“I remember that m’ Father once shot a cuckoo with an egg in its beak. He had it stuffed and set up” remarked Tom Turney. “He said at the time that it was flying to put it in another bird’s nest.”
“Ah, but you said, Mr. Newman, that the kuckuck, what you call googoo, laid its egg in the nest of another bird, did you not? Then how, would I ask you, why should Mr. Turney’s respected Father’s googoo be carrying the egg in the beak also to lay it at the same time?”
“That, my dear Sir,” began Mr. Newman, in his throaty voice, turning to Herr Krebs, “is a most interesting controversy, and one that has engaged the speculations of many naturalists since Gilbert White of Selborne. Perhaps our little friend Phillip, who shows such a bent for field study, will be able to solve the problem one day, with his camera.”
Another valetudinarian shuffled past, pulled by a bulldog. From under the seat came the steely growl of Thomas Turney’s cat, followed by an uneasy or sneezy sniffle from Bogey the pug. They had recognised a well-known ugly landmark in the local animal world.
“What is your son’s line of business, Mr. Turney?” said Mr. Bolton, somewhat diffidently.
“The latest is, or was, so far as we know, something in the import business, but perhaps he means the term to apply only to himself, ha-ha-ha!”
Tom Turney’s laughter was from his belly, beneath the blue serge waistcoat stained with wine and cigar ash; the jacket almost purple, faded in the sun of summers upon the Hill.
*
Sometimes Phillip cycled to school; but most mornings he preferred to walk over the Hill, as there was more to see that way. He was always happy when he walked with Milton; he felt clearer, simpler, somehow, in Milton’s company. They talked of the coming summer holidays: every day brought the enchanted prospect nearer and nearer. There was an almost breathless magic in the words Summer Holidays! Phillip saw them in his mind as sunlight for ever upon the grass and under the shade of familiar trees; kites dancing in the wind; baking spuds in the embers of his camp-fire in the Backfield; expeditions with Desmond to the Seven Fields; cycling with roach-tackle to the Fish Ponds of Reynard’s Common; playing tennis with Mavis and her friends on the Hill. Perhaps, who knew, one day Milton and Helena, with his sister and her sister, might be playing there; perhaps they might invite him to join in with them—it was almost too much to be hoped for.
Phillip loved tennis. Mother said they might take up a tea-basket and have a picnic in the holidays, when they played. Aunt Theodora had sent them some racquets and balls, from her Somerset school which had closed down; also a box of croquet sticks and hoops; but they were no good in the garden, the lawn sloped too steeply. Anyway it was too small, unlike Cousin Percy’s at Beau Brickhill. O, the summer holidays! They were going again to Hayling Island, he told Milton, and he was looking forward to taking some snaps of the life-boat house, the fishermen with their net, the west floating-pier where the naval steam-pinnaces came in, bringing officers to play golf, and the wonderful blue Channel waves crashing on the shingle shore by the life-saving cable, and big hauls of striped mackerel and green-boned garfish slapping on the brown pebbles.
If only Milton and his people were coming to Hayling, with the Rolls—for the two families went away to the seaside together, every summer. But they were going to the Isle of Wight—far across the sea from Hayling. Still, he could think of them there in the sunlight, gay laughter and merriment all the time. He could lie in bed at night, and think of the beautiful people, in the darkness of the nights over Hayling Island.
Bad news: they were not going to Hayling after all! Mother had left applying for apartments too long, and so they would not see the sea that year! The sea that was the same sea in which she would be swimming—he would not be able to speak, in secret, to the waves of the tide sweeping from the Isle of Wight, around the shingle shores of Hayling!
Phillip walked to school by himself for two days, after that news. Then his spirits rose again. Mother said if Aunt Liz would have them, they might go instead to Beau Brickhill. Still, there would be dear old Percy to be with, and singing duets at the piano at night, and games of billiards, bat-shooting in the twilight by the ivied stable walls; and the ponds full of roach and dace. Summer Holidays! If only the end of July would come quicker!
One Saturday morning, hastening home alone from school, Phillip was beckoned by Gran’pa, to the seat where he always sat with other old men. He wanted to pass on, pretending not to see or hear Gran’pa; but since it might mean a penny for an ice-cream in the refreshment shelter, he decided to go and see what he wanted. No such luck, however; all Gran’pa wanted was to tell him that his cousins would be coming home soon, from Africa, a thing which he knew already. Gran’pa, of course, had to ask about lessons, as he always did, telling him to make the most of his opportunity while he was young.
