Donkey Boy

by Henry Williamson

  With an interior feeling of fascination George Lemon played with the idea of doing some investigation on his own. The enquiry agent had reported that some of the “young ladies” visiting the place were “high class”, and from the “theatrical profession”. By Jove!

  With Isabelle in his house, staying between jobs of work, George Lemon felt more shut-in upon himself than ever. He was glad to have the poor old thing, of course, though by heaven what a frump she was! She couldn’t help it, being an effect rather than a cause, a surplus female. To offset Belle’s coming, Hilary’s visit had been much anticipated. At least he was realistic, having had seen something of the world. Dick and Viccy were very much of a type, thin-blooded people. He hoped his child, of whose coming George Lemon had known without any particular satisfaction, would not take after his wife’s family. At least, not the ‘Viking’ side of it. But you could never tell; it might be like Hilary, who took after his mother, an amiable and easy German woman, whose life had been hell with her husband, from all accounts. Perhaps it might be a daughter, like his sister Bee, a jolly girl with no inhibitions, who was coming to stay.

  Beatrice was a young widow: and on previous occasions George Lemon had observed his sister’s interest in Hilary; first for the photographs on his chimney-piece while her elderly husband was still alive, and later when she had met him; and the interest was mutual, he had decided. The two, Hilary and Bee, would make a fine pair, he thought.

  *

  That afternoon when they returned from a walk, Phillip kept well behind Aunty Belle. To him the new uncle was an object to be avoided, with his pink, roundish face and big white legs wide apart on a chair. With the other new uncle it was different. He was not a great big white man, he was ordinary size brown face, not ha-ha toothy face like white uncle holding out arms for him. In dread of this personality, Phillip took a double grip of the handle of the mail cart.

  “I can push, Aunty Belle, you have tired feet, you sit down, Aunty Belle,” he said, and was surprised at the laughter of the men who, he had been told, were his two uncles. The teeth of uncle white did not look so much like big-dog-bite after the laughing. Aunty Belle said, “Now Phillip be a good boy and say how do you do, to your Uncle Hilary.”

  “No,” said Phillip, meaning that he wanted to go with Aunty Belle, being afraid of Uncle White. Isabelle misinterpreted the refusal.

  “You must not be rude, Phillip. Now go and shake your uncle’s hand, or you will not have any sop for your supper.”

  “No, Aunty Belle!” The child clung more tightly to the mail-cart. Isabelle, embarrassed, unpicked his fingers. The child clutched her skirts. Hilary laughed. Isabelle became quietly firmer. The child struggled, and hid his face in her skirts.

  “You see,” said Isabelle to her brother-in-law George Lemon, “what Dickie meant by clinging to Hetty’s apron-strings? Come, Phillip, you must not make an exhibition of yourself! There now, you have made your sister cry! I will not allow such bad manners, so be a good boy and do as Aunty Belle tells you,” she said, her voice ameliorating.

  “No, no, Aunty Belle!”

  “Very well, you will have no sop for supper.”

  “Leave him to me,” said George Lemon, gently. He was thinking that if children should be seen and not heard, so should all governesses, by God. “The boy will be better when he knows us all more.” He turned with a smile to the child staring up at him. “Now then, Phillip, shall we roll some croquet balls on the grass? You help me, like a good chap, to get them through the hoops!”

  He got up, and rolled a ball for a few feet, then went on his hands and knees. As soon as the towering size of Uncle Lemon was gone, and a nice, brown uncle was crawling on the grass, hope sprang up in Phillip, and he ran forward to play with his new friend. His eyes lit up and he laughed and cried “Jolly! Jolly!” as he rolled his ball beside Uncle Brown rolling another ball. Uncle Brown was a nice man—he was Uncle Lemon.

  Phillip’s ball was white with blue rings, Uncle’s was white with red rings. It was good fun trying to see which ball went through the hoop first. They took turns. Oh, his ball slipped! Uncle Brown let him have another turn. Red ball was near blue ball! “Quick, quick, Uncle Brown!” he cried. Then, “Ha! ha! your ball was too fast; perhaps a daddy-long-legs looked up and pushed it, Uncle Lemon.”

  “You have a remarkable imagination, my boy!”

  The boy was intent on getting the blue ball through the hoop. He rolled it, it slowed, he gave it an extra touch, glanced furtively at the other, and jumped around when Uncle Brown said, “Well, perhaps the daddy-long-legs was pulling your ball back this time, Phil.” He added, “Did you see it?”

