Young Phillip Maddison (38 page)

“What I’d like would be rooms in a farmhouse, but I’m about twenty years too late for that, I suppose.”

“There’s Joy Farm, Uncle Charley!” cried Phillip.

“Joy Farm? Can such a name exist in Wakenham?”

“I saw a notice on the gate-post in Randiswell Lane, saying ‘Rooms to let’. Father used to live there before he married Mother, and he says they were respectable people. It was very clean in the cowhouse.”

Uncle Charley roared with laughter. “Is that the part your respected parent lived in? Ha ha ha! Well, thanks for the tip, young feller.”

U
NCLE
C
HARLEY
and Auntie Flo seemed pleased with Joy Farm. There was some sort of a garden, an orchard of apple and plum trees, and fields of cabbage surrounding the dingy Georgian yellow-brick house. No more corn-fields; no more rotation of crops; Joy Farm was a farm almost only in name. The land, said the farmer, had been sold over his head for building, and he was only hanging on until he could find another farm out in the country. He was glad to let his rooms.

On the following Sunday, when supposed to be going to St. Cyprian’s church, Phillip went instead down past the cemetery, to Joy Farm. Once past the gates, he took Timmy Rat from under his jacket, and let him sit outside.

He hid Timmy Rat again before he went into the house, for a surprise. Through the window he saw his cousin Ralph Cakebread, whom he did not like. Ralph was no longer an apprentice in High Holborn, owing to his flat feet, Mother had said. Ralph was now hoping to go to sea, as an apprentice in the merchant service. At sea, Mother said, the flatness of Ralph’s feet would not bother him so much, for he would not have to stand about a lot in one place. This information was slightly puzzling to Phillip, for decks of ships were more or less like floors, which were flat, and had made Ralph’s feet flat by so much standing on them. Even if he moved from one spot to another on a ship’s
deck, it would still be flat under his feet. “Not through the Bay of Biscay, dear!” said Mother.

“Hullo,” said Phillip, to Ralph, through the open window. “I hope your feet are a little better.”

Thinking that this was meant for cheek, Ralph replied, in the sharp defensive manner of apprentices herded in garret dormitories, “You’d better ask them, I haven’t seen them lately.”

Phillip felt rebuffed, for he had meant the enquiry about Ralph’s feet to be a kind one. Then a voice he recognised as Uncle Joseph’s said, with a guffaw like a donkey’s, “‘A year ago I used Pears’ Soap, since then I have used no other’,” followed by his braying laugh. Uncle Joseph was Mother’s youngest brother. Mother said he was a little different from the others, owing to having been dropped on his head as a baby. Uncle Joey, as he was called, usually made rather silly jokes about people’s feet and things like that, except when ladies were present.

“Hullo, my son, come on in,” said Uncle Charley, and Phillip went into the parlour, the white rat still hidden under his jacket. He saw Petal reading on the sofa, fingers plugged in ears; and Tommy was sticking stamps into his book, at the table.

Cousin Ralph had a new and very large pipe, which he was filling from Uncle Charley’s crocodile skin pouch.

“What’s this tobacco, Charley?” he asked, and on being told that it was John Cotton, he shouted, “Thank God I’ve got a large pipe, old man!” Then folding the pouch, he tossed it over the table to Uncle. “Got a light?” he asked next, in a new loud gruff voice, which sounded funny coming from his thin pale face with dark circles under the eyes, and high starched man’s collar almost up to the lobes of his ears, which were unusually low-placed on his skull. He sat on the corner of the table, swinging his leg.

Staring down at Phillip, he cried, with exaggerated alarm, “God! Don’t tell me I’ve got ’em again! Pink-eyed rats! I must take more water with it in future!” Jumping off the table, he went to Phillip and opened his jacket. Taking out Timmy Rat, he held it by the tail, while Timmy Rat twisted up, trying to catch his own tail and climb up it.

“Watch its eyes drop out!” said Ralph. “I bet it breaks its back first!”

“Don’t torture my rat!” cried Phillip. “Give him to me, please.”

Ralph ran round the room, holding the rat at arm’s length and enjoying the fun.

“Timmy’s not very strong, give him back to me,” pleaded Phillip.

Ralph dodged him, and went to the open window, where sat the farm cat, an old grimalkin with wide tabby face and torn ears, obviously a fighter. Ralph approached it, as though he was going to give the rat to it.

“No!” screeched Phillip; then he ran at his cousin, and getting hold of the back of his collar, pulled Ralph over backwards. They fell together beside the table. The big curved pipe clattered over the oilcloth.

“You little toe-rag, I’ll pay you out for that!” gasped Ralph, assuming the rage that had gone from Phillip, who now tried to be reasonable.

“Apologise!” cried Ralph.

“Shan’t! You leave my rat alone!”

