Donkey Boy

by Henry Williamson

  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.”

  Later Victoria said: when she had seen more of the children, “I wonder if there is anything in what Dickie says, that old Turney is a Jew? I have never met him, of course, and from all I’ve heard, I don’t think I want to. Have you seen him, Belle?”

  “He came into the house while I was there, Viccy. He seemed an amiable sort of man, rather like the Prince of Wales in appearance, though I have only seen drawings and photographs of the Prince, of course.”

  “The Prince of Wales does look a little bit Jewish, don’t you know, Belle. We have several of the Chosen People who have come recently to live in the neighbourhood. I have not called, of course. Perhaps George will be able to tell us, when he comes home. His head clerk buys their stationery from Mr. Turney’s firm, you know.”

  *

  That evening George Lemon, who had returned from his office in Lincoln’s Inn, placed a bottle of champagne in the dining-room bucket, for it was an especial occasion. Not only had Mafeking been relieved, but Hilary was coming to stay, being expected any moment. “That is, if he isn’t held up by the celebrations in Town.” George Lemon imagined the crowds, the lights, the Regent Street bars, laughing girls’ faces, the fun, the fireworks in the Park; and kept his amiable glance away from the face of Isabelle, his sister-in-law, and the pretty, the familiar, the somewhat Burne-Jones, the remotely angelic of Victoria, which before marriage he had found so attractive.

  During dinner Victoria brought up the question which had been occupying her mind: for of her brothers Richard was the favourite, and she had always regretted the circumstances of his marriage, believing that he had thrown himself at the first face he had seen after their mother’s death.

  “Well,” said her husband. “The only possible connexion between the Prince of Wales and the Chosen People that I can see is that he seems to prefer bizarre companions, who in the words of Lord Odo Russell the other day ‘are not English’, being either Jews or Parsees, like Ernest Cassel, or Sassoon, and other rich arrivistes. But more particularly to your question, as I’ve never met Mr. Turney, and am not likely to, I cannot possibly answer. Why do you ask?”

  Victoria then mentioned Phillip, and his strange temperament and behaviour.

  “He seems to be at cross-purposes with himself,” she said. “That is so, in mixed blood, is it not?”

  “Well, if you are going into the question of pure blood, who is there in England who could pass the test? They talk about the United States of America being the melting pot, but what about Britain in the past, with all its invasions and foreign settlements? The Lemons are Cornish for a good many generations, most of us have the dark look of Phoenicians, with a few bright exceptions when we cast a fair-haired blue-eyed type like m’ sister Beatrice, for example, but we more probably came from the north coast of France, Le Mans may be our derivation. Nobody can be sure. So what does a drop more or less of Jewish blood in the old British bucket matter?” And George Lemon went to the ice bucket, and after the merest token pointing of the napkin-wrapped bottle at Isabelle, who at once put her hand over her glass, filled his own and drank.

  George Lemon reflected that the Maddisons fancied themselves too much. That was the trouble with women brought up in the country to believe that their own world of a few square miles was the centre of everything; and where, anyhow, were the Maddisons today? His wife�
�s family had been a branch of the Scottish Maddisons, who coming south of the border, had bought land, acquired more by marriage, and in due course made a fortune out of the coal beneath their properties. There was a baronetcy dating from the seventeenth century. Since the firm of solicitors of which he was a junior partner was one mainly concerned in the conveyancing of land, George Lemon knew many details of landed families which would have shocked most people who believed in their own invincible respectability, were such details made known to them. The entire Victorian idiom was hypocritical, as Theodora, the only decent in-law he possessed, had realised. As for his own dear wife, she would never be able to believe that life should be otherwise than noble and Tennysonian: the penalty of having a dissolute papa!

  Thank heaven young Hilary was coming to stay; he had a sense of reality. George Lemon finished the bottle by himself, after the sisters had retired to the drawing-room, and then helped himself to some ’64 Cockburn, to celebrate Hilary’s inevitable night out, with London gone mad. Why had he not stayed up himself, for such an unique occasion?

  Hilary appeared at The Lindens the following afternoon, full of what he had seen. The complete stoppage of traffic, and the vast crowds besieging the West End had prevented him, he said, making his apologies to his sister, from coming down the night before. He had tried to find a place to send a telegram, in vain.

  “When eventually I fought my way off the shoulders of those who insisted on carrying me around, I doubt if there was a post office left open in the whole of London. The entire place had run riot. As I’ve already told George, when I went round to see him in his office this morning, I was coming out of my club, in uniform, for owing to the transport of extra troops to South Africa at Southampton, there has been delay in sending on my boxes, and I had no other kit in town. Well, as I was saying, I was hardly off the steps of m’ club, when I was hoisted up on somebody’s shoulders. No use me trying to explain that my uniform was not the blue ensign, but the red, I was carried round like a hero.”