Donkey Boy (15 page)

Mrs. Feeney loved her Master Phil. Had she not helped to bring the little dear into the world? Mr. and Mrs. Maddison were a special master and mistress to the charwoman. She had the highest regard for both of them, based on Richard’s invariable courtesy to her, and on Hetty’s sweetness and confiding kindness; and also, though Mrs. Feeney did not realize this, on her own not unexceptionable integrity. Mrs. Feeney always worked her hardest and best. She was invariably cheerful, and always grateful for all and any little extras in the way of stale pieces of bread, cold potatoes, bones and pieces of mutton fat, old clothes and hats, old newspapers, that Hetty gave her. She did not ever stand on her rights, as the phrase went; she knew only her duties.
For a shilling, Mrs. Feeney worked a half day of five hours. A whole day was eighteenpence, including her lunch of bread and cheese and tea, and more tea with bread and dripping at five o’clock, before going home. She enjoyed her work greatly.

Mrs. Feeney, having removed black poke bonnet and shawl, went into the scullery. In that small, dark place, she leaned towards the sink, held her nose between finger and thumb, and adroitly cleared her nostrils with an expulsion of air from the lungs. Then she turned the tap, and found, to her surprise, that Phillip had been watching her. “Don’t you ever do that, Master Phil, or you’ll be getting me into hot water.”

Bonnet and shawl being hung behind the scullery door, she tidied her hair, before going upstairs to see the mis’es, otherwise mistress. She found Hetty changing the diapers of the baby in her cot. Mis’es had the fever, and Mrs. Feeney tucked her up in bed.

“I’ll get on all right, mum, you leave it to me, mum.”

Hetty told her that Miss Maddison, the master’s sister, was coming at twelve o’clock, and would Mrs. Feeney see about some macaroni and cheese for her luncheon. And would she go in next door and tell Mrs. Turney that she would like to see her? And, of course, to keep an eye on Master Phillip.

Master Phillip meanwhile had gone out of the house, and was knocking at Mrs. Bigge’s front door. He often went in to see Aunty Bigge, because she gave him cake and comfits. Comfits were nice to crunch, being little rolypoly white and pink things with black licorice inside. He liked to strum on Mr. Bigge’s harp, too, and make lovely noises. There were also many fascinating things to see in Aunty Bigge’s house, although he did not like being kissed by Aunty Bigge, who smelled like some of the cloths in the cleaning cupboard, or her hair did. Aunty Bigge’s hair had a black bottle smell, a cat’s tail smell.

Mrs. Bigge was proud of her hair, which when brushed out fell nearly to her knees. She had a secret receipt, by which she maintained what Josiah Bigge called her Woman’s Glory. She used to work a mixture of vinegar, neat’s foot oil, and chemist’s civet into her scalp with an old toothbrush. This receipt not only guarded against any tendency to dandruff, but it gave the thick tresses a fragrance similar to those of Ayesha, Josiah’s
favourite heroine in fiction, by way of Rider Haggard’s famous novel. Mrs. Bigge had not the least wish to attract Josiah Bigge, or any other man; she considered that any woman who set out to attract anyone was lacking in self-respect. The hair-treatment receipt was an old one of her grandmother’s, and calling herself Ayesha had no more harm in it than Josiah’s harp-playing. Good plain cooking was the way to a man’s heart.

“Mummy ill in bed, dear? Good little boy to come in and tell Aunty! You shall have a piece of home-made toffee, that you shall!”

Phillip felt disappointment. He had had Aunty Bigge’s home-made toffee before. It was not real toffee, being made of dripping and black treacle. He looked round for interesting things when Aunty Bigge was in the kitchen, but saw nothing new.

That day was a strange one for Phillip. He was subdued, rather scared, and unhappy that he was not allowed to see Mummy. Her door was to be kept shut. Mrs. Feeney said “Isolation”. It sounded alarming. Grannie said to Aunty Bigge, “Are there any spots on the b-t-m, Mrs. Bigge, with German measles?” He wondered what b-t-m meant.

Mavis was brought down from Mummy’s room, and her cot put in the sitting room.

