The Tom Barber Trilogy_Volume I_Uncle Stephen, the Retreat, and Young Tom

by Forrest Reid

  “Don’t!” Pascoe said, glancing uneasily to right and left.

  “Don’t what?” answered Tom impatiently.

  “You’re dancing up and down: everybody’s staring at you.”

  This was purely a figment of imagination, for nobody was paying the least attention to them, but Pascoe seemed to have a morbid dread of publicity.

  The procession took nearly three hours to pass, and they waited till the end before themselves adjourning to the field. There the speeches had begun, but they were not interested in these. They wandered through the crowd; they listened to Mr. Sabine for a few minutes; they saw Max and avoided him; and they had begun to feel that the best of the show was over when Tom’s arm was grabbed from behind. “We’ve been looking for you,” Mother said. “Daddy and I are going home and you’d both better come with us: I’m sure you’ve had enough of this; I certainly have. Besides, you must be hungry; we had lunch so early.”

  It was what they had been thinking themselves, so they complied at once, and began to thread their way through the crowd, Daddy and Pascoe leading, Tom following with Mother.

  “Did you see James-Arthur?” he questioned eagerly. “He’s with his girl.”

  “What girl?” Mother answered. “And don’t talk like that.”

  “Like what?” Tom said; and then: “Why?”

  “Because I don’t like it—especially coming from a little boy.”

  “Well—anyhow she’s Nancy from the Green Lion.”

  Mother laughed. “Such nonsense! I suppose she was asking him how he was enjoying himself. Nancy used to be the Sabines’ maid, and I should think must be old enough to be James-Arthur’s mother.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “I WONDER how long this is going to last?” Mother said, pausing with the coffee-pot in her hand, but addressing nobody in particular, as she gazed out next morning through streaming window-panes at the soaked and dripping garden. “I should have thought it might have rained itself out by now: twice I woke up in the night and it was coming down in a deluge. It’s extraordinary the luck they always have for their procession. Just imagine if it had been like this yesterday!”

  Tom imagined it, and Daddy said: “The rain will do a lot of good: in fact if it keeps on all day I shan’t be sorry; the garden needs it. . . . Unfortunately the glass seems to be on the turn again.”

  He got up as he spoke to give it a further tap, which suggested to Tom how much better an arrangement it would be if the barometer affected the weather instead of the weather the barometer. “Then we could fix it so that it would never rain except at night.”

  “Wouldn’t that be rather unfair to some of your nocturnal friends?” Daddy reminded him, and after a prolonged and impartial consideration Tom was afraid it would.

  Supposing such an alteration could be made, Alfred for one wouldn’t like it. Nor would the owls who lived at Denny’s, nor the rats who lived by the river. Perhaps, then, things were better as they were. Yet it was an interesting question, and he began to ruminate on how his proposed amendment would go if put to the vote in a parliament of beasts. Cows and horses and dogs would vote for it, and of course wasps, bees, and butterflies; but frogs and ducks probably would vote on the other side, and cats and bats certainly would. Field mice would be for, and possibly indoor mice against. As he kept on enumerating the ayes and the noes he was impressed by the diversity of taste among Earth’s children, and the wonderful impartiality with which she looked after them all. She had no favourites—as he feared in her place he would have had—a hippopotamus, a blackbird, and a boy were equally pleasing to her, equally provided for, equally her sons. From which it most clearly followed that none had a right to interfere with or rob the others of their rights.

  Having discovered this truth, he immediately tried to communicate it, and was surprised when Mother told him he would find it expressed in the very first chapter of Genesis, when the various creatures are brought to Adam that he may name them: but Daddy, whose gaze had been fixed upon him throughout his struggle to find the right words, here interposed. “I don’t think that’s quite what he means:”—and on Tom’s confirming head-shake—“it goes further than that. The Edenic doctrine is autocratic, whereas Tom’s is based on an ethical conception of the greater democracy.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know what the greater democracy is,” Mother said.

