Donkey Boy (28 page)

Hetty tapped on the door again. She listened. There was no sound inside the bedroom. The key was not even in the lock. Perhaps he had swallowed it, in his frenzy! Sonny, Sonny, open the door at once! No reply.

Hetty had run next door to confide her fears to Mamma. The first thing she saw there, to her surprise and joy which showed itself in laughter, was Sonny, talking to Hugh in his room, which was next to the garden. Hugh was about to play on a violin which he had made out of a cigar-box.

“How did you get here, Sonny?”

With a glance at Hugh, the boy had replied, “A little bird brought me, Mummy.”

“That’s right, Hetty,” said Hugh. “The stork was that little bird. Well, sister, we are about to have a lesson in the art of producing sounds of beauty from the gut of a cat and the tail of a horse.”

Hugh had not long returned from South Africa. He was brown of face and lean of body, noticeably bow-legged after much horse-riding. On his bedroom wall, framed, was a certificate of thanks for his services to King and Country signed, in print by the block process, by the Lord Mayor on behalf of the City of London.

Phillip had been forbidden by his father to go into Hugh Turney’s room; but the boy went there whenever he thought he would, to see the one who was not like an uncle at all, but a nice person to be with. Hugh told Phillip stories of the war which were not like the stories he had read in a book sent him by Uncle John in the country, called
For
Valour
and
Victory.
Uncle Hugh said that at the battle of the Modder River all the soldiers ran away so fast that more were trodden underfoot in the rush to the rear than were hit by Boer bullets. Most of them had been Scotsmen in kilts, the Highland Brigade. Uncle Hugh told Phillip how the Boer women and children had been put in big lägers, or cages, many thousands of them, where ever so many had died of fever.

“War’s a swindle, my boy, and anyone who believes in the glory of war is a first-class bloody fool. Only jackals profit from war—the contractors, the arms manufacturers, together with the gold-fields capitalists—Midas &
Co. Listen to this——” and the sardonic voice chanted:

“Those lines, my boy, come from a satirical poem by Hilaire Belloc, called ‘Verses to a Lord who in the House of Lords said that those who opposed the South African Adventure confused soldiers with money-grubbers’. Hello, here’s your mamma coming. What have you been up to now, eh,” and he winked at Phillip.

Phillip winked back. Uncle Hugh was a wonderful man, a soldier of the Queen. He said “bloody”; Phillip would say it, too, when he was by himself.

Hetty wondered how Phillip had got out of his bedroom. Had he slipped out, locked the door behind him and, creeping downstairs, got into the next garden by way of the kitchen steps, or perhaps by the french windows, in the sitting-room and over the garden fence? He would not say; nor did Hugh Turney know.

Phillip had discovered, in his exploration of the attic, that he could crawl on hands and knees over the joists to the water tank, and, squeezing past it, continue over the front bedroom ceiling, through a small opening at the apex of the common wall between the two houses, and so, by way of Grandpa’s bedroom ceiling, joists, and water tank, to the trapdoor in Grandpa’s bathroom. Opening this, he had slipped through, after arranging that the trap should shut as he let go with his hands. If detected, he would pretend to have come upstairs to the lavatory.

Phillip told Cousin Percy Pickering of this secret place while the two were lying in bed, a bolster between them until Percy’s mother could know how harmoniously or otherwise the two would fit into the same bed. It was Phillip’s first visit to Beau Brickhill.

“Does your father use that bloody cane I saw hanging on the back of his chair at supper, Percy?”

“No fear! Dad don’t beat me.”

“Has he ever, Percy?”

“No. Nor does Mum, or Granpa, or Gran.”

“Then why does it hang there, Percy?”

“I dunno. It always has.”

“This is a lovely house, isn’t it? I like being here. Will you be my great friend, Percy?”

“Well, I’ve got a great friend already. His name is Fred. You’ll see him tomorrow when we go nesting.”

Phillip was silent for a while. Then he said:

“Couldn’t I be your other great friend, Percy?”

“’Course you can. You can join our football team if you like. That’s a spiffing lantern you’ve got
.
Did your Dad lend it to you?”

“Yes, only don’t tell my Mother. She isn’t supposed to know. It’s a secret.”

