Donkey Boy

by Henry Williamson

  Hugh wrote rapidly in his notebook. He seemed to be weary afterwards. He sighed. “Well, all good things come to an end. I must be off, old girl.”

  “But you’ve only just come! You’ll stay for some lunch?”

  “I never eat in the middle of the day, thanks all the same. I must go, really. I’ve been writing lyrics, and must take one to a man I know, who’s in with one of the leading publishers. Goodbye young feller, au revoir, auf wiedersehen, tootle-oo. You want to put him in long trousers, Hett old girl, he’s a big boy now, too big for skirts. That long hair too, over his shoulders. Bless me, no one would know whether it was a little girl or not, unless the wind—

  “‘There was a bonny Scotsman

  At the Battle of Waterloo

  The wind blew up his petticoats

  And showed his——’”

  “Now Hughie, whatever you do, you must not go teaching Sonnie things he may repeat to his father, for goodness gracious sake!” said Hetty, with a nervous laugh. “I’ll make you some cold mutton sandwiches, they won’t take a minute, and you can eat them in the train if you are in a hurry.

  “But do try and stay longer next time,” she said down in the kitchen, carrying the saddle of South Down lamb. “I see any of the family so seldom nowadays, or anyone else, though one or two people have called. Do you remember the nice Mr. Mundy, the vicar of St. Simon’s? He called, with Mrs. Mundy. He told me there is likely to be a new church built in Charlotte Road, but I shall never give up Mr. Mundy at St. Simon’s.”

  “Well, you won’t be lonely very much longer, Hetty. What does Dick say about it—the proposed move of our respected parents?”

  Hetty did not understand.

  “Didn’t you know the Old Man was moving to this district?”

  “No Hughie. Oh dear!”

  Hetty had to sit down.

  “I’m dashed sorry if it came as a shock, old girl. Yes, the Old Man’s bought several properties in the neighbourhood, as an investment, so I heard from Mallard the chairman of the firm. Naturally I concluded, as the family is leaving Maybury, that the Old Man intended to come here to be near you.”

  Chapter 6

  RICHARD’S BOHEMIAN EVENING

  RICHARD enjoyed the first summer in his new house. He had joined St. Simon’s Lawn Tennis Club, and now it was a habit, and a pleasurable one, to spend two evenings a week on the grass court adjoining the parish hall. Here was an oasis from the dry hot smells and sights of the City, from ammoniacal heat reflected from asphalt and sett-stone, the dust of dry horse-dung in nostrils and eye-corner, the everlasting clatter of hoof and rolling wheel.

  At half-past five, while the sun was yet high in the west, he left the main doors of his office building in Haybundle Street and set out, one amidst thousands, for London Bridge, carrying his straw boater in hand as he swung along optimistically. He liked his work, his colleagues were, he considered, a thoroughly decent lot; and there was much less etiquette and decorum than in the old days of Doggett’s in the Strand. There the rules about dress had remained rigid; the frock coat, the tall hat, and the umbrella were still de rigueur. Now in the summer he wore a jacket of black vicuna material as befitted his position and responsibilities, and a black waistcoat with grey, black-striped trousers of the same durable cloth.

  Twelve minutes after leaving Wakenham station, by way of worn wide flagstones and gravel paths of the Hill, he arrived with his swinging stride, hat in hand, down the wide gravelled way to Hillside Road: twenty yards on asphalt, and the garden gate of Lindenheim clicked, and Hetty heard the familiar whistle as he walked under the porch: she heard the key in the door and the jingle of the bunch dropping into his trouser pocket, as in the hall he wiped his boots, dry and clean though they were, by habit on the mat at the foot of the stairs. Then the hat hung on its peg, and the folded Trident laid upon pegs above it, ready for the armchair later on.

  While Hetty was preparing his evening meal, Richard went upstairs to take off his City clothes, first having turned on the cold tap of the bath, and then, in carpet slippers and dark blue dressing-gown, he locked himself in the bathroom, for a refreshing immersion. This was something to be looked forward to all the afternoon, cool though it was in the marble and mahogany ground floor of the Town Department. Beautiful cold water, aa-ah! as he sat down and then, raising knees and shifting body forward, preparatory to extending his length and submerging, that was the moment! He was primitive man in his original element, according to Darwin. Was this the water of the river Thames, or its tributary the Lea? Whence was it drawn? Perhaps from deep wells in the chalk below the clay? He must remember to ask Mr, Mundy. There was a knocking on the door.

