William the Good

by Richmal Crompton

  CONTENTS

  Foreword by Daniel Roche

  1. William the Good

  2. William the Great Actor

  3. William and the Archers

  4. William the Money Maker

  5. William the Avenger

  6. Parrots for Ethel

  7. One Good Turn

  8. William’s Lucky Day

  9. A Little Adventure

  FOREWORD

  I’ve loved Just William for a long, long time and never in my wildest dreams did I think one day I’d be playing my childhood hero. I was about two when I first started listening to Martin Jarvis reading the Just William stories on CD, and I think the only time I ever sulked at that age was when I didn’t have my CDs playing as I drifted off to sleep. Although I’ve always been a huge William Brown fan, it was only when my friends found out I was auditioning for the part that I realized how well known William actually is. Lots of my friends also idolized William while growing up, just as I did, along with the Outlaws (the other boys in William’s gang) and all the other amazingly realistic characters Richmal Crompton created.

  When I got the first audition for the BBC Just William adaptation, I was really excited, but there were so many other boys there I didn’t think I’d get any part – least of all the role of William Brown. Then when I received the call back, it felt phenomenal. After a long series of auditions, where Paul Seed (the Director) and I simply recited the lines and chatted about rugby and dogs, I was shocked to hear that I’d been offered the part of William himself.

  After a week of rehearsals (and a lot of reluctant haircuts), the other boys playing the Outlaws and I were already firm friends. I could see how many people in the script run-throughs were huge Just William fans, and also how many talented actors there were in the cast. I felt like a dwarf against giants. But the filming was really fun and everyone was so welcoming, whether we were strolling through a cornfield or eating breakfast in the Brown family’s kitchen. With a great director like Paul I knew all the early mornings were definitely worth it. The filming included so many first experiences, such as filming with actors my own age, filming with animals, and I also learned to do my own stunts, which was a brilliant experience. Even Ivor, the friendly dog playing Jumble (William’s scruffy mongrel), began to sink into the world of William and, after a while, followed me like his owner.

  I know and love the fact that this book is going to make so many people happy. I remember the great feeling when my mum came back from shopping with a brand-new Just William CD. William Brown is a character who will never grow old. Adults love him because they grew up with him or were just like him, and kids like me love him because he brings out the tree-climbing, pond-swimming child in all of us that can sometimes get lost in video games and cartoons. If I had the chance to switch lives with William I would do so without a care in the world, and so would many other fans. I feel so lucky to have not only acted in the series, but to have had the opportunity to play my childhood idol. I, like so many others, will never forget the Red Indian, pirate-ship captain eleven-year-old known as William Brown.

  Daniel Roche

  CHAPTER 1

  WILLIAM THE GOOD

  THE Christmas holidays had arrived at last and were being celebrated by the Brown family in various ways.

  Ethel and her friends were celebrating it by getting up a play which was to be acted before the village on Christmas Eve. Mrs Brown was celebrating it by having a whist drive, and William was celebrating it by having influenza.

  Though William is my hero, I will not pretend that he made a good invalid. On the contrary he made a very bad one. He possessed none of those virtues of patience, forbearance, and resignation necessary to a good invalid. William, suffering from influenza, was in a state of violent rebellion against fate. And he was even worse when the virulence of the attack had waned and he could sit up in bed and partake of nourishment.

  There was, he bitterly complained, nothing to do.

  Kind friends brought him in jigsaw puzzles, but, as he informed those about him incessantly, he didn’t see what people saw in jigsaw puzzles. He didn’t like doing them and he didn’t see any good in them when they were done. As an occupation, they were, he gave his family to understand, beneath his contempt. His family offered him other occupations. One of his aunts kindly sent him a scrap album, and another kindly sent him a book of general knowledge questions. He grew more morose and bitter every day. No, he didn’t want to do any of those things. He wanted to get up. Well, why not? Well, tomorrow then? Well, WHY NOT?

  Well, he’d always said that the doctor wasn’t any use.