Zippy caught a bird and played with it, and the bird went “Ee-ee”. Zippy ran away growling when he tried to take the bird. So he chased Zippy with a cushion and banged him until he let go the bird, which he picked up to stroke, when the bird pecked him hard, hurting his finger before flying away. So Phillip pinched Mavis and made her cry. He took her dolly and gave it first a ride on Daddy’s bike, then a swish in the pan by pulling the plug.

Aunty Belle looked round the door and said he was a naughty boy and if he did not behave he would be sent to bed.

“I don’t care.”

“You cannot love your Mother, if you say such things when she is ill, Phillip.”

“I don’t love Mummie any more.”

Phillip felt like he did when he was chasing Zippy, he did not really mean it, but only half-meant it.

The doctor came and looked down his throat with an ivory thing, not the handle of a spoon as when Mummy used to look
down his throat, pressing on his tongue, making him retch. Then he had to take off his jersey and vest.

“No sign of it so far. But the children must remain downstairs in isolation. It’s scarlet fever.”

When Father came home he was not angry. He said to Aunty Belle, “What rotten luck for you, at the start of your holiday, too! It is very good of you to offer, Belle, and I will send a telegram to Viccy at once.”

That night it was strange, sleeping on the floor beside the yellow and brown carpet of the front room, on a big mattress laid there by Father. And the gas lamp went
pop
when it went out, then red, and a little light shone up there all by itself. Phillip lay very still, for Daddy was in his nightshirt getting into another bed on the carpet. And a Nurse was upstairs with Mummy and no one had kissed him goodnight. He hugged Golly beside him.

The darkness seemed to be rushing by all the time. It was thick, and so different from the darkness upstairs in his bedroom. Phillip did not realize that this was due to the curtains being drawn across the poles above the windows. In his own bedroom there was nothing at night over the window.

In the thick dark about him there was a little
pop,
and a little whistle, then some more pops and little whistles.

He wondered why the lamp in the middle of the ceiling was making little pops, now that it was on the by-pass. Then Daddy moved in the dark and sighed and turned over and there were no more pops and whistles. Instead there were slow, soft prods over his feet and beside his legs and he felt very glad, lying open-eyed in the darkness, feeling that Zippy was open-eyed, too. Then Zippy was purring and playing the piano on his body. He could feel Zippy’s whiskers near his ears, though they did not touch or tickle him. Zippy’s whiskers never did. Then
pop,
and the little whistle again. Zippy was gone. He felt for him, but he was not there.

The cat was creeping, step by step, towards a scent. Then the pop and little whistle stopped and Daddy whispered, “Hullo, Zippy! Where have you been, you naughty boy.” Zippy purred loudly as Daddy stroked him. “Where have you been hiding? You naughty boy, Zippy. Ah, you want my warmth, don’t you?”

Phillip went to sleep soon afterwards. So did Richard, gently
snoring, with the brindled cat against his back, under the bedclothes.

Isabelle Maddison slept in the sitting room, on an improvised sofa-bed, beside Mavis in her cot.

Upstairs, feeling herself to be swelled red all over, while all her brain and thoughts were a thick brown, Hetty lay unsleeping in her bed.

All the upper windows of the house were open, for the contagious germs of scarlet fever to escape into the air.

Richard was convinced, from an article about Sanatoria in Switzerland he had read recently in
The
Daily
Trident,
that germs floating in air would follow a warm air-stream, and so find themselves outside. That was why the lower windows of the house were all shut.

The next morning a telegram arrived with the post. It was decided that the two children should be taken to Epsom, where Isabelle Maddison had already arranged to spend the second week of her vacation with her younger sister, Victoria, and her husband George Lemon.

Victoria had replied to the pre-paid telegram, offering to look after the children during Hetty’s indisposition, provided that Isabelle would accompany them for the first fortnight.
Please
telegraph
time
of
arrival.

T
HE OUTSIDE
porter of Randiswell station had come up with his trolley, and the black portmanteau, with its thick, cracked straps, faded white paint lettering, and plaster of old labels, once Richard’s grandfather’s, had preceded the travellers by half an hour. Mrs. Bigge had pushed the mail cart in which Mavis was strapped. Miss Isabelle Maddison had held the hand of her nephew. Phillip wore his best suit: white sailor blouse and skirt, white socks, black shoes with button strap, wide straw hat with letters in gold on the band, H.M.S. Defiant.

