The third man had a pleasant expression on his face. He looked at Phillip with a look rather like that of Mr. Graham, the Old Boy who took snapshots on the school playing field. He had the same kind of eyes and moustache. After the bearded and clean-shaved men had spoken to Phillip, and read a letter which with sudden horror he recognised as having the coat-of-arms and the school address on the top, the letter was passed to this third man, who read it. Then they spoke together for a few moments, and the man with the moustache nodded, before looking at Phillip and smiling.
“This is Mr. Howlett, of our Wine Vault Lane Branch, who will shortly have a vacancy in his office——” began the bearded man, in a slow mumbling voice.
“Thank you, sir,” said Phillip, on his best behaviour.
“I haven’t finished yet,” went on the General Manager, looking at Phillip’s red silk handkerchief—given him by Gran’pa—in his breast pocket. “I was about to say that Mr. Howlett is prepared to take you on probation, next Ladyday, at our usual commencing salary of forty pounds a year. Ladyday is the twenty-fifth of March. Will that be agreeable to you?”
“Oh yes, thank you, Sir!” exclaimed Phillip, much relieved at the thought of the two months ahead of him. The sand-martin and the chiff-chaff would arrive before then. He had been dreading that he might be told straight away to sit at a desk and do work of which he knew he would be entirely incapable.
This feeling was partly due to Richard’s account to him of the good prospects available for actuaries, who had to work out statistics from masses of figures connected with the occupational risks, prospects of life, age-limits, records and analyses of hazards and diseases of hundreds of thousands of policy holders. True, Richard had been talking of Life Assurance, which the Moon Fire Office did not touch; and Phillip, with only half an eye and quarter of an ear on Father, had been reading about the nesting and fishing habits of the Osprey or Fish Hawk in The Field open on the table before him, at the time; so there existed some slight confusion in Phillip’s mind, and considerable apprehension about his ability in actuarial affairs. His relief was therefore great, and his expression of gratitude entirely genuine, as he thought of not having to start before Ladyday.
“You will receive by post a letter confirming this arrangement, then,” said the General Manager. “Good day to you.”
“Good day to you, sir.”
Phillip bowed, as Father had told him to do, and hastily left the room. He went along the corridor and ran down the wide carpeted stairs. At the bottom an old man in a frock coat and silk hat and white spats was being helped up the stairs, by a younger man most anxious to aid him. The old man had an immense face, with several chins, and an eyeglass stuck in one eye. He glared at Phillip, as he puffed and panted. Was this someone coming in to be insured? If so, it looked rather late in the day.
At the bottom of the stairs Phillip saw again the big mahogany swing doors he had passed on his way up. Would Father be working in there? He did not want to see Father. He was about to leave, when he saw through the glass of the doors the man who had smiled, approaching him. It was Mr. Howlett. Mr. Howlett raised his hand. It was too late to run away.
Howlett! What a queer name. He looked something like an owl, too.
“You disappeared before I could catch you, Maddison,” said Mr. Howlett, in a soft voice. “I came down through the mezzanine room, to tell your Father, who is just round the corner. Which way did you come down?”
“By the staircase over there, sir.”
“Ha, that was the Directors’ Staircase, Maddison. Did you pass anyone?”
“Yes, sir, a very old gentleman.”
“Good lord!” ejaculated Mr. Howlett, “that must have been Mr. Henry Chaplin, the Chairman. The staff use the stairs this way,” and he pointed the way he had come.
“Yes, sir, I’ll see to it in future.”
“I was going to ask you if you would care to have lunch with me. I don’t know if your Father wants you to go with him, but if not, I should be quite happy if you would come with me. We have a luncheon club at the top of the building, but that is only for the staff—so we’ll go to a little place I know.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Phillip hoped it was not the Voyagers’ Club, for he did not particularly want to meet Uncle Hilary just then.
Richard got down from his stool, and came forward smiling.
“Well, Phillip, Mr. Howlett, my colleague, has told me the good news, and it only remains for me to congratulate you.”
Richard held out his hand, and Phillip shook it. His back felt very warm, for behind him was a huge rotund iron stove, in which a blazing coal fire burned. So they had fires in an office! It might not be too dusty after all.
