Donkey Boy (6 page)

“Yes, dear, of course, naturally,” agreed Hetty, half-listening, while thinking that at times he was rather like one of the speakers round the Socialist Oak himself.

One June evening of that year the Hill was transformed. For weeks a great bonfire near the bandstand had been building. Faggots and branches of trees, tar-barrels in the middle, a mass as high and compact as a house, for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. In the twilight Richard carried his son up the wide gravel way beyond Hillside Road, planted on either side with may-thorns, to see the sights. He left pocket-book, all money, and watch and chain behind; and carried his oak walking stick on his arm. Minnie was to have come with them; but at the last moment was left behind. Burglars might take advantage of the celebrations to break into the house. Hetty must not be left
alone with the baby. So Richard went with Phillip in his arms, the boy wrapped up and wondering what was to happen: something exciting, he could feel. And it was all strange and frightening, all red like his sleep-pictures, called nightmare by Mummy, when the ninganing man and the ninganing and all had been red.

The flames ran up the forty-foot bonfire and soon all the people were moving back from the big red. The wood was crackling and the tar-barrels roaring, and all the faces red in the fire light. Shouts, cries, all the sky on fire—he hid his face by Daddy’s tickling beard and cried for Minnie. Before he took the child home, Richard went apart from the crowd of many thousands of people with gilded faces around the perimeter of heat, turning his back upon the great roaring fire, the sparks coiling and whisking hundreds of feet into the air. He walked to the southern crest of the Hill and looking across the lights of houses and streets below, saw many beacons burning far away. There were nearer fiery tongues leaping upon Honor Oak Hill and Sydenham and Shooter’s Hill, with smaller speckles all the way to the North Downs. Chains of beacons ringed the base of the London night to Hampstead and Highgate and distant Hainault and Epping. His imagination took fire; he thought of the tongues of flame from Poldhu in Cornwall to Dunkery Beacon on Exmoor, a living girdle of flame from the hills of Cranborne Chase and the Great Plain above the grey spire of Salisbury Cathedral to Portsdown Hill and eastwards to Ditchling, in Sussex; onwards to Wrotham Hill
and Caesar’s Camp above Folkestone in Kent: the midsummer night filled with fire along the coasts of England, far north to the pikes of Northumberland and the remote grey capes of Scotland. Great Britain was aflame! Sixty years a Queen! Nearly into the Twentieth Century! He was the father of a son and daughter in the greatest nation on earth! Could it all be possible?

“Look, Phillip, bonfires everywhere, for the Old Queen!”

“Mummy p’e Daddy, mummy p’e Daddy”.

Richard sighed. Fancy forsook him. With memories of his boyhood
gone
for
ever
and
ever,
he walked in the ruddy twilight down the broad gravel to his home again, the child quiet against his shoulder.

He was taken up to bed at once, and Richard said he thought
he would return upon the Hill, for it was an historic occasion; but feeling suddenly weary, he settled in his armchair, and read the Golden Extra of
The
Daily
Trident,
printed in gilt letter-press for the Diamond Jubilee. He had an evening paper, too, which he intended to put away, for his son to read when he was a man. That day the old Queen had driven to St. Paul’s Cathedral for the service, which had taken place on the steps, because she was too weak to get out of the State Carriage.

Well, it was the end of an age all right; and another near-terrifying thought came to him, that almost before life had begun, he was approaching middle-age. Next birthday he would be thirty-two. How far away seemed the holiday in North Devon with brother John and Jenny, Theodora and Hetty, and the baby in its specially made wicker basket. Could it have been only two years ago? And had Jenny been dead only five short months? Jenny, so beautiful and wise and calm, the one he had, from the moment he had seen her, loved with his soul, was dead; and John left with a baby son, one year and eight months younger than Phillip. She had died in childbirth during the gale that had swept all England last December, the same night that the Chain Pier at Brighton had collapsed in the storm. He had cried as he walked to the station after he had read John’s telegram.

Richard sighed and closed his eyes; then started up, as a cry came from the kitchen. At once he thought of burglars; his hair twitched coldly on his neck; he thought of his special constable’s truncheon which he kept inside his desk. He went to the door.

It was nothing, Hetty assured him, nothing at all. “I was only startled for the moment, by the sight of a mouse.”

