Donkey Boy (14 page)

Which, as it turned out, was in accordance with the thoughts of other members of the Antiquarian and Archeological Society; for owing to the extreme density of the fog, only Mr. Mundy and Miss MacIntosh, who had but to walk a hundred yards or so, arrived at St. Simon's Hall that night.

The next evening Miss Thoroughgood called, asking to see Mr. Maddison on particular business, in private. Richard saw her in the front room, behind the door shut for about five minutes. Afterwards Miss Thoroughgood left with raddled face, and Hetty heard her thanking Richard profusely as he let her out of the front door, and saw her down the dark porch and awkward path to the gate. Hetty did not ask what Miss Thoroughgood had said, nor did Richard tell her.

In due course local newspapers printed accounts of the
proceedings at Greenwich Police Court, where a remand was made; and later still, the details at the Quarter Sessions. Richard appeared as a witness on both occasions. The accused man declared on oath that his daughter had told him that her employer had not only interfered with her, but had kept back half her wages, paying only half-a-crown a week. Hetty denied this, saying she had paid Mona five shillings every Saturday. Medical evidence was given that conception had occurred before the girl entered employment as a domestic servant. An earnest member of the Society for the Elevation of the Poor was permitted to give evidence of extenuating circumstances. She said that there were seven children in the family, which was one of three families occupying a three-bedroom'd house in Mercy Terrace. The Monks occupied one room. Monk had always been a good husband and father until he had experienced a prolonged period of being out of work, for no fault of his own.

Mrs. Monk was not required by law to testify against her husband, nor was Mona brought into the witness box; so the charge of incest, known by the court missionary and others to be common enough in such rookeries of the poor, was not made. It was sufficient that Monk had committed the acts of burglary, assault and battery, with intent to do grievous bodily harm. He was sent to penal servitude for the maximum number of years.

Richard was deeply mortified by accounts printed in the newspapers. He never went back to St. Simon's Tennis Club, nor did he attend any further Antiquarian Society meetings. His feelings about the matter may perhaps be indicated by the fact that, when his quarterly season-ticket expired on the London, Brighton railway, he changed to the South Eastern, going to and returning from Randiswell every day, in order to avoid passing down Foxfield Road and the parish hall of St. Simon Wakenham. And he never told Hetty, or anyone else, what Miss Thoroughgood had told him in confidence: that she was suffering from skin cancer, and had charged Mona an excessive commission of half her wages, as that was the only way she could pay the doctor's bills. “Old Loos'am”, as she had been known, died in the Infirmary half a year later, and was buried in the graveyard of the parish church.

T
HE
may blossom was white on the thorns upon the Hill, as though to adorn the first springtime of the new century. Leaves of silver birch and elm hid the black branches of winter; the grass was a deeper green, like the colour painted upon the spiked iron railings enclosing the forty acres of the Recreation Ground. Hetty had planned to dress the two children in their best clothes—Sonny in white sailor suit and Mavis in the silk frock she had made for her—and take them to Greenwich, to visit her favourite Aunt Marian; but on rising that morning she felt ill, and wondered if she were going to have one of her bilious attacks.

She was so obviously unwell, head hot and cheeks flushed, that Richard ordered her to remain in bed, saying that he would get his own breakfast. The porridge was already cooked in the double-cooker, and had only to be heated under the gas. Rashers of streaky bacon were in the larder. Hetty prayed that Dickie would not be upset if he found any food that he considered stale on the shelves; and she started to get up, but felt so giddy that she climbed back again into bed, shivering.

“I shall be quite all right, Dickie.” Thinking of the children, she felt relief that Mamma was next door. “Mrs. Bigge will come in, dear, if I want any help. I’ll take some nux vomica, perhaps that will put me right. No, dear, I don’t feel like—I mean I don’t want any breakfast. Just a cup of tea, thank you Dickie. Sonny and Mavis only have a plate of porridge each, and then a slice of bread and butter with marmalade.”

“I know, I’m not entirely unobservant, Hetty!”

“No, dear, of course not. My head aches a little, I can’t think very clearly.” Her eyes shone with fever. “Oh Dickie, please don’t bother about getting the children’s breakfasts, on second thoughts. Sonny has never dressed himself alone, dear.”

“Well, it’s time he learned! A boy who cannot dress himself, at his age, indeed! I’ve never heard of such a thing!”

He went to the door and called down the corridor, “Phillip, are you awake?”

“Yes, farver,” a thin voice floated back.

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing, farver.”

“Then get up, at once, and dress yourself!”

There was no reply, so Richard, in dark-blue dressing-gown and carpet slippers, went down the corridor to the end bedroom but one. On the way he turned on the cold tap for his morning tub.

“Come on, old chap!” he said to the boy lying in bed. “Are you feeling seedy, too?”

“No, farver.”

“Then get up!” He stripped back the clothes, revealing the thin child lying curled up with a golliwog, and a loudly purring brindled cat, in his arms.

The boy stared at his father. Something in the stare penetrated to an inner feeling of the man, who almost against his will heard himself speaking with an abruptness that he did not really intend. Indeed, Richard never really intended to be censorious or critical; but gradually the habit had formed.

