Young Phillip Maddison (28 page)

“Will I get into trouble, please, sir?” said Lenny Low, scarce above a whisper.

“No! For I will, of course, as your friend and Scoutmaster, stand by you. Come on, a mistake has been made, so let’s all face it with true British grit! Like having a bad tooth out, that’s all! And when it’s all over, we’ll forget the whole business!”

Mr. Purley-Prout was like his old self again. Phillip could not look at his face. He could not look at Father’s face either—
Father said it was because he was shifty. Phillip felt that if he was shifty, so was Mr. Purley-Prout.

They walked in silence to Lenny Low’s house.

In the front room, Mr. Purley-Prout said that he had thought the whole matter out, and really, it was all a storm in a teacup. Boys, he said, sometimes dreamed, and, when awakening, felt great relief that it was, after all, only a bad dream. The human mind had been a mystery to even the greatest savants; men knew little about the human mind even in the present advanced age, when the ether had been pierced by wireless telegraphy, and the air conquered by flying machines and dirigibles. Illusions were common amongst the most intelligent as well as among ordinary, everyday sort of people like themselves. People would swear to their beliefs, and sincerely, even though they were proved to be based on imagination. There was the case of William Blake, the great metaphysical poet, who was thrashed as a child for saying he saw angels on a tree. The eighteenth century was a barbarous age, but today men knew better than to punish little children for the fantasies of their minds.

Then, looking up from the carpet of the front room, Mr. Purley-Prout said earnestly, holding his hands before him.

“Mr. and Mrs. Low! I swear to you on my honour as a Scoutmaster, as I am prepared to swear my oath in court to defend the good name of the Troop—and I most sincerely hope it will not be necessary—I swear to you that I gave your son money simply and solely because of a humble Christian impulse to do a good turn to others. Now Lenny dear, answer me this before your parents. Did I, or did I not, promise you the money before, or after, you had told me about the debt that hung like a dark cloud over your home?”

“After, Mr. Prout.”

“Thank you, Lenny, for your courage in telling the truth. I am far from being a rich man,” went on Mr. Purley-Prout. “Indeed, I am a poor man, but when I decided to form the North West Kent Troop of Baden-Powell’s Boy Scouts, it was with a determination to do all in my power, to spend every penny I possessed to help the youth of England. God knows I am no paragon, indeed in many ways I consider myself a failure, but when I heard from Lenny the sad story, it——”

Mr. Prout’s voice broke. He turned away, and blew his nose with two trumpet notes. He dabbed his eyes.

“Mr. and Mrs. Low, I have opened my heart to you! I can only hope, humbly, for your understanding. I ask you to consider just this one thing more. Would a man in my position, were he guilty of the unspeakable crime that has been whispered abroad simply and solely because of this money—I ask you, as I would ask any British court of justice should it be necessary to clear my good name—I repeat, I ask you, would any man in his senses, any guilty man that is, give any boy he had injured a half-sovereign, knowing that such an act would suggest the very thing that, if he were guilty, he would want to hush up?”

Mr. Purley-Prout looked from Mrs. Low’s face to Mr. Low’s face, then quickly back to Mrs. Low’s face again.

“I can only say to you, Mrs. Low, that if my generosity were misdirected, I am humbly sorry, and well have I paid for my impulsiveness. In future I shall think twice before I leap, in a world which so easily can miscontrue a generous act. And if this little storm in a teacup has served to allow us to know one another better, well then, it only fulfils the old adage, that it’s an ill wind which blows nobody any good! Phillip, thank you for standing by your Scoutmaster! Mrs. Low, I hope you are now in some way less a prey to anxiety. Mr. Low, I hope you will not think too hardly of Lenny, who will, I am sure, grow out of his functional hysteria—I had some training as a medical student before I decided I could serve humanity in other ways—and develop into a fine young man.”

