Young Phillip Maddison

by Henry Williamson

  Just before the start of the play, which was to end the first show, the actor with the thick grey hair and raddled face approached the group of boys, rattling his box; this time the girl in pink was with him, Phillip saw with thudding heart. He was unable to move away; he stood there while the actor came right up to him, and shaking the box with a double shake said loudly, for all to hear, “You see the show often enough, why don’t you give something sometimes, eh?” and again he rattled the box. Feeling hot and ashamed, Phillip felt for the sixpence, and put it in the box. An unutterable feeling came over him as he did so, that he was giving away part of his mother; and with the feeling was a dark desire that he would never go back, but wander off and never see her again.

  The actor smiled, showing brown teeth with a big brown whiff of whisky close to his face. “You like the show, eh?” he said, nudging him with his elbow, and winking as with a jerk of his head he indicated the girl in pink with the straight fair hair. When she lifted her lashes, and smiled at him, Phillip felt such a surge of happiness that he had to clench his hands to prevent himself from giving a shout. He would eat bread and butter with cheese instead of digestive biscuits, and not be sick in the train tomorrow! Then Mother would not mind that he had given the money to the Merry Minstrels.

  When the first show was over, he did not return for supper, feeling no need for food. After packing the tent, he sat on the shingle, watching the little wavelets, sparkling with phosphorescence, almost tinkling on the shore as they formed and broke at the edge of the smooth grey sea. He felt a sad happiness as the sun went down over the gorse and bramble flats, beyond which was the golf course, and the floating iron tanks which supported the West Ferry, whereon he had caught a codling, a pollack, and several small eels. Farewell West Pier, lifting with the tide! Then in the clear, still air he heard voices, and standing up, saw the lighted Chinese lanterns glowing inside the wooden stage. For a moment he found it hard to breathe, with the wonder of it all.

  So Phillip, heedless of anything save his own feelings which must be obeyed, once again forgot his life and circumstance as he stared at the girl in the pink frock and large pink hat under the row of round paper lanterns.

  Would you care for it, and tend it every day

  Till the time when all must part,

  If I should plant a tiny seed of Love

  In the garden of your heart?

  The sun was nearly gone beyond the gorse and bramble flats, where the stonechat was silent, sleeping in his thick bramble-berry bush. Perhaps he would never hear that same bird again, with its black and white and browny feathers. Father said the life of a small bird was very short. Goodbye, little stonechat!

  The moon seemed to be moving up very fast over the dark treetops in the village, as though to see what the row of Chinese lanterns were doing on the common. Ah, this was his last night at the sea-side: what did it matter that he was over two hours late for supper, when soon the canvas would be drawn across the stage of the Merry Minstrels, and then, O sad thought, the lanterns be blown out? Tears ran down his cheeks as the little boy on the stage died, it was like what he had written in the scholarship composition over two years ago, a time which now was far away in the remote past.

  Very bright and lonely seemed the moon when the lanterns went out, and all the people had gone, and the chairs were occupied only by their own shadows in the moonlight.

  Lingering behind, Phillip followed the Merry Minstrels at a distance as they walked to their room in the public house where they had their meals and drank whisky, though not of course the girl in the pink frock. It seemed very strange that such a wonderful girl could be the daughter of the funny man in the red wig—who was not really awfully funny.

  As they sat in the room, with the door open, Phillip dared to take a last glance upon wide soft shimmering hair covering the back of a pink frock as she took a big bite at a ham sandwich—how strange to think she could be hungry like any ordinary person—and then, after a pause in the lane beyond, while with shut eyes he faced a sudden terrifying thought that the scenes of his life could never never never come back again, Phillip set off down the blank white road, tent bundle under arm. He did not stop until he came in sight of the row of cottages in the middle of the island, wondering if he would be locked out finally this time.

  Perhaps if everyone was in bed, Mother would come down to open the door for him if he threw up a small amount of gravel, with the bigger stones picked out, of course, in case the glass were broken. But the lamp was alight in the downstairs room. Mother was playing Patience with herself as she waited up. She was not angry. All was well.

