How Dear Is Life (7 page)

One evening the kestrel got through the fence, at the end where the post had rotted, and the boards leaned outwards. Phillip let it go—it would not accept him as a friend. He hoped it would manage to live in the long grass, on mice and birds in the Backfield. But that was its own look out.

*

The August sun burned down, the tennis courts on the Hill showed worn patches, the band played on Thursdays to thousands of shrill sparrow-like children come up from the old-time marshes around the great ox-bend and eyot in the Thames, called the Isle of Dogs: an area long since covered with rows and terraces of cottage-like dwellings with tiled roofs darkened by soot, their brick walls saturated with the odours of leather, vinegar, hops, sulphur, and glue: while beyond the dark low clusters, seen under their haze of smoke from the Hill, stood up the red and yellow funnels of liners, the masts and spars of sailing ships which crossed the seas with their cargoes to and from the docks and basins of London river.

Phillip was to take his holidays in September. Where, he could not decide. Mavis and Cousin Petal, home from the convent in Belgium, sang at the piano the song Phillip had heard on the concert platform of Hayling Island, in those family holidays which now seemed so far away. 

Richard had cycled to the Norfolk Broads for his holiday, having taken it in the last fortnight in June, and the first week of July. In early manhood, in the days of butterfly collecting, he had dreamed of visiting that remote and mysterious place, with its fabulous bitterns, harriers, and bearded titmice; great shoals of bream, rudd, pike and tench, brown-sailed wherries and windmills rising above the reeds vibrating with the thousand tongues of the wind ruffling watery solitude; and, most wonderful of all, Large Copper and Swallowtail butterflies, extinct elsewhere in Britain. His collecting days were over; an elderly man went to the Broads, to make real a boyhood dream, from which he returned bronzed and happy; but it was not the West Country.

“I hope you two will be all right while we are away,” said Hetty, on the eve of her departure with Mavis and Doris to Beau Brickhill, to stay with Aunt Liz and Polly.

“Rather!” cried Phillip. “Give my love to old Percy!”

Percy Pickering had left school and gone to work in Uncle Jim’s firm of corn and seed merchants.

It was rather nice and quiet to be alone in the house. He seldom saw Father. He had his breakfast next door with Aunt Marian, and his supper, when he returned in the evening, with Desmond and Mrs. Neville. Desmond had another three years at school before going to the University, then into his Uncle’s lace business in Nottingham. Of Desmond’s father Phillip knew nothing beyond that he was still alive; he had not the least curiosity, nor did Desmond ever speak of him.

What was there to do in the evenings, and at week-ends? The nests in his preserves were long since forsaken; a spirit had departed. And Desmond nowadays seemed to have no interest in birds. He cared more for fishing. It was no good going any more to the round-ponds in Whitefoot Lane woods, or the dewponds in the Seven Fields of Shrofften, where once they had caught roach. Old cans and bits of broken carts lay in those little ponds now that the houses were creeping up in long red and yellow rows. The woods themselves were bare, threaded with broad paths where hundreds of strange feet had trodden.

It was a fashion that year to wear in the buttonhole a little German silver tube, holding water, and flowers—perhaps a rose and maidenhair fern. All the youths on the Hill sported them. Phillip wore a white carnation—for Helena.

Sometimes, if it looked like rain, the boys went together to the
Electric Palace in the High Street to see Nazimova, Mary Pickford, Theda Bara, or a Mack Sennett film, which was always screamingly funny. Once a week they had a sixpenny seat in the dress circle of the first house of the Hippodrome, where strange new music called rag-time was to be heard. A little brown-faced man—“All handsome men are slightly sunburnt,” laughed Phillip, quoting the oft-seen advertisement, to Desmond —came on with a violin and sang wheezily, 

while his violin went sort of scrittchy scratch and there was not a lot of clapping afterwards. He was one of the first turns, of course. Phillip thought that Uncle Hugh could have done ever so much better, if he had lived. But there he was, in the cemetery beside Grannie: two white tombstones.