  “No, Uncle Brown Lemon! It was me who pushed it.”

  “Ha ha!” exclaimed George Lemon, as though to his wife. He put his hand affectionately on the boy’s head. “Thank you for telling me the truth. Well done. I must go in now, Phil, and get into some more comfortable clothes. Perhaps if you ask Uncle Hilary, very nicely, to play with you, he will take my place. Don’t be afraid of him, he’s quite harmless, really. And don’t bite him, he’s got a horror of hydrophobia! Lives too well on board ship, that’s his only trouble. A little too fat. Go and ask him. Say, ‘Please, Uncle Hilary, will you play with me?’”

  George Lemon went into the house through the open french windows and Phillip went slowly towards Uncle White, looking at him doubtfully. Hilary was sitting in a deck-chair. Summoning up his resistance, Phillip managed to say, “Please, Uncle White, will you play with me?”

  “If you shake hands first, and call me Uncle Hilary, that’s my name, you know. Then we can be friends, can’t we? Shake hands like a little man.”

  Phillip advanced to hold out his hand. Hilary took it, and pulled the boy to him. He stood him before him, holding him there while he sat himself in the deck-chair, saying, “Let’s have a good look at you. I’ve heard a lot about you, young man. Do you know who I am? We must now get properly acquainted. I am your father’s brother. We used to collect butterflies together. You know what they are, don’t you? Ha ha! You young rascal, you; I hear you purloined a case of your father’s, and took them to bed with you, under your pillow. Didn’t you, that? What did Daddy do, tell me? Did he smack your bottom?”

  “My farver’s stronger than you,” said Phillip, not liking this uncle at all.

  “Good for you. So you’ve got some spunk! Only you should say ‘Father’ not ‘Farver’. You’re too big a boy now to talk like that. Say it after me—‘Far’—go on!”

  “Far.”

  “Now then.”

  “‘Now then’.”

  “Don’t be cheeky, or I’ll spifflicate you. Now once more. ‘Far—ther’.”

  “Far—ther.”

  “Well done! Now you are a big boy, aren’t you? Say ‘Father’ again.”

  “Far—ther.”

  “Splendid!”

  Phillip resented the pink face so near his own, the hands holding his ribs. He tried to get away.

  “Whoa, young hoss! Answer me, did Daddy smack your bottom good and hard? You young rip, you! Why should I play ball with you? Give me a good reason. Come on, don’t be shy! I shan’t eat you!”

  Phillip began to feel that the Uncle White Hilary might do this very thing. Hilary was laughing in a way that frightened Phillip. He struggled harder to get free.

  “Do you like stories, Phillip? Shall I tell you about sharks?”

  “No, thank you, Uncle White.”

  “But it’s very interesting. What’s the matter with you? Other little boys I know like to be told stories of sharks. Stop wriggling, or I’ll put you in irons, you young cuss, you!”

  “I want Aunty Belle!”

  “Now now, you must be a man, my boy. Keep still, you little rip! Very well, into irons you go,” and lifting up the awkward child, Hilary put him between his legs, crossed one ankle over the other, brought his knees under the white duck trousers together, and chuckled at the writhings of the skinny creature to escape.


  “Don’t you want to hear how we catch sharks off the Australian coast, Phillip?”

  “No, you fool!”

  “Well, I’m jiggered! You’re a caution, and no mistake.”

  Phillip tried to pull himself out of the locked legs. He clutched the short grass of the lawn, but was pinned between shin bones and ankles. Amusement and dislike possessed Hilary. He would tame the little brute, who had refused his offer of friendship.

  “We go out in a boat with lumps of pork and some lengths of stiff bamboo. Then we sharpen the ends of a length of bamboo and push both ends into the meat. Then we tie the ends together lightly, and throw the pork into the water. And then what do you think happens next?”

  Phillip was still struggling, his face close to the grass. Only the black-haired back of his head on the thin stalk of neck was visible above the fallen-forward square collar of his sailor blouse. In amusement Hilary lifted up the pleated skirt, and laughed as he saw a small rump sticking up like that of a pale, hairless monkey.

  “Well, I’ll tell you what happens next. A dead dog is just as good to attract a shark. Or a naughty little devil like you. The shark turns on his back to swallow the meat. Down it goes. But as he digests it in his belly the bamboo bow flies open and rips him up. He leaps out of the water, smacking down to try and get rid of the bamboo spears, but each time he bleeds more, and at the smell of blood all the other sharks come around, and go mad as they lash the water, tearing him to shreds and eating them.”

