Just William (6 page)

William acknowledged the compliment by a scowl and a mysterious muttered remark to the effect that some people were always at him.

During preparation in afternoon school he read a storybook kindly lent him by his next-door neighbour. It was not because he had no work to do that William read a storybook in preparation. It
was a mark of defiance to the world in general. It was also a very interesting storybook. It opened with the hero as a small boy misunderstood and ill-treated by everyone around him. Then he ran
away. He went to sea, and in a few years made an immense fortune in the goldfields. He returned in the last chapter and forgave his family and presented them with a noble mansion and several
shiploads of gold. The idea impressed William – all except the end part. He thought he’d prefer to have the noble mansion himself and pay rare visits to his family, during which he
would listen to their humble apologies, and perhaps give them a nugget or two, but not very much – certainly not much to Ethel. He wasn’t sure whether he’d ever really forgive
them. He’d have rooms full of squeaky balloons and trumpets in his house anyway, and he’d keep caterpillars and white rats all over the place too – things they made such a fuss
about in their old house – and he’d always go about in dirty boots, and he’d never brush his hair or wash, and he’d keep dozens of motorcars, and he wouldn’t let Ethel
go out in any of them. He was roused from this enthralling daydream by the discovery and confiscation of his storybook by the master in charge, and the subsequent fury of its owner. In order
adequately to express his annoyance, he dropped a little ball of blotting paper soaked in ink down William’s back. William, on attempting retaliation, was sentenced to stay in half an hour
after school. He returned gloomily to his history book (upside down) and his misanthropic view of life. He compared himself bitterly with the hero of the storybook and decided not to waste another
moment of his life in uncongenial surroundings. He made a firm determination to run away as soon as he was released from school.

He walked briskly down the road away from the village. In his pocket reposed the balloon. He had made the cheering discovery that the mathematics master had left it on his
desk, so he had joyfully taken it again into his possession. He thought he might reach the coast before night, and get to the goldfields before next week. He didn’t suppose it took long to
make a fortune there. He might be back before next Christmas and – crumbs, he’d jolly well make people sit up! He wouldn’t go to school, for one thing, and he’d be jolly
careful who he gave nuggets to for another. He’d give nuggets to the butcher’s boy and the postman, and the man who came to tune the piano, and the chimney sweep. He wouldn’t give
any to any of his family, or any of the masters at the school. He’d just serve people out the way they served him. He just would.

The road to the coast seemed rather long, and he was growing rather tired. He walked in a ditch for a change, and then scraped through a hedge and took a short cut across a ploughed field. Dusk
was falling fast, and even William’s buoyant spirits began to flag. The fortune part was all very well, but in the meantime he was cold and tired and hungry. He hadn’t yet reached the
coast, much less the goldfields. Something must be done. He remembered that the boy in the story had ‘begged his way’ to the coast. William determined to beg his. But at present there
seemed nothing to beg it from, except a hawthorn hedge and a scarecrow in the field behind it. He wandered on disconsolately deciding to begin his career as a beggar at the first sign of human
habitation.

At last he discovered a pair of iron gates through the dusk and, assuming an expression of patient suffering calculated to melt a heart of stone, walked up the drive. At the front door he
smoothed down his hair (he had lost his cap on the way), pulled up his stockings, and rang the bell. After an interval a stout gentleman in the garb of a butler opened the door and glared
ferociously up and down William.

‘Please—’ began William plaintively.

The stout gentleman interrupted.

‘If you’re the new Boots,’ he said majestically, ‘go round to the back door. If you’re not, go away.’

He then shut the door in William’s face. William, on the top step, considered the question for a few minutes. It was dark and cold, with every prospect of becoming darker and colder. He
decided to be the new Boots. He found his way round to the back door and knocked firmly. It was opened by a large woman in a print dress and apron.

‘What y’ want?’ she said aggressively.

‘He said,’ said William firmly, ‘to come round if I was the new Boots.’

The woman surveyed him in grim disapproval.

‘You bin round to the front?’ she said. ‘Nerve!’

Her disapproval increased to suspicion.

‘Where’s your things?’ she said.

‘Comin’,’ said William without a moment’s hesitation.

‘Too tired to bring ’em with you?’ she said sarcastically. ‘All right. Come in!’

William came in gratefully. It was a large, warm, clean kitchen. A small kitchenmaid was peeling potatoes at a sink, and a housemaid in black, with a frilled cap and apron, was powdering her
nose before a glass on the wall. They both turned to stare at William.

‘’Ere’s the new Boots,’ announced Cook, ‘’is valet’s bringin’ ’is things later.’

The housemaid looked up William from his muddy boots to his untidy hair, then down William from his untidy hair to his muddy boots.

‘Imperdent-lookin’ child,’ she commented haughtily, returning to her task.

William decided inwardly that she was to have no share at all in the nuggets.

The kitchenmaid giggled and winked at William, with obviously friendly intent. William mentally promised her half a shipload of nuggets.

‘Now, then, Smutty,’ said the housemaid without turning round, ‘none of your sauce!’

‘’Ad your tea?’ said the cook to William. William’s spirits rose.

‘No,’ he said plaintively.

‘All right. Sit down at the table.’

William’s spirits soared sky-high.

He sat at the table and the cook put a large plate of bread and butter before him.

William set to work at once. The housemaid regarded him scornfully.

‘Learnt ’is way of eatin’ at the zoo,’ she said pityingly.

The kitchenmaid giggled again and gave William another wink. William had given himself up to wholehearted epicurean enjoying of his bread and butter and took no notice of them. At this moment
the butler entered.

He subjected the quite unmoved William to another long survey.

