Donkey Boy (13 page)

“Yes dear, I am afraid so.”

“Then she will have to leave this house immediately!”

Mona was listening at the top of the three stairs, her heart beating rapidly. Earlier that evening she had gone into the Randiswell Recreation Ground for the purpose of drowning herself; but thoughts of Phillip, whom she loved as her own, had come between her desire for death. The voice of master, which had given her a little hope as he spoke to her out of the fog, was now cross. There was no more hope. Mona turned back into the kitchen, put her arms upon the scrubbed deal kitchen table, and broke down. She would drown herself in the river.

In the sitting-room, while Richard drank his soup, Hetty was grieving, as she had many times before, that she was seldom able to utter her real thoughts to her husband. She knew by now, and had accepted it, that she must always be very careful what she told him. He was so easily upset. Her main thought before and during the first year of their married life had been of concern for him; her thought had been mainly directed to thinking of ways and means by which he would be pleased. Alas, that so many of her good intentions had turned out the other way! If she tried to keep things from him, that would upset him, she knew; he called it suppression of the truth. And if on the other hand she told him something that had happened, he was just as likely to complain that she was incapable of managing her own affairs. Talking this over with her mother—nothing of it must be told to
Papa, of course—Hetty had eased herself of a condition that at times had given her nervous headaches. Sarah had given her daughter comfort by her own confession.

“Yes, dear, we all have to suffer our husbands. Perhaps to be silent is better than to try and explain. Then there is always prayer.”

“Yes, Mamma, I do pray, every day, that I shall not do anything to upset Dickie.”

But there were some things Hetty could not tell even her mother. She could not think of them, even, without mental flurry and evasion. And the latest of them, and to her mind the worst, was the shocking things she had found out about Mona.

Three mornings previously, Hetty had gone into the end bedroom at eight o'clock, all being quiet in the house, thinking that Mona had overslept. It was a Sunday morning, and the alarm was not wound on Saturday night—on week-day mornings it went off in Mona's room at half-past six—because Richard needed an hour's extra sleep. Mona was supposed to go downstairs at a quarter to eight, on Sunday mornings, and bring up a small pot of China tea on a tray, with two cups and saucers, a jug of milk, a plate of thin slices of brown bread and butter, and
The
Weekly
Courant,
which had been thrust through the letter-box. This was the ritual of Richard's Sunday morning, a little luxury he allowed himself once a week. He looked forward to it at eight a.m. precisely. The brown bread and butter had to be cut the night before, by Hetty, and kept fresh between two plates. He would not have Mona, probably with unwashed hands, cutting the bread.

Hetty had found Mona asleep, and Phillip asleep beside her, one arm lying across his body. The bedclothes were disarranged, as though she had been tickling him, which was forbidden. Also, she was not supposed to have the child in her bed, by Richard's orders; for she was a developing girl, and neither Hetty nor Richard considered it proper that a young boy should see any exposure of her body. Hetty had instructed Mona that she must always take off and put on her clothes behind a screen that stood in the room for that purpose.

What Hetty saw shocked her deeply. Phillip was lying on his back, part of his night-gown rucked up, so that his thin legs were exposed and part of his bluish-white stomach. It was not the
sight of that which shocked Hetty, but the fact that Mona—it could only have been Mona—had tied one of her small red hair-ribands in a bow round the private part of the little boy. Her own little child, her dear little Sonny, to be treated like that by Mona, whom she had utterly trusted! Thank God the boy's father had not seen it!

Hetty removed the riband, praying that Sonny would not wake up. Her prayer was answered; the boy slept on. Gently she covered his legs with the night-gown, and dropped the creased riband on the rug by the bed, so that Mona might think it had dropped off one of her plaits, and so have no recollection of her action.

But more was to come. Gould she believe her eyes? Surely it could not be her fancy? Mona was lying on her side, only a sheet of the bedclothes covering her above the waist; and to Hetty it appeared that she was bigger than she ought to be. Perhaps it was the fold of the blanket lying across her that gave the suggestion of a mound? Animated by anxious curiosity, Hetty gently tugged at the blanket to straighten it and saw that Mona's bigness just there was not a fancy. At that moment a dark eye opened and Mona was looking at her. The girl sat up, muttering; thrust away the hair from her brow and said, “Oh mum, I overslepp misself, oh the master's tea——”

Hetty said nothing about it to Mona that morning, or the rest of the day, but on the Monday afternoon, two hours before Richard was due to come home, she said that Mona must have a bath, using the same water in which Phillip, and then the baby, had been washed. And making an excuse to go into the bathroom while Mona was in the bath, Hetty saw that the girl was pregnant.