Phillip looked anything but defiant. His face was tearstained. He had sobbed all the morning at the idea of leaving Mummy. When the time came to leave, he had clung to the banister rails halfway up the stairs. Mrs. Bigge had finally got him down to the hall, whereupon he had clung to the post at the bottom. Eventually he was persuaded to abandon the post, vainly admonished to be a man. Another plea likewise had failed.

“Surely,” said a distressed Aunty Belle, “surely, Phillip, you cannot want to upset your little sister? Look at Mavis, sitting so still and good in her mail-cart! “Round-eyed, in poke bonnet, bib, and shoulder-cape, the baby wondered what it was all about. Soon she, too, was crying. “I want my Mummy, I want my Mummy.”

Phillip’s cries were succeeded by deep sobs which stopped his breathing. Mrs. Bigge was alarmed.

“I’ve seen a child in that state suck up the contents of his stomach into his wind-pipe and turn blue in the face and he was gone before you could say knife,” she remarked. “Leave him to me, Miss Maddison.” She lifted up the limp, gibbering creature. “Would you like to play Uncle Josiah’s harp to Mummy, dear? It’s in the front room, and Mummy will hear you through the open window. Now be an angel boy, and play the harp to Mummy.”

“Yes, play to Mummy,” called out the nurse from up above.

Eventually the child grew calmer, with this purpose before him. They went into the drawing room of “Montrose”. There he struck a few chords, after nearly toppling the gilt frame into the aspidistra-stand in the bay of the front-room window.

“Mummy will be better now, won’t she, Aunty Bigge?”

“Yes, dear.”

On this assurance he was led down the road, held by Aunty Belle’s hand, and repeating “I made Mummy better, didn’t I, Aunty Bigge?”

He cried again when Aunty Bigge said goodbye at the station. She cried too, but only when she was alone once more.

“Now don’t cry, Phillip. Aunty Bigge has only gone back to help make your mother better.”

“I helped, didn’t I, Aunty Belle, by playing the music?”

Phillip soon had other ideas in which he believed. By pushing his hand into the corner, where the cushions of the carriage ended, he could start the train moving. But Aunty Belle would not listen to him. She looked out of the window when he told her what he could do. His faith, however, was not easily abased.

“I can start the train, Aunty Belle! You watch me! Watch me, Aunty Belle! Look, Aunty Belle! I push down here and the train will start!”

“You should not talk so much, Phillip.”

Phillip had ridden in a train twice before, and on the second occasion he had made the unique discovery that if he watched when the man with the hat and whistle waved his green flag, and then pushed his own hand down in the corner, the engine whistled and the carriage moved.

“Watch, Aunty Belle, watch me start the train!”

Isabelle Maddison did not look at her nephew. She had for some years past been a governess to a family of gentlefolk, her own class, a minor canon in a cathedral close; and though she tried to make herself believe, in true Christian charity, that Richard’s little son was but a child, yet she would be withholding the truth from herself if she did not look the matter square in the face and so conclude—and what her brother had told her confirmed it—that Phillip already revealed some unfortunate characteristics of his Turney blood. Mendacity in a child could not be checked too young; at the same time, it would not be right for her to interfere. Perhaps he would grow out of it.

Isabelle Maddison was thirty-nine years old; she had accepted a life of spinsterhood, but not without certain regrets. It would ill behove her to judge her parents, for after all they
were
her Father and Mother; but she could not help feeling that if she, as the eldest, had not had so many duties put upon her in looking after and tending her younger brothers and sisters—first John, then Richard, then Augusta, then Victoria, then Hilary, and lastly Theodora—and if Father had had more consideration for his family, then she, Isabelle, might have had a better chance of meeting eligible young men in the county, before the break-up of the home. Isabelle felt very nearly bitter about it at times; but always her belief as a Christian made her realize how unworthy were such complaining thoughts, since this life was one of trial and burden to prepare one for the next.

