Donkey Boy (18 page)

Phillip resented the pink face so near his own, the hands holding his ribs. He tried to get away.

“Whoa, young hoss! Answer me, did Daddy smack your bottom good and hard? You young rip, you! Why should I play ball with you? Give me a good reason. Come on, don’t be shy! I shan’t eat you!”

Phillip began to feel that the Uncle White Hilary might do this very thing. Hilary was laughing in a way that frightened Phillip. He struggled harder to get free.

“Do you like stories, Phillip? Shall I tell you about sharks?”

“No, thank you, Uncle White.”

“But it’s very interesting. What’s the matter with you? Other little boys I know like to be told stories of sharks. Stop wriggling, or I’ll put you in irons, you young cuss, you!”

“I want Aunty Belle!”

“Now now, you must be a man, my boy. Keep still, you little rip! Very well, into irons you go,” and lifting up the awkward child, Hilary put him between his legs, crossed one ankle over the other, brought his knees under the white duck trousers together, and chuckled at the writhings of the skinny creature to escape.

“Don’t you want to hear how we catch sharks off the Australian coast, Phillip?”

“No, you fool!”

“Well, I’m jiggered! You’re a caution, and no mistake.”

Phillip tried to pull himself out of the locked legs. He clutched
the short grass of the lawn, but was pinned between shin bones and ankles. Amusement and dislike possessed Hilary. He would tame the little brute, who had refused his offer of friendship.

“We go out in a boat with lumps of pork and some lengths of stiff bamboo. Then we sharpen the ends of a length of bamboo and push both ends into the meat. Then we tie the ends together lightly, and throw the pork into the water. And then what do you think happens next?”

Phillip was still struggling, his face close to the grass. Only the black-haired back of his head on the thin stalk of neck was visible above the fallen-forward square collar of his sailor blouse. In amusement Hilary lifted up the pleated skirt, and laughed as he saw a small rump sticking up like that of a pale, hairless monkey.

“Well, I’ll tell you what happens next. A dead dog is just as good to attract a shark. Or a naughty little devil like you. The shark turns on his back to swallow the meat. Down it goes. But as he digests it in his belly the bamboo bow flies open and rips him up. He leaps out of the water, smacking down to try and get rid of the bamboo spears, but each time he bleeds more, and at the smell of blood all the other sharks come around, and go mad as they lash the water, tearing him to shreds and eating them.”

As in a nightmare, Phillip was struggling to get away.

“Let me go, please, Uncle White. I beg your pardon, Uncle White, I beg your pardon,” he cried. Hilary was amazed to see that the little fellow was weeping. Immediately he was contrite.

“I say, I’m sorry, young fellow. I thought we were playing a game, Honest Injun, I did! Also, I thought the story would interest you,” he said, taking him into his arms, and trying to get Phillip to look at him. “Come now,” he said, in his smoothest tones. “Let me dry your tears. Tut tut, this will never do. Anyway, sharks are the most frightful creatures, and deserve no mercy, you know. Have you ever seen pictures of one? Now I wonder what I have got in my pocket. Let’s see, shall we? Look, here’s a shilling. Don’t cry any more. Really, Phil, I intended it only as fun! It was only a game I was playing with you!”

But Phillip would accept neither friendliness nor shilling. What a little freak he was, a proper donkey boy! Hilary let him go, and watched with a feeling of amused contempt his nephew hurrying, head down, towards the house.

As Phillip went through the shadowed room, on the way to
lock himself in the lavatory, he suddenly started, for a voice said, out of nowhere, “Darling, whatever has been happening?”

Phillip looked up, and saw a black shining soft lady, sitting in a chair. She knelt down on one knee and held out black glistening arms to him, and a funny thing like the larder window was over her beautiful face.

