Donkey Boy (27 page)

“Yes, yes,” murmured Mr. Bigge.

“There'll never be another like him,” remarked Hugh.

“Beautiful language, beautiful!” cried Hetty.

Sarah wiped away a tear; and held her daughter Dorrie's hand.

“Well, boys, what did ye think of it, eh?”

“Oh, we learn it at school, Gran'pa,” said Hubert. “But it sounds better in the dark from you, sir.”

“The Elizabethan spirit, will it ever visit England again, Mr. Turney?” said Theodora.

Richard was thinking, not of the scene Mr. Turney had read, but of the hypocrisy of the old man: that he could not, being what he was, possibly understand the passage. He was bogus, a sentimentalist, enjoying the sound of his own voice, and extracting the feelings of Shakespeare, as though they were his own. Even so, he could not altogether spoil the beauty of the phrases, which were a revelation. Richard had never seen a Shakespearean play, and had only dull memories of trying to learn by heart certain passages in his private school at Slough.

All parties have to end, to the grief of little children dazed in enchantment. Up Hillside Road came the steady pecking of a horse's hoofs; the crunching of iron wheel-rims on granite
kerb-stones
, the cry of “Whoa!”, the jingle of reins, a momentary silence in the night as the cabman descended.

His round face peered in the open window, to vanish again as Tom invited him in for a glass of punch. He came in,
watery-eyed
, hoarse-voiced, tarred bowler hat on his head. Cracked and thickened fingers enclosed the glass, and with a “Best respects”,
the liquid went down his throat. A toast; and glasses refilled. Might the children have just a little sip? There was no harm in it; wait a minute, add more sugar and lemon and hot water to their glasses.

“The Queen, God bless her!”

They stood in the light of seven candles now burning on the chimney-piece. Then they held crossed hands, swung arms as they sang
Should
Auld
Acquaintance
be
forgot.

Sarah was crying silently; so was Dorrie, and her sister Hetty. Tears filled old Mr. Newman's eyes; the dead glimmered there. Mrs. Bigge smiled as her tears fell; even the cabby brushed the back of his hand across lashless lids. Richard, despite himself, moved to his sister Theodora and took her hand; for he could see how she was affected, and he admired Sidney Cakebread. The small boys were silent as bandoliers and slouch hats were put on, straps fastened under chins. The party was breaking up, the party was broken, it was night, the horse was turning round, the candles smoking in the carriage lamps, sparks arose from braked wheels sliding over flints of the road. The shoes of the horse struck sparks, too. Then down from the zenith of the sky slid a shooting star, towards the mass of the grammar school dark against the curious and pale horizon of the north-west.

And Phillip cried in his bed, because Uncle Hugh and Uncle Sidney had gone away and might never come back again. In the next room, equally silent upon her pillow, Theodora was weeping, too. There were other tears in the night; and when summer was gone, and leaves were fallen, and winter was come again with fogs and frost, Thomas Turney came in one morning, after Richard had left for the City, and said to his daughter, “I have bad news, a cable from Hugh. Sidney Cakebread has died of enteric fever. Will ye come with me, Hetty, and break the news to Dorrie?”

“A
UNTY
B
IGGE
, Aunty Bigge, I am going holiday-making to my cousins at Beau Brickhill, before I go to the new school after Easter! The outside porter is coming up for our portmanteaux soon. And Grannie has given me a shilling; look, Aunty Bigge!”

Phillip was looking over the garden fence, which was low, since the Bigges’ gravelled back way was nearly two feet below the Maddisons’ back way. The six-foot fence was therefore only four feet high where Phillip was looking over.

Mrs. Bigge was watering some flower-pots on the shelves of her greenhouse, which enclosed an area from her back door. Spring was in the air, rooks in the row of elms beyond the bottom line of garden fences were cawing at their nests. This was, however, not entirely the spring the Bigges had looked forward to. A row of scaffolding had recently arisen beyond the rookery. It looked as though bricks and mortar were about to creep across the lower levels of the Backfield, that waste of long grass and wilding thorns, which had been one of the attractions before the Bigges had moved to the desired solitude of Hillside Road.

