William ignored this question.
‘Oh, blow the kid!’ said Robert. ‘What does he want to come for? He’s sure to mess things up.’
Robert had forgotten the five shillings and was fortunately unaware that the consuming passion in William’s mind at present was a burning desire to do him service.
‘I might,’ said William mysteriously. ‘I might be able to help. You don’t know yet how I might be able to help.’
Then he departed with great dignity, leaving Robert staring after him blankly.
The fête afternoon passed off more or less uneventfully. William made first for the ice-cream stall, next for the toffee stall, then bought a stick of rock and a bar of chocolate from an itinerant tray bearer, then went to the coconut shies, where he failed to win a coconut, but succeeded in hitting a passing curate.
The curate, who was a very good young man, took it on the whole quite well.
‘You should be more careful, my little man,’ he said, rubbing the side of his head and smiling a smile that was meant to express Christian forgiveness and geniality. (It didn’t at all. It expressed only an excusable desire to smack William’s head, barely held in check by a strong sense of duty and regard for appearances.)
William, who hadn’t meant to hit the curate, explained that the sun was in his eyes, and watched the protrusion on the curate’s forehead increase to the proportion of a fair-sized egg with proprietary interest. Then he went to the roundabouts and rounded about on a gigantic cockerel in blissful happiness, sucking a large stick of rock, till he had got down to his last sixpence. Then he saw Ethel coming to fetch him to join his family for tea.
He had lost his cap, his hair stood straight on end, the rock and toffee and chocolate and ices had left visible marks of their passing in large circles round his mouth. His efforts at the coconut shy stall had sent his collar and tie round to the region of his left ear, his hands were black and sticky and his knees, where he had fallen when jumping to and fro over the fence at the back of the coconut shy stall, were covered with mud.
Ethel shuddered and winced at the sight. The thought of this object’s joining the well-dressed Brown party around the dainty little table in the enclosure was too horrible.
‘Do you want any tea, William?’ she said.
‘Yes,’ said William, his mouth full of rock.
Ethel handed him sixpence.
‘I’ll give you that,’ she said, ‘not to want any tea.’
William pocketed it.
‘Now do you want any tea?’ said Ethel.
‘No,’ said William, trying unsuccessfully to jump over the bran tub (which was left temporarily unattended) and bringing bran tub and himself to the ground. He got up, brushed off a certain amount of bran from his person and hurried away from the scene of disaster.
Reaching the shelter of a large tree, he took out Ethel’s sixpence to gaze at it fondly. It did not occur to him to wonder why Ethel did not want him to want any tea. The ways of the grown-up world were so full of mystery that he never even attempted to solve them. He’d got sixpence – that was the main thing – and he could get far nicer things himself with sixpence than you ever got at any old grown-up tea. Whistling discordantly, with his hands in his pockets, he set off to buy another stick of rock, then he bought another bar of chocolate, then he had another ride on the roundabout, then he had another coconut shy.
Ethel returned to the tea enclosure where several elegantly-dressed friends had now joined the Browns. Ethel felt a glow of pride at her diplomacy.
‘William doesn’t want any tea,’ she said.
‘Oh dear,’ said Mrs Brown, much perturbed, ‘I do hope he’s not going to be ill – Ethel, did he look ill?’
‘No,’ said Ethel.
‘But – but he’s always ready for a meal as a rule,’ said Mrs Brown.
‘Oh, he’s all right,’ said Robert.
‘I’ll take his temperature the minute we get home,’ said Mrs Brown, still anxious.
Then they forgot William. There was a very elegant young man among the friends who was much impressed by Ethel, and there was a very pretty girl who was having a nice little flirtation with Robert. And all went merry as a marriage bell till, in the middle of a funny story told by the young man, the smile froze on Ethel’s face and her eyes filled with horror. In silence they followed her eyes.
