William and the Pop Singers (Just William, Book 35)

by Richmal Crompton

  Cedric’s expression of bewilderment and apprehension deepened. He glanced nervously around.

  Hannah still lay by the herbaceous border, uttering short resentful grunts, and on the other side of the hedge the burly, gaitered figure of Farmer Smith could be seen. He was inspecting Hannah with interest.

  “Didn’t know you were goin’ in for pig-keeping, Miss Thompson,” he said.

  “Oh, it’s not mine,” said Miss Thompson. “Far from it!” She waved her hand towards Cedric. “It belongs to this gentleman.”

  Cedric approached the hedge over which Farmer Smith’s head protruded.

  “Do you know anything about pigs?” he said.

  “I do,” said Farmer Smith.

  “Well, is it possible for a pig to get hydrophobia?”

  Farmer Smith wrinkled his brow.

  “I’ve never heard tell of a case,” he said.

  “Well, this one’s been fairly placid till today and today she’s had a sort of brain-storm. Charged all over the place, knocked a man into the pond and—well, as you see, made a shambles of the whole place. It seemed to come on quite suddenly. Do pigs ever go out of their minds? Such minds as they have, of course.”

  “I’ll come round and look at her,” said Farmer Smith shortly.

  “Actually, it’s what she stands for, rather than the pig itself that’s important to us,” said Cedric. “We want to make our mark on our generation. We want our names to be handed down to posterity.”

  His only audience was William, who stood in front of him still munching biscuits and listening with rapt attention.

  “After all,” continued Cedric, “what we do in these first few years will set standards and principles for generations yet unborn. My own name,” he continued, “may become a household word, among future scholars not only of Newlick University but of—other universities also.”

  Suddenly William remembered the sheaf of papers that still rested in his pocket. He drew them out.

  “May I have your autograph, please?” he said.

  Cedric stopped in midstream. Carried away on the swelling tide of his own eloquence, he saw himself as a world famous figure, a Man of Destiny. It did not seem at all strange to him that this boy should want his autograph.

  “Certainly,” he said graciously.

  He took out his pen and, frowning portentously, scrawled his name with a flourish on the line indicated by William.

  Encouraged by this, William approached the other members of the group. Though they had paid scant attention to Cedric’s actual words, the general trend of his speech had impressed them. They were the precursors of a new age of liberty and equality. Mascots for everyone. Pigs for all. Like Cedric, they saw nothing strange in William’s request. Like Cedric, they signed on the line indicated by William each on a separate piece of paper.

  Farmer Smith continued his examination of Hannah, patting her, soothing her, poking and prodding her.

  William thrust the papers into his pocket and, approaching his hostess, took a formal farewell of her, fixing her with the glassy smile that accompanied any exhibition of “manners” on his part and enunciating the words “Thank you for having me” in a loud and husky voice.

  “It’s been a pleasure, dear,” said Miss Thompson vaguely. “You must come again some time when I’m not quite so busy.”

  William made his way back to the spot where he had left the girl in the blue dress and the young man. They were still there, still talking earnestly together, but obviously on more intimate terms than when he had last seen them. The attache case still lay open by her side. William placed the papers in it.

  The girl threw him a smile over the young man’s shoulder, then winked at him. The suggestion of a secret understanding pleased William. He lingered in hopes of improving the acquaintanceship.

  “I’ve jus’ been to tea with Miss Thompson,” he said. “A pig knocked a man into a pond an’—”

  “Go away,” said the young man without turning to look at him.

  “All right,” said William huffily, “if you’re not int’rested . . .”

  He wandered off down the road in search of Ginger.

  Gradually the peace of evening descended on the countryside. In Miss Thompson’s garden the chairs and tables and crockery were neatly stacked in the veranda awaiting collection. Miss Thompson stood at her front door making feeble apologetic rejoinders to a man who was trying to sell her an electric polisher. Her pleasant face was overcast.

  She didn’t need an electric polisher. She didn’t want an electric polisher . . . but there was a dark foreboding in her heart that at the end of ten minutes—or less—she would have bought one.

