William the Fourth (19 page)

‘Dear me!’ squeaked the little old man, greatly impressed. ‘How interesting! How
very
interesting!’

They had reached the little old gentleman’s house. A very prim old lady opened the door.

‘You’re late, Augustus,’ she said sternly

A most interesting specimen,’ murmured Augustus deprecatingly ‘I found it as I was on the point of returning home and forgot the hour.’

The prim lady was looking William up and down.

‘Who is this boy?’ she said, still more sternly

Ah!’ said the old gentleman, as if glad to change the subject. ‘He is a little gipsy’

‘Nasty creatures!’ put in the lady fiercely

‘But he has told me his story,’ said Augustus eagerly, peering at William again over the top of his spectacles. ‘Interesting – most interesting. If you’ll just come
into my study with me a moment.’

The lady pointed to a chair in the hall.

‘Sit there, boy’ she said to William.

After a few minutes she and the little old gentleman came into the hall again. ‘Where’s this birthmark you speak of?’ said the old lady severely.

Without a moment’s hesitation, William pointed to a small black mark on his wrist.

The lady looked at it suspiciously.

‘My brother will go back with you to the encampment to verify your strange story’ she said. ‘If it is untrue I hope they will be very severe with you. Don’t be long,
Augustus.’

‘No, Sophia,’ said Augustus meekly, setting off with William.

William was rather silent. It was strange how adventures seemed to have a way of getting beyond control.

‘I don’t remember the peacocks very plain,’ he said at last.

‘Hush!’ said the old man, taking out his magnifying glass. He crept up to a tree-trunk. He gazed at it in a rapt silence.

‘Most interesting,’ he said. ‘I much regret having left my notebook at home.’

‘An’, of course,’ said William, ‘anyone might dream about stachues.’

They found that the encampment had gone. There was no mistake about it. There were the smouldering remains of the fire and the marks of the wheels of the caravan. But the encampment had
disappeared. They went to the end of the wood, but there were no signs of it along any of the three roads that met there. The little old gentleman was distraught.

‘Oh, dear, oh, dear!’ he said. ‘How unfortunate! Do you know where they were going next?’

‘No,’ said William truthfully

‘Oh, dear, oh, dear! What shall we do?’

‘Let’s go back to your house,’ said William trustingly. I should think it’s about dinner-time.’

‘Well,’ said Sophia grimly, ‘you’ve kidnapped a child from a gipsy encampment, and I hope you’re prepared to take the consequences.’

‘Oh, dear,’ said the old gentleman, almost in tears. ‘What a day! And it opened so propitiously. I watched a perfect example of a scavenger beetle at work for nearly half an
hour and then – this.’

William was watching them with a perfectly expressionless face.

‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t matter what happens today. It’s extra.’

‘We must keep the boy,’ said Augustus, ‘till we have made inquiries.’

‘Then he must be washed,’ said Sophia firmly, ‘and those dreadful clothes must be fumigated.’

William submitted to the humiliating process of being washed by a buxom servant. He noticed, with misgiving, that his birthmark disappeared in the process. He resisted all attempts on the part
of the maid-servant at intimate conversation.

‘A deaf moot, that’s wot I calls ’em,’ said the maid indignantly, ‘an’ me wastin’ my kindness on ’im an’ takin’ a hinterest in
’im an’ ’im treatin’ me with scornful silence like. A deaf moot ’e is.’

The lady called Sophia had entered, carrying a short, white, beflounced garment.

‘This is the only thing I can find about your size, boy,’ she said. ‘It’s a fancy dress I had made for a niece of mine about your size. Although it has a flimsy
appearance, the thing is made on a warm wool lining. My niece was subject to bron chitis. You will not find it cold. You can just wear it while you have dinner, while your clothes are being –
er – heated.’

A delicious smell was emanating from a saucepan on the fire. William decided to endure anything rather than risk being ejected before that smell materialised.

He meekly submitted to Helbert’s garments being taken from him. He meekly submitted to being dressed in the white, beflounced costume. He remembered to take his two paper bags from the
pockets of Helbert’s knickers and tried, unsuccessfully, to find pockets in the costume he was wearing, and finally sat on them. Then, tastefully arrayed as a Fairy Queen, he sat down at the
kitchen table to a large plateful of stew. It was delicious stew. William felt amply rewarded for all the indignities to which he was submitting. The servant sat opposite watching him.

‘Is all gipsies deaf moots?’ she said sarcastically.

‘I’m not an ornery gipsy,’ said William, without raising his eyes from his plate, or ceasing his appreciative and hearty consumption of Irish stew. ‘I was stole by the
gipsies, I was. I’ve gotter birthmark somewhere where you can’t see it what’ll identify me.’

‘Lor!’ said the maid.

‘Yes, an’ I rec’lect peacocks an’ stachues – an’ – folks walkin’ about in crowns.’

‘Crikey!’ said the maid, filling his plate again with stew.