“You are becoming a nervous little thing, aren’t you?”

Richard was never irritable now that Minnie was with him. Minnie and Richard often talked and laughed together about the old days. He showed her his cases of butterflies, and she peered at them, murmuring at their beauty and precision in line. She was devoted to Richard; she was able to endure an alien living mainly through him, the only one left to her. She was almost selfless, almost entirely subordinated to his feelings. His true, or inner living, was held in affection for Minnie; and the rows of pinned and mummified insects were as real to her as to him.

Hetty had cried out because suddenly as she was suckling the baby beside Minnie a mouse had appeared on Minnie’s lap; and before she could say anything, Minnie had sprung up and with a shake of her skirts had jerked it into the open grate. It had screamed in the flames and tried to run over the hot coals. Hetty had hidden her eyes. How could Minnie do such a thing?

Minnie was now living for the day when she would see her Fatherland again. She thought London was the dirtiest and cruellest city in the world. The filthy streets, the untidiness, the careless ways of people, their acceptance of low standards, and above all, the look in the faces of the children seen in the streets, all blank and worried, had given her
heimweh,
homesickness for the clean and orderly countryside of her childhood. Truly the Englanders called their country the Motherland, for they treated it as so many treated their wives, with no
mitleid,
and often with unkindness. How she had suffered for her poor
hochgeboren
baronin,
her father and brothers killed in the war, and then a cruel Englander for husband! But God in His Mercy had taken her, and surely her spirit on its way to Heaven had gone back to Lindenheim, to the beautiful schloss on the side of the hill, where she belonged.

So Minnie departed. Richard obtained leave to see her off from Liverpool Street Station, on the train for Harwich and the Hook of Holland. The outside porter from Randiswell came up with his trolley to take her corded wooden box early one morning. When the moment came, of parting from the place that Minnie could not bear, a place neither of the town nor of the countryside, suddenly Minnie looked stricken. Fortunately at that moment Mrs. Bigge popped out of her front door, beaming with affection, and trotting up the porch, put her arms round the older German woman and hugged her.

“Pleasant journey, dear, and don’t forget us, will you? We won’t forget you, and your beautiful yellow skirt, will we, Mrs. Maddison? Nor will dear little Phil, in a hurry, with his ‘Minnie Mummie’, bless his little heart. Well I must not keep you, I’ve left my iron on the gas-ring, so tootleoo, and give my love to Germany. I’ve never been there, but I know it is very beautiful.”

With a wipe of an eye and wave of hand Mrs. Bigge hurried away down the front path lined with candy-tuft and London Pride growing in the rockery, with some fleshy cactus-like plants,
and so into her own house again. And there her face was, between the Nottingham lace curtains of her front room, beside an aspidistra, ready to smile at last farewell to Minnie.

Mrs. Bigge was much affected at the departure. For Hetty, too, the occasion held a sense of desolation; and for a terrifying instant it seemed that every time you said goodbye it was bringing death a little nearer. Every parting was a kind of oblivion; every tick of the clock said goodbye. How very sad was change! You met people, and places, and then—goodbye! Very shortly the dear, dear house in Cross Aulton would be in other hands, for Mamma had said that Pappa was thinking of giving it up, it was far too large, now that only one child was left at home,—Joey already grown up, and in the Firm!

Her face smiled, her lips quivered, her eyes were bright with unbroken tears. Oh sonny, come to Mother, hug Mother, hold me close dear little son, she thought to him. You, little son, who have such large serious eyes, Little Mouse, you understand, don’t you, Sonny? We’ll be together when Minnie and Daddy have gone, won’t we, Sonny?

Phillip was sitting on the stairs, looking at the scene through the bars of the banisters, his mouth down at the corners, very quiet in the immensity of so much movement.

