How Dear Is Life (8 page)

There was a magazine club in the Branch: Mr. Howlett bought
Nash’s
, Mr. Hollis
The
Royal
,
Downham
The
London
, and he bought
Pearson’s
.
When they had read them for a week, they passed them round. Then Edgar bore them home.

The
London
was Phillip’s favourite; it usually had an F. St. Mars story.

He read, oblivious of cabs and buses and drays outside, while munching slowly to make the portion of crusty cottage loaf last, magazine propped against tea-pot. He was on his own; he could return when he wanted to; even so, Edgar would be back at six, so he must not linger. After all, he was now in charge of the Branch. It was seven minutes to six. He had six and a half more minutes.

The story finished, he took out his diary, and gloated upon the amount of overtime already due to him,
£
2 5s. 6
d
. Riches indeed! By working from five o’clock until nine that evening, he would make a further six shillings: more than he earned in nearly three ordinary days. From this diary, given him by Mr. Hollis—one of scores sent to the Branch every New Year, from other firms and companies—he learned from the
Table
of
Income
or
Wages
that his
£
40 per year was
£
3 6
s
.
8
d
.
per month, 15
s
. 4½
d
.
per week, or 2
s
.
2½
d
. per day. After Christmas he would buy a Belgian double-barrel gun, and go with Bertie down to the Blackwater estuary wildfowling during the week-ends!

Having scraped the pot of apricot jam clean, and picked off his plate the last group of crumbs, he sipped his third cup of tea, and regarded further information in the
North
British
and
Mer
cantile
Diary
about the population of the United Kingdom at
the last census, two years previously; and reflected that, had he died before donkey’s milk had saved his life as a baby, the number of people in England would now be 34,047, 658. “Donkey Boy”, his old nickname. “Worry Guts”, Father had sometimes called him. Was that because he had thread-worms all the time, and had been ashamed to tell Mother how they had itched so? After his scholarship exam, he had told her; and kept in bed, starved, medicine had killed them all.

He asked for the bill. He liked the waitress who usually served him; she always smiled at him, she was plump and pink-faced, unlike most of the pale thin waitresses in black clothes and white caps and aprons.

Four minutes left. He read the
Table
of
Inhabited
House
Duty
,
and wondered why anyone had to pay tax. Father often grumbled about income tax. What would Father have to pay? He had been in the M.F.O. for nearly twenty years, and Mother said he had started, coming from Doggett’s Bank, at
£
120 per annum, so now he would be earning in the neighbourhood of
£
320. The first
£
160 was abated, which meant it didn’t count; so he would have to pay 160 lots of 9
d
.
,
or 160 @ 6
d
. equalled
£
8, plus
£
4, total
£
12. But there was an allowance for every child under 16. Mavis was just 16, so Father would have to pay ten more ninepences than last year; more than that, for with his
£
10 annual rise it would mean twenty ninepences more, or 15
s
. Twelve pounds fifteen shillings a year! What a swizz! Hard cheese, Pater old Man, you should have gone to Australia when you had the chance!

Three minutes left. How long before he would have to pay income tax? By
£
10 annual rises, including the
£
20 rise from
£
50
t0
£
70
during his third year, it would take him—he counted on his fingers—eleven more years before he reached
£
160. He would be Downham’s age by then!

Lips and fingers working, he reckoned it would take him fifteen and a half years to reach
£
200, twenty-five to
£
300, thirty-five to
£
400, fifty-five to
£
500, sixty-five to
£
600, seventy-five to
£
700, eighty-five to
£
800, ninety-five to
£
900, a hundred and five to
£
1,000. By that time he would be like Old Parr! Then looking at his watch, he saw with slight alarm that he ought to be going.

The waitress who took an interest in what she thought of as the tall Irish boy with the dark blue eyes and lovely shy smile
wondered if he was hard-up, and reckoning how far his money would go. So when he rose and offered her his usual twopence she said quickly, with a sudden full look into his eyes, “No dear, that’s quite all right, really, you keep it. I know what it is to be hard up.”

