William the Good (27 page)

They had been walking aimlessly along the road without noticing particularly where they were going, and they discovered suddenly that they were passing Ginger’s aunt’s house.

‘Let’s see if we can see her parrot,’ said Ginger. ‘It’ll probably be in the front room.’

They crept cautiously up to the window. Ginger’s aunt was what is known as ‘houseproud’ and Ginger – leaver of muddy boot marks and sticky finger marks, breaker of nearly
everything he touched – knew that he was not a welcome visitor to her house. He was not at all sensitive to shades of manner, but she had left him in no doubt at all on that subject.

Therefore he crept furtively up to her front window in order to enjoy the intriguing spectacle of his aunt’s parrot hopping up and down upon its perch and uttering malicious chuckles.

‘I bet she’s out,’ said Ginger. ‘She always goes out shopping in the mornings. Let’s open the window an’ listen to it.’

They opened the window cautiously and put their heads inside. The parrot began to jump up and down on his perch still more excitedly when he saw them.

‘Hello, Polly!’ said William encouragingly.

‘Oh, shut up,’ said the parrot.

This delighted his visitors.

‘Go on, Polly,’ encouraged Ginger. ‘Go on! Say something else.’

‘Get out, you old fool,’ said the parrot with a snigger.

‘Jolly good, isn’t it?’ said Ginger proudly. ‘And it’s quite tame. It comes out an’ sits on your finger. My aunt lets me take it out and hold it. At
least,’ he corrected himself, ‘she used to before that last vase got broke. How could I know,’ he added bitterly, ‘that a vase would fall off the hall table on to the floor
an’ get broke simply with me comin’ downstairs?’

William made a vague sound suggestive of sympathy but he was not really interested in the disastrous reverberations of Ginger’s footfall. He was interested in the parrot.

‘I bet it doesn’t jus’ sit quietly on
your
finger,’ he said. ‘It knows
her
finger, of course, but I bet if you took it out it wouldn’t sit quiet
on yours.’

‘It would,’ affirmed Ginger aggressively.

‘Easy to say that,’ said William, ‘when you know that you can’t try.’

‘I
can
try,’ said Ginger. ‘She’s out shoppin’, anyway. She always is in the morning. I bet you
anythin’
it’ll sit quiet on my finger. It
won’t take a
second.
Let’s jus’ get in an’ see.’

He raised the window and with a cautious glance around the room entered. William followed. The parrot gave its most vulgar snigger and said: ‘Oh, shut up.’ It was certainly an
attractive bird. . . .

With another hasty glance round Ginger opened the catch of the cage and put out his finger ready for the bird to alight upon.

The bird said: ‘Get out, you old fool,’ and hopped obligingly on to Ginger’s finger.

‘
There!
’ said Ginger proudly standing with his arm outstretched. ‘There! What did I
tell
you?’

For a second he stood like that with an indescribable swagger in his pose, holding out the bird at arm’s length. For a second only. At the end of a second the bird suddenly spread its
wings and without any warning at all flew straight out of the window. The swagger dropped incontinently from Ginger’s pose. He gazed at the open window, his freckled face pale, his mouth
open.

‘
Crumbs!
’ he gasped.

‘
Crumbs!
’ echoed William.

Then both of them dived simultaneously through the window into the garden.

There they gazed around them. The parrot was sitting quite calmly on a low bush in the next-door neighbour’s garden.

The two Outlaws crept up to the fence and climbing over it, approached the parrot. The parrot awaited their approach, chuckling his most malicious chuckle. He let them come up quite close to
him. He waited till Ginger had put out a hand to grab him, and then with a combination of his malicious chuckle and his vulgar snigger he flew off from under Ginger’s very hand through the
open window into the next-door house.

‘
Crumbs!
’ said Ginger again in a tone of helpless horror.

William crept cautiously up to the window.

‘I can see him,’ he whispered, ‘he’s sittin’ on the piano.’

‘Is there anyone in the room?’ whispered Ginger from behind the laurel bush where he had taken cover.

‘No. No one. Just a lot of chairs. I’ll go in an’ fetch him. I’ll jus’ get in at this window an’ fetch him. I’ll—’

He was cautiously pushing up the window.

‘I’ll come too,’ volunteered Ginger somewhat dispiritedly. Mental visions of his aunt when she discovered that her pet was missing were beginning to haunt him.

‘No. Best let only one go alone,’ said William, ‘then if anything happens to me you’ll be safe to go on lookin’ for it.’

William’s spirits were rising at the prospects of an adventure.

He swung himself over the sill and found himself in a small drawing-room. It was full of chairs arranged in rows as if for a meeting and there was a table at one end.

‘Oh, shut up,’ said the parrot excitedly from the piano.

William began to stalk his prey in his best Red Indian fashion. It waited till his hand was nearly on him then, chuckling, flew to the mantelpiece.

‘Polly, Polly,’ whispered William in fierce, hoarse coaxing as he approached the mantelpiece.

‘Get out, you old fool,’ said the parrot who seemed to be thoroughly enjoying himself. He let William think that he was really going to get him this time, then with another chuckle
spread his wings and flew off again. This time he circled round and round the room and finally disappeared behind a cabinet that stood across a corner of the room, having a fair-sized recess
between it and the wall.

William was just pursuing it to this retreat when the door opened and a tall, stern-looking woman wearing pince-nez and a high collar entered the room. She looked at William in surprise and
disapproval.

‘You mustn’t come into a house like this without knocking at the door,’ she said. ‘If you’ve come to the meeting you should have knocked at the door properly and,
anyway, the meeting doesn’t begin till half-past. Have you come to the meeting?’

