Young Phillip Maddison (50 page)

The front door closed gently on its oiled multiple latches.

“Hur. Now we can breathe!” exclaimed Phillip.

At twenty minutes to nine Phillip left for school, whistling
I
wouldn’t
leave
my
Little
Wooden
Hut
for
You,
which Petal, who with her brother Tommy lived with Aunt Dorrie during the holidays, had taught him to sing. Petal and Mavis and Maude, Aunt Dorrie’s daughter, were all at the Convent together.

At fifteen minutes to the hour Doris left, for the Grey Ladies School.

At fourteen minutes to nine Hetty went in to see Papa, who was sitting at the breakfast table, staring straight in front of him. On the table-cloth beside him was a telegram, saying that Hugh Turney had died in the nursing home in Tranquil Vale at half past six that morning.

T
HE
General Manager of the Moon Fire Office replied to Phillip's letter, asking him to present himself at noon on Monday of the following week, and to confirm if the appointment was convenient. Phillip did so, under Richard's eye.

“You will have to get yourself some decent clothes to go up in. Today, I saw some black vicuna jackets in the sale at the Stores. You will want a pair of striped trousers, too; and while you are there, you might choose yourself a raincoat. Dark grey, or black, will be suitable.”

“When shall I go, Father? I am playing footer on Wednesday afternoon.”

“Then you had better go up on Saturday afternoon. Now I wonder if you can be trusted to get the right things?”

“Phillip can perhaps get them on approval, Dickie.”

“When his appointment is next Monday? To hear you talk, no one would imagine that the boy's entire future is at stake!”

“I meant, Dickie, that there is time now to order the clothes on approval. They would be here in a matter of two days, and I
could ask Carter Paterson to call the next day for anything that had to go back.”

“You should know by now that articles in Sales are not sent on approval.”

Richard looked at
The
Daily
Trident,
where there was an interesting article about the hazards of Polar exploration, with references to Peary, Amundsen, Scott, and Shackleton. But how could he read with such sloppy people in the room? With a sigh he looked up again.

“If I had been you, Phillip, I would have taken the opportunity to go to Sydney, when you had the chance! I had the same chance once, let me tell you, and I had to turn it down, as others were involved. However, that is past and done with.” He looked at his paper again, found it impossible to read; and said, regarding Hetty, “If Phillip is sensible, he will go up on Wednesday. Let him choose for himself, he is old enough now. I will write down his requirements, then he can put the items down to my account, and bring them home here. Then we can all see the transformation of your best boy for ourselves, on Wednesday night.”

“Then I shan't be playing football?” asked Phillip, disappointment in his voice.

Richard tossed the paper on to the table, and stood up. He had started the article half-way through tea, but owing to the feeling in the room he had never got beyond the third paragraph. Now, wagging a forefinger at Phillip, he said with scarcely suppressed exasperation, “You
are
a contrary cuss, aren't you! All these years you have been dodging games whenever you could, and now that you are on the point of leaving school, suddenly you find a game of football to be of paramount importance! Well, there is an old saying in the West Country, ‘It be a lazy hoss what sweats to see the saddle'.”

Hetty laughed. Her laugh broke the tension. Richard sat down, and took up the paper once more.

“Zzct! Gee up! Gee up!” said Phillip, pretending he was a horse.

“I'll see that he goes up on Wednesday, dear. I have something I want to do in London, so we can go together, can't we, Phillip?”

She nodded at him, plainly urging him to reply, to let Dickie see that he, had some interest in what was being done for him. Phillip pretended to be eating grass off the tablecloth. Holding
up the paper before him, Richard appeared to be oblivious of what was going on. Thus encouraged, Hetty remarked, “Well, I think at least you might say thank you to your Father, Phillip.”

“Yes, of course, thank you very much, Father. Of course I will pay you back.”

“H'm, I still think you will live to regret that you did not go to Australia.”

Tea proceeded in silence, until Doris whispered something to her mother.

“Speak out, girl!” said Richard. “Anyone would think this house was a—well, whatever a whispering house is called.”

Doris was still a reserved, at times a subdued, girl, despite her attendance at the College of Grey Ladies on the Heath. Thomas Turney had offered to pay the fees, as he paid, or had paid, for the education of some of his other grandchildren—Mavis and Maude at the Convent, Hubert at Dulwich as a boarder, Gerald and Ralph at day schools.

He had supported, in addition, his invalid son Hugh, and his widowed daughter Dorothy.

