Donkey Boy

by Henry Williamson

  “He took some sherry of Dickie’s this morning, Dora, and upset the decanter, after drinking some.”

  “Just a boyish prank, Hetty, surely nothing more?”

  “He is rather troublesome, in other ways, I’m afraid, and it worries Dickie very much. Phillip is going to a new school next term, perhaps that will give him the necessary discipline.”

  Theodora said nothing.

  “Donkey Boy’s gone to bed,” said Mavis, suddenly. “He was a naughty boy, wasn’t he, Mummy? He will be like Daddy’s farver, won’t he, Mummy, when he’s a man?”

  Theodora was startled. John had made a similar accusation against his small son. Could the war mentality have affected both men, with its partisan distortions?

  “Be quiet, Mavis, I will not have you say such things! Oh, I haven’t shown you your room, Dora. It’s the end one, up there, and gets all the morning sun. There’s a thrush that sings on the top of the elm tree.”

  Looking up, Theodora saw Phillip’s face at the window. It disappeared immediately.

  “How very peaceful you are here, Hetty,” remarked Theodora, sad at her own unconscious irony. “Some neighbours in the top house, as I passed by, told me that Dickie had just gone out on his bicycle. Is he as keen as ever on his butterflies?”

  “He spends a lot of time in the country, I am so glad he has kept up with his cycling. I think he expected you later on, Dora, or he would have stayed in. I am afraid he has given up his butterflies.”

  “Donkey Boy took Daddy’s bufflies,” Mavis said.

  “He seems to be a regular pickle, doesn’t he, Mavis? Are you ever naughty, too?”

  “Donkey Boy makes me naughty, doesn’t he, Mummy?”

  “No Mavis, you really must not say such things! And you must not call your brother, ‘Donkey Boy’.”

  “Daddy does,” said Mavis, looking unhappy because Mummy was cross with her.

  “What your Father does is nothing to do with you, dear. You see, Dora,” she went on hurriedly, “I can seldom find time to take them for walks, and since Dickie was so upset by the behaviour of a little maid I had, he does not like the idea of having another in the house.”

  “It must be very difficult for you, Hetty, I can see that.”

  Theodora was struggling against the prevailing unhappy feeling about her. What had happened to her old friend, to change her so? Hetty always had been a nervous little person, but she had always had an outlet to her personality. Now she seemed to have lost her resilience, to be shut away inside herself. And what, in heaven’s name, were these two parents doing to that unhappy little boy? Would she be showing an unpardonable interference if she enquired? Or worse, might not Hetty break down, and this condition lead to a worse one with Dickie?

  Perhaps she was exaggerating within herself a small incident? Phillip taking sherry, and drinking it? She was sure no small boy would mean harm by it: it must have been a childish prank! Small children drank wine with their meals abroad, it was a normal thing. And all children showed a natural curiosity, which too often was misinterpreted as mischievousness. As though having divined her thoughts, Hetty said, “You see, Dora, Phillip is so very, very mischievous.” She pronounced the word as though it had four syllables, as Phillip had done.

  “Surely all small boys are by nature—mischievous, Hetty?” Dora, after hesitation, whether to pronounce it with three syllables or four, pronounced the word correctly. “What is this I hear about the sherry?”

  “He found his father’s key in a drawer of his desk, and opened the cupboard below the bookcase, and helped Mavis and himself, Dora, while I was upstairs doing the bedrooms.”

  “Perhaps he had seen Dickie doing just that, Hetty, and wanted to be like him.”

  “Yes, he did see Dickie giving a glass of sherry to Sidney Cakebread, when he called in the other evening.”

  Sidney Cakebread! Theodora’s heart beat in her ears. She made herself speak equably when she had recovered her balance.

  “Children are imitative, you know, Hetty.”

  “Yes, of course, naturally.”

  Theodora felt the matter was distressful to Hetty, so she changed the subject.

  “How is Sidney?” she asked, with a smile. She added with a laugh, “Do not be anxious on my behalf, Hetty. I am now fully the mistress of my feelings.”

