William in Trouble (24 page)

The Outlaws cheered lustily. The explanation conveyed little to them, but they understood that an exploit of a more or less unlawful nature was in progress, and they swung joyously up the hill
to the Vicarage. They peered through the gate. À gardener came up and threatened them with a hose. ‘Run off, ye saucy little ’ounds,’ he said.

They put out their tongues at him and retreated farther down the road. There they held a consultation.

‘One of us has
gotter
get in to the Vicar’s study,’ said William, with a frowning air of determination, ‘an’ take that cup that b’longs to
Robert.’

Ginger peered through the hedge.

‘I think that ole gardener’s gone round to the back,’ he said.

They advanced to the gate.

Just as they reached it a woman came up.

‘You going in to the Vicarage?’ she said.

‘Yes,’ said William, unblushingly.

‘Well, do take a message for me, there’s a good little boy. I promised to call, but I’m catching a train and I shall miss it if I stay a
minute.
Tell Mrs Lewes that
little Frankie Randall can’t come this afternoon after all. He’s suffering from
nervous exhaustion.
Will you tell her that?’

‘Yes,’ said William, greatly cheered by the message. It gave him an excuse for entering the Vicarage doors, anyway.

The lady hurried on, and William turned to his gallant braves.

‘You stay here,’ he directed, ‘an’ I’ll go inside. If I’m not back in an hour,’ he added, in the manner of all the best detectives in fiction,
‘come an’ look for me.’ Then, with an air of desperate courage, he stuck his sixpenny pistol into his belt and boldly entered the Vicarage garden. The gardener came round from the
back and again advanced upon him threateningly.

‘I’ve gotter message for the Vicar,’ said William, with an impudent grimace.

Still growling threateningly, the gardener retired to the back of the house.

William walked up the steps to the front door. It was open. The hall was empty. There was no one in sight. It was a heaven-sent opportunity. He slipped lightly into the hall and looked round for
the study. Two open doors revealed drawing-room and dining-room, and a third a passage leading to a kitchen. Still no one came.

The spirit of adventure descended upon him. He crept upstairs, and there, through a door at the top, was the study. It was empty. He entered. And there, upon a bracket just above the desk, stood
a silver cup. William’s eyes gleamed as he looked at it. It was rather large to be concealed on William’s not very ample person. He could throw it out of the window of course –
or—

Just then the Vicar’s wife entered. William looked at her apprehensively. But she gave him a radiant smile.

‘It’s little Frankie Randall, I suppose,’ she said, ‘they never told me you’d come – so glad to see you, dear! We’ll go down at once to the Parish Hall,
shall we?’

William hesitated. If he delivered the message and explained that he was not Frankie Randall, he would, of course, be constrained to leave the Vicarage at once, throwing away his glorious chance
of taking the cup. On the other hand, were he to pretend to be Frankie Randall – whoever Frankie Randall might be – his visit quite evidently would be prolonged. So he assumed his most
expressionless expression, and said:

‘Yes – thank you – good afternoon.’

She led him down the stairs through a door into the garden and into a small corrugated iron building at the end of the lawn where what seemed to William an enormous crowd of women was assembled.
William looked at them and blinked in amazement. He began to think that perhaps it would have been better to have said at once that he wasn’t Frankie Randall.

The Vicar’s wife was speaking.

‘This is little Master Randall, of whom we have all heard so much. It’s a great honour for us to have him here this afternoon. He is staying with his uncle, who, as you all know,
lives in East Mellings, and he has very kindly come to entertain us. He only arrived last night, so we are
most
grateful to him.’

William looked around him and met the interested gaze of the assembled women with a blank stare. Secretly he wondered what on earth was expected of him. Suddenly he knew.

The Vicar’s wife led him over to a corner of the room where he noticed, for the first time, a piano upon a little platform. She motioned him to the seat.

‘We all, of course, know you by repute, my dear little boy,’ she said gushingly. ‘We have read of your wonderful compositions and your wonderful, wonderful playing. Now what
we’d like best of all, my dear little boy, is for you to play us one of your own compositions – that would be a real treat.’

William found himself sitting at an open piano with a tense and silent circle of women around him. And William could not play the piano. William had never learnt to play the piano. He looked
desperately around – rows and rows of expectant faces turned towards him – a large woman in a green hat in the front row, looking at him through lorgnettes.

WILLIAM CRASHED BOTH HIS HANDS ON THE KEYS IN A SUDDEN EAR-SPLITTING DISCORD.

‘We’re quite ready, dear,’ said the Vicar’s wife, in the hushed tone in which one speaks in church.

HIS AUDIENCE LISTENED IN AMAZED SILENCE.

Then William’s familiar spirit of devilry came to his aid.

He crashed both his hands upon the keys in a sudden ear-splitting discord. He ran his fingers up and down the keys. He crossed one hand over the other, he hurled himself wildly at the bass and
then at the treble. His audience listened in amazed silence. He kept up a Bacchanalian riot of inharmonious sounds for nearly ten minutes, then he stopped and turned his sphinxlike expressionless
face towards his audience.

Now the lady in the green hat was the squire’s wife, who prided herself on being
au courant
in matters musical and artistic. She knew really very little about music, but she had
read in the paper about Frankie Randall, the infant prodigy, and his wonderful playing and his wonderful compositions, and she was determined to show that she knew what was what.

