Young Phillip Maddison Page 13

  Phillip had often discussed his chances with Helena with his mother, advancing various observations to prove, and then to disprove, whether or not she was as keen on him as he was on her.

  “Oh, I wish my men had turned up when she passed, Mum! Then I could have drawn my sword. I felt such a fool standing there alone, all by myself.”

  “I expect they will turn up soon, dear.”

  “They’re always late! There’s a rule of a ha’penny fine for being late, but no one will ever pay it.”

  The figure of Gran’pa appeared on the balcony, out of his bedroom door.

  “Ah, you have responsibilities now, Phillip, and must learn to be patient, m’boy!” said Gran’pa’s voice. Phillip ignored it, as he had ignored Gran’pa’s appearance. “What are you going to do today, chase spies, Phillip, he-he-he?”

  Why did Gran’pa always laugh at his own jokes, and such silly ones, too?

  Phillip answered shortly, “Oh Gran’pa! What do you think we are? We’re Scouts!”

  “Oh, I see. He-he-he,” chuckled Thomas Turney. “Are you there, Hetty?”

  “Yes, Papa.” She leaned out, looking upwards.

  “I was just coming in to see you, to tell you about Hughie.”

  “Oh Papa, what has happened?”

  “He’s losing his sense of balance. Newman came to tell me that he saw ’im fall over, on the Hill this morning. Bolton dropped in just now, and suggested I get a man for him. What d’ye think, Hetty?”

  “Oh, poor Hughie! Did he hurt, himself badly, Papa?”

  “No, Hetty, no cause for alarm. I just wanted to talk things over with you. Is Dickie home?”

  “I’m expecting him any moment now, Papa. I’ll come in and see you later in the afternoon, when I shall be alone.”

  “Very well, Hetty. I want to discuss my new will with you, too. I heard from Grandison, the broker, this morning. He says there’s nothing to be done about those Canadian Pacifies. I ought to have sold my block when he advised, months ago. They’re not likely to recover now the company has gone into liquidation. Well, even Homer nods, he-he-he.”

  “Oh Papa, perhaps they will recover! Even so, it is a terrible thing, I must admit.”

  “They went up, you see, on a rumour that the Company was going to make an offer, and I hung on for a rise. The first loss should be the last loss. Never forget that maxim, Phillip! Then you won’t go through life blaming others for your own faults, m’boy, eh Hetty? He-he-he! Worry makes a man hesitant. There’s your Uncle Charley, silly fellow, chucking up his steady job with the mining people, and buying an import business—Charley, who knows nothing about business!”

  Thomas Turney opened his snuff-box, took a pinch, sniffed it up first one hairy nostril, then another. He sneezed appreciatively, blew his nose rigorously on a red silk handkerchief taken from the breast-pocket of his blue serge jacket, and went on with his remarks. “You know, Hetty, children remain children to their parents all their lives. Anxiety never leaves a parent, anxiety absorbs thought, and thought is energy.” He looked down upon his grandson with a beam of benevolence. “Now you look out that you don’t get caught when you grow up, Phillip, by a pretty face. Never marry for excitement, m’boy, he-he-he, like your Uncle Charley did.”

  “Oh shut up,” muttered Phillip to himself, with a glance of distaste at his mother. He was used to Gran’pa’s advice; he never listened. He was beginning to side with Father against Gran’pa Turney. Gran’pa was always discussing the making of a new will with Mother; always coming in to see Mother about it. Before the old man could say any more, Phillip slipped away into the road, to look and see if any of his men were in sight.

  The talk from the balcony continued. Oh why must they talk about him, and so near to the Pye’s house? And the Rolls’ too.

  “This scout idea will keep him out of mischief, Hetty. Who is his Scout-master?”

  “I don’t think they have one yet, Papa. Phillip is in charge,” she said proudly. “He’s taking his patrol for a field day this afternoon.”

  “He’s too thin, Hetty. Don’t let him walk too far, at his age, or go too long without food. Once you let a bull calf shrink, it never makes up for it. It’s the same with human beings. We’re all mammals, y’know.”

  You might be, but I’m not, thought Phillip. He was a little reassured by Mother saying, “Oh, Phillip is stronger than he looks, Papa. He’s got a pound of sausages in his mess tin, to cook round the camp fire.”

  “Beef or pork?”

