William the Fourth (18 page)

‘Well, I don’t see much leapin’ about this year so far,’ said William, trying to rise to equal heights of sarcasm.

‘Oh, go and play Leap Frog,’ said Robert scathingly.

‘I don’t believe you
know,
’ said William. ‘I don’t for a minute b’lieve you know why it’s called Leap Year. You don’t care, either.
S’long as you can sit talkin’ to Miss Flower, you don’t care about anything else. You’ve not even got any curiosity ’bout Leap Year nor anything else. I dunno what you
find to talk to her about. I bet she doesn’t know why it’s Leap Year no more than you do. You don’t talk ’bout anything sensible – you an’ Miss Flower.
You—’

Robert’s youthful countenance had flushed a dull red. Miss Flower was the latest of Robert’s seemingly endless and quickly changing succession of grand passions.

‘You don’t even talk most of the time,’ went on William scornfully, ‘ ’cause I’ve watched you. You sit lookin’ – jus’
lookin’
– at each other like wot you used to with Miss Crane an’ Miss Blake an’ Miss – what was she called? An’ it does look soft, let me
tell
you, to anyone
watchin’ through the window’

Robert rose with murder in his eyes.

‘Shut
up
and get
out
!’ he roared.

William shut up and got out. He sighed as he wandered into the garden. It was like Robert to get into a temper just because somebody asked him quite politely what Leap Year was.

Ethel, William’s grown-up sister, was in the drawing-room.

‘Ethel,’ said William, ‘why’s it called Leap Year?’

‘Because of February 29th,’ said Ethel.

‘Well,’ said William, with an air of patience tried beyond endurance, ‘if you think that’s any answer to anyone askin’ you why’s it Leap Year – if you
think that’s an answer that
means
anythin’ to any ornery person . . .’

‘You see, everything leaps on February 29th,’ said his sister callously; ‘you wait and see.’

William looked at her in silent scorn for a few moments, then gave vent to his feelings.

‘Anyone’d think that anyone’s old as you an’ Robert would know a simple thing like that. Jus’ think of you
an’
Robert
an’
Miss Flower not
knowing why it’s called Leap Year.’

‘How do you know Miss Flower doesn’t know?’

‘Well, wun’t she have told Robert if she knew? She must have told Robert everythin’ she knows by this time, talkin’ to him an’ talkin’ to him like she does.
F’ that matter I don’t s’pose Mr Brooke knows. He’d have told you ’f he did. He’s always—’

Ethel groaned.

‘Will you stop talking and go away if I give you a chocolate?’ she said.

William forgot his grievance.

‘Three,’ he stipulated in a quick business-like voice. ‘Gimme three ’n I’ll go
right
away’

She gave him three so readily that he regretted not having asked for six.

He put two in his mouth, pocketed the third, and went into the morning-room.

His father was there reading a newspaper.

‘Father,’ said William, ‘why’s it called Leap Year?’

‘How many times am I to tell you,’ said his father, ‘to shut the door when you come into a room? There’s an icy blast piercing down my neck now. Do you want to murder
me?’

‘No, Father,’ said William kindly. He shut the door.

‘Father, why’s it called Leap Year?’

‘Ask your mother,’ said his father, without looking up from his paper.

‘She mightn’t know’

‘Well, ask someone else then. Ask anyone in heaven or earth. B
UT DON’T ASK ME ANYTHUNG!
And shut the door when you go out.’

William, though as a rule slow to take a hint, went out of the room and shut the door.

‘He
doesn’t know,’ he remarked to the hat-rack in the hall.

He found his mother in the dining-room. She was engaged in her usual occupation of darning socks.

‘Mother,’ said William, ‘why’s it called Leap Year?’

‘I simply can’t
think,
William,’ said Mrs Brown feelingly, ‘how you get such
dreadful
holes in your heels?’