A figure was walking jauntily along on the other side of the rope that separated the tea enclosure from the rest of the fête ground. It had no cap. Its hair stood up on end. A dirty collar (clean only an hour ago) and tie set up on end under one ear. Dark coloured rings, suggestive of toffee and chocolate, surrounded its mouth. Its knees were black; its bootstrings untied, its clothes covered with mud and bran. In one hand it held a stick of rock; in the other an ice-cream horn. It licked them alternately.
Suddenly it caught sight of the elegant party watching it in horror-stricken silence from the other side of the rope. A radiant smile overspread the grimy countenance. The figure was evidently quite unaware of the appearance it presented.
‘Hello!’ it said cheerfully, ‘I’m having a jolly good time, are you?’
After tea there were races. Robert went in for the race for those over sixteen. Robert had not the slightest doubt that he would win. He had been distinctly annoyed after tea to observe that he was followed wherever he went by the horrible rock-licking, ice-cream-sucking figure of William. He imagined that William did this to annoy him. He did not know that William was inspired solely by a desire to prove his gratitude. It was certainly embarrassing for Robert to have to explain to the very pretty girl that the terrible object was his brother. He imagined that the pretty girl’s manner cooled perceptibly after that disclosure. But he meant to reinstate himself by winning the race.
‘HELLO!’ SAID WILLIAM CHEERFULLY. ‘I’M HAVING A JOLLY GOOD TIME, ARE YOU?’
At the starting place he was next to the Vicar’s son, whom he disliked on sight – a ferret-faced boy with protruding teeth and who had also been hanging round the pretty girl, and who had, Robert bitterly reflected, no ghastly brother, like William, to spoil his chances.
William hovered round Robert giving him unasked advice between the alternate sucks of rocks and ice cream.
‘Run for all you’re worth, Robert,’ – suck – ‘Yes, bend down like that for startin’,’ – suck – ‘and then jump forward,’ – suck – ‘then run jus’ to keep near the front,’ – suck – ‘an’ then, then give a sud’n sprint an’—’
‘Shut up,’ hissed Robert fiercely from his stooping position at the starting line.
William was still feeling grateful for the five shillings.
‘All right, Robert,’ he said meekly, as he regretfully swallowed the last of his ice-cream horn, and moved hastily across the field to the winning tape. Robert said afterwards that if it hadn’t been for the sudden vision of William’s horrible figure – rocky and branny and muddy and dishevelled, waving and cheering at the winning tape when he thought he’d left him safely behind at the starting line – he’d have won the race without any doubt at all.
‘Well,’ said William, crestfallen. ‘I thought I looked all right. I thought I looked same as I looked when we started out. I’d seen myself in the glass then and I looked all right. How was I to know I’d changed? – an’ I was only saying, ‘Go it, Robert,’ – an’ ‘Good ole Robert,’ an’ things like that, trying to help him!’
‘Well, you didn’t help me,’ said Robert, bitterly.
For the sad truth is that Robert came in neck-and-neck with the Vicar’s ferret-faced son. At least it looked to the spectators like a neck-and-neck ending and evidently it also did to the umpire, for he gave it as a draw, and they drew lots and the ferret-faced boy won and was presented with a silver cup and went in friendly confabulation with the pretty girt.
Robert was furious. Moreover he was confident that he had really won the race. He had won it, he claimed, by a fraction of a head. His nose had reached the winni
ng tape before the ferret-faced boy’s. And it was William’s putting him off so that had prevented his winning by several yards. William suddenly appearing like that and shouting and yelling and waving his arms and looking so awful – enough to put anyone off. He went into the Vicarage before he returned home and saw the cup in the Vicar’s study.
‘There it was,’ he said bitterly when he rejoined the others. ‘My cup – there on a bracket in the Vicar’s study, and I’d be carryin’ it home now if everyone had their rights. It’d be on the silver-table in the drawing-room with my other cup now, if everybody had their rights.’
The ferret-faced boy passed him, accompanied by the pretty girl, and Robert ground his teeth. And William, swallowing the last fraction of rock, made a great decision.
The next morning, William gathered together his boon companions – Ginger, Henry and Douglas, known collectively as the Outlaws – and addressed them earnestly.
