Authors: Richmal Crompton
William the Good
FOREWORD
I’ve loved Just William for a long, long time and never in my wildest dreams did I think one day I’d be playing my childhood hero. I was about two when I first
started listening to Martin Jarvis reading the Just William stories on CD, and I think the only time I ever sulked at that age was when I didn’t have my CDs playing as I drifted off to sleep.
Although I’ve always been a huge William Brown fan, it was only when my friends found out I was auditioning for the part that I realized how well known William actually is. Lots of my friends
also idolized William while growing up, just as I did, along with the Outlaws (the other boys in William’s gang) and all the other amazingly realistic characters Richmal Crompton created.
When I got the first audition for the BBC
Just William
adaptation, I was really excited, but there were so many other boys there I didn’t think I’d get any part – least of
all the role of William Brown. Then when I received the call back, it felt phenomenal. After a long series of auditions, where Paul Seed (the Director) and I simply recited the lines and chatted
about rugby and dogs, I was shocked to hear that I’d been offered the part of William himself.
After a week of rehearsals (and a lot of reluctant haircuts), the other boys playing the Outlaws and I were already firm friends. I could see how many people in the script run-throughs were huge
Just William fans, and also how many talented actors there were in the cast. I felt like a dwarf against giants. But the filming was really fun and everyone was so welcoming, whether we were
strolling through a cornfield or eating breakfast in the Brown family’s kitchen. With a great director like Paul I knew all the early mornings were definitely worth it. The filming included
so many first experiences, such as filming with actors my own age, filming with animals, and I also learned to do my own stunts, which was a brilliant experience. Even Ivor, the friendly dog
playing Jumble (William’s scruffy mongrel), began to sink into the world of William and, after a while, followed me like his owner.
I know and love the fact that this book is going to make so many people happy. I remember the great feeling when my mum came back from shopping with a brand-new Just William CD. William Brown is
a character who will never grow old. Adults love him because they grew up with him or were just like him, and kids like me love him because he brings out the tree-climbing, pond-swimming child in
all of us that can sometimes get lost in video games and cartoons. If I had the chance to switch lives with William I would do so without a care in the world, and so would many other fans. I feel
so lucky to have not only acted in the series, but to have had the opportunity to play my childhood idol. I, like so many others, will never forget the Red Indian, pirate-ship captain
eleven-year-old known as William Brown.
Daniel Roche
CHAPTER 1
T
HE Christmas holidays had arrived at last and were being celebrated by the Brown family in various ways.
Ethel and her friends were celebrating it by getting up a play which was to be acted before the village on Christmas Eve. Mrs Brown was celebrating it by having a whist drive, and William was
celebrating it by having influenza.
Though William is my hero, I will not pretend that he made a good invalid. On the contrary he made a very bad one. He possessed none of those virtues of patience, forbearance, and resignation
necessary to a good invalid. William, suffering from influenza, was in a state of violent rebellion against fate. And he was even worse when the virulence of the attack had waned and he could sit
up in bed and partake of nourishment.
There was, he bitterly complained, nothing to do.
Kind friends brought him in jigsaw puzzles, but, as he informed those about him incessantly, he didn’t see what people
saw
in jigsaw puzzles. He didn’t like doing them and he
didn’t see any good in them when they were done. As an occupation, they were, he gave his family to understand, beneath his contempt. His family offered him other occupations. One of his
aunts kindly sent him a scrap album, and another kindly sent him a book of general knowledge questions. He grew more morose and bitter every day. No, he didn’t want to do any of those things.
He wanted to get up. Well, why not? Well, tomorrow then? Well, WHY NOT?
Well, he’d always said that the doctor wasn’t any use.
He’d said so ever since he wouldn’t let him stay in bed when he felt really ill – that day last term when he hadn’t done any of his homework. And now, now that it was
holidays, he made him stay in bed. He simply couldn’t think why they went on having a man like that for a doctor, a man who simply did everything he could to annoy people. That was all the
doctoring he knew, doing everything he could to annoy people. It was a wonder they weren’t all dead with a doctor like that. No, he didn’t want to do crossword puzzles.
What did he want to do then?
He wanted to get up and go out. He wanted to go and play Red Indians with Ginger and Douglas and Henry. He wanted to go to the old barn and play Lions and Tamers. He wanted to go and be an
Outlaw in the woods. That was what he wanted to do. Well, then, if he couldn’t do anything he wanted to do what did they keep asking him what he wanted to do for?
In disgust he turned over on his side, took up a book which a great-aunt had sent him the day before and began to read it.
Now it was a book which in ordinary circumstances would not have appealed to William at all. It was a book in the ‘Ministering Children’ tradition with a hero as unlike William as
could possibly be imagined. William merely took it up to prove to the whole world how miserably, unutterably bored he was. But he read it. And because he was so bored, the story began to grip him.
He read it chapter by chapter, even receiving his mid-morning cup of beef tea without his usual execrations.