‘It’s that hard road on the way to school, I ’spect,’ said William. ‘I’ve gotter walk to school. I ’spect that’s it. I ’spect ’f I
didn’t go to school an’ kept to the fields an’ woods I wun’t gettem like wot I do. But you an’ Father keep sayin’ I’ve gotter go to school. I wun’t
mind not goin’ – jus’ to save you trouble. I wun’t mind growin’ up ign’rant like wot you say I would if I didn’t go to school – jus’ to save
you trouble – I—’

Mrs Brown hastily interrupted him.

‘What did you want to know, William?’

William returned to his quest.

‘Why’s it called Leap Year?’

‘Well,’ said Mrs Brown, ‘it’s because of February 29th. It’s an extra day’

William thought over this for some time in silence.

‘D’you mean,’ he said at last, ‘that it’s an extra day that doesn’t count in the ornery year?’

‘Yes, that’s it,’ said Mrs Brown vaguely. ‘William dear, I wish you wouldn’t always stand
just
in my light.’

It was February 29th. William was unusually silent during breakfast. In the relief caused by his silence his air of excitement was unnoticed.

After breakfast, William went upstairs. He took two small paper parcels from a drawer and put them into his overcoat pocket. One contained several small cakes surreptitiously abstracted from the
larder, the other contained William’s ‘disguise’. William’s ‘disguise’ was a false beard which had formed part of Robert’s hired cos- tume for the
Christmas theatricals. Robert never knew what had happened to the beard. He had been charged for it as ‘missing’ by the theatrical costumier.

William had felt that a ‘disguise’ was a necessity to him. All the heroes of the romances he read found it necessary in the crises of their adventurous lives to assume disguises.
William felt that you never knew when a crisis was coming, and that any potential hero of adventure – such as he knew himself to be – should never allow himself to be without a
‘disguise’. So far he had not had need to assume it. But he had hopes for today. It was an extra day. Surely you could do just what you liked on an extra day. Today was to be a day of
adventure.

He went downstairs and put on his cap in the hall.

‘You’ll be rather early for school,’ said Mrs Brown.

William’s unsmiling countenance assumed a look of virtue.

‘I don’t mind bein’ early for school,’ he said.

Slowly and decorously he went down the drive and disappeared from sight.

Mrs Brown went back to the dining-room where her husband was still reading the paper.

‘William’s so good today’ she said.

Her husband groaned.

‘Eight-thirty in the morning,’ he said, ‘and she says he’s good today! My dear, he’s not had time to look round yet!’

William walked down the road with a look of set purpose on his face. Near the school he met Bertram Roke. Bertram Roke was the good boy of the school.

‘You’re not goin’ to school today, are you?’ said William.

‘Course,’ said Bertram virtuously. ‘Aren’t you?’

‘Me?’ said William. ‘Don’t you know what day it is? Don’t you know it’s an extra day wot doesn’t count in the ornery year. Catch
me
goin’
to school on an extra day what doesn’t count in the ornery year.’

‘What are you goin’ to do, then?’ said Bertram, taken aback.

‘I’m goin’ to have adventures.’

‘You’ll – you’ll miss geography,’ said Bertram.

‘Geography!’ said the hero of adventures scornfully

Leaving Bertram gaping over the school wall, his Latin grammar under one arm and his geography book under the other, William walked up the hill and into the wood in search of adventures.

It was most certainly a gipsy encampment. There was a pot boiling on a camp fire and a crowd of ragged children playing around. Three caravans stood on the broad cart track
that led through the wood.

William watched the children wistfully from a distance. More than anything on earth at that moment William longed to be a gipsy. He approached the children. All of them fled behind the caravans
except one – a very dirty boy in a ragged green jersey and ragged knickers and bare legs. He squared his fists and knocked William down. William jumped up and knocked the boy down. The boy
knocked William down again, but overbalanced with the effort. They sat on the ground and looked at each other.

‘Wot’s yer nyme?’ said the boy.

‘William. Wot’s yours?’

‘Helbert. Wot yer doin’ ’ere?’

‘Lookin’ for adventures,’ said William. ‘It’s an extra day, you know. I want today to be quite diff’rent from an ornery day. I want some adventures; I’d
like to be a gipsy, too,’ he ended wistfully

Helbert merely stared at him.

