Donkey Boy (35 page)

“Remember what, Mum?”

“Oh, nothing, dear. You would not understand,” a remark which made Phillip determined to understand. On Saturday morning he asked Mrs. Feeney what “Tin Wills” meant.

“They called the first bicycles that, Master Phil. It was a low expression. Your father would not like to hear it from you, so be a good boy and forget it.”

This reply made Phillip think more about it. Thinking about it made him remember it. Later in the morning, when he and his cousins Ralph and Gerry, and other of the Band, were around the camp-fire hidden in a cleft of the slopes of the Backfield, he asked about it.

“‘Jesus Christ on Tin Wheels’ was how they used to sauce your Old Man,” said Ralph.

Phillip was shocked at this use of the name of Jesus, and subdued because Father had been sauced like that. His father was the best man in Hillside Road. He was the best cyclist, too, with the only Sunbeam with Little Oil Bath and Three-speed Sturmey-Archer gear to be seen anywhere.

O
NE
afternoon on coming home from school Phillip climbed up the elm tree and saw something in the Backfield which made him most curious. It was a sort of very long cart, with two pairs of stubby wheels each end. They were far apart and connected by a thick piece of wood. Soon he had hopped over the fence, startling a blackbird who was scratching in the heaps of rotting lawn-mower grass thrown over from Mr. Bigge’s garden, and had crept along a dog path under the thicket of elm suckers. This brushwood surrounded the row of tall trees in whose tops the rooks were cawing at their nests.

He stared at the strange cart. The letters
FITCHYSON,
Timber
Merchant,
Pit
Vale
Sawmills,
were painted on a board nailed to the left side of the front carriage. Whatever was it there for?

There was a new notice board put up at the far lower end of the Backfield, and he ran over to have a look at that. It was a notice that
Desirable
Residences
were to be erected. He ran back through the grass, thinking himself to be Umslopagaas in
Nada
the
Lily
running with his assagai to warn Allan Quatermain that strange scouts were tracking over the veldt. On return he hid in the thicket, and was wondering where he could get a real assagai, when fear that Father might be coming home early to fly his big double-box kite, nearly a man-lifter, on the Hill that evening, as there was a fine breeze, made him get up. The Backfield was forbidden, therefore the more exciting a place to hunt in, to stalk birds and cats, and other boys, and bake potatoes in the embers of a fire like Arthur who won the day.

Safely over the fence, he climbed the tree again. This was not forbidden, though Father said he must always hold tight with at least one hand when he was up there, as broken limbs would mean a heavy doctor’s bill, as well as goodbye to his chance of winning a scholarship.

Making sure that the strange new cart could be seen from the tree, so that he could not be caught out in a lie and sent to bed,
Phillip went indoors again, to try and learn Kings, Queens and Dates for Mr. Groat. Mr. Groat, who lived in No. 9, called “Chatsworth”, coached him twice a week for an hour on Mondays and Fridays. Mr. Groat was like Mr. Garstang, a Head Master, but as he lived in Hillside Road, there was no cane with the coaching.

When Father came home, Phillip told him about the cart he had seen. Father went down to have a look. Then Father got over the fence, and said Phillip could come with him for just that once. Phillip pretended to get over clumsily, as though it was the first time; but Father said, “Come on, old chap, by the clay marks on that board you usually do it in one hop, sole of right boot there, and down. Don’t you think I know? I’ve been a boy myself, you know.”

Father was not angry, and he did not know what to say.

“Bless my soul, it’s a timber waggon. They are going to cut down our elms! Well, there you are, my boy! Progress. What a shame! Money, money, money, that’s all some people think about. Goodbye to the rooks.”

“I saw a notice board down over there, Father. I walked down and back. It said houses.”

“Well, I suppose it had to come sooner or later. We must make the best of it, that’s all. There’s some wonderful leaf mould under here, you know. It’s the very thing for the garden. Better get it while we can. Would you like to collect some of it in a pail for me, or as much as you can get up, and just tip it over the fence at the bottom, where it is low?”

“Yes, Father. Now, Father?”

“Oh no, we are just going to have tea. I have brought
something
home for tea. We must wash now, to be ready in time. How are you getting on at school, old chap?”

“Very well, thank you, Father. I can do woodwork now, under Mr. Mansard in the Woodwork Shop. Satinwood is very nice, my favourite wood, I think.”

“Yes, it is a good working wood, though your tools have to be sharp to cross the grains properly. I don’t suppose you are allowed very sharp tools, though. A chisel can give you a very nasty cut if it slips. Shall I give you a leg up?”

