Donkey Boy

by Henry Williamson

“LONDON PARTICULAR”

  ON A LATE November night the first fog of the winter descended upon London. Matter floating from factory louvre and domestic chimney during the windless hours of a hazy day fell with the afternoon condensation of moisture upon river, roof, and cinder flat. As the hour of four was struck upon the cracked bronze rim of Big Ben an acid mist in the half-empty streets began to corrode oppidanal prospects sombre as steel-engravings. The lamplighters stepped rapidly upon their rounds; carriages of the leisured classes, coachmen in front and tiger-boys behind, drove their masters and mistresses homewards to roaring red coal-fires, and themselves to comfortable quarters above stable and mews. Street vendors by shallow and tray in the poorer districts cursed, but remained with their wares exposed above the gutter; thieves rejoiced; within thousands of counting-houses and offices middle-class anxiety increased behind thoughts of policies, bills, cover notes, invoices, and other patterns of commerce expressed in paper and ink.

  Richard Maddison, glancing out of the tall glass windows of the Town Department of the Moon Fire Office in the City, hoped that a pea-souper would not come down, at least before his train reached Wakenham station; for that evening he was giving a lecture upon ‘Local Lepidoptera’ to the Antiquarian Society. The very idea of it during the preceding weeks and days, had given him quaking moments akin to panic; for he had never so much as made a speech in public in his life before. And a lecture to last one hour, without magic-lantern slides! He tried to forget it, and to concentrate entirely upon the policy he was preparing from its proposal form.

  He sat on a tall mahogany stool against a long mahogany desk or counter, one of several clerks seated likewise along its length. A ground-glass partition divided the counter into two sections, by which opposing faces were concealed from one another. Above the screen arose porcelain globes supported on lacquered brass pipes, out of which issued gas, by means of improved non-corrosive jets. The pot-bellied stove by the far wall, beside the messenger’s lodge, gave forth a steady radiation of heat. It was, by the clock above the inner swing doors before the main entrance, a quarter after four o’clock. The rumble of wheeled traffic opposite the Royal Exchange down the street had sunk to a deeper growl, as the pace of the vehicles was slowed.

  “Looks as though we are in for a London particular,” remarked Journend, the pleasant little colleague on his right.

  “Yes,” said Richard, “I am afraid you are right,” glancing up before continuing his work.

  Outside the London day was decaying rather than dying. Westward the sun was still visible above the Houses of Parliament, a livid orb in the manufactured air. Gradually the enwreathed rim was sinking to wreckage upon the pinnacles of the building which had constituted itself guardian of the free world served by navy and merchant shipping paramount upon the seven seas. Through the poisonous atmosphere the sun’s colour was as of the redness of dyed tainted meat offered for sale in the poorer quarters of London.

  With the sun’s disappearance there arose as out of sweating paving-stone, sooted building, wet bedunged asphalt street, and dripping branch of plane tree supporting puffed and dingy-rock-dove—the pigeon of the Londoner—an emanation as of solar death. Sulphurous whiffs caught the breathing; acid inflamed the membranes of eyes; detritus lodged under lids, inflamed haws, to be removed, if the muttering pedestrian were fortunate, with hook of nail or rubbing of finger-tip. The pea-souper dreaded by Richard, together with nearly two million other Londoners, was beginning to drift in slow swirl and eddy into the streets from the direction of the Thames estuary. It was to be seen billowing past the street lamps, enclosing them at once in clammy thickness; it moved upon central London from its gathering places over the industrial east both north and south of the river, as though sucked upon the tide moving in from Gravesend and the marshes of Sheppey and distant Nore. At six o’clock, when it was at its most dense, more than four hundred tons of organic and inorganic matter were in suspension within the area called Greater London; double night lay upon the City, more terrible because it was made by man who least desired it.

  At half-past six the southward march across London Bridge of black-coated workers was at its greatest press. The granite sett-stones of the road between the sidewalks bore the grind and percussion of thousands of iron wheels and shoes. Lamps were visible but a pace distant and then as yellow spots within cocoons. Richard walked, worsted-gloved hand over mouth and nose, with coat buttoned and collar up against pickpocket and cold. The starched cuffs of his shirtsleeves were encased with white paper; a muffler was round his neck. Coughs were audible everywhere in the bobbing ranks of benighted travellers: these were the only human noises, the only complaints, as though amplified by the mechanical hoots and blares of foghorns upon the river below.

