Donkey Boy

by Henry Williamson

  It was suddenly cold inside the church, where the ropes went up and down quickly as men pulled them. The bells stopped when the Beadle came in, and behind him were a lady and gentleman with some children wearing gloves. “That’s the Squire,” whispered Percy.

  The Beadle opened the gate of what Uncle Jim had already told Phillip was the Lady Chapel.

  Then a single bell tolled and the parson came in in white, and prayed.

  The organ was like a piano, only it was squeaky and wheezy. The man playing it made his feet go up and down underneath and they stopped when the music stopped with a kind of gasp, followed by a muffled thump, and then a noise like a football bladder suddenly being untied. Phillip realized that the man’s feet had been pumping air into it all the time. It wasn’t really an organ after all, it was only a hurdy-gurdy! What a swindle!

  Impressed by the importance of his discovery, he turned to Percy and whispered:

  “Our church at home has a real organ, a hundred times as big as that little thing, which I wouldn’t give a penny for.”

  A moment later he started, for the silver knob of the black stick had tapped him on the shoulder. Turning round, Phillip saw the Beadle looking at him.

  “Sss-sh!” said the Beadle, as though some of the air of the hurdy-gurdy had escaped from him. Phillip sat as still as he could after that.

  After singing and prayers, the Squire read the lesson, in a throaty voice. He had a lot of lines on his face, and white whiskers, and blew his nose on a red silk handkerchief before he started to read. He looked cleaner than the churchwarden at St. Cyprian’s, the new church in red-brick in Charlotte Road, where sometimes he had to go on Sundays when Father was not taking him and Mavis for a walk.

  The Squire looked like Mr. Newman, Grandpa Turney’s friend who lived in a little house opposite the Randiswell Baths, with a house-keeper to look after him. Phillip called in to see Mr. Newman occasionally, because Mr. Newman always offered him a slice of cake and half a glass of port. Mr. Newman was a funny sort of man, for he treated him as though he were a grown up gentleman, instead of a boy, so Phillip thought there was something a little daft about Mr. Newman, who bowed to him when he shook hands. Mr. Newman called his house the Ginger Bread House, it certainly was very small compared with his own house. Though Beau Brickhill House was ever so much bigger than his own house.

  Phillip thought of Mr. Newman as the Squire read from the Bible on a big brass stand with eagle’s wings open on top of it. He was sorry when he said “Here endeth the first lesson”, for now it was dull singing, with the foot-flapping man working away at the hurdy-gurdy.

  The rector’s voice was just like a rook’s cawing in the trees of the Backfield. The Devil, my friends, is waiting to Caw! Caw! We may deceive ourselves, my friends, but we do not Caw! Caw! For what shall it profit a man if he Caw! Caw! Phillip remembered going to the theatre to see Uncle Hugh play his violin. Aunt Dorrie, with Bertie, Ralph, and Jerry, and Mummy and Grandpa and Grandma all sat in a row in red seats. Mummy said Uncle Hugh was nervous and not a bit like himself, oh what a pity, what a pity, after the people high up in the gallery above had whistled and thrown pennies on the stage. Mummy said “Clap hard! Clap hard!” and they had all clapped, and he had cried out “Caw on! Caw on!” after, but the curtain had come down, and everyone had laughed. He had not known why, until Mummy said it should have been “On Caw!” the other way round. Grandpa Turney had said to Mummy as they were riding home in the tram, “Poor silly fellow, will my son’s conceit never let him learn?” That had been a long time ago, at the New Cross Empire.

  Caw caw! my friends. It was like waiting for an egg to boil, for there was an hour glass on an iron bracket fixed to the wall beside the pulpit. It made Phillip think of the ostrich’s egg on the table in the front room at home, brought back by Uncle Hugh from South Africa as a present to Mummy. He tried to see the sand falling from the top shiny glass to the bottom one, but it was too dark in the church, as the windows were stained glass with pictures of the disciples and Christ in blue, red, green and yellow.