“Phillip,” said the soft voice. “Oh, you pet! Kiss me, darling!” and the lady lifted back her veil and her smell was lovely. He yielded. Scarcely touching his head with her black fingers she pressed her lips against his cheek, breathing sweetness upon him a moment before she sat back in the chair again; and then leaning forward with one gloved hand upon the handle of her parasol, and her chin supported by a fingertip of the other hand, she said softly, “So you are shy Richard’s little boy! And oh dear, there is another tear on your cheek! I tasted one just now with my lips. Are you lonely without your mother? Poor pet, don’t feel lonely any more, I will look after you; I am your new Aunty Bee.” And over her shoulder she called out, “Hilary, you are a first-class, unimaginative oaf!” She held Phillip close to her, and spoke gently to him, watching the expression of his face, as he regarded her gravely, with his enormous eyes.

Phillip did not realise what she was murmuring to him, so much as he felt what she gave to him of her own feeling; as indeed all the faces he had known had made him, in layer upon layer as a coral reef is built up, in part of their own feelings. This black soft strange lady was not like an aunty.

“You are very sweet, my pet,” she said gently. “I would like to steal you, and take you to my home. Would you like that?”

She touched his forehead, and smoothed his dark hair, strangely moved for what she perceived in his face, in the deep perplexity and acceptance of life in his candid eyes, in the sweet mobility and gentleness of his mouth. “Little pet!” she whispered again; and smiling at him with unfirm, quivering lips, she felt the tears coming into her eyes. This child was clear as the Cornish sea of her own childhood; as her own lost innocence, of that time when she saw herself as fair and free as barley in August, waving in the fields of the headland she had known as a child, riding on her pony along the bridle-paths by the cliffs, above a summer sea as deeply blue as the eyes of this most gentle, this most innocent little boy before her.

“How your Mamma must love you,” whispered Beatrice.

“Phillip must go to bed now, it is already past his bedtime,” said Victoria’s voice. She had come silently upon the deep carpet. “Aunty Belle will bathe you, Phillip, and then give you your bowl of sop, if you are a good boy.”

“Oh, may he not stay up a little longer, Viccy dear? I have only just made the acquaintance of your enchanting nephew. Viccy, he is fey! Look at his eyes!”

Victoria smiled. She liked Bee; who didn’t? The trouble with Bee, she thought, was that, as a successful actress on the stage, she could never know when she was
really
sincere in what she said in ordinary life.

“He
is
fey, you know,” said Bee, staring at the boy so tranquil before her. “He is pure Celtic. Look at the shape of his head! Feel this bump at the back. What an imagination must be stored in there—hundreds of years, thousands of years, in that little barrow. The past never dies, you know, Viccy.”

“Do you think that accounts for it, then?” asked Victoria, in her thin voice, with an anticipatory smile on her gentle face, as though she would like to believe all that Bee said. The quiet spell was broken by Hilary, magnificent and assured in his white uniform, stepping up from the garden into the room, and Bee swiftly lowering her veil before turning to meet him. Phillip, feeling blank now that the lady with the yellowy hair and smiling eyes seemed to have forgotten him, as she went away with Uncle White, allowed himself to be led up to his bath, then to his bowl of bread and milk while Aunty Belle told him not to linger as his Aunt Victoria was giving a dinner party that night to many people. He must not forget to clean his teeth thoroughly, to wash out his glass afterwards, to fold up his clothes, to kneel and say his prayers and to ask God to make Mother better soon, then to get into bed—a large, wide bed, like Mummy’s bed—and thereafter to make no sound, but to go to sleep.

“You need not be afraid of the dark,” she said. “For your Uncle Hilary is going to sleep in your bed beside you. There are six extra people sleeping in the house tonight. So you must be sure to be asleep when your uncle comes up.”

“Can I have the door left open, please, Aunty Belle?”

“No, dear, it is not necessary.”

“Then can I have the window open?”

Isabelle prided herself that she knew the ways of children. Did she not remember her own childish fears of being left alone, she the eldest who later had the burden of the younger ones?

“Yes, dear, if you are very quiet, and promise not to call out, but to go to sleep immediately, I will leave the door just a little way open. Did you ask God to make you a better boy, dear?”

“Yes, Aunty Belle. And Mummy and Daddy, and Mavis and Mrs. Feeney, and Aunty Bee and Uncle Lemon, and Uncle White and Aunty Victoria and you as well, Aunty Belle.”

“Yes, dear, you mentioned them in your prayers, that is right.”

“To make them all better, Aunty Belle. Don’t forget to leave the door open, will you?”