‘When next you come a-hentering of this ’ouse, my boy,’ he said, ‘kindly remember that the front door is reserved for gentry an’ the back for brats.’

William merely looked at him coldly over a hunk of bread and butter. Mentally he knocked him off the list of nugget-receivers.

The butler looked sadly round the room.

‘They’re all the same,’ he lamented. ‘Eat, eat, eat. Nothin’ but eat. Eat all day an’ eat all night. ’E’s not bin in the ’ouse two minutes
an’ ’e’s at it. Eat! Eat! Eat! ’E’ll ’ave all the buttons bust off his uniform in a week like wot the larst one ’ad. Like eatin’ better than
workin’, don’t you?’ he said sarcastically to William.

‘Yes, I do, too,’ said William with firm conviction.

The kitchenmaid giggled again, and the housemaid gave a sigh expressive of scorn and weariness as she drew a thin pencil over her eyebrows.

‘Well, if you’ve quite finished, My Lord,’ said the butler in ponderous irony, ‘I’ll show you to your room.’

William indicated that he had quite finished, and was led up to a very small bedroom. Over a chair lay a page’s uniform with the conventional row of brass buttons down the front of the
coat.

‘Togs,’ explained the butler briefly. ‘Your togs. Fix ’em on quick as you can. There’s company to dinner tonight.’

William fixed them on.

‘You’re smaller than wot the last one was,’ said the butler critically. ‘They ’ang a bit loose. Never mind. With a week or two of stuffin’ you’ll
’ave most probable bust ’em, so it’s as well to ’ang loose first. Now, come on. ’Oo’s bringing over your things?’

‘Er – a friend,’ explained William.

‘I suppose it
is
a bit too much to expeck you to carry your own parcels,’ went on the butler, ‘in these ’ere days. Bloomin Bolshevist, I speck, aren’t
you?’

William condescended to explain himself.

‘I’m a gold-digger,’ he said.

‘Crikey!’ said the butler.

William was led down again to the kitchen.

The butler threw open a door that led to a small pantry.

‘This ’ere is where you work, and this ’ere,’ pointing to a large kitchen, ‘is where you live. You ’ave not,’ he ended haughtily ‘the hentry into
the servants’ ’all.’

‘Crumbs!’ said William.

‘You might has well begin at once,’ went on the butler, ‘there’s all this lunch’s knives to clean. ’Ere’s a hapron, ’ere’s the knife-board
an’ ’ere’s the knife-powder.’

He shut the bewildered William into the small pantry and turned to the cook.

‘What do you think of ’im?’ he said.

‘’E looks,’ said the cook gloomily, ‘the sort of boy we’ll ’ave trouble with.’

‘Not much clarse,’ said the housemaid, arranging her frilled apron. ‘It surprises me ’ow any creature like a boy can grow into an experienced, sensible, broad-minded man
like you, Mr Biggs.’

Mr Biggs simpered and straightened his necktie.

‘Well,’ he admitted, ‘as a boy, of course, I wasn’t like ’im.’

Here the pantry door opened and William’s face, plentifully adorned with knife-powder came round.

‘I’ve done some of the knives,’ he said. ‘Shall I be doin’ something else and finish the others afterwards?’

‘’Ow many ’ave you done?’ said Mr Biggs.

‘One or two,’ said William vaguely, then with a concession to accuracy, ‘well, two, but I’m feeling tired of doin’ knives.’

The kitchenmaid emitted a scream of delight and the cook heaved a deep sigh.

The butler advanced slowly and majestically towards William’s tousled head, which was still craned around the pantry door.

‘You’ll finish them knives, my boy,’ he said, ‘or—’

William considered the weight and size of Mr Biggs.

‘All right,’ he said pacifically. ‘I’ll finish the knives.’

He disappeared, closing the pantry door behind him.

‘’E’s goin’ to be a trile,’ said the cook, ‘an’ no mistake.’

‘Trile’s ’ardly the word,’ said Mr Biggs.

‘Haffliction,’ supplied the housemaid.

‘That’s more like it,’ said Mr Biggs.

Here William’s head appeared again.

‘Wot time’s supper?’ he said.

He retired precipitately at a hysterical shriek from the kitchenmaid and a roar of fury from the butler.

‘You’d better go an’ do your potatoes in the pantry,’ said the cook to the kitchenmaid, ‘and let’s ’ave a bit of peace in ’ere and see
’e’s doin’ of ’is work all right.’

The kitchenmaid departed joyfully to the pantry.

William was sitting by the table, idly toying with a knife. He had experimented upon the knife-powder by mixing it with water, and the little brown pies that were the result lay in a row on the
mantelpiece. He had also tasted it, as the dark stains upon his lips testified. His hair was standing straight up on his head as it always did when life was strenuous. He began the
conversation.

‘You’d be surprised,’ he said, ‘if you knew what I really was.’

She giggled.

‘Go on!’ she said. ‘What are you?’

‘I’m a gold-digger,’ he said. ‘I’ve got shiploads an’ shiploads of gold. At least, I will have soon. I’m not goin’ to give
him
,’
pointing towards the door, ‘any, nor any of them in there.’

‘Wot about me?’ said the kitchenmaid, winking at the cat as the only third person to be let into the joke.

‘You,’ said William graciously, ‘shall have a whole lot of nuggets. Look here.’ With a princely flourish he took up a knife and cut off three buttons from the middle of
his coat and gave them to her. ‘You keep those and they’ll be kind of tokens. See? When I come home rich, you show me the buttons an’ I’ll remember and give you the nuggets.
See? I’ll maybe marry you,’ he promised, ‘if I’ve not married anyone else.’