  *

  Soon after the return home on the Saturday afternoon the dream faded, and life became ordinary once more. His first concern was for Timmy Rat, so he went down to Hern’s to find Cranmer. Timmy Rat was all right, looking very much bigger, having been fed largely on oat-meal and cheese by a considerate Cranmer, who had brought the box to the yard behind the shop first thing that morning. Phillip told Cranmer about the tent he had got, which would do for their camp; but what they needed, he said, was a baggage waggon to carry their kit in. What about some old pram-wheels? He had some wood for the frame, and a box, but wheels were the problem.

  Cranmer said at once that Phillip could have the “wills” off his family perambulator. They could be put back later on. With these promised, Phillip planned to make the baggage waggon on the Monday morning.

  Sunday had to be got through first. This meant church in the morning at St. Cyprian’s with his two sisters, and church again in the evening with Mother at St. Simon’s. To make the visit to St. Cyprian’s more interesting, Phillip arranged to call for his cousin Gerry. Ralph was there, home for the week-end from Murrage’s shop in High Holborn. Ralph’s feet were so tired from standing all day that he was spending Sunday in bed until the time to return after supper.

  Dressed in their Eton suits, Phillip in a straw-yard and Gerry in a small bowler hat, they walked before the three girls, who in white cotton frocks and black stockings with high-laced black boots, cotton gloves and large straw hats ornamented with artificial flowers, joined the many family parties walking sedately up Charlotte Road to the toll of the single bell in the roof of the red-brick barn-like church.

  *

  St. Cyprian’s had been built at the same time as the new row of flats in Charlotte Road; but, as indicated on the blue cover of every monthly parish magazine, without the tower. Many of the inhabitants in what was a new suburb had no interest in any church, old or new, so the money estimated to come in from pew-rents had not materialised. For this reason there had been added upon the ridge of the roof, in lieu of the planned tower with peal of Loughborough bells, a little erection like a louvred ventilator on a stables, housing a single bell. Dong-dong-dong it tolled on Sundays from a quarter to eleven to within a few minutes of the hour of Morning Service—a dismal sound to Phillip, yet part of the feeling he always had, behind his life, somehow.

  There being no graveyard to the new church, the land within its spiked railings had been left in the original state of twitch-grass growing wild on the yellow clay; so the church never looked like a church to Phillip, either inside or out. Once he and Gerry had wandered inside when it was empty during the week, and it had not seemed at all wicked to speak in ordinary voices when they saw a row of paint-pots and some ladders there. A sparrow had got itself trapped inside the church, hopping about between rows of new rush-chairs—the chairs alone showed it wasn’t a proper church. The bird fluttered with open beak, too weak to fly. Gerry caught it, and gave it a drink out of the bowl on the altar, which had some flowers in it, while telling Phillip that some people would say he was committing sacrilege. Gerry let drops fall from his fingers into the sparrow’s mouth. Afterwards the bird began to chirp in a queer, thin little way. They took it outside and let it go among the long grasses, where, said Gerry, it would have to take its chance of being caught by the numerous moggies that howled about the place, love-making.
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  Everything on earth, said Gerry, had its origin in what the yowling moggies were after. Then, while Phillip grinned shyly, Gerry repeated the words of a verse that Marie Lloyd, a hot piece on the halls, was said to have sung at the New Cross Empire one Saturday night during the second house while the audience was singing the ordinary words of the chorus

  It’s only human nature after all

  To get a pretty girl against a wall

  And give your humanation

  To her abomination—

  It’s only human nature after all!

  Phillip was not quite sure what the words meant; mentally he shied away from something rather nasty, yet fascinating. Fancy Gerry daring to say that inside a church! Phillip recalled the verse as he sat at the back, next to Gerry, trying hard not to giggle at the yam-yam voice of the parson.

  He sought relief, as on previous occasions, in trying to force himself to read things in the Revised Prayer Book. His eye lit on a familiar sentence.