Many other men were taking glances at them. A uniformed messenger smiled as he passed. Phillip began to feel that it was quite a nice place. From what Father had often said of City life, he had imagined it to be almost as grim as a prison, or at least as bad as school. This place wasn’t half bad! He would be what Mother called one of the men in the moon!
Richard took him aside before he left, and said, “Do not forget to thank Mr. Howlett for his hospitality after luncheon, will you, old chap? Such little courtesies make all the difference in life.”
“Yes, Father.”
“Well, I must not keep you. Au revoir!” Father waved, and turned away.
Mr. Howlett seemed to Phillip to be ever so nice. They went to lunch in a chop house near the Bank of England. They sat among men wearing bowler hats before heavy wood tables, with high wooden partitions between each table. Most of the men read newspapers propped on cruets while eating, others played dominoes and drank coffee amidst clouds of pipe smoke. Mr. Howlett asked Phillip all about himself, and was told about the woodpeckers of Knollyswood Park, the rare willow tit in the alder over the brook Darenth, the peewits and other birds upon the Squire’s land at Shooting Common. Mr. Howlett looked rather amused, Phillip thought, but the main thing about him was that he was all right.
It was quite different from lunch in the Voyagers Club with Uncle Hilary, where cigars, and not pipes, were smoked afterwards. Phillip preferred this chop house; it was exciting to be in the City, and to feel himself almost to be a City man. Mr. Howlett having removed his bowler, Phillip had done the same. Now, as they put them on again—Mr. Howlett having given the old shuffling waiter four coppers, Phillip noticed—Mr. Howlett said, “Well, Maddison, I shall look forward to seeing you at the office at a quarter to ten on Ladyday.”
“Yes, Mr. Howlett! And thank you very much for your hospitality. Goodbye, sir!”
“Enjoy yourself in the meanwhile,” said Mr. Howlett, puffing his pipe, outside the chop house.
“Yes, sir,” replied Phillip, raising his bowler; and turning away, he went along the pavement, simmering with exaltation, revolving his rolled umbrella.
*
Phillip determined to enjoy himself, as Mr. Howlett had suggested, during the next two months. He was safe until the sand-martin returned, and the chiff-chaff.
He sat among other nondescripts like himself in the Commercial Class, a group of boys who were supposed to be learning, for their advantage in after-life, the practice of Pitman’s Shorthand, Book-keeping, Bills of Lading and Discount, and commercial French and German. One of the junior masters set them tasks every morning, and again in the afternoon; after that, they were left to work by themselves. The senior boy was in charge. They all took turns to dictate passages to be taken down in shorthand, and business letters in the two languages, in the intervals of conversation upon personal matters.
Phillip did not take shorthand. It was too late, unless he were prepared, said the Magister, to carry on his lessons, either by postal tuition or evening classes elsewhere, when he had left school. Phillip said he did not think he was prepared; so he took only Book-keeping and Commercial Languages.
“No Spanish?” asked Gran’pa.
“No,” said Phillip.
“A pity,” said Gran�
�pa. “Spanish will be——”
“I know,” said Phillip.
“What do you know, m’boy?”
“That I will see you at Pompeii, Gran’pa.”
“He-he-he,” chuckled Thomas Turney. “Don’t you mean Philippi?”
But Phillip had gone. He was on his way to tell Mrs. Neville his news about the Bagmen, as the Commercial Class was called.
The only other class privileged to work by themselves were the prefects of the Upper Sixth, some of whom were preparing for University entrance exams. There was no connection between these aloof and lordly ones and the Bagmen except that they, too, possessed a nickname. Someone had heard one of the prefects, coming out of the Upper Sixth room, humming an operatic aria. Ever since they had been known as the Belle Cantos, shortened to the Belles, sometimes the Swells, or the Swelling Belles. They had a glorious future; whereas the Bagmen, a term out of Dickens, were considered to be little more than embryo pedlars, door-to-door salesmen, cheap-jacks at fairs, or tic-tac men for bookies. One of the Swells was Milton, who was preparing for the Little Go, for Cambridge.
