Donkey Boy (29 page)

Hetty gave him all the news about Papa and Mamma, Charley, Hughie, Dorrie, and Joseph.

“And how is your husband, Hetty? How does he like
insurance
after banking?”

“It is more interesting work, Dickie says. The people there are easier to get on with than was the case at Doggett’s.”

“Look who bank at Doggett’s!” exclaimed James, removing the cherry-wood, and appearing to glare. “All the rich Tories, the great landlords! Your husband is well out of such an atmosphere, I should say.” His pipe glowed, smoke issued from his nostrils in two streams. “The Duke banks there, of course, all the landlords stick together! Give me a local bank anytime, though more and more are being swallowed up by the big ones with headquarters in London, more’s the pity.”

“Still, they can’t do that with gas, thank goodness, Jim,” declared Eliza; and Hetty had to restrain herself from laughing as Jim blew another cloud of indignant smoke from his nostrils. James Pickering was secretary of the local gas company, whose ironwork adjoined the railway station.

In the morning all were assembled for breakfast in the parlour of Beau Brickhill, as they called the house among themselves. It had been built on a field of that name, the copyhold of which had been held by a branch of the yeoman Turneys since the sixteenth
century. Brickhill House had been built from the profits of a brick-making business on the site. The underlying blue clay of the ten acres of Beau Brickhill had been dug out, in a series of flat terraced pits, to be moulded, dried, and finally baked in stacks of heavy flat bricks which had been of the first quality for building. The layers of blue lias, or gault, had lain upon gravel, under which in turn lay a yellow clay, holding water, so that when brick-making had been discontinued, with the
working-out
of the stratum of blue lias, deep ponds had formed in the eight acres to a depth of twenty-five feet. These ponds lay behind the gardens of the house. Reeds had sprung up in them and sallows upon the banks; fish had appeared, said to have been brought there as spawn upon the legs of mollerns, dipchicks, and other wildfowl.

Phillip thought it was a wonderful house, the best in the world. There was a Grandpa and Grandma in it, and their name was Thacker. Looking at Grannie Thacker at the end of the
breakfast
table (for Brickhill belonged to her), and at the cane hanging upon the back of her chair, Phillip thought that her name must have something to do with the cane. It was like the word in the Pluck Library when Tom Valiant, with a club made of rolled-up examination papers, and disguised in a white sheet to be a ghost, went
thwack-thwack
on the bald square head of the German master, who was a spy in disguise. Percy’s grandmother was very thin, so her name was thin, not thwacker, ther-wacker, but thin, thacker. Thin Thacker, Tin Tacker, like the long blue hair-pins Mummy wore in her hat.

“Do you know who I am, Phillip?” asked Mrs. Thacker. She was dressed in black, and sat thin and upright in a wooden corset. She smiled and said, swaying stiffly, “Do I remind you of anyone?”

Why was Mummy smiling at him, and Aunt Eliza, too, and Uncle Jim? Phillip shook his head.

“I am your grandfather’s sister, Phillip. Your grandfather Turney!”

Phillip could not understand it. The idea of Gran’pa Turney having a sister was outside his world. “Oh,” he said.

Grandpa Thacker sat at the other end of the table. He had a thin red face and a long beard down to the mother-of-pearl buttons of his black-braided waistcoat. He wore black mittens
on his hands; his fingers were pink and nobbly. He had a big red handkerchief with white spots on it. Before saying grace he blew his nose like a trumpet and then folded the handkerchief up carefully before putting it in the pocket of his dark-brown velvet coat. During grace everyone bent their heads but only Grannie Thacker really shut her eyes, Phillip noticed, peeping from face to face.

“For what we are about to receive the Lord make us truly thankful” said Grandpa Thacker, and everyone said “Amen”. Phillip was thinking of how soon after breakfast would he be able to go to the Pits and catch perch and pike there. He had read all Father’s books in the bookcase about fishing, and knew about paternoster tackle, live bait, spinning for pike, and
brandling
worms for perch.

During breakfast he was so excited that he wanted to leave after the porridge; but when Martha, an old woman, appeared from the kitchen with a plateful of hot sausage rolls and he had tasted one, he forgot about the pressing need to dig brandling worms in what Percy called the trash heap up the garden.

The sausage rolls were very tasty, the meat being of a pig recently killed, minced in the hand-machine and flavoured with oatmeal and herbs. A corm of cut garlic smeared around the mixing bowl had given a hungry flavour. The rolls were followed by strawberry jam on home-made bread, with pats of butter, not spread thin on slices as at home.

