More William (17 page)

‘We must find somethin’ to eat,’ said William firmly. ‘We can’t let ourselves starve to death.’

‘Shrimps?’ suggested Peggy cheerfully.

‘We haven’t got nets,’ said William. ‘We couldn’t save them from the wreck.’

‘Periwinkles?’

‘There aren’t any on this island. I know! Seaweed! An’ we’ll cook it.’

‘Oh, how
lovely
!’

He gathered up a handful of seaweed and they entered the hut, leaving a white handkerchief tied on to the door to attract the attention of any passing ship. The hut was provided with a gas ring
and William, disregarding his family’s express injunction, lit this and put on a saucepan filled with water and seaweed.

‘We’ll pretend it’s a wood fire,’ he said. ‘We couldn’t make a real wood fire out on the prom. They’d stop us. So we’ll pretend this is. An’
we’ll pretend we saved a saucepan from the wreck.’

After a few minutes he took off the pan and drew out a long green strand.

‘You eat it first,’ he said politely.

The smell of it was not pleasant. Peggy drew back.

‘Oh, no, you first!’

‘No, you,’ said William nobly. ‘You look hungrier than me.’

She bit off a piece, chewed it, shut her eyes and swallowed.

‘Now you,’ she said with a shade of vindictiveness in her voice. ‘You’re not going to not have any.’

William took a mouthful and shivered.

‘I think it’s gone bad,’ he said critically.

Peggy’s rosy face had paled.

‘I’m going home,’ she said suddenly.

‘You can’t go home on a desert island,’ said William severely.

‘Well, I’m going to be rescued then,’ she said.

‘I think I am, too,’ said William.

It was lunchtime when William arrived at the boarding house. Mr Percival Jones had moved his place so as to be nearer Ethel. He was now convinced that she was possessed of every virtue his
future ‘spouse’ could need. He conversed brightly and incessantly during the meal. Mr Brown grew restive.

‘The man will drive me mad,’ he said afterwards. ‘Bleating away! What’s he bleating about anyway? Can’t you stop him bleating, Ethel? You seem to have influence.
Bleat! Bleat! Bleat! Good Lord! And me here for a
rest
cure.’

At this point he was summoned to the telephone and returned distraught.

‘It’s an unknown female,’ he said. ‘She says that a boy of the name of William from this boarding house has made her little girl sick by forcing her to eat seaweed. She
says its brutal. Does anyone
know
I’m here for a rest cure? Where is the boy? Good heavens! Where is the boy?’

But William, like Peggy, had retired from the world for a space. He returned later on in the afternoon, looking pale and chastened. He bore the reproaches of his family in stately silence.

Mr Percival Jones was in great evidence in the drawing-room.

‘And soon – er – soon the – er – spring will be with us once more,’ he was saying in his high-pitched voice as he leant back in his chair and joined the tips
of his fingers together. ‘The spring – ah – the spring! I have a – er – little effort I – er – composed on – er – the Coming of Spring –
I – er – will read to you sometime if you will – ah – be kind enough to – er – criticise – ah – impartially.’

‘
Criticise!
’ they chorused. ‘It will be above criticism. Oh, do read it to us, Mr Jones.’

‘I will – er – this evening.’ His eyes wandered to the door, hoping and longing for his beloved’s entrance. But Ethel was with her father at a matinee at the Winter
Gardens and he looked and longed in vain. In spite of this, however, the springs of his eloquence did not run dry, and he held forth ceaselessly to his little circle of admirers.

‘The simple – ah – pleasures of nature. How few of us – alas! – have the – er – gift of appreciating them rightly. This – er – little
seaside hamlet with its – er – sea, its – er – promenade, its – er – Winter Gardens! How beautiful it is! How few appreciate it rightly!’

Here William entered and Mr Percival Jones broke off abruptly. He disliked William.

‘Ah! Here comes our little friend. He looks pale. Remorse, my young friend? Ah, beware of untruthfulness. Beware of the beginnings of a life of lies and deception.’ He laid a hand on
William’s head and cold shivers ran down William’s spine. ‘ “Be good, sweet child, and let who will be clever,” as the poet says.’ There was murder in
William’s heart.