  The bridge itself was in movement. The mass of masonry was transmitting into the flood-tide constant vibrations from its submerged piers which shrimps and prawns resident in the weed clustered to the sterlings periodically discerned with their feelers: the vibrations of tens of thousands of human feet, of multitudinous wheels hooped with iron beating upon flag-stone and granite sett. The tide of human beings was crossing the tide of Thames, the one on the ebb to the suburbs, the other to the German Ocean.

  There was inevitable delay in both the higher and lower levels of the railway station. Great jets of steam screeched from the safety valves of delayed engines, the noise momentarily decapitating the body hurrying to find a seat, peering into carriages already packed tight, with men standing between wooden seats covered with hard, dull and durable upholstery. Tobacco smoke reeked with fog; fifteen men unspeaking, almost unmoving—like the train. It was inevitable. It could not be altered. It had always been, and always would be.

  Reports sounded muffled down the line. Richard, standing with the top of his head not far from the pale blue flame in the glass cover in the middle of the roof, was thinking that he could not possibly be at St. Simon’s hall at eight o’clock, washed and changed and having supped. Would the train never start? What train was it? No matter, the fog had upset the entire time-table. Should he go directly to the hall; or go home first?

  The feeling of being unclean decided him. The membranes of his eyes were inflamed, specks of carbon and metal felt to be enormous and untidy in their irritation. He would go home first, wash and change his clothes, and have his supper later. Why had he undertaken to give the damned lecture at all? There was no time for that sort of thing any more: butterflies belonged to youth gone past.

  At last the train started. Standing figures braced themselves against the jerk following the guard’s whistle; thereafter was dull endurance, amidst the detonation of signals, until finally the train stopped at the familiar, but ghostly, station. He hurried out into the cold murk of the night, walking as fast as he dared, hands held out before him, up Foxfield Road leading from the station to the Hill. It was already twenty minutes to eight.

  He walked in the middle of the road, to avoid blundering into iron railings and scraping himself against brick walls of gardens. As he climbed up Foxfield Road the fog became less dense, so that the lights on lamp-posts began to be visible a dozen yards away. Fumbling along as fast as he dared, he crossed Twistleton Road, coming to Cranefield Road, and the next turning to the right would lead up to the gates of the Hill, which would be lightless.

  The fog was thinner as he came to the end of the last rows of houses. He could see an occasional rectangular blur on either side of him. He stepped high over the kerb, and felt the pebbles of the gravel of the path under the thin leather soles of his boots. He must get them repaired; it was false economy to wear them through to the inner sole.

  A colder air was in movement upon the Hill. He felt a wet mist condensing upon his eyelashes. A star was visible overhead; the black trunks of the elms where the rooks nested in spring, and where once he had seen a Camberwell Beauty in the beam of his dark lantern, loomed on his right hand. He felt easier: he would just have time to wash and change, and return for his address. Any
ruffians accosting him, as on the occasion when he had lost the Camberwell Beauty, would have another man to reckon with, he assured himself, as his chin thrust itself forward and the hair on his neck rose. Richard never passed the elms without memory bringing before him that scene of nearly five years before.

  The path forked to the right beyond the trees, passing the dark square of the West Kent Grammar School. Another couple of hundred yards, and he would be at the top of the broad way leading down to Hillside Road.

  He was half-way down the gulley when he heard the sound of someone sniffing. Recently seats had been placed by the London County Council on both sides of the gulley, against low iron railings enclosing plantations of hawthorns on the steep slopes above. Someone was sitting there alone. Richard had just passed the seated figure, pale blur of face, when he heard sobbing. He stopped; and was about to pass on, mindful of the foolishness of interference, when a strangled voice said, “It’s only me, sir.”

  “Is that you, Mona? Is anything the matter?”

  There was no reply. Drippings from the bushes pattered down.

  “Mona? What are you doing there? Are you alone?”

  “Please sir, yes sir. Oh, oh,” and unrestrained weeping joined the melancholy patterings from the trees.

