William At War
Page 19
Any more.’
A wave of both hands included the rest of the Hubert Laneites.
‘I’VE GOT A LOVELY THURPRITHE FOR YOU, WILLIAM,’ SAID VIOLET ELIZABETH.
‘And here’th the ole German prithonerth,
Their generalth, too,
Looking juth like the monkeyth
You thee in the zoo.’
The Hubert Laneites stared at her, speechless with fury, aghast at the trick that had been played on them.
For Violet Elizabeth had joined them, offering to organise their pageant, act the part of Britannia, and even help them capture the Outlaws for German prisoners. She had cast Hubert Lane for the part of Churchill, stipulating that he must have a row of medals, which, she assured him, Churchill always wore. So Hubert, who was rather stupid, procured the medals. She had assigned to Bertie Franks the part of Mr Eden and had corked his moustache herself, assuring him that the likeness was now so perfect that no one could tell the difference. Claude Bellew, she had said, must be Monty, Georgie Parker and the rest of them British soldiers. Instead of which, she had shamelessly delivered them into the hands of their enemies, making them play the hateful and humiliating part themselves in the Outlaws’ pageant.
She stood there, smiling proudly.
‘Ithn’t it a lovely thurprithe, William?’ she said.
The infuriated Hubert Laneites flung themselves upon the Outlaws. The Outlaws flung themselves upon the Hubert Laneites. The battle spread to the audience, and the audience, losing its air of listlessness, flung itself upon both sides impartially.
Struggling masses of children surged to and fro over the lawn. Hubert Lane dodged round the summer house with William in hot pursuit. A member of the audience had got Bertie Franks down on the ground and was filling his mouth with grass. Claude Bellew was half-way up the copper beech with Ginger hanging on to his leg and trying to pull him down. Henry the Fifth was wrestling with his own disintegrating costume, his ankles pinioned by yards of tangled dishcloth cotton. The peaceful summer air was rent by shouts and yells and war-whoops.
Then a sudden silence fell.
Lady Markham was making her way to them over the lawn from the house.
And here the Outlaws got their third shock.
For she was smiling in unmistakable welcome. She held out her hand to William and clasped his warmly.
‘Thank you, my dear boy,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’
Every summer Sir Gerald and Lady Markham invited a party of slum children to spend an afternoon in the grounds and partake of a tea that had continued even in wartime to be comparatively lavish. They were a conscientious couple, deeply sensible of their obligations to the community in general and, though they had closed the Manor and were spending the summer in Scotland, they decided to come back for the usual Saturday of the children’s visit and do the thing in style, as they had always done. They had prepared the lavish tea. They had engaged a conjuror to do conjuring tricks on the lawn. They had engaged a Punch and Judy show to follow. And then, when the audience had arrived – shy and ill-at-ease and even slightly resentful, as it generally was at first – the conjuror rang up to say that he had sprained his ankle, and a few minutes later the Punch and Judy man rang up to say that he was down with ’flu. Lady Markham telephoned every entertainment agency she knew. No one was free on such short notice. Frantically she rang up all her friends. None of them had any suggestions except one who offered to recite passages from Shakespeare, and another who offered to give a lecture on ‘Home Life in the Eighteenth Century’ which she had given at the Women’s Institute the week before and which had, she said, been well received by the few who had turned up to listen to it. Meantime the audience sat, bored and impassive, waiting . . .
And then the miracle had happened.
‘I don’t know who sent the children,’ said Lady Markham afterwards. ‘Or whether it was their own idea. They must, of course, have heard of the dilemma I was in, because I’d simply rung up everyone I knew to tell them about it. I was feeling simply desperate, when I looked out of the window and saw these children coming to my rescue. It really was a charming idea. A children’s Battle of Flowers. First came a little girl dressed as a snowdrop, followed by her pages, then came a little girl dressed as a rose, followed by her pages. The pages, of course, were rather strangely dressed, but, considering the war and everything, it was excellent. Then they started this Battle of the Flowers and invited the audience to join in, and then the whole thing went like a house on fire. It became just a little bit rough, I admit, but the children enjoyed it and that was the chief thing.’