“No, dear. I’ll put the chair here, to stop it from closing. Now go to sleep,” she said, as she pushed her wet lips, so much harder than Aunty Bee’s, against his cheekbone, “and don’t you make a sound, like a good boy.”

He made no sound; the tears for Mother fell silently. Later he felt sadly tranquil, as he heard a bird singing
jug-jug-jug,
then
teroo-teroo-teroo,
and watched the sunlight on the tops of trees, then the sounds of people passing in the passages outside, the noises of horses’ hoofs and carriage wheels, more voices coming upstairs, doors shutting, and then a lot of talking and laughter from down below. And there were lanterns alight in the garden, and people walking there when it was growing dark—all of it far away from his life, nearly as far away as God, who was waiting a long way away, never to be seen or heard, but just waiting, waiting, waiting, much farther away than Mummie, who was as far away as the world, the world which, however much he tried to make it come nearer to him by thinking it near, always remained far away. Listening and thinking, silently weeping and then singing very quietly to himself about the world—thus the hours passed, and the darkness settled deeper, but still the bird sang
jug-jug-jug,
and then, after waiting, it sang
teroo-teroo-teroo,
and then sad cries came from it. The bird stopped singing at last, and then the horses’ hoofs and the carriage wheels were heard again, with voices in the night. The world seemed nearer now, and he felt sleepy, yawned, and thinking of the tree at the bottom of the garden, and the black fence, drifted out of the world.

H
ILARY
R
OBERT VON
F
ÖHRE
M
ADDISON
, going upstairs to bed ten minutes after one o’clock in the morning, bumped into the white cane-bottomed chair stuck in the doorway, and muttered a series of curses
sotto
voce.

Awakened, Phillip lay still with the instinct of self-preservation. He pretended to be asleep. Uncle lit the gas. But he was no longer Uncle White; he was black. Phillip, peeping between half-open lids, thought that this was because it was night. Uncle sat on the chair and took off his coat, and then he was white on top again, and creaking. Through narrowed eyes Phillip saw him take off his shoes, and Uncle was grunting. He watched him take off his trousers, and his white creaking shirt, then his vest, and Uncle was big and pink and hairy, like a sort of bear. Uncle put on a light-blue suit, of coat and trousers, not a nightshirt like Father wore. And Uncle had a dressing-gown like Daddy’s, only softer and smoother, like it was made of quilt, and a blue rope to tie it with. Why was Uncle dressing again so soon? Then Uncle went out and shut the door ever so quietly and the light was left on, and when he came back Uncle carried a towel. And then Uncle opened his bag with a snap and closed the bag with another snap and then he pulled the chain of the gas and it went out and the mantle was red in the dark like in the front room sleeping on the floor until it cooled off and a little by-pass light stayed on. And then the door was opened ever so quietly and closed again, while he knew Uncle was holding his breath.

When Phillip awakened again he heard the bird singing
jug-
jug-jug,
then
teroo-teroo-teroo
very loudly in the new garden outside. He lay listening, his eyes wide open and staring round the strange room. He saw the little light still burning on the by-pass. He got out of bed and went in the pot under the bed, then got back into bed again, seeing Uncle White’s clothes on the chair. Then he went to sleep and when he awoke again Uncle was getting into bed beside him and the springs were sagging and all the bedclothes
were taken, and this made his back cold; so he gripped the bedclothes in a hand over his shoulder, and then rolled over to get them back again, because it was his bed. It was now Uncle’s turn to be cold. Uncle laughed and said, “Well, damn my eyes, you little cockerel!” and laughed again as he pulled the top blanket over himself. Phillip was not afraid of Uncle White now, and wanted to kick him for getting into his bed, but instead withdrew as far as he could with the coverlet around him and whispered, his back turned to the intruder, “You fool.”

P
HILLIP
thought it was lovely at Uncle George’s house. The sun always shone in the garden. There were lots of strawberries and cream. He was promised a new sailor suit, with
long
trousers. Every night before bed Aunty Bee told him and Mavis about Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Uncle Hilary said that Aunty Bee made everyone feel it was a beautiful world. And Uncle Hilary did not catch him any more, or Aunty Belle tell him he was naughty. And there were lots of wooden boxes and everyone had presents, and there were jars of jelly and nice-to-smell joss-sticks burning in the morning-room on the chimney-piece beside the clock and photographs and little elephants and fat yellow booders.

