William The Outlaw (14 page)

‘Oh, very dull,’ said the first lady. ‘I really came away before it was actually opened. Just got what I wanted and then came away. It all looked as if it was going to be
most
dull.’

The highly-coloured lady sniffed and her complacency gave way to aggrievement. ‘I must say that I was a bit
hurt
that they didn’t ask me to give an entertainment. I
can’t help feeling that it was a bit of a
slight.
People have so often told me that no function about here is complete without one of my entertainments and then not to ask me to
entertain at the Conservative Fête . . . well, I call it
pointed
, and it points to one thing and one thing only in my eyes. It points to jealousy, and intrigue, and spitefulness, and
underhandedness, and cunning, and deceit on the part of some person or persons unknown – but, believe
me
, Mrs Bute, quite easily guessed at!’

The highly-coloured lady was evidently in the state known as ‘working herself up’. Suddenly William knew who she was. She must be Miss Poll. He remembered now hearing his mother say
only yesterday, ‘That dreadful Poll woman wants to give an entertainment at the Fête and we’re
determined
not to have her. She’s so
vulgar.
She’d cheapen
the whole thing. . . .’

He peeped at her anxiously from behind his concealing tablecloth, then hastily withdrew.

‘Of course,’ said Mrs Bute, who sounded bored and as if she’d heard it many times before, ‘of course, dear, but . . . the coat will do, will it?’

‘Very nicely, thank you,’ said Miss Poll rather stiffly because she thought that Mrs Bute really ought to have been more sympathetic. ‘
Good
afternoon, dear.’

‘I’ll wrap it up for you,’ said Mrs Bute.

There was silence while she wrapped it up, then Miss Poll said, ‘
Good
afternoon, dear’ again and went into the hall and there followed the sound of the closing of the front
door, then sounds as of the mistress of the house going upstairs. William retreated through his open window and rejoined Douglas and Henry at the gate. Ginger had vanished.

‘Quick,’ he said, ‘
she’s
got it.’

The figure of Miss Poll carrying a large paper parcel could be seen walking down the road. ‘We’ve gotter follow
her.
She’s got it now.’

At this minute Ginger reappeared.

‘She’s got it,’ William explained to him.

‘Yes, but there’s another,’ said Ginger, pointing, ‘there’s
another
black coat hangin’ up in the hall. I’ve been round an’ looked through a
little window an’
seen
it . . . it’s
there.
’

William was for a moment nonplussed. Then he said: ‘Well, I bet the one she’s took’s the one, ’cause I heard her say wasn’t it a bargain, an’ it
was
a
bargain too. Huh! I’m goin’ after her.’

‘Well, I’m
not
,’ said Ginger. ‘I’m goin’ to stop here an’ get the other one.’

‘All right,’ said William, ‘you an’ Douglas stay here an’ Henry ’n me’ll go after the other an’ I
bet
you ours is the right one.’

So quite amicably the Outlaws divided forces. Ginger and Douglas remained concealed in the bushes by the gate of Mrs Bute’s house, warily eyeing the windows, while William and Henry set
off down the road after Miss Poll’s rapidly vanishing figure.

William and Henry stood at Miss Poll’s gate and held a hasty consultation. Their previous experience did not encourage them to go boldly to the front door and demand the
black coat.

‘Let’s jus’ go in an’ steal it,’ said Henry cheerfully. ‘’S not hers really.’

But William seemed averse to this.

‘No,’ he said, ‘I bet that wouldn’t come off. I bet she’s the sort of woman that’s always poppin’ up jus’ when you don’ want her. No, I
guess we’ve gotter think out a
plan.
’

He thought deeply for a few minutes, then his face cleared and over it broke a light that betokened inspiration.

‘I
know
what we’ll do. It’s a
jolly
good idea. I bet . . . well, anyway, you come in with me an’ see.’

Boldly William walked up to the front door and rang the bell. Apprehensively Henry followed him.

Miss Poll, wearing the black coat (for she had been trying it on and fancied herself in it so much that she had not been able to bring herself to take it off to answer the bell), opened the
door.

William, his face devoid of any expression whatever, repeated monotonously as though it were a lesson:

‘G’afternoon, Miss Poll, please will you come to the Fête to give an entertainment.’

Miss Poll went rather red and for one terrible minute William thought that she was going to attack him as the maid had done – but the moment passed. Miss Poll was simpering coyly.

