William

by Richmal Crompton

  They approached the back door of the Vicarage. The Vicar’s wife, who had a great respect for her front doorstep, had trained the juvenile population of the village to approach the Vicarage by the back door.

  Still holding the teapot under his coat and with his Outlaws ranged behind him, William knocked tentatively at the Vicarage back door. An untidy housemaid opened it. She looked at the Outlaws as if she didn’t see them. She didn’t see them. She saw only the milkman. She and the milkman had plighted their troth the night before, and today the housemaid, in the fashion of maidens who had just plighted their troth, saw the image of the beloved wherever she looked. She even gave William a fatuous smile. William, who wasn’t used to smiles, fatuous or otherwise, from housemaids, was so startled that for a minute or two he quite forgot what he’d come to say. Then the housemaid realised their presence and assumed the forbidding scowl with which he felt more at his ease.

  ‘We want to speak to the Vicar,’ said William.

  ‘Well, you can’t,’ said the housemaid ungraciously; ‘he’s busy.’

  ‘It’s very important,’ said William.

  ‘I don’t care what it is,’ said the housemaid, ‘he wasn’t to be disturbed except for sudden illness or death. Are you sudden illness or death?’

  William admitted reluctantly that he wasn’t either.

  ‘Well, then, he can’t be disturbed for you,’ said the housemaid tartly; ‘he’s writing his sermon, so go away.’

  ‘What about her?’ said William. ‘When will she be back?’

  The housemaid had no need to ask who ‘she’ was.

  ‘She’s stayin’ away till tomorrow,’ she said, and added piously, ‘Glory be!’

  ‘Well,’ said William, drawing the teapot from under his coat with a dramatic gesture, ‘we’ve got this back. It was stole – stolen, stole two years ago.’

  The housemaid gave it a fatuous smile. To her it wasn’t a teapot. It was the milkman. William was disappointed by her receipt of his news.

  ‘You make the tea in it for tea,’ he went on. ‘Don’t tell him. Just see what he says when he sees it. It’ll be a nice surprise.’

  The housemaid emerged partially from her daydream and gazed at William’s face with the distaste that she now felt for every face that was not the milkman’s.

  ‘What did you say?’ she demanded curtly.

  ‘I said make tea in it an’ take it in to him.’

  The housemaid had returned to her dream again. She received the order with automatic resignation as though it had been given her by the Vicar’s wife herself.

  ‘A’ right,’ she said dreamily, taking the teapot from his hands and gazing through him with the fatuous smile. ‘A’ right.’

  William and his band hastily departed.

  ‘She’s balmy,’ said Ginger.

  ‘Let’s go back and see if we c’n see him doin’ anythin’ else,’ said William.

  They returned to Mr Ballater’s house and met him issuing from his front gate in hat and overcoat.

  ‘He’s fleein’,’ exclaimed Ginger. ‘He’s found the letter an’ he’s fleein’.’

  ‘Well, as long as he’s not written to my father first,’ said William.

  Then they went home to tea.

  Mr Ballater was having tea with the Vicar. Mr Ballater generally went to have tea with the Vicar when the Vicar’s wife was away. They discussed on these occasions pigs and cucumbers and marrows. The Vicar’s wife never allowed the Vicar to ask him to tea while she was at home, because she said that he wasn’t a spiritual man. She said that no man who thought so much about the size of pigs and cucumbers and marrows could possibly be a spiritual man. But in her absence they always forgathered and enjoyed a chat. The Vicar had just finished ‘tenthly and lastly’ as Mr Ballater was announced, and so he could give a free mind to the proportions of Eglantine. Mr Ballater was as usual waxing lyrical over the proportions of Eglantine. He was feeling much happier about her because she’d had a nice little nap in the afternoon, and he felt that with a lot of food and rest she’d soon make up that pound or so she’d lost that day. Still, he told the Vicar the whole story.

  ‘Fortunately,’ he ended, ‘I know the boy, so I can complain of his conduct to his father, and I hope he will take active measures. A valuable animal like that . . . pounds it must have lost.’

