Donkey Boy

by Henry Williamson

  “Ah, Mrs. Maddison,” he said, holding out his hand. “You have come at an opportune moment. I was about to write to you about the progress of Phillip. Will you come upstairs to my study? Phillip, as you can see, has been allowed time for a little meditation. Now you may go to your classroom, my boy, and apply yourself to your work, so that we may be proud of you in time to come. For you have considerable ability, if you care to use it in the proper direction.”

  Gratefully Phillip hurried away back into Standard Four, feeling such relief that only with difficulty did he stop himself from giving a loud shout, which would go right through the glass of the partition and make all the panes crack.

  Up in the Head Master’s room Hetty was telling Mr. Garstang that it was true about the African parrot being let out of its cage, and flying off with the rooks on the Hill.

  “Well, Mrs. Maddison, in my fairly long experience as a master, I do not think I have ever been so impressed with any child’s composition. Phillip wrote a nearly perfect description of the parrot, how it flew away and how it came back again; and then the details, which were so remarkable, showing keen observation, of the difference in the parrot’s way of walking through the grass, and the rooks’. Did you not think so yourself?”

  “I am afraid I have not seen it yet, Mr. Garstang. Phillip is rather reserved in some things, as he is unreserved in other directions, so I have not been allowed to see it.” Hetty spoke lightly, with a smile, and the other realised that she was a little hurt.

  “I can send for it now, if you would care to read it, Mrs. Maddison? It is only a matter of pressing the bell——”

  “Oh no, I would not have him think I want to compel him in any way,” replied Hetty, conscious of expressing herself badly. “But thank you very much indeed, all the same, I am sure.” She laughed lightly again.

  Mr. Garstang could see that Phillip was the apple of her eye, and that already the imperious little boy had imposed his conditions of living upon the mother. Mr. Garstang had noticed more of Phillip than Phillip was aware. Mr. Garstang knew of his friendship with Cranmer, for example, another boy in whom he had thought to see much good, if only it could be encouraged in the right way. It was through Mr. Garstang, a member of the Borough Council, that Cranmer’s father had been found work under the new plans for the development of the High Road. Mr. Garstang had four grown sons of his own, all of them out in the world, and doing well; he was convinced that a happy home life was the only basis for the making of a good citizen. A man must have work, and children must be fed. Hungry children could never learn.

  This essentially gentle, thoughtful man often wondered about the Maddison household. He was a little surprised that Mr. Maddison had not taken any steps to see him, as the Head Master of the school to which he had sent his boy. It was not to be expected, of course, from the general run of parents; but from what he had heard of Mr. Maddison from the vicar of St. Simon’s he would have thought that such a matter of punctilio would be observed by him.

  Mr. Garstang and Mr. Mundy were friends of long standing. They had both been members of the Board of Works, now abolished and replaced by the Borough Council; while for many years they had met with the Antiquarian Society. The vicar had described Maddison as an aloof man, with an inclination to stiltedness, due to loneliness and pride, a man who needed to be drawn out of himself.

  By Mrs. Maddison’s vaguely strained attitude under her friendly manner Mr. Garstang thought that perhaps all was not well between husband and wife in the home; in which case the children would be the first to show the effects of such an atmosphere. A mother wrapped up in her son, however much she might try and dissemble or make light of her obsession—if that was not too strong a word—was usually a femmé manquée towards her husband. Mr. Garstang noticed, for the first time, that the nails of her ungloved hand were bitten.

  “Well, the season of scholarships will be upon us soon, Mrs. Maddison. This year our scholars will sit for the examination in Bereshill School.”

  “Will there be very many sitting? I suppose there are bound to be a great many?” said Hetty, hoping she was not revealing her anxiety.

  “We have eighteen provided schools in the borough,” replied Mr. Garstang, “and in all they supply nearly twenty thousand school seats. The scholarship scheme provides for the transfer of a large number of children to the Secondary Schools, but the exact number is not revealed. We are sending just over thirty candidates from here, and eight to ten may be successful.”

  “I see,” said Hetty. “Well, I must hope for the best, I suppose. In any event, I shall always be very grateful to you, Mr. Garstang, for your great kindness to Phillip, and for the help and encouragement you have given in the matter.” With these words Hetty said good-bye.

