Still William (21 page)

CHAPTER 11

T
he Botts were going to give a fancy dress dance at the Hall on New Year’s Eve, and William and all his family had been invited. The inviting
of William, of course, was the initial mistake, and if only the Botts had had the ordinary horse sense (it was Robert who said this) not to invite William the thing might have been a success. It
wasn’t as if they didn’t know William. If they hadn’t known William, Robert said, one might have been sorry for them, but knowing William and deliberately inviting him to a fancy
dress dance – well, they jolly well deserved all they got.

On the other hand William’s own family didn’t . . . and it was jolly hard lines on them (again I quote Robert) . . . Knowing that they had William all day and every day at home,
anyone would think they’d have had the decency to invite them out without him . . . I mean whatever you said or whatever you did, you couldn’t prevent it . . . he spoilt your life
wherever he went.

But the Botts (of Botts’ Famous Digestive Sauce) had a ballroom that held 200 guests and they wanted to fill it. Moreover the Botts had a cherished daughter of tender years named Violet
Elizabeth, and Violet Elizabeth, with her most engaging lisp and that hint of tears that was her most potent weapon, had said that she wanted her friendth to be invited too an’ she’d
thcream an’ thcream an’
thcream
till she was
thick
if they din’t invite her friendth to the party too . . .

‘All right, pet,’ had said Mr Bott soothingly. ‘After all we may as well give a real slap-up show while we’re about it and swell out the whole place – kids
an’ all.’

Mr Bott was ‘self-made’ and considering all things had made quite a decent job of himself, but his manners had not the ‘repose that stamps the caste of Vere de Vere’.
Violet Elizabeth on the other hand had been brought up from infancy in the lap of luxury and refinement provided by the successful advertising of Botts’ Famous Digestive Sauce.

The delight with which Robert and Ethel (William’s elder brother and sister) received the invitation to the fancy dress dance was, as I have said, considerably tempered
by the fact of William’s inclusion in the invitation. And William, with his natural perversity, was eager to go.

‘Any show we
want
him to go to,’ said Robert bitterly, ‘he raises Cain about, but when a thing like this comes along – a thing that he’ll completely spoil
for us if he comes like he always does—’ he spread out his arm with the eloquent gesture of one tried almost beyond endurance, and left the sentence unfinished.

‘Well, let’s accept for ourselves, and say that William can’t go because he’s got a previous engagement,’ suggested Ethel.

‘But I haven’t,’ said William indignantly. ‘I haven’t got anything at all wrong with me. I’m quite well. An’ I
want
to go. I don’ see why
everyone else should go but me. Besides,’ using an argument that he knew would appeal to them, ‘you’ll all be there an’ you’ll be able to see I’m not doing
anything wrong, but if I was alone at home you wouldn’t know what I was doing. Not,’ he added hastily, ‘that I
want
to do anything wrong. All I want to do is to make others
happy. An’ I’ll have a better chance of doin’ that at a party than if I was all alone at home.’

These virtuous sentiments did but increase the suspicious distrust of his family. The general feeling was that far worse things happened when William was out to be good than when he was frankly
out to be bad.

‘Oh, I think William must go,’ said Mrs Brown in her placid voice. ‘It will be so interesting for him and I’m sure he’ll be good.’

Mrs Brown’s rather pathetic faith in William’s latent powers of goodness was unshared by any other of his family.

‘Anyway,’ she went on hastily, seeing only incredulity on the faces around her, ‘the thing to do now is to decide what we’re all going as.’

‘I think I’ll go as a lion,’ said William. ‘I should think you could buy a lionskin quite cheap.’

‘Oh,
quite
!’ said Robert sarcastically. ‘Why not shoot one while you’re about it?’

‘Yes, an’ I will,’ said William, ‘ ’f you’ll show me one. I bet my bow and arrow could kill a few lions.’

‘No William, darling,’ interposed Mrs Brown again quickly, ‘I think you’d find a lionskin too hot for a crowded room.’

