William The Outlaw (26 page)

‘HERE’S SOMETHIN’ ELSE I’VE RESCUED,’ SAID WILLIAM, PROUDLY.

‘PUT HIM DOWN HERE,’ MISS POLLITER SAID. ‘THIS IS A NOBLE WORK, INDEED.’

‘Some more I’ve rescued,’ he said succinctly.

Miss Polliter turned to him a face which was bright with interest and enterprise.

‘Splendid, dear boy,’ she said happily, ‘splendid. . . . I’ll soon have them warmed and dried – or wait – is the flood rising?’

William said it was.

‘Well, then, the best thing would be to go to the very top of the house where we shall be safer than here!’

Determinedly she picked up the infants, went out on to the landing and mounted the attic stairs. William followed holding the puppy who managed during the journey to tear off and (presumably
– as they were never seen again) swallow his pocket flap and three buttons from his coat. Then Miss Polliter returned for the pig and William followed with a hen. The pig was very
recalcitrant and Miss Polliter said ‘Naughty,’ to him quite sternly once or twice. Then they returned for the other hens. One hen escaped and in the intoxication of sudden liberty flew
squawking loudly out of a skylight.

In the attic bedroom where Miss Polliter now assembled her little company of refugees she lit the gas fire and started her great task of organisation.

‘I’ll dry these dear children first,’ she said. ‘Now go down, dear boy, and see if there is anyone else in need of your aid.’

William went downstairs slowly. Something of his rapture and excitement was leaving him. Cold reality was placing its icy grip upon his heart. He began to wonder what would happen to him when
they discovered the nature and cause of his ‘flood,’ and whether the state to which the refugees were reducing the house would also be laid to his charge. He waded out to the hose pipe
and had another fruitless struggle with the tap. Then he looked despondently up and down the road. The ‘flood’ was spreading visibly, but there was no one in sight. He returned slowly
and thoughtfully to Miss Polliter.

Miss Polliter looked brisk and happy. She had apparently forgotten both her nervous system and its need of perpetual nourishment. She was having a game with the infants who were now partially
dried and crowing with delight. She had managed to drive the hens into a corner of the room and had secured them there by a chest of drawers. She had tied the pig by a piece of string to the
wash-hand-stand and it was now lying down quite placidly, engaged in eating the carpet. One hen had escaped from its ‘coop’ and was running round a table pursued by or pursuing (it was
impossible to say which) the puppy. Miss Polliter was playing pat-a-cake with the drying infants and seemed to be enjoying it as much as the infants. She greeted William gaily.

‘Don’t look so sad, dear boy,’ she said. ‘I think that even though the river continues to rise all night we shall be safe here – quite safe here – and I
daresay you can find something for these dear children to eat when they get hungry. I don’t need anything. I’m quite all right. I can easily go without anything till morning. Now do one
more thing for me, dear boy. Go down to my room on the lower floor and see the time. Dr Morlan said that he would be home by six.’

Still more slowly, still more thoughtfully, William descended to her room on the lower floor and saw the time. It was five minutes to six. Dr Morlan might arrive then at any minute. William
considered the situation from every angle. To depart now as unostentatiously as possible seemed to him a far, far better thing than to wait and face Dr Morlan’s wrath. The hose pipe was
damaged, the garden was flooded. Miss Polliter’s room was like a battlefield after a battle, strange infants and a pig were disporting themselves about the house, a destructive puppy had
wreaked its will upon every cushion and curtain and chair within reach (it had found that it could pull down window curtains).

William very quietly slipped out of the front door and crept down the drive. The flood seemed to be concentrating itself upon the back of the house. The front was still more or less dry. William
crept across the field to the stile that led to the main road. Here his progress was barred by a group of three who stood talking by the stile. There was a tall pompous-looking man with a beard, a
small woman and an elderly man.

‘Oh, yes, we’ve quite settled in now,’ the tall, pompous-looking man was saying. ‘We’ve got a resident patient with us – a Miss Polliter who is a chronic
nervous case. We are rather uneasy at having to leave her all today with only the cook and house-boy. Unfortunately our housemaid left us suddenly yesterday but we trust that things will have gone
all right. An aunt of mine was reported to be seriously ill and we had to hurry to her to be in time but unfortunately – ahem – I mean fortunately – we found that she had taken a
turn for the better so we returned as soon as we could.’

‘Of course,’ said the woman, ‘we’d have been back
ever
so much earlier if it hadn’t been for that affair at the cave.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said the doctor, ‘very tragic affair, very tragic indeed. Some poor boy . . . there were a lot of people there trying to recover the body and they wanted to have a
doctor in the unlikely case of the boy being still alive when they got him out. I assured them that it was very unlikely that he would be alive and that I had to get back to my own patient . . .
and it would only be a matter of a few minutes to send for me. . . . The poor mother was distraught.’

‘What had happened?’ said the other man.

‘Some rash child had crawled into an opening in the rock and had not come out. He must have been suffocated. His friends waited for over an hour before they notified the parents and I am
afraid that it is too late now. They have repeatedly called to him but there is no response. As I told them, there are frequently poisonous gases in the fissures of the rock and the poor child must
have succumbed to them. So far all attempts to recover the body have been unsuccessful. They have just sent for men with pickaxes.’

