William the Good (12 page)

‘Eight and six,’ said Douglas gloomily. ‘Well, we shall never get eight and six, so we may as well stop thinking of them, and just do the best we can with sticks.’

This spiritless attitude irritated William.

‘
Why
can’t we get eight an’ six?’ he said. ‘Of course we c’n get eight an’ six if we want it.’

‘All right,’ challenged Douglas, as irritated by William’s attitude as William had been by his. ‘If you c’n get eight an’ six, go an’
get
eight
an’ six.’

‘All right, I will,’ said William.

He hadn’t exactly meant to say this, but the words were out so he accompanied them with a careless swagger.

They eyed him morosely and yet with a gleam of hope.

‘Course you can’t get eight an’ six,’ they said. ‘How c’n you get eight an’ six?’

William having taken up a position, however rashly, was not going to abandon it.

‘P’raps
you
can’t,’ he said kindly. ‘I daresay
you
can’t, but if
I
want to get eight an’ six I bet I c’n get eight
an’six.’

‘Before tonight?’ said Ginger. ‘You’ll bring ’em here tonight?’

William was for a second taken aback by thus having the soaring flights of his fancy tied down to time and space.

He blinked for a moment, then recovering his swagger said:

‘Course. You wait and see.’

He walked home rather thoughtfully. Eight and six. The magnitude of the sum staggered his imagination. How could he get one and six or even sixpence, let alone eight and six?
Not for the first time he regretted those rash impulses that always seemed to visit him at critical moments and make him undertake quite impossible tasks. The actual undertaking was, of course, a
glorious moment – the careless swagger, the impression he gave himself as well as his audience of hidden resources, secret powers – almost of omnipotence.

But afterwards – and
eight and six!
William felt as helpless as if he had undertaken to provide a million pounds. He did not remember ever possessing as much money as eight and six.
He did not remember ever knowing anyone who possessed as much money as eight and six. And yet – he knew that his prestige was at stake. With simple, touching faith the Outlaws were now
looking to him to provide eight and six before tonight.

Up till now William had, owing to strokes of pure luck, always managed to make good his spectacular promises of the impossible, but this time he thought that he had met his Sedan. He did not
think it in those exact words, of course, because he had not yet got to Napoleon. He was still laboriously and uninspiredly doing the Wars of the Roses. But he did think that he was in a beastly
hole and he’d look a nice fool when he met them tonight with only the twopence-halfpenny which he might be able to extort from the boy next door, in exchange for a set of cigarette cards.
(The boy next door never had more than twopence-halfpenny, and as he did not collect cigarette cards the exchange would have to be forcibly effected.) Looking round all his available resources.
William did not see any prospect of anything except that possible twopence-halfpenny. His family, of course, was out of the question. His brother and sister always pretended that they had no money
which, as William knew, was absurd, considering that they were grown up and had magnificent allowances and nothing to spend them on. It seemed to William one of the many ironies of fate that when
you were young – say eleven – and had a lot of interesting things to buy, such as cricket bats and sweets and pistols and airguns and mouth organs, you had only a measly twopence a
week, and when you were old – say eighteen like his brother – and had lost your taste for interesting things, they gave you shillings and shillings which you simply went and wasted on
things like clothes and notepaper and suitcases and books (to quote a few recent instances of waste of money which William had noticed in the adult members of his family). It always made him feel
bitter to see perfectly good money which might have been spent on cricket bats and sweets and pistols and air guns and mouth organs squandered on such things as clothes and notepaper and suitcases
and books. His sister had particularly disgusted him only the other week by buying an expensive book of music. How much better and kinder it would have been, thought William, to buy the cricket
stumps for him. . . .

His mother? His mother was softer hearted than any other member of his family (which in William’s opinion was not saying much), but only yesterday he had inadvertently spilt boiling
sealing-wax on the top of her polished writing-table while carrying on – without her knowledge – some private and highly interesting experiments with a sealing-wax set which she had won
as a prize at a bridge drive. The set consisted of little balls of sealing-wax and a tiny saucepan in which to heat them over a little candle, and as soon as William saw it he knew that his spirit
would have no rest till he had tried it. As he explained to her when she discovered the damage, he did not know that it was going to boil over on to her table like that. . . . He had made things
worse by trying to get the mark out with ammonia because he had seen his mother the night before getting a stain out of his suit with ammonia.

His mother had covered up the mark by the simple expedient of putting the ink pot upon it and had agreed to say nothing about it to William’s father, but William felt it was hardly a
propitious moment for approaching her with a request for eight and sixpence. . . .

His father? . . . he hadn’t yet paid for the landing window and his father was presumably still feeling annoyed about the cricket ball which had accidentally hit him yesterday evening when
William was practising bowling in the garden. No: it would be little short of suicidal to approach his father for eight and six today and quite hopeless at any time. Extraordinary to think of the
hundreds of pounds which must be wasted on quite useless things every year and no one would give him eight and six for a really necessary thing like cricket stumps. . . .

He wandered gloomily homeward. A youth with projecting teeth met him and gave him an expansive smile of greeting. William replied with his darkest scowl. He recognised the youth as Ethel’s
latest admirer and one of the most unsatisfactory admirers Ethel had ever had. He had given the youth every chance to buy his good graces, and the youth had not presented him with so much as a
cigarette card. William, who did not believe in wasting efforts, had long since ceased to greet the youth with any attempt at pleasantness. Pleasantness to Ethel’s admirers was in
William’s eyes a marketable quality and this youth had not seen fit to purchase it.

After turning to watch the youth out of sight and wasting upon the youth’s unconscious back an exceptionally expressive grimace of scorn and ridicule, William continued gloomily to plod
his homeward way.

