Donkey Boy

by Henry Williamson

Here they had to change, and await the local train to Hayling Island. There were twenty minutes to spare before that was due to depart, and so Hetty began to think about getting a cup of hot beef tea for Sonny. There was a lady waiting for the same train, and approaching her, she asked if she would mind keeping an eye on her two little girls while she left the station; only for a few minutes, since her little boy had not been very well. Mavis and Doris, the luggage piled before them, were in the open shelter on the platform, playing Neighbours with their dolls on the seat. With a smile the traveller said she would remain with them, and after thanking her Hetty, holding the boy by the hand, went out into the High Street.

  Beef tea was the best restorative for Sonny, as for herself after a bilious attack, when the period of nausea had passed; so the thing to do was to look for a tea-shop. After walking down a hundred yards or so, and not finding one, anxiety about the train—the need to be not too long away—made her go into a grocer’s shop and enquire. There was a tea-shop at the end of the High Street, she learned, five minutes walk away; but on leaving the shop, two short blasts on the whistle of an engine made her wonder if after all she or the porter had made a mistake in the number of minutes to wait—perhaps he had said ten, and not twenty. There was a public house opposite; and remembering how once in her girlhood, after a bad crossing from Ostend to Harwich, Papa had given her some brandy and how much better she had felt, Hetty crossed the road and after some hesitation went through the door marked Private.

  “I have a little boy who has been sick in the train from London. Might I have a little brandy, medicinal of course, to help restore him?” she asked the man behind the counter, who had two waxed spikes to his black moustache.

  He gave a glance at Phillip’s thin pale face, and said, “A glass of hot milk with an egg in it, and a lacing of three-star’s the thing to put that rooky right. Plenty o’ time for the Hayling train, m’am, and I’ve got the milk already warm on the hob. Ada!” he barked to someone behind a curtain, “whip up an egg and milk, not too hot, and put a jerk into it.” A deep voice behind the curtain said, “I ’eard, and you ain’t got a squad on the square.”

  Enlarged photographs on the wall revealed the landlord’s military past. He took up a glass, and polished it.

  Hetty had not long to wait. Sounds of swizzling in a glass came through the curtain; then a stout woman with a big toothy face and motherly smile appeared with the glass on a tray.

  “It’s not too hot, m’am,” she smiled, “and I put a little sugar in it, that will do as much good as the brandy, before the egg can get to work in the little lad’s stomach.”

  Phillip had a picture of the egg, a sort of Uncle Hilary Humpty Dumpty, getting to work with mallet and chisel, shavings all about its feet in a cavernous workshop of his stomach. Shavings, ugh! He did not want to put the glass to his lips, the smell of the milk in his nostrils made him feel sick; but after the first sip all reluctance instantly went, and he swallowed it in eager sips, exclaiming, “It’s lovely! Brandy, is it? It must be lovely to be a drunkard.”

  “Hush, Sonny!”

  “How old is your little boy?” asked the woman.

  “He is nine and four months,” said Hetty.

  “I didn’t think he was so old as that. Has he been very ill?”

  “Only when he was a baby. We could not find the right food for him, and after two months he weighed a pound less than he did at birth. Yes!” exclaimed Hetty, “I very nearly lost him.”

  Phillip, as he sipped the hot drink, wished that she would not talk about him before strangers. He dreaded people to know that he had been fed on donkey’s milk. It was a disgrace. Some of the Mildenhall gang knew it, but if decent people ever knew it, and told Mr. or Mrs. Rolls, he would run away to sea and become a cabin boy, never to return.

  Both the landlord and his wife seemed to take a personal pleasure in watching the life come back into the boy’s face. And because the little mother seemed hardly to be grown up, to be scarcely more than a child herself, they refused to charge her anything for the drink. Hetty thanked them, but said she must insist on paying.

  “It’s a pleasure, m’am. You see, we had a little boy once, only he was taken from us,” said the woman, softly, and so Hetty said no more. She smiled at the woman, a tear in her eye; and offering her hand to both of them, thanked them again, while Phillip did likewise, and raised his cap on leaving.

  “People when you get to know them are so very very kind,” said Hetty, as they hurried back to the station, “so very very kind, once they understand one another.”

