“Even the cane is still there, I see! It quite used to frighten me when I was a child.”
“I remember my father saying that he bought it at the Michaelmas Goose Fair for a penny during the Crimea war. He brought it home and hung it there, and there it has remained ever since. I have never known it to be used. Now tell me, dear, how is your husband?”
“Oh, Dickie is very well, thank you. He’s very keen on flying box kites now, from the Hill with a friend. I am so glad he has taken it up as a hobby.”
“Of course, he always disliked the City life, and wanted to be a farmer, didn’t he? Well, I am glad he’s settling down. It’s a very hard life, farming, you know.”
“Yes, I know. Papa says it is a thing of the past nowadays.”
“Jim feels the depression quite a lot. Farmers are not growing so much corn as they did, they say they can buy feeding stuffs cheaper. However, we mustn’t grumble. How is Dorrie nowadays?”
“She isn’t very well, I’m afraid. Her heart you know. Sidney’s death was a great shock.”
“Yes, it was to us all, Hetty. How are her children? She has three boys and a girl, has she not?”
When Hetty had told Liz of Dorrie’s family, Liz asked about her Aunt Sarah.
“Mamma is growing very old, I am afraid, Liz. But she is cheerful, as always.”
“And how is Hugh? He had rheumatism very badly, didn’t he?”
“He is better now, he has treatment from the doctor, still,” said Hetty, and changed the subject. She told her cousin about the decision to send Phillip to Wakenham Road School.
“Of course both Dickie and I have discussed it all ways, but it seems the only thing to do, to work for a scholarship. I did so want him to go to the Bluecoat School. It would have been so very good for him. But I am afraid it is out of the question now.”
“He seems a nice boy, Hetty; very quick, isn’t he?”
“Yes, sometimes I think he is too quick. He can’t be taught, I’m afraid, his lessons upset him.”
“In what way, Hetty?”
“He doesn’t seem able to learn at all. Even Dora, who is very good with children as a rule, found it next to impossible to get him to understand what she was trying to show him. He just cries, and says he cannot. His head seems filled with the papers he reads; though Dickie has forbidden them, it makes no difference.”
“Poor little fellow. But he is a good boy, by his face, Hetty.”
“Oh yes, I am sure he would be all right, with the right example before him. But there, it is too late for the Bluecoat School now. Ah well!”
“Who is this Sir Roland Tofield you mentioned in your letter, Hetty?”
Hetty told her cousin about her romance on the Riviera long ago, while omitting the part her friend of those wonderful three weeks had later played in getting Richard an introduction to the Moon Fire Office. Nor did she confide in Eliza that her recent letter to her old acquaintance had been replied to by a secretary, who had written that as Sir Roland had been called unexpectedly abroad he was replying for him. Sir Roland had asked him to say at once that as he had no presentation for Christ’s Hospital in his own gift, it might perhaps be more effective if Mrs. Maddison made direct application in those quarters where such applications would, he felt sure, receive all due consideration.
Hetty felt shame whenever she recalled the letter. Obviously Sir Roland Tofield must have considered her request to be presumption on her part. And worse, could he have thought that she—— Hetty baulked at the thought. She had seen a photograph of him with his wife and two children in an illustrated weekly paper in her father’s house.
“Haven’t you a sister-in-law who started a school, Hetty?”
“Yes, Theodora took a lovely old house in Somerset, with a friend of hers in partnership. She has rather spoiled her chances, Dickie says, by embracing Women’s Suffrage.”
“Oh, so she is one of these Suffragettes, is she? What a pity. We have two in the parish, madcap creatures they are, too, riding about in a motorcar, and without hats, no sense of modesty, making fools of themselves, for all to see.”
“Dora is not that sort, of course——”
“No dear, of course not. She is probably deluded by some unscrupulous companions.”
Hetty felt she had given a wrong impression of her great friend.
“Oh, Dora is a wonderfully clever person, Liz, and writes such interesting letters. She knows so much about all kinds of things. What induced her to join the movement for Women’s Suffrage was hearing Mrs. Pankhurst tell of a little girl of only thirteen having an illegitimate baby.” Hetty’s voice showed her embarrassment at mentioning such a thing. “Poor girl, I am sure it was not her fault in the first place.” Hetty was thinking of Mona Monk. “She exposed the baby when it was only a day old, and was hanged, poor thing.”