  “Of course, Dora. Sidney is very well. He and Dorrie live in Charlotte Road, now, you know, just round the corner. Oh yes, there have been many changes since you went away! Sidney and Hughie are in the C.I.V.’s, and sailing for South Africa in a day or two. Papa is giving a little party this evening, for the grandchildren as well, and Mamma expects us all. Would you like to see her after tea, Dora, or will you wait till we go in to supper? I am afraid Phillip won’t be going, he has to stay in bed.”

  “May I decide a little later, Hetty? I have something of a headache, and think I shall lie down for a while.”

  “Yes, of course, Dora. Do please do just what you want to do. Shall I show you your room?”

  What Hetty had not dared to tell Theodora was the incident that had made Richard so angry with the boy, before he had learned of the sherry incident. Letting himself into the house with his latchkey, quietly, he had heard the children playing in the front room; and looking round the half-open door, to give them a surprise, he had been shocked by what he had seen. There was Phillip under the table, struggling with Mavis and interfering with her clothes. Dickie heard Phillip saying, “Come on, be fair, I have shown you mine, now you must show me yours!” Hauling him in a rage from under the table by a leg, Richard had set the boy on his feet, and demanded to know what he meant by it.

  “Nothing, Father.”

  “I’ll teach you to behave like that, you disgusting little beast! How dare you?” He had shaken Phillip, hit him with his flat hand on the side of the head, then put him across his knee, and holding him with one hand by the neck, beaten him as hard as he could with his other hand.

  Afterwards, Phillip had been sent upstairs to bed. It was then that Hetty had summoned her courage to tell Richard about the accident with the decanter.

  “Accident, you say? But how did he get to the cupboard in the first place.”

  “I think he must have found the key somewhere, Dickie.”

  “And opened the cupboard by accident, too, I expect you want me to believe?”

  “No, Dickie, I think he did it more out of curiosity than anything else.”

  “Well, that is an admission anyway! And to what do you attribute his behaviour towards his sister just now? At any rate it shall not be said of me that as a father I failed in my duty to try and check his badness! If I did what I ought to do, I would give him a thrashing, at this very moment, that he would not forget in a hurry! Do you want him to turn out to be like one of those blackguards on the Hill, who have no respect at all for women?”

  Hetty could not bring herself to tell Theodora all that had happened. She showed her to her room, saying that she hoped her headache would go after a quiet rest.

  She said nothing about her own headache.

  Chapter 18

  RICHARD’S SATURDAY EVENING

  DURING A recent Saturday afternoon cycling expedition Richard had come upon a house being built in a clearing of a wood, a hundred yards or so off a lane, in a secluded spot near Reynard’s Common. There amidst the stack of bricks and timber, the white square of putty lime beside heaps of sand, scaffolding, tiles, a bath had stood, filled to the brim with clear greenish water. It was to this secret place that Richard had set out, watched from in front of Turret House by Mr. and Mrs. Gerard Rolls, a few minutes before the arrival of Theodora. The Maddisons and the Rollses had what was called a bowing acquaintance. Hetty had left cards at Turret House when the Rollses had come to live there, after their marriage, and had had cards duly left with her. There the matter rested, for neither man wanted his leisure after the day’s work to be violated.

  No one was to be seen in the clearing within the wood. Richard wa
s hot and dusty, the grit of the white glaring road was upon his face and in his ears. The green-tinted, slightly shivering clear water looked cool and inviting.

  On impulse he took off his shoes and stockings; then off came his coat, followed by collar, tie, shirt and vest; and thrilling with adventurousness, his knickerbockers. Now was the critical moment. Supposing someone came! His name taken: a prosecution for indecency! He stood white in the sunlit silence a moment before stepping into the water and sliding under to his neck. Up and out again, greatly exhilarated and refreshed, but an underlying sense of anxiety; a quick smoothing away with his hands of water from hair of legs, arms, and chest, and so into knickerbockers and safety! What an adventure! He felt a new man afterwards; and pedalling away down the lane, with its turtle doves and yellowhammers dusting themselves upon its forsaken length, sang a few snatches of the song of his youth, The Arab’s Farewell to his Steed.

