More William (16 page)

‘I don’t get much
thanks
,’ William continued bitterly. ‘Me givin’ up my half holiday to helpin’ you removin’, an’ I don’t get much
thanks
!’

‘Well, William,’ said Mrs Brown, ‘you can go to the new house with the first van. He’ll be less in the way there,’ she confided distractedly to the world in
general.

William was delighted with this proposal. At the new house there was a fresh set of men to unload the van, and there was the thrill of making their acquaintance.

Then the front gate was only just painted and bore a notice ‘Wet Paint’. It was, of course, incumbent upon William to test personally the wetness of the paint. His trousers bore
testimony to the testing to their last day, in spite of many applications of turpentine. Jumble also tested it, and had in fact to be disconnected from the front gate by means of a pair of
scissors. For many weeks the first thing that visitors to the Brown household saw was a little tuft of Jumble’s hair adorning the front gate.

William then proceeded to ‘help’ to the utmost of his power. He stumbled up from the van to the house staggering under the weight of a medicine cupboard, and leaving a trail of
broken bottles and little pools of medicine behind. Jumble sampled many of the latter and became somewhat thoughtful.

It was found that the door of a small bedroom at the top of the stairs was locked, and this fact (added to Mr Jones’s failure to return from his lemonade) rather impeded the progress of
the unpackers.

‘Brike it open,’ suggested one.

‘Better not.’

‘Per’aps the key’s insoide,’ suggested another brightly.

William had one of his brilliant ideas.

‘Tell you what I’ll do,’ he said eagerly and importantly. ‘I’ll climb up to the roof an’ get down the chimney an’ open it from the inside.’

They greeted the proposal with guffaws.

They did not know William.

It was growing dusk when Mrs Brown and Ethel and the second van load appeared.

‘What is that on the gate?’ said Ethel, stooping to examine the part of Jumble’s coat that brightened up the dullness of the black paint.

‘It’s that
dog
!’ said Mrs Brown.

Then came a ghostlike cry, apparently from the heavens.

‘Mother!’

Mrs Brown raised a startled countenance to the skies. There seemed to be nothing in the skies that could have addressed her.

Then she suddenly saw a small face peering down over the coping of the roof. It was a face that was very frightened, under a superficial covering of soot. It was William’s face.

‘I can’t get down,’ it said hoarsely.

Mrs Brown’s heart stood still.

‘Stay where you are, William,’ she said faintly. ‘Don’t
move
.’

The entire staff of removers was summoned. A ladder was borrowed from a neighbouring garden and found to be too short. Another was fetched and fastened to it. William, at his dizzy height, was
growing irritable.

‘I can’t stay up here for
ever
,’ he said severely.

At last he was rescued by his friend Mr Blake and brought down to safety. His account was confused.

‘I wanted to
help
. I wanted to open that door for ’em, so I climbed up by the scullery roof, an’ the ivy, an’ the drainpipe, an’ I tried to get down the
chimney. I didn’t know which one it was, but I tried ’em all an’ they were all too little, an’ I tried to get down by the ivy again but I couldn’t, so I waited till
you came an’ hollered out. I wasn’t scared,’ he said, fixing them with a stern eye. ‘I wasn’t scared a bit. I jus’ wanted to get down. An’ this ole black
chimney stuff tastes beastly. No, I’m all right,’ he ended, in answer to tender inquiries. ‘I’ll go on helpin’.’

He was with difficulty persuaded to retire to bed at a slightly earlier hour than usual.

‘Well,’ he confessed, ‘I’m a bit tired with helpin’ all day.’

Soon after he had gone Mr Brown and Robert arrived.

‘And how have things gone today?’ said Mr Brown cheerfully.

‘Thank heaven William goes to school tomorrow,’ said Ethel devoutly.

Upstairs in his room William was studying himself in the glass – torn jersey, paint-stained trousers, blackened face.

‘Well,’ he said with a deep sigh of satisfaction, ‘I guess I’ve jolly well
HELPED
today!’

