Young Phillip Maddison (44 page)

“W
ELL
done, m'boy!” exclaimed Gran'pa, when Phillip went in to tell him, casually, that he had passed the Oxford Local. He had got his remove, too, into the Upper Fifth. He had failed in History, Geography, Geometry, Trigonometry, and Latin; but was satisfactory in Algebra, Arithmetic, Divinity, Physics, and Chemistry.

“No Spanish? A pity, Spanish is the coming language, for trade in South America. Our future lies in the export trade, with our merchant navy. This intensifying competition with Germany will have to be diverted to the South Atlantic, where there are great potential markets for our manufactures. He-he-he.” This last comment in pseudo laughter was caused by Phillip wandering out of the room.

“Phillip never listens to me,” remarked Thomas Turney, turning to his housekeeper, Miss Rooney, who sat demurely, hands on lap, in one of the two upholstered chairs on either side of the fire-place. He himself sat in his usual wheel-backed yew chair, with the cane fire-and-draught guard on its back. His cat crouched, with shut eyes, on his cocked-up knee, cased in perennial blue serge. Thomas Turney now possessed more than two dozen such pairs of trousers, with their jackets and waistcoats, all bought at January sales during the last few years: thus he allayed one of his anxieties about the future.

Phillip went down to Uncle Hugh's room, to talk to Bob, Uncle's man. Uncle nowadays could walk only by clinging with one hand to the broad leather strap Bob wore round his jacket. Bob came from Mercy Terrace, down by the station, from a family of soldiers. There were four brothers, all of them with dark hair and dark, almost black eyes. It was a little scaring to go into Bob's house to see him, for when the brothers were at home they sat there so quiet, yet seeming ready at any time to break into frightful rages. They had joined the Army because they had not been able to get any work, Bob told Phillip. Two had worked in the docks, until the strike six months before, when they had taken the King's shilling.

The thing that disturbed Phillip, secretly, was the attitude of
Bob and his brothers towards the girls they met in the streets at night. They hunted them down, almost as though they were enemies. Bob told Phillip, with a sort of subdued angry satisfaction, what he and his pal did when they got off with a couple. He took a card out of his breast pocket, with a drawing, on one side, of a thing like a leg-of-mutton bone. On the other side was a heart.

“You show this to a girl, this side first, and say, ‘This is the bone that breaks your heart,' then you turn the card over and say, ‘And this is the heart what was broken.' Blime, me and Alf had some sport the other foggy night, outside the Mission! Two girls arst us what the card meant. They was pretendin', but us warn't! So we took 'em inside the Mission, and showed 'em. They didn't want to, then, but it was too late.”

Bob was a sort of Jack Hart, Phillip thought. He grinned in the same rather frightening way. The station end of Randiswell beyond the Railway pub and the Mission, was rather a sinister place. That was where the Monks had lived. Phillip remembered how the father of Mona Monk, the servant Mother had had when he was little, had come up drunk one night and smashed in the front door. Father had knocked him out with his special constable's truncheon and blown his whistle for the police to come and take Monk away on a stretcher. Mona, although only fourteen, had had a baby afterwards. Gerry had told him that her own father had given it to her. How awful some people were!

Phillip's business with Bob in Uncle Hugh's room was over a silver cigarette box he had bought at a pawnshop. He wanted Bob to sell it back to the pawnbroker, and buy with the money a small plated derringer pistol lying in the window. With this he intended to shoot wild pigeons in the woods of Whitefoot Lane. Bob promised to sell the silver box, which was fairly heavy for its size, with flowers and ferns engraved on the lid, and buy the derringer, which was marked 1/6. Phillip had bought the box for that price, a month or so previously.

Bob was washing out Uncle Hugh's rubber thing, which was fixed to Uncle at night, to prevent him having accidents in bed. It was not very nice to look at, but Uncle had now lost control of his functions. Phillip was mildly sorry for Uncle Hugh, who soon would have to go away to a nursing home. He was failing fast, said Mother. Uncle Hugh was an awful warning, Mother
often told him, never to do anything that he knew was wrong. “Ah, my son, I often say to myself that the saddest words in the language are, ‘Too Late'.”

