Still William (9 page)

William dodged and fled towards the door. There he collided with Ethel – Ethel with a pale, distraught face.

‘It’s all over the village, Mother,’ she said angrily as she entered. ‘William’s told everyone in the village that I’ve got epilepsy and
consumption.’

‘I
didn’t
,’ said William indignantly. ‘I only told Mrs Morrison.’

‘But, William,’ said his mother, sitting down weakly on the nearest chair, ‘why on earth—?’

‘Well, Ethel didn’t want to go to the Morrisons tonight. She wanted to go to the Helms—’

‘I did
not
,’ said Ethel. ‘I was glad to get out of going to the Helms.’

‘Well, how was I to
know
?’ said William desperately. ‘I had to go by what you
said
and I had to go by what Robert
wrote
. I wanted to
help
.
I’ve took no end of trouble – livin’ a life of self-sacrifice and service all day without stoppin’ once, and ’stead of being grateful an’ happy an’
admirin’—’

‘But, William,’ said Mrs Brown, ‘how did you think it was going to help
anyone
to say that Ethel had epilepsy and consumption?’

‘I’d rather have epilepsy and consumption,’ said Robert who had returned to the sofa and was sitting with his head between his hands, ‘than be engaged to Marion
Dexter.’

‘I must say I simply can’t understand why you’ve been doing all this, William,’ said Mrs Brown. ‘We must just wait till your father comes in and see what he makes
of it. And I can’t think why dinner’s so late.’

‘She’s gone to bed,’ said William gloomily.

‘I’d better see to things then,’ said Mrs Brown going into the hall.

‘Epilepsy!’
groaned Ethel.

‘Twenty-four – twenty-four if she’s a day – and the sort of hair I’ve always disliked,’ groaned Robert.

William followed his mother to the kitchen rather than be left to the tender mercies of Ethel and Robert. He began to feel distinctly apprehensive about the kitchen . . . that pool of eggs . . .
those brown liquids he’d mixed . . .

Mrs Brown opened the kitchen door. On the empty chicken dish on the floor sat Jumble surrounded by chicken bones, the wishing bone protruding from his mouth, looking blissfully happy . . .

In his bedroom whither he had perforce retired supperless, William hung up the Outlaw’s signal of distress (a scull and crossbones in black and the word ‘Help’
in red) at his window in case Ginger or Henry or Douglas came down the road, and then surveyed the events of the day. Well, he’d done his best. He’d lived a life of self-denial and
service all right. It was his family who were wrong. They hadn’t been happy or grateful or admiring. They simply weren’t worthy of a life of self-denial and service. And anyway how
could he have
known
that it was another Marion and that Ethel couldn’t say what she meant and that Jumble was going to get in through the kitchen window?

A tiny pebble hit his window. He threw it open. There down below in the garden path were Douglas, Henry and Ginger.

‘Ho! My trusty mates,’ said William in a penetrating whisper. ‘I am pent in durance vile – sent to bed, you know – an’ I’m jolly hungry. Wilt kill some
deer or venison or something for me?’

‘Righto,’ said Ginger, and ‘Yes, gallant captain,’ said Douglas and Henry as they crept off through the bushes.

William returned to his survey of his present position. That old boy simply didn’t know what he was talking about. He couldn’t ever have tried it himself. Anyway he (William) had
tried it and he knew all there was to know about lives of self-denial and service and he’d
done
with lives of self-denial and service, thank you very much. He was going back to his
ordinary kind of life first thing tomorrow . . .

A tiny pebble at the window. William leant out. Below were Ginger, Henry and Douglas with a small basket.

‘Oh, crumbs!’ said William joyfully.

He lowered a string and they tied the little basket on to it. William drew it up fairly successfully. It contained a half-eaten apple, a bar of toffee that had spent several days unwrapped in
Henry’s pocket, which was covered with bits of fluff, a very stale bun purloined from Ginger’s mother’s larder, and a packet of monkey nuts bought with Ginger’s last
twopence.

William’s eyes shone.