  He’d said so ever since he wouldn’t let him stay in bed when he felt really ill – that day last term when he hadn’t done any of his homework. And now, now that it was holidays, he made him stay in bed. He simply couldn’t think why they went on having a man like that for a doctor, a man who simply did everything he could to annoy people. That was all the doctoring he knew, doing everything he could to annoy people. It was a wonder they weren’t all dead with a doctor like that. No, he didn’t want to do crossword puzzles.

  What did he want to do then?

  He wanted to get up and go out. He wanted to go and play Red Indians with Ginger and Douglas and Henry. He wanted to go to the old barn and play Lions and Tamers. He wanted to go and be an Outlaw in the woods. That was what he wanted to do. Well, then, if he couldn’t do anything he wanted to do what did they keep asking him what he wanted to do for?

  In disgust he turned over on his side, took up a book which a great-aunt had sent him the day before and began to read it.

  Now it was a book which in ordinary circumstances would not have appealed to William at all. It was a book in the ‘Ministering Children’ tradition with a hero as unlike William as could possibly be imagined. William merely took it up to prove to the whole world how miserably, unutterably bored he was. But he read it. And because he was so bored, the story began to grip him. He read it chapter by chapter, even receiving his mid-morning cup of beef tea without his usual execrations.

  It was perhaps because of his weakened condition that the story gripped him. The hero was a boy about William’s age, whose angelic character made him the sunshine of his home. He had a beautiful sister who, he discovered, was a secret drinker. He pleaded with her to give up the fatal habit. That was a very beautiful scene. It had, however, little effect upon the sister. She became a thief. The youthful hero saw her steal a valuable piece of old silver in a friend’s house. At great risk of being himself suspected of the crime he took it back and replaced it in the friend’s house. The sister was so deeply touched by this that she gave up her habits of drink and theft and the story ended with a youthful hero, his halo gleaming more brightly than ever, setting out to rescue other criminals from their lives of crime.

  ‘Gosh!’ said William as he closed the book. ‘An’ only eleven, same as me.’

  At once, William ceased to long to play Red Indians with Ginger and Henry and Douglas. Instead he began to long to rescue those around him from lives of crime.

  Downstairs, Ethel and her mother were talking. ‘Have you settled the parts for your play yet, dear?’ said Mrs Brown.

  ‘N-no,’ said Ethel, ‘it’s all rather annoying. Mrs Hawkins has taken up the whole thing, and is managing everything. Of course, we can’t stop her, because, after all, she’s going to finance the whole show, and have footlights put up and make it awfully posh, but still – she’s insisting on our doing scenes from As You Like It. She would want Shakespeare. She’s so deadly dull herself.’

  ‘And you’ll be Rosalind, I suppose?’ said Mrs Brown quite placidly.

  Ethel was always the heroine of any play she acted in.

  But Ethel’s f
ace grew slightly overcast.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘that’s the question. Mrs Hawkins is having a sort of trial at her house. It lies between me and Dolly Morton and Blanche Jones. She wants to hear us all read the part. She’s going to have all the committee at her house on Tuesday to hear us all read the part. It does seem rather silly, doesn’t it? I mean, making such a fuss about it. However—’

  ‘Well, darling,’ said Mrs Brown, ‘when you are at the Hawkins’ I wish you’d ask them if they can let us have one bonbon dish. I haven’t quite enough for all the tables at the whist drive, and Mrs Hawkins kindly said she’d lend me as many as I liked.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Ethel absently. ‘I shall feel mad if she gives the part to Dolly Morton or Blanche Jones. I’ve had much more experience and after all –’

  After all, Ethel’s silence said, she was far and away the prettiest girl in the village. She heaved a sigh.

  Mrs Brown, as if infected with the general melancholy, also heaved a sigh.

  ‘The doctor says that William can get up tomorrow,’ she said.

  Ethel groaned.

  ‘Well,’ said her mother wearily, ‘he can’t be worse up than he’s been in bed the last few days.’

  ‘Oh, can’t he?’ said Ethel meaningly.

