Donkey Boy (16 page)

Later Victoria said: when she had seen more of the children, “I wonder if there is anything in what Dickie says, that old Turney is a Jew? I have never met him, of course, and from all I’ve heard, I don’t think I want to. Have you seen him, Belle?”

“He came into the house while I was there, Viccy. He seemed an amiable sort of man, rather like the Prince of Wales in appearance, though I have only seen drawings and photographs of the Prince, of course.”

“The Prince of Wales does look a
little
bit Jewish, don’t you know, Belle. We have several of the Chosen People who have come recently to live in the neighbourhood. I have not called, of course. Perhaps George will be able to tell us, when he comes home. His head clerk buys their stationery from Mr. Turney’s firm, you know.”

That evening George Lemon, who had returned from his office in Lincoln’s Inn, placed a bottle of champagne in the dining-room bucket, for it was an especial occasion. Not only had Mafeking been relieved, but Hilary was coming to stay, being
expected any moment. “That is, if he isn’t held up by the celebrations in Town.” George Lemon imagined the crowds, the lights, the Regent Street bars, laughing girls’ faces, the fun, the fireworks in the Park; and kept his amiable glance away from the face of Isabelle, his sister-in-law, and the pretty, the familiar, the somewhat Burne-Jones, the remotely angelic of Victoria, which before marriage he had found so attractive.

During dinner Victoria brought up the question which had been occupying her mind: for of her brothers Richard was the favourite, and she had always regretted the circumstances of his marriage, believing that he had thrown himself at the first face he had seen after their mother’s death.

“Well,” said her husband. “The only possible connexion between the Prince of Wales and the Chosen People that I can see is that he seems to prefer bizarre companions, who in the words of Lord Odo Russell the other day ‘are not English’, being either Jews or Parsees, like Ernest Cassel, or Sassoon, and other rich
arrivistes.
But more particularly to your question, as I’ve never met Mr. Turney, and am not likely to, I cannot possibly answer. Why do you ask?”

Victoria then mentioned Phillip, and his strange temperament and behaviour.

“He seems to be at cross-purposes with himself,” she said. “That is so, in mixed blood, is it not?”

“Well, if you are going into the question of pure blood, who is there in England who could pass the test? They talk about the United States of America being the melting pot, but what about Britain in the past, with all its invasions and foreign settlements? The Lemons are Cornish for a good many generations, most of us have the dark look of Phoenicians, with a few bright exceptions when we cast a fair-haired blue-eyed type like m’ sister Beatrice, for example, but we more probably came from the north coast of France, Le Mans may be our derivation. Nobody can be sure. So what does a drop more or less of Jewish blood in the old British bucket matter?” And George Lemon went to the ice bucket, and after the merest token pointing of the napkin-wrapped bottle at Isabelle, who at once put her hand over her glass, filled his own and drank.

George Lemon reflected that the Maddisons fancied themselves too much. That was the trouble with women brought up
in the country to believe that their own world of a few square miles was the centre of everything; and where, anyhow, were the Maddisons today? His wife’s family had been a branch of the Scottish Maddisons, who coming south of the border, had bought land, acquired more by marriage, and in due course made a fortune out of the coal beneath their properties. There was a baronetcy dating from the seventeenth century. Since the firm of solicitors of which he was a junior partner was one mainly concerned in the conveyancing of land, George Lemon knew many details of landed families which would have shocked most people who believed in their own invincible respectability, were such details made known to them. The entire Victorian idiom was hypocritical, as Theodora, the only decent in-law he possessed, had realised. As for his own dear wife, she would never be able to believe that life should be otherwise than noble and Tennysonian: the penalty of having a dissolute papa!

Thank heaven young Hilary was coming to stay; he had a sense of reality. George Lemon finished the bottle by himself, after the sisters had retired to the drawing-room, and then helped himself to some ’64 Cockburn, to celebrate Hilary’s inevitable night out, with London gone mad. Why had he not stayed up himself, for such an unique occasion?

Hilary appeared at The Lindens the following afternoon, full of what he had seen. The complete stoppage of traffic, and the vast crowds besieging the West End had prevented him, he said, making his apologies to his sister, from coming down the night before. He had tried to find a place to send a telegram, in vain.