Phillip “simply itched” to be the owner of the derringer. He had at least another year at school, now that he had passed the Oxford Local. Father had seen the Magister, and it had been agreed that he should stay an extra year at school after the five years of the scholarship period ran out in April, Father paying the fees. Father said that there were good prospects in the future for Actuaries in the Life Assurance companies, but he would have to buck up and improve the mathematical side of his studies, and get First Class Honours next time with distinctions, if he were to have any chance at all. Phillip had received this information with voiceless gloom. What he would like to be was an official in the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, the sort who wrote the pamphlets about what birds were good for the farmer, and why.

This would entail a certain amount of examination upon the contents of various birds' crops, to see what they fed on. To get the specimens, they would have to be shot first. Phillip's idea of this work involved a motorcycle, the derringer pistol, and travelling about all over England. He could take a small tent, and camp out, cooking by a fire in the woods. He could take photographs of birds or their nests. Fishing, too, might be done, in order to find out what fish fed on. Then he never need go to work in London, inside the sort of office Father worked in, or the awful counting house of Mallard, Carter & Turney, Ltd.

Anyway, another year at school would put off the fateful time when he must grow up and become a slave like Father.

“Then, you'll do that for me, Bob?” Bob nodded.

*

“Phillip, m'boy,” called out Gran'pa, as he came up from Uncle Hugh's room, gloating at the thought of the derringer, which took the same ammunition that Father fired in his .22 miniature rifle.

For a period, Phillip had dreamed of having the old rifle Mother had bought for Father, for a New Year's present, converted to take .22 ammunition, as Father did not want it. It was an old Martini-Henry rifle, practically a dummy, and used for drill only. Mother had bought it from Peter Wallace's father. Father had made a fuss, as usual, about the Martini-Henry,
saying it was a white elephant, and why had she wasted her money, instead of consulting him first? Mother had in the end gone away to be by herself in the front room. When he had followed her there, she said, wiping her eyes. “I can never do anything to please your Father, Phillip. When the time comes for you to get married, I hope, if only for the sake of your little children, you will think always before you speak! I did not waste my money in buying it, anyway it was my own money, left me by Mamma, and——”

Here she had cried again; but was smiling soon, and telling Father that she was sorry she had made a mistake, and would he please buy the right kind at the Stores, and allow her to pay for it? Father had bought himself a .22 miniature rifle, but had insisted on paying for it himself. He had, however, consented to allow Mother to give him, for a present, the brown canvas bag in which it was carried.

“Mother has got only a very little money of her own, Phillip. I do not think that she should spend any of it on me. Anyway, your Mother knows that I do not want people to give me presents. I do not deserve them. I am well aware that I am a failure.”

This admission had no effect on Phillip. Father had said that before; but had remained Father, as before.

When Phillip was in bed Richard, after greasing the Martini-Henry, and wrapping it in brown paper, took it down with him through the trap-door and stood it beside his violoncello, where, he said somewhat wryly to himself, it would stand on sentry go and see his time out. Which was not entirely prophetic, as the not-so-distant future was to reveal.

*

Presents to and from members of the Turney family were never unacceptable. Thomas Turney invited Hetty and Joey to accompany him on a visit to the Continent at Easter, and perhaps Phillip would like to come along too? It would help broaden the boy's outlook. Mavis did not come home from the convent for the Easter holidays, so it was proposed to visit her at Wespaeler. It would give Phillip a chance to practise his French, one of his shakiest subjects. What did Phillip say?

Phillip remained mute at first. It would mean missing Desmond, and hearing with him the first chiffchaff and willow wren in the coverts of Shooting Common. The carrion crow laid early, too. and there was a tawny owl's nest he had “suspected” in the Park
of the Dowager Countess. He looked up dates in his
Schoolboy's
Diary.
It would mean missing the first fortnight in April. The cuckoo arrived on April 15 in his preserves. The swallow on April 8. It would mean losing only a week or so. He decided to go.

“I think you ought to accept Gran'pa's invitation yourself, Phillip, and thank him at the same time, don't you? Otherwise he may think that you take everything for granted.”

“Oh blow! You do it for me, Mum. I must do this trigonometry, if I am to be an actuary, you know.”