Harmony floated through the warm summer twilight on the Hill; laughing girls passed; sudden feet running over dusky grass, shouts and more laughter, as youth wrestled and ragged in fun. Cries in the gloaming; the near double-warble of some sweet whistler, feeling
grand in a new pair of peg-topped trousers, all the rage among the sort of chaps who ‘warbled’; two-fingered screech of Cranmer leaving for home, a salute for his admired, his beloved Phillip—an attitude of which the recipient was entirely unconscious. Phillip wished he wouldn’t do it, but, of course, didn’t like to tell old Horace.

*

The harvest moon rose over the Thames estuary, casting long shadows: and among the shadows, fancy might have seen one of the wraiths of the Hill, the ghost of Hugh Turney swaying in the mist of light between two dark hawthorn patches, and remarking in a whisper of his old ironic self,
Keep
it
going
boys
—
your
race
is
nearly
run.

The high moon shone on
her
house, dark and with drawn blinds, and glistened on the little turret that was her bedroom. Standing in the blackness of the hawthorns across the road
merging his own darkness with the shadows of the moon, he dreamed of a face there, a smile, of white arms held out to him below, all his spirit like a nightingale singing. It was safe to stand there and dream: for she was with her people in the Isle of Wight. Alas, that his holidays began before they were due to return! Ah, he was glad, for might she not then miss him?

When the moon shone down upon the Hill, all fancies seemed possible. Ghosts walked, dreams became truth.

Night by night the moon rose later, to slant in gold upon the singing, the playing, and the fun.
Keep
it
going
,
boys
——

*

“Well, old chap—if I might make a suggestion for your holiday next week—you could join the Cyclists’ Touring Club, you know. They provide one, on request, with a list of suitable lodgings for the night. Why not go awheel down to the West Country? It is a wonderful journey, across the Plain—though I fancy it is too late to hear the quails——”

“I was wondering, Father—do you think I might pay Uncle John and Willie a visit, at Rookhurst? Of course, I don’t want to be in the way.”

“Well, you might call at Uncle John’s on the way down, Phillip. Then he might invite you to stay. A postcard to your Cousin Willie, say three days in advance, would be the thing, I think.”

So with rod and saloon gun strapped to cross-bar of the Swift, Phillip cycled away very early one morning, to cross the Thames by Kingston Bridge; and by way of Staines, Bagshot Common, and Andover, to Salisbury for the night in an eighteen-penny bed-and-breakfast C.T.C.-recommended lodging; then onwards across the Great Plain, in heat radiating from white dust and stubble field of that chalk country where he lingered throughout a summer day, dreaming of the ventriloquial notes of quails; and at owl-light he came to the thatched village of Rookhurst, and the stone house of Willie and Uncle John under the downs.

O
N THE
first day of October the coal fire was lit in the office. The Michaelmas renewals were now coming in. They were
connected, in Phillip’s eyes, with a most desirable thing: overtime. This began after five o’clock, and was paid for at the wonderful rate of one shilling and sixpence an hour for a junior of under ten years’ service. He worked out that this was slightly more than thrice the rate of his day work. The Overtime Book was a big black-covered one, and the entries had to be countersigned by E.R.H.—except Mr. Hollis’, Phillip noticed: he counter-signed his own. Mr. Hollis worked alone, too—never when he ordered Phillip to remain. He got half a crown an hour; Downham got two shillings. Downham seldom did any overtime, nor did E. Rob Howlett.

Phillip liked to be alone with Edgar on the occasions when Mr. Hollis suggested that he should stay. Then he and Edgar had some fun. The occasions when he stayed were the addressing of the first renewal reminder notices. Edgar had to stay in order to stamp them. Bouts of work were interrupted by bouts of boxing and football in the basement. Phillip was now six feet tall, though very thin; he weighed, according to the machine on London Bridge station, nine stone ten pounds with top hat, raincoat, and umbrella.

That silk hat had drawn some remarks at first.

