William the Bad

by Richmal Crompton

  They crept down the lane. She was still there, glaring malevolently over her gate. As soon as she saw them she picked up a sod and threw it at them. It caught William neatly in the back just as he turned to flee.

  They stopped to draw breath again when they’d turned the comer and were out of her sight.

  ‘We’re bein’ jolly cunnin’,’ said William, ‘we’re puttin’ her off her guard jolly well.’

  They agreed that they were but, having put her so successfully off her guard, as William said, wondered what to do next. Direct approach was proved impossible. It would merely necessitate a repetition of that act of deep strategic cunning that was always William’s explanation of their flight.

  ‘We’ll jus’ have to wait till she goes out an’ then go round an’ look at her frames,’ said Ginger.

  So the next evening they waited concealed in the hedge till the old lady had set off down the road to the village to do her shopping.

  They had set out upon the expedition as a desperate adventure. William had said:

  ‘She looks the sort to me who’s as like as not to kill you when she got hold of you. Well, that lump of soil she threw at me hurt me jolly hard. I bet if it’d hit my head I’d be dead by now. If I’d not been clever enough to get it in my back ’stead of my head where she meant it to go I’d be dead by now. It’s a jolly dangerous sort of adventure an’ I think we oughter go armed.’

  So Ginger had brought his air-gun, Henry his new penknife, Douglas his pistol (it only shot caps but, as Douglas said, it would startle her and then Ginger or Henry could get her with the air-gun and penknife) and William his bow and arrows. Moreover, they had left an envelope at home on William’s dressing-table on which was written: ‘To be opened if we do not return.’ Inside was a slip bearing the simple legend: ‘Mises Bretherton has murdered us,’ and signed by all four Outlaws.

  ‘That’s jolly clever,’ said William complacently. ‘I read about a man doing that in a book. Then if she kills us they’ll hang her an’ it’ll be jolly well sucks for her.’

  Not content with these preparations, William and Ginger had each made a will and left it in their playbox. William’s read: ‘If I di I leeve everythin’ to Ginger. Pleese let him have the mouth orgun you tuke of me.’ And Ginger’s read: ‘If I di I leeve everythin’ to William. The ants egs for the golefish are in the toffy tinn.’

  Henry had not made a will but Douglas, hoping to cause among his relations the panic and chagrin that the will of a rich uncle lately deceased had caused, had made a will that read:

  ‘I leeve everything to charryty.’

  When finally they set off, thus armed and prepared, creeping with elaborate and ostentatious secrecy along the ditch even in those roads where there was no chance of their meeting Mrs. Bretherton, their spirits were keyed up to a deed of desperate daring. They reached the cottage without meeting with any other adventure than the accidental discharge of Douglas’s pistol upon his last cap (‘You’ll have to look after yourself now,’ said William grimly, ‘we can’t promise to rescue you if you get in any deadly peril. You shouldn’t’ve kept foolin’ about with it.’) and a rencontre with a frog which delayed them for about ten minutes.

  They crouched in the ditch by the cottage and waited till Mrs. Bretherton came down the little path with her shopping basket on her arm. All went well. She passed them without seeing them and disappeared in the direction of the village. Then the Outlaws emerged very cautiously, carrying their weapons, and crept up the garden path headed by William. The elaborate and ostentatious secrecy of their mien would have attracted the attention of anyone upon the road had anyone been upon the road, but fortunately it was empty, so they reached the back of the cottage without question from anyone. And there were Mrs. Bretherton’s cucumbers in her frame. William surveyed them disapprovingly.

  ‘Well, I don’t think much of ’em,’ he said at last. ‘No, I can’t say I think much of ’em.’

  Then he took a tape measure from his pocket (he’d ‘borrowed’ it from his mother’s work basket) and measured the dimensions of the biggest.

  That done, the Outlaws turned and crept away in the same elaborately secret and sinister fashion in which they had come, pulling their caps over their faces to hide their eyes (Ginger had seen this done on the pictures) and returned home by way of the ditch again, partly because they couldn’t bear to relinquish their melodramatic rôles and partly because they hoped to meet another frog.

  The next day William took the dimensions to Mrs. Roundway and she compared it with hers. The result brought back her old all-embracing smile.