“Ach, how can I go, how can I leave you all, whom I love so dearly?” cried Minnie, laughing and smiling, when the last moment was come, and the door wide open. Ach, mein lieb’ ganschen, will you not miss your Minnie? How may I go now? And the lieb’ dark-eyed Mavis, so called because the Dinkelweizen heard a drossel, a thrush, singing on the top of the little elm-tree at the bottom of the garden! That was just as it should be, naturlich! For all true things come only from Nature. It was his German blood. Ach, the Englanders were at heart like the Deutsche! Had not the good Queen married a German hochgeboren Prince, noble Albert? Then why was it that she was leaving all her dear freunde und verwandte—her kith and kin—for what after thirty-three years must now be entirely new and strange? Duty, duty called. Auf wiedersehen! Auf wiedersehen! Auf wiedersehen! Grüsse Gott! Hetty, Mrs. Bigge, and Phillip watched the two turn the corner—a last wave of the hand——

Hetty walked up the porch crying. Phillip was crying too. They sat down in the kitchen and cried together, mother clasping
son. The house would never be the same again. Ah well, she must try and be worthy of all that Minnie had taught her, keeping the larder and scullery neat and fresh and clean as Dickie liked all things to be. And then as she was wiping away tears from two faces, both smiling again, there came a ring at the bell in the corner of the kitchen ceiling, and Phillip was excitedly pointing out the red signal behind the glass of the box and saying, “Front door, Murnmie, front door!”

“Open it, will you please, Sonny? I think it must be Aunty Bigge.”

He ran to open the door, and there stood Mrs. Bigge, with a steaming pot of tea in one hand.

“New Auntie come, Mummie, New Auntie come!”

“Yes dear, it’s your new Auntie who loves you! I thought a little company just now would be the very thing for us both,” cried Mrs. Bigge, cheerfully. And at once life seemed to be flowing again.

“Ah well, we must make the best of it, mustn’t we, Mrs. Bigge?”

“Yes dear, and what you need now is a nice sensible young girl from ‘Old Loos’am’ down in the High Street. That’s what they call Miss Thoroughgood, of the Agency. I would not wish to interfere in your affairs, of course, were it not that your own mother lives so far away.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Bigge. Mamma did think of moving nearer, now that all her children are flown, except the youngest, she says.”

“Yes dear, she was telling me the very selfsame thing on the day little Mavis was born. And I said to her, ‘Mrs. Turney, why not move into Hillside Road, there is a house vacant right next door, where you can keep an eye on your grandchildren.’”

“Oh Mrs. Bigge, I expect she will have forgotten all about it by now!”

Mrs. Bigge misinterpreted the anxiety on Hetty’s face. “No, don’t you believe it, dear! Why, she said she would talk it over with your Papa. Cross Aulton is a nice place, I’ve heard, but too far away from you for your Mum’s liking, I gathered. It is nice for a girl to have her mother near, especially when she has such an understanding one as you have, dear.”

“Yes, Mrs. Bigge.” Hetty was in a flurry. Mamma next to her would be too good for words, but—what would Dickie say?
The baby was crying in the crib upstairs. “I must feed the baby now, if you will excuse me.”

“Goodness gracious, and I must go back to my iron on the gas ring! It will be red hot. Well, don’t hesitate to let me know, dear, if you need anything. Just rap on the back window with the bamboo cane I have leaned against the fence, it will save you having to come round to the front door.”

Papa and Mamma living next door! Whatever would Dickie say? Oh, pray that Mrs. Bigge would not mention it to him, if she spoke to him over the fence while he was gardening! But poor Mamma! How awfully ungrateful she was, not wanting her own mother, who had felt for her as now she was feeling for her own little daughter. But it was not that she
really
did not want her. Mamma would understand.

Mrs. Turney did understand. She arrived later in the day, knowing that her daughter would be feeling a little overcome, with two babies alone in the house. It was a happy inspiration that brought her over, she could see by the look in her darling’s face the moment she opened the front door.

Sarah remained with Hetty until shortly before six, on her way to spend the night with her elder daughter Dorrie. She had told Hetty a little of her worry about Dorrie, for her marriage to Sidney Cakebread was not going very well. But with four little ones to be considered, perhaps things would come right; one must always hope for the best, and leave such matters in God’s hands; and Sidney Cakebread was a good man, in every sense of the word.

Seeing how Mamma was worried, Hetty did not say anything about the idea that she might be coming to live with Papa next door.

W
ITH A
feeling of optimism Hetty next morning set out with Mrs. Bigge to pay a visit to the Domestic Servants Agency of “Old Loos'am” in the High Street. Hetty had every confidence in leaving her two babies in the care of Mrs. Feeney. She would only be gone for an hour and a half at the most, so there need be no worry about Mavis waking up hungry. Her next feeding time was two o'clock, and now it was only just after half past ten. She could allow herself two hours, with safety.