  *

  The examination was to be held in March of the new year. As the time approached, Hetty became more unhappy about Sonny’s prospects of being one of the eight or ten mentioned by Mr. Garstang. After the Christmas holidays, the twice-weekly coachings by Mr. Groat were resumed. They were not satisfactory meetings for either the heavy-bearded man with steel-framed spectacles and massive squat body, whose questions the boy found unanswerable, or for the boy himself, whom Mr. Groat considered to be without normal intelligence, with a weakness for facile tears.

  Long periods of silence, broken only by phrases of “Come on, surely you have not forgotten what I told you last time”, or “If you won’t make some effort yourself, how can you expect me to help you?” were passed while the BB pencil, having made so many crossings-out on Phillip’s trial examination papers taken in by the boy after hurried last-minute work in the kitchen, occupied itself until the end of the prescribed half-hour by drawing weird shapes all over the margins of the paper. Usually Phillip went down the steps of Mr. Groat’s home sniffing and wiping away with his hand the last of his bi-weekly tears in the gas-light.

  There was a lamp-post just outside the gate of “Chatsworth”, and one evening, coming out into chilly fog, Phillip thought he would be unobserved if he imitated a dog; and he was relieving himself against the fluted iron post, painted cream, when the familiar click of his own garden gate gave warning, but too late; for even as he saw Father’s form against the halo of lamp-light at the top of the road, so his own movement was perceptible. In contemptuous anger Richard hauled him home by the arm, shaking him and calling him a dirty little beast; and the front door having been opened to the jingle of keys, Phillip was ordered upstairs, and to take down his trousers immediately. Pleas for pardon and reiterated apologies greeted the arrival of the parental cane. By the post at the bottom of the stairs Hetty stood, holding her hands to her heart, while near-hysterical shrieks came from the bedroom.

  *

  Hetty had a saying which she uttered on occasion with a little laugh—“There is no peace for the wicked”—meaning herself. Why were such trials sent to her? What was the reason of it all?

  “Sonny, Sonny, what will your father say when he finds out this time? Oh, you wicked boy. You’ll break my heart, Sonny. Why did you do it, dear? Don’t you ever think what you are doing?”

  These words were uttered a few minutes after a loud report in the back garden one Saturday morning had brought her down from the bathroom, where she was washing out handkerchiefs. Saturday night was bath night. The fire being lit in the kitchen range after breakfast, Hetty took advantage of the hot water to get all the small washing of the week done before Dickie came home at two o’clock.

  Sonny had his Saturday task, or chores as they were called, as well as Mavis and Doris. His work was the polishing of the brass, the burnishing of fire irons, and the cleaning of boots. Hetty had fondly supposed, as she told Mamma afterwards, that he was busily engaged on this work, which brought a reward of twopence a week—one half of which had to go into his money-box for the Post Office Savings account for a bicycle one day—when a bang bigger than that of the largest Chinese Cracker startled her at the bathroom basin. Running into the back bedroom, she saw the
boy crouching down behind the fence dividing the Bigges’ garden from their own, while a cloud of blue smoke hung above his head, and a voice that she recognised as Mrs. Groat’s called out, “I saw you fire that pistol, Phillip, and as soon as Mr. Groat comes home I shall ask him to come and see your father! You have deliberately broken the whole of this window!” There followed the sound of a window being shut, and a tinkling of small glass.

  “Where did you get that awful thing?”

  The awful thing was a percussion cap horse pistol, with a barrel seven inches long, and a bore of three-quarters of an inch.

  “I bought it in Sprunts’, Mother.”

  “But it is highly dangerous! Are you mad, my son? Is that the reason why you do such wicked things?” Standing in the garden, Hetty looked at the bedroom window of “Chatsworth”, the lower pane of which showed a large black jagged hole.

  “It was only a cork, Mother, not a bullet. It had no right to go where it did. I fired into the air, and it just went that way. It’s only a pop gun really, a sort of firework. It’s as safe as houses, really. It’s an antique.”

  “How long have you had it?”

  “I bought it last night, on my way to the dancing class at St. Cyprian’s Hall, with Mavis.”