*

Since going to the convent, Petal had changed, thought Phillip, whenever he saw her during holidays from Thildonck. She had become withdrawn, reflective, cool. She and Tommy lived with Aunt Dorrie when they were home from school.

Mrs. Neville knew a great deal about the family and its doings from Phillip. He loved talking to her, and spent quite a lot of his time there. And to the flat he went when, returning with his mother on the following Wednesday, brown-paper parcel under arm, they came to the bottom of Hillside Road.

“I won't be long, Mum. Mrs. Neville is rather interested in how I get on, you see.”

“Very well, dear, I am glad you have someone in whom you can confide. But don't be too long, will you? I think Gran'pa would like to see you. Your Father is also interested in you, you know.”

Phillip had a second tea with Mrs. Neville. She said he looked extremely nice in his grown-up suit. Talking to her, he lost for the moment his apprehension of the interview on the coming Monday.

The black vicuna jacket, of smooth and soft and durable cloth, went with his dark hair and deep blue eyes, thought Mrs.
Neville. He had bought two new shirts, white with stiff starched cuffs, a ready-made bow-tie, and three standup winged collars. There was a black vest with the jacket, and the trousers had the new fashionable turn-ups at the bottom, he explained.

“Now, dear, I expect your Mother will be expecting you,” said Mrs. Neville, after tea. “It was so kind of you to come in to see me. Come again, any time you feel like it. But I don't need to tell you that, do I?”

Phillip went home, while the feeling of apprehension grew again.

“H'm,” said Richard. “‘Now I see you stand before me, all this while you were disguised',” as he misquoted an old saying once applied to him by his own father.

*

The interview on the Monday took place in what to Phillip was an atmosphere of unreality, before the General Manager, a dark bearded man sitting at a big mahogany desk at the end of a large soft-carpeted room and two men standing beside him. One of these was the Secretary, a clean-shaven man who wore pince-nez spectacles on a fine gold chain slung over one ear. Neither smiled, but spoke in level, impersonal voices. Thus had new applicants been interviewed since time immemorial. The posts of general manager and secretary were filled, by custom, by members of the staff, long proven in steadiness and orthodoxy.

The third man had a pleasant expression on his face. He looked at Phillip with a look rather like that of Mr. Graham, the Old Boy who took snapshots on the school playing field. He had the same kind of eyes and moustache. After the bearded and clean-shaved men had spoken to Phillip, and read a letter which with sudden horror he recognised as having the coat-of-arms and the school address on the top, the letter was passed to this third man, who read it. Then they spoke together for a few moments, and the man with the moustache nodded, before looking at Phillip and smiling.

“This is Mr. Howlett, of our Wine Vault Lane Branch, who will shortly have a vacancy in his office——” began the bearded man, in a slow mumbling voice.

“Thank you, sir,” said Phillip, on his best behaviour.

“I haven't finished yet,” went on the General Manager, looking at Phillip's red silk handkerchief—given him by Gran'pa
—in his breast pocket. “I was about to say that Mr. Howlett is prepared to take you on probation, next Ladyday, at our usual commencing salary of forty pounds a year. Ladyday is the twenty-fifth of March. Will that be agreeable to you?”

“Oh yes, thank you, Sir!” exclaimed Phillip, much relieved at the thought of the two months ahead of him. The sand-martin and the chiff-chaff would arrive before then. He had been dreading that he might be told straight away to sit at a desk and do work of which he knew he would be entirely incapable.

This feeling was partly due to Richard's account to him of the good prospects available for actuaries, who had to work out statistics from masses of figures connected with the occupational risks, prospects of life, age-limits, records and analyses of hazards and diseases of hundreds of thousands of policy holders. True, Richard had been talking of Life Assurance, which the Moon Fire Office did not touch; and Phillip, with only half an eye and quarter of an ear on Father, had been reading about the nesting and fishing habits of the Osprey or Fish Hawk in
The
Field
open on the table before him, at the time; so there existed some slight confusion in Phillip's mind, and considerable apprehension about his ability in actuarial affairs. His relief was therefore great, and his expression of gratitude entirely genuine, as he thought of not having to start before Ladyday.

“You will receive by post a letter confirming this arrangement, then,” said the General Manager. “Good day to you.”

“Good day to you, sir.”

Phillip bowed, as Father had told him to do, and hastily left the room. He went along the corridor and ran down the wide carpeted stairs. At the bottom an old man in a frock coat and silk hat and white spats was being helped up the stairs, by a younger man most anxious to aid him. The old man had an immense face, with several chins, and an eyeglass stuck in one eye. He glared at Phillip, as he puffed and panted. Was this someone coming in to be insured? If so, it looked rather late in the day.