‘But I wun’t go into the room,’ said William, ‘I want to crawl about the garden in it roarin’ an’ springin’ out at folks – scarin’
’em.’

‘And you just said you wanted to go to make people
happy
,’ said Robert sternly.

‘Well, that’d make ’em happy,’ said William unabashed. ‘It’d be
fun
for ’em.’

‘
Not
a lion, darling,’ said his mother firmly.

‘Well a brigand then,’ suggested William, ‘a brigand with knives all over me.’

Mrs Brown shuddered.

‘
No
, William . . . I believe Aunt Emma has a fancy dress suit of Little Lord Fauntleroy that Cousin Jimmie once wore. I expect she’d lend it, but I’m not sure whether it
wouldn’t be too small.’

Wild shouts greeted this suggestion.

‘Well,’ William said offended, ‘I don’ know who he was but I don’ know why you should think of me bein’ him so funny.’

The Little Lord Fauntleroy suit proved too small, much to the relief of William’s family, but another cousin was found to have a Page’s costume which just fitted William. It
certainly did not suit him. As Mrs Brown put it, ‘I don’t know quite what’s wrong with the costume but somehow it looks so much more attractive off than on.’

Robert was to go as Henry V and Ethel as Night.

William, to his delight, found that all the members of his immediate circle of friends (known to themselves as the Outlaws) had been invited to the fancy dress dance. All had wished to go as
animals or brigands or pirates, but family opposition and the offer of the loan of costumes from other branches of their families had been too strong in every case. Ginger was to be an Ace of
Clubs, Henry a Gondolier (‘dunno what it is,’ remarked Henry despondently, ‘but you bet it’s nothing exciting or they wouldn’t have let me be it’). Douglas was
to be a Goat Herd (‘It’s an ole Little Boy Blue set-out,’ he explained mournfully, ‘but I said I wouldn’t go if they didn’t call it something else. Not but what
everyone’ll
know
,’ he ended gloomily).

‘An’ we could’ve been brigands s’easy, s’easy,’ said Ginger indignantly. ‘Why, you only want a shirt an’ a pair of trousers an’ a coloured
handkerchief round your head an’ a scarf thing round your waist with a few knives an’ choppers an’ things on it . . . No trouble at all for them, an’ they jus’
won’t let us – jus’ cause we want to.’

There was a short silence. Then William spoke. ‘Well,
let’s
,’ he said. ‘Let’s get Brigands’ things an’ change into ’em when we’ve got
there. They’ll never know. They’ll never notice. We’ll hide ’em in the old summer house by the lake an’ go an’ change there, an’ – an’ we
won’t wear their rotten ole Boy Blues an’ Gondowhatevritis. We’ll be Brigands.’

‘We’ll be Brigands,’ agreed the Outlaws joyfully.

The Botts were having a large house party for the occasion.

‘Lord Merton is going to be there,’ said Mrs Brown to her husband, looking up from her usual occupation of darning socks, as he entered the room. ‘Just fancy! He’s in the
Cabinet! Mr Bott’s got to know his son in business and he’s coming down for it and going to stay the night.’

‘That
fellow!’ snorted Mr Brown. ‘He ought to be shot.’ Mr Brown’s political views were always very decided and very violent. ‘He’s ruining the
country.’

‘Is he dear?’ said Mrs Brown in her usual placid voice. ‘But I’m sure he’ll look awfully nice as a Toreador. She says he’s going as a Toreador.’

‘Toreador!’ snorted Mr Brown. ‘Very appropriate too. He
is
a Toreador! – and we’re the – bull. I tell you that man’s policy is bringing the
country to rack and ruin. When you’re dying of starvation you can think of the fellow toreadoring – Toreador indeed! I wonder decent people have him in their houses. Toreador indeed! I
tell you he’s bleeding the country to death. He ought to be hung for murder. That man’s policy, I tell you, is wicked –
criminal
. Leave him alone and in ten years time
he’ll have wiped out half the population of England by slow starvation. He’s killing trade. He’s
ruining
the country.’