  More warm feelings were to come; for the woman who had promised to look after Mavis and Doris turned out to be someone Hetty had known at the Ursulines’ Convent at Thildonck. The children rejoiced in their mother looking so gay as she talked with the new lady, Mrs. Robartes. The train went over the sea, and they saw ships and boats and seagulls. Mrs. Robartes told Phillip that at low tide the harbour was all mud, and many of the boats lying there were old hulks, and would never go to sea again, being abandoned. Then after crossing the black bridge they were on Hayling Island, passing cornfields and haystacks, and far away could be seen the Isle of Wight.

  From the station, where they said goodbye to the lady, they rode in a cab through the village and came among trees to a lane behind a common. The sea, the sea! There beyond gorse and brambles among patches of brown shingle could be seen a blue-grey placid level. Phillip was wildly excited. He kept jumping up and down; and out, as soon as the cab stopped at Sea View Terrace.

  Sea View Terrace consisted of a row of half-a-dozen cottages, with plastered outer walls dark grey with the blown spume of many winters, and yellow-brown in patches with orange lichen. The terrace was built opposite the Lifeboat House, about a minute’s walk from the shingle slope to the sea. The Maddison lodgings were in No. 2, kept by an old spinster of the name of Barber. Miss Barber was plump, with no eyebrows; she wore a lace cap pinned to her wig, while her body was enclosed within a boned black bodice and black skirt dating from about the time of the Franco-Prussian war. Phillip hoped she would not want to kiss him. Off the children ran, to see the sea, having promised to be back in time for tea at half-past four.

  At half-past four Miss Barber brought in the tray of boiled eggs, cottage loaf, butter, and cake, with the tea-pot under a thick woollen tea-cosy looking like herself. Phillip ran in, just in time. Miss Barber told him that he must always be punctual for his meals if he did not want to miss them. He waited until she had gone, then breathlessly told his mother that it was a wonderful place, with fishing boats, anchors, bathing tents, a life-saving apparatus, a real lifeboat in the house, and, most wonderful of all, porpoises coming up black out of the waves quite near the shore.

  “They come in after the shoals of mackerel,” said Miss Barber, reappearing with a bowl of raspberries. “They look fearsome creatures, but they won’t hurt you if you meet them bathing.”

  Phillip had no wish to read now. Here was everything just like a book, except that he had to share a bed with Mavis. Mummy came up to put a bolster between them, to stop kicking matches. The very first morning the postman brought him a postcard, a funny picture of lots of men playing conkers, who had come over with William the Conqueror. It was from Father. It was the sort of thing Father thought funny, but he could see no point in it. Father’s writing on the other side hoped he and Mummy and Mavis and Doris had had a pleasant journey, and that Hayling was as, nice as he had hoped it would be. It ended Yours affectionately, Daddy; but it was Father writing, not the ever-so-long-ago Daddy who had taken him to the Jubilee Bonfire.

  On the following Sunday, Father arrived at dinner-time on his new black Sunbeam with the Little Oil Bath. He wore his dark-brown cycling suit and cap, and said he had averaged eleven miles an hour, having started soon after five that morning. Phillip shook hands with Father, and felt that it would not be so nice now that he had come, even though he was not stopping, being on his way down to Dartmoor, which he said he wanted to exp
lore.

  Sunday at Hayling Island was not so dull a day as at home. You could take off your starched collar after going to church in the morning, and put on your jersey. There was no Collect to learn, but no shops were open, or boats allowed on the sea. Church was not so bad, you could see the sunshine inside this church, not like church at all.

  *

  Richard’s two-day stay had been prearranged; Hetty had packed for him a spare flannel shirt, bathing dress, and a pair of brown-striped flannel trousers which, after many washings, had shrunk and become of yellowish hue; still, with the ends let down, soap rubbed on the creases, and then pressed with a hot iron on a damp cloth, they were presentable. So, when Mrs. Robartes drove to Sea View Terrace to call on Hetty on the Monday afternoon, and was introduced to Richard, they could accept an invitation to go on the following afternoon to the Robartes’ tennis party.

