Young Phillip Maddison (49 page)

Inside was a sort of office, where other men in uniform stood. There were several small boys in uniform, as well. All wore white gloves. One of the men came forward, and to him Phillip repeated that he had come to see Mr. Maddison.

“You would like to leave your hat and umbrella, sir?”

The man beckoned, and a page ran forward.

“Take this gentleman to the cloakroom.”

To Phillip he said, “If you come back here, sir, I will send another page with you to Mr. Maddison.”

Phillip followed the page. After putting his bowler and umbrella on a hook, but his gloves in his pocket in case someone
took them, he found himself being guided into what he thought must be a sort of public lavatory. By now he was uneasy, wondering if he would have to tip all these people, or be found out as poor. He had only his return half ticket, and fourpence.

Fortunately the page boy left at once. Then Phillip saw a man in a white coat, who moved to turn on the taps in one of the basins, saying, “Hot and cold mixed, sir?” as he laid a towel, and two ivory-backed brushes before the looking-glass over the particular basin. Dreading by now the thought of his poverty, Phillip stammered, “Oh, I have just washed, thank you.” He wanted to go to the lavatory rather badly (oh, why hadn’t he gone at Charing Cross station?) but the thought that the lock in the door might require sixpence in such a grand place, instead of the usual penny in the slot, made him hesitate. And hesitating, he was lost. He stood in a horror of growing indecision.

He was wondering what to do, when the man in the white coat said to an old man in a morning coat, who had just come in, “Mornin’, m’lord!” Thereupon Phillip slipped out, before it could be discovered that he had gone into the wrong place.

He was additionally apprehensive about meeting Uncle Hilary, since he remembered how once, when he was very small and staying at Epsom with Aunt Victoria, Uncle had held him between his legs, in white duck trousers, and he had been unable to escape. That was the chief memory of Uncle Hilary, although since then of course there had been the motor ride in the Panhard et Lavassour out to the Fish Ponds. When Uncle had seen him being sick! Oh, why had he come?

But it was too late now. Told to follow another page, Phillip went into a big room full of leather sofas and armchairs, dark green like Father’s “Sportsman” armchair. Old men were standing about and talking, glasses in their hands. Others were sitting down and reading newspapers, or magazines. It was rather like in the Free Library, only these men were all very clean, and fatter, with red faces, and wore expensive clothes. Could these be globe-trotters, travellers from all over the world?

“Your guest, Mr. Phillip Maddison, sir!”

“How do you do, Phillip?”

“Quite well, thank you, Uncle Hilary.”

And could this be Uncle Hilary, whom he remembered as a big man with fair hair and bright blue eyes, and a long thin
nose? Why, Uncle was almost an old man, rather fat, his nose was much bigger, and his face was on a lower level than his own. He held out a hand.

Uncle Hilary said breezily. “My word, you have grown since I last saw you! You must be nearly as tall as your Father, aren’t you? How is he? How’s your Mother? And your sisters? Come, let’s sit down over here, and tell me all about yourself.”

*

Hilary Maddison was disappointed in his nephew. As he told his wife, in his Hampshire home the next day, young Phillip was much too much wrapped up in himself, with not the slightest idea of how he wanted to earn his living, if indeed he wanted to earn it at all. He had no idea of conversation. He never spoke unless asked a question, and then his replies were as likely as not to be monosyllabic.

“I suppose it’s his life in that suburb, but even so, Bee, after making all due allowances for his upbringing, I must agree with m’sister Viccy that he hasn’t got the right stuff in ’im. Dick says he has a taste for low companions—goes about with a guttersnipe livin’ in a slum. Dick forbade the friendship, such as it was, but it made no difference. No, he’s a throw-back. Even so, one would have thought that he would have had something to say on his own behalf, considering one was taking the trouble to give him a start in life. Not a bit of it! He ‘didn’t really know’ if he wanted to learn farming. What would he like to do, then? No answer! Had he any idea of any sort of a career? It was the same at table. What would he like to eat? ‘He didn’t mind’. Well then, had he any favourite dish? ‘Oh no.’”

“I expect the poor dear was shy,” said Beatrice. “Perhaps the sight of knives and forks positively frightened him. I know, when I first saw a fish knife, it scared me terribly. I didn’t know which way up the thing went. I expect Phil was shy.”

