William the Good (5 page)

‘We will, of course, be pleased to give you sixpence for being the wind and any other little noises that may come into the play, William.’

‘Thank you,’ said William, concealing his delight beneath a tone of calm indifference. Sixpence . . . it was something to start from. William was such an optimist that with the first
sixpence the whole fund seemed suddenly to be assured to him. . . . He could do something else for someone else and get another sixpence and that would be a shilling, and, well, if he kept on doing
things for people for sixpence he’d soon have enough money to buy the football. Optimistically he ignored the fact that most people expected him to do things for them for nothing. . . .

It was arranged that William should attend the next reading of the play in order to be the wind and whatever other noises might be necessary and then William, transferring his chewing-gum from
his pocket to his mouth and scattering bits of fern absently to mark his path as he went, disappeared into the hall, took his cap from the fox’s head, pulled a face at the stuffed owl, then,
seeming annoyed by its equanimity, pulled another, absently plucked off another spray of Mrs Bruce Monkton-Bruce’s cherished fern, and made his devastating way into the street. His piercing
and unharmonious whistle shattered the quiet of countless peaceful homes as he strode onwards, cheered and invigorated by his visit, looking forward with equal joy to his role as wind-maker and his
possession of the sixpence that was to be the nucleus of his football fund.

The members of the Literary Society heaved sighs of relief as the sounds of his departure faded into the distance.

‘Don’t you think,’ said Miss Greene-Joanes pathetically, ‘that we could find a
quieter
type of boy?’

‘But it
was
,’ said Mrs Bruce Monkton-Bruce, ‘it
was
a
very
good imitation of the wind. I mean, of course, when he did it softly.’

‘But wouldn’t a quieter type of boy do?’ persisted Miss Greene-Joanes. ‘For instance, there’s that dear little Cuthbert Montgomery.’

‘But he can’t whistle,’ objected Mrs Bruce Monkton-Bruce. ‘I’m afraid that you’d always find that the quiet type of boy couldn’t do such a good
whistle.’

So reluctantly the Literary Society decided to appoint William as the wind.

William put in an early appearance at the next rehearsal. It was in fact a little too early for Mrs Bruce
Monkton-Bruce, at whose house it was held. He arrived half an hour before the time at which it was to begin and spent the half-hour sitting in her drawing-room cracking nuts and practising his
whistle. Mrs Bruce Monkton-Bruce said that it gave her a headache that lasted for a week.

‘William,’ she said sternly when she entered the drawing-room, ‘if you don’t learn to do a
quiet
whistle we won’t have you at all.’

‘
Wasn’t
that quiet?’ said William, surprised. ‘It seemed to me to be such a quiet sort of whistle that I’m surprised you heard it at all.’

‘Well, I
did
,’ she snapped, ‘and it’s given me a headache, and don’t do it any more.’

‘Sorry,’ said William succinctly, transferring his whole attention to the nuts.

Her tone had conveyed to him that his position as wind-maker was rather precarious, so when the other members of the cast arrived he made his wind whistle so low that they had to request him to
do it a
leetle –
just a
very leetle –
louder. Even then it sounded very faint and far away. William had decided not to risk either his sixpence or his place in the cast by
whistling too loudly at rehearsals. The actual performance of course would be quite a different matter. His gentle whistle endeared him to them. They unbent to him. He was turning out, Miss
Featherstone confided to Miss Gwladwyn in a whisper, a nicer type of boy than she had feared he would be at first. He had helpful suggestions too about the other noises. He knew how to make the
sound of horses’ hooves. You did it with a coconut. And he knew how to make thunder. You did it with a tin tray. And he could make revolver shots by letting off caps or squibs or something.
Anyway, he could do it somehow. . . . They thought that perhaps he’d better not try those things till nearer the time. He’d better confine himself to the wind – so he confined
himself to the wind, a gentle, anaemic sort of wind which he despised in his heart, but which he felt was winning him the confidence of his new friends. They unbent to him more and more. He was
rather annoyed that he was not to have the snow-storm. Miss Gwladwyn said that her nephew would manage the snow-storm. She said that her nephew was a dear little boy with beautiful manners, who she
admitted regretfully could not whistle, and might not be able to manage the other noises, but would, she was sure, manage the snow-storm perfectly.