On arriving home he first went up to his bedroom and carried out a systematic search of all his drawers and pockets. William was an incurable optimist and always hoped to find some day a
forgotten coin in a pocket or a corner of a drawer. Ginger had once found a halfpenny in the pocket of a flannel suit he had not worn since the summer before, and ever after that all the other
Outlaws had lived in hopes of doing the same thing. The search, however, proved in this case fruitless. It revealed only a rusty button and an old whistle which must have lost some vital part, for
though William, temporarily forgetting the eight and six, expended a vast amount of wind and energy on it no sound of any sort resulted. Thereupon, purple in the face and breathless, he threw it
indignantly out of the window. It seemed to him a typical example of fate’s way of dealing with him. Even when he found an old whistle it hadn’t any blow in it. . . .

Scowling bitterly and still trying to devise some method by which one might conjure eight and sixpence out of the void he descended to the garden.

In the garden he found his sister Ethel wearing a neat land girl’s costume and weeding a bed. The Browns were temporarily without a gardener, and Ethel had undertaken the
care of the garden till a new one should be engaged. She had done this chiefly because she had discovered how extremely fascinating she looked in a land girl’s outfit. The land girl’s
outfit was partly responsible for the fatuous smile on the projecting teeth of the youth who had just left her. . . .

William watched her for a minute in silence. His thoughts were still bitter. Spending money on that old gardening suit that might have been used to buy the stumps. . . . His eye roved round the
garden. . . . Spending money on spades and rakes and watering cans and seeds and flowers and things that didn’t do any good to anyone . . . things that must have cost ever so many eight and
sixes, and they wouldn’t give him one little eight and six to buy a useful thing like cricket stumps.

Suddenly an inspiration visited him.

‘Can I help you, Ethel?’ he said with an ingratiating smile.

She looked up at him suspiciously, began a curt refusal, then stopped. She was growing tired of gardening. She was growing tired of her land girl’s outfit. Its novelty had worn off and it
was rather hot and stuffy. The youth with projecting teeth admired her in it intensely, but then she was growing tired of the youth with projecting teeth. She stood up and stretched.

‘CAN I HELP YOU, ETHEL?’ WILLIAM SAID, WITH AN INGRATIATING SMILE. ETHEL LOOKED UP AT HIM SUSPICIOUSLY.

‘How much do you want for it?’ she demanded brusquely.

She laboured under no delusions as to the disinterestedness of William’s offers of help. She had known William too long for that.

‘Sixpence an hour,’ said William daringly.

He never thought she’d give it him. But Ethel was sick of kneeling on the ground in the hot sun in a suit of clothes she was beginning to dislike, slaving for a lot of silly plants which
didn’t seem to look any better when she’d done with them.

‘All right,’ she said.

William did a hasty sum. Eight and six. Two sixpences in a shilling. Twice eight are sixteen and the other sixpence seventeen. Seventeen hours.
Crumbs!

‘I meant a shilling,’ he said quickly.

‘Well, you said sixpence and sixpence is all you’ll get,’ said Ethel, unfeelingly.

William was not surprised. He hadn’t really hoped for anything else from Ethel. Well, it would be a beginning . . . and perhaps when he’d got this bit of money something else would
turn up.

‘What d’you want me to do?’ he said.

‘Water the rose beds with the hose pipe and weed the bed on the lawn and pick a basket of strawberries for mother.
Pick
, not eat, remember.’

William haughtily ignored the insult contained in the last sentence and mentally contemplated his directions with a professional air.

‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘that’ll take me a good many hours. I daresay that’ll take me all the rest of today, late into the night an’ most of tomorrow.’
He was struggling in his head with vast and complicated mental sums . . . hours into sixpences – sixpences into shillings. . . . She interrupted them.

‘It oughtn’t to take you more than two,’ she said. ‘Anyway I’m not paying you for more than two. It oughtn’t really to take you one.’

‘
Well!
’ said William in a tone of surprise and indignation, as if he was unable to believe his ears. ‘
Well!
’

But Ethel was already out of earshot. She was going to change the land girl’s outfit (which she had finally decided was not really her style at all) for a dress of printed chiffon.

William stood and stared around the garden despondently. What was one shilling in eight and six? Then his ever ready optimism came to his aid. One shilling was better than nothing. . . . He
might as well start on it. What had she said first? The hose pipe. . . . Well, it wouldn’t be so bad. Quite apart from the shilling the hose pipe always had its bright side. . . . Normally
William was forbidden the use of the hose pipe. Even Ethel wouldn’t have told him to use the hose pipe if she hadn’t been in a state of weary disgust with gardening in general and her
land girl’s suit in particular. William fitted on the hose pipe nozzle and turned on the tap. He had no thought in his mind except the watering of the rose beds as directed, and the earning
of his shilling.

It was sheer bad luck that just at the critical moment when he was about to deluge the rose bed he suddenly caught sight of his inveterate enemy, the next-door cat, silhouetted against the sky
on the top of the wall. William did not stop to reason. He acted on the overpowering impulse of the moment. He turned the full flow of the hose pipe on to the person of his enemy. His enemy nimbly
evaded it and it flowed in a pellucid unbroken fountain over a wall into the next garden. There came a shrill scream.

‘The brute! He’s soaked me!’ a voice shrilled.

‘Me too!’ screamed another. ‘Oh, the brute! Who was it? I’m soaked.’

‘It must be that awful boy next door.’

‘Look over the wall and see if you can see him. Stand on the chair!’

After a few minutes’ interval an irate and dripping head appeared over the wall and looked around for William. It did not see William, however. William, crouching behind the rain tub, was
quite hidden from view. It saw, however, the hose pipe flung upon the ground and discharging its full force down the garden path.