots of money. Jus’ to have one of these things with heads actin’ in a sort of hole.”

  “All right,” agreed Violet Elizabeth sweetly. “What’ll we act?”

  “That’s jus’ what we’re fixin’ up now,” said William, “an’ if we let you come in, too, you’ve gotter do jus’ what you’re told to do.”

  “Courth I will,” said Violet Elizabeth sweetly. “I alwayth do.”

  Surprise at this flagrant mis-statement of fact deprived them of speech for a moment, then William said:

  “Well, now we’ve gotter think out a story. You’ve gotter be the girl.”

  “The heroine,” said Violet Elizabeth smugly.

  ‘‘An’ I’m goin’ to be the good man.”

  “The hero,” said Violet Elizabeth.

  “An’ Ginger’s bein’ the bad man.”

  “The villain.”

  “An’ Douglas’s bein’ my father. Bet you can’t find a word for that,” he added triumphantly. “An’ Henry’s bein’ the policeman.”

  “An’ whath the thtory?” demanded Violet Elizabeth.

  “That’s what we’ve gotter fix up,” said William.

  * * *

  The Television Show had been arranged for the following afternoon. A clothes-horse had been borrowed from Ginger’s kitchen and an old sheet hung across it. A convenient hole in the middle of the old sheet had been enlarged till it could contain two heads at fairly close quarters. It was a jagged, uneven hole but, as William pointed out, would be a change from the usual square one.

  A large notice had been affixed on to the door of the old barn. “TELLYVISHON ENTRANCE FREE”. For, after much discussion, the Outlaws had decided not to charge any entrance fee to their new show. The decision was due less to generosity than to a conviction that otherwise it would not be patronised at all. The juvenile population of the village demanded a good deal for its money and had almost completely wrecked the Outlaws’ last show on the grounds that it was not worth the halfpenny charged for it.

  “We’ll jolly well let ’em have it free this time,” William had said. “Then they’ll have to sit quiet an’ listen, ’stead of shoutin’ out for their money back.”

  The audience was a fair-sized one, for the Outlaws’ shows could generally be trusted to provide some little excitement, even if not of the sort contemplated by their organisers.

  They sat here, there, and anywhere on the floor and stared at the jagged hole in the sheet, making deprecatory remarks on the accommodation provided and the probably inadequate nature of the entertainment.

  Arabella Simpkin, as usual, was the chief agitator. Arabella’s mother earned her living by “obliging” the ladies of the neighbourhood, but the social boundaries were very sketchy among the junior inhabitants of the village, and Arabella, by means of a forceful personality, had dominated them from babyhood. She sat now in the front row, holding a bag of monkey nuts, with which she regaled herself from time to time.

  She was, to-day, decked out in her best, having “borrowed” (unbeknown to her mother) the pride of her mother’s wardrobe—a long, raggy once-white feather boa, always referred to by her mother as “me fur”. Arabella’s mother had gone out for the day and so was not likely to notice the absence of her treasure. Arabella made great play with this, flinging the long ends over her shoulder, wrapping it several times round her neck, swinging it round and round, and to and fro.

  “If it’s the same sort of show they generally give,” she prophesied with gloomy relish, “it’ll be jolly rotten.”

  Arabella always came to the Outlaws’ shows, and was always the first to demand her money back. She was feeling slightly aggrieved now, because the show was free and it would be impossible to make that particular protest.

  There was the sound of whispered colloquy behind the curtain, then William came out and surveyed his audience with a lofty frown. He was feeling somewhat worried. Violet Elizabeth had not yet turned up. He’d had a sort of idea, from the very beginning, that she’d spoil things. Somehow she always did. She’d been the limit too, when they tried to rehearse the play, wanting to have her head in the hole ail the time and hardly letting anyone else speak. He wished now that they’d had a play without a heroine. It must be quite possible to think one out—all gangsters and policemen and things. The one they’d made up hadn’t had much of a heroine till Violet Elizabeth got hold of it and after that it had had little else. Violet Elizabeth insisted on dominating every situation. She even insisted on staying in the hole while the villain was plotting to kidnap her.