  He arrived back at his house, feeling pleased with life and the prospect of seeing his favourite sister again after so long a time. He had forgotten all about Phillip, towards whom his attitude—apart from the periodical exasperations of the boy’s mischievousness—was that he dash well wished that the little cuss would not be so meddlesome, inquisitive, and show so persistently a lack of respect for the law of meum et tuum. He did not want continually to be upbraiding him, exhorting him, and, in the last instance, punishing him. But why would he not see reason, why was he not amenable to decent behaviour? Failing that, he was compelled, in his duty as a father, to punish him—the silly little donkey boy.

  In this mood, having greeted Theodora, he went upstairs, saw the boy in bed, gave him a talk to show the unreason of interfering with another’s belongings—“Hang it all, Phillip, I don’t take your toys, do I?”—and then told him he could get up and go to the party next door, provided, of course, that he saw to it that he behaved himself properly.

  “Thank you, Father,” said Phillip. When he was alone again, the boy’s mouth became dry with his haste to dress himself, in his anxiety not to miss a moment of it.

  Richard had made an excuse for not going to the party by saying to Hetty that he had a long-standing engagement on the Hill, for a kite-match in the evening of the second Saturday in August. It was true that he flew his kite in friendly rivalry against that of Mr. Muggeridge whenever he met him up there; and that he had recently built a new model of a kite, as had Mr. Muggeridge, and the last time they had flown, they had agreed to meet on the following Saturday, if fine, and try them one against the other; but the real reason for not going to the party was Richard’s dislike of his wife’s family.

  This dislike was not exactly reciprocated; for the Turneys were, without exception now that Thomas Turney had shown signs of mellowing, easier people. The hasty temper of the menfolk—the Old Man himself had Irish blood mixed with his heavy-clay yeoman stock—went with a generosity of nature that had not been spoiled by, because not confined to, pavement living. Thomas Turney had been brought up the hard way, working on his father’s farm with his brothers and sisters from the age of five onwards; but though his father had been stern, he had never been unjust. When he had punished he had done so in anger; and then forgotten the petty incident; while the culprit, so-called, had gone back among his brothers and found there a rough but instant sympathy.

  Thomas Turney was sitting, in the mellow-bright harvest sun above the south-west, on the balcony outside his open bedroom door. The opposite door of Hetty’s bedroom was also open; and Thomas Turney had heard, with satisfaction, his son-in-law telling little Phillip that he could get up and go to the party. The voice had come down the corridor along the southern upper wall of the house, with its varnished wallpaper and polished linoleum, to the older man on the balcony.

  Tom Turney was now sixty years old, and the second senior partner in Mallard, Carter and Turney Ltd. of Sparhawk Street, High Holborn. His business affairs had gone well since he had helped to establish the firm of printers, account-book makers, lithographers, and stationers thirty years before. His interior problems had settled themselves, too; his children were grown up, and partly off his mind. His eldest daughter Dorothy, with her four boys and small daughter, had moved into the neighbourhood, where he and Sarah were able to keep an eye on them. Hubert, his eldest grandson, was a promising boy at his father’s old school, Dulwich College. He was intended for the Firm.

  Hubert was a compensation for the earlier disappointment of Charley, Thomas Turney’s eldest son; though to be sure, Charley was no longer the ne’er-do-well, being safely married, and in the import business at Durban. Hugh, poor silly fellow, was the only child that now remained a worry. Tom Turney still felt discomfort when ever he remembered that occasion of showers of pennies upon the stage when, ridiculously overdressed, poor fellow, as Chittybucktoo, the Japanese Gipsy with his Violin, Hughie had appeared, for the first and final time, at the New Cross Empire, and got the bird of many whistles.

  Hugh Turney now had, in his father’s eyes, committed the crowning folly of joining the City Imperial Volunteers Mounted Infantry, and, much more a matter of disturbance, Sidney Cakebread had joined with him.