The Bagmen were well-content. They had formed themselves into the Bagmen’s Mutual Improvement and Protection Society, an unofficial intimate club. Timmy Rat was an honorary member, who entered the Club premises usually concealed under his owner’s coat. Another member was not so honorary; this was Jerry the jay, who being accustomed to having its freedom about the rooftops and gardens of Hillside Road, and moreover having a voice more penetrating than any Sunday afternoon speaker by the Socialist Oak on the Hill, had to be left outside. The Magister heard the querulous screeches from the roof of the school, near the bell turret, and went into the playground and to his surprise a bird with light blue eyes, raised crest, and wings with blue-white bars flew down and perched on his gowned shoulder. Quite unperturbed, and realising that it was an escaped tame bird, the Magister stroked its poll, bore it to the porter’s lodge, suggested a meal of beef scraps and peas with which to speed the visitor on his way, and returned to what to him was the universal poetry of Higher Mathematics.
The visitor, however, so liked the peas, and the white suet, that he stayed up by the turret and slept off his meal, to return for more at midday, when Phillip on his bicycle took him home.
The remarkable thing was that Jerry, who sometimes flew up to the elms on the Hill, must have recognised the distant trees to the north-east as those partly hiding the bell-turret of the school; and sloping thither on his short wings, made for slipping from tree to tree in woodland, by easy stages he returned; and during the afternoon his screeches of pleasure were once more heard up by the roof-ridge and the lead-covered bell turret. There he lived, more or less, accompanied by Jack and Jill the daws, whom Phillip had brought to school, thinking this a good chance to get rid of them.
There were wild daws on the Heath, and jays in the Crown Woods of Shooter’s Hill. The birds wandered; they were reported in Greenwich Park; they were known to enter the windows of various houses in Tranquil Vale during sunny days; they were seen being chased out of a rookery by rooks which were claiming their old spring homes again. They were strong of wing; and one day they were seen no more.
*
The sand-martin returned, and the chiff-chaff.
On the last Friday morning, Phillip suggested a farewell outing for his special friends among the Bagmen, the following day. Nobody cared about the Bagmen on a Saturday morning. One of their number was a pale, quiet boy named Cundall, whom Phillip had taken once or twice into his preserves. Cundall was going into a bank. Another boy was Greenall, nicknamed Snouter, since his Christian names were Percy Ivor. A third was Lawrence Pett, the youngest of three brothers who came of a Thames barge-building family at Greenwich.
Phillip had taken Lawrence Pett one May day during the previous year, and shown him his nests, in hedges and trees around Knollyswood Park, in the area of the camps of the rival troops of Boy Scout days.
There had been coal titmouse, spotted flycatcher, bullfinch, chaffinch, blue-tit, wren, blackcap warbler, corncrake, gold-crest, turtle dove and woodpigeon, among others. Returning two evenings later, alone, Phillip had found that nearly every nest was empty. The following day he had accused Pett of betraying a friendship. Pett, a boy with bright curly hair and light blue eyes, looked so unhappy that Phillip was sorry he had spoken so severely to him. He did not know that Pett, who had thought nothing of birds before Phillip had taken him out, had been so imaginatively stirred by what Phillip had told and shown him, that he could not rest until he had returned with a friend; and between them they had shared the contents of the nests.
Lawrence Pett had looked at Phillip with such dejected humility in his face when Phillip accused him of treachery, saying that he was very sorry, that Phillip held out his hand.
Now, at the Bagmen’s Outing, Lawrence Pett accompanied Phillip, Cundall, Snouter, and two others of the Commercial Class. Milton came by special invitation, from the Swells. They met at the Clock Tower, and took the tram to Whitefoot Lane, and walked up to the woods. There were more footpaths in these woods now; as game preserves they had been abandoned; red rows of houses from the north had come very near. In one strip of wood a rusty old bath was found, lying by itself. How had it come there? Phillip looked at it with sinking heart. In some way he could not express to himself, the bath, which had a hole in its bottom, was the final mark of doom upon the woods, and upon his own boyhood.
An old faded notice-board, hanging askew a tree, said Trespassers will be prosecuted.
