After the Lunatic Bakers, Harry Tate and his motorcar. That was screamingly funny, the man in the loud check cap and big twitching moustache. Why won’t the car go, Papa! After a lot of funny arguments with the chauffeur, the boy in the back in a top hat discovered the reason. The wheels were not round! Not round? They looked round enough. Ah, but they were not going round! It was terribly funny. Then the schoolboy tried to prove that the reason was that while the circumference of ordinary wheels was 3πr, his Father’s wheels were 4πr! They had one-third more circumference than ordinary wheels! A mathematical joke! Fancy telling that to the Magister, phew!
Then with a sudden hollow bumpy feeling Phillip realised that he had left school …
At last, Marie Lloyd. The audience seemed to be going mad as the bewigged footman with the notice board came on. He felt frightfully excited. Then he saw a woman with what looked to be a big-corseted waist, a big hat with ostrich feathers in it, and a parasol. As she sang she looked sideways at the audience, her big teeth protruding. Sometimes she paused, and sniffed in a knowing way as she made suggestive remarks and pretended to wipe her nose on the back of her hand. A little of what you fancy does you good! He knew what that meant, and by the way she said it, it was rather like the women in the Rec. Then suddenly the rays of light from the arc-lamp in the box made her eyes glitter Cambridge-blue. They were like a turquoise: he saw only the sky-blue glint, which seemed somehow to make her more than a woman who was rather like a principal boy wearing fancy clothes instead of tights.
He stared, fascinated, a little frightened. After that blue eye-glint he was held to her every movement on the stage, as she sang in a rather hoarse voice, her big feather hat nodding, her parasol held out with its point on the stage as she stopped, showed her teeth sideways, wiped away a sniff with her hand, said to him (how had she seen him?) Every little movement has a meaning of its own! As she said it, there came the sudden and startling blue glitter of her eyes; and although she was ever so far away and below, Phillip was rather thrilled.
*
When he got home at nearly half past nine, Phillip took off his muddy boots, put on slippers, and went down into the sitting-room. Father did not even ask him where he had been, or why he was late. He just turned his head in the armchair, from reading The Daily Trident, and said, “Hullo, old chap, had a good time?”
“Yes thank you, Father. Some friends and I have been walking over the Seven Fields, and on the way home we went to the Hippodrome to see Harry Tate.”
Father did not say anything further. Phillip sat down behind Father’s chair, his usual place. He could hear Mother in the kitchen making sop for his supper. There was his book, given him the day before, lying on the table, near Father’s elbow. It was the history of the School, by Mr. Graham. Every boy on leaving was given a copy.
Phillip thought, a little unsteadily, that never again would he sit among the Bagmen. Taking the book, he opened it at random. Head on hands, he read the first verse of the School song, which he knew by heart, from the six times he had sung it with the massed choir on Founder’s Day, before all the parents (though Father had never come) in Hall.
Who’ll sing us a song of the sports of the year
And the tales that around each cling?
Who’ll sing in praise of the tented field,
And the glories that cricket and footer yield,
Or the trophies the swimmers bring?
Let each man tell his story well, and the chorus shall go with a swing!
Here’s to the tented field, swimming, footer, and cricket!
Here’s to the rifle and camp, the butts, the goal, and the wicket!
Here’s to our teamsmen all, my lads, and the friendship nought can sever!
Here’s to the good old school, my lads, may it flourish for ever and ever!
Phillip turned back to the early pages, to the recantation of the Founder, lying in Newgate Prison, over three hundred years before.
