William The Conqueror (2 page)

‘Yah-boo, softie!’ he called over the wall.

Yet he was depressed by the proceeding, and even Ginger’s suggestion of trying the effect of the soot on the bed of arum lilies did not revive him much. However, the effect was certainly
cheering. So they moved on to the white roses and worked with the pure joy of the artist on them till they heard the dulcet tones of Joan and Mary and Geoffrey returning from the spot. Then they
went back to the wall. Joan was growing bored with Geoffrey. She looked up almost longingly towards William’s grimy face.

‘Where
is
your soot, William?’ she said.

‘Jus’ here,’ said William. ‘It’s jolly good soot.’

‘I’ll come an’
look
at it,’ she said condescendingly. ‘I won’t come in an’ play. I’ll come in an’
look
at it. You can go on
home, Geoffrey.’

Geoffrey debated with his conscience. ‘I won’t come in,’ he said, ‘’cause mother says he’s so rough. I’ll wait for you out here.’

So hand-in-hand Joan and Mary came round to the back of the summer-house. William and Ginger proudly introduced them to the soot.

‘Ith lovely,’ said Mary. ‘Leth – leth danth round it – holding handth.’

‘All right,’ said William genially. ‘Come on.’

Nothing loth, they joined hands and danced round it.

Joan laughed excitedly.

‘Oh, it’s fun,’ she cried. ‘Faster.’

‘Father!’ cried Mary.

They went faster and faster. William and Ginger with the male’s innate desire of showing off his prowess began to revolve at lightning speed.

Then came the catastrophe.

Plop!

It was Mary who lost her balance and fell suddenly and violently on her face into the heap of soot.

Joan, with feminine inconsistency, turned upon William, stamping her foot.

‘
You
did it! You nasty, rough, horrible boy!’

‘I
didn’t
!’

‘You
did
!’

‘He
didn’t
!’ said Ginger.

‘He
did
!’

‘He
didn’t
!’

Meanwhile Mary had arisen from the soot heap – hair, eyes and mouth full of soot, soot clinging to her dress.

Her voice joined in the general uproar.

‘Oo – it taths nathy, it taths nathy – oo – oo.’

Joan wept in angry sympathy.

‘See how
you
like soot in your mouth, you nasty boy!’ she screamed at William, seizing a handful of soot and hurling it at William’s face.

That was the beginning of the battle.

Geoffrey, hearing the noise, came nobly to the rescue, to be received by a handful of soot from Ginger. It was a glorious battle. Ginger and William fought Geoffrey, and Joan fought everyone,
and Mary sat on the soot heap and screamed. They threw soot till there was practically no soot left to throw. A butcher boy who was passing and heard the noise came in to arbitrate, but stayed to
participate. Sheer lust of battle descended upon them all.

Then came sudden sanity. In stricken silence they gazed at each other.

Joan seized Mary by the hand. She glared round at them all from a small black face framed with grimy curls.

IT WAS A GLORIOUS BATTLE. GINGER AND WILLIAM FOUGHT GEOFFREY, AND JOAN FOUGHT EVERYONE, AND MARY SAT ON THE SOOT HEAP AND SCREAMED.

‘
Hate
you all!’ screamed Mary, whose tears were making white tracks down her black face.

‘It wasn’t me,’ said Geoffrey eagerly and ungrammatically.

‘I hate
you
,’ said Joan, ‘worse than anybody – worse than William and worse than anyone, an’ I’m going home to tell mother – so there.’

‘Tho’ there,’ wailed Mary in concert.

With outraged dignity and clinging soot on every line of her figure, Joan led Mary from the garden.

It was more than Geoffrey could bear.

He followed them sobbing loudly, his white suit a cloudy grey-black.

Joan’s voice floated out on the twilit air.

‘An’ I’m
goin
’ to tell mother –
you’ll
catch it, William Brown.’

Ginger looked round uneasily.

‘I’d best be going, William,’ he murmured.

Dejection descended upon William.

‘A’right.’

Then he looked at Ginger and down at himself.

‘Funny how it gets all over you,’ he said, ‘and don’t it make your eyes look queer?’