“Here, what the devil have you got on your head?” Mr. Hollis demanded, when he appeared in his topper. “Who the blazes do you think you are? No, no, don’t take it off, keep it on! Look at this, Howlett, what do you think of your junior?’

Downham looked sardonic. Phillip thought that he was rather despised by Downham.

“Well, Maddison,” gurgled Mr. Howlett, pipe hanging from mouth, its rim oily black with Hignett’s Cavalier. “Didn’t recognise you at first, I must say.”

“Young monkey, apeing his seniors,” laughed Hollis. “Get on with the post book, you lamp-post.”

Phillip hastily disappeared into the basement, to hang up coat and hat, then to leap up the stairs again. When Mr. Hollis came to him with the post he whispered, “Don’t mind my fooling, Maddison. I appreciate that you are trying to keep up the traditions of the Lane.”

The hat was an old story by October, not so shiny as when new. Mid-day sittings in the churchyard of St. Botolph at the corner of Houndsditch and Aldgate, when money for lunches
had run out, had exposed it to more than one pigeon. In places it looked as though it had been licked by a cat.

If Phillip was a lamp-post, Edgar was still a little tich, with treble voice and child face free of the quick cunning of Cockney van or newspaper boy. Unknown to Phillip, Edgar had a hero upon whom to model his mind. In his messenger’s uniform, with silver-gilt buttons, he looked a happy mite beside his mural display of boxers and beauties.

At football in the basement Edgar was very quick, and scored more goals with the string-tied ball of brown-paper, against Phillip’s wall, than Phillip did against Edgar’s wall. Edgar butted a lot; an act impossible to Phillip, since not only was Edgar never there when he charged, but he had to bend down to meet Edgar shoulder to shoulder. This made the breaks in clerical work all the more hilarious.

As for the boxing, with towels wrapped round fists, Edgar invariably scored more blows, or light taps, than Phillip. Edgar’s head was never there when Phillip launched his gentle straight lefts. More than once Edgar got under his guard, and a series of left-right-lefts on his ribs and solar-plexus made him aware that he ought to do something about his total ignorance of the art of self-defence.

*

The directors of the Moon Fire Office made a grant of four pounds to every clerk who joined the territorials. Phillip wanted a new suit; there was Church the tailor in Fenchurch Street who advertised a thick, dark-grey herring-bone all-wool suit, made to measure, for fifty shillings. Cheaper suits were thirty-five bob. The four pounds grant was therefore attractive. Also, said Downham, there was the camp every year, near the sea, in addition to the annual two weeks’ holiday. A whole month in the open air, with full salary; and the second fortnight under canvas without cost, and a shilling a day soldier’s pay as well!

Phillip decided to join the territorials.

There were many battalions in the London Regiment, twenty-eight in fact, he learned from Downham. Then there was the Honourable Artillery Company, a corps apart. Most of the fellows at Head Office were in one or the other of the crack battalions—the Inns of Court, London Rifles, Queen’s Westminsters, Artists’ Rifles, London Highlanders, and one or two more. But for the Highlanders you not only had to have Scottish
blood, declared Downham: you had to be first-class socially. They would not take any old rag-tag or bobtail who presented himself.

“The battalion for the bobtails is the Tower Hamlets, down the river, the Shiny Old Seventh, the louts from Leytonstone,” pointing with his pen to a map of London on the wall.

Phillip was somewhat subdued by what he considered to be a reference to himself as a supposed bobtail. Pype, who had been one of the Bagmen in his last term at school, had recently got a post at Head Office. Phillip had not forgotten how Downham had spoken rather slightingly about Pype.

“Fancy a chap like that being admitted on the staff!” were his words to Mr. Hollis. “Why, he was a scholarship boy at some suburban grammar school!”

Pype certainly was small, and rather sallow; but surely Heath’s was a pretty good school, being founded in Elizabethan times? Both Downham and Mr. Hollis were proud of the fact that they had gone to public schools, Merchant Taylors and St. Paul’s respectively.

