How Dear Is Life Page 7

  Phillip liked to be alone with Edgar on the occasions when Mr. Hollis suggested that he should stay. Then he and Edgar had some fun. The occasions when he stayed were the addressing of the first renewal reminder notices. Edgar had to stay in order to stamp them. Bouts of work were interrupted by bouts of boxing and football in the basement. Phillip was now six feet tall, though very thin; he weighed, according to the machine on London Bridge station, nine stone ten pounds with top hat, raincoat, and umbrella.

  That silk hat had drawn some remarks at first.

  “Here, what the devil have you got on your head?” Mr. Hollis demanded, when he appeared in his topper. “Who the blazes do you think you are? No, no, don’t take it off, keep it on! Look at this, Howlett, what do you think of your junior?’

  Downham looked sardonic. Phillip thought that he was rather despised by Downham.

  “Well, Maddison,” gurgled Mr. Howlett, pipe hanging from mouth, its rim oily black with Hignett’s Cavalier. “Didn’t recognise you at first, I must say.”

  “Young monkey, apeing his seniors,” laughed Hollis. “Get on with the post book, you lamp-post.”

  Phillip hastily disappeared into the basement, to hang up coat and hat, then to leap up the stairs again. When Mr. Hollis came to him with the post he whispered, “Don’t mind my fooling, Maddison. I appreciate that you are trying to keep up the traditions of the Lane.”

  The hat was an old story by October, not so shiny as when new. Mid-day sittings in the churchyard of St. Botolph at the corner of Houndsditch and Aldgate, when money for lunches had run out, had exposed it to more than one pigeon. In places it looked as though it had been licked by a cat.

  If Phillip was a lamp-post, Edgar was still a little tich, with treble voice and child face free of the quick cunning of Cockney van or newspaper boy. Unknown to Phillip, Edgar had a hero upon whom to model his mind. In his messenger’s uniform, with silver-gilt buttons, he looked a happy mite beside his mural display of boxers and beauties.

  At football in the basement Edgar was very quick, and scored more goals with the string-tied ball of brown-paper, against Phillip’s wall, than Phillip did against Edgar’s wall. Edgar butted a lot; an act impossible to Phillip, since not only was Edgar never there when he charged, but he had to bend down to meet Edgar shoulder to shoulder. This made the breaks in clerical work all the more hilarious.

  As for the boxing, with towels wrapped round fists, Edgar invariably scored more blows, or light taps, than Phillip. Edgar’s head was never there when Phillip launched his gentle straight lefts. More than once Edgar got under his guard, and a series of left-right-lefts on his ribs and solar-plexus made him aware that he ought to do something about his total ignorance of the art of self-defence.

  *

  The directors of the Moon Fire Office made a grant of four pounds to every clerk who joined the territorials. Phillip wanted a new suit; there was Church the tailor in Fenchurch Street who advertised a thick, dark-grey herring-bone all-wool suit, made to measure, for fifty shillings. Cheaper suits were thirty-five bob. The four pounds grant was therefore attractive. Also, said Downham, there was the camp every year, near the sea, in addition to the annual two weeks’ holiday. A whole month in the open air, with full salary; and the second fortnight under canvas without cost, and a shilling a day soldier’s pay as well!

  Phillip decided to join the territorials.

  There were many battalions in the London Regiment, twenty-eight in fact, he learned from Downham. Then there was the Honourable Artillery Company, a corps apart. Most of the fellows at Head Office were in one or the other of the crack battalions—the Inns of Court, London Rifles, Queen’s Westminsters, Artists’ Rifles, London Highlanders, and one or two more. But for the Highlanders you not only had to have Scottish blood, declared Downham: you had to be first-class socially. They would not take any old rag-tag or bobtail who presented himself.

  “The battalion for the bobtails is the Tower Hamlets, down the river, the Shiny Old Seventh, the louts from Leytonstone,” pointing with his pen to a map of London on the wall.

  Phillip was somewhat subdued by what he considered to be a reference to himself as a supposed bobtail. Pype, who had been one of the Bagmen in his last term at school, had recently got a post at Head Office. Phillip had not forgotten how Downham had spoken rather slightingly about Pype.

  “Fancy a chap like that being admitted on the staff!” were his words to Mr. Hollis. “Why, he was a scholarship boy at some suburban grammar school!”

