More William (13 page)

But Providence was on William’s side for once. An old uncle came to tea and gave William five shillings.

‘Going to dance at a maypole, I hear?’ he chuckled.

‘P’raps,’ was all William said.

His family were relieved by his meekness with regard to the May Day festival. Sometimes William made such a foolish fuss about being dressed up and performing in public.

‘You know, dear,’ said his mother, ‘it’s a dear old festival, and quite an honour to take part in it, and a smock is quite a nice manly garment.’

‘Yes, Mother,’ said William.

The day was fine – a real May Day. The maypole was fixed up in the field near the school, and the little performers were to change in the schoolroom.

William went out with his brown paper parcel of stage properties under his arm and stood gazing up the road by which Evangeline Fish must come to the school. For Evangeline Fish would have to
pass his gate. Soon he saw her, her pale blue dress radiant in the sun.

‘’Ullo!’ he greeted her.

She simpered. She had won him at last.

‘Waitin’ to walk to the school with me, William?’ she said.

He still loitered.

‘You’re awful early.’

‘Am I? I thought I was late. I meant to be late. I don’t want to be too early. I’m the most ’portant person, and I want to walk in after the others, then they’ll
all look at me.’

She tossed her tightly wrought curls.

‘Come into our ole shed a minute,’ said William. ‘I’ve got a present for you.’

She blushed and ogled.

‘Oh,
William
!’ she said, and followed him into the woodshed.

‘Look!’ he said.

His uncle’s five shillings had been well expended. Rows of cakes lay round the shed; pastries, and sugar cakes, and iced cakes, and currant cakes.

‘Have a lot,’ said William. ‘They’re all for you. Go on! Eat ’em all. You can eat an’ eat an’ eat. There’s lots an’ lots of time and they
can’t begin without you, can they?’

‘Oh,
William
!’ she said.

She gloated over them.

‘Oh, may I?’

‘There’s heaps of time,’ said William. ‘Go on! Eat them all!’

Her greedy little eyes seemed to stand out of her head.

‘Oo!’ she said in rapture.

She sat down on the floor and began to eat, lost to everything but icing and currants and pastry. William made for the door, then he paused, gazed wistfully at the feast, stepped back, and,
grabbing a cream bun in each hand, crept quietly away.

Bettine in her print frock was at the door of the school.

‘Hurry up!’ she said anxiously. ‘You’re going to be late. The others are all out. They’re waiting to begin. Miss Dewhurst’s out there. They’re all come
but you an’ the Queen. I stayed ’cause you asked me to stay to help you.’

‘HAVE A LOT,’ SAID WILLIAM. ‘THEY’RE ALL FOR YOU. GO ON! EAT ’EM ALL. YOU CAN EAT AN’ EAT AN’ EAT.’

He came in and shut the door.

‘You’re goin’ to be May Queen,’ he announced firmly.

‘
Me?
’ she said in amazement.

‘Yes. An’ I’m goin’ to be King.’

He unwrapped his parcel.

‘Look!’ he said.

He had ransacked his sister’s bedroom. Once Ethel had been to a fancy-dress dance as a fairy. Over Bettine’s print frock he drew a crumpled gauze slip with wings, torn in several
places. On her brow he placed a tinsel crown at a rakish angle. And she quivered with happiness.

‘Oh, how lovely!’ she said. ‘How lovely! How lovely!’

His own preparations were simpler. He tied a red sash that he had taken off his sister’s hat over his right shoulder and under his left arm on the top of his smock. Someone had once given
him a small bus conductor’s cap with a toy set of tickets and clippers. He placed the cap upon his head with its peak over one eye. It was the only official headgear he had been able to
procure. Then he took a piece of burnt cork from his parcel and solemnly drew a fierce and military moustache upon his cheek and lip. To William no kind of theatricals was complete without a corked
moustache.

Then he took Bettine by the hand and led her out to the maypole.

The dancers were all waiting holding the ribbons. The audience was assembled and a murmur of conversation was rising from it. It ceased abruptly as William and Bettine appeared. William’s
father, mother and sister were in the front row. Robert was not there. Robert had declined to come to anything in which that little wretch was to perform. He’d jolly well had enough of that
little wretch to last his lifetime, thank you very much.

William and Bettine stepped solemnly hand in hand upon the little platform which had been provided for the May Queen.

Miss Dewhurst, who was chatting amicably to the parents till the last of her small performers should appear, seemed suddenly turned to stone, with mouth gaping and eyes wide. The old fiddler,
who was rather short-sighted, struck up the strains, and the dancers began to dance. The audience relaxed, leaning back in their chairs to enjoy the scene. Miss Dewhurst was still frozen. There
were murmured comments. ‘How curious to have that boy there! A sort of attendant, I suppose.’

‘Yes, perhaps he’s something allegorical. A sort of pageant. Good Luck or something. It’s not quite the sort of thing I expected, I must admit.’

‘What do you think of the Queen’s dress? I always thought Miss Dewhurst had better taste. Rather tawdry, I call it.’

‘I think the moustache is a mistake. It gives quite a common look to the whole thing. I wonder who he’s meant to be? Pan, do you think?’ uncertainly.

‘Oh, no, nothing so
pagan
, I hope,’ said an elderly matron, horrified. ‘He’s that Brown boy, you know. There always seems to be something queer about anything
he’s in. I’ve noticed it often. But I
hope
he’s meant to be something more Christian than Pan, though one never knows these days,’ she added darkly.

