Donkey Boy

by Henry Williamson

  “Well, you would have been if you had been in Mafeking, wouldn’t you?” said Victoria, loyally but inconsequentially.

  “I suppose there were some naval gun teams in the column which relieved the place, and that was good enough for the hoi poloi,” laughed Hilary. “Lord, what a schemozzle it was! People blowing coaching horns and bugles, waving Chinese lanterns and Union Jacks, carrying portraits of Baden-Powell, men and women of all classes dancing and singing. I got away from my particular idolators outside Swan and Edgar’s, and made my way up Regent Street to a bar where one usually sees a friend at any time, it’s a great meeting place for sailors. I was having a drink in the long bar with a fellow I know when in came the Prince of Wales with some friends, and would you believe it, he walked the entire length of the bar, sweeping his walking stick along the counter from one end to the other, knocking off every blessed glass! Then in his guttural voice he called out that everyone present must drink the health of the South African Field Force, coupled with the gallant defenders of Mafeking. Lord, you should have seen their faces!”

  “I suppose it must have been a shock to them,” said Victoria, with her slight smile.

  “Shock, Good Lord, no, Viccy! They were delighted! We drank as directed, sang God Save the Queen, and flung our glasses on the floor. Immediately afterwards, H.R.H. went out, everyone standing to attention. Before we knew what happened, he was gone again.”

  Isabelle looked puzzled. “But surely——?” She looked at her sister. “Would not the proprietor lose all his glasses?”

  “Good Lord, he didn’t care! It’s a custom, you know, to break a glass after an important toast. The Prince of Wales broke them before, as well as after!”

  “But who would pay for the—the toast, Hilary?”

  “The Prince’s equerry, of course, Belle. After all, it was a very special occasion.”

  “Well, I don’t pretend to understand the ways of London Society,” said Isabelle. “But it is very nice to see you again, Hilary.” She went to give him a kiss, and he turned his smooth, pink cheek to receive the rather thick-lipped pressure of one who had always regarded him as the dearest little brother.

  Hilary Maddison was considered to be the fortunate one of the family. Had he not, at so young an age, travelled around the world, and being popular, found favour in the eyes of the rich and important, to the extent of being worth over ten thousand pounds by his twenty-eighth birthday? Possibly more, for the value of the farm he had bought in New South Wales had increased since he had acquired it for a song, when he was twenty-one. It was worked by a partner, while Hilary continued his duties as special officer in the Phasiana, one of the great white liners of the famous MacKarness Line. Sir Robert MacKarness, himself, that tough, blunt Glaswegian ex-shipping clerk, with a face and physique of Scots granite, had selected him as one of his particular young men who, he told them, if they could work—not would work, but could work—driving themselves as hard and as constantly as a yellow-metal screw is driven at the end of its shaft, then they could not be kept from rising to the high levels of Britain’s major industry, and its only future, upon the sea. And though Sir Robert MacKarness affected to despise the English gentleman as effete, yet he knew the value of one who was not afraid of work, and who would pay the strictest attention to detail during every hour of the twenty-four, seven days a week, and fifty-two weeks a year. The future, he said, more than once to Hilary Maddison, his favourite among his protegés, was founded in the present; so future and present were coupled as a universal joint. Experience was everything; let a young man with ability learn from the bottom upwards, to ground himself in reality, for the great changes that were coming with the new century.

  Hilary had begun work in his Clyde-side office; then he had accompanied Sir Robert, who had found him to be thorough, reliable, and with an ease of manner that the older man admired, as a confidential writer and messenger combined. Pleased with his work and unfailing grasp of essentials, Sir Robert had used him on special missions about the routes and ports of the house of MacKarness—Southampton, Gibraltar, Port Said, Colombo, Indian Ocean and China Sea, Hong Kong and Sydney, flying fish and Southern Cross—a pleasant life, with strict attention to business, with many opportunities in both the world of business and pleasure. Hilary had many a ship-board romance, discreetly conducted, of course, and always conscious that the white of one’s uniform was distinct in the nights of phosphorescent waves under the low blaze of stars. In short, Hilary Maddison, self-assured by the thought of his ten thousand pounds, every one the product of his intelligence, was extremely pleased with himself and with the prospect of three months’ leave before him, after three years’ foreign service, in the only place where spring was really spring—England.