  “It dothn’t matter,” she said sweetly. “I’ll pretend I’m not lithening. I want them to go on theeing me.”

  And now, though it was five minutes after the time at which the performance was to have started, she hadn’t turned up. It would, of course’ have been a good thing to dispense with her altogether, but she’d made the play so entirely her own that they wouldn’t have known how to do it without her, and it was too late to make up another one.

  There she was at last—entering the barn door with a flourish. A sister of her mother’s was spending the day with them, and Violet Elizabeth had crept into her mother’s room and appropriated the hat and fur that the visitor had left on the bed. It was a small straw hat, with a flower and an eye-veil, and Violet Elizabeth wore it at a jaunty angle. The fur was a small, mink necklet. The cousin was not going home till evening and Violet Elizabeth intended to return them as soon as the Television Show was over. She had borrowed them early in the afternoon, and the reason why she was late was that she had not been able to tear herself away from the contemplation of her reflection in the mirror The fur in particular she admired. At least, she did till she saw Arabella flinging one end of the long, feather boa over her shoulder and cracking a monkey nut at the same time. Violet Elizabeth stopped and looked at her. Suddenly she yearned with all her might to throw the end of a long fur over her shoulder. The mink necklet was no use. It was short and unthrowable. It seemed, suddenly, wholly unsuitable for a heroine. She smiled sweetly at Arabella.

  “Hello,” she said.

  Arabella, secretly flattered, looked at her dourly and cracked another monkey nut.

  “Hello,” she replied ungraciously.

  “I like your fur tho muth,” said Violet Elizabeth still more sweetly.

  Arabella looked down at it complacently and cracked another monkey nut. Then she glanced with interest at Violet Elizabeth’s fur. There was an expensive look about it that appealed to Arabella. Her interest was tinged with envy.

  “Yours isn’t so bad,” she admitted grudgingly.

  Violet Elizabeth, reading aright the interest and the envy, acted promptly.

  “Leth thwop,” she suggested.

  Arabella looked again at the mink necklet. It was small and dun-coloured, but it was the sort of thing that people wore in the pictures. It took all the glamour from the feather boa.

  “All right,” she said, hiding her pleasure beneath a show of indifference. “I don’t mind if you want to, but mine’s a much better one.”

  Violet Elizabeth quickly took over the long, feather boa and flung the end round her neck with a flourish as she went behind the screen.

  Arabella pulled her hat farther over one eye, and fastened the mink necklet at the back of her neck. She assumed an expression that was apparently one of acute nausea, but that was in reality an attempt to took
like Greta Garbo.

  The Television Show was over. It had not been an unqualified success. Violet Elizabeth and the feather boa had taken up so much room in the hole that hero, villain, policeman, and hero’s father had been practically invisible. The plot was an involved one in any case, and it became still more involved in actual performance.

  “It’s a rotten show,” commented Arabella, at the end, but she was too busy admiring her mental picture of herself in the mink necklet to make herself as disagreeable as usual.

  The rest of the audience, however, compensated for this omission.

  “Yes, it is a rotten show,” they shouted, “and we’ll never come to any more of your rotten shows.”

  “Well, listen,” said William. “It wasn’t meant to go like that. It was meant to go quite diff’rent—”

  “There was nothin’ but an ole girl throwin’ a fur about. Call that a play?”

  “Well, it was meant to be diff’rent,” persisted William. “She wasn’t meant to be in it all the time, same as she was. We made it up quite diffrent. We—”

  Violet Elizabeth, seeing that she was becoming unpopular with both her fellow actors and her audience, flung the end of her boa over her shoulder again and walked haughtily to the door.

  “I wouldn’t act for you again,” she said, “not if you athked me to.”