  A woman may not marry her grandfather.

  At last they were shuffling in the slow throng moving down the aisles past the rows and rows of emptying rush-chairs, towards the open doors through which passed about two thousand men, women, and children in their best clothes, to the thundering of the organ. Almost the entire congregation was bound for the top of the Hill, where every fine Sunday relaxation was sought from the subduement of self in the up-and-down walk upon the crest, for half an hour or so before descending to where, from chimney and open window, smells of roast beef, roast mutton, roast potatoes, Yorkshire pudding, onion sauce, and various kinds of cabbage would then be issuing, via gas-stoves under the surveillance of thousands of more or less anxious mothers and housekeepers.

  Outside in Charlotte Road, in the free air and sunlight, Phillip said he had to meet someone on the Hill, to discuss the forthcoming camp.

  “Ha, I bet it’s not about your old patrol!” said Mavis. “We all know very well who you hope to see up there! Anyway, you needn’t be so anxious, we don’t want to come with you.”

  These remarks made Phillip angry, because Mavis had seen through his real intention, which was to go on the Hill in the hope of seeing Mr. and Mrs. Rolls and Helena.

  *

  The girl in pink was far away, like a dream that was gone; the battle of the brain, the torment of his life in Wakenham, was once more centred upon the unattainable Helena. She was harmony, she was bliss, she was free air and sunlight, she was Love.

  Phillip thought of the awful state of his mind, which sometimes overcame him in bed, as the battle of the brain; so violently did his thoughts make him hot, sleepless, and despairful in the darkness while they lasted. Hetty shared his secrets; all she could do was to sympathise, and to suggest that he must work steadily and so lay the foundation of a successful career, when he might win the one he loved. She was, at times, alarmed by the intensity of his feelings; she could not but take her little boy seriously. He was so passionate, so intense, so—distracted. Ah, if only she had been able to give him the warmth of her love when he had been little, perhaps this strange craving in him for a face—for that was all it was—would not now be so intense!

  *

  “Shut up, Mavis, you don’t understand.”

  Phillip plucked Gerry’s sleeve and, taking him apart from the girls, whispered, “Do you mind if I go on the Hill alone? I want to see someone there, you know who, but don’t split, will you? See you later and tell you all about it.”

  “Good hunting,” replied Gerry, with a squeeze of his hand for which Phillip was most grateful.

  He hurried up the gravel path alone, drawing on his gloves. There was a photograph of himself in his pocket, which he had dared to think of putting into Helena’s hand, when her parents were not looking. The thought made him feel slightly sick with apprehension.

  Streams of people were moving up to the crest by all the paths. When Phillip got to the main path on the crest, which lay east and west, he entered the crowd of people moving both ways, passing and repassing one another. Parasols bobbed over all the heads to the far distance. The path was about ten feet wide. A dry and extensive crunching noise filled the air all along the ridge, made up of thousands of boots and shoes pressing upon the yellow gravel surface. It was the Sunday parade of Wakenham’s upper classes. Accompanying the parasols was a black bobbing of top-hats.There were all shapes and sizes of faces, some smooth, a few bearded; there were big moustaches, some curling upwards, others drooping at the ends, as though with resignation to middle-aged respectability; there were black frock coats and newer morning coats, one or two pairs of lavender kid gloves, a great many brown gloves. Phillip knew by the clothes, shape of starched linen collars, gloves, sticks, and the way they walked which part of Wakenham they came from—from the big houses in Twistleton Road to the new little red-brick ones on the other side of the Hill.

  Hundreds of walking stick ferrules tapped on the path. People passed almost in rows four and five abreast, meeting similar rows, weaving and interweaving. All had come out of the churches, Established and Unitarian, Catholic and Episcopalian, High and Low—six or seven thousand people passing and repassing one another upon six to seven hundred yards of gravel which ancient floods and seas had deposited with the underlying yellow clay of the Woolwich beds.

  “Ah, our Rabelaisian naturalist! How do you do, Phillip!”

  “Goo’ morning, sir!”

