Donkey Boy

by Henry Williamson

  When Phillip awakened again he heard the bird singing jug-jug-jug, then teroo-teroo-teroo very loudly in the new garden outside. He lay listening, his eyes wide open and staring round the strange room. He saw the little light still burning on the by-pass. He got out of bed and went in the pot under the bed, then got back into bed again, seeing Uncle White’s clothes on the chair. Then he went to sleep and when he awoke again Uncle was getting into bed beside him and the springs were sagging and all the bedclothes were taken, and this made his back cold; so he gripped the bedclothes in a hand over his shoulder, and then rolled over to get them back again, because it was his bed. It was now Uncle’s turn to be cold. Uncle laughed and said, “Well, damn my eyes, you little cockerel!” and laughed again as he pulled the top blanket over himself. Phillip was not afraid of Uncle White now, and wanted to kick him for getting into his bed, but instead withdrew as far as he could with the coverlet around him and whispered, his back turned to the intruder, “You fool.”

  Chapter 14

  MANY ADVENTURES

  PHILLIP thought it was lovely at Uncle George’s house. The sun always shone in the garden. There were lots of strawberries and cream. He was promised a new sailor suit, with long trousers. Every night before bed Aunty Bee told him and Mavis about Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Uncle Hilary said that Aunty Bee made everyone feel it was a beautiful world. And Uncle Hilary did not catch him any more, or Aunty Belle tell him he was naughty. And there were lots of wooden boxes and everyone had presents, and there were jars of jelly and nice-to-smell joss-sticks burning in the morning-room on the chimney-piece beside the clock and photographs and little elephants and fat yellow booders.

  Uncle Hilary said a booder was a god, but not on this side of the world. And there were little sharks’ mouths stretched wide with a stick in them, and one was for Father, with a hammock of sparter grass. Sparter grass was slippery and yellow and heavy and you rolled out easily if you turned over too soon, and Uncle Hilary said it was not sparter grass but es-pa-to grass.

  Uncle Hilary gave him the new sailor suit, with long trousers, white like Uncle Hilary’s, and this made him a big boy, ever so big. “Look, Aunty Viccy, I am as high as this!” and with hand held flat on the top of his head he showed how high he was, much higher than he looked because he was really high up where his head was. Proudly wearing the long trousers, he was like Uncle Hilary, and took Uncle’s hand to go for a walk without being asked, while Aunty Bee held Uncle’s other hand and swung it as they walked, so he swung Uncle’s hand too. And he had a cricket bat from Uncle George and a book of Just So Stories from Aunty Viccy; and when Aunty Belle left to be a companion to the Dowager Lady Botesdale she gave him a shilling for his Post Office Savings Book. He loved everyone now, except the gardener, who always said, “Clear off out of it,” when he went to watch what the gardener was doing.

  Jessie now looked after him when he went for a walk, with Mavis in the mail cart. They went for lovely walks, but he must hold the mail cart when they crossed the road. His great friend was an old gentleman dog called Joey who wagged his tail to see him.

  One day Phillip took a loaf to have a picnic with Joey. They ran away together into the woods and saw wonderful birds, and a big pond where lots of white butterflies were flying up and down on the water, and huge spotted fishes were splashing with open mouths to eat the butterflies. They ate some of the loaf, but Joey took his bits away and scratched earth over them. A man came up in a brown hat and brown coat and a gun, and tied a string on Joey’s collar and took them back, for they were lost. Jessie had red eyes, and said, “Oh, Master Phillip, how could you!” And Uncle George said thank you to the man and gave him a yellow sixpence, and the man touched his brown hat and then patted him on the head and said, “He’s a cute little beggar, sir, asking me lots o’ questions, and all to the point, what’s more,” and Lady Catt cried over Joey and Phillip wondered why she was not called Lady Dog. Then Uncle George said, “Let me come on the next picnic with you, Phil old fellow. If I am away, please wait for me, for I love picnics.” Aunt Bee kissed Uncle George and called him an angel. But Aunty Viccy said he was a naughty boy.