  Tom tried to convince himself that it might be the making of Hugh. As for Sidney, his house of long-established City wine merchants had been very generous in the matter of paying his salary while he was away: but supposing his son-in-law did not come back, what would become of Dorrie? And Tom Turney, to his hasty shame and immediate elimination of the idea, thought that if it were the case that Hugh—— No, he must not allow such thoughts. They came from long-seated worry, for Hugh had been a trouble to his mother and a burden on himself ever since he had made the mistake of sending the boy to the university. It had been a waste of time and money, and had only unsettled Hugh for a commercial career, spending two years with young rips and wasters, and giving him airs and ideas beyond his station. Well, let him go out on the veldt, and become a hero if he could! As much chance of that as the sparrow had, chirping on the gabled roof above him!

  Tom Turney readjusted the position of his right leg cocked over the other, looked at his watch on the gold chain across his blue serge waistcoat, with its hanging albert seal, and settled back in the cane-bottomed chair for ten minutes’ cat nap.

  Richard saw him sitting there a few minutes later, when he tip-toed across the carpet for the very purpose of finding out if Mr. Turney was still in situ. He had spotted the figure of his father-in-law in the chair as he pushed his cycle up the road, and had pretended not to see him; even as Tom Turney had pretended to be asleep, in order to avoid calling out to his son-in-law. The older man was quite ready to call down a greeting, but he knew Dick’s aversion to himself. A pity he had been so hasty years ago when the young fellow had come to ask him for Hetty’s hand. But there, if Dick still bore him ill-will, he couldn’t do anything about it.

  Richard crept out of Hetty’s bedroom, and tip-toed down the stairs to the sitting room, to his tea alone with Dora, for Hetty had made an excuse to leave the two together. He had already changed from his cycling suit to an old tweed jacket and white flannel trousers with brown stripes, in anticipation of a pleasant evening on the Hill. He was now perturbed about the problem of passing Mr. Turney’s house after tea; for he did not want to be seen carrying his kite and reel of twine by the figure on the balcony. The alternative was to walk downhill to Randiswell and all the way up beyond the eastern boundary of the Hill. Why the deuce should he, a grown man, have to do that? How long was Mr. Turney going to monopolise the balcony?

  The opportunity to slip past was provided by the arrival of Dorrie, and the four Cakebread children walking proudly up Hillside Road with their father and uncle in khaki uniforms, jingling spurs strapped to brown boots, bandoliers across tunics, and felt wide-awake hats with the left side pinned up. Richard, who had retreated from his porch, heard his father-in-law calling down a greeting. “How are ye, come along in!” He heard him pushing himself out of his chair, and going away into the bedroom. Quickly R
ichard seized his winder of twine and the new five-foot kite.

  Phillip, his hair plastered flat with water, ran before him, nearly slipping in his eagerness upon the curving, sloping path to open the gate for Father.

  “Thanks, old chap,” whispered Richard. “Now behave yourself, won’t you?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “Keep your sailor suit clean!”

  “Yes, Father,” and Phillip ran back into the house, terribly excited. His secret hope was that Uncle Hugh would have his gun with him, and he would be allowed to hold it.

  *

  Safely past Mr. Turney’s house, Richard began to feel keen anticipation of the meeting with Mr. Muggeridge.

  This acquaintance was in his usual place, on the grassy area beyond the eastern edge of the gulley. Richard had to walk to the top, and then return parallel to the gulley and above it; for the sloping sides above the wide gravel way, planted with white-thorns, were forbidden to the public. The area was railed off below, with wooden seats at intervals, and fenced with hurdles of hazel wood above, of the kind used for folding sheep. One of the many rules and regulations forbade entry among the thorns, which thereby had become the hunting ground of small boys, including Phillip, who had hidden a candle-end and a penny packet of Epps’ cocoa in a tin box down a crack in the clay, under a bush, and covered it with grass.

  Mr. Muggeridge’s kite was already high in the northern sky. He stood gently pulling the string to and fro, as though he were soothing his white captive, urging it to rise higher on its dancing tail of newspaper wads. Mr. Muggeridge, when Richard approached, raised his bowler hat and bade him good-evening. Not to be outdone in courtesy, Richard raised his straw boater and said, “Good evening, Mr. Muggeridge. A nice southerly breeze after the heats of the day.”

  “Yes, Mr. Maddison. So you brought your new model, I perceive. Bit light in the frame, isn’t she? And I fancy the loop is fixed rather low.”