  Daddy knew, however; and though from his choice of such long words Tom suspected that he was not taking it seriously, he could see at the same time that he had perfectly grasped the idea. “It means,” Daddy went on, “a social community in which you and I and Tom, and squirrels and hedgehogs and dogs and mice, all have precisely equal rights to freedom and happiness—the communist ideal, in short; with this important difference, that it is to be extended to the non-human races. . . . Therefore, no more animal circuses and shows; no more shutting up in zoos; and, if we are to be absolutely consistent, I’m afraid no more——”

  Daddy, turning a quizzical glance upon his son’s falling countenance, deliberately left the last word unspoken, but Tom had already seen that this was the end of the aquarium. . . .

  At least so far as fish were concerned: luckily there was nothing in it at present except tadpoles, and an aquarium must be just as good a place as any other for tadpoles to develop into frogs. Pascoe would grumble, no doubt, but it couldn’t be helped. . . .

  Lost in thought, he sat staring at the opposite wall until Mother brought him back to the present with a start. “Tom dear, do get on,” she urged him patiently. “It may be raining, but I don’t see that that is a reason for our spending the entire day at the breakfast-table.”

  “I’ve finished: I’ve practically finished,” he hastily mumbled, swallowing the last mouthfuls of toast and marmalade, and gulping down the remainder of his coffee.

  “Is Clement coming this morning?” Mother asked him.

  “Pascoe, do you mean? I don’t know. I suppose he’ll come if he’s not frightened of the rain.” He rose from his chair. “If he does come, I’ll be up in the loft.”

  He went out through the back quarters, and in the kitchen found Mary alone. There had been no repetition of Mary’s psychic experience; indeed she appeared to have recovered from it so completely that Tom felt she was now in a position to give him a detailed account of what she actually had seen. He would know at once if she had seen Ralph, and it was a question which interested him intensely. Unfortunately Mother had strictly forbidden him to allude to the matter in any way, and had even extracted from him a promise that he wouldn’t. So except in the extremely unlikely contingency of Mary herself broaching the subject, he supposed he should never really know the truth. . . . With this, an alternative occurred to him, and he wondered why he hadn’t thought of it sooner. It would be perfectly simple to take Pascoe to Granny’s, and when there take him up to the closed wing. Whether anything would happen or not if he did do so was another matter.

  He opened the back door, crossed the yard, and climbed up to the loft. The rain was still coming down, though no longer violently, but in a persistent drizzle that seemed half water and half mist. It was a fine, nearly noiseless rain, though all around there was a steady dripping and trickling from eaves and spouting, and in spite of what Daddy had said, it did not look to Tom in the least like clearing. The light was dim, and the little wind there was, instead of breaking the clouds, seemed to be gathering and melting them together, till they were less like clouds than a thick grey veil spread out to hide every glimpse of the sky. Yet there was no chill in the air; it was quite warm; which perhaps meant that the veil was not really very thick and eventually would be drawn up by the sun.

  In the meantime it was not unpleasant, and he sat down on the floor by the open window. He watched the raindrops run along the edge of the roof, swelling rapidly as they united to form larger drops like crystals, which trembled for a moment on the brink before splashing down on to the cobble-stones below. The continuous trickle and splash made a
kind of music, and presently he took his mouth-organ from his pocket and began softly to play an accompaniment. Like Orpheus, he was working a magic, but of a different kind, for the swallows flying in and out under the roof did not stop to listen to him. It was a dream magic, and beneath its spell the song of the rain acquired a more personal note, till at last out of the mist a little grey old man with a weak and tearful voice materialized. Yet not completely; his speech never passed into actual words; and his form remained fluid and nebulous, dissolving when Tom tried to look at him closely, and drawing together again when he half shut his eyes and breathed into his mouth-organ. If it had not been for his so lachrymose appearance Tom might have suspected this strange old man of mocking him, but his tearful eyes had far too melancholy an expression for that, and even his long nose was mournful. His grey hair, too, was long and thin and dank, and hung straight down like his drooping hands, which seemed all pendulous fingers. But his wavering shape was growing ever more uncertain and transparent, fainter and fainter, till suddenly a golden shaft pierced him through, and without even a sigh he vanished. His world was vanishing also—curling up, evaporating—as if the sun were a dragon and had put forth a great fiery tongue that wound about it, lapping it up, and leaving only at the edges a few diminishing wisps of white drifting vapour.