‘Would they take me?’ went on William, nodding his head in the direction of the caravans. ‘I’d soon learn to be a gipsy. I’d do all they tell me. I’ve always
wanted to be a gipsy – next to a Red Indian and a pirate, and there don’t seem to be any Red Indians or pirates in this country’

Helbert once more merely stared at him. William’s hopes sank.

‘I’ve not got any gipsy clothes,’ he said, ‘but p’raps they’d give me some.’

Enviously William looked at Helbert’s ragged jersey and knickers and bare feet. Enviously Helbert looked at William’s suit. Suddenly Helbert’s heavy face lightened. He pointed
to William’s suit.

‘Swop,’ he said, succinctly.

‘Don’t you really mind?’ said William, humbly and gratefully

The exchange was effected behind a bush. William carefully transferred his packet of provisions and his disguise from his pocket to the pocket of Helbert’s ragged knickers. Then, while
Helbert was still donning waistcoat and coat, William swaggered into the open space round the fire. His heart was full to bursting. He was a gipsy of the gipsies.

‘ ’Ello,’ he called, in swaggering friendly greeting to the gipsy children. But his friendliness was not returned.

‘ ’E’s stole Helbert’s clothes.’

‘You wait till my Dad ketches yer. ’E’ll wallop yer.’

‘Ma! ’E’s got our Helbert’s jersey on.’

A woman appeared suddenly at the door of the caravan. She was larger and dirtier and fiercer-looking than anyone William had ever seen before. She advanced upon William, and William, forgetting
his dignity as a hero of adventures, fled through the wood in terror, till he could flee no more.

Then he stopped, and discovering that the fat woman was not pursuing him, sat down and leant against a tree to rest. He took out his crumpled packet of provisions, ate one cake and put the rest
back again into his pocket. He felt that his extra day had opened propitiously. He was a gipsy. William never felt happier than when he had completely shed his own identity

He did not regret leaving the members of the gipsy encampment. He had not really liked the look of any of them. There had been something unfriendly even about Helbert. He preferred to be a gipsy
on his own. He ran and leapt. He turned cart wheels. He climbed trees. He was riotously happy. He was a gipsy.

Suddenly he saw a little old man stretched out at full length beneath a tree. The little old man was watching something in the grass through a magnifying glass. On one side of him lay a
notebook, on the other a large japanned tin case. William, full of curiosity, crept cautiously towards him through the grass on the other side of the tree. He peered round the tree-trunk, and the
little old man, looking up suddenly, found William’s face within a few inches of his own.

‘Shh!’ said the little old man. ‘A rare specimen! Ah! Gone! My movement, I am afraid. Never mind. I had it under observation for quite fifteen minutes. And I have a specimen of
it.’

He began to write in his notebook. Then he looked up again at William.

‘Who are you, boy?’ he said suddenly

‘I’m a gipsy,’ said William proudly

‘What’s your name?’

‘Helbert,’ said William without hesitation.

‘Well, Albert,’ said the little old gentleman, ‘would you like to earn sixpence by carrying this case to my house? It’s just at the end of the wood.’

Without a word William took the case and set off beside the little old gentleman. The little old gentleman carried the notebook, and William carried the japanned tin case.

‘An interesting life, a gipsy’s, I should think,’ said the old gentleman.

Memories of stories he had read about gipsies returned to William.

‘I wasn’t born a gipsy’ he said. ‘I was stole by the gipsies when I was a baby’

The little old gentleman turned to peer at William over his spectacles.

‘Really?’ he said. ‘That’s interesting – most interesting. What are your earliest recollections previous to being stolen?’

William was thoroughly enjoying himself. He was William no longer. He was not even Helbert. He was Evelyn de Vere, the hero of ‘Stolen by Gipsies’, which he had read a few months
ago.

‘Oh, I remember a kinder palace an’ a garden with stachues an’ peacocks an’ – er – waterfalls an’ – er – flowers and things, an’ a
black man what came in the night an’ took me off, an’ I’ve gotter birthmark somewhere what’ll identify me,’ he ended, with modest pride.