William’s heart was sinking lower and lower. Crumbs! He’d quite forgotten the cave part of it. Crumbs! He’d quite forgotten that he’d left the Outlaws in the cave waiting
for him. The house-boy and the cook and the silver cleaning and the hose pipe and the flood and Miss Polliter and the hens and the pig and the puppy and the infants had completely driven the cave
and the Outlaws out of his head. Crumbs, wouldn’t everybody be mad!

For William had learnt by experience that with a strange perversity parents who had mourned their children as lost or dead are generally for some reason best known to themselves intensely
irritated to find that they have been alive and well and near them all the time. William had little hopes of being received by his parents with the joy and affection that should be given to one
miraculously restored to them from the fissures of the rock. And just as he stood pondering his next step the doctor turned and saw him. He stared at him for a few minutes, then said, ‘Do you
want me, my boy? Anything wrong? You’re the new house-boy, aren’t you?’

William realised that he was still wearing the overalls which the house-boy had given him. He gaped at the doctor and blinked nervously, wondering whether it wouldn’t be wiser to be the
new house-boy as the doctor evidently thought he was. The doctor turned to his wife.

‘Er – it is the new house-boy, dear, isn’t it?’ he said.

‘I
think
so,’ said his wife doubtfully. ‘He only came this morning, you know, and Cook engaged him, and I hardly had time to look at him, but I think he is – Yes,
he’s wearing our overalls. What’s your name, boy?’

William was on the point of saying ‘William Brown’, then stopped himself. He mustn’t be William Brown. William Brown was presumably lost in the bowels of the earth. And he
didn’t know the house-boy’s name. So he gaped again and said:

‘I don’t know.’

There came a gleam into the doctor’s eye.

‘What do you mean, my boy?’ he said. ‘Do you mean that you’ve lost your memory?’

‘Yes,’ said William, relieved at the simplicity of the explanation, and the fact that it relieved him of all further responsibility. ‘Yes, I’ve lost my memory.’

‘Do you mean you don’t remember anything?’ said the doctor sharply.

‘Yes,’ said William happily, ‘I don’ remember anythin’.’

‘Not where you live or anything?’

‘No,’ said William very firmly, ‘not where I live nor anything.’

The other man, feeling evidently that he could contribute little illumination to the problem, moved on, leaving the doctor and his wife staring at William. They held a whispered consultation.
Then the doctor turned to William and said suddenly:

‘Frank Simpkins . . . does that suggest anything to you?’

‘No,’ said William with perfect truth.

‘Doesn’t know his own name,’ whispered the doctor, then again sharply:

‘Acacia Cottage . . . does that convey anything to you?’

‘No,’ said William again with perfect truth.

The doctor turned to his wife.

‘No memory of his name or home,’ he commented. ‘I’ve always wanted to study a case of this sort at close quarters. Now, my good boy, come back home with me.’

But William didn’t want to go back home with him. He didn’t want to return to the house which still bore traces of his recent habitation and where his ‘flood’ presumably
still raged. He was just contemplating precipitate flight when a woman came hurrying along the road. The doctor’s wife seemed to recognise her. She whispered to the doctor. The doctor turned
to William.

‘You know this woman, my boy, don’t you?’

‘No,’ said William, ‘I’ve never seen her before.’

The doctor looked pleased. ‘Doesn’t remember his own mother,’ he said to his wife: ‘quite an interesting case.’

The woman approached them aggressively. The doctor stepped in front of William.

‘Come after my boy,’ she said. ‘Sayin’ ’is hours ended at five an’ then keepin’ ’im till now! I’ll ’ave the lor on you, I will. Where
is ’e?’

‘Prepare yourself, my good woman,’ said the doctor, ‘for a slight shock. Your son has temporarily – only temporarily, we trust – lost his memory.’

She screamed.

‘What’ve you bin doin’ of to ’im?’ she said indignantly, ‘’e ’adn’t lorst it when ’e left ’ome this mornin’. Where is
’e, anyway?’

Silently the doctor stepped on to one side, revealing William.

‘Here he is,’ he said pompously.

‘’Im?’ she shrilled. ‘Never seed ’im before.’

They stared at each other for some seconds in silence. Then William saw the real house-boy coming along the road and spoke with the hopelessness of one who surrenders himself to Fate to do its
worst with.

‘Here he is.’

The real original house-boy was stepping blithely down the road, an extemporised rod over his shoulder, swinging precariously a jar full of minnows. He was evidently ignorant of the flight of
time. He saw William first and called out cheerfully:

‘I say, I’ve not been long, have I? Is it all right?’

Then he saw the others and the smile dropped from his face. His mother darted to him protectively.

‘Oh, my pore, blessed child,’ she said, ‘what have they bin a-doin’ to you – keepin’ you hours an’ hours after your time an’ losin’ your
pore memory an’ you your pore widowed mother’s only child. . . . Come home with your mother, then, an’ she’ll take care of you and we’ll have the lor on them, we
will.’

The boy looked from one to another bewildered, then realising from his mother’s tones that he had been badly treated he burst into tears and was led away by his consoling parent.