“When eventually I fought my way off the shoulders of those who insisted on carrying me around, I doubt if there was a post office left open in the whole of London. The entire place had run riot. As I’ve already told George, when I went round to see him in his office this morning, I was coming out of my club, in uniform, for owing to the transport of extra troops to South Africa at Southampton, there has been delay in sending on my boxes, and I had no other kit in town. Well, as I was saying, I was hardly off the steps of m’ club, when I was hoisted up on somebody’s shoulders. No use me trying to explain that my uniform was not the blue ensign, but the red, I was carried round like a hero.”

“Well, you would have been if you had been in Mafeking, wouldn’t you?” said Victoria, loyally but inconsequentially.

“I suppose there were some naval gun teams in the column which relieved the place, and that was good enough for the hoi poloi,” laughed Hilary. “Lord, what a schemozzle it was! People blowing coaching horns and bugles, waving Chinese lanterns and Union Jacks, carrying portraits of Baden-Powell, men and women of all classes dancing and singing. I got away from my particular idolators outside Swan and Edgar’s, and made my way up Regent Street to a bar where one usually sees a friend at any time, it’s a great meeting place for sailors. I was having a drink in the long bar with a fellow I know when in came the Prince of Wales with some friends, and would you believe it, he walked the entire length of the bar, sweeping his walking stick along the counter from one end to the other, knocking off every blessed glass! Then in his guttural voice he called out that everyone present must drink the health of the South African Field Force, coupled with the gallant defenders of Mafeking. Lord, you should have seen their faces!”

“I suppose it must have been a shock to them,” said Victoria, with her slight smile.

“Shock, Good Lord, no, Viccy! They were delighted! We drank as directed, sang God Save the Queen, and flung our glasses on the floor. Immediately afterwards, H.R.H. went out, everyone standing to attention. Before we knew what happened, he was gone again.”

Isabelle looked puzzled. “But surely——?” She looked at her sister. “Would not the proprietor lose all his glasses?”

“Good Lord, he didn’t care! It’s a custom, you know, to break a glass after an important toast. The Prince of Wales broke them before, as well as after!”

“But who would pay for the—the toast, Hilary?”

“The Prince’s equerry, of course, Belle. After all, it was a very special occasion.”

“Well, I don’t pretend to understand the ways of London Society,” said Isabelle. “But it is very nice to see you again, Hilary.” She went to give him a kiss, and he turned his smooth, pink cheek to receive the rather thick-lipped pressure of one who had always regarded him as the dearest little brother.

Hilary Maddison was considered to be the fortunate one of the
family. Had he not, at so young an age, travelled around the world, and being popular, found favour in the eyes of the rich and important, to the extent of being worth over ten thousand pounds by his twenty-eighth birthday? Possibly more, for the value of the farm he had bought in New South Wales had increased since he had acquired it for a song, when he was twenty-one. It was worked by a partner, while Hilary continued his duties as special officer in the
Phasiana,
one of the great white liners of the famous MacKarness Line. Sir Robert MacKarness, himself, that tough, blunt Glaswegian ex-shipping clerk, with a face and physique of Scots granite, had selected him as one of his particular young men who, he told them, if they could work—not would work, but
could
work—driving themselves as hard and as constantly as a yellow-metal screw is driven at the end of its shaft, then they could not be kept from rising to the high levels of Britain’s major industry, and its only future, upon the sea. And though Sir Robert MacKarness affected to despise the English gentleman as effete, yet he knew the value of one who was not afraid of work, and who would pay the strictest attention to detail during every hour of the twenty-four, seven days a week, and fifty-two weeks a year. The future, he said, more than once to Hilary Maddison, his favourite among his protegés, was founded in the present; so future and present were coupled as a universal joint. Experience was everything; let a young man with ability learn from the bottom upwards, to ground himself in reality, for the great changes that were coming with the new century.