CHAPTER 11

W
illiam’s family were going to the seaside for February. It was not an ideal month for the seaside, but William’s father’s doctor
had ordered him a complete rest and change.

‘We shall have to take William with us, you know,’ his wife had said as they discussed plans.

‘Good heavens!’ groaned Mr Brown. ‘I thought it was to be a
rest
cure.’

‘Yes, but you know what he is,’ his wife urged. ‘I daren’t leave him with anyone. Certainly not with Ethel. We shall have to take them both. Ethel will help with
him.’

Ethel was William’s grown-up sister.

‘All right,’ agreed her husband finally. ‘You can take all responsibility. I formally disown him from now till we get back. I don’t care
what
trouble he lands you
in. You know what he is and you deliberately take him away with me on a rest cure!’

‘It can’t be helped, dear,’ said his wife mildly.

William was thrilled by the news. It was several years since he had been at the seaside.

‘Will I be able to go swimmin’?’

‘It
won’t
be too cold! Well, if I wrap up warm, will I be able to go swimmin’?’

‘Can I catch fishes?’

‘Are there lots of smugglers smugglin’ there?’

‘Well, I’m only
askin’
, you needn’t get mad!’

One afternoon Mrs Brown missed her best silver tray and searched the house high and low for it wildly, while dark suspicions of each servant in turn arose in her usually unsuspicious breast.

It was finally discovered in the garden. William had dug a large hole in one of the garden beds. Into the bottom of this he had fitted the tray and had lined the sides with bricks. He had then
filled it with water and taking off his shoes and stockings stepped up and down his narrow pool. He was distinctly aggrieved by Mrs Brown’s reproaches.

‘Well, I was practisin’ paddlin’, ready for goin’ to the seaside. I didn’t
mean
to rune your tray. You talk as if I
meant
to rune your tray. I was
only practisin’ paddlin’.’

At last the day of departure arrived. William was instructed to put his things ready on his bed, and his mother would then come and pack for him. He summoned her proudly over the balusters after
about twenty minutes.

‘I’ve got everythin’ ready, Mother.’

Mrs Brown ascended to his room.

Upon his bed was a large popgun, a football, a dormouse in a cage, a punchball on a stand, a large box of ‘curios’, and a buckskin which was his dearest possession and had been
presented to him by an uncle from South Africa.

Mrs Brown sat down weakly on a chair.

‘You can’t possibly take any of these things,’ she said faintly but firmly.

‘Well, you
said
put my things on the bed for you to pack an’ I’ve put them on the bed, an’ now you say—’

‘I meant clothes.’

‘Oh,
clothes
!’ he said scornfully. ‘I never thought of
clothes
.’

‘Well, you can’t take any of these things, anyway.’

William hastily began to defend his collection of treasures.

‘I
mus’
have the popgun ’cause you never know. There may be pirates an’ smugglers down there, an’ you can
kill
a man with a popgun if you get near
enough and know the right place, an’ I might need it. An’ I
must
have the football to play on the sands with, an’ the punchball to practise boxin’ on, an’ I
must
have the dormouse, ’cause – ’cause to feed him, an’ I
must
have this box of things and this skin to show to folks I meet down at the seaside ’cause
they’re int’restin’.’

But Mrs Brown was firm, and William reluctantly yielded.

In a moment of weakness, finding that his trunk was only three quarters filled by his things, she slipped in his beloved buckskin, while William himself put the popgun inside when no one was
looking.

They had been unable to obtain a furnished house, so had to be content with a boarding house. Mr Brown was eloquent on the subject.

‘If you’re deliberately turning that child loose into a boarding house full, presumably, of quiet, inoffensive people, you deserve all you get. It’s nothing to do with me.
I’m going to have a rest cure. I’ve disowned him. He can do as he likes.’

‘It can’t be helped, dear,’ said Mrs Brown mildly.

Mr Brown had engaged one of the huts on the beach chiefly for William’s use, and William proudly furnished its floor with the buckskin.