William went home fortified by their praise of his distant whistle and two buns given him by Mrs Bruce Monkton-Bruce. On the way he met Douglas and Henry and Ginger.

‘Hello,’ they said, ‘where’ve you been?’

‘I’ve been to a rehearsal,’ said William with his own inimitable swagger. ‘I’m actin’ in a play.’

They were as impressed as even William could wish them to be.

‘What play?’ demanded Ginger.

‘One the Lit’ry Society’s gettin’ up,’ said William airily.

‘What’s it called?’ said Douglas.

William did not know what it was called, so he said with an air of careless importance:

‘That’s a secret. I’ve not got to tell anyone that.’

‘Well, what are you actin’ in it?’ said Henry.

William’s swagger increased.

‘I’m the most important person in it,’ he said. ‘They jolly well couldn’t do it at all without me.’

‘You the
hero?
’ said Ginger incredulously.

‘Um,’ admitted William. ‘That’s what I am.’

After all, he thought, surely in a play where you were continually hearing and talking about the wind, the wind might be referred to as the hero. Anyway, he soothed his conscience by telling it
that as he was the only man in the piece, he
must
be the hero.

‘They’re all women,’ he continued carefully, ‘so of course they had to get a man in from somewhere to be the hero.’

The Outlaws were not quite convinced, and yet there was
something
about William’s swagger. . . .

‘Well,’ said Ginger, ‘I s’pose if you’re the hero you’ll be havin’ rehearsals with ’em?’

‘Yes,’ said William. ‘Course I will!’

‘All right,’ challenged Ginger. ‘Tell us where you’re havin’ the nex’ one an’ we’ll
see.
’

‘At Mrs Bruce’s nex’ Tuesday afternoon at three,’ said William promptly.

‘All
right
,’ said the Outlaws, ‘an’ we’ll jolly well
see.
’

So next Tuesday at three o’clock they jolly well
saw.
Hidden in the bushes in Mrs Bruce Monkton-Bruce’s (let us call her by her full name. She hated to hear it as she said
‘murdered’) garden they saw the cast of
A Trial of Love
arrive one by one at the front door. And with them arrived William – the only male character – swaggering
self-consciously but quite obviously as an invited guest up Mrs Bruce Monkton-Bruce’s front drive. He was fully aware of the presence of his friends in the bushes, though he appeared not to
notice them. His swagger as he walked in at the front door is indescribable.

The Outlaws crept away silent and deeply impressed. It was true. William must be the hero of the play. They were torn between envy of their leader and pride in him. Though all of them would have
liked to be the hero of a play, still they could shine in William’s reflected glory. Their walk as they went away from Mrs Bruce Monkton-Bruce’s front gate reflected something of
William’s swagger. William was a hero in a play. Well, people’d have to treat them
all
a bit diff’rent after that.

The rehearsal was on the whole a great success. William, afraid that his friends might be listening at the window and not wishing them to guess the comparative insignificance of his role,
reduced his whistle to a mere breath. Mrs Bruce Monkton-Bruce said encouragingly: ‘Just a
leetle
louder. William,’ but Miss Greene-Jones said hastily: ‘Well, perhaps it
would be as well to keep it like that for rehearsals, dear, and to bring it out just a
leetle
bit louder on the night.’

So William, still afraid that the Outlaws were crouched intently outside the window, kept it like that.

It was decided at the end that William need not attend all the rehearsals. The cast found his stare demoralising, and his habit of transferring his piece of chewing-gum (he’d had it for
three weeks now) from his mouth to his pocket and from his pocket to his mouth disconcerting. Also he would at intervals take a nut from another pocket and crack it with much noise and facial
contortion. He always made a very ostentatious show of collecting all the shells and putting them into yet another pocket, but Mrs Bruce Monkton-Bruce’s horrified gaze watched a little heap
of broken nutshells steadily growing upon her precious carpet by William’s feet. William himself fondly imagined that he was behaving in an exemplary way. He had even offered each of them one
of his nuts and had been secretly much relieved at their refusal. They could not, he thought, expect him to offer them a chew of his chewing-gum. . . . But he was supremely bored and was not sorry
when informed that it would be best for them to rehearse the play without wind and thunder till they were a little more accustomed to it.