And, of course, the inevitable question, “Are they going to teach you Spanish at your school? The future of world commerce lies in South America.” Phillip made his escape as Gran’pa turned to the other old men and said, “If only my boy Charley had taken it into his head to go to the Argentine, he would have shown better sense.”
What would Gran’pa say if, one day, he answered that all he knew about Spanish at school so far was about Spanish Fly? That was a powder prepared from dried green-bottles, which if rubbed gently into the back of a girl’s hand, as you pretended to stroke it, would make her hot. Phillip had heard this with some uneasiness, as he thought nowadays of girls only in the abstract; smiles, eyes, gleaming brushed hair, alluring wonder; except Helena Rolls, who was his Ideal.
At first the talk about Uncle Charley was of little interest to him; but as the days went on, and the Union Castle liner passed the White Man’s Grave, and entered the Bay of Biscay, as recorded in The Daily Telegraph which Gran’pa read, Phillip began to form a picture of this new uncle as a sort of rolling stone, a mixture of Lieutenant Oakfall of the Kent Guides, (who had turned out to be not a real lieutenant at all, but a swanker like Mr. Prout) and a ne’er-do-well remittance man who lived on his wits, as in the stories he read in magazines. Would Uncle Charley arrive in a khaki suit, and Stetson hat, a revolver in his hip pocket? Phillip had these ideas from remarks he had overheard from time to time, in both houses. Father, cross as usual with Mother, had said that most of her people were either wasters or remittance men: and since Uncle Hugh was obviously meant as the waster, Uncle Charley must be the remittance man. He discussed it with his mother.
“Gran’pa said he stopped sending Uncle Charley money when he threw up his farming job in Manitoba, Mum. Was it a nice farm, with plenty of birds to watch in spring? And game to shoot in autumn? Were there any pheasants, as well as prairie hens of the kind you brought some eggs back with you? You know, the ones you gave me when I was too young, so that I broke them. And that whippoorwill’s egg, too. What a pity, wasn’t it? Why ever did you do it?”
This was a perennial regret from Phillip, which brought the same reply every time the question was asked, “Well you see, dear, a little boy asked and asked for them so many times that in the end I gave them to him, for the sake of peace and quiet.”
“But you ought to have known I was too young!”
“I did, my son, I did!” said Hetty. “But you were you, a very very inquisitive and persistent little person!”
“But you knew very well I had taken Father’s butterflies and smashed them up, and eggs are just as easily broken!”
“Ah well, it is done now, Phillip, so it is best forgotten, dear, like many other things that can no longer be helped. But always remember, my son, what the poem says—
Boys flying kites haul in their white winged birds
But you can’t do that when you are flying words.
Thoughts unexpressed, sometimes fall back dead
But God Himself can’t kill them when they’re said.”
Phillip had heard that too, many times from his mother.
“Tell me about Uncle Charley, Mum.”
/> “Well, dear, all I can tell you is that he has had a very variegated life, but it was all very interesting, I am sure.”
“I suppose he is a sort of ne’er-do-well, really?”
“No dear, of course he is not, and never has been! I won’t have you even thinking such a thing! Wherever did you get such ideas from?”
“From Father. Also Uncle Hugh said Charley rode underneath a train all the way from Canada to San Francisco, as he had not the wherewithal for a ticket. Those trains have rods underneath, and he rode on them for hundreds and hundreds of miles.”
“It is wrong of Uncle Hugh to give you such an impression, Phillip. I shall speak to him about it, the very next time I see him. For goodness gracious sake don’t you repeat to Uncle Charley what you have just said! He would never forgive us!”
“But Gran’pa did kick him out of house and home, didn’t he?”
“If he did, then it was a very long time ago, and all forgotten now, Phillip.”
“Uncle Hugh said that if it had not been summer, Charley would have frozen to death, and been found, when the thaw came, a skeleton on the rods.”
“It was Uncle Hugh’s fun, Phillip. Canada is a new country, dear, and life is very hard for newcomers. Anyway, I am sure what Uncle Hugh said is very exaggerated.”
