William the Bad

by Richmal Crompton

  He crouched, concealed by a rhododendron bush, watching the door. The music began again. Dolly Clavis and Ronald Bell disappeared into the house. The coast was clear. He rose cautiously, and was just about to creep up to the side door, when he heard someone move in the bushes just near him. He crouched down again frozen to breathless immobility.

  Gordon Franklin strode wrathfully away down the garden in search of his costume. The cheek of whoever had taken it! The cheek! The beastly cheek! The best costume he’d got! Well, he’d jolly well find it before the night was out or—He stopped short. He could see a figure creeping through the bushes dressed—yes, dressed in his costume. It was, of course, William, whose unofficial party in the summer house was being a great success, and whose unofficial guests after an unofficial supper were now engaged in scouting each other in that part of the garden not occupied by the official guests. William was making his way through the bushes to his hiding place, while the others were counting a hundred before they followed to scout him. Engaged in this peaceful occupation, William was amazed and indignant to find himself brutally assaulted by a tall youth who uttered violent threats and imprecations, and then tore his treasured pirate’s suit from his person. Having torn it from his person, his assailant strode off with it, still muttering bloodthirsty threats. William stood for a minute, spellbound with amazement. Then his faculties returned, and with them a realisation of the horrible fact that he wasn’t wearing any costume at all—or at least any costume that would be recognised in public as such. He must go to his bedroom at once and put on his Red Indian suit. But he couldn’t go like this. On the other hand he couldn’t go to his friends for help. His proud spirit could not brook the thought of confessing himself the victim of an unrequited attack. No, he’d go round to the side door, wait till all was clear, then dash upstairs. Very cautiously he crept round to the side door. No, it was useless. Dolly Clavis and Ronald Bell sat there. Well, he’d wait till they’d gone. He crouched in the bushes waiting. It seemed to him that he waited for hours. At last the music arose for the next dance and the couple went in. William was just rising when—he heard a sound in the bushes near. He crouched down again and froze to breathless immobility.

  Robert and William crouched there, not moving, hardly breathing, till to each it seemed that the coast must be clear, and then at the identical moment they arose and surveyed each other across a giant fern and two rhododendron bushes, both clad in the unconventional attire of vest and pants. They stared at each other in silence, paralysed with amazement, their mouths slowly opening wider and wider. The silence was broken at last by Gordon Franklin, who had caught sight of Robert and bore down upon him triumphantly. His successful retrieval of his costume had killed all the rancour he had felt against Robert for letting it go.

  ROBERT AND WILLIAM CROUCHED THERE, HARDLY DARING TO BREATHE, TILL IT SEEMED THAT THE COAST MUST BE CLEAR. THEN THEY ROSE AND SURVEYED EACH OTHER.

  ‘I say, I’ve got it back,’ he said. ‘Come to the shed and put it on again.’

  Robert turned his bewildered gaze from William to the costume.

  ‘That—that isn’t the one,’ he said faintly.

  ‘Of course it is,’ said Gordon Franklin impatiently. ‘Come on and put it on. We don’t want to miss all the dancing.’

  ‘B-but—’ stuttered Robert weakly.

  He looked round for that amazing apparition of William rising from the bushes in his underclothing like Venus from the sea. But it had gone. His brain, he thought, must have been so overwrought by the dreadful events of this night that he had imagined it. Or else it had been some peculiar atmospheric condition that had given the air the properties of a mirror and it had been his own reflection he had seen. A mirage or something like that.

  ‘Do get a move on,’ said Gordon Franklin. ‘Or do you want to spend all night admiring that rhododendron in your pants?’

  Robert didn’t want to spend all night admiring that rhododendron in his pants.

  He got a move on.

  Robert, resplendent in the pirate’s costume, was sitting again with the beloved in the garden.

  She was gazing at him admiringly.

  ‘I think it was a ripping idea, changing like that into another costume in the middle of the dance,’ she was saying. ‘I wish you’d let me into the secret, though. You absolutely had me on toast while you were in the shed changing. I honestly thought that someone had locked you in at first.’