“Shy!” exclaimed Hilary. “That’s only an excuse for lack of good manners.”

“Not always,” said Beatrice.

“What else, then?”

“Nervousness, due to unfamiliar surroundings.”

“Damn it all, Bee, we all have to overcome that, sometime or other. But the point is, he made no effort to help me. I was only too willing to do anything I could. I told him so. It made no difference. He’s gauche, and rather stupid, I consider.”

“There is another possible reason, of course.”

“I wish you would tell me what it is, then!”

“Boredom,” said Beatrice.

“Boredom? A young fellow like that, a schoolboy still, invited to luncheon at the Voyagers? Why, half the mother country and Empire is run by the members! A boy of that age ought to be taking an interest in things beyond himself. Well, he’s thrown away a damned good chance, as far as I am concerned.”

“Who runs the other half, darling? The National Liberal Club?”

Hilary ignored this. He was thinking that, if Phillip was a typical specimen of the coming generation, then it was a poor look-out for the country.

“Anyway, talking about running, my precious nephew was apparently so eager to leave my company, that when I saw him off down Pall Mall, he took to his heels as soon as he thought I had turned back into the Club.”

“Perhaps you kept him too long, and he had an appointment elsewhere, darling.”

“Why do you invariably object to my assumptions, whatever the subject, my dear Bee? I had already offered to take Phillip to a matinee, but the idea seemed to fill him with positive fear. He must get back, he stuttered. Not a word of thanks! Only that he must get back and feed his white rat. What can you make of a youth like that?”

“I am sure, from what I remember of Phillip when he was a very little boy, that he would be very, very fond of his white rat.”

Hilary ignored this remark as a typically feminine bit of contrariness. “It’s just sheer bad manners, if you ask me. It comes from lack of a decent education. It’s part of the spirit of the times. Young people don’t want to work! They’re out for pleasure, first and last. That’s why we’re being beaten in overseas trade by Germany. They make cheaper goods, because they work harder. It’s different in the colonies; there a man has to work or starve, and if he does hard graft, as they call it, he gets on. It’s here in England, with that damned Lloyd George’s ideas, and women wanting the vote—as though the woman’s place in the home isn’t important enough—it’s here in England that the rot starts!”

“Poor little Phillip and his white rat,” murmured Beatrice. “What a lot he has to answer for.”

Which conversation, or talk at cross-purposes, went to show, perhaps, that all was not well with the Hilary Maddisons.

*

Hilary was not the only middle-aged man who was irritated by a young face, or a young generation, which seemed without character: a face which was callow, covered in places with soft hairs, with lips that tended to droop at the corners and were infirm, with a tendency to looseness, and with eyes that too often looked beyond the immediate scene, that were filled with a melancholy to which was added indecision, and evasiveness in the presence of elders and betters.

“Why do you not do what I tell you?” cried Richard, a few evenings after receiving a letter from his brother hinting at the unpropitious visit to the Voyagers Club. “I distinctly told you to write the date of the month
before
the month, and not after it! I have my reasons for this, you know. In writing the date, it is best to separate the two sets of figures; but you have written January, then added the date and the year! No, do not scratch it out! Take another piece of writing paper, and start afresh. First appearances, both by letter and in person, are most important!”

Phillip copied out the letter again. It was to the General Manager of the Moon Fire Office, begging to apply for the position of junior clerk, age and educational qualifications being as stated. The fair copy, after being passed by Richard, was put in an envelope, stamped with a penny stamp, and taken down to the post-box opposite Peter Wallace’s house in Charlotte Road, in time to catch the half-past nine post.

Having heard the fatal, slightly metallic flip of the letter in the box, Phillip ran to the flat of Mrs. Neville, to acquaint her with the latest news. She had already heard about the visit to the Voyagers, and had only just prevented tears as she realised Phillip’s predicament—which he told as a joke—due to having what he thought to be not enough cash in his pocket for tips. She had heard, too, about the Arithmetic paper: further cause for perturbation within her ample bosom. What tragedies there were in life, all the more pitiable because so often young people could not express their thoughts, and dared not say what they really felt!