  ‘I remember,’ put in the Vicar, ‘in the case of that pig I had one or two years ago – a really gigantic creature—’

  And just then tea was brought in. The housemaid was still living in a glamorous dream in which the only clear thing was the milkman’s face. There had appeared in the kitchen a strange teapot and she had hazy recollections of having received instructions from someone or other to make the tea in it. So she’d made the tea in it. She placed it upon the tea-table. The Vicar poured out tea, and Mr Ballater seized the opportunity to get in again with Eglantine, and all went merry as a marriage-bell till suddenly Mr Ballater’s eyes fell upon the teapot. He stared. His eyes bulged. He faltered in the middle of a description of Eglantine’s weekly menu. His teapot, his Georgian teapot . . . he could have sworn that it was his Georgian teapot, the one his godmother had given him last year. The Vicar was wielding it quite unconcernedly. The Vicar was an absent-minded man without an eye for details. He could not have described the teapot in which his tea was generally brought to him. He could not have recognised it had it been shown to him in company with a dozen strange teapots. To the Vicar a teapot was just a teapot, a thing containing tea with a handle and a spout. He asked no more of it. He poured the tea from Mr Ballater’s Georgian teapot before Mr Ballater’s gaping eyes with no thought in his mind but a determination to convince Mr Ballater that Judith had been every bit as big as Eglantine and that that snapshot that Mr Ballater had of her was out of focus and made her look about half her real size. He found it unusually easy to stem the flood of Mr Ballater’s rhapsodies. Mr Ballater suddenly seemed unable to do anything but gape helplessly at the teapot. As a visitor the Vicar found him rather disappointing. There wasn’t much satisfaction in saying that Judith was as large as Eglantine if Eglantine’s master didn’t contradict him. The whole thing lacked zest. The Vicar, in fact, wasn’t sorry when Mr Ballater, still gazing at the teapot as if it were a ghost, rose to take his leave quite an hour earlier than he usually took it. He walked down the drive like a man in a dream. The Vicar watched him from the window. A sudden explanation of his strange behaviour occurred to him.

  SUDDENLY MR BALLATER’S EYES FELL UPON THE TEAPOT. HIS TEAPOT!

  ‘He’s beginning to realise it at last,’ he said with a smile. ‘She was as big – every bit as big.’

  Mr Ballater almost ran up his front drive, flung open his front door and hurried into his drawing-room. And there his worst fears were realised. His silver cabinet was shorn of the brightest jewel in its crown. His teapot had gone. His Georgian teapot. And his godmother was coming to tea tomorrow. He must act at once. Perhaps the Vicar had a dual personality – a sort of Jekyll and Hyde personality – part of him a Vicar and the other a thief. He must get it back at any cost. Pale with horror, he set off again down the road towards the Vicarage. On the road he met four boys. One of them was the boy who had treated Eglantine so outrageously that morning. That reminded him. He mustn’t forget to go and see his father tomorrow. The Outlaws stood and watched his figure till it was out of sight. Then William said sternly:

  ‘Well, he’s takin’ a jolly long time to get off. I thought he was fleein’ the last time we saw him.’

  ‘He’s gettin’ his loot together,’ said Henry. ‘Pity we didn’t take a few more of those silver things he’d stole an’ stop him gettin’ off abroad with ’em. That cupboard was full of ’em.’

  ‘Let’s get some of ’em now,’ said William. ‘If I’ve got back a lot of stole things it’ll sort of make it all right case anyone’s told my father about that pig. I remember now there was a sort of silver cream jug and sugar basin that went with the teapot. I bet they m
us’ be the Vicar’s, too. He prob’ly took ’em at the same time. I bet he’d be jolly grateful to me if I got ’em back, too. He’d prob’ly be so grateful that he’d ask my father to take me to the pantomine anyway, even if someone’d told him about that pig.’

  The Outlaws looked rather doubtful.

  ‘I don’t know that I would,’ said Douglas. ‘He might come back and he’d be desperate, of course, with bein’ found out.’

  ‘Well, I’ll jus’ have a try,’ said William; ‘the rest of you keep a look-out down the road and jus’ give the danger whistle if you see him comin’.’

  The Outlaws had an elaborate code of whistles which they practised regularly, but many of which had never been required and probably never would be required. They included special whistles for help in such contingencies as attacks by lions, pursuit by Red Indians and meeting with sharks when bathing.