  After looking at these, Phillip searched through the prayer-book for interesting bits, a fruitless task on previous occasions, but one nevertheless hopefully undertaken. There were only Collects, one of which he had to learn for Mummy every Sunday afternoon; Psalms with strange names and unreal words to God; Burial at Sea; Baptism of Infants; The Marriage Service; and that “final refuge of the destitute”, as Uncle Hugh called it, to read people a man or woman may not marry.

  A man may not marry his grandmother.

  At long last came the noise of people stirring as the parson turned and said: “And now to God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost”, the most welcome moment in church, except the start of the going-out music. How bright was the sun outside, how blue the sky, how green the grass among the grave stones. Everybody was raising hats and curtsying to the Squire and his wife, and the coachman and a footman in tall hats and white breeches with shiny black boots stood by the shiny carriage.

  Phillip thought the Beadle was just like a blue-and-red beetle fly climbing up the grasses in the Backfield in summer.

  When the people were gone, Mother said she wanted to look at the tombstones in the churchyard. “Look, Sonny, at all your Turney ancestors, they go back hundreds of years.” But Phillip slipped away with Percy, because he wanted to see a jackdaw who could talk, after its tongue had been slit, said Percy.

  On the way back they stopped to look at the wicker cage hanging on a cottage wall, beside a damson tree. Phillip hoped it would say something, perhaps swear, like a parrot, but the bird only looked anxiously at them. It seemed to be huddled, Phillip thought. They left it, and arrived home first, to see the chicken for dinner turning on the jack-spit before the parlour fire. It turned first one way, then the other, slowly, while the clockwork in the brass case went click before every turn. Martha poured spoonfuls of fat from the tray below over it, to baste it, she said. Phillip wondered what it did with the lump on its behind, which Percy said was the parson’s nose. It looked a funny thing.

  The day before Phillip had seen a big white cockerel hanging head downwards inside a cupboard in the kitchen. Its legs were tied together with string, which was looped over a nail. Upon asking Martha why it was like that, its comb so red and its eye flicking, he had been told that the blood must all run to its head before it was killed, to make the flesh white. Phillip had wanted to let it go, it looked so unhappy, but Percy had said: “Pray don’t, for Grannie likes white meat”, and then Percy had closed the cupboard door again.

  Was this the cockerel, on the spit, he enquired; and on being told yes, remarked that it had shrunk a lot.

  In the afternoon the five children went into the garden, for the grown-ups wished to be quiet. They were not allowed to play croquet, as it was Sunday, but otherwise they might do as they liked, provided they made not a sound. Phillip wanted to explore the loft over the stables, where were wonderful things to be seen, all piled and standing about there, and covered with dust and cobwebs. Percy had taken him up there once, and he had seen a stuffed fox, birds in glass cases, a pair of riding boots with wood inside them, piles of old books and magazines, an Aunt Sally dummy for making clothes on, besides other things in drawers and cupboards.

  Percy said they could not go. “Dad says the stable loft is out of bounds on Sundays.”

  “But he won’t know, doesn’t he go to sleep in his armchair on Sundays, in his sanctum?”

  “He hasn’t got a sanctum, he sleeps in the billiard room, Phil. All the same, I ain’t going to go in the loft if my Dad says No.”

  This puzzled Phillip. Why did Percy always do as he was told? He went to the stable door, but Percy said, “Pray don’t, pray don’t!”, so Phillip went into the garden. Percy said the trees along the walls were peach, greengage, and quince. There were box-hedge borders to the paths, lots of paths. One led to the Maze, where there was a seat with a sundial before it.

  Here the girls went t
o sit, in the sun and out of the wind, playing mothers with their dolls. Mavis was now seven, and the eldest of the three. Her cousin Polly was Doris’s age, five. Polly Pickering was stronger, lither, more direct, merrier than the round-faced, white-skinned Doris, who, her father declared, took after her German grandmother. Polly had the Irish colouring of her great-grandmother, who had been Thomas Turney’s mother: red cheeks, dark curly hair, grey eyes. Polly had a definite will of her own, where her parents were concerned. Polly would do only what Polly would do.

