William At War

by Richmal Crompton

  ‘That’s very kind of you, dear,’ said Miss Milton serenely, as she continued her note, ‘but you know, verbal messages are so apt to get distorted. I think it’s so much better to have things in black and white.’ She murmured her words aloud as she wrote. ‘They’ll – change – it – for – unpolished – if – you—’ Then she stopped suddenly and sat listening, her whole body tense. The worst had happened. Hector and Herbert were exploring the cellar just underneath her with shouts of rapture. Their actual words could not be heard, but William could tell that they were acclaiming their discoveries to each other in careless glee.

  Miss Milton put down her pen and looked at William.

  ‘I thought, dear,’ she said in a low voice, still listening intently to the mysterious sounds, ‘that you were alone in the house.’

  ‘Yes, I am,’ said William.

  ‘Then what’s that?’ said Miss Milton.

  ‘What?’ said William, deciding to brazen it out.

  ‘Those voices.’

  ‘What voices?’ said William, exchanging his forbidding scowl for an expression of exaggerated bewilderment.

  ‘Can’t you – hear?’ said Miss Milton, dropping her voice still further.

  ‘Hear what?’ said William, whose expression now suggested that of an amiable half-wit.

  ‘Voices,’ said Miss Milton again, looking about the room. ‘They seem to come from all around me.’

  William realised with something of relief that Miss Milton’s sense of hearing was not very clear, and that she was not aware that the Brown house contained a cellar.

  ‘It’s prob’ly an echo,’ he said hopefully.

  ‘Echo?’ said Miss Milton, a little tartly. ‘My dear boy, an echo of what?’

  ‘Well, anythin’,’ said William. ‘Echoes come from anywhere, you know. It might be jus’ people talkin’ miles off, an’ it – well, it’s just sort of echoes.’

  ‘That’s nonsense, my dear boy,’ said Miss Milton, so firmly that William decided to abandon the echo theory.

  ‘It’s prob’ly rats, then,’ he tried next. ‘Rats or the wind. I’ve often noticed rats an’ wind sound jus’ like people talkin’.’

  ‘But you hear nothing,’ said Miss Milton. ‘You just said that you heard nothing.’

  ‘No, I can’t hear anythin’,’ said William. ‘’Cept – well, ’cept jus’ a bit of rats an’ wind.’

  Miss Milton listened again, still more intently, while the voices of Hector and Herbert rose muffled but vociferous from below. William cleared his throat, then coughed loud and long, but not quite loud or long enough to drown the twins’ exultant yells. Then he looked at Miss Milton in surprise. Her air of bewilderment had changed to one of happy ecstasy that sat oddly upon her plain, matter-of-fact, pince-nezed face.

  ‘Tell me, dear,’ she said. ‘Do other people hear these sounds?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ said William, anxious to take her mind off the subject as quickly as possible. ‘Some people do. Some people hear them all right. It’s jus’ somethin’ wrong with their ears,’ he went on in sudden inspiration. ‘That’s what it is. People with somethin’ wrong with their ears hear ’em. It’s nothin’ axshully serious, of course,’ he added hastily. ‘They jus’ hear voices like that when there’s somethin’ wrong with their ears, that’s all.’

  But the expression of ecstasy did not fade from Miss Milton’s face.

  ‘Oh, no, it’s not that, dear boy,’ she said, in a dreamy, far-away voice. ‘It’s not that. My mother was the seventh child of a seventh child, and, though this is the first manifestation I’ve actually experienced, I’ve always known that it must be there somewhere.’ She looked about her with a blandly complacent smile, as the voices of Hector and Herbert arose again – now in sudden altercation. ‘Voices everywhere . . . All around me . . .’ She patted William’s head. ‘Be thankful that you do not hear them, dear boy. A gift like that is a great responsibility . . . Well,’ she drew herself up and spoke in a quick, brisk voice, ‘one still has to live in the material world of everyday life, has one not? One must not forget that. One must not allow any manifestation of another world to cause one to forget one’s duty in this one, and my next duty is to go to see Mrs Bott about mending the surplices. She always seems to be away from home her week, and I’ve decided to nail her down. Be sure your mother gets my note, won’t you? Well . . .’ She drifted into the hall and paused as a loud shout from Hector floated up from the cellar. ‘They seem to follow me,’ she said, with a seraphic smile, ‘to move with me as I move . . . Well,’ resuming her brisk voice, ‘as I said, one must not neglect one’s duty . . .’