“Between you and your Dad?”

“Yes, sort of. I say, Percy!”

“What say?”

“I will give you some of my sweets when I buy them. I’ve got lots of tin to spend.”

“I’ll let you shoot with my saloon gun if you like.”

“Oh, spiffing!”

Uncle Jim called up the stairs: “Stop talking you two, and go to sleep. Good night!”

“Good night, Uncle Jim.”

“Good night, Dad.”

It was wonderful to lie in bed, talking in whispers … whispers … whispers … while the mice in the old house ran over the thick uneven slabs of the chestnut floor unheard, for the boys were asleep.

Downstairs in the kitchen parlour, by the coal fire, Hetty and Eliza, her cousin and childhood friend, were talking over a cup of tea before going to bed.

In another room, where the half-sized billiard table stood, Eliza’s husband, James Pickering, partner in a firm of corn and seed merchants, was sitting at his desk, entering the day’s orders in a book.

“Well, Hetty,” said Eliza Pickering, “here you are at last! I can hardly believe it is really you.”

She was a dark, small-headed woman, of Brythonic or ancient British type; she was dressed in black, with dark hair parted in the middle and drawn back plainly over her head. “I cannot tell you how nice it is, after all these years, to see you again. It’s just like old times, and with all the children about it makes me feel young again.”

“Yes, Liz,” smiled Hetty. “Everything is just as it used to be!”

She glanced round the room, at the tall grandfather clock with the flowers painted round its face, and the pheasant across the yellow-white dial; the wooden salt-box on its nail above the long-handled basting ladle and the two-pronged meat-fork hanging beside the hearth; the copper pans on the chimney shelf; the pictures on the wall; the long farmhouse table and the high-backed chairs at either end, their woollen antimacassars on the tops, and the old yellow cane hanging by its curved handle.

“Even the cane is still there, I see! It quite used to frighten me when I was a child.”

“I remember my father saying that he bought it at the Michaelmas Goose Fair for a penny during the Crimea war. He brought it home and hung it there, and there it has remained ever since. I have never known it to be used. Now tell me, dear, how is your husband?”

“Oh, Dickie is very well, thank you. He’s very keen on flying box kites now, from the Hill with a friend. I am so glad he has taken it up as a hobby.”

“Of course, he always disliked the City life, and wanted to be a farmer, didn’t he? Well, I am glad he’s settling down. It’s a very hard life, farming, you know.”

“Yes, I know. Papa says it is a thing of the past nowadays.”

“Jim feels the depression quite a lot. Farmers are not growing so much corn as they did, they say they can buy feeding stuffs cheaper. However, we mustn’t grumble. How is Dorrie nowadays?”

“She isn’t very well, I’m afraid. Her heart you know. Sidney’s death was a great shock.”

“Yes, it was to us all, Hetty. How are her children? She has three boys and a girl, has she not?”

When Hetty had told Liz of Dorrie’s family, Liz asked about her Aunt Sarah.

“Mamma is growing very old, I am afraid, Liz. But she is cheerful, as always.”

“And how is Hugh? He had rheumatism very badly, didn’t he?”

“He is better now, he has treatment from the doctor, still,” said Hetty, and changed the subject. She told her cousin about the decision to send Phillip to Wakenham Road School.

“Of course both Dickie and I have discussed it all ways, but it seems the only thing to do, to work for a scholarship. I did so want him to go to the Bluecoat School. It would have been so very good for him. But I am afraid it is out of the question now.”

“He seems a nice boy, Hetty; very quick, isn’t he?”

“Yes, sometimes I think he is too quick. He can’t be taught, I’m afraid, his lessons upset him.”

“In what way, Hetty?”

“He doesn’t seem able to learn at all. Even Dora, who is very good with children as a rule, found it next to impossible to get him to understand what she was trying to show him. He just cries, and says he cannot. His head seems filled with the papers he reads; though Dickie has forbidden them, it makes no difference.”

“Poor little fellow. But he is a good boy, by his face, Hetty.”

“Oh yes, I am sure he would be all right, with the right example before him. But there, it is too late for the Bluecoat School now. Ah well!”

“Who is this Sir Roland Tofield you mentioned in your letter, Hetty?”