Before saying anything to her, Hetty consulted her mother. Sarah said that the best thing to do was to have a quiet talk with Mona, and advise her to tell her own mother on her next afternoon off.

“Your own experiences, dear, will enable you to know what to say to the poor child,” remarked Sarah. “She is so very young, only fourteen, dear me. She is such a good girl too, you can see that by the way she cares for your little two ones, Hetty.”

So on the Wednesday, after a dinner of cold mutton, and the rest of the potatoes and greens of the night before fried up
together warm and brown, and some hot jam tart, Hetty spoke to Mona, who hung her head and began to cry at once.

At three o'clock she left the house, going down the road in the direction of Randiswell and her home in Mercy Terrace. And Hetty knew nothing more until Richard returned, late because of the fog, with Mona that evening.

Richard was putting on his coat at the foot of the banisters by the front door, the dark lantern having been lit, more from an idea of romantic companionship in the forthcoming ordeal of the lecture than for finding a way through the fog, when there came the noise of knuckles knocking on the coloured glass panes. He opened the door slightly, on the chain, and a woman's voice said breathlessly, “Is our Mona 'ere? Are you the master? 'Im as put it acrost our Mona will 'ave to pay, that's what I come to say, to get what is 'er rights!”

“Who is it, Dickie?” called out Hetty, in anxious tones behind him.

“I do not know,” he replied, and turning the screen of the lantern, shone the beam on the sad face of a prematurely-aged woman.

“I think it must be Mona's mother, dear.”

“Oh,” said Richard. “I'd better turn up the gas.” It was usually turned low for economy. He slid the dog of the chain out of its groove, and opened the door.

“I think I had better have a talk with Mrs. Monk, dear,” said Hetty. “You go to your lecture, Dickie,” she added, with an attempt at calm, “I am sure everything will be all right.”

“So it't'd better be!” cried Mrs. Monk. “It's a shime, an' the man what done it will 'ave to pay, Mr. Monk will see to that!”

“Why are you talking to me in that tone of voice?” said Richard, for the woman had addressed her remarks directly to himself.

“Mrs. Monk is not herself, Dickie,” said Hetty. “Pray go to your lecture, it will come all right. I will see Mrs. Monk, perhaps it will be best to leave it to me, dearest.”

But Richard was not going to leave Hetty with what he fancied to be a violent woman. It was plain to him now what was the implication.

“I must ask you to explain your attitude, Mrs. Monk,” he said. “No, Hetty, I cannot leave you: I shall have to abandon all idea
of my address, there is no help for it. Here, come into the kitchen; we shall awake the children if we talk here in the hall. Please wipe your boots on the mat, Mrs. Monk.”

“I'm sure I never intended no offence, sir.” Mrs. Monk wiped her boots vigorously. She was overawed to be inside such a house, of whose splendours she had heard from her daughter. She was now beginning to be afraid.

Hetty rose to the occasion. “Let me make you some cocoa; it is a cold raw night, Mrs. Monk. Mona, put on the little kettle, there's a good girl, fill it up from the big kettle on the hob, and set it on the ring. Mr. Maddison has to give a lecture in St. Simon's Church Hall, and must not be late. You go
,
dear, Mrs. Monk and I and Mona will have a talk together, and decide what is best to be done.”

Richard hesitated. His experiences in the district had given him a profound distrust of the lower orders. He was trying to make up his mind—a man already unsure because of lack of sufficient food—when a sudden thumping on the door and a shout without decided the question of go or remain, for him.

The scene that followed was one to be remembered with recurrent agitation by Hetty for many years, until greater events beginning seventeen years later shook, and altered, all of Hillside Road and the district circumadjacent to the Hill—the flux of consciousness extending to those known to her, even to far places of the earth, involved in an almost universal upsurge of human violence arising from repressed human instincts. On this November night of 1897 there were blows on the door of No. 11 Hillside Road when Richard refused entry to Mona's father. The blows were followed by the shattering of stained and leaded glass, and hysterical screams from the kitchen. Richard went to the door and fastened the brass chain on its catch, and then slid the bolt into its socket. Having turned out the gas, he ran down the three steps, lantern in hand, to the sitting-room. Pushing up the roll-top of the desk there, he seized his truncheon and whistle.