Eliza Pickering made a double clucking noise with her tongue, a bird-like sound, between that of a partridge talking to chicks and a hedge wren as cat or weasel passes underneath. She shook her head slowly. She sighed.
“That was wrong, Hetty, that was wrong. We need a change of heart in this country, it has never been the same since Gladstone died. The Tories are hard men, and dead set against all progress.”
Hetty agreed with this, though not without a qualm of disloyalty to Richard, who was against Liberals and Free Trade. Boldly she said, “I was about to say, Liz, that Dora wrote in her letter something I have remembered ever since. ‘The vote is denied to children, idiots—and women.’”
“What’s this I hear about the Tories?” said an amiable voice. James Pickering, smoking a pipe with curved amber mouthpiece, and yellow bowl carved in the shape of a negro’s head, had come quietly in his carpet slippers through the other door. He was a Saxon of middle height, with yellow fuzzy hair, pale eyes that seemed to be a mixture of blue and amber, and a large yellow moustache dyed brown below the nostrils by the smoke of many hundreds of packets of Westward Ho! tobacco.
“I was just saying how the Tories keep back progress, Jim,” said his little black-bodiced wife, nursing a cup of tea between her hands on her lap.
“I should just about think so too!” exclaimed Jim Pickering, removing his calabash pipe. His yellow eyes glared at imaginary wickedness in space, and from his nostrils issued a double jet of tobacco smoke. “Why, look how the Duke here, owning tens of thousands of acres in the county, and other large estates in Devon, Scotland, and all those streets and squares in London …”, and for the next three minutes he expatiated upon the evils of great landlords.
“If a man wants to build his own house, can he get a bit of land to build it on? Will the Duke’s Steward sell? And look at the parsons he puts in his livings! Look at the trouble we had to get the Gas Company established!”
James Pickering was a radical indeed, and while he held forth, match after match was needed to keep alight the fuming head of the negro. Finally he started a new pipe, a rustic-looking affair of cherry-wood, which being properly packed, burned fragrantly. It may have been mere coincidence, but at once his indignation abated; and with his usual mild demeanour he settled in the armchair his wife dutifully had vacated. With a cup of strong tea well-stirred with sugar, James enquired how his uncle by marriage, Tom Turney, was getting along in his business.
Hetty gave him all the news about Papa and Mamma, Charley, Hughie, Dorrie, and Joseph.
“And how is your husband, Hetty? How does he like insurance after banking?”
“It is more interesting work, Dickie says. The people there are easier to get on with than was the case at Doggett’s.”
“Look who bank at Doggett’s!” exclaimed James, removing the cherry-wood, and appearing to glare. “All the rich Tories, the great landlords! Your husband is well out of such an atmosphere, I should say.” His pipe glowed, smoke issued from his nostrils in two streams. “The Duke banks there, of course, all the landlords stick together! Give me a local bank anytime, though more and more are being swallowed up by the big ones with
headquarters in London, more’s the pity.”
“Still, they can’t do that with gas, thank goodness, Jim,” declared Eliza; and Hetty had to restrain herself from laughing as Jim blew another cloud of indignant smoke from his nostrils. James Pickering was secretary of the local gas company, whose ironwork adjoined the railway station.
*
In the morning all were assembled for breakfast in the parlour of Beau Brickhill, as they called the house among themselves. It had been built on a field of that name, the copyhold of which had been held by a branch of the yeoman Turneys since the sixteenth century. Brickhill House had been built from the profits of a brick-making business on the site. The underlying blue clay of the ten acres of Beau Brickhill had been dug out, in a series of flat terraced pits, to be moulded, dried, and finally baked in stacks of heavy flat bricks which had been of the first quality for building. The layers of blue lias, or gault, had lain upon gravel, under which in turn lay a yellow clay, holding water, so that when brick-making had been discontinued, with the working-out of the stratum of blue lias, deep ponds had formed in the eight acres to a depth of twenty-five feet. These ponds lay behind the gardens of the house. Reeds had sprung up in them and sallows upon the banks; fish had appeared, said to have been brought there as spawn upon the legs of mollerns, dipchicks, and other wildfowl.
