Young Phillip Maddison (45 page)

He tried to open a window. The air in the room was stale. It looked as though it had never been opened. He could never sleep in a room unless the fresh air could come in. The window would not open. He sat on the bed, and took off his boots, in the light of his candles in heavy china sticks on the dressing table. Then in stockinged feet he went to the wash-hand-stand, and found the first friendly thing in the room, a brass can of hot-water wrapped in a clean white towel, like a turban. But there was no soap. Mother had the soap, in her bag. She had brought it from England, as the Belgian hotels, she said, did not provide soap. He
must
wash his hands before going to bed, he could never sleep unless his hands were clean and free.

Why hadn't Mother put some soap in his bag, one with a snap-fastener lent by Gran'pa? If she had known about no soap, she ought to have put some in.

But where was her room? It was next to his, but which way, up or down the corridor? Supposing he knocked on the wrong door? He dare not risk it. Why couldn't Mother be sensible?

While he was sitting on the bed, feeling cold, there came a tap on the door. He went to open it. Petal stood there, in her dressing gown.

He was relieved to see her. “Come in,” he whispered, and shut the door behind her. ‘Isn't it a dismal old hole? Have you got any soap?”

“No, haven't you? That's what I came in for. It must be in Aunty Hetty's bag. Tell me, where did you go to after dinner, Phil?”

“Oh, just for a walk. My window doesn't open, does yours?”

“No. But it doesn't matter. We're only here for one night. Did you go back to the fair ground?”

“Yes.”

“To see that mechanical girl in the glass case?”

“Yes I did, if you want to know. I wanted to see how it worked.”

“Did you find out?”

“No, I can't speak French well enough.”

“I could see she fascinated you.”

“Poof, a dummy like that? What rot!”

“It was the attitude, wasn't it? Like this.”

Petal seated herself on the bed, shook her hair loose, and squatted on her heels, her arms sideways, in the posture of the wax figure. Then she put on a smile, with parted lips, giving an imitation in candlelight which increased Phillip's rate of breathing before her.

“Do you think I'm a good actress, Phillip?”

He nodded. “Shall we do it now?” he managed to say.

It was Petal's turn to nod.

“Lie down then,” he whispered. “Wait a mo', I'll chuck off this beastly eiderdown.” Petal obeyed, like an obedient girl. Phillip lay upon her. He felt rather awkward. What was he supposed to do next?

“Is this right?” he asked.

“I don't think so.”

He got off, and stood up. The feeling of fascination was gone. Petal got off the bed, and threw back her hair.

“Where's Aunt Hetty's room?”

“Next to mine, down the passage. I say, Petal.”

“What?”

“Did you really come in for some soap?”

“Yes, of course. What else d'you think I came in for?”

“I don't know.”

There was a tap on the door. Petal opened it.

“Petal, what are you doing here, dear?”

“I came in to try and borrow some soap, Aunt Hetty.”

“Well dear, you should have come to me. I've just put some in your room. You'd better go back now, dear. We've got a long day before us tomorrow, and Phillip hasn't been very well. I've brought some for him, too. Don't catch a chill, Phillip. Come on, Petal, I am sure we are all very tired. Are you feeling all right now, Phillip?”

“Yes, Mum, quite all right. Goodnight. Goodnight Petal, see you tomorrow.”

He yawned; and after washing his hands, for warmth got
into bed in his vest and shirt, to fall asleep thinking that he would have four days with Desmond on his return, before the new term beginning on the twentieth of April.

*

Coffee and rolls with
conserve
and
beurre
were very nice for breakfast; and in high expectation they drove to the
gâre
(Phillip played a game with himself, to see how many French words he could learn) in a
voiture
pulled by a
cheval
sur
le
route
de
pierres.
The station was grimy like all London ones, but the trains quite different. This one, for Bruxelles, had an immense-wheeled engine, and a tinny little tooting horn which it obeyed in a vast cloud of steam. It was not much louder than Freddy Payne and his pewter bugle, in the scouting days of long ago.