  The protest marchers were making their way slowly down the Hadley Road. Hannah was no longer with them.

  “I think we did the right thing,” Cedric was saying. “He said she’d been stung by something and maybe she had, but there was no guarantee that it wouldn’t happen again. She might have caused some fatal injury. After all, human life is sacred.”

  “And he gave us a pretty good sum for her,” said Dopey. “Oh, yes, we haven’t done so badly. And if we use the money for some gift to the University that will stamp our names and leave our mark for future generations, the same purpose will have been served. The boy was certainly impressed by the stand we made. He asked for my autograph.”

  “And mine.”

  “And mine.”

  “What about endowing a fellowship?”

  “There won’t be enough for that, you chump!”

  “A bird sanctuary ...”

  “Don’t be daft. A radiogram . . .”

  “Perhaps a few amenities for ourselves . . . After all, we earned the money . . .”

  “Decent old girl who kept the tea gardens, wasn’t she? She was evidently impressed by our protest. Wouldn’t let us pay a penny.”

  “A bit on the batty side. She kept calling me Mr Coleman.”

  “She called me Miss Poppins.”

  “Once or twice I got the idea that there was more in the whole thing than met the eye.”

  “So did I. . .”

  “Well, come on! Let’s settle the form our gift will take.”

  “A clock tower . . .”

  “A bicycle shed ...”

  “Another drum for the orchestra ...”

  “I honestly don’t know what we quarrelled about,” the young man was saying to the girl in the blue dress.

  “You were very rude and very unkind,” said the girl. “You said I’d never get a job like this. You said I hadn’t the guts.”

  “Well, you’d annoyed me. You seemed to think I wasn’t good enough for you.”

  “Well, you’re not, are you?” She waved her hand towards the open attache case. “It may surprise you to know that all these forms are signed by people in the neighbourhood. What have you to say to that?”

  “I eat my words,” said the young man. “I apologise. I grovel. You’re the world’s best research expert . . . Forgive me and chuck the wretched job and marry me.”

  She relaxed against his arm.

  “If you insist . . .’’ she said.

  William ran Ginger to earth on the outskirts of Crown Wood.

  “I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” panted Ginger. “It’s come!”

  “What’s come?” said William.

  “The circus.”

  “I thought it wasn’t comin’ till tomorrow.”

  “So did I, but it’s come. They’re settin’ it up now. You can see it nearly all through the hedge. There’s elephants an’ lions an’ horses an’ bears an’ even a monkey that keeps jumpin’ about everywhere . . . I’ve been lookin’ for you for ages. What have you been doin’?”

  For a moment or two William tried to think what he had been doing but the events in which he had taken part had faded into insignificance beside a circus with elephants and lions and horses and bears and a monkey that jumped about everywhere . . .

  “Oh nothin’,” he said impa
tiently. “Come on!”

  Chapter 6 – The Outlaws and the Ghost

  “Gosh! Wasn’t it awful yesterday?” said William as the four Outlaws walked slowly down the village street. “Never stopped for a single second,” said Ginger. “Nearly as bad as the one in the Bible,” said Douglas. “Just rained cats and dogs all day,” said Henry.

  “I wouldn’t have minded cats an’ dogs,” said William. “Cats an’ dogs would have been rather excitin’. Gosh! Think of ’em all tumblin’ down from the sky!” He gave his short harsh chuckle. “We’d have to have umbrellas made of iron to keep ’em off.”

  The others considered this picture with rising spirits. “They’d start fightin’ all over the place,” said Douglas. “They’d get caught in the trees,” said Henry, “an’ we could fetch ’em down.”

  “They’d come down the chimneys.”

  “They’d fall into greenhouses an’ things.”

  “My father’d go ravin’ mad if one fell into his.”

  “We could have as many dogs as we liked. I don’t think much of cats.”

  “I’d like a bloodhound for a friend for Jumble,” said William.