At that minute Ethel entered.

‘No,’ she snapped. ‘I sat next to a man who smelt of bad tobacco. I
hate
men who smoke bad tobacco.’

Mr Jones assumed an expression of intense piety.

‘I may boast,’ he said sanctimoniously, ‘that I have never thus soiled my lips with drink or smoke . . .’

There was an approving murmur from the occupants of the drawing-room.

William had met his father in the passage outside the drawing-room. Mr Brown was wearing a hunted expression.

‘Can I go into the drawing-room,’ he said bitterly, ‘or is he bleating away in there?’

They listened. From the drawing-room came the sound of a high-pitched voice.

Mr Brown groaned.

‘Good Lord!’ he moaned. ‘And I’m here for a
rest
cure and he comes bleating into every room in the house. Is the smoking-room safe? Does he smoke?’

Mr Percival Jones was feeling slightly troubled in his usually peaceful conscience. He could honestly say that he had never smoked. He could honestly say that he had never drunk. But in his
bedroom reposed two bottles of brandy, purchased at the advice of an aunt ‘in case of emergencies’. In his bedroom also was a box of cigars that he had bought for a cousin’s
birthday gift, but which his conscience had finally forbidden to present. He decided to consign these two emblems of vice to the waves that very evening.

Meanwhile William had returned to the hut and was composing a tale of smugglers by the light of a candle. He was much intrigued by his subject. He wrote fast in an illegible hand in great
sloping lines, his brows frowning, his tongue protruding from his mouth as it always did in moments of mental strain.

His sympathies wavered between the smugglers and the representatives of law and order. His orthography was the despair of his teachers.

‘ “Ho!” sez Dick Savage,’ he wrote. ‘ “Ho! Gadzooks! Rol in the bottles of beer up the beach. Fill your pockets with the baccy from the
bote. Quick, now! Gadzooks! Methinks we are observed!” He glared round in the darkness. In less time than wot it takes to rite this he was srounded by pleesemen and stood, proud and defiant,
in the light of there electrick torches wot they had wiped quick as litening from their busums.

‘ “Surrender!” cried one, holding a gun at his brain and a drorn sord at his hart, “Surrender or die!”

‘ “Never,” said Dick Savage, throwing back his head, proud and defiant. “Never. Do to me wot you will I die.”

‘One crule brute hit him a bio on the lips and he sprang back, snarling with rage. In less time than wot it takes to rite this he had sprang at his torturer’s throte and his teeth
met in one mighty bite. His torturer dropped ded and lifless at his feet.

‘ “Ho!” cried Dick Savage, throwing back his head, proud and defiant again. “So dies any of you wot insults my proud manhood. I will meet my teeth in your
throtes.”

‘For a minit they stood trembling, then one, bolder than the rest, lept forward and tide Dick Savage’s hands with rope behind his back. Another took from his pockets bottles of
beer and tobacco in large quantities.

‘ “Ho!” they cried exulting. “Ho! Dick Savage the smugler caught at last!”

‘Dick Savage gave one proud and defiant laugh, and, bringing his tide hands over his hed he bit the rope with one mighty bite.

‘ “Ho! Ho!” he cried, throwing back his proud hed. “Ho, ho! You dirty dogs!”

‘Then, draining to the dregs a large bottle of poison he had concealed in his busum he fell ded and lifless at there feet.’

There was a timid knock at the door and William, scowling impatiently, rose to open it.

‘What d’you want?’ he said curtly.

A little voice answered from the dusk.

‘It’s me – Peggy. I’ve come to se how you are, William. They don’t know I’ve come. I was awful sick after that seaweed this morning, William.’

William looked at her with a superior frown.

‘Go away,’ he said. ‘I’m busy.’

‘What are you doing?’ she said, poking her little curly head into the doorway.

‘I’m writin’ a tale.’

She clasped her hands.

‘Oh, how lovely! Oh, William, do read it to me. I’d
love
it!’