  She went down to the road. A large car had drawn up there, and a man with a red, round face got out and began to make his way across the fields to the old barn. Violet Elizabeth stood and watched. He entered the barn. Curiosity fought with pride in Violet Elizabeth’s breast and pride won. She didn’t care who the man was or why he’d gone to the old barn. She’d never have anything more to do with any of them. She’d never act for them again—never all the rest of her life. She threw the end of the feather boa over her shoulder and set off quickly homewards. She must put Aunt Maggie’s fur and hat back before she started making a fuss. She remembered suddenly that this wasn’t the fur that she had actually borrowed from Aunt Maggie and again she hesitated. Should she go back and retrieve the small brown necklet? But again pride won the day. No, she wouldn’t go back there, not for anything, after the way they’d treated her. After all, a fur was just a fur. Probably Aunt Maggie herself wouldn’t remember that it was a small, brown one she’d left and not a long, white one.

  She entered the Hall and stood for a moment outside the door of the drawing-room, listening.

  “I’ve never liked her,” her mother was saying.

  “Neither have I,” said Aunt Maggie. “I never listen to servants’ gossip, of course, but her cook told my house-maid . . .”

  It was clear that the two were enjoying a pleasant little discussion of their mutual friends. The loss of the fur and hat had evidently not yet been discovered. Violet Elizabeth ran upstairs and laid them carefully on her mother’s bed, then slowly made her way back to the old barn. Curiosity had triumphed over pride. She had decided to forgive the audience for not appreciating her acting, because she wanted to know what the big man with the round, red face was doing at the old barn.

  The sound of clapping greeted her as she approached. Evidently some sort of entertainment was in progress. The audience had swelled to double the size it had been when Violet Elizabeth left it. She stood in the doorway and watched. The big man, who referred to himself in his patter as Uncle Charlie, was giving a conjuring show, and the audience was crowding round him in rapturous delight. He was just drawing a carrot from William’s neck. He had already taken a goldfish in a bowl of water from Ginger’s ear. The audience was wildly excited. Even Arabella had lost her usual grim expression and was watching with shining eyes and a beaming smile.

  Arabella, too had hurried home after the Television Show to replace the fur. She had remembered, suddenly, that her mother would be back from work at five, and that she might discover the loss of her fur if it were not in its usual place. Like Violet Elizabeth, she forgot the little matter of the exchange, in the hurry of the moment, and did not remember it again till she was hanging the fur on its accustomed peg in the hall. Then, like Violet Elizabeth, she derided to leave the issue to fate and to hurry back to Uncle Charlie’s conjuring show. For Uncle Charlie, it appeared, was a well-known conjurer, on his way to an engagement at a music-hall in a neighbouring town. Not quite sure if he was on the right road, he had stopped his car and made his way across the field to make enquiries of the children who were assembled there. It turned out that he was on the right road and he had more than an hour in hand. It turned out, too, that there had been some sort of a show there that had been a complete failure, and that the audience was on the point of mobbing the four boys responsible. Uncle Charles enjoyed performing to children, so he leaped nimbly into the breach, sending a batch of them down to his car for his bag, and keeping the others amused with his best patter, meantime. Then the entertainment began. The most glorious entertainment that had ever been known in the village. Arabella and Violet Elizabeth, watching entranced, forgot that there were such things as furs in the world.

  Meantime, Aunt Maggie was standing in Mrs. Bott’s bedroom, holding the feather boa at arm’s length and surveying it with an expression of frozen horror.

  “My fur’s been stolen,” she said dramatically, “and this—this—left in its place.”

  Mrs. Bott sat down weakly on the bed and stared at her, then, on a sudden thought, hurriedly took a key from her bag, unlocked a drawer, took out a jewel case, unlocked that, checked its contents, and sat down again with a sigh of relief.

  “That’s all right,” she said.

  “What’s all right?” snapped Aunt Maggie.