  “Dad, me come in. P’il good boy now, p’e, Daddy.”

  “Just a moment, old chap. Just a moment.”

  Richard dried himself on the hard Turkish towel and secured it round his middle before slipping back the bolt. Phillip came in, with a penny boat which his mother had given him—Hetty had got it in exchange for three jam-jars from a man with a barrow, in Randiswell hamlet. The jars had to be taken down, for of course no barrow man would be allowed up Hillside Road; nor would he venture to come, knowing his place. Hillside Road was not Comfort Road.

  Richard looked forward to his meal in the garden room, the french windows opening upon what was to be a lawn from next spring onwards. Now it was undergoing a bare fallow; and very bare it looked, covered with cracked spade-slabs of hard yellow clay. Still, the compost of leaf-mould was heaped under the elm sapling at the bottom of the garden; the leaves were green upon the trees; tomtits visited its branches for hanging green caterpillars, and beyond was the field which was said to be without title deed or owner—a delightful piece of waste land, too steep for building, grown with long grasses and here and there a wilding thorn. Sometimes a kestrel hung over its slopes for mice; butterflies drifted there. It was rus in urbe, Mr. Mundy, the vicar, had declared, cycling down from the Hill to see how Hetty was getting on that afternoon—the countryside verging upon the town.

  “Well,” said Richard, now wearing his brown-striped white flannel trousers, white shirt and tweed jacket, “well, I must be thinking of my tennis”, as he folded his table napkin neatly beside his plate, with seven prune stones aligned on the edge. He had already recited the inevitable, “Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggar man——” and laid down his spoon. Phillip, opposite him, beside Hetty, was a soldier for the occasion, since three prunes were deemed by Richard to be “enough for his little economy”. However, the child had plans for taking both Daddy’s stones and Mummy’s stones, together with his own, to bed with him that night. “It will be the usual couple of sets, I suppose; and Miss MacIntosh will partner me against your good Vicar and his lady. What a pity Minnie has gone, for otherwise you would be able to come and partner me.”

  Hetty had often heard from Richard about Miss MacIntosh, the secretary to the Vicar, who helped him to run both the Antiquarian Society and the St. Simon’s Lawn Tennis Club. Hetty had seen her on one occasion only, when she and Dickie had been invited to tea at the Vicarage. Hetty remembered her red hair and white skin from that occasion nearly three years before: she had been a little afraid of her. Why, she could not tell; but Hugh, who claimed a knowledge of anthropology, had explained that it was the natural dread of Celt for Dane. The Danes, like the Vikings, were killers, Hugh had declared.

  Hetty said, with a little laugh, that she was afraid her tennis days were over.

  “Cheer up!” said Richard, giving his prune stones to Phillip. “When the new maid comes, perhaps she will turn out to be reliable, the pearl beyond price, and then you must accompany me. It is a pity to waste your racquet. I see a string has gone. You should have kept it, as I told you, in the top of the cupboard in the kitchen.”

  “Yes, dear, I am sure you are right. But I think it was a mouse.”

  “But damp tautens the gut, and causes it to break. A mouse, indeed! What mouse would gnaw the gut of a cat? Why, it would
be a cannibal!” and Richard laughed at his joke. Phillip laughed too, because his father was laughing.

  “See, even the boy laughs at you. Give him your stones, Hetty. Now then, my boy, see if you can determine your fate!”

  It was a mouse, she was sure. The same mouse that she had found in the last of her Christmas puddings in the larder. It had eaten a hole through the cloth and down to the bottom of the basin. Head first, it was asleep, after eating itself too fat to get out. At least it looked like it, for the mouse’s tail-tip had been sticking out of the hole in the cloth, a very dirty little mouse. She had carried the basin to the bottom of the garden, and left it there; and returning an hour later, there the mouse was, still asleep, lying head down in the hole. So she had shaken it out, and it had run into the compost heap. And Hetty had burned the rest of the pudding, to get rid of the evidence. Thank goodness Dickie had not seen it in the larder!