  When it was quite gone, Tom descended the ladder and came round to the garden, which he found transformed, like some garden in an Arabian tale after a shower of precious stones. Everything was soaking wet, and from each leaf and blade of grass the light in all the colours of the spectrum was refracted as through a prism. He gazed up at the sun between nearly closed fingers, because an angel lived there. The angel’s name was Uriel, but Tom had never been able to discover him, and he did not see him now. Roger found him thus engaged, and soon afterwards Pascoe arrived—both very wet, for Roger had come across the fields and through the glen, and Pascoe must have left home while it was still raining.

  The latter looked uncomfortably hot, which was not surprising, seeing that he was encased in a sort of shining black cocoon, composed of waterproof trousers, cape, and hat. “I wish I’d waited till it was fine,” he grumbled, wheeling his bicycle into the porch. “These beastly things may keep out the rain, but they make you nearly as wet as if they didn’t: my shirt’s sticking to me.”

  “What’s in the parcel?” Tom inquired, glancing curiously at a brown-paper parcel, oblong in shape and of considerable size, which was fastened to the carrier of the bicycle.

  Pascoe unstrapped it. “It’s things for making a kite,” he said—“just some laths and linen. I didn’t know it was going to clear up, so I thought we might as well make a kite.”

  Tom had never possessed, nor even seen a kite, and he thought Pascoe’s plan a good one, though it had a drawback. “What about Roger?” he said. “I mean, if we’re going to work all morning up in the loft, he’ll find it very dull, and he can’t get up by the foot-board. . . . I’ve tried carrying him, but it’s no use; he struggles like mad and he’s frightfully strong.”

  Pascoe frowned. This perpetual fuss about Roger seemed to him exaggerated, and in any case a nuisance. He liked dogs himself, but he liked them sensibly. What is more, he was convinced that if Roger had been a human being Tom would have shown no such compunction about leaving him. Nevertheless, he considered the problem, while they walked round to the yard.

  Beneath the loft he paused thoughtfully, gazing up at the window before entering the motor-house. Here he paused again. “We ought to be able to arrange something,” he murmured, while Tom, who had the greatest confidence in his friend’s practical ingenuity and inventiveness, said “Yes,” and waited expectantly.

  “It’ll have to be a lift,” Pascoe deliberated, “but that shouldn’t be difficult; and the best place to put it would be exactly under the trap-door, so that the foot-board will help to keep it from tilting.”

  “He’d jump out,” Tom said.

  “Well, that’s his look-out. All the same, I bet if he’s really anxious he’ll soon pick up the idea, and one of us can stand below for the first trip or two. After all, he’s a sheep-dog, and you can teach a sheep-dog anything. . . . Where’s William?”

  “William!” Tom repeated. “What do you want William for?”

  “I don’t. It’s just that to do the thing properly we ought to have a winch or something, for the rope to go round.”

  Tom was less ambitious. “We can pull him up without a winch,” he said; for he could see that Pascoe presently would be wanting a bell for Roger to ring. “Anyhow, William’s not here; he’s recovering from yesterday.”

  This, as he knew, was a gratuitous libel on that strictest of teetotallers, but Pascoe, who had begun to hunt among a pile of wooden boxes and cases, was too busy to notice it. Very soon he found what he thought might do, and dragged it out. “There’s just about room for him if we take off the lid and knock out the partitions; and it’s got handles we can tie the ropes to. As a matter of fact it’s an old wine case, which is why it’s so well made.”

  Tom was dubious. “He’d never stay in that, and if he jumped out when it was half-way up he might hurt himself. Dogs’ legs are very easily hurt; they’re different from cats’.”

  “Just as you like,” Pascoe replied. “I believe he’d be all right, but if you’re nervous we’d better wait till we can get a basket or something we can shut him into. . . . Only,” he added, “if we’re going to make the kite this morning, we’ll have to begin soon.”

  “Of course we’ll make it,” Tom gave in. “Roger’ll have to stay down in the yard.”

  This was all Pascoe wanted, and he lifted his parcel. “If you can borrow a pair of scissors for cutting out the linen,” he said, “I think I have everything else.”

  “Won’t you need paste? There’s a tube of seccotine in my tool-box, but seccotine makes your fingers stick to everything.”