‘It was killed by my uncle,’ he announced to the small crowd of children at the door who had watched with interest his painstaking measuring on the floor in order to place his
treasure in the exact centre. ‘He killed it dead – jus’ like this.’

William had never heard the story of the death of the buck, and therefore had invented one in which he had gradually come to confuse himself with his uncle in the role of hero.

‘It was walkin’ about an’ I – he – met it. I hadn’t got no gun, and it sprung at me an’ I caught hold of its neck with one hand an’ I broke off
its horns with the other, an’ I knocked it over. An’ it got up an’ ran at me – him – again, an’ I jus’ tripped it up with my foot an’ it fell over
again, an’ then I jus’ give it one big hit with my fist right on its head, an’ it killed it an’ it died!’

There was an incredulous gasp.

Then there came a clear, high voice from behind the crowd.

‘Little boy, you are not telling the truth.’

William looked up into a thin, spectacled face.

‘I wasn’t tellin’ it to you,’ he remarked, wholly unabashed.

A little girl with dark curls took up the cudgels quite needlessly in William’s defence.

‘He’s a very
brave
boy to do all that,’ she said indignantly. ‘So don’t you go
saying
things to him.’

‘Well,’ said William, flattered but modest, ‘I didn’t say I did, did I? I said my uncle – well, partly my uncle.’

Mr Percival Jones looked down at him in righteous wrath.

‘You’re a very wicked little boy. I’ll tell your father – er – I’ll tell your sister.’

For Ethel was approaching in the distance and Mr Percival Jones was in no way loath to converse with her.

Mr Percival Jones was a thin, pale, aesthetic would-be poet who lived and thrived on the admiration of the elderly ladies of his boarding house, and had done so for the past ten years. Once he
had published a volume of poems at his own expense. He lived at the same boarding house as the Browns, and had seen Ethel in the distance at meals. He had admired the red lights in her dark hair
and the blue of her eyes, and had even gone so far as to wonder whether she possessed the solid and enduring qualities which he would require of one whom in his mind he referred to as his
‘future spouse’.

He began to walk down the beach with her.

‘I should like to speak to you – er – about your brother, Miss Brown,’ he began, ‘if you can spare me the time, of course. I trust I do not er – intrude or
presume. He is a charming little man but – er – I fear – not veracious. May I accompany you a little on your way? I am – er – much attracted to your – er –
family. I – er – should like to know you all better. I am – er – deeply attached to your – er – little brother, but grieved to find that he does not – er
– adhere to the truth in his statements. I – er—’

Miss Brown’s blue eyes were dancing with merriment.

‘Oh, don’t worry about William,’ she said. ‘He’s
awful
. It’s much better just to leave him alone. Isn’t the sea gorgeous today?’

They walked along the sands.

Meanwhile William had invited his small defender into his hut.

‘You can look round,’ he said graciously. ‘You’ve seen my skin what I – he – killed, haven’t you? This is my gun. You put a cork in there and it comes
out hard when you shoot it. It would kill anyone,’ he said impressively, ‘if you did it near enough to them and at the right place. An’ I’ve got a dormouse, an’ a
punchball, an’ a box of things, an’ a football, but they wouldn’t let me bring them,’ bitterly.

‘It’s a
lovely
skin,’ said the little girl. ‘What’s your name?’

‘William. What’s yours?’

‘Peggy.’

‘Well, let’s be on a desert island, shall we? An’ nothin’ to eat nor anything, shall we? Come on.’

She nodded eagerly.

‘How
lovely
!’

They wandered out on to the promenade, and among a large crowd of passers-by bemoaned the lonely emptiness of the island and scanned the horizon for a sail. In the far distance on the cliffs
could be seen the figures of Mr Percival Jones and William’s sister, walking slowly away from the town.

‘YOU’RE A VERY WICKED LITTLE BOY!’ SAID MR PERCIVAL JONES.

At last they turned towards the hut.