‘We’ve gotter help Robert, ’cause he gave me five shillings last week an’ – you remember – I gave all of you sweets out of it – an’ it’s his cup really, but the other boy’s got it an’ we’ve gotter get it off the bracket in the Vicar’s study and put it on the silver-table in the drawing-room with Robert’s other cup – poor ole Robert wot really won it all the time.’
The Outlaws, who had not attended the garden fête, were rather vague as to the meaning of this tirade, but they were used to following William’s leadership. What they chiefly demanded of life was excitement, and William seldom failed to supply it in large doses to them.
They walked through the wood and over the hill to West Mellings. ‘Walk,’ perhaps is not quite the right word, ‘Walk,’ suggests a decorous, unexciting mode of progression that did not apply to the Outlaws at all. They ran along the ditches, they balanced (or failed to balance) on the top of fences, they scouted each other as Red Indians through the woods, they played leapfrog in the lanes, they climbed trees and they held races and they deliberately walked through every stream they found – but at last, after several hours, and an expenditure of energy that would have taken them at walking pace there and back half-a-dozen times, they arrived at the village of West Mellings.
‘What we goin’ to do?’ said Ginger cheerfully, throwing a stone at a telegraph post and hitting a hen, who fled down the road with loud screams of indignation to her native farm.
William assumed the stern air of a leader of men.
‘We’ve gotter go to the Vicarage.’ he said, ‘and get back Robert’s cup. It’s on a bracket in the Vicar’s study, ’cause his son took it (though it b’longs to Robert), and it’s gotter go on to the silver-table in our drawing-room, where Robert’s other cup is an’ where it b’longs.’
The Outlaws cheered lustily. The explanation conveyed little to them, but they understood that an exploit of a more or less unlawful nature was in progress, and they swung joyously up the hill to the Vicarage. They peered through the gate. À gardener came up and threatened them with a hose. ‘Run off, ye saucy little ’ounds,’ he said.
They put out their tongues at him and retreated farther down the road. There they held a consultation.
‘One of us has gotter get in to the Vicar’s study,’ said William, with a frowning air of determination, ‘an’ take that cup that b’longs to Robert.’
Ginger peered through the hedge.
‘I think that ole gardener’s gone round to the back,’ he said.
They advanced to the gate.
Just as they reached it a woman came up.
‘You going in to the Vicarage?’ she said.
‘Yes,’ said William, unblushingly.
‘Well, do take a message for me, there’s a good little boy. I promised to call, but I’m catching a train and I shall miss it if I stay a minute. Tell Mrs Lewes that little Frankie Randall can’t come this afternoon after all. He’s suffering from nervous exhaustion. Will you tell her that?’
‘Yes,’ said William, greatly cheered by the message. It gave him an excuse for entering the Vicarage doors, anyway.
The lady hurried on, and William turned to his gallant braves.
‘You stay here,’ he directed, ‘an’ I’ll go inside. If I’m not back in an hour,’ he added, in the manner of all the best detectives in fiction, ‘come an’ look for me.’ Then, with an air of desperate courage, he stuck his sixpenny pistol into his belt and boldly entered the Vicarage garden. The gardener came round from the back and again advanced upon him threateningly.
‘I’ve gotter message for the Vicar,’ said William, with an impudent grimace.
Still growling threateningly, the gardener retired to the back of the house.
William walked up the steps to the front door. It was open. The hall was empty. There was no one in sight. It was a heaven-sent opportunity. He slipped lightly into the hall and looked round for the study. Two open doors revealed drawing-room and dining-room, and a third a passage leading to a kitchen. Still no one came.
The spirit of adventure descended upon him. He crept upstairs, and there, through a door at the top, was the study. It was empty. He entered. And there, upon a bracket just above the desk, stood a silver cup. William’s eyes gleamed as he looked at it. It was rather large to be concealed on William’s not very ample person. He could throw it out of the window of course – or—
Just then the Vicar’s wife entered. William looked at her apprehensively. But she gave him a radiant smile.