  Pype certainly was small, and rather sallow; but surely Heath’s was a pretty good school, being founded in Elizabethan times? Both Downham and Mr. Hollis were proud of the fact that they had gone to public schools, Merchant Taylors and St. Paul’s respectively.

  At Head Office luncheon that day Phillip thought he would ask Costello, who was an Old Heathian, and in the London Highlanders, pretending that the idea had only just come into his head. He waited until Costello, opposite him at table, had finished his lunch.

  Wielding a quill toothpick, Costello said, “Oh, we’re pretty well full up I think. Why not try the Twentieth, they’re your way, aren’t they,” and then turned to talk to some others at the next table. So that was it! Costello knew Downham, and they thought him not good enough for the Highlanders.

  Going downstairs, on impulse he went into the telephone box, and asked for Wine Vaults Lane. Downham answered. Putting on an assumed voice, Phillip asked for himself. Downham replied that he was out to lunch, so Phillip said, “Oh, I see. Well, I’m his uncle, and I was going to ask him to luncheon, so I’ll ring up another day. Good day to you.”

  When he got back to the office Downham was furious. “Why the hell do you ring yourself up from Head Office, saying you were your uncle? What’s the game? Don’t you know this is a private line? The telephone girl asked me as soon as you hung up, ‘Is his uncle at Head Office, as well as his father?’, and then she rang the Town Department, who said you’d just left the box. You young idiot, why do you do such damn silly things?”

  Later in the afternoon Phillip assembled himself sufficiently to say, “Oh, about the London Highlanders, I have a cousin in them, you know.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Hubert Cakebread.”

  “Why, Bertie Cakebread is a corporal in my company!” exclaimed Downham. “He’s one of the best bayonet fighters in the School of Arms.”

  Phillip kept his eyes modestly on his work, writing his neatest hand. He was glad when Mr. Hollis returned, top-hatted and in morning coat, from inspecting a Moses Cohen factory at Leytonstone, where a new fire-sprinkler system had been installed.

  Then Downham told him about the ringing-up. Mr. Hollis made no comment, as he drew off his gloves.

  “What a frightful neighbourhood,” he said. “Young Roy Cohen tells me that ass’s milk has a large sale down there, from the costers’ mokes. Isn’t that what you were brought up on as a brat, Maddison, what?”

  Phillip noticed that Mr. Hollis always said What?, instead of Eh?, when he wore his tail coat with the black braid around the hem, his highly-creased morning trousers, ironed top-hat, chamois-leather gloves, gold-banded umbrella, and rose-bud or other flower in his button-hole. He went on writing, face held low.

  “I say, Maddison, I do apologise for my extremely rude remark! But you are a bit of a donkey, you know.”

  In gratitude for the great man’s kindness, Phillip smiled, and said, “Oh, that’s quite all right, thank you, Mr. Hollis.”

  He felt that it was almost a case of second sight when, the next morning, Uncle George Lemon came into the office; but he kept his face hidden, in case Uncle did not want to recognise him.

  “Good morning, good morning to you, Mr. Lemon!” cried Mr. Hollis, affably. “To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?”

  Phillip went on with his work, after a faint smile at Uncle George’s small brown face. He listened. It was something to do with a house Uncle said he was going to have rebuilt in
Cornwall. He unrolled a lot of crinkling plans.

  “Quite a mansion, Mr. Lemon,” said Mr. Hollis. “By Lutyens, what? What are there, twenty bedrooms? Let me see. H’m. The cubic footage must run to well over a million—at sixpence a cubic foot, this is going to be in the neighbourhood of twenty-five thousand pounds, at a very rough estimate! Then there is Lutyens’ fee—what is that?—two thousand guineas?”

  “I am going to chuck this unnatural City life,” said Uncle George, as though he had not heard. “I want to farm land owned by m’forebears. I am going to bring back the Longhorn. I want to breed a winter-wheat that will ripen in July, to defeat the old swampy harvests of the past. Two out of every three Cornish Augusts are swampy, as you know. I have just bought a thousand acres in a ring fence, for a start, land once belonging to m’family.”