  “He’d make mincemeat of Jumble.”

  “He would not!”

  “There might be a special sort of dog without tails an’ with ten legs.”

  They laughed uproariously at this, then Henry returned to the original subject of discussion.

  “Anyway, it jus’ rained without stoppin’ from the minute we got up in the mornin’ till the minute we went to bed at night. It seemed more like a week than a day . . . I tried to make a railway bridge with a kit I’d got, but the glue went all over the top of a polished table an’ they were mad.”

  “I tried to catch a wasp with my fishin’ net,” said Douglas, “an’ it got all tangled up in my mother’s flower arrangement, an’ she was mad, too.”

  “Yes, an’ I had jus’ a bit of quiet practice with one of my father’s golf balls—’case I take up golf when I’m grown up—an’ it broke the bulb of my father’s readin’ lamp an’ he was mad,” said Ginger.

  “They’re always like that on rainy days,” said Douglas. “It’s funny, but there it is. Every little thing you do seems to make ’em mad.”

  “I read a book,” said William with an air of modest virtue. “My mother promised me sixpence if I’d sit quiet for an hour. I found a book of ghost stories in the bookcase an’ I read it.”

  “Did you get the sixpence?” said Henry.

  “Well, I got fivepence halfpenny,” said William. “I started talkin’ about ghosts in the middle.”

  “There aren’t any ghosts,” said Douglas.

  “Gosh, there are!” said William, his voice rising on a note of protest. “Gosh! You should jus’ read that book. There’s ghosts on every page.”

  “Yes, but they were jus’ stories,” said Ginger.

  “They weren’t all jus’ stories,” said William earnestly. “Some of them were written by the axshul person it happened to. They’d got ‘I’ all the way through, so it must have been true.”

  “They’re white, aren’t they?” said Ginger uncertainly. “An’ keep moanin’ an’ groanin’.”

  “Not all of ’em,” said William. “There’s lots of different sorts. One of ’em in this book had joined up with the devil an’ went about scarin’ people into fits, an’ another was the picture of a person in a book—it was an awful creature like a skeleton with yellow eyes an’ nails like claws—an’ it went on scarin’ this man the book belonged to till he had to bum the book to get rid of it, an’ there was one about a man that found a whistle an’ when he whistled it an awful ole witch came up from under an ash tree where she’d been buried an’ nearly killed him.”

  “Gosh! I’d have kept well out of their way,” said Ginger. “Yes, but you wouldn’t always know they were ghosts,” said William. “There was one in this book that looked like a live person an’ acted like a live person an’ it wasn’t till nearly the end that they found he was someone that had come back after he’d been dead for years.”

  “Why’d he come back?” said Douglas.

  “He’d done a dreadful wrong in his lifetime,” said William, “an’ he’d got to come back to get it put right. He was a good man at heart but he’d been led astray by evil companions.”

  “I once read one like that,” said Henry solemnly. “His spirit could find no rest an’ he’d got to go on walkin’ the earth till he’d got this wrong he’d done put right.”

  “That’s how it was with this one,” said William.

  “What had he done wrong?” said Douglas.

  “Well, the one in this book I read,” said William, “had got some papers about secret polit’cal information ready to hand over to the en’my, an’ he’d hidden them ready to hand over to the en’my an’ then he died before he could do it an’ after he was dead he repented an’ came back to get these papers destroyed. He’d got to walk the earth, same as Henry said, till he’d got them destroyed.”

  “What did he live on all that time?” said Ginger. “I bet they’ve not got stomachs, ghosts.”

  “I tell you, this one had,” said William. “He was jus’ like an ordin’ry man ’cept that he was a ghost . . . Gosh! I wish I could find one.”

  “One what?” said Henry.

  “A ghost. I’ve never looked out for one before, but—well, you should jus’ read this book. They mus’ be all over the place.”

  Douglas threw a nervous glance around.

  “Funny we’ve never come across any,” said Ginger. “That’s ’cause we’ve not been lookin’ out for them,” said William. “I bet once we start lookin’ out for them we’ll find one all right.”