  ‘That was only my joke,’ said Robert.

  ‘I think you look ripping in that pirate’s thing,’ she went on: ‘I wish I’d brought another costume to change into. It’s a ripping idea. I say . . . when did you first begin to feel that we were real friends?’

  Gordon Franklin sat with Peggy Barlow in the conservatory. They were getting on very well together.

  ‘I’ve been looking out for you all evening,’ she said.

  ‘I was a bit late,’ he said, ‘I couldn’t get off before. And then I had to stop to give Robert a hand with his costume. There was a bit of confusion about it. You can bet that I came as quickly as I could. D’you know, I’ve never met anyone who understands as you do.’

  ‘That’s just the way I feel about you. When did you first—’

  William was in the summer-house with his unofficial guests.

  ‘Well, we took a long time findin’ you,’ said Ginger, ‘and why’ve you put your Red Indian suit on?’

  ‘I—I jus’ thought I’d change,’ said William airily, ‘I got a bit tired of the other. This is easier to muck about in. All right. It’s Ginger’s turn to hide. Go on, Ginger . . . one, two, three . . .’

  Mr. Sebastian Buttermere, dressed in his monk’s habit, sat at the writing-desk, that was a replica of Charles Dickens’ writing-desk. His face beamed rapturously. The story was going splendidly. His little adventure of the evening seemed to have stimulated his brain. Quite a Balzacian touch about his characters . . . quite a soupçon of Dickens humour . . .

  It was going very well indeed.

  Everything was quite normal again. The little interlude was over.

  CHAPTER 10

  THE PENNYMANS HAND ON THE TORCH

  The Outlaws always kept a watchful eye upon the Hall and made the most of its frequent periods of emptiness. They had made an extensive study of the habits of caretakers, knew their (frequent) hours of repose and played undisturbed in the garden and sometimes even in the house itself. But the arrival of new tenants interested them, too, because new tenants, though of course they might prove uninteresting, might also give to life that added zest that the Outlaws always liked life to have. So when they heard that the Hall was let again, their disappointment at being deprived of their unofficial playground was tempered by excitement at the prospect of new neighbours.

  They ascertained the time of their arrival in order to be the first to see the new-comers. The Outlaws generally did this when new people were coming to the village. One glance sufficed to tell the Outlaws whether the new-comer was capable of adding any sort of zest to life.

  On this occasion the train was rather late and the Outlaws, clustered together on a stile on the road that led from the station to the Hall, grew restive. The Outlaws did not like wasting their time.

  ‘I votes we go away,’ said Ginger, ‘we don’t want to stay here all day, an’ it’s nearly ten minutes after the time now. We’ll never get any decent game if we stay here all day.’

  ‘You can’t call ten minutes all day,’ challenged William pugnaciously.

  ‘Yes, you can,’ said Ginger, taking up the challenge with enthusiasm, for the ten minutes’ inactivity was telling on his nerves. ‘Course you can. Ten minutes an’ ten minutes an’ ten minutes an’ it’s soon all day. We’ve had one ten minutes an’ soon it’ll be another, an’ so on, an’ that’s all day if it goes on long enough, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well, you can’t say it’s all day after only one ten minutes,’ returned William, as pleased as Ginger at finding something to argue about. ‘It’
s a lie callin’ one ten minutes a whole day. Anyone’d say it was a lie. I bet if you asked anyone they’d say it was a lie, callin’ one ten minutes a whole day.’

  Ginger was just going to make a spirited reply when Douglas said, ‘Here they are,’ and the station cab trotted slowly into view.

  They fell silent and craned forward to look. The cabman, who owed William several, managed to give him one neat flick as he flourished his whip carelessly in passing. William tried to catch hold of the end, failed, and overbalanced into the field behind. He resumed his seat, rubbing the side of his face where the whip had caught it. The incident had stimulated him and turned his mind to pleasant thoughts of vengeance. There were certain perpetual feuds without which William would have found life almost unsupportable, and one of them was the feud with the village cabman. It came next in excitement and general indispensability to the feud with Farmer Jenks.