  Phillip did not connect the reserve his Aunt Victoria was beginning to feel for him with the dish of apples on the table of the morning-room. Every morning one of the apples was being bitten. The bite was taken, so far as could be decided, before half-past ten of a morning. At any rate, it was before the children had their cups of Epp’s cocoa at eleven o’clock.

  Did both the children go to the dish? The bite was small, and the skin of the apples being tough and wrinkled—they were Ribston Pippins from Hilary’s farm in New South Wales, brought home crated in the Phasiana—no distinct teeth-marks were visible, as might have been the case with softer apples. Then there was the question of the height of the dish from the floor. The dish could be reached by Mavis alone, only if a stool were put against the table. There were fingermarks on the table, but whether they were those of Mavis or of Phillip Victoria could not decide.

  So she waited in the hall, where were saddle-bag armchairs and a chesterfield; jaguar skins on the floor from Malay, and Hilary; a writing table with blotter set in tooled leather, two silver inkwells and tray with both quill and steel pens, another of dark-blue writing paper embossed with the Lemon crest, which device was also to be discerned upon the envelope flaps. Every morning Victoria sat at her table, attending to her correspondence. Near her was a bowl filled with scores of visiting cards of several sizes; while in the drawer of the Jacobean writing table, with its two latten drops, were hundreds more, all records of the polite rectitude of living.

  Victoria wore a white shirt-blouse in the morning, with a high starched linen collar and a thin tie of black velvet, with a grey serge skirt. She called it her housekeeping uniform, since she had no housekeeper. George, a younger son, had yet to make his own way in the world. She must practise economy.

  While she attended to her account books and correspondence in the morning, the door leading to the morning-room was left open. Upon the polished parquet flooring beyond the door lay a reflexion of light from the french windows at the farther end of the room. Anyone coming in from the garden would throw a shadow on the dull shine of the floor.

  The apple-biting had occurred on the very first morning after the arrival of Dickie’s children. Phillip and Mavis were called in from the garden to have their cups of Epps’ cocoa at eleven o’clock and put to bed at ten minutes after eleven. At five minutes to one o’clock they were allowed to get up, their faces and hands were washed, their hair brushed, before being bibbed for their midday meal in what was called the schoolroom. The younger of the two maids was appointed to be the temporary nurse, since Isabelle took luncheon with the others in the dining-room.

  Victoria, with some reason, suspected Phillip to be the culprit. He had that stealthy look at times, she said; and he appeared in unexpected places about the house, silently staring at her when she came upon him. The gardener, too, sometimes found him in his potting shed, peering and prying, though it was only fair to say that he had done no damage, and in so far as it was known, had removed nothing. Nor did he pick flowers. He did, however, have an unpleasant habit of catching flies and putting them in spiders’ webs, then watching the wretched things being eaten by the spiders.

  “I hope,” she said to him, “that you are not the sort of cruel little boy who pulls the wings off poor little flies, Phillip.”

  “No, Aunty Viccy. When I am sorry for them, I bash the cruel spiders.”

  He was inclined to be mischievous, too. One day he went into the kitchen, when no one was there, by the back door, and removed the fly-paper which Cook had hung by her open window. This sticky strip, burdened with the dead and the dying, the frantically buzzing, the coagulated and feebly struggling, had been carried to the potting shed, and placed upon a wide, level web like a blue silken carpet with a tunnel at its dark end where dwelt a particularly big black spider with eight long hairy legs and glistening ey
es above the face and inverted horns of a miniature bull. This was Phillip’s favourite spider. The gardener, who had just pulled a blackbird’s nest with downy young from a bush, to bury in his compost heap, complained to his mistress. It was his spider, he said, and he had been watching it for two seasons. He didn’t want no one a-messin’ about in his shed.

  “You must not interfere with the gardener’s things, nor must you go into the kitchen, do you understand, Phillip?”

  “Yes, Aunty Viccy.”

  “Did you bite the apples in the dish, Phillip?”

  “No, Aunty Viccy.”

  “It is not a very nice thing to do, you know, when you are a guest in someone else’s house, and everyone is being kind to you. You understand what I am saying, don’t you, Phillip?”