‘You – you’ve been sent on a message, I suppose, little boy?’ Then, relieving William’s conscience of the difficult task of answering this question, she went on,
‘I
thought
there must be some mistake. . . . Of course,’ she simpered again, then pouted, ‘
really
I’d be quite within my rights to refuse to go. It’s
most discourteous of them to send for me like this at such short notice but,’ she gave a triumphant little giggle, ‘I
knew
that
really
they couldn’t get on without
me. They didn’t send a note by you, I suppose?’

‘No,’ said William quite truthfully.

She pouted again.

‘Well,
that
I think is rather rude, don’t you? However,’ the pout merged again into the simper, ‘I wouldn’t be so
cruel
as to punish them for that by
staying away. I
knew
they’d want me in the end. But these things are always so shamefully organised, don’t you think so?’

William cleared his throat and said that he did. Henry, in response to a violent nudge from William, cleared his throat and said that he did too. Miss Poll, encouraged by their sympathy, warmed
to her subject.

‘Instead of writing to engage me
months
ago they send a message like this at the last minute. . . . What would they have done if I’d been out?’

Again William said he didn’t know and again Henry, in response to a nudge from William, said he didn’t know either.

‘Well, I mustn’t keep the poor dears waiting,’ said Miss Poll brightly. ‘I’ll be ready in a second. I’ve only to put my hat on.’

Then Miss Poll underwent a short inward struggle which William watched breathlessly. Would she keep on the black coat or would she change it for another? Wild plans floated through
William’s head. He’d say would she please go in something black because the Vicar had died quite suddenly that morning or – or the Member had just been murdered or something like
that. . . . It was obvious that Miss Poll was torn between the joy of wearing a coat in which she considered herself to look ‘smarter’ than in anything else she possessed and the
impropriety of wearing for a festal occasion a garment borrowed for the obsequies of the very removed cousin. To William’s relief the coat won the day and after buttoning up the collar to
give it an even smarter appearance than it had before and putting on a smart hat with a very red feather, she joined them at the door.

‘Now I’m ready, children,’ she said, at which William scowled ferociously and Henry winced, ‘they didn’t say which of my repertoire’ (Miss Poll pronounced it
reppertwaw) ‘I was to bring with me, did they?’

And again William said ‘no’ with a face devoid of expression and with perfect truth. And Henry said ‘no,’ too.

‘As it’s such short notice,’ she went on, ‘they really can’t expect
anything
in the way of – well, of make-up or dress, can they?’

William said that they couldn’t and Henry, being nudged again by William, confirmed the opinion. . . .

‘Though I wish you children could see me in my charwoman skit. I’m an artist in make-up. . . . Now, can you imagine me looking
really
old and ugly?’

Henry quite innocently said ‘yes,’ and on being nudged by William, changed it to ‘yes, please.’ Miss Poll looked at Henry as if she quite definitely disliked him and
turned her attentions to William.

‘You know, dear . . . I can make myself up to look
really
old. You’d never believe it, would you? Now guess how old I am, really?’

Henry, not wishing to be left out of it, said with perfect good faith, ‘fifty’ and William, with a vague idea of being tactful, said ‘forty’. Miss Poll who looked, as a
matter of fact, about forty-five, laughed shrilly.

‘You children
will
have your joke,’ she said, ‘now I wonder what I’d better do for them to start with? You know, what makes me so
unique
as an entertainer,
children – and if I’d wanted to be I’d be
famous
now on the London stage – is that I’m
entirely
independent of such artificial aids as mechanical musical
instruments and books of words and such things. I depend upon the unaided efforts of my voice – and I’ve a perfect voice for humorous songs, you know, children – and my facial
expression. Of course I’ve a
magnetic
personality . . . that’s the secret of the whole thing . . .’

William was tense and stern and scowling. He wasn’t thinking of Miss Poll’s magnetic personality. He was thinking of Miss Poll’s coat. The first step had been to lure Miss Poll
to the Fête; the second and, he began to think, the harder, would be to detach the coat from Miss Poll’s person.

‘It’s – it’s sort of gettin’ hot, i’n’t it?’ he said huskily.

‘Yes, isn’t it?’ said Miss Poll pleasantly.

William’s heart lightened. ‘Wun’t you like to take your coat off?’ he said persuasively. ‘I’ll carry it for you.’

But Miss Poll who considered, quite erroneously, that the coat made her look startlingly youthful and pretty, shook her head and clutched the coat tightly at her neck.

‘No, certainly not,’ she said firmly.

William pondered his next line of argument.

‘I thought,’ he suggested at last meekly, ‘I thought p’raps you
sing
better without your coat.’

