Donkey Boy (19 page)

He was glad when the apples were not there any more, for then Mavis could play with him and have Epps’ cocoa. And Uncle Hilary said Aunty Bee was going to be his real aunty, and Aunty Bee wore white like Uncle Hilary, and smelled so nice as she showed him a ring on her hand that went blue and green and red, like the wet grass on the lawn in the morning before his feet made it look broken. Sitting beside Aunty Bee he drove in a carriage, and saw lots of flowers in the fields, and water behind railings, and Uncle Lemon said that the fishes lying in the water clear as gin were trout. It was a lovely drive behind the horse.

One day Father came over on his Starley Rover and sat in the garden, wearing his Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers and new thin cycling shoes without laces or buttons, and a badge in his coat with a wheel on it and C.T.C. He was like a different Father. He said, “Hullo, old chap, how well you look, quite sun-burned,” and told him about Mummy, and said she was now in Quarantine, and he thought that must be a very long way away, as far as Uncle Hilary went in his ship. Then Father said, “Mother is going to have a week in Brighton before you return, so that she can pick up,” and he saw Mummy as fallen down and unable to get up unless she left Quarantine and reached Brighton.

“Well, goodbye, old chap, keep your pecker up,” and Father was going again.

“But, Dick, you have only just come!” said Aunty Viccy. And Uncle George said, “But you will stay for luncheon, surely?” and Father said, “No, thanks, I must get back.” When Uncle George said, “I will get you a drink,” Father said he would like only a glass of water.

Uncle Hilary said afterwards it was just like Dickie, who liked to wear the hair-shirt. This puzzled Phillip, for Father was wearing his stripey flannel shirt with a collar ending like a butterfly’s wings. And when Father was gone, shaking hands with everyone and smiling as he had not often seen him smiling, Phillip went to church wearing the new clothes Aunty Victoria had given him. Church was itchy, as he had to sit so still and not move about, but when the man stopped talking and said, “And now to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost,” everyone moved, and he could move too. There were lots of carriages outside the church, and people talking in the sun, ladies with sunshades up. There was red gravy and meat and potatoes and greens for dinner, which was the best part of Sunday, though the afternoon walk with Jessie pushing Mavis in the mail-cart was nice, with lots of things to see. And Jessie talked under a tree to a soldier in a red and yellow coat, and white gloves and belt and a stick called a switch, and the soldier gave him a cigarette card with an old man called Bobs on it. He held the card in his hand and it was crinkly when they got back, and Mavis was asleep in the mail-cart.

Red petals of the hawthorn lay in the dry dust of the road, the lilac began to turn rusty, little green apples with brown bows at their throats were to be seen among the leaves of the apple trees in the garden. There were lots of little shiny green cherries, too, and what Jessie called goosegogs, which were hard and hairy. None of them were nice to eat, so after the first handful hidden on the ledge under the table, with a mince pie taken when no one was looking, Phillip did not collect any more goosegogs.

Uncle Hilary went away and came back wearing clothes not looking like his clothes. Phillip asked him why, and Uncle Hilary said his kit had turned up at the club. Phillip saw the kit as something with a tail and a head like Dick Whittington’s
cat in the pantomime Mummy and Aunty Dorrie had taken them all to, and the club was held over its shoulder with a bundle of clothes for Uncle.

Phillip did not cry for his mother any more. He was brown of face and hands. He was more like what a boy ought to be, thought Victoria. What a change from the wild, staring creature who had come a fortnight before with Isabelle! As for Mavis, she was a good little thing, very sweet-tempered now that her brother was not so selfish with her. At first, he had tended to push himself before her, as though afraid he might miss something—a tendency that had confirmed Victoria in her belief that the Turneys were Jews.

Victoria as a young girl had heard her father saying, often enough, that the Jews were getting more and more a hold on England, behind the scenes; and everything Father had said was unquestioned. It was noticeable how, with firm but kind treatment, the boy’s trait of selfishness had tended to decrease.