Hetty carried the shopping basket she had bought at Hyères on the Riviera, ages and ages ago it seemed to her, more than four whole years had passed since that remote, faraway time. Ah well, she sighed thinking of the untrammelled joy of her girlhood, everyone had to grow up. Had she not her dear husband instead, and the dearest little son in the world, and the loveliest baby daughter with brown eyes, to whom Dickie had taken with such delight? It was strange how Sonny did not appear to have any interest in Mavis: could he be jealous? Dickie crooning over Mavis, she had observed, caused him to hide under the table. Dickie laughed, thinking it funny.

Mrs. Bigge and Hetty walked down the asphalt pavement of Hillside Road. The petty cracks of the dark surface were already pierced by bindweed, now showing its pink flowers from the clay beneath. “Aren't they pretty?” said Hetty. Mrs. Bigge agreed. She carried a shopping basket of wicker, from the basket-maker in Randiswell, who soon would be gone now: for a row of new, modern shops was to replace some of the older, weather-boarded cottages of the hamlet.

Hardly had they turned the corner of Hillside Road into chestnut-lined Charlotte when a man, walking down from the hill, opened the gate of No. 11, after a quick counting of the houses downwards from the top of the road. He walked under the glass porch and rang the bell. Mrs. Feeney opened the door.

“Why good morning Mr. Hugh! Mrs. Maddison has just
gone out, only just this minute. I wonder you did not see her going down the road, sir. She is with Mrs. Bigge from next door. They're going down to the High Street. You will overtake them quite easily, if you hurry, Mr. Hugh.”

“How are you, Mrs. Feeney? Well, I hope? Two of them, you say? Perhaps I'd be in the way.”

“No, Mr. Hugh, I'm sure they would be delighted to see you. Mrs. Bigge is very nice, you'd like her, sir.”

“Right, I'll vamoose. See you later!” And with a waggle of his straw boater Hugh Turney was gone.

He walked quickly down the road, and at the first bend he saw them below, where Charlotte Road ended in Randiswell Lane. He walked faster, not wanting to lose sight of them. Hurrying round the corner, he came upon them unexpectedly. They had stopped on the other side of the road, and were looking at a small shop with second-hand furniture on the sidewalk outside it. They had not seen him.

Acting on an idea, Hugh Turney walked back the way he had come. As soon as he was round the corner, he pulled something black from his pocket, which he fastened by two loops over his ears. It was a false beard.

“Eh bien, mesdames!” he said, with the gesticulation of a stage Frenchman. “Alors! En avance! Maintenant pour la plume de ma tante!”

Setting his boater at a slight angle, and perking up the waxed ends of his moustache, Hugh Turney advanced with a slightly mincing step, swinging a malacca cane with one hand, the elbow of the other arm raised, as though he were carrying a bouquet for a lady. In this guise he passed his sister and her companion on the other side of the road. Proceeding onwards he came to the Railway at the corner by the station, where, seeing that the two women were some distance behind, he entered through the ornamental glass-panelled doors and called for a brandy and seltzer. This he sipped while watching for them to pass beyond the window.

The publican, a fat man in shirt-sleeves, standing behind the bar, suddenly uttered a loud belch of gas, which had generated from an excess of raw onion, white bread, and gorgonzola cheese.

“Comment?” said Hugh.

“Pardon,” said the publican. “I gets the wind, see.” He spoke in a feeble, sorry voice.

“Vraiment,” replied Hugh, stroking his false beard. “Il y a beaucoup de mots vrai parlé de l'estomache.”

“'Ow much?” asked the publican.

“I remarked that many a true word is spoken from the chest,” replied Hugh, removing the beard to feel the point of his chin.

“Oo d'yer fink you are? What's the game, trying to be funny?” enquired the publican, in a rougher, rousing voice, as more wind broke from him.

“I am Gonzalo the Wandering Violinist, and I am, alas, trying to be funny,” replied Hugh.

“Well, you can ‘king well start doin' some wanderin' nah, you poncified little tich,” roared the publican, now in possession of his full self. He made as if to lift the mahogany flap in the bar counter, to chuck out the sauce-box.