“What, are you going all the way up to Scotland, dear?” Mrs. Bigge’s question was asked humorously, for Phillip’s face was almost entirely enclosed by a deerstalker hat.

“Oh no, Aunty Bigge. We are going to Cousin Percy’s.”

“Where did you get that wonderful hat, Phil? Did your father give it to you, dear?”

“No, Father didn’t give it to me. I found it. How are your ferns to-day?”

“There’s a nice boy to ask! They are very glad to be seeing the sun, dear.”

“I expect everything is, too. Isn’t it nice and warm to-day?”

“Yes. How long are you and your mummy and sisters going to be away in the country?”

“A fortnight, Aunty Bigge. Would you like me to send you a new picture post-card from Beau Brickhill? I have lots of money”

“Now that would be very kind of you, dear. But you mustn’t waste your pennies on an old woman like me, you know.”

“But I like you, Aunty Bigge, and you do not look like an old woman at all.”

“You little dear!” cried Mrs. Bigge. “I believe you mean it, too! Do you?”

“Yes, Mrs. Bigge.”

“Then give us a kiss, ducks—or are you too big to be kissed, eh?”

By standing on his toes he could just reach the top of the fence with his chin; and as Mrs. Bigge’s side was so low, she had to fetch a box to stand on. She gave him three good kisses on his cheek. “You’re growing quite a big boy, aren’t you, dear?”

“Yes, Aunty Bigge, I am an inch higher on the door since I was eight. So I have grown an inch in one year!”

Hetty measured her children’s heights on the jamb of the sitting-room door, once a year on Phillip’s birthday, marking the lines with a knife.

“Well, you are big enough to look after your Mother and Mavis and Doris on the journey.”

“Yes, Aunty Bigge. I have some money, and I am going to buy a Pluck library, and if you promise not to tell Father, also a Union Jack library, and the Boy’s Friend.”

“I won’t tell him, dear. But ought you to go against your father’s wishes, if he doesn’t want you to read such things?”

“I don’t care.”

Mrs. Bigge looked at the boy. More than once on hearing his cries as he was being caned Mrs. Bigge had had to go away to another part of her house and try and think about other things. Mr. Maddison, she knew, considered that the reading of “bloods” inspired his son to mischief.

“But you ought to care, dear, for your mother’s sake. You must try and be a good boy, now that you are growing up. There now, you think Aunty Bigge is preaching, don’t you, eh?”

“I don’t mind.”

“Well, do try, dear. You see, if you are disobedient it worries your mother, and then Father is angry with her for not being sterner with you, and so your mother is made very unhappy. But you know that, don’t you, dear?”

Only the ear-flaps of the deerstalker, tied across the crown, were visible now from the lower side of the fence.

“There now, I’ve made you close up. How nice it will be with your cousins, won’t it?”

After a pause the boy said:

“Percy has a gun, and he can shoot bats.”

“Are you going to shoot bats, too? Is that why you’re wearing that hat?”

“Yes, Aunty Bigge. It is a bat-stalking hat. You see, I want to stuff a bat and put it in a glass case, in my museum.”

There was the sound of a window opening high up in the wall of the house. Immediately the boy flitted round the corner, out of sight. Hetty looked down upon the scene below from the yellow brick cliff.

“Oh, good morning, Mrs. Bigge!”

Phillip reappeared, without the hat.

“Ah, there you are, there’s a good boy! I was afraid Sonny had run away again,” she said, with an apologetic laugh. “Come along, dear, and help me bring the bags downstairs. The outside porter will be here soon, and we must catch our train, mustn’t we, Mrs. Bigge?”

“That’s right, dear. Sonny has been saying good-bye to me, like the little gentleman he is. Now run along, dear, and help your mother.”