“No thank you, Father, I can get over easily.” And placing his hands on the fence the boy sprang up, his two toecaps bumped
the wood, he swung his right boot lightly on the top, and vaulted over, with a quick glance at Father to see if he saw how well he could do it.

The something extra for tea was scotch shortbreads. After bread and butter, they melted sweetly in the mouth, and took away hunger.

“The Scots work on oatmeal,” said Father, “so do horses.”

After tea Phillip went into the front room with a list of Kings, Queens, and Dates to be learned. He was busily frowning when Father looked round the door.

“Hullo,” said Father. “Would you like to come for a walk with me, and see if we can spot that big chub that is supposed to be lingering on in the Randisbourne? Or are you too busy?”

“No, Father,” said Phillip, looking up from the page.

“He is very good, he has already been learning his dates before tea,” said Hetty, peering round beside her husband.

“There you go,” Richard remarked, half playfully. “I cannot have a word with the boy on my own, but you have to come and prompt him. I have not the least intention of taking him from his work,” and putting on his tweed cap, and taking his walking stick, Richard went out of the house.

“What have you been doing to annoy your father, Phillip?”

“Nothing, Mother!” He scowled. “Father and I understand each other.” Hetty had to go away into the kitchen, to hide laughter, which was near to tears.

The trees in the Backfield were soon down. Phillip watched, after running all the way home from school at midday, the last of the elms tottering after a great creak, then a sort of shriek and a swishing noise as down it went, and
thump
, it seemed to bounce before getting small all at once and lying still. Men with axes lopped and topped it; then when he came home in the afternoon the trunk had been sawn into sections with two-handled cross-cuts with teeth like the huge pike in the Brickhill pits. At the end of the week only the branches were left; but the rooks still cawed high in the sky.

Hundreds of navvies appeared early one morning. They had leather straps holding up their corduroy trousers below the knee, and with little wooden scrapers thrust in the straps, to clean their spades as they dug away the grass for a road. Carts took the sods
and made a huge heap in the middle of the level place below the slopes of the Backfield. Then the carts took all the sections of branches which had been cut up with axes, and men built a great bonfire of them, but without setting it alight. Next they covered the bonfire with an enormous amount of clay, all the carts taking it up. Only then did they set light to the bonfire.

While the heap was burning, day after day, other men were building foundations and walls of houses, in two rows down the new road where many smaller branches had been laid for a foundation. A steam-roller went over the branches and crushed them flat. The enormous heap of yellow clay went on burning day after day, and at night there were little flames over the heap, which Father said was a miniature Etna. After a fortnight the heap had turned red.

This was ballast, said Father, to lay on the new road; but the builder had changed his mind, and had put down gravel and flint instead, from the pit near the poplars where the kites sailed over. This was harder and better altogether for road metalling, said Father.

So the red ballast heap remained after the houses were built; and so did the marn ponds just behind the garden. The builder was an ass, said Father, and was asking to be made bankrupt, to go to all the trouble of mixing and pouring the marn, to make bricks with, and then to swop horses in midstream and decide to buy bricks instead.

Phillip was forbidden to go anywhere near the ballast heap, which was still burning. Steam and smoke sometimes issued from the cracks in the mass of several hundred tons. If he fell in, said Father, only his white bones would be found in many years’ time.

The bricklayers departed. The windows of the houses were glazed, each pane of glass bearing its warning nebula of
whitewash
, as a warning to painters with ladders, said Father.

One morning a frightful smell was wafted into all the houses of Hillside Road. It came as the shelter of the workmen’s privy was being pulled down, fifty yards beyond the row of garden fences. Gran’pa, after making everyone gargle with Sanitas, went down to Randiswell Police Station about it, to learn that Mr. Bigge had already called to complain. The pit was strewn with lime and filled in.

In addition to gargling, Hetty had made the children wear
handkerchiefs soaked in Dodder’s disinfectant over their noses, and sent them on the Hill. Mildenhall was there with some of his gang. They threw stones at Phillip as he ran away, and shouted out, “Laugh at ’im! Laugh at ’im! Frightened of a little——,” a very rude word. The Lanky Keeper chased the boys for using the word which, he said, “was not even in the Bible, and that’s sayin’ a lot!”