  As in a nightmare, Phillip was struggling to get away.

  “Let me go, please, Uncle White. I beg your pardon, Uncle White, I beg your pardon,” he cried. Hilary was amazed to see that the little fellow was weeping. Immediately he was contrite.

  “I say, I’m sorry, young fellow. I thought we were playing a game, Honest Injun, I did! Also, I thought the story would interest you,” he said, taking him into his arms, and trying to get Phillip to look at him. “Come now,” he said, in his smoothest tones. “Let me dry your tears. Tut tut, this will never do. Anyway, sharks are the most frightful creatures, and deserve no mercy, you know. Have you ever seen pictures of one? Now I wonder what I have got in my pocket. Let’s see, shall we? Look, here’s a shilling. Don’t cry any more. Really, Phil, I intended it only as fun! It was only a game I was playing with you!”

  But Phillip would accept neither friendliness nor shilling. What a little freak he was, a proper donkey boy! Hilary let him go, and watched with a feeling of amused contempt his nephew hurrying, head down, towards the house.

  As Phillip went through the shadowed room, on the way to lock himself in the lavatory, he suddenly started, for a voice said, out of nowhere, “Darling, whatever has been happening?”

  Phillip looked up, and saw a black shining soft lady, sitting in a chair. She knelt down on one knee and held out black glistening arms to him, and a funny thing like the larder window was over her beautiful face.

  “Phillip,” said the soft voice. “Oh, you pet! Kiss me, darling!” and the lady lifted back her veil and her smell was lovely. He yielded. Scarcely touching his head with her black fingers she pressed her lips against his cheek, breathing sweetness upon him a moment before she sat back in the chair again; and then leaning forward with one gloved hand upon the handle of her parasol, and her chin supported by a fingertip of the other hand, she said softly, “So you are shy Richard’s little boy! And oh dear, there is another tear on your cheek! I tasted one just now with my lips. Are you lonely without your mother? Poor pet, don’t feel lonely any more, I will look after you; I am your new Aunty Bee.” And over her shoulder she called out, “Hilary, you are a first-class, unimaginative oaf!” She held Phillip close to her, and spoke gently to him, watching the expression of his face, as he regarded her gravely, with his enormous eyes.

  Phillip did not realise what she was murmuring to him, so much as he felt what she gave to him of her own feeling; as indeed all the faces he had known had made him, in layer upon layer as a coral reef is built up, in part of their own feelings. This black soft strange lady was not like an aunty.

  “You are very sweet, my pet,” she said gently. “I would like to steal you, and take you to my home. Would you like that?”

  She touched his forehead, and smoothed his dark hair, strangely moved for what she perceived in his face, in the deep perplexity and acceptance of life in his candid eyes, in the sweet mobility and gentleness of his mouth. “Little pet!” she whispered again; and smiling at him with unfirm, quivering lips, she felt the tears coming into her eyes. This child was clear as the Cornish sea of her own childhood; as her own lost innocence, of that time when she saw herself as fair and free as barley in August, waving in the fields of the headland she had known as a child, riding on her pony along the bridle-paths by the cliffs, above a summer sea as deeply blue as the eyes of this most gentle, this most innocent little boy before her.

  “How your Mamma must love you,” whispered Beatrice.

  “Phillip must go to bed now, it is already past his bedtime,” said Victoria’s voice. She had come silently upon the deep carpet. “Aunty Belle will bathe you, Phillip, and then give you your bowl of sop, if you are a good boy.”

  “Oh, may he not stay up a little longer, Viccy dear? I have only just made the acquaintance of your enchanting nephew. Viccy, he is fey! Look at his eyes!”

  Victoria smiled. She liked Bee; who didn’t? The trouble with Bee, she thought, was that, as a successful actress on the stage, she could never know when she was really sincere in what she said in ordinary life.

  “He is fey, you know,” said Bee, staring at the boy so tranquil before her. “He is pure Celtic. Look at the shape of his head! Feel this bump at the back. What an imagination must be stored in there—hundreds of years, thousands of years, in that little barrow. The past never dies, you know, Viccy.”