Phillip thought it was a wonderful house, the best in the world. There was a Grandpa and Grandma in it, and their name was Thacker. Looking at Grannie Thacker at the end of the breakfast table (for Brickhill belonged to her), and at the cane hanging upon the back of her chair, Phillip thought that her name must have something to do with the cane. It was like the word in the Pluck Library when Tom Valiant, with a club made of rolled-up examination papers, and disguised in a white sheet to be a ghost, went thwack-thwack on the bald square head of the German master, who was a spy in disguise. Percy’s grandmother was very thin, so her name was thin, not thwacker, ther-wacker, but thin, thacker. Thin Thacker, Tin Tacker, like the long blue hair-pins Mummy wore in her hat.
“Do you know who I am, Phillip?” asked Mrs. Thacker. She was dressed in black, and sat thin and upright in a wooden corset. She smiled and said, swaying stiffly, “Do I remind you of anyone?”
Why was Mummy smiling at him, and Aunt Eliza, too, and Uncle Jim? Phillip shook his head.
“I am your grandfather’s sister, Phillip. Your grandfather Turney!”
Phillip could not understand it. The idea of Gran’pa Turney having a sister was outside his world. “Oh,” he said.
Grandpa Thacker sat at the other end of the table. He had a thin red face and a long beard down to the mother-of-pearl buttons of his black-braided waistcoat. He wore black mittens on his hands; his fingers were pink and nobbly. He had a big red handkerchief with white spots on it. Before saying grace he blew his nose like a trumpet and then folded the handkerchief up carefully before putting it in the pocket of his dark-brown velvet coat. During grace everyone bent their heads but only Grannie Thacker really shut her eyes, Phillip noticed, peeping from face to face.
“For what we are about to receive the Lord make us truly thankful” said Grandpa Thacker, and everyone said “Amen”. Phillip was thinking of how soon after breakfast would he be able to go to the Pits and catch perch and pike there. He had read all Father’s books in the bookcase about fishing, and knew about paternoster tackle, live bait, spinning for pike, and brandling worms for perch.
During breakfast he was so excited that he wanted to leave after the porridge; but when Martha, an old woman, appeared from the kitchen with a plateful of hot sausage rolls and he had tasted one, he forgot about the pressing need to dig brandling worms in what Percy called the trash heap up the garden.
The sausage rolls were very tasty, the meat being of a pig recently killed, minced in the hand-machine and flavoured with oatmeal and herbs. A corm of cut garlic smeared around the mixing bowl had given a hungry flavour. The rolls were followed by strawberry jam on home-made bread, with pats of butter, not spread thin on slices as at home.
At last he could eat no more.
“Have you filled your belly, little fellow?” asked Grandpa Thacker, looking down from the end of the table.
“Yes, thank you, Grandpa Thwacker,” replied Phillip. Everyone laughed, and Phillip wondered why.
“Theodore Thacker is my name, little fellow. Can you say that, eh?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Can you say it six times over without fault, little fellow? I’ll gi’ee a ha’penny if you can.”
Phillip remained silent.
“Go on, earn the money, Phillip. I would if I were you,” Aunty Eliza urged him, across the table.
As he did not speak, Uncle Jim said: “And I’ll give you a penny if you can say ‘Theodore Thacker threshed a stack on Saturday and thickly thatched the stack with straw’ six times without fault, my boy.”
“I’m not so clever as you are, Uncle Whipper,” said Phillip, and this time he knew why everyone laughed.
Uncle Jim said: “He’s sharp as a needle, your lad, Hetty.”
“Go on, try it,” said Aunt Liz, but still Phillip did not attempt it. He wondered where the catch was. Grandpa Thresher gave the cane to Grandma Thacker-Thicker-Thocker-Thugger-B—but he must not think the word Cousin Ralph used, for it was a very bad word and meant something awful, like its sound.