“Uncle Hugh said that at San Francisco Charley signed on as a hand in a ship to Cape Town. Uncle Hugh told me how he met him out there, thin as a lath, building huts in the war for the Boer families taken from their farms in the veldt, and herded behind barbed wire. Later, when he got married, Uncle Charley and his wife spent their honeymoon eating Nestlé’s milk out of tins, with one spoon, taking turns. They had a whole box of tins in their hotel bedroom, said Uncle Hugh.”
“They were both very young, Phillip. Uncle Charley was a light-hearted boy, always. Oh, I am so longing to see him!” said Hetty, thinking of happy days.
“Mum, is it true that, when he became a farmer, diamonds were found under his land? Uncle Hugh said he sold the farm, and bought an import business, dealing largely in bikes. Uncle Hugh said that it took the rich niggers off their feet and put Charley on his. And what did Uncle Hugh mean when he said to Gramps, ‘Your prodigious son is returning, sir’?”
Hetty looked at Phillip with astonishment mixed with apprehension. He was growing up fast, and it behoved them all to be more careful than ever about what was said in his presence. She was anxious about her brother’s home-coming, remembering the terrible scenes that had occurred in the past between Papa and Charley. Mamma was anxious, too, though hopeful that the past would be forgotten, and forgiven, by all concerned.
Hetty dared not think about the scene just before Charley had left the house for good, after Papa had knocked Mamma down with his fist, and Charley had attacked Papa with his fists, and cut Papa’s lips. The terrible swearing! Only the intervention of Jim, the coachman, had prevented what might have been a tragedy. In a way Charley took after Papa; he flew into the same terrible rages. But there, all that was over and done with, and best forgotten.
Phillip hoped that Uncle Charley would have, in addition to the revolver in his hip pocket, a pigskin bag, fitted with heavy brass locks, and filled with diamonds. Perhaps he would have lion skins, and a faithful black kaffir servant, who had been with him in many fights against Zulus. Phillip had already passed on these imaginative details, which had their origin in King Solomon’s Mines, as facts in a letter to Desmond.
*
On the day Uncle Charley was expected, Phillip cycled home fast from school. Tommy, his new cousin, named after Gran’pa, was to sleep in his bedroom, as there was no room next door. That would be wonderful: they would be able to talk far into the night, in whispers!
Pushing the Swift up Hillside Road, he saw Mrs. Rolls talking to Mr. Pye at the top. At once he felt subdued. Was Mr. Pye saying anything about him? Mrs. Rolls had recently spoken to him for throwing his orange peel about on the Hill instead of putting it in one of the iron containers. He had picked it all up afterwards, but with a feeling that he had disgraced himself forever in her eyes.
This small, treble-voiced fifteen-year-old boy still dreamed of the unrealisable, the terrifying moment when he might find himself suddenly invited into the Rolls’ house; and with accompanying pang knew he never would be. But oh, if Uncle Charley turned out to be very well-off, as high up as his Uncle Hilary Maddison who had once visited them in his motorcar, it might help his cause! Uncle Hilary, after that one occasion many years ago, had never come to see them again. Mother said he was a very busy man; and, of course, they were poor relations.
With some trepidation Phillip saw that Mr. Pye had raised his hat to Mrs. Rolls, and had started to walk down the road. It was too late to hurry on now, and get into his gateway before meeting Mr. Pye. With relief Phillip saw that there was something else to take Mr. Pye’s attention: a telegraph boy on a red bicycle had turned the corner, and standing on the pedals, was exerting all his strength to ride up the road. He passed Phillip, grunting as he heaved at the handle-bars. He got off outside Gran’pa’s house, just as Mr. Pye, a dark curved figure under grey Homburg hat, and swinging rolled umbrella, loomed with pale heavy face upon him.
Raising his cap, Phillip blurted out, to break the nervous constriction,
“That telegram is from my Uncle, who owns ever so many diamond mines in Kimberley.”
“Oh really?” said Mr. Pye, with a short mirthless laugh, as he passed. Oh, why had he said that to Mr. Pye? He would be sure to find out it was not true, and tell Mrs. Rolls! As Mother often told him, he was his own worst enemy.
Uncle Hugh came out to meet the telegraph boy. Phillip heard the boy say that he had passed two cabs along Charlotte Road.