At the bottom of the stairs Phillip saw again the big mahogany swing doors he had passed on his way up. Would Father be working in there? He did not want to see Father. He was about to leave, when he saw through the glass of the doors the man who had smiled, approaching him. It was Mr. Howlett. Mr. Howlett raised his hand. It was too late to run away.

Howlett! What a queer name. He looked something like an owl, too.

“You disappeared before I could catch you, Maddison,” said Mr. Howlett, in a soft voice. “I came down through the mezzanine room, to tell your Father, who is just round the corner. Which way did you come down?”

“By the staircase over there, sir.”

“Ha, that was the Directors' Staircase, Maddison. Did you pass anyone?”

“Yes, sir, a very old gentleman.”

“Good lord!” ejaculated Mr. Howlett, “that must have been Mr. Henry Chaplin, the Chairman. The staff use the stairs this way,” and he pointed the way he had come.

“Yes, sir, I'll see to it in future.”

“I was going to ask you if you would care to have lunch with me. I don't know if your Father wants you to go with him, but if not, I should be quite happy if you would come with me. We have a luncheon club at the top of the building, but that is only for the staff—so we'll go to a little place I know.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Phillip hoped it was not the Voyagers' Club, for he did not particularly want to meet Uncle Hilary just then.

Richard got down from his stool, and came forward smiling.

“Well, Phillip, Mr. Howlett, my colleague, has told me the good news, and it only remains for me to congratulate you.”

Richard held out his hand, and Phillip shook it. His back felt very warm, for behind him was a huge rotund iron stove, in which a blazing coal fire burned. So they had fires in an office! It might not be too dusty after all.

Many other men were taking glances at them. A uniformed messenger smiled as he passed. Phillip began to feel that it was quite a nice place. From what Father had often said of City life, he had imagined it to be almost as grim as a prison, or at least as bad as school. This place wasn't half bad! He would be what Mother called one of the men in the moon!

Richard took him aside before he left, and said, “Do not forget to thank Mr. Howlett for his hospitality after luncheon, will you, old chap? Such little courtesies make all the difference in life.”

“Yes, Father.”

“Well, I must not keep you. Au revoir!” Father waved, and turned away.

Mr. Howlett seemed to Phillip to be ever so nice. They went to lunch in a chop house near the Bank of England. They sat among men wearing bowler hats before heavy wood tables, with high wooden partitions between each table. Most of the men read newspapers propped on cruets while eating, others played dominoes and drank coffee amidst clouds of pipe smoke. Mr. Howlett asked Phillip all about himself, and was told about the woodpeckers of Knollyswood Park, the rare willow tit in the alder over the brook Darenth, the peewits and other birds upon the Squire's land at Shooting Common. Mr. Howlett looked rather amused, Phillip thought, but the main thing about him was that he was all right.

It was quite different from lunch in the Voyagers Club with Uncle Hilary, where cigars, and not pipes, were smoked afterwards. Phillip preferred this chop house; it was exciting to be in the City, and to feel himself almost to be a City man. Mr. Howlett having removed his bowler, Phillip had done the same. Now, as they put them on again—Mr. Howlett having given the old shuffling waiter four coppers, Phillip noticed—Mr. Howlett said, “Well, Maddison, I shall look forward to seeing you at the office at a quarter to ten on Ladyday.”

“Yes, Mr. Howlett! And thank you very much for your hospitality. Goodbye, sir!”

“Enjoy yourself in the meanwhile,” said Mr. Howlett, puffing his pipe, outside the chop house.

“Yes, sir,” replied Phillip, raising his bowler; and turning away, he went along the pavement, simmering with exaltation, revolving his rolled umbrella.

*

Phillip determined to enjoy himself, as Mr. Howlett had suggested, during the next two months. He was safe until the sand-martin returned, and the chiff-chaff.

He sat among other nondescripts like himself in the Commercial Class, a group of boys who were supposed to be learning, for their advantage in after-life, the practice of Pitman's Shorthand, Book-keeping, Bills of Lading and Discount, and commercial French and German. One of the junior masters set them tasks every morning, and again in the afternoon; after that, they were left to work by themselves. The senior boy was in charge. They all took turns to dictate passages to be taken down in shorthand, and business letters in the two
languages, in the intervals of conversation upon personal matters.