  He walked to the seat, saying in a gentler tone, “Come, do not be afraid of me. Do you not feel very well? You ought to be indoors on a night like this, you know.”

  “I ain’t doin’ no wrong, please sir. It’s—it’s me half day off, please sir.”

  Poor little thing, thought Richard, his heart touched. “Well, I am afraid it is not a very pleasant one. It is yours to do what you like with, of course, but then you are not very old, and we cannot have you getting pneumonia, you know. Come along, there’s a good girl. You should not be alone on the Hill. Come along now.”

  More sobbing. “I dursen’t, please sir. Missis is angry wi’me. I couldn’t help it, please sir.”

  “Oh, some little trouble? Well, it cannot be so serious, I am sure. Mrs. Maddison is not one to be angry very long, Mona.” He thought that perhaps she had broken a plate or cup, or even dropped a tray.

  “Come along now, be sensible. It is hardly a night for a dog to be out.” The girl did not move. “Well, if you will not come, I suppose you will stay there.” He moved away, his sympathy lessening.

  A despairing cry came out of the murk. “Gawd’s sake, sir, don’t go and tell me farver, sir. He’ll kill me, sir.”

  He began to feel impatient with the girl’s hysteria, as he thought of it to himself. “Come along, Mona, I am sure you have not done anything really very bad. What is it, a broken plate or a cup? Well, that is not very terrible. Just come along home now, and I will try and put things right for you. Come along there’s a good girl, you must be very cold, come in and have a cup of hot cocoa by the kitchen fire.”

  “Thank you, sir. I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t mean no harm, sir, promise you won’t tell me farver, sir?”

  She was in such a state that Richard promised. She followed him, sniffing and blubbering, down the broad gulley, through the spiked iron gates padlocked open, and so to the asphalt pavement of Hillside Road.

  Richard let himself in with his latch key, and whistled as he opened the door. Hetty came out of the kitchen. “Go on in, Mona, there’s a good girl,” she heard him say. “We must not let the fog come in, must we? Wipe your boots on the mat, there’s a good girl—heels and sides, and then the soles. Well, Hetty, I found your little helpmeet sitting on the Hill, and thought it was time she came in. I must hurry back for the address; have you some soup all ready?”

  “Yes, dear, some Scotch broth, it won’t take a minute. I’ll put it on a tray, and bring it down to the sitting-room.”

  “I must wash first.”

  “Yes, dear, I’ll have it all ready for you when you come down.”

  When he came downstairs he went into the kitchen to change his boots. Mona was sitting, in coat and hat, on a chair by the fire.

  “Come, cheer up, Mona,” he said, “you must not go around looking like a wet week, you know.” Whereupon Mona hung her head, and began, once more, to weep silently.

  Carrying his other pair of boots, to warm them by the sitting-room fire, Richard, with concealed impatience, went down into that room, waiting in his armchair while Hetty poured out a bowl of broth.

  She remained anxiously quiet while he sipped the welcome soup. She did not want him to be upset in any way before the lecture, which he had been preparing, with the aid of his notebooks and various volumes containing hand-coloured woodcuts and plates, during the past few evenings. She knew that it meant a great deal to him. And how glad she had been that Mamma was next door, to advise her what to do about Mona. Mamma had suggested telling Dickie when he came back after his lecture.

  “Your little maid of all work is not very happy, what is the matter?”

  “Yes, dear, she is a little upset over something. I will tell you of it later, it really is not very important.”

  “Then if it is not very important, why mention it at all?”

  “Yes, you are quite right, dear, it was stupid of me. Would you like some biscuits and cheese after the broth?”

  “I haven’t time. Well, you women are contradictory creatures, I must say: you arouse a man’s curiosity, and then you refuse to say anything about the cause of it. What is the mystery, pray?”

  “Only a little trouble Mona has got into, Dickie. Really, I did not mean to worry you at all. I sent Mona home, to tell her mother, and have been expecting to hear from her.”

  “Got herself into trouble, has she? If you mean what I think those words mean, I should not call it a little trouble. She is scarcely turned fourteen, too. Is that what you mean?”

  “Yes dear, I am afraid so.”

  “Then she will have to leave this house immediately!”