  “Well, it’s extremely good of you to think of us, Mr. Lemon! I don’t know what our Chancery Lane Branch will say about it, but healthy rivalry, you know, stimulates, what?”

  Uncle Lemon rolled up the plans, and put them in their long tube. Then he went to Phillip’s desk and said quietly, “How are you, Phil? When are you coming out to luncheon with me, as you promised? Hilary’s back from Sydney, did you know? We must foregather. How is your father? And your mother? Do give them both my kind regards. And your sisters. Come over and see us one Sunday, before we leave Epsom. Are you still keen on fishing? If all goes well, I shall be able to offer you some real good salmon fishing in Cornwall in the course of a year or two. One of my plans is to change the late-running fish in the Camel to springers, by introducing, by way of Khashmir boxes, early-running eyed-ova from the Tay. Don’t forget—write to me. Goodbye,” and Uncle Lemon held out his hand.

  When he had gone, leaving Phillip in a daze of glory, Mr. Hollis said, “How did you come to know Mr. George Lemon?”

  “He’s my uncle, Mr. Hollis.”

  “George Lemon your uncle?” cried Mr. Hollis, in surprise. “Why, he is the senior partner in Wilton, Lemon and Co., since old Wilton died. They act for my father-in-law’s firm, Carlton Turnham and Co., you know, the Civil Engineers.”

  That evening, when he told his father about Uncle George’s visit, Richard showed surprise, too; but a different kind of surprise.

  “I refuse to believe it! He was spoofing you, my boy.”

  “But I saw the plans of the mansion, truly, Father!”

  The next night Father said, “Well, Hollis confirms your story, I must admit that. But whatever does George Lemon think he’s doing, to want to rebuild a house of that kind? Has he come into a fortune? Or gone out of his mind? A house of twenty bedrooms, to be redesigned internally by one of the most expensive architects in England! And at a time when taxation is already making many owners of such houses feel the pinch! You mark my words, there is something fishy about it all.”

  Richard took up the Trident again, and said no more.

  “At any rate, dear,” said Hetty, “Phillip was quite right in what he said.”

  There was no reply from behind the newspaper.

  *

  Mr. Hollis’ attitude to Phillip became mellower. He brought up a basket of apples from his Woking garden, and gave two yellow-red ones to Phillip, two to Downham, one to Edgar, and the rest to Mr. Howlett. They were Cox’s orange pippins, not yet ripe, he said; they should be kept until they became mellow.

  Mellowness was in the air, in the attitude of Mr. Hollis particularly: the ripe mellowness of St. Martin’s Little Summer, of dwarf-yellow sun shining upon apples, peaches, and sunflowers in his garden, the working of which, Mr. Hollis often declared, provided him with the only true antidote to a damned office life lived eighty per cent in electric light.

  To Phillip, office life did not feel to be so damned. As the days shortened there was overtime for the Michaelmas second and third renewal notices. Edgar took them in batches, folded and stamped them, carried them in wicker tray to the pillar-box in Fenchurch Street.

  It was wonderful to have the office key in his charge. When the others had left, with blinds drawn Phillip sat and wrote with feelings of adventure. When should he go to tea? He was his own master. Then there was Edgar to think of. What time should he send him to tea tonight? Five-fifteen, or five-thirty?

  “You go to tea at half-past five, will you, Edgar?”

  “Yessir!”

  “Back at six, my lad!”

  “Yessir!”

  At 5.28 p.m., to show his power, Edgar slipped out. Five minutes later the man-in-charge got up, locked the door, strolled round the corner to his usual A.B.C. shop, and ordered his favourite meal of boiled country egg (as the menu described it), portion of cottage loaf, pat of butter, pot of tea, and penny pot of jam.

  “I think I’ll have apricot tonight.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The pot of jam was all the more attractive as it was only about two inches high, and little more than one in diameter. There were many kinds to choose from: cherry, quince, plum, greengage, apricot, damson, apple jelly, marmalade, raspberry, and strawberry. Tea, which cost sevenpence, was eaten slowly, to relish every mouthful, while he read in The London Magazine one of those thrilling nature stories by F. St. Mars, illustrated by Warwick Reynolds. This month’s was about a buzzard.

  There was a magazine club in the Branch: Mr. Howlett bought Nash’s, Mr. Hollis The Royal, Downham The London, and he bought Pearson’s. When they had read them for a week, they passed them round. Then Edgar bore them home.

