Young Phillip Maddison (14 page)

A very small boy, approaching on the grass beside the West Kent Grammar School, stopped and raised his bugle. After a few preliminary squeals and toots a thin, discordant noise floated down; a mere strangulation of wind.

“Why doesn’t that little tich wait until he comes on parade, if he
must
blow it himself,” exclaimed Phillip. “That’s what
comes of having a kid in the patrol who wears his sister’s boots!”

“It’s his bugle, so he has a right to do what he wants to with it,” said Peter Wallace.

“But it’s my patrol, all the same. Those squeaky notes sound simply awful, especially when you think we are supposed to be Bloodhounds.”

Phillip’s description of Freddy Payne as a little tich was not intended to be unkind. He did not know that Little Tich was a malformed and diminutive music-hall turn; or realise that Freddy Payne was a product of pre-natal malnutrition. Freddy Payne was in his tenth year, yet only about half the height of his broomstick. His thin, rickety legs ended in high brown boots, for his ankles were weak.

As the patrol-leader had remarked, they were girl’s boots; but Freddy’s mother, at her son’s earnest request, had had the soles and heels studded with blakeys to give them at least some likeness to boy’s boots. The iron “protectors” clattered and clinked as Freddy crossed the road, the little pewter bugle suspended across his shoulder on an old crimson curtain cord a-swing with two big tassels. Phillip stared enviously at his new hat, the chin-strap worn under the owner’s lower lip, to increase his martial appearance.

“Why are you late again, Freddy?”

“I had to wait to get my Father’s permission before I could come.”

“Oh, very well. Come on now, fall in, men. Corporal Wallace on the right.”

They shuffled into line. Phillip produced his notebook.

“Subscriptions first.”

The Wallace brothers glanced at one another. Phillip began with the bugler. “Got your penny, Freddy?”

Freddy Payne blushed again. He shuffled his boots, avoiding the patrol leader’s gaze.

“Father asked me to say, Phillip, what’s the subscription for, and who keeps the money we give you every week?”

Phillip frowned.

“As I told you before, the patrol is saving up for a bivouac tent, for when we go camping! It costs seven and sixpence! When we’ve got it, it will belong to the patrol, not to me! There’s no need to be alarmed—I shan’t pinch your blooming oof.”

“Also, Father asked me to ask,” went on Freddy, shifting on
another foot. “Supposing a scout leaves the patrol, what happens to his share of the tent?”

Phillip frowned more intensely.

“Well, we haven’t got the tent yet, so your Father’s hypothesis does not apply! Q.E.D. as Euclid would say. Anyway, we all agreed to pay a penny a week. Haven’t you brought yours?”

“I’ve only got my one for broken biscuits.”

“Well, bring it next week, don’t forget. I’ll put your penny down now, so now you owe it to me personally. How about yours, Peter?”

“What about your own?” replied Peter Wallace, unmoving.

His manner startled Phillip. A pulse of fear went through him. “Well,” he said hurriedly, “I am keeping mine in my Post Office book, for the tent.”

“That’s what
you
say,” retorted Peter Wallace. “I’ll trouble you for our subscriptions back.”

Phillip said faintly, “What have I done?” He was utterly bewildered by the sudden change in Peter’s attitude.

“Where is the money?”

Peter’s eyes glinted. Would he take off his spectacles, next thing?

Staring helplessly at Peter, Phillip managed to say that the money was quite all right.

“Then I’ll call for it on Monday night. And don’t forget it, accidentally on purpose, will you? We’ve had enough of your ways. Come on, Davie.”

Phillip wondered wildly what he would do if everyone left like that. Oh, it was not true to say he had pinched the Tent Fund money. He had spent most of the subscriptions, but the amount was covered by his Post Office Savings account. Had Peter put Freddy up to refusing to pay? Thank goodness it had not happened in Hillside Road, perhaps with Mr. and Mrs. Rolls, and Mr. Pye, hearing what Peter had said.

A further shock was to come. When he was a dozen yards away, Peter Wallace put his hand in his pocket and drew forth a pennant. It had a dog’s head on it, as Phillip saw while Peter was tying it to his pole.