‘Am I’s bad as you?’ said Ginger apprehensively.

‘Worse,’ said William.

‘Will it come off with cold water?’

‘Dunno,’ said William.

‘I’ll give it,’ said Ginger, ‘a jolly good
try.
What’ll your folks say?’

‘Dunno,’ said William.

‘Well, goo’night, William.’

‘Goo’night,’ said William, despondently. Dusk had fallen.

He crept round to the back door, hoping to slip up the back stairs unobserved. But the cook’s strident voice came from the library.

‘Mrs Bell wants you on the telephone at once, please’m. It’s something about Master William.’

William beat a hasty retreat to the laurel bushes. Then, hearing footsteps on the drive, he stood on tiptoe and peered out. He met the horrified gaze of the housemaid, who was returning from her
afternoon out.

With a wild yell she ran like an arrow towards the back door.

‘Oh lor! Oh lor!’ she called. ‘I seed the devil. I seed ’im in the garding.’

William among the laurel bushes smiled proudly to himself.

Then he sat down cross-legged in his retreat, black face on black hands, gleaming white eyes gazing dreamily into the distance.

He was not building castles in the air; he was not repenting of his sins; he was not thinking about future retribution. He was merely deciding that he wouldn’t be a sweep after all. It did
taste so nasty.

CHAPTER 2

‘W
HAT we goin’ to do this afternoon?’ demanded William of his boon companions, the Outlaws.

They felt that as far as the morning was concerned they had pretty well exhausted the resources of the universe. They had fished in the pond with bent pins, which were attached to the end of
strings which were attached to the end of sticks, and they had caught a large variety of water weeds and one sardine tin. Douglas said that he caught a fish which escaped before he could draw in
his line, but this statement was greeted with open incredulity by the others.

‘A jolly big one too,’ said Douglas, unconsciously following in the footsteps of older adherents to the piscatorial art.

‘Oh, yes,’ said William sarcastically, ‘so big that none of us could
see
it. If it was as big as what you say it is why din’ you tell us, then we could have had a
look at it?’

‘I din’ want to scare it away,’ said Douglas indignantly; then with a faint emulation of William’s sarcasm, ‘Fancy you not knowin’ that. Fancy you not
knowin’ that fishes get scared of you shoutin’ an’ yellin’ about. I’m not s’prised that you only catch ole tins an’ things that can’t hear you
shoutin’ an’ yellin’ about. I should think all the fishes for miles round’ve got headaches the way you’ve been shoutin’ an’ yellin’ about. I know the
one I caught looked’s if it’d got a headache with it.’

William was taken aback by this outburst, but he quickly recovered.

‘Oh, yes, I dare say it looked pretty funny altogether, the one you caught. I’m sure if you caught a fish at all it was a pretty funny one.’

‘D’you say I
din’t
catch a fish?’ said Douglas furiously, squaring up to William.

‘I say no one
saw
your ole fish, ’an you oughter ask your mother to buy you a pair of spectacles s’as you can
see
what
is
fish an’ what’s your
own ’magination.’

Ginger and Henry sat on the ground to watch the fight. It was not a long one, because Douglas lost his footing soon after they had begun and fell into the pond and was rescued by William, and
the excitement of this proceeding dimmed the memory of Douglas’s alleged ‘catch’.

Then Henry thought that he saw a rabbit on the edge of the wood, so the Outlaws invaded the wood in a body with Jumble, William’s mongrel, at their head. Jumble hunted imaginary rabbits
with yelps and barks and futile rushes, and the Outlaws urged him on with war-whoops and cries of ‘Good old Jumble! Fetch him out.’ Jumble caught and dismembered a leaf after pursuing
it with wild excitement from tree to tree in the breeze, worried a clump of fungus, pricked his nose badly on a holly bush, and retired to bark defiance at it from a safe distance.