It was perhaps because of his weakened condition that the story gripped him. The hero was a boy about William’s age, whose angelic character made him the sunshine of his home. He had a
beautiful sister who, he discovered, was a secret drinker. He pleaded with her to give up the fatal habit. That was a very beautiful scene. It had, however, little effect upon the sister. She
became a thief. The youthful hero saw her steal a valuable piece of old silver in a friend’s house. At great risk of being himself suspected of the crime he took it back and replaced it in
the friend’s house. The sister was so deeply touched by this that she gave up her habits of drink and theft and the story ended with a youthful hero, his halo gleaming more brightly than
ever, setting out to rescue other criminals from their lives of crime.
‘Gosh!’ said William as he closed the book. ‘An’ only eleven, same as me.’
At once, William ceased to long to play Red Indians with Ginger and Henry and Douglas. Instead he began to long to rescue those around him from lives of crime.
Downstairs, Ethel and her mother were talking. ‘Have you settled the parts for your play yet, dear?’ said Mrs Brown.
‘N-no,’ said Ethel, ‘it’s all rather annoying. Mrs Hawkins has taken up the whole thing, and is managing everything. Of course, we can’t stop her, because, after
all, she’s going to finance the whole show, and have footlights put up and make it awfully posh, but still – she’s insisting on our doing scenes from
As You Like It.
She
would
want Shakespeare. She’s so deadly dull herself.’
‘And you’ll be Rosalind, I suppose?’ said Mrs Brown quite placidly.
Ethel was always the heroine of any play she acted in.
But Ethel’s face grew slightly overcast.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘that’s the question. Mrs Hawkins is having a sort of trial at her house. It lies between me and Dolly Morton and Blanche Jones. She wants to hear us
all read the part. She’s going to have all the committee at her house on Tuesday to hear us all read the part. It
does
seem rather silly, doesn’t it? I mean, making such a fuss
about it. However—’
‘Well, darling,’ said Mrs Brown, ‘when you are at the Hawkins’ I wish you’d ask them if they can let us have one bonbon dish. I haven’t quite enough for all
the tables at the whist drive, and Mrs Hawkins kindly said she’d lend me as many as I liked.’
‘Very well,’ said Ethel absently. ‘I shall feel
mad
if she gives the part to Dolly Morton or Blanche Jones. I’ve had much more experience and after all
–’
After all, Ethel’s silence said, she was far and away the prettiest girl in the village. She heaved a sigh.
Mrs Brown, as if infected with the general melancholy, also heaved a sigh.
‘The doctor says that William can get up tomorrow,’ she said.
Ethel groaned.
‘Well,’ said her mother wearily, ‘he
can’t
be worse up than he’s been in bed the last few days.’
‘Oh,
can’t
he?’ said Ethel meaningly.
‘But he’s been quite good this afternoon,’ admitted Mrs Brown in a voice almost of awe, ‘reading a book quietly all the time.’
‘Then he’ll be awful tomorrow,’ prophesied Ethel, gloomily, and with the suspicion of a nasal intonation.
Mrs Brown looked at her suspiciously. ‘You haven’t got a cold, have you, Ethel?’ she said.
‘No,’ said Ethel hastily.
‘Because if you have,’ said Mrs Brown, ‘it’s probably influenza, and you must go to bed the minute you feel it coming on.’
William was downstairs. He did not, strangely enough, want to go out and play Red Indians with Henry, Douglas and Ginger. That lassitude which is always the after-effect of
influenza was heavy upon him. William, however, did not know that this was the cause.
He mistook it for a change of heart. He believed his character to be completely altered. He did not want to be a rough boy ranging over the countryside any longer. He wanted to be a boy wearing
a halo and rescuing those around him from lives of crime. He watched Ethel meditatively where she sat on the other side of the room reading a magazine. She looked irritatingly virtuous.
William found it difficult to imagine her drinking in secret or stealing pieces of silver from a neighbour’s drawing-room. It was, he reflected, just his luck to have a sister who was as
irritating a sister as could be, and yet who would afford him no opportunity of rescuing her from a life of crime. His expression grew more and more morose as he watched her. There she sat with no
thought in her mind but her silly magazine, resolutely refusing either to drink or steal.
As a matter of fact, Ethel had other thoughts in her mind than the magazine upon which she was apparently so intent. Ethel was afraid. There was no doubt at all that a cold was developing in
Ethel’s head, and Ethel knew that, should her mother guess it, she would be summarily despatched to bed and would not be able to attend Mrs Hawkins’ meeting, and that the result would
be that either Dolly Morton or Blanche Jones would be Rosalind in the play.
Now, Ethel had set her heart upon being Rosalind. She felt that she would die of shame if Dolly Morton or Blanche Jones were chosen as Rosalind in her stead. And, therefore, the peculiar feeling
of muzziness, the difficulty of enunciating certain consonants that she was at present experiencing, filled her with apprehension. A cold was coming on. There was no doubt of it at all. If only it
could escape her mother’s notice till after today!
After today, when she was chosen as Rosalind, Ethel was willing to retire to bed and stay there as long as her mother wanted, but not till then. Hence she was silent and avoided her mother as
much as possible. She might, of course, take something to stave it off (though she knew that that was generally impossible), but her mother had the keys of the medicine cupboard, and to ask for
anything would arouse suspicion.