‘Oh, I
say
,’ he said gratefully, ‘thanks
awfully
. And, I say, you’d better go now ’case they see you, and I
say
, I’ll come huntin’
wild animals with you tomorrow night.’

‘Righto,’ said the Outlaws creeping away through the bushes.

Downstairs William’s family circle consumed a meal consisting of sardines and stewed pears. They consumed it in gloomy silence, broken only by Mr Brown’s dry,
‘I suppose there must be quite a heavy vein of insanity somewhere in the family for it to come out so strongly in William.’ And by Ethel’s indignant, ‘And
epilepsy
!
Why on earth did he fix on
epilepsy
?’ And by Robert’s gloomy, ‘Engaged to be married to her . . .
twenty-four . . . chained
to her for life.’

Upstairs the cause of all their troubles sat on the floor in the middle of his bedroom with his little pile of eatables before him.

‘Come on, my gallant braves,’ he said addressing an imaginary band of fellow captives. ‘Let us eat well and then devise some way of escape or ere dawn our bleached bones may
dangle from yon gallows.’

Then quite happily and contentedly he began to eat the fluffy stick of toffee . . .

CHAPTER 5

B
ob Andrews was one of the picturesque figures of the village. He lived at the East Lodge of the Hall, and was supposed to help with the gardening
of the Hall grounds. He was tall, handsome, white-bearded and gloriously lazy. He had a roguish twinkle in his blue eyes and a genius for wasting time – both his own and other people’s.
He was a great friend of William and the Outlaws. He seemed to them to be free of all the drawbacks that usually accompany the state of grown-upness. He was never busy, never disapproving, never
tidy, never abstracted. He took seriously the really important things of life such as cigarette-card collecting, the top season, Red Indians, and the finding of birds’ nests. Having
abstracted a promise from them that they would take ‘one igg an’ no more, ye rascals’, he would show them every bird’s nest in the Hall woods. He seemed to know exactly
where each bird would build each year. He had a family of two tame squirrels, four dogs and seven cats, who all lived together in unity. He could carve boats out of wood, make whistles and bows and
arrows and tops. He did all these things as if he had nothing else to do in the world. He would stand for hours perfectly happy with his hands in his pockets, smoking. He would watch the Outlaws
organising races of boats, watch them shooting their bows and arrows, taking interest in their marksmanship, offering helpful criticism. He was in every way an eminently satisfactory person. He was
paid a regular salary by the absent owner of the Hall for occasionally opening the Lodge gates, and still more occasionally assisting with the gardening. He understood the word assistance in its
most literal sense – that of ‘standing by’. He was also generous with kindly advice to his more active colleagues. It says much for his attractive personality that this want of
activity was resented by no one.

Mr Bott, the new owner of the Hall, was a businessman. He liked to get his money’s worth for his money. It was not for nothing that passionate appeals to safeguard their
health by taking Bott’s Sauce with every meal met England’s citizens in every town. Mr Bott believed in getting the last ounce of work out of his work-people. That was what had raised
Mr Bott from grocer’s errand boy to lord of the manor. When Mr Bott discovered that he had upon his newly acquired estate a man who drew a working man’s salary for merely standing about
and at intervals consuming the more choice fruit from the hothouses, Mr Bott promptly sacked that man. It would have been against Mr Bott’s most sacred principles to do otherwise . . .

The Outlaws avoided Mr Bott’s estate for some time after their adventure with his daughter. But having heard that she had departed on a lengthy visit to distant relatives, the Outlaws
decided to return to their favourite haunts. They entered the wood by crawling through the hedge. For a time they amused themselves by climbing trees and turning somersaults among the leaves. Then
they tried jumping over the stream. The stream possessed the attraction of being just too wide to jump over. The interest lay in seeing how much or how little of their boots got wet each time.
Finally the Outlaws wearied of these pursuits.

‘Let’s go and find Bob,’ said William at last.

Scuffling, shuffling, dragging their toes along the ground, whistling, punching each other at intervals, in the fashion of boyhood, they made their way slowly to the East Lodge.

Bob stood at his door smoking as usual.