“I’m sure I don’t quite know what to say, Mr. Prout,” began Mrs. Low; but Mr. Low interrupted and said, his jaw almost clenched,

“I do! Here is your half-sovereign back! I thank you for that part of your actions which were concerned with your good intentions.”

Mr. Purley-Prout looked at Mr. Low, as though puzzled. Mr. Purley-Prout seemed about to say something. Then he held out his hand to Mr. Low.

Mr. Low looked Mr. Purley-Prout in the eye, ignoring his hand. Then Mr. Low went to open the door. Mr. Low looked very grim, thought Phillip. He looked as though he would never speak to anyone ever again. Mrs. Low was crying, so was Lenny Low.

Mr. Purley-Prout rode away on his Dursley-Pedersen. Feeling lost for a moment, Phillip wandered into the cemetery, then he went to tell Mrs. Neville all about it.

The patrols scattered when the North West Kent Troop came to an end. It was said that Mr. Prout had gone to Rome, to live in a monastery.

*

Phillip decided to join the troop attached to St. Mary’s church. They had two buglers, a drum, and the parish hall every Thursday for lectures, games and
soirees.
Thither he went, and met a tall, dark, tight-lipped scoutmaster called Oscar Blackman, whose sallow face was adorned with an incipient moustache. With hardly a word of greeting, unsmiling, this authority ordered him to report with his patrol at the next Saturday afternoon parade.

When Phillip turned up, with Cranmer and Desmond, Mr. Blackman said, as Phillip saluted him, “Is this your patrol? What do you call yourselves?”

“The Bloodhounds, sir,” replied Phillip, standing to attention.

“Oh,” murmured Mr. Blackman, through pursed lips. Then he muttered, “Shades of Sherlock Holmes.”

Phillip thought that perhaps it was not a very favourable remark. Mr. Oscar Blackman, who was an Old Boy of his school, somehow seemed to be different from other scoutmasters he had seen. Cranmer remarked, when Mr. Blackman had gone away, that he looked “a bit of a black ’isself, wiv ’is gloomy fissog, bloomin’ great cape and sewerman’s boots.”

The new scoutmaster’s uniform was rather different, certainly. Mr. Oscar Blackman wore the same sort of cape that the Bloodhounds had, but not cut down. It was fastened by a chain at his throat, and when he cycled fast along the High Street on his Humber bicycle, in top gear, pushing with his black leather riding boots, the cape fluttered behind him.

“This bloke fancies ’isself as Dick Turpin,” said Cranmer, adding that he must have swiped the boots from a mounted copper. In this Cranmer was not far wrong, for the boots, together with the cape, had been bought at Murrage’s, old City of London mounted police gear.

“Dick Turpin” became his nickname among the three friends. After the first day, Dick Turpin said that they would have to join the other patrols, and become either Wolves or Kestrels. That was devastating news; but before Phillip could decide for himself, an occurrence at the next Thursday evening meeting in the Parish Hall decided for him.

The senior patrol leader, a younger brother of the Scout-master, a big, red-faced, curly-haired boy who went to Phillip’s school, took the meeting. He addressed them all, saying that his brother was very ill. Very ill indeed. He walked up and down dramatically on the platform, before the scouts waiting in silence to hear the news.

“Worn out by constant work for St. Mary’s Troop, on top of his day’s work in London,” declared the patrol leader of the Wolves, “my brother Oscar has finally succumbed to what at first was feared to be brain fever.”

The boys listened in silence.

“On Monday morning,” went on the Wolf leader, dramatically, “we found Oscar in his bedroom, wandering about in his woollen combinations. He had a dazed look in his eye, and a thermometer in his mouth, upside down.”

At this, Phillip could not help laughing.

The Wolf leader scowled as he pointed at the offender.

“Oh, it’s
you!
” he said, sarcastically. “It
would
be,
you bloody little hound!” He looked so angry that Phillip was scared. “Get out!” he shouted, in sudden rage. “Clear off, before I boot you up the backside, you little rough, you scholarship kid!”

Phillip hurried to get out. At the door he turned and said, “Coming, Cranmer?”