At last he could eat no more.

“Have you filled your belly, little fellow?” asked Grandpa Thacker, looking down from the end of the table.

“Yes, thank you, Grandpa Thwacker,” replied Phillip. Everyone laughed, and Phillip wondered why.

“Theodore Thacker is my name, little fellow. Can you say that, eh?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Can you say it six times over without fault, little fellow? I’ll gi’ee a ha’penny if you can.”

Phillip remained silent.

“Go on, earn the money, Phillip. I would if I were you,” Aunty Eliza urged him, across the table.

As he did not speak, Uncle Jim said: “And I’ll give you a penny if you can say ‘Theodore Thacker threshed a stack on Saturday
and thickly thatched the stack with straw’ six times without fault, my boy.”

“I’m not so clever as you are, Uncle Whipper,” said Phillip, and this time he knew why everyone laughed.

Uncle Jim said: “He’s sharp as a needle, your lad, Hetty.”

“Go on, try it,” said Aunt Liz, but still Phillip did not attempt it. He wondered where the catch was. Grandpa Thresher gave the cane to Grandma Thacker-Thicker-Thocker-Thugger-B—but he must not think the word Cousin Ralph used, for it was a very bad word and meant something awful, like its sound.

If he said the bad word suddenly by mistake it would be terrible, nobody would think he was a good boy anymore, but find out what he really was, a bad boy all through. He was not
really
a bad boy, like Cousin Ralph, because he never really meant to be naughty, but always
pretended
to be naughty when the feeling like wire in him made him do the opposite. Mummy said Ralph was really naughty because Uncle Sidney had died, and Aunt Dorrie could not control him, his elder brother Hubert being away at boarding school.

The fishing was almost as wonderful as the books Phillip had read. Richard had allowed him to look at the fishing books in the glass bookcase, on condition that the boy washed his hands first, and put the books back in their places afterwards. Phillip thought that the Brickhill Pits were like the Longpond Father had told Mavis and him about during Sunday morning walks to Cutler’s Pond at home. When he got his first bite Phillip was so excited that he gave such a big jerk, when his quill float rose up and then dived under, that the silvery fish went right over his head. It was a fish with red fins, gold eyes, silver-green scales and dark bars down its sides, while its back fin was like the top of a Roman’s helmet, and spiky. He recognised it for a perch from the plate in Payne-Galways’ book on Coarse Fishing. Percy told him to be careful of the spines, which could draw blood.

With trembling fingers Phillip put his fish in the pail half full of water, then threaded a fresh brandling on the hook as Percy had shown him. Very soon the float dipped under again, and he gave a flip with the end of the bamboo pole, and then cried out to Percy that he had hooked a big one. Percy came and showed him how to play it, holding the pole so that the strain was off
the thin top and the fish tired itself out before you drew it in slowly to the side. Then telling Phillip to hold the pole, Percy stood on the plank laid on the reeds, stooped to hook his finger in the red gills, and lifted the perch out.

“That’s a half pound if it’s an ounce,” said Percy. The perch splattered about, raising its back fin in agony; but Percy said it was done to stab his hand as he worked the hook with a thin wooden degorger out of its throat. Into the pail it went, with the other one.

Soon afterwards the fish ceased to bite. Percy said they had gone down into a deep hole to lie up. So the anglers moved to another pit. Little birds with yellow streaks behind their eyes were chattering and making skrittchering noises in the reeds. Percy said they were reed warblers. They made nests of
spear-leaves
plaited round stems of bullrushes. There were sand-martins flitting over the water. It was all marvellous and strange to Phillip. Best of all was the flashing sight of a greeny-blue kingfisher flying so straight and fast that he could only just see its wings beating. Percy said you could easily shoot one. They came up from the Satchville brook to fish in the pits, and always perched on the same places on the low willow branches. Phillip asked if he might shoot with his gun, and was overjoyed when Percy said he would let him.

“Pray don’t say a word to a soul, for the Duke won’t have kingfishers shot. He will find out if you do, for he has a hundred game-keepers. The Duke’s park has a wall twelve miles round it, and there is every kind of pheasant in the world inside, besides ostriches, emus, bison, and hundreds of other animals.”

Phillip thought the Duke must be a very big person, and with a very dark black beard, a sort of giant, or even ogre.

The next day was Sunday. Everyone put on best clothes. Phillip and Percy were told to keep in until they went to church, for they must not get their boots or their collars dirty.