‘Hello, Bob,’ called the Outlaws.

‘Hello, ye young rascals.’

‘I say, Bob, make us some boats an’ let’s have a race.’

‘Sure an’ I will,’ said Bob knocking out his pipe and taking a large penknife out of his pocket, ‘though it’s wastin’ me time ye are, as usual.’

He took up a piece of wood and began to whittle.

‘How’s the squirrel, Bob?’

‘Foine.’

‘Bob, they’re building in the ivy on the Old Oak again.’

‘Shure an’ I knew that before you did, me bhoy.’

But though he whittled and whistled Bob was evidently not his old self.

‘I say, Bob, next month—’

‘Next month, me bhoys, I shall not be here.’

They stared at him open-mouthed.

‘What –
you goin’ away for a holiday, Bob?’

Bob whittled away nonchalantly.

‘I’m goin’ away, me bhoys, because th’ould devil up there has given me the sack – God forgive him for
Oi
won’t,’ he ended piously.

‘But –
why
?’ they said, aghast.

‘He sez I don’t work.
Me!
’ he said indignantly.
‘Me
– an’ me wearin’ me hands to the bone for him the way I do.
An’
he says I
steal ’is fruit – me what takes only the few peaches he’d come an’ give me with his own hands if he was a gintleman at all, at all.’

‘What a
shame
!’ said the Outlaws.

‘Turnin’ me an’ me hanimals out into the cold world. May God forgive him!’ said Bob. ‘Well, here’s yer boats, ye young rascals, an’ don’t ye go
near me pheasants’ nests or I’ll put the fear of God on ye.’

‘We’ve gotter
do
something,’ said William, when Bob had returned, smoking peacefully, to his Lodge.

‘
We
can’t do anything,’ said Ginger despondently. ‘Who’d listen to
us
? Who’d take any notice of
us
, anyway?’

William the leader looked at him sternly.

‘You jus’ wait an’
see
,’ he said.

Mr Bott was very stout. His stoutness was a great secret trouble to Mr Bott. Mr Bott had made his money and now Mr Bott wished to take his proper place in Society. Mr Bott
considered not unreasonably that his corpulency, though an excellent advertisement of the nourishing qualities of Bott’s Sauce, yet detracted from the refinement of his appearance. Mrs Bott
frequently urged him to ‘do something about it’. He had consulted many expensive specialists. Mrs Bott kept finding ‘new men’ for him. The last ‘new man’ she had
found was highly recommended on all sides. He practically guaranteed his treatment to transform a human balloon to a human pencil in a few months. Mr Bott had begun the treatment. It was irksome
but Mr Bott was persevering. Had Mr Bott not been persevering he would never have attained that position of eminence in the commercial world that he now held. Every morning as soon as it was light,
Mr Bott, decently covered by a large overcoat, went down to a small lake in the grounds among the bushes. There Mr Bott divested himself of his overcoat and appeared in small bathing drawers. From
the pocket of his overcoat Mr Bott would then take a skipping rope and with this he would skip five times round the lake. Then he would put away his skipping rope and do his exercises. He would
twist his short fat body into strange attitudes, flinging his short fat arms towards Heaven, standing upon one short fat leg with the other thrust out at various angles and invariably
overbalancing. Finally, Mr Bott had to plunge into the lake (it was not deep), splash and kick and run round in it, and then emerge to dry himself on a towel concealed in the other pocket of his
overcoat, shiveringly don the overcoat again and furtively return to the house. For Mr Bott was shy about his ‘treatment’. He fondly imagined that no one except Mrs Bott, the ‘new
man’ and himself knew about his early morning adventures.

One chilly morning Mr Bott had skipped and leapt and twisted himself and splashed himself and emerged shivering and red-nosed for his overcoat. Then Mr Bott received a shock
that was nearly too much for his much exercised system. His overcoat was not there. He looked all round the tree where he knew he had left it, and it was not there. It was most certainly not there.
With chattering teeth Mr Bott threw a glance of pathetic despair around him. Then above the sound of the chattering of his teeth he heard a voice.