William the Good (11 page)

THE SOLDIERS SWARMED UP OUT OF THE TRENCH AND BEGAN TO RUSH ACROSS THE FIELD.

‘We put ’em to flight,’ yelled William as soon as he caught sight of his friend.

‘He’s drowned hisself,’ yelled Ginger joyously.

They met and began excitedly to exchange reports. ‘We just fired once,’ said William,
‘an’—’

‘We shut the gate on him,’ said Ginger, ‘an’—’

‘They went dashin’ out of their hole terrified an’—’

‘He went moanin,’ an’ groanin’ about the garden—’

‘Simply
terrified—
’

‘Gettin’s desperater an’ desperater.’

‘An’ went tearin’ away over the field.’

‘An’ at last went an’ drowned himself in a pond. . . .’

‘We saw ’em
tearin
’ away over the field.’

‘We heard a big splash and then saw his dead body in the pond an’—’

The Archers would have liked to have gone back to the field to see whether they were any traces of the routed enemy, but the thought of the caretaker and gardener, who probably still lay in wait
for them with hostile intent, deterred them.

‘We’d better not go back,’ said William, ‘they may’ve left bombs or – or snipers or somethin’, but,’ he ended impressively, ‘I can jolly
well tell you that there won’t be
one
of ’em left tomorrow mornin’. They’ll all go back home in their ships tonight.’

And William was right in the first part of his prophecy. There was not one of them left in the morning. They had, as originally arranged, departed with praiseworthy dispatch and smartness in the
early hours of the morning.

It was the next week and they were in William’s back garden. William was still discussing the affair. The other Outlaws were beginning to get rather bored with the airs
William put on about it. William seemed not to have stopped talking about it since it happened, and his boasting grew more unbearable every day.

‘I oughter have a statchoo put up to me,’ he said. ‘I did it. It was all my idea. I’ve saved the country an’ conquered a foreign enemy an’ I oughter have a
statchoo put up to me.’

‘Oh, shut up,’ said Ginger, ‘so ought I too, anyway, an’ anyway I’m jolly tired of it an’ let’s go fishin’ again.’

‘All right,’ said William, taking up the stick which bore a bent pin attached to it by a length of damp string. ‘All right. I don’t mind. But wot I say is that I ought to
have a statchoo put up to me for savin’ the country. Yes, you ought to, too,’ he concluded hastily as Ginger began to speak, ‘you ought to, too, but I oughter have the biggest one
because it was my idea anyway. I oughter be put up on a tall piller like Nelson. I ought—’

He stopped abruptly and stood as if petrified, his eyes staring in horror and amazement at a figure which was just coming in at the front gate.

General Bastow had returned after the manoeuvres to spend a few days with his friend, Mr Hunter, had met Mr Brown there and had today been invited to the Browns’ to lunch. William did not
know this. Ginger and Douglas were equally petrified. The three of them stood transfixed with horror – eyes and mouths open wide. The visitor strode jauntily up to the front door. He did not
see the three boys who were crouching behind the bushes.

William recovered from his stupor first. He turned to Ginger and hissed:

‘Thought you said he’d drowned himself . . . thought you said you’seen his dead body.’

Ginger’s face was pale with horror.

‘I did,’ he gasped, ‘I did honest. This must be his ghost.’

‘It can’t be,’ said Douglas. ‘You can’t see through it.’

‘You c-can’t always see through them,’ said Ginger faintly.

‘Dun’t
look
like a ghost,’ said William grimly.

‘It
mus
’ be,’ said Ginger recovering gradually his normal manner. ‘It mus’ be. I tell you I
sor
his dead body in the pond. He’s haunting us
’cause we made him kill himself same as you said you’d haunt the man what nearly killed you with a motor car. I bet you
anythin
’ that if you went up an’ gave him a
good hit the hit’d go right through him.’

General Bastow had reached the front door and rung the bell. He stood there twirling his white moustaches still unaware of the three boys behind him.

‘All right,’ said William, ‘go’n’ do it. Go’n’ give him a good hit and see if it goes through him.’

‘All right, I will,’ said Ginger unexpectedly.

Ginger had been so convinced that the black shadow at the bottom of the pond was General Bastow’s dead body that he had no doubt at all that this apparition was General Bastow’s
ghost come back to haunt him. He had decided to show it once for all that he was not afraid of it.
He
would jolly well teach it to come haunting
him.