Tiring of rabbit hunting, the Outlaws climbed trees, and when Ginger had torn his coat and Henry split his trousers with the effort of attaining dangerous heights, they abandoned that
occupation. They ‘tracked’ each other with much ostentatious secrecy and noisy ‘silence’ and crawling about on stomachs and sibilant whispering and ‘Sh’s’
and stepping upon twigs and exclamations. Finally they were chased into the road again by a furious keeper and were given a ride in a farm waggon by a passing labourer, who was blessed with a good
nature and rather liked the daredevil looks of the Outlaws.

William, drunk with ecstasy, drove and narrowly escaped precipitating the equipage into the ditch, and Ginger, while experimenting how far he could lean out at the back without falling,
overbalanced and fell into the road. He climbed back cheerful and unhurt, if somewhat dishevelled.

Arrived at the village, they descended with much exuberant thanks and made their way to the disused barn that was the scene of most of their activities.

There they had a shooting match with the homemade bows and arrows that they kept concealed at the back of the barn. After breaking the window of a neighbouring cottage by accident they fled to
the other end of the village, where they watched the blacksmith shoeing a horse. Ginger, to his great delight, was allowed to hold the hammer for a minute. This made him rather uppish, and his
subsequent boasts of the honour thus paid him annoyed the other Outlaws so much that they all sat upon him (literally) in the ditch till he promised as well as his mouthful of mud would allow him
not to mention it again.

It had been, on the whole, a thoroughly satisfactory morning. A similar afternoon was hardly to be hoped for, but the Outlaws were notoriously optimistic.

‘What we goin’ to do this afternoon?’ repeated William.

A look of despondency came over Ginger’s face.

‘Gotter stay in at home,’ he said mournfully.

‘Why?’ said the Outlaws.

‘Gotter naunt comin’ to stay. She’s not comin’ till tea-time, but they say they want her to see me clean, so I gotter stay in clean all afternoon.’

There was a murmur of indignation at this inhuman cruelty.

‘Jus’ like grown-ups,’ said William bitterly.

‘What’s your aunt like?’ said Henry with interest. ‘Sorter one who gives decent tips?’

The Outlaws always ‘went shares’ in tips, and therefore each one took a personal interest in the visits of the other members’ relations.

‘Never seen her before,’ said Ginger disconsolately. ‘Don’t know what she’s like.’

‘Sure to be awful,’ said Douglas unfeelingly.

‘But we don’ mind that if she gives a decent tip,’ added Henry.

‘Oh, no,’ said Ginger bitterly. ‘
You
don’ mind.
You’ve
not gotter sit all afternoon clean an’ doin’ nothin’, have you? Oh, no,
I’m sure
you
don’t mind.’

‘She might poss’bly be nice,’ said William, without much conviction.

‘Oh, yes. She might,’ said Ginger still more bitterly. ‘S’easy for
you
to talk, isn’t it?
You
don’ mind. Oh, no! An’ she might be nice.
Oh, yes, you’d talk like that if it was
your
aunt what was comin’ an’
you
what had to sit clean all afternoon, wun’t you?’

When roused, Ginger could emulate William’s sarcastic manner rather well . . .

The afternoon passed happily enough. William, Douglas and Henry practised lassoing Jumble in the back garden of William’s house. Jumble enjoyed the game immensely. The lasso never caught
him, but occasionally he caught the lasso and worried it zestfully. When, however, they had by mistake lassoed a flower pot on to and through the glass of a cucumber frame, the Outlaws very quietly
left the precincts of William’s home and spent the rest of the afternoon sliding down a battered hayrick in one of Farmer Jenks’ fields, and bringing down a considerable portion of hay
with each descent. At intervals they thought of Ginger sitting in solitary cleanliness and boredom in his family’s drawing-room waiting for his aunt.

‘Poor old Ginger!’ said Henry, as he descended from the hayrick with a bump.

‘She’ll have come by now p’raps,’ said Douglas.

‘Hope she’s rich,’ said William cheerfully.

‘Let’s go’n look at her,’ said Henry.

The idea appealed to the Outlaws, and they set off at once for Ginger’s house.

Dusk was falling when they reached it. They crept round to the back of the house, where they knew that Ginger’s drawing-room window was. There they crouched among the ivy and peered
cautiously into the lighted window.