“Yes, take your guttersnipe pal with you. We don’t want you, either!” pointing to Desmond. Desmond hastened after Phillip.

“Brain fever my eye!” taunted Cranmer, at the door. “Dick Turpin ain’t got no brains to get ’ot!”

“I’ll smash you for that!” shouted the Wolf, leaping off the platform. “My brother is to have an operation for appendix tonight!”

“That won’t put in what wor never there!” retorted Cranmer, before he darted off among the tombstones.

“They’re all sissies in that there lot, if you arst my opinion,” he remarked, when Phillip and Desmond met him in the Rec. a few minutes later. “Good riddince ter bad rubbage!”

Which was, it must impartially be recorded, more or less what the senior patrol leader had just remarked about the Bloodhounds.

*

Despite his experiences, Phillip still dreamed of ideal scouting. At school he heard of a troop on the Heath that wanted recruits. Milton gave him the name and address of the headquarters.
There he went the next Wednesday night, for the mid-week meeting. It was held in a house in Tranquil Vale, near a pub called The Three Tuns. Phillip remembered the name of the pub because Uncle Hugh was sitting outside it, in the dogcart he sometimes hired from the publican who kept the Randiswell. Uncle Hugh’s man, called Bob, who came from a family living in Railway Terrace, was with him. Uncle Hugh offered Phillip a bottle of pop, but Phillip said he was going to a patrol leaders’ meeting, and must not be late.

Determined to make a good impression, he put on a happy face as he sat with the other patrol leaders—including Milton of the Peacocks—round a big mahogany table. He paid the closest attention to what the presiding scoutmaster said. The others wore their everyday clothes, but Phillip had changed into his Eton suit, with gloves. He listened with apparent great attention, a wide smile fixed across his over-soaped face. He wore a new collar and tie, both borrowed from his cousin Hubert. Determined not to make a fool of himself by talking too much—his mother had often told him that he had no reserve—Phillip sat silent during the entire discussion, except to say “Yes”, or “No”, as occasion demanded.

At the end of it, the scoutmaster said to Phillip that he could join the troop if he cared to, but not as a patrol leader.

“We have enough patrols for the present.”

Concealing his disappointment, Phillip continued to smile widely.

“By the way,” said Mr. Peacock. “Do you attend Dulwich College?”

“No, sir,” replied Phillip, surprised. Milton winked at him.

“Oh, I see. I asked only because you are wearing the school tie. You see, I happen to be an Old Alleynian.”

“Oh, this one?” said Phillip, pointing with a gloved hand. “My cousin Hubert Cakebread lent me this, as mine had a greasy mark on it, sir.” He smiled at Milton. He would not mind being in his patrol. He would do his very best, if Milton would have him. Was he not a friend of Helena Rolls?

*

What was left of the Bloodhounds—Phillip, Cranmer, and Desmond—paraded with the new troop on the following Saturday. Alas, there was no room in the Peacocks. But the Rattlesnakes needed men. Their call was a pebble in a small
potted-meat tin. The other Rattlesnakes did not like Cranmer. Cranmer made the rattle with his throat. They looked at him as though he were quite different from themselves. To Phillip the new troop seemed tame after Mr. Purley-Prout’s way of doing things. They marched about and scouted over the Heath, signalling with flags, or pretended to be hiding in the open, with golfers moving past them, or calling “Fore!” from the distance. Worst of all, there were no camp fires. And as they obviously looked down on Cranmer, Phillip said, “I votes we don’t turn up in the mouldy old Rattlesnakes again.”

Anyoldhow, declared Cranmer, he had to start work on Monday, in a tanning yard at Bermondsey; which left only Phillip and Desmond.

And that was the end of the Bloodhound Patrol.

D
URING
the winter Phillip discovered a big red book in the Free Library which had a list of all the villages of Kent, with their populations, industries, and principal landowners. The first place he looked for was where he had camped at Whitsun. The lord of the manor and principal landowner was the Right Honourable the Earl of Mersea, K.G. Knollyswood Park was the residence of the Dowager Countess of Mersea.