  But the horse was an ancient horse whom nothing could ever induce to move at more than a walking pace, and so, even with this little interlude, William had plenty of time to inspect the occupants of the cab. There were two—a man and a woman, both very tall, very pale and very thin. Both wore pince-nez and hand-woven tweeds.

  The Outlaws gazed at them in silence till they had disappeared from view. Then Ginger said in a resigned tone of voice:

  ‘Well, they don’t look very int’restin’.’

  William, however, was not so sure. ‘You never know,’ he said, with an air of deep wisdom, ‘they might be. Anyway, I bet it’s worth goin’ to see ’em to-night.’

  The Outlaws generally followed up an acquaintanceship begun in this way by paying an unofficial visit to the new-comer’s house after dusk in order to study the household at closer quarters. People seldom drew blinds or curtains, and even if they did there was generally an aperture through which they could be studied.

  ‘Might as well go an’ see, anyway,’ repeated William. ‘We needn’t stay if they keep on bein’ dull. But you never know. People that look dull often turn out to be excitin’. An’ sometimes the other way round.’

  They waited concealed in the ditch, as was their custom, for the return of the now empty cab, and as soon as it had safely passed them emerged to hang on behind till the cabman saw them and zestfully removed them with his whip.

  Then, stimulated by the little diversion, they returned to the game of Red Indians that they had abandoned in order to perform their unofficial welcome of the new-comers.

  Dusk found them creeping in single file through the grounds of the Hall on their way to the house where the new-comers should be spending their first evening in their new home.

  A bright light shone from the uncurtained drawing-room window, and this the Outlaws cautiously approached. There was a convenient bush by it that would have screened them from view had it been daylight. They crouched behind it and gazed into the room. And in the room was a marvellous sight. The tall thin lady and the tall thin gentleman had discarded their hand-woven tweeds and were dressed in flowing classical robes with fillets about their heads. The lady was working at a loom on one side of the fire and on the other the gentleman was playing unmelodiously but evidently to his own entire satisfaction upon a flute. The Outlaws stood and watched the scene spell-bound. Then the spell was broken by a housemaid who opened the door and spoke. The window was open and the Outlaws could hear the conversation.

  ‘Please, ’m, the butcher’s come to see if there are any orders.’

  The effect of this remark was instantaneous and terrifying. The woman went pale and the man dropped his flute and both assumed an expression of almost unendurable suffering. For a minute they were silent, and it was clear that they were silent because their mental anguish was too intense for speech. Finally the woman spoke in a faint voice.

  ‘Send him away,’ she said. ‘Send him right away. Tell him never to come back again. And—and Mary—’ The maid who was preparing to go, turned back. ‘Never . . . never mention the word to us again.’

  ‘What word, ’m?’ asked Mary innocently.

  ‘The word, the word you said,’ said the lady.

  The housemaid bridled indignantly.

  ‘No langwidge what nobody mightn’t hear has never passed my lips,’ she said pugnaciously, ‘not never in all me life.’

  ‘The word your mistress meant,’ said the man in a low pained voice, ‘was the—the name of the man who spills the blood of our little brothers and sisters.’

  ‘Lor!’ said the maid, her eyes and mouth opening to their fullest extent, ‘Lor! spills the b—. You’ve bin ’avin’ nightmares, ’m. The police ’d get ’im quick if anyone went about doin’ anythin’ like that.’

  ‘No, no,’ said the man impatiently, ‘by brothers and sisters your mistress means our little four-footed brothers and sisters.’

  ‘Oh, them,’ said the maid. ‘Pigs and such-like. The butcher you mean, ’m, then?’

  Again the lady and her husband blanched and exhibited signs of acute suffering.

  ‘Don’t. Please, don’t. Never mention the word again. Tell him never to come near us again.’