Henry, who felt that he was supporting William rather inadequately, said: ‘Yes, you sort of look as if you’d sing better without a coat.’

‘What nonsense!’ said Miss Poll rather sharply, ‘I sing
perfectly
well in a coat.’

Then William had an idea. He remembered an incident which had taken place about a month ago which had completely mystified him at the time, but which he had stored up for possible future use.
Ethel had come home from a garden party in a state bordering on hysterics and had passionately destroyed a perfectly good hat which she had been wearing. The reason she gave for this extraordinary
behaviour had been that Miss Weston had been wearing a hat
exactly
like it at the garden party (‘
exactly
like it . . . I could have killed her and myself,’ Ethel had said
hysterically). The reason had seemed to William wholly inadequate. He met boys every day of his life wearing headgear which was exactly identical with his and the sight failed to rouse him to
hysterical fury. It was one of the many mysteries in which the behaviour of grown-up sisters was shrouded – not to be understood but possible to be utilised. Now he looked Miss Poll up and
down and said ruminatingly, ‘Funny!’

‘What’s funny?’ said Miss Poll sharply.

‘Oh, nothin’,’ said William apologetically, knowing full well that Miss Poll would now know no peace till she’d discovered the reason for his ejaculation and steady
contemplation of her.

‘Nonsense!’ she said sharply, ‘you wouldn’t say ‘funny’ like that unless there was some reason for it, I suppose. If I’ve got a smut on my nose or my
hat’s on crooked
say
so and don’t stand there
looking
at me.’

William’s steady gaze was evidently getting upon Miss Poll’s nerves.

‘Nothin’,’ said William again vaguely, ‘only I’ve just remembered somethin’.’

‘
What
have you remembered?’ snapped Miss Poll.

‘Nothin’ much,’ said William, ‘only I’ve jus’ remembered that I saw someone at the Fête jus’ before I came out to you, in a coat
exactly
like that one what you’ve got on.’

There was a long silence and finally Miss Poll said: ‘It
is
a little hot,
dear.
You were quite right. If you would be so kind as to carry my coat—’

She took it off, revealing a dress that was very short and very diaphanous and very, very pink, folded up the coat so as to show only the lining and handed it to William. William, though
retaining his sphinx-like expression, heaved a sigh of relief, and Henry dropped behind Miss Poll to turn a cartwheel expressive of triumph in the middle of the road. They had reached the gate of
the Vicarage now. They were only just in time. . . .

‘I’VE JUS’ REMEMBERED,’ SAID WILLIAM, ‘THAT I SAW SOMEONE AT THE FÊTE IN A COAT EXACTLY LIKE THAT ONE WHAT YOU’VE GOT ON.’

It happened that the Member’s agent had with difficulty and with the help of great persuasive power and a megaphone, collected the majority of the attendants at the Fête into a large
tent where the Member was to ‘say a few words’ on the political situation. Many of those who had had experience of the Member’s ‘few words’ on other occasions had
tried to escape but the agent was a very determined young man with an Oxford manner and an eagle eye, and in the end he had hounded them all in. The Member was just buying a raffle ticket for a
nightdress case and being particularly nice to the raffle ticket seller partly because she was pretty and partly because she might have a vote (one could never tell what age girls were nowadays).
The agent was hovering in the background ready to tell him that his audience was awaiting him as soon as he’d finished being nice to the pretty girl, and at the same time keeping a wary eye
on the door of the tent to see that no one escaped. . . . And then the
contretemps
happened. Miss Poll tripped airily up to the door of the tent in her pink, pink frock, peeped in, saw the
serried ranks of an audience with a vacant place in front of them, presumably for the entertainer, and skipping lightly in with a ‘
So
sorry to have kept you all waiting,’ leapt
at once into her first item – an imitation of a tipsy landlady, an item that Miss Poll herself considered the cream of her repertoire. The audience (a very heavy and respectable audience)
gaped at her, dismayed and astounded. And when a few minutes later the Member, calm and dignified and full to overflowing of eloquence and statistics, having exchanged the smile he had assumed
while being nice to the pretty raffle ticket seller for a look of responsibility and capability, and having exchanged his raffle ticket for a neat little sheaf of notes (typed and clipped together
by the ubiquitous agent), appeared at the door of the tent he found Miss Gertie Poll prancing to and fro before his amazed audience, her pink, pink skirts held very high, announcing that she was
Gilbert the filbert, the colonel of the nuts. The agent, looking over his shoulder, grew pale, and loose-jawed. The Member turned to him with dignity and a certain amount of restraint.