Reading the description, Phillip thought of writing to the Dowager Countess for permission to photograph birds in the park with his camera. Peter Wallace had got permission to go in Whitefoot Lane woods, so why shouldn’t he, in this ever so much better place?

In another volume among the thick red reference books he read how to write a letter to a peer or peeress of the realm. He copied out the specimen letter carefully upon a piece of paper; then returning to the Gazetteer, he searched for other names of landowners in North West Kent. Excited by the idea, he imagined Desmond and himself, with his Christmas-present five-bob Brownie, exploring far and wide in their secret preserves. They would study Nature and take wonderful photographs!

Obsessed by his idea, he hastened to the lending section and took out a book on the topography of North West Kent. It had several maps and photographs. He spent the next hour looking up villages on the map within a dozen miles of his home, where woods and streams were marked, and in transcribing particulars from the large red Gazetteer. Why not fishing, too? But perhaps he had better not ask for too much at once, in case it looked greedy, and permission therefore be refused.

There was no Cranmer to be met at the Free Library nowadays; so with his information he hurried home, and copied out the names and addresses, in code, into his
Schoolboy’s
Diary.
This had been another Christmas present: it had sketches of birds and animals in the corners of some of the pages, with brief descriptions. He knew them all by heart—fox, otter, badger, deer, hare, rabbit, stoat, pine-marten—capercailzie, pheasant, partridge, wren, ring-dove, owl, eagle.

Phillip had entered the most important things of the New Year in code. Therein were the names of rare motorcars; the times he had seen Helena Rolls in the distance; and when he had met Cranmer, one Sunday afternoon, down in the Warm Kitchen, below where the promenaders walked by the bandstand. In code, now, went the names and addresses of his preserves, as he thought of them.

These precautions would conceal the whereabouts of his preserves should he lose his diary, and some spy such as Ching find it and try and copy him. However, even if Ching found out that some of the names were spelt backwards, he would have to think very hard to puzzle out that when you were swizzed you were rooked, that Tall Yellow Leaves in Autumn meant
High
Elms,
Lamp was
Wick,
Bacon
Ham,
Yoho—fifteen dead men on a dead man’s chest, Yoho for a bottle of
rum
—Finished was
Dun,
Close was
Far,
and hardest of all, Norfolk Broads was wherries, or the Old English spelling Uerries.

Phillip’s handwriting in his diary was almost of a copperplate engraving care and precision: in his diary was his pride of life,
his passion, expressed in the regularity of the lettering made with firm strokes, and careful forming of loops and circles. This was his writing when he lived in what he was recording; in contrast to the formless and irregular scrawl of perplexity and distaste, the deadness in his school exercise-books. The letter he wrote that evening in the kitchen would have pleased, and certainly surprised Richard, had he seen it before Phillip slipped out to catch the half past eight collection in the red pillar-box in Charlotte Road.

The letter was not entirely of his own composition. Mr. Newman, in his little cottage opposite the Randiswell Baths, had made some suggestions as to how to make the best impression on so great a lady as the Dowager Countess of Mersea. Phillip borrowed a piece of Gran’pa’s best rag-made grey writing paper for the copperplate final draft.

Lindenheim,           

Wakenham,     

Kent.        

2 March 1910.

To

T
HE
R
IGHT
H
ONOURABLE
THE
D
OWAGER
C
OUNTESS OF
M
ERSEA
Madam,

I have the honour to present my Compliments to your Ladyship, and to request that the cause of scientific knowledge be advanced by permission for myself and my friend to roam your Ladyship’s land, both arable, grazing, and park, for the purpose of taking photographs of wild birds and their nests
in
situ,
without disturbance or in any way causing distress to the feathered songsters for which the writer has the greatest regard. I have some knowledge of the art and mystery of farming, and would in no wise cause damage or leave any gates open, so to cause possible straying of cattle, horses, sheep, or other live stock. I am fourteen years of age, and a student at Heath School, founded in Elizabethan times by the famous donor of our local Almshouses.

