William the Fourth

by Richmal Crompton

  A delicious smell was emanating from a saucepan on the fire. William decided to endure anything rather than risk being ejected before that smell materialised.

  He meekly submitted to Helbert’s garments being taken from him. He meekly submitted to being dressed in the white, beflounced costume. He remembered to take his two paper bags from the pockets of Helbert’s knickers and tried, unsuccessfully, to find pockets in the costume he was wearing, and finally sat on them. Then, tastefully arrayed as a Fairy Queen, he sat down at the kitchen table to a large plateful of stew. It was delicious stew. William felt amply rewarded for all the indignities to which he was submitting. The servant sat opposite watching him.

  ‘Is all gipsies deaf moots?’ she said sarcastically.

  ‘I’m not an ornery gipsy,’ said William, without raising his eyes from his plate, or ceasing his appreciative and hearty consumption of Irish stew. ‘I was stole by the gipsies, I was. I’ve gotter birthmark somewhere where you can’t see it what’ll identify me.’

  ‘Lor!’ said the maid.

  ‘Yes, an’ I rec’lect peacocks an’ stachues – an’ – folks walkin’ about in crowns.’

  ‘Crikey!’ said the maid, filling his plate again with stew.

  ‘Yes,’ said William, attacking it with undiminished gusto, ‘an’ the suit I was wearin’ when they stole me is all embroidered with crowns an’ peacocks an’ – an’—’

  ‘An’ stachues, I suppose,’ said the servant.

  ‘Yes,’ said William absently.

  ‘An’ you was wearin’ silver shoes an’ stockings, I suppose.’

  ‘Gold,’ corrected William, scraping his plate clean of the last morsel.

  ‘Lor!’ said the maid, setting a large plate of pudding before him. ‘Now, while you’re a-heatin’ of that I’ll jus’ pop round to a friend next door an’ bring of ’er in. I shun’t like ’er to miss ’earin’ you talk – all dressed up, like what you are, too. It’s a fair treat, it is.’

  She went, closing the door cautiously behind her.

  William disposed of the pudding and considered the situation. He felt that this part of the adventure had gone quite far enough. He did not wish to wait till the maid returned. He did not wish to wait till Augustus or Sophia had ‘made inquiries’.

  He opened the kitchen door. The hall was empty Sophia and Augustus were upstairs enjoying their after-dinner naps. William tiptoed into the hall and put on one of the coats.

  Fortunately, Augustus was a very small man, and the coat was not much too large for William. William gave a sigh of relief as he realised that his humiliating costume was completely hidden. Next he put on one of Augustus’s hats.

  There was no doubt at all that it was slightly too big. Then he returned to the kitchen, took his two precious paper packets from the chair, put them into Augustus’s coat pockets and crept to the front door. It opened noiselessly. William tiptoed silently and ungracefully down the path to the road.

  All was still. The road was empty.

  It seemed a suitable moment to assume the disguise. With all the joy and pride of the artist, William donned his precious false beard. Then he began to walk jauntily up the road.

  Suddenly he noticed a figure in front of him. It was the figure of a very, very old man, toiling laboriously up the hill, bending over a stick. William, as an artist, never scorned to learn. He found a stick in the ditch and began to creep up the hill with little faltering steps, bending over his stick.

  He was thoroughly happy again.

  He was not William.

  He was not even Helbert.

  He was a very old man, with a beard, walking up a hill.

  The old man in front of him turned into the workhouse gates, which were at the top of the hill. William followed. The old man sat on a bench in a courtyard. William sat beside him. The old man was very shortsighted.

  ‘ ’Ello, Thomas,’ he said.

  William gave a non-committal grunt. He took out his battered paper bag and handed a few fragments of crumbled cake to the old man. The old man ate them. William, thrilling with joy and pride, gave him some more. He ate them. A man in uniform came out of the door of the workhouse.

  ‘Arternoon, George,’ he said to the old man.

  He looked closely at William as he passed.

  Then he came back and looked still more closely at William. Then he said: ‘ ’Ere!’ and whipped off William’s hat. Then he said: ‘Well, I’m—!!’ and whipped off William’s beard. Then he said: ‘I’ll be—’ and whipped off William’s coat.