William hesitated. If he told her that he had come to catch Ginger’s aunt’s escaped parrot then there was no doubt at all that Ginger’s aunt would hear of the escapade from her
neighbour and it was of vital importance to Ginger’s peace of mind and body that the parrot should be caught and returned to its cage without Ginger’s aunt having known of its escape.
It seemed better therefore on the whole to have come to the meeting.

‘Yes,’ he said, assuming his blankest expression.

Then another lady very like the first one came in and stared at William.

‘Who is this boy and what’s he doing here?’ she said to the first lady.

‘He says he’s come to the meeting,’ said the first lady helplessly.

‘But, my
dear
!’ said the second lady, ‘we don’t want people like
that
at the meeting. A rough-looking boy like
that
!’

The first lady grew yet more helpless.

‘But we’ve advertised it as a public meeting,’ she said. ‘We can’t turn people away, I mean –
well
we
can’t.
I don’t think it would
be legal,’ she ended vaguely.

‘But what does he
want
to come to the meeting for?’ said the second lady. ‘And a quarter of an hour too early, too.’

‘I suppose he’s interested in Total Abstinence,’ said the first lady doubtfully. ‘I suppose there’s no reason why he shouldn’t be.’ She turned to
William. ‘Are you interested in Total Abstinence?’

‘Yes,’ said William without a second’s hesitation and looking blanker than ever.

Both ladies stared at him and looked very much perplexed.

Then a man with crossed eyes behind huge hornrimmed spectacles and carrying a sheaf of papers entered and said briskly:

‘Is everything ready?’

The first lady pointed to William.

‘This boy says he’s interested in Total Abstinence and wants to come to the meeting,’ she said.

William turned a sphinx-like face to the man.

The man subjected William to a lengthy inspection. William met it unblinkingly. The lengthy inspection did not seem to reassure the young man at all. He said reluctantly:

‘Well, I suppose we can’t turn him out if he wants to come. I mean we’ve
advertised
it as a public meeting—’

‘Just what I said,’ said the first lady.

‘But any monkey tricks from you, my boy—’ said the man threateningly.

‘
Me!
’ said William, his sphinx-like look changing to one of righteous indignation. ‘
Me!
’ He seemed hardly able to believe his ears.

‘All right,’ said the man irritably. ‘Go and sit down somewhere at the back. People will be coming in in a minute.’

William chose a seat just in front of the cabinet behind which the parrot had taken refuge. The parrot was preserving a strange silence. William made violent efforts to see it from his chair
till the second lady said:

‘Do sit still there, boy! You make me feel quite giddy fidgeting about like that.’

So William sat (comparatively) still, wondering how he could entice the parrot from behind the cabinet and make his departure with it unobserved. The parrot’s silence puzzled him. Was it
merely resting after the excitement of its flight or was it planning some outrageous piece of devilry? People were beginning to arrive now. They all threw glances at William, curious and in most
cases disapproving. William’s whole energy was now taken up in meeting their glances with his blankest stare.

Evidently one lady (who presumably knew him) was objecting to his presence because he heard the first lady saying helplessly:

‘Well, I don’t see how we
can
turn him out. He said that he wanted to come to the meeting because he was interested in Total Abstinence . . . and he isn’t
doing
anything we can turn him out for.’

Fortunately the chair William occupied stood by itself next to the cabinet. Just in front of him was the last row of chairs. The chairs were all full now and the meeting was beginning. He was
craning his neck round to see what had happened to the parrot. There was still no sound from behind the cabinet. . . . He began to think that if must have gone to sleep. . . .

The cross-eyed man was speaking. ‘It gives me great pleasure to introduce to you our speaker, Miss Rubina Thomasina Fawshaw. Her name is well known, of course, to all of
us—’

It was at this point that the parrot behind the cabinet suddenly ejaculated.

‘Oh, shut up!’

The meeting wheeled round to gaze at William open-mouthed with horror and indignation. William with a great effort maintained his sphinx-like expression and stared fixedly in front of him,
trying to look as if he were in a brown study and had not heard the interruption.

The man was fortunately rather deaf. After looking about him vaguely for some minutes he continued. With a last stern and threatening glance at William the audience turned round again to
listen.

‘She is a splendid and well-known worker in this noble cause. She has for the last six weeks been travelling in America, and she has there studied the question of Prohibition in all its
aspects—’

‘Get out, you old fool!’

They all swung round again. It couldn’t have come from anyone but William. William was making a supreme and quite unconvincing attempt to look innocent. He was staring in front of him with
a set, fixed stare and a purple face. The man with the squint had heard now. Fixing one furious eye on William and the other out of the window he said:

‘One more such interruption from you, my boy, and out you go.’

The unhappy William made a vague sound in his throat suggestive of innocence and surprise and apology and continued to stare fixedly in front of him. After another short silence the cross-eyed
man continued his speech. The audience, pausing only to throw final vitriolic glances at William, turned round again to listen.

‘I personally,’ went on the cross-eyed man, ‘have known Miss Fawshaw for a good many years—’

‘GET OUT, YOU OLD FOOL!’ SAID A VOICE. WILLIAM WAS STARING IN FRONT OF HIM WITH A SET, FIXED STARE.

There was no mistaking it. It was a vulgar snigger coming from the back of the room where William sat.

Without a word the cross-eyed man arose and came down the room, one baleful eye fixed on William. He seized his victim by the neck and propelled him before him out of the room down the hall to
the front door, where he ignominiously ejected him.