She was a tall woman, with dark brown hair, a big frame and face, and eyes that saw no more within than without. She was not clumsy, but she walked as though uncertain of her own movements. Her father had come to dislike her soon after she had learned to walk, seeing in her some likeness to his wife, with whom he had nothing, psychically speaking, in common. Isabelle had heavy Bavarian, plodding traits. And now at thirty-nine, with thoughts of an approaching change of life—she had observed the difficulties of her late employer, the minor canon’s wife—Isabelle felt that she had missed her rightful place as a woman before, it seemed, her life had really started.

“I made the train go, did you see me, Aunty Belle?”

“People who are not truthful do not go to Heaven, Phillip.”

The child stared at her face. He was suddenly frightened. Did Aunty Belle mean that Mummy might be going to Heaven?

With several admonitions, earnest and repeated, to be careful and at the same time not to move, as the train rattled over the points for Waterloo Junction, Isabelle waited anxiously by the near side window, ready to attract a porter the very moment the train should stop by the platform. When it did, she let down the window—a matter of some difficulty as a previous occupier of the third class carriage had, for his own purposes, cut off all but two inches of the heavy leather strap. Thereupon her modest black and purple bonnet, the shape of a loganberry, was inserted with the rest of her head into the outside smells of the district.
A porter hurried forward. “Porter!” cried Isabelle, in her rusty voice “Porter!”

The porter led them, carrying two bags, while Isabelle pushed the mail-cart with Mavis strapped in, and Phillip holding part of the handle, down a grimy covered way. Here upon various places of the asphalt floor lay the splattered vomit of volunteer soldiers returning to duty after last furlough before proceeding to South Africa. Phillip pointed one out to his aunt.

“Look, Aunty Belle, some poor little boys have been sick!”

Isabelle hurried him onwards by the hands, saying “You should not take any notice of such things.” The boy, who remembered being sick himself after being made to swallow half a cupful of brown licorice powder in water, thought to tell her that some dead birds must have been found by other little boy’s daddies in the hissing thing up above the bathroom ceiling trap-door, called the cistern. Mummy had told him about the dead sparrow, and “Just in case, Sonny!” she had induced him to swallow the green-brown
urgh!
licorice powder, and had given him a worn brown penny which tasted cold and thin when he sucked it.

Waterloo Station was crowded with people, all hurrying to look at something. There were lines of cabs, with horses’ heads half-hidden in cocoanut nose-bags, and tall soldiers in tight red jackets, white belts, and blue trousers with broad red bands down the outside seams, and pillbox hats on the side of their heads. “Oh Aunty Belle, look Aunty Belle, I am so incited!” for the strains of a band were heard in the distance, with cheers and yes! it was coming nearer. “Ninganing men coming, Aunty Belle!” Aunty Belle was opening her purse and buying a second-class ticket for Epsom at a high-up window, and fearing that she would not let him see the ninganing men, Phillip ran away round the corner, following other children eager for the sights. Soon he was lost among hundreds of people, who began shouting out and cheering so much that he became frightened, but all the noise and the running people took him on.

The band was now very loud, the noise of brass and drums thundering under the roof. And wheels and a pony dashed by, and someone pulled him back just in time, and a roll of newspapers fell with a thump near him, to be pounced upon by a boy with bare feet, to be torn open, and then with a paper apron the boy was shouting out newspapers for pennies, pulling them off
under his arm. Lots of men were marching behind the band, carrying what Phillip knew were guns, but what funny men they were, in brown-paper coloured clothes and big, strange hats. And people were laughing and jumping up and down and one funny man with a glass penny in his eye was jumping on his black hat, then picking it up he wiggled it on his walking stick. It was all like a dream, only dreams never were like this one, for he could walk in this dream and he did not have to pull himself along by the banisters and the harder he pulled with his hands the more was the stop-still.

Everybody was cheering and shouting, and taking off their hats, and the strange men in brown-paper clothes were wiggling theirs on their guns. And a man on a horse in red had a black tea-cosy hat and white feathers on it and his horse was dancing clop-clop-clop on the road. And a nice smiling man bent down and said “Hullo, old chap, would you like a tanner for some tucker, eh?” and opening his hand put a new sixpence, with the Queen’s head on it, into his hand, and then closed it for him again and was gone.