  “So that’s what you do when you are trusted to go dancing!”

  To try and use up some of his energy in the right direction, Hetty had persuaded Phillip to join the dancing class once a week, from six till eight on Fridays. The new church hall was near Sprunt’s, the pawnbroker’s at the end of Comfort Road. His shop was distinguished from the others by three large gilt balls suspended above it. For days Phillip had coveted a horse pistol lying in the dusty window, seeing himself keeping off Mildenhall with it, among other Dick Turpinal enthusiasms. The pistol lay among an assembly of old ivory chessmen and brass cornets, flutes, dress button-boots, hockey sticks, javelins, coconuts carved and painted as ugly masks, a fiddle or two, a concertina, a clarionette, silver-mounted walking-sticks, sets of china (most of it cracked and mended with little metal rivets), sets of books, and a bric-à-bac of faded jewellery and old silver on shelves.

  From Mr. Sprunt, who had a passion for natural history, Phillip had bought for his father’s birthday a small silver tobacco or snuff box, engraved with flowers, and fairly heavy, for one shilling and sixpence; but on seeing the pistol, a week or so before the birthday, he had, after much hesitation, gone into the pawn-shop, after taking Mavis to the class in the hall, and enquired the price.

  Mr. Sprunt, a seedy individual who looked as though he had been in pawn most of his life, as indeed he had, told him the price was ninepence. Thereupon Phillip, feeling daring and important, had produced the silver box in which he carried his swops since Mum had given him a stamp book for Christmas, and pawned it for ninepence. With the money he had bought the pistol.

  The next midday he had bought some black gunpowder at the ironmongers’, and a little round tin of copper percussion caps, with money extracted from his money box with a knife. He had gone on the Hill, and having first made sure that neither the Lanky Keeper nor Skullface were about, he had poured about a thimbleful of powder into the pistol, rammed some newspaper in, hard down, put a cap on the nipple, fully cocked the hammer, pointed up into the elms, and, eyes shut, pulled the trigger. A report followed, and a lovely fireworky smell of blue-white smoke. The paper went to shreds in the air, and when picked up, was seen to be edged with black where it had been torn by the explosion. It really worked! He ran home to find some tintacks, meaning to stalk sparrows in the Backfield. He would bake them in clay in his fire in a hidden hollow behind the Ballast Heap, and eat them, thus doing better than Arthur who won the day.

  In Grandpa’s back garden Phillip had found a nice fat cork with a bulging tin head, marked champagne. Thinking that this might make an extra loud report, he had fitted it into the muzzle of the pistol, whence by some ballastical aberration it had moved at a tangent over Mr. Bigge’s fruit trees, his arch of jasmine and yellow ivy, his lower fence, and so to Mr. Groat’s sash-window, shattering the glass of the lower half. There the cork was, partly blackened by powder, waiting on the front-room table of “Chatsworth” as evidence when Mr. Groat should arrive home from his weekly hot bath (economy being the order of the day at “Chatsworth”) in Randiswell Baths.

  Having obtained possession of the horse pistol, Hetty went into Mrs. Groat’s, and begged her not to say anything about it, adding that of course it was only right that Phillip should be punished by having to pay for the damage out of his Post Office Savings Account.

  “He is a very naughty boy indeed, and I am very much ashamed of him, he does not seem to be my son sometimes,” said Hetty. “I can only tender you my sincere apologies, and I would not ask you to keep it a matter between us, Mrs. Groat, were it not for the fact that the scholarship exam, is so very very near. Mr. Groat has been so very very good in every way, and if Phillip has any success, it will be entirely due to what Mr. Groat has done for him.”

  Hetty did not dare to look Mrs. Groat in the face. She could never be sure which eye she ought to look at, which was the glass one and which the real one. Hetty hoped Mrs. Groat would not think she was looking at her worn carpet too much.

  Mrs. Groat did some thinking, while tapping her toe on the carpet, then she said, “It is dangerous to allow a small boy to have such a weapon. Look at my eye, Mrs. Maddison!” and then Hetty had to look up into Mrs. Groat’s face. Which eye ought she to look at? Fortunately the matter was soon taken out of her hands, for pointing to what Hetty had thought to be the real eye, Mrs. Groat said, “I lost this eye, Mrs. Maddison, because a boy, very much like Phillip, never did what his parents told him, and one day, pretending to be Robin Hood, he fired an arrow at me, with the result that I lost the sight of the eye forever.”