I have the honour to be,                                

Madam,                                                    

Your Ladyship’s Most Obedient Serva

P
HILLIP
M
ADDISON
.                        

The envelope of this missive, as he called it to himself, was sealed with red wax, and impressed with a signet ring he borrowed from a drawer in Father’s bedroom.

When a reply came two days later, in a grey envelope with a thin black band all round it, and a crest with motto on the flap, he opened it with trembling fingers holding the bread-knife to cut the top carefully; and taking out a white card, also lined with black, read first the signature beneath,
Constance
Mersea,
then the word
Permission
on top, in shaky slanting writing. Permission for Mr. Phillip Maddison and friend to enter the woods!

“Hurray, hurray, hurray!” he shouted.

When he had told Mother she said, “Finish your tea, dear, before going down to see Desmond. And be sure to write a note and thank your benefactor for her great kindness, won’t you?”

Phillip was too excited to listen; and pressing two pieces of bread and beef dripping together, he gulped his cup of tea, and with cheeks bulging ran down the road to give the wonderful news to Desmond. There he had a second tea, before going on down to tell the news to Mr. Newman.

The housekeeper, shawl over shoulders, small round wrinkled face and white hair scrimped up in a wispy bun at her neck, opened the door to him, and with her smiling little bow stepped back for him to come in. Mr. Newman was sitting in his parlour, the walls of which were lined with all the same kind of pictures. Blue and red predominated. In each one a volcano was erupting above the sea, while below ships were at anchor in icy cold water. There were seven such pictures, two on each of the three walls side by side, while the largest was alone, over the fireplace.

Phillip thought that Mr. Newman’s treasures represented his past life. If this was so, he must have spent some time at anchor, canvas furled so closely that he had never been able to sail away in time from those great eruptions of flame, steam, and cinder. Mr. Newman had told him about his visits to Italy, Japan, Iceland, and Mexico; and Phillip had assumed that he had been a sailor, as sometimes Mr. Newman wore an old peaked cap, while sitting by his iron grate shaped like a sea-shell. What adventures he must have had! The largest picture over his chimney piece was one of the Great Fire of San Francisco, while his frigate, every stitch rolled, lay at anchor in the bay.

Mr. Newman must have seen some fighting with cannibals, too. On the wall hung a cutlass with its golden hanging knot;
next to it a Polynesian painted mask and two crossed boomerangs; a jagged-bladed fishing spear with a light wood shaft. There were models of wooden ships in bottles, all with sails flying; and beside the hearth, by the bellows, a funny brown velvet cap, a pill-box hat, with a tassel hanging from it. Mr. Newman said it was a smoking cap, from Heidelberg in Germany.

Then there were the cabinets, shells, and bird’s eggs which lay, some in cotton wool, in many tiers of shallow drawers, around the walls.

“Ah, it is my little friend!” exclaimed the thin old gentleman, rising from his tattered leather armchair to bow and take Phillip’s hand. “What a pleasure to see you again. Pray take a chair, and draw up to the fire. I have wondered since last we met how you have fared with your letter writing. Ah, I see you have something to show me,” as he felt for his glasses in his breast pocket. To his housekeeper he said, “The tray, if you please, and the barrel of biscuits.”

Mr. Newman always said this whenever Phillip called; and his housekeeper always half-curtsied before withdrawing behind a curtain, to reappear with a silver tray on which was a decanter of wine and two glasses. She took the biscuit barrel from a shelf, and put it on a hassock beside Phillip. Mr. Newman was reading the card Phillip had given him.

“Permit me to congratulate you, dear boy, and to say that I am sure you will prove worthy of such a privilege. Now may I offer you a little port wine, with a biscuit?”

“Thank you very much, Mr. Newman.”