“Now you know very well it is forbidden to take Zippy to bed with you, don’t you?”

When the boy did not answer, but continued to stare with full dark stare, the inner feeling seemed to leap out of Richard and he said severely, “If you do this again, my boy, you will have to go to bed and have only bread and water for a day! I will not have you grow up in deceit! Come on, up with you!” and he gave the boy a slap on his bottom.

The cat stretched itself and yawned, while the boy began to cry.

“Oh come on, Phillip! Cannot I say anything to you without you turning on the water-works? Be a man! Look at Zippy, he doesn’t start crying because he has to get up. Zippy, Zippy! Come on then, old fellow.” With tail erect the brindled cat walked over the bed, and rubbed its neck against Richard’s knuckles.

“Oh, come on Phillip, stop snivelling! Anyone would think you’d been ill-treated, the way you respond to a slap! Why bless my soul, I hardly touched you. Your Mother is not very well, and so you must be an extra special good boy to-day, and look
after your Aunt Isabelle when she arrives. It’s time you had a cold tub in the morning, I started them before I was your age. Come on, I’ll give you a swish before I have mine.”

He led the boy into the bathroom.

“Come on, now, off with your nightshirt.” The bath was a third full, a quivering oblong of pale green coldness.

“Now then, in you go, like a man. Come on, climb over by yourself. Don’t stand there shivering, and for heaven’s sake don’t start grizzling again! Come on, don’t be a mamby-pamby!”

Hetty was listening. The bedroom door was wide open. She had heard the slap, the overbearing voice, the whimpering, and wondered anxiously what Sonny had been doing to upset his father. She knew how the boy had adored his father, and had felt after the birth of Mavis that his father did not want him any more. It grieved her to think that during the past year the boy had become noticeably more shut-in upon himself. At times it seemed to Hetty that Dickie had forgotten how he, in his boyhood, had felt when
his
father had been cross and impatient.

The bathroom window was open at the top. Richard believed in plenty of fresh air. It was a calm summer morning outside. Through the drawn-down top of the window a starling was visible on the chimney pot of the opposite house, belonging to Mr. Turney. Richard always thought of his father-in-law as Mr. Turney, as invariably he addressed him as Mr. Turney. Thomas Turney’s sons addressed the Old Man as “sir”; Richard had done the same to his father; but to him Mr. Turney was Mr. Turney, an individual he could not respect.

This feeling, of course, was shared by both men towards each other, since it had its existence between the two.

Richard had an affection for the starling. Its bronze-green sheens glinted in the sun as it sang on the rim of the warm red chimney pot. It wheezed and shivered its wings, as, with opened upheld beak, it turned from side to side, like a singer on a concert platform. Its song was composed of mimic cries of its surroundings—yodel-like
Milk-o!
cry of milkman, clatter of tinned milk cans, plaintive cry of kestrel hawk that hunted over the Hill, ringing cry of tomtit, bark of dog,
zec-zec
of carter to horse, the thin wail of a violin—even the noise of Mr. Turney clearing his throat in his bathroom opposite! Richard greeted the bird, in his mind, as a friend, every morning. He knew that the starling was
throwing off into the sky its joyous greeting to the sun, the expectations of its mate’s sky-blue eggs hatching, and food in the cabbage fields of Randiswell—and then Richard’s happy communication with the herald on the chimney pot was liable to be broken by the actual noise of Mr. Turney clearing his throat at the wash-basin, sniffing diluted Sanitas up his nostrils, and gargling. Richard was too sensitive to close his own bathroom window, although he did not want to hear the vulgarian noises of his father-in-law; nor for Mr. Turney to overhear the private noises of his own ablutions. Any moment now Mr. Turney would be entering his bathroom.

“Come on, old chap, no use shivering on the brink! Under you go! Why, you’re not half a man! At your age, I and your uncles used to swim every morning, summer and winter, in the Longpond at home.”

Richard believed this; as a fact he had learned to swim at seven years of age.

Phillip was standing unhappily in the bath. He was afraid of the deep mass of greenish water below him. He was greatly apprehensive of being shattered by the cold. Richard lost patience with him. He bent over the bath, placed one arm under the boy’s knees and the other around projecting shoulder-blades, and lifted him up preparatory to laying him flat on his back. But the child clung to him. He was rigid with fear, his mouth open, his eyes terrified.

“No, farver, no! Please don’t! No, farver! I beg your pardon, farver!”

“Let go, boy! Don’t be such a blue funk, Phillip! Why, you’ll have a wonderful glow afterwards. Come on now, let go of my dressing-gown!” The father spoke sharply; he had lost patience; his wife’s indisposition had ruined his morning routine, and pleasure in the exhilarating cold tub, which he took every day of the year, attributing to it his absence of colds or any other illness.

He pressed down the clinging boy. Phillip cried out, tried wildly to claw himself up. His head bumped on the curved rim of the iron bath, and he began to cry. The father lifted him out, covered the shivering little wretch with his towel, and dried him.

“What a fuss over nothing, my boy! There now, don’t you feel better?”

