Young Phillip Maddison Page 23

  When Mother came upstairs, after Mr. Purley-Prout had gone, Phillip was feeling almost sick with suspense.

  “Oh, I knew Father would never let me camp out,” he wept, on being told the news. “I have recovered fully from scarlet fever! I am not delicate any longer!” and he hid his face under the clothes.

  *

  Phillip was allowed to cycle out to the camp beyond the Fish Ponds by day, but he had to be home by six o’clock every evening. Thus he missed all the fun, he told his mother. Mr. Purley-Prout was a hero. He was out all night, raiding the camps of the Bereshill and Fordesmill troops, returning with their flags, after they had raided the North Western’s camp and failed to take their flag.

  “The chaps get no sleep at all at night, Mum, as the raids go on all night. Oh, why didn’t Father let me go?”

  “Perhaps he will at the Whitsun Camp, dear, when the weather is warmer. But surely Mr. Prout allows the scouts to have some sleep? It must be very bad for growing boys to be on the go all the time.”

  “It’s not his fault, Mum. It’s those awful Bereshill and Fordesmill roughs. Their scoutmasters simply hate Purley-Prout. He says it’s due to envy, as he has the smartest troop in the district. I say, don’t tell Father about the lack of sleep, will you? You know what he is. Else he’ll say ‘No’ to the Whitsun Camp. He’s a spoil-sport.”

  “Phillip, that is most unfair. Your Father has only your good at heart.”

  “Well, then, try and persuade him to let me go at Whitsun.”

  “You must ask him yourself, dear.”

  *

  It was a fine Whitsun; and Phillip’s anxious request was duly granted. With wild enthusiasm he set about rebuilding the baggage waggon. The only wheels he could get were old, but with care they would last out.

  The great moment arrived at last.

  On Friday, May 28, just before 6 p.m., the Bloodhound Patrol, in a somewhat hot condition, after carrying the baggage waggon (which had broken down en route) arrived upon the parade ground of the North Western Troop near Fordesmill Bridge Station. Richard had made one stipulation: that the faulty groundsheet be replaced by the remains of a roll of oil-cloth, “which I will lend to your patrol, provided you return it in good condition.”

  Phillip was rather ashamed of the roll of oilcloth, which had had to be carried with the waggon, from the Fire Station onwards, by Cranmer and Desmond. Half way to Fordesmill, after a taunt of “Doin’ a moonlit?” from some boys, they had stopped to wrap the tent around the roll, to disguise it. The patrol arrived a quarter of an hour late.

  “Where have you been? Do you want to be left behind?” asked Mr. Purley-Prout, when they halted. “Phillip, the eternal tenderfoot, I see! Whatever is in that bundle?”

  “It’s to keep the patrol dry, please sir,” gasped Phillip. They had run the last quarter of a mile.

  “Fall in behind the others!”

  Excitement started early. While they were waiting on the platform for the train to Reynard’s Common, a bowler-hatted head and shoulders, with big white moustaches under its bushy eyebrows, stared down at them from the parapet of the road bridge above. This was Captain Blois, from St. Anselm’s College. The St. Anselm’s Troop were rivals of the North West Kents, who had ambushed them more than once. Captain Blois was considered to be spying as he stood there. Phillip did a little jig on the platform towards the bowler hat, taunting it. Cranmer let go his terrific four-finger whistle. Captain Blois glared down revengefully, he thought, before disappearing. He had obviously come to find out their strength, and in plain clothes!

  The train puffed in, just after a quarter past six. The troop rushed for carriages. Mr. Purley-Prout had cycled on with some of the other scouts. They wanted their bikes for midnight raids, explained Mr. Swinerd, in charge of the train party. St. Anselm’s Troop were camping around Reynard’s Common, as well as the Fordesmills and Berehills, he told them. Oh, there would be some sport!

  The railway terminus was a familiar place of pleasure: here the Maddison family had arrived in past times, for Sunday picnics on the common, Father joining them there on his bicycle, finding them by the family whistle.

  The engine turned round on a wooden turn-table at the end, in order to go back the way it had come. It was the end of the ordinary world. This was the real country. There were roses growing along the platform fence, and large oil lamps on wooden posts. Phillip felt very happy as they jumped out on the platform and saw the cyclists coming in, led by Mr. Purley-Prout, half a minute later. The train had raced them!