  On the lawn, Phillip and Percy, both nine years of age, were playing at Public Speaking. Phillip had suggested the game, after the manner of the various Sunday afternoon addresses to be heard on the Hill, near what was called the Socialist Oak. Standing on a rustic-work table, Phillip wearing deerstalker harangued his audience of Percy, sitting on the iron seat under the cherry tree. When Percy’s turn came he was allowed to wear the cap, while Phillip was the audience. Phillip was thinking of the gun when he lent the cap to his cousin.

  The game was to see who could make the funniest speech. Inevitably the tone, or quality, fell off. At last, so amused were the boys at their own competitive wit that while Phillip stood on the table Percy stood on the seat, both speechifying antiphonally, one replying to the other, and each trying to cause the most laughter. The three girls came out of the Maze to listen. Wilder, more outrageous, became the repartee.

  “I am speaking to dogs, whose hind legs go up like railway signals as they run on the pavement and——”

  “I am talking to cows, who never wipe their——”

  “My friends, have you ever tasted soup made of——”

  “What does the Beadle feed on? If you turn up a cow’s pancake you will see lots of little beadles underneath——”

  The three girls shrieked with laughter. Thus excited, Phillip became more outrageous. He was about to imitate a dog on the table top, when to his dismay and immediate deflation he saw the face of Grandpa Thacker looking at him from in front of the summer house. Oh lor’, would he be sent to bed, for rudeness, and on Sunday, too?

  “Oh my sainted aunt,” he said. “Percy, quick, did he hear what I said just now? Anyhow, swear I said only ‘pancake’, not ‘pat’, won’t you?”

  “It’s all right, Phil,” called out Polly. “Grandpa’s deaf, and can’t hear a word.”

  Immediately Phillip’s spirits were inflated. “Well, my friends,” he concluded, “you have heard my policy for thatching Theodore Thacker’s trousers with tar, tintacks, and—cow-shakes.” He waggled a fore-finger at them, in the manner of old Mr. Chivers, the thin, blue-faced, gentle Altruist, by the Socialist Oak. “I will now give you, if you will be so good as to accept it, a tract dealing with my little address.” And lifting Mr. Chivers’s imaginary, faded yellow straw hat, with its threadbare black band around it, Phillip jumped down from the table.

  The septuagenarian Theodore Thacker, who had watched “the little fellow’s” antics with keen amusement, went back to the house to report that the children were playing quietly on the lawn and not making a sound, bless their little hearts.

  Chapter 21

  TABLE FOR A PARROT

  RICHARD was content during the two weeks his family was away. A man of precision and regular habit, he found the time passed pleasantly enough. His breakfast was simple: shredded wheat with milk, an Empire apple with brown bread and butter, two cups of tea. Since the family was away, he had used the portion of the housekeeping money for himself, by agreement with Hetty; and so he had given himself a treat of having a light luncheon at an A.B.C. in the middle of the day, instead of taking his usual tin box of sandwiches.

  He continued to spend as little as possible on himself, deeming it his first duty to think of the family, to provide for his wife should anything happen to him. His life was assured for five hundred pounds under an endowment policy maturing in his sixtieth year, with accrued bonuses every year; if he died meanwhile the capital sum would be available for Hetty and her children.

  Richard did not think of them as his children; they were Hetty’s children.

  While the family was away, he thought much of Hetty, Phillip, Mavis, and baby Doris. In physical absence a happy sense of their existence pervaded the quiet regularity of the house, to which he returned between half-past six and seven o’clock of an evening, in daylight. After grilling his two kippers under the gas, while the kettle heated on the top of the grill—or toast under the grill if it were to be boiled eggs—he sat down at the kitchen table, to enjoy his meal, with The Daily Trident, that infallible companion of his spiritual life, propped up against the milk jug before him. Immediately after the meal, he washed up, leaving sink and scullery table clean, cloth rinsed and wrung out to dry, everything in its place. The next operation was the cleaning and polishing of his black boots for the morrow morning. The Japanese blacking was in a deep and narrow earthenware jar, a black liquid which had to be applied with a stick, after stirring. Applied evenly by a brush, the boots were left to dry; later they were polished, and put in their place in the row under the kitchen dresser.