One morning Phillip came to her and said he was “very incited”. She explained that he meant excited. The cause of excitement was the arrival of the day of which he had heard so much. Jessie had told him of it, as well as Uncle Hilary and Aunty Bee. Jessie and her father, the gardener, said it was the Durby, while Uncle said it was the Darby. Phillip imagined the gardener’s dirty hands, and Jessie’s little brother had a dirty face, so they said Durby. But he was clean, and Master Phillip, so he would say Darby. He told Jessie that her brother Tom was “darty”. Jessie told him not to be cheeky, or he’d get no more cigarette cards.

“Fag cards,” said Phillip.

“I will tell your Aunty!” said Jessie, stiff white cuff’d and collar’d over her grey jacket, bought specially for her temporary duties of afternoon mail-cart pusher.

“You would not dare!”

“Yes, I do dare, then!”

“I’ll tell about the soldier!”

“Hur. There’s nothing to tell. See?”

“I saw him kiss you.”

“That you didn’t!”

“That I did! Ugh! he spooned with you.”

Spoon
was a word learned from Aunt Victoria. Once he had
heard her tell Uncle George that Hilary and Bee were spooning in the summer-house in the garden, and it was not very nice with the gardener nearby.

“Well, what of it if he did kiss me? What’s wrong with that?”

“Spooning is not very nice.”

“Well, it wasn’t that kind of spooning, see? I don’t come from a back street, let me tell you, Master Phillip.”

“I come from near the Hill. My father is the best man there, let me tell you.”

“Yes, and your ma’s coming for you soon, but you’ll be sorry when you leave Jessie, won’t you? There now, let’s not be cross, shall us?”

“No,” said Phillip. “Let’s make it up.”

“There’s a good boy. Now master and mis’es be getting ready for the Durby.”

Phillip was not allowed to go outside the gate, because there were lots of bad men about, said Jessie, who would cut your throat from ear to ear as soon as look at you. And there were the gipsies who would steal children and dye them dark-brown all over and take them away in a wooden house on wheels. They would steal Joey, too, and eat him if they got a chance. Phillip imagined the gipsies with red faces and jagged teeth and black hair half over their eyes, like the giant in the story book. So he carried a switch, taken from the gardener’s bundle of faggots, to fight the gipsies with if they came after him.

Everyone was dressing up. Phillip stared at his aunt’s silks and satins, at the hats with feathers and flowers, the frilly parasols, and wondered why Uncle George had a grey hat and Uncle Hilary a black one. Both uncles had flowers in their button-holes, and talked about them before taking them out, saying perhaps they ought not to wear them in wartime. Aunty Bee was more rustling shiny-black than before, with a big bow across her throat as she stooped down and put a cornflower in the blouse of his sailor suit, which had been washed and ironed. He hoped this might mean that after all they were going to take him. Aunty Bee said, “I don’t know which is the deeper blue, this cornflower or your eyes, my pet.” Oh, if only she would take him where she was going to the Darby!

Phillip dared to utter his longing to Aunty Bee. Could he ride just a little way only, on the box of the coach that was coming
to fetch them? Didn’t little boys go to the Darby? Only grown-ups were going this time, said Aunty Bee. He might be lost, she said.

“I will be ever so careful, and keep ever so close to you, if you will let me come, Aunty Bee. I will fight the gipsies with my switch!”

Aunt Bee called him her pet and kissed him, saying he must look after Mavis.

“Jessie can do that, Aunty Bee. And the soldier will look after Jessie.”

“Oh, Jessie has a soldier, has she? Have you seen him?”

“Only a long way away, Aunty Bee. I didn’t see him kiss Jessie, Aunty Bee!”

“You pet,” said Bee, laughing, and kissing him again.

“Then can I come, Aunty Bee?”

“I am afraid not, darling. But I will tell you all about it when I come back.”

The coach came down the road, and there were smiling people on it, and a coachman in a big coat and shiny hat with a thing like a squashed black beetle on the side of it, and a whip, and another man who had a long bright horn. And he held up the horn and blew it, and the noise was bright like the horn and the grey horses liked it for they jingled away.

The gate was left open, and Joey came in to see him. Phillip told Jessie about the squashed beetle thing and she said, “Fancy thinking Mr. Jones had that on his shiner! Why, it’s a cockade, Master Phil! My uncle’s a coachman too, and has one like that.”

Phillip still thought of it as a beetle, like the one that smelled nasty-sweet when it cocked its tail, and you squashed it.