  ‘Mine’s bigger,’ she said. ‘A fair size bigger . . . though I can’t think that it’s quite right to—’

  But the Outlaws, nibbling the cookie boy she had given-them, reassured her.

  ‘There’s nothin’ wrong with jus’ findin’ out how big it is. ’Isn’t as if we did anythin’ to make it smaller.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Mrs. Roundway slowly, ‘an’ even if it was bigger I couldn’t do nothin’ to make mine bigger . . . it’s just that one does sort of feel better knowin’.’

  After that the Outlaws paid a weekly visit to Mrs. Bretherton’s back garden while she was doing her Saturday evening shopping and measured her cucumbers. They did not vary the proceedings in any particular from the first occasion. They went armed, they crept in single file through the ditch the whole way, they made wills and left notes informing the world that Mrs. Bretherton had murdered them. Without these preliminaries the expedition would have lacked zest in their eyes. But the great fact was that according to their calculations Mrs. Bretherton’s cucumber remained much smaller than Mrs. Roundway’s.

  ‘You’re cert’n to get the prize this year,’ they assured her earnestly.

  The day of the show came and—Mrs. Bretherton won the first prize. Her giant cucumber lay side by side with Mrs. Roundway’s making it look a veritable pigmy.

  The Outlaws gaped at it helplessly, eyes and mouth wide open.

  ‘B-but it wasn’t as big as that last night,’ said William.

  ‘You must have mis-measured it, love,’ said Mrs. Roundway trying to hide the bitterness of her disappointment. ‘It’s all right. Don’t you worry, love. I didn’t ought to’ve let you go measuring it. It’s a judgment on me same as David and the censor.’

  But the Outlaws were not interested in the moral side of the question. It was the practical side of it that appealed to them. They went off slowly to the old barn, too deep in thought even to eat the cookie boy that Mrs. Roundway had given them. There they sat on the floor and gazed gloomily in front of them.

  ‘After all the trouble we took,’ said Ginger. ‘Riskin’ our lives every week.’

  ‘An’ her nearly killin’ me with that piece of earth she’d put iron into,’ said William.

  ‘An’ all for nothin’,’ said Douglas.

  ‘But—it wasn’t as big as that last night,’ persisted William.

  ‘You must’ve mis-measured it same as what she said,’ said Ginger gloomily.

  ‘Well, I bet I didn’t,’ retorted William with spirit. ‘I bet I’ve got enough sense for that, anyway. I bet I understand them little strings with numbers on as well as anyone. It wasn’t as big as that last night.’

  ‘Well, what d’you think’s happened, then?’ said Ginger.

  William was silent for some time. Then he said slowly and impressively:

  ‘Tell you what I think’s happened. I think she’s a witch an’ puts a spell on ’em. She goes out the night before the show an’ puts a spell on ’em. Well, she must’ve done. It wasn’t as big as that last night when we saw it. She must’ve come out afterwards an’ put a spell on it. I know—’cause I c’n understand them little strings with numbers on as well as anyone. She’s a witch. Well, you’ve only gotter look at her to see she’s a witch, haven’t you?’

  The Outlaws, while considering it inconsistent with their dignity to believe in fairies, still believed in the more sinister
elements of their fairy tales.

  ‘There are witches an’ spells an’ those things still,’ went on William earnestly. ‘Well, how’d her cucumber suddenly get to that size in a night if there isn’t? An’ look at her face. Course she’s a witch. It’s bein’ a witch makes her face like that. Just same as pictures of witches. Well, that’s what I think anyway,’ he ended, with an unconvincing note of modesty in his voice. The Outlaws agreed with him and grew still more serious.

  ‘Well, I don’t see we c’n do much if she’s a witch,’ said Ginger, ‘we’ve not got any magic or anythin’ like that.’

  ‘’Sides,’ said Douglas, ‘it’s a bit dangerous interferin’ with witches. I shouldn’t like to be turned into a frog or anythin’ like that.’

  ‘I don’t know but that I’d as soon be a frog as a boy,’ said William thoughtfully. ‘They don’t have to go to school or wear collars or keep brushin’ their hair all the time. An’ they can play about in puddles an’ ponds an’ things an’ get wet all over without gettin’ into rows.’