“I must hop back now, Mrs. Neville, if you don’t mind. Father is going to try to teach me Chess, while Mother goes in
to play bezique next door. Gran’pa’s a bit lonely, now that Uncle Hugh is in the nursing home in Tranquil Vale.”

Mrs. Neville gazed fondly at Phillip.

“I think it is very good of you to think of your Mother like that, dear. She must have a lot on her mind just now. How is your uncle, do you know?”

“I think he’s still in a coma, Mrs. Neville. He won’t last long now. The last thing he said was whispered to Mother—that he wanted to be burned, on the South Downs at night, and his ashes scattered to the winds. I think I know how he feels. I’ll push the door after I’ve closed it, to make sure it is shut. Good night, Mrs. Neville.

“Good night, dear.”

As he went down the stairs, Mrs. Neville wiped her eyes with one of the little squares of lawn that she made for herself, called handkerchiefs.

*

When Phillip appeared at breakfast the next morning, he saw at once that Mother had been crying. Doris was sitting silently over her Quaker Oats. Father was saying, “Nonsense, nonsense! It’s pure hysteria on your part, Hetty. It’s an illusion, and nothing you can say will alter my opinion!”

“What’s the matter now,” muttered Phillip.

“Oh, your Mother has been having one of her fancies, Phillip, that’s all.”

“It is true, Phillip,” said Mother, in a strained voice, turning to him with a despairing face. “I know my brother is dead, I know that Uncle Hugh died this morning!”

She got up and went into the scullery, and closed the door gently behind her. Phillip helped himself to porridge, hating Father for his attitude to Mother.

“Phillip,” came Mother’s voice, faintly from behind the scullery door. Phillip looked at Father.

“She is hysterical,” said Father in a sort of appealing, exasperated voice, which made Phillip think of the old tennis rackets in the downstairs lavatory, most of their strings broken and curly. “Your Mother had a dream, that is all, and now she insists that what she dreamed is bound to have happened! I tell her, as I have always told her, that she needlessly upsets herself when she gives way to her precious fads and fancies, and other people with them. Better go to your Mother, if she needs
you. Perhaps what you say will reassure her. My words do not, of that I am certain!”

And having finished his haddock, Richard swallowed the rest of his tea, wiped his moustache with his table napkin, rolled it up and put it in its ring, and went upstairs to clean his teeth with precipitated chalk, toothbrush, and a rubber band for the interstices, before leaving for his train. He had the only good teeth in the family.

*

“What’s up, Mum?” asked Phillip, when his Mother returned, smiling.

“I saw my Mother, dear,” said Hetty, trying not to speak weakly, “as clearly as I see you children now. She was standing by my bed, when I woke up at half past six this morning. She was quite close to me. Mamma said, quite distinctly, ‘I have come to fetch Hughie,’ and then she smiled, and she slowly went away. I was sitting up in bed, Phillip, I saw her as clearly as I have ever seen anyone in my life. You do believe me, don’t you, Sonny?”

“Do you think that Uncle Hugh is dead?” asked Phillip.

“Yes, dear, lam as sure of that as I am sure of anything in my life,” smiled Hetty. Then her face puckered, and she tried not to cry, as she said in a small strangled voice, “When I told your Father, he scoffed at me, and said that it was a delusion, and probably came from—no no, it does not matter, we shall see, we shall see,” and she dried her eyes and smiled again. “It was exactly half past six, for I looked at the clock. I
knew
that my brother had passed on at that very moment. Mamma would never deceive her children, never!”

Richard looked round the kitchen door. Hetty turned her face away, not wanting to annoy him further. Phillip bent down to tie up the laces of his boots, thinking that Father’s face had the same sort of look in it sometimes as the Magister’s, but never so keen and clear and full. Nobody at school hated the Magister: he was too iceberg-towering for that, he was beyond hate. Father’s forehead was not broad, like the Magister’s, though both their eyes were the same colour. Father’s eyes never really blazed, in an icy sort of way, a Northern Lights way, like the Magister’s.

“Well, I may be late tonight, Hetty old girl. There are a lot of second-notice renewal premiums coming in now. So expect me when you see me, and not before.”

With this mild joke, a sort of quarter-hearted attempt at amelioration, the bowler-hatted head was withdrawn.