  When George Lemon came home, talk between the two men was upon another level of living.

  “London last night was the strangest experience, George. I suppose it’s never happened like that before in all our history. The news of Waterloo, even. Everybody appeared to be in the West End, and the strangest thing was the feeling of friendly unity in the crowds. I should not have believed such a thing possible, if I hadn’t experienced it myself. You know Kipling’s ‘East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet’, well, they dam’ well did, as far as London is concerned. I’m no radical, the idea of men being equal is nonsense—one day at sea in a ship proves that, if proof were required—but I must say it did my eyes good, George, to feel the spirit of unity in the crowds, after seeing so many dagos in the East.”

  “We’ve got our little Englanders all the same, Hilary. You’ve been away, and haven’t experienced it. That little Welshman in the House of Commons, whom Lord Lonsdale calls Mr. George, has been standing up for the Boers. The fellow ought to be shot, lettin’ the prestige of the country down, giving more powder and shot for the Germans—not your own respected cousins, and their sort, of course, but the commercial gentry around the Kaiser, who have probably fooled and egged on the All Highest to send that dam’ sabre-rattlin’ telegram to ‘Oom Paul’. God, have you seen a photograph of the old blackguard? He’s a fool?”

  “Kruger? He’s something straight out of the Old Testament, by way of an undertaker’s shop. The brains behind him are after the goldfields. Barnato, Oppenheim, Wernher, Joel—they are the boys who will eventually matter.”

  “Of course the Jews are behind everything, but we couldn’t do without them. They provide the money for nearly everything, you know.”

  “Well, now Bobs has gone out with Kitchener—one of our ships had the job of transporting them, by the way—we shall soon settle the Boers’ hash. What a word, Boers. Rightly named, if you ask my opinion. I must tell you, George. I saw a curious sight in Trafalgar Square, of all places. There were a couple of tommies rogering two tarts up against the wall below the National Gallery. As bold as brass, and not giving a damn who saw them. Would you believe it? And in Pall Mall, as I went down to my club, I saw two fellows turn up a girl, quite young she was, and smack her bottom in full view, drawers and all, as though it was part of the festivities.”

  “What happened?”

  “I didn’t wait to see. Besides, there was such a press of people, all yelling their blasted heads off, squirting water in people’s faces, and waggling ticklers, I was pretty glad to get out of the scrum and into the comparative quiet of the Voyagers.”

  Hilary paused—they were sitting in the rose arbour—while he checked a thought. George had a sharp brain, and would recognise his train of thought if he didn’t go ’possum with another idea first. Hilary wanted to ask about George’s younger sister, Beatrice, the meltingly beautiful, honey-blonde, blue-eyed Bee, recently widowed.

  “I hear that Dickie’s two children are here, George. His wife’s got scarlet fever, Viccy tells me. D’you know, I never knew Dickie was married until I opened my post bag in Sydney and heard from John details of my father’s death, let me see, it must be a little more than five years ago. And the next time we called a
t Sydney, there was another letter from John, telling me of his wife Jenny’s death in childbirth. I must try and see both John and Dick this leave.”

  “Richard’s a shy bird,” said George.

  “He always was. Hullo, here’s Belle with his offspring.”

  Isabelle had appeared round the gravelled path, pushing the mail cart. Seeing the two men, Phillip hid behind her voluminous skirts, which stirred some of the yellow pebbles as she advanced sedately upon her buttoned glacé kid boots.

  “Now be a good boy, Phillip, and say ‘How do you do’ properly to your Uncles.”

  Phillip hung back, sucking his thumb, while with the other hand he held tight to Aunty Belle’s skirt.

  Hilary tried his charm on the boy. He jingled coins in his pocket, then withdrew some and made them dance in the palm of his hand. This not being attractive, he selected a new sixpence and held it up between finger and thumb. At the sight of the coin Phillip retired once more behind Aunty Belle’s skirts.

