Young Phillip Maddison (15 page)

“I am dying, Egypt, dying——” he groaned to the air. “I have immortal longings for thee!”

The bell from the cemetery chapel tolled as he stood, a man partly paralysed from the pelvis downwards, upon the gravel path leading to the Hill dominated by the old red brick building of the West Kent Grammar School. As though desirous of getting away from the sound of the tolling bell, Hugh Turney threw his legs out before him, one after the other, while into his mind came a desperate hope, in which he did not really believe, but which he must adhere to: that if he exercised his body hard, he might sweat-out some of the poisonous toxin from his blood, and at least
arrest
the paralysis of his nerves. After all, the doctors had declared that
spirella
spirocheta
was no longer active in his blood, and that the mercury rubbed into his skin, during the secondary stage of his illness, had probably gone from his system. Human will might yet triumph over the flesh! Up, up, get into a good lather, left leg, right leg, left leg, right leg! Keep it going Hughie, my boy, get into a lather! Sweat the vice out of the vehicle of worms and epitaphs!

From below, as he rested again, came a thin and puny note—the Bloodhounds’ bugle. Phillip had seen Cranmer.

W
HAT
a relief it was to see dear old Cranmer, a grin on his “physog”, waiting for them! Cranmer wore the cricketing hat Mother had found, and starched, especially for him. Cranmer’s shorts were rather big for him, obviously made out of a pair of old man’s trousers cut off below the knees. Phillip blew another salute on the bugle: half the notes were of the “lost, stolen, or strayed variety”, as Hugh Turney had remarked.

Cranmer replied with his four-finger-in-mouth whistle, a veritable screecher.

Hardly had the patrol, or what was left of it, halted when an elderly man with a face of salt looked out of an upper window of one of the small houses of the lane, and cried out irritably,

“Be quiet, you boys! Can’t you see what is coming?”

Phillip saw it was Mr. “Lower” Low, father of Lennie Low, known to him only because he sometimes came to the house to fetch Mrs. Low, who sewed for Mother and Grannie.

The reason of Mr. “Lower” Low’s warning was an approaching funeral procession. Phillip stared at the black high-stepping horses with top-knots like sweep’s brooms on their heads, at the top-hatted mutes standing behind the crystal and nickel-plated sides of the coach, at the polished coffin, covered with white lilies, within. When all had gone through the iron gates, the patrol fell in again, and marched down the road to Randiswell. They hurried, for it was already late. At the High Street they decided to go by tram. It was a ha’penny fare each to Fordesmill.

When they arrived there Phillip, to show off his prowess and pride as patrol leader, decided to jump off before the tram stopped at the terminus. He was standing, when he jumped, with his face towards the rear of the tram, just as it was rattling over the points to take position for the return journey. He landed, not as expected, upon his feet, but on his back, with feet in air. His broomstick bounced into the gutter, upsetting an urchin who was carrying a ha’penny pail of horse-dung hopefully for sale to some local gardener. Phillip lay in the remains of the scraping, an agonised pain at the end of his spine. Then,
remembering the bugle, he twisted over, to see with relief that it was not damaged. Slowly he got to his feet, and was picking up the “pole” when he saw Father on the Sunbeam crossing the road towards him.

“Why didn’t you wait until the tram stopped, you silly boy? Why, you might have been run over, if a cart or motorcar had been following! This isn’t the horse-tram any longer, you know. Well, it will be a useful lesson for the future. Do you feel all right?”

“Yes—thank—you, Father,” Phillip managed to say. His back hurt, but his concern was lest Father should forbid him to go scouting any more. And supposing Father saw Cranmer? He dared not look to see if Cranmer was waiting with Freddy and Desmond by the tram-stop, in case he should give a clue to his thoughts.

Cranmer, having recognised the bearded figure on the bicycle, had skedaddled, to hide among the Saturday afternoon fruit, china, and lace-curtain stalls on the other side of the Green. From behind a barrow piled with mussels and cockles he watched anxiously, wanting to go to his great friend’s aid, while realising that Phillip’s Ol’man might give Phil a ’iding later on for ’aving ’im in the Blood’arnds. Waiting there, Cranmer forgot the kind of hat he was wearing: a hat which served the opposite purpose of that for which it had been imagined.

Richard recognised the face under the hat before the head bobbed from view. He said nothing, then or later; but reflected, as he cycled away from the litter of paper, banana skins, and cabbage leaves around the stalls, that if his son’s so-called friend had had any decent feeling in him, he would surely have gone to that friend in trouble, instead of skulking until any possible trouble had blown over.