Uncle Hilary said a booder was a god, but not on this side of the world. And there were little sharks’ mouths stretched wide with a stick in them, and one was for Father, with a hammock of sparter grass. Sparter grass was slippery and yellow and heavy and you rolled out easily if you turned over too soon, and Uncle Hilary said it was not sparter grass but es-pa-to grass.

Uncle Hilary gave him the new sailor suit, with
long
trousers, white like Uncle Hilary’s, and this made him a big boy, ever so big. “Look, Aunty Viccy, I am as high as this!” and with hand held flat on the top of his head he showed how high he was, much higher than he looked because he was really high up where his head was. Proudly wearing the long trousers, he was like Uncle Hilary, and took Uncle’s hand to go for a walk without being asked, while Aunty Bee held Uncle’s other hand and swung it as they walked, so he swung Uncle’s hand too. And he had a cricket bat from Uncle George and a book of
Just
So
Stories
from Aunty Viccy; and when Aunty Belle left to be a companion to the Dowager Lady Botesdale she gave him a shilling for his Post Office Savings Book. He loved everyone now, except the gardener, who always said, “Clear off out of it,” when he went to watch what the gardener was doing.

Jessie now looked after him when he went for a walk, with Mavis in the mail cart. They went for lovely walks, but he must
hold the mail cart when they crossed the road. His great friend was an old gentleman dog called Joey who wagged his tail to see him.

One day Phillip took a loaf to have a picnic with Joey. They ran away together into the woods and saw wonderful birds, and a big pond where lots of white butterflies were flying up and down on the water, and huge spotted fishes were splashing with open mouths to eat the butterflies. They ate some of the loaf, but Joey took his bits away and scratched earth over them. A man came up in a brown hat and brown coat and a gun, and tied a string on Joey’s collar and took them back, for they were lost. Jessie had red eyes, and said, “Oh, Master Phillip, how
could
you!” And Uncle George said thank you to the man and gave him a yellow sixpence, and the man touched his brown hat and then patted him on the head and said, “He’s a cute little beggar, sir, asking me lots o’ questions, and all to the point, what’s more,” and Lady Catt cried over Joey and Phillip wondered why she was not called Lady Dog. Then Uncle George said, “Let me come on the next picnic with you, Phil old fellow. If I am away, please wait for me, for I love picnics.” Aunt Bee kissed Uncle George and called him an angel. But Aunty Viccy said he was a naughty boy.

Phillip did not connect the reserve his Aunt Victoria was beginning to feel for him with the dish of apples on the table of the morning-room. Every morning one of the apples was being bitten. The bite was taken, so far as could be decided, before half-past ten of a morning. At any rate, it was before the children had their cups of Epp’s cocoa at eleven o’clock.

Did both the children go to the dish? The bite was small, and the skin of the apples being tough and wrinkled—they were Ribston Pippins from Hilary’s farm in New South Wales, brought home crated in the
Phasiana
—no distinct teeth-marks were visible, as might have been the case with softer apples. Then there was the question of the height of the dish from the floor. The dish could be reached by Mavis alone, only if a stool were put against the table. There were fingermarks on the table, but whether they were those of Mavis or of Phillip Victoria could not decide.

So she waited in the hall, where were saddle-bag armchairs and a chesterfield; jaguar skins on the floor from Malay, and Hilary; a writing table with blotter set in tooled leather, two silver inkwells and tray with both quill and steel pens, another of dark-blue writing paper embossed with the Lemon crest, which
device was also to be discerned upon the envelope flaps. Every morning Victoria sat at her table, attending to her correspondence. Near her was a bowl filled with scores of visiting cards of several sizes; while in the drawer of the Jacobean writing table, with its two latten drops, were hundreds more, all records of the polite rectitude of living.