  “My pearls are all right.”

  “I don’t see what that’s got to do with it.”

  “No, I suppose not, dear. I only meant—I don’t see how thieves can have got in.”

  “Of course they must have done,” said Aunt Maggie. “That fur of mine was a really valuable one, and look—just look—what’s been left in its place! I’m going straight to the police about it.”

  “Why not ring up?” said Mrs. Bott.

  “No, I’m going in person. People never really take any notice of you on the telephone. They just put you off.”

  “I’ll come with you if you like, dear.”

  “No, thank you,” said Aunt Maggie distantly. “I prefer to see to the matter alone.”

  Aunt Maggie was annoyed with her sister for taking the matter so lightly. It was a really valuable fur, and all people could think of was their own pearls.

  “Just as you like, dear,” said Mrs. Bott, becoming distant in her turn.

  “Where is the police station?” demanded Aunt Maggie haughtily.

  “Just beyond the Blue Lion, on the village green, dear. I’ll come with you if you like."

  “No, thank you.”

  With another outraged glare at the feather boa. Aunt Maggie rammed her hat on her head and flounced out of the room. As she turned out of the Hall gates, she ran into another woman who was also hurrying along the road and not looking where she was going. It was Arabella’s mother, enraged at the discovery that “me fur” had been stolen and a nasty little brown thing left in its place.

  “I beg your pardon,” said Aunt Maggie graciously.

  “Granted,” said Arabella’s mother.

  “I’m afraid I wasn’t looking where I was going,” went on Aunt Maggie. “I’m on my way to the police station to report a theft.”

  “Same here,” said Arabella’s mother grimly. “I’ve ’ad me fur stolen!”

  “What?” said Aunt Maggie. “Yours too?”

  “Yes, an’ a measly bit o’ rat-skin left in its place.”

  “But, that’s just what happened to me,” said Aunt Maggie excitedly. “How very odd! There—there must be some gang at work.”

  “Right down below me waist me fur came," went on Arabella’s mother, “an’ this bit o’ rat-skin only just meets round me neck.”

  “It’s most extraordinary,” said A
unt Maggie, warming to her companion in misfortune. “Most extraordinary! And so odd to leave other worthless furs in their places. Perhaps it’s their idea of a joke.”

  “Joke!” said Arabella’s mother. “I’ll give ’em joke.”

  They had reached the police station now.

  Together they entered and poured out their story.

  “A really valuable fur—”

  “Reached down past me waist—”

  “An utterly worthless thing left in its place—”

  “Measly bit o’ rat-skin—”

  The policeman scratched his head and looked bewildered.

  “It must be a gang,” said Aunt Maggie.

  “Yes, it might,” agreed the policeman judicially. “Never heard of anything like it before though.”

  “Leaving worthless furs in the place of valuable ones might be a sort of—you know—a sort of trademark of the gang,’’ suggested Aunt Maggie. “I once saw a play in which they always left cards with red triangles on.”

  “Yes,” agreed the policeman non-committally, “it might, or, on the other hand, of course, it mightn’t.”

  “Have you had any other cases reported?”

  “Not yet,” said the policeman.

  “There may have been other cases that haven’t been discovered yet. Have any strangers been seen in the village?”

  “Well, now,” said the policeman, with rising interest, “it’s a funny thing, but I ’ave ’eard of some strangers only a minute ago. I was jus’ goin’ to look into it when you come along.”

  The story of Uncle Charlie had spread and grown. A passing conjurer had stopped his car just beyond the village and was giving a performance to the village children in the old barn. A troupe of music-hall artists had stopped their cars in the village and were giving a performance in the old barn. A whole string of caravans had stopped outside the village and their occupants (animals and all) were indulging in some kind of wild orgy in the old barn. The story had attained these final proportions by the time it reached the policeman, and he had just been about to set out on a tour of inspection when Aunt Maggie and Arabella’s mother appeared.