“Can’t stand a joke, can you? Mother’s little darling!” Ralph raised an arm to his ear, as though about to give Phillip a back-hander. Then, baring his teeth, he ran at Phillip.

“Don’t get ratty, I say, I was only funning, Ralph!” said Phillip, diving under the table. Ralph pulled him out by a leg.

“Haw haw haw!” guffawed Uncle Joey, who had an innocent face with mild grey eyes, and a long upper-lip hidden by a thick drooping moustache. “Mind the smell of his feet don’t knock you over, Ralph.”

Joseph Turney’s jokes about feet were never meant to be personal. Any feet would do for his sense of fun.

Phillip was now on his back. Holding up crossed fingers, he said, “Fainits! I cry Fainits!” Ralph still held his leg.

“If you can’t take a joke, then take this!” said Ralph, twisting his leg. Raising himself on his hands, Phillip kicked himself free, and rolling over, got on his feet and darted round the table. Ralph grabbed him again by the jacket, and swung it sideways, trying to fling Phillip down. Then with a leap he landed on top of his much smaller cousin, and held him down.

“My ear, my ear!” yelled Phillip. “My head, oh my head! You swine!” as Ralph got his knees upon the bones of his arms, and started to grind the muscles. “Help, Tommy, help! Oh, you bloody——”

Tommy came to his aid. With a cry of “Skellum!” he tried to pull Ralph off. Failing to do this, he stepped back and took a swinging kick at him. Ralph dodged, caught a
boot, gave a twist, and Tommy went down hard on the oilcloth.

Petal now came to the rescue. Putting down the
Life
of
Adelina
Patti,
she darted up behind Ralph and nipped the short hairs of his neck between the fingers and thumbs of both hands, and pulled sideways. It was now Ralph’s turn to yell. Uncle Charley threw back his head and roared with laughter.

Ralph got up, and glared about him, with the glare of the dormitory-hunted, and later on the hunter, showing his teeth. Petal took no notice of the glare, but stood her ground, and kicked him expertly on the shin. Ralph howled. She kicked him again. He retreated. She followed him round the table, while he tried to appear indifferent.

“You young bitch!” he hissed, as he backed away from her.

To Phillip, standing on the other side of the table and stroking Timmy Rat, it seemed an awful word. It was the first time he had heard it used for a girl or woman. It just showed how depraved Ralph’s mind was. Mother had told him that Ralph had an unhealthy mind, and he must not take any notice of what he said, for he had run wild after his father had died of enteric in the Boer War, with Hubert his eldest brother away at boarding school, and only Aunt Dorrie to control him. It was strange that Uncle Charley did not seem to mind the word at all. Perhaps he had not heard it. Only the lowest of the low used words like that, about a woman. Cow was sometimes used, but it was not so bad as the other word.

“What is going on down there?” called Aunt Flo’s voice from above. She was probably still in bed. Mother said that Aunt Flo’s idea of a happy life was to lie warm in bed, a pot of tea beside her, a box of chocolates open on the counterpane, and a novelette in her hand.

*

Florence Turney, twelve years younger than her husband, had discovered the delights of reading since coming from the uncultured veldt, where the only book had been a Bible. Her favourite authors were Gertie de S. Wentworth James and Elinor Glyn; although it should be said that the older novelist was a little too serious for her taste. She liked, too, the works of Mrs. Florence M. Barclay, particularly
The
Rosary,
a book generally said to be the favourite reading of the Tsar and Tsarina of Russia. Miss Gertie de S. Wentworth James most nearly expressed her own longings: the sevenpenny paper-backs were
always somewhat guiltily concealed under counterpane or cushion whenever the children came into the room, for two reasons, the more obvious being the books’ titles and lurid covers. The less obvious reason being that Flo was the daughter of a Calvinist Scots mother and a Dutch
voortrekker
father. Phillip had heard Uncle Hugh say to mother, “Through these latter-day romances many of the secret feelings of women approaching the change of life are exhaled;” and asking what this meant, was told that it was only the sort of things that Uncle Hugh was in the habit of saying; and he should take no notice.

“What’s all the noise about?” Aunt Flo’s voice called again, from upstairs.

“Only some horse-play among the lesser breeds,” shouted her husband. “And Petal showing herself to be a chip off the old block.”

He laughed again. Many times had his wife’s feet, bare and shod, gone for his shins—the traditionally vulnerable spot on the body of a native “boy” in need of correction.

“Now futsack you two boys, Ralph and I want to talk business.”

“Don’t be late for lunch, Tommy,” the voice of Aunt Flo called down.

“And don’t you!” shouted Uncle Charley. “Remember that our good landlady visits her relations on Sunday afternoons.”

“Petal and I will wash up, tell her. There’s a cold chicken and salad in the safe, if you feel peckish. Are you coming back here for lunch, Phillip?”