  William stood revealed as the Fairy Queen in the middle of the workhouse courtyard.

  The short-sighted old man began to chuckle in a high, quavering voice. ‘It’s a lady out of a circus,’ he said. ‘Oh, dear! Oh, dear! It’s a lady out of a circus!’

  The man in uniform staggered back with one hand to his head.

  ‘Gor’ blimey!’ he ejaculated. ‘ ’Ave I gone mad, or am I a-dreamin’ it?’

  ‘It’s a lady out of a circus. He! He!’ cackled the old man.

  But William had gathered up his scattered possessions indignantly and fled, struggling into the coat as he did so. He ran along the road that skirted the workhouse, then, finding that he was not pursued, and that the road was empty, adjusted his hat and beard and buttoned his coat.

  At a bend in the road there was a wayside seat, already partially occupied by a young couple. William, feeling slightly shaken by the events of the last hour, sat down beside them. He sat there for some minutes, listening idly to their conversation, before he realised with horror who they were. He decided to get up and unostentatiously shuffle away. They did not seem to have noticed him so far. But Miss Flower was demanding a bunch of the catkin palm that grew a little farther down the road. Robert, William’s elder brother, with the air of a knight setting off upon a dangerous quest for his lady, went to get it for her. Miss Flower turned to William.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ she said.

  WILLIAM STOOD REVEALED AS THE FAIRY QUEEN IN THE MIDDLE OF THE COURTYARD. THE SHORT-SIGHTED OLD MAN BEGAN TO CHUCKLE. ‘IT’S A LADY OUT OF A CIRCUS! OH, DEAR! OH, DEAR!’

  William shaded the side of his face from her with his hand and uttered a sound, which was suggestive of violent pain or grief, but whose real and only object was to disguise his natural voice.

  Miss Flower moved nearer to him on the seat.

  ‘Are you in trouble?’ she said sweetly.

  William, at a loss, repeated the sound.

  THE MAN IN UNIFORM STAGGERED BACK WITH ONE HAND TO HIS HEAD.

  She tried to peer into his face.

  ‘Could – could I help at all?’ she said, in a voice whose womanly sympathy was entirely wasted on William.

  William covered his face with both his hands and emitted a bellow of rage and desperation.

  Robert was returning with the catkins. Miss Flower went to meet him.

  ‘Robert,’ she said, ‘have you any money. I’ve left my purse at home. There’s a poor old man here in dreadful trouble.’

  Robert’s sole worldly possessions at that moment were two and sevenpence halfpenny. He gave her half a crown. She handed it to William, and William, keeping his face still covered with one hand, pocketed the half-crown with the other.

  ‘Do speak to him,’ whispered Miss Flower. ‘See if you can help him at all. He may be ill.’

  Robert sat down next to William and cleared his throat nervously.

  ‘Now, my man—’ he began, then stopped abruptly, staring at all that could be seen of William’s face.

  He tore off the hat and beard.

  ‘You little wretch! And whose coat are you wearing, you little idiot?’

  He tore open the coat. The sight it revealed was too much for him. He sank back upon the seat with a groan.

  Miss Flower sat on the grass by the roadside and laughed till the tears ran down her cheeks.

  ‘Oh, William!’ she said. ‘You are priceless. I’d just love to walk through the village with
you like that. Will you come with us, Robert?’

  ‘No,’ said Robert wildly. ‘At every crisis of my life that boy turns up and always in something ridiculous. He’s – he’s more like a nightmare than a boy’

  William faced a family council consisting of his father and mother, and Robert and Ethel.

  William was still attired as a Fairy Queen.

  ‘Well,’ said William, in a tone of disgust. ‘You said today was extra. I thought it didn’t count. I thought nothin’ anyone did today counted. I thought it was an extra day. An’ there’s Robert takin’ a half-crown off me an’ no one seems to mind that. An’ Robert tellin’ Miss Flower, on the seat, how he’d wanted to live a better life since he met her.’

  Robert’s face went scarlet.