Phillip ran off, feeling good that Mrs. Bigge had called him a little gentleman.

Ten minutes later the outside porter from Randiswell Station was wheeling his iron-wheeled trolley down the steep asphalt pavement of Hillside Road. There were three bags, two of white rush secured with brown straps, and a larger portmanteau of leather and brown canvas.

Richard was going to look after himself during the fortnight his family would be away. He did not want Mrs. Feeney to come during that time, and had declined Mrs. Bigge’s invitation to have his meals with them. He was looking forward to a spell of quiet by himself.

Grannie Turney went with them to the station, pushing the go-cart in which sat the youngest, Doris. Wanting to be apart, Phillip walked in front. Across his shoulder was slung his new satchel, in which were his own particular treasures, and a special
packet of banana sandwiches. He had planned to ride in a carriage by himself, and to climb up into the rack. There he saw himself reading the new Pluck Library with the dark lantern beside him, the Sherlock Holmes hat on his head, the blinds down.

The hat and lantern were packed in his satchel. He had discovered them in the tin trunk in the attic above the bathroom ceiling. He had explored all the attic, from the gable in front where there were chinks of light, the chirp of nesting sparrows, and dim remote street noises, to the water-tank in the middle, and the joists at the other end over his bedroom. There were many interesting things hidden in the attic, among them a very heavy and old round leather case with red silk inside, and an old top hat fitted into it. There was a long narrow wooden case with fishing rods in it, and leather pocket-books of fish-hooks with flies on them. There were small boxes filled with brass gimp with swivels and treble hooks fixed to them. There were little painted fish above the treble hooks, made of fish-skin. There was a pile of yellow butterfly boxes. And in the long japanned tin trunk were some clothes, a soldier’s uniform, red jacket with things like gold shell-fish on the shoulder straps, and a funny pair of boots. At the other end of the trunk he had come across the deerstalker hat and the bull’s-eye lantern. In the tin trunk was a big violin bow, three black leather books with writing in them, and some photographs. The photographs were of no interest: but the detective’s hat and lantern were a wonderful find. He was taking them to show Cousin Percy, who had a real gun with which to shoot birds, bats and rabbits.

Led by Phillip, the procession went down Charlotte Road, where the black branches of the horse-chestnuts were glistening with big buds brown as toffee apples. Phillip had discovered that they were no good to eat. He and Gerry had climbed up one tree and picked some, finding them sticky and nasty. Gerry had spoken of a fortune by using the gum for flypapers. Perhaps they could sell the discovery to Grandpa? Meanwhile some of the collected samples had been fitted as heads of arrows, to be shot at other boys with their string-and-bamboo bows. A window had been broken in Charlotte Road. Running into Gerry’s house, the cousins had hastened upstairs, to climb through an upper window and so to hide on the high brick wall dividing the lean-to sculleries of the paired houses.

Now, as he passed by the house, Phillip looked up and saw that the window was still broken. He looked the other way, in case someone was spying.

Sarah Turney, now sixty-two years old, left Hetty at the bottom of Charlotte Road, kissing her and the little girls good-bye—Phillip would not come to be kissed—went into No. 202, to visit her eldest daughter Dorothy. She had two sovereigns in her purse to give to Dorrie. Unknown to Tom, who already made his daughter a monthly allowance, to augment the very small pension she received as the widow of a trooper, Sarah gave her something extra every month. Sidney Cakebread’s firm had been generous when he had died in the South African war; they had paid his widow two years’ salary in monthly instalments: but this money was now spent.

Hubert, the eldest boy, had left school and was working in the Firm, living at home; while the second boy, Ralph, considered by his grandfather to be a poor specimen, was being educated at the West Kent Grammar School on the Hill. Gerry, the youngest boy, had been sent to the council school in Wakenham Road, to win a scholarship to a secondary school. Phillip was to join him after the Easter holidays.