  ‘Yes, but she might change us into worse than frogs,’ said Douglas, ‘black beetles or moths or somethin’ like that.’

  ‘Yes, I shouldn’t like to be one of them,’ said William. ‘Moths always seem a bit potty to me. Messin’ about windows an’ flyin’ into candles. They don’t do int’restin’ things like frogs. An’ eatin’ blankets. They don’t seem to have any sense.’

  Seeing that William was about to enter into a lengthy comparison of the habits of the various creatures into which they might be turned by the witch, Ginger hastily drew him back to the point at issue.

  ‘Well, now we know she’s a witch,’ he said, ‘what’re we goin’ to do?’

  ‘We’ll tell the judge,’ said William firmly, ‘we’ll wait till nearer the show an’ see who’s the judge an’ we’ll tell him that she’s a witch an’ puts a spell on ’em the night before to make ’em big. An’ then they won’t let it count. They’ll give the prize to Mrs. Roundway.’

  ‘An’ we won’t go measurin’ it any more?’ said Douglas.

  ‘N-no,’ said William rather regretfully.

  William had enjoyed those expeditions in the ditch to Mrs. Bretherton’s cottage.

  ‘We’ll jus’ tell the judge nearer the time about her puttin’ spells on ’em.’

  The affair seemed to have been quite satisfactorily settled and they transferred their attention to the cookie boy, assuming their characters of cannibal chiefs sitting in judgment on the rash white man who had ventured into their territory.

  As the days went on their suspicions that Mrs. Bretherton was a witch grew yet stronger. It was after she met Ginger in the village and looked at him that he lost the new fountain pen that was the joy of his heart. And Douglas, who had secret doubts on the subject, was quite convinced when, on wakening suddenly in the night and feeling sick after partaking of trifle in unwise quantities for supper, he remembered that he had passed her cottage in the afternoon and that she had looked at him out of the window. In fact every misfortune that now visited the Outlaws was laid at Mrs. Bretherton’s door. When William was kept in to learn his French verbs again, he felt indignant not against the French master but against Mrs. Bretherton.

  ‘I knew somethin’ like that’d happen,’ he said, ‘I had to pass her house ’stead of goin’ the long way round, ’cause I was late an’ I din’ see her lookin’ out at me but she must’ve, else I wouldn’t’ve been kept in.’

  Whenever the Outlaws had to pass Mrs. Bretherton’s cottage they passed it with crossed Angers, but even that did not save them from calamity. They invariably lost things or were kept in after passing her cottage. The fact that they lost things, and were kept in just as much when they didn’t pass her cottage, had in their eyes no bearing on the case at all.

  When it was announced that the judges of the vegetables were to be General Moult and Mr. Buck, the Outlaws held another meeting in the old bam to discuss what steps they should now take.

  ‘We’ll all go,’ said William, ‘an’ we’ll tell them about her bein’ a witch an’ puttin’ a spell on ’em, then they won’t count it.’

  They approached General Moult first. He received them quite graciously, mistaking them for a deputation from the village boys’ cricket club. He was expecting to be asked to be President of the village boys’ cricket club. He loved all official positions, and the more things he was President of the better he was pleased. So he ushered them into his little study, smiling an expansive welcome.

  ‘Well, my boys,’ he said genially. ‘Very nice to see you. Very nice indeed to see you. I always like a chat with you boys. Well, and how’s the world treating you? How’s the world treating you, eh?’

  William cleared his throat. He’d decided to lead up to the subject gradually. He was aware that the grownup world in general would receive his news at first with scepticism.

  ‘We wanted to talk to you about somethin’,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, my boy,’ smiled the General, ‘I think you will find me all attention.’

  ‘We wanted,’ said William slowly, ‘to ask you to do somethin’ for us.’ The General smiled.

  ‘I think I can guess what it is,’ he said, ‘and I think I can promise to do it.’

  The sombreness of William’s expression lightened.

  ‘I didn’t know you knew about it,’ he said with interest.

  ‘I think I can guess,’ said the General, smiling yet more genially. ‘Little birds carry these things about.’

  ‘Birds!’ said William. ‘Been turnin’ people into birds, has she? Crumbs! I din’t know that. I thought it was only the cucumber. Not but what I’d sooner be turned into a bird than a moth any day if I couldn’t be turned into a frog.’