  Mona was listening at the top of the three stairs, her heart beating rapidly. Earlier that evening she had gone into the Randiswell Recreation Ground for the purpose of drowning herself; but thoughts of Phillip, whom she loved as her own, had come between her desire for death. The voice of master, which had given her a little hope as he spoke to her out of the fog, was now cross. There was no more hope. Mona turned back into the kitchen, put her arms upon the scrubbed deal kitchen table, and broke down. She would drown herself in the river.

  In the sitting-room, while Richard drank his soup, Hetty was grieving, as she had many times before, that she was seldom able to utter her real thoughts to her husband. She knew by now, and had accepted it, that she must always be very careful what she told him. He was so easily upset. Her main thought before and during the first year of their married life had been of concern for him; her thought had been mainly directed to thinking of ways and means by which he would be pleased. Alas, that so many of her good intentions had turned out the other way! If she tried to keep things from him, that would upset him, she knew; he called it suppression of the truth. And if on the other hand she told him something that had happened, he was just as likely to complain that she was incapable of managing her own affairs. Talking this over with her mother—nothing of it must be told to Papa, of course—Hetty had eased herself of a condition that at times had given her nervous headaches. Sarah had given her daughter comfort by her own confession.

  “Yes, dear, we all have to suffer our husbands. Perhaps to be silent is better than to try and explain. Then there is always prayer.”

  “Yes, Mamma, I do pray, every day, that I shall not do anything to upset Dickie.”

  But there were some things Hetty could not tell even her mother. She could not think of them, even, without mental flurry and evasion. And the latest of them, and to her mind the worst, was the shocking things she had found out about Mona.

  Three mornings previously, Hetty had gone into the end bedroom at eight o’clock, all being quiet in the house, thinking that Mona had overslept. It was a Sunday morning, and the alarm was not wound on Saturday night—o
n week-day mornings it went off in Mona’s room at half-past six—because Richard needed an hour’s extra sleep. Mona was supposed to go downstairs at a quarter to eight, on Sunday mornings, and bring up a small pot of China tea on a tray, with two cups and saucers, a jug of milk, a plate of thin slices of brown bread and butter, and The Weekly Courant, which had been thrust through the letter-box. This was the ritual of Richard’s Sunday morning, a little luxury he allowed himself once a week. He looked forward to it at eight a.m. precisely. The brown bread and butter had to be cut the night before, by Hetty, and kept fresh between two plates. He would not have Mona, probably with unwashed hands, cutting the bread.

  Hetty had found Mona asleep, and Phillip asleep beside her, one arm lying across his body. The bedclothes were disarranged, as though she had been tickling him, which was forbidden. Also, she was not supposed to have the child in her bed, by Richard’s orders; for she was a developing girl, and neither Hetty nor Richard considered it proper that a young boy should see any exposure of her body. Hetty had instructed Mona that she must always take off and put on her clothes behind a screen that stood in the room for that purpose.

  What Hetty saw shocked her deeply. Phillip was lying on his back, part of his night-gown rucked up, so that his thin legs were exposed and part of his bluish-white stomach. It was not the sight of that which shocked Hetty, but the fact that Mona—it could only have been Mona—had tied one of her small red hair-ribands in a bow round the private part of the little boy. Her own little child, her dear little Sonny, to be treated like that by Mona, whom she had utterly trusted! Thank God the boy’s father had not seen it!

  Hetty removed the riband, praying that Sonny would not wake up. Her prayer was answered; the boy slept on. Gently she covered his legs with the night-gown, and dropped the creased riband on the rug by the bed, so that Mona might think it had dropped off one of her plaits, and so have no recollection of her action.

  But more was to come. Gould she believe her eyes? Surely it could not be her fancy? Mona was lying on her side, only a sheet of the bedclothes covering her above the waist; and to Hetty it appeared that she was bigger than she ought to be. Perhaps it was the fold of the blanket lying across her that gave the suggestion of a mound? Animated by anxious curiosity, Hetty gently tugged at the blanket to straighten it and saw that Mona’s bigness just there was not a fancy. At that moment a dark eye opened and Mona was looking at her. The girl sat up, muttering; thrust away the hair from her brow and said, “Oh mum, I overslepp misself, oh the master’s tea——”