  “Beef, Papa. Pork are rather expensive, at sixpence a pound.”

  “Well, there’s staying power in beef, certainly, though not so much, I fancy, in this imported frozen stuff. I was going to ask ye, Hetty, what about that water-bottle Phillip has? A lot of fellows died of enteric in the war, you know, like poor Sidney. Has it been well disinfected?”

  “Yes, Papa, I did it myself, with boiling soda water, then permanganate, as Dickie advised. Dickie is always very careful, you know.”

  Thomas Turney did not think much of his son-in-law, a cross-grained fellow whose complaining voice was far too often audible in the adjoining house. Nowadays, however, he kept his opinion on the fellow to himself; and a little praise, where it was due, was always gladly given.

  “Yes, Dick’s very thorough, I know that. You can’t be too careful. Well, a boy is only young once, Hetty. Let him make the most of it. Come in and play me a game of bezique tonight, will ye? Come to supper, do. There’s a macaroni pie, and some scallops, both easily digestible.”

  Phillip, who by now had given up all idea of putting on his sword, started to walk down the road in a mood of aimlessness. Then he saw, to his delight, cousin Gerry turn the corner. He waved his pole, and uttered the patrol call, Boo-hoo! Gerry was accompanied by a small boy, whom Phillip had seen about, but never spoken to. The boy lived in one of the flats in Charlotte Road, built at the same time as St. Cyprian’s Church, in the space between the Wakenham and Randiswell stretches.

  Phillip had wondered if Gerry would join the Bloodhounds and be the patrol-leader, he himself being corporal, but Gerry was too big; besides, he was in the cadet corps of St. Anselm’s College at Fordesmill, where Gran’pa had paid for him to go after he had failed to win a scholarship. Phillip loved being with Gerry, he was his favourite cousin, he always seemed amused at what he did. Gerry had a girl, and was not afraid of policemen or keepers on the Hill. Gerry was never afraid to fight if there was trouble. Though Gerry was not quarrelsome, nor did he behave like a hooligan. He always liked to shake hands after a fight if he could, which was being British, he said.

  “Hullo, you bloodhound,” said Gerry. “Do you want a pup?”

  “Father wouldn’t let me have one, Gerry. He dislikes London dogs.”

  “I mean a recruit, you dough-nut,” said Gerry, pointing to the modest figure of the small boy beside him.

  “Oh, I see, a tenderfoot. Yes, we do want another Scout.”

  “Well,” said Gerry, “you can have the blisters, but I prefer two penn’orth of dark at the flicks. Think of me in the dark with a belle, being an ordinary sort of dog myself. So long, hounds!”

  “So long,” replied Phillip, proud that the new man had seen what a fine cousin he had.

  “I say, have you been to the Electric Theatre?” he said to the newcomer when they were alone.

  The boy shook his head. “Mother is afraid of my weak chest. I might get the germs of scarlet fever, whooping cough, or diphtheria, so I am not allowed to go.”

  “Nor am I, not from germs, though. I went with Gerry one Saturday, soon after it opened, and stayed from two o’clock until it ended at ten, so my Father was crusty, and put the kibosh on me going again. It was a very funny film. There was a man on a motorbike who rode everywhere—through houses and rooms, bumping into carts and upsetting them, and into men carrying huge cans on their shoulders, lettered ‘Alcool’, which is French for ‘Alcohol’. Coo, there was some sport!” said Phillip, reminiscently.

 
The newcomer looked at Phillip with awe. Phillip examined him, as he stood before him. He wore a grey flannel suit, and carried an overcoat, neatly folded, over one arm. His grey worsted stockings showed his brown bony knees. Rather nervously, the boy said, “Please, Phillip, Mother says, may I join your patrol.”

  “Yes, of course you can, we need a sixth man, only”—doubtfully—“you’ll have to get a uniform, you know, and pay a penny a week subscription.”

  “Yes, Mother says I may do that.”

  “We’re going scouting this afternoon, you can come with us if you like. What’s your name? How old are you?”

  “I’m nine, and my name is Desmond Worsley Whickham Neville.”

  Phillip thought that was a rather grand name.

  “All right. I hereby pass you into the Bloodhounds.” Phillip lifted his pole, and touched him on the shoulder with the pennant. “Got your penny on you? It’s for the Tent Fund. In case you’ve heard any remarks from the Wallace brothers, I do NOT spend it on suckers for myself. If I have borrowed a bit now and then, it is all down in this book. And what’s more, the money is covered by my grant, in the Post Office Savings Bank. Figures cannot lie.”