*

Cousin Petal would be travelling with Mother and himself, as she was going to the convent. There might be a chance to have it out with her. Uncle Charley and Aunt Flo were going to New York. Tommy was to spend the holidays with Aunt Dorrie, before going to boarding school at Brighton College. Yes, Petal—

Soon after breaking up, Phillip and Petal, with Hetty, left Liverpool Street station for Harwich. They were crossing by the
Peter
der
Koeneck
to Ostend. Phillip was afraid that he would be sick, a dread confirmed by the smell of the engines before he went on board. Petal, on the other hand, said she loved the sea. Phillip tried to think that he did too; but not the oily engines. He disappeared into dark galleries below the deck, lit by yellow carbon-filament electric lamps, the filaments being shaped like the top half of a heart—a sight which, he thought wildly, was enough to make anyone sick, as it twisted the eyes. Hetty got a rug, and covered him on a bunk, a tin basin, talisman of safety, beside him. Oh, why had he come? Everything was so oily. Hetty decided a little unhappily that she had given him her weak stomach.

The ship pitched and rolled through the swell of the recent equinoctial gales. At last it was over, and a pale Phillip beside a pink-cheeked Petal crossed the gangway on to foreign soil. Once on shore, with a medicinal cognac inside him, Phillip began to notice how strange a place it was. The women wore black shawls and thick black skirts, and clopped past in wooden sabots. Horses looked very thin and uncared for. He was surprised to see a young woman straddling over a drain beside the pavement and behave just like a horse. After a momentary stare at the unexpected, Phillip looked the other way. A gendarme was standing quite near, too. Fancy doing that right in front of a policeman!

The Hotel Windsor, where their porter had led them, was a yellow-painted place. When they had tidied up in their rooms, and partaken of
café
au
lait
with
petit
pain
with
beurre
and
confiture
in the
salle
á
manger
Phillip, exercising his French, said he felt
mieux,
and how about a
promenade
?

They went for a walk, and found themselves in a sort of circus or fair, where Hetty told them not to take out any money, in case they were robbed. So the five francs spending money, which Gran'pa had given Hetty for each of his grandchildren, remained in their purses. As they were leaving the fair-ground, Phillip saw something in a glass case which fascinated him. It was a girl, made of wax but absolutely life-like, with gleaming brown eyes and dark tresses over her shoulders and naked bosom, sitting back on her haunches; and as her head turned slowly from left to right in the glass case her mouth parted, she smiled with pearly teeth, and her bosom slowly rose and fell as she breathed. He fell in love with this dummy at first sight, and on return to the hotel, determined to see her again as soon as he could.

The opportunity occurred after a wonderful supper of
bifstek
and
pommes
frits,
which beat any English chips to smithereens, he told his mother. And the French
moutarde
! And the salad they ate off a separate little plate! Why could they not have food like that at home?

“We would, dear, always, if Father could afford it.”

After supper, Phillip slipped back to the fair. Naphtha flares were now alight, and great arcs of electric bulbs glowing like yellow pearls all over the place. Steam music was blaring, cymbals clashing, painted wooden horses flying. He found his inamorata again, and feasted his eyes on her, just as the hero did on the heroine in
Pearson
'
s
Magazine.

In the garish light this figurante, for ever slowly turning, breathing, and flashing her eyes, began to look like Petal, as he had seen her without her clothes on, sitting on her bed and brushing her hair. A pang smote him. If he went back to the Hotel Windsor, it would not be like out here, but if he stayed out here, he would only feel lost and rather hopeless. And supposing someone demanded payment, what could he do? Feeling lonely, Phillip went back to the Windsor.

“You look tired, dear, I think we all ought to have an early night,” said Hetty, seeing his face when he reappeared. When they went upstairs he gave a bare goodnight to his Mother, but
no word for Petal, as he closed his door. He felt that a fine wire was pulling him away from Mother. The bed in his room had a horrible soft bag-like covering on top, shapeless and heavy. The whole room seemed dead, a part of the dirty cobbled streets, with little carts drawn by dogs, the scarecrow horses with raw sores on them, pulling the big heavy waggons. Men in dark shapeless coats and trousers with shapeless peaked caps, smoking acrid tobacco, spitting all the time, with big mufflers round their necks, and clopping wooden shoes.