“I will, Aunty Hetty,” said Polly, her eyes gleaming as she looked at Phillip. That boy, after a swift turn of the head to make sure that his sister had gone, put his hand on the black serge material of Polly’s waist, and slid it down below her patent-leather belt, in order to experience the thrilling sensation that he had felt when, together with Mavis and Percy, Polly’s brother, the foursome of small children at the Pickering’s country home, some years before, had played a game, innocently enough, called Mothers and Fathers.
“What do you think you’re trying to do?” whispered Polly.
“You know!” he whispered back. “Shall we do it together, one day?”
Polly tossed her head. “Wouldn’t you like to?” she breathed.
“Yes, wouldn’t you? Ss-sh!”
Phillip moved away from her. He had heard his mother’s footfalls come out of the bedroom. Lightly, two at a time, without sound, he pulled himself up the stairs by the banister rail. “Hullo mother, got ’em?” he asked. “I was just coming up to you. Blime, you need to be a glow-worm to get about in this house.”
“Phillip, I’ve told you before, you should not use that expression, it is not nice. Here are your collars, dear, I had them from Aunt Dorrie. Don’t forget to thank her, when you see her.”
“What, for these old hand-me-downs! Still, if they were Bertie’s and Gerry’s, I don’t mind having them.”
Remotely more muffled bangs of fog-signals came through the darkness.
“You’d better wash now, Phillip. Come into the bath-room, before your Father comes home. Here’s some matches, if you will kindly light the gas.”
“No, I will unkindly light it for a change.”
The burner flared up. Phillip looked critically at the starched linen collars. They were indeed hand-me-downs, the front tags much-broken-and-stitched at the stud-holes.
“The mends won’t be visible, dear, your tie will cover them. Now wash your face, and don’t forget your neck and ears. And promise you won’t read? It’s bad for you, Phillip.”
The bathroom was often used by Phillip as a library, as he sat comfortably on the mahogany seat, behind the locked door, with a book.
“Not me! I’ve got work to do. Beastly Latin tonight, then foul Euclid, and stinking Algebra.”
“Really Phillip, your language! Well, don’t be long, dear. I’ll lay out your Etons for you, in your bedroom.”
“No, I’ll be short, like Mrs. Bigge next door.”
“Really Phillip!” laughed Hetty, as he followed her into the bedroom. “Sometimes I wonder where you get it all from.”
“From the beastly Turneys,” replied Phillip.
“Well, you certainly don’t get it from Father,” said Hetty, indulgently. “Oh, I heard from Aunt Dora today. I sent her your essay on Timmy Rat, you know, and Aunt thought it very good. She says you have a gift for writing.”
Phillip thought of what he had written in the library book. He quivered within.
“Shall I put on a clean dickie? Or will the fog muck it up? Quick Mummy, quick! It’s library night!”
“I think I sent your old one to the laundry, Phillip. Can’t you do without one just for tonight? You must look your best for your photograph tomorrow, you know. I want to send one to your Aunt Victoria, and another to Uncle Hilary. I thought it would be considerate of you, as they always remember your birthday.”
“I don’t like either of ’em.”
“Hush Phillip! They are your Father’s sister and brother, and they have both been very kind to you.”
“I won’t hush! Aunt Viccy always looks at me as though I were some sort of freak. When I went to stay with her after Christmas she said ‘Even when you were a little baby of nine months, Phillip, your big wondering eyes were filled with fear. Why, why, why?’ As though anyone can help what they looked like! But you know, I did sort of think of a reply the other day. Shall I tell you? It was this. ‘Well Aunt, it must have been caused by what I was looking at!’”
“Phillip—Phillip! You naughty boy!” Hetty went out of the room, trying not to laugh. She had never felt easy with that particular sister-in-law. She felt that Victoria always tried to like her, but it was against her real nature to do so.
*
Left alone, Phillip set about undressing. Then he examined his face. His eyes stared anxiously back at him from the mirror upon the tall mahogany chest of drawers. They looked dark and gloomy in the light of the yellow-fringed gas-flame issuing from the gilded burner. Were his eyes filled with fear? He felt sad. Then thinking of Helena Rolls, he sighed. He had a very ugly face. The Valentine! Quick, before Father came home! It would be awful if he were to see it.