  To William’s relief she had now reached the front door. He watched her drift down the drive, turn round anxiously when she reached the gate, then reassured by a yell from the twins, pass happily on her way.

  ‘Corks!’ gasped William, when she was safely out of sight. ‘Corks! I thought she was never goin’. I’ll get ’em out quick ’fore anyone else comes.’

  He hastened down the cellar steps to find a hilarious potato fight going on. A large King Edward hurled by Hector at Herbert hit him on the nose as he reached the bottom of the stairs. He firmly resisted the temptation to join in the fight.

  ‘We’re havin’ a jolly good time,’ panted Herbert. ‘It’s a jolly fine place. I wish we’d got a place like this in our house. We’re pretendin’ we’re smugglers an’ pirates in a cave. We’re having a jolly good fight.’

  ‘Listen,’ said William urgently. ‘You’ve gotter go home now. This was only a sort of practice. You—’

  At that moment the front-door bell rang again.

  ‘Corks!’ groaned William. ‘S’like a bad dream.’

  Once more he weighed the advantages of answering and not answering the bell, and once more decided in favour of answering. But he must secure the twins’ silence. Another visitor might not be ready to ascribe their raucous young voices to psychic origins.

  ‘Look here,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I’ve gotter go for a minute. You’ve not gotter make a noise. Will you promise to be quiet while I’m away?’

  ‘Is it the enemy?’ said Hector, with eager interest. ‘We’ve been sayin’ p’raps the enemy’d come. When will they start droppin’ bombs?’

  Herbert threw a potato at the small, grimy window, breaking one of the panes, and shrieked excitedly.

  ‘The enemy! The enemy! The enemy! Bomb! Bomb!’

  ‘Shut up,’ said William fiercely. ‘It is the enemy, an’ they will drop bombs if you start makin’ a noise. If you’re quiet they’ll go away. P’raps they’re goin’ away now.’ He listened hopefully, but the only sound that broke the silence was another and more imperious peal of the frontdoor bell. He sighed. ‘No, they’re not goin’ away. Well, it’ll be all right s’long as you’re quiet, but if you start kickin’ up a row they’ll start droppin’ bombs.’

  ‘What’ll we do if they come down here?’ said Hector.

  ‘Pelt ’em with potatoes,’ shouted Herbert gleefully.

  ‘Shut up!’ said William.

  Another peal of the front-door bell told him that the visitor was of the sort that never owns defeat, so, with another stern admonition to the twins not to speak till he returned, he hastened again up the cellar steps to the front door. Mrs Monks, the vicar’s wife, stood there with a small grocer’s paper bag in her hand. The scowl with which William greeted her was more repellent than ever.

  ‘’Fraid my mother’s out,’ he muttered gruffly.

  Mrs Monks pushed him on to one side and sailed placidly into the hall.

  ‘I want to leave this for the Pound Day,’ she said, ‘and write her an apology for not having left it this morning, as she asked us to.’

  ‘You needn’t stay’n write her a note,’ said William with a note almost of pleading in his voice. At present there was silence below, but at any moment, he felt, pandemonium might break out again. ‘I’ll tell her. I’ll ’splain. You can go right away now. I’ll ’splain all right.’r />
  ‘My dear William,’ said Mrs Monks, ‘I never believe in leaving explanations to a third party. In any case, I owe her an apology, and I must make it as nearly in person as possible. I certainly can’t send it verbally, even by you. Indeed, I know how often children of your age either forget to give messages, or give them in a completely garbled form.’

  She laid down her paper bag and handbag on the hall chest side by side, and sailed into the drawing-room taking her place at Mrs Brown’s writing table.

  ‘I didn’t forget to bring my pound of rice this morning,’ she went on, ‘but my housemaid was taken ill, and I haven’t had a moment till now. Not a moment. I got rice, by the way, because I thought that probably no one else would think of it.’ Her pen moved rapidly over the paper as she spoke. William stood by her, tense and rigid, listening with every nerve for sounds from below. But all was still and silent. Evidently Hector and Herbert had taken his words to heart. Once he thought he heard someone moving in the hall, but the sound ceased almost at once, and it was plain that Mrs Monks heard nothing.