At Head Office luncheon that day Phillip thought he would ask Costello, who was an Old Heathian, and in the London Highlanders, pretending that the idea had only just come into his head. He waited until Costello, opposite him at table, had finished his lunch.

Wielding a quill toothpick, Costello said, “Oh, we’re pretty well full up I think. Why not try the Twentieth, they’re your way, aren’t they,” and then turned to talk to some others at the next table. So that was it! Costello knew Downham, and they thought him not good enough for the Highlanders.

Going downstairs, on impulse he went into the telephone box, and asked for Wine Vaults Lane. Downham answered. Putting on an assumed voice, Phillip asked for himself. Downham replied that he was out to lunch, so Phillip said, “Oh, I see. Well, I’m his uncle, and I was going to ask him to luncheon, so I’ll ring up another day. Good day to you.”

When he got back to the office Downham was furious. “Why the hell do you ring yourself up from Head Office, saying you were your uncle? What’s the game? Don’t you know this is a private line? The telephone girl asked me as soon as you hung up, ‘Is his uncle at Head Office, as well as his father?’, and then she rang the Town Department, who said you’d just left the box. You young idiot, why do you do such damn silly things?”

Later in the afternoon Phillip assembled himself sufficiently to say, “Oh, about the London Highlanders, I have a cousin in them, you know.”

“What’s his name?”

“Hubert Cakebread.”

“Why, Bertie Cakebread is a corporal in my company!” exclaimed Downham. “He’s one of the best bayonet fighters in the School of Arms.”

Phillip kept his eyes modestly on his work, writing his neatest hand. He was glad when Mr. Hollis returned, top-hatted and in morning coat, from inspecting a Moses Cohen factory at Leytonstone, where a new fire-sprinkler system had been installed.

Then Downham told him about the ringing-up. Mr. Hollis made no comment, as he drew off his gloves.

“What a frightful neighbourhood,” he said. “Young Roy Cohen tells me that ass’s milk has a large sale down there, from the costers’ mokes. Isn’t that what you were brought up on as a brat, Maddison, what?”

Phillip noticed that Mr. Hollis always said
What
?
,
instead of
Eh
?, when he wore his tail coat with the black braid around the hem, his highly-creased morning trousers, ironed top-hat, chamois-leather gloves, gold-banded umbrella, and rose-bud or other flower in his button-hole. He went on writing, face held low.

“I say, Maddison, I do apologise for my extremely rude remark! But you are a bit of a donkey, you know.”

In gratitude for the great man’s kindness, Phillip smiled, and said, “Oh, that’s quite all right, thank you, Mr. Hollis.”

He felt that it was almost a case of second sight when, the next morning, Uncle George Lemon came into the office; but he kept his face hidden, in case Uncle did not want to recognise him.

“Good morning, good morning to you, Mr. Lemon!” cried Mr. Hollis, affably. “To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?”

Phillip went on with his work, after a faint smile at Uncle George’s small brown face. He listened. It was something to do with a house Uncle said he was going to have rebuilt in Cornwall. He unrolled a lot of crinkling plans.

“Quite a mansion, Mr. Lemon,” said Mr. Hollis. “By Lutyens, what? What are there, twenty bedrooms? Let me see.
H’m. The cubic footage must run to well over a million—at sixpence a cubic foot, this is going to be in the neighbourhood of twenty-five thousand pounds, at a very rough estimate! Then there is Lutyens’ fee—what is that?—two thousand guineas?”

“I am going to chuck this unnatural City life,” said Uncle George, as though he had not heard. “I want to farm land owned by m’forebears. I am going to bring back the Longhorn. I want to breed a winter-wheat that will ripen in July, to defeat the old swampy harvests of the past. Two out of every three Cornish Augusts are swampy, as you know. I have just bought a thousand acres in a ring fence, for a start, land once belonging to m’family.”

“Well, it’s extremely good of you to think of us, Mr. Lemon! I don’t know what our Chancery Lane Branch will say about it, but healthy rivalry, you know, stimulates, what?”