“I can’t, I didn’t ask Father’s permission before he went out on his bike, Aunty Flo. Thanks all the same. Oh, by the way, I forgot to tell you that Mother sent you her love, and hoped you would soon be better.”

“Why did she say that, when I’m not ill, Phillip?”

“Oh, I think she thought you might be a bit ill in bed.”

“But how does she know that I am in bed, Phillip?”

“Ha ha ha!” roared Uncle Charley. “Hetty obviously has the Turney second-sight, based on past experience!”

“You think you’re very funny, don’t you?” called down Aunt Flo. “Well, let me tell you this, you’re not half so funny as you look, as you’ll find out one of these days, my boy!” She sounded angry, as if a row were coming.

At this point Uncle Joey, the peace-maker as Uncle Hugh called him, attempted to calm things down by a story. It was
about Crippen, who had been caught with Miss Le Neve on arrival in America by wireless telegraphy, the first murderer so to be caught. There were current innumerable stories on the subject of Dr. Crippen and the girl he had run away with after he had cut up his wife with a carving knife and hidden the sections in concrete, under a cellar of his London house. Phillip did not think much of the stories; he was secretly rather sorry for anyone, even a murderer, being caught, even if … he flinched from thinking further.

Uncle Joey, with several haw-haws, began his story.

“A feller went into a theatre late, and made a noise getting to his seat. He was knocked over by someone unlacing his tight boots, haw-haw! Getting up, he went on down the aisle to his row, near the front, on tip-toe. He went so slowly and quietly that the hero looked over the footlights and hissed, ‘Who are you, Crippen?’ ‘No, I’m creepin’,’ the fellow explained. Haw-haw! Go on, Phillip, laugh!”

“I don’t think it’s funny, that’s all,” replied Phillip. “Come on, Tommy, let’s go for a walk on the Hillies.”

“Ee-aw, donkey boy!” cried Ralph. “Mind you don’t grow up like your old man!”

*

“It’s just like Ralph’s cheek, apeing a man, to call Uncle Charley by his Christian name,” remarked Phillip, as he and Tommy walked down the orchard path, through sooted trees gnarled with canker, which rose forlornly out of rank grass growing from acidulated yellow clay. All but twenty acres of the farm were now built upon; great boards advertised the weedy fields as Desirable Building Sites. Phillip, who had known these fields in former years, felt vaguely disturbed at the change. On the other side of the lane was the cemetery, looking whiter with marble tombstones every time he passed that way.

“Dad doesn’t mind,” said Tommy. “I call him Charley sometimes, so does Pet.”

“Good lord, I wouldn’t dare to do that to my Father,” replied Phillip. “What was cousin Ralph talking about so earnestly with Uncle Charley?”

“He wants Dad to take up agencies for motorbikes, and give him a job when we return to South Africa.”

“Motorbikes, how spiffing! Better’n push bikes, any old day!”

“That’s what Dad said, when he sold the import business for
bikes. He says motorbikes will oust them in a few years. But Schleigermann stole a march on him, and got the agency for the best German and British motorbikes. Now Dad wants to get the Belgian agency, for F N’s. Where’re we going, on the Hill?”

People were coming out of church. Phillip looked at Tommy critically. He wore his weekday clothes. His black stockings were rolled down to his knees, his blue serge knickerbockers were untidy, and he wore only a blue jersey, with no coat. Obsessed with the Sunday idea of correctitude in connection with Helena Rolls, Phillip made an excuse to say goodbye to Tommy.

“I’ve just remembered I have to see somebody, Tommy.” As a concession he added, “Will you take Timmy Rat home for me, and put him in his box? Latch the lid, won’t you, for Gran’pa’s cat sometimes sneaks in, the brute. Well, au revoir, I’ll see you soon,” and with anxious heart he proceeded alone, upon his hopeless quest for beauty in one face in the Sunday parade.

*

The next morning the Rev. E. H. P. Mundy, M.A. came freewheeling down the gully, front wheel shaky on the loose pebbles, one hand holding the brim of his black straw hat, a smile on his ruddy face. Slowing up at the green iron gates, he turned left, gave his handlebars a jerk at the kerbstone, and so continued his ride upon the pavement. There were, of course, rules against wheeled traffic on all pavements—the older people still spoke of them as sidewalks—but Mr. Mundy always declared that, as he had cycled there before they were made, he had an
a
priori
right of way. Furthermore, why should he be delayed, in visiting his flock (most of them, he thought privately, were sheep, with a few honest goats here and there) by punctures? Was the work of the Almighty to be mocked by hissing air? Certainly not! So Mr. Mundy rode awheel on paving, flag-stone, cinder path and ballast walk, wherever the roads beside them were flinty. Policemen did not appear to see him.