  “Fall in, the North West Kent Troop! Leave the baggage, a cart is coming for it. Peter, detail a scout from your patrol to remain as baggage guard. He can ride on the cart.”

  They marched across the common, with its silver birches and clumps of gorse giving out a sweet scent of blossom, its linnets and stonechats and warblers among the rising honeysuckle bines and plants of foxglove. When they rested, Phillip could hear the chirp of grasshoppers and crickets in the sun. There was a low line of dark clouds on the horizon of the west, which Mr. Swinerd, a man with a dull face and loose mouth, said he did not like the look of. While they were sitting there, he told them a story about a man who asked at London Bridge station for a return ticket to the Crystallised Palace, meaning to cheat the railway company by not going back by train. The same man spat on the carriage floor, while going to the Crystallised Palace, and someone else in the carriage said, “You cannot expect to rate as a gentleman, if you expectorate on the floor.”

  Mr. Swinerd had to explain what the long word meant, then they laughed.

  Mr. Swinerd continued to be a funny man. When they fell in again, he said, “Now for another amble onwards, forward my merry men, to honour, glory, and bags of mystery for supper!” They could laugh at that, knowing that he meant sausages.

  They reached camp at eight o’clock, and set about putting up the tents. The camp was in the same paddock as at Easter. It was about an acre, with tall fir trees rising along three sides. The fourth side had a hedge growing over posts and rails, to keep sheep and cattle from dropping to the road below the steep bank. The subsoil was chalk; the road dipped down and rose again some distance away, to Farthing Street. There was a quarry below the lower end of the field, and in this were cow-sheds and a piggery. Phillip knew that it was the home-farm of the Dowager Countess of Mersea, which the bailiff, a small neat man in cord jacket and breeches with cloth gaiters, managed for her.

  The bailiff’s cottage was across the road, on the corner of the other long white road which ran under the cleft-oak fencing of Knollyswood Park. The bailiff came to see if they wanted anything beside the milk and eggs he had already brought.

  “It looks like rain,” he said to Mr. Purley-Prout, and Mr. Prout said, “Oh, do not be a Jeremiah, Mr. Wilson.” The bailiff laughed a short laugh and said, “Well, I can’t control the weather, sir, and a little rain just now will bring on the malting barleys nicely. They need it.”

  “They are never satisfied, those horny-handed sons of toil,” Mr. Purley-Prout said to Mr. Swinerd, when the bailiff had gone.

  Phillip laid out the patrol tent and knocked in the pegs, then unrolled the linoleum. It was nine o’clock before they had their supper. Then they had to turn in, as they had a long day before them on the morrow, said Mr. Purley-Prout. Prayers first. After prayers, a scout was put on guard at the entrance, at the five-barred gate under the pine tree at the road junction. Mr. Purley-Prout told them that the Greyhounds would provide hourly guards for the first night.

  “The Bloodhounds can try their mettle tomorrow night, when we can expect attempts to capture our Flag.” It was wonderfully exciting.

  Each of the six Bloodhounds had twelve inches of lateral space for his bed. Each had a blanket. Rolled capes were used as pillows. Hardly had they taken off their boots, and were trying to settle down, when it began to rain.

  “Lucky we put up the tent when we did,” said Phillip.

  The sides of the tent were open; and Phillip,
lying on the outside, towards the west, soon felt drops on his face. He tried to get farther into the tent. The need for adjustment passed from boy to boy, until the one at the other end, Ching, exclaimed, “Don’t push, Cranmer! You’re deliberately shoving me out!”

  “I ain’t! I was shoved, see?” replied Cranmer. “Move up, Lenny.”

  “I can’t, my ribs are almost crushed!”

  “Silence everyone!” said the voice of Mr. Purley-Prout.

  He occupied a small khaki bivouac between the Bloodhounds and the Lions and Kangaroos who were in a large bell-tent. Beyond the bell-tent was another small tent, in which the Assistant Scoutmaster, Mr. Swinerd, slept. Then came the Greyhounds, in their tent.

  The rain pattered down. After a quarter of an hour’s sleeplessness, writhing, and muttering, Ching suddenly cried out, “Aow! It’s raining down my neck! You’ve pushed me outside again, Cranmer!”

  He struggled to sit up. His head touched the canvas. “I thought so! The tent’s rotten!”

  “Be quiet,” whispered Phillip.