The second class carriage was dark grey. A notice on a small white enamelled plate said
Niet
rooken
niet
speuen.
Phillip fancied himself as a linguist as he explained to Mother and Petal that in this carriage people must neither smoke nor spit. On the other side of the carriage was a similar notice, which said
Défense
de
fumer
et
de
crâcher.
He had learned a new word—
cr
â
cher.
It somehow fitted the noise of a Belgian getting ready to expectorate.

“Ne crâchez vous, Mama! Niet speuen, Feuille de Fleur! Mum, why does it say it in two languages?”

“Some of the Belgians are of French extraction, or Walloon, dear, while the other half is Flemish, or Flamand. Oh, how it all comes back to me, my girlhood, I mean.”

With a smile Hetty looked out of the window at the countryside, thinking of Dorrie and Mamma.

“Surely you didn't smoke and spit when you were at the convent?”

Hetty laughed. “Sometimes I can almost hear my brother Hugh in your tones, Phillip. You have the same sense of fun.”

Poor Hughie! Hetty reflected, as she looked toward the window again, that he believed Papa would sooner or later want to get rid of him; and so of late he had been occupying himself with the idea of starting a stationery business by post. Laboriously Hughie was sending samples of brown paper, tarred on one side to make it water-proof, to some of his old customers, as he called them—the firms he had been visiting nearly twenty years before! It was pathetic, for of course those firms still dealt with Mallard, Carter & Turney. Hughie's mind often wandered back to that time, in what seemed to Hetty to be a
desperate effort to make a fresh start in life, all over again. Too late, too late! The saddest words in the language.

*

“Look, Sonny, at the windmills. They pump up water from the dykes, for all this is very low-lying country.”

The towers of Bruges came into view. Then they were on the way to Ghent, which the Flamands insisted on calling Gand. They were always quarrelling with the French section of the population, explained Hetty. Peace, peace! she thought, and saw Mamma's face smiling at her in space, a little sadly. In the cathedral of Bruges was a casket said to contain a drop of the blood of Christ, saved from the Cross.
Come
unto
Me
…
and
I
will
give
you
rest.
Was Mamma watching over Hughie, and all of her children? Pray God that Phillip and Mavis and Doris would not have to go through what the older generation had had to suffer! Still, one must never give way to repining, one must keep one's spirits up, for the sake of the living.

*

Brussels of happy memory! The same big dogs drawing their little carts, with long loaves of bread in them, and urns of milk, and vegetables for market. And the
Pension
Louise,
in the Avenue Louise, where she had stayed as a girl! Old Mme. Louise's daughter was now in charge, another Mme. Louise, just as friendly. Papa and Joey smiling, everyone pleased to see them! It was almost like being home again, for a moment.

Phillip had to share a room in the top of the house with his Uncle Joseph. There were two beds in the room, one very small, for a child really, the other large. Would he mind sharing with Uncle Joey? Phillip did not mind. Uncle Joey was not like an Uncle, really. He had no sternness in him. Phillip did not recognise pure kindness. He rather looked down on Uncle Joey for being childish. Phillip had heard Father saying, once, that he had been laughed at by Uncle Joey, something to do with the time when Father asked Gran'pa for Mother's hand in marriage. Fortunately he did not snore, and kept to his side of the bed, and made only one joke about feet, when he was washing his in a tiny little bowl shaped like a dolls' house bath; for there was no bathroom in the
Pension
Louise.

“These foreigners don't believe in soap and water, Phillip, haw-haw! When they do, the women wash inside a linen shroud, afraid of their own bodies! Haw-haw-haw!”

Phillip, entering into the joke, pretended to be trying to get into the little bath.

It was lovely, new kind of food, and nice to change into Etons for dinner at night. Gran'pa made a mistake the first night, by helping himself, after the soup, to most of the omelette for their table, which held six people. Gran'pa took a plateful, then had to put most of it back on the dish, else it would not have gone round. He-he-he, laughed Gran'pa, saying he had thought it was the main dish. The
garcon,
bending down, said in English that stewed pigeons and pears, the
spécialité
de
la
maison,
was to follow. Phillip thought that when he had the derringer pistol, he would ask Mother to cook the pigeons he shot, with stewed pears.