Hilary had begun work in his Clyde-side office; then he had accompanied Sir Robert, who had found him to be thorough, reliable, and with an ease of manner that the older man admired, as a confidential writer and messenger combined. Pleased with his work and unfailing grasp of essentials, Sir Robert had used him on special missions about the routes and ports of the house of MacKarness—Southampton, Gibraltar, Port Said, Colombo, Indian Ocean and China Sea, Hong Kong and Sydney, flying fish and Southern Cross—a pleasant life, with strict attention to business, with many opportunities in both the world of business and pleasure. Hilary had many a ship-board romance, discreetly conducted, of course, and always conscious that the white of one’s uniform was distinct in the nights of phosphorescent waves under the low blaze of stars. In short, Hilary Maddison, self-assured
by the thought of his ten thousand pounds, every one the product of his intelligence, was extremely pleased with himself and with the prospect of three months’ leave before him, after three years’ foreign service, in the only place where spring was really spring—England.

When George Lemon came home, talk between the two men was upon another level of living.

“London last night was the strangest experience, George. I suppose it’s never happened like that before in all our history. The news of Waterloo, even. Everybody appeared to be in the West End, and the strangest thing was the feeling of friendly unity in the crowds. I should not have believed such a thing possible, if I hadn’t experienced it myself. You know Kipling’s ‘East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet’, well, they dam’ well did, as far as London is concerned. I’m no radical, the idea of men being equal is nonsense—one day at sea in a ship proves that, if proof were required—but I must say it did my eyes good, George, to feel the spirit of unity in the crowds, after seeing so many dagos in the East.”

“We’ve got our little Englanders all the same, Hilary. You’ve been away, and haven’t experienced it. That little Welshman in the House of Commons, whom Lord Lonsdale calls Mr. George, has been standing up for the Boers. The fellow ought to be shot, lettin’ the prestige of the country down, giving more powder and shot for the Germans—not your own respected cousins, and their sort, of course, but the commercial gentry around the Kaiser, who have probably fooled and egged on the All Highest to send that dam’ sabre-rattlin’ telegram to ‘Oom Paul’. God, have you seen a photograph of the old blackguard? He’s a fool?”

“Kruger? He’s something straight out of the Old Testament, by way of an undertaker’s shop. The brains behind him are after the goldfields. Barnato, Oppenheim, Wernher, Joel—they are the boys who will eventually matter.”

“Of course the Jews are behind everything, but we couldn’t do without them. They provide the money for nearly everything, you know.”

“Well, now Bobs has gone out with Kitchener—one of our ships had the job of transporting them, by the way—we shall soon settle the Boers’ hash. What a word,
Boers.
Rightly named,
if you ask my opinion. I must tell you, George. I saw a curious sight in Trafalgar Square, of all places. There were a couple of tommies rogering two tarts up against the wall below the National Gallery. As bold as brass, and not giving a damn who saw them. Would you believe it? And in Pall Mall, as I went down to my club, I saw two fellows turn up a girl, quite young she was, and smack her bottom in full view, drawers and all, as though it was part of the festivities.”

“What happened?”

“I didn’t wait to see. Besides, there was such a press of people, all yelling their blasted heads off, squirting water in people’s faces, and waggling ticklers, I was pretty glad to get out of the scrum and into the comparative quiet of the Voyagers.”

Hilary paused—they were sitting in the rose arbour—while he checked a thought. George had a sharp brain, and would recognise his train of thought if he didn’t go ’possum with another idea first. Hilary wanted to ask about George’s younger sister, Beatrice, the meltingly beautiful, honey-blonde, blue-eyed Bee, recently widowed.

“I hear that Dickie’s two children are here, George. His wife’s got scarlet fever, Viccy tells me. D’you know, I never knew Dickie was married until I opened my post bag in Sydney and heard from John details of my father’s death, let me see, it must be a little more than five years ago. And the next time we called at Sydney, there was another letter from John, telling me of his wife Jenny’s death in childbirth. I must try and see both John and Dick this leave.”

“Richard’s a shy bird,” said George.

“He always was. Hullo, here’s Belle with his offspring.”

Isabelle had appeared round the gravelled path, pushing the mail cart. Seeing the two men, Phillip hid behind her voluminous skirts, which stirred some of the yellow pebbles as she advanced sedately upon her buttoned glacé kid boots.