  “I’ll get pneumonia!” wailed Ching.

  “Well, you insisted on being on the outside, you know,” said Phillip.

  “Yes, to get away from the smell of Cranmer’s toe-jam.”

  “I washed me feet ’smorning,” protested the corporal.

  “Shut up, everybody,” said Phillip. A few minutes later he rose on his elbow and said, “The tent is wet down the inside everywhere! I told you fools to be careful not to touch the canvas.”

  “The splashes from the trees are coming in my end as well. I wish I hadn’t come,” moaned Ching.

  Phillip flashed his electric lamp. The interior certainly was glistening in places. “Don’t touch it above your head, Ching, whatever you do!”

  At once Ching’s fingers went up. A dribble of drops pattered on his head.

  “You damned fool, I told you not to! I hope you like it!”

  “Phillip, let your voice be silent from now onwards!” called the voice of Mr. Purley-Prout through the rainy darkness.

  Phillip rested disconsolately on his elbow, after he had switched off the lamp, to save the battery. A battery cost 4½d., and did not last for many flashes.

  “Did you hear me, Phillip?”

  “Yes, Mr. Prout.”

  “Then say ‘Yes’, the next time.”

  “The rain’s coming in where I am, too,” whispered Desmond.

  “Did you hear what I said, Phillip?”

  “Yes, Mr. Prout.”

  “Then don’t you consider it a matter of common courtesy to reply when your Scoutmaster is speaking to you?”

  “I thought you told me to say ‘yes’ the next time, so I was waiting for the next time, Mr. Prout.”

  “Don’t split hairs. Now, understand this, there will be no further talking among your patrol. Shut up, you Bloodhounds!”

  “Yes, Mr. Prout.”

  “And shut up yourself, Phillip.”

  “Yes, Mr. Prout.”

  Ching whispered, “My blanket’s covered with wet! Oh, why did I come? Curse you, Cranmer, take your bony elbow out of my stummick!”

  “You take yer stummick, Ching, and put it where v’ monkey puts v’ nuts!”

  “Aow! Something walked over my face,” Ching complained next.

  “Phillip, I hope I shall not have to tell you again to keep your men in order! For the last time, shut up!”

  “Stop talking, men!” Phillip cautioned his unhappy patrol.

  “Shut up, yourself, Phillip! How can you expect to be obeyed, when you set a bad example?”

  “Ask Old Nick,” muttered Phillip.

  An uneasy half hour followed. Then complaints began to arise once more from the cramped boys lying under the dripping canvas. Phillip felt unhappy, that a real Boer War tent should have behaved like that. “I hope the rain stops before long. I expect it will,” he encouraged his men.

  “For the last time, will you keep your men in order, Phillip!”

  “I’m doing my best, Mr. Prout.”

  “Then your best is not good enough, Phillip! How can you command without having learned to obey? For the very last time, will you be quiet! Can’t you keep your men in order?”

  “Shut up, everybody!” said Phillip.

  From inside the dry bivouac tent of the Scoutmaster came a dreadful command.

  “Phillip! Go home!”

  The patrol lay silent in the open, leaky, dark tent. Phillip reached for his boots. He felt them to see if there was water inside, then put them on and laced them up. Water splashed on the back of his neck. He unrolled his thick dark grey cape, which came down to the elbows, and fastened it by the rusty chain at the throat. He put on his wide-awake with the strap under his chin, as the wind was now blowing. Then rummaging in the wooden box which had been taken off the chassis when the waggon had broken down, he selected the rations, which Mother had given him. There was his loaf of bread, his half pound of streaky rashers, his blue paper bag of sugar mixed with tea, his pot of apricot jam, his quarter-of-a-pound of butter, his tin of condensed milk. He put these in a sack; twisted the hessian round the bundle to sling it over his shoulder; then whispered, “So long, men, see you another time,” and crawled out. He took his pole and started to trudge across the wet grass.

  At the gate his flash-light revealed a huddled figure on guard under the pine tree. It was David Wallace. Silver streaks of water fell in the rays of the carbon-filament bulb. David was shivering.

  “Are you relieving me, Phillip?”

  “Old Purley-Prout has sent me home. How far is it? Nine miles?”

  “Just about.”

  “It’s cold, isn’t it?”

  “It is, rather. Mr. Prout lent me his cycling cape.”

  “Seen anything of the raiders?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t suppose they’ll come in the rain.”

