Young Phillip Maddison (32 page)

“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—

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!

Who else was playing peeping Tom? Ah, there was old “Sailor” Jenkins, of No. 8, the swanker, white yachting cap on head, shielding his eyes from the sun, as he stood between his arch of privet trained over his gate, trying to look like the captain of a ship.

Mr. Jenkins was a tall, handsome man of about thirty; he had told Phillip, soon after coming to live in the road, that everyone
mistook him for Lewis Waller, the matinee idol. At first Phillip had been greatly impressed by Mr. Jenkins. During the summer evenings, while trimming his hedge, which he did with almost mathematical exactitude, Mr. Jenkins whistled, with a flute-like whistle, musical comedy songs as he stood, wearing yachting cap and brass-buttoned blue reefer jacket, and white canvas shoes below his trousers, clipping here, peering there, sometimes hesitating before making a delicate snip. Phillip had admired the sailor, until one evening a very strange thing had happened.

Phillip, walking silently in rubber plimsolls, had gone down to speak with his new and admired grown-up friend; and there he had seen, to his utter surprise, an entirely different Mr. Jenkins. His face no longer resembled an actor’s. Mr. Jenkins, who had not seen him, was swearing in a level cold deadly quiet voice at lowly Mrs. Jenkins, who was standing by an open window, crying, a handkerchief to her eyes. When Mr. Jenkins saw him, his face changed, and coming through his gate, he bent down to whisper something to him, while holding his arm at the elbow, as Mr. Prout had done when he was afraid. “Don’t tell a soul about what you heard, will you?” Mr. Jenkins had whispered. “My wife and I don’t get on! We don’t see eye to eye. How could we? When I married her, she was only a back-street woman.”

Phillip did not quite understand what “Sailor” Jenkins meant; but he was never quite the same romantic figure afterwards.

So
Whoosh!
a second imaginary clay-bullet whizzed through the air—
whopp!
and old Jenkins’ pavement yachting hat was sent spinning off the black wavy-haired head. Who else was there who deserved the Order of the Clay Bullet?

Looking down the road, Phillip saw Mrs. Neville sitting in the window of her flat. He waved. She waved back. She was all right, she was allowed to look. He had already told her all about Uncle Charley’s home-coming.