  ‘There!’ she said, signing her name with a flourish. ‘See she gets that, won’t you? Well, I must hurry off now.’ She collected her handbag from the hall chest and sailed to the front door. ‘Be sure you give her my note . . . Goodbye.’

  William heaved a sigh of relief as she sailed down the drive and disappeared into the road. The danger was over. He could now dispose of the twins before his mother came back, and— His heart sank again. Another figure was coming up the drive, carrying a grocer’s paper bag. Too late even to pretend that there was no one in the house, as he had decided to in case of future interruptions, for she had seen him and was waving to him gaily. It was Miss Thompson, who lived with her aunt at The Larches. She was small and fluttery, like a bird, and she wore a hat with a perky little feather sticking up in front like a bird’s top-knot.

  ‘Is your mother in?’ she said breathlessly, as she reached the front door. ‘Aren’t I naughty? I quite forgot about bringing my pound this morning. I’ve no excuse at all. I just forgot! I bought a new hat in Hadley this morning, and I’m afraid it drove everything else out of my mind.’ She fluttered into the hall and looked at herself in the mirror. ‘It’s rather nice, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘I thought it was a bit too young at first, but the woman persisted that it wasn’t. She said everyone was wearing them, and that it was quite suitable. It’s just a leetle on the small side. It gave me a headache even in the shop, and it’s coming on again now. I must take it back to be stretched. I’ll just slip it off now while I write my note of apology to your mother. It will give my head a rest.’

  ‘I’ll tell her,’ said William desperately. ‘You needn’t write. You can go home an’ rest your head prop’ly . . .’

  But she wasn’t listening to him. She was putting her hat and grocer’s bag on the hall chest, side by side, and chattering away in her birdlike inconsequential fashion.

  ‘I see I’m not the only naughty one. I do hope your mother will forgive me. Such a little scatter-brain, I always am! I got rice. I thought that probably no one else would think of it. And it’s so wholesome. Whole tribes live on it in India. Now may I just go into the drawing-room, and write my little note? I do hope she won’t be cross with me. I thought of it first thing this morning and then, as I said, the hat drove it clean out of my mind. May I sit here and use a piece of her notepaper? “Dear – Mrs – Brown . . .” ’

  William watched her helplessly, his body rigid, his ears strained. Once he thought again that he heard stealthy sounds outside the room, but decided it must be his imagination.

  ‘ “Please – forgive—” ’ said Miss Thompson, slowly ending her note, ‘ “your – scatter-brained – friend – Louisa – Thompson.” There!’ She fastened up the envelope. ‘Now I must fly. Literally fly. My aunt wanted to have tea early today and—’ She glanced at the clock. ‘My goodness! I’m late already. I shouldn’t have come till after tea. What a scatter-brain I am! Forgive me, dear. I can’t stop to hear all your news, though I’d love to.’ She fluttered into the hall, snatched up her hat without looking at it, perched it on her head, said, ‘Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye! Give my love to your dear mother,’ and fluttered off down the drive.

  William closed the door and drew a long, deep breath.

  ‘Crumbs!’ he said, in a tone of heartfelt relief.

  The next step was plain. Now that the coast was clear all he had to do was to bring the twins from their hiding-place and speed them on their homeward way. But, before he’d had time even to reach the cellar door, there was the sound of a key in the lock, and his mother entered.

  ‘Hello, dear!’ she said. ‘I never thought you’d get back before me. I came back earlier than I intended, anyway . . . Oh, dear! Rice again. No one seems to be able to think of anything else but rice. Still, the grocer says he’ll change it . . . Now there’s only you and me, dear, so we’ll have a nice cosy tea together. And you’ll help me get it ready, won’t you? You can be such a help when you like.’

  Despairingly, he watched Mrs Brown hang her hat and coat on the hatstand, then read the three notes that were on the hall chest with the three bags of rice. He could hear faint sounds from the cellar below. They began to increase in volume.

  ‘Mother,’ he said, speaking in a loud, booming voice, in order to drown them, ‘wouldn’t you like to go an’ lie down for a bit while I get tea? Jus’ about five minutes.’ (He could easily get rid of the twins in five minutes.) ‘You – you look a bit tired to me. You look ’s if it’d do you good to have a bit of a lie-down while I get tea.’