A hasty tip-toeing to the bathroom; face held down in cold water to give, his cheeks a healthy look; a rapid soaping and blowing of water through hands; an equally quick drying, then back again to his room, and a flurried donning of clean flannel shirt smelling slightly of Mrs. Feeney—soapy rinsing water. While he dressed, a wild thought came to him: dare he ask Helena Rolls if she would like a photograph of him? After all, faint heart never won fair lady.
Phillip thought with some excitement of Mr. Woods’ studio in the High Road, of the ordeal of facing the big mahogany camera on the wooden tripod, while the black cloth was over both box and photographer’s head during focusing. He must remember not to grin, for that would show his crowded front teeth; his dog’s-teeth, as Mavis called them. Nor must he look too serious, or Father might say again that he looked weepy, as though he had been out in the garden to eat worms. The hypo-marks on one of his last photos had looked just like tears, Father had said. He was always crying at the least excuse, said Father; he was not a manly boy; even Aunt Viccy had told him that, when he had pretended to cry after she had threatened to tell Father he had taught cousin Adele a bad word. “And why tell lies?” she had asked, when he said that the word he had used was tart: he had told Adele that too many tarts caused indigestion, or vice versa. He had pretended to look very contrite while Aunt Viccy had solemnly lectured him for using “grubby little words”.
His Aunt Victoria’s pale face was associated in Phillip’s mind with the word Why? Why was it necessary to tell fibs? Why did he use such bad words, such grubby little words? Was it nice, to repay hospitality in that manner? Why was he not more manly? Why did he cry at the least thing? Why could he not look her straight in the eyes, instead of having such a shifty gaze? Why could he not be like other boys, decent boys, from decent homes? Why did he worry his Father so much, with his constant prevarications? Why could he not go straight?
“Look at me, Phillip! Look into my face! Now tell me, why are you such a young rascal? Where do you get it all from?”
He had stared straight into her face. “I don’t know, Aunt Victoria”.
Aunt Viccy had smiled. He puzzled her, she said. He had always puzzled her.
“Why, even when you were nine months old, your baby face was filled with fear! You stared just as you are staring at me now. Your eyes were always filled with fear, you started at the least sound, you had, even at that age, a guilty look in those large eyes of yours! Why, why, why?”
“I don’t know, Aunt Victoria”.
“Well, buck up, old chap, that’s my advice to you. Keep a tight rein on yourself. Don’t do things which annoy your Father. He has a lot to put up with in his life, you know! No man wants a son who is always telling fibs, who is never to be trusted, who is always peeping and prying into other people’s affairs! I had you here to stay as I hoped you would be able to benefit from different surroundings, but I cannot and will not have Adele taught ways and expressions of a street boy. And you must learn not to cry at the least reproof, it isn’t at all manly, you know. Will you promise me, if I let the matter go no further, that you will never again use that expression?”
“Yes, Aunt Victoria.”
“Very well, then, we’ll say no more about it, this time. But if it occurs again, I shall have to send you home. Now go to your cousin Adele, and beg her pardon.”<
br />
Phillip had gone out of the morning room, and said to Adele that he was sorry. Then he had tip-toed upstairs to his bedroom, packed his bag, tip-toed down again, and so away from the house, to run most of the way to Epsom station and, with his return ticket, back to London, and home. That was during the Christmas holidays; and after a “wigging” from his father, and an enforced letter of apology to Aunt Victoria, the matter had ended.
*
Looking at himself somewhat anxiously in the glass, Phillip tried to arrange his small face so that it would look larger, and so resemble one belonging to a manly figure, with out-jutting chin, and stiff upper lip. This was rather difficult to do: for his jaw could only be made to stick out by putting his lower teeth over the upper, and then his lips almost disappeared, and the upper lip was not only too stiff, but flat. If only he were good-looking, like Milton, who was a friend of the Rolls’!
