“I suppose it’s his life in that suburb, but even so, Bee, after making all due allowances for his upbringing, I must agree with m’sister Viccy that he hasn’t got the right stuff in ’im. Dick says he has a taste for low companions—goes about with a guttersnipe livin’ in a slum. Dick forbade the friendship, such as it was, but it made no difference. No, he’s a throw-back. Even so, one would have thought that he would have had something to say on his own behalf, considering one was taking the trouble to give him a start in life. Not a bit of it! He ‘didn’t really know’ if he wanted to learn farming. What would he like to do, then? No answer! Had he any idea of any sort of a career? It was the same at table. What would he like to eat? ‘He didn’t mind’. Well then, had he any favourite dish? ‘Oh no.’”
“I expect the poor dear was shy,” said Beatrice. “Perhaps the sight of knives and forks positively frightened him. I know, when I first saw a fish knife, it scared me terribly. I didn’t know which way up the thing went. I expect Phil was shy.”
“Shy!” exclaimed Hilary. “That’s only an excuse for lack of good manners.”
“Not always,” said Beatrice.
“What else, then?”
“Nervousness, due to unfamiliar surroundings.”
“Damn it all, Bee, we all have to overcome that, sometime or other. But the point is, he made no effort to help me. I was only too willing to do anything I could. I told him so. It made no difference. He’s gauche, and rather stupid, I consider.”
“There is another possible reason, of course.”
“I wish you would tell me what it is, then!”
“Boredom,” said Beatrice.
“Boredom? A young fellow like that, a schoolboy still, invited to luncheon at the Voyagers? Why, half the mother country and Empire is run by the members! A boy of that age ought to be taking an interest in things beyond himself. Well, he’s thrown away a damned good chance, as far as I am concerned.”
“Who runs the other half, darling? The National Liberal Club?”
Hilary ignored this. He was thinking that, if Phillip was a typical specimen of the coming generation, then it was a poor look-out for the country.
“Anyway, talking about running, my precious nephew was apparently so eager to leave my company, that when I saw him off down Pall Mall, he took to his heels as soon as he thought I had turned back into the Club.”
“Perhaps you kept him too long, and he had an appointment elsewhere, darling.”
“Why do you invariably object to my assumptions, whatever the subject, my dear Bee? I had already offered to take Phillip to a matinee, but the idea seemed to fill him with positive fear. He must get back, he stuttered. Not a word of thanks! Only that he must get back and feed his white rat. What can you make of a youth like that?”
“I am sure, from what I remember of Phillip when he was a very little boy, that he would be very, very fond of his white rat.”
Hilary ignored this remark as a typically feminine bit of contrariness. “It’s just sheer bad manners, if you ask me. It comes from lack of a decent education. It’s part of the spirit of the times. Young people don’t want to work! They’re out for pleasure, first and last. That’s why we’re being beaten in overseas trade by Germany. They make cheaper goods, because they work harder. It’s different in the colonies; there a man has to work or starve, and if he does hard graft, as they call it, he gets on. It’s here in England, with that damned Lloyd George’s ideas, and women wanting the vote—as though the woman’s place in the home isn’t important enough—it’s here in England that the rot starts!”
“Poor little Phillip and his white rat,” murmured Beatrice. “What a lot he has to answer for.”
Which conversation, or talk at cross-purposes, went to show, perhaps, that all was not well with the Hilary Maddisons.
*
Hilary was not the only middle-aged man who was irritated by a young face, or a young generation, which seemed without character: a face which was callow, covered in places with soft hairs, with lips that tended to droop at the corners and were infirm, with a tendency to looseness, and with eyes that too often looked beyond the immediate scene, that were filled with a melancholy to which was added indecision, and evasiveness in the presence of elders and betters.
“Why do you not do what I tell you?” cried Richard, a few evenings after receiving a letter from his brother hinting at the unpropitious visit to the Voyagers Club. “I distinctly told you to write the date of the month before the month, and not after it! I have my reasons for this, you know. In writing the date, it is best to separate the two sets of figures; but you have written January, then added the date and the year! No, do not scratch it out! Take another piece of writing paper, and start afresh. First appearances, both by letter and in person, are most important!”