If he said the bad word suddenly by mistake it would be terrible, nobody would think he was a good boy anymore, but find out what he really was, a bad boy all through. He was not really a bad boy, like Cousin Ralph, because he never really meant to be naughty, but always pretended to be naughty when the feeling like wire in him made him do the opposite. Mummy said Ralph was really naughty because Uncle Sidney had died, and Aunt Dorrie could not control him, his elder brother Hubert being away at boarding school.
*
The fishing was almost as wonderful as the books Phillip had read. Richard had allowed him to look at the fishing books in the glass bookcase, on condition that the boy washed his hands first, and put the books back in their places afterwards. Phillip thought that the Brickhill Pits were like the Longpond Father had told Mavis and him about during Sunday morning walks to Cutler’s Pond at home. When he got his first bite Phillip was so excited that he gave such a big jerk, when his quill float rose up and then dived under, that the silvery fish went right over his head. It was a fish with red fins, gold eyes, silver-green scales and dark bars down its sides, while its back fin was like the top of a Roman’s helmet, and spiky. He recognised it for a perch from the plate in Payne-Galways’ book on Coarse Fishing. Percy told him to be careful of the spines, which could draw blood.
With trembling fingers Phillip put his fish in the pail half full of water, then threaded a fresh brandling on the hook as Percy had shown him. Very soon the float dipped under again, and he gave a flip with the end of the bamboo pole, and then cried out to Percy that he had hooked a big one. Percy came and showed him how to play it, holding the pole so that the strain was off the thin top and the fish tired itself out before you drew it in slowly to the side. Then telling Phillip to hold the pole, Percy stood on the plank laid on the reeds, stooped to hook his finger in the red gills, and lifted the perch out.
“That’s a half pound if it’s an ounce,” said Percy. The perch splattered about, raising its back fin in agony; but Percy said it was done to stab his hand as he worked the hook with a thin wooden degorger out of its throat. Into the pail it went, with the other one.
Soon afterwards the fish ceased to bite. Percy said they had gone down into a deep hole to lie up. So the anglers moved to another pit. Little birds with yellow streaks behind their eyes were chattering and making skrittchering noises in the reeds. Percy said they were reed warblers. They made nests of spear-leaves plaited round stems of bullrushes. There were sand-martins flitting over the water. It was all marvellous and strange to Phillip. Best of all was the flashing sight of a greeny-blue kingfisher flying so straight and fast
that he could only just see its wings beating. Percy said you could easily shoot one. They came up from the Satchville brook to fish in the pits, and always perched on the same places on the low willow branches. Phillip asked if he might shoot with his gun, and was overjoyed when Percy said he would let him.
“Pray don’t say a word to a soul, for the Duke won’t have kingfishers shot. He will find out if you do, for he has a hundred game-keepers. The Duke’s park has a wall twelve miles round it, and there is every kind of pheasant in the world inside, besides ostriches, emus, bison, and hundreds of other animals.”
Phillip thought the Duke must be a very big person, and with a very dark black beard, a sort of giant, or even ogre.
The next day was Sunday. Everyone put on best clothes. Phillip and Percy were told to keep in until they went to church, for they must not get their boots or their collars dirty.
Shortly after half past ten the party left for church, Gran’pa and Grannie, Uncle Jim, Aunt Liza, Percy, Polly, and Phillip. Doris had been left behind, for she had caught a cold. Her puckered face, mouthing “Mummy!” behind glass, appeared at an upper window, as the party walked down the village street. She had escaped from Martha, who picked her up a moment later, and took her back to bed, where she cried herself to sleep.
Phillip looked up at the great holly hedges they passed by. They were dark green, and tall and as smooth as the side of a house. When they left the village, and had passed other hedges and walls, they came to a stile, which led along a footpath to the church seen among trees. The bells were ringing out, and it seemed to Phillip that the swallows were the sound, blue steel clanging over the buttercups in the grass.
By the lych-gate leading into the churchyard stood an ugly old blob-nosed red-faced man in a red and blue uniform with silver buttons, and a cocked hat. He wore white gloves and had a smooth black stick with a silver knob on it. He touched his hat to all the men going in who wore tophats, Phillip noticed. Grandpa Thacker and Uncle Jim wore tophats, and they nodded to the old man and said: “Good morning, Beadle.”
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