Victoria wore a white shirt-blouse in the morning, with a high starched linen collar and a thin tie of black velvet, with a grey serge skirt. She called it her housekeeping uniform, since she had no housekeeper. George, a younger son, had yet to make his own way in the world. She must practise economy.

While she attended to her account books and correspondence in the morning, the door leading to the morning-room was left open. Upon the polished parquet flooring beyond the door lay a reflexion of light from the french windows at the farther end of the room. Anyone coming in from the garden would throw a shadow on the dull shine of the floor.

The apple-biting had occurred on the very first morning after the arrival of Dickie’s children. Phillip and Mavis were called in from the garden to have their cups of Epps’ cocoa at eleven o’clock and put to bed at ten minutes after eleven. At five minutes to one o’clock they were allowed to get up, their faces and hands were washed, their hair brushed, before being bibbed for their midday meal in what was called the schoolroom. The younger of the two maids was appointed to be the temporary nurse, since Isabelle took luncheon with the others in the dining-room.

Victoria, with some reason, suspected Phillip to be the culprit. He had that stealthy look at times, she said; and he appeared in unexpected places about the house, silently staring at her when she came upon him. The gardener, too, sometimes found him in his potting shed, peering and prying, though it was only fair to say that he had done no damage, and in so far as it was known, had removed nothing. Nor did he pick flowers. He did, however, have an unpleasant habit of catching flies and putting them in spiders’ webs, then watching the wretched things being eaten by the spiders.

“I hope,” she said to him, “that you are not the sort of cruel little boy who pulls the wings off poor little flies, Phillip.”

“No, Aunty Viccy. When I am sorry for them, I bash the cruel spiders.”

He was inclined to be mischievous, too. One day he went into the kitchen, when no one was there, by the back door, and removed the fly-paper which Cook had hung by her open window. This sticky strip, burdened with the dead and the dying, the frantically buzzing, the coagulated and feebly struggling, had been carried to the potting shed, and placed upon a wide, level web like a blue silken carpet with a tunnel at its dark end where dwelt a particularly big black spider with eight long hairy legs and glistening eyes above the face and inverted horns of a miniature bull. This was Phillip’s favourite spider. The gardener, who had just pulled a blackbird’s nest with downy young from a bush, to bury in his compost heap, complained to his mistress. It was
his
spider, he said, and he had been watching it for two seasons. He didn’t want no one a-messin’ about in his shed.

“You must not interfere with the gardener’s things, nor must you go into the kitchen, do you understand, Phillip?”

“Yes, Aunty Viccy.”

“Did you bite the apples in the dish, Phillip?”

“No, Aunty Viccy.”

“It is not a very nice thing to do, you know, when you are a guest in someone else’s house, and everyone is being kind to you. You understand what I am saying, don’t you, Phillip?”

“Yes, Aunty Viccy.”

“Then run along, and be a good boy, and play with your sister in the garden, and don’t let her pick the flowers, will you?”

“No, Aunty Viccy.”

Mavis did pick flowers, and smacking gently on the hands had not cured her.
Could
it be Mavis, who was biting just one apple every morning—a fresh one every day?

Victoria looked out of the other window. There was the Catt’s overfed dog in the front garden, cocking his leg against the cotoneaster, the brute. Opening the window, she shoo’d him away. Joey took not the slightest notice, but deliberately scratched his hind legs on the grass border, then turned over to roll on his back, while gurgling to himself, the fool! Half amused, Victoria watched the old dog laboriously get on his feet again, shake his absurd harness, and then trot down the path round the side of the house to find his playmate Phillip. Well, there was no harm in it; but he was no Fritz: there was no dog like Fritz, and never could be ever again.

Victoria sighed.