Meanwhile the front door, its latch having been turned by a bleeding hand thrust in the space of broken glass, and the bolt pushed back, was receiving heavy blows as the weight of the body outside was hurled against it. The screws holding the chain were torn out of the wood; the door was burst in and was only saved
from fracture against the wall by the coats hanging from their hooks on the rack.

By this time the children upstairs had been awakened by the noise. The screams of Phillip added to the upset as Monk the navvy, drunk on gin and porter from the Railway, pushed his way into the kitchen, tore off his shapeless cloth cap and hurled it upon the oilcloth, while the terrified women cowered back. With a bellowing cry of “Where is 'e, the 'kin' bleeder? Stole 'arf 'er wages, the 'kin' bastard, and put it acrost my litt'l gal, 'e 'as! By God A'mighty, when I done wiv 'im—where's 'e gorn, Jes' Chris' on tin wills? Coward, 'at's what 'e is, 'kin' coward run away! I'll get 'im, if I swing for it!”

Monk pulled off his coat, spat on his hands, loosened his belt, and went towards the passage, down which Richard had disappeared.

“Oh please do not!—Dickie, Dickie!—O my children!” and Hetty wrung her hands.

Then she heard the noise of the sash-window in the sitting-room being flung up; and a long-drawn
Fran-nn-nn-aa-aa-nn
—the twin discordant blast of a police whistle. Lantern in one hand, truncheon in the other, nickel-plated whistle in mouth, Richard was summoning help through the fog.

He drew a deep breath; blew a second blast; inhaled deeply again, as he secured the cord of the varnished wooden truncheon, with the arms of the City of London painted upon it, around his right wrist; and summoning up himself, with lantern in left hand, walked resolutely towards the kitchen, his nostrils wide, his hair feeling to be standing up on the back of his head. He felt entirely calm, events were happening outside himself.

Monk the navvy spat on his hands again, and was holding fists before face and head preparatory to the crouch and rush when the tip of the hard-wood billet, coming up with a flick of Richard's forearm and wrist—the old Indian club twirl—struck him under the chin and not down upon his head as he had expected. Immediately he collapsed in a loose heap.

More whistle blasts into the fog. Answering blasts and shouts. Footfalls upon asphalt, upon the tiles of the porch.

“Hullo, sir, had some trouble? We know this customer.”

Monk was hand-cuffed before being hauled to his feet, whimpering. He was frog-marched into the hall. More oaths as he was
pushed through the door, more blows; and the sobbing of Mrs. Monk and Mona in the kitchen audible again.

The delinquent was flung down upon the little lawn in front of the house. He pitched face-first over the burnt-brick rockery, there to lie and await the hand-ambulance.

By this time other front doors down Hillside Road had opened—“Montrose”, “Chatsworth”, “Knebworth”, etc. Voices came from the fog. One preceded action: Mrs. Bigge, shawl over Assyrian style of hair-dress, beset with pins and clasps after the mid-weekly wash, popped into “Lindenheim”, and at once went upstairs to Phillip, calling out as she hauled herself up by the banisters, “There now, little man, there now! Aunty Bigge is coming, Aunty Bigge is coming, to tell you about Goldilocks and the Three Bears!” Hetty was already with the baby.

When it was over—the statements written into books, the wheeled and hooded cart brought and the man taken away prostrate under the brown canvas, strapped across feet, middle, and wrists—Richard pasted brown paper over the shattered leaded panel of the front door, while Mrs. Bigge, in the kitchen, had a cup of cocoa, wide-eyed Phillip in her arms.

“I hope Josiah is not upset by it all, perhaps I ought to pop back into the house and see.” Gallantly Richard escorted Mrs. Bigge to the front gate of “Montrose”. From the notes of the harp coming from upstairs, it appeared that Mr. Bigge was undisturbed. Thanking her for her good offices, Richard returned to his own house, with no further thoughts of his lecture.