  ‘You don’t want no meat then, ’m?’ inquired the maid innocently.

  The word meat seemed to have as devastating an effect as the word butcher.

  ‘Never!’ moaned the lady, averting her head, making a gesture with her hand as if waving something aside. ‘We shall live on vegetables and on vegetables only. And we grow them ourselves. I meant to tell you earlier, but have been too busy. We live the life that nature meant us to live. And macaroni. Macaroni that we make with our own hands and spread out to dry in the sun.’ The maid departed, and the lady and gentleman continued their weaving and flute playing. Suddenly the gentleman put down his flute and said:

  ‘My dear, we must begin at once to educate these poor benighted souls.’

  ‘We must,’ said the lady, earnestly turning from her loom, ‘we must, indeed. We must take them back to the simple life. It is our mission, our service to humanity—our handing on of the torch.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the gentleman, taking up his flute.

  Then he began to play again—so untunefully that even the Outlaws couldn’t stand it, and had to retreat to the road. There they discussed the results of their expeditions.

  ‘Lunies,’ said Ginger, contemptuously, ‘I bet they’ve escaped from somewhere.’

  ‘They’re fun to watch anyway,’ said William. ‘We can always come an’ watch ’em when we’ve nothing else to do.’

  Heartened by the thought of this addition to their resources, they went home to bed.

  The next morning they arrived early at the Hall, but there was very little to see. The new-comers were not wearing their flowing robes. They were dressed in their hand-woven tweeds, and they breakfasted (watched by their invisible audience) on barley water and macaroni. After the meal the man went out, and the Outlaws, after arranging to meet there again that evening, went to school. Somebody, however, gave Ginger a broken air-gun in the course of the morning, and the burning question of its mending occupied the thoughts of the Outlaws to the exclusion of everything else. They found the airgun quite unmendable (as Ginger bitterly remarked, ‘He wouldn’t’ve give it away if it hadn’t of been’), but the excitement of taking it to pieces and finding out how it was made almost compensated for this. William, after examining it closely, said that it would be quite easy to make one, and that he meant to set about making one at once. The attempt absorbed all his energies for the next few days. The result was not successful as an air-gun, but with a little alteration and the addition of a mast and William’s handkerchief tom into two pieces for sails, it made quite a good ship of the easily sinkable sort.

  The existence of the new tenants of the Hall was brought back forcibly to his notice by finding the lady of the weaving loom in the drawing-room engaged in returning his mother’s call when he returned from experimenting with the new ship in the pond. The sight rekindled his interest, and after performing a lengthy and la
borious toilet (in which he attended to his face, his hands, his knees, his nails, but unfortunately forgot his hair) he entered the drawing-room and greeted the guest with the expression of intense ferocity that he always assumed when he intended to be especially polite. Then he took his seat in a corner of the room. His mother glanced at him helplessly. He did not usually accord his presence to her drawing-room, and when he did she always suspected that it cloaked some sinister design. Moreover, his hair looked terrible. It stood up wildly around the margins of his face whither his washing operations had driven it. The visitor, introduced as Mrs. Pennyman, had given him a vague smile and turned at once to his mother again. Evidently his entrance had interrupted an impassioned speech.

  ‘It is the ugliness of modem life,’ she said, ‘that shocks Adolphus and me so terribly. The ugliness of the clothes that we have to wear for one thing is repulsive in the extreme. In the evenings, when Adolphus and I are alone at home, we go back to the morning of the world, and wear the clothes that nature intended us to wear,’ seeing a question in Mrs. Brown’s eye, Mrs. Pennyman explained hastily, ‘flowing robes completely covering the human body and combining beauty with grace and harmony. The world of course is not yet fully educated to them. We have found that we must go slowly and educate the world. We tried the experiment of going out in them, but the result was not encouraging. We met with what I can only describe as a hostile reception. We were driven to compromise. In the daytime we wear the ugly garments that convention insists upon, but in the evening, in the seclusion of our own home, we wear the garments that as I said suggest the morning of the world.’