  ‘But he’s been quite good this afternoon,’ admitted Mrs Brown in a voice almost of awe, ‘reading a book quietly all the time.’

  ‘Then he’ll be awful tomorrow,’ prophesied Ethel, gloomily, and with the suspicion of a nasal intonation.

  Mrs Brown looked at her suspiciously. ‘You haven’t got a cold, have you, Ethel?’ she said.

  ‘No,’ said Ethel hastily.

  ‘Because if you have,’ said Mrs Brown, ‘it’s probably influenza, and you must go to bed the minute you feel it coming on.’

  William was downstairs. He did not, strangely enough, want to go out and play Red Indians with Henry, Douglas and Ginger. That lassitude which is always the after-effect of influenza was heavy upon him. William, however, did not know that this was the cause.

  He mistook it for a change of heart. He believed his character to be completely altered. He did not want to be a rough boy ranging over the countryside any longer. He wanted to be a boy wearing a halo and rescuing those around him from lives of crime. He watched Ethel meditatively where she sat on the other side of the room reading a magazine. She looked irritatingly virtuous.

  William found it difficult to imagine her drinking in secret or stealing pieces of silver from a neighbour’s drawing-room. It was, he reflected, just his luck to have a sister who was as irritating a sister as could be, and yet who would afford him no opportunity of rescuing her from a life of crime. His expression grew more and more morose as he watched her. There she sat with no thought in her mind but her silly magazine, resolutely refusing either to drink or steal.

  As a matter of fact, Ethel had other thoughts in her mind than the magazine upon which she was apparently so intent. Ethel was afraid. There was no doubt at all that a cold was developing in Ethel’s head, and Ethel knew that, should her mother guess it, she would be summarily despatched to bed and would not be able to attend Mrs Hawkins’ meeting, and that the result would be that either Dolly Morton or Blanche Jones would be Rosalind in the play.

  Now, Ethel had set her heart upon being Rosalind. She felt that she would die of shame if Dolly Morton or Blanche Jones were chosen as Rosalind in her stead. And, therefore, the peculiar feeling of muzziness, the difficulty of enunciating certain consonants that she was at present experiencing, filled her with apprehension. A cold was coming on. There was no doubt of it at all. If only it could escape her mother’s notice till after today!

  After today, when she was chosen as Rosalind, Ethel was willing to retire to bed and stay there as long as her mother wanted, but not till then. Hence she was silent and avoided her mother as much as possible. She might, of course, take something to stave it off (though she knew that that was generally impossible), but her mother had the keys of the medicine cupboard, and to ask for anything would arouse suspicion.

  The muzziness was growing muzzier every minute, and she had a horrible suspicion that her nose was red.

  Suddenly she remembered that when William’s cold began, her mother had bought a bottle of ‘Cold Cure’, and given it to him after meals for the first day before the cold changed to influenza and he had to go to bed. She believed that it was still in the sideboard cupboard in the dining-room. She’d sneak it upstairs and take some. It might just stave it off till tonight.

  She looked up and met William’s earnest gaze. What was he looking at her like that for? He’d probably noticed that she’d got a cold and he’d go and tell her mother. It would be just like him. He’d blurt out, ‘Mother, Ethel’s got a cold,’ and she’d be packed off to bed and not be able to go to Mrs Hawkins’, and Dolly Morton or Blanche Jones would be Rosalind and she’d die of shame. She stared at him very haughtily, and then went off to the dining-room for the bottle of ‘Cold Cure’.

  But her manner had attracted William’s attention. He moved his seat so that he could see her through the crack of the door. She went across the hall to the dining-room. She looked about her furtively. She tiptoed to the hall again and looked up and down to make sure that no one saw her. Then very furtively she went back into the dining-room. She opened the sideboard cupboard and with a quick guilty movement took out a bottle and hid it under her jumper. A bottle! William gaped. His eyes bulged. A bottle! Still looking furtively around her she went upstairs. William followed just as furtively. He heard her bolt her bedroom door. He put his eye to the keyhole and there he saw her raise the bottle to her lips. He was amazed, but he had to believe the evidence of his eyes. She was a secret drinker. Ethel was a secret drinker!