The next day they went to Antwerp, called Anvers. Here they separated, agreeing to meet for
dejeuner
at The Golden Lion. Hetty, with Petal and Phillip, went on by train to Wespaeler, to fetch Mavis from the convent, for a day in the City.

There was a wood outside the convent, and as they went through the gates, Phillip saw a notice board on a tree,
Het
ist
verboden
in
het
bosch
tee
gaan.
It was easy to translate that: It is forbidden in this wood to go. A long-tailed titmouse flitting by to perch on a hedge gave him an idea that there was a nest there.

Saying that he wanted to go to the lavatory, and would follow her to the convent—a grey building of turrets and high roof—he returned to enter the forbidden wood. It was full of small birds, pigeons, and pheasants. With a thrilling feeling, he went exploring.

The ashpoles were tall, among oaks and other trees. A jay screamed. It was just like England. But what was the hut doing at the top of one tree, made of brushwood around a platform? A flimsy sort of ladder, with cross pieces of stick nailed to the trunk, led up to it. It was very high to climb, especially on that wonky-looking ladder. Perhaps it was a robbers' look-out. What a story he would tell Desmond and Mrs. Neville when he got back! He had discovered a brigand's lair!

After wandering in the wood for some minutes, while all the time he was conscious of Mother's anxiety, Phillip went back the way he had come. He was keeping the nest of the bottle-bird, as Percy called it, to the end.

The leaves of the hedge were small and new. The nest, shaped like a little wooden barrel or ploughman's bottle before the days of glass among labourers, was visible at once. It was
the first he had seen, other than those already pulled out by village boys at Beau Brickhill. Greatly excited, while the little smoke-hued birds twitted overhead, he put a finger in the hole at the side, feeling the interior to be warm with many layers of feathers, and at the bottom, some eggs. Trembling, he withdrew the finger, and inserted two, bringing out with extreme care an egg
,
scarcely bigger than a pea, between the tips.

It was white, scarcely freckled. Was it an old hen, who had lost power to colour an egg?
Why were eggs, anyway, decorated with spots and blotches? If, as was said, for protective coloration only, then why the many many patterns? Were the coloured feathers of the birds for protective coloration? Why did women wear pretty dresses? For the same reason that eggs were decorated, and birds' feathers, of course! For beauty!

The nest was beautiful, made of moss and fibre and horsehair, and covered outside with thousands of pieces of green-grey lichen, off apple-trees and oaks and ashes, tacked together by spider-webs. A thousand journeys to a farm-yard must have been undertaken to line the nest with its warm wads of feathers. How
could
some village boys pull out such a nest, when the birds were so very very small, and unable to defend their home?

The bottle-bird laid up to sixteen eggs, so she would not miss one; and wrapping it carefully in his handkerchief, Phillip climbed the hedge of the bosch in which it was verboden tee gaan, and hurried to the entrance of the convent d'Ursulines.

Seeing no bell pull, he opened the church-like door and crept inside. A nun came forward, her hands clasped.

“Ah,” she said softly, looking down at him. “You must be Hetty's boy. Your Mother is upstairs, if you will come with me.”

Cap in hand, Phillip went beside her up some stone steps, an in-church expression on his face. He passed a room with an open door in which many girls in dark uniforms like Mavis' were sitting. They all had white starched collars like boy's collars, and white cuffs over their wrists, as he saw in a swift glance.

They went into a room of white walls, on one of which was an altar with Virgin and Child. Before it a candle burned, newly lighted. Mother was standing there, with a very old nun with a silver chain and rosary hanging before her, on her robes. She had an old sweet face.

“Ah,” she said, in the same sort of soft voice, “here is your
son, my child,” to Mother, and as she said it, Phillip felt that the old nun really did look on her as a child.

Mother was smiling. She said, “Oh yes, here he is! This is my little boy, Mère Ambroisine.”

The Mother Superior looked at him, and took his hand between her own soft, pink, wrinkled hands. Then another nun, with a larger kind of headdress, came forward, and he was introduced to her. She was shorter than the Mother Superior, with a fatter face, and a more jolly expression.