  Black straw of the Rev. Mundy, vicar of St. Simon, was courteously raised; Phillip’s old boater was lifted in respectful return. The boy walked on with sudden confidence.

  Beside the main concourse on the grassy areas beside the gravel path, other people were strolling, or stopping to chat in groups around the bandstand. Some had with them children on their best behaviour, conscious of everyone else being in their Sunday best.

  On the other side of the bandstand, on the slopes above the Warm Kitchen, were the lesser lights of Wakenham, the people who did not go to church, most of them bowler-hatted or with strawyards slightly tilted, and wearing blue serge suits. Some of them wore yellow or brown shoes with tweed jackets, celluloid collars, and ready-made bow-ties. They strolled and loitered in the sunshine, content in the knowledge that they too had their place in the English Sunday, the Day of Rest, envying no man, for they could pay their way, and therefore could consider themselves respectable people.

  Away in the distance, under much-climbed thorn trees, played the hatless children, the urchins, the partly cared-for and the partly-uncaring: human sparrows of the congested lower streets nearer Thames. They were completely at ease, they had shrill voices and no cares.

  Phillip saw Cranmer near the bandstand. He waved. That was enough for Cranmer. He had come up for no more than that: recognition from his friend and hero. Cranmer strolled away, warmly happy within. He did not dare to, or indeed want to go among the toffs on the path, the splendid people so far above him, who wore shiners.

  Phillip’s life was without inward glow, without contentment. He was transfixed by his anxious quest, aware that his straw-hat was old and second-hand, slightly too big for him despite paper behind the leather band, that his Eton collar was much-mended at the stud-holes, that his hands hidden by gloves were unwashed, his boots not properly blacked, that he swore and was ill-mannered, that he was a scholarship boy because his father did not have enough money to pay for him at school, that he did not really belong to such nice people: by which he meant the Rolls family, whom he dreaded to meet, whom he hoped to see. And suddenly in an alarming instant there were four faces smiling, four heads inclining together, four people saying, “Good morning, Phillip.” Milton was walking beside her! Then all four were gone past—and he had not had time to raise his hat!

  Shame, confusion, black grief that he had disgraced himself for ever overcame him. Oh, thank God that he had not been so foolish as to offer his photograph. They were gone, the beautiful faces, hidden now by hundreds of other faces laughing and talking, faces, faces which had passed while he
walked on unseeing, life darkening with shame that he had not raised his hat. He must get away from everybody, hide behind the bushes, hurry, but do not run, do not let them see you running over the empty tennis courts. Climb the forbidden hurdles and through the may bushes to the broad gravel before the Grammar school! Vault the tarred railing and into the empty sheep-fold, over more wooden hurdles and down through the steep clay slopes, cracked by summer heat, hat and face and coat scraped with thorns all the way down to the railings of the gully. Hurry down the gravel, past her house, past Mr. Pye’s, past Gran’pa’s—“Hey, Phillip, how are ye? I say, m’boy—why’r’ye in such a hurry—hullo, he’s gone as though the devil himself were after him, he-he-he——”

  Knock knock knock on the door. Ring the bell. “Quick quick, open the door!”

  “Why, Phillip, whatever is the matter?”

  “Is Gerry here?”

  “He’s in the garden, dear, on the grass with Timmy Rat.”

  “Thank God, oh thank God.”

  “Why, dear, is anything the matter?”

  Hetty followed him into the front room, where he had flung himself down.

  “When’s Father coming home from his tour?”

  “He is due back tonight, dear; why do you ask?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Everything is ended.”

  She waited a little anxiously, lest he have something to tell her—oh, pray he was not in trouble again!

  She felt his hot brow. He pushed her hand away. Tragic eyes looked into her face.

  “Mother, what have I done with my life?”

  “Done, dear? Why, in particular, do you ask, Sonny?”

  “I’m no good, am I? If you told the truth, you would say I was no good. You know what Father thinks of me. I’m a throw-back! That’s why no one really wants to know me!”

  “Sonny dear——”