  Richard helped his son to determine his fate. Since he had given seven stones, making ten with Phillip’s, and Hetty had added six, the boy’s fate was decided—a thief! He looked quite pleased, with sixteen stones on his plate.

  “Well, I’ll be off on the Starley Rover, Hetty. Home about nine forty-five. We’ll have a game of chess when I return, shall we?”

  “Yes, dear, if you like.”

  The Starley Rover lived in the lavatory next to the sitting-room, against the wall. Propped against the other wall was the violoncello in its case, never opened nowadays. The small room was used as a store; Richard had fixed a couple of shelves there.

  Soon, with cycle clips securing trouser bottoms round his ankles, Richard was walking down the flinty surface of Hillside Road, to mount a score of yards from the bottom and pedal away up Charlotte Road, and so to the tennis club eight minutes later.

  “Ah Maddison, here you are! Now we shall have our match, what? Mrs. Mundy and I will, I hope, have our revenge for last Tuesday evening’s debacle!”

  “But I have only just arrived, sir, perhaps somebody else would care to play before me?”

  “We have all played, and now for some of your cannon-ball services, to help commote the liver!”

  Soon the white ball was passing to and fro under the lime trees whose honey had long been taken by bees and flies. Richard alone of the four played without a hat. His partner, Miss MacIntosh, was in white as usual, from tam o’shanter, jacket with leg-o-mutton sleeves, pleated skirt touching the lawn, to white canvas shoes. Richard felt himself to be in fine form, he was exhilarated to be in her company, though he was on his guard, being a little scared of her. He had to restrain himself from playing with the dash he felt capable of, since his opponent was both clerical and elderly, and therefore scarcely one to be the recipient of his fastest cannon ball service. When it came off, this service, delivered with pear-shaped racquet from the top of extended arm with all his strength, was unreturnable, so far as the other male members of the St. Simon’s Lawn Tennis Club were concerned. Since Richard was over six feet in height, the ball descended a steep incline almost invisible over the net, to flick the forecourt dividing line within an inch or two of the chalk, whence, curving onwards, it passed the immobile opponent waiting tensely well beyond the back line, while he was still looking at the white puff of the strike upon the grass. If propelled at one particular angle of the racquet it swerved to the right; if upon the reverse, to the left.

  But Richard could not bring himself to serve his cannon-balls to Mr. Mundy, despite the request for no mercy. “All is fair in love and tennis, Maddison!”

  This remark, recurring again and again to his mind, discomposed Richard a little, behind the austere expression upon his bearded face. Did Miss MacIntosh give him more than a partner’s glance of her green eyes, as she crouched slightly upon the back line, ready to drive back his service should it be returned?

  Mr. Mundy was a player resourceful as he was steady. After it had seemed that a ball was beyond returning suddenly a lob would soar up almost to the height of St. Simon’s grey tower, around which the shrill-whistling swifts chased one another; or the ball was cut sharply across the net, spinning upon its bounce or darting away unexpectedly. His underhand service, too, was deceptively gentle, the ball upon arrival within the forecourt liable to break away unpredictably. He was a cunning old fellow, thought Richard.

  “Come come, Maddison, no favours to my cloth! Play your hardest, sir! Oh, well volleyed, Miranda! Upon my soul, you would be a match for the brothers Renshaw! ’Vantage out, to server. Your turn, my love. Oh, pretty to watch, pretty to watch! Ha ha, caught you on the wrong foot, Maddison! Game to us, my love, and set! Well played, Mrs. Mundy! Now let us all partake of some cool lemon squash under our linden trees, and enjoy a well-earned rest.”

  A row of deck chairs stood along one side of the court, in the shade. By them was a table with glasses, a bundle of straws, and a carafe of pale yellow liquid, in which ice floated, beside a dish for pennies. The money was understood to go towards the Girls’ Friendly Society. Richard dutifully placed his penny in the dish, and bore his glass and straw to a chair three seats away from Miss MacIntosh. There he pretended interest in the single between two young women wearing straw-boaters pinned through their hair, whose mis-shots were the cause of some mortification to themselves, judging by the half-repressed “O-ohs”, and “Oh dear” that accompanied the gentle parabolas from their spoon-like scooping.