Shortly after half past ten the party left for church, Gran’pa and Grannie, Uncle Jim, Aunt Liza, Percy, Polly, and Phillip. Doris had been left behind, for she had caught a cold. Her puckered face, mouthing “Mummy!” behind glass, appeared at an upper window, as the party walked down the village street. She had escaped from Martha, who picked her up a moment later, and took her back to bed, where she cried herself to sleep.

Phillip looked up at the great holly hedges they passed by. They were dark green, and tall and as smooth as the side of a house. When they left the village, and had passed other hedges and walls, they came to a stile, which led along a footpath to the church seen among trees. The bells were ringing out, and it seemed to Phillip that the swallows were the sound, blue steel clanging over the buttercups in the grass.

By the lych-gate leading into the churchyard stood an ugly old blob-nosed red-faced man in a red and blue uniform with silver buttons, and a cocked hat. He wore white gloves and had a smooth black stick with a silver knob on it. He touched his hat to all the men going in who wore tophats, Phillip noticed. Grandpa Thacker and Uncle Jim wore tophats, and they nodded to the old man and said: “Good morning, Beadle.”

It was suddenly cold inside the church, where the ropes went up and down quickly as men pulled them. The bells stopped when the Beadle came in, and behind him were a lady and
gentleman
with some children wearing gloves. “That’s the Squire,” whispered Percy.

The Beadle opened the gate of what Uncle Jim had already told Phillip was the Lady Chapel.

Then a single bell tolled and the parson came in in white, and prayed.

The organ was like a piano, only it was squeaky and wheezy. The man playing it made his feet go up and down underneath and they stopped when the music stopped with a kind of gasp, followed by a muffled thump, and then a noise like a football bladder suddenly being untied. Phillip realized that the man’s feet had been pumping air into it all the time. It wasn’t really an organ after all, it was only a hurdy-gurdy! What a swindle!

Impressed by the importance of his discovery, he turned to Percy and whispered:

“Our church at home has a real organ, a hundred times as big as that little thing, which I wouldn’t give a penny for.”

A moment later he started, for the silver knob of the black stick had tapped him on the shoulder. Turning round, Phillip saw the Beadle looking at him.

“Sss-sh!” said the Beadle, as though some of the air of the hurdy-gurdy had escaped from him. Phillip sat as still as he could after that.

After singing and prayers, the Squire read the lesson, in a throaty voice. He had a lot of lines on his face, and white whiskers, and blew his nose on a red silk handkerchief before he started to read. He looked cleaner than the churchwarden at St. Cyprian’s, the new church in red-brick in Charlotte Road, where sometimes he had to go on Sundays when Father was not taking him and Mavis for a walk.

The Squire looked like Mr. Newman, Grandpa Turney’s friend who lived in a little house opposite the Randiswell Baths, with a house-keeper to look after him. Phillip called in to see Mr. Newman occasionally, because Mr. Newman always offered him a slice of cake and half a glass of port. Mr. Newman was a funny sort of man, for he treated him as though he were a grown up gentleman, instead of a boy, so Phillip thought there was something a little daft about Mr. Newman, who bowed to him when he shook hands. Mr. Newman called his house the Ginger Bread House, it certainly was very small compared with his own house. Though Beau Brickhill House was ever so much bigger than his own house.

Phillip thought of Mr. Newman as the Squire read from the Bible on a big brass stand with eagle’s wings open on top of it. He was sorry when he said “Here endeth the first lesson”, for now it was dull singing, with the foot-flapping man working away at the hurdy-gurdy.

The rector’s voice was just like a rook’s cawing in the trees of the Backfield. The Devil, my friends, is waiting to
Caw!
Caw!
We may deceive ourselves, my friends, but we do not
Caw!
Caw!
For what shall it profit a man if he
Caw!
Caw!
Phillip remembered going to the theatre to see Uncle Hugh play his violin. Aunt Dorrie, with Bertie, Ralph, and Jerry, and Mummy and Grandpa and Grandma all sat in a row in red seats. Mummy said Uncle Hugh was nervous and not a bit like himself, oh what a pity, what a pity, after the people high up in the gallery above had whistled and thrown pennies on the stage. Mummy said “Clap hard! Clap hard!” and they had all clapped, and he had cried out “Caw on! Caw on!” after, but the curtain had come down, and everyone had laughed. He had not known why, until Mummy said it should have been “On Caw!” the other way round. Grandpa Turney had said to Mummy as they were riding home in the tram, “Poor silly fellow, will my son’s conceit
never let him learn?” That had been a long time ago, at the New Cross Empire.