William the Fourth (20 page)

‘Do speak to him,’ whispered Miss Flower. ‘See if you can help him at all. He may be ill.’

Robert sat down next to William and cleared his throat nervously.

‘Now, my man—’ he began, then stopped abruptly, staring at all that could be seen of William’s face.

He tore off the hat and beard.

‘You little wretch! And whose coat are you wearing, you little idiot?’

He tore open the coat. The sight it revealed was too much for him. He sank back upon the seat with a groan.

Miss Flower sat on the grass by the roadside and laughed till the tears ran down her cheeks.

‘Oh, William!’ she said. ‘You are priceless. I’d just love to walk through the village with you like that. Will you come with us, Robert?’

‘No,’
said Robert wildly. ‘At every crisis of my life that boy turns up and always in something ridiculous. He’s – he’s more like a nightmare than a
boy’

William faced a family council consisting of his father and mother, and Robert and Ethel.

William was still attired as a Fairy Queen.

‘Well,’ said William, in a tone of disgust. ‘You said today was extra. I thought it didn’t count. I thought nothin’ anyone did today counted. I thought it was an
extra day. An’ there’s Robert takin’ a half-crown off me an’ no one seems to mind that. An’ Robert tellin’ Miss Flower, on the seat, how he’d wanted to
live a better life since he met her.’

Robert’s face went scarlet.

‘An’ then takin’ a half-crown off me,’ William continued. ‘I don’t call that livin’ a better life.
She
gave it me an’
he
took it off
me. I don’t call that being noble like what he said she made him want to be. I don’t—’

‘Shut
up,’
said Robert desperately. ‘Shut up and I’ll give you the wretched thing back.’

‘All right,’ said William, receiving the half-crown.

‘What I want to know, William,’ said Mrs Brown almost tearfully, ‘is – where are your clothes?’

William looked down at his airy costume.

‘Oh, she took ’em off me an’ put this thing on me. She said she wanted to heat ’em up. I dunno why. She took off my green jersey an’ my—’

‘You weren’t wearing a jersey’ screamed Mrs Brown.

William’s jaw dropped.

‘Oh,
those
clothes! Crumbs! I’d forgotten about those clothes. I – I suppose Helbert’s still gottem.’

Mr Brown covered his eyes with his hand.

‘Take him away’ he groaned. ‘Take him away! I can’t bear the sight of him like that any longer!’

Mrs Brown took him away.

She returned about half an hour later. William, tired by the events of his extra day, had fallen at once into an undeservedly peaceful slumber.

‘It’ll take us weeks probably to put whatever he’s done today right,’ she said hysterically to her husband. ‘I do hope you’ll be severe with him.’

But Mr Brown, freed from the horrible spectacle of William robed as a Fairy Queen, had given himself up to undisturbed and peaceful enjoyment of the fire and his armchair and evening paper.

‘Tomorrow,’ he promised pacifically. ‘Not today. You forget. Today doesn’t count.’

‘Eavesdropping,’ burst out Robert suddenly. ‘Simply eavesdropping. I don’t know how he can reconcile that with his conscience.’

‘Let’s all be thankful,’ said Mr Brown, ‘that February 29th only happens every four years.’

‘Yes, but William doesn’t,’ said Robert gloomily ‘William happens all the year round.’

CHAPTER 12

WILLIAM ENTERS POLITICS

‘W
hen William at the Charity Fair was asked to join a sixpenny raffle for a picture, and shown the prize – a dingy oil painting in an
oval gilt frame – his expression registered outrage and disgust.

It was only when his friend Ginger whispered excitedly: ‘I say, William, las’ week my aunt read in the paper about someone what scraped off an ole picture like that an’ found a
real valuable ole master paintin’ underneath an’ sold it for more’n a thousand pounds,’ that he hesitated. An inscrutable expression came upon his freckled face as he stared
at the vague head and shoulders of a lightly clad female against a background of vague trees and elaborate columns.

‘All right,’ he said, suddenly holding out the sixpence that represented his sole worldly assets, and receiving Ticket number 33.

‘Don’t forget it was me what suggested it,’ said Ginger.

‘Yes, an’ don’t forget it was my sixpence,’ said William sternly

William was not usually lucky, but on this occasion the number 33 was drawn, and William, purple with embarrassment, bore off his gloomy-looking trophy Accompanied by Ginger he took it to the
old barn.

They scraped off the head and shoulders of the mournful and inadequately clothed female, and they scraped off the gloomy trees, and they scraped off the elaborate columns. To their surprise and
indignation no priceless old master stood revealed. Being thorough in all they did, they finally scraped away the entire canvas and the back.

‘Well,’ said William, raising himself sternly from the task when nothing scrapable seemed to remain, ‘an’ will you kin’ly tell me where this valu’ble ole
master is?’

‘Who said definite there
was
a valu’ble ole master?’ said Ginger in explanation. ‘ ’F you kin’ly remember right p’raps you’ll kin’ly
remember that I said that an aunt of mine
said
that she
saw
in the paper that
someone’d
scraped away an ole picture an’ found a valu’ble ole master. I never
said—’

William was arranging the empty oval frame round his neck.

‘P’raps now,’ he interrupted ironically, ‘you’d like to start scratchin’ away the frame, case you find a valu’ble ole master frame
underneath.’

‘Will it hoop?’ said Ginger with interest, dropping hostilities for the moment.