  “You never know. What’s the time?”

  “About eleven, I should think. It will take me till three o’clock to get home.” He would wait in the porch when he got back. He would not dare to wake up Father.

  “Where’s your black rubber cycling cape, Phillip?”

  “I lent it to Cranmer. Well, so long, David. Goodbye for now,” said Phillip, trying to stop his voice quavering.

  He started walking on the gritty, running surface. He began to whistle Alice, Where Art Thou?, and had gone less than fifty yards when Cranmer’s shrieking whistle came through the black night.

  Stopping, Phillip heard David Wallace calling out to him, “Phillip, come back!”

  He went back, as slowly as he had set forth, whistling softly to himself, sack over shoulder. He returned to the patrol tent. Crouching down, among silent men, on the cold wet oilcloth, he took off his sodden cape and boots. There was more room in the tent now, for Mr. Purley-Prout had taken Lenny Low into his bivouac, said Desmond.

  Chapter 16

  ALARUMS AND EXCURSIONS

  PHILLIP did not know when the rain stopped, although it must have been after dawn, for the cuckoos were calling while drops were still pattering on the canvas from the pine trees above. There was a mist over the paddock when he did leave the tent, on hands and knees, feeling cold and pale. A voice in the quarry below called to a cow, and pigs made shrill squealings, which suddenly stopped. Many birds soon were singing. One by one his men crawled out. They began to look about for firewood, but only sodden sticks lay on the ground. Mr. Purley-Prout crawled out of his bivouac, followed by Lenny Low.

  Mr. Purley-Prout said another troop was coming from Croydon that day, so the troop must hurry up with breakfast, as they had to go and meet their guests and help carry their baggage. This would be reckoned a good turn for the day for everybody. There was no camp fire, each patrol was left to make its own as best it could.

  Phillip had been lent a double-cooker for the patrol’s porridge, by his mother. After many matches, kneeling in the wet, blowing and coughing, he managed to start a hissing fire which,
with damp sticks, was no flame and all smoke. The porridge pot had just been put on when Mr. Purley-Prout told them that in five minutes they must leave. As there was no time for oatmeal, attempts were made to fry eggs. The wet sticks picked up below the pines being rotten, were saturated with water; the fire required constant blowing to make the smallest flame appear in the steam. So the Bloodhounds, together with the others, had to leave without any breakfast. Mr. Purley-Prout had eaten some dates, nuts and figs, while Mr. Swinerd munched sandwiches left over from the night before.

  “Fall in the North West Kents!”

  Soon after they had set out, the sun appeared, and dried the puddles in the road. They took an unfamiliar route. On and on they marched. It became hot; dust arose as they straggled on, pallid with sleeplessness and no breakfast. Phillip felt thirsty, but the water in his wooden bottle tasted too bad to drink. The others, too, wanted a drink, but Mr. Purley-Prout did not stop. After two hours they arrived outside a strange station, where stood a solitary waggonette.

  Mr. Purley-Prout looked at his gold watch. “We’ve got two minutes to spare,” he said. “Bravo, the North Western! Never let it be said that we kept our guests waiting!”

  Oh, for a drink! Would they all march back as soon as the train came in? A distant whistle and a chuff-chuffing told that it was coming. Mr. Purley-Prout called the Troop to attention. The Flag was held up by his personal Standard Bearer, Holdwich, patrol leader of the Lions.

  The train came in and stopped. Eight old people alighted, led by a clergyman. Mr. Purley-Prout spoke to them. They were Ramblers, they said. They were going in the waggonette to visit Caesar’s well, which fed the Fish Ponds, the source of the Randisbourne, and look for relics of Roman pottery on the common. No, they had seen no Boy Scouts in the train.

  “The blighters have obviously missed it,” Mr. Purley-Prout said to Mr. Swinerd. “Well, we’ve done our part. We shall have to hang on for the next train, that’s all.”

  Mr. Swinerd told them that meant two hours to wait. There was a shop near the station, and Phillip bought some oranges and a loaf of white bread, with fourpence of the sixpence Mother had given him for emergencies. He gave an orange to each of his men, and kept two for himself. He hacked slices of the bread with his knife, and they ate it. An old woman in a cottage gave them a jug of water; two jugs of water; three, four jugs. Mr. Purley-Prout thanked her on behalf of the Troop.