  The geniality of General Moult’s manner disappeared abruptly: This was evidently not a deputation from the village boys’ cricket club asking him to be President.

  ‘What on earth do you mean, my boy?’ he said curtly.

  William considered that he had led up to his subject sufficiently and might come to plain facts.

  ‘Ole Mrs. Bretherton,’ he said simply. ‘She’s a witch, an’ she puts a spell on her cucumber the night before the show so’s she’ll get the prize an’—’

  The General rose, his face purple.

  ‘WHAT ON EARTH DO YOU MEAN, MY BOY?’ SAID THE GENERAL, CURTLY.

  ‘What do you mean by coming here with your impudence? What—’ He looked closer. He recognised William. The purple of his ferocious countenance deepened. ‘You’re the boy who was throwing stones at my walnut tree. You—’

  ‘SHE’S A WITCH,’ SAID WILLIAM, ‘AN’ SHE PUTS A SPELL ON HER CUCUMBER SO’S SHE’LL GET THE PRIZE.’

  But the Outlaws, feeling that the interview could not now be profitably prolonged, and judging from the General’s gestures that he intended to exact summary punishment, had fled through the garden door and down the garden to the road where they met the deputation from the village boys’ cricket club just coming in.

  ‘S’no use now,’ said Ginger gloomily, when they had reached the end of the road and stopped to draw breath. ‘S’no use even goin’ to the other one. He wouldn’t b’lieve either, an’ if he did ole General Moult wouldn’t let him give Mrs. Roundway the prize. They’re all mean and stupid like that, grown-ups are.’

  ‘What’re we goin’ to do then?’ said Douglas.

  They all looked at William. William’s face was set in stern thought. In the silence that followed their depression left them. William would surely find a way. And suddenly as they watched, the light of inspiration broke through William’s dejection.

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘We’ll go’n’ hide in her garden the night before when she says her spell over it. An’ then after she’s gone in we’ll say it again backwards an’ that’ll take it off.’

  It was the night before the show. The Outlaws were inadequately concealed behind the rain tub and the holly bush in Mrs. Bretherton’s back garden. Near them was the
cucumber frame, where she must come to cast her spell over to-morrow’s exhibit. It reposed now in its frame, an insignificant thing, infinitely smaller than Mrs. Roundway’s, but the Outlaws had no doubt at all that as soon as she had said the magic words over it it would swell to the gigantic proportions of last year and the year before. That expedition had been a truly perilous one. They had not crept into Mrs. Bretherton’s back garden while she was in the village as they had done before.They had braved her, as it were, in her den. They had crept into her garden while she sat in full view of them in her little sitting-room reading the newspaper. William had left a trail of paper leading to the cottage for the benefit of any rescue party that might set out to search for them should they fail to return. Ginger carried a swastika (‘borrowed’ from his brother), and Henry had brought a police whistle (‘borrowed’ from his mother). As regards the last William had said scornfully:

  ‘It won’t be any good. She’ll have turned us into something before they come even if they hear it.’

  They waited patiently till dusk fell, and still Mrs. Bretherton sat reading in her kitchen, unaware of the four boys watching her intently from the shelter of the rain tub and holly bush.

  ‘P’raps she won’t do it till midnight,’ whispered Ginger.

  ‘We’ll stop till she does, anyway,’ whispered William.

  ‘I’m gettin’ awful pins and needles,’ whispered Douglas, pathetically.

  ‘Shut up,’ hissed William.

  Mrs. Bretherton turned sharply as if she had caught the sound of their voices. But after a second or two she turned back to her paper. No sooner had she done so, however, than there came the sharp click of the latch of the gate and steps coming down the garden path. The Outlaws froze again into silent immobility. The steps passed them, and a young man tapped very quietly upon the cottage door. Mrs. Bretherton leapt to her feet, threw down her newspaper and went to the door to admit him. He held a paper parcel under his arm. As he entered the lighted kitchen the watching Outlaws recognised him as a nephew of Mrs. Bretherton’s, who lived in a village five miles away, and worked in a large nursery garden there. He opened his paper parcel, revealing a giant cucumber. His words reached the Outlaws through the open window.