‘It’s little Frankie Randall, I suppose,’ she said, ‘they never told me you’d come – so glad to see you, dear! We’ll go down at once to the Parish Hall, shall we?’
William hesitated. If he delivered the message and explained that he was not Frankie Randall, he would, of course, be constrained to leave the Vicarage at once, throwing away his glorious chance of taking the cup. On the other hand, were he to pretend to be Frankie Randall – whoever Frankie Randall might be – his visit quite evidently would be prolonged. So he assumed his most expressionless expression, and said:
‘Yes – thank you – good afternoon.’
She led him down the stairs through a door into the garden and into a small corrugated iron building at the end of the lawn where what seemed to William an enormous crowd of women was assembled. William looked at them and blinked in amazement. He began to think that perhaps it would have been better to have said at once that he wasn’t Frankie Randall.
The Vicar’s wife was speaking.
‘This is little Master Randall, of whom we have all heard so much. It’s a great honour for us to have him here this afternoon. He is staying with his uncle, who, as you all know, lives in East Mellings, and he has very kindly come to entertain us. He only arrived last night, so we are most grateful to him.’
William looked around him and met the interested gaze of the assembled women with a blank stare. Secretly he wondered what on earth was expected of him. Suddenly he knew.
The Vicar’s wife led him over to a corner of the room where he noticed, for the first time, a piano upon a little platform. She motioned him to the seat.
‘We all, of course, know you by repute, my dear little boy,’ she said gushingly. ‘We have read of your wonderful compositions and your wonderful, wonderful playing. Now what we’d like best of all, my dear little boy, is for you to play us one of your own compositions – that would be a real treat.’
William found himself sitting at an open piano with a tense and silent circle of women around him. And William could not play the piano. William had never learnt to play the piano. He looked desperately around – rows and rows of expectant faces turned towards him – a large woman in a green hat in the front row, looking at him through lorgnettes.
WILLIAM CRASHED BOTH HIS HANDS ON THE KEYS IN A SUDDEN EAR-SPLITTING DISCORD.
‘We’re quite ready, dear,’ said the Vicar’s wife, in the hushed tone in which one speaks in church.
HIS AUDIENCE LISTENED IN AMAZED SILENCE.
Then William’s familiar spirit of devilry came t
o his aid.
He crashed both his hands upon the keys in a sudden ear-splitting discord. He ran his fingers up and down the keys. He crossed one hand over the other, he hurled himself wildly at the bass and then at the treble. His audience listened in amazed silence. He kept up a Bacchanalian riot of inharmonious sounds for nearly ten minutes, then he stopped and turned his sphinxlike expressionless face towards his audience.
Now the lady in the green hat was the squire’s wife, who prided herself on being au courant in matters musical and artistic. She knew really very little about music, but she had read in the paper about Frankie Randall, the infant prodigy, and his wonderful playing and his wonderful compositions, and she was determined to show that she knew what was what.
‘Beautiful,’ she said after a short interval, during which the horrible echoes of William’s nightmare of discord died away, and repeated determinedly, ‘most beautiful.’
The Vicar’s wife, not to be outdone, murmured, ‘exquisite,’ and tried to dispel the expression of agony that William’s effort had summoned to her face.
The Mothers’ Meeting in general said nothing – only gazed at William in horror and looked round for escape.
‘Really beautiful,’ said the squire’s wife again, ‘so modern, so free from convention – such spirit.’
The Vicar’s wife, still determined not to be left behind by the squire’s wife in musical appreciation, took up the refrain.
‘To me,’ she said, ‘it has been a treat that I shall remember all my life. Never has a quarter of an hour’s playing caused me such exquisite pleasure.’
The squire’s wife thought that this was rather uppish of the Vicar’s wife and attempted once more to secure her position as supreme musical arbiter.
‘Your name, little boy,’ she said to William, ‘is, of course, well known to me, and I have wished to hear you play for a long time. I can only say that it has far exceeded my expectations. Such verve – such execution – such gallant scorn of convention, such – such genius. And you composed it entirely yourself?’
William in Trouble Page 17