He had come to the conclusion that his son was a cowardly sort. Did he not tell untruths, sometimes, it appeared, for the sake of untruth, when really there was nothing to be gained by it? Hetty was partly responsible, of course; she spoiled the boy, by giving in to his every mood.

“Now toddle along and show Mother that you can dress yourself like a big boy! You
are
a big boy, you know, you are five years old. You must look after Mother today, and Mavis. And when Aunty Belle comes, you must be on your best behaviour. There now, you won’t be afraid of cold water any more, will you?”

“No, farver.”

“And tomorrow, if you are good, I’ll let you give yourself a cold swish, after I’ve had mine, all by yourself. What do you say to that, eh?”

“Thank you, farver.”

“That’s right, old chap. Now toddle along and get your clothes on, and perhaps if you are good today, when I come home tonight I’ll give you, as an especial treat, some cherry toffee.”

“Thank you, farver.”

The boy hurried away back to his bedroom. Richard, as was his habit, shut and bolted the door, to enjoy the privacy and refreshment of what he called his tub.

As a special treat for breakfast, he cooked some bacon for Phillip. The two had the meal together in the kitchen. Richard was a little keyed-up because he had taken, for him, a bold decision. He would ride on the Starley Rover to the City. This would enable him to leave a message at Dr. Cave-Brown’s on the way. He had not cycled to his work for two years, and so the prospect was cause for some trepidation. He had never yet been late at the office—whether in the old days at Doggett’s in the Strand, or now at the Moon Fire Office in Haybundle Street—during all his years in the City, since the age of seventeen. And he must not spoil that record of punctuality.

Having taken his wife a second cup of tea, he lifted out his bicycle and departed down Hillside Road on that enamelled and nickel-plated machine, straw hat held under arm lest it blow off in the rush of air down the short and flinty hill to the corner, and then up the slight slope of Charlotte Road to the doctor’s.

Phillip watched him out of sight from his mother’s bedroom window. Then he turned and said to his mother, “I’m the man now, Mummy.”

“Yes, dear. You will be a good boy, and not touch any of your father’s things, won’t you?”

“No, Mummy.”

The idea having been put into his head, Phillip promptly went down the steps from the landing to Father’s work-room. It was a wonderful place, full of strange and exciting things. He tried the handle, and found the door locked. He returned to his mother’s bedroom.

“May I float my birf-day boat, Mummy, in the barf?”

“Yes, dear, if you promise not to make a lot of splashing.”

Hetty thought with relief that Mrs. Feeney was coming for a whole day today.

“I don’t want Mavis to come, Mummy. She interubbers me.”

Mavis could now walk. She lived much of her life in the cot and the high chair which Phillip had vacated. She was now asleep, having had from her father, whose delight in her was as obvious as his disappointment with his first-born, a bowl of warm bread and milk, called sop.

Hetty lay with aching eyeballs. She felt sick, her head ached. She shivered. What could she have eaten? Or had she caught a chill. Thank goodness, Mrs. Feeney would be here any minute now.

Phillip put in the plug, and turned on the taps. The fire was not alight in the kitchen, so no hot water could scald him, thought Hetty, or be wasted. His Aunt Victoria had sent him a little yacht from Holborn for his birthday, on behalf of his godmother who was living in the Aegean, making a study of the country of Homer and other Greek poets, preparatory, it was understood, to coming home and starting, with a friend, a school for young gentlewomen in the West Country.

Happily Phillip sailed his boat in the bath. He experimented with extra sails from the toilet roll, extra masts with toothbrushes from the rack above the soap dish, and with the soap for its own sake, together with the tooth glass. It was interesting to transfer water in the glass from bath to lavatory pan. He tried to sail the yacht in the pan, and to find out what happened when
he clambered up and pulled the plug. Obviously the form was disintegrating, for next he sought out Zippy, to give that cat a cold swish.

This being done, the cat yowled and fled, looking unusually thin, and leaving a string of water on the linoleum of the landing and the carpet of the stairs. Philip knew where it had gone to, its hide in the cupboard under the stairs, where brooms and brushes were kept, with smelly cloths—Phillip knew every one of the smells—for polishing and cleaning wood, stone, and metal.

Having pulled Zippy out of the cupboard, Phillip was wiping him in the scullery when there was a knock on the door. He went to the door, recognising the knock of Mrs. Feeney. He knew all the other callers by the way they rang the bell, knocked, or, when it was Hern the grocer, who was deaf, both rang and knocked.

“Why, what have you been doing with the cat, Master Phil? My goodness, the poor old moggy’s as wet as anything! What have you been doing, eh?”

Mrs. Feeney went straight into the kitchen, put her bag on the board under the dresser, and began to untie the strings of her bonnet.

“Zippy had a barf, Mrs. Feeney. I did too, with Farver. I’ve been sailing my boat. Mummy’s ill in bed. So don’t make too much noise, will you?”

“Oh? I’ll be going upstairs then, to find out what’s the matter.”

“You won’t make any noise, will you, Mrs. Feeney?”

“Go on with yer, Master Phillip, it’s you that mustn’t make the noise!”