“You might like to know that I have formed my own patrol, the Greyhounds,” said Peter. “And our preserves are the woods in Whitefoot Lane, so keep clear of them, or you know what you’ll get!”

“But Whitefoot Lane is my preserve,” said Phillip, incredulously. “I took you there first, you know I did! They are my woods, and were my Father’s before me! Say it’s all a joke, Peter,” he said, with a tremulous smile.

“The joke is that we’ve found you out. Come on, Davie.”

“Half a mo’, Peter. I did go to Whitefoot Lane Woods first, and my Father can prove it. He took me up Whitefoot Lane on my bike! I swear on my scout’s honour it’s true.”

“Well, the Whitefoot Lane woods, and the Seven Fields, are from now on the territory of the Greyhounds! And you’re a liar, and a swanker, pretending as though the woods belonged to your father! In case you don’t know, I’ll tell you that I looked in a reference book in the library, and discovered that the woods and all the land belong to Mr. Forster, who is a Member of Parliament! What’s more, I wrote to him for permission for the Greyhounds to go in his woods, and he says we can after the end of the month, when the pheasants have hatched, if we don’t interfere with them in any way. They are private woods, so you keep out of them, or you know what to expect!” The brothers walked away.

*

To complete his mortification, Phillip saw Uncle Hugh approaching up the passage way from Ivy Lane. He had recently begun to feel anxiety lest such a shambling figure be connected with him. Uncle Hugh was hobbling along on two sticks, which had rubber ferrules on the bottoms instead of the usual iron ones. He had an old yellow straw-yard on his head, while his jacket and trousers flapped loose on his thin frame. Uncle Hugh was a wreck, Phillip knew that; Gran’pa had said something about him having fallen down that morning. Uncle’s thin hawk-nose was bruised, and his forehead was cut, and dabbed with yellow disinfectant.

“Ha ha!” he cried. “Now we shan’t need a Navy any more!” Waving a stick at his nephew, Hugh Turney stopped by the iron cannon embedded in the asphalt of the footpath. This greeting threw him off his balance, and to prevent himself from falling he clutched the mouth of the cannon, which, being filled with mortar, gave a grip for clawed fingers. Having maintained himself upright, Hugh stared jauntily at the boys, while giving the hongroised ends of his moustache a twist between finger and thumb. Then putting on a droll face, he stared gravely at
Freddy Payne, whose wide-awake was now upon his ears, and turning to Phillip, said,

“Who is this figure of martial grandeur and indomitable aspect? How old is this modern Napoleon? Is it a case of, ‘Lost in London; found under the hat’?”

“He’s only a tenderfoot, Uncle Hugh. He’s nine, you see. We’re just about to march off.”

“Only nine! Ah, to be ‘only nine’ again! Why, you must have been born during the war, young feller. Don’t tell me your name—I can guess it!”

Whereupon Hugh Turney, resting his sticks against the churchyard railings, raised his straw-yard with one hand, and clutching the mortar in the mouth of the cannon with the other, sang in an imitation music-hall voice,

Am I right?”

“No, it’s Freddy Payne,” replied Phillip, wishing Uncle would go away.

“Can he sound a tucket on his trumpet, enough to rouse the dead?”

“It’s a bugle, not a trumpet, Uncle. Anyway, he’s only learning still.”

“Well, let’s hear him sound the charge! We need men like Freddy Payne to wake up this district of soot and puritanism, which would, by God, be the same thing as waking the dead! Come on, Napoleon, let’s see you blow out those front teeth!”

“I told you, he’s only learning, Uncle Hugh!”

“Come on, let me have a go, then! Let an old trumpeter of the C.I.V.s show what he can do! The old war-horse smells powder!”

Phillip shook his nose at Freddy. Uncle Hugh had a bad illness, as Father had warned him many times. It was highly catching.

“We must go now, Uncle, we’re late already. Goodbye. Fall
in men. You go the right, Desmond, you’re tallest. Freddy, will you lend me your bugle, please? Then I’ll give you a sausage at the camp-fire. I promise.”

The instrument was handed over, and slung on Phillip’s shoulder.

“What about your old pal Peter the Painter?” said Hugh Turney.

“He’s formed his own patrol.”