Hetty told her cousin about her romance on the Riviera long ago, while omitting the part her friend of those wonderful three weeks had later played in getting Richard an introduction to the Moon Fire Office. Nor did she confide in Eliza that her recent letter to her old acquaintance had been replied to by a secretary, who had written that as Sir Roland had been called unexpectedly abroad he was replying for him. Sir Roland had asked him to say at once that as he had no presentation for Christ’s Hospital in his own gift, it might perhaps be more effective if Mrs.
Maddison
made direct application in those quarters where such applications would, he felt sure, receive all due consideration.

Hetty felt shame whenever she recalled the letter. Obviously Sir Roland Tofield must have considered her request to be presumption on her part. And worse, could he have thought that she—— Hetty baulked at the thought. She had seen a photograph of him with his wife and two children in an illustrated weekly paper in her father’s house.

“Haven’t you a sister-in-law who started a school, Hetty?”

“Yes, Theodora took a lovely old house in Somerset, with a friend of hers in partnership. She has rather spoiled her chances, Dickie says, by embracing Women’s Suffrage.”

“Oh, so she is one of these Suffragettes, is she? What a pity. We have two in the parish, madcap creatures they are, too, riding about in a motorcar, and without hats, no sense of modesty, making fools of themselves, for all to see.”

“Dora is not that sort, of course——”

“No dear, of course not. She is probably deluded by some unscrupulous companions.”

Hetty felt she had given a wrong impression of her great friend.

“Oh, Dora is a wonderfully clever person, Liz, and writes such interesting letters. She knows so much about all kinds of things. What induced her to join the movement for Women’s Suffrage was hearing Mrs. Pankhurst tell of a little girl of only thirteen having an illegitimate baby.” Hetty’s voice showed her
embarrassment
at mentioning such a thing. “Poor girl, I am sure it was not her fault in the first place.” Hetty was thinking of Mona Monk. “She exposed the baby when it was only a day old, and was hanged, poor thing.”

Eliza Pickering made a double clucking noise with her tongue, a bird-like sound, between that of a partridge talking to chicks and a hedge wren as cat or weasel passes underneath. She shook her head slowly. She sighed.

“That was wrong, Hetty, that was wrong. We need a change of heart in this country, it has never been the same since
Gladstone
died. The Tories are hard men, and dead set against all progress.”

Hetty agreed with this, though not without a qualm of
disloyalty
to Richard, who was against Liberals and Free Trade. Boldly she said, “I was about to say, Liz, that Dora wrote in her letter something I have remembered ever since. ‘The vote is denied to children, idiots—and women.’”

“What’s this I hear about the Tories?” said an amiable voice. James Pickering, smoking a pipe with curved amber mouthpiece, and yellow bowl carved in the shape of a negro’s head, had come quietly in his carpet slippers through the other door. He was a Saxon of middle height, with yellow fuzzy hair, pale eyes that seemed to be a mixture of blue and amber, and a large yellow moustache dyed brown below the nostrils by the smoke of many hundreds of packets of Westward Ho! tobacco.

“I was just saying how the Tories keep back progress, Jim,” said his little black-bodiced wife, nursing a cup of tea between her hands on her lap.

“I should just about think so too!” exclaimed Jim Pickering, removing his calabash pipe. His yellow eyes glared at imaginary wickedness in space, and from his nostrils issued a double jet of tobacco smoke. “Why, look how the Duke here, owning tens of thousands of acres in the county, and other large estates in
Devon, Scotland, and all those streets and squares in London …”, and for the next three minutes he expatiated upon the evils of great landlords.

“If a man wants to build his own house, can he get a bit of land to build it on? Will the Duke’s Steward sell? And look at the parsons he puts in his livings! Look at the trouble we had to get the Gas Company established!”

James Pickering was a radical indeed, and while he held forth, match after match was needed to keep alight the fuming head of the negro. Finally he started a new pipe, a rustic-looking affair of cherry-wood, which being properly packed, burned fragrantly. It may have been mere coincidence, but at once his indignation abated; and with his usual mild demeanour he settled in the armchair his wife dutifully had vacated. With a cup of strong tea well-stirred with sugar, James enquired how his uncle by marriage, Tom Turney, was getting along in his business.