Phillip liked Mr. Newman’s port wine. It gave him a rusty-stinging warmness as it went down his gullet, to lay warm in his stomach. The biscuits were Osbornes, oval and crisp. He ate two; and after looking at some of the birds’ eggs in their trays, he said, unconscious of his abruptness, “I must go now, I think,” and shaking hands with Mr. Newman remembered the half-mechanical “Thank you for your hospitality, sir,” and hurriedly left the house to hasten back to Desmond.

*

Exhilarated by his success, Phillip borrowed more writing paper from Gran’pa, and sent his requests to the owners of woods and coverts at the places he had recorded in code in his diary. The baronet of “Lampbacon Court” replied in clear but shaky handwriting, giving permission; but asking Mr.
Phillip Maddison kindly to see the keeper before entering the coverts. The squire whose Queen Anne red brick house was behind the noisy and extensive rookery set back from the road along “Bee Yoho ley” Common also gave permission to Mr. Maddison and friend to walk over his estates. The chatelaine of the big house at “Easterbacon” likewise gave her consent, adding that fishing in the mere was permitted only after hay-making; while his Lordship of “Tall Yellow Leaves” wrote that he would be most pleased to give permission for Mr. Phillip Maddison to pursue his Nature Studies on his property.

Phillip swore both Desmond and Mrs. Neville to secrecy, before he showed them these replies. After tea, he and Desmond sat at the kitchen table, when it was cleared, and experimented with Desmond’s electrical apparatus. There was a coil of green-silk-covered wire, which when connected with Desmond’s curved pocket accumulator, with its transparent celluloid case, buzzed almost evilly with a hard little star-like spark. Two hollow brass handles extended on wire from the terminals; and when you touched these you got a shock.

So far Phillip had been afraid to hold them while the blue spark was buzzing like a little fly of hell that would never die under a spider’s fangs. Sometimes the blue spark turned green and threw off a wisp of smoke about a red speck; it was eating the brass spring away. Now, emboldened by his good fortune, he held the handles firmly while the coil was switched off, and said, “Try me!” Desmond moved over the switch, and the next moment Phillip had fallen sideways off his chair, with a loud and surprised shout. Picking himself up, he asked Desmond in an anxious voice if he supposed his Mother up in the drawing room had heard the word he had used, and been shocked? In case she had, he went up to apologise.

Mrs. Neville, crochetting in her armchair by the fire, showed surprise on her large face at the subdued question. No, she had heard nothing to shock her, she said gently. Had Neville’s experiment been a little strong? Oh no, replied Phillip, it had caught him on the hop, that was all; and after showing an interest in her work, he withdrew, with a slight bow, leaving Mrs. Neville with her face as straight as his … until he had gone out of the room, when the fat woman began to shake with silent laughter. There was another shout soon afterwards, when Desmond held the brass handles in order to do what Phillip could do.

After that, it was time for Phillip to leave, to do his homework. He had given up taking
The
Scout,
The
Gem
Library,
and
The
Magnet;
and in their place he bought the week-old copies of
The
Field
and
The
Autocar
from the Public Library, for two-pence. The only trouble with the copies was that they were dirty, particularly at the bottom corners of the pages, where the print was usually rubbed out by the grimy fingers of the Dogeared Brigade.

*

One Wednesday afternoon in Eastertide two boys on bicycles, each wearing a haversack containing a packet of banana sandwiches and slices of plum cake, crossed the familiar flint and gravel road across Reynard’s Common. It was a warm day; the wind of morning had dropped; sunshine lay over the linnet-haunted heath.

They entered Knollyswood Park by three oak steps, which led up to a swing gate, built in the long oak-cleft fence. Lifting over their bicycles, they hid them in the bracken growing below silver birch and other trees within. Walking away, eager to explore the new hunting grounds, Phillip was startled to hear a laughing, almost mocking cry in front. He stopped, his hand on Desmond’s shoulder, as a bird of many bright colours seemed to dive up in its flight over the greensward and stick to the white bole of a big birch in front.