He felt shame that twopence was not enough. He had a thr’penny bit in his pocket, too. It was too late to offer it now. He said, “Oh, I see, well, thank you, good evening,” and in confusion went out of the door, feeling that he could never go there again. Was he mean? Grandfather Maddison, who had died of drink, used to tip porters half-a-sovereign sometimes, when they opened carriage doors for him. And Gran’pa Turney once had given only a cigar-stub to a poor man who had carried his bag from Liverpool Street to London Bridge Station. He hurried down the street and turned into Wine Vaults Lane, to see Edgar approaching, whistling loudly
Oh
,
oh
,
that
Gaby
Gaby
Glide
.

A few evenings later, still thinking of the
£
4
grant in terms of new suit and Belgian double-barrel for wildfowling down by the Heybridge Basin (which, he had learned from Bertie, was the end of a canal, where it joined the Blackwater estuary by means of big wooden lock-gates) Phillip went to the Headquarters of the London Highlanders. There he declared a Scottish great-great-grandfather (of whom Richard had informed him) and was accepted, sworn in by the Adjutant while holding a Bible and standing to attention; and posted to ‘B’ Company.

Bertie took him to the School of Arms. Here amidst other activities men in flannel trousers, plimsolls, and singlets were bayonet-fighting, wearing wire masks and a sort of leather armour in front. He watched two at it. Long dummy rifles clashed, they ran in and out; suddenly one hurled his rifle forward with the full length of his arm and his body with it. The heavy iron button on the extended rod which took the place of the bayonet struck the other man on his leather chest-guard. The weight of the thrust drove the iron rod back against its spring. It shot out again with a snap. The umpire declared that Wallace had driven the bayonet through his opponent’s ribs.

Wallace! When the wire mask was removed, he saw Peter’s bespectacled face. He moved away, not wanting to meet Peter. He was still ashamed of having got Peter to fight for him on the Hill, although it was six years ago now. He still winced whenever
he recalled how Peter had come up to call him a coward, after Mr. Pye next door to the Rolls had complained to Father, and Father had told Uncle Hilary and Aunt Viccy at Epsom about it, to his utter shame. O, why had he not joined the Twentieth County of London, at Blackheath? He was forever branded a coward.

Self-critical, envious, haunted, hopeless (he had had no lunch and no tea), he watched Bertie in a bout with Peter. Others came to watch. Bertie was very agile and quick, he had a different manner of fighting. He ran in under Peter’s guard, and holding his rifle short, made the button spring against his chest. Phillip heard the staff-sergeant say, “Unorthodox, Corporal Cakebread, but I must admit you pinked your opponent.”

Elsewhere in the large drill hall, lit by electric globes hanging from the roof, men were boxing. The instructor, in dirty white jersey and grey flannel trousers, had a grinning scarred face, few teeth, and conglomerated ears. Beyond was a vaulting horse, parallel and horizontal bars. Phillip realised that everyone there was ever so much better than himself.

A recruit had to attend three drills a month, he learned. School of Arms was voluntary. Next week, said the storeman, he would have his uniform and equipment ready, stamped 9689 Pte. P. S. T. Maddison.

On the following Thursday he collected his kilt of hodden grey, purse or sporran, hose or stockings, spats, khaki jacket, and blue glengarry with the white-metal badge of the Scottish lion held by St. Andrew’s Cross. These went into a grey canvas kit-bag. With this equipment he went by omnibus to London Bridge, feeling that he was now really in the grown-up world.

During the walk over the Hill in the darkness he met the band with whom he sometimes wandered and played, and told them about his enlistment. They accompanied him down the gully, Ching insisting on carrying the kit-bag.

“Well, I’d like to ask you in,” said Phillip, to the four youths, to impress them further, “but I expect they will be in the middle of dinner.”

“Oh, it’s quite all right, Phil. Good night!”

He had told Mother he would be late that evening. There was a tray laid for him; bread, brawn, a slice of mince pie.
Would he like tea or cocoa with his supper? Richard looked up from the
Trident
.

“How about a plate of oatmeal for our soldier boy? You can’t produce a haggis, I suppose, Hetty?”

“I’m not really hungry, thank you.”

“Perhaps you would care for a glass of whusky?”

“Really, Dickie!” said Hetty, pleased with his amiability.

“Well, it is an occasion, your best boy joining the Army, surely? And I thought all Scotsmen lived on oatmeal and whiskey. Well, old chap, so you’re a territorial! What make of rifle did they issue you with?”