They crossed the lane to the woods on the other side, which were less trodden. One of the Bagmen was a pale, almost muddy-faced boy named Pype, who was something of a naturalist. A flock of thrush-like birds flew out of the treetops, clucking and making rachety noises; these were fieldfares, explained Pype. They had come from Norway, and soon would be returning across the North Sea for the nesting season.
Farther down the narrow strip of woodland was a lightning-blasted tree, fairly narrow, and branchless to its broken top, where a coronet of dead bark was silhouetted against the sky. Pype swarmed up, gripping with his knees, and was about to put a hand over the rim when a large brown bird flew off. A tawny owl! Phillip had never found a nest with eggs, before. Pype held up a nearly round white egg. There were two others, he said. He descended, something else in cap held between teeth.
“Look,” he said. “You can see what the tawny feeds on, by the broken pellets it disgorges.”
There were several mice skulls and thigh bones, a sparrow’s leg with the horn of toes dissolved away, innumerable minor bones of mice, rib and knee, knuckle and foot, together with dark blue gleaming shards or wing-cases of beetles.
Phillip held the egg in his hand. A hundred dreams of twilit nights, of stars and wind in darkness passing, passing, arose from the oval white egg. He decided to put it back. He looked at Pett. “I swear I don’t want it, Phillip.”
“There aren’t many owls about, you know. And they do good.”
Egg in cap, he swarmed up the tree, and put the egg with the other two. Among the litter and frass was an acorn which had sprouted there. Phillip brought it down, and planted it in leaf-mould on the ground. Goodbye, little tree, he whispered to it, before rising again.
At the end of the wood—a narrow strip which extended along the northern boundary of the Seven Fields until it joined the main road just beyond Cutler’s Pond—they walked silently, in file, for they were now near Perry’s mill, and might be seen. This tall boarded building, half covered with ivy, stood beyond the pond at the bend of the road, by the water-cress beds. The cedar tree, with its massive brown trunk covered with its dark strata of branches, which looked as though no wind would ever shake them, lay over most of the pond. The water was as clear as glass. Fish glided away under its surface. They were the last of the Randisbourne trout, for the brook was now polluted below Cutler’s Pond. Even the stickle-bats, minute fishy urchins armed with spines, had not been able to survive the tar and
creosote acids from the drains of the new road. The black county of London was steadily invading the green county of Kent.
It began to rain. They sheltered under the cypress, and when an omnibus came, grey mud squelching out from its solid rubber tyres, they decided to take it to the market town. It was full inside; but who cared about rain? They rode on top, under the tarpaulins fixed to the seats, and with occasional songs in the intervals of ragging and jokes, arrived at the market place.
Cundall now took charge; this was his country; the Elmstead woods were his preserves. They were divided by a railway; houses were creeping on them, too. The woods were of hazelnut in rows among standard oaks. Celandines and primroses were out on the brown leaf-floor; bluebell plants were rising.
Pheasants were still preserved in the woods, for here were gibbets on which several domestic cats hung tail down, with more hedgehogs than Phillip had ever seen in his preserves. Perhaps, said Pype, the low, rather damp ground caused more slugs to be about; hedgehogs ate slugs for their main diet.
Phillip was not sure about the honesty of Pype. Recently the Dowager Countess had written him a brief note, declaring that as so many nests had been robbed in the past season, all permits would be withdrawn. All permits? Who else was there, besides himself and Desmond? This had been a shock to Phillip, since he had never robbed any nest, taking only one egg of each new species he had found. He had spotted Ching following him one day; Ching and Pype were rather thick. Had Pype written for a permit? Challenged, Pype admitted it. Pett had told Pype about his permit. As Mother always told him: he was his own enemy.
*
After his dismissal by the Dowager Countess, Phillip had gone to his preserves farther afield. The best of them was a large estate about five miles beyond Reynard’s Common. Of rolling arable and pasture under the downs, among great beeches, Squerryes had, running through the park, a series of trout ponds. Above them, on the grassy slope, were rabbit warrens enclosed with wire-netting fences. Little doors were fixed in the fence, exits for feeding at night.
Young Phillip Maddison Page 48