Before either William or Douglas could stop him he had crept up behind the gallant warrior and dealt him a sound punch in the small of his back. The General started round, purple-faced and
snorting with anger. The impact of his fist with the solid flesh of the General had convinced Ginger at once that this was no ghostly visitant from another world, and panic-stricken he had darted
off into the bushes like a flash of lightning. Douglas, with admirable presence of mind, had followed him, and when the General turned, purple-faced and snorting, only William was there standing
behind him, rooted to the spot in sheer horror. And at that moment William’s father opened the door. The General pointed a fierce finger at William.

‘Th-a-t boy’s just hit me,’ he spluttered, going a still more terrific purple.

At this monstrous accusation the power of speech returned to William.

‘I d-didn’t,’ he gasped, ‘Ginger did. Ginger hit you b-because he thought you were a ghost.’

The enormous figure of the General seemed to grow more enormous still and his purple face more purple still. His eyes were bulging.

‘Thought I was a g— Thought I was a
what?
’

‘A ghost,’ said William.

‘A GHOST?’ roared the General.

‘Yes, a ghost,’ said William; ‘he thought he’d drowned you and you’d come back to haunt him.’

‘He thought – WHAT?’ bellowed the General.

‘He thought he’d drowned you and you’d come back to haunt him. He was hitting you to see if the hit would go through you.’

The General stared back at him and stared and stared. And a memory came back to him – a memory of a dusty road, a bullet-head in his stomach and an unavailing pursuit. He looked as if he
were going to have an apoplectic fit. He pointed a trembling finger at William,

‘Why –
you’re
the boy,’ he sputtered, ‘who—’

William’s father intervened quietly.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Come and tell me what he did indoors.’

It was evening. William and Ginger and Douglas sat gloomily in William’s back garden. ‘That’s all one gets,’ said William bitterly, ‘for
savin’ one’s country. That’s all one gets for puttin’ a foreign enemy to flight. Bein’ treated like that. Oh, no, no one believes me, do they? Oh no. They’ll
believe any lies any foreign enemy tells them, won’t they? But not me, not me what’s saved the country. They won’t believe anythin’ I say. Oh, no. I can save the country
from a foreign enemy, but
that
doesn’t make any difference. Oh, no. They won’t listen to a word I say. Oh, no. But they’ll listen to a foreign enemy all right. Oh, yes.
Well. I’ve jolly well finished with ’em and
now – now
’ – impressively he brought out his terrible threat – ‘if they came to me on their knees
beggin
’ to put up a statchoo to me. I wouldn’t let ’em.’

CHAPTER 4

T
HE Outlaws stood around and gazed expectantly at William.

‘Well, where’re we goin’ to get ’em?’ said Ginger.

‘Buy ’em,’ said William after a moment’s deep thought.

There was another silence. The solution was felt to be unworthy of William.

‘
Buy
’em!’ echoed Douglas in a tone that expressed the general feeling, ‘
buy
’em! Who’s got any money?’

This question being unanswerable remained unanswered. It was a strange fact that the Outlaws never had any money. They all received pocket money regularly and they all received the usual tips
from visiting relatives, but the fact remained that they never had any money. Most of it, of course, went in repairing the wreckage that followed in the train of their normal activities –
broken windows, shattered greenhouse frames, ruined paintwork and ornaments which seemed to the Outlaws deliberately to commit self-destruction on their approach. As William frequently remarked
with deep bitterness:

‘Meanness, that’s what it is. Meanness. Anythin’ to keep the money themselves ’stead of givin’ it to us. Seems to me they go about makin’ things easy to break
so’s they c’n have an excuse for keeping it themselves instead of givin’ it us.
Meanness.
That’s what it is.’

The parents of the Outlaws who formed a sort of unofficial Parents’ Union and generally worked in concert had evolved the system of fines – one penny for being late to a meal, a
half-penny for dirty hands at meals and a farthing for not scraping their boots before coming into the house (merely wiping them was insufficient. The Outlaws always brought in with them the larger
part of the surrounding countryside). What was salvaged from the general wreckage of their finances caused by this ruthless tyranny seldom passed the test of the close proximity of Mr Moss’s
sweet shop with its bottles of alluring sweets and its boxes of less lasting but more intriguing chocolate ‘fancies’.