  “You can’t buy him, Hilary,” laughed George Lemon.

  “Come on, you little rascal!” said Hilary. “Come on, don’t be frightened of me. I’ll be jiggered if you don’t look just like a marmoset looking round the trunk of a banyan tree!”

  Neither man connected Isabelle with a banyan tree, their thoughts being with the unusual solemnity in the face of a small boy. It seemed so funny, the solemn, gazing eyes of the bony, white face: the mixture of caution, fear, and curiosity.

  “He was supposed to have been reared on the milk of a donkey, but bless my soul, it might very well have been an organ grinder’s guenoy,” remarked George Lemon. At the last thought he had changed the word monkey into its French female equivalent; for in his opinion the boy was exceptionally precocious, and he did not want to hurt his feelings.

  Hilary suddenly darted forward and caught the boy by an arm. Then holding his wrists, while he faced him, he told him to bend down his head and Uncle would give him a somersault. The boy became rigid. “Come on, you young rascal, over with you!” cried Hilary. “It’s very easy, Phillip, why, there’s nothing in it!” As the boy still resisted, he caught him under the arms and threw him up into the air, laughing as the boy’s skirt flew open on the descent, to reveal above the skinny legs a thin, grey belly. Hilary threw him up again and again, saying, “There’s nothing to be afraid of! Why are you so scared of me? I won’t let you fall! Come on now, once more, only make yourself less rigid, relax your muscles, man, relax yourself! Why, you’re not half a boy! You ought to see the little chaps, no older than you, diving in off the quays of Colombo, a knife between their teeth, and not a stitch on ’em, not a man jack of ’em over five years of age, and swimming under the sharks, to rip them up with their knives. What, don’t you want to hear? You little swine you! Did you see that, George? Look at my hand! The young cuss bit me!”

  It had been accidental: Phillip had gasped with fear of being thrown up, and Hilary’s hand had met the little teeth in the open, rigid mouth.

  Chapter 12

  GEORGE LEMON HAS AN IDEA

  IN THE morning George Lemon, frock-coated, silk-hatted, dog-skin-gloved and carrying a rolled umbrella, left for the station, accompanied by his wife. Victoria, pale of complexion and fair as a Burne-Jones angel, walked with him down the pleasant, secluded road, with its villas standing well back behind cleft-oak paling fences, among trees of lilac, double-flowering Japanese cherry, mimosa and laburnum, all so fair in the sun rising into a clear sky of the south-east, thrushes and blackbirds and chaffinches singing, cuckoos calling from many points of the downs; and immediately and startling near, as though summer shadow itself were vocal, the shaking notes and trills of a nightingale.

  Victoria held George’s arm tightly in her elation that she was to have his child. She had come with him that morning specially to tell him her secret. Victoria felt unusually free and happy, and this taking of his arm in public, with both hands, was for her almost a defiance of convention. However, they were alone in the road, except for a very fat terrier dog, with grey jowl and teeth protruding with premature senility due to eating too much red meat, who was inspecting the base of one after another of the trees along the sidewalk.

  “Hullo, Joey,” said George Lemon, whereupon the dog gave one wag of its tail before passing on.

  Joey belonged to Sir Alfred Catt, a neighbour. The Lemons held the Catts in some scorn because they were so obviously arrivistes, by way of trade and lord-mayoralty of a Midland manufacturing town. Joey, the obese terrier, much larger than any genuine terrier-dog should have been, looked like part of the late Corporation of his master’s home-town, its body being encased in blue straps, each one properly saddle-soaped before the morning constitutional, and fastened with German silver buckles. As for the collar, that also was a Birmingham speciality, being of strong leather set with formidable spikes, also of German silver, the points of which had been rounded off, as a concession to canine civility.

  The Catts were elderly and childless. Joey (named after the great Chamberlain, of course) along with several blue Persian cats, was privileged to share the bedroom of her Ladyship. The animals were regarded and cared for as a family. Joey, however, contrary to the experience of most eldest sons, had found so much favour in his father’s eyes, that he was on the way to a rapid death through kindness. The dog’s heavy, studded collar was an armour against having its throat torn out by the savage hairy mongrels of the seasonal gipsies of Epsom; the straps and bands were to protect its heart from excessive exertion when on the leash; but there was no protection for its kidneys, liver, and colon, from overmuch fat, acid, and carbo-hydrate.