  ‘An’ then takin’ a half-crown off me,’ William continued. ‘I don’t call that livin’ a better life. She gave it me an’ he took it off me. I don’t call that being noble like what he said she made him want to be. I don’t—’

  ‘Shut up,’ said Robert desperately. ‘Shut up and I’ll give you the wretched thing back.’

  ‘All right,’ said William, receiving the half-crown.

  ‘What I want to know, William,’ said Mrs Brown almost tearfully, ‘is – where are your clothes?’

  William looked down at his airy costume.

  ‘Oh, she took ’em off me an’ put this thing on me. She said she wanted to heat ’em up. I dunno why. She took off my green jersey an’ my—’

  ‘You weren’t wearing a jersey’ screamed Mrs Brown.

  William’s jaw dropped.

  ‘Oh, those clothes! Crumbs! I’d forgotten about those clothes. I – I suppose Helbert’s still gottem.’

  Mr Brown covered his eyes with his hand.

  ‘Take him away’ he groaned. ‘Take him away! I can’t bear the sight of him like that any longer!’

  Mrs Brown took him away.

  She returned about half an hour later. William, tired by the events of his extra day, had fallen at once into an undeservedly peaceful slumber.

  ‘It’ll take us weeks probably to put whatever he’s done today right,’ she said hysterically to her husband. ‘I do hope you’ll be severe with him.’

  But Mr Brown, freed from the horrible spectacle of William robed as a Fairy Queen, had given himself up to undisturbed and peaceful enjoyment of the fire and his armchair and evening paper.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ he promised pacifically. ‘Not today. You forget. Today doesn’t count.’

  ‘Eavesdropping,’ burst out Robert suddenly. ‘Simply eavesdropping. I don’t know how he can reconcile that with his conscience.’

  ‘Let’s all be thankful,’ said Mr Brown, ‘that February 29th only happens every four years.’

  ‘Yes, but William doesn’t,’ said Robert gloomily ‘William happens all the year round.’

  CHAPTER 12

  WILLIAM ENTERS POLITICS

  ‘When William at the Charity Fair was asked to join a sixpenny raffle for a picture, and shown the prize – a dingy oil painting in an oval gilt frame – his expression registered outrage and disgust.

  It was only when his friend Ginger whispered excitedly: ‘I say, William, las’ week my aunt read in the paper about someone what scraped off an ole picture like that an’ found a real valuable ole master paintin’ underneath an’ sold it for more’n a thousand pounds,’ that he hesitated. An inscrutable expression came upon his freckled face as he stared at the vague head and shoulders of a lightly clad female against a background of vague trees and elaborate columns.

  ‘All right,’ he said, suddenly holding out the sixpence that represented his sole worldly assets, and receiving Ticket number 33.

  ‘Don’t forget it was me what suggested it,’ said Ginger.

  ‘Yes, an’ don’t forget it was my sixpence,’ said William sternly

  William was not usually lucky, but on this occasion the number 33 was drawn, and William, purple with embarrassment, bore off his gloomy-looking trophy Accompanied by Ginger he took it to the old barn.

  They scraped off the head and shoulders of the mournful and inadequately clothed female, and they scraped off the gloomy trees, and they scraped off the elaborate columns. To their surprise and indignation no priceless old master stood revealed. Being thorough in all they did, they finally scraped away the entire canvas and the back.

  ‘Well,’ said William, raising himself sternly from the task when nothing scrapable seemed to remain, ‘an’ will you kin’ly tell me where this valu’ble ole master is?’

  ‘Who said definite there was a valu’ble ole master?’ said Ginger in explanation. ‘ ’F you kin’ly remember right p’raps you’ll kin’ly remember that I said that an aunt of mine said that she saw in the paper that someone’d scraped away an ole picture an’ found a valu’ble ole master. I never said—’

  William was arranging the empty oval frame round his neck.

  ‘P’raps now,’ he interrupted ironically, ‘you’d like to start scratchin’ away the frame, case you find a valu’ble ole master frame underneath.’

  ‘Will it hoop?’ said Ginger with interest, dropping hostilities for the moment.

  They tried to ‘hoop’ it, but found that it was too oval. William tried to wear it as a shield but it would not fit his arm. They tried to make a harp of it by nailing strands of wire across it, but gave up the attempt when William had cut his finger and Ginger had hammered his thumb three times.