By the time he got to the bottom of Brumley Hill, a pleasant sweat had relieved Richard of this and similar grievous thoughts; and after cycling to the top of that tree-shaded slope, he was free to enter a private world of pleasure in the lanes winding through the orchards of north-west Kent. There had been no rain for a week and more; the white dust was thick and loose, glinting with particles of flint; various birds, including partridges and turtle doves, dusted themselves in front of him as he pedalled along to the haven of the Salt Box, for an ideal tea.

About half a dozen miles London-wards from the North Downs, Phillip and his shrunken patrol sat round their camp fire in Whitefoot Lane woods. They had seen no sign of Peter Wallace; and after a period of anxious deliberation, had made their fire, cooked their sausages and sliced potatoes, and made tea of the compressed pellets. Phillip imagined, as he gazed proudly at his pennant on the pole stuck in the ground, that they were a band of hunters, in the depths of Africa. Now was the time to teach his men the Zulu’s chant, from
Scouting
for
Boys.

“Now when Cranmer whines ‘Een gonyama’, you, Freddy”—Phillip chose Freddy to make him feel important—“will translate, and say, ‘He is a Lion’. Then you all say together, in chorus, in sort of surprise, ‘Only a lion?’ Then you give a sort of triumphant shout, all together, ‘Invooboo!” Then you, Freddy, translate this again, into English, only louder, ‘No, he is greater than that, he is a Hippopotamus’. Hippo-pot-amus, Freddy. You can say just ‘Hippo’ if you like, it’s a bit of a tongue-twister, I admit. It means ‘River Horse’. Anyhow, you say it Freddy. Then everyone cries ‘Ya Bo!’ and then Freddy, you say the English ‘Yes sir, yes sir!’, and after that ‘Invooboo!’ once more. Then you all shout, ‘He is a Hippopotamus!’ Is that quite clear to everyone?”

Nobody replied.

“All right, you begin, Corporal Cranmer.”

Cranmer gave a faint grin, and remained silent. Suddenly he slapped his knee. “Blime, these mosskeeters ’v’ got beaks like bleedun parrits!”

“No swearing! Don’t muck about, men. Come on, ‘Een gonyama’. Then Freddy follows with ‘He is a Lion’. Look, look! Coo, what a sod! Let’s watch it!”

A mosquito stood on the back of his hand, gripping with its thin legs, slightly bent.

“Christmas, look at its blinkin’ proboscis boring for my blood!
Keep your physog away, don’t breath on it, Freddy! It may fly away. Aough! It’s got through! Coo, look how it guzzles! Don’t snuffle so much, Freddy, keep your snout out of it. I want to see how much a mosquito can drink. Look, it’s filling out behind, like a little red airship.”

“Blime, it’s a soddin’ Invooboo wiv’ wings on,” said Cranmer, admiringly.

The skin of the insect was visibly swelling.

“Just like a hippopotamus, isn’t it?” said Phillip. “I hope the bloody thing busts! Don’t you worry, I won’t let it get away! Just let’s see if it can fly when it’s full. Then let’s torture it!”

The body was now thrice its original size.

“It’s got the best part of a whole drop inside it. Look, it’s pulled out its beastly snout! Here goes!” Phillip squashed it, then rubbed off the smear of blood on a leaf.

“I votes we move on, there’s more of the beastly things humming about, men. We must leave no sign of our fire, we don’t want Peter to know we’ve been here.”

The fire was stamped out. Mess tins were cleaned with roots of grass, and fixed to belts again.

“I votes we go down to Cutler’s Pond! Fall in, men!”

Phillip was thinking of the tasty broken biscuits which could be bought in the little wooden shop standing below the empty, broken, ivy-grown mill house where once, Father had told them, knives were ground, and scissors sharpened.

A wizened dame, small in keeping with her shop, which was scarcely more than nine feet square, sat behind the counter. She sold farthing’s worth of broken biscuits, sweets, and licorice root, besides whipping tops, marbles, and in season, red chinese crackers. There was ginger pop, too, but this cost a ha’penny a glass; and the tram-ride had seriously depleted funds earlier that afternoon. However, Phillip had a penny left; with this he bought four paper cones of broken biscuits for himself and his men, each holding a quarter of a pound.

“We ought to hurry home now, men. My father said if I was late, he’d forbid me coming out again. Napoleon, would you like to play the bugle, going back?”

Phillip was anxious about Freddy Payne leaving the patrol. He might easily decide to join the Greyhounds, then there would be no bugle.

“Fall in! Quick march! Play, Napoleon! It doesn’t matter if the notes squeak a bit. You’re much better’n I am, anyway.”

Thus flattered, Napoleon did his best.

After Fordesmill, the pewter bugle swung cold and unblown against its owner’s blue serge hip; there was hardly a puff left in Napoleon’s body. Blisters on the balls of his feet corresponded roughly to the blakeys under them. The new tenderfoot Desmond also marched desperately, with blistered heels, carrying the coat which now weighed so heavily upon his arm.