‘Yes, dear,’ murmured Mrs Brown, ‘I’m sure you’re right . . . I think these blue socks of yours are almost done, don’t you?’

‘Ruining
it!’ snorted Mr Brown, going out of the room and slamming the door.

William looked up from the table where he was engaged theoretically in doing his homework. Practically he was engaged in sticking pins into the lid of his pencil case.

‘Why’s he not in prison if he’s like that?’ said William.

‘Who, darling?’ said Mrs Brown. ‘Your father?’

‘No, the man he was talking about. And what’s a Toreador?’

‘Oh . . . a man who fights bulls.’

William’s spirits rose.

‘Will there be bulls there?’

‘I hope not, dear.’

‘Shall I go as a bull? It seems silly to have a Tor— what you said, without a bull. I could easy get a bullskin. I ’spect the butcher’d give me one.’

Mrs Brown shuddered.

‘No, dear, most certainly not. Now do get on with your homework.’

William, having fixed all his pins except one into the lid, now took the last pin and began to twang them with it. They made different noises according as they were twanged near the head or near
the point. Mrs Brown looked up, then bent her head again over her darning . . . What funny things they taught children nowadays, she thought.

The day of the dance drew nearer. Robert was still feeling sore at the prospect of William’s presence. He relieved his feelings by jeering at William’s costume.
William himself, as it happened, was not quite happy about the costume. It was a long stretch from the animal skin and Brigand’s apparel of his fancy to this pale blue sateen of reality. When
he heard a visitor, to whom Mrs Brown showed it, say that it was ‘picturesque’ his distrust of it grew deeper.

Robert was never tired of alluding to it. ‘Won’t William look sweet?’ he would say, and ‘Don’t frown like that, William. That won’t go with the little Prince
Charming costume at all.’

William accepted these taunts with outward indifference, but no one insulted William with impunity. Robert might have taken warning from past experiences . . .

When not engaged in tempting the Fates by teasing William, Robert was engaged in trying to win the affection of a female epitome of all the virtues and graces who had come to stay with the
Crewes for the dance. This celestial creature was called Glory Tompkins. Robert called her Gloire as being more romantic. At least he spelt it Gloire but pronounced it Glor. Through Robert’s
life there passed a never-ending procession of young females endowed with every beauty of form and soul. To each one in turn he sincerely vowed eternal fidelity. Each one was told in hoarse accents
how from now onwards his whole life would be dedicated to making himself more worthy of her. Then after a week or two her startling perfection would seem less startling, and someone yet more
perfect would dawn upon the horizon, shattering poor Robert’s susceptible soul yet again. Fortunately the fidelity of these youthful radiant beings was about on a par with Robert’s own
. . . Anyway Glory was the latest, and Robert called on the Crewes every evening to tell Glory with his eyes (the expression that he fondly imagined to express lifelong passion as a matter of fact
was suggestive chiefly of acute indigestion) or with his lips how empty and worthless his life had been till he met her . . .

William had his eye on the affair. He generally followed Robert’s love affairs with interest, though it was difficult to keep pace with them. A handle against Robert was useful and more
than once Robert’s love affairs had afforded useful handles. Robert’s physical size and strength made William wary in his choice of weapons, but it was generally William who scored . .
.

On the day before the dance Robert had written a note to Miss Tompkins.

He was going to take it himself though he knew that his idol had gone away for the day. However a friend hailed him just as he was setting out, so he put the note on the
hatstand and went out to join his friend, meaning to take the note later.

He met William just coming in.

‘Hello, little Page—’ he said in mock affection.

William looked at him, his brows drawn into a frown, his most sphinx-like expression upon his freckled face. William’s stubbly hair as usual stood up around his face like a halo . . .
William was not beautiful.

Robert, whistling gaily, went down the steps to join his friend at the gate.

William took up the note, read the address, and went into the drawing-room where Mrs Brown was, as usual, darning socks.

‘Sh’ I take this note for Robert?’ he said, assuming his earnestly virtuous expression. Mrs Brown was touched.