Phillip said he didn’t know, it was still in the armoury. He took his kit-bag up to his bedroom. He was not going to be persuaded to try on the kilt, and risk possible remarks about his ‘sparrow knees’, as once Mr. Swinerd, the assistant scoutmaster of the old North-west Kent Troop, had referred to them. Mr. Swinerd with his loose lips, and so-called jokes about orange juice swelling up bread in a boy’s stomach and stopping his heart, the silly rotter!

Richard would not have made such a remark to his grown son: but in the past, he had sometimes spoken of his ‘weepy’ face, his ‘creepy-crawly’ ways, his ‘throw-back’ behaviour; and the son had not forgotten, even if the parent had.

*

At his first School of Arms night, in singlet, white flannel trousers and plimsolls, Phillip felt, at least at first, that he was a man among men. The boxing lesson convinced him that he wasn’t. Two punches, like two fireworks in the streets outside exploding on his face, removed all desire to continue. The comic-paper drawings of a splosh with stars exactly described the feeling; the first crashed like a jumping cracker on his mouth, the second darkened all his head, spreading to his eyes with flashy darkness.

“Come on, lad, open yer peepers! Where’s that guard? Go on, after him! Up you get! That warn’t nothin’! Up you get! Nah then, watch ’im! Where’s yer guard? Use yer elbows! Never mind that one, ’e ain’t got no hoss-shoe in ’is glove! You ain’t goin’ to let no one do that to you! Cross with yer right! Where’s that straight left? What are yer feet doin’, tryin’ ter grow through the floor? Batter ’is gums! Change that smile on ’is dial! ’It ’
im
, not the air, lad! ’Ere, ’alf a mo’, I’ll show yer.”

After leaving the ring to wash his face free of blood, he decided to join the group for the vaulting horse. But he could only do simple exercises; no hand-springs. So he did a bit of rope-climbing on his own. He could do that, anyway.

On his first drill night he went on parade holding rifle at the half-trail, like a scout’s pole. He saluted the man in charge, the butt meanwhile resting on the floor. Downham was there, laughing.

“Don’t salute me, lad, I’m not an officer!” growled the staff-sergeant. “And keep that butt from dragging on the floor, it ain’t a broom. Fall in and dress by the right.”

He learned to form fours, to slope arms, to turn left and right, to stand to attention, to ground arms, to port arms for inspection with breech and cut-off open, to present arms, to fix and unfix bayonet; and most welcome of all, to dismiss—and so to the canteen.

“Cheerio!”

“Here’s the skin off your nose.”

“Thanks.”

*

One evening he went to call on Mr. Graham, who was president of the Old Boys’ Club, and tell him his news. Mr. Graham spoke of a reunion at the school on the following Saturday evening, and said he looked forward to meeting him there. In due course, wearing his new made-to-measure dark grey herringbone woollen suit, bought for fifty shillings at Church the tailor’s, Phillip walked over the Hill, down into the murky High Street glowing in a pool of electric light, and up towards the dark levels of the Heath.

Outside the school he hesitated; then assembling himself against old feelings of magisterial apprehension, went through the iron gates, past the chemistry laboratory and so to the entrance. Opening the door slightly, the first face he saw, in the rings of flickering gas-light under the high beams and rafters, was the Magister’s. There it was, pink and big, smiling among a group of old boys. Awaiting a chance to slip in unobserved, he darted into a cloak-room until the Magister was on the other side of Hall, before strolling out to talk to Tom Cundall and others he knew. He avoided the Magister: too many times had those icy Viking eyes looked into his inner self, and seen nothing there, for all Celtic personality had taken flight in fear.

An extraordinary thing happened later, when the Magister had left. Mr. Graham suggested his name to Fitcheyson, president of the Old Heathians Football Club, as captain of the new fourth team being formed!

He was amazed. He was no good at footer. He had been one of the worst boys in the school—not really bad, of course, like Jack Hart—but still, all the same, not much good: and here was Gildart Fitcheyson asking him if he would captain the Fourth Eleven!

Fitcheyson said he would arrange the fixtures. What about it? He agreed, with some wonder and more self-doubt; and in due course the matches were made, the cards printed.
Captain
, P. S. T. Maddison!