“Ah! The old, old story! Tadpoles become frogs, grubs become beetles, bloodhounds become greyhounds, our old shirts become fine quality of laid paper; while Napoleon”—he pointed at Freddy Payne—“is reincarnated! Phillip, old war-horse, take heart! Recruits are like women, there’s always one to be picked up on every street corner.”

Before Uncle Hugh could say any more awful things, Phillip gave the order to trail poles, left-turn, and quick march. Raising the half-size pewter bugle, he blew what he hoped would be notes as resounding as those of the full-size copper bugles of the Boys Brigade when they marched to church on Sundays.

“H’m, a your notes are of the lost, stolen, and strayed variety, I see,” said Uncle Hugh, as the three small boys marched off. “Eyes right!” he called out, as he drew his frame approximately upright, and raised a hand to the salute.

*

As the Bloodhound patrol disappeared round the corner into what was known among certain individuals as Love Lane, the bell in the cemetery chapel beyond the high brick wall began to toll. Bravura left the stilted figure balancing itself by the cannon. Hugh Turney’s face became haggard.

“Christ!” he hissed through teeth loose in their puffy gums. “Christ, I can’t bear it any more! I can’t! O, Christ! I can’t! Et tu, Brute!”

He knew that Phillip was ashamed of him.

Breathing heavily, he clung to the iron cannon, overcome with loneliness, with the anguish of ruined hopes. He shut his eyes against the horror of the forty brick-walled acres, filled with serried lines of white marble tombstones, amidst ever-new mounds of yellow clay covered with wilted flowers of gaudy hues; and among them, perpetually, women in black, heavily veiled, weeping, with red eyes and noses; while the bell tolled through almost every period of the day.

“I was once young!” cried Hugh, lifting his eyes to the sky.
“The years like great black oxen tread the world, and I am broken underneath their feet.”

He sighed deeply. Then he heard a cuckoo calling. Thank God, in that marmoreal desolation! With a shrug of thin shoulders he turned to retrieve his sticks. “I hope to God that when my turn comes a wisp, or a covey, or a veritable gaggle of cuckoos will
shout
over my grave as they lower what is left of me into the pit, and the clay thuds on m’coffin! ‘Criste did not spare to visite poore men, in the colde greve’,” he quoted. Dear Jesus, He understood. He was the friend of all, however rotten the tenant in the house of flesh.

Hugh Turney consoled himself with various other thoughts, among them that many a better man than he had gone the same way before him: Beethoven, Chatterton, Nietzsche, Keats. With a feeling of being in some sense companioned, he set his straw-yard, with the colours of Trinity round the brim, more securely on his head, and hobbled away up the Hill.

A victim of locomotor ataxia, he could move forward only by throwing out his feet before him, so that to a beholder it looked as though his boots were loosely attached to the bones of his legs, like weights. As he progressed, he fancied himself as an old soldier, veteran of the financiers’ swindle of the South African War; at least he was alive, and not dead from enteric or Boer bullet!

“Sidney, old friend, why didn’t I get that blasted enteric, and accompany you into death’s dateless night?”

Resting half way up the slope, he recited to an imaginary audience,

Two urchins, after passing him, turned to jeer. “Yah! Laugh at ’im! Scatty! Scatty! Laugh at ’im!”

“How I agree with you, gentlemen,” said Hugh Turney, gravely, to the shouts behind his back.

He sneered as he recalled the fat, corset’d, malodorous female, with painted face and lampblack’d lashes, whom he had, confounded fool, with two bottles of claret inside him, allowed to steer him out of the Empire Promenade on that September night nearly fifteen years before. Why had he been such an Elsinorian idiot as to go against his own grain, just because he had set mind and heart on an unattainable refuge—ideal—idol—Theodora Maddison. All men killed the thing they loved, as Oscar Wilde had written in Reading gaol—knowing full well that the thing a man loved was his own soul! That had to be killed, usually in childhood by a tyrant father, before a man could become, by chance circumstance, what in the eyes of the world was known as a murderer. O, if he could but have peace and quiet, if only he could have known in youth what he knew now, what novels would he not have written! He would make George Moore appear the poseur he was! Now all was lost.