The marn pits remained in Phillip’s mind as things of terror, worse than quagmires, worse than the Exmoor bog which had sucked down Carver Doone after Jan Ridd had torn out the muscles in Carver’s arm like the string out of an orange. Gerry said that even frogs were drowned in the yellow marn. But Phillip had seen something much worse than frogs drowning. He was looking over the fence one Saturday morning when he saw a dog chase a cat into the marn, and the dog jumped in after the cat. Phillip cried out to Mrs. Bigge, to Grannie, to Mummy, to anyone to come quick, for all their fur was gone and their heads and tails were hidden, too, in thick yellow marn. As he watched they became shapes hardly moving; and only little bumps showed day after day where they had drowned.

When the wood of the stinking shed had been removed, and the houses were all finished, men came and cut channels in the sides of the marn pits, so that the water underneath the yellow pug trickled out; and the following Saturday morning when Phillip climbed over the fence, and laid a flat board on the marn and slowly walked out, in terror lest suddenly yellow squeeze up and suck him down, he discovered that there was no more danger.

The marn was firm; cracks were opening across it everywhere; soon he was stepping upon it without fear. There was the cat’s skull. Its skin easily came off, with the whiskers; and near it the dog’s white teeth seemed to be wanting to bite it. With Father’s fork he dug both skeletons out, washed them in a pail of water drawn from the butt, and reburied them in Grandpa’s garden, for the time when he should make his underground museum, like the one made by the mad genius whose inventions Jack Joker saved for England from the spies of Germany, in the new
Emerald
Library.

Richard looked forward to his kite-flying in the fine summer evenings. One late July evening was a special occasion, for he had
a new pilot box kite, and hoped it would go so high as to be almost out of sight. Phillip was asked to go upon the Hill after his homework was done, and take turns with cousin Gerry at holding the heavy winder.

As soon as Father was gone, Phillip closed the book and decided to have some music. He played the Polyphone for a couple of tunes, and then decided to go and see Gerry.

This cousin was a tall, blue-eyed boy who liked “young Phillip” as much as Phillip admired “old Gerry”. Gerry knew lots of nice things to talk about, and was never sarcastic like Ralph. Gerry was as tall as Ralph, who had rabbit teeth and cold sort of eyes, like a cod’s on the fishmonger’s slab. Ralph went to the West Kent Grammar School. He was one of the Yah Boo Boys, who had a feud with the prefects. The boots of the Yah Boo Boys often thumped on the tricky asphalt paths of Hillside Road, as they ran past, shouting and laughing, their books in straps over their shoulders, to be thrown down when they stopped and shouted up the gulley to their pursuers, “Yah Boo! Yah Boo!” The Yah Boo Boys cheeked the keepers on the Hill, too,
particularly
the Lanky Keeper, who was very thin and tall, with a gruff voice and a huge brown bushy moustache. The other keepers were fat and round, with the exception of Skullface, who was always trying to catch you among the forbidden bushes, or hiding while you tried to get sparrows’ nests up the trees or under the eaves of the lavatory. To do this you had to climb the spiked railings, and tread among the flowers, which was strictly
forbidden
. The eggs therefore were more valuable.

Phillip did not care for cousin Ralph. He thought he was a fool, ever since the day when some of the Yah Boo Boys, dashing down through the bushes, had settled in the grassy corner where the hurdle fence met the spiked railings, opposite Grandpa’s house across the road. They had begun to light Ogden’s Tabs. Ralph had called Phillip over, and said,

“Would you like to see smoke coming out of my eyes?”

Phillip said smoke couldn’t do it.

“You watch steadily, and see, if you don’t believe me,” replied Ralph. “Hold my hand to see there is no deception. Hold it tight.”

Phillip did so.

“Now look hard at my eyes.”

The other Yah Boo Boys were grinning. Ralph drew a lot of
smoke from his Tab, so that it glowed bright red, and then drew it into his lungs, while staring at Phillip’s eyes. Suddenly Phillip cried “Oh!” then “B—— you!” for the end of the cigarette had been put on his wrist. Ralph’s toothy grin came through the green bars of the railings.

“I suppose you think you are funny, don’t you?” shouted Phillip, after looking at the little white blister on his skin.

“I do,” grinned Ralph.

“You are, you know, too! You look exactly like a monkey in the Zoo, behind bars!” and so saying, Phillip had gone in to see Uncle Hugh, pleased that the other boys had laughed at Ralph, who had said, “You young s——,” another very bad word.

But that was long ago, at the beginning of Standard Three, and since then Phillip had had nothing more to do with his cousin Ralph. Gerry was the one he liked.