  His spirits rose. He must set about the work of reforming her at once. The first thing to do was to plead with her. That in the book had been a very moving and beautiful scene.

  He was waiting for her in the morning-room when she came down. Yes, she did look like a secret drinker now that he came to look at her more particularly. She’d got a red nose. They always had red noses. She threw him a haughty glance, took up her magazine and began to read it. Then suddenly she was shaken by an enormous sneeze. It came upon her unawares, before she could stop it. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t the sort of sneeze you could stop. It was the sort that proclaimed to all the world that you have a cold, perhaps influenza, and that you ought to be in bed.

  WILLIAM MOVED HIS SEAT SO THAT HE COULD SEE HIS SISTER THROUGH THE CRACK OF THE DOOR.

  ETHEL WENT ACROSS THE HALL TO THE DINING-ROOM. SHE LOOKED ABOUT HER FURTIVELY.

  Thank heaven, thought Ethel, her mother was in the village shopping. William, however, was gazing at her reproachfully. He was, she supposed, wondering bitterly why she was allowed to go about with a cold when he’d been sent to bed at once. She gazed at him defiantly. William, as a matter of fact, had not noticed the sneeze at all. His mind was so taken up by the problem of how to plead with her to give up her habit of secret drinking.

  He began rather sternly.

  ‘Ethel, I know all about it.’

  ‘Whatever do you mean?’ said Ethel feebly, ‘all about it! Why, I’m perfectly all right. Perfectly all right. Anyone can do it once. Once is nothing. It – it’s good for you to do it once.’

  Of course, she’d say that, thought William. In his book the sister had said that it was the first time – ‘Have you only done it once, Ethel?’ he said earnestly.

  ‘Of course,’ she snapped, ‘that was the first time.’

  She must have known that he’d seen her through the keyhole. He couldn’t think what to say next. He’d quite forgotten what the boy in the book had said, but he remembered suddenly Ethel’s pride in her personal appearance.

  ‘It’s making you look awful,’ he said.

  ‘It isn’t’ snapped Ethel; ‘my nose is a tiny bit red, but it’s not due to that at all.’

  ‘I bet it is,�
�� said William.

  ‘It isn’t,’ said Ethel. ‘Anyway’ – and she became almost humble in her pleading – ‘anyway – you won’t say anything to mother about it, will you? Promise.’

  ‘Very well,’ said William.

  He promised quite willingly, because he didn’t want his mother interfering in it any more than Ethel did. He wanted to have the sole glory of saving Ethel from her life of crime, and if their mother knew, of course, she’d take the whole thing out of his hands.

  ‘Ethel,’ said Mrs Brown tentatively, ‘I wonder – I’d be so much obliged if you’d take William with you to Mrs Hawkins’. He’s getting so restless indoors, and I daren’t let him go out and play, because you know what he is. He’d be walking in the ditch and getting his feet wet and getting pneumonia or something. But if he goes with you it will be a nice little change for him, and you can keep an eye on him, and – well’ – vaguely – ‘it’ll be about Shakespeare, and that’s improving. His last school report was awful. And, as I say, it will be a nice little change for him.’

  Ethel knew that her mother was thinking about a nice little change for herself, rather than for William, but, chiefly lest her pronunciation of certain consonants should betray her, she acquiesced.

  ‘Then I can get on with the preparations for the whist drive,’ said Mrs Brown, ‘and you won’t forget to ask for the bonbon dish, will you, dear?’

  Ethel said ‘No’ (or rather ‘Do’), and felt grateful to the whist drive because she knew that it was preoccupation with it that prevented her mother from recognising the symptoms of a cold in the head which were becoming more and more pronounced every minute.

  William showed unexpected docility when ordered to accompany Ethel to Mrs Hawkins’. He felt that he had not so far acquitted himself with any conspicuous success in his role of reformer of Ethel. He could not flatter himself that anything he had said would have saved her from drink. He might get another chance during the afternoon.