Left alone with Joey, Phillip thought he would like to run away and be lost. He went round the path, and stood against the brick wall of the house feeling that he would like to be lost in the woods. The robins would cover him with leaves, and Joey would go home alone to his dinner at Lady Catt’s, and forget all about him. He would never come back any more, but be dead under the leaves.

Jessie came out to find Phillip a few minutes later, and tell him that his cocoa was waiting for him. She called his name, searched in the garden, then ran back to the kitchen breathlessly crying, “I can’t find Master Phillip nowhere, Mrs. Powell. Do you think the gipsies have took him?”

In the midst of the agitation the house-parlourman of Lady Catt’s came round, in his yellow-and-black striped vest and white
sleeves, to ask if Joey were there, for he must come back for his luncheon.

They came to the conclusion that the boy and the dog had gone on another picnic.

“I’d lay a strap across his backside if I had my way,” the servant complained.

Needless to add, he had been often treated that way in his boyhood.

“It’s my ’alf-day off, too, and my lady and bloke have gone to the races, and what’ll ’appen if Joey don’t come back I wouldn’t like to say.”

Phillip and Joey were in the woods, looking for Goldilocks and the Three Bears. They passed the pond stocked with rainbow trout which had been rolling up after mayflies during their first visit. There were no fish visible now. The sated trout were lying on the bottom of the gravelly shallows, in the shade of waterside trees. Instead of the fish, there was a big grey bird crying
Squar-rk!
Joey said
Wuff!
and Phillip exclaimed
Oh!
as he watched with wonder the bird’s yellow beak and black bootlace on its thin head, as it flapped up and beat away over the trees.

Suddenly something very strange and frightful happened. There was a
bang!
The grey bird tumbled and fell down. Phillip half-believed that it was shot by a bad man who would cut his throat, but he thought it was the Keeper who had fired the gun. But it might be gipsies! He ran away with Joey from the place of the bang, in case the Keeper pointed his gun at them and killed them. As he ran he thought that he would never put flies in spider webs again, if only God would save him.

He came from the path to a wider ride. The grass of the ride was marked with hundreds of big nailed boot marks. Joey began to sniff them and to wag his tail. Then Joey turned over and rolled, showing his pink tongue and saying
Huff
huff
huff
,
for known to Joey, but not to Phillip, the golden Labrador bitch had been with the Keeper on his rounds.

Phillip thought that if he went backwards from the boot marks he would be going away from the Keeper with the gun, and so the Keeper would not see him and perhaps shoot him. His one idea now was to get back to Jessie and Mavis. He was lost, but there were men shouting and horns blowing the way he was going, so he ran on. When Joey would not come he stopped and
clutched himself with fear, and wanted to go back and whip Joey for being a fool. Then Joey came, sniffing the ground, and Phillip gave him a flick of the switch, but as this made Joey wriggle, and want to roll more, he whipped him. Joey looked sad, so he stroked him, and told Joey he was sorry, and afterwards Joey followed him properly down the path.

A bird like a hen’s husband flew up with a long tail saying
Kock-koch-karr!
and its wings hit the twigs and the leaves. This was probably a rich stockbroker bird, who owned the wood. He remembered Uncle George saying to Uncle Hilary,
A
queer
bird
has
taken
the
shooting,
a
stockbroker,
I
hear.

Phillip and Joey got safely out of the wood. There were a lot of people, hundreds and hundreds and
hundreds
of people, over the grass where the wood ended. There was a hard-wire fence, with sharp, grey spidery spikes on the wire. Phillip lay down and wriggled under the lowest wire, slowly because of the spikes, and triumphantly reached the grass. There was a rope fence over the grass, and pieces of wood with rope loops over their squashed tops, and this fence was easy.

Beyond were wooden houses on wheels. An old woman smoking a little black pipe upside down sat on the steps of one house. She had a brown face and dark hair like Uncle George’s. There were lots more people. Several thin dogs with tails curving under them ran at Joey. Joey stood still wagging his tail and saying
ee-ee-ee
as the thin dogs sniffed him. One big dog pulled the fur on Joey’s neck with his teeth. Joey lay down and held up his bent legs. When the dogs had sniffed and wee-ee’d on Joey they ran away. Joey stood up again and came beside Phillip and stayed close to him until they were under the other rope.