Uncle Lemon rolled up the plans, and put them in their long tube. Then he went to Phillip’s desk and said quietly, “How are you, Phil? When are you coming out to luncheon with me, as you promised? Hilary’s back from Sydney, did you know? We must foregather. How is your father? And your mother? Do give them both my kind regards. And your sisters. Come over and see us one Sunday, before we leave Epsom. Are you still keen on fishing? If all goes well, I shall be able to offer you some real good salmon fishing in Cornwall in the course of a year or two. One of my plans is to change the late-running fish in the Camel to springers, by introducing, by way of Khashmir boxes, early-running eyed-ova from the Tay. Don’t forget—write to me. Goodbye,” and Uncle Lemon held out his hand.

When he had gone, leaving Phillip in a daze of glory, Mr. Hollis said, “How did you come to know Mr. George Lemon?”

“He’s my uncle, Mr. Hollis.”

“George Lemon your uncle?” cried Mr. Hollis, in surprise. “Why, he is the senior partner in Wilton, Lemon and Co., since old Wilton died. They act for my father-in-law’s firm, Carlton Turnham and Co., you know, the Civil Engineers.”

That evening, when he told his father about Uncle George’s visit, Richard showed surprise, too; but a different kind of surprise.

“I refuse to believe it! He was spoofing you, my boy.”

“But I saw the plans of the mansion, truly, Father!”

The next night Father said, “Well, Hollis confirms your story, I must admit that. But whatever does George Lemon think he’s doing, to want to rebuild a house of that kind? Has he come into a fortune? Or gone out of his mind? A house of twenty bedrooms, to be redesigned internally by one of the most expensive architects in England! And at a time when taxation is already making many owners of such houses feel the pinch! You mark my words, there is something fishy about it all.”

Richard took up the
Trident
again, and said no more.

“At any rate, dear,” said Hetty, “Phillip was quite right in what he said.”

There was no reply from behind the newspaper.

*

Mr. Hollis’ attitude to Phillip became mellower. He brought up a basket of apples from his Woking garden, and gave two yellow-red ones to Phillip, two to Downham, one to Edgar, and the rest to Mr. Howlett. They were Cox’s orange pippins, not yet ripe, he said; they should be kept until they became mellow.

Mellowness was in the air, in the attitude of Mr. Hollis particularly: the ripe mellowness of St. Martin’s Little Summer, of dwarf-yellow sun shining upon apples, peaches, and sunflowers in his garden, the working of which, Mr. Hollis often declared, provided him with the only true antidote to a damned office life lived eighty per cent in electric light.

To Phillip, office life did not feel to be so damned. As the days shortened there was overtime for the Michaelmas second and third renewal notices. Edgar took them in batches, folded and stamped them, carried them in wicker tray to the pillar-box in Fenchurch Street.

It was wonderful to have the office key in his charge. When the others had left, with blinds drawn Phillip sat and wrote with feelings of adventure. When should he go to tea? He was his own master. Then there was Edgar to think of. What time should he send him to tea tonight? Five-fifteen, or five-thirty?

“You go to tea at half-past five, will you, Edgar?”

“Yessir!”

“Back at six, my lad!”

“Yessir!”

At 5.28 p.m., to show his power, Edgar slipped out. Five minutes later the man-in-charge got up, locked the door, strolled round the corner to his usual A.B.C. shop, and ordered his
favourite meal of boiled country egg (as the menu described it), portion of cottage loaf, pat of butter, pot of tea, and penny pot of jam.

“I think I’ll have apricot tonight.”

“Yes, sir.”

The pot of jam was all the more attractive as it was only about two inches high, and little more than one in diameter. There were many kinds to choose from: cherry, quince, plum, greengage, apricot, damson, apple jelly, marmalade, raspberry, and strawberry. Tea, which cost sevenpence, was eaten slowly, to relish every mouthful, while he read in
The
London
Magazine
one of those thrilling nature stories by F. St. Mars, illustrated by Warwick Reynolds. This month’s was about a buzzard.