‘Splendid effort, my boy,’ said Sir Gerald, grasping William’s hand in his turn. ‘Simply splendid! I can’t tell you how grateful my wife and I are to you . . . Ice broken all right now, eh?’
The ice was certainly broken, together with most of the chairs and benches on which the audience had been sitting, but host and hostess gazed at the chaos with smiles of unalloyed pleasure.
‘Such a relief!’ said Lady Markham. ‘These afternoons have always been a success. I should have been miserable if this one had been a failure. You and your friends will stay to tea, won’t you, and help us till the little visitors go?’
Dazedly William promised that he would. Dazedly he returned to the fray. The Battle of Flowers had developed into a game which everyone played according to his own rules, and in which everyone seemed to know what he was doing, though no one else did. The little visitors leapt and screamed and shouted and pushed.
‘It’s the best party we’ve ever ’ad here,’ said one of them to William. ‘I’m jolly glad they asked you.’
They clustered round the trestle tables in the hall, dishevelled and panting, and began the attack upon jellies, sandwiches, cakes, buns. Sir Gerald and Lady Markham hovered gratefully about William, pressing delicacies upon him.
‘It really is good of you, you know,’ said Sir Gerald, ‘giving up your Saturday afternoon to getting us out of a hole like this.’
William grinned sheepishly and took another slab of chocolate cake.
*
Violet Elizabeth and Joan stood on one side and watched proceedings with an air of aloofness, daintily nibbling chocolate biscuits.
‘It’s a very pretty frock,’ said Joan generously.
‘Yourth ith pretty, too,’ said Violet Elizabeth, not to be outdone in generosity, and added: ‘An’ yourth wath a very nithe piethe of poetry.’
‘You didn’t make up that poetry yourself, did you?’ said Joan.
‘No,’ admitted Violet Elizabeth, with what on any less angelic face would have been a grin. ‘I got my couthin to do it. Thee’th clever.’
They watched the boys scuffling round the table, wolfing the lavish tea.
‘Jutht look at them,’ said Violet Elizabeth, elevating her small nose. ‘Aren’t they dithguthting?’
‘They haven’t any manners, boys,’ said Joan.
The two felt themselves to be withdrawn into a rarified atmosphere of feminine superiority.
‘They haven’t any mannerth and they haven’t any thenth,’ said Violet Elizabeth severely. ‘I thay, will you come to tea at our houthe tomorrow, and we won’t have any boyth?’
‘Yes, I’d like to,’ said Joan.
William approached them, his mouth still full of chocolate cake.
‘We’re goin’ out to play rounders,’ he said indistinctly. ‘Come on.’
Violet Elizabeth looked at him disdainfully.
‘What a meth you’re in!’ she said, with an odious imitation of grown-up disapproval. ‘Joan and I don’t care for thothe childith gameth. We’re going to walk round the garden, aren’t we, Joan?’
‘Yes,’ said Joan.
They walked off, arm in arm, without looking back.
William stood staring after them, baffled and crestfallen, pondering on the incomprehensibility of the female sex. Then he shrugged his shoulders, dismissed the problem, and ran to join the riot on the lawn . . .
Richmal Cr
ompton 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
Just William
More William
William Again
William the Fourth
Still William
William the Conqueror
William the Outlaw
William in Trouble
William the Good
William at War
This selection first published 1995 by Macmillan Children’s Books
This edition published 2011 by Macmillan Children’s Books
This electronic edition published 2011 by Macmillan Children’s Books
a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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www.panmacmillan.com
ISBN 978-0-330-54356-9 EPUB
All stories copyright © Richmal C. Ashbee
This selection copyright © 2005 Richmal C. Ashbee
Foreword copyright © John Sessions 2011
Illustrations copyright © Thomas Henry Fisher Estate
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