“Surely I shal be able to saye nothing, but hang down my heade like a bullrush for verry greife of heart, yea trembling and confounded before your honour. My sacrifice must be a contrite and a broken hart. I confesse I thought to prayse the vertues of ye Earle (whose flesh is now clothed with wormes, and dust of ye earth) and darkely to poynt at his death vnder ye historie of Cicero, but not to greive at ye sentence of his condemnation, proposed by our most iust and wise prince: for God knowes who searchest ye verry veynes and intralls of men, that I was neuer yet disloyall unto her Maiestie, eyther in thought, worde or deed. Yea it is and hath bene my morning incense and my euvening sacrifice vnto Almighty God, that he would preserve her Maiestie as ye apple of his eye, and that he would wound ye head of her enimies, and ye heary scalpe of euery one who doeth intend to shorten ye dayes of his annoynted Gloriana.”
What a dry book, Phillip thought; all unreal like the rest of history, which belonged to another kind of world altogether, when men were very cruel, and there were traitors, and people were being tortured, tried, beheaded, and killed in rebellions or wars, all the time. It was quite a different world now; all that was a thing of the past; men knew so much better nowadays.
He closed the book and put it away, before Mother could come in and, seeing it, talk about the old times which, for some strange reason, she could not see were uninteresting, like fossils.
Then resting his head on his hands once more, Phillip thought of his last goodbye to the Bagmen outside the Hippo. Never would they be all together again. It was over, his boyhood was over. He sat as one transfixed.
*
In the green russian-leather armchair Richard held the newspaper before him. He was not reading it. Quietly he laid it on his lap, and closed his eyes. Phillip’s mention of the Seven Fields had brought pictures of the past before what he called the camera obscura of his mind. Only a little while ago, it seemed, he and Hetty were arriving at the keeper’s cottage, for their brief honeymoon; and the woodcock had pitched beside them as they lay in Knollyswood Park, on the dry skeleton leaves of the year’s end. He thought of Phillip’s arrival, and the little chap suddenly smiling at him, as he nursed him at night through his illness—ah! he liked his Daddy then, why, the little chap had always wanted him to hold him by the hand, in his cot, for a minute or two, before he settled to sleep.
His eyes still closed, Richard drew in a deep breath, then released his thoughts in a long sigh, inaudibly, before taking up his newspaper again and reading about the empty houses the suffragettes were burning down, the windows they were smashing, the bombs they were leaving in public buildings, the acid poured into pillar boxes. Theodora—his own sister! What had come over the world? That a gentlewoman could so far forget all her upbringing, and sense of decorum, and associate herself with such dastardly behaviour? And that was the Theodora who, mark you, had criticised him for doing his duty in punishing Phillip for bad behaviour in the past. It was all of a piece! There was something very rotten in the State of Denmark!
Well, now the boy was off his hands. And with the workaday balance of his mind adjusted again, Richard poured himself his nightly cup of hot water, half an hour before his bed-time.
“I expect you feel ready for bed, after your long walk, Phillip. Don’t forget to clean your teeth.”
“No, Father. Good night.”
“Good night, old man.”
Hetty came into the room, carrying her work-basket. She took out her darning needle, wool, and leopard-spotted large cowrie shell, which went inside the sock she darned—one of the presents of her brother Charley from Africa.
Richard looked up and smiled.
“Well,” he said, with a sudden air of ease. “How about a game of chess, old girl?”
*
October 1952 - August 1953 Devon.
By Henry Williamson in Faber Finds
THE FLAX OF DREAM
The Beautiful Years
Dandelion Days
The Dream of Fair Women
The Pathway
The Wet F
landers Plain
A CHRONICLE OF ANCIENT SUNLIGHT
The Dark Lantern
Donkey Boy
Young Phillip Maddison
How Dear Is Life
A Fox Under My Cloak
The Golden Virgin
Love and the Loveless
A Test to Destruction
The Innocent Moon
It Was the Nightingale
The Power of the Dead
The Phoenix Generation
A Solitary War
Lucifer Before Sunrise
The Gale of the World
Copyright
This ebook edition first published in 2014
by Faber and Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
All rights reserved
© Henry Williamson Literary Estate, 1953
The right of Henry Williamson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–0–571–31551–2
Young Phillip Maddison Page 50