Phillip copied out the letter again. It was to the General Manager of the Moon Fire Office, begging to apply for the position of junior clerk, age and educational qualifications being as stated. The fair copy, after being passed by Richard, was put in an envelope, stamped with a penny stamp, and taken down to the post-box opposite Peter Wallace’s house in Charlotte Road, in time to catch the half-past nine post.
Having heard the fatal, slightly metallic flip of the letter in the box, Phillip ran to the flat of Mrs. Neville, to acquaint her with the latest news. She had already heard about the visit to the Voyagers, and had only just prevented tears as she realised Phillip’s predicament—which he told as a joke—due to having what he thought to be not enough cash in his pocket for tips. She had heard, too, about the Arithmetic paper: further cause for perturbation within her ample bosom. What tragedies there were in life, all the more pitiable because so often young people could not express their thoughts, and dared not say what they really felt!
“I must hop back now, Mrs. Neville, if you don’t mind. Father is going to try to teach me Chess, while Mother goes in to play bezique next door. Gran’pa’s a bit lonely, now that Uncle Hugh is in the nursing home in Tranquil Vale.”
Mrs. Neville gazed fondly at Phillip.
“I think it is very good of you to think of your Mother like that, dear. She must have a lot on her mind just now. How is your uncle, do you know?”
“I think he’s still in a coma, Mrs. Neville. He won’t last long now. The last thing he said was whispered to Mother—that he wanted to be burned, on the South Downs at night, and his ashes scattered to the winds. I think I know how he feels. I’ll push the door after I’ve closed it, to make sure it is shut. Good night, Mrs. Neville.
“Good night, dear.”
As he went down the stairs, Mrs. Neville wiped her eyes with one of the little squares of lawn that she made for herself, called handkerchiefs.
*
When Phillip appeared at breakfast the next morning, he saw at once that Mother had been crying. Doris was sitting silently over her Quaker Oats. Father was saying, “Nonsense, nonsense! It’s pure hysteria on your part, Hetty. It’s an illusion, and nothing you can say will alter my opinion!”
“What’s the matter now,” muttered Phillip.
“Oh, your Mother has been having one of her fancies, Phillip, that’s all.”
“It is true, Phillip,” said Mother, in a strained voice, turning to him with a despairing face. “I know my brother is dead, I know that Uncle Hugh died this morning!”
She got up and went into the scullery, and closed the door gently behind her. Phillip helped himself to porridge, hating Father for his attitude to Mother.
“Phillip,” came Mother’s voice, faintly from behind the scullery door. Phillip looked at Father.
“She is hysterical,” said Father in a sort of appealing, exasperated voice, which made Phillip think of the old tennis rackets in the downstairs lavatory, most of their strings broken and curly. “Your Mother had a dream, that is all, and now she insists that what she dreamed is bound to have happened! I tell her, as I have always told her, that she needlessly upsets herself when she gives way to her
precious fads and fancies, and other people with them. Better go to your Mother, if she needs you. Perhaps what you say will reassure her. My words do not, of that I am certain!”
And having finished his haddock, Richard swallowed the rest of his tea, wiped his moustache with his table napkin, rolled it up and put it in its ring, and went upstairs to clean his teeth with precipitated chalk, toothbrush, and a rubber band for the interstices, before leaving for his train. He had the only good teeth in the family.
*
“What’s up, Mum?” asked Phillip, when his Mother returned, smiling.
“I saw my Mother, dear,” said Hetty, trying not to speak weakly, “as clearly as I see you children now. She was standing by my bed, when I woke up at half past six this morning. She was quite close to me. Mamma said, quite distinctly, ‘I have come to fetch Hughie,’ and then she smiled, and she slowly went away. I was sitting up in bed, Phillip, I saw her as clearly as I have ever seen anyone in my life. You do believe me, don’t you, Sonny?”