  Mrs Brown gazed at him tenderly, deeply touched by this proof of his affection and considerateness, storing up the incident in her mind in order to tell her husband when he came home from work. (‘I’m always telling you that you don’t do William justice, dear. Now just listen to what he said to me when I came in this afternoon . . .’)

  ‘That’s a very kind thought, dear,’ she said, ‘but I’m not feeling at all tired, and I certainly won’t let you get the tea all alone. Many hands make light work, you know. Now I’ll put the kettle on, and you get out the tablecloth and—’

  ‘Mother,’ said William with the urgency of desperation (again his ears, strained to attention, had caught those faint sounds from below), ‘it seemed to me someone’d stole a lot of tools from our tool shed this afternoon. Seemed to me quite a lot of them’d gone when I came in.’ (If only he could get her out of the house as long as it would take to go to the tool shed and back, it would give him time to drag the twins up from their retreat and hustle them off home.)

  ‘What had gone, dear?’ Mrs Brown said placidly.

  ‘Well,’ temporised William, ‘I can’t say quite what’d gone. I didn’t count ’xactly. I only saw that some’d gone. I thought I’d better tell you . . .’

  ‘I expect you’re mistaken, dear,’ said Mrs Brown, bustling about the kitchen, quite unmoved by the news. ‘You’re always imagining things. I’ll look after tea but I’m certainly going to have a cup of tea before I do anything else. Anyway, if they’re gone, they’re gone, and a few minutes won’t matter here or there . . . Have you got the cloth out, dear?’

  ‘Mother . . .’ said William. (He was going to tell her that he thought he’d heard the boiler burst just before she came in. That should get her up to the loft at any rate.) But at that moment there came another ring at the front-door bell.

  ‘See who it is, dear,’ called his mother.

  William went to the door. Miss Milton entered. There was a tense, keyed-up look on her face.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said in a tense, keyed-up voice to Mrs Brown, who had come out of the kitchen to see who it was. ‘I’m terribly sorry, but I must make sure.’

  ‘Make sure?’ said Mrs Brown.

  ‘Yes,’ said Miss Milton. ‘It was here I heard them. They seemed to follow me to the gate, then stopped. I’ve not heard them since. I had to come back here and – make sure. Can I still hear them
here? I know I did before. Often that – extra sense, shall we call it? – functions erratically, but one must do what one can to understand it, to regularise it . . . I felt that I must make sure whether I could still hear them here . . .’

  ‘Them?’ faltered Mrs Brown.

  She’d always known that Miss Milton was a little eccentric, but – well, really, eccentric was almost too mild a word for this.

  ‘The voices,’ said Miss Milton.

  ‘The voices?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Miss Milton had stridden into the drawing-room, and was standing there in the middle of the room, every muscle taut as if poised for flight.

  ‘I heard them here,’ she said dreamily, ‘only a few minutes ago. Voices. All round me.’

  She listened, but there was no sound. The twins had evidently discovered some silent occupation for the moment. Mrs Brown was too much bewildered for speech, and William realised the uselessness of it.

  ‘Strange!’ said Miss Milton. ‘Either the gift has deserted me or—’

  At that moment came another interruption. It was Mrs Monks. Admitted by William, she sailed into the drawing-room, her face set and stern, and, opening the small handbag she carried, drew out three or four carrots.

  ‘What’s the meaning of this?’ she said severely.

  Mrs Brown sat down upon the nearest chair.

  ‘What on earth is happening?’ she said helplessly.

  ‘I came here a few minutes ago,’ said Mrs Monks, ‘to leave my rice and write a note of apology—’

  ‘Fancy you thinking of rice!’ put in Miss Milton, who had now decided that the gift had deserted her.

  ‘I laid my handbag on the hall chest while I came in to write my note,’ continued Mrs Monks, ignoring Miss Milton. ‘I had met the organist just before I reached your gate and had opened my bag to consult my diary because we were discussing the most suitable day for the choir treat. The bag then held its usual contents – my purse, stamp book, engagement diary and – er – a small powder compact. As I said, I laid it down on your hall chest for a matter of – say – five minutes and when I got home I found that it contained – these!’ She held out the carrots dramatically.