  “Oh, come on,” said Henry impatiently. “I’m sick of talkin’ about ghosts. Let’s find somethin’ interestin’ to do.”

  “There’s a new tractor over at Jenks’s farm,” said Ginger. “It’s got some little wheels an’ things on that I’ve never seen before. Let’s go an’ have a look at it.”

  “There’s a new litter of pigs at Smith’s farm,” said Douglas. “We might go an’ have a look at those.”

  “We never finished that underground tunnel we were makin’ under the stream,” said Henry.

  “No, an’ we’re not likely to,” said Douglas morosely.

  “Not at the rate the water keeps pourin’ down into it.”

  “We can have a try,” said Henry.

  “I’m not goin’ to do anythin’ else,” said William doggedly, “till I’ve found a ghost. If all the people in that book could find ’em, I don’t see why I shouldn’t.”

  They looked at him apprehensively, remembering the strange and unexpected situations into which William’s one-track mind had so often led them.

  “You might have to go on lookin’ for the rest of your life,” said Henry.

  “They didn’t. They found ’em almost on the first page.”

  “I say! Look at that!” said Ginger excitedly. “It’s a Jaguar. Look at its headlights. An’ it’s got a bonnet that opens as well as a boot.”

  They stopped to gaze in at the window of the Post Office—a chaotic medley of provisions, shoes, stationery, articles of clothing, saucepans, crockery and toys—to examine the display of miniature cars that was almost hidden by a pair of Wellington boots.

  “It’s not got its price on,” said William. “Let’s go in an’ ask how much it is.”

  They entered the shop beneath an archway of dangling plimsolls, threaded their way past sacks of potatoes and a couple of wheelbarrows to the counter, and stood there discussing the merits and probable price of the Jaguar. The postmistress was at the Post Office end of the counter, attending to the needs of two women whom William did not know. They were dressed in tweed suits, head-scarves and serviceable brogues. Their resonant voices cut through the conversation of the Outlaws.

  “Have you seen the ghost at Springfield?” said one of them.

  “I caught a glimpse of him last
night,” said the other.

  “I think I saw him this morning,” said the first, “writing in that little summer-house at the end of the lawn. He was wearing a green beret.”

  “Come out quick!” whispered William.

  They made a dash for the door, leaving behind them a trail of scattered potatoes and overturned wheelbarrows.

  The postmistress threw them a glance of mingled resentment and resignation.

  “Them boys!” she said with a shrug and continued to dole out stamps and postal orders.

  “Did you hear her?” William was saying excitedly as they stopped in the street outside the shop. “Didn’t I tell you! We’ve found a ghost almost the minute we started lookin’ for one.”

  “We’ve not found it yet,” said Ginger.

  “An’ we’ll prob’ly get in a muddle over it if we do,” said Douglas. “Anyway, where’s Springfield?”

  “It’s one of those big houses on the road to Steedham,” said William. “Oh, come on! Don’t jus’ stand there arguin'. Gosh! We don’t want him to vanish before we’ve seen him, do we?”

  “I shouldn’t mind,” said Douglas.

  “P’raps we’d better find out a bit more about it first,” said Henry.

  “Oh yes, that’s right!” said William. “I’ve taken all this trouble findin’ a ghost for you an’ all you can do is to stand there arguin'!” He flung out his arms in an eloquent gesture. “All right! I’m goin’ off to find it an’ you can stay here, an’ if you never see another ghost for the rest of your lives it’ll be your fault.”

  He set off briskly down the street. The others hurried after him and they walked on together, their slight difference forgotten.

  The journey to Steedham across the fields was a short one, enlivened by a further discussion on the subject of ghosts.

  “You can see right through ’em,” said Ginger. “You can walk through ’em.”

  “Not all of them,” said William. “I told you about the ghost in this book, didn’t I? He was jus’ like a real person. He was solid all through, same as you or me, filled right up to the top with bones an’ lungs an’ things.”