They tried to ‘hoop’ it, but found that it was too oval. William tried to wear it as a shield but it would not fit his arm. They tried to make a harp of it by nailing strands of wire
across it, but gave up the attempt when William had cut his finger and Ginger had hammered his thumb three times.

William carried it about with him, his disappointment slightly assuaged by the pride of possession, but its size and shape were hampering to a boy of William’s active habits, so in the end
he carefully hid it behind the door of the old barn which he and his friends generally made their headquarters, and then completely forgot it.

The village was agog with the excitement of the election. The village did not have a Member of Parliament all to itself – it joined with the neighbouring country town
– but one of the two candidates, Mr Cheytor, the Conservative, lived in the village, so feeling ran high.

William’s father took no interest in politics, but William’s uncle did.

William’s uncle supported the Liberal candidate, Mr Morrisse. He threw himself whole-heartedly into the cause. He distributed bills, he harangued complete strangers, he addressed imaginary
audiences as he walked along the road, he frequently brought one hand down heavily upon the other with the mystic words: ‘Gentlemen, in the sacred cause of Liberalism—’

William was tremendously interested in him. He listened enraptured to his monologues, quite unabashed by his uncle’s irritable refusals to explain them to him. Politically the uncle took
no interest in William. William had no vote.

William’s uncle was busily preparing to hold a meeting of canvassers for the cause of the great Mr Morrisse in his dining-room. Mr Morrisse, a tall, thin gentleman, for some obscure reason
very proud of his name, who went through life saying plaintively, ‘double S E, please,’ was not going to be there. William’s uncle was going to tell the canvassers the main
features of the programme with which to dazzle the electors of the neighbourhood.

‘I s’pose,’ said William carelessly, ‘you don’t mind me comin’?’

‘You suppose wrong then,’ said William’s uncle. ‘I most emphatically mind your coming.’

‘But why?’ said William earnestly. ‘I’m
int’rested.
I’d like to go canvassing too. I know a lot ’bout the rackshun-aries – you know, the
ole Conservies – I’d like to go callin’ ’em names, too. I’d like—’

‘You may
not
attend the Liberal canvassers’ meeting, William,’ said William’s uncle firmly.

From that moment William’s sole aim in life was to attend the Liberal canvassers’ meeting. He and Ginger discussed ways and means. They made an honest and determined effort to impart
to William an adult appearance, making a frown with burnt cork, and adding whiskers of matting which adhered to his cheeks by means of glue. Optimists though they were, they were both agreed that
the chances of William’s admittance, thus disguised, into the meeting of the Liberal canvassers was but a faint one.

So William evolved another plan.

The dining-room in which William’s uncle was to hold his meeting was an old-fashioned room. A hatch, never used, opened from it on to an old stone passage.

The meeting began.

William’s uncle arrived and took his seat at the head of the table with his back to the hatch. William’s uncle was rather short-sighted and rather deaf. The other Liberal canvassers
filed in and took their places round the table.

William’s uncle bent over his papers. The other Liberal canvassers were gazing with widening eyes at the wall behind William’s uncle. The hatch slowly opened. A dirty oval gilt frame
appeared, and was by no means soundly attached to the top of the open hatch. Through the aperture of the frame appeared a snub-nosed, freckled, rough-haired boy with a dirty face and a forbidding
expression.

William didn’t read sensational fiction for nothing. In ‘The Sign of Death’, which he had finished by the light of a candle at 11.30 the previous evening, Rupert the Sinister,
the international spy, had watched a meeting of masked secret service agents by the means of concealing himself in a hidden chamber in the wall, cutting out the eye of a portrait and applying his
own eye to the hole. William had determined to make the best of slightly less favourable circumstances.

There was no hidden chamber, but there was a hatch; there was no portrait, but there was the useless frame for which William had bartered his precious sixpence. He still felt bitter at the
thought.

William felt, not unreasonably, that the sudden appearance in the dining-room of a new and mysterious portrait of a boy might cause his uncle to make closer investigations, so he waited till his
uncle had taken his seat before he hung himself.

Ever optimistic, he thought that the other Liberal canvassers would be too busy arranging their places to notice his gradual and unobtrusive appearance in his frame. With vivid memories of the
illustration in ‘The Sign of Death’, he was firmly convinced that to the casual observer he looked like a portrait of a boy hanging on the wall.

In this he was entirely deceived. He looked merely what he was – a snub-nosed, freckled, rough-haired boy hanging up an old empty frame in the hatch and then crouching on the hatch and
glaring morosely through the frame.

William’s uncle opened the meeting:

‘. . . and we must emphasise the consequent drop in the price of bread. Don’t you think that point is very important, Mr Moffat?’

Mr Moffat, a thin, pale youth with a large nose and a naturally startled expression, answered as in a trance, his mouth open, his strained eyes fixed upon William.

‘Er – very important.’

‘Very – we can’t over-emphasise it,’ said William’s uncle.

Mr Moffat put up a trembling hand as if to loosen his collar. He wondered if the others saw it too.

‘Over-emphasise it,’ he repeated, in a trembling voice.

Then he met William’s stony stare and looked away hastily, drawing his handkerchief across his brow.

‘I think we can safely say,’ said William’s uncle, ‘that if the Government we desire is returned the average loaf will be three-halfpence cheaper.’

He looked round at his helpers. Not one was taking notes. Not one was making a suggestion. All were staring blankly at the wall behind him.

Extraordinary what stupid fellows seemed to take up this work – that chap with the large nose looked nothing more or less than tipsy!