Just William Read Free Page B

rains.’
    ‘Yes.’ Mr Morgan put up a hand as though to loosen his collar. ‘Er – very bad.’
    ‘Almost impassable.’
    ‘Er – quite.’
    Silence again.
    Inside the drawing-room, Mr Brown was growing restive.
    ‘Is dinner to be kept waiting for that youth all night? Quarter past seven! You know it’s just what I can’t stand – having my meals interfered with. Is my digestion to be
ruined simply because this young nincompoop chooses to pay his social calls at seven o’clock at night?’
    ‘Then we must ask him to dinner,’ said Mrs Brown, desperately. ‘We really must.’
    ‘We must not ,’ said Mr Brown. ‘Can’t I stay away from the office for one day with a headache, without having to entertain all the young jackasses for miles
around?’ The telephone bell rang. He raised his hands above his head.
    ‘Oh—’
    ‘I’ll go, dear,’ said Mrs Brown hastily.
    She returned with a worried frown on her brow.
    ‘It’s Mrs Clive,’ she said. ‘She says Joan has been very sick because of some horrible sweets William gave her, and she said she was so sorry to hear about William and
hoped he’d be better soon. I couldn’t quite make it out, but it seems that William has been telling them that he had to go and see a doctor about his lungs and the doctor said they were
very weak and he’d have to be careful.’
    Mr Brown sat up and looked at her. ‘But – why – on – earth?’ he said slowly.
    ‘I don’t know, dear,’ said Mrs Brown, helplessly. ‘I don’t know anything about it.’
    ‘He’s mad,’ said Mr Brown with conviction. ‘Mad. It’s the only explanation.’
    Then came the opening and shutting of the front door and Ethel entered. She was very flushed.
    ‘He’s gone,’ she said. ‘Mother, it’s simply horrible! He didn’t tell me much, but it seems that William actually went to his house and told him that I wanted
to see him alone at seven o’clock this evening. I’ve hardly spoken to William today. He couldn’t have misunderstood anything I said. And he actually took a flower with him –
a dreadful-looking rosebud – and said I’d sent it. I simply didn’t know where to look or what to say. It was horrible!’
    Mrs Brown sat gazing weakly at her daughter.
    Mr Brown rose with the air of a man goaded beyond endurance.
    ‘Where is William?’ he said shortly.
    ‘I don’t know, but I thought I heard him go upstairs some time ago.’
    William was upstairs. For the last twenty minutes he had been happily and quietly engaged upon his bedroom door with a lighted taper in one hand and penknife in the other. There was no
doubt about it. By successful experiment he had proved that that was the way you got old paint off. When Mr Brown came upstairs he had entirely stripped one panel of its paint.
    An hour later William sat in the back garden on an upturned box sucking, with a certain dogged defiance, the last and dirtiest of the Gooseberry Eyes. Sadly he reviewed the
day. It had not been a success. His generosity to the little girl next door had been misconstrued into an attempt upon her life, his efforts to help on his only sister’s love affair had been
painfully misunderstood, lastly because (among other things) he had discovered a perfectly scientific method of removing old paint, he had been brutally assaulted by a violent and unreasonable
parent. Suddenly William began to wonder if his father drank. He saw himself, through a mist of pathos, as a Drunkard’s child. He tried to imagine his father weeping over him in Hospital and
begging his forgiveness. It was a wonder he wasn’t there now, anyway. His shoulders drooped – his whole attitude became expressive of extreme dejection.
    Inside the house, his father, reclining at length in an armchair, discoursed to his wife on the subject of his son. One hand was pressed to his aching brow, and the other gesticulating freely.
‘He’s insane,’ he said, ‘stark, raving insane. You ought to take him to a doctor