The decision to send Phillip to an elementary school had been taken by Richard and Hetty only after some perturbation and argument, following on Hetty’s failure to get a presentation for the school on which she had set her heart since before he was born—Christ’s Hospital, in Charterhouse Square. However, things would not be so bad when Sonny had won a scholarship: perhaps the two years among the very poor children who went to the council school would not, as she dreaded, turn him into an unruly boy, with bad habits of speech and behaviour.

“Well,” Richard had said, “all schools were free schools, in the old days. I have done my best with the boy, to give him an idea of how to conduct himself; but your leniency towards him has countered all my efforts. Taking sides with him as you have done, exonerating his bad behaviour, only makes matters worse. Well, if his behaviour gets worse at the school, I cannot help it. I have done my best, and have apparently failed, as far as Phillip is concerned. And while you continue to side with him against me, I cannot see how things can ever improve.”

“Oh, Dickie, how can you say I go against your wishes? I am always telling Sonny to be good, and not to touch your things.”

The fact was the boy listened neither to his father, nor to his mother. Once, and once only, had Hetty caned him. She was looking out of her bedroom window while she was making the bed one morning when she saw, to her horror, Phillip across the road, with Mavis, behaving in a most shocking manner against the park railings. In shame, anger, and desperation she had run downstairs and across the road, to grip their arms and drag them into the house. Phillip had never seen his mother so angry before, and was for the first time in his life scared by her: by the look on her face, especially at the way she showed her teeth.

“You bad,
bad
boy, you! I sometimes wonder if you are not my son after all! How
dare
you behave like that, for all the neighbours to see!”

Phillip was too over-awed to say that they had only been pretending to be dogs, and that Father had told him liquid manure was good for grass. To Phillip’s dismay and incredulity his mother had taken him upstairs, got the long thin cane from the wardrobe in the front bedroom, and chased him into his bedroom. There he had gone to ground under the bed, where she had swished the cane to get him out. He had held on to the end, saying, “I’ll tell Father of you, using his cane without permission!”

When he had seen she was serious, he had ceased to evade her. He had done what he was told: taken down his trousers, and lain on the bed. He looked at her with a puzzled look as she stood above him, the cane raised.

Hetty gave him one cut. She had not struck hard, for when he was half-naked, remorse for the utter perplexity in his face had overcome her. She felt she was betraying him. But she must not weaken now, for his sake. She had compromised with one cut. As the cane came down he put his hand over his bottom, and it struck him across the back of the fingers. He buried his face in the bedclothes, all resistance gone.

“There now, Sonny, I did not mean to hurt you, dear, but you
must
be a good boy; you are driving your father and me to distraction. Please try and be a good boy in future, won’t you?”

Seeing her distress, his emotion set upon its course: he would
hide himself away, and not eat any more food until he died. He got over the other side of the bed and under it again, to lie still on the floor. Hetty had left him, and gone to speak to Mavis, who was boo-hoo’ing in her bedroom.

When she had returned to Phillip, after half an hour, during which no sound had come from upstairs, she had found the door locked. She asked him to open the door and to come down and be a good boy again. Silence. Surely he had not become ill? She was always afraid that, with his highly strung nature, coupled with the fact that before his birth Papa had knocked her down and she had remained unconscious for several hours, any sudden shock might injure his brain. Supposing he was lying in a fit, and it was all her fault? Oh, why had she used the cane?

Hetty knew in her heart that it was wrong to punish young children. Theodora, who had started her school in Somerset, had written in a letter, received three months ago, that many of the ills in life, a waywardness and tendency to wrong-doing and violence, were in many cases to be attributed to severities in childhood, imposed upon tender minds by unknowing parents. It had been a bewildering, disturbing letter. Could such a thing be happening to her little boy, already so afraid of his father, to make him estranged from his mother, the one who loved him more than anyone else in the world! And worse, he might be lying there, behind the locked door, unconscious!