  Phillip showed the new recruit the notebook.

  “Now, you’re a witness that I have entered up your name, Desmond, and penny. Hullo! The other men are coming, after all!” and funnelling his hands around his mouth, Phillip cried, Boo-hoo! Boo-hoo!

  The noise was answered by two boys standing at the bottom of the road.

  “That’s the bay of a bloodhound on the trail, Desmond. It sounds a bit eerie, I admit, but that’s how we recognise one another in the woods, when we’re tracking, without wanting to let it be known that we are human. Those two who just bayed are Peter and David Wallace. Freddy Payne ought to be coming along soon. He’s got a bugle, so I let him join. He’s only a little tich, he can’t play for toffee, so I do it for him. Of course I can’t play it properly, Father won’t let me practise when he’s home. Even when I went into the coal-cellar, with a candle, he stopped me. Well, if Mahomet won’t come to the mountain, the mountain must go to Mahomet. We’ll parade by the church, our usual place.”

  “Will it be all right if I come on parade with my coat?” asked Desmond, diffidently.

  “Oh yes, for the first afternoon. As a tenderfoot, of course, you’ll have to walk behind when we march off. Can’t you leave your coat somewhere? It won’t rain.”

  Desmond looked unhappy. “Mother said I must carry it. I’ve had bronchitis, and have a weak chest.”

  “Oh, in that case it might be safer to carry it. We are going to buy capes when we get some tin, and carry them rolled under our haversacks. At Murrages you can buy dark grey capes, made of old uniforms, one-and-six each. They shoot off the rain from your shoulders.”

  “Have you read Sherlock Holmes in ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’?” went on Phillip. “It’s an eerie story. I want to get some luminous paste, for use on my face during night-work. It’ll put the fear of God into anyone after us, should we be hard-pressed at any time! Boo-hoo! Boo-hoo!”

  Phillip walked down the road, the new tenderfoot beside him, following the two other scouts towards the church.

  They stopped by the right-of-way which led down to the lane behind the cemetery wall. The patrol usually marched that way, to meet Cranmer, who awaited them by the stonemason’s yard opposite the main gates.

  “You men are awfully late, you know. We’ll never get to Whitefoot Lane woods this way.”

  “We had our dinners late,” replied Peter Wallace.

  “Oh, I see. Anyway, why don’t you salute when you see me coming on parade? You should, you know. I told you that last time. This is our new man, Desmond Neville. Carramba! Do you see what I see? Freddy Payne’s got a real wide-awake!”

  A very small boy, approaching on the grass beside the West Kent Grammar School, stopped and raised his bugle. After a few preliminary squeals and toots a thin, discordant noise floated down; a mere strangulation of wind.

  “Why doesn’t that little tich wait until he comes on parade, if he must blow it himself,” exclaimed Phillip. “That’s what comes of having a kid in the patrol who wears his sister’s boots!”

  “It’s his bugle, so he has a right to do what he wants to with it,” said Peter Wallace.

  “But it’s my patrol, all the same. Those squeaky notes sound simply awful, especially when you think we are supposed to be Bloodhounds.”

  Phillip’s description of Freddy Payne as a little tich was not intended to be unkind. He did not know that Little Tich was a malformed and diminutive music-hall turn; or realise that Freddy Payne was a product of pre-natal malnutrition. Freddy Payne was in his tenth year, yet only about half the height of his broomstick. His thin, rickety legs ended in high brown boots, for his ankles were weak.

  As the patrol-leader had remarked, they were girl’s boots; but Freddy’s mother, at her son’s earnest request, had had the soles and heels studded with blakeys to give them at least some likeness to boy’s boots. The iron “protectors” clattered and clinked as Freddy crossed the road, the little pewter bugle suspended across his shoulder on an old crimson curtain cord a-swing with two big tassels. Phillip stared enviously at his new hat, the chin-strap worn under the owner’s lower lip, to increase his martial appearance.

  “Why are you late again, Freddy?”

  “I had to wait to get my Father’s permission before I could come.”

  “Oh, very well. Come on now, fall in, men. Corporal Wallace on the right.”

  They shuffled into line. Phillip produced his notebook.