  Joey, however, all his life had been protected from intercourse with common dogs. Hence, in late middle age, and during walks with his master or his master’s valet, Joey’s almost feverish interest in the recognition, or perhaps in the collection, of as many visiting cards and calls of his canine neighbours at the bases of trees owned and cared for by the Epsom Rural District Council,

  That, at any rate, was Joey seen through the eyes of George Nathaniel Lemon.

  Victoria did not really care for her husband’s quips and remarks about Joey, the poor old dog. Many of his other ways did, while not exactly shocking her, for she prided herself on her broadmindedness, tend secretly to dismay her sense of propriety. Of course a man’s mind was entirely different from a woman’s, but even so—— It was somewhat curious, that streak in him, for George was a gentleman, of good family. Victoria could not imagine any of her brothers saying, or even thinking, the things George Lemon said. He was Cornish, of course, that might well be the difference. It certainly accounted for his dark hair and eyes, his brown skin, and a peculiar, almost uncanny, awareness of what she, Victoria, was thinking. How could George then, with all his intelligence, be so, well, crude on occasion? Not that it really mattered in other things, for after all he was her husband; but even so, why did George, so esteemed in his profession, and so popular with people, not realise that it was not very nice to say the things he did at times say?

  But that May morning of 1900 as she walked down the avenue of limes, murmurous with bees upon their canopies in the bright morning, Victoria felt free of herself, of her experience, for joy of the new life within her; and she clung to her husband’s arm, her somewhat indecorous behaviour happily unobservable by anybody except the snuffling old dog. And Joey, having wagged his tail to greet, on equal term, his friend in the shiner—Joey like all well-brought-up dogs, knew a gent from a common person by his hat, clothes, gait and smell—then trotted on to ascertain what had been doing since his arboreal survey, master’s valet waiting at the gate, of the night before.

  Victoria (the childish name of Viccy seemed, somehow, to be part of the past) turned back just before the end of the road, not wanting to meet any of George’s Town and Golf Club acquaintances who, about that time of a few minutes after nine o’clock, usually passed by on foot or carriage on their way to the railway station. At the parting she hoped that Ge
orge would kiss her, though she knew the vulgarity of such demonstration in public. George did not; so Victoria returned up the road faster than she had come down it, for the care of the house was her dominant concern in living.

  While she walked under the avenue of lime trees, she turned over in her mind what George had said about Dickie’s little boy. “A boy needs more affection from his father than from his mother.” “Dickie is too self-absorbed, perhaps, ever to share his inner feelings with anyone else.” This implied criticism of her favourite brother Richard had somehow prevented her from telling George what she had been rehearsing in her mind to tell him ever since the previous day, when the doctor had confirmed her hopes. George’s words had chilled her. Her brother was not selfish, and never had been! If Dickie had become more reserved than before who, or what, was to blame? His marriage!

  George Lemon, in his first-class carriage, richly upholstered in leather, mahogany, and Liberty fabric, settled back in his corner seat and opened The Times in an atmosphere of aromatic, blue Havana cigar smoke. No conversation in the carriage was usual, or conventional, beyond the initial Good morning and the briefest impersonal genialities about the weather. He opened the rear pages in order to read the Stock Exchange prices in the lists there, which concerned his holdings; but he thought not of prices but of a case in which he was engaged, of a client who wanted an injunction against a neighbour, alleging that his premises were being used as a disorderly house. The neighbour in question was a peer of the realm, not one of Gladstone’s crop of glorified shop-keepers and worthy tradesmen, but one of the oldest families in Surrey.

  It was a case of the utmost delicacy, and might, if persisted in, cause a first-class scandal. There had been some investigation by a private enquiry agent, a retired Scotland Yard man whom the partners sometimes employed, and undoubtedly the house in Bryanston Square was a select bordel. The point was in the alleged disorder.