Bearded once again, Hugh swallowed the rest of his drink. “Bonjour, petit pomme de mon oeil!” he cried, and with a bow, backed out through the door, leaving the irate man staring at his retreating figure.

Over the bridge Hugh caught up with the others, and slowed his pace to a saunter, keeping half a dozen yards behind them, swinging his cane and now walking with splayed feet, his jaw dropped in the guise of a simpleton. “Ah ha, my old Alma Mater!” he cried, gazing at the red-brick Public Baths, with the tower in front. “Ha ha, they'll never get me in there any more. Scrub, scrub, scrub for a week, and they discovered my shirt. Scrub, scrub, scrub for another week, and they found my vest. Scrub, scrub, scrub until all the brushes were worn out—but they never found me!”

“Don't turn round, dear, but there is a strange man behind us,” whispered Mrs. Bigge; whereupon Hetty turned half round, to see for a moment what appeared to be a bearded Frenchman. “Cross the road, dear, he is following us,” whispered Mrs. Bigge, a little later.

The Frenchman followed.

When they came to the High Street, Mrs. Bigge said, “Look in the shop with me, dear, we can then give him the go by.”

The strange man also stared in the shop, a little behind them. A tram rattled slowly past in the middle of the street, pulled by
three dejected horses in line. “Ve Anglais zont a nation of har'nimal loveurs!” exclaimed the Frenchman.

Mrs. Bigge nudged Hetty, “Don't look at him, dear, he is either trying to scrape acquaintance, or else escaped from the Infirmary.” This was a local institution recently erected by the Metropolitan Asylums Board.

They walked on down the High Street, relieved that the stranger was now some way behind. Outside the Domestic Servants Agency, Mrs. Bigge said, “Now dear, you go in, and tell ‘Old Loos'am' that you require a girl to train. Do not offer more than eight pounds a year, mind. That is the proper wage. If you agree to pay more, Miss Thoroughgood will only get it out of the girl in registration fees, as she calls it. I'm just going down to the butcher's to buy my hubby some tripe, it's his harp night. He likes tripe for supper with onions before the practice in the front room with Norah. Hullo, that fellow's still hanging about. What do you suppose he's after? There, I did not mean to alarm you, dear. A foreigner, by his appearance, and you know what foreigners are. Perhaps he's come over for the Jubilee and lost his way. Ah, he's found one way, I see,” for Hughie had turned into the Castle, for another b. and s.

“Thank goodness he's gone. I'll come back for you here, dear, and mind now, don't be put off by Miss Thoroughgood's manner or appearance. She is a stuck-up old thing, she can't forget the old days of Macassar Oil, she was Mr. Roland's housekeeper. You know, Roland the Macassar Oil King, that's why they call her ‘Old Loos'am', he used to be the big man round here, fancied himself as the Squire.” And with a sudden “Here, give us a kiss!” Mrs. Bigge hugged Hetty, sang out “Tootle-oo,” and hurried away.

Miss Thoroughgood's Domestic Servant Agency was in one half of a shop, the other half being what Mrs. Feeney would call a snob's shop, and Hetty a boot repairer's. Miss Thoroughgood, when away from her office, liked to think of it as a bootmaker's. Rows of misshapen foot-gear stood on a high bench before the leather-apron'd snob and his assistant. A continual knocking and banging accompanied Miss Thoroughgood's particulars of her servant girls' ages, religions, references, and experience.

Hetty entered the shop, and after a brief glance at her, Miss Thoroughgood continued writing. In the glance she had observed
that the caller was dressed in a clean but old-fashioned style, and judged her to be a governess in search of employment. Hetty was wearing her boater hat, with a blue serge shirt and short jacket with a rolled-back collar faced with white. Under the jacket was a plain white blouse topped by a high starched collar and a dark blue tie. A good class of young person, thought Miss Thoroughgood, and the thought induced her to say, in a regal tone of voice, as she continued writing, “I will not keep you a moment, young woman.”