  William carried it about with him, his disappointment slightly assuaged by the pride of possession, but its size and shape were hampering to a boy of William’s active habits, so in the end he carefully hid it behind the door of the old barn which he and his friends generally made their headquarters, and then completely forgot it.

  The village was agog with the excitement of the election. The village did not have a Member of Parliament all to itself – it joined with the neighbouring country town – but one of the two candidates, Mr Cheytor, the Conservative, lived in the village, so feeling ran high.

  William’s father took no interest in politics, but William’s uncle did.

  William’s uncle supported the Liberal candidate, Mr Morrisse. He threw himself whole-heartedly into the cause. He distributed bills, he harangued complete strangers, he addressed imaginary audiences as he walked along the road, he frequently brought one hand down heavily upon the other with the mystic words: ‘Gentlemen, in the sacred cause of Liberalism—’

  William was tremendously interested in him. He listened enraptured to his monologues, quite unabashed by his uncle’s irritable refusals to explain them to him. Politically the uncle took no interest in William. William had no vote.

  William’s uncle was busily preparing to hold a meeting of canvassers for the cause of the great Mr Morrisse in his dining-room. Mr Morrisse, a tall, thin gentleman, for some obscure reason very proud of his name, who went through life saying plaintively, ‘double S E, please,’ was not going to be there. William’s uncle was going to tell the canvassers the main features of the programme with which to dazzle the electors of the neighbourhood.

  ‘I s’pose,’ said William carelessly, ‘you don’t mind me comin’?’

  ‘You suppose wrong then,’ said William’s uncle. ‘I most emphatically mind your coming.’

  ‘But why?’ said William earnestly. ‘I’m int’rested. I’d like to go canvassing too. I know a lot ’bout the rackshun-aries – you know, the ole Conservies – I’d like to go callin’ ’em names, too. I’d like—’

  ‘You may not attend the Liberal canvassers’ meeting, William,’ said William’s uncle firmly.

  From that moment William’s sole aim in life was to attend the Liberal canvassers’ meeting. He and Ginger discussed ways and means. They made an honest and determined effort to impart to William an adult appearance, making a frown with burnt cork, and adding whiskers of matting which adhered to his cheeks by means of glue. Optimists though they were, they were both agreed that the chances of William’s a
dmittance, thus disguised, into the meeting of the Liberal canvassers was but a faint one.

  So William evolved another plan.

  The dining-room in which William’s uncle was to hold his meeting was an old-fashioned room. A hatch, never used, opened from it on to an old stone passage.

  The meeting began.

  William’s uncle arrived and took his seat at the head of the table with his back to the hatch. William’s uncle was rather short-sighted and rather deaf. The other Liberal canvassers filed in and took their places round the table.

  William’s uncle bent over his papers. The other Liberal canvassers were gazing with widening eyes at the wall behind William’s uncle. The hatch slowly opened. A dirty oval gilt frame appeared, and was by no means soundly attached to the top of the open hatch. Through the aperture of the frame appeared a snub-nosed, freckled, rough-haired boy with a dirty face and a forbidding expression.

  William didn’t read sensational fiction for nothing. In ‘The Sign of Death’, which he had finished by the light of a candle at 11.30 the previous evening, Rupert the Sinister, the international spy, had watched a meeting of masked secret service agents by the means of concealing himself in a hidden chamber in the wall, cutting out the eye of a portrait and applying his own eye to the hole. William had determined to make the best of slightly less favourable circumstances.

  There was no hidden chamber, but there was a hatch; there was no portrait, but there was the useless frame for which William had bartered his precious sixpence. He still felt bitter at the thought.

  William felt, not unreasonably, that the sudden appearance in the dining-room of a new and mysterious portrait of a boy might cause his uncle to make closer investigations, so he waited till his uncle had taken his seat before he hung himself.

  Ever optimistic, he thought that the other Liberal canvassers would be too busy arranging their places to notice his gradual and unobtrusive appearance in his frame. With vivid memories of the illustration in ‘The Sign of Death’, he was firmly convinced that to the casual observer he looked like a portrait of a boy hanging on the wall.