‘Beautiful,’ she said after a short interval, during which the horrible echoes of William’s nightmare of discord died away, and repeated determinedly, ‘
most
beautiful.’

The Vicar’s wife, not to be outdone, murmured, ‘exquisite,’ and tried to dispel the expression of agony that William’s effort had summoned to her face.

The Mothers’ Meeting in general said nothing – only gazed at William in horror and looked round for escape.

‘Really beautiful,’ said the squire’s wife again, ‘so modern, so free from convention – such spirit.’

The Vicar’s wife, still determined not to be left behind by the squire’s wife in musical appreciation, took up the refrain.

‘To me,’ she said, ‘it has been a treat that I shall remember all my life. Never has a quarter of an hour’s playing caused me such exquisite pleasure.’

The squire’s wife thought that this was rather uppish of the Vicar’s wife and attempted once more to secure her position as supreme musical arbiter.

‘Your name, little boy,’ she said to William, ‘is, of course, well known to me, and I have wished to hear you play for a long time. I can only say that it has far exceeded my
expectations. Such
verve
– such
execution
– such gallant scorn of convention, such – such
genius.
And you composed it entirely yourself?’

‘Yes,’ said William with perfect truth.

The mothers were stealing out, still casting glances of silent horror at William.

The Vicar’s wife addressed them.

‘Now you’ll all be able to tell your children,’ she said gaily, ‘and your children’s children that you heard this little boy play.’

They made inarticulate sounds and hastened their flight. One of them was heard to remark that she was going home to take an aspirin and then go straight to bed.

‘Now I’m sure,’ said the Vicar’s wife to William, ‘that you’d like a little refreshment after your work. I know what a mental and emotional strain creative
work is. I often help the dear Vicar with his sermons and feel
quite
limp after it. Now come to the study and have a nice glass of milk.’

She felt that this disposed of the squire’s wife. The squire’s wife took her leave coldly of the Vicar’s wife and warmly of William.

‘May I kiss you, little boy,’ she said, ‘then I can tell people that I have kissed one of the world’s future great musicians.’ She implanted a large kiss in the
middle of William’s cheek. William winced slightly, but otherwise maintained his sphinx-like calm.

The Vicar’s wife led him to the study and left him there alone. William at once seized the silver cup from its bracket and darted to the window. From the window he could see the road where
his faithful band of comrades waited for him. They saw him and waved encouragingly. With a great effort he flung the cup through the window and into the road.

‘Keep it,’ he shouted, ‘I’ll be down in a sec’

And then the Vicar’s wife entered with a glass of milk and a plate of cakes. William disposed of these with an alacrity that surprised her.

‘You – you’ve quite a good appetite, haven’t you, dear?’ she said faintly.

‘Yes,’ agreed William.

Somehow she’d imagined that a genius – a
real
genius – wouldn’t eat in
quite
such a hearty manner. It somehow slightly lowered her opinion of
genii
in general.

The Vicar entered as William was inelegantly consuming the last bun.

‘This is Frankie Randall, dear,’ said his wife, ‘the little musical prodigy who’s staying with his uncle over at East Mellings, and he’s
very
kindly been
playing one of his own beautiful compositions to the Mothers’ Meeting.’

The Vicar looked at him with a slightly puzzled frown.

‘The face,’ he said, ‘looks vaguely familiar to me.’

He had noted William – tousled, untidy, and covered with rock and bran – with disapproval and distaste at the garden fête.

He could not for the moment recall where he had seen this tousle-headed boy before. All he knew was that the face seemed vaguely familiar.

The Vicar’s wife laughed coyly at William.

‘Ah,’ she said, ‘that’s the price of fame, isn’t it dear?’

William, fearing complications, hastily picked up the currants and bits of icing still remaining on the cake plate, stuffed them into his mouth, and said that it was time for him to go.

The Vicar’s wife, who was anxious to write an account of the ‘recital’ for the local press, and was afraid of forgetting such words as ‘verve’ and
‘execution’ if she left it too late, agreed that perhaps it was, and William, replete with cake and success, rejoined his comrades.

In triumph they marched away bearing aloft the silver cup slightly battered from its fall in the road, while the Vicar’s wife sat in the Vicar’s study writing her little article on
William’s ‘recital’ and looking up ‘verve’ in the dictionary.

At the gate of his home William disbanded his followers and walked into the house carrying the cup. With a great pride and triumph at his heart he placed it in the middle of
the silver-table in the drawing-room next to Robert’s other cup. It happened fortunately that the drawing-room was empty. Then he went up to perform those violent, though often inadequate
ceremonies with sponge and brush known as ‘tidying for tea.’

When he came down again his mother and Robert and Ethel were in the drawing-room. Evidently they had not yet discovered the presence of the silver cup on the silver-table. William said nothing.
He was beginning to feel that he had been almost too grateful to Robert. After all, the five shillings hadn’t lasted long and there was such a thing as taking
too
much trouble. He
didn’t for a moment think that Robert would realise how much trouble he’d taken over it. He felt that on the whole he was on the credit side now as far as Robert was concerned.

‘William dear,’ said his mother, ‘go and tidy for tea.’

‘I have,’ said William simply.

‘Go and do it again, then,’ said Robert, ‘you might get another layer or two off if you scrub hard.’