  Phillip was glad to see Father and Mother so well-dressed and happy. He promised to take his two sisters back to tea at Miss Barber’s between four o’clock and a quarter past, to be in time for half-past. He was put in charge, said Father; he was head boy now. He promised not to bathe, as the tide would be high, and there was a back-drag on the shingle. With sunshade up, and long skirt held out of the dust, Mother left with Father, and above the sky seemed wider and clearer.

  While Phillip and his sisters were playing on the shingle an exciting thing happened. A boat rowed up with a net on the back. One man in big leather boots jumped out, to hold a rope on shore. The other two men sat in the boat, each holding an oar. They dipped their oars occasionally to keep the boat beyond the breaking waves. Then the man on shore pointed out to sea. Phillip looked, but could see nothing. Then looking at the man’s big leather boots, which the sea wetted each time a wave ran up, Phillip saw a tiny fish, then another—there were hundreds of tiny fish. He pointed to them, and the fisherman said “Brit”.

  He suddenly shouted, his arm pointing. At once the men lay on the oars, and the boat moved out to sea, the net dropping over the back. The men rowed hard, the oars seemed to bend. They turned the boat, and rowed in a wide loop, then came toward the shore, by the lifeboat house. The man on shore was pulling in the dark-brown rope. Then putting it over his shoulder he trudged step by step toward the boathouse. The boat grated into the shingle, the two men scrambled out, and began pulling in the other end of the rope. Corks floated in the loop out to sea. Phillip took the rope behind the skipper and helped him haul in.

  As they pulled in, the men drew nearer to one another. Phillip pulled with all his might. The arc of corks came nearer; then he stopped pulling, to watch the men hauling in the net. They left it in little heaps, which the waves rushed over, and sucked back from, with glinting brit on their sides. The water inside the corks was dark blue, and the little brit were jumping out like drops of rain coming out of the sea. The men bent low, you could see the darns in their jerseys. They hauled faster as the corks came nearer shore.

  “Look at the fish!” cried Phillip, jumping away from the rope. Hundreds of fish were moving about, making the water dark. Soon the net came in like a big stocking and there were thousands of fish threshing about under the string squares, green fish with blue bars on them and curved thin tails. Mackerel!

  They flapped on the pebbles, twisting and jumping, so many mackerel that the net could not be pulled in, but lay where the waves were breaking. One of the men waded in and began to throw them on the shingle, saying, “I reckon there’s two hundred stone here, Dad.”

  Many people were now watching. Phillip saw one man who was watching with hands in pockets suddenly bend down and pick up a fish. He put it head first into his inside pocket, beside an envelope. Then he stood as though nothing had happened, his hands in his pockets again. He had on dirty white tennis shoes, with his big-toe toenails sticking out.

  At last the mackerel were all in a big heap. The skipper said to one of the younger men, “Go after the cart, Bob.” Then he said to the people, “I’m selling eight a penny! Fine fresh mackerel!”

  After hesitation, Phillip pulled from his trousers pocket, with some difficulty, for his hands and clothes were wet, the two pennies he had been fingering there all the afternoon, for a ride on the Life Saving Apparatus. But he had been too afraid to go up so high. Now he went to stand by the fisherman.

  “Right you are, sonny,” said the man, taking his twopence. Then with a knife he cut a piece of twine, and threaded sixteen fish on it, through their red gills. The bundle was very heavy, so the man cut another piece of string, took eight off the bundle, and threaded them on the new string. Feeling important, Phillip asked the man the time.

  “Five after four, turn o’ tide,” said the man, without looking at a watch.

  Proudly lifting his two shiny wet bundles, Phillip said to his sisters, “Come on, children, we must go to tea now, I promised Miss Barber we wouldn’t be late. Half a mo’, I must count my fish. No one’s going to cheat me.” He counted sixteen. “That’s right. Come on, children.” He gave the fish to Miss Barber.

  “I’ll grill four for supper, and souse the other four right away, dear,” said Miss Barber, in reply to his request that she see to it that they were cooked before they went bad. Eight, he said, were for Dr. and Mrs. Robartes.

  He had an idea that after tea he would take them to the house, which would give him a good excuse for calling.

  “I’ll leave you in charge of Doris, Mavis,” he said. “I shall have to run most of the way, else these mackerel might go bad in the sun.”