There were several photographs of Fritz on the wall, with others hanging there, correctly spaced and aligned. Her favourite photograph was of the family group, on the lawn before the house, the last one taken before the break-up of the family. What a splendid-looking family they were! Father tall and upright, standing between John and Dickie at the back; Mother in the centre, on a chair, Isabelle on her right and Augusta on her left—Mother in her lace cap and bodice button’d to the neck, the elder sisters in white straw hats with flat brims, and print dresses with hooked collars under the chin and sleeves to the wrists. Sitting at their feet was Hilary, in monkey jacket and peaked cap, between Theodora and herself sitting cross-legged and holding lawn-tennis raquettes, their long silky fair hair falling over their shoulders, and such a decent, straight look in their open blue eyes. Just compare that Maddison look with little Phillip’s! And there was Fritz sitting at Father’s feet, the same challenging look in his eyes as in those of the master he adored! Dogs did take after their masters, she was sure. Where could a finer family be found to-day? If only Father had not been
too
good,
he would never have had his heart broken as he did, and so have taken to excess. He was
driven
to it, by those brutes of radicals with the Free Trade!

Victoria, musing with some agitation, as she had mused many times before, saw a shadow on the polished floor by the open door of the morning-room. At last she would catch the thief! She got up and tip-toed across the hall. Peeping round the door, she saw—Joey. His tongue was hanging out as he panted slightly. Joey looked up at her, expectantly, as though saying, “Where’s Phillip? Can’t he come out to play?”

“Get out, you brute! Get away! Go back to your own garden! Come here, sir! Shoo! Shoo! Be off!”

Victoria followed his tip-tippering feet (for Joey’s toe-claws were overgrown) on the parquet floor and out into the garden and round the path and so to the gate. Joey obediently trotted home; while Victoria discovered how he had got in. That beastly butcher’s boy had left the tradesmen’s gate unfastened again.

The peculiar thing about the incident was that, when she had left the morning-room a moment before, she could have sworn that no apple had been touched in the bowl. But, upon
returning there, she saw at once that a bite had been taken out of the apple nearest the edge of the table. Could it have been Joey, fantastic as the idea was? Ah, there was Mavis, sitting on the step, holding a sweet-pea in one hand and her dolly in the other! Mavis was obviously the culprit! So she was put to bed without any Epps’ cocoa, it having been impressed upon her that she was a very naughty girl.

The next morning Mavis went cocoa-less to bed again, this time without her doll. As the doll, which Hetty had given Mavis, was the container, preserver, and token of all mummy-feeling for Mavis, she wept. Phillip crept up to see her, and showed her how to catch flies with a scooping hand, in order to make her forget; but Mavis went on crying. Aunty Victoria came in and told him to go downstairs.

During the next seven days one apple on the dish had one bite taken out of it every morning, and as regularly Mavis was taken up to bed without doll or cocoa. Then the dish of apples was removed, without it being known that it was not Mavis who had taken the bite.

Phillip felt no shame that his sister had been punished for what he had done. He was sorry for Mavis being in bed; but it did not occur to him that he was to blame. Being sent to bed, like crying, and being told not to do anything, was just ordinary. There were, however, satisfactions, like presents given to you, and presents you gave to yourself. He had given himself a present of something out of a drawer, which he kept hidden, otherwise it would be taken away from him. It was like a little clock, only it did not tick, and you could not wind it up. When you opened the case you saw

inside the case. He could read the words and figures to himself, though he had not been able to read words out of books when Mummy had tried to teach him at home.

Then one morning Phillip had seen a tiny little one like his on Uncle Hilary’s watch-chain, and learned that it was a compass, and what it was for.

His compass was hidden on a ledge under the morning-room table. He was going to use it, with a slice of the loaf from the picnic, and a packet of Epps’ cocoa, when he sailed all by
himself away over the seas, on the sledge Father had promised him when he was bigger.

The sledge would be turned into a raft, like the picture Aunty Belle had shown him of a man called Lumber Jack. He had bitten the apples on top of the table because then the people would not think of under the table, where the compass, the bread, and the packet of Epps’ cocoa were hidden. In bed at night, thinking of himself sailing away on the raft, he did not cry for Mummy, but saw himself on the gently gliding raft, which had a little sail, and he was safe on it, with his secret food. He sailed from a place called Tilbury, and as he sat by himself on the raft he sang a little song of sadness to the waves and the stars, for he had gone away from everyone he knew for ever and ever; and then remembering where he really was, he was ever so glad that he was lying beside Mavis; and when he put his hand on her soft warm tummy it made him feel very good and kind, for she was soft and warm like Aunty Bee. He loved Aunty Bee, but no one must ever be told.