  The rest of them stood at the corner of the road, and William entered Mr Ballater’s house again cautiously by the drawing-room window. He went to the cabinet and to his amazement found it empty. He listened. Sounds came from upstairs. He crept upstairs. The sounds came from a bedroom. He peeped in. An unsavoury-looking individual stood at a dressing-table, opening drawers. There was a half-filled sack on the floor. William had no doubt at all as to the identity of the unsavoury-looking individual. It was Mr Ballater’s confederate who was collecting the ‘loot’ to take with them in their flight from justice. William felt righteously enraged at this plot, and determined to foil it. A bold plan came to him. He tiptoed into the room, slammed the door, locked it, and slipped the key into his pocket. It was the work of a second, but in that second the unsavoury-looking individual had turned round, revealing a face as unsavoury as the rest of him, and hit out fiercely at William. William dodged the blow, flashed across the room to the open window and slid down the water-pipe. The unsavoury individual was too large to slide down pipes, so he contented himself with battering against the locked door and uttering horrible threats.

  The Vicar and Mr Ballater came down the road together. They carried the teapot tenderly between item. They were still discussing the mystery of its curious disappearance from Mr Ballater’s house and its still more curious appearance at the Vicar’s.

  ‘From what the maid says,’ said Mr Ballater, ‘it sounds like the same boy. I mean the boy who made Eglantine run – run,’ his voice trembled, ‘across the lawn this morning. I’ve rung up his father. He’s away till tomorrow evening. I’m going to see him then.’

  They entered the gate of Mr Ballater’s garden and walked up the drive. They came round the side of the house. A boy was sitting in the middle of the rose bed beneath a bedroom window.

  ‘That’s the boy,’ said Mr Ballater excitedly.

  The boy addressed the Vicar calmly.

  ‘Good!’ he said, ‘you’ve got him. I hoped someone’d catch him before he’d fled right off. I’ve got the one that stayed to c’lect the things. I’ve got him up there. He’s got all the rest of the things in a sack. You can hear him shoutin’ if you listen.’

  William’s father had arrived home.

  ‘I suppose, my dear,’ he said wistfully to William’s mother, ‘that nothing has happened to prevent my taking William to the pantomime tomorrow? I mean no complaint from neighbours or anything like that?’

  ‘Oh, no dear,’ said Mrs Brown. ‘Just the opposite. Mr Ballater says he caught a thief for him. He’s most grateful to him. There was something about a pig and a teapot, too, but it was such a complicated story that I couldn’t follow it. Anyway, the upshot of it all is that he caught a thief for Mr Ballater, and Mr Ballater’s so grateful to him that he’s going to take them off to the Zoo next week, for a little treat.’

  ‘Heaven help him!’ said William’s father feelingly.

  Richmal Crompton was born in Lancashire in 1890. The first story about William Brown appeared in Home magazine in 1919, and the first collection of William stories was published in book form three years later. In all, thirty-eight William books were published, the last one in 1970, after Richmal Crompton’s death.

  ‘Probably the funniest, toughest children’s books ever written’

  Sunday Times on the Just William series

  ‘Richmal Crompton’s creation [has] been famed for his cavalier attitude to life and those who would seek to circumscribe his enjoyment of it ever since he first appeared’

  Guardian

  Books available in the Just William series

  William at War

  Just William

  More William

  William Again

  William the Fourth

  William at Christmas

  Still William

  William the Conqueror

  William the Outlaw

  William in Trouble

  William the Good

  William

  William the Bad

  William’s Happy Days

  First published in 1929

  This selection first published 1984 by Macmillan Children’s Books

  This edition published 2016 by Macmillan Children’s Books

  This electronic edition published 2016 by Macmillan Children’s Books

  an imprint of Pan Macmillan

  20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR

  Associated companies throughout the world

  www.panmacmillan.com

  ISBN 978-1-5098-0525-9

  All stories copyright © Edward Ashbee and Catherine Massey

  This selection copyright © Edward Ashbee and Catherine Massey 1984

  Foreword copyright © Bonnie Langford 2016

  Illustrations copyright © Thomas Henry Fisher Estate

  You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Typeset by Nigel Hazle

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  The text of this book remains true to the original in every way. Some stories may appear out of date to modern-day readers, but are reflective of the language and period in which they were originally written. Macmillan believes changing the content to reflect today’s world would undermine the authenticity of the original, so have chosen to leave the text in its entirety. This does not, however, constitute an endorsement of the characterization and content.