Ah well, it was no good hoping that he could alter his face; but he could alter his habits. That was the only way to get into the good books of Mr. and Mrs. Rolls. In future, he swore to himself, he would always behave like a little gentleman. He would turn over a new leaf. He would learn the Collect on Sundays without being badgered to do it by Mother. He would reform himself from swearing, and become a choir boy. Visions of the benefits of reformation filled his mind. He might even be chosen, in time, to sing the anthem on Sunday evenings at St. Simon’s Church, where Mother sometimes took him on Sunday evening to listen to the Rev. Mr. Mundy. Milton was the head choir-boy there; perhaps his own voice, if he trained it properly, would soar up to the roof, like Milton’s did. O, for the Wings, for the Wings of a Dove! Hearing the new voice, perhaps when Milton was taken suddenly ill, Helena Rolls, in her rented pew, would sit entranced. Afterwards Mrs. Rolls would say “Was that really Phillip stepping into the breach, with that beautiful clear voice? Oh, we must ask him to tea, Gerard,’—
At this point Phillip began to feel hot all over with a kind of fear.
For in Phillip’s eyes Mr. Gerard Rolls was a figure as grand as he was aloof. He was extremely handsome, tall and straight, always very well dressed, always affable, a very distinguished person indeed. He always was the same—never angry, or cross, or anything but very well bred. To sit in the same room as such a tall, blue-eyed, twisted-moustached man was—unthinkable. Phillip’s fingers trembled at the stitched stud-holes. Careful!
Having brushed his wet hair flat, he put on his Eton jacket, the one cousin Gerry Cakebread had outgrown. To complete the picture of rectitude and reformation, he then drew on a pair of brown dog-skin gloves; and after smiling at himself for awhile in the looking-glass to fix the right expression on his face, he turned the gas out, and feeling unnatural, tip-toed along the passage and down the stairs.
*
Passing the kitchen door, he saw the light underneath it and heard the girls’ murmured voices. Opening the door cautiously, he peered round. Mavis and Doris were crocheting beside the table, while against the wall, paint-box open before her, dabbling her brush in an old potted-meat glass, sat Polly.
“Oh, just look what’s come out of the fog!” cried Mavis, as she pointed out the glistening head poked round the door. She leant back in her chair, laughing. “Oh dear, look—look at his hair! It’s collapsed with sheer fright! He looks just like Timmy Rat after a bath!”
“At least I don’t lick myself all over with a flannel when I wash.”
One of Richard’s criticisms, made half as a joke, of his favourite daughter Mavis was that she washed herself like a cat, in sections, in the bathroom of a morning. It was likewise a criticism, half-serious, that none of the children cared for a cold tub in the morning. He himself, of course, took one the whole year through.
“No, for you don’t wash at all, do you?”
Polly laughed, and seeing her bright eyes, “How do you do,” said Phillip, very politely, acting the role of an imagined little gentleman. He held out a gloved hand to be shaken. “Busy with brush and palette, I see. What is this for, the dear vicar’s bazaar?”
Then noticing the top of the window opened, his tone changed. “Who opened that window? It’s bath night, and you know very well if the window’s open the cold air comes in there, and chills the pipes.” He pushed up the window, and opened the lower sash frame. “There, if you must be fresh air fiends! I say, Polly, will you be long? I promised to take Peter Wallace his picture by six o’clock.”
“Go on, Phillip! We know you too well, old boy! We know who that Valentine is for!”
“I bet you don’t!”
“Oh yes, I do. I bet it’s for Helena Rolls!”
“You liar!”
“Ha ha, we know! That’s why you’ve got your gloves on, to create an impression! You are going to call on Mr. Rolls, and ask him for his daughter’s hand, ha ha ha! Do you remember what happened last time you wore your gloves, when you called on the Todds? Muriel’s dog bit you, ha ha! Yes, Tiny nipped you in the leg.”