Mollified, he opened the door and she took her seat on his buckskin on the floor, and William sat by the candle, clearing his throat for a minute before he began. During the reading she never
took her eyes off him. At the end she drew a deep breath.

‘Oh, William, it’s beautiful. William, are there smugglers now?’

‘Oh, yes. Millions,’ he said carelessly.

‘
Here?
’

‘Of course there are!’

She went to the door and looked out at the dusk.

‘I’d love to see one. What do they smuggle, William?’

He came and joined her at the door, walking with a slight swagger as became a man of literary fame.

‘Oh, beer an’ cigars an’ things.
Millions
of them.’

A furtive figure was passing the door, casting suspicious glances to left and right. He held his coat tightly round him, clasping something inside it.

‘I expect that’s one,’ said William casually.

They watched the figure out of sight.

Suddenly William’s eyes shone.

‘Let’s stalk him an’ catch him,’ he said excitedly. ‘Come on. Let’s take some weapons.’ He seized his popgun from a corner. ‘You take’
– he looked round the room – ‘you take the waste-paper basket to put over his head an’ – an’ pin down his arms an’ somethin’ to tie him up! – I
know – the skin I – he – shot in Africa. You can tie its paws in front of him. Come on! Let’s catch him smugglin’.’

He stepped out boldly into the dusk with his popgun, followed by the blindly obedient Peggy carrying the wastepaper basket in one hand and the skin in the other.

Mr Percival Jones was making quite a little ceremony of consigning his brandy and cigars to the waves. He had composed ‘a little effort’ upon it which began,

He went down to the edge of the sea and, taking a bottle in hand, held them out at arms’ length, while he began in his high-pitched voice,

He stopped. A small boy stood beside him holding out at him the point of what in the semi-darkness Mr Jones took to be a loaded rifle. William mistook his action in holding out
the bottles.

‘It’s no good tryin’ to drink it up,’ he said severely. ‘We’ve caught you smugglin’.’

Mr Percival Jones laughed nervously.

‘My little man!’ he said. ‘That’s a very dangerous – er – thing for you to have! Suppose you hand it over to me, now, like a good little chap.’

‘WE’VE CAUGHT YOU SMUGGLIN’!’ WILLIAM SAID SEVERELY.

William recognised his voice.

‘Fancy you bein’ a smuggler all the time!’ he said with righteous indignation in his voice.

‘Take away that – er – nasty gun, little boy,’ pleaded his captive plaintively. ‘You – ah – don’t understand it. It – er – might go
off.’

William was not a boy to indulge in half measures. He meant to carry the matter off with a high hand.

‘I’ll shoot you dead,’ he said dramatically, ‘if you don’t do jus’ what I tell you.’

Mr Percival Jones wiped the perspiration from his brow.

‘Where did you get that rifle, little boy?’ he asked in a voice he strove to make playful. ‘Is it – ah – is it loaded? It’s – ah – unwise, little
boy. Most unwise. Er – give it to me to – er – take care of. It – er – might go off, you know.’

William moved the muzzle of his weapon, and Mr Percival Jones shuddered from head to foot. William was a brave boy, but he had experienced a moment of cold terror when first he had approached
his captive. The first note of the quavering high-pitched voice had, however, reassured him. He instantly knew himself to be the better man. His captive’s obvious terror of his popgun almost
persuaded him that he held in his hand some formidable death-dealing instrument. As a matter of fact Mr Percival Jones was temperamentally an abject coward.

‘You walk up to the seats,’ commanded William. ‘I’ve took you prisoner for smugglin’ an’ – an’ – jus’ walk up to the seats.’

Mr Percival Jones obeyed with alacrity.

‘Don’t – er –
press
anything, little boy,’ he pleaded as he went. ‘It – ah – might go off by accident. You might do – ah –
untold damage.’

Peggy, armed with the waste-paper basket and the skin, followed open-mouthed.

At the seat William paused.

‘Peggy, you put the basket over his head an’ pin his arms down – case he struggles, an’ tie the skin wot I shot round him, case he struggles.’