  “Come and sit nearer, my dear Maddison. I notice that you do not reverse your racquet for the back-hand volley, nor for the back-hand drive. I have not seen it done since Major Wingfield in the early ’seventies took out a patent for his new court which, as you may recall, was the shape of an hour glass.”

  “My father was a friend of Major Wingfield, sir, who taught him the stroke.”

  “Now that is most interesting. That must have been before the All England Croquet Club took a viper to its bosom, and admitted tennis playing to its sacred precincts! Do you play croquet, a sport much in decline since our young Amazons have preferred to beat the rubber ball rather than the wooden one. What do you think, Miranda?”

  “I think both are good games, Vicar.” Miss MacIntosh rose to speak to Mrs. Mundy, who was leaving the garden.

  “You must come over with your lady wife and take a turn with us at the hoops,” went on the Vicar. “Tennis to commote the liver is an excellent thing before preparin’ one’s sermon, but croquet is more the game for the family, helping to keep it together. No doubt you recall many happy hours spent with your parents and brothers and sisters with mallet and ball?”

  “Yes, sir, croquet can be capital fun.”

  “Now tell me, how do you like your new house?”

  But Mr. Mundy appeared not to be listening to Richard’s answer to the polite enquiry. He seemed preoccupied with other thoughts. He glanced sharply in the direction where Miss MacIntosh had disappeared with Mrs. Mundy. The two women had gone through the gate at the end of the tall laurel hedge leading to the road upon whose grey-flagged sidewalk Richard strode morning and evening to and from the station.

  “Ah, yes, the Antiquarian and Archeological Society! I have been meaning to ask you if you would care for me to put your name forward. I recall our most interesting talk on the Hill during the sledging, in the winter of ’ninety-five, do you re member?”

  Richard thought that Mr. Mundy had done most, if not all, of the talking on that occasion. “Yes, I do remember it well, sir.”

  “Well Maddison, we are watching a phase of history, of geological history. Like a crustacean, modern man is raising the subsoil all about him. In other words, we are witnessing an extension of the Industrial Age; and to me personally, it is a great pity that the absorption of our neighbourhood into the, I might say perhaps not with untruth, horrid County of London—as apart from the City of London, which has an historical soul of its own—Yes, a great pity that the modern trend should obliterate with advancing rapidity so many of those oases dear to the antiquarian. Therefore I hope that all, to whom the his
tory of our parish and its environs is of interest, will forgather for the purpose of acquiring data for our local history, in the coming season of winter. I refer, of course, to the Wakenham Antiquarian and Archeological Society, of which I am honoured by being the President. In a nutshell, would you care to join us?”

  Richard kept a straight face. He thought of the prune-stones, and Hetty’s face; he thought of all the antiquarians, diminished to insect-size, all hiding in a nutshell. Suddenly he felt extremely well-disposed towards Hetty.

  “Do not decide now,” the Vicar added, misinterpreting the look on the young man’s face, “there is plenty of time to think it over. The subscription is nominal, a half-crown the year. We have several members, including one or two of the working classes, good steady fellows, artisans who have decided that their spiritual needs are met in St. Simon’s rather than the chapel recently erected at the bottom of Twistleton Road. For them the question of subscription is met by a rule that permits the appointment of honorary members. We have lectures in the dark months, with lantern slides. An urn of tea and some buns provide an occasion for friendly intercourse after the lectures. This coming season, some of our younger members have asked for dancing. We must not always be Dryasdust: a little frolic helps to commote the liver!”

  Richard wondered if Hetty had been telling the Vicar that he was interested in archæology. She was quite capable of agreeing with him in the matter to such an extent that an entirely false impression would be given. It was not fair! The thing was being done against his will, he was being press-ganged into it. What had Hetty been saying to Mr. Mundy? For obviously the Vicar had an entirely false impression of himself! He must be careful not to commit himself; the next thing, he would expect him to attend his church, or even to sing in the choir. And with a start he heard Mr. Mundy say, “I hear you are musical, Maddison. Do you sing?”