“It mistook me for someone else on that occasion,” said Phillip, glad of the chance to lead the talk away from Helena Rolls. “Yes, the little over-ripe banana-skin mongrel called Tiny, who lives at Number Six, Polly, was on that occasion entirely working by instinct,” exclaimed Phillip, with an animated glance at Polly’s friendly face. “Tiny smelled my gloves, as belonging to the skin of an erstwhile rival.” He held up his hands. “They are made of dogskin, these gloves, you see. And the Todds’ blinking mongrel, scared to death of my gloves when they were part of his old enemy, crept up behind me and snapped at the first thing it saw, which happened to be my leg. Look, I’ll show you the scar,” and rolling up his trouser, he showed upon the calf of his right leg two slight depressions almost joined together. “Caustic silver stopped any ill-effects. Do you learn chemistry at school?” he asked Polly. “It comes in useful for making bombs or pills. Well goodnight, girls, if I don’t see you again,” and bowing ironically to them, he withdrew, closing the door quietly behind him. For a moment he listened, to hear what might be said about himself; but a more urgent matter had come into his mind—the stomach-turning thought that soon he must return the library book which he had hidden under the Windsor side-board in the front room, and what would happen if the librarian spotted what he had written about various birds, including the Raven, the Gull, and worst of all, the Shag.
Father had said at breakfast that he might be home early; so there was no time to lose. He went into the front room, got down on hands and knees, and pulled the heavy book from under the cupboard. For safety, he took it upstairs, and hid it under his bed.
However hard Phillip had tried to erase the words he had written in Birds of the British Isles, he had not succeeded; the broad thick strokes of the relief nib, made with such hilarity, had remained. The idea of tearing out the offending pages had not occurred to him; he thought only that he must either rub out what he had written, or return the book without his crime being discovered.
Having hidden the book, he returned to the kitchen, to do his homework. The girls left, to be with Mother in the sitting-room. Phillip seated himself at the table, and poured out the contents of his leather satchel. Homework, ugh! The written subjects had to be done, but the Shakespeare could be learned by heart tomorrow while walking to school. He knew he could not learn anything tonight, what with the Valentine to be delivered, and the ordeal of the library book. Golly, if he got put of it this time, he would never do it again.
While he was working at his Algebra, the door was slightly kicked, and Mavis’ voice said, “Open the door, please”. Since it was Mavis speaking he let her wait a little, before getting up; and as she came in, carrying a sewing machine, he exclaimed testily, “How can I be expected to do my work, if you don’t leave me alone?”
“I bet you’re reading instead!” She put down the machine, and darted to his satchel. In it was concealed a copy of Boy’s Life. “There, I knew it! You just put it in there! It’s warm! You thought it was Father, I bet!”
“Look, the
ink’s wet on this equation! Now apologise!”
“I won’t, grumpy. Anyway, you know Father does not like you to read trash!”
“You spy! You want me to muck up my work, and get me expelled! Stop grinning at me, ugly mug! And take that awful sewing machine away.”
“Father doesn’t like the noise in the sitting room, and I must get this done tonight, for someone’s birthday tomorrow.”
“I know, it’s for your beloved Miss Wendover! You’re soppy about her.”
“Not half so soppy as you are about stuck-up Helena Rolls!”
Phillip’s feelings burst into irritable rage. He threw his satchel at his sister, who fled from the room, crying, “Ah, you can be very brave, with girls to fight, but you can’t fight your own battles with boys, can you? That’s why you have to get Peter Wallace to fight for you!”
“Now children, children, you mustn’t quarrel,” said Hetty, coming into the room.
“Why can’t Mavis leave me alone? I’ve got my homework to do, and it’s Latin tonight,” complained Phillip. “And French irregular verbs, which I can’t understand. You know how I feel, Mother, don’t you?”
“Yes, dear, of course your homework must come first. Only your Father may be home any minute now, and he will want to be quiet, dear. It’s a very quiet machine really, and Mavis is keen to get her work done tonight, before bedtime, Phillip. Oh, before I forget, have you changed the sawdust in Timmy Rat’s box?”
“Not yet. Oh, I can’t do Algebra!”
Phillip’s head was now held in his hands, elbows on table, fingers plugged in ears. The Latin primer was open before him. Quietly his mother lit the gas jet in the scullery, filled a kettle at the tap, and returned with it to the kitchen, to set it on the range.
“Oh, curse this muck,” he muttered. “What’s the use of the ablative absolute? What does it mean, anyway?”
“I expect it will have a use in after-life, dear.”
“Which one do you mean?”
“When you are grown up, of course, dear.”
“Oh, I thought you meant when I was dead.”
Young Phillip Maddison Page 2