‘
Buy
’em,’ echoed Henry with deep feeling. ‘What’re we to buy ’em with? There’s
laws
to stop people takin’ money off other people,
but my father’ – with heavy sarcasm – ‘don’t seem to have heard of ’em. He’ll be getting into trouble one of these days takin’ other people’s
money off them. He’s startin’ with me, what he thinks can’t do anythin’ back, but he’ll be going’ on to other people soon like what the Vicar said people always
do what begin pickin’ an’ stealin’ in little things an’ then he’ll be gettin’ into trouble. Takin’ sixpence off me jus’ for bein’ late for a
few meals! An’ then they keep sayin’ why don’t we
save.
Well, what
I
say is why don’ they give us somethin’
to
save, ’fore they start
goin’ on an’ on at us for not savin’. Not that I b’lieve in savin’,’ he added hastily, ‘I don’ b’lieve in savin’ an’ I never have
b’lieved in savin’. Money isn’t doing’ any good to anyone – not while you’re savin’ it. I think it’s
wrong
to save money. Money doesn’t
do any good to you or to anyone else. Not while you’re savin’ it. It’s kinder to help the poor shop people by spendin’ money at their shops. How’r the poor people in
shops goin’ to live if all the people save their money an’ don’t spend any of it? . . . Well, anyway that’s what
I
think.’ This was for Henry an unusually long
and an unusually eloquent speech. It showed that he had been stirred to the depth of his feelings. There was a moment’s impressed silence. Then the others murmured in sympathy and Douglas
said: ‘Let’s go’n look at ’em again.’

They were in the window of the little general shop at the other end of the village. . . . Three of them, beautiful in shape and strength and size and symmetry, with brass tops
– cricket stumps. They were priced eight and sixpence.

‘Golly!’ said Ginger wistfully. ‘Just think of
playin
’ with ’em!’

‘You
can
get ’em cheaper than that,’ suggested Douglas tentatively, ‘you can get ’em for three and six. Smaller, of course, and not so nice.’

The Outlaws, who were flattening their noses against the glass and gazing at the stumps like so many Moseses gazing at the Promised Land, treated Douglas’ suggestion with contempt.

‘Who’d want to play with cheap ones after seeing these ones?’ said William sternly. ‘There’s no
sense
in talkin’ about
cheap
ones now
we’ve seen these ones. I – I’d sooner go on playin’ with the tree than play with
other
ones now we’ve seen these ones.’

The Outlaws had these holidays developed a passion for cricket. They had, of course, partaken in the pastime in previous years, but listlessly and with boredom as in a pastime organised by the
school authorities and therefore devoid of either sense or interest. Fielding had, of course, provided ample opportunity for studying the smaller fauna which infested the cricket pitch (last term
Ginger had several times been hit squarely in the back while engaged in catching grasshoppers at mid-on), and batting was usually of short duration, but not until these holidays had the Outlaws
regarded cricket as a game to be played for its own sake when not under the eye of Authority. The discovery was a thrilling one. The Outlaws in this as in everything threw moderation to the winds.
They played cricket in season and out of season. They began the game before breakfast and continued it throughout the day with intervals for meals. They considered cricket far more enlivening when
played with four players than when played with twenty-two. Ginger’s elder brother gave them an old ball and Douglas had had a bat for a birthday present. Stumps they did not worry about. They
chalked stumps on a tree trunk and played quite happily with them for a long time. But they found that stumps chalked on a tree trunk have their drawbacks, of which the chief one is that the bowler
and batter are seldom agreed as to when one is hit. The Outlaws generally settled the question by single combat between batter and bowler, which at first was all right because the Outlaws always
enjoyed single combats, but as the game itself became more and more exciting the perpetual abandoning of it to settle the score by single combat became monotonous and rather boring.

It was then that the Outlaws decided to procure stumps. Had they not happened to see the eight and six set all would have been well. They would have stuck sticks into the ground or scraped together enough
money to buy an inferior set at one and eleven. But – not now. Now that they had seen the eight and six set of stumps, the set of stumps de luxe, the set of stumps with brass tops from the
Land of the Ideal, they knew that all the savour would be gone from the game till they possessed them.