Banging of leather sounded through the partition. When it stopped Hetty heard the scratch of the steel pen upon the paper. Miss Thoroughgood appeared to be cogitating upon some matter, for her muttered words were audible. “Now let me see.” Miss Thoroughgood picked up some cards. “H'm. Yes. The Very Reverend H'm-H'm recommends—but she expects twenty-five pounds, and board wages when the family is out of Town. Too demanding. H'm. Major the Honourable H'm-h'm requires—does he now! Not if I know it, the old ruffian! I won't keep you a moment, young woman. Hopeless, hopeless! What
do
they expect for eighteen pounds a year nowadays? Why, in Mr. Roland's time, when Lord Dartmouth called to see him——”

The banging was resumed.

Miss Thoroughgood was a big woman, grey and puffy, looking as though her body was composed largely of white bread, which indeed was the case. The body, except for the hands, ears, and small areas of skin behind the neck, was covered by a façade. She wore a wig, her eyebrows were painted black and her lips red, her face was powdered, the cheekbones rouged, the rims of her eyelids were blackened with a mixture of lamp-carbon and gum arabic. Above all this, like a Martello tower in defence of the façade, was a hat that held Hetty's gaze in fascination and wonder.

As she was staring at it, Miss Thoroughgood appeared to read her thoughts; for the black-rimmed eyes looked up, while the rest of the ensemble remained immobile, as she said:

“I shall not be very long. I have just to finish my letter to the wife of our mayor.”

“Oh, I have plenty of time, thank you,” replied Hetty.

Miss Thoroughgood smiled, unexpectedly revealing long yellow hare's teeth. At once Hetty thought of the Mad Hatter in
Tenniel's illustrations to
Alice
in
Wonderland.
As for the hat, Hetty had never seen anything like it. It was of purple plaited straw, wreathed with two ostrich feathers, one pink and the other black. They were connected in front with a rosette bow of mauve silk, displaying a large paste buckle. From the back of the hat arose several willowy aigrettes. Various sprays of artificial flowers, including marigolds and forget-me-nots, were secured upon otherwise bare places of the plaited purple straw. Two humming birds were mounted, one on either flank, upon the superstructure, which was underpinned by ten-inch hat-pins of blued steel, with globular black china heads.

With this armour of her soul Miss Thoroughgood faced the disintegrations of the new age and of her body.

“Are you new to the district?” she said, her pen pausing.

“Yes, I am in a way, though my——” Hetty was going to say ‘husband', but Miss Thoroughgood cut her short, with a question.

“Then you know the Quaggy brook?”

“I don't think I do,” replied Hetty, puzzled. What an extraordinary question!

“Then you will never have known Loos'am as it was, and as it ought to be, young woman,” Miss Thoroughgood managed to say, through the tapping and thumping of the snobs. “Let me tell you that I myself have often picked wild flowers upon its banks, but where are those banks now? They are making an artificial canal-bed of concrete, and taking our brook under something they call an Arcade—what could be farther from Arcadia, indeed?”

“Yes, I am afraid they are building everywhere today.”

“And what buildings! Look at our High Street, look what is happening to it. Architectural splendours of the Caroline and Georgian periods are almost daily being torn down, and the rubbish of the modern jerry-builders being run up in their place. The tragedy is, no one seems to mind. Do you, for instance?”

“I love old things and old places,” said Hetty.

Miss Thoroughgood looked with new interest at the face before her, appraising candid brown eyes and child-like smile. A nice face, a fresh face.

“I will take down your particulars in a moment,” she said. “That is, if you are not in a hurry?”

“Oh no, Miss Thoroughgood.”

“In the old days,” she went on, “when proper standards of conduct were imposed from above, let me tell you, there was not this frantic hurry——” She drummed her fingernails on her desk. “Really, what one has to put up with nowadays——” Her face seemed to sag; her other hand clutched her side; her eyes closed as in pain. Hetty wondered if she were ill.

With a deep sigh Miss Thoroughgood recovered herself. “Where was I? Oh yes, of course, the Quaggy is being put underground, for a terrace of so-called modern shops, I hear, with wide plate-glass windows, for the display of goods, for one and all to gaze upon. In the old days, let me tell you, shops were
shops,
and people went
into
them to select their purchases. Nowadays we are, apparently, to be confronted with wide plate-glass windows, for all to gaze upon, and the lowest of the low to be tempted to covet goods which can never be theirs. Do you think that can be right?”