  “Subscriptions first.”

  The Wallace brothers glanced at one another. Phillip began with the bugler. “Got your penny, Freddy?”

  Freddy Payne blushed again. He shuffled his boots, avoiding the patrol leader’s gaze.

  “Father asked me to say, Phillip, what’s the subscription for, and who keeps the money we give you every week?”

  Phillip frowned.

  “As I told you before, the patrol is saving up for a bivouac tent, for when we go camping! It costs seven and sixpence! When we’ve got it, it will belong to the patrol, not to me! There’s no need to be alarmed—I shan’t pinch your blooming oof.”

  “Also, Father asked me to ask,” went on Freddy, shifting on another foot. “Supposing a scout leaves the patrol, what happens to his share of the tent?”

  Phillip frowned more intensely.

  “Well, we haven’t got the tent yet, so your Father’s hypothesis does not apply! Q.E.D. as Euclid would say. Anyway, we all agreed to pay a penny a week. Haven’t you brought yours?”

  “I’ve only got my one for broken biscuits.”

  “Well, bring it next week, don’t forget. I’ll put your penny down now, so now you owe it to me personally. How about yours, Peter?”

  “What about your own?” replied Peter Wallace, unmoving.

  His manner startled Phillip. A pulse of fear went through him. “Well,” he said hurriedly, “I am keeping mine in my Post Office book, for the tent.”

  “That’s what you say,” retorted Peter Wallace. “I’ll trouble you for our subscriptions back.”

  Phillip said faintly, “What have I done?” He was utterly bewildered by the sudden change in Peter’s attitude.

  “Where is the money?”

  Peter’s eyes glinted. Would he take off his spectacles, next thing?

  Staring helplessly at Peter, Phillip managed to say that the money was quite all right.

  “Then I’ll call for it on Monday night. And don’t forget it, accidentally on purpose, will you? We’ve had enough of your ways. Come on, Davie.”

  Phillip wondered wildly what he would do if everyone left like that. Oh, it was not true to say he had pinched the Tent Fund money. He had spent most of the subscriptions, but the amount was covered by his Post Office Savings account. Had Peter put Freddy up to refusing to pay? Thank goodness it had not happened in Hillside Road, perhaps with
Mr. and Mrs. Rolls, and Mr. Pye, hearing what Peter had said.

  A further shock was to come. When he was a dozen yards away, Peter Wallace put his hand in his pocket and drew forth a pennant. It had a dog’s head on it, as Phillip saw while Peter was tying it to his pole.

  “You might like to know that I have formed my own patrol, the Greyhounds,” said Peter. “And our preserves are the woods in Whitefoot Lane, so keep clear of them, or you know what you’ll get!”

  “But Whitefoot Lane is my preserve,” said Phillip, incredulously. “I took you there first, you know I did! They are my woods, and were my Father’s before me! Say it’s all a joke, Peter,” he said, with a tremulous smile.

  “The joke is that we’ve found you out. Come on, Davie.”

  “Half a mo’, Peter. I did go to Whitefoot Lane Woods first, and my Father can prove it. He took me up Whitefoot Lane on my bike! I swear on my scout’s honour it’s true.”

  “Well, the Whitefoot Lane woods, and the Seven Fields, are from now on the territory of the Greyhounds! And you’re a liar, and a swanker, pretending as though the woods belonged to your father! In case you don’t know, I’ll tell you that I looked in a reference book in the library, and discovered that the woods and all the land belong to Mr. Forster, who is a Member of Parliament! What’s more, I wrote to him for permission for the Greyhounds to go in his woods, and he says we can after the end of the month, when the pheasants have hatched, if we don’t interfere with them in any way. They are private woods, so you keep out of them, or you know what to expect!” The brothers walked away.

  *

  To complete his mortification, Phillip saw Uncle Hugh approaching up the passage way from Ivy Lane. He had recently begun to feel anxiety lest such a shambling figure be connected with him. Uncle Hugh was hobbling along on two sticks, which had rubber ferrules on the bottoms instead of the usual iron ones. He had an old yellow straw-yard on his head, while his jacket and trousers flapped loose on his thin frame. Uncle Hugh was a wreck, Phillip knew that; Gran’pa had said something about him having fallen down that morning. Uncle’s thin hawk-nose was bruised, and his forehead was cut, and dabbed with yellow disinfectant.