  The London was Phillip’s favourite; it usually had an F. St. Mars story.

  He read, oblivious of cabs and buses and drays outside, while munching slowly to make the portion of crusty cottage loaf last, magazine propped against tea-pot. He was on his own; he could return when he wanted to; even so, Edgar would be back at six, so he must not linger. After all, he was now in charge of the Branch. It was seven minutes to six. He had six and a half more minutes.

  The story finished, he took out his diary, and gloated upon the amount of overtime already due to him, £2 5s. 6d. Riches indeed! By working from five o’clock until nine that evening, he would make a further six shillings: more than he earned in nearly three ordinary days. From this diary, given him by Mr. Hollis—one of scores sent to the Branch every New Year, from other firms and companies—he learned from the Table of Income or Wages that his £40 per year was £3 6s. 8d. per month, 15s. 4½d. per week, or 2s. 2½d. per day. After Christmas he would buy a Belgian double-barrel gun, and go with Bertie down to the Blackwater estuary wildfowling during the week-ends!

  Having scraped the pot of apricot jam clean, and picked off his plate the last group of crumbs, he sipped his third cup of tea, and regarded further information in the North British and Mercantile Diary about the population of the United Kingdom at the last census, two years previously; and reflected that, had he died before donkey’s milk had saved his life as a baby, the number of people in England would now be 34,047, 658. “Donkey Boy”, his old nickname. “Worry Guts”, Father had sometimes called him. Was that because he had thread-worms all the time, and had been ashamed to tell Mother how they had itched so? After his scholarship exam, he had told her; and kept in bed, starved, medicine had killed them all.

  He asked for the bill. He liked the waitress who usually served him; she always smiled at him, she was plump and pink-faced, unlike most of the pale thin waitresses in black clothes and white caps and aprons.

  Four minutes left. He read the Table of Inhabited House Duty, and wondered why anyone had to pay tax. Father often grumbled about income tax. What would Father have to pay? He had been in the M.F.O. for nearly twenty years, and Mother said he had started, coming from Doggett’s Bank, at £120 per annum, so now he would be earning in the neighbourhood of £320. The first £160 was abated, which meant it didn’t count; so he would have to pay 160 lots of 9d., or 160 @ 6d. equalled £8, plus £4, total £12. But there was an allowance for every child under 16. Mavis was just 16, so Father would have to pay ten more ninepences than last year;
more than that, for with his £10 annual rise it would mean twenty ninepences more, or 15s. Twelve pounds fifteen shillings a year! What a swizz! Hard cheese, Pater old Man, you should have gone to Australia when you had the chance!

  Three minutes left. How long before he would have to pay income tax? By £10 annual rises, including the £20 rise from £50 t0 £70 during his third year, it would take him—he counted on his fingers—eleven more years before he reached £160. He would be Downham’s age by then!

  Lips and fingers working, he reckoned it would take him fifteen and a half years to reach £200, twenty-five to £300, thirty-five to £400, fifty-five to £500, sixty-five to £600, seventy-five to £700, eighty-five to £800, ninety-five to £900, a hundred and five to £1,000. By that time he would be like Old Parr! Then looking at his watch, he saw with slight alarm that he ought to be going.

  The waitress who took an interest in what she thought of as the tall Irish boy with the dark blue eyes and lovely shy smile wondered if he was hard-up, and reckoning how far his money would go. So when he rose and offered her his usual twopence she said quickly, with a sudden full look into his eyes, “No dear, that’s quite all right, really, you keep it. I know what it is to be hard up.”

  He felt shame that twopence was not enough. He had a thr’penny bit in his pocket, too. It was too late to offer it now. He said, “Oh, I see, well, thank you, good evening,” and in confusion went out of the door, feeling that he could never go there again. Was he mean? Grandfather Maddison, who had died of drink, used to tip porters half-a-sovereign sometimes, when they opened carriage doors for him. And Gran’pa Turney once had given only a cigar-stub to a poor man who had carried his bag from Liverpool Street to London Bridge Station. He hurried down the street and turned into Wine Vaults Lane, to see Edgar approaching, whistling loudly Oh, oh, that Gaby Gaby Glide.