  “Do you think that accounts for it, then?” asked Victoria, in her thin voice, with an anticipatory smile on her gentle face, as though she would like to believe all that Bee said. The quiet spell was broken by Hilary, magnificent and assured in his white uniform, stepping up from the garden into the room, and Bee swiftly lowering her veil before turning to meet him. Phillip, feeling blank now that the lady with the yellowy hair and smiling eyes seemed to have forgotten him, as she went away with Uncle White, allowed himself to be led up to his bath, then to his bowl of bread and milk while Aunty Belle told him not to linger as his Aunt Victoria was giving a dinner party that night to many people. He must not forget to clean his teeth thoroughly, to wash out his glass afterwards, to fold up his clothes, to kneel and say his prayers and to ask God to make Mother better soon, then to get into bed—a large, wide bed, like Mummy’s bed—and thereafter to make no sound, but to go to sleep.

  “You need not be afraid of the dark,” she said. “For your Uncle Hilary is going to sleep in your bed beside you. There are six extra people sleeping in the house tonight. So you must be sure to be asleep when your uncle comes up.”

  “Can I have the door left open, please, Aunty Belle?”

  “No, dear, it is not necessary.”

  “Then can I have the window open?”

  Isabelle prided herself that she knew the ways of children. Did she not remember her own childish fears of being left alone, she the eldest who later had the burden of the younger ones?

  “Yes, dear, if you are very quiet, and promise not to call out, but to go to sleep immediately, I will leave the door just a little way open. Did you ask God to make you a better boy, dear?”

  “Yes, Aunty Belle. And Mummy and Daddy, and Mavis and Mrs. Feeney, and Aunty Bee and Uncle Lemon, and Uncle White and Aunty Victoria and you as well, Aunty Belle.”

  “Yes, dear, you mentioned them in your prayers, that is right.”

  “To make them all better, Aunty Belle. Don’t forget to leave the door open, will you?”

  “No, dear. I’ll put the chair here, to stop it from closing. Now go to sleep,” she said, as she pushed her wet lips, so much harde
r than Aunty Bee’s, against his cheekbone, “and don’t you make a sound, like a good boy.”

  He made no sound; the tears for Mother fell silently. Later he felt sadly tranquil, as he heard a bird singing jug-jug-jug, then teroo-teroo-teroo, and watched the sunlight on the tops of trees, then the sounds of people passing in the passages outside, the noises of horses’ hoofs and carriage wheels, more voices coming upstairs, doors shutting, and then a lot of talking and laughter from down below. And there were lanterns alight in the garden, and people walking there when it was growing dark—all of it far away from his life, nearly as far away as God, who was waiting a long way away, never to be seen or heard, but just waiting, waiting, waiting, much farther away than Mummie, who was as far away as the world, the world which, however much he tried to make it come nearer to him by thinking it near, always remained far away. Listening and thinking, silently weeping and then singing very quietly to himself about the world—thus the hours passed, and the darkness settled deeper, but still the bird sang jug-jug-jug, and then, after waiting, it sang teroo-teroo-teroo, and then sad cries came from it. The bird stopped singing at last, and then the horses’ hoofs and the carriage wheels were heard again, with voices in the night. The world seemed nearer now, and he felt sleepy, yawned, and thinking of the tree at the bottom of the garden, and the black fence, drifted out of the world.

  Chapter 13

  PHILLIP ASSERTS HIMSELF

  HILARY ROBERT VON FÖHRE MADDISON, going upstairs to bed ten minutes after one o’clock in the morning, bumped into the white cane-bottomed chair stuck in the doorway, and muttered a series of curses sotto voce.

  Awakened, Phillip lay still with the instinct of self-preservation. He pretended to be asleep. Uncle lit the gas. But he was no longer Uncle White; he was black. Phillip, peeping between half-open lids, thought that this was because it was night. Uncle sat on the chair and took off his coat, and then he was white on top again, and creaking. Through narrowed eyes Phillip saw him take off his shoes, and Uncle was grunting. He watched him take off his trousers, and his white creaking shirt, then his vest, and Uncle was big and pink and hairy, like a sort of bear. Uncle put on a light-blue suit, of coat and trousers, not a nightshirt like Father wore. And Uncle had a dressing-gown like Daddy’s, only softer and smoother, like it was made of quilt, and a blue rope to tie it with. Why was Uncle dressing again so soon? Then Uncle went out and shut the door ever so quietly and the light was left on, and when he came back Uncle carried a towel. And then Uncle opened his bag with a snap and closed the bag with another snap and then he pulled the chain of the gas and it went out and the mantle was red in the dark like in the front room sleeping on the floor until it cooled off and a little by-pass light stayed on. And then the door was opened ever so quietly and closed again, while he knew Uncle was holding his breath.