  “I’m going to use nails,” Pascoe said. “I brought some with me—specially small ones. My father has a workshop, you know.”

  Tom didn’t know, but it now appeared that Pascoe’s father was an expert carpenter. “He made a lovely cabinet for Mother’s birthday, and the drawers slip in and out as smoothly as if they were sliding on butter. He says himself that that’s the best test of good workmanship: in cheap modern furniture the drawers never work properly. . . . When you’re getting the scissors, get some old newspapers and string too. You may as well be making the tail while I’m making the kite.”

  Tom departed on these errands, and when he returned Pascoe was already up in the loft, where he had cleared the table and unpacked his materials. Tom watched him for a minute or two, as he laid out and secured the framework of the kite; then, Pascoe having shown him what to do, he himself set to work on the tail, cutting the newspaper into strips and rolling these into solid wedges, which he knotted at regular intervals on the cord.

  “Make them thick,” Pascoe warned him, “and it’ll need plenty. If the tail isn’t heavy enough the kite won’t fly steadily, but dive about all over the place, and very likely get smashed on the ground.”

  “I know—I know,” Tom muttered, for if making the tail was not difficult, neither was it particularly interesting—all the interesting work was being done by Pascoe, who having completed the frame and laid it on the tightly-stretched linen, was now drawing on this the shape to be cut out. He seemed to be quite as good at making kites, Tom thought, as he had been at making the aquarium; clearly the example, or the lessons of Pascoe senior had not been thrown away. But he must have a special gift as well—inherited very likely—just as he, according to Mother and Doctor Macrory, took after Uncle Stephen. In that case, he suspected, Uncle Stephen wasn’t a carpenter. Nor was Daddy, who couldn’t be trusted even to fix a blind, Mother said, without making it ten times worse than it had been before. . . . All the same, he would have liked to know rather more particularly just in what way he did take after Uncle Stephen. Nobody had explained this, and Granny seemed to think it
was all nonsense. Tom didn’t believe it was nonsense, and felt extremely curious about Uncle Stephen—though there wasn’t much chance of his curiosity ever being gratified, unless by some miracle Uncle Stephen should become curious about him. . . .

  These reflections were interrupted by Pascoe, who without looking up from his work suddenly asked; “Did I tell you I saw Max on the road?”

  “No,” Tom answered, in a tone which indicated he had no desire to pursue the subject.

  “Well, I did,” Pascoe said, “and he had his gun. Imagine going out shooting on a morning like that—though of course it was clearing up by then. . . . I’m going to use seccotine after all—just to finish things off.”

  Tom took this as a signal that he might get up to inspect the progress he had made. It was a big kite Pascoe had designed—about three feet by two. “The square ones are the best,” he said. “The others may look more ornamental, but they never fly so well.”

  “I think it looks great!” Tom declared.

  So perhaps did Pascoe, though he replied modestly that it was too soon to judge. “Wait till we see how she goes. It all depends on the balance—and the belly-band may have to be altered, though I think it’s all right.”

  “Will we be able to fly it this afternoon?” Tom asked.

  “Not unless you buck up with the tail. You’re taking a deucy long time over it.”

  But this Tom took to be merely a cautionary remark: he was pretty sure that Pascoe had every intention of flying the kite that afternoon, and during lunch the conversation was devoted exclusively to his and Daddy’s earlier flyings. Daddy thought that Chinese boys had kites shaped like boxes, which didn’t require tails, but he was unable to tell Pascoe where he could find a description of how to make one. He admired their kite, and so did Mother and Phemie and Mary, to all of whom Tom displayed it, while Pascoe remained quietly in the background.

  The best place for a trial, they decided, would be Denny’s fields, where they could get an open space without trees. So they set out, still chattering eagerly as sparrows about the kite, and taking it in turns to carry it. “You can try it first,” Pascoe said, which—seeing that it was he who had thought of it, and made it, and supplied all the materials, including a ball of whipcord—was jolly decent of him. On their way they came upon James-Arthur: and James-Arthur, forsaking a cart he was loading with turnips, joined them to witness the start. Roger and Barker of course were there; but Pincher wasn’t: ever since Max’s advent Pincher had become an infrequent visitor, though he came as often as he could escape.