  “Mummy said you must remain with us, and you promised,” protested Mavis. “Anyway, if you go, I don’t see why I shouldn’t.”

  “But I don’t want you. They are my fish, not yours.”

  After more bickering, he set out with the fishes. To his exasperation he was followed by his sisters. He ran to the village, looking back at the turn. He heard Mavis shout “It’s all right, I know the way”, so he took this to be a good excuse to go on by himself. It was not far. Mummy had pointed out the house, behind tall hedges, when she had taken him to the shop to buy a new pair of plimsolls, and white cricketing hat to stop sunstroke.

  He went in through the gate, and rang the bell of the front door. A maid came. He said, “Please, I’ve brought these for your master and mistress. My father and mother know them very well, and came to the tennis to-day.”

  Mrs. Robartes appeared. “Come along in, my dear, how very kind of you to bring us some fish.”

  “They are quite safe to eat, Mrs. Robartes, and very fresh. You can grill them or souse them.”

  “How clever of you to know, dear. Now come in and join us. You are just in time for tea. Where are your sisters?”

  “I think they are coming, Mrs. Robartes. I could not control them.”

  He knew it was all right when Mrs. Robartes smiled. Father smiled, and so did Mummy.

  “Your little boy has brought us some fresh mackerel, Hetty. How extremely thoughtful and kind of him, to be sure. Ah, there’s the bell, that must be your daughters! How your children must love you, dear!”

  It was wonderful in the big room with the soft chairs and pictures of the sea and cornfield on the wall, much nicer than his house. It was funny bread and butter, all tiny rolled pieces with green crunch stuff inside. There were all sorts of little sandwiches, cakes, chocolates and marzipans. Afterwards Father played tennis and hit the ball ever so fast over the net, and when he served he won his service almost at once. He was the best player. There was another man who tried to copy him. This man played Father a single afterwards, while Dr. Robartes, who was short and rather fat, sat in a deck-chair and watched with the other old man.

  Father and the copy-cat man played crouched down. They hit every ball hard and only sometimes into the net. Often they hit the ball before it bounced, slamming away, this side and that side, ever so quickly. Phillip wished Father would play on the Hill, just to show everyone. Then Mildenhall would not call him Tin Wheels any more.

  Father did not
say “Van in” and then “Van out” as the players on the Hill did, but “Vantage in” and “Vantage out”. They banged away. It was over! “Well played, sir. I think that’s Game and Set.” Who had won? Father had! And the other man was a captain, too!

  On the way home, Father said, “Captain Spalding has some big guns, Phillip, up in the red-brick forts on the mainland, on top of the downs. They are to keep any invaders away from our country. I shall be cycling past them to-morrow, on my way to the West. Now tell me about the fish.” He laughed. “Did you buy them at the fishmonger’s? Or catch them yourself? Which is it, eh?”

  “I bought them from the man with the net.”

  “Phillip did buy them, Daddy,” said Mavis. “I saw him buy them. There were hundreds and hundreds and hundreds on the beach. If I had had my purse with me, I would have bought some, too.”

  “Copy-cat!” said Phillip. “Anyway, I thought of it first. Now we are going to have a surprise for supper. Please don’t tell what it is, Mavis, or you, Doris, will you?”

  “I don’t know what it is,” said Doris.

  “I simply cannot think what it is,” said Father.

  “I can!” cried Mavis.

  “Then don’t tell, dear,” said Hetty. “Let it be a surprise.”

  “Poof!” replied Mavis. “Anyone can guess.”

  “Be quiet, Mavis!” hissed Phillip, in agony in case she told.

  “Oh, tell me!” cried Doris.

  “Anyway, Phillip didn’t catch them himself, he only bought them!”

  “I believe it’s only fish!” exclaimed Doris. “I don’t call that a surprise!”

  Phillip abruptly took to his heels. He ran with all his speed back to No. 2 Sea View Terrace. He leapt upstairs to get two pennies out of his purse hidden under the grate in the bedroom fireplace. With the coins in his hand he ran to the Life Saving Apparatus. He must show Daddy that he was not always a funk: if he held tight to the two handles on the pulley wheel, he would not fall and break his legs on the shingle so far down underneath the cable.