When he realized he was lost, Phillip began to run everywhere, looking for Aunty Belle. Dream had become nightmare with the shouting and cheering, the white steam of engine whistles and strange, loud hooting noises, like he heard sometimes on the Hill far away where the ships’ masts rose above the houses. He began to cry. Where was Aunty Belle? And Mummy’s face. He would never see Mummy again. Thereafter his mind was in mad fragments, even when a Mrs. Feeney woman said words and took his hand and then a policeman took his hand and gave him a bun but all he wanted was Mummy. What was his name, where did he live, where was he going to—all was swept away inarticulately under sobs of wanting Mummy.

“Is your Daddy here?”

“I-w-w-w-want-m-m-m-mummy!”

“Have you got a Daddy? What’s his name?”

“M-m-m-m-mur-mur-mummy!”

And at last Aunty Belle was filling up to the sky and scolding him and holding his hand tightly and his new sixpence was gone and they were in a train and Aunty Belle counting out pennies for the porter and then the door was shut, both children crying and wanting Mummy.

As he hurried away the porter muttered to himself, “Blimey, the mean old cat, fourpence for minding two bags over ’alf an hour, and Mafeking relieved!” Then, “’Strewth, what a bit o’luck!” For there on the platform before him lay a silver coin. He put it into a flapped waistcoat pocket for his kid at home, a shiny new tanner, his lucky day.

Staring out of the window and everything going backwards, Phillip was soon sick; and when at last they stopped at their station, he was asleep on a seat. Aunty Belle had covered the acid signs of too much excitement with a middle page of
The
Church
Times,
which she had bought to scan the advertisements of
Governesses
Vacant
;
for after her holiday with Victoria she must find a new post.

“Do you know Mrs. Lemon’s house, The Lindens?”

The driver of the station cab raised his whip; and thither she was driven, sitting opposite her thin, pale-faced nephew with the large blue, almost violet eyes, and—really, whatever was Hetty thinking of?—no knickers or clothes of any kind under his skirt.

“You must be on your best behaviour, Phillip,” said Isabelle. “Look at your little sister Mavis, what a good little girl she is to be sure.”

Two parlour-maids in black bodices fastened high in the neck, wearing starched, frilly caps on their heads with white tabs behind, and black skirts, were waiting for the sound of hoofs and the jingling of harness upon the carriage sweep of the Lindens. They were glad that children were coming to help liven up the formality of the house.

The door was opened as soon as the four-wheeler stopped. Victoria stood in the hall, just out of the sunlight, waiting to greet her guests.

“Belle, how nice to see you again, dear!”

The sisters kissed.

“Did you have a good journey? And how did you leave Hetty? You must tell me all the news later on. And you are Phillip, are you? How do you do, Phillip.”

“Quite well, thank you, Aunt Victoria.”

“He has suffered a little from the motions of the train, Viccy. That explains his pallor.”

“Dear me, what bad luck! And you are Mavis!” Victoria, liking the child’s face, knelt to kiss her.

“You won’t kiss me,” said Phillip.

“Do you want me to kiss you before you have washed your face, dear?”

“No thank you,” said Phillip.

Victoria laughed. “Well, shall I kiss you after you have washed your face, then?”

Phillip, thinking of his mother, shook his head. Then turning away his face, he began to cry.

“Come come, Phillip! That will never do. That is not the way to behave. You must try and be a man, you know.”

“I’m a boy!” he cried, between sobs. “Go away, I don’t like you! I want my m-m-mummy!”

When the children had been put to bed, to rest before luncheon, the two sisters sat in the hall, where sun-blinds kept carpet and fabrics from fading, and talked. At length Victoria said: “Mavis has a sweet little face, with her long lashes and brown eyes, I suppose she takes after her mother? I have never met her, you know. But what an odd little boy Phillip is, to be sure. He looks so unhappy. Who does he take after? Not the Maddisons, and he is certainly not a von Föhre, our mother’s family. No wonder Dickie calls him the donkey boy.”