At the Green, amidst the lights of trams, shops, stalls, and carts, Phillip decided to be a hero. He would carry Freddy Payne, who was now grizzling, over his shoulder, as in the illustration in
Scouting
for
Boys.
So Napoleon was hoisted up, and the Bloodhounds traipsed onwards, with frequent halts for rest. Phillip, too, had blisters. Only Cranmer, whose feet had been hardened by early bootless years, seemed fresh. Soon Napoleon was riding pick-a-back on the poor boy’s back. It seemed an age before they left the High Street, and turned off through St. Mary’s Churchyard.

Hardly had they done so, when Richard went by on the Sunbeam.

*

His afternoon had been serene, in a lonely sort of way—the loneliness of a man who felt he was growing old, and had never found love.

There was a steep narrow lane beside a wood near the Salt Box, descending to a wide open valley. This was one of his especial haunts, sunlit and quiet, where seldom another person was to be seen. Here he had found his peace. Strolling among mossy flints under the beeches, he had sat down to watch a family of green woodpeckers about their nest, chipped high up in a grey snake-like bole of a tree. The westering sun gilded its bark, and illuminated the paint-pot colours of the birds. Afterwards, returning to the small cottage of red brick and tiles built in the shape of an old wooden salt box, he said goodbye to the woman who had given him tea, and mounting his cycle, pedalled back the way he had come, between hedges in bud with wild rose, bryony, and plowman’s spikenard.

He passed a quarry where chalk was burned for lime, and stopped to watch a young cuckoo on the gate-post beside the lane leading down to the quarry; and thence onwards again, to
the Fish Ponds of Reynard’s Common. Here under the pines on the banks of the cool and silent sheet of water he undressed and put on his bathing combinations, a woollen garment patterned with blue and white rings which buttoned up the front from waist to neck, and concealed all his body between neck, elbows, and knee-caps. Then a dive into the deep water, shattering the images of trees; and a slow, delightful circuit of the lake, with feelings that he was a boy again, back in a world of enchantment.

Refreshed after his swim, he dressed in luxurious aloneness, listening to the cooing of doves and the haunting cadences of a woodlark; and after a walk around the upper lake, green with floating lily-leaves, he departed with a wave of his hand, as to an old friend; and then back across the common, redolent of gorse in bloom scenting the air.

The sun was down in the west as he reached Randiswell, to pedal slowly through that village now almost entirely urbanised, yet peaceful under the windless, cloudless summer evening that gave a feeling of ease to most men out in the open air. He sighed, thinking of the home he was returning to.

He walked the Sunbeam, with consideration for its tyres, but really because he was tired, up Hillside Road.

“Is Phillip back yet, Hetty?”

“Not yet, Dickie, but I am expecting him any minute now.”

Richard pulled out his watch, then exclaimed somewhat testily, “His time is seven o’clock, and it is now getting on for nine! Why is he not home? He knows his proper time! I shall have to forbid this so-called scouting, unless——”

When Phillip had not appeared by five minutes after the hour, Richard lit the Lucas silver-plated oil-lamp of the Sunbeam, and went out to look for him. Confound the boy, why could he not play the game? He was incapable of doing the decent thing, without the need for constant reprimand.

*

Having rested on the wide grey stone steps of St. Mary’s church, the Bloodhound patrol went on again, Napoleon once more pick-a-back on Cranmer. Phillip had the bugle now, ready to show Randiswell, as soon as they got over the top of the bridge, what sort of a patrol they were.

His effort met with no sympathy. The little procession was greeted by the jeers of small boys, waiting for their parents outside
the Railway pub, with its steamy lighted windows and shouted songs and cries within.

“Yah! Stone ’em! Boo! Boo!”

“’Ere come the Boy Sprouts, laff at ’em!”

“Don’t take any notice, don’t heed them, I say,” said Phillip.

As he passed the clock in Hawkins the barber’s window he saw it was nearly a quarter past nine. Crikey!

The bugling expired.

Opposite the area of waste-land beyond Hern’s shop, where new hoardings for advertisements were being erected, Phillip suddenly cried out, “Cave! My Father! I must go!” and hastily unslinging the bugle, gave it to the new man, before diving under the wooden framework.

Richard, passing on the Sunbeam with its colza-flame showing red and green in the diamond-shaped side-windows of the silver lamp on his front forks, caught a glimpse of a pale cloth hat and pennant vanishing under the wooden framework of the hoarding; but when he entered the porch of “Lindenheim” six minutes later and unlocked the door, he heard the last patter of bare feet up the stairs as Phillip disappeared towards his bedroom.