‘Yes,’ said William, attacking it with undiminished gusto, ‘an’ the suit I was wearin’ when they stole me is all embroidered with crowns an’ peacocks
an’ – an’—’

‘An’ stachues, I suppose,’ said the servant.

‘Yes,’ said William absently.

‘An’ you was wearin’ silver shoes an’ stockings, I suppose.’

‘Gold,’ corrected William, scraping his plate clean of the last morsel.

‘Lor!’ said the maid, setting a large plate of pudding before him. ‘Now, while you’re a-heatin’ of that I’ll jus’ pop round to a friend next door
an’ bring of ’er in. I shun’t like ’er to miss ’earin’ you talk – all dressed up, like what you are, too. It’s a fair treat, it is.’

She went, closing the door cautiously behind her.

William disposed of the pudding and considered the situation. He felt that this part of the adventure had gone quite far enough. He did not wish to wait till the maid returned. He did not wish
to wait till Augustus or Sophia had ‘made inquiries’.

He opened the kitchen door. The hall was empty Sophia and Augustus were upstairs enjoying their after-dinner naps. William tiptoed into the hall and put on one of the coats.

Fortunately, Augustus was a very small man, and the coat was not much too large for William. William gave a sigh of relief as he realised that his humiliating costume was completely hidden. Next
he put on one of Augustus’s hats.

There was no doubt at all that it was slightly too big. Then he returned to the kitchen, took his two precious paper packets from the chair, put them into Augustus’s coat pockets and crept
to the front door. It opened noiselessly. William tiptoed silently and ungracefully down the path to the road.

All was still. The road was empty.

It seemed a suitable moment to assume the disguise. With all the joy and pride of the artist, William donned his precious false beard. Then he began to walk jauntily up the road.

Suddenly he noticed a figure in front of him. It was the figure of a very, very old man, toiling laboriously up the hill, bending over a stick. William, as an artist, never
scorned to learn. He found a stick in the ditch and began to creep up the hill with little faltering steps, bending over his stick.

He was thoroughly happy again.

He was not William.

He was not even Helbert.

He was a very old man, with a beard, walking up a hill.

The old man in front of him turned into the workhouse gates, which were at the top of the hill. William followed. The old man sat on a bench in a courtyard. William sat beside him. The old man
was very shortsighted.

‘ ’Ello, Thomas,’ he said.

William gave a non-committal grunt. He took out his battered paper bag and handed a few fragments of crumbled cake to the old man. The old man ate them. William, thrilling with joy and pride,
gave him some more. He ate them. A man in uniform came out of the door of the workhouse.

‘Arternoon, George,’ he said to the old man.

He looked closely at William as he passed.

Then he came back and looked still more closely at William. Then he said: ‘ ’Ere!’ and whipped off William’s hat. Then he said: ‘Well, I’m—!!’ and
whipped off William’s beard. Then he said: ‘I’ll be—’ and whipped off William’s coat.

William stood revealed as the Fairy Queen in the middle of the workhouse courtyard.

The short-sighted old man began to chuckle in a high, quavering voice. ‘It’s a lady out of a circus,’ he said. ‘Oh, dear! Oh, dear! It’s a lady out of a circus!’

The man in uniform staggered back with one hand to his head.

‘Gor’ blimey!’ he ejaculated. ‘ ’Ave I gone mad, or am I a-dreamin’ it?’

‘It’s a lady out of a circus. He! He!’ cackled the old man.

But William had gathered up his scattered possessions indignantly and fled, struggling into the coat as he did so. He ran along the road that skirted the workhouse, then, finding that he was not
pursued, and that the road was empty, adjusted his hat and beard and buttoned his coat.

At a bend in the road there was a wayside seat, already partially occupied by a young couple. William, feeling slightly shaken by the events of the last hour, sat down beside them. He sat there
for some minutes, listening idly to their conversation, before he realised with horror who they were. He decided to get up and unostentatiously shuffle away. They did not seem to have noticed him
so far. But Miss Flower was demanding a bunch of the catkin palm that grew a little farther down the road. Robert, William’s elder brother, with the air of a knight setting off upon a
dangerous quest for his lady, went to get it for her. Miss Flower turned to William.

‘Good afternoon,’ she said.

William shaded the side of his face from her with his hand and uttered a sound, which was suggestive of violent pain or grief, but whose real and only object was to disguise his natural
voice.

Miss Flower moved nearer to him on the seat.

‘Are you in trouble?’ she said sweetly.

William, at a loss, repeated the sound.

She tried to peer into his face.

‘Could – could I help at all?’ she said, in a voice whose womanly sympathy was entirely wasted on William.

William covered his face with both his hands and emitted a bellow of rage and desperation.

Robert was returning with the catkins. Miss Flower went to meet him.

‘Robert,’ she said, ‘have you any money. I’ve left my purse at home. There’s a poor old man here in dreadful trouble.’

Robert’s sole worldly possessions at that moment were two and sevenpence halfpenny. He gave her half a crown. She handed it to William, and William, keeping his face still covered with one hand, pocketed the half-crown with the other.