WILLIAM AND BETTINE STEPPED SOLEMNLY HAND IN HAND UPON THE LITTLE PLATFORM WHICH HAD BEEN PROVIDED FOR THE MAY QUEEN.

William’s sister had recognised her possessions, and was gasping in anger.

William’s father, who knew William, was smiling sardonically.

William’s mother was smiling proudly.

‘You’re always running William down,’ she said to the world in general, ‘but look at him now. He’s got a very important part, and he said nothing about it at home.
I call it very nice and modest of him. And what a dear little girl.’

Bettine, standing on the platform with William’s hand holding hers and the maypole dancers dancing round her, was radiant with pride and happiness.

And Evangeline Fish in the woodshed was just beginning the last currant cake.

CHAPTER 9

W
illiam was a scout. The fact was well known. There was no one within a five-mile radius of William’s home who did not know it. Sensitive old
ladies had fled shuddering from their front windows when William marched down the street singing (the word is a euphemism) his scout songs in his strong young voice. Curious smells emanated from
the depth of the garden where William performed mysterious culinary operations. One old lady whose cat had disappeared looked at William with dour suspicion in her eyes whenever he passed. Even the
return of her cat a few weeks later did not remove the hostility from her gaze whenever it happened to rest upon William.

William’s family had welcomed the suggestion of William’s becoming a scout.

‘It will keep him out of mischief,’ they had said.

They were notoriously optimistic where William was concerned.

William’s elder brother only was doubtful.

‘You know what William is,’ he said, and in that dark saying much was contained.

Things went fairly smoothly for some time. He took the scout’s law of a daily deed of kindness in its most literal sense. He was to do one (and one only) deed of kindness a day. There were
times when he forced complete strangers, much to their embarrassment, to be the unwilling recipients of his deed of kindness. There were times when he answered any demand for help with a cold:
‘No, I’ve done it today.’

He received with saint-like patience the eloquence of his elder sister when she found her silk scarf tied into innumerable knots.

‘Well, they’re jolly good knots,’ was all he said.

He had been looking forward to the holidays for a long time. He was to ‘go under canvas’ at the end of the first week.

The first day of the holidays began badly. William’s father had been disturbed by William, whose room was just above and who had spent most of the night performing gymnastics as instructed
by his scoutmaster.

‘No, he didn’t
say
do it at nights, but he said do it. He said it would make us grow up strong men. Don’t you
want
me to grow up a strong man? He’s ever so
strong an’
he
did ’em. Why shun’t I?’

His mother found a pan with the bottom burnt out and at once accused William of the crime. William could not deny it.

‘Well, I was makin’ sumthin’, sumthin’ he’d told us an’ I forgot it. Well, I’ve
got
to make things if I’m a scout. I didn’t
mean
to forget it. I won’t forget it next time. It’s a rotten pan, anyway, to burn itself into a hole jus’ for that.’

At this point William’s father received a note from a neighbour whose garden adjoined William’s and whose life had been rendered intolerable by William’s efforts upon his
bugle.

The bugle was confiscated.

Darkness descended upon William’s soul.

‘Well,’ he muttered, ‘I’m goin’ under canvas next week an’ I’m jolly
glad
I’m goin’. P’r’aps you’ll be sorry when
I’m gone.’

He went out into the garden and stood gazing moodily into space, his hands in the pocket of his short scout trousers, for William dressed on any and every occasion in his official costume.

‘Can’t even have the bugle,’ he complained to the landscape. ‘Can’t even use their rotten ole pans. Can’t tie knots in any of their ole things. Wot’s
the good of
bein
’ a scout?’

His indignation grew and with it a desire to be avenged upon his family.

‘I’d like to
do
somethin’,’ he confided to a rose bush with a ferocious scowl. ‘Somethin’ jus’ to show ’em.’

Then his face brightened. He had an idea.

He’d get lost. He’d get really lost. They’d be sorry then all right. They’d p’r’aps think he was dead and they’d be sorry then all right. He imagined
their relief, their tearful apologies when at last he returned to the bosom of his family. It was worth trying, anyway.

He set off cheerfully down the drive. He decided to stay away for lunch and supper, and to return at dusk to a penitent, conscience-stricken family

He first made his way to a neighbouring wood, where he arranged a pile of twigs for a fire, but they refused to light, even with the aid of the match that William found adhering to a piece of
putty in the recess of one of his pockets.

Slightly dispirited, he turned his attention to his handkerchief and tied knots in it till it gave way under the strain. William’s handkerchiefs, being regularly used to perform the
functions of blotting paper among other duties not generally entrusted to handkerchiefs, were always in the last stages of decrepitude.

He felt rather bored and began to wonder whether it was lunchtime or not.

He then ‘scouted’ the wood and by his woodlore traced three distinct savage tribes’ passage through the wood and found the tracks of several elephants. He engaged in deadly
warfare with about half a dozen lions, then tired of the sport. It must be about lunchtime. He could imagine Ethel, his sister, hunting for him wildly high and low with growing pangs of remorse.
She’d wish she’d made less fuss over that old scarf. His mother would recall the scene over the pan and her heart would fail her. His father would think with shame of his conduct in the
matter of the bugle.

‘Poor William! How cruel we were! How different we shall be if only he comes home . . . !’

He could almost hear the words. Perhaps his mother was weeping now. His father – wild-eyed and white-lipped – was pacing his study, waiting for news, eager to atone for his
unkindness to his missing son. Perhaps he had the bugle on the table ready to give back to him. Perhaps he’d even bought him a new one.