William the Good

by Richmal Crompton

  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 fo
r 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.

  ‘It’s him,’ said the voice. ‘I don’t see him but I know it’s him. He’s left the thing there. Look! Pouring out. It must be him.’

  ‘Let’s go straight in to change and then go and tell his father. I’m still soaked.’

  The head disappeared; the sound of indignant voices grew fainter; a distant door closed.

  William emerged from behind the rain butt and hastened to turn off the tap and put away the hose pipe. . . . All that beastly cat’s fault. Now he came to think of it hose pipes always had been unlucky for him. There’d been that little affair at the doctor’s only a few months ago. . . .

  Well, he’d better get on with the rest of it and try and get the shilling safely before they were dry enough to come and see his father. What had she told him to do next? Weed the bed on the lawn. William promptly knelt down and weeded the bed on the lawn with commendable thoroughness. There was no doubt at all in William’s mind as to what constituted a weed. In William’s mind a weed was any plant he did not know the name of. William knew the names of very few plants. When he had finished weeding the bed contained a few straggling stocks and asters and one marguerite. By his side lay a pile of uprooted lobelias, petunias, calceolarias, veronicas and other plants. He carried these carefully to the rubbish heap, then gazed with pride at the bed on which he had been working.

  ‘Looks a bit tidier now,’ he said.

  Only one more thing to do. What was that? Oh, a basket of strawberries. He got a basket from the greenhouse and proceeded to the strawberry bed. He sat down there and a languorous content stole over him.

  Ethel appeared dressed in the printed chiffon. She looked very dainty and bewitching. She’d decided to send the land girl’s suit to the next parish jumble sale – it really wasn’t her style. . . . William ought to have finished now. She’d give him his shilling and then she’d tell her father that she’d done what she’d said she’d do in the garden and she jolly well wouldn’t offer to do any more. Anyway, a new gardener would be coming next week. . . . She suddenly stopped motionless, her eyes wide open in horrified amazement. The rose bed was still unwatered, but the garden path was completely swamped. Her eyes wandered slowly to the bed on the lawn which she had told William to weed. It was as William had left it – completely denuded except for half a dozen straggling plants whose presence only emphasised its desolation. There was no sign of William. Ethel went round to the kitchen garden. William was sitting on the path by the strawberry bed still in a state of languorous content. Ethel stared from the empty basket to the empty strawberry bed and from the empty strawberry bed to William’s gently moving mouth.

  ‘You naughty boy!’ said Ethel. ‘You’ve eaten them, every one!’

  William awoke with a start from his state of languorous content and looked at the basket and the strawberry bed. He was almost as amazed and horrified as Ethel.

  ‘I say,’ he said. ‘I din’t meant to eat ’em all. I din’t honest. I only meant to try jus’ one or two jus’ to make sure they was all right before I started pickin’ ’em. I – I expect really it’s the birds that did it when they saw I wasn’t lookin’. Honest, I don’t think I could’ve eaten ’em all – I’m sure I only ate just a few – jus’ to see they was all right.’

  Ethel’s fury burst forth.

  ‘I shan’t give you any money and I shall tell father the minute he comes in.’

  This reminded William of something else.

  ‘I say, Ethel,’ he said anxiously. ‘No one’s – no one’s been in to see father jus’ lately, have they?’

  ‘Oh,’ snapped Ethel. ‘Why?’

  ‘No, nothin’,’ said William. ‘I mean I jus’ thought p’raps someone might be jus’ sort of comin’ to see him, that’s all.’

  Ethel turned on her heel and walked away. Slightly to relieve his feelings William put out his tongue at her back. He might have known Ethel would let him slave for her for all this time and then not give him a penny. It was just like Ethel. He’d known her all his life and he might have known she’d play him a mean trick like that. Getting him to work like a slave and promising him a shilling and then not giving him a penny jus’ because – well jus’ because of hardly anything.

  A great despondency possessed William, He seemed to be farther off the eight and six than ever. . . . Ethel being Ethel would not be likely to forget to tell his father and presumably the recipients of the contents of the hose pipe were already drying themselves in preparation for their visit. . . . He was in for a rotten time. He wouldn’t have minded if he’d got the eight and six. He wouldn’t mind anything if he’d got the eight and six. He decided that it would be as well to leave the strawberry bed, so after carefully wiping his mouth to remove any chance stains, he wandered disconsolately round to the front of the house. His mother was coming out of the front door, dressed in her best clothes.

  It struck Mrs Brown that her younger son was looking rather pathetic. She was short-sighted and she often mistook William’s expression of fury and disgust for one of pathos. It was a mistake which had often served William well.

  ‘Would you like to come with me, dear?’ she said pleasantly.

  ‘Where to?’ said William guardedly.

  ‘To a nice little Sale of Work in Miss Milton’s garden,’ said his mother. ‘I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.�
��

  William was sure he wouldn’t, but it occurred to him that he might as well be at Miss Milton’s nice little Sale of Work as anywhere. Better than staying at home where his father and the next-door neighbours might arrive any minute.

  ‘A’right,’ said William graciously. ‘I don’t mind.’

  ‘Very well, dear. I’ll wait for you. Go and wash and brush yourself.’

  ‘I have washed and brushed myself,’ said William. ‘I did it specially well this morning to last the day.’

  ‘Well, it hasn’t done, dear,’ said Mrs Brown simply. ‘So go and do it again.’

  With a deep, deep sigh expressive of bitterness and disillusion and unexampled patience under unexampled wrongs, William went to do it again.

  The first person he saw at the Sale of Work was Ethel in the printed chiffon accompanied by the young man with projecting teeth. William, who had detached himself from his mother, passed them without acknowledging them and hoped that they felt small. As a matter of fact they had not noticed him. He wandered about the garden. It might have been a more or less enjoyable affair for there were bran tubs and coconut shies and Aunt Sallies on a small scale – had William not been weighed down by his heavy financial anxieties. He was obsessed by the thought of the eight and six.

  There simply didn’t seem any way in the world of getting eight and six. . . .

  He found his mother and assuming that expression that he found so useful in his dealings with her said: ‘Mother, please may I have a little money to spend here?’

  His mother was obviously touched by his tone and expression, but after a brief inward struggle seemed to conquer her weaker feelings.

  ‘I’m afraid not, William dear, because you know what your father said about the landing window last week. But I’ll give you just one penny, because it’s all in a good cause and I’m sure your father didn’t mean when it was a case of charity. But not more than one penny.’