  There were three tasks he had set himself to accomplish while the family was away. First, to hang the pictures which brother John had sent him from Rookhurst. John had written to ask if Richard would care to have them, they were of little or no value, apart from a sentimental one. They were a series of steel engravings of naval battles in the Napoleonic wars. There was also the meeting of Wellington and Blücher on the field of Waterloo. They had hung in the schoolroom during Richard’s childhood, and as a link with the past were dear to him.

  The steel engravings, in their clouded brownish-yellow frames of the hue of malacca cane, arrived by Carter Paterson. The crate was standing in the lower passage to the sitting-room, waiting to be opened when he had purchased the necessary hanging fasteners.

  The second task was to rig up an electrical timing device, by which he hoped to be awakened at twenty minutes after seven of a morning.

  The third was to make a small table to hold a very special object that he was expecting in the middle of the second week. It was to be a surprise for the children on their arrival home. It was an African parrot, which his brother Hilary was bringing back in the Phasiana.

  Richard set about hanging the engravings first, to get them out of the way. When he took them out of their case, many memories came upon him. For a moment the impact of old time was so great that he sat down on the stairs to try and recapture the life gone by; but always such attempts were vain; after the first poignant glimpse, they were gone the instant he tried to find them in the camera obscura of the mind. It was as though one almost got outside of Time, in a terrifying instant, in the opening and closing of a shutter. Indeed, life was a series of pictures, altering every instant of Time; a flow like a river, always going on, but never the same at any given moment. And when a man or an animal died, that series of records perished with the individual. How could memory have any validity, since it was entirely personal?

  It was never any good to think like that. It was weakness, a sort of sickness. He might be a weakling, as Father had more than once declared, but at least he had tried always to face up to life as it was.

  Richard stared at the engravings, his sight unfocus’d. He was lost in poignant feeling. He was overcome, and went into the front garden, to feel the sun on his face. Its touch restored him, and he returned indoors to consider where the half-dozen faded and varnished engravings should hang, and in what order. He lined them up against the wall, and stood back to survey them.

  There was really little difference between them. All were crowded with detail of sail, cannon, struggling men in disastrous attitudes—Copenhagen, Nile, Toulon, Cadiz, Teneriffe, Trafalgar—Battle, Murder, and Sudden Death—horrible pictures really! No wonder John wanted to get rid of the beastly things. To think that these pictures had fired his imagination as a small boy! How much more pleasant would be pastoral scenes, water-colours of the downs, the meadows, the beech ha
ngars and the thorn-grown tumuli.

  However, up they should go, hanging on their copper gimp, seedy relics of the past, the cobwebs black with old dust still on their backs. As for Wellington and Blücher, and the butchery of Waterloo, that could be got rid of in Hetty’s front room. There was a space over the sideboard.

  The hanging of the pictures, after careful brushing and cleaning of the frames, left enough time to go upon the Hill for a walk. It was a fine evening, the sun going down in a clear sky. Several kites were waggling their paper tails in the evening breeze, but Mr. Muggeridge’s was not among them. He had stolen a march on him, having taken to box kites in series, and his were the champions so far; but let him wait! Richard had a surprise in store for Mr. Muggeridge. He intended to appear one day with the new pattern of double-box kites. He had seen and ordered at the Civil Service Stores in Queen Victoria Street, a kite six feet wide and another, the pilot, four feet wide, of the new design.

  Next evening, after two ounces of pressed beef and a lettuce, followed by a slice of Dundee cake, Richard tackled the second job. He had invented an electric alarm to be worked by the big wall clock at the head of the stairs. This involved a certain length of thin copper wire, enwound with green silk for insulation, being taken along the picture-hanging cornice above the stairs, and led down the frame of the bedroom door, and through a hole in the frame to the bedroom within. The wire was then led down the inner frame to a small switch conveniently placed by his side of the double bed.

  At the clock end, another wire was attached to the pivot of the hour hand, while its twin, to complete the circuit, was secured to a thin strip of brass foil a third of the way between the black Roman numerals VII and VIII on the enamelled face. When the tip of the lower hand met the brass strip, it made contact; the circuit was closed between the motor of the alarum bell and the wet cells on a shelf above the coal-cellar; and when he switched on beside the bed, the bell should ring.