“One of’m’s full of fevvers and spears, sir.”
“That sounds like my long-lost brother,” said Uncle Hugh. “Hey, lend me your jigger for a couple of minutes, boy. Here, take this in to the Old Man, Phillip.”
Telegram in hand, Phillip watched him mounting the red bike from the kerb. After one or two swerves, Uncle Hugh went down the road. He waited in trepidation to see if Uncle Hugh would fall off at the corner; after all, Uncle was very groggy on his pins, and perhaps would not have the strength to back-pedal, since it was a fixed wheel. He watched him zigzag round the corner; held his breath as Uncle seemed to be about to crash into the kerb opposite; and with relief saw that he was not going to fall off. With head held well down, and back rising and falling, Uncle Hugh wobbled up the slight rise to St. Cyprian’s church; and there with a crash he fell off.
“Nobody didn’t ought to take my grid,” complained the telegraph boy. “Tain’t allowed, by rights.”
“It won’t hurt your old iron,” retorted Phillip, contempt in his tone, at the smaller boy’s whine. He was still feeling squeezed in by Mr. Pye.
“I’ll get the sack,” the telegraph boy whined, with unhappy face. To think of losing his job was to be in utter darkness. He could say or do nothing more. He waited, with the usual dull expressionless look of a poor child from an unhappy home.
Two cabs came in sight along Charlotte Road, beyond the church. Phillip ran in to tell his mother. She was already hastening to her bedroom window, calling, “Here they are at last! Mavis! Doris! They’re coming, oh I am so happy!”
Phillip returned outside. The front windows of the house were open. Why was Mother always so excitable? Why could she not behave calmly, like Mrs. Rolls? Father was always saying she was too excitable.
The two cabs stopped by Uncle Hugh. Then the clopping of the horses’ hoofs came over the grass again. Surely Mrs. Rolls would hear them? Two cabs! Then he heard Gran’pa’s voice, from the balcony above, saying “Sarah, Sarah, come along do, here’s Charley come already, he-he-he!” Gran’pa always laughed like that when he said anything.
Phillip stood against the privet hedge, not wanting to be seen. He preferred to be alone, to think his own thoughts. And then, to spoil it all, the others came out on the pavement! Why
couldn’t they wait until the cabs arrived? He moved apart from them. To the waiting telegraph boy he said, “My uncle has just come from South Africa.”
“I fort so,” replied the boy. “When I seed a blackamoor’s face in the last keb.”
“Good lord! Then he has got a Kaffir servant!”
Just as he had invented in the letter to Desmond!
A few moments later he saw Mrs. Bigge’s head at her gate. Of course, she would have to pop out from under her red-and-white striped awning, which dear Josiah had put up to save the paint of his precious front door from blistering!
*
Ever since Phillip had shot holes in Mr. Bigge’s tiny greenhouse with his father’s air rifle, and Mr. Bigge had remained silent about the damage, he had been wary of the Bigges. During the years this attitude had developed into a scorn for the harmless old gentleman, an attitude Phillip did not have towards their next-door neighbours, the Groats, who had promptly complained when he had broken their windows, and made him pay for the damage. He did not like the Groats; but he did have respect for them.
Mrs. Bigge, however, had not allowed her feelings about her husband’s spoiled plantarium to alter her attitude towards Phillip’s mother, for whom she had a deep, instinctive sympathy.
“Hullo, Mrs. Emm! I expect you feel very happy, to see your long-lost brother again, eh, dear?”
“Yes, Mrs. Bigge, it is splendid, after all these years!”
Mrs. Bigge stood beside her gate-post, scarcely taller than its top, and ready to disappear at the right time.
Phillip decided to cross the road, in the hope that Mrs. Rolls or Helena were looking from their bedroom window. From his new position he took surreptitious glances at the top house, but saw no sign. Then, quizzing farther down the road, he detected a movement of the bedroom curtain of No. 9. There she was, Old Mother Groat, glass eye and all, spying out the land! Inquisitive old devil! He sent an imaginary clay-bullet whizzing in her direction—it had a bit of loose grass sticking out of it, whoosh, it whizzed through the air. He heard the imaginary bull’s-eye. Crack! right in the middle of the pane, tinkle tankle of falling glass. That would settle her hash!
Young Phillip Maddison Page 31