  “Yes, Aunty Viccy.”

  “Then run along, and be a good boy, and play with your sister in the garden, and don’t let her pick the flowers, will you?”

  “No, Aunty Viccy.”

  Mavis did pick flowers, and smacking gently on the hands had not cured her. Could it be Mavis, who was biting just one apple every morning—a fresh one every day?

  Victoria looked out of the other window. There was the Catt’s overfed dog in the front garden, cocking his leg against the cotoneaster, the brute. Opening the window, she shoo’d him away. Joey took not the slightest notice, but deliberately scratched his hind legs on the grass border, then turned over to roll on his back, while gurgling to himself, the fool! Half amused, Victoria watched the old dog laboriously get on his feet again, shake his absurd harness, and then trot down the path round the side of the house to find his playmate Phillip. Well, there was no harm in it; but he was no Fritz: there was no dog like Fritz, and never could be ever again.

  Victoria sighed.

  There were several photographs of Fritz on the wall, with others hanging there, correctly spaced and aligned. Her favourite photograph was of the family group, on the lawn before the house, the last one taken before the break-up of the family. What a splendid-looking family they were! Father tall and upright, standing between John and Dickie at the back; Mother in the centre, on a chair, Isabelle on her right and Augusta on her left—Mother in her lace cap and bodice button’d to the neck, the elder sisters in white straw hats with flat brims, and print dresses with hooked collars under the chin and sleeves to the wrists. Sitting at their feet was Hilary, in monkey jacket and peaked cap, between Theodora and herself sitting cross-legged and holding lawn-tennis raquettes, their long silky fair hair falling over their shoulders, and such a decent, straight look in their open blue eyes. Just compare that Maddison look with little Phillip’s! And there was Fritz sitting at Father’s feet, the same challenging look in his eyes as in those of the master he adored! Dogs did take after their masters, she was sure. Where could a finer family be found to-day? If only Father had not been too good, he would never have had his heart broken as he did, and so have taken to excess. He was driven to it, by those brutes of radicals with the Free Trade!

  Victoria, musing with some agitation, as she had mused many times before, saw a shadow on the polished floor by the open door of the morning-room. At last she would catch the thief! She got up and tip-toed across the hall. Peeping round the door, she saw—Joey. His tongue was hanging out as he panted slightly. Joey looked up at her, expectantly, as though saying, “Where’s Phillip? Can’t he come out to play?”

  “Get out, you brute! Get away! Go back to your own garden! Come here, sir! Shoo! Shoo! Be off!”

  Victoria followed his tip-tippering feet (for Joey’s toe-claws were overgrown) on the parquet floor and out into the garden and round the path and so to the gate. Joey obediently trotted home; while Victoria discovered how he had got in. That beastly butcher’s boy had left the tradesmen’s gate unfastened again.

  The peculiar thing about the incident was that, when she had left the morning-room a moment before, she could have sworn that no apple had been touched in the bowl. But, upon returning there, she saw at once that a bite had been taken out of the apple nearest the edge of the table. Could it have been Joey, fantastic as the idea was? Ah, there was Mavis, sitting on the step, holding a sweet-pea in one hand and her dolly in the other! Mavis was obviously the culprit! So she was put to bed without any Epps’ cocoa, it having been impressed upon her that she was a very naughty girl.

  The next morning Mavis went cocoa-less to bed again, this time without her doll. As the doll, which Hetty had given Mavis, was the container, preserver, and token of all mummy-feeling for Mavis, she wept. Phillip crept up to see her, and showed her how to catch flies with a scooping hand, in order to make her forget; but Mavis went on crying. Aunty Victoria came in and told him to go downstairs.

  During the next seven days one apple on the dish had one bite taken out of it every morning, and as regularly Mavis was taken up to bed without doll or cocoa. Then the dish of apples was removed, without it being known that it was not Mavis who had taken the bite.