  Mrs. Groat spoke in a doleful voice, and Hetty made a sympathetic double-click with her tongue.

  “And I’ve had to wear a glass eye ever since, because of one little boy’s wildness. A nice thing it would have been for me, just think, if I had happened to be looking out of the window just now, and had got this right in my other eye, wouldn’t it?”

  Mrs. Groat picked up the offending cork.

  “Yes, you are quite right, Mrs. Groat. I will see to it that Phillip never has such a dangerous weapon again.”

  “I think I understand all your feelings in the matter, Mrs. Maddison.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Groat. Phillip is such a worry, he never means any harm, I am sure, but he is always up to mischief. When he gets his scholarship, and Mr. Garstang is very pleased with his Composition, which I am sure is largely due to Mr. Groat’s coaching, I am hoping it will make a great change in him. May I send him down to Randiswell at once, to send up the glazier, Mrs. Groat? Of course, I shall ask him to let me have the bill.”

  “Very well, Mrs. Maddison, just for this once. But if he fires it off again, it will be my duty to tell Mr. Groat, for we cannot have that sort of thing as a habit, you know. Our lives may be in peril.”

  On hearing of his lucky escape, Phillip ran down at full speed to the sweep in Randiswell, urging him to come at once, for double pay. His khaki-coloured Savings Book that afternoon was stamped by a withdrawal of ten shillings, duly handed over to Mr. Nightingale. Later in the afternoon the pistol went in Hetty’s handbag to Mr. Sprunt’s, where it was exchanged for a ticket and sixpence.

  On the following Monday a quantity of deal planking was delivered at “Montrose”, and stored in the passage below the fence, near Mr. Bigge’s upper conservatory. Phillip wondered what it was for. He soon learned; for the next day two carpenters arrived, and raised the fence by another three feet, thus concealing all but the blank part of the passage, where there were no windows or fixed lights, from the garden of No. 11.

  “There, you see what you have done, Phillip!” said Hetty, looking at him intently. “Oh, I feel so utterly ashamed!”

  “Hark” said Phillip. “I can hear old Josie at his harp aga
in, and I expect Old Mother Bigge is going to cook tripe and onions tonight. Ugh! Beastly stuff.”

  Chapter 30

  OLD HULK AT SEA

  THE WEEK before the examination arrived. Day by day the dreaded Saturday came nearer, while Phillip felt colder and colder inside whenever he thought of it. He went to bed early on the Friday night, to rest his brain, as Father said; he spent the slow hours until long after his parents had gone to bed in trying to find a cool place on his pillow, in pulling up the sheet which had somehow got twisted round his knees in a lump, in trying to stop the quicksilvery rush of jumbled pictures through his head.

  When they slowed down, other figments moved down from the fluid dark, to resolve themselves into great ugly faces before his shut eyes, flowing up and shaping themselves like the colours when stirred in the tanks of Grandpa’s factory in Sparhawk Street, where they made the end papers of ledgers and account books in blue, red, black and brown. He saw the factory in Sparhawk Street, with its iron stairs and crowded printing machines, shafts and wheels, and bands turning; in other rooms lithograph stones with men in aprons making wet pictures on them, also in colours. Over two hundred men and girls worked there, Mr. Mallard said, then asked him if he would like to go into the Firm one day. Then Mother took them to Madame Tussaud’s, which Uncle Hugh had said was full of great glaring dolls. Some of their faces now came up and became like rotten cabbages, and all sorts of awful things looked at him, with lips bulging and pulled down and skulls and lots of white worms wriggled and grinned at him, and he went down a dark tunnel deep into the earth, and he could not breathe and the white worms were going to eat him alive and he shrieked and shrieked and his voice made no sound as he tried to run and his feet were like those of a fly on flypaper and then a light was jabbing his eyes and he heard himself cry out Save me! Save me! and Mother was there, and Father in his white nightshirt.