He was not summoned to another rehearsal for a fortnight. The play was, as Miss Georgina Hemmersley said, ‘taking shape beautifully.’ Miss Georgina Hemmersley as a Cavalier looked
quite dashing, despite her forty-odd years, and Miss Featherstone as the Roundhead looked also very fine, though she too had passed her first youth. It was, however, as she said, only fair that
those who had been in the society longest should have the best parts. . . . Miss Gwladwyn, they all agreed, made a sweetly pretty heroine.

William arrived with all his paraphernalia of coconuts and squibs and tin tray, and, he considered, put up the best show of all of them. True, the rest of the cast seemed a little irritable.
They kept saying: ‘
Quietly,
William.’ ‘William, not so
loud
.’ ‘William, we can’t hear ourselves speak.’ ‘William, stop making that
deafening
noise. Well, there isn’t any wind now.’ At the end Miss Greene-Joanes, who had seemed strangely excited all the time, burst out:

‘Now, I’ve got some news for you all. . . . William, you needn’t stay.’ William began to make elaborate and protracted preparations for his departure, but, intensely
curious, lingered within earshot. ‘I didn’t tell you before we began, because I knew it would make you too excited to act. It did me. You’ll never
guess
who’s staying
in the village.’

‘
Who?
’ chorused the cast breathlessly.

‘Sir Giles Hampton.’

The cast uttered screams of excitement. The Cavalier said, ‘What for?’ and the Roundhead said, ‘Who told you?’ and the comic aunt and uncle said simultaneously,
‘Good
heavens
!’

‘He’s had a nervous breakdown,’ said Miss Greene-Joanes, ‘and he’s staying at the inn here because of the air, and he’s supposed to be incognito, but of
course
people recognise him. As a matter of fact, he’s telling people who he is because he’s not
really
keen on being incognito. Actors never are really. They feel
frightfully mad if people don’t recognise them.’

‘What’s he like to look at?’ said the comic aunt breathlessly.

‘Tall and important-looking and rather handsome with very bushy eyebrows.’

‘Do you think he’ll
come
?’ said all the cast simultaneously.

‘I don’t know but – William,
will
you go home and stop dropping nutshells on the carpet.’

There was a silence while all the cast waited impatiently for William to take his leave. With great dignity William took it. He was annoyed at his unceremonious ejection. Thinking such a lot of
themselves and their old play, and where would they be, he’d like to know, without the wind and the thunder and the horses’ hooves and all the rest of it? . . . Treating the most
important person in the play the way they treated him. . . .

He walked down the road scowling morosely, absent-mindedly cracking nuts and scattering nutshells about him as he went. . . . At the end of the road he collided with a tall man with bushy
eyebrows.

‘You should look where you’re going, my little man,’ said the stranger.

‘Come to that, so should you,’ remarked William, who was still feeling embittered.

The tall man blinked.

‘Do you know who I am?’ he said majestically.

‘No,’ said William simply, ‘an’ I bet you don’t know who I am either.’

‘I am a very great actor,’ said the man.

‘So’m I,’ said William promptly.

‘So great,’ went on the man, ‘that when they want me to play a part they give me any money I choose to ask for it.’

‘I’m that sort, too,’ said William, thrusting his hands deep into his trouble pockets. ‘I asked for sixpence an’ they gave it me straight off. It’s
goin’ to a new football.’

‘And do you know why I’m here, my little man?’ said the stranger.

‘No,’ said William without much interest and added, ‘I’m here because I live here.’

‘I’m here,’ said the man, ‘because of my nerves. Acting has exhausted my vitality and impaired my nervous system. I’m an artist, and like most other artists am
highly strung. Do you know that sometimes before I go on to the stage I tremble from head to foot.’

‘I don’t,’ said William coolly. ‘I never feel like that when I’m actin’.’

‘Ah!’ smiled the man, ‘but I’m always the most important person in the plays I act in.’

‘S’m I,’ retorted William. ‘I’m like that. I’m the most important person in the play I’m in now.’

‘Would you like to see the programme of the play I’ve just been acting in in London?’ continued the actor, taking a piece of paper out of his pocket.

William looked at it with interest. It contained a list of names in ordinary-sized print; then an ‘and’ and then ‘Giles Hampton’ in large letters.