  Phillip felt no shame that his sister had been punished for what he had done. He was sorry for Mavis being in bed; but it did not occur to him that he was to blame. Being sent to bed, like crying, and being told not to do anything, was just ordinary. There were, however, satisfactions, like presents given to you, and presents you gave to yourself. He had given himself a present of something out of a drawer, which he kept hidden, otherwise it would be taken away from him. It was like a little clock, only it did not tick, and you could not wind it up. When you opened the case you saw

  RAT PORTAGE 1896

  inside the case. He could read the words and figures to himself, though he had not been able to read words out of books when Mummy had tried to teach him at home.

  Then one morning Phillip had seen a tiny little one like his on Uncle Hilary’s watch-chain, and learned that it was a compass, and what it was for.

  His compass was hidden on a ledge under the morning-room table. He was going to use it, with a slice of the loaf from the picnic, and a packet of Epps’ cocoa, when he sailed all by himself away over the seas, on the sledge Father had promised him when he was bigger.

  The sledge would be turned into a raft, like the picture Aunty Belle had shown him of a man called Lumber Jack. He had bitten the apples on top of the table because then the people would not think of under the table, where the compass, the bread, and the packet of Epps’ cocoa were hidden. In bed at night, thinking of himself sailing away on the raft, he did not cry for Mummy, but saw himself on the gently gliding raft, which had a little sail, and he was safe on it, with his secret food. He sailed from a place called Tilbury, and as he sat by himself on the raft he sang a little song of sadness to the waves and the stars, for he had gone away from everyone he knew for ever and ever; and then remembering where he really was, he was ever so glad that he was lying beside Mavis; and when he put his hand on her soft warm tummy it made him feel very good and kind, for she was soft and warm like Aunty Bee. He loved Aunty Bee, but no one must ever be told.

  He was glad when the apples were not there any more, for then Mavis could play with him and have Epps’ cocoa. And Uncle Hilary said Aunty Bee was going to be his real aunty, and Aunty Bee wore white like Uncle Hilary, and smelled so nice as she showed him a ring on her hand that went blue and green and red, like the wet grass on the lawn in the morning before his feet made it look broken. Sitting beside Aunty Bee he drove in a carriage, and saw lots of flowers in the fields, and water behind railings, and Uncle Lemon said that the fishes lying in the water clear as gin were trout. It was a lovely drive behind the horse.

  One day Father came over on his Starley Rover and sat in the garden, wearing his Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers and new thin cycling shoes without laces or buttons, and a badge in his coat with a wheel on it and C.T.C. He was like a different Father. He said, “Hullo, old chap, how well you look, quite sun-burned,” and told him about Mummy, and said she was now in Quarantine, and he thought that must be a very long way away, as far as Uncle Hilary went in his s
hip. Then Father said, “Mother is going to have a week in Brighton before you return, so that she can pick up,” and he saw Mummy as fallen down and unable to get up unless she left Quarantine and reached Brighton.

  “Well, goodbye, old chap, keep your pecker up,” and Father was going again.

  “But, Dick, you have only just come!” said Aunty Viccy. And Uncle George said, “But you will stay for luncheon, surely?” and Father said, “No, thanks, I must get back.” When Uncle George said, “I will get you a drink,” Father said he would like only a glass of water.

  Uncle Hilary said afterwards it was just like Dickie, who liked to wear the hair-shirt. This puzzled Phillip, for Father was wearing his stripey flannel shirt with a collar ending like a butterfly’s wings. And when Father was gone, shaking hands with everyone and smiling as he had not often seen him smiling, Phillip went to church wearing the new clothes Aunty Victoria had given him. Church was itchy, as he had to sit so still and not move about, but when the man stopped talking and said, “And now to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost,” everyone moved, and he could move too. There were lots of carriages outside the church, and people talking in the sun, ladies with sunshades up. There was red gravy and meat and potatoes and greens for dinner, which was the best part of Sunday, though the afternoon walk with Jessie pushing Mavis in the mail-cart was nice, with lots of things to see. And Jessie talked under a tree to a soldier in a red and yellow coat, and white gloves and belt and a stick called a switch, and the soldier gave him a cigarette card with an old man called Bobs on it. He held the card in his hand and it was crinkly when they got back, and Mavis was asleep in the mail-cart.