“Do you think that Uncle Hugh is dead?” asked Phillip.
“Yes, dear, lam as sure of that as I am sure of anything in my life,” smiled Hetty. Then her face puckered, and she tried not to cry, as she said in a small strangled voice, “When I told your Father, he scoffed at me, and said that it was a delusion, and probably came from—no no, it does not matter, we shall see, we shall see,” and she dried her eyes and smiled again. “It was exactly half past six, for I looked at the clock. I knew that my brother had passed on at that very moment. Mamma would never deceive her children, never!”
Richard looked round the kitchen door. Hetty turned her face away, not wanting to annoy him further. Phillip bent down to tie up the laces of his boots, thinking that Father’s face had the same sort of look in it sometimes as the Magister’s, but never so keen and clear and full. Nobody at school hated the Magister: he was too iceberg-towering for that, he was beyond hate. Father’s forehead was not broad, like the Magister’s, though both their eyes were the same colour. Father’s eyes never really blazed, in an icy sort of way, a Northern Lights way, like the Magister’s.
“Well, I may be late tonight, Hetty old girl. There are a lot of second-notice renewal premiums coming in now. So expect me when you see me, and not before.”
With this mild joke, a sort of quarter-hearted attempt at amelioration, the bowler-hatted head was withdrawn.
The front door closed gently on its oiled multiple latches.
“Hur. Now we can breathe!” exclaimed Phillip.
At twenty minutes to nine Phillip left for school, whistling I wouldn’t leave my Little Wooden Hut for You, which Petal, who with her brother Tommy lived with Aunt Dorrie during the holidays, had taught him to sing. Petal and Mavis and Maude, Aunt Dorrie’s daughter, were all at the Convent together.
At fifteen minutes to the hour Doris left, for the Grey Ladies School.
At fourteen minutes to nine Hetty went in to see Papa, who was sitting at the breakfast table, staring straight in front of him. On the table-cloth beside him was a telegram, saying that Hugh Turney had died in the nursing home in Tranquil Vale at half past six that morning.
Chapter 30
BAGMEN’S OUTING
THE General Manager of the Moon Fire Office replied to Phillip’s letter, asking him to present himself at noon on Monday of the following week, and to confirm if the appointment was convenient. Phillip did so, under Richard’s eye.
“You will have to get yourself some decent clothes to go up in. Today, I saw some black vicuna jackets in the sale at the Stores. You will want a pair of striped trousers, too; and while you are there, you might choose yourself a raincoat. Dark grey, or black, will be suitable.”
“When shall I go, Father? I am playing footer on Wednesday afternoon.”
“Then you had better go up on Saturday afternoon. Now I wonder if you can be trusted to get the right things?”
“Phillip can perhaps get them on approval, Dickie.”
“When his appointment is next Monday? To hear you talk, no one would imagine that the boy’s entire future is at stake!”
“I meant, Dickie, that there is time now to order the clothes on approval. They would be here in a matter of two days, and I could ask Carter Paterson to call the next day for anything that had to go back.”
“You should know by now that articles in Sales are not sent on approval.”
Richard looked at The Daily Trident, where there was an interesting article about the hazards of Polar exploration, with references to Peary, Amundsen, Scott, and Shackleton. But how could he read with such sloppy people in the room? With a sigh he looked up again.
“If I had been you, Phillip, I would have taken the opportunity to go to Sydney, when you had the chance! I had the same chance once, let me tell you, and I had to turn it down, as others were involved. However, that is past and done with.” He looked at his paper again, found it impossible to read; and said, regarding Hetty, “If Phillip is sensible, he will go up on Wednesday. Let him choose for himself, he is old enough now. I will write down his requirements, then he can put the items down to my account, and bring them home here. Then we can all see the transformation of your best boy for ourselves, on Wednesday night.”
“Then I shan’t be playing football?” asked Phillip, disappointment in his voice.
Richard tossed the paper on to the table, and stood up. He had started the article half-way through tea, but owing to the feeling in the room he had never got beyond the third paragraph. Now, wagging a forefinger at Phillip, he said with scarcely suppressed exasperation, “You are a contrary cuss, aren’t you! All these years you have been dodging games whenever you could, and now that you are on the point of leaving school, suddenly you find a game of football to be of paramount importance! Well, there is an old saying in the West Country, ‘It be a lazy hoss what sweats to see the saddle’.”
Hetty laughed. Her laugh broke the tension. Richard sat down, and took up the paper once more.
“Zzct! Gee up! Gee up!” said Phillip, pretending he was a horse.
“I’ll see that he goes up on Wednesday, dear. I have something I want to do in London, so we can go together, can’t we, Phillip?”
She nodded at him, plainly urging him to reply, to let Dickie see that he, had some interest in what was being done for him. Phillip pretended to be eating grass off the tablecloth. Holding up the paper before him, Richard appeared to be oblivious of what was going on. Thus encouraged, Hetty remarked, “Well, I think at least you might say thank you to your Father, Phillip.”
“Yes, of course, thank you very much, Father. Of course I will pay you back.”
“H’m, I still think you will live to regret that you did not go to Australia.”
Tea proceeded in silence, until Doris whispered something to her mother.
“Speak out, girl!” said Richard. “Anyone would think this house was a—well, whatever a whispering house is called.”
Doris was still a reserved, at times a subdued, girl, despite her attendance at the College of Grey Ladies on the Heath. Thomas Turney had offered to pay the fees, as he paid, or had paid, for the education of some of his other grandchildren—Mavis and Maude at the Convent, Hubert at Dulwich as a boarder, Gerald and Ralph at day schools.
He had supported, in addition, his invalid son Hugh, and his widowed daughter Dorothy.
*
Since going to the convent, Petal had changed, thought Phillip, whenever he saw her during holidays from Thildonck. She had become withdrawn, reflective, cool. She and Tommy lived with Aunt Dorrie when they were home from school.
Mrs. Neville knew a great deal about the family and its doings from Phillip. He loved talking to her, and spent quite a lot of his time there. And to the flat he went when, returning with his mother on the following Wednesday, brown-paper parcel under arm, they came to the bottom of Hillside Road.
“I won’t be long, Mum. Mrs. Neville is rather interested in how I get on, you see.”
&
nbsp; “Very well, dear, I am glad you have someone in whom you can confide. But don’t be too long, will you? I think Gran’pa would like to see you. Your Father is also interested in you, you know.”
Phillip had a second tea with Mrs. Neville. She said he looked extremely nice in his grown-up suit. Talking to her, he lost for the moment his apprehension of the interview on the coming Monday.
The black vicuna jacket, of smooth and soft and durable cloth, went with his dark hair and deep blue eyes, thought Mrs. Neville. He had bought two new shirts, white with stiff starched cuffs, a ready-made bow-tie, and three standup winged collars. There was a black vest with the jacket, and the trousers had the new fashionable turn-ups at the bottom, he explained.
“Now, dear, I expect your Mother will be expecting you,” said Mrs. Neville, after tea. “It was so kind of you to come in to see me. Come again, any time you feel like it. But I don’t need to tell you that, do I?”
Phillip went home, while the feeling of apprehension grew again.
“H’m,” said Richard. “‘Now I see you stand before me, all this while you were disguised’,” as he misquoted an old saying once applied to him by his own father.
*
The interview on the Monday took place in what to Phillip was an atmosphere of unreality, before the General Manager, a dark bearded man sitting at a big mahogany desk at the end of a large soft-carpeted room and two men standing beside him. One of these was the Secretary, a clean-shaven man who wore pince-nez spectacles on a fine gold chain slung over one ear. Neither smiled, but spoke in level, impersonal voices. Thus had new applicants been interviewed since time